Post: #26

(08-03-2016 04:06 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  Oh good grief. Every twee hipster and wannabe "producer" sits around in Starbucks geeking out on their Macbook, nobody pays any attention. The iPhone is the most powerful cockblocking device ever made; I'd rather not give them a penny, simply on principle.

Go down the "prop game" line too far and before you know it you're this attention-whore:



I have actual work to do.

Well, if there's anything we know about women, it's that actual merit is irrelevant to them.

If you wanted to get more social mileage out of an apple product, better not to use it in a "basic" venue full of people with massive student loans and unsustainable lifestyles. It's not good company to be seen in.

But even in a better venue, it's probably no more game-effective than a nice pair of shoes. I'll stick to shitbox laptops with Linux till I'm made of money.

Post: #27

I wonder how a gold plated Macbook Pro with a diamond encrusted keyboard will do with Russian/Slavic girls.....that'll be a real pussy magnet.

Post: #28

I use a cheap Lenovo and it's a beast. With that said, the new Mac lineup is coming out soon and I'm really considering a new iMac because it's hard to do real work on laptops without an external screen and keyboard. I'm also considering a dell XPS 13 with external monitor and keyboard, since that will basically work as a portable iMac.

Post: #29

(08-03-2016 02:47 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  There isn't any reason Windows has to get sluggish over time

There is and it will. It's called the register. It grows larger over time, by installing new software for instance. Lookups in it become increasingly more expensive. I have yet to find a tool that truly remedies this.

(08-03-2016 02:47 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  I also think that running your OS on an SSD helps.

Yes, a lot. But Windows performance will still be worse than OS X and especially Linux.

(08-03-2016 02:47 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  That leaves Apple. I have no experience with it. When I eventually migrate to it, I'd like to be able to build a hackintosh.

Tried it, got it semi-working, not worth the trouble in my opinion. Apple goes to great lengths to make sure their OS runs on their hardware.

(08-03-2016 02:47 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  Though, admittedly, modern processors (and maybe even routers) probably compromise your privacy to the degree that worrying over the OS is a futile exercise in any attempt to preserve it.

Routers, maybe. A processor compromising privacy? Not likely. Even if it were able to make a connection to the outside world, which it isn't, it would only be able to send the instructions it received and/or executed. Not very useful without context. Your OS should be the main point of concern. Especially if it's not open source and we therefore have no idea what kind of hidden functionalities it contains.

(08-03-2016 03:01 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  For anything else you can always run a virtual machine. In fact, these days with a fast enough processor and SSD option, running Windows in a virtual machine on top of a lightweight Linux distribution all the time is a completely reasonable option if you're paranoid about security.

A virtual machine will do little for your privacy. It's basically just another system running in a window. Your external IP will be the same and be visible and your actions will still be trackable by the machine's OS. The only advantage is the fact you've got a sandbox. If the virtual machine gets infected with malware you can just delete it.

Post: #30

Artistic Purposes: Apple (DJing, Audio/Video Production)
Work Purposes: Windows (Excel Modeling, or any work where you do extensive work with Windows Office Suite)
Gaming Purposes: Windows (every game)

With that being said, if we're strictly talking laptops, and you don't have a specific niche need, then Apple products are better, and it's not close. And yes, I've used both.

Macbooks generally (note generally) have longer battery lives, less bugs, and shorter startup & load times. I also like OS X more than Windows 7/8 (i.e., multiple desktop screens). There is a reason people tout Apple's "usability". It really is easier to use and generally works better. My Air was $1000.

Post: #31

(08-03-2016 04:54 PM)MrFish Wrote:  There is and it will. It's called the register. It grows larger over time, by installing new software for instance. Lookups in it become increasingly more expensive. I have yet to find a tool that truly remedies this.

I suppose the difference might be that I generally don't install new programs after the PC is set-up post fresh-install. I know what I use, and don't much go beyond that.

Quote:Yes, a lot. But Windows performance will still be worse than OS X and especially Linux.

As I said, I don't have experience with OS X. I've never noticed a significant enough difference in boot time or program launching with any Linux distro. I can't imagine anyone caring about any discernible difference, if possible, short of the obsessive. At least the way I have my PC set up. It boots fast. Programs launch fast enough. A couple of seconds saved with a Linux boot, if it is that, makes no difference to me. And I know that Windows continues to boot process after the desktop shows.

