Live data from Hacker News

Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

maxrozen.com

621–630 of 634 posts

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU/Linux-supported devices receive updates far-far-far longer, both laptops and phones.

Then run Linux on your MacBook when you no longer have an Apple-supported Mac OS, which is 10 years. Lots of people have.

That used to be a good solution in like 2015, but there are generations of Macbooks whose Linux support never includes working WiFi, audio or other components: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is suspend working reliably on Linux for MacBooks?

That's a global issue with Linux. There are people having problems with Linux sleep/suspend on a wide variety of makes of laptops, include Apple's. But not everybody is having a problem with every make of laptop which means it's either a distribution issue, user error, or some combination of the two.

Suspend and hibernate have worked on a variety of laptops I've owned over more than a decade. You can also easily build a custom desktop and never run into issues with either. Issues with suspending stem from manufacturers' bespoke components, firmware, configurations and/or non-standard handling of any of those.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a global issue with Linux. There are people having problems with Linux sleep/suspend on a wide variety of makes of laptops, include Apple's. But not everybody is having a problem with every make of laptop which means it's either a distribution issue, user error, or some combination of the two.

This is not a global issue with Linux. My Librem 15 has 100% reliable sleep. Devices designed for Linux work flawlessly. Devices with closed specifications and not providing any drivers don't work reliably, unsurprisingly.

Google "linux laptop sleep suspend problem" and have fun reading all the problems people are having with sleep/suspend with a variety of makes and models of laptops. Meanwhile, sleep/suspend has been worked out for MacBooks, for some time actually. Presumably even on the M2's since that's the machine Linus uses for his development.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a global issue with Linux. My Librem 15 has 100% reliable sleep. Devices designed for Linux work flawlessly. Devices with closed specifications and not providing any drivers don't work reliably, unsurprisingly.

Google "linux laptop sleep suspend problem" and have fun reading all the problems people are having with sleep/suspend with a variety of makes and models of laptops. Meanwhile, sleep/suspend has been worked out for MacBooks, for some time actually. Presumably even on the M2's since that's the machine Linus uses for his development.

The suspend problems only occur on hardware not designed for Linux, which is most of the available hardware. Therefore I'm not surprised that it affects a variety of laptop models. Meanwhile all devices specifically targeting Linux have a reliable suspend.

The same thing is happening with Macs: Hardware designed for MacOS has a reliable suspend on MacOS.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens! Whenever I see a Thinkpad I start thinking I should buy one even though I have an M1 MacBook Pro. I'm sure I'm not the only neckbeard lusting after Thinkpads.

I have some thinkpads privately and an M1 MBP at work. Bang-per-buck is best with the MBP, no doubt. The absolute number of bucks for a used thinkpad is super low and they live for a long time, so I have old thinkpads for light home use. The fact that anyone would go back to a thinkpad is surprising to me, but if you need win10/11 (or insist on no-VM linux) I guess it begins to make sense. On every other point they s…

They have a trackpoint, so there's basically no other option. Sadly the build quality and repairability has gone down, which used to be the other big selling point. Also Macbooks are way uglier, but that will probably be disputed :P

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#626
My biggest complaint about Macs is the lack of backwards compatibility of the OS and apps. It always comes to a point when the OS won't support your hardware and then the apps won't be supported on the older OS. This has a much bigger effect with the advent of cloud services.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> c) want to be unable to charge other devices from your laptop. You just charge them with battery pack.

The whole point of a laptop is that I can use it on my lap, on public transit. That's not possible with your recommendation.

The question I replied to was about charging other devices from laptop. You can charge your other devices in your bag with battery pack, not dangling from your laptop while you're charging them.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend modding a panel from a different thinkpad, like from the newer X1 models: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354162731881 This should, with slight modifications, fit any thinkpad with a non-touch 40-pin eDP. Not all T480 will have the right connector, so make sure you've got the right one before buying. This panel will get you full DCI-P3 color gamut at 3840x2160 in 10-bit, but only 500 nits.

Thanks for the link, this is definitely a "nicer" panel than MBP ones. Maybe it is time to jerry-rig my t420 :)

Well, it definitely beats the MBP at resolution (290 vs 220ppi), has the same colorspace, same brightness, and is much cheaper and easy to replace :)

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#629
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, once it's out of warranty, I buy the part I need on ebay/aliexpress/etc. and fit it myself. "being able to take it apart and put it back together" covers for a multitude of sins if you're me. Others may feel differently, and, well, to each their own preferred set of trade-offs :)

If you trust ebay/aliexpress for battery, good luck. I am lucky enough to have been able to buy what looks a genuine one from a store here as I hope they sourced it from official Lenovo European reseller, which are available only for company (req. Vat number etc)

I've never yet accidentally bought a fake part off ebay (I'm sure I will one day, of course).

Requires a little paying attention to get decent odds, certainly, but it's far from impossible to do so.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#630
post #278
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know from extensive debugging of this issue that docker is the problem. You basically can't run docker (as of 6 months ago...I hope this will eventually be false) on an M1/M2 without causing significant heating and battery drain. Since this is the fault of the OS, maybe Asahi will eventually be the solution.

Yes, same conclusion. I wonder if people using it for writing code are running docker at all, you read so many comments on HN of how the battery life is incredible (on any thread about comparisons between any Mac and any other laptop) while in my experience a full charge Macbook Air M2 lasts about 6 hours with Docker running instead of the usual 15 it lasts when its off.

Are you running arm64 or amd64 images? I switched from docker to podman, mostly due to other issues (e.g., the weirdness with the Docker VM seemingly growing infinitely in size and refusing to trim automaticity), but running arm-native containers has never really made my battery life significantly worse.

The 12+ hours, though, I’m not sure how people are getting that consistently. I feel like VS Code and some LSPs alone make that impossible for me.

I can’t imagine if I were doing some web dev stuff and needed Chrome installed of Safari too.

Post reply on HN