[HN Gopher] Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480
___________________________________________________________________
Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480
Author : rozenmd
Score : 338 points
Date : 2023-02-21 08:14 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maxrozen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maxrozen.com)
| Hippocrates wrote:
| 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.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| 1440p screen, an i7, 32GB RAM, glass trackpad + sturdy thinkpad
| body and ports = awful computer? What is awful about it?
|
| 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.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| I think he means the experience of using it. And the price was
| much cheaper.
| smoldesu wrote:
| On the bright side, he _did_ avoid spending $200 for the 16gb
| RAM upgrade.
| ribit wrote:
| For RAM that's around 3x slower. I mean, if it works, it
| works, but it's hardly something to boast about.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| RAM speed does not make up for capacity. If you need a lot
| of RAM for VMs or Docker or loads of tabs, getting lower
| capacity, but higher speed RAM is not a substitute.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| For loads of tabs it does. For docker or VMs maybe not.
| Requiring a large amount of fully allocated RAM, like 8G+
| seems like a deficiency in the software/dev environment,
| and definitely an edge case. In my whole career I've not
| needed that, but seen some poorly done dev environments
| configured with 4G+ VMs, so I don't doubt it can happen.
| gruffin wrote:
| Yeah I don't think anyone would disagree that with time, know-
| how, manual labor, and a 50% performance degradation, you might
| save money.
| trieste92 wrote:
| 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
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think the design philosophy of Apple Silicon is probably the
| future.
| trieste92 wrote:
| I wonder if vertical integration of software and hardware is
| also the future
| [deleted]
| oneplane wrote:
| So in other words, just like most "switched from X to Y" stories:
| it depends on a lot of factors and there is no one-size-fits-all.
|
| In this specific case however, the issue is much easier: author
| wanted a collection of components, not a packaged experience. So
| in other words: if the device is the goal (or having a collection
| of components), you might not enjoy an Apple product. If you want
| a specific experience, then a product that is just a collection
| of components (and experienced as such), then you might enjoy an
| Apple product.
|
| Semantics would suggest that 'anything is a collection of
| components', but that is not the point, the point is how the
| experience is different. Some components are experienced as a
| group/list/collection while others are experienced as a product.
| Which one fits you best varies from person to person and job to
| job.
| Angostura wrote:
| I thought the basic summary at the end said a lot: "I wanted a
| cheap travel laptop I could replace without blinking an eye at
| the price."
| oneplane wrote:
| Oh yeah, it definitely did. But as someone else here posted,
| even a 10 year old MacBook Air would work out, it reminds me
| a bit of the netbook days, but without the hardware being so
| hobbled by Intel requirements (i.e. only 1 DIMM allowed in
| NetBooks).
|
| But from the general comments you can glean that people still
| seem to think in terms of "one has to be absolutely better
| than the other". At best one could argue that the mass-market
| enjoys one thing more than the other, but even that depends
| on where you are located in the world and what skills you
| have. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the OLPC
| project had a western version where kids start out with one
| of those, that would make both cases even clearer (i.e. some
| would not enjoy doing work 'for' the device instead of doing
| work 'with' the device).
| selimnairb wrote:
| What's next, and article about replacing your 2020 Prius with
| 1995 Chevy Cavalier?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I do a lot of development work on a tiny Acer with 8GB of RAM and
| an Atom-class processor. Not fast, but fast enough. I rarely need
| to wait more than a couple seconds between editing something and
| seeing the results.
|
| And making it impossible to open lots of browser tabs is actually
| nice for productivity.
| kramerger wrote:
| Surprised you get downvoted for this comment...
|
| I've an insanely powerful (and expensive) laptop from work. But
| looking back, most of the work I'm actually proud of was done
| in really cheap laptops. Maybe success is more about being
| comfortable with the tool you have than having the most
| expensive tool??
| rbanffy wrote:
| It was a 600x1024 netbook screen that persuaded me to re-
| learn Emacs. Of course I'd prefer a ridiculously fast
| computer, with a fast CPU with dozens of cores, an insane
| amount of memory (not swapping is kind of important with
| SSDs) and a very fast SSD, but, in the end, I don't need that
| much of a computer.
|
| Would I turn down a 4th-gen Xeon or EPYC Genoa workstation if
| someone offered me one for free? Of course not! In fact, I
| like retro computing and I wouldn't turn down a TRS-80 (and,
| in fact, would be delighted to give a home to a VT-230/330
| terminal or an ASR-33 teletype).
| karuzel wrote:
| Where do you get your knowledge about spare parts?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Upgrading RAM and storage is obviously trivial. The battery as
| well, that just requires buying a bigger one for the same
| model.
|
| As for the screen and trackpad, Lenovo has extensive
| documentation on their website detailing how to replace
| components, all the way down to the type of screws you need
| should you lose some. The compatible parts for any of their
| model can be found on their website. Although the OEM parts are
| usually more expensive, you can usually find them online in
| various shops.
|
| If you go for the aliexpress route, just searching "screen for
| thinkpad t48" will get you a bunch of screens of varying
| quality.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| No picture of the actual ThinkPad hardware, likely more IBM
| ThinkPad DNA loss by Lenovo. The Apple MacBooks have had a design
| change back to the future.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Hi, author of the article here, what do you mean by "likely
| more IBM ThinkPad DNA loss by Lenovo"?
|
| and thanks for the feedback - I've added a photo of the actual
| laptop now.
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| I suppose it depends on your 'good enough' threshold. I'm quite
| happy on a stock Thinkpad X220 (7 row keyboard) but I don't do
| anything especially demanding.
|
| Many here would find that machine limiting.
| clircle wrote:
| I have various dells and think pads from work that i just install
| Linux on and use for personal stuff. I want to buy a m1 mac, but
| given that my free handmedowns keep humming along, i cant justify
| the upgrade
| taylodl wrote:
| It's been 11 years since Apple first released non-upgradeable
| laptops. Can we get over it already? If you want a laptop that
| you can upgrade then don't buy an Apple. If you don't like
| Apple's ecosystem then don't buy an Apple. This has been the
| advice for over 10 years now.
|
| There's nothing new here.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I think it's also psychological. When buying a Mac, you have
| this warm fuzzy feeling that you are taken care of, you have
| been given the best, there is nothing to improve and nothing to
| worry about.
| mftb wrote:
| I agree it's psychological. Upon entering an Apple store, I
| feel like The Dude stumbling into the lair of the pretentious
| nihilists in The Big Lebowski.
| titaniczero wrote:
| Jeez, I don't think I'll ever understand the american thing
| with Apple. It must be a social thing, I've seen people
| humiliate and even shun people who have Android ("the green
| bubble") or other non-Apple devices.
|
| I feel that they're always very biased in these comparisons.
| efdee wrote:
| And 11 years later they are still non-upgradable and it still
| sucks. Just because we're a few years later doesn't mean it's
| still a huge drawback.
| javaunsafe2019 wrote:
| But as it's bad for the environment it's even more important in
| 2023 to keep complaining about it.
