Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days
Recently, I decided it was time for an update. I use Linux on the often so it was important for me to purchase a laptop that was compatible.
I bought 2 laptops, all of which I had to return in the last 2 months.
1. Dell XPS: I spent over 20+ hours with their support going back and forth. I also had a tech come to my house to replace my motherboard before I gave up and demanded a return
2. Lenovo Carbon X1: The laptop came with a faulty keyboard so I just returned it because I didn't want to wait 30 days for a mail-in repair or drive 2 hours to go to a "local" repair shop. They also made me order the laptop 3 times because their system kept cancelling it for whatever reason so it took an insane amount of time to just purchase the laptop (I spent ~6 hours to just purchase the laptop)
Maybe I'm just unlucky but the time I spent and energy I spent to just purchase these laptops shows you why people buy from Apple instead. I strongly dislike MacOS because they force the "apple way" of doing things. But it seems to be the only option these days to buy a computer with ease and get a computer "that just works". My Macbook was more expensive but the time I saved outweighs the price imo.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 308 ms ] threadBTW got a huawei matebook as of late. Pretty decent - tries to look like a macbook too
But I'm reconsidering them from now on. One of my current laptops have a weird issue and I tried to purchase extended warranty for them to fix it. Only to discover they now only service machines up to 3-years old.
I ultimately decided to get a new Macbook Pro 14in (on sale for $1750) and have 0 regrets so far.
I decided that if I was stuck with a machine that wasn't going to have user replaceable components, I'd rather have a Macbook that I know will last longer than most PC based laptops. Pretty simple logic.
Some people will disagree, but IMHO: Yes.
Why our choice is an ancient refurbished pre-shit ThinkPad or Mac? You can't throw a rock without hitting a random developer — but they all type on self-destructing shittops… And they type emails to customer support instead of coding.
Because that market segment is not large enough to easily justify RnDing your own laptop platform, nailing down the finer details, upscale that into mass production and then fight existing competition, all while keeping the price competitive.
And the rest of the world will do fine with the rest of the laptops. Or build desktops for specific tasks :shrug:
Does anyone even care about connected standby?
Rationalizing a reason into existence does not mean they have made a point, in my book.
Or you could opt for a T-series ThinkPad, but they come with their own host of issues. And you're still missing out on everything a MacBook does better.
But the other problem we've seen over the last few years is that you can order one and have no idea when it will actually arrive. Apple, on the other hand, has been rock solid with their delivery estimates (current China lockdown situation may change that - too early to tell).
https://frame.work/nl/en
https://nl.starlabs.systems/
I switched from Ubuntu to Arch some years ago because it was getting too bloated for my taste.
How is PopOS on this regard?
https://frame.work
The Framework is a beta product, at best. If you know that and are up for the challenge, go for it, but if you want something you're not going to have to fiddle with every time you want to do anything on it, pick something else.
As an example, Ubuntu had issues with my newer Zen hardware despite the hardware being on the market for quite some time. Switching to the newest kernel fixed my issues with stand-by and sleep, along with weird issues like random freezing.
For someone who's considering a MacBook the primary viable alternative, I'm just trying to point out that it's a long way from a smooth experience on a refined product.
I've used Ubuntu and Debian stable and testing for decades, but have migrated over to rolling releases for desktop use because of better hardware support.
I really think that Apple devices get so much clout mostly due to advertising.
My issues with my iPhone 7 radio made me switch to Android after they told me it was Qualcomm's fault that it wasn't bonded to the PCB properly.
My 2009 MacBook Pro 13" had some sort of issue where the SATA III part of the controller died and I was forced to either pay $800 for a new logic board because I had upgraded the RAM or use an optical drive HDD caddy which ran at SATA I(?) speeds. I had also had the logic board replaced once and the screen replaced twice less than a year after I got it as the screen had stopped working. Don't remember the actual cause of the issue, but seeing as it was covered I have a feeling there was a known issue with that line.
My girlfriend's 2011 13" MacBook Pro ended up with non-functioning USB ports due to a known but never recalled, even silently, issue with a chip on the logic board. Again, would have been a $500+ logic board replacement "fix".
My 2016 MacBook Air 13" started to develop a crack on the black plastic piece covering the hinge because of heat stress. I paid for the most "performant" SKU and after one major macOS update it was practically unusable.
My mom's 2017 MacBook Air 13" worked fine until this past year where the trackpad and keyboard died. Sure, got 5 years out of it, but this is also a very common issue as far as I can tell from research. Also, who the hell routes the keyboard through the trackpad? That's madness.
This is all anecdotal for sure, but I am staying away from Apple products from now on based on my experience. Especially these days with the machines having non-user-serviceable parts, I just can't take the risk anymore. What happens when my logic board inevitably dies? All of my data on that device is toast with no way to recover it. Ultimately you have to purchase something that's going to work and is serviceable... either by yourself or a service center.
Backups are your friend. Backblaze, Arq, etc etc etc. Tons of cheap options out there.
