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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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 think Microsoft's Surface lineup has been making good strides on that front, but they still have a long way to go.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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
I notice none of it on my ASUS and HP gaming laptops.
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.
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???
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
"Macbooks seem to be the only viable option these days", because I had bad experiences with two non-Macbook computers.
To be fair; I don't think that the author came to that conclusion only from those 2 anecdotes. But still, that is the way the argument is presented. And it really looks absurd.
So to each his own and definitely op is just unlucky and the conclusion drawn in this post is just absurd and flame-baity.
All of these laptops are higher end business models from major OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc...) I was an avid fan of Thinkpad T series laptops for quite a while, but in the last couple of years I've had a lot of problems with them and am no longer confident in that series. I've never been a fan of HP, and have had mixed results with their products. Their higher end business stuff is decent, but I've had issues here and there. Oddly, despite the many horror stories I've heard, the Dell Latitudes I've worked with have been the most rock-solid. No swollen batteries, no broken displays, no random bricking (happened to two different T460Ss I had), no BSODs.
I've personally not had great experiences with Macs in general, but have a lot less experience with them than PCs. I have not found Macs to be notably better than mid to high end PCs in terms of hardware quality.
hackers are working hard on really cool daily driver laptops that respect your freedom and work to deliver an excellent computing experience.
system76 offers a good balance of performance and value: https://system76.com/laptops
pinebook offers a competitive and cheap arm daily driver: https://pine64.com/
and purism frankly rivals Apple levels of build quality and performance: https://puri.sm/
Thinking maybe it was a fluke, the owner of the machine fiddled with one of the other rubber feet, and was able to get it to pop off just by flicking it with his finger.
The security features are nice on the Librem, but as configured, this particular laptop cost more than the M1 Macbook Air. Same amount of storage, same amount of ram. Different CPU's, obviously.
When asked about battery life of the Librem 14, the owner said he hadn't really seen how long it'd typically last on the Librem. I can say though that the M1 Macbook Air, during my normal use (writing and compiling code, slack, email, zoom, etc), is having a bad day if it doesn't last at least 6 hours. I've used the M1 on a trip recently that took 38 hours, door to door. I didn't charge the M1 once, and used it quite a bit during various flights and while waiting for flights. I worked, watched a couple of movies, had a couple of Facetime calls. I still had 25% battery when I finally arrived.
While I admit that it's probably not fair to make a judgment after holding the Librem 14 for about five minutes, I can't really say that the quality of the Librem 14 rivals that of Apple.
Edit: forgot to add. I've rarely felt my M1 get even warm, let alone turn on a fan. My Macbook Air doesn't even have fans. I used to be able to count on the Intel based Macbooks to warm my fingers during winter, but not any more. The M1's run very cool. The Librem 14 was loud. And hot. Not warm, but hot. My fingers were sweating when trying out the keyboard.
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.
At work I had several MBP in the meantime. All of them with several problems. Docker extremely slow, Bluetooth not working, ports not working, noise like a nuclear reactor, extremely hot like you can actually make a pizza on top also the OS is very strict and hard to tell any other MBP user how to install things or how to configure it feels like a roulette and some of them if you open more than 6 apps it may reboot so good luck if MBP is your only option because you will be screw.
My whole family and most of my colleagues use macs/iOS all over, and interacting with these things is plain infuriating to me. Plus, somehow Apple pulls an amazing PR stunt where somehow everything is purported to be easy, but really they rely on untold hours of non-volunteer work from family & friends who feel bound to help out with Mac handling, because they feel "it's apple, it has to be easy... right?"
Anyhow, these are my two cents.
I had to make a custom power plan and send it to everyone to keep it at sane temperatures and prevent throttling (at which point it's decent). If you look at it & the T15p Gen 2 you'll see Lenovo realized their mistake and then overcompensated on cooling by doubling thickness (blech), even on non-Quadro models.
But the keyboard is definitely nice and it's one of the sturdier Windows laptops I've seen, even has a neat hardware switch for the webcam.
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.
Pardon me, but I think Microsoft should get their shit together if they want to stop losing users and devs to MacOS.