| taylodl wrote:
| _But as it's bad for the environment_
|
| Is it? Thanks to the increased reliability that non-
| upgradeability confers I'm still using my 2012 MacBook Pro as
| my daily driver. I suspect there's _a lot_ of minutia to
| tease out to verify whether this claim is actually true in
| the global case.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| 2012 MVP was a solid computer. I've been supplied MacBooks
| at work that have all been newer and less reliable.
| mattkrause wrote:
| That's an apt typo!
| ibz wrote:
| 2012 MBP was indeed my final reliable Apple product. I
| "upgraded" away from it unfortunately (because jobs
| always paid for these things) which resulted in me
| throwing away at least 3 newer models, which simply
| stopped working. I'm gladly off Apple for 2 years now!
| taylodl wrote:
| My work-issued 2015 MBP is still going strong. But I have
| heard there have been models where they had more issues.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| How often have you had the sockets fail, compared to the
| components themselves?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > the increased reliability that non-upgradeability confers
|
| I'm skeptical of those being connected; my 2008 thinkpads
| and 2011 desktop (that I'm writing this on) are extremely
| upgradable and still work fine (I mean, the thinkpads are
| slow by modern standards, but that's not a reliability
| issue). And non-upgradeability in this sense also means
| that it's not _reparable_ either, so when it _does_ have
| problems the whole thing is dead rather than, say, just
| swapping out a faulty RAM module or replacing the worn-out
| SSD or whatever - to say nothing of the battery degrading.
| wilg wrote:
| Theoretically, having to design the product to be modular
| means you'll have connectors, modules, and other parts
| that you have to ship on every product. At scale, you
| could imagine that adding 0.1 grams of weight and
| material to every unit nets out to be more wasteful than
| throwing away 1 in 100,000 entire units due to a fault.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Theoretically, maybe, but we'd need real numbers to even
| start to evaluate that.
| wilg wrote:
| Sure, I'm just pointing out from an environmental/waste
| standpoint it's not obvious that repairability is a win.
| jrockway wrote:
| I agree with you. My computing requirements haven't changed
| significantly in a decade, so it is easy to pick a laptop
| that will meet them. Display technology is pretty much
| perfect; there is very little that is going to change in
| the life of your laptop, so you don't need to worry about
| the display becoming outdated. Laptop keyboards have been
| terrible since the first laptop ever, and that will remain
| true forever. CPU / memory / storage is also pretty easy to
| predict, and modern laptops are very competitive. (I would
| want 16 CPU, 64GB RAM, 4TB storage. Apple is happy to sell
| such a laptop, though I guess the CPU maxes out at 12
| cores.)
|
| For that reason, I don't see why you would expect to
| upgrade your laptop. I currently use a home-built
| workstation and rarely upgrade it. By the time the CPU is
| outdated and tired, you also want to swap the GPU. My 128GB
| of DDR4 is useless in the world of DDR5. So it's not like I
| get a ton of upgradeability by having a workstation. I can
| keep the case and the fans for the next build, saving me
| $150. Woo. (I have kept my NVMe SSDs forever, though. But
| they are inexpensive and "rsync" after the upgrade is not
| too onerous, so it's pretty reasonable. But, technology
| improves there too. I have PCIe-4, but my SSDs don't take
| advantage of it. So keeping them just gives me slower
| storage.)
|
| The only thing you have to be careful about is sticker
| shock vs. future needs. Upgrade is pay later, but laptops
| are pay now. It hurts to price NVMe SSDs on Newegg and then
| pay Apple $2000 for it. That might be what people are
| talking about with "upgradeability"; "Apple is too
| expensive".
| cpursley wrote:
| Exactly. My Apple products out-last non-Apple stuff by an
| order of magnitude (as much as I want to be on Android and
| Linux desktop).
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| That's because they are more expensive, not because Apple
| is slower on innovation.
| hbn wrote:
| His 4th point in the conclusion at the end:
|
| > I wanted a cheap travel laptop I could replace without
| blinking an eye at the price.
|
| It's pretty easy to get ~10 years out of a good laptop from
| Apple. I'll be shocked if this guy is still using his
| Thinkpad in 10 years, and even if he does, that he didn't
| create more e-waste by swapping parts that he wouldn't have
| had to sticking with the MacBook.
| dagw wrote:
| Based on highly unscientific observation, people tend to keep
| using old Apple laptops much longer than random Not Apple
| laptops.
| ibz wrote:
| Old Apple laptops, like the 2012 mentioned, yes. Newer ones
| don't really last long anymore.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Obviously anyone will get the computer they want, well at least
| when you can. Sometimes you get stuck with a choice someone
| else made, like a company device. However, it is still useful
| to voice and especially to listen to criticism. Apple should be
| thankful that a lot of people are voicing their opinions.
| Getting this kind of feedback is priceless if they want to
| appeal to more people and grow their user base.
| taylodl wrote:
| It's the same feedback Apple has been getting for 11 years
| now. There's nothing new here. I think Apple is well-aware
| that there are people who prefer an upgradeable laptop and
| not having to participate in the Apple ecosystem. I suspect
| Apple has data showing _even more_ people prefer having a
| more reliable laptop (upgradeability tends to decrease
| reliability) and the perceived benefits of the Apple
| ecosystem - otherwise why would they have continued on this
| path for 11 years now whilst having very vocal critics of
| this approach the whole time?
| ibz wrote:
| I don't see posts like this as "feedback for Apple", but as
| encouragement for people to look into alternatives. Sure,
| lots of people do indeed prefer Apple's laptop-as-a-service
| model, but others do not. It is this latter group that
| posts like this targets.
|
| What you're saying here is more like - yes, everybody knows
| fast food is bad, so let's stop creating YouTube channels
| about cooking.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| > I suspect Apple has data showing even more people prefer
| having a more reliable laptop (upgradeability tends to
| decrease reliability) and the perceived benefits of the
| Apple ecosystem
|
| I wouldn't assume. Most Apple users I know conform with
| their devices one way or another (I used to be one of them
| myself). This could be just one more thing they can live
| without but would still rather have than not.
|
| Apple won't decide something based on criticism alone or
| even based on what people want. They decide based on what
| will net bigger profit. In this case, you can just as
| easily guess that Apple has data showing that while
| overpriced parts, hostile repair policy and lack of
| upgradability bother everyone, all of these contribute
| massively to the bottom line and are not enough to drive
| people away en masse.
|
| However, criticism is still important since it can help in
| some decisions where it can be the determining factor or
| the missing nudge towards one direction over the other.
| notpublic wrote:
| "IMPORTANT: BY USING YOUR MAC PRODUCT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO
| BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THE APPLE 1 YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY
| ("WARRANTY") AS SET OUT BELOW...."
|
| If the product is that reliable, why not offer a 3-5 year
| warranty?
| justinator wrote:
| They do, it's called AppleCare and you would be nuts not
| to get it. Just factor it in for the price of the Macbook
| you want before budgeting and purchasing.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| If they actually believed in the product they wouldn't
| charge you extra for the warranty.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are a lot of cost, marketing, and legal
| considerations that go into setting warranty durations.
| They're not intrinsically linked to the expected service
| lifetime of the product.
| lostlogin wrote:
| In New Zealand we have an excellent piece of legislation
| called The Consumer Guarantees Act. Things are supposed
| to last a reasonable amount of time. You'll easily get 3
| years warranty if you cite the law when you call Apple.