Not to mention that "just replace the motherboard" can often mean costing half, if not more, the original price of the machine. What happens if my SSD wears out? I just have to replace the entire logic board for one wear component?
Say it's not the SSD and it's something else like a voltage regulator. Now this motherboard is complete scrap. There's no harvesting of the RAM or SSD, so the part is probably $300 more expensive than it needs to be. And all those useful parts that are already scarce in a chip shortage will just be ground down and "recycled". These laptops suck.
Additionally, some industries like K12 or non-profits a lot of times have to try to squeeze as much life out of their systems as possible. These organizations would benefit insanely from better repairability and cheaper access to parts.
Of course motherboards are a bit harder to repair and usually means replacing the whole board, but it doesn't have to if we had a skilled workforce that could easily refurbish boards. Apple has taken great measures to make sure this never happens.
There's also the argument to be made for historic preservation. The retro computer community has been doing nothing but growing and I can already see in 20+ years time that these machines will be absolutely unusable without some sort of software hack. Even then, your onboard storage is shot and you have to boot externally.
You can make repairable, cost effective, well built, and top of the line machines. Apple just doesn't do it.
If it is a hassle then you're doing it wrong and you'll be in all sorts of trouble if you lose your laptop / it gets stolen.
Then again "ship your entire Mac back to repair the webcam" was always a meme, so maybe Apple gonna Apple.
OSX is a native unix. Yes there are limitations such as needing a vm to run docker but the core system is posix and the filesystems are all laid out in in teh unix way. on of this damn C/D drive nonsense.
macOS is more consistent with the BSDs than Linux is with older Linux or one distro is with another.
Once upon a time our production servers might have also been Unix. And developing from a Unix system was therefore desirable.
But these days our production services are almost certainly running on Linux (and probably Docker). Mac/Unix will have incompatibilities with this.
But you can get away with a non-Linux local environment because: * most server software doesn't use APIs that differ between environments * most OSes are well supported by Docker- which may work using a seamless Linux VM.
Better to scrap it and run a proper Debian box inside a hyper-v VM I found.
Or do what I did and drop kick the steaming Dell turd out of a window and buy a mac.
Tell me you haven't used WSL without telling me you haven't used WSL.
So lose the infernal meme snark. I used this more than most people did. And no, works for me is not a suitable retort because we have 200 people with the same issues day in day out.
It’s a fucking shit show.
Edit: The throttling would happen despite the CPU temperature being normal for average workloads. It certainly wasn't running at full power near 95°C and then slowing down to protect itself. We even tried providing increased airflow and a laptop cooling stand. It didn't help or make a difference on when it would drop down to throttling range. We tried all sorts of Windows power management settings, a few Lenovo power management apps, updating the firmware, and yet nothing helped.
Steve jobs famously said "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.", and this seems true to me for almost all hardware manufacturers, and to a larger degree still for software.
Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations?
There has been amazing workmanship for thousands of years. The Minoan culture made golden jewellery out of sub-milimeter spheres. Why should we now tolerate the insult that consumer computers are?
I think Microsoft's Surface lineup has been making good strides on that front, but they still have a long way to go.
Making laptops and tablets was anecdotally a business MSFT didn't particularly want to be in but the OEM options for business workplace were that embarrassing the bar had to be raised by someone.
And it seems even Microsoft’s “people should be aspiring to this, come on OEMs do better“ models have plenty of problems.
As a lifelong non-Mac guy (mostly unix, and then linux, since the days AT&T were sharing their code around college campuses), I'm about to go to the dark side and embrace the fruit simply because I think the whole deal will be better.
Naturally, the unsupported, glued-down screens also make them some of the least repairable devices on the market. At least they had the sense to make the SSD removable—aside from saving you if spontaneous failure catches you out of a backup (as Microsoft will wipe all devices sent in for repair), it's also the only part salvageable from a "PC" of such form factor.
That said, the Dells we've had seem to very reliably suffer from broken hinges.
To me, these details are less desirable, but the operating system and the way in which I utilize the computer to work and get shit done matters more. The niceness of the design (and don't get me wrong, they are super nice and beautiful) seems like superficial details to me. It isn't jewelry to me, it is a tool that I use to work.
But that shouldn’t be a trade-off. You should be able to have your OS and a nicely constructed laptop.
I got the impression the original post was more about quality than aesthetics (which are always up to personal taste).
We tolerate less poor design, because spending time on money on something which in the end is not truly worth the time or money is focusing on something unimportant to most people....especially at a job they most likely hate.
We spend a huge amount of time using computers. Considering not just the share of time but also the share of concentrated attention, they are an even more important object in our lives.
Why would you not desire the tool you use to be the absolute best you can have? And if eating cornflakes is important to you, the Laguioles may be worth it. After all, they will probably last ten years or twenty. Compared to many completely irrelevant, even burdensome objects we own, that's not that much.
