Comment by pjerem

Comment by pjerem 8 hours ago

63 replies

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I’d say it’s barely 3 things :

- The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it)

- The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs.

- The audio : Apple truly did some sorcery to get such an awesome sound from machines that are flat as sheet. It’s so good that you can watch a movie on your MacBook without earbuds and don’t be bothered.

Everything else like build quality is overall better than most other alternatives but a few other manufacturers are also good at it.

I say this as someone who uses a MacBook for work despite loving Linux and who hates what macOS have become. The hardware is really that good.

baq an hour ago

Also add a very important feature of ‘lid is closed - the computer is asleep and it wakes up when lid opens’. Both windows and Linux are simply broken in that regard.

What I need is Apple MacBook hardware with a 100% supported Linux OS. This combination simply doesn’t exist and there’s no amount of money to make it happen (yes I know about asahi.)

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  • rjzzleep an hour ago

    It's not really Linux' fault. Most It's Microsoft that forced this, and most vendors don't know how to deal with this and work proper firmware. I think Framework and Valve fixed theirs. I have a GPD and just found out that the reason I kept getting it wake from sleep was some MS related option triggering an ACPI IRQ 9 sleep wake.

    On another note, I actually think that the most important things that work better on the Apple devices is the mic and camera, the rest is somewhat unimportant on the go if you work at a desk.

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wolvesechoes 4 hours ago

Guy is talking about laptop lasting for 5 years as not something that is special, and you respond with awesome sound quality.

Apple threads are always so funny.

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  • newsclues 2 hours ago

    Have you used the cheap Dells and HP laptops that most people buy (not high end IBM machines)?

    They tend to be plastic junk.

    Yes thinkpads are good, but most laptops are trash disposable hardware

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    • rwyinuse 2 hours ago

      They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

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      • kiliancs an hour ago

        In my experience and my family's you are lucky if they last 3 years. If they last 5 years there's usually a subpar experience, e.g. they overheat significantly at 2 years. OTOH, we have a few macbooks > 10 years still working.

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        • LtWorf 3 minutes ago

          And macbooks aren't overheating?

          I've owned old macbooks… I got scalded by the metal screws on the bottom in the summer because apple thought looking sleek was more important than proper cooling.

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      • MangoToupe an hour ago

        > even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years

        Every plastic laptop I've bought has busted within two years, whether it's mechanical stress or poor heat design. They feel less like reliable tools and more like toys. Looking specifically at you, thinkpads.

        Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro I bought for myself for college 17 years ago still boots. The battery is dead, but that's an incredibly long life for any hardware of that complexity.

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        • LtWorf 2 minutes ago

          Booting once a year isn't "life" for a computer.

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    • bluecalm 2 hours ago

      I am on my 3rd Thinkpad already and while I still like them they are not close to Apple quality. On my current one keyboard touches the screen when it's closed so the screen becomes dirty quickly. After Windows 11 upgrade it auto-dims on battery after like 30 seconds and I can't figure a way to turn it off. Hibernation never worked properly (apparently AMD/Windows issue). You don't need to deal with any of that on a Macbook. I would switch instantly if I didn't need to run Windows.

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      • LtWorf a few seconds ago

        > Hibernation never worked properly

        You can blame microsoft for that unfortunately. They made the vendors to change how it all works to workaround windows issues and it didn't even work.

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  • pxc 3 hours ago

    The sound on MacBooks is impressively loud and clear, but it's also not actually good sound. Because it couldn't be, in that form factor. So for things where you actually care about good sound (i.e., music, movies, TV), you probably still want headphones or speakers anyway.

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    • breakfastduck 2 hours ago

      it does actually sound good

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      • pxc 42 minutes ago

        If you bought even a small bluetooth speaker that sounded the same as an MBP, you'd think "this thing kinda sucks... no bass, but at least it's small; what do you expect". Either that or you aren't someone who cares about sound (which is fine)

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  • strix_varius 2 hours ago

    Uh he provided counter points to your distortion field comment, he doesn't have to just +1 the exact point of view of the parent comment.

    But here I'll bite: I've had MBPs for work for like 15 years now and I bought a personal high spec Thinkpad. I now regret that purchase because my work machine is better than my personal machine in literally every way. My over $2k Thinkpad just sits there gathering dust because I don't want to use it. And unlike MacBooks, the secondary market for it is nothing so I can't just sell it and recover most of the loss.

