Given my recent tweet about my absolute dissatisfaction with Apple's new MacBook Pros, specifically the fact that storage and memory are on part with my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro, its time to consider options. I'm partially down the road of a Hackintosh although my build got stalled out and I have a pile of non working pieces waiting for me to get back to them. But in the event that doesn't work out I need a backup plan.

Here's what I'm looking for in a configuration:

  • 64 gigs of ram
  • minimum of 1 TB ssd
  • traditional USB; USB 3 sounds great but the issues have me concerned
  • ethernet
  • able to drive a Dell Ultra Wide Screen Display
  • wifi
  • fanless; I'm so absolutely tired of my MacBook Air sounding like a small propeller every time Safari fires up

Oddly this doesn't have to be a laptop. DropBox is so bloody good that I can have a lesser box for when I travel since sync is now a non issue. As long as all my files are present, I'm far more machine independent than I used to be. If I pull my development into Docker that would very much isolate me from cross machine differences – at least theoretically

I find the Intel Skull Canyon NUC interestingly compelling and I really have no idea why – maybe it is the skull.

In terms of the OS I suspect its either a Hackintosh version of Capitan or Elementary OS. I'm wondering seriously about moving to Linux for development and OSX just for things I can't readily move over like photos / media.

I've started tracking links on the post mac world on my Pinboard.

This is utter madness – if you had told me even 2 years ago that Apple would release new Macbook Pros and I would be thinking about leaving the platform in disgust, I wouldn't have believed it. Sigh.