Ask HN: What laptop do you use? - <AUTHOR> I've been a proud macbook user for the last 10 years, but I've been using the latest touchbar model for the last 5 months and I'm starting to lose my mind with it.  I have 200 dollars worth of dongles, and yet I constantly find myself without the one I need on hand (usually a usb-a to usb-c). Its frustrating as hell .  The lack of SD card slot is nothing short of infuriating as well.  And.. on top of that OSX on this is a load of garbage and crashes nearly every time I undock from my external monitor.
For the first time in 10 years I'm considering trading in my shiny aluminum slate and going back to using a linux/windows machine as my daily driver (or maybe just buying a used 2015 model).
What are you using and are you happy with it?  What are your recommendations for a good linux daily driver machine with good build quality?  Is there anything out there on par with a macbook? <comment><USER2> Lenovo X260 running Linux (doesn't matter which one really, I am happy with Fedora (25 to 27) for desktop, though I've been a Debian/Ubuntu user for far longer than I like to think about). I use i3 Window manager and now find anything else intolerable. (And I'm sure everyone near me now finds my attitude towards i3 intolerable).

I fully tricked the X260 out: i7, 16gb, 2tb ssd (aftermarket addon) and most importantly the Lenovo WWAN card for Internet everywhere. I just picked one up on Ebay for $900 AUD second hand with 8/512 for my sister. Brand new mine was only $2200 in one of Lenovo's rare sales (The ones that only happen when their website is up, does anyone pay full price?).

Everything "just works", sound, sleep/resume, hdmi, mini DP, etc.

I've replaced everything I had on Mac except for: Readdle Tools. I'm a student and find the PDF reading markup invaluable and I have an iPad. Though now I have the WWAN I am leaving the iPad at home this semester. Evernote. Why oh why don't they have a native client for Linux. NixNote is not up to my size Evernote folder. Karabiner (Elements), Better Touch Tool & Typinator. Open to suggestions for shortcut management and text expansion for i3. Mac Automator: I know I can do most of it in Python, but for some GUI things this was amazing.

Gripes: Proprietary charging port. (Oh for USB C.). Random crashes that turned out to be because the plastic case was flexing and touching the RAM. A strategic piece of foam solved that. (My sister's one didn't have that issue).

I didn't get the fingerprint reader so I don't know if it works on Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the ThinkPad X260/270 series seems to be _exactly_ what i want from a laptop.

<comment><USER2> I forgot the 3 USB ports, RJ45 & SDcard reader too. (And the 24 hours I can get with the extended battery).

The X280 doesn't look as good to me. More limited range and IIRC soldered memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use the a late 2016 MacBook Pro and had similar issues (even had the keyboard replaced with a 2017 keyboard and it's great now) but overall I'm still happy as the crashing seems to be entirely related to the external monitor usage and that's no longer something I do. FWIW if you have the laptop open when you connect and disconnect the external monitor(s) it doesn't seem to crash in my experience.

That said, some of the people at our office love some of the latest Lenovo ThinkPad models and are running Linux.

<comment><USER4> I have a 2016 MPB had the same issue with the external monitor when I was using a 3rd party dongle (which was half the price of Apple's dongles). I have now bought Apple's dongle and no issues with the monitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I switch my old old MBP for a HP Spectre x360 running Fedora. [http://store.hp.com/CanadaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=2SP85U...](http://store.hp.com/CanadaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=2SP85UA&opt=ABL&sel=NTB)

Build quality is good for a PC, but doesnt match my old MBP (a bit less robust). Also Apple put an anti glare on the screen, I don't think HP ever heard of that. Even if there the screen can be brighter, end result is worst.

Everything works fine except the webcam.

But if you're a Mac OS power user, there is some things you'll greatly miss.

First, the keyboard shortcut. OS X uses emacs shortcuts all over the place, consistently. CTRL-K will do the same thing in the terminal, in your mail app or in your web app. Same thing for CTRL-E, CMD-[XCV], CMD-Arrow(s) etc... When you are use to this, it's quite powerful and convenient. Also you're Mac keyboard has less keys because it doesn't required them.

On linux, it's the same shortcut you'll find on Windows and its mostly inconsistent. To do the same action the shortcut changes depending on the running application. Emacs' in terminal, windows' in Mail. Sometime copy/paste is CTRL+[CP], sometime you need to add the Shift key. Same thing for all shortcuts. When you're used to Mac power and simplicity, this is quite frustrating.

Plus, if you write in multiple languages, on the Mac keyboard you can write letter like è, ñ, ... only by using the option key. On linux you have to switch the keyboard layout or remember the hex code.

After 8 months, I'm still more efficient on a mac keyboard.

One other thing to keep in mind is the trackpad. On linux it's painful. There is two software solutions, none works correctly. Palm rejection doesn't work well or it doesn't work at all. The only partially usable solution is to use disable the trackpad when the keyboard is in action. This is a Linux limitation, not a trackpad issue. Terrible! Simply terrible.

I don't know how much these details worth, but in the end I'm not sure I made the right decision to switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure some of those keyboard issues could be resolved with some customization with xmodmap.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xmodmap](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xmodmap)

It'll be a pain in the ass but once its done you can save the config and have it forever.

I hear you on the trackpad though. Its sad how far everyone else lags behind on trackpad quality. The trackpad on the touchbar laptops is immaculate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Razer Blade[1]. Excellent build quality, aluminum unibody, bad-ass matte black color (but admittedly cheesy green Razer logo on the back). I highly prefer it over the MacBook Pro I had to use at my last job. I also prefer developing on Windows (or Linux) over OSX.

[1] [https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops/razer- blade](https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade)

<comment><USER7> Ugh, "excellent build quality"? Hardly. I bought a Razer Blade Stealth at the end of 2016, and one of my USB-A ports is dead, the front rubber striping on the bottom has separated from the body, the body itself has warped (lid doesn't close flush anymore), one of the body screws has fallen out (exposing circuit boards to the air, because of the warping), and the backlight for the leftmost 16 keys on the keyboard no longer works.

I suppose the larger Razer Blade Model might have better quality, but I'm skeptical given my experience.

I never had any problems remotely like this with Apple laptops (which I used for ~11 years), which I still consider the gold standard for build quality. The only real positive I can attribute to the Stealth is that Linux support on it has been easier than with most Apple laptops I've owned.

<comment><USER6> That's unfortunate, I've had mine for ~2 years and haven't had any major issues with it. Sometimes mine wakes up randomly (but I think that's a Windows issue).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For me, it's cheap, cheap, cheap.

My "desktop" is an Asus 11.6" cheapie running Win8. I've got a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, plugged into it. I can also disconnect it and use it as a conventional notebook. It was on sale at Best Buy for under 300 bucks, don't remember exactly how much.

My "notebook" is an Asus 10" convertible, where the screen detaches from the keyboard and becomes a tablet, running Win10. It's one of those things with no hard disk, and a relatively small amount of flash storage. It was a refurb, for around 100 bucks.

Touch screen, wireless mouse, and decent keyboard shortcuts have pretty much eliminated the need to care about the quality of the trackpad. I love the touch screens.

I don't need much by way of performance: Browser, Python, Jupyter, for interesting but relatively lightweight computation.

Now back to the cheap thing. I've decided that starting with a really cheap computer is basically my "insurance policy" against the thing getting lost, stolen, or crushed.

</comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't help much with your dongle frustrations but I've been really happy with my new Dell XPS 13". It's all usbc like the new MacBooks but you can buy it with Ubuntu installed - Dell even have a compatible Ubuntu iso on the website you can download. So far it's been a great MacBook replacement.

<comment><USER10> What about the infamous XPS coil whine, the 2018 model doesn't have this problem anymore? Otherwise it's looks like a top notch piece or hardware.

<comment><USER9> The laptop's really quiet in general, no coil whine so far (3 weeks in). Fans rarely kick in loud enough to be heard (for all I'm doing anyway).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dell XPS 13 9350 qhd+ running arch Linux. The battery life is fantastic! I used to average 6.5 hours on windows with thermal issues but on arch without a de, I'm getting a solid 10 hours and my laptop stays cool!

</comment><comment><USER7> I used Macs from 2005 to 2016. When the 11" MacBook Air came out, I completely fell in love with it, and bought three of them over the span of ~5 years. I generally ran Linux on all of them, except for a period of about 6 months when one of my new laptops didn't have wifi or suspend-to-RAM support. The 11" MBA wasn't perfect: maxing out at 8GB of RAM was a constant annoyance, and the lack of a high-DPI display was disappointing. The low-power CPU was usable but not great.

With the demise of the 11" MBA, and the ridiculousness of the MBP's Touch Bar, I decided to try something new. I bought a Razer Blade Stealth near the end of 2016. Initially I was pretty happy; hardware specs were great, and the industrial design was similar (though certainly not as good) as Apple's. But then one of the two USB-A ports died. And then the rubber feet on the bottom of the laptop (actually a long bar across the width of the laptop) started coming unglued. The body of the laptop is warped for some reason now; when I close the lid it doesn't sit flush with the body. Last month one of the rear screws fell out (perhaps related to the warping), and I couldn't find it, so part of the rear of the laptop is now exposed to the air. A few days ago, the keyboard backlight stopped working for the 16 left-most keys on the keyboard.

I'm considering going back to Apple later this year after the MacBook gets its next round of updates, though I'm of course afraid about Linux compatibility (the MBPs for the past few years, at least, are very poorly supported). I have a friend who has a Dell XPS 13 and really likes it (he also runs Linux on it), but I'm not a huge fan of their design. Ditto for Lenovo (and I'm not sure I trust Lenovo as a company anyway). I might look into Sony, though I'm confused about what's going on with them -- quick search for "sony vaio" turns up a press release from them from 2014 saying they're selling their PC business, but [https://us.vaio.com/](https://us.vaio.com/) exists with a copyright year of 2018. I'm not particularly impressed by HP's offerings. So... we'll see.

