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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

#361

Post by sofixa »

dbevv wrote: post #186
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…

I dislike using touchpads very much. I go to great lengths to control everything with the keyboard, and fall back to a traditional mouse when I have to (I tried trackballs but I couldn't adapt). Whenever I'm forced to use a touchpad because I'm on the go or I don't have room to bring a mouse with me, I groan. That said, the implementation of the touchpad in a Macbook vs a regular touchpad in even a high end laptop is…

But there's one giant flaw on MacBook touchpads. After hearing everyone drool over them and finally getting to try one ( newly issued corporate laptop), I'm shocked that you can't independently control the scroll direction of the touchpad and mouse scroll button. There's an option in both submenus ( touchpad and mouse), but they change the same setting, resulting in a really unintuitive (for me) setup. Where's Apple's attention to detail here? Why do you have two different toggles in two different menus change each other? Why are you forced the same way on two completely different devices with different UX?

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

#362

Post by kaba0 »

neoberg wrote: post #358
kaba0 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though part of it is thanks to apple themselves, for having a patent on that. Fortunately some company did find another way to reproduce this click feel through haptics and it will hopefully appear soon in other manufacturers’ laptops.

But the most important thing with Apple trackpad is not the haptics imo. If Apple went back to regular buttons tomorrow I wouldn't care at all. The tracking itself is light years ahead of any competition. This is still one of the big things keeping me from using Linux (even on Macbooks). Tracking and scrolling is just unbearable. (Yes I tried that driver, the other library, the recommended macos like settings, custom…

Just for the record, may I ask you when did you try last? Libinput which wayland uses heavily improves on the previous drivers, but I agree it still won’t be as good as osx’s.

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

#363

Post by Mindwipe »

MBCook wrote: post #286
bostonsre wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? 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…

I get that you prefer Linux or Windows. That’s completely fair. But that shouldn’t be a trade-off. You should be able to have your OS and a nicely constructed laptop. I got the impression the original post was more about quality than aesthetics (which are always up to personal taste).

We're just coming out of a five year period of many, if not most Macbook keyboards failing after two years.

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

#364

Post by Avlin67 »

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…

I would look to all mods and watercooling cooling rigs. When i enter an Apple I feel a lack of taste me too. Oh you were about laptop, well this is just opinionated remarks from fashionable wannabe geeks. Get a lenovo x1 carbon, you can even walk on it without worry as I did, wanna hard work ? get an eurocom with 128Gb Ram.

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

#365

Post by culopatin »

throwing4321 wrote: post #331
culopatin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I use and deploy them at work. The only problem I have with them is the screen. That privacy filter could be a godsend for someone on an airplane, but for every day use at home or office, it really kills the image quality

Privacy filter means "HP Sure View Reflect" I guess?. There are 3 options for current HP Elitebook screens [1]. Only 1 of them has the privacy filter. I think the best option is to buy the middle one in that pic (low power, 400 nits). [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/... Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elit...

Unfortunately at work they all ship with the sure view filter, I have no say on that.

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

#366

Post by sofixa »

bzzzt wrote: post #341
pllbnk wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally I stay away from Apple products or topics. The only reason I decided to comment was that I am forced to use Mac in my current work and after several stints I understood I was not going to get used to it. If people use it and like it, I don't mind. For me, it's just not intuitive; for instance, I wouldn't have thought of looking for this setting, let alone under accessibility options.

If you're going to have to use an unfamiliar device it helps to just check out what it can do (e.g. explore the settings) before concluding it sucks ;) I don't really have the patience for silly stuff that annoys me and should/could be trivial to adjust. Just Google something (in this case 'macos disable animations') and you can remove a lot of friction from your daily life.

The problem is that there can be many such "small" things, sometimes with complex solutions ( remapping cmd+tab) or no solution at all ( having different scroll direction between trackpad and mouse. After some time you just get tired and accept the OS isn't for you and you stop fighting it.

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

#367

Post by mrslave »

Avlin67 wrote: post #364
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…

I would look to all mods and watercooling cooling rigs. When i enter an Apple I feel a lack of taste me too. Oh you were about laptop, well this is just opinionated remarks from fashionable wannabe geeks. Get a lenovo x1 carbon, you can even walk on it without worry as I did, wanna hard work ? get an eurocom with 128Gb Ram.

I'm off Lenovo X-s due to poor keyboards and poor warranty support. I was told (around the Gen5 era) that they often have slightly less powerful CPUs than similar competition though I have no idea if this is still true. They were also slower to offer better displays.

Onto Linux-on-Dell XPS 13 for a few years, though admittedly I didn't pay for it so I didn't really have a choice. Still, I'm happy and would easily recommend the product. A lot of firmware upgrades happen over `fwupdmgr` too.

The recently posted StarBook 14-inch looks interesting, but the screen isn't hi-res.

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

#368

Post by cutler »

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.

Powershell is a verbose OOP monstrosity typical of the Microsoft Way.

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

#370

Post by cutler »

bostonsre wrote: post #46
cultofmetatron wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It feels a lot more like a dual os system than just running a vm inside of windows. The integration between the two is pretty seamless and powerful. e.g. this is in my wsl .bashrc file, it writes to my windows clipboard by running the powershell.exe windows executeable: function cb () { powershell.exe -command "\$input | set-clipboard" } Mac is unix sure, but they have diverged from the popular main stream linux dist…

BSD Unix predates Linux.
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