Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

Short run-down of issues with my late-2019 Air:

* Effectively can't play YouTube videos at all if the browser gets even just a wee bit busy (say, 30 tabs or so, including the usual portion of busy news sites). By "not at all" I mean the output starts getting so shoppy (and the controls so unresponsive) that it's just not worth the bother. By contrast my 2013-2016 Airs could do on the order of 50+ fully loaded YT tabs without much sign of strain (beyond starting to get a bit slow at the controls).

* While we're at it -- even standalone audio files are dodgy (if the environment is just a bit loaded). It's like the audio interface itself is perpetually hosed / overloaded.

* This despite a 2x upgrade in ram, and 4x upgrade in SSD space that I thought would take care of most of my performance issues.

* My UX experience was generally consistent on 2010-2016 models. That is, everything you hovered over / clicked / dragged behaved "the way a mac should" -- without having to even think about it. But with the 2019 model (Catalina) it seems they have to "improve" a lot of these default behaviors, which took weeks of trial and error to figure out (some of which I still am figuring out).

* It freezes up (requiring reboot) way more than it should (and correspondingly seems less tolerant of high browser loads). It's never a great experience when a laptop freezes up to to high load (which is of course perfectly avoidable). But I had to push my 2013-2016 really far to get it into the same level of instability. Basically it seems it can take only 1/4 the load of my earlier models.

* USB-C (which is just plain dodgy, and there's only one free slot. Can anyone explain what they were thinking with that?)

* Other stuff I'm probably too burned out by my overall experience with this thing to bring to the foreground of consciousness.

The only problem is - I'm still basically addicted to Macs (and have had consistently less than happy experience with Linux-based desktops over the years). Largely due to the overall UX, screen + audio quality (along with lightness and thinness). And (when the used to be reliable) their stability and low overall maintenance footprint.

With that said - is there any current offering from Apple that's at least reasonably stable (particularly in regard to browser load and audio issues)?

Or if not - what open source notebook offerings are people using these days (that are reasonably decent in terms of screen quality and overall responsiveness)?

I mostly agree with this analysis. As far as the webcam goes: you can use your iphone (just select it as a video camera) and get a really good webcam image. It also eliminates the issue where the other person on the call appears to be looking down all the time -- they are always looking away from the camera anyway(unless you print something to hold your phone in place) so you don't think they're not paying attention.

It was a good insight that the Touch Bar is a feature designed for non-pro users!

There are a few things I disagree with but they are all in the matters of taste. I don't have any problems with the big touchpad, but that could be related to the fact that I don't care about the "wrist rests" -- if my hands were to contact the cover anyway I think they'd be misaligned and at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (piano teachers and typing teachers -- back when they existed -- taught you to maintain a straight line from top of hand to top of forearm for this very reason.

I do have a problem with the common refrain of "this is not a pro machine". It's just a name for differentiating their product line. I'm a pro -- full-time software developer -- and the feature sets seem designed for me precisely (almost never plug anything into my machine for example). Other people are also pros but use their machines in different ways and probably considered my use case absurd. I have assumed Apple collected info on how people use their machines to figure out, for example, whether the SD slot was worth it (I talked about a card slot with Steve Jobs 20 years ago and he was very dismissive, on some grounds that were reasonable for the time).

I always enable telemetry on my Macs and on most apps, as I figure the developers might use the info to improve the product the way I use it (I'd like to know that info for my code!). I know a lot of people do not do so from privacy concerns. I wonder if my feeling that "this machine is right for me" is because those of us willing to enable telemetry are overweighted in Apple's beliefs of use patterns. I'm not aware that they survey users in the traditional way, though probably they do do that as well.

I just sent in my late-2011 MacBook Pro for LCD and keyboard replacement. Still refuse to touch anything that has a glassy surface for a keyboard.

We develop cross-platform projects in an environment where Windows is a second-class citizen but accounts for the vast majority of our user base. WSL2 is a really nice stepping stone towards having both operating systems treated equally.

Those users invariably have been blindly clicking away the update notification and have picky themselves to blame.