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  • udev4096 3 hours ago

    Yeah, it's always funny how they cope. Also, it's not "your iCrap". Apple has full remote access to iCrap devices and requires internet connection for activation which is hilarious. Plus, you give away the right to have any privacy. You are totally owned by them

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me551ah 6 hours ago

Also durability. I’m shocked that something that looks so good can withstand by downright abuse. I hold my MacBook Pro with one hand and fling it around and I’ve lost track of the number of times it has fallen down. But except for some chips at random places, it works perfectly fine

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  • goyagoji 5 hours ago

    I'm not really sure that's remarkable, maybe compared to the netbook level machines. Now that HDs are gone the only cause of failure I see from my coworkers is extended vacations and remote work in tropical climates.

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    • goyagoji an hour ago

      Ah, I guess the point of the thread was to share only data points consistent with the distortion.

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Sayrus 4 hours ago

As a mostly Dell user I'd add the camera and microphone: the difference in quality on a standalone laptop is just mind blowing. Audio output can be tuned with the right equalizer profile but microphone filtering and camera quality just doesn't come anywhere close to a Macbook.

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kaladin-jasnah 37 minutes ago

Interestingly, I really don't like MacBook trackpads. The actuation force is too high for my taste. Maybe this has changed.

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goosedragons 3 hours ago

The MBA screen is /alright/. It's better than a lot of Windows machines but you can get better for the price for sure. I'd argue the screens in the Surface line are comparable and arguably better, 3:2, brighter, 120Hz at basically the same price. And there's loads of 4K OLED Windows laptops if you're willing to pay for them.

Apple screens also tend to have pretty bad response times too. They are sharp and color accurate but fall down in places.

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  • kelipso 3 hours ago

    Even the Air has a great builtin webcam, so I don’t have to carry around a webcam like I used to do with my old laptop (which is more than 8 years old and I still use because it has replaceable batteries and ssd lol).

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    • goosedragons 2 hours ago

      Somewhat unfair since it's technically a tablet, but the Surface Pro webcam is very very good.

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gigatexal 7 hours ago

This. My 2013 MacBook Pro lasted just shy of 10 years no issues.

My m3 max mbpro I only wish was the larger screen one and not the 13 inch one … oh well. But I suspect it will last me — and be passed down as well — 8-10 years as well.

The trackpads are second to none. So are the speakers. The screen are pretty good. I wish mine got even brighter but the m4s do. The keyboard is finally awesome.

The OS just works. In fact I moved from Linux to MacOS. I thought I’d miss i3 and sway but with Magnet and a launcher I don’t. I live in a terminal and can split that as much as I like. And gui apps Magnet does a decent job.

There are projects to go even further and you don’t have to leave MacOS for all the tiling love.

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

But I get basically everything I need with Magnet.

So TLDR I used to be a huge Linux head (I still am…) but I’m practical now and tired and macOS is a small price to pay for such amazing hardware.

More on why I left Linux as my main platform: https://gigatexal.blog/pages/no-perfect-workstation/no-perfe...

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  • Doohickey-d 5 hours ago

    It's possible to increase the brightness in software on M1, by faking HDR (desktop capture -> scale brightness to HDR -> display).

    One example: https://www.brightintosh.de/ but there's many others.

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    • gigatexal 4 hours ago

      you just made my day I am so happy with this I could kiss you!* just saved me a bunch of coin cuz I was considering trading up for a m4 or otherwise to get better brightness

      amazing!

      * more a turn of phrase, a hug, a handshake, a thank you thank you thank you all suffice ;-)

      I insta bought the suggested app

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  • asimovfan 3 hours ago

    I read why you left linux as your main platform.. You say you are "practical now and tired" implying GNU(+linux) is unpractical and tiring, which is perfectly wrong in my opinion. Not only my opinion but also in your own opinion, as you also write how package managers are better in linux, macOS is not as hackable, how much it is locked down etc. So it comes down to this paragraph:

    "I learned to like nice things. I became a bit bougie, hah. I like the build quality of the Apple laptops. The amazing trackpads. The vibrant screens. And how, for the most part, the hardware and software just work together so well. Seamlessly connecting Apple Keyboards to my Apple Laptop, or my Apple Headphones to my Apple Laptop, etc., etc."

    so boils down to this intangible "bougieness" they tricked you with. I dont know about Apple build quality. I have the experience that they absolutely slow down, break down faster, more expensive to get fixed, and the trackpad is annoying as hell. I haven't had any problems with headphones or connecting keyboards (wireless or wired) in non macOS laptops either. It is 2025 and all my computers work fine with such peripherals.