Bruce Sterling once held a talk about minimalism and objects which stuck with me, long before Marie Condo commoditized the trend. He basically said: Spend a lot of money on things that you eat or put on your skin, on your bed, on your tools and beautiful objects. Get rid of the rest.
At the core, what I cherish about Apple objects is that they don't steal my attention and efforts for some inferior, fake promise. Looking at them and using them is the same, there is hardly any broken promise. It's that integrity which counts.
One thing that makes me tend to prefer Apple is the stores and support. I recall support for HP and VAIO computers being extremely painful. PC manufacturers have so many models they don’t even have parts available for a computer that was being sold last year. That was my experience with a Samsung laptop.
[1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-macbook-keyboard-fiasco-is-su...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/4/21246223/macbook-keyboard-...
[3] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/03/27/strn-kyboard
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-butterfly-keyboard-c...
Though perhaps I’m being overly harsh on Ive … have they sorted out spellcheck yet? The way they’ve conducted that the last while is I think some of the most disrespectful product management ive (should be I've) seen since Cadbury replaced quality chocolate with a drumming gorilla.
Apple's far from perfect—the competition just doesn't seem interested in actually competing.
Which is funny because the touchpad is by far the best touchpad I've ever used, it's the first touchpad I'd ever used that made me think a touchpad could compete with a mouse. It even made me start donating to the linux touchpad improvement project that got posted on HN [1].
My thinkpad is the exact opposite. Decent keyboard for a laptop but terrible touchpad.
[1] https://www.gitclear.com/blog/linux_touchpad_update_december...
I notice none of it on my ASUS and HP gaming laptops.
I think we should ask for hardware to remain beautiful in use. Look around you: Except for things made out of wood, metal, paper, glass or ceramic, most things will fail that test.
I'll admit, I haven't touched a Windows machine in over a decade, and it hasn't been my daily driver since 2002. The last version I used on a semi-regular basis was Win2K3 at work.
I'm willing to give it another shot though. Why do you think it's the best now?
Microsoft says "it might not work" yet it works flawlessly. YMMV though.
Visual Studio 2022 is x64 and is running under emulation in an ARM environment (M1 Max) and is working perfectly.
While it's not native performance, it's close and the gap will even get narrower by time.
Occasionally you do see PC OEMs that try for taste in the Windows ecosystem. Sony did that with their VAIO laptops, with the somewhat-inflated price tag to match. In fact, it impressed Jobs so much he literally just offered them an OSX license (which they didn't bite on).
Look at all the fields where superior quality is a completely natural criterion (whether it exists may be another question): Watches, cars, pens, paper notebooks, furniture, fashion, jewellery, architecture, bikes, coffee machines ...
What's more - if you look at the visual representations of computers - i.e. marketing material, art, illustrations, unix porn etc - all that highly values aesthetics and beauty. But the actual products are a disgrace to all of that!
Because it needs to be affordable to the masses as a whole, and not just the upper middle class and up.
Some old Swiss everyday products are affordable yet beautiful; I am convinced both is possible.
Those same "old Swiss everyday products" are most likely no longer affordable based on the modern cost of labor and materials.
side note: "caran d'ache" actually means pencil in Russian which in turn borrowed the name from Turkic, where cara(n) means black and ache is stone. The company is Swiss, but it was set up by a Russian cartoonist that fled the 1917 revolution, worked in Paris and settled in Switzerland inbetween the world wars.
We buy computers by comparing sets of numbers. Your GHz and Mb are bigger than my GHz and Mb? And the $ are lower?
But luxury items are some times about the feel. And if you have a nice computer running Windows. Well, the primary way in which we interact with the machine is budget so why bother with the rest of it?
Anytime "normies" ask me to help them buy a laptop, this is not at all what they ask. The only thing they want to know is "is it fine for my needs?" and the only thing I really need to do is check "min GHz, min Mb", and find the cheapest option in the bucket with a decent support contract and then pick the cheapest option.
And in my circle, the cheapest option is not really anyone's concern (they budget 1k, 2k, and are fairly agnostic within like +-$300); in near any other subject, it'd be preceded by look & feel, but they all look and feel the same (inoffensive, at best), so cost is all you've got.
No "normie" I know has high expectations of computers, both by their own failure but mostly by failure of the machine itself, and its largely because computers do not have high expectations of themselves.
I think many of us here really appreciate the beauty of Cray Mainframes and Apple hardware, but computers are so associated with work and utilitarianism, I think they’ve often been overlooked for their value as design pieces. I mean, brutalist architecture is a thing, so it’s probably just a matter of time.
The question is why you don’t seem to have a choice of quality. It’s basically seems to be quite high (Apple), or somewhere between crap and acceptable.
Where are the very high PCs? The nice PCs? The good PCs? There aren’t many, they’re basically niche.
I don’t have much experience with recent PCs. Most of it has been quite bad. Even the relatively well spec’ed Windows laptops at work are sad (despite decent reviews).
Cheapest PC mech keyboard will get you blinking RGB.