</comment><comment><USER12> What generation of touchbar model is it? YMMV, but my observation has been that the first gen was problematic, but models since are much better. I use a (I think) second gen 15" touchbar at work and generally speaking it's not been a problem at all. It's about as stable as my own personal 2015 15".

Additionally, I've had no issues with external monitors, but I use Dell and ASUS monitors exclusively, and it seems that USB C/Thunderbolt 3 flakiness often comes from the monitor/adapter in question rather from the computer or OS.

</comment><comment><USER13> Flavoie's comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16593355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16593355)) are really good. Some questions you might ask yourself:

1\. Do you live in the CLI? 2\. Is your desired software available for Linux? 3\. How much do you like tinkering with your desktop/system? 4\. Are you bothered by features being possibly unreliable or unavailable?

I'm waiting for the next MBP revision, but I might just bite the bullet and get a refurbished 2015 MBP.

My work computer is a 2017 15" MBP and I use this "dock" to make the dongle problem significantly less annoying: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0746381W6/ref=oh_aui_deta...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0746381W6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Work would have preferred me getting a Linux laptop, CUDA would have been a nice-to-have but isn't a necessity for my work, but after some research these were the Linux options: System 76 or RazerOne. You might find this interesting: [https://fossbytes.com/best-linux-laptop-razer- blade/](https://fossbytes.com/best-linux-laptop-razer-blade/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't have a specific recommendation for you, but I feel your pain and agree with all the issues you've raised.

My 9 year old Mac finally died, and I thought long and hard about buying a new Mac as a replacement. I decided against a new Mac because I just couldn't bring myself to buy another machine with something like the touchbar.

My old Windows machine had something like it, and I kept spending mad amounts of time debugging WiFi problems only to realize I had accidentally turned off WiFi with an errant touch. Totally stupid.

My solution was to use my old (hated) Windows machine rather than spending more (lots) of money on a new hated Macbook. The Windows hardware stinks and feels chintzy but I already had it, and only needed to buy some software to bridge a functionality gap between the OSX and Windows X experience.

Then Spectre / Meltdown news broke, and I realized I won't be buying anything new until Intel and manufacturers have a reliable fixed new product line on the market. Anything purchased now will still need a microcode update to fix this issue.

</comment><comment><USER15> Older machines: Thinkpad T42p, Hp/Compaq 6910b, HP 2230s, etc. All of them running Linux, mostly Debian. The 2230s is used as a stationary machine, connected to a monitor and an M1 keyboard.

Why older machines? Because developing on older machines makes sense: if it works well on those, it flies on more modern hardware. Also, the things just keep on working. For heavier workloads I have some servers to offload to so the (by 'modern' standards) relatively anaemic performance of e.g. the Pentium M 1.8GHz in the T42p is not a problem. The screen on the thing is still better than on most 'modern' hardware, as is the keyboard. It still gets around 3.5 hours on a battery charge as well.

The servers are connected to gigabit fibre (a recent addition to our farm here out in the Swedish countryside) so as long as I have a good connection I can access anything as if I'm home on the ranch. Everything goes through a VPN to the router here at home, both laptops as well as phones and tablets, making it possible to use public WiFi without giving up the keys to the kingdom.

</comment><comment><USER16> My personal laptop is a Macbook Pro 2015 but for work, I've got an HP ZBook Studio G3 (i7-7820HQ/32GB RAM/256GB SSD) which is quite nice.

The ZBook is Windows 10 Enterprise but surprisingly, it's been not bad to use. I run the Linux subsystem which has come a long way since the beta.

My only real complaints are no support for hardware keys (ie if Git signs w/ a private key on your Yubikey) and, by default, no support for the open command. There's way to get it to work on the Windows partition but no dice for the Linux dirs.

There's quite nice interoperability too like the Linux docker CLI being able to connect to the Windows daemon. Annoyingly, there's a bug where it fails so you gotta restart Docker once on boot up.

As a CLI fan, all 3 flavours (Win/Mac/Linux) feel the same at this point. It's basically your pick of OS around it (file explorer/window chrome etc) if you ask me.

I like the Macbooks but as someone who has run one for a while, I kinda miss having a mobile GPU and like you mentioned, the slimming down of ports and that is a pain in the butt.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've got a 2011 MBP and I'm going to upgrade to a 2015 model and pray that they stop doing stupid things to the MBP line eventually :(

</comment><comment><USER18> I use a Microsoft Surface Book (1) with performance base. After Microsoft ironed out the firmware bugs it is a fantastic laptop/3-in-1, with a good weight, good keyboard/trackpad, and very good battery life (when docked). I use it 80% of the time as a laptop, and the touch is for content consumption, laziness, or testing touch interaction.

I think Microsoft's Surface Laptop is likely a slightly superior device for my uses but the loss in battery life (from 81.0 Wh in the Surface Book w/performance base to only 45.2 Wh in the Surface Laptop) is a shame. It is one of the costs for that 0.68 pound (20%~) weight saving.

Biggest downside of the range is the lack of ports/adapter usage, which is legitimately obnoxious day to day. I still type meeting notes (often in OneNote ironically) even with the pen right there, it is simply faster. The fact this still has MagSafe is super nice (miss that).

I'd particularly recommend the Original Surface Book right now as they're clearance prices (due to the 2), and still highly premium hardware/experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I heavily debated getting the surface book vs this macbook and I somewhat regret it. I just wish windows was a bit more enjoyable for development for me.

WSL is pretty awesome, but IMO its just not quite there for me to use it as my daily driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After using a MBP 2011 17" during 4 years I returned to Windows because I never got used to macOS. I love the myriad of apps in Windows and since I love gaming (both play and develop) Windows is the platform to go.

Back in 2015 I bought an MSI GS60 2PC GHOST and it worked great, but the build quality wasn't that great. The aluminum case wasn't that good comparing to a MBP and the rubber feet unglued quickly. Since I needed Linux for app development, I installed a VM. After WSL was launched I was in heaven.

I used it for 2 years without any major issue and a year ago I bought another MSI, an GS73VR 7RF Stealth Pro and the build quality was improved for sure. After a year the rubber feet are still there and the aluminum case is great. I haven't had any issue with it. I love it and my next one will be an MSI again.

I upgraded the RAM to 32GB and changed the secondary HDD to a 512GB SSD drive, since I hate turning off the computer every day, and I burnt 3 HDD drives this way xD

</comment><comment><USER20> Everyone I get to try a real ThinkPad loves them and can't imagine how they operated before. The new ones even come in white so you can look cool.

Personally I like the X250 (12"). The newer models get a bit hot. The X1 is often enjoyed. I'm also good with the T4x0s which are slim but have even better keyboards.

Unfortunately you're forced into choosing between the models which force tradeoffs as far as screen resolution, heat, keyboard off-centre (15" models have a numpad which unbalances things). Lenovo refuses to allow you to get a no compromises model.

Linux suppose is good, though I'd suggest Windows as host OS then run everything in a VM. Less hassle with drivers that way.

Other competitors are worse than Lenovo. I find MacBooks unergonomic with horrible heat issues. Asus makes cute stuff but feels sorta cheap. No one seems to ship great keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER21> MacBook Air 2012 11" for text editing. The dual-GTX 1080 Ti rig in the corner does the heavy lifting.

<comment><USER22> Choosing between an 11" or 13" MacBook Air took me a while. I like the portability and light weight of the 11" \- it's great for language exchange in a café (my Mandarin tutor uses one).

In the end I chose the 13" because it has longer battery life and an SD slot. I have a 512GB SDXC card, and it's helpful to have extra capacity without a hard drive hanging off/falling on the floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm using a ThinkPad X270.

Pros:

Excellent Linux support, zero issues even on day 1

Performs very well

Good battery life (my fans never even turn on during normal use)

Inexpensive (mine was about $850, you can spend more if you want PCIe storage, or other high end upgrades)

Expandable (standard 2.5" SATA, upgradable RAM, upgradable WiFi)

Full port selection (2xUSB-A, 1xUSB-C, HDMI, Ethernet, SD Card, Headphone)

Good keyboard, TrackPoint mouse (touchpad is also a "precision" touchpad, though I dont use it)

The 1080p IPS screen is pretty good, and standard, unlike the last ThinkPad I had

Good BIOS update support, ThinkPads are supported for many years including very fast turn around on things like BIOS level security updates

Negatives:

The build quality could be better (its not a MacBook), but it feels solid and I've yet to break a ThinkPad. If plastic bothers you, look elsewhere.

Other computers fit a 13.3" display into the space Lenovo fits a 12.5"

<comment><USER20> Is the heat as bad as reviews say? The X250 seems to be the last X2x0 with a reasonable heat signature. In can't stand having the keyboard be even warm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have two - a 2015 MBP and an Acer Chromebook R11.

I absolutely adore this Acer Chromebook R11. For $250, you get almost tablet like battery life, very light and an 11" touch screen. I just wish it's a bit more powerful. If anyone know such a laptop exist, recommend one for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> An Apple MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011), with a high-res anti-glare screen, maxed out CPU and GPU options, 8 GB RAM (can be upgraded to 16), and a Samsung 850 Pro SSD. Very happy with it. Otherwise I would've upgraded it by now, but I've not had a need to so far.

<comment><USER26> You should be able to upgrade that machine to 16gb of RAM (official line is 8gb max, but I had that machine with 16gb with no issues)

<comment><USER25> Yep, I'm aware of that, thanks. 8 GB is enough for my current needs; I'm not doing anything memory intensive or running many VMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 2016 MBP 15" for home. 2017 MBP 15" for work.