| It's Sort of like free apple care.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I skeptical that non upgradability increases reliability. I
| have never heard this claim before. I have heard it
| decreases thickness and weight, both of which people might
| like, but increasing reliability? How much of that can just
| be attributed to improved components as manufacturing gets
| more sophisticated?
|
| I think this is just down to most people not caring. I like
| the idea of upgradability as an abstract concept, but
| didn't necessarily use the options when available.
| jrmg wrote:
| Every socket is another potential point of failure. When
| shipping millions of units it'll be noticeable.
| taylodl wrote:
| I used to work for an industrial automation company,
| building custom-designed computers (the entire system,
| including the motherboard) that control manufacturing
| lines. The units we used to design, being field
| upgradeable, were far less reliable than the units where
| the memory and CPU were soldered to the motherboard. That
| wasn't an option for mass storage at the time. Vibration
| and heat do amazing things to components that are
| removable. Also, components that are soldered on the
| mainboard, by not using a socket, generate less heat. The
| interconnect can also be faster. So yes, upgradeability
| does tend to decrease reliability. By the time I left
| that company they had switched to entirely non-
| upgradeable units because they were far more reliable.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Never had a memory stick get jarred a bit loose, eh?
| Sometimes it even keeps _kinda_ behaving normally....
| kube-system wrote:
| What does non-upgradable mean? It has been even longer since
| Intel discontinued socketed mobile processors. LPDDR has
| advantages, and it is not socketed per the spec. It seems silly
| to blame all of this on Apple when the entire industry is going
| that way, and for a reason.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Apple is the world's most valuable corporation, they can deal
| with some criticism.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| It isn't Apple who's suffering the criticism, it's us who has
| to wade through low value, uninteresting, repetitive comments
| on HN which won't make a blind bit of difference to how Apple
| does anything, who suffer from it.
|
| Is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34879574 worth
| upvoting because "Apple can take the criticism"?
| howinteresting wrote:
| As long as everyone else has to suffer through the endless
| parade of praise Apple gets on here, yes.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| You don't have to, you can close thread. Instead of
| shitting in thread, then closing it.
| BirAdam wrote:
| The main problem is that e-waste is an ever increasing problem
| and companies like Apple are just creating more e-waste. Every
| single time a new Apple device is created, so is more e-waste.
| With a fully user serviceable device (of any category), less
| e-waste is created, and the time period of use is longer for
| many of those components. Personally, I do not care what people
| choose to buy, but everyone needs to become more aware of the
| true cost of their iTrinkets.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Not sure about that, there is a huge market for refurbished
| Apple products.
| OJFord wrote:
| > I felt like it? I'm not telling you what to do here, I'm just
| telling you my experience.
|
| Also, it was news to me that the screen and trackpad are so
| easily replaceable/upgradeable, that there's such a community
| around it.
|
| It's your comment that isn't adding anything.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Practically, I agree with you. If you don't need upgrade-
| ability, buy an Apple. These are the market options, choose and
| get on with your life.
|
| Ideologically, I disagree with you. If we keep allowing the
| removal of upgrade-ability to retain a foothold in our devices,
| we will be worse off in the long-run. My gut says we need to
| keep beating the drum and taking a stand or it will be bad for
| our future.
|
| But then again, I typed and wrote this on an M1 MacPro, because
| I've "chosen" and am "getting on with my life" like a true
| hypocrite.
| taylodl wrote:
| IDK. I think Apple's take is these are appliances. Do you
| worry about upgrading your refrigerator or microwave? That's
| where computing has gone. Back when every 3 years or so there
| were significant performance improvements necessitating an
| upgrade then the ability to upgrade was important. Now you
| can go 5-10 years before you find your performance lacking -
| which is also the lifetime of the hardware. Apple has made
| computers appliances.
|
| There may still be niche cases where such an approach is
| undesirable and that's okay - other vendors are filling that
| niche.
| softfalcon wrote:
| If it's an appliance, it should last as long and not become
| obsolete the same as my appliances do. Examples include:
|
| - Kenmore Dishwasher (12 years of age, still running
| perfectly)
|
| - Danby Deep freezer (9 years of age, still running
| perfectly)
|
| - Whirlpool Washer & Dryer (21 years of age, still running
| perfectly, minor self-service repairs)
|
| - Kenmore Refrigerator (11 years of age, still running
| perfectly)
|
| I have barely had to service these items, but when I did
| (washer and dryer) the parts were readily available and I
| was able to do the repair myself.
|
| When I compare this to my iPhone X, it is quite different:
|
| - 1 year in, needed a screen replacement due to a factory
| faulty digitizer
|
| - 3 years in, needed a battery replacement
|
| - 4 years in, phone is starting to get slow, heats up a lot
| when in use
|
| If I had to compare this to a "device" I own and use
| regularly, I would say it feels a lot more like a car and a
| lot less like my refrigerator. Based on what I'm reading,
| it would appear the lawyers and courts see it similarly and
| the only folks disagreeing are Apple/Microsoft/Google/John-
| Deere. Folks who don't want right-to-repair, which funnily
| enough, we have for cars and most appliances.
|
| Odd that all the sudden they want it otherwise when it's a
| "computer" but also... is now an "appliance".
|
| I wonder why they're so keen to make seem like it's an
| appliance? Is it perhaps advantageous for them to do so?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Just because Apple wants to increase their profit margins, by
| enforcing planned obsolescence and creating e-waste on scales
| that are beyond comprehension, does not mean that everyone else
| should just ignore it and shut up about it.
|
| It's not Apple's way or the highway, there is room for
| criticism and change.
|
| There are also millions of Apple customers who have no idea
| that Apple is actively going out of their way to ensure that
| the devices they own can't be upgraded. Pretending that
| everybody knows how strict Apple is about planned obsolescence
| is not a given.
| urda wrote:
| > by enforcing planned obsolescence
|
| This simply isn't true, as Apple supports their devices from
| phones to laptops far-far-far longer than their competitors.
| It's why iPhones last longer in the wild. They have
| demonstrated clear support to their customers through their
| actions.
| fsflover wrote:
| GNU/Linux-supported devices receive updates far-far-far
| longer, both laptops and phones.
| taylodl wrote:
| Then run Linux on your MacBook when you no longer have an
| Apple-supported Mac OS, which is 10 years. Lots of people
| have.
| justinator wrote:
| _> by enforcing planned obsolescence_
|
| Their support for software updates and security patches in
| older models is actually quite good. They've also made a ton
| of strides in the right direction when it comes to repair-
| ability of their phone line.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I can run Windows or Linux on any computer for decades if I
| want to, and I have. Software is not the issue. The issue
| is that Macs are artificially limited by hardware, not the
| software that they run, although macOS deprecation can be a
| limitation. Computers generally become obsolete because of
| hardware limitations, and Macs have had had limitations
| imposed by soldered components like memory for more than a
| decade, now.
| kube-system wrote:
| Non-Apple laptops have also been slowly moving to more
| soldered components. This will likely continue as memory
| timings and power consumption requirements continue to
| tighten. I remember when you could replace the CPU in
| laptops, however the benefit to doing so didn't keep many
| systems out of landfills.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Can you run modern windows on a machine from 2003? I
| doubt it would install.