Cheap PC case with front mesh airflow. Most likely will come with RGB fans. If it's real cheap you won't be able to even turn it off.
Same with cheapish mouse with decent sensor.
Needless aesthetics is almost unavoidable on the budget end. Unless you specifically go out of your way to pay extra to get models without RGB.
A bit of creakiness and flakiness is tolerable when you’re a home gamer and only have to deal with it for a couple of hours at a time during the weekend, but when it’s a full time job it gets old fast.
That's why I said "look like." Sometimes good tools look good, and sometimes they don't.
For computers these days, especially true. It may have been true that the aesthetics of a Mac strongly correlated with quality, but that's far from certain now.
This is also why good computers are affordable by almost everybody, but things like good bicycles, furniture, watches, coffee machines etc are not.
You can buy a decent computer for the same money as one chair.
Sometimes aesthetics is part of practicality: how many doors does one run into with a "push" or "pull" sign because otherwise it's not possible to tell in which direction things work?
A good watch can be passed down through generations. A computer passed on from my father would likely just be a storage and disposal cost instead of any real use.
Outside of specialist enthusiasts and collectors, I suppose. But for every working Apple 1 there's thousands of c64s that no longer function quite right.
Conversely, nowadays that is less and true though. Currently, getting a latest Ryzen 5000 APU laptop can very easily last you 10 years or more -- until something physically breaks inside. The machines themselves are very energy-efficient and fast enough for everything except special work niches.
So I suspect we're witnessing a culture shock: what used to be the best strategy no longer is, and the players (the producers) haven't adapted yet.
You never know. I have an AMD TR 1900X CPU (launched in August 2017) in a box, since Windows 11 doesn't run on it.
May I ask, why you need to run Windows 11?
Another thing was, that since there were less cores and the thermal capacity was the same as the bigger siblings, the cores were clocked slightly higher (3.8 GHz base frequency).
Eventually, I got one of last 2920X for a good price. I got more, but slower cores and it still works in the X399 board I used with 1900X.
---
I actually do not need to run 11 yet. But eventually, it will come.
The interval of replacement due to performance is getting longer through. A 10-year old high-end laptop is still pretty good for average user today, especially with an SSD. Most people need just something that can run web-apps and stream HD videos via browser. Buying a new laptop solely for performance is getting harder and harder to justify. I guess that's why Macbooks are attractive, they offer more than just performance.
I just googled this and it's based on an unsubstantiated boast by Sony's president in 2014, I'd be skeptical:
https://www.appleworld.today/2021/01/06/from-the-vault-did-s...
Although this article seems to think it holds water:
https://9to5mac.com/2014/02/05/sony-turned-down-offer-from-s...
Not sure if that survived his return to Apple.
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...
https://youtu.be/AnrM4n6S3CU?t=5973
[Definitely worth a watch. Also Jobs makes a few mistakes such as calling the PowerBook a Power Mac and referring to iTunes as iMusic.]
No such thing as a "correct" design: it's all about market positioning and design trade-offs. I'm typing this on a sub-$300 laptop, it's made of plastic, it bends and flexes, but it is very light, and has a 1980x1024 display, a 9-hour battery, and again - it bears repeating - cost less than $300 brand new. These factors may not be important to you, but they were to me as I wanted something I could bike with, and wouldn't be too stressed if it broke in a fall[1]. I also have a MacBook, but it's heavy and expensive to repair.
1. It is also something I would have been my dream machine as a poor student in a place with unreliable electric service, yet still attainable, unlike the other "well-made" laptops that have a premium on aesthetics & build-quality.
It can seamlessly install and run Linux apps and compilers via virtualization (Crostini). I usually use vim, but I also have VS Code installed and it works pretty well. It won't win any CPU perf awards though: it has a dualcore Celeron.
Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine).
How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards?
How garbagey is Xcode relative to any other IDE nowadays?
I can go on ... and on.
Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. And I use software to get my job done--the hardware merely needs to be sufficient (I generally customize my laptops to use an i5 (including mac)--which ducks a lot of the idiotic thermal issues).
I'm sitting on a Lenovo Carbon X1 with Linux full-time now. I finally got tired of fighting craptastic software from Apple. If I'm gonna fight software, I might as well be on Linux.
And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.
Which mouse? I've always had bad experiences with Bluetooth mice, but have chalked it up to BT being a shit protocol for mice.
> Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine).
Is it all USB 2.0 ports that die in that case, or just the ones on your external dock? Are you using an adapter of some sort as well?
> How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards?
This seems a bit petty to me. I don't disagree, but if they fix it they fix it, and afaik they have. Lots of improvement to make, but I quite like the current ones as much as I can. Laptop keyboards across the board are only going to be barely passable imo, because the feedback to me is less important than scrunching my hands together in a way that fucks with my shoulders. This is true of full size mechanical keyboards as well. I think it's important, if you care, to re-evaluate every so often. If a restaurant I like makes a thing that sucks once or twice, I'll wait a bit and try it again a while later, and it's no longer that important that I didn't like it previously
I owned a previous Macbook Air with a "shittastic" keyboard and never had an issue– although I'm glad I now have the new M1 with a better keyboard.
> Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage.
I had the unfortunate displeasure of being issued a top of the line Windows 11 computer for work, and it was a horrible experience. Basic things that Mac OS gets right like search, recursively deleting files, and bash environments Windows either struggles with or requires workarounds.
> And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.
Linux is an incredible family of operating systems. Every few years I will try downloading and installing a few distros. I always run into issues with GPUs, sound cards, and WiFi. Once I get past those, I run into different sets of issues. One that sticks with me is the awful nested menus in XCFE.
Apple in some ways have allowed some behaviour in their MacOS to regress, but it is still the top choice for me. Mac OS is not garbage. I'm sorry to hear that you had an awful experience with it, but I am still very productive with it.
I was a linux-on-the-desktop user for about a decade before switching to Mac, and like you, I try Linux out again from time to time. My experience is similar: I hit stuff I just don't have the time or patience to deal with anymore, every single time. Looking back, it only ever seemed good because I was somehow blind to how much time I was losing, and I'd learned to work around or ignore a bunch of broken stuff on my systems.
I feel this way about macOS.
How much time have I lost because the Bluetooth was screwy? How much time have I lost because the WiFi did something strange? How much time have I lost trying to do USB development and the OS got in the way? How many times have I had to blow away and reinstall all my printers because macOS got confused. On macOS, I have to install special apps to keep my laptop awake or to set it to the native screen resolution. How much weirdness have I had to debug because of App Dislocation?
It finally got driven home when I was trying to configure someone else from scratch on macOS. After the sixth "Hey, how do you deal with misfeature <X>?" followed by "Well, you need to download an app that does <Y>." I realized that I'm diddling with my macOS system as much as I diddled with my Linux systems.
At that point, I might as well choose Linux so that my diddling actually helps the wider community rather than simply going into the black hole of Apple and adding to their profits.
You may try Fedora, for me it just works (with an AMD graphic card), and Gnome is pretty usable, even ergonomics these days.
On a thinkpad with “standard” hardware, there is absolutely no driver problem of any kind.
I consider most of their "free" add-on software best-in-class or at least best-for-my-use case, with only a couple exceptions (including, yes, Xcode). The software is a whole lot of what keeps me on Mac hardware.
The underlying UNIX often seeps through the layers and it is simply an objectively worse UNIX than linux. Sure, its user space has plenty of cool features but even those are half-assed and buggy. Like, how come switching desktops is not smooth? Sure, I don’t have an M1, but a goddamn last-intel MBP, it should simply never lag at such a user-facing interaction. Sometimes I feel my T480 is better with gnome on input latency..
Agreed, but iOS is playing on easy mode: it sandboxes everything to a high degree, everything running on it went through some amount of checks to make sure they won't mess up the system, it routinely kills processes so apps must be written to resume properly from a cold start, and it (even today) has relatively limited multitasking. It both doesn't let programs do as much, and encourages or forces developers to employ practices that (I suspect) tend to improve program stability.
I would echo your experience. macOS has gone significantly downhill overall, in terms of sheer ugliness and hassle to use as a developer box. I'm think about the continual prompts for running software and allowing access to folders etc., incredible difficulty in getting non-macOS frameworks like SDL etc., to run.
It's no longer worth the hassle.
My work Razer Blade 15 runs CentOS 7. My MBP M1 runs Asahi. And this Lenovo is running Ubuntu 20.04. Gnome on all of them, and by and large, much much better experience than either current Windows or macOS.
Because the value of a laptop is the parts inside, not the presentation. Why would I care about those things? Or at least why would I care about them enough to make me spend more than I have to?
For me something I spend my time that much should look nice. That combined with the parts inside is perfection, which is the M1 MBP for me.
Does it really matter to you to have something pretty sitting on your desk while you work? That seems really weird to me. Personally I couldn't care less. Especially in the context of a professional work laptop which is a machine that goes onto the corner of my desk and I plug a bunch of other things into and basically ignore forever past that point.
I was shocked when I found out that macs are popular among people who actually work with computers and even make software. It will never cease to shock me. The only explanation I can think of is that this is a USA social class thing. In the USA the upper classes have Apple stuff and the lower classes have something else. Most people in software come from an upper or upper-middle background so they grow up in an Apple house. Those who don't get Apple anyway to blend in.
Yeah, wtf. It's not like people that build software for a living know anything about computers right?!
Craftspeople appreciate good tools. Good tools don't make you better at craft, but bad tools can definitely make you worse.
There's also the thing where at the start of a model cycle from Apple, you generally cannot purchase an equipment with all those performance capabilities combined at any price from anyone else. This is true of phones and laptops alike.
In other words, at major new model cycles, the full combination of practical function and durable form is often not available anywhere else at any price.