Quote:Tried it, got it semi-working, not worth the trouble in my opinion. Apple goes to great lengths to make sure their OS runs on their hardware.

Good to know.

Quote:Routers, maybe. A processor compromising privacy? Not likely. Even if it were able to make a connection to the outside world, which it isn't, it would only be able to send the instructions it received and/or executed. Not very useful without context. Your OS should be the main point of concern. Especially if it's not open source and we therefore have no idea what kind of hidden functionalities it contains.

I wasn't being specific enough, I was referring to the internet chatter over possible backdoors in Intel and AMD chips. So, yeah, not exactly an every-day privacy concern. More of a security concern that most mortals won't have to worry about, if true.

Intel Chips run enough "advanced technology" features to make what they can do, exactly, suspicious enough. If those chips aren't considered a black box, that runs under your OS, then I'm unsure what constitutes such.

Unless someone is running OpenBSD, I don't think that they can really be certain of what is running under their OS.

Anonymity is another issue, should one desire such a thing.

Post: #32

I prefer Apple OSX. I use Linux and Unix. There is a need for Windows. To me most ARM machines (the Raspberry Pi) are the best ones to use if you know coding or simple Unix Admin.

In other words pick the best item with the proper toolset you are looking for. If you are just browsing on the internet get a Google Chromebook. Dont waste your money on a 2000 dollar machine with awesome graphics and a 1tb SSD because thats what your friends have.

Post: #33

(08-03-2016 04:44 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  I wonder how a gold plated Macbook Pro with a diamond encrusted keyboard will do with Russian/Slavic girls.....that'll be a real pussy magnet.

Post: #34

I use windows b/c too much specialty software I use runs only on it.

Post: #35

I do video editing , so I tend to buy an insanely powerful windows workstation and then get Hackintosh on it . Pay the price of windows and benefit the reliability of Mac . You can add internal hardrive for about a 100 quid and have both pc and hackintosh at the same time and decide to choose which you want to use and when .

Post: #36

I'm sticking with OSX ,windows 10 is total shit

Post: #37

I remember that time el mech got a Mac.

Fun times !

Post: #38

Apple laptops are at the very high end of the market, although you could get similar quality with a similarly priced windows computer. They are worth the money, and the warranty program is amazing. IT is worth buying for the following factor which windows computers CANNOT offer: privacy. Windows 10, even with all the privacy options turned on, will continue to steal your personal date. I wouldn't want to spend money to support SJWism, but that is the lesser of two evils when you consider the necessity of privacy to a healthy society. Also, the black hole that is windows sucking out your personal data may actually affect you on a personal level one day.

As for other apple products like the iphone, these operate on a walled garden principle where the company severely limits your rights as a user. I don't know why anybody would ever get it as it is less flexible, pricier, and harder to use than an android or blackberry phone. Ipods are great though, as long as you avoid itunes. They have amazing battery life which is useful.

Post: #39

If I was going to buy a brand new high performance laptop right now, I'd grab a surface book and slap a linux distribution on it. Dual boot.

Have never purchased an apple product.

My main computer is a desktop that I threw together and has never had anything but Linux on it. I only use one of my windows laptops when I have absolutely no other option for a particular software I need.

Post: #40

I have a Macbook I got a year and a half ago and it works great. However, if I was getting a desktop computer, it'd be fun to build a high-performance PC.

Post: #41

The only reason I would ever buy Apple crap is for developing on the iOS platform. They're overpriced, essentially impossible to upgrade, and not home-reparable anymore, while having built-in warranty-breaking planned failures. No thanks. Also, glossy screens suck on work machines.

Consumer grade PC laptops suck too, of course, in different ways. But there's the whole wide world of business class PC laptops and that's where you want to go if you want a solid work machine that will last, for 1/2-2/3 what a comparable Macbook would run.

Unfortunately, the whole PC laptop market is going to shit because they're all trying to copy the Apple form factor the last few years and that means making really fucking stupid compromises. I'm probably going to buy a stack of Thinkpad T430 refurbs for $300 each and use those for the next decade, now that Lenovo fucked up the Thinkpad line.

Windows 7 is the last Microsoft OS for me. I expect my computers to run all Linux except for gaming within 2 years.

