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Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

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Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#21

Post by BitwiseFool »

My last Lenovo Thinkpad was an utter disaster. Despite being a mid to mid-top of the line notebook for performance it was stuck with a critical flaw that frequently throttled the CPU down to .39 GHz. Apparently it was a well known bug with the thermal control software and the ultimate solution was just to replace it with another model from corporate IT.

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.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#22

Post by luc_ »

ComradePhil wrote: post #20
cutler wrote: post #19

Stay with the "Mac way". It's far better than Windows. Take disk imaging, for example. As far as I'm aware you need special software to image a Windows system but with Mac OS X it's a feature. OS X is also BSD Unix so you have far superior cli.

Windows has a MUCH superior cli these days because of WSL.

That's just like your opinion, man.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#23

Post by Jackpillar »

dijonman2 wrote: post #11
fetus8 wrote: post #5

I recently was in the market for a laptop for personal use, and wanted to spend around $1200-1400 USD for a Windows based machine. All I wanted was a decently powerful CPU, higher resolution screen, and a thin and light body. I simply couldn't get past the fact that most laptops in that price range are gaming focused, and have non-user replaceable components. They also tend to have plastic bodies and most I saw were…

Entry level Durabooks go for $1500. It’s a little heavy, but it’s serviceable and not made of cheap plastic.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#24

Post by uniqueuid »

I may be an outlier, but for me, the problem with non-mac machines is that they seem just careless.

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?

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#26

Post by death_syn »

I also used to always run ThinkPads (and Precision workstations with pointing sticks). I these days run a System76 Lemur Pro with a USB thinkpad keyboard I stick on top. The built-in keyboard is good, but trackpads and I have never gotten along. They've come a long way. Another option that friend got was the Frame Work. I helped him assemble it, and it also is a great GNU/Linux machine. Everything just works.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#28

Post by death_syn »

mindcrime wrote: post #14

My recently (ish) purchased System76 box "just worked" right out of the gate. More so than even I expected, as I had thought I would probably replace their PopOS distro with something else. But I gave it a whirl, found that it works just fine, and stuck with it.

I love that it is just Ubuntu underneath, so I just install `lubuntu-desktop` and I've got my preferred desktop environment, while not losing the benefits of their kernel tuning and such.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#29

Post by cultofmetatron »

ComradePhil wrote: post #20
cutler wrote: post #19

Stay with the "Mac way". It's far better than Windows. Take disk imaging, for example. As far as I'm aware you need special software to image a Windows system but with Mac OS X it's a feature. OS X is also BSD Unix so you have far superior cli.

Windows has a MUCH superior cli these days because of WSL.

its certainly superior to previous windows but its ultimately a hosted vm in windows.

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.

Re: Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

#30

Post by sedatk »

uniqueuid wrote: post #24

I may be an outlier, but for me, the problem with non-mac machines is that they seem just careless. 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…

> 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?

I think Microsoft's Surface lineup has been making good strides on that front, but they still have a long way to go.

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