When your livelihood depends on your machine, you do well to invest in good tools. And "invest" is the right word, because these hold value.
By the end of a model cycle, other vendors may catch up or pass the price perf curve, yet the Apple models are built in a way that holds value for double or quadruple the lifespan of a Windows laptop purchased around the same launch window. This means when you buy fresh and resell two years in, you can spend less for the top of the line functionality than when you stay in the shovel-wear class of machine. (You can even sometimes buy direct refurb and sell a year later for as much as you paid.)
> It will never cease to shock me.
How to say you're not open minded without saying you're not open minded? :-)
1. Unix-based OS
2. Outstanding battery life
3. Sturdy and long-lasting; a well-maintained Macbook will outlive any Windows laptop of equal price
4. No pre-loaded crapware
5. Best trackpad in existence
6. Secure, with patches and updates for years
This more than outweighs all the other minuses, such as the overly-obsessive focus on thinness, or the outrageous cost of dongles, adapters, memory/storage upgrades, and battery replacements.
Desktops last pretty much forever. Almost every desktop component I've had worked perfectly until it was extremely obsolete and sold or given away.
What's crazy is that although their performance remains the same over years, their prices depreciate like crazy for no reason. I am never gonna buy new computers again. I've gotten a few 2nd hand gaming desktops recently on buy and sell websites for around €300 each (often including monitor / peripherals) and they perform perfectly, they can run AAA games fine even.
Sorry, but I don‘t believe anyone who says this while looking at a modern day M1 macbook. I have the pleasure to own one for software development and graphical imagery work and frankly it‘s the single best computer I have ever used. No windows or linux machine comes close. It‘s a unix system where everything just works out of the box.
The design inconsistencies though are twofold. If we look at phones Samsung makes their own processor that they try to use with their phones and they are also not fabless but that processor continually either underperforms Apple's products. On the other hand the Apple tax is quite real. Also, Samsung's aesthetic at least at their phones is quite real although they might just abandon their standard flagships to foldable phones because the yearly update cycle for phones is stopping soon.
Also, many manufacturers seem to just blindly copy Apple up to even their marketing (which I don't think many would disagree that Apple does the best out of any of their competitors).
You can't get whatever you want though. You can't get a machine with remotely the look and feel of a MBP. You have lots and lots of mediocre choices and no really good ones.
Obviously you can get PCs that are way cheaper. I found one for $150. Apple can’t touch that.
But for $1000 you get an amazing screen, fantastic performance, unbelievable battery life, and absolutely no moving parts. All in a very light and thin case. You can get some of those qualities but nowhere near all.
All the more amazing given Apple’s legendary margins. PC makers can’t get close despite making less money on each unit.
I own a very expensive 2021 gaming laptop / mobile workstation-ish laptop from Lenovo. A ton of people who have it have had issues with the touchpad getting unresponsive. I could fix for the most part by using a 300W brick over a 240W (don't ask me how, that must be a very interesting power delivery system, or maybe the battery controller is interrupt storming, what do I know).
Lenovo's response has been to say they're aware of the issue, and otherwise ignore it / replace entire top shells only for the problem to return 2 weeks later.
I also have a T495, a machine that absolutely should never have been released with the C-States it has. While AMD has issued a patch for them, Lenovo has not bothered to provide a BIOS revision that fixes it. Support for these products is essentially minimal to dead upon release.
It feels like every OEM has become MediaTek.
It's the aesthetically stunted and clueless nerds on HN who don't know the name of their hairstyle and aren't aware of the length or color of their shorts who are the outliers, not you
I prefer the plastic of my Thinkpad, it doesn't feel creaky, there's no "sticky-feeling texture". It doesn't boil on my lap the way metal MacBooks and PowerBooks have. It feels solid while also not denting from knocking it into a doorway by accident or worse yet deforming itself from it's own heat.
You can buy quality PCs. You just gotta pay more.
Supported longer, better materials, better keyboards.
I'd buy a second hand elitebook over a new acer or whatever any day.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/...
Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elit...
there are nice quality laptops to be had, they're just expensive enough that apple becomes competitive price-wise.
The fact that the trackpad comes without dedicated buttons is a tradeoff of size, but the amount of force needed to perform a click (even on the side where least amount of force is needed {yes, it varies}) is so high that the mouse WILL move a bit before click is registered, as your finger gets squished. Using anything but touch-tapping on it is impossible with single finger.
That same year I got my first ever macbook, M1 Air. I guess I dont even need to explain the difference in every aspect comming to mind between those two machines to illustrate my point.
I had a MBP, 2019 I believe. It was riddled with problems. True Tone color was wrong. Flickering on the display. The weird internet connectivity which often required some hacky restart. The touch bar was a terrible idea; this was a time when other laptops had high quality touch screens that were actually useful. The touch bar was a half-hearted implementation with a fraction of the benefits of a touch screen, but taking up a whole row on the keyboard.