|
| Can you run winXP on a modern machine? Possibly, but most
| people probably shouldn't as there's no support for it
| any longer.
| justinator wrote:
| _> I can run Windows or Linux on any computer for decades
| if I want to, and I have._
|
| That's super cool, if that's what you're in to, but other
| than a small percentage of geeks, there's limited utility
| to do that for the majority of Macbook users. If you want
| to run a decades-old computer, then absolutely yes: there
| are much better computers to choose from, and at a good
| price (mostly free).
| softfalcon wrote:
| They do provide decent support. It's not perfect, but it
| far outpaces most hardware vendors out there.
|
| As for repair-ability of devices. Let's be real here.
| Repair-ability is garbage all around and every major vendor
| (including Apple) is doing token gestures at best to make
| the situation easier. Take one look at the last minute
| changes Apple/Google/Microsoft forced into the recent New
| York right-to-repair bills and it's obvious they have
| absolutely zero interest in furthering repair-ability of
| any of their devices.
|
| Any positives you hear in the media about repair-ability
| are all a song-and-dance so they can sneak another
| "security measure" into their devices that makes it
| impossible to order parts online and fix your phone
| yourself.
| jrmg wrote:
| _There are also millions of Apple customers who have no idea
| that Apple is actively going out of their way to ensure that
| the devices they own can 't be upgraded._
|
| I think it's way more likely they're trying to create devices
| that are lighter and more reliable.*
|
| Does anyone here really believe that the vast majority of
| users would ever upgrade a laptop? I don't mean the folks
| here, we're outliers - although I think this is true of
| _most_ of us too.
|
| They get one that does what they need, and buy a new one when
| modern software won't run on it well. It's really unlikely
| that they even could upgrade it sensibly, because at that
| point most every component in the new laptop will be
| noticeably better and so it'll be better to get a new one
| with all-better components.
|
| If what I said above is true, the non-upgradable laptop is
| the more responsible option - it's less resource-intensive to
| produce, lighter to transport, and probably more energy
| efficient in use.
|
| *Edit: and cheaper!
| xenadu02 wrote:
| The vast majority of upgradeable machines are never actually
| upgraded. Basically no laptop can have its CPU or GPU
| upgraded to begin with.
|
| Upgradability is not free. It has a weight and volume cost.
| Depending on implementation it can also have a performance
| cost - for example a user-swappable battery means a 30-40%
| reduction in battery capacity OR a corresponding increase in
| weight+volume. For another example SODIMM slots take up space
| and are larger than surface mount soldered DRAM chips... I
| mean that should be obvious right?
|
| Conspiracy theorists are gonna see conspiracy theories.
|
| Engineers look at ancient "luggables", imagine a future where
| Star Trek pads exist, then incrementally iterate reducing
| power consumption on 200 different individual components,
| shrinking the volume of 27 different assemblies, and making
| thousands of difficult choices - all of which has to yield a
| sellable product today so there will even be a chance to
| improve in the future. There is no magic. You can't wave your
| wand and make the future week-long battery life laptop that
| weighs nothing appear out of nowhere. Somewhere along the way
| you have to decide if you are going to keep the space for the
| extra connectors and SSD controller or if you're going to
| integrate everything to shave off some weight and reduce
| volume, along with cut power consumption by removing a single
| chip. The nay-sayers claim the gains are minimal for those
| specific changes but you can make that claim for most of the
| changes made along the way to get from a luggable to the
| modern MacBook Air. Some people really needed SCSI ports and
| are still angry they're gone. If everyone listened to those
| people laptops would have the weight of bricks and get 20
| minutes on battery.
|
| History has proven those with the engineer mindset are more
| likely to be successful than those with the conspiracy
| mindset but it's up to each person to choose.
|
| (Of course you can also make a living filling a niche - the
| world is large)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I get people preferring upgradeable hardware, but find the
| notion that Apple went non-upgradeable to squeeze more
| money out of people to be among the sillier ideas people
| have about Apple. There are so very many other ways they
| could be doing that, but are instead doing the _opposite_.
|
| I don't think they cared enough about capturing a little
| more business from the surely single-digit percentage of
| people who ever replaced anything on their laptop,
| including the battery, to radically redesign the whole
| product line. Especially when there are other plausible
| reasons they might want to do that.
|
| I don't know how people get these ideas so stuck in their
| head, with such confidence, that they post about them on
| Web forums. Whatever evil Apple may in-fact get up to, this
| one doesn't even pass the smell test.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I might disagree here on some points.
|
| Most Apple users aren't power users, and they will run their
| computer to the ground or close too. I have entourage still
| using their 8-year-old iMac daily.
|
| For power users that buy Apple, they tend to keep it for a
| few years, but they don't throw it away. They resell it, and
| Apple laptops keep their value well over time. So it's
| lifespan is extended, and the new owner didn't buy a new
| laptop. And we're back into my first point.
|
| I have family/friend to whom I sold/gave Apple computers, and
| they're still using them even on 10-year-old laptops (MBA
| core i5, MBP core i5).
|
| So yes, you're right, but it's not all in absolutism.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > enforcing planned obsolescence and creating e-waste on
| scales that are beyond comprehension
|
| Last time I saw someone study it, the average ownership time
| for a Macbook was double the average for a PC laptop.
| Anecdotally, I spend a _lot_ less money on electronics when I
| 'm in the Apple ecosystem (phones & laptops) than I do when
| I'm on an Android/PC kick. The mild savings in capital outlay
| is quickly dwarfed by the absolutely abysmal resale value and
| quality.
| sockaddr wrote:
| How do they create more ewaste though? Like many others
| report my experience is that apple products routinely last
| multiple times longer than other tech.
|
| I only just last week retired a MacBook bought in 2013, and
| it still worked just fine. Now someone else bought it and is
| using it.
|
| Things like PCs and android phones usually have some
| combination of cheap materials, bloat/crap ware or poorly
| designed software stacks that don't age well.
|
| I used to own PCs, buy android phones, etc and the difference
| in longevity is incredible.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _How do they create more ewaste though? Like many others
| report my experience is that apple products routinely last
| multiple times longer than other tech._
|
| Compared to some other tech, you're correct that the
| e-waste is comparable or better. However, the comparison
| above is Apple to Apple. The other tech companies are
| irrelevant for this. Apple has full ability to dramatically
| lower the amount of e-waste their products by making them
| more upgradeable/repairable, and they choose not to in
| order to maximize profit at the expense of everyone else.
| It absolutely doesn't have to be that way, but it is, and
| IMHO calling this out and being critical is 100% fair, much
| like you would call out an oil and gas company who was
| intentionally generating waste to maximize their profit,
| regardless of how they compared to other oil and gas
| companies.
|
| But it's also very fair to point out what you've pointed
| out, that compared to others Apple is pretty good, so this
| is not a compelling reason to avoid buying Apple products
| if you're going to buy a different one that generates just
| as much or more e-waste.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The only things that are easily repairable in most
| laptops are the SSD and RAM, but those very rarely fail
| anyway so it makes essentially no difference to e-waste.
|
| It's _annoying_. But that 's about it.