Pretty happy with both overall. Meets my battery life, perf, and size requirements. For work, I spend most of my time in VMWare Fusion developing in Windows right. Eventually that'll shift to developing in macOS as work shifts.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm using nothing comparable to a macbook.

I'm using: W520 thinkpad as my daily driver. It's bulky and heavy but gets the job done. The cpu and gpu are nothing to write home about and using an external monitor for gpu intensive tasks can be a pain, but I'm quite happy with it.

T420 for the couch and on the go. Solid little laptop you can get for cheap. Works great with coreboot.

Dell Latitude e5550 for work. Shit reflective screen, medium battery life and some problems when using multiple displays. But it got rather stable over the last kernel upgrades and is a okish laptop for work. Ok keyboard and trackpoint, but like I said reflective screen which is normally a nogo for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> A Clevo N130BU for about a year.

\- Core i7-7500U

\- 32GB RAM

\- 1TB Samsung NVMe

\- QHD+ IPS display, 13.3". QHD is a pita on Linux, I have different xrandr magics for different 2nd screens, I'd happily downgrade this to a normal HD screen just for the convenience, which would also increase the not-so-great battery life (it runs for about 3 hours on batteries).

\- No additional GPU (this was a pro to me, because I've never made it work the nVidia Optimus under Linux).

\- USB-C, HDMI, USB 2.0, MiniDP, SDCard reader, 4G modem, Ethernet UTP socket. Needing no adapters was a big pro to me.

\- Purchase price of this rig was £1290 last year, UK VAT (20% sales tax), shipping included.

Without a hardware failure, this rig will be fine for me for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you need light weight machine than will get (thermal or artificially) throttled(slow), few ports. Like MacBook, Dell XPS, MS Surface. Are you fine with more heavy weight option?

If you need ports than 2015 is not for you I guess, better to have Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-C, so may be starting from 2017 I guess.

And you forget to mentioned price range.

I have bought cheap `Dell Inspiron 15 7577`: \- 1000 USD \- 2.6 KG \- official Ubuntu Linux \- 2x8GB DDR4 \- 1 NVMe and 1 SATA \- i7-7700 \- GPU NV 1050 Ti \- mid range IPS 1920 display

There is more pricey with NV 1060 and high end retina display.

It is possible to wait for summer to see next gen laptop models on i7-8650U(20W) and i7-8700HQ(6 core, 45 W).

</comment><comment> CO-VAX Dell Precision M6600 [0] purchased used for $250. I especially like the 17.3" anti-glare display.

I don't buy new PCs anymore--I buy used from someone I know, or wait until Dell Refurbished [1] has a sale.

[0] [https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/precn/en/prec...](https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/precn/en/precision-M6600-spec- sheet.pdf)

[1] [https://www.dellrefurbished.com/computer- workstation?filter_...](https://www.dellrefurbished.com/computer- workstation?filter_category=313)

</comment><comment><USER31> 2015 Macbook Pro with i7-4870HQ, AMD R9 M370X graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

It's my primary machine. I've normally been a "PC" guy but picked up the Macbook because of a visual impairment where most cheap laptop screens hurt my eyesight. It's much better now that I've gotten medical treatment for it, but I don't regret purchasing this laptop anyways.

It's still early days but Chinese companies now manufactor NVMe to Apple SSD adapters. Once that stabilizes I think I'm going to pick up a 2TB SSD and continue using this laptop.

Still plan to build myself a new desktop for home after the whole GPU shenanigans get better.

<comment><USER22> Is there any reason you'd rather get the NVMe adaptor instead of the OWC Aura 2TB SSD? [https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DAPB4MB20K/](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DAPB4MB20K/)

The OWC one is expensive, but I'd rather get TRIM and avoid risking data loss if an adaptor goes wrong (not sure how likely that is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am currently using the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) with 16gb ram and a 250gb ssd. I have had to have the screen replaced for the lamination unsticking, and the fan replaced since it was starting to sound like a trash compactor.

Apart from that these are decent laptops, I'd recommend the macbook air though which is what I had before, the screen is about the same for normal use (excluding photo editing) and it is much cheaper. Use either of these with a good 4kp60 monitor/mouse/kb and you're set. Get a desktop box with a couple 1080ti if you need to do number crunching and set it up in the corner..

</comment><comment><USER33> Thinkpad p51s. Very fast, two batteries, great battery life on both windows/Linux, and when I use it docked it feels like a desktop with how smooth it is. It's very lightweight and thin too, can't recommend it enough.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm using a 2009 Macbook Pro with El Capitan on it. I'm pretty happy with it, but when it breaks I'll probably switch to a Thinkpad X200 with Linux. I've also heard good things about System76 laptops.

<comment><USER35> I too am using a 2009 MBP. Installed a SSD ages ago and replaced the battery about a year ago. Running Mavericks. Good for browsing, emails, etc. Use a beefed up Ubuntu desktop system for serious development work.

Anytime I walk by an Apple Store, I test out the latest systems. The keyboards don't feel right for me. And the touch-bar hold very little appeal for me. When this MBP bites the dust, I'll probably get a PixelBook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If it's an option, I would go with display port to Thunderbolt 3; at home I've had no issues. (At work I have a Apple Thunderbolt display and OWC Thunderbolt 2 dock; the HDMI display that goes into the dock is always giving me fits syncing)

However, if I were to go with a Linux machine today, the newly released t480 or t480s would be my choice. I'd even strongly consider running Windows again, since multi-DPI with Linux is still a challenge (I experimented with using a maxed out XPS15 with Linux, and that's what drove me back to Mac)

</comment><comment><USER36> I use the X1 Carbon and I am pretty happy with it. Compared to older models the keyboard and mouse (red dot in keyboard) are not as good as they used to be and the case does not shut in a way that the lid fits 100%. But other than that the laptop is a beast and I am happy that Lenovo gave up on stupid keyboards. The above made me consider to install Linux on a MacBook. Maybe that is something for you. It will not fix the keyboard issue but maybe the crashing when you connect external screens. Hope you find a satisfying solution!

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually do have ubuntu installed on it but its not usable atm due to a bug in the broadcom driver [https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#wi- fi](https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#wi-fi) The solution is to use a usb wifi dongle... With obligatory USB-A->USB-C adapter >.<

<comment><USER28> Ok can't say if this works for your macbook, but have you tried ndiswrapper? If the windows driver is usable it should work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Been a Macbook user for 8+ years. I used to like their products, but recently I can't stand them. The MagSafe chargers are very unreliable, and yes, USB-C with the extra dongles is annoying. The overall build quality seems to have gotten much worse recently. 2 weeks ago I bought a Thinkpad T440p and installed OpenBSD. Love it! The one thing I miss is Sublime Text, which I have gotten quite used to, but I'm sure I'll get used to Emacs again.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm using the Dell Latitude E7470. It works great with Qubes OS, and the only reason that I haven't upgraded to the E7480 (which supports 32 GB RAM) is because I'm waiting for the next model.

Pros: Good keyboard, decent touch pad, 32 GB memory support (for the E7480), great Linux compatibility.

Cons: Somewhat costly, poor GPU (the latter doesn't matter to me since I'm using Qubes which doesn't allow you to use the GPU anyway).

</comment><comment><USER39> I use Linux exclusively I currently have an Asus Zenbook, one of the higher end ones with a touchscreen. I like it in general, but the touchscreen has a lot of glare. Additionally, the one I got my mom (a lower-end one) has an unhinged screen now, and I've been concerned with the screen's seating ever since.

My next one will be a Dell XPS 13. I've seen two of my colleagues use it and it looks fantastic.

<comment><USER40> I've been using Zenbook UX305ua (with Fedora) for the last year and a half with a matte screen and I pretty happy with it, although some recent kernels have had some issues now fixed). No USB-C and micro-HDMI is annoying (since you need a dongle), but otherwise it works well.

<comment><USER28> The frigging ux305ua! Oh hell no I know what issue you are talking about since I had to bisect the kernel to find it. The bios had non standard vbt handling (to put it mildly) and the newer implementatiin which didn't have defaults set and relied on the hardware simply stopped booting.

Also the keyboard backlight needed dsdt fixed or acpi parameter to work correctly and the touchpad kinda worked randomly (the keys). It was a great big hack to get everything working and even thought it's a light kinda nice looking laptop I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Additional disclaimer: everything seems to work fine with the newest kernel revision

<comment><USER40> Oh... well thanks for doing that! It was a minor inconvenience for me running with an older kernel for a bit. My keyboard doesn't have lighted keys and I've never had any issues with the touchpad, so I guess there must be some variance in those parts...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Lenovo Yoga 4K 16G 1TB - $1500 right now at their site. I used to use Linux exclusively on my older system, but needed Windows 10 to be onsite for a job - so when I got this one I installed Ubuntu via the WSL, and it does exactly what MSFT intended - work well enough for my mostly command line world that I left Windows on the machine even after I didn't need it for the job any longer.

</comment><comment><USER42> 2017 15" Macbook Pro with Touch Bar.

I can barely stand to use this busted keyboard. 90% of the time I use a full size magic keyboard. I routinely hit the touch bar and mute the computer. The trackpad is too big and will catch my palm.

Would rather have a Thinkpad running Linux or an old MBP/MB Air. This likely could be the last Apple laptop I get, 14 or so years after I bought a 12.1" Powerbook G4.

<comment><USER43> In the same boat as you. If Apple doesn't fix this horrible keyboard in the next release, I think I'll finally switch to ThinkPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I'm also leaning towards a thinkpad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thinkpad 25th Anniversary Edition. I'm very happy with it, but picked it specifically because of the keyboard. If you prefer the Mac-style keyboard, I'd instead suggest you look at the X1 Carbon or the T Series. I've used Thinkpads for years and am very happy with their durability and reliability.