But then they make the best processors and have the most power in a compact space, so as OP said, there's really no other option. I gave it another chance and they've fixed all the problems from the 2019 model.
I love this. Yes, those were horrible. The current Apple TV Remotes with the touch surface area is practically unusable by any but a twitch video gamer. Every time I watch my mom try to select anything I'd see her try to push the button and the touch surface would end up moving the selection. Eventually i bought her a 3rd party remote so she could stop being constantly frustrated.
It's really hard to believe apple actually tested this with real people.
If they would've just added the bar above the normal F-keys, everyone would've either embraced or ignored it. But taking away function keys was just too much for pretty much everyone - especially ESC (which they rectified in a later iteration).
But it was expensive. So it was only all the more expensive models, the ones that professionals and programmers used. And a lot of them hated it.
I don’t mind it that much personally. My work laptop has one and it can be nice on occasion. But when I switch to a laptop that doesn’t have one I don’t miss it at all.
(I have the hardware escape key. I think without that it would truly drive me nuts.)
For a while there it was like someone inside Apple wanted to chase developers away from their laptops.
That said, the implementation of the touchpad in a Macbook vs a regular touchpad in even a high end laptop is night and day. The software and hardware work together to make sure the touch surface is centered, and your fingers glide through it, there are no accidental presses, and esentially never misinput. The haptic feedback is so good that you can't really tell that you're not pressing a button. In comparison, the touchpad in what I consider the best Windows laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, is a steaming pile of shit, and fails every measure.
I don't know how much of it is Apple's attention to detail versus their ability to do vertical integration -- Lenovo likely has very little control over how Synaptics implements their drivers -- but I would pay a hefty premium for an experience like a Macbook.
(rant following so please don't read the rest if you don't like ranting about linux desktop)
I could probably live with trackpad not being great. But the sound stack, bluetooth stack, driving displays with different dpi (hidpi and non-hidpi) etc. are all terrible. Managing multiple displays (xrandr, xinerama etc.) even without the dpi difference is also just bad. If you like to tinker it's great but I just couldn't make the switch. It didn't give me the confidence that it will work when I need it. I tried all major distros and read almost the entirety of the arch wiki (it is so good). i3 is one of the things that would make me try again in the future. There is nothing like it on macos (some wms try but they always feel duct-taped). And systemd is good.
Similarly, pipewire is pretty much stable now, which fixes both the sound and bluetooth stack singlehandedly.
So fair enough for not trying it out just yet, hopefully soon we can just easily say that it works splendidly!
It was actually perfect in my 2015 MBP, now its a tad too bad and its hard to find good resting positions for the fingers and palms.
Fingers crossed that the Asahi Linux project keeps advancing as good as they have.
I care way more that my Dell laptop is trivial to disassemble than that making it that way (cheaply) involves plastic, panel gaps and creaking joints.
These machines are simple, built well and in my 5+ year experience with all day use they're rock solid.
However for my personal use I use a Macbook.
But I agree, for family members I always try to find a used <T480 laptop in good conditions, because these are faster than similarly priced low-end laptops (seriously, what they offer at the low-end is just criminal, they want to take advantage of the technically illiterate), and basically everything can be changed inside.
I am super filtered by the Mac keyboard and I don't think it is intended for professional use at all.
Also "it just werks" is not true at all, Macs have a super bad reparability. If you love Macs fine, but they are not that savoir of laptops as you claim, its a brand with its own loyal fans just like there is Thinkpads with loyal fans and people who say WHY NO ONE MAKE GOOD MUSIC TODAY EXCEPT TAYLOR SWIFT?????
ONLY GOOD PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IS C# TODAY WTF???
Where do you find laptops with creaking plastic or weird textures like that? I get that there are more options to choose from in non-mac world but that doesn't mean you have to choose bad options. I go with Lenovo and never had any problems you are talking about. Macs, on the other hand, they have buggy UI and are extremely annoying if you want to use them in any other way than the "Mac way". Over the years they also had their share of hardware faults.
Feels good to vent. :)
I get your anger, but it's not about trying to look 'cool'. For lots of folks it's more clear to see that (for example) a minimised window can be found in the dock by showing a transition. For people like you there's a preference (under accesibility - display - reduce motion) to turn it off.
I don't really have the patience for silly stuff that annoys me and should/could be trivial to adjust. Just Google something (in this case 'macos disable animations') and you can remove a lot of friction from your daily life.
Another issue is the fact that whenever I turn on my headphones, if they were connected before laptop went to sleep, it will automatically wake up. Imagine if it was in your backpack and started working there.
At one point I had a list of Mac software issues but then I threw it away before I was forced using it again. As another commenter said, there is a threshold of small issues which once they add up is overstepped and then you search and find better options.
Apparently I also hold my laptops differently because with the older MBPs the edge at the front hurt my wrist more than working on any other laptop ever had.
Onto Linux-on-Dell XPS 13 for a few years, though admittedly I didn't pay for it so I didn't really have a choice. Still, I'm happy and would easily recommend the product. A lot of firmware upgrades happen over `fwupdmgr` too.