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| In theory, Apple could still offer products that last many
| years AND are upgradeable, so that they only get partially
| converted to waste.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's not really true, there are no sockets for LPDDR4X
| or LPDDR5.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a double-edged sword. Macbooks are sturdy in some
| areas (bottom case assembly) but fragile in others (display
| assembly and keyboard). The e-waste partially stems from a
| lack of repairability; common issues like a cracked display
| or shorted Logic Board capacitor will run you upwards of
| $500. Not because those individual parts are so expensive,
| but because the entire display/motherboard assembly has to
| be replaced. Perhaps that does get salvaged with Apple's
| first-party reclamation programs, but that just means the
| wastefulness is passed on to the customer in the form of a
| surcharge. It doesn't fix the vast majority of devices that
| will never return to Apple either.
|
| Apple's absolute authority over the platform ruins it in
| the end. Simple regulation like forcing them to add user-
| servicable storage would prevent M1 devices from getting
| bricked after hitting their TBW limit. It was a no-brainer
| for John Deere, so why not the largest company in America?
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| I have an early 2013 15" MBP now running Ubuntu and a late
| 2013 13" MBP and it is running the latest macOS that is
| supported on it and Windows 11. I have a new M1 MBP but
| those other two machines are just slow compared to this.
| They are otherwise going strong in their new roles.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This is the main reason I only buy Apple hardware as well.
| The moment you open the box on a PC desktop, it's basically
| worthless beyond what you could part it out for. A Mac will
| maintain >50% of it's retail price for years.
| antiterra wrote:
| A quick glance at the market for clamshell g3 iBooks
| shows how irrationally well Apple computers can hold
| value.
| DrThunder wrote:
| "Ignoring" it means you buy an alternative product. As OP
| states there are plenty of alternatives. Capitalism works and
| money talks. Put your money elsewhere. If someone provides a
| better alternative than apple, the problem fixes itself. This
| is best course of action for you to change apple.
|
| Unless you're talking about some forced government
| legislation to make apple do things the way you want... and
| that's fraught with all sorts of other issues.
|
| These companies aren't going to listen to your whining. They
| just want your money. Give it to them or don't. Not
| everything is some social justice activity.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm using a 2014 MBP and an iMac from 2013. Feel no reason to
| upgrade at all on those machines. I'm less happy with my 2G
| (2018?) iPad Pro, which...while it still works great, the
| battery is clearly discharging too quickly.
|
| I've never had a Lenovo (at work) that was good past 2 years.
| Which one is creating more e-waste?
| lopis wrote:
| > a laptop that you can upgrade
|
| When you want to "upgrade" from a broken SSD to a functional
| one, you still need to replace basically the whole device. So
| yeah, we need to continue to complain until companies stop
| being anti-user and anti-repair.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to defend apple in this case?
| elbigbad wrote:
| My read wasn't a defense of Apple and in fact I agree with
| the criticism. My read was that it's tired and dull to keep
| harping on exactly the same feedback for a decade as though
| it's unique.
|
| Clickbait headline "I replaced my MacBook with a thinkpad
| _gasp_ " then people click thinking there will be something
| interesting, but it's the same old stuff.
| ProAm wrote:
| > My read was that it's tired and dull to keep harping on
| exactly the same feedback for a decade as though it's
| unique.
|
| I hear what you are saying but just because something is
| bad for a long time doesn't make it acceptable just because
| its been a long time.
|
| Will Apple ever change? Nope, their share price depends on
| it not changing.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Who says it has to be unique to be bad?
| eptcyka wrote:
| The validity of the feedback doesn't change with the times
| necessarily - it's still just as stupid to not be able to
| extract a drive out of a laptop now as it was 10 years ago.
| If so, the author of the post hasn't put forward higher
| priority qualms to complain about, so to me it definitely
| sounds like they are just defending Apple. And if they
| were, I just want to know why.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| The complaints will go away when the issue is fixed,
| presumably. If Apple doesn't want to fix it then that's on
| them, not on the people highlighting that Apple are,
| indeed, still being pricks.
| aftergibson wrote:
| My work laptop is an M1 Macbook, if I could, I would happily move
| to my personal Thinkpad x230 running Kubuntu.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| 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 hours in airport,
| entire plane ride (10 hours), uber 1 hour home. Constant use, 60%
| battery life used.
|
| However, my usage is probably atypical. All of my machines, even
| my phones, belong to a big tailscale vpn. That means everything
| is accessible everywhere, no matter where I am. Remote
| development is a simple as VS Code Remote SSH. Files/media/etc
| are also readily available.
|
| This is a thin client approach, and really opens up my options.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Do you ever find yourself without reliable internet connection
| and unable to develop/watch media/etc.? Any issues with data
| caps?
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Not really. I am very far away from home right now - live in
| SF bay area, on a trip in northern Alaska. Have 2 cellphone
| providers, Google Fi and Verizon. Between the two even when
| in Denali national forest I had cell reception. Spent the
| afternoon yesterday writing code, had zero issues.
|
| 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.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Fate is funny. I just received an alert that there's a
| power outage at home. UPS is keeping things alive for a
| bit, but given PG&E's track record.......
|
| Annoying!
| cameldrv wrote:
| Regarding the non upgradable battery, one thing a lot of people
| don't know is that you can charge your MacBook with a USB power
| bank. The typical phone power bank only puts out 10W, but this is
| usually enough to maintain the internal charge while you use it
| on an Air, and to at least very significantly extend the lifetime
| on the Pro. This has come in handy for me on a long flight where
| I unexpectedly didn't have power at my seat.
| kube-system wrote:
| For a little bit more money, there are a good number of of
| power banks that output just as much as normal Air wall
| charger.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| 15W at 3A 5V actually is the maximum over usb-a. USB-PD
| powerbanks are a thing these days but it's useful in a pinch.
| jrmg wrote:
| This is actually enough to power the laptop and trickle
| charge! I've had a M1 Pro and now have an M2 Air plugged into
| my weirdo USB-C monitor that only provides 15W power(!), and
| unless I'm heavily compiling all day (like change-compile-
| change trial-and-error), the laptop does slowly charge. Even
| on the heavy use days its never actually run all the way
| down.
| pella wrote:
| > Intel(r) Core(tm) i5-8350U CPU @ 1.70GHz x 8
|
| this is only 4core/8thread
|
| https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/124969/...
| fmajid wrote:
| And Intel's multithreading is notoriously weaker than AMD's
| SMT.
| dontbesquare wrote:
| Linux is now ready to run on modern Macs. Linux 6.2: The first
| mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1 chips arrives:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-6-2-the-first-mainstream...
| themadturk wrote:
| Macs don't have butterfly keyboards anymore. I don't want to know
| the amount of crap that has drifted or fallen into my M1 MBA
| keyboard over the last couple of years.
| browningstreet wrote:
| 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 for $99 and when it came back
| (3 days later), they also replaced the motherboard for some
| reason. I don't know why, but basically, aside from the screen
| and the keyboard, it's a new machine. I still use it today -- the
| only thing I can't really do on it is edit 4K video.