</comment><comment><USER45> A mid 2012 MacBook Air with a Core i7 and 8Gigs of ram purchased early 2013 at a discount rate. Had the battery replaced once and it could use a new screen (a few blotches and some bleeding at the edges). Other than that, works fine.

Edit: I use this my main development machine. Mostly NodeJS and PHP based work.

<comment><USER46> I'm still using my mid 2013 i7 13" air as my main dev driver. only thing that really holds me back is the 8gb ram. I've worked around that by grabbing a cheap i5 pc which I run my work vm on and ssh into it etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dell Chromebook 2 with the i3 and 4g of ram running Fedora. It's sleek and has fantastic battery life, as well as enough processing power to compile stuff / watch HD videos. It was less than $400, highly recommended if you can find one.

I have a new Ryzen PC and all I use it for is PUBG...

</comment><comment><USER48> Got an HP Studio g3 through uni, with discount. But it doesn't run Linux well... Have to disable the dedicated (nvidia) gpu and even then there are numerous annoying little bugs.

It said on the website RHEL was officially supported but there's nothing of the sort.

Hoping to go XPS13 next.

(Anyone want a Studio g3?)

</comment><comment><USER49> Still using 2011 Lenovo X220 i7-2640M. Excellent Linux (NixOS atm) support, best keyboard imo, kinda lacking 768p screen. Only had to replace battery, one ram stick and cpu fan. Dunno what I'll do when it dies, considering laptop mods from sites like 51nb.

</comment><comment><USER50> Lenovo P51s. It's basically a T570 with discrete graphics. Compatible with same external batteries. This thing is a monster. I got it with a 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of ram. Immediately wiped windows and put Ubuntu 16.04 server + awesome wm.

</comment><comment><USER51> The Thinkpad t4xx line are one of the most durable and ergonomic laptops out there. They won't work for graphics worloads but for programming they're exquisite. I can find a t470 "used" model for only 800$, retail price is like 1800$.

<comment><USER52> And they remain expandable in an age of integration. A 2.5" drive bay means I can throw in a 2TB SSD. A removable battery means I can carry 16 hours of work time. The memory is even on DIMMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Macbook Pro 2015 maxed out running Sierra - no issues other than I'd like a larger SSD. I probably won't buy another until there is a significant speed upgrade or something fails.

All things considered, I might wind up taking this laptop to my grave.

</comment><comment><USER54> Currently, I'm using a MacBook Air (because I'm working on a heavyweight Desktop machine at home). But I'll replace it anytime soon. Probably with an ASUS ZenBook 13 UX331UN or Lenovo YOGA 920.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have a Surface Pro 4, but am considering upgrading to a Dell Latitude 7285, because it has a hard base keyboard (like a Surface Book), LTE, and a few nice features I can't get from the Surface line.

<comment><AUTHOR> That latitude looks very slick, but I couldn't find any info about linux on it

<comment><USER55> I suspect running Linux on it would be a pain in the rear, since it's not one of the PCs Dell natively supports with Linux, and as a detachable, I'm sure it has a handful of "weird" drivers that make it work right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> HP ZBook Studio G3 - Windows 7. Wonderful as long as you never attach a thunderbolt dock. Probably the closest thing to a MPB they make. (I manage a fleet of 50 of them... complete shit show for 9 months.)

</comment><comment><USER57> Portable: Asus Zenbook UX301F

Non-portable(less used): Sager NP8657-S It's still pretty sweet. Doesn't outperform new laptops but it keeps me happy.

Both are running Archlinux, the Sager is a dual boot for games.

<comment><USER58> Same, a Zenbook as well, I can't find any better than Zenbook, they run so well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> One at work and one at home:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

But I'm glad this thread is here, because at some point these will both die and I'm not sure what I'll replace them with.

</comment><comment><USER60> Thinkpad T540p. Nothing fancy, but it's really solid. I'm also completely dependent on the nub for navigating. I disable the trackpad completely.

<comment><USER61> I'm sorry for you. I bought the same laptop and you're right. The touchpad is gar-bage.

I purchased it with a 2.4-only wifi card. Did you know the bios enforces a whitelist restricting which wifi cards you can install? I didn't, now I'm stuck.

It wasn't cheap, but this was the first (and last) Lenovo I'll ever buy...

<comment><USER20> The 440 and 540 have the ridiculous no-button trackpad. So bad even Lenovo reversed position for the next gen. You can buy a 450 or 550 trackpad to replace it for under 100$. Will make a huge difference.

<comment><USER61> Holy guacamole. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've got an Asus ZenBook with discrete graphics card running Linux. Everything works great. No complaints.

</comment><comment><USER63> 2015 Macbook pro. I switched to Mac as I was not happy with Windows Vista, and never looked back

</comment><comment><USER64> Acer aspire r7 372t - touch screen, transformable, very unique. I hope they continue this line.

</comment><comment><USER65> Closest one is Dell XPS 15 as long as you can live with its weird web cam placement.

</comment><comment><USER66> Thinkpad t4X0p (e.g. t470p) w/ your favorite Linux flavor (I prefer Debian).

</comment><comment><USER67> For work, 2016 ThinkPad X1, 14".

Works great, would recommend, runs Debian just fine.

</comment><comment><USER68> 2015 Thinkpad Lenovo w550s.

Has all the ports I need, including VGA! No USB-C though...

<comment><USER22> It looks like a good laptop! Screen resolution of 2880x1620 is a little lower than the MBP Retina 2880x1800, but it's close. It has VGA & Ethernet, and the MBP has HDMI & dongles. I've used the HDMI connection several times, although I think VGA would've sufficed at those moments. It looks like a good series though; I hope Lenovo doesn't buy into Apple's port-removing craze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> dell precision 5520 dual boot windows 10 pro/ubuntu. I hardly ever use windows on it though

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to hear more about the non-Apple options, but this is my research before buying a spare laptop last week.

This is the last year when you can buy the 2015 MacBook Pro with AppleCare warranty. Go to the Apple Refurbished store, and you should be able to find the old model. Refurbished means it was serviced by Apple during the warranty period. There's a maximum of 3 years warranty, therefore now is the last chance to buy the 2015 model. You can then add another 3 years AppleCare at checkout, and have Apple keep supporting it until 2021.

My main laptop is/was a 2014 Retina MacBook Pro, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM. I accidentally booted into Diagnostics mode one day (holding down D on startup) and found a battery error PPT004. The warranty expires at the end of this week, so last Friday I took it to an AASP repair shop to try to get them to replace the battery before my warranty runs out.

While it goes away for 2 weeks, I decided to buy a spare laptop. I agonised over this choice for 2 days.

The MacBook Pro 2008 model can be bought for only $300 on eBay, and can take two 2.5" SSDs (one in the optical drive bay). The largest 2.5" SSD is 4 TB from Samsung. I really want that space. I could also recycle it as an external drive. The old keyboard with no gaps between the keys is really appealing. It can run macOS 10.12 (although I'd rather have 10.9). It has a replaceable battery (and I already have a spare), so I'd get 5 + 5 hours = 10 hours battery life. However, I'd need to buy an ExpressCard adaptor to add USB 3 or SD reading. It also only has a maximum of 6 GB RAM. The screen is 15", but the resolution is only 1440x900. It's also heavy.

My other option was the MacBook Air 2013-2014 model. I specifically wanted those years, because they can run 10.9 (and even 10.8, so I can sync Notes without iCloud). I'd buy it locally, and get a Taiwanese keyboard with lots of special characters. It's also super light, and has SD and USB 3 built in. The screen is only 13" (not 15"), but has the same resolution as the 2008 model (1440x900). The battery can be replaced by unscrewing the case - it's not glued in like the Retina MacBook Pro. The battery life is 12 hours. The SSD is compatible with the Retina, so when I get my main laptop back from repair and buy a 2TB upgrade, the Air can take the hand-me-down 512GB. MagSafe 2 (which is great) is also going to be compatible between my 2013 Air and the 2014 Pro, unlike how it would be if I bought the 2008 Pro. The Air needs dongles for Ethernet and FireWire, but I have those for my Retina already.

If you want the MacBook Pro with an optical drive, only buy the 2012 model. Older models only have USB 2 and no Thunderbolt. The prices I found were much more expensive though, for lower battery life and comparable screen resolution.

In the end, I bought the 2013 MacBook Air. Downgrading the OS was hard! I had to mount in Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode, partition the drive, use DiskMaker X 5 to make one partition into a Mountain Lion installer, then reboot, install Mountain Lion on the other partition, backup with Time Machine, reboot into recovery mode, erase the drive again to make a single partition, and restore the Time Machine backup. It was hard, but it was possible, and I'm now typing this from the Air running 10.8. There's a few issues (Safari 6 doesn't let me see Github because of HTTPS issues, Skype doesn't run), and I might upgrade to 10.9 if those issues bother me too much.

If anyone has comments about running Linux on the MacBook Air - I'm also expecting to hop platforms soon, and I'll be using this spare laptop as a testing ground for that. Thankfully I resisted "upgrading" to a newer macOS that would change my drive to APFS. Linux should still be able to mount my HFS+ drive, because I stayed with the old OS. When my killer apps (iTunes & AppleScript) are ported, I'll be ready to jump, and start developing for Linux instead.

<comment><USER70> What are the security implications of using an old version of OSX?

<comment><USER22> Security from whom, against what threat?