Having a new UI style on the Desktop and every single click on it leads to a completely unpredictable UI doesn't have anything to do with "center".
When people ask me what to get I always answer "just get a macbook" because even when I would love to give them a shiny Linux laptop, the amount of maintenance work on there is insanely high. Macbooks compared to my Linux systems are basically maintenance free once they are setup.
Of course that depends on whether you want to develop software on it...but let's not kid ourselves here: most users are not developers. And most users don't want to use i3wm or the Terminal.
Consistency is not that big of a deal. It is usually poor hardware support, installation/update issues, and lack of software where Linux falls flat on its face.
Complaining about this is like complaining that cats don’t behave like dogs.
macOS has its own idiosyncrasies. It may not be for everyone, but maybe this is the reason why things “just work” for the general public (and more).
I’m not aware of Windows working on Apple Silicon, but there is Asahi Linux which, I hear, has done a good job with their M1 support, although it likely comes with compromises (again, this is second hand information).
Then if I do want a laptop I could buy a chassis with a battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen, etc, etc to dock my device above in to.
Edit: Seriously considering taking the motherboard out of a steam deck and making a custom aluminum enclosure for it that only exposes the usb-c port.
> Then if I do want a laptop I could buy a chassis with a battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen, etc, etc to dock my device above in to.
https://nexdock.com/samsung-dex-laptop/
I've never used either (but I'd like to)
A USB-C laptop shell that was nothing but a nice screen, a good keyboard+trackpad, and a generous battery would indeed be an interesting product, and a fantastic companion to either a GPD Micro PC or a powerful smartphone. (edit: someone posted about the "NexDock" products which appear to be exactly this. Hooray!)
I'm also considering the same albeit a bit different - a standard NUC or even a Chromebox that I bring to work and use at home - all over USBc. And for in-person meetings where I need a device I have a thin and light Chromebook in my bag.
I suspect that cloud + browser covers many of the use cases for this setup, and perhaps most of the uses people would pay for, while being cheaper to deliver.
I'd steal it, but I doubt I'd have time to seriously work on it. So... either make it and sell it to me, or have someone else do it.
Specs aren’t great though.
It's all about personal requirements and I suppose, taste.
Don't get me wrong, the MacBook is a fantastic laptop, especially for the creative professional and laypeople.
For me, as a Linux user and enthusiast, MacBooks have slowly become less and less viable each year.
I bought my first MacBook in 2007, in college, and have used MacBooks as my primary choice of device until 2018. I still use a MacBook professionally, as it is what my company distributes for development machines.
They are beautifully crafted, well integrated, and optimized for a good amount of use cases.
What they are no longer good for is openness. They are slowly migrating away from being able to access low level things, and when you can it's highly limited. Each year, I feel like the OS and hardware creep toward iPad levels of openness.
A lot of open source software will stop being supported for M1 (MX moving forward) chipsets if they choose to ditch backwards compatibility with current architectures. Powerful tiling window managers are all but extinct on macOS, with the exception of yabai, which you need to disable a lot of security features just to use.
I bought my wife a MacBook for Christmas in 2020 and I was very jealous. The hardware and the OS are simply beautiful. However it simply doesn't work for me anymore.
I bought an XPS developer edition in 2018, slapped Arch Linux on it and never had any serious issues.
My next laptop will be another XPS, ThinkPad, Systemic, or a Star book, but I will continue to look at MacBooks with envy.
That being said, if MacBooks meet your requirements, it's hard not to argue that it's a good machine, if not the best, possibly lending to your feeling that it's the "only choice".
But in the last 3 years, we've seen endless failings, across all brands, Dells and their shit batteries and docks, Lenovo and their cheap build quality, faulty keyboards, screens with ghosting and dead pixels, cases cracking, Apples big issues we've seen is motherboards, and power circuitry.
It is just so frustrating to have to go through the read tape, and headaches only to be told that a new unit won't be available for a weeks.
I wish, there was a reliable vendor, but like so much else it just seems that quality is the lowest concern.
