Messages

I agree with Carlos, most multimedia software should be able to take advantage of AltiVec. By removing that you'd deliberately cripple the notebook. Seems like a waste to me. Though I do also agree little endian is going to get more support in the future, for now, big endian would probably be the best choice.

950M or 960M are faster than 270M with same TDP. I would want at least a 965M, though.

Unfortunately there are no proper NVIDIA drivers for PowerPC that I'm aware of (only Nouveau, which is hardly useful), whereas amdgpu is available in recent (4.2+) Linux kernels. But yes, I would otherwise also prefer NVIDIA.

Is the GPU going to be MXM 3.0 A? I'd say that would make sense for a 15 inch laptop. From what I saw, AMD's R9 M270X would do rather well, and at a fairly nice price. However, it has a TDP of 50W, and I could imagine a lower TDP being nice for a laptop without low power integrated GPU. That or we could try to add a PowerVR or similar low power GPU for basic rendering and work on hardware or (kernel level) software switch, along with drivers if needed.

http://instructables.com/id/MagSafe-for-the-Rest-of-Us-A-DIY-Magnetic-Power-A/

Considering that's copyrighted, this would probably be a better / more legal option.

Any chance at replaceable keycaps? As developer, I'd love a Vim layout, for example. And I can imagine others liking certain keys having different colours (WASD for gaming, perhaps). I know it's not very likely in a standard chassis, but just in case there's an opportunity, I would love it at least!