Years ago, I tried to help a friend transition from Windows on a white MacBook to Boot Camp. She didn't tell me that the NTFS partition was using security features. I ignorantly made a DMG of the disk, and tried to restore that as a partition. It wasn't bootable, so I tried again as a virtual machine. Mac OS can mount the DMG, but only read the non-encrypted files. I still think her data is lost, although I keep the DMG on my external drive just in case tools come along one day when I can rescue her data. I was embarrassed at my mistake (don't just image a drive and expect it to work), and now I just tell people to make their own backup.

Local security isn't about protecting yourself from PRISM. On Windows it's about viruses, but those are less common on Macs.

I'd rather have a machine using HFS+ that I can mount R/W on Linux, with root login, with an easy way to set up a local web server. Worrying about hackers when I'm behind NAT just doesn't seem proportional - if they're on the same network, they can probably just walk over and get hardware access. Security is like DRM; it makes life for everyone more difficult, and those who are truly determined will get in anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> An oldish ThinkPad T420

</comment><comment><USER72> Rose gold MacBook ;)

<comment><USER25> How are you finding typing on that keyboard, assuming you do it more than just a handful of hours per day?

<comment><USER72> Late to this... when it works, no problems at all for me. But then a random key sometimes ends up sticking, which I've heard elsewhere too and is a pain in the ass. Click it enough and I've been able to unstick them each time but still an issue.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Checklist for Publishing an App in the Apple App Store - <AUTHOR> https://app.processd.com/process/how-to-ship-an-ios-app-in-the-app-store/ <comment><USER2> Seems to bare bones for newbies, for example the provisioning profile step essentially says "create two of them". I would also not really want to use fastlane as a first time user.

At the same time as someone who has done this quite a lot I don't feel I would get some value from it - it is too verbose to be a simple checklist for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I am going to update the Provisioning profile step. It does need more details about downloading it and making sure it is installed into Xcode.

The idea with checklists like this one is that until you have done it quite a lot it is easy to forget a step. And having all the steps in one place is so much easier to use than trying to search for pieces on the web.</comment></comment>


Forever font - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kenperlin.com/?p=3099

<comment><USER2> I don't really see the need to use a pixel font when printing to paper. It's not like a piece of paper has a given grid that must be followed like a monitor (which is not totally true, given sub-pixel anti-aliasing on LCDs).

This might be a dumb question, but why not just take a regular font and shrink it to the same size as the pixel font, and print that, assuming you're not using an old dot-matrix printer? In other words, why limit yourself to those 8 bits?

<comment><USER3> Most printing technologies still work with dots: dots of ink, dots of toner, dots of wax. You can get greyscale by varying the amount of stuff in a dot, which generally will make the dot bigger or smaller without changing its actual color. You can also get variations by using different colors of ink/toner/wax for different dots, or mixed in the same dot.

For very-long-term archival, these variations are probably too subtle and too likely to be lost over time. A black and white pattern of dots will probably last a lot longer and be easier to interpret than slight variations in size and/or shade of the dots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing I love about the idea of storing data on paper is that we have lots of experience with paper, have a clear understanding of the failure modes, and know how to keep paper around for hundreds of years.

The frustrating thing is that even using high density barcodes, it still takes several banker boxes per gigabyte.

My current thinking surrounding long term data archives is to store data on a durable, high density medium and use paper to keep the instructions for how to decode the data on the high density storage.

<comment><USER5> A modern laser-printed page has better archival characteristics than the Domesday book.

Most paper is now acid-free. It's chemically stable cellulose that few creatures can eat. Laser toner is black plastic powder, heat-fused to the paper and thus waterproof and fadeproof. It's not fireproof but nothing short of stone or metal is anyway. And it's available in virtually unlimited quantities.

If you wanted to preserve the most important terabyte or two of our civilization's legacy you could do worse than a cargo container full of Xeroxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta disk: <http://www.rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/>

I do like the fact that Perlin's idea doesn't require a laser-etched plate and could conceivably be produced on any home printer, although Long Now's device is probably going to last longer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Alternate title: "If Flash game designers managed records preservation"

</comment><comment><USER8> This isn't really a new idea. Pixel fonts have been around about as long as graph paper, I suspect.

Here's something similar, for example:

<http://www.dafont.com/wendy.font>

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not just use good microfiche. Then it would be waterproof, as well as more compact than any dot printer could achieve.

<comment><USER10> Good points, but I think it would be a lot easier to keep paper dry than microfiche cool; the former can be done passively, the latter requires active systems for most of the world.

<comment><USER11> Just dig a big hole. Once you get into the earth a bit, the temperature is a constant coolness. Plus, an old mineshaft is a pretty good candidate for surviving some "end of the world" scenario.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but that cuts against the "people being able to find it again" problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did one of those in my Apple II days. Of course, the purpose was not to print it for future generations, but just to cram as much text as possible in as little pixels we had (a stock Apple II had 192 lines of 280 pixels)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that some combination of Huffman encoding for Markov chained letter transitions with an error correcting code, combined with instructions for decoding, would make more sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't forget a 'linefeed' character that indicates where lines join into paragraphs. Something Project Gutenberg forgot with their ASCII texts.

</comment><comment><USER15> Aren't there places in the world with low levels of education and knowledge and so on right now that we could test some of these ideas of jump starting educated civilisation?

If it works, well we don't regard educating people as a bad thing so that's no qualm. We have controls already - we wouldn't hobble them but carrying on as we do now should be OK.

If the attempts fail for social, governmental, language, etc. reasons that's no excuse - all those things could happen in a real post-apocalyptic future. And if the attempts succeed then they might help avoid said future.</comment>


All mentions of "love" and "hate" on Reddit over the past 2hrs (3:39pm-5:39pm EST) - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/S8g2q0Q.gif

<comment><USER2> Neat but I'm skeptical. Perhaps this is simply a measure of activity on reddit over the course of 2 hours? I'd like to see graphs for all posts.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there anyone trying to "disrupt" umbrellas? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> High wind usually disrupts mine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Global warming!</comment>


Ask YC: Real World Applications of Machine Learning? - <AUTHOR> I've been in grad school in physics for 4 years.  Ever since I read MacKay's book on ML I've been obsessed with the field.  I have a strong desire to do something with ML technology that real customers would pay for, but I'm a bit clueless about where to look.  Questions:<p>(1) What are some specific commercial applications of ML technology (other than banking/finance which I'm not interested in for personal reasons) I've been looking at medical devices / biometrics, but any other suggestions would be helpful.<p>(2) Would someone with a physics background be taken seriously?  I have a decent amount of experience doing numerical work and data analysis with python / c++, but I suspect that these types of jobs are hyper-competitive even for people with hard-core CS backgrounds. <comment><USER2> Basically any topic where you know what hypothesis look like, and there is lots of data floating around.

Medical diagnosis is an area where ML should be used, but isn't. It's been discovered that a decision tree beats a cardiologist for heart attack triage, but no one will touch it (1). In research, it is often used to discover genetic regulatory networks, and other such things. Basically, ML is replacing what would be a boring job for a grad student.

Also look at marketing. Thanks to their ML systems, Walmart knows that people buy poptarts to prepare for a hurricane.

(1) If a cardiologist kills 10/1000 people due to human error (whoops, forgot the aspirin), it happens. If a computer program kills 5/1000 people due to classification error it's 5 lawsuits waiting to happen, provided you can find a cardiologist to say "In hindsight, I would have gotten that right."

<comment><USER3> I met a guy at a university commercialization seminar that was trying to make ML/decision tree stuff for medical diagnoses and such. I don't think he was thinking of triage but much more basic decisions. I hope he got some funding, but this was also in Pittsburgh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An out-of-left-field option, if your goal is only to make some money working with ML: go into independent game design and create a game around a ML system.

It's not something mainstream gaming would be interested in using because the goals are different - there the development process is enslaved to some well- defined intellectual property, and (with rare exceptions) does not roam freely enough to allow more than a "good-enough AI opponent" - but if you developed a concept and brought it to market yourself, making sure that the result is fun to play and easy to learn, as well as a good use of tech, you have a shot at a decent revenue stream. Probably not enough to live on, but the beauty of independent gaming is that you can keep revising and expanding on an innovative concept, gradually growing your own market over a period of many years.

<comment><USER5> Here's a ML game that I think would be cool: The idea is genetic programming with human interaction based around a Pokemon kind of game. There would be pre-made and player made pets, and a "wild" area where creatures could evolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On 2, we are a company founded by a combination of CS/Physics people. We have found that pairing a physics person with a CS person leads to the best outcomes.

I think you should emphasize the things you are good at (probably modeling and data analysis) and not worry too much about the CS gaps There are a ton of opportunities out there for your skill-set.

</comment><comment><USER7> (1) All sorts of information and collaborative filtering. Examples: Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, etc. Lots on ML in defense these days too -- i.e. here's everyone's call data, who's the terrorist?

(2) If you just want to implement or tweak existing algorithms, it doesn't really matter what your background is -- the qualifications are the same as any software engineering job (so CS degree helps a lot but not mandatory). If you want to be in a research type position, you'll need a PhD in CS with a dissertation on ML.

<comment><USER8> > If you want to be in a research type position, you'll need a PhD in CS with > a dissertation on ML.

Comp Bio works fine too. Same difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suggest you get out and talk to friends and their friends at your school, about the problems in their fields, that you might be able to help with. They might not identify their problem as needing ML, but you can connect those dots yourself.

I think your chance of success is much higher if you work directly with someone who knows the problem domain in depth. Cross-domain work is where its at.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tag grouping for smarter search.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just read an article about the guys who won the spock challenge <http://www.spock.com/do/pages/pr_spock_challenge_winner>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> check out www.zillow.com

</comment><comment><USER12> Sebastian Seung's research group at MIT is using machine learning to automatically segment the profiles of sectioned axons and dendrites in electron microscopical images of 60 nm serial sections. A very hard problem, and currently in high demand among neuroscience labs.