I miss the pre-2016 macs
First, Windows shit the bed with Windows 8 and the material design and tiles and two desktops. It still ... REALLY ... sucks. And they didn't care, why would they? The money STILL came in.
Secondly, Intel sat on its laurels, and even worse, accepted a supplicative role to Microsoft in the Wintel "alliace". Intel absolutely should have pushed Linux on the desktop with some of their spare billions, if only to keep Microsoft honest, and to push hardware vendors. Even if it was under the guise of keeping compatibility high, or due diligence.
Linux has, for at least two decades, been the opportunity to showcase hardware features in Intel without waiting for Microsoft to scratch its butt and crap out another service pack about two years after the hardware feature was available. But Intel never got it.
It's not surprising they don't understand software, because from what I can tell of their management, they don't even understand hardware.
I think you're likely going to encounter some faulty equipment from any vendor. I have enough family who swear by macbooks to know that the grass isn't much greener from their side and their hardware breaks too. I would be hesitant to switch ecosystems over 2 bad experiences.
Funny screens, overheating, broken trackpads, the infamous keyboard.
They are definitely more annoying that you can't swap the disks if they need sending off for repair though.
At 10th of this month I bought MacBook M1 that has 16 GB RAM and 512 GB disk. I did dual boot macOS Monterey and Asahi Linux. I could not find a way to turn off boot sound, selecting that menu option at macOS did not work. When I was away from keyboard, macOS did go to sleep mode, even when I tried make it not to at power settings. Asahi Linux did keep running, so my HexChat IRC etc did not stop when away from computer. Linux is still best work OS. I did like MacBook M1 is silent.
At 14th of this month I had to return MacBook M1 to warranty repair, because it does not boot anymore. It does charge to full, but does not boot.
Good luck finding working laptop.
Also, I have been wanting to try https://system76.com/ for quite a while but I can't get my work to approve one.
Used a Dell XPS for a while, it's a fairly good experience with Linux (Ubuntu and Manjaro), but the build quality is pretty bad. Once it fell backwards from a coffee table and shorted the main board from the hit. I had to resolder a few SMD parts, was not fun. I also hit the corner or the "metal" lid which cracked and bent from an impact what wouldn't even scratch a MacBook. Needless to say, Dell's support was not helpful.
Now I've got a new 2022 ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16, and so far the experience is much better. It's a sturdy machine, without any Dell's creaking and bending, the keyboard is much better as well. ASUS Linux community at https://asus-linux.org/ is helpful and most of the features worked either out of the box, or with reasonable amount of tinkering. The price for it here in Shanghai is also reasonable, 12700h w/ nvidia 3060, 2T SSD, and 40GB DDR5 RAM is ~US$2250.
What are the specific things that you cannot do with your MacBook that are a deal breaker for you?
I'm curious because I was previously a "hard-core" i3wm/Ubuntu user, but after switching to Mac/MacOS, the limitations (not running i3wm, pretty much) were not deal breakers for me, especially in light of the quality of the battery/microphone/speaker/bluetooth as a remote worker.
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 am not going to use a closed source black box OS from Apple, with the possibility of remote surveillance of my device whenever the company or governments want.
ALL modern windows laptops are broken inherently due to Microsoft's forcing of Modern standby on manufacturers, this means that pretty much every manufacturer has removed S3 sleep from their laptops, this means that laptops cannot and will not deep sleep.
You can't quickly shut the lid on any of the new Dell or Lenovo laptop, the fans stay on cooking itself if you put it into a bag (not covered under warranty btw) or just draining the battery.
Microsoft Modern / Connected standby is so broken that many people are returning their laptops (just hit Reddit to see how widespread this is)
I have just moved my company away from Dell as a primary provider because our $8K XPS 9710's are basically useless as laptops.
We even tried to set "Hibernate on Lid close" and "Auto Power on Lid Open" - Hibernate fails about 1/3rd of the time basically causing a hard reset and loss of anything that was open.
Our company is now a Mac only company and unfortunately for Dell its not likely going to change in the future.
Yeah, I've had a few of these and all of them have had issues. On one, the speaker blew. On another the battery died. On another the wi-fi died.
