501–510 of 634 posts
I feel torn here between FOSS principles and the quality of MacBook ux. Also the amount of performance you get per dollar It used to be, you bought an Apple product and got less performant hardware for a higher price. Now it's the opposite. I have no idea how they do this so well. Maybe by vertical integration of hardware, OS, and user level services all under the same roof
Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…
Every single laptop I owned before switching to Apple was a huge piece of shit, in hindsight—like, probably shouldn't have been saleable, just a straight-up lemon by design. ... except an IBM (yes, it's that long ago) Thinkpad that was super-underpowered even for the time. Though, it did have the ~2-3hr actual-in-practice battery life that was typical of laptops at the time, no matter what they promised, so like all…
I've had great luck with exactly this--used, midrange Dell Latitudes.
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T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you noticed. MBP doesn't have a trackpoint. Still can't run Linux as well, lacks USB A so still requires constant dongles despite improved port selection. I moved from a 2018 15" MBP to a P14s Gen 2 AMD. The speakers, screen, trackpad are worse. But I don't care. I'm not stuck using a horrible OS with miniscule amounts of storage to keep the price down. The machin…
Is the trackpoint really that important when you have a trackpad which doesn't suck with associated drivers and software which doesn't suck? I've never been using a Mac trackpad and felt the need for something trackpoint-like. I understand the desire for a trackpoint on laptops with non-Apple trackpads though.
These days, the hardware of the laptop rarely matters for me. Battery life and screen legibility is what matters above all else because I do little to no compute on the actual device itself. To that end, I like the Mac M1 Air and the Framework laptops. Nothing beats the battery life of an M1 Air that I have found. What really sold me was my first trip with it, flying from Amsterdam to SFO. Left hotel 3 hours early, 2…
Do you ever find yourself without reliable internet connection and unable to develop/watch media/etc.? Any issues with data caps?
Airplanes are hit or miss, but can take advantage of HN/reddit reading time or read a book (preferred) if access is limited.
As for data caps, no issues at all. Family of 5 on unlimited internet plan. The 5gbps internet I have is mostly underutilized in terms of 95% usage, but fully saturated when transferring big files between different devices.
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Yes? You don't need to move from the keyboard at all, you get physical buttons too. Your wrist is never misinterpreted as a mouse movement either. It's just better unless your workflow heavily involves the use of 3+ finger gestures. Which I don't personally care about but seems like a necessity to not go insane on macOS.
> "Your wrist is never misinterpreted as a mouse movement either." This just doesn't happen on Mac trackpads: they have pretty sophisticated and effective palm rejection.
Am I crazy? The author writes > It's not as insane of a downgrade as it sounds. And then goes on to describe assembling a Frankenstein laptop that has specs and ergonomics that pale in comparison to the MacBook's. This sounds like a truly awful computer to me, but if your only goal is to spend as little as possible and get user-serviceability then I guess this is one way to go.
Im using a 3 year old 490s for work. Great machine. Wish they gave it more RAM and SSD but other than that Im happy with it.
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On the bright side, he did avoid spending $200 for the 16gb RAM upgrade.
For RAM that's around 3x slower. I mean, if it works, it works, but it's hardly something to boast about.
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> PS: Battery replacement is a bless. Yes, built-in batteries allow for more sturdy frames but it is bad in long term. It would be enough the provide replacement batteries with a low-weight cage and screws instead of glue. I agree with this. That said, an all-in battery replacement by Apple is $199. Once every 3 years isn't going to break the bank vs. like $50 for an X220 battery. Especially when an X220 gets like 7h…
> Once every 3 years isn't going to break the bank vs. like $50 for an X220 battery. My Apple laptops haven't gotten frustratingly-low battery life—but, hell, still better than any PC laptop I've ever owned at purchase, even when "degraded"—until ~5 years, historically. Including the Intel ones. IDK what Apple does with their batteries (extra, "stealth" capacity? Just way, way higher-quality batteries than any other…
I'm still not sure why. The section doesn't really answer the actual question. It's cheaper, good enough, replacement parts are cheap, and I understand that argument; I myself use alternatively some kind of very old Thinkpad (that I don't remember the specs of), a 2011 Macbook Air, or a recent Macbook M1 and for what I do with them (little more than running Firefox and ssh) the only difference that matters in practic…