The recently posted StarBook 14-inch looks interesting, but the screen isn't hi-res.
But the most demanding issue is cost. PCs are now a commodity. The margins in hardware are sustainable--barely. Therefore, every dollar (yen, yuan, etc.) invested in hardware design beyond the reference implementation provided by Arm, Intel, Nvidia, etc., is less money to the bottom line. And with lots of competition and rapidly iterating developments occurring at the chip and board level, the big gains in performance are driven by the chip manufacturers, not by the hardware platform providers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
Apple has managed to side-step that whole issue by providing an integrated platform that they completely control--more so now with the huge success of the Apple Silicon chips. This allows them to build compelling integrated solutions that don't run into the reliability problems posed by huge numbers of 3rd-party driver developers, support for add-in cards and other multi-provider issues. These are all things people complain about--the inability to upgrade or service their Apple hardware--but it provides a much more controlled environment, and allows Apple to spend more time working on all those attention-to-detail-items you mentioned, rather than testing, troubleshooting, and supporting an ever-growing plethora of hardware interopation issues.
Apple hardware costs a bit more (not a huge amount), and has a lot fewer upgrade or customization options, but what you get for that is a more bullet-proof solution overall. And it means Apple engineers and designers have more time to make sure that the devices are light, well balanced, quiet, and durable. It's a trade-off, to be sure, but so far the numbers are shifting in Apple's favor--something that seems shocking if you were around in the '90s when Apple's certain demise was commuted due to a huge investment by it's then arch-rival, Microsoft.
12.3 broke copying large files (200mb+) from the finder to network shares (files get corrupted, bad data). Copy from terminal with cp, no issue.
12.3 broke airplay
iOS 15.3 broke WebGL, tons of sites that rely on it are effed, (can't ask users to use a different browser on iOS)
All 3 issues, 6 weeks+ still unfixed.
etc....
PS: not saying that MS does better but "It just works" Apple is never actually true
A procurement officer at an insurance company will just do and RFQ and buy 50,000 laptops. The one the wins may be $2 cheaper than the loser.
Yet. I am pretty sure you could spin up Archlinux / Ubuntu on it. I'd give it a shot if I had the need to replace my Thinkpad.
https://community.frame.work/c/framework-laptop/linux/91
While with Windows it would be.
Also, I have been wanting to try https://system76.com/ for quite a while but I can't get my work to approve one.
What's your question?
Macbooks are better than about 95% of PC laptops, but that's because Macbooks are only in the lower/mid upper end of laptops. PC laptops range from absolute garbage to being significantly better than Macbooks.
When people complain about how terrible PC laptops are, it's very rare that they've spent a meaningful amount of time (read: enough to get used to the trackpoint) with a high end PC laptop.
I only move them around the house, never on the road. When I move them, I place them in a Thule Gauntlet. I really take care of these babies as I find it wasteful not to.
So that is my anecdata on the 'stability' and 'care' of Apple.
My experience differs from yours. Both are wrong and true. You could just be unlucky, and so can I. No need to completely write off Dell or Lenovo over that though.
Looking online, it seems like there was a quality issue with their displays for the first few batches of production.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-facing-m1-macbook-cracked-s...
It is a shame. I did enjoy using the laptop very much.
99% of the time I’ve seen this sort of stuff happen it’s because there was a screen protector or someone shut some crap in the lid.
Note that this isn't saying "you're being abusive to the computers": I can imagine daily-use patterns that are genuinely the best you can do that would result in much higher physical stress to a laptop than your typical office work. It's just saying that maybe, for your particular use case, you might need something more rugged than a stock MacBook of whatever type without a case on.
Every Dell or Lenovo I had before that was cracked, missing plastic bits, feet and screws after 4 years.
Last Lenovo had battery issues from the start. 2018 MacBook still lasts a day.
But my dual Xeon Dell Precision desktop from 2017 is still a beast, never had issues.
It’s a gradient in the aggregate but my personal experience says it’s just fine to write off any laptop that isn’t a Mac. The plastic housing alone makes me think they take a “Gillette razor” approach to portables; who cares if it cracks apart, just replace it! which I have a hard time looking passed given the industrial waste shitshow we already have.
So many of their laptops have had issues necessitating recalls, but because they were able to delay those recalls until 5+ years after those devices were released (even if complaints started way earlier), they get away with it.
I've already had 2 Apple laptops where I took in a 4-5 year old device, and basically had them replace/refresh it for free. One was the gen 1 or gen 2 Macbook which had a ridiculous discoloration issue on the case palm rests, combined with the case peeling apart, and the other a Macbook Pro (2011?2012?) that had a graphics card issue.
The 13" MBP M1 has been the best, apart from the wretched touchbar.
My experience with Macs as work and personal laptops has been very good.
I say this while having pretty meh experiences with earlier generation (~2019 and earlier) HP elite models used for work.