I was thinking recently about tech reviews, because they're usually all glowing for the Dell XPS series. But these reviewers probably get brand-new units, play with them for a week, and then send them back. I wish they'd focus on things like build quality (not just the materials), longevity, customer support, defect rate etc.
My wife has some cheap Acer laptop, it's all plastic, the thing gets thrown in her work bag like lunch, but it never dies. It's like a Toyota, and my laptop is like a Mercedes needing special care with cotton gloves.
My work laptop is a Macbook, and it feels way "sturdier" than my XPS. It certainly sees rougher treatment, and never misses a beat.
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.
I switched from Ubuntu to Arch some years ago because it was getting too bloated for my taste.
How is PopOS on this regard?
I ultimately decided to get a new Macbook Pro 14in (on sale for $1750) and have 0 regrets so far.
It has it all. Lightweight, great battery life, big screen, full backlit keyboard, numpad, latest processors, USB-C charging and display, the only PC trackpad that beats the Mac. And with PowerToys, you can lay out the keyboard however you need.
Unless you need a dedicated GPU, it's the complete PC laptop in my opinion.
The really annoying thing is that they tried so hard to replicate the MacBook packaging experience. This failed miserably when it wouldn’t come out of the box because the vacuum forming was wrong.
Shows how much QA goes into a product if they can’t actually not fuck up the box.
I'm typing this from an old Thinkpad T470, which is still pretty adequate for development work, with an M.2 SSD and 32 GB RAM, running Linux. I don't feel constrained.
2006 HP Pavillion - dragged around the world. Felt a bit cheap/plasticy but never had any major issues.
2013 Macbook Pro Retina was a champ, a bit dated now. Saved me from massive back-injury when I fell on some ice and acted as a shield. Put a huge dent in the corner. Speakers rumbled a bit after. Unusable now due to MacOS limit.
2015 Asus Zenbook Pro still quite usable. Windows 10 still happy. Keys felt a bit plastic/motile but still decent to type on.
2022 Dell Latitude 7520 just arrived, extremely light and peppy. Overall has a very utilitarian feel with a backspace key and function row. Nice big trackpad. Hope it lasts a while.
Now the only funny thing is if you add up the cost of all the non Apple laptops it equated to the same cost as all the others combined.
Pavillion ~$800, Zenbook Pro ~$1299, Dell ~$1699, Macbook Pro Retina: ~$3700
Definitely got my eye on a https://frame.work/ soon for personal.
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.
- Much better battery life (both when you buy it, and how slowly it degrades)
- Windows is just a mess. MacOS is way nicer, and has the advantage for developers of being Unix based. And compared to linux, things generally just work which is a major boost to overall productivity.
- Build quality is unmatched and always has been. Materials are nicer, things fit together properly, they’re light, etc
- Touchpad is amazing
- Performance is great. It feels like the parts work together rather than individually, and the machine is optimised for real tasks rather than isolated benchmarks.
There are many good reasons to use a freer linux laptop but productivity is not one of them, in my experience.
I would add that the quality of Asus laptops in general seems to be pretty great. I have another 9-year old Asus that was used extensively by my kid for her online classes the last couple of years. It still runs as well as it did when I bought it, and I've never had it repaired.
What does that mean exactly? I'm genuinely curious about what Apple forces a user to do. I would think cost is a concrete example ... But does Apple restrict you from using some software? or executing some work related function? some other functionality? or is that "Apple way" with regard to Apple's user experiences?
I wish there was a "Vent HN:" for posts like this. I'm not saying there isn't a legitimate argument in the original post; but there's a lot of hyperbole & vague statements too. And venting can be healthy.
Another example is Safari and its extensions ecosystem: an Apple license is required for publishing and as such even basic tools (stylus etc.) can require the user to purchase with no guarantee of developer support in the medium to long term.
OOTB the biggest example is the Mac-style hotkeys, its a persistent and extremely annoying problem for new Mac users and is, from the outset, unfixable via any sort of configuration, BIOS or not. Concretely: CTRL + T for new tab is now command + T, however switching tabs is still CTRL + Tab (Mac control is more like alt, in this case).