The purpose: to reconstruct all neuronal connections of a piece of brain tissue.

<http://hebb.mit.edu/></comment>


Ask HN: Indian Fast Food Feedback - <AUTHOR> I love Indian food, but as a founder/software engineer, I hate waiting at restaurants, and I don't have the time/desire to cook it myself.
I was working late a few nights ago on my B2B SaaS tool, and I felt pretty frustrated because I couldn't find any Indian fast food near me (except for some overpriced restaurants via DoorDash), so I want to change that by building an Indian fast food chain [0].
I'd appreciate your feedback and commentary, especially on whether this is actually desirable.
Also, if you're feeling super gracious, could you help me with 5 short questions [1]?
[0] Landing Page: [https://fast-food-a3b73e.webflow.io/](https://fast-food-a3b73e.webflow.io/)
[1] Typeform: [https://pujitmehrotra.typeform.com/to/hCedcx](https://pujitmehrotra.typeform.com/to/hCedcx) <comment><USER2> (Heads up: I came here because I have alerts for when Webflow is mentioned in HN [I work there])

I think the idea has a lot of potential. I love how short your "menu" is. I would absolutely love more Indian options for fast food - did you consider a pop up food truck to perfect the process before scaling?

Food business is hard business. Good luck!</comment>


Why Food Addiction Is Deadlier Than Drinking (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.thefix.com/content/oa-vs-aa?page=all <comment><USER2> I've been off alcohol and drugs for 2.5 years, and abstinent from compulsive overeating for almost a year. Food was harder to get a handle on than meth, no joke. Quitting refined/added sugar in particular was almost as bad as quitting smoking. (Haven't smoked in 1.5 years either.)

In my experience, compulsive overeating is every bit as much an addiction as alcoholism, smoking, or hard drugs. I saw myself exhibiting the exact same behaviors around food as I did around alcohol (splitting my shopping up between multiple corner stores so none of them would know how much I was eating) and feeling the exact same way about myself (I'm a worthless piece of shit, I'll never get a handle on this, I might as well just dive in and die young).

You might argue that had I not learned those behaviors while being an active alcoholic, I wouldn't have put them into use with food. Maybe. I think that's beside the point. The point is that I couldn't stop even though I desperately wanted to.

In my case I had food problems before I got sober. I hear about people turning to food after they stop drinking (in fact one very well-known program explicitly recommends it), but for me food, booze, drugs, nicotine, and casual sex were/are a package deal. They all hit the same place in my brain, perform the same function for me emotionally, and are impossible to quit on my own.

(Posted anonymously for reasons I hope are obvious.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another point is that alcoholics can stop using alcohol and still live. Heroin addicts can stop using heroin and still live. People with food addiction still need to eat to live, which I think makes this even harder.

<comment><USER4> Yeah that's one of the main points he brings up.

The other one he talks about that I think deserves highlighting is the "last house on the block" problem, where a lot of other successful addicts have turned to food as a more "acceptable" vice, and then struggle immensely to defeat it when they realise it's the last one left.

I know I certainly struggle with that fact. I had serious problems with both weed and benzodiazepines, and while I certainly wasn't skinny while I was on them, my weight only really started to spiral uncontrollably once I successfully kicked them.

I agree completely with this article by the way. While quitting weed was mentally exhausting, and quitting benzos was physically painful, food is the only one out of the three that I haven't been successful with so far. I think that says a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another problem with food is that there are too many people writing not scientifically researched opinions on how to lose fat and get more healthy at the same time. After going through a lot of pub-med researches about decreasing my blood triglyceride levels, I found out that I have to get rid of sugar and saturated fat completely, and eat foods with low glycemic index. Still, I don't want to binge, so I found Tim Ferriss' slow carb diet much better than the popular and dangerous low carb diet. All these things may be in the media, but a lot of false things as well.

Now I'm eating eggs without the yolks, red lentils (very easy to make) and falafel (fried in the oven), and my triglycerid levels and weight are changing without me trying to binge at all.

<comment><USER6> > dangerous low carb diet

Oh please. If it didn't work for you thats fine. Don't go spreading baseless FUD.

<comment><USER5> If it works for you, the question is for how many years can you do it without falling back (increasing your carb intake)?

I seriously believe that I wouldn't be able to live a happy life on a low-carb diet (let's say 30-60 years), but leaving a few unhealthy ingredients out to keep my glucose and cholesterol levels in check is not a problem (as long as I'm not hungry)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You also need to factor in the available cures. A simple gastric band operation means you can't then die of overeating. But a liver replacement can still be abused by an alcoholic.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately gastric bands don't stop food addicts.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: AWS blocked my roommate out of his own account, What to do? - <AUTHOR> So my roommate who is a masters student at an US university started working with a guy who presented himself as a PhD student at a hackathon on a startup idea couple of months back and he also got some other students to work with him. My roommate created an AWS account for using it using the company's email id(this guy created gapps emails using company domain) but he used his own card on account, his own address and all other details on account were his. These guys found out couple of days back that there are a couple of fraud cases filed against him at small claims court and his name doesnt show up in the university student directory. These guys decided to stop working for him and secure the code they wrote by kicking him out of the AWS account. This guy then calls AWS and apparently they restored the account for him and kicked out all the others out and put a monitoring on the account in case my roommate and his friends tried to get it back in(my roommate tried contacting AWS and it seems he knows that). Now my question is can AWS do this considering just the registered email belongs to the company? if yes, doesnt this mean that people opening AWS accounts using GMAIL email addresses belongs to GOOGLE? They(AWS CS) are saying that my roommate can only get access using the email he registered with(which that fake PhD guy has control over). What can be the course of action on this?<p>PS: These guys just signed a NDA and nothing else so far. This guy is threatening to sue to get the code by saying its his IP. These are just some masters and under graduate students(some are international student and fear about their VISA status) without money to consult a lawyer. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> TL;DR;

Use some paragraphs, FFS!</comment>


The most interesting problem in physics? - <AUTHOR> http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/split/857-2.html

<comment><USER2> The first thing that comes to mind is ripples in the fabric of space-time causing unexpected increases in velocity. The ripples would be something like gravity causing space to fold on itself in very tiny amounts causing a small "jump" in velocity for an object passing through such a folded ripple. Velocity would increase without an increase in acceleration.

Yes I know, I watch too much Star Trek sometimes...

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to be an asshole to all the nice physics guys, but the problem of cognition and reasoning is a hell of a lot more interesting.

<comment><USER4> Given enough time, physicists will invade the cogsci field too and take over research into the cognition problem.

<comment><USER2> Apologies, but this is the same as saying computer engineering will invade and take over web development. The two are related in that the underpinnings of web development rely on the principles of computer engineering, but the usefulness of one application does not equate to encompassing the possibilities of the other.

While it is true that the mechanisms governing the interactions of neurons and the chemicals related to this interaction ultimately boil down to what we call "physics", it is useful to be able to think at higher levels of abstraction.

Such intellectual groupings/classifications/segments are important to advancing knowledge. I am open to considering that currently the "mental toolation" of thinking at abstracted levels is reflective of the current level of human intellectual capacity. Furthermore perhaps a blending of everything into one grand unified SCIENCE is maybe one day possible - but this does not equate to desirable; this is something for future generations to determine. I believe/maintain there is a great deal of richness to be gained by having such abstracted levels at which we can think/operate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amongst others. However, solve this problem and you may have made the first major breakthrough in physics for the 21st Century.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, there are Germans working on it. Will be solved soon. Obviously.

<comment><USER7> if today had been before 1939, yes

<comment><USER6> Or say - before 1914 (chemical weapons and the like).

My comment was meant more innocently - for when in the space race captured (or persuaded) Germans worked on the Sovjet and the American side.</comment></comment></comment>


Canada's Top 100 Startups - updated list as of October 1, 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canada-startup-index-october-2012-2012-10-01

<comment><USER2> Are they ranked by Alexa rank?

Maybe it should be Canada's Top 100 _WEB_ Startups? (problem with original article)

I realize that having a successful internet presence is important to a company, but I don't think it is the end-all measure of whether something is a "top startup". Is it even a valid metric unless your business is in selling advertising impressions?

      Alexa is the leading provider of free, global web metrics. Search Alexa to discover the most successful sites on the web by keyword, category, or country. Use our analytics for competitive analysis, benchmarking, market research, or business development. Use Alexa's Pro tools to optimize your company's presence on the web.</comment>


Show HN: Weather.Marketing – A tool to sync FB and Google ads with the weather - <AUTHOR> https://weather.marketing <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I've built this clean serverless app. To test it out you don't even need to login, try for example [https://weather.marketing/new- flow](https://weather.marketing/new-flow) let me know your thoughts!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you maintain good habits with a disruptive career and life style? - <AUTHOR> If you travel regularly or have work deadlines etc that disrupts any kind of healthy routine how do you maintain good habits like exercising, meditation, etcetera? <comment><USER2> For me, I had to turn this on its head. Define the habits and healthy routine you want and build the lifestyle around it.

I was on a crash course for 15 years as a tech exec. 90+ hours work per week, travel, etc. not by compulsion or financial necessity but by personal drive to be the best at what I was doing. Unfortunately I was literally killing myself.

In 2013 I stepped back, applied an engineering/tech startup process to researching and analyzing what I really wanted and needed in terms of health and family and built my career and lifestyle around those healthy choices.

The result: get more done in less time, focus on things that really move the needle in career and work, tolerate very little noise vs signal, and financially doing 2x better while working 1/2 the hours. I'm in better health now than when I was in college. By coincidence, I had a totally unrelated emergency surgical procedure not long after I got into a healthy state, and because I was fit, my body was able to recover very quickly, and my work processes were now so effective, I barely missed a beat in terms of productivity. An MD friend of mine assured me that had I been in my previous poor health state, if I had survived the surgery (his opinion unlikely) recovery would have taken months to years with likely long lasting debilitating effects. And I almost certainly would have lost my career.

