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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

#421

Post by satsuma »

smackeyacky wrote: post #207
goosedragons wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy metal PCs. There's loads of them. Microsoft themselves even make them. Pretty sure every big OEM has at least one laptop with a solid metal chassis at this point. 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 acci…

Pay more for the corporate class laptops from HP or Dell i.e Elitebook Supported longer, better materials, better keyboards. I'd buy a second hand elitebook over a new acer or whatever any day.

typing this on a dell precision-class laptop and yeah, it's a dream. even between this and my latitude (which is still business class but one tier down) it's noticeable.

there are nice quality laptops to be had, they're just expensive enough that apple becomes competitive price-wise.

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

#422

Post by heavyset_go »

aiisjustanif wrote: post #411
lewispollard wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, at the same time it's worth pointing out that anyone who wants to buy a laptop to run Linux on it full time should be using a Linux distro which provides up to date packages.

Can you provide a short list of those distros you recommend with up to date packages?

OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Arch and Arch-based distros like EndeavorOS, maybe Debian Sid (it's been a while since I've used it, don't know how up-to-date the packages actually are), maybe Fedora Rawhide. There's also Manjaro, but I can't really recommend it when there are better options. Then there are some other rolling release distributions that I can't speak for, some of them new and some of them old like Gentoo.

I've used Ubuntu and Debian stable and testing for decades, but have migrated over to rolling releases for desktop use because of better hardware support.

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

#423

Post by gorjusborg »

MBCook wrote: post #283
theshrike79 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Touch Bar was a good idea. Replacing the F-keys with it was a _terrible_ idea. If they would've just added the bar above the normal F-keys, everyone would've either embraced or ignored it. But taking away function keys was just too much for pretty much everyone - especially ESC (which they rectified in a later iteration).

I actually think normal users would be fine or even happy with it instead of the F keys. But it was expensive. So it was only all the more expensive models, the ones that professionals and programmers used. And a lot of them hated it. I don’t mind it that much personally. My work laptop has one and it can be nice on occasion. But when I switch to a laptop that doesn’t have one I don’t miss it at all. (I have the hard…

I switched away from apple laptops because of the butterfly keyboard and removal of the F-keys in favor of the touch bar.

For a while there it was like someone inside Apple wanted to chase developers away from their laptops.

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

#424

Post by sofixa »

ideamotor wrote: post #391
sofixa wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

You can use third party tools and i believe command line to do this.

It's maddening how many third party apps with huge permissions one needs to get a macOS device to be customisable, like a keylogger for even basic keyboard shortcut customisations.

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

#425

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

You experienced a 6 sigma event of two laptops from top tier manufacturers in a row turning up defective. I believe, most people never bought a defective laptop in their life time. I haven't.

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.

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

#426

Post by asiachick »

brundolf wrote: post #184
muzani wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has the same problem. In college, we'd bring our own mice to the computer labs because it was better than the buttonless Apple mice they had there. Even today, the input devices have been IMO Apple's weak spot and the main reason I stayed away from MacBooks. 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 ofte…

A key differentiator though is that when Apple gets something wrong it's usually a poor design decision, not careless craftsmanship. The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find

> The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find

I love this. Yes, those were horrible. The current Apple TV Remotes with the touch surface area is practically unusable by any but a twitch video gamer. Every time I watch my mom try to select anything I'd see her try to push the button and the touch surface would end up moving the selection. Eventually i bought her a 3rd party remote so she could stop being constantly frustrated.

It's really hard to believe apple actually tested this with real people.

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

#428

Post by mrmuagi »

smileybarry wrote: post #377
black_puppydog wrote: post #81

I just got my first thinkpad in 9 years, after having spent two years on a dell xps from hell. I have to say, this is the first time in a long while I'm back in love with hardware. Got a second-hand L14 AMD G1, upped the ram and SSD (yes you can do that!) and apparently there's even an option to add another m2 ssd since the ryzen in this thing has some spare PCIe lanes that are hooked up to the WWAN slot I'm not usin…

ThinkPads are definitely nice but +1 to getting a Ryzen one. Work supplied a T15p Gen 1 with Comet Lake (GTX 1050 so GPU isn't a heatmaker) and it's basically "factory-throttling". Every single one we have just turbos to 100C (not even max clock rate) and self-throttles. There's also some critical Thunderbolt PnP bugs but I 100% blame Intel for that, it's their chipset after all. I had to make a custom power plan and…

I experienced factory throttling on my Thinkpad as well, its a T470p (intel) and I was able to reduce temperature by ~7-10 degrees by undervolting the cpu a teensy bit (and cpu cache as well I think). People recommended re-applying thermal paste but I got enough gains out of undervolting.

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

#429

Post by fartcannon »

Johanx64 wrote: post #420
fartcannon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trashy is paying extra for needless aesthetics. Function over fashion forever, in my earnest opinion.

Trashy aesthetics is what you get by default when you buy a PC. Cheapest PC mech keyboard will get you blinking RGB. Cheap PC case with front mesh airflow. Most likely will come with RGB fans. If it's real cheap you won't be able to even turn it off. Same with cheapish mouse with decent sensor. Needless aesthetics is almost unavoidable on the budget end. Unless you specifically go out of your way to pay extra to get…

There definitely is a lot of pointless garbage in PC culture eh. Like touch bars, notches and aluminum unibodies, glass backs in devices that will definitely crack, single button mice, limited IO for devices... The list goes on and on.

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

#430

Post by musicale »

gumby wrote: post #206
jonny_eh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, it impressed Jobs so much he literally just offered them an OSX license (which they didn't bite on). I just googled this and it's based on an unsubstantiated boast by Sony's president in 2014, I'd be skeptical: https://www.appleworld.today/2021/01/06/from-the-vault-did-s... Although this article seems to think it holds water: https://9to5mac.com/2014/02/05/sony-turned-down-offer-from-s...

I have no idea if the story is true but FWIW in the 80s and 90s Steve Jobs used to speak admiringly about Sony quite a bit. Not sure if that survived his return to Apple.

In his "One more thing..." introduction of the Titanium PowerBook G4 in 2001 he explicitly compared it to the Sony Vaio:

https://youtu.be/AnrM4n6S3CU?t=5973

[Definitely worth a watch. Also Jobs makes a few mistakes such as calling the PowerBook a Power Mac and referring to iTunes as iMusic.]

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