Post: #42

For the security conscious:

Nearly every computer available runs closed-source firmware (software used to initialise the hardware and you're not able to inspect the code of it). This has been discovered in the past to contain backdoors and hackers/NSA often use firmware 0days to hack your computer.

There are however a few completely open-source computers available (no affiliation):

1) There's a few companies which have modified ThinkPads and installed open-source firmware on them (Libiquity, Minifree).

2) There is also an open-source computer which has just been funded via CrowdSupply: EOMA68 - Vimeo link, can't embed

Basically a credit-card sized computer card which you can slide into a laptop, micro desktop and soon to be tablet and phone housing.

The downside with all of these products is that they haven't got the latest specs. But they can go up to 8GB RAM, dual core and have dual SSD drives if desired.

Fortunately the more people start demanding completely open-source computers without any potential backdoors, the sooner we'll get them with better specs.

Post: #43

(10-30-2016 09:02 AM)weambulance Wrote:  Windows 7 is the last Microsoft OS for me. I expect my computers to run all Linux except for gaming within 2 years.

Windows 7 til I die.

Post: #44

Personally I am a windows fan.


I build my own computers, and I have windows 8.1 installed on them, I refuse to upgrade to windows 10 and I have taken some specific Reg files off of this particular installation to mitigate data harvesting and tracking. I also run a VPN.

However, in you're situation I would go with a Lenovo over Asus, Asus' charging ports have always done me wrong with all three laptops I have owned from them.

With PC systems you can install other OS's(Ie. Windows 10 to Windows 7/8.1). I have personally done this with old dell laptops that don't have much life left in them, if you slap Linux onto it it will speed up immensely.

If you have any questions on the subject of computers; either laptop or desktop building PM me and we can talk more about it. I love talking about this shit but I'd rather not ramble 40 paragraphs for no reason.

Post: #45

Apple make nice, shiney sexy hardware.

But they like to make you do things the apple way.

I prefer the PC world so I can do things my way (like drag and drop MP3s onto a music player instead of itunes)

Also I like the hardware interchangeability of PCs and lower cost.

Post: #46

(10-30-2016 05:01 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  Apple make nice, shiney sexy hardware.

But they like to make you do things the apple way.

I prefer the PC world so I can do things my way (like drag and drop MP3s onto a music player instead of itunes)

Also I like the hardware interchangeability of PCs and lower cost.

Yup, that is what has always irked me with my iPhone; I can't just pop a micro sd card into it and play my music, I need to hop through all the red tape first!

Post: #47

(10-30-2016 04:00 PM)Valentine Wrote:  For the security conscious:

Nearly every computer available runs closed-source firmware (software used to initialise the hardware and you're not able to inspect the code of it). This has been discovered in the past to contain backdoors and hackers/NSA often use firmware 0days to hack your computer.

There are however a few completely open-source computers available (no affiliation):

1) There's a few companies which have modified ThinkPads and installed open-source firmware on them (Libiquity, Minifree).

2) There is also an open-source computer which has just been funded via CrowdSupply: EOMA68 - Vimeo link, can't embed

Basically a credit-card sized computer card which you can slide into a laptop, micro desktop and soon to be tablet and phone housing.

The downside with all of these products is that they haven't got the latest specs. But they can go up to 8GB RAM, dual core and have dual SSD drives if desired.

Fortunately the more people start demanding completely open-source computers without any potential backdoors, the sooner we'll get them with better specs.

Sidetrack:

Even using encryption on the web isn't completely safe, regardless of firmware hacks.

The NSA likely has a pre-cooked set of solved encryption for anything less than 1024bit that uses certain algorithms. The estimated cost is something around $100 million bucks, so they probably did it already.

Just learned about this the other day...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%...y_exchange

Quote:As estimated by the authors behind the Logjam attack, the much more difficult precomputation needed to solve the discrete log problem for a 1024-bit prime would cost on the order of $100 million, well within the budget of large national intelligence agency such as the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The Logjam authors speculate that precomputation against widely reused 1024-bit D–H primes is behind claims in leaked NSA documents that NSA is able to break much of current cryptography.

