Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

ssp.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 476 posts

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#141

Post by cycomanic »

anon7000 wrote: post #88
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

Well, yeah, and my mom was using my old 2012 MBP until it was a decade too. Main reason to upgrade to an M1 Air was the battery and the performance improvement that comes with a decade of processor and efficiency improvements. And I bet that’ll last another decade. I sold my previous two work MBPs back to family members as well, which they’re still using. And btw a used M1 Air, at almost 5 years old now, is still a g…

As I said somewhere above, I am not trying to say that apple hardware is bad and I'm sure they last a long time (although when the battery eventually dies I heard changing that is not straight forward). My point is, that apple is not "crazy good" for making laptops that last 5 or even 10 years, that's just normal in the upper segment.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#142

Post by cycomanic »

codeflo wrote: post #93
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

> 8-10h battery life If you think that's even close to good, then it's you who lives in a reality distortion field. But so are all of the PC laptop manufacturers, reviewers and buyers. I don't get it. I desperately want to move to a Linux laptop (I run it on every desktop PC I own, and I hate that I have to deal with a locked-down system). I've tried more laptops than is probably financially healthy for me. There's n…

> > 8-10h battery life > > If you think that's even close to good, then it's you who lives in a reality distortion field. But so are all of the PC laptop manufacturers, reviewers and buyers. I don't get it. >

That's a laptop from 2016, IIRC at the time that was about the same you got out of a top of the line macbook. But I'm pretty certain that 2016 macbook would not have that battery life now, while I could easily swap out the battery and am back to 10h battery life.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#143

Post by Novosell »

msh wrote: post #119
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

I think that a lot comes down to apple only selling quality laptop but a brand like Lenovo sells both cheap crap and quality laptops. So if you tell someone buy a apple laptop you know they will get a good laptop but if you tell them to buy a Lenovo they might end up with the worst crap.

I believe this is one of the main contributing factors in people who strongly prefer iOS devices over Android as well. With iOS, there are no options really. You buy high end or you don't buy. With Android, people will end up buying some 150-200€ phone and being shocked it doesn't compare to their 1100€ iPhone.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#145

Post by trinix912 »

gbalduzzi wrote: post #81
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

I believe there is a similar situation in the mobile space with iphones, at least here is Europe where they are not ubiquitous. Most people use cheaper android phones, that are slower and with a much shorted timespan. then they try a 1k€ iPhone and it is great and conclude they prefer the iPhone to Android: it is not an apple to apple comparison, you should compare it to a 1k€ android lol. Same things happens on lapt…

You can easily pay $1000+ for a Windows laptop and still end up with a worse trackpad or keyboard than what all MacBooks have. I've made that mistake myself.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#147

Post by rkomorn »

trinix912 wrote: post #145
gbalduzzi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there is a similar situation in the mobile space with iphones, at least here is Europe where they are not ubiquitous. Most people use cheaper android phones, that are slower and with a much shorted timespan. then they try a 1k€ iPhone and it is great and conclude they prefer the iPhone to Android: it is not an apple to apple comparison, you should compare it to a 1k€ android lol. Same things happens on lapt…

You can easily pay $1000+ for a Windows laptop and still end up with a worse trackpad or keyboard than what all MacBooks have. I've made that mistake myself.

The trackpad on my X1 Nano (and the associated Linux experience) is a daily annoyance to me compared to the macOS+M1 MacBook Air experience.

I have way more accidental touches, drags, wrong palm detection, etc.

Windows isn't much better (or is arguably worse because "natural scrolling" still somehow isn't an out of the box thing).

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#148

Post by phantomathkg »

socalgal2 wrote: post #105
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

I agree with your point that 5yrs is not "crazy good" I have a mid 2014 15.6" Macbook Pro. It still runs fine. Apple doesn't support it though. I'm also not claiming 11 years is "crazy good" either. On the opposite side though, I don't like giving old machines to non-techies. I'm actually planning to get rid of that 2014 MBP since it's sat plugged in but basically unused for 4 years, but I don't like the idea of a no…

Why not recycle it? I thought Apple in general can trade in old device?

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#149

Post by creakingstairs »

> And most important, instant workspace navigation. The reason why I was upset with Apple: with the latest update, Yabai didn’t work flawlessly anymore

I just wish Apple would let us have instant workspace navigation. It is pretty much the only reason why I wrestle with getting Yabai working on every major OS update. There is “reduced animation” setting but it has a short fade in-and-out animation and it drives me crazy.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#150

Post by simonh »

ksec wrote: post #136
anon7000 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the fuck are you talking about. A current high end laptop CPU is the AMD 9955HX3D, with Geekbench 6 of 3161/19080 geekbench. M4 Pro is 3812/20076. Why do I worship apple silicon? Because it’s literally the best performing processor for a laptop on the planet. I can use it for a full day of work from the couch on battery, no performance hit, RAM maxed out, containers running, the fans never turn on, and it barely…

>all of that in one package was unheard of in a laptop before Apple silicon. My point is, it was available on iPhone. And has always been the case but people brush it off because it was an Smartphone SoC. And I literally just stated there are ARM CPU Core offering available. You either compare the whole MacBook / Laptop, or you compare the CPU / SoC. The first being there aren't many choice compared to. The latter ar…

So we shouldn’t be impressed by Apple silicon because it also runs in phones?

And yes, there are ARM laptops ASUs just brought out a laptop running on the Snapdragon X Plus. Geekbench Single Core 2231 versus the M4 at 3678.

I mean, I’m sure it’s fine for a lot of people, but fine for a lot of people isn’t all that impressive in 2025. The other ARM chips are still a long, long way off from getting close to base M series performance and features. When you start looking at the pro, ultra, etc M chips it’s another level again.

Post reply on HN