|
| Two years ago I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son. A
| couple of weeks ago the keyboard stopped working. We bought a
| replacement keyboard and swapped it out. Still didn't work. So,
| something on the motherboard. When we called and asked about
| getting it fixed, they said it wasn't in warranty anymore and the
| price to diagnose and replace the broken part couldn't be
| estimated, nor could they estimate how long it would take. We'd
| have to ship it to a third-party repair center. So my son is
| walking around his college campus with a Lenovo laptop and an
| external keyboard, for a laptop we bought 2 years ago for almost
| $2,000.
|
| So, no. No Lenovo for me. And given my previous stupendously
| negative experience with Dell (they couldn't repair 2 brand new
| machines that were shipped to us with broken WiFi and took so
| long to declare it unrepairable the machines couldn't be returned
| either -- two machines bought together had to be reported in
| separate calls to tech support and the third party tech support
| people who came to the house weren't very knowledgable -- calls
| disputing the non-returnable declaration took so long to return
| and were bounced among so many unhelpful people at Dell
| Headquarters they basically convinced me to give up, buy third-
| party wifi cards and live without Bluetooth in these machines),
| no Dell XPS laptops for me either.
|
| On those experiences, I'll only spend my own money on Apple
| laptop hardware.
| lars_francke wrote:
| Opposite experience for me. Had a MacBook for ~10 years and I
| had various hardware failures, every time you have to book an
| appointment at the genius bar first to try and convince them
| that it's really an issue. Go into the shop, then you have to
| wait for 7-21 days for it to get fixed for an unknown price and
| because it's all connected replacing the rubber feet means
| changing the whole bottom case etc. Then you have to go in and
| pick it up again. This is in Germany where a Apple Store might
| not be around the corner.
|
| And yes, because I relied on it for business I spent the money
| on their Joint Venture program to get faster service and a
| replacement laptop (but only if the Apple Store in question had
| one available which was never the case for me which is
| ridiculous). Until they canceled the program.
|
| Lenovo instead: Bought premium support, had an issue, someone
| physically came to my house to replace the memory at my kitchen
| table the next day.
|
| Apple - in my experience - is not great for freelancers and
| small businesses. It might be good for private people and large
| businesses.
|
| I hate the ceremony and the Apple Store experience.
| 7speter wrote:
| I bought a t470s on ebay for 100 dollars during the holidays
| and I'm blown away that its mostly an intel era macbook air
| (was there a 2017 model?) with upgradeable ram 16gb (for 35
| dollars), nvme, and a replaceable battery.
|
| Gaming pcs, until about a year or two ago, are pretty much
| desktop replacement pcs.
| telchior wrote:
| I switched from a Macbook to PC laptop a few years ago. I'd say
| there are two rules to making that switch comfortably.
|
| Rule #1: do a ton of research and comparison shopping to be
| certain you're making a good PC buy. These huge brands like
| Lenovo, Dell, Acer, etc churn out so many laptops, and the
| build quality varies wildly between them. For my process, I
| completely factored out most brands: absolutely no shopping for
| Acer, MSI, Dell, Toshiba, etc. They're just too much of a
| roulette, unless you know a specific model that fits your needs
| (like the Thinkpad!). At the time I was shopping I was only
| looking at Asus, Alienware and Gigabyte (not sure if they're
| all still good brands in 2023).
|
| Rule #2: be able to do basic small maintenance. I ended up
| buying a Gigabyte laptop that's still running perfectly 5 years
| later, and it IS a gaming laptop with all the heat / cooling
| issues that implies. I've had to replace the SSD, the battery
| (heat degradation), didn't replace but had to oil and reseat
| the fans, repasted CPU / GPU, and make various software tweaks.
| A computer shop could do the same, just like the Genius bar,
| but it just makes things so much less stressful when you can do
| the kind of quick maintenance that Apple so strongly
| discourages.
| ndiddy wrote:
| In my experience, Lenovo is basically two different companies
| for their Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad machines. If you have a
| Thinkpad and have a warranty issue, they'll overnight you a
| shipping box with an overnight label. I had an issue with mine
| that needed a motherboard replacement and I was only without my
| laptop for 3 days. Meanwhile, I had a similar issue with a non-
| Thinkpad laptop and they emailed me a UPS ground shipping
| label, expected me to provide my own box, and quoted a
| turnaround time of several weeks. I ended up buying another of
| the same model of laptop and returning the defective one
| instead.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I consider Apple that they don't sell "non-Thinkpad"
| products. That's how I can easily pass the spect sheets which
| promise better-than-apple-for-much-less and pay a bit more
| and be happy about it.
|
| It's almost as if you get what you pay for.
| nextos wrote:
| In Europe, even ThinkPad support is atrocious. It's done
| through some third-party resellers.
|
| Pricing is also pretty atrocious compared to the US, which is
| sad as there are not that many alternative laptop brands with
| good Linux support.
| unxdfa wrote:
| It's fine in the UK. Not sure about mainland Europe.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Prices in Switzerland are ok, to not say cheaper than
| elsewhere, but support...Unless in warranty, is
| atrocious. They asked me to send my laptop for
| "diagnostic" with unknown cost when I requested how to
| buy the part (out of stock on their website) to replace
| it.
| mst wrote:
| 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 :)
| unxdfa wrote:
| By the time it's out of warranty you can afford a fully
| working parts mule off ebay to leave lying around.
| okasaki wrote:
| Maybe it depends where you are?
|
| I have a Lenovo gaming laptop and I have a 4 year warranty
| with on-site service.
| unxdfa wrote:
| Spot on.
|
| Comparing to Apple (I run both Lenovo and apple kit) I've
| lost two bits of hardware with apple for multiple days on
| repairs in the UK. A friend just got told that there's a 2
| month turnaround on his custom M1 MBP 16 which has a logic
| board problem.
|
| That scared the shit out of me enough to throw the money in
| on a Lenovo T14 gen 3 with NBD on site repairs. If I sell my
| apple kit I can afford to buy another identical machine and
| stick it on the shelf. I'm still PS120 up on my mac and
| mitigated a whole bunch of risks.
|
| A couple of T490's is probably good enough for me to be fair.
| matwood wrote:
| It's odd to me that Apple has never offered a 24h
| turnaround (or cross ship) higher tier support package.
| This was a hold up for businesses using Apple machines for
| a long time. I guess enough employees started requesting
| Apple machines eventually getting businesses to offer them
| anyway.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> It 's odd to me that Apple has never offered a 24h
| turnaround (or cross ship) higher tier support package._
|
| They used to have an even more exotic AppleCare tier than
| that for Xserve customers - onsite hardware support
| _within 4 hours_ if you had a problem during the business
| day. I don't remember exactly how much it cost but I want
| to say it was less than $500.
|
| Remarkably, the old product page for it is still up on
| B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/283804-REG/Ap
| ple_M892...
| Symbiote wrote:
| In relevant countries / locations, that's a fairly
| standard option from Dell, HP etc for servers.
| piperswe wrote:
| AppleCare+ does cross-ship in many situations
| nobaddays wrote:
| They offer "express replacements" with applecare, I did
| it for my broken ipad. They overnighted me a new one and
| I sent the old one back to them in the included
| box/label.