    The screens look vibrant i'll give you that, but you pay for it anyway, like you could've paid with another laptop.

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    • sersi 2 hours ago

      Well I have a desktop running arch linux as my main computer at home. For my laptop though I use a mbp purely for the build quality because I have never found a laptop that is as good at the current generations of mbps for thermals, trackpad quality, sound quality, screen, battery life.

      Now personally I'd be happier running linux and I'm looking forward to arch linux on asahi working on my laptop. But I will use macos (which I used to like but has become steadily worse over the years) just because of the hardware

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ozgrakkurt 7 hours ago

Screens are not really that good. My 600$ lenovo has a way better screen than my m1 pro 16”

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  • apfsx 7 hours ago

    What Lenovo model + screen option do you have that is better than the M1 Pro 16 inch screen? I've yet to see anything better.

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    • ozgrakkurt 6 hours ago

      It has an OLED screen so image quality isn’t even comparable. It is worse in terms of glare but not unusable and I don’t use it outside much

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      • alecthomas 5 hours ago

        Which $600 model has an OLED screen?

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    • reactordev 6 hours ago

      He doesn’t have nano texture, I can guarantee that. His screen probably has fingerprints and glare and all sorts of issues like visible pixels.

      I’ve owned a hell of a lot of laptops and MacBooks are the best, not because of Mac, but because of the build quality. The touchpad is perfect, the aluminum body is rugged, the screen is amazing, and the audio truly is sorcery thanks to Apple acquiring Beat’s audionet.

      The worst laptop for build quality were those HP Chromebooks.

      ThinkPad’s are mid tier but still made of plastic.

      Yoga foldable or a MS Surface is better.

      MSI or Razor if you don’t feel like ever touching your laptop (:fire:)

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      • zozbot234 4 hours ago

        "Visible pixels" are a total non-issue already on a 1080p screen, and a near-non issue on 768p. There's just no ambiguity about this, it's a matter of simple physics. Maybe you'll need to go up to a 1200p screen or thereabouts to cope with crappy rendering on the software side (allowing for a 0.7x factor or so in image spatial bandwidth/resolution due to lack of proper anti-aliasing), but anything above that is just plain overkill. Unless you like to look at tiny portions of your screen with a frickin' magnifying glass, of course.

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      • ezst 4 hours ago

        > He doesn’t have nano texture© […] His screen probably has fingerprints and glare and all sorts of issues like visible pixels.

        Thanks Tim, but I prefer my day without bullshit propaganda.

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      • pxc 3 hours ago

        Laptops only get fingerprints on the screen, unless they're touchscreens, when they try to be stupidly thin like MacBooks do, so that the screen routinely touches the keys. It's stupid design.

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sudosysgen 2 hours ago

The screen point is just not true anymore. There are quite a few laptops at the ~1000$ price point with significantly better screens, such as the Zenbooks with OLED screens.

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realusername 3 hours ago

I agree for the screen and the audio but the trackpad on the mac is significantly different from any other laptop so you either love it or hate it. Personally I hate it and would rate it similarly as a cheap laptop. My brother loves it though.

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  • imcritic 2 hours ago

    What's there to hate in it?

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    • realusername 37 minutes ago

      It's hard to describe, when you never used a mac in your life, it feels weird with plenty of ghost inputs.

      To each their own but I really don't want my laptop to imitate that.

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lostlogin 7 hours ago

Some of the Apple integrations are so great. Copy and paste between devices, airdrop, call handling and messaging, the notes app, preview app. PDF handling (my god is the windows default hot garbage in comparison).

Yes, other apps and companies do this, but out the box there are some pretty great options from Apple.

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  • blakblakarak 4 hours ago

    Using my IPad as a second monitor still feels like sorcery. I can have a dual monitor setup wherever I work without cables or fuss.

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  • gigatexal 7 hours ago

    All very true! Seamless integration with my AirPods is really nice.

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romanovcode 4 hours ago

> - The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it)

It is my understanding that Apple did lock their trackpad tech behind a patent and that is why all the others suck. So it's really not their fault and it is very unfortunate if that's the case.

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ant6n 7 hours ago

> The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs.

The screen is a mirrowy mess. PC Laptop with matte screens cost 500, MacBook 1500.

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