Ask HN: Is There a MacBook Equivalent?
I am looking to renew my piece (Dell XPS) and I am thinking about an M4 Max maxed out. My budget is $4-5k.
I'd rather buy a non-apple hardware but after only 3 years of use for this Dell: The charger broke and it was hard finding replacement because it is a specific model, the battery barely last for an hour now, the touch screen went crazy just after one year and is useless now, the "carbon fibre" casing ridiculously aged as if it is 10+yo, microphone still not supported although that's a minor issue.
Also I don't have any proof but I think its overall performance degraded although not significantly.
I've used Apple Macbooks before and they had issues but when they worked , they worked great. I'd rather buy a Linux laptop but I couldn't find anything that can match the M4 Max or come close.
39 comments
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It's necessary to do a bit of research ahead of buying. The new x13 looks really promising.
Their website improved significantly. I remember I interacted with one of them 3 or 4 years ago and they were rather bulky. I wonder how much they have improved since then?
However, you can tweak some kernel params to keep them mostly silent.
Plus, some of their AMD offerings are really good for running local LLMs.
A Framework that runs Nix and some tiling WM is a very nice experience TBH.
Agreed. I've been using a Framework 13 AMD since they came out (almost two years?) and it's an excellent machine, but some of the hardware just isn't as good. The display, trackpad, and build quality aren't as good.
That said, there's still not a single machine on the market that I'd rather use. I actually own and control my laptop hardware, and while I'd get better battery life on a MacBook, I like that this machine is _actually_ mine.
What screen size do you need?
What will it be used for?
Will you be using it at a desk? with a monitor? or always travelling.
What battery life do you need
Etc
I do notice that most people tend to abuse their laptops; I believe my laptops are outliers because I don't abuse them.
Your laptop performance should not be degrading if you don't allow it to overheat.
In addition to physical treatment, the software that you allow to run on it, makes a difference. (Software maxing out the CPU constantly is going to cause it to overheat and degrade.)
That is a phrase I would expect an ad to say. Can you quantify those things?
Do they have physical switches for the camera, microphone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth? Do they have tamper-evident features?
https://mac.getutm.app/
Also, depending upon your needs, a lot of software that you would typically run on Linux has a native port to macOS.
Personally if I was in the market for a new laptop I would be upgrading my 16gb M1 macbook pro, to whatever the latest MBP is with as much RAM as I could afford.
16gb can run 14b models slowly and they are semi usable, good for small tasks.
24gb or 32gb can get you into 27b models that start getting pretty usable.
Web surfing and watching Netflix? They are all pretty much equivalent.
Running Linux? I don’t think the M chips are well supported, and last I looked it appeared the M3 and 4 are not supported at all…though, I did not look at Arch.
Equivalent in price, aesthetics, or brand identity?
For Gaming? Programming? Training LLM’s? Editing Video?
Battery Life?
Not really. Many laptops still come with 1080 hd screens and $1 speakers. You would want an upgraded screen, ideally oled along with multiple speaker drivers.
I am not saying it is what you want, but a few grand saved on a laptop could buy some compute. And a laptop that doesn’t need to compile Rust can be optimized for other ergonomics.
Workstation laptops never have great battery life and other than Thinkpads, laptop Linux tends to be a bit painful.
Caveats: 32 GB RAM is enough for me and I don't need a powerful GPU. Also battery life is average, but there's a way to optimize the system for minimum power draw which I never did.
Nowadays having minimum 32gb and ideally 64gb is more important than the cpu