It will be scary at first, like sweating all night awake with gut wrenching fear scary, but compared to the inevitable health crash that is likely, I expect you won't regret it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know a couple high-powered executives who have to fly all over the world and meet tough deadlines. They love routine. They love staying at the exact same hotel every time they're in town, meeting me at the same restaurant we always go to, etc. They love seeing me because I'm someone from their "real life" who just happens to be in the city they're rushing through. They also know a lot of the waiters, security guards, building staff, etc they see each day by name. This constrained routine and rich social life seems key to their mental health and when mental health is good, physical health is easier to invest in. And vice-versa of course. But I think people forget that it's hard to eat broccoli when you really just want to cry.

I wonder whether anyone could do it. I tried traveling all the time for work and I just kept getting sick. But, I also didn't like that job and resented it taking me away from my home city.

</comment><comment><USER4> Planning. If you travel regularly you can make a regular plan to visit the hotel gym, run, etc. Meditation can be practiced almost anywhere.

I don't know if many roles in which people are _always_ under deadline pressure. If that's you, either plan around the deadlines or stop committing to unsustainable deadlines (which, I know, is easier said than done).</comment>


I want to teach people to be Growth Hackers / Online Marketers - <AUTHOR>

Me and a group of entrepreneurs who have together built over a dozen tech and internet businesses that cumulatively secured more than $100 million in funding are running a series of weekend Test Drive Online Marketing in SFO for people who are seriously considering becoming an Online Marketer or Growth Hacker. The program will present people with a unique opportunity to "test drive" what it's like being one for a weekend to find out if the career suites them. In 48 hours of learning by doing, attendees will actually build, launch and start marketing a fully functional eCommerce site. We've found this approach provides maximum exposure to the full marketing stack and real world marketing problem solving in a short time period. We already have the product lines lined up so people just need to bring their creative and analytical minds, and be ready to learn. We priced the event at $99 which doesn't cover our costs - these weekends are more so a labor of love and way to give back. http://marcademy.com/test-drive/ or http://marcademy.eventbrite.com/ <comment><USER2> What a great idea. Unfortunately I am in Miam, but would love to look at replicating here.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the comment. would love to do it in Miami. actually Miami is on the list for the Fall or Spring. Stay tuned.

<comment><USER2> Great to hear. Feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss further.</comment></comment></comment>


There Is No Algorithm for the Truth - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=leX541Dr2rU <comment><AUTHOR> A long but good discussion of algorithmically-filtered media platforms, and truth, trust, distortion, and disinformation, by Tom Scott of YouTube fame.</comment>


Angel Investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturegiant.com That was long and the fact I reached the end of it, is testimony that it is a good essay. You've written 4 million is entering the Venture Capital boundary and anything below is Angel Investment. I have read quite some literature, but I've never read about any "absolute" demarcation. I think this is a good benchmark though. http://www.venturegiant.com <comment><AUTHOR> Brk - I'm not commenting as a third person and I'm sorry that you didn't like the video, which most people like. The site is an honest attempt to help entrepreneurs meet real angel investors.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> somehow my comment doesn't show up there, so I had to discuss it below.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That was long and the fact I reached the end of it, is testimony that it is a good essay. You've written 4 million is entering the Venture Capital boundary and anything below is Angel Investment. I have read quite some literature, but I've never read about any "absolute" demarcation. I think this is a good benchmark though. <http://www.venturegiant.com>

<comment><USER2> Your username is venturegiant. The url of the post is venturegiant, and you're commenting as if you're talking to a 3rd person?

Your intro video (which is actually kind of annoying) says you are the "leading online solution for pitch ideas" (or something like that). Yet it looks like the site has been up for about a year. Quite an accomplishment that is...

Oh, and it looks like I have to pay a fee to get any real value out of the site.

Just what the industry needs, more fee-based VC "helper" services out there masquerading as something useful.

<comment><USER3> Top-tier VCs and their spin-offs have generally had excellent reputations, which they strive to preserve. At the other end, successful entrepreneurs who later choose to seed selective startups are the best "angels" because they look to add value to a process they understand (and from which they seek to profit as the startup profits). In between are the lower-tier VCs and the "organized" angels - a no-man's land that has occasional pockets of opportunity but that is more often than not treacherous for startups who may wander into it.

My experience with institutional angel investors is that they should be approached with great caution. Some may offer value but _caveat emptor_.</comment></comment></comment>


The biggest culture shocks working in a European city - <AUTHOR> https://www.sophiaellis.co/blog/2017/9/22/the-biggest-culture-shocks-in-europe-from-a-us-millennial <comment><USER2> A view from Italy.

Career: same thing here.

Smoke: it's not cool but it's accepted. People have to get out of restaurants to smoke a cigarette.

Hanging out at home: same thing here, maybe a little less true in winter (it's cold in the north.)

Sleep: very true for Spain, especially because they live in the wrong time zone and get one extra hour of light all the year round.

Dressing up: not particularly true for IT jobs here, but I don't know what's the standard for the USA.</comment>


Fore: thinner Android view layers - <AUTHOR> https://erdo.github.io/android-fore/ <comment><USER2> It's funny that they list support for screen rotation as a key feature, as if this is some kind of rocket science... but they're totally right to do so, because on Android it _is_ rocket science at times!

I've never properly understood why mobile screen rotation needs to be so much more difficult to handle than desktop window resizing.

<comment><USER3> You can disable activity restart on screen rotation but you shouldn't because if your app can't handle that it won't be able to handle any number of other config changes (UI density, font settings, localization etc.) to say nothing of restarting gracefully when Android force stops it in the background.

Really the issue is websites and desktop programs have the expectation of being always running and in-memory until they choose not to be.

Not to say that the way Google decided to handle these issues in Android is in any way ideal. And CSS for all its warts has far better support for responsive design than the stock Android layout system.

<comment><USER4> If I could choose between "fast rotates, all apps crash/are killed on OS level font settings changes" or "slower rotates, apps gracefully handle OS level font settings changes" I feel like the former is clearly way preferable to the latter. Do you really feel differently?

<comment><USER3> It's not a matter of speed, it's a matter of preventing the app from losing state, background tasks, timers, notifications etc. whenever you do something as normal as take a call and browse the web before trying to go back to the app at hand. If it can't handle config changes it will crash a lot, sometimes even when not fully backgrounded.

That being said there are plenty of apps (video players for instance) that disable config changes on rotate as to more quickly switch between orientations. They still need to handle config changes properly for times like when the app is put into the background, and sometime later restored in a different orientation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Narrowing the Scope – Department of Justice modifies warrant for disruptj20.org - <AUTHOR> https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/narrowing-the-scope/ <comment><USER2> Gizmodo article: _Justice Department Drops Request for IP Addresses of 1.3 Million Visitors to Anti-Trump Site_

[https://gizmodo.com/justice-department-drops-request-for- ip-...](https://gizmodo.com/justice-department-drops-request-for-ip-addresses- of-1-1798325300)

Gizmodo article submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077136)

Techmeme Summary: _DOJ says DreamHost warrant was too broad, states it has no interest in records relating to 1.3M IP addresses of visitors to anti-Trump site_</comment>


About the new iWork for Mac: Features and compatibility - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6049?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US <comment><USER2> Apple increasingly proves that intransigence in response to customer feedback is not a defining feature of Apple's aesthetic. Another example is the reduced motion setting in iOS7. There's no need to piss people off just for the sake of purity; Steve gave that to Apple, but it is fundamentally distinct from Steve's primary gift - his vision of consumer products. Steve would have berated you for using Applescript, until Apple released the update a year later that supported Applescript.

<comment><USER3> This.

I had to look it up, so to save you the time:

        intransigence: Unwillingness to change one's views or to agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This new trend of Apple "communicating" their "plans" is really... unsettling? It has the same sort of un-appleness to it as the announcement at WWDC of a product with no release-date: just sort of not something we've seen much of, previously.

This sort of communication seems more unambiguously good, though. Not sure if this counts as backtracking, but it's certainly a new degree of 'transparency' (or 'not complete opacity') and I think it's refreshing.

I guess there's actually a bit of previous from apple for this sort of thing, such as their open letter about the iPhone 4 antennas, or about Foxconn etcetera. Still this feels a bit different.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "the announcement at WWDC of a product with no release-date"

If you're referencing the Mac Pro, that one made sense to me. People have been complaining about the lack of an update for a long time and Apple was probably losing people to Hackintosh/other platforms. An announcement helps slow that loss. Also developers are likely one of the main groups the Mac Pro is relevant to so it makes sense to announce that they are working on it at WWDC. Also didn't they say 'later this year'? That's not too different that what they do every year with iOS (coming this fall).

<comment><USER5> I thought the also did it with the iPad Mini Retina? I'm probably wrong though

<comment><USER6> They said "Later in November". More of a general time frame than a release date.

<comment><USER7> Yup, timeframe. The first iPad was announced as coming "next month", which turned out to be 5:00pm on the last business day (a Friday) of April.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. Just when I thought Apple couldn't do anything to bring me back, they do this. And then that warrant canary yesterday.

Using Apple is like being in a passive-aggressive relationship. One day, she's absolutely wonderful and does everything your way and you get to cooperate on every single decision, and the next day, she gives you the cold shoulder because you weren't doing some arbitrary thing right.

The website still looks like crap, but it looks like Apple is slowly coming out of the inconsistent days of iOS 7 and fixing the stuff they should have a long time ago.