| chx wrote:
| Not only that, even as an individual you can buy on site
| warranty and they will come to your apartment to fix your
| ThinkPad if you have any problems.
| cluoma wrote:
| I was in the same situation with a Macbook Air 2011. At about 9
| years old I needed to replace the battery, but got turned away
| from the Apple Store because it was 'too old'.
|
| I tried buying a replacement battery online but it only worked
| for a short time before it stopped charging all-together.
|
| Left a really sour taste in my mouth because the battery was
| the only thing stopping me from using an otherwise perfectly
| fine piece of hardware.
| w0m wrote:
| It all comes down to what you want and what you buy.
|
| I've had my 11" MBA in service since it launched. I did have to
| pull off OSX because (it became garbage); but the hardware has
| been solid for a decade+ now.
|
| My 2019 rMBP lasted ~2.5 years before an OSX update came in and
| cooked it ~1w outside of corporate Apple Care expiring on it
| (see: I was told to scrap it).
|
| I've also had a Dell tech sitting at my kitchen table replacing
| a bad motherboard the same day the laptop failed to post; ~8h
| turnaround 'Dead' to 'Working fine'.
|
| You get what you buy and what you pay for to a large extent.
| Much of Apples reputation is that they simply don't sell a
| cheap gaming laptop.
| toastgrave wrote:
| I disagree. My office have me 15 year old Lenovo E440s when
| COVID hit and we all worked from home. Some of them are going
| on close to 20 years and I've had few problems other than
| slowness. A few had WiFi fail but other than that ran strong
| yenda wrote:
| A personal anecdote, I've had the the complete opposite
| experience with Asus and Lenovo laptops lasting forever, not
| even needing any sort of repair, while my 2007 MacBook pro died
| because of a known flaw on Nvidia GPU after less than 4 year
| and the fix costed as much as a new laptop
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >Lenovo gaming laptop
|
| No.
|
| Thinkpad laptop for work, gaming desktop @ home.
| biftek wrote:
| Apple's customer service is really unrivaled in the computer
| repair space. I had a similar experience with my MacBook Pro in
| the past, my display stopped working, dropped it off at a store
| and picked it up a couple days later. They had replaced
| basically the entire laptop sans the plate on the bottom.
|
| Tried getting HP to fix a monitor with a defective port and was
| going to have to ship it to them at my own cost with no
| estimates of the repair time or cost. I just went out and
| bought a Samsung.
|
| If you have the time and knowledge to repair your own computers
| like the author it can be a fun hobby, I also have two custom
| built PCs, but I don't do work on them for a reason.
| wl wrote:
| I've had Lenovo send a tech over within 24 hours and do a
| repair on my kitchen table. The several day wait typical of
| Apple in-store-repair is glacial in comparison. And that's
| assuming the Apple store doesn't ship it out to the depot for
| a repair where the reimaging-happy techs are likely to impose
| a couple extra hours of restoring from backup when you get
| your machine back in your hands.
| biftek wrote:
| I've never dealt with or owned a Lenovo but it sounds like
| they're also good based on others replies.
|
| Do you have to pay extra or have a business plan with
| Lenovo to get that service tho?
| tomxor wrote:
| > I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son
|
| These are not comparable. There are wildly different quality of
| laptops under the Lenovo brand. A ton of them are complete
| crap. Apple simply doesn't sell anything like that. The author
| is comparing to a Thinkpad specifically.
|
| Additionally, the 10 years old Apple that made your macbook is
| a very different company from today. Although they are still a
| premium brand, the reliability and replaceability of parts is
| completely different. I have one of the first unibody MBPs from
| 2009, and ran it for almost 10 years (although I had to switch
| to freebsd and linux by the end because of Apple). That laptop
| was incredibly sturdy, and parts were reasonably replaceable,
| keyboard lasted 10 years before getting squishy. Battery was a
| terrible hot pocket but replaceable without screws! back then
| it was all SATA so I upgraded to an intel SSD from before they
| sold their controllers to samsung - also in a user serviceable
| compartment next to the battery.
|
| None of these things are true of Apple laptops today.
| mwint wrote:
| I'll give you the user-serviceability point, but not the
| longevity point. I would bet lots of money that my 2021 14"
| MBP will still be very usable in 2031.
|
| (Maybe not by me, but that's only because I'll succumb to the
| urge to buy something new and shiny and tax deductible in a
| few years.)
| tomxor wrote:
| Maybe, if you are lucky. Not so sure you will be running
| MacOS though, max version support seems pretty arbitrary
| with Apple historically.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| tax deductible ?
| Vrondi wrote:
| IDK, the last Thinkpad I had, I used for a decade, then
| passed it on to a relative who used it for a few more years
| before something finally broke. Have also owned a Lenovo
| Yoga series laptop, and it's absolutely not in the same
| category at all as a Thinkpad.
| BanazirGalbasi wrote:
| > I'll give you the user-serviceability point, but not the
| longevity point.
|
| I just replaced my 2012 Thinkpad T430s (which I bought
| second-hand!) with a 2019 x390. Part of it is that the T430
| became a loaner that I have gifted to a friend who needed a
| laptop for light paperwork, but also the battery on it (and
| any replacements I could find) had a pretty short lifespan,
| about 2.5 hours at best. The laptop was still very usable,
| but I've become too tied to my desk and my desktop lately
| and I wanted to be able to work with more mobility and not
| worry about having an outlet constantly available.
|
| All that is just to say that Thinkpads, even post-IBM era
| ones, have the longevity you expect from a Macbook.
| Unfortunately, the user-serviceability has also gone
| downhill, with soldered-on memory being common and now the
| charging port is a USB-C that is built onto the
| motherboard.
| touisteur wrote:
| But the T430 us legendary like that. I have written many
| scrapping and alerting bots, but the only one still
| running is the 'find me any new refurbished T430 trove
| nearby' and haul ass to buy some. I love this machine so
| much I'd like to retire with a stock of them, praying
| I'll still be able to browse whatever the slow web will
| be then and code the night away as I've always done with
| this beauty.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Yeah it's sad but the butterfly keyboard generation of MBPs
| had such issues. Keyboard aside, USB-C ports burned out /
| stopped working all the time. Battery life was just OK on
| Intel.
|
| The latest gen is better thanks to MagSafe and Mx chips help
| yield much better battery life.
| danielfoster wrote:
| If Lenovo put their name on it, it's absolutely reasonable to
| blame them.
| tombert wrote:
| I will agree that it's not quite as easy to
| fix/service/upgrade as it used to, but I bought my Macbook
| Pro (Intel i9) in 2020, used it daily since then, thrown it
| in a backpack and had to thrashed around in airports
| repeated, and the thing still works about as well as when I
| purchased it.
|
| I really do think Apple does a reasonably good job at making
| sure stuff lasts. It hurt to pay nearly 4 grand for a
| computer three years ago, but I suspect I'll get at least
| another five years out of it.
| asmor wrote:
| The Legion 5/5 Pro/7 are very solid as workstations in my
| experience, and with the exception of the keyboard,
| everything I would want to service is accessible. I've
| switched the memory, added new SSDs and even repasted my
| Legion 7 Gen6. I've even been able to run VFIO virtualized
| Windows on these machines.
