Comment by dividedbyzero

Apple's only just started getting good hardware. For so long their hardware was so below standard and in a lot of areas it still is. Apple users will sit there with a straight face telling me about how much they care about a good cpu when I know they paid 3k for a low tier intel cpu and 8gb of ram not to long ago.

Also when they talk about how their laptop can handle all this stuff without fans spinning up its only because the laptops come with next to no cooling and spend most of the time thermal throttling.

Eh. debatable. my work MBP frequently dies and the screen never turns on when i plug it in. I have to wait 15-20 minutes for it to turn on. My Linux laptop on the other hand, the screen turns immediately power or no power/just plugged in

I'm pretty sure Apple is unavoidable if you work as a mobile app developer. I mean, no iOS SDK for Windows/Linux.

If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac isn't necessary.

Some of the stuff coming out of CES is nice. Whether the apparent quality survives in production is another question.

Is your macbook air running 8 different corporate security products eating CPU?

I had a macbook for work previously and it was just as shit as windows due to all the junk running in the background.

ThinkPads run the gamut. Their flagship line is nice. In most regards, I enjoy my first gen X1 Nano — good keyboard, screen (even if it annoyingly requires fractional UI scaling), body feels solid despite being lightweight, soft touch plastic makes it feel nice to hold. Trackpad is just ok but the trackpoint makes for that.

It likes to spin up its fan doing the most insignificant things though (even plugging in a pedestrian 1x scaling external monitor can while idle can do it) and its battery life is somewhat abysmal. Standby time is also quite poor.

Some of these things are in theory improved by a newer CPU (Lunar Lake in particular looks decent) but sadly they discontinued the Nano. The Carbon isn’t that much bigger, but the size difference is noticeable in some circumstances.

Yeah, if you don't like the case quality of a T model Thinkpad, you are the problem ;) - fiber reinforced plastic is arguably a more suitable laptop case material than aluminum.

Lenovo's cheap laptops are as bad as anyone's.

Batter life claims are very bold. Also the starfighter launches with a 3 year old CPU .

Doesn't seem to me like a good deal especially price wise.

Yes hardware is great. Price per performance watt is also great. But UI sucks. Look at all then posts even macOS fans about new macOS release like the glass ones. I prefer ssh and running jobs in macOS.

You've got history backwards. IBM Thinkpads did it that way 30+ years ago, when there was no consensus in the industry. Do you switch it now, and anger every lifetime Thinkpad loyalist, or keep it and annoy just the folks who switch back and forth between different vendors' laptops?

In a brief survey of laptop photos from the early 90s, IBM, Toshiba, Zenith, NEC, Packard Bell, Compaq, and Fujitsu all put Fn on the outside.

Epson, Apple, HP, Panasonic, and Sony put it as the second key.

A handful put it as the third key. Heck, one Toshiba machine had Ctrl left of A, Alt on the extreme lower-left starting out the bottom row, followed by Caps Lock and Fn and backslash and finally spacebar.

Only in the last 15-ish years have most of the Fn-Ctrl keyboards died out and the majority of the industry is now using Ctrl-Fn. Thinkpads are the last major holdout, but they didn't decide to buck the trend, the trend bucked them.

You can swap those in BIOS for most models.

Apple also puts fn/globe in the bottom left corner and control to its right.

All MacBooks have Fn at the left bottom corner too?

Idk, I find it easier to press control on a Thinkpad because it's closer. It being in a corner would be farer away. Anyway, control should be (and traditionally was) where CapsLock is. Just remap it - everything is suddenly easy and ergonomic.

You can get more than double that battery time with an ARM

Nice for experimentation, but if you want a daily driver that lasts for years: Dell Latitude (now Dell Pro), HP EliteBook or Lenovo ThinkPad. Literally laptops built to last. Will last a decade with ease. Higher segments ofcourse better than lower segments, but in general very very good if you stay away from lowest tier

I think I get what you’re hinting at. But is there a more expensive option that’s free (as in freedom) and provides an experience that the GP referred to?

It’s a computer. Stop acting like a martyr. Your “suffering” is meaningless.

Maybe! But the fact that Apple also makes the operating system means the hardware/software integration can’t be beat. I’ve never used a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad worked a tenth as good as any MacBook.

X13 is not that much bigger I believe.

That sounds like just what I want, that ought to have great battery life as well. Very promising, if someone were to build a nice light laptop around it...

I think we're always going to have that: there will always be That One Software that doesn't work on Linux, and you need to keep another OS around just to run it. I was able to get rid of Windows everywhere in my home except for one gaming PC, where I keep it around just for Fortnite, because of Epic's insistence on using their nasty kernel-level anti-cheat. So I keep that one machine around isolated from the rest of my network, for the sole purpose of playing one game.

I'm now in the process of un-Appleing my home too, and it's going pretty well, but I know I'll need to keep a single Mac somewhere in the corner of my garage in case I need to use Xcode to build an iOS app or something.

> I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly

In Linux? Seriously? How much tweaking did that require?

Do you dare to throw the laptop into a backpack in sleep mode instead of shutting it down first?

USB-C display support is coming soon too.