I guess that's worth something, even if it doesn't feel like enough to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm kinda surprised to see this. I'm a big iWork user and I didn't really miss any of the features they took out. I mean, not having those features didn't affect my ability to do my job, so I didn't really know if the outcry was realistic or just a sense of entitlement. It is good know that we'll see some rapid improvements - although I'll be wondering how necessary some of these features are if I didn't miss them in the first place ;-)

edit: what kind of things are people doing with Applescript in Keynote? It sounds interesting...

<comment><USER10> Pretty realistic. I can speak from my own experience: a lot of people used it to produce professional documents. I use it to write books, it is (was) a wonderful alternative to Microsoft Word.

The new version removed at least six mission critical features, so I didn't upgrade. I could not have written my book in Pages if I was starting out with the new version. Style management, in particular, is crucial.

<comment><USER11> As you self-publish, wouldn't it make more sense to use Adobe InCopy[1]? There is no other app I know of that integrates better with InDesign. As a publisher, that's what I ask authors and editors to style copy in.

If you're a Adobe CC subscriber, you already have access to it. If not, a InCopy CC license costs $240 a year.

[1] [http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html](http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html)

<comment><USER10> It may make sense to learn it eventually, but so far there's nothing I haven't been able to do with ease in Pages. Here are my books, you should be able to see inside them to get a sense of the formatting:

[http://www.amazon.com/Graeme- Blake/e/B009A0YBWO/](http://www.amazon.com/Graeme-Blake/e/B009A0YBWO/)

What would be the major advantages? I'm sure there are some, I just don't know much about it.

<comment><USER11> I looked at the covers of your books: those are good. I also looked at the interiors on some of your books: those seem to not have received as much attention.

InCopy makes it easy to add styles that translate well to InDesign. The same is true for tables and lists. I'd say, watch the tutorials Adobe and Lynda.com[1] created.

InCopy has copyfitting features: you can see exactly how many lines fit on one page and how many lines you've got left. You can also preview the layout.

[1] [http://www.lynda.com/InCopy-training- tutorials/232-0.html](http://www.lynda.com/InCopy-training- tutorials/232-0.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm disappointed not to see the "Share" menu make it into this list.

In iWork '09, there's a "Share" menu. It has a few different output formats (PDF, Word, etc). When you click an output format, it exports to an attachment and automatically opens Mail. This is so incredibly efficient and reduces so many clicks.

I use this feature at 5-10 times a day, at least, and it's the one feature that is preventing me from upgrading to Mavericks on my primary laptop.

I realize that when I install the new iWork, the old iWork will still be there, but it still feels risky.

Apple, if you're listening, please fix this.

<comment><USER11> > In iWork '09, there's a "Share" menu. It has a few different output formats > (PDF, Word, etc). When you click an output format, it exports to an > attachment and automatically opens Mail.

The new iWork apps have a Share menu. It has all the same options as before, but it can also send just a link to the document. Using the latter option, the recipient can choose to open the document in whatever format they desire and to open it in an iWork app or on the web. Even web users can edit the document and send it back to you as an iWork file (and other file formats.)

Here are some screenshots: (iWork 5 in Mavericks)

[http://imgur.com/IxNE8KG](http://imgur.com/IxNE8KG) (the Share menu in the app toolbar)

[http://imgur.com/a4DqXkY](http://imgur.com/a4DqXkY) (Send an email containing the document)

[http://imgur.com/X9YgQ4r](http://imgur.com/X9YgQ4r) ('Send via email' file format options)

[http://imgur.com/OcKseRs](http://imgur.com/OcKseRs) (Send an email containing a link to the document)

Also, if you upgrade to Mavericks, you can continue using iWork '09. When you upgrade your OS, the iWork apps aren't automatically updated to the new versions. And if you do download the new iWork apps, your iWork '09 apps will still be there.

<comment><USER12> Appreciate the response. The problem is that the new process introduces another click where you have to select the document format. In iWork '09, you click the menu, then drag to word, then a menu opens. so 1-2 clicks vs. extra clicks and context shifts. It's a step backward.

I realize an update to Mavericks won't necessarily affect iWork, but I'm too attached to my current process to even risk it. It's an irrational behavior, I know. :-)

<comment><USER11> > the new process introduces another click

Yeah, that is an unfortunate result from adding more functionality in the same menu. I would've preferred to have two buttons: one for sharing links and one for sharing files. Even better: I'd like to customize the toolbar, like you can in Finder.

Currently, there's no preference option to set a standard export format. I'm sure you could write a script that automates the process, but you might have to do it through UI actions.

Personally, I've starting sending links instead of files. Doing so only takes two clicks, like we're used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apple changes its mind frequently. "Nobody wants video on an ipod" a year later, ipod with video. "Nobody reads Books anymore", cue the ibook store years later. You don't need two buttons on a mouse, powerPC processor are the best, firewire! Scsi!

Apple seems to reserve the right to change their minds and then not say anything about it. They ignore commenting on the past ofter (the Halo Demo at macworld for example..)

Apple always project they know what they're doing, but looking at it hindsight they change their mind frequently as business conditions change

<comment><USER14> _Apple always project they know what they 're doing, but looking at it hindsight they change their mind frequently as business conditions change_

That's one way to phrase it. Why not say Apple knows what they are doing _because_ they adapt to changing business conditions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "New unified file format" ... isn't the same sort of nonsense we went thru with Office applications that led to the nightmare of trying to open the files in other applications?

<comment><USER16> It's an undocumented binary format rather than a documented XML one. The format seems to have been designed with low RAM / CPU usage (ie: iOS) in mind.

But seeing as nobody else seems to have bothered to actually add support for the old iWork formats despite them being documented XML, the situation is basically unchanged in reality.

<comment><USER11> According to John Siracusa, Apple made the new iWork file formats so that changes could sync better with iCloud. The idea being that it's more economical to sync lots of small packages instead of sending one XML file.

Apparently, the new file formats use a Google technology called 'Protocol Buffers'[1]. According to Google, Protocol Buffers have some advantages over XML: they're simpler, smaller, faster, less ambiguous, and generate data access classes that are easier to use programmatically.

Here are some more details on the new file formats: [http://pxlnv.com/blog/exploring-the-new-iwork-for-mac- file-f...](http://pxlnv.com/blog/exploring-the-new-iwork-for-mac-file- formats/)

[1] [https://developers.google.com/protocol- buffers/docs/overview...](https://developers.google.com/protocol- buffers/docs/overview?csw=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A spreadsheet program without "Multi-column and range sort"?

They are definitely catering to a specific group of people here (i.e. nobody who has ever used a spreadsheet in a remotely technical fashion EVER -- my monthly budget tracker??)

</comment><comment><USER18> I like how their workaround is to have two versions of iWork installed. That's the same kind of shit they are always making fun of everyone else for.

Personally, I find OS fragmentation more excusable than Office Suite fragmentation.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I miss from Pages:

1) Set shortcut key for style.

2) Being able to see my styles laid out and displayed WYSIWYG (but I don't miss the drawer).

What I was hoping for but did not get in the new version of Pages:

3) Non-broken ePub export.

None of these have been promised (yet).

<comment><USER11> Keyboard shortcuts for styles are mentioned as a feature coming in the next 6 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One small issue is comments aren't shown as a sidebar so if you have many comments on a document, it becomes tedious to read them as they're tucked away behind little yellow boxes.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hm... no mention of restoring the drastically weakened typographical features that got dropped from this version of Pages. I suppose I'll stick with iWork '09...

<comment><USER22> I would hope that you weren't hoping for them to restore 'drastically weakened typographical features' as you suggest. :)

Restoration of drastically more powerful ones, sure. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Improvements to AppleScript support"

This was the biggest disappointment for me. Although, given the train wreck the Finder has become, I am not very surprised. It seems like they should have waited a couple of more months before releasing Mavericks.

<comment><USER24> I am confused how the Finder has become a train wreck.

It is fundamentally the same as OSX 10.0 public beta.

<comment><USER23> It actually worked in 10.8 and is buggy as hell in 10.9. So here are some fun things with 10.9:

Create a folder A, set folder A to sort by Kind, create a folder B inside it, create 100 text files. Open 2 Finder windows showing A. Scroll window 1 to the top of A, scroll window 2 to the bottom of A. Drag the last file from windows 2 to folder B showing in window 1. watch window 2 scroll. Sorting files into sub-folders just became an exercise in frustration.

Set any folder's view properties with AppleScript and they no longer take effect until you navigate out of and then back into the folder.

Move too many images with previews and watch Finder hang.

<comment><USER25> Maybe I'm missing something: why wouldn't you just open folder B in window 2 and move files from the outer folder in window 1 into the open folder B in window 2?

I haven't updated to Mavericks yet, btw.

<comment><USER23> I gave the simplest example. In general you would have a couple of folders that you would be sorting some files into when one folder got too crowded. It is still a really crappy bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here comes the backtracking via public announcement; something we've come to expect from Apple over the past few years.

<comment><USER27> This isn't backtracking, and this is awesome.

There has been a lot of coverage over how the new iWorks is to the old one as FCP X was to FCP 7. _Unlike_ that debacle, which left users wondering WTF, this time Apple is providing a roadmap amazingly quickly after release, detailing exactly what feature improvements we should be expecting in the near future and when. To that I say: about time, and thank you.

I'll stick with iWorks '09 for now, but at least I now know that e.g. the lack of AppleScript is temporary, not permanent, and that I'll be able to massage my old scripts to work with the new tools within six months. Not bad.

<comment><USER28> And I bought Keynote a few weeks ago — I have some disc with Keynote 1 (maybe 2?) on it somewhere, but instead of digging that out I thought I may as well get something up to date — and I noticed in my Applications folder earlier today that some recent update has installed Keynote '09 alongside the new version.</comment></comment></comment>