|
| You're also exempt from the Lenovo panel lottery.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| I had Apple quote me $900 to replace a failed screen (no
| visible damage, but no image either) and tell me that they
| weren't sure it would even work because of "liquid damage" to
| the mainboard. I can assure you that the computer never got
| wet. I bought a replacement screen from ifixit for less than
| half the price and installed it myself in an hour.
| focusedone wrote:
| I've purchased a lot of computers from Lenovo and other brands.
| The service and parts availability difference between the
| Thinkpad/Station/Centre models and _everything else_ Lenovo
| makes is vast. The build quality between Thinkpads and other
| Lenovo models is also stark.
|
| Parts, firmware updates, repair manuals...even warranty
| extensions for 5+ year old Thinkpads is totally normal.
|
| For computers other than Think branded things that Lenovo
| makes, they're functionally abandoned ASAP. They make some
| innovative and well-engineered things, but outside the Think
| line everything is basically a disposable commodity machine.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >Parts, firmware updates, repair manuals...even warranty
| extensions for 5+ year old Thinkpads is totally normal.
|
| They still have the hardware maintenance manual online for my
| 30 year old Thinkpad 350C.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Regarding Lenovo:
|
| I only ever bought T series laptops from them and they all
| still work flawlessly, the oldest being a T420 currently used
| by my mom who needs a computer about once a month to visit a
| website.
|
| On those experiences, I'll only spend my own money on Lenovo
| laptop hardware. ;-)
| jefc1111 wrote:
| I'm a self-confessed Thinkpad fanboi so very happy to
| contribute my story. I bought the laptop I am typing on now
| (P51s) on eBay 4 years ago for ~PS600 with a couple of years of
| warranty remaining. During a covid lockdown it developed a
| motherboard fault and they sent someone out the next day to my
| house to fix it onsite. With Apple I was always told to take it
| to a service centre. I mean, that's what I signed up for I
| guess, but the damn thing cost me PS2000. I think there is not
| enough emphasis on the price differentials in these
| conversations. In fact, my repair story is kind of irrelevant
| to my point which is that for me the availability, cost and
| repairability(?) of these machines is key. I have an IT cabinet
| with spare parts, PSUs, clonky docking stations, and have
| managed to get most of my family onto Thinkpads so we have a
| pretty robust setup whereby if somebody has a problem we can
| probably sort it within an hour or two, either with a
| replacement part or a replacement machine. I am a bit envious
| of recent Apple silicon for battery life but stubbornly
| sticking with my old Thinkpads for now!
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| You know what they say. Windows for your gaming desktop, Mac
| for your laptop, and Linux for your servers.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Not so much anymore.
|
| WSL2 under Windows is very good these days, you can run ML
| tasks without much overhead, and Windows 11 has an x server
| that allows graphical applications to run from WSL2. So for
| home development, all you really need is Windows (if you
| game, if you don't or run games that work well under Linux,
| Linux is the better choice).
|
| For laptop, it very much varies by use case. For general
| higher level coding and web browsing, M1/M2s work very well.
| For more specialized use cases, Linux is simply better than
| OS X.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| have you seen WSL ? Windows is very compelling for your
| laptop
| browningstreet wrote:
| Agreed on the Linux for your servers bit, for sure.
| bradwood wrote:
| Really? I thought it was Arch for your desktop, Arch for your
| laptop and RHEL for your servers? /s
| AnnualDegree99 wrote:
| There are some people in Arch communities that use Arch on
| servers too and think that stability is not necessary.
| bradwood wrote:
| Well, if you're doing immutable infrastructure, it's
| probably perfectly reasonable. Not sure about rolling
| releases on production gear though.
| baq wrote:
| I'm now using a Macbook Pro (3 months give or take) after
| being on windows HPs and the hardware is excellent but macOS
| itself... not great by any means. Windows+WSL2 is a better
| developer experience and I'm honestly surprised as I expected
| it to be the other way around. Granted to make windows usable
| I had to install tons of tools, but the same is true for the
| Mac!
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| It's crazy how good apples are. I have a 2013 MacBook Air which
| I replaced batteries now after 10 years. Still as fast and
| snappy as day 1. It is crazy.
| pmontra wrote:
| I can't say the same thing about my HP ZBook from 2014.
| Reason: it's snappier now after I upgraded the RAM from 16 to
| 32 GB and swapped the HDD for two SSDs years ago.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The Air didn't receive any hardware upgrades though, apart
| from a new battery.
| pmontra wrote:
| I didn't check the specs of that Air, but is it
| upgradeable? If it is, maybe you could make it faster
| too.
|
| Anyway, there is no reason for your Air to be slower
| after 10 years. The hardware is the same. Either Apple
| makes a slower OS for it or it will be as fast as ever.
|
| In my case I moved to Debian two months ago after years
| of Ubuntu. It was fast enough but it feels faster now.
| The fan didn't turn on often but it's even more silent
| now. Maybe less stuff running in background or a newer
| kernel and graphic driver, who knows.
|
| On the other side, my friend's cheap Windows laptops
| become slower and slower until they buy a new one. I'm
| not sure to know somebody with a 2000 Euro Windows
| laptop. Maybe it's different.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I use my 2011 13" MacBook Pro daily, though the OS is so out
| of date I don't log into my Apple ID with it or even Chrome.
| Media consumption, ssh to servers, web browsing is all super
| fast still. I even use Parsec to game on it connecting to my
| PC in the basement, it does so perfectly. I replaced the
| battery twice, but otherwise it's been issue-free. 16gb ram
| and an SSD gave it a new life.
|
| Some stuff the dual core i5 just can't handle anymore, but it
| won't be e-waste any time soon.
| jm4 wrote:
| I've owned a few MacBook Pros and I now use a ThinkPad X1
| Extreme. I paid for the support plans on all of them.
|
| The Macs were generally very good until the generation prior to
| the M1. That was the worst laptop I've ever owned. I had to
| repair it multiple times - keyboard multiple times and also a
| motherboard that went bad - and I was without it for days each
| time. Not to mention, I also had to make an appointment, often
| days away, just to drop it off. The AppleCare experience with
| laptops was pathetic. To be fair, they've done a fantastic job
| on the phones and iPads I've had to bring in.
|
| My ThinkPad's touchpad started flaking out so I called about a
| repair. They had someone at my house the next day and I was
| only without the laptop for about 15 minutes. It was a night
| and day difference between AppleCare and Lenovo's premium
| support. There's nothing sexy about this ThinkPad and the
| hardware isn't as good as the latest Macs, but the Linux
| support is flawless and I know I can count on Lenovo to provide
| good service.
| abrouwers wrote:
| I bought a framework just for this sort of peace. I really long
| for apple hardware, but given the price, I'd be afraid of
| breaking things.
| krasin wrote:
| +1 to Framework. I self-repaired my kid's laptop twice
| (spills; once I had to swap the keyboard, and another time -
| motherboard), and it's being straightforward to fix.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I think you got exceededly lucky with your MBA repair. And
| honestly it's a bit tough to believe they replaced the
| motherboard for free 3ish years after they typically refuse to
| stop servicing the device entirely for anything besides the
| battery and have declared the device obsolete