It's an eternal reminder that you are now stuck doing things the Apple way even if it's just relearning all of your hotkeys.
The work I was doing required an Internet connection, but when I tethered my mac, it kept trying to download gigabytes of updates.
It ended in a stalemate with seeming no way to pause, cancel or cap the download.
Both windows and Linux will set you set download cap, flag connections as metered, pause downloads or kill update processes.
I find that a lot of other Apple stuff grating too, not limited to:
- iOS development hoops with certs, provisioning profiles, beta reviews. It doesn't help that AppStoreConnect is bad.
- Apple Developer account 2FA - which is either "trusted device" or SMS. SMS is unreliable and insecure, trusted device ties me to a laptop I don't want to always have with me.
- I had to sign into the AppStore on my mac to get XCode, and now it insists on me using iCloud and iMessage.
On the other hand, I had two 2018 Intel MBPs fail in the span of 4 days last month. Just my personal work computer. I set up 2 new MBPs in 1 week. Don't know the cause but after a while they would stop starting up properly. I ended up with an M1.
I speculate it's all related to covid shortages somehow but who knows.
For my home laptop, I had been using, for around the last 4 years, an HP Chrome 13 g1 Chromebook (6Y75), which I really loved. Got one for my son for last Christmas for $120 landed. 16GB RAM, 32GB SSD, 2560x1440 display. The original one I got for $550, it was refurbed on woot. List price was more over a grand, but I wasn't prepared to spend that on the experiment.
For the longest time it didn't support the Linux containers, but that got remedied last year. I was mostly using it for the browser and using a Chrome extension to SSH into my work machines. With the Linux containers, it's a full Linux environment, though with some restrictions.
However, over it's life it lived very well up to the "just works" idea that I got it initially to try out. OS updates are super fast (they just show up and when you reboot next they are there, <30 seconds).
If you need a full laptop running Linux, you're going to just need to get a laptop. I'd probably consider another Dell, it has worked fine. My last Thinkpad had some weird battery issues, and because of it's slim config it had two small batteries and I wasn't quite ready to have work buy $300+ of batteries for a problem I couldn't reliably reproduce.
But, I'd definitely consider a Chromebook with Linux containers for lighter duty work.
Ditched that and switched to a low-range HP. All my work was on the cloud anyway. Worked really nice and exceeded all expectations. Linux worked just out-of-the-box.
Then I owned a high-range Asus, and it was the best laptop I have ever seen or used. Loved the product.
I use high-range Asus from that point in my life. Great experience. Linux works, has NVIDIA GPU w/ CUDA, everything just works great! Couldn't complain.
Made two friends switch to high-range Asus for life, as well.
What a ridiculous post.
The unfortunate effect, though, is that even many brands that were upmarket at one point have moved downmarket to build their business model around volume as economies of scale and commoditization have taken over the industry. I remember in the mid-90s when IBM stopped supplying mechanical keyboards with PC desktops, where other manufacturers had stopped long ago, thus removing another reason to pay the premium for an IBM. I can tell you as well that the current generation of Thinkpads are a far cry from the T60 and X30 of yesteryear.
As it happens, I too have come to the same conclusion. I've been using Macbooks and old refurbished Thinkpads for personal computing devices for several years now. Luckily if you build your own desktop, you still have many high quality options to choose from in assembling it, but for laptops Macbooks are the name of the game, everything else is just grossly inferior from a craftsmanship, aesthetic, and build quality perspective. Frankly, I think companies stopped moving downmarket and started staying in place while cutting costs as much as possible, and somewhere along they way they just stopped caring. Apple is the only laptop-producing company left that seems to care about it's products, and I hope they stick to it.
For me personally the keyboard is one of the most important things and nobody gets it right anymore however I recently got a cheap Acer (usually use Asus but their keyboards took a horrible turn) which doesn't have the most awful keyboard and common keys do not require a 3 finger contortionist exercise.
