The Framework Laptop

I'm not a touch screen fanatic but I think using your whole arm instead of just torquing your wrist all day is considered a feature?

Obviously it's not as great if the measure you're looking at is "how quickly can I go back to typing?".

Is the thinkpad better value than the MacBook?

The i7 16GB ram / 512GB ssd Thinkpad X1 Carbon is $1900 and you don't even get a nice display. The M1 16GB/512GB ssd Macbook Pro is only $1700 and you get a best-in-class display along with that.

The XPS 13 and Surface are similarly priced. Macbooks are very price competitive and have been for a long time.

Right, which is why I wanted the non-stretching version. The modifiers are quite reachable with about 50-52 keys.

>This looks to satisfy all your requirements from your original post:

Thank you for the link. Unfortunately it only looks so.

It satisfies only partly because it's still headache to remember where it is, remember to take it and when something like that sticks out of your machine probability to break it when there are people around is very high and not unusual. Also you can tilt accidentally your laptop and it cat potentially break the port completely.

With all that said the reality now for instance that it is simply not available in the country I am right now unfortunately. I cannot move because of the covid situation and I am limited with what I can order. My MacbookPro has died gracefully (you can read how if you wish: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25809097) I have managed to get M1 machine but now I'll have to deal with adapters that are available around.

Because I do not have sd-card-slot my photography is limited to zero currently until I find adapter that would work. I have additional headache to choose one that works, and they lie about the specs and you never know what you get so this is the reality of all those theories about 'oh you can get a dongle'.

I just wish to add that when you are really mobile and travel in different countries it is Not unusual situation. Even if it's developed country it's not easy to order something in a small town or even in a big town. Usually small towns do not have something you need, you can count on that. Probably you can buy a new Mac probably like I did but it's M1 with 2 ports and some nice adapters will be not available there. Again this is the reality , not the theory where you can access everything you need whenever you need it.

The second item you've mentioned is nice. Thank you again. It can be useful when I'll be able to reach it. Right now all my drives are usb3 to fit MacbookPro I had. This hub is also requires power supply brick as I understand and again it would be simply impossible to get the hub you've mentioned where I am at the moment.

So in my case it will be huge adapter hanging on wire and let us pray it will work as expected.

>Surely you're not suggesting that laptops built in 2021 should have a VGA port?

No, I am not suggesting that. HDMI an micro-sd-card reader do not add any thickness though and are still very useful for flexibility in real world. When I took my previous Mac I thought I will not use HDMI but mobile reality made it so that at some point it was the only way I can use it and extract data from it and the external port allowed me to boot gnu/linux. The M1 Mac on the other hand become not bootable in the first day because of the bug in DiskUtility and I needed 'another Mac' to make it even bootable again so from my perspective I did not upgrade I have downgraded.

>_extreme_ niche use case [...] 99% of people For me it's not about how many people use something it's about what a portable computer allows you to do and how flexible , productive and creative you can be with that tool. I do not want to go further about what else 99% do not do ... following majority was never too exciting for me.

Hmm, the middle mouse button is bound to "paste text from buffer" on Linux (probably X11 more accurately), so I keep pasting random text into the edit box or terminal window. And if I click on that middle button, then change my mind about scrolling the window, then release that button, it pastes the buffer. It looks like I have to move the trackpoint just slightly to change my mind

I don't know. Maybe people can be trained to workaround all this, but it seems very fragile and unintuitive to me. If there was a way to bind the middle button to one of the modifier keys (e.g. Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Fn, Super/Window), I can see that being a better UX. Then I can hit the modifier key, then change my mind without affecting anything.