301–310 of 1001 posts
I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild
I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild
Keep in mind 2 displays are only supported with the lid closed. So the only change is that now you can use an external monitor in lieu of the internal display.
But nevertheless, Apple's hardware strategy sucks ...
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I found it's completely acceptable for hobby usages that don't involve running offline LLMs. If you're doing work, get a Pro.
I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on Windows and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open with half a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory hungry program (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're out of luck. Actually I had to have my last work laptop replaced because 8GB wasn't enough for Chrome and a Teams video call! If I tried to screen share a browser tab of Jira everything would start paging.…
For my kids and parents, the M1 Air has been flawless (even for me - it's my travel Mac). But if you know you're a heavy user definitely get more RAM.
I'm still very bummed with Apple's strategy in using # of supported external displays as a feature to gate laptops. I had to return a decently spec-ced M3 Macbook PRO 14" because it only supported 1 display (base M3) and pay more for M3 pro even though I don't need the extra horsepower. And now the base M3 Air's support 2 displays? This is wild
I think even worse than that is that they still only put 8 GB RAM in the base and middle options.
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But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the $1K price range for laptops that don't have a GPU, but that's basically it. The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality…
I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same once opened…
The degree to which Apple has kinda just “won” laptops is nuts to me. $999 for an 13-inch M2 Air is just bonkers. You can easily pay $1500, even $2000 for Windows laptops that are hotter, heavier, AND slower.
You're absolutely right that they make a damn fine laptop (the build quality stands out to me) and they do a great job in that market. Anecdotally, my Framework 13 AMD ran me 1500 and I ended up with 64 GB of ram, 2 TB of storage, and an AMD 7840U. I bought my RAM and storage separately to get that end cost, to be fair. I wouldn't be surprised if the M3 actually outperforms my processor by a bit, but having way more…
HN used to say that System76 were the best laptops ever, so I bought two of them. They’re an incredible pile of shit, in addition to the battery life or the clunky build, the fans turn on and off like my gamer boyfriend’s PC back in 2001.
System76 said they won’t take them back, after I tried to give it to every intern.
I’m absolutely flaggerblasted at what Linux or Windows users tolerate, it seems fine for them, since all of their laptops is like this! The problem is having low standards, and compared to this, they think their laptop is great.
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> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. People love to say this without linking to a model. That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... lite…
Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well. Weight is very much light enough for me. Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs
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I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? I have a few friends who are Linux devotees yet watching them do stuff seems so tedious and slow in comparison to my workflows. Like I get that you can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and stuff to do whatever you want, but that's also possible in MacOS, so what is it exactly that you can do better/faster in Pop_OS? For most of…
I've got a M2 Max MBP I'm not using yet because there's no way to get sshfs/fuse working with free as in freedom software on macOS, and Asahi doesn't support external displays yet, so it can't take over for my ThinkPad T440p with either OS. Package management and package availability is much worse in the macOS world. Nix is weirdly broken, at least the ARM macOS packages. Homebrew is okay but not very good, similar t…
That being said I am a dev and a designer and I can't think of any paid software I use beyond Figma (which is free for basic use) and Texts.app which doesn't have any free or paid equivalent on Linux.
Not talking about screen sizes obviously, but I really don't have an intuition for what 'less than half an inch' thickness is and I'm sure there are a _lot_ of people who use English as their interface language outside of the US.