It works reasonably well on either windows or Linux, despite being an AMD disaster - I got the AMD variant of the swift 3 and aside from being typical modern ultrabook filmsy crap (like appple, too), it's actually ok (but depending on WiFi environment may want to replace the mediatek, although it's only caused me issues on garbage consumer AP's like isp provided).
As for the buying experience well that's locality dependent, I ordered online and picked it up from a robot machine a few hours later (alza cz)
Replace "computer" with "laptop" and the above statement might be true. I use desktop computers because I've worked remotely for almost my entire career, and I haven't had a problem with a desktop since the 90s.
Fast forward to 2015, the first gen Surface Book feels similar. The build quality surpassed the PowerBooks I was used to, Windows was pretty decent for getting things done. I've used it for 7 years now without any problems, although I know that when the battery comes to the end of its life, a replacement will be difficult to arrange. The whole thing feels proprietary which means I haven't bothered to install Linux on here, but I don't require it in daily life/work. The OS still feels fast, and it's easy to troubleshoot what could potentially slow it down with Windows.
Oh -- and my P50 could apparently withstand waterboarding... though I'll just take Louis Rossmann's word for it (and video) rather than trying to duplicate the experiment myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3xI8dUdm0
I recently bought a refurbished x270 from an IT supplier outlet:
- 1TB SSD
- 16GB RAM
- IPS display
- A keyboard you can _actually_ use
- for about 500$
I still have a desktop at home for heavy duty lifting, but for light tasks or doing some work sitting in the garden or at a cafe, it is the perfect form factor. It is running Debian 11 + KDE plasma 5 with no issues.
Don't underestimate the upgrade-ability of old thinkpads, they are sort of modern Theseus ships.
Instead of a laptop, have you considered purchasing a VR computer?[1]
[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-l...
I convinced my current CTO to let me use a Linux machine, and I bought a ThinkPad P14S with Ryzen 7 5800H. I will definitely prefer companies which allow me to use a ThinkPad. I'm on Ubuntu running qtile, with custom tooling for myself that I wrote in Rust. I blaze through my work because of how comfortable I've gotten with the experience. If someone offers me a buttload of money to work with a Mac, I will ask them to give me a cloud machine and use mosh to do all my work. But yes, for the same money, the company that gives me a ThinkPad and tells me to install my own OS gets my yes anyday. It's a far better developer experience.
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:
Essentially modern laptops, mobile workstation included, to my eyes are more and more craptops more and more similar to mobile "smart-crap". Some still need them, students for instance, hybrid workers, people who work out of an office etc. But others can accept the loss in portability to gain in quality, upgradability and comfort. A classic, self assembled, desktop with eventually caddy and 2.5" classic ssds to being able to move data, if not the entire OS, around as needed. Not as free as a laptop, but doable under certain circumstances.
For instance:
2021 Macbook Pro 16" gets a rating of 93 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2021-M1-P...)
Lenovo ThinkPad P1 G4 has a 90 rating (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P1-G4-laptop-r...)
Are the reviewers just not evaluating machines on any real world basis? Grading on some ridiculous curve?
I had an issue with my Samsung smart phone at one point. However, I couldn't part with the phone for x number of weeks, to send it in, for an assessment.
After that, I realized ease of support on iPhone was the biggest differentiator between Apple and other brands
Where Apple shines is in providing an Arm laptop - that's unrivalled as of now. They still have some issues with those laptop but maybe the next generation will be good.
On my side, I'll just switch to desktop pc I can assemble and get an Arm Macbook if I need to travel.
The T580 is much more plasticky, and it's also the last one since they ditched the 2.5 inch bay, and they still don't give you two drive slots (unless you get the 15p) except for sourcing one of about 2 models of SSD that fit the WLAN slot, which is getting harder and harder. And the suspend battery life is maybe 20% of what it used to be, but I could probably fix that if I wanted to.
Anyway, it doesn't quite feel as amazing to me as the T440s was, and I know some people hate the '40 machines.
For me, without a shadow of doubt, macbooks has been the least reliable peace of technology that I've used for the past years. I can't deny that their support is awesome and they will change anything without questions if you have the money to pay for the repair or you are still under warranty. However, I would really appreciate if I didn't have to use the service.
I haven't used the new M1's, I really hope that they are more reliable.
I'm surprised about the Carbon X1 but I've not heard positive things about the newer models so not completely surprised.
These days I'm using gaming-level laptops based on OEM from Clevo and Tongfang and I've been really happy with them. However, I do up-spec my machines.
I actually bought 5 Macbooks M1 for friends and family last year, because it's a trendy gift. I tried one for myself. I liked screen brightness. I didn't like that many programs weren't available without creating an Apple account, very expensive memory and SSD, and lack of games. So I went with a Gigabyte gaming laptop. 4k oled display, 3080 GPU, 32GB RAM and 1.5TB SSD for $4k - much better bang for money imho.
I say this while having pretty meh experiences with earlier generation (~2019 and earlier) HP elite models used for work.
Usually if you go for the workstations, they have a longer lifecycle and get some engineering TLC, the CAD/GIS/high end audience usually has its own budget and doesn’t skinflint as much as normal corporate IT.
Lenovo is overrated and Dell sells so many models that you need to do alot of homework to figure out what is good and what is junk.
+ Build quality
+ Screen quality
+ Software cohesiveness
+ Customer support
+ Longevity
+ Resale value
A MacBook is basically a no-brainer today. Even a MB Air is good now. Apple is killing the laptop game right now.
The Macbooks generally spent more time being shipped to and from Apple warranty centers for repairs then they did being used for work.
Maybe we were just unlucky, but it says something when more than 4 dozen Macbooks were utter pieces of crap.
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.
MacOS - mini or macbook - is just a life-changer. It's like having your own Tesla instead of walking or taking the bus. Don't be so put off by the marketing and fandom that you actually make yourself suffer. Just get one.
Years from now you'll still be accelerating, and your former troubles will be laughable.
BTW got a huawei matebook as of late. Pretty decent - tries to look like a macbook too
I'm happy with my purchase but I'm still not a fan of Apple and their philosophy in any way. If there was a real competitor to the M1, I would switch in a heartbeat.
One thing I’ve noticed is that nearly every damn laptop I’ve had the past few years has power management issues.
Usually it’s some issue waking from a sleep state, but I had a modern Thinkpad just give up and die recently after months of continuing getting stuck in sleep states.
It also has a 360 hinge so it can become a tablet. Love it. Great for work, any workloads that are heavier and I'm on a desktop. Only downer is no usb-c charging but eh that's barely the end of the world. Rig gets treated rough like the tool it is. Cops a thrashing. People overthink laptops imo.
I advise my clients against any major vendor lock in or bs high priced gear. Also having worked fixing Dells and lenovos under big corp contracts I advise against those too. Their support/diag is terrible. The money you save not buying their overpriced bs you can use for a few hot spares and still have coin leftover to spend on your local IT guy.
Deadset go do it on a desktop if you need more grunt than 1500 bucks can buy you. If your doing long haul sessions of work 8+ hours go use a desktop with a real keyboard and mouse too your ergo w/ a laptop is probably terrible. I'm not a fan of having laptops used as desktops, short runs sure but if your leaving it plugged in at a desk 8 hours a day get a desktop. Less ruined batteries, less headaches for me as your IT lol.
Tldr dell are AVG, Lenovo are AVG, apple are also AVG. Buy something cheap that gets the job done you'll replace it in 36 months anyways.
But Macbooks aren't any better.. You'll be paying for a new logic board exactly 1-2 years later out of warranty.
Lenovo has firmware issues which makes an extreme amount of laptops go black screen on resume suspend.
Dell XPS has had coilwhine for ages.
All laptops suck nowadays.
Seriously my win 10 laptop is always installing updates.. mostly kid plays Roblox on it.
I used centos for years then Ubuntu and still have Ubuntu on a machine or 3.
M1 is amazing tho.
"This my laptop, there are many like it, but this one is mine."
I look at apple's website, put the sliders to the right, and do it again in 5-6y.
I can't be bothered to figure out who has xyz feature or whatever. I don't care.
Some people will disagree, but IMHO: Yes.
What's your question?