To avoid these vulnerabilities, authors recommend use of elliptic curve cryptography, for which no similar attack is known. Failing that, they recommend that the order, p, of the Diffie–Hellman group should be at least 2048 bits. They estimate that the pre-computation required for a 2048-bit prime is 109 more difficult than for 1024-bit primes.

If NSA is breaking Diffie–Hellman, but has not pushed for US sites to upgrade to longer keys, then it would be an example of NSA's NOBUS policy of not closing security holes that NSA believes only they can exploit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS

Quote:NOBUS, short for "NObody But US", are security vulnerabilities which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) believes that only it can exploit. As such, NSA sometimes chooses to leave such vulnerabilities open if NSA finds them, in order to exploit them against NSA's targets.[1] NSA has a dual mission of both attacking foreign systems and defending U.S. systems, so keeping significant vulnerabilities which affect U.S. systems secret is a conflict of interest.[2]

You look at a vulnerability through a different lens if even with the vulnerability it requires substantial computational power or substantial other attributes and you have to make the judgment who else can do this? If there's a vulnerability here that weakens encryption but you still need four acres of Cray computers in the basement in order to work it you kind of think "NOBUS" and that's a vulnerability we are not ethically or legally compelled to try to patch – it's one that ethically and legally we could try to exploit in order to keep Americans safe from others.

— Former NSA chief Michael Hayden

Post: #48

(10-30-2016 09:02 AM)weambulance Wrote:  The only reason I would ever buy Apple crap is for developing on the iOS platform.

This is basically why I bought mine. Apple has a good infrastructure for development, before I got into that I was happy with my Lenovo gaming notebook.

I know everybody's already torn Apple to shreds on the trendy-hipster-gear line of argument, and I don't really disagree. But I dislike Android because I see Google as being a much greater evil than Apple. I appreciate how Apple has doubled down on the privacy side of things as a selling point for their products.

Post: #49

(10-29-2016 11:46 AM)Nowak Wrote:  I'm sticking with OSX ,windows 10 is total shit

That why I sticking with linux distros. I'm using for elementary OS loki as my main OS on my laptop. Its bitch with programing errors, but it running with my laptops hardware. Compare to Windows 10, it going a slow as 56K modem. Still need need windows to use certain programs. Hoping to get new hard drive and install windows 7 again. To focus on Apple, I admire one thing.

There is one thing Apple does well is well thought out user experience. Job's implementation of psychology and his perfectionism has been instilled into Apple was to make everything high quality product that is easy to use at every level of the user's experience from the software to hardware.

Post: #50

I have been in electronics for a long time, so this will be a bit lengthy but hopefully worth the time to read.

There is an ongoing misunderstanding about how computers, and really electronics generally, are brought to market.

A very small number of computers are designed in the US, and virtually none are manufactured here. Taiwanese Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) with mainland factories both design and build computers, then sell them in the US through companies like Dell. Quanta, for example, has contracts with every major computer company including Apple.

The only "engineering" a company like Dell will do is to specify design parameters, and that includes quality levels. Dell will call up Quanta and say they want a laptop with xyz features and a some quantified acceptable failure rate. An earlier poster pointed out that brands don't matter, and that is essentially correct.

There are problems with the ODM method. Dell's XPS line of laptops is their "premium" product, but it has had major design issues since it was first marketed against Apple's Macbooks. (Review websites don't report problems because they are really just PR companies.)

Apple controls design problems by engineering their computers in the US, but their manufacturing still goes to Quanta, who is known for problems with BGA assemblies.

The differences between US computer companies are 1) engineering effort 2) marketing and 3) customer service. Almost all products on the market are sourced through ODMs.

On the question of privacy, Windows 10 is awful and actually sends keystroke telemetry back to Microsoft. With the latest updates even Windows 7 now has telemetry, but it is more easily located and disabled. I am not aware that OS X has ever been publicly audited so cannot comment. Linux will depend on the distribution you choose. Running Ubuntu 16.04 on 2+ year old hardware is very satisfying, but again in this case I do not know what, if anything, is being sent back to Canonical. They do have a built-in mechanism for routing queries to amazon.com.

My recommendation for non-Apple products is to get an enterprise-grade laptop with Windows 7, though lately the lines between market segments have been blurring. I am conflicted about Apple because of the initial outlay, creeping OS X problems, and subtraction of useful features in the race to the bottom for thinness.

If any questions, I'll try to answer.