From OS X to Ubuntu

You're probably spot on. I'd like to add that this is the problem with many "Product Managers" - they aren't MANAGING the product. Their job is to take this noise (because that's what this is) and distill it down to something structured and logical. No wonder Apple makes so much money. You can hate them, but they get this (mostly)* right.

* There are rumblings by many about the mac laptop variations not being cleanly delineated.

Linux? Desktop? Different answer from different people.

For me I've always been optimistic. Linux as desktop offers choices and freedom. I've been running Linux as my main desktop since Fedora Core 1 (you can count). Overall the kernel and desktop environments (window managers) are getting better (especially KDE). Of course, there has been learning curves and all sort of frustration, many weird problems to attack but never a real showstopper AS LONG AS you had the time and passion to research (learn) and fix them (at least it is how I have built up my Linux skills tree).

It's about freedom and choice, also the habit that has formed over the years.

I do use a MacBook Pro 15" for work (on the move, portability, battery life is better than running Linux on it - plus the wireless driver hassle - no worth it - as long as iTerm2 and homebrew is in place - don't care), but the pretty much all grunt work is done on my workstations (2 optiplex) in office and home. They both are running Arch Linux + KDE Plasma 5 (Xfce4 and other light weight WMs as alternatives). I just feel relaxed and in control of the OS (can do pretty much what I want - like mount a part of physical memory as ramfs/tmpfs and use it to do heavy I/O tasks etc... similar to drive a manual car ;-)

I don't mind using a Mac but do consider Linux as a good and free alternative when coming across things that do not work well on Mac. It may not work for all but you'll have to give it a try to know.

In addition, better consult and seek advice from Linux veterans regarding distribution/desktop environment/window manager choices, known hardware support issues and best practices beforehand, save you time and trouble ;-)

> It's not just PCs, of course. It's all consumer electronics

I recently bought an induction hob, and it's exactly the same.

Bosch for example have a series 4, 6 and 8 and within that, models with various configurations. At first I assumed series 8 was the best or newest, but there are low and high end models in all of the series. I looked through the manufacturers specs, and even in terms of features I couldn't see anything different between the series, only between induvidual models. Maybe the series refers to what day the 'design team' came up with it?

I tried to look at some reviews online to see what people said was the best - I live in Northern Europe and haven't yet picked up the language so looked at reviews on UK and German sites. Except the models available there aren't available here, and vice versa.

At the end of the day they are all pretty much the same (they all cook stuff), so I just went to the shop and picked one that wasn't too cheap or too expensive and looked the prettiest (Wife Approved TM).

> If the laptop comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with CentOS or Arch?

Very high.

For the most part, drivers on Linux are determined by the kernel version[0]. Arch typically runs a pretty new kernel, so anything that Ubuntu supports, will most likely be fine. (That applies to pretty much all desktop-oriented distros.) CentOS is server-oriented, and typically runs a pretty old kernel, and as such you need to be more conservative in the hardware you choose. That said, they do backport a fair amount of hardware support from newer kernels.

[0] The exception to this rule are closed-source drivers, but even those tend to be tied/limited to certain kernel versions.

You're probably right. But it doesn't explain why Apple is so good at this and so few other companies aren't. They must realize the confusion they're creating among consumers. Is it because they're still rooted in 80s/90s PC culture?

Nice brand names like MacBook doesn't preclude having precise model IDs, though. The MacBook range mostly has unique model names (and Apple publishes a full list [1]), for example.

As a counter-argument, an example from TVs: The same TV models are sold all over the world with different identifiers. They'll do things like tack on an "E" for European models. But it makes it really hard to find reviews, because the same Samsung model sold in the US as UN40J5200 might be UN40J5300E in Europe, and you don't necessarily know how to translate between the two identifiers (though they often have a system about what the letters and digits mean so you can decode them, kind of). You might find a review for Samsung UN40J6200 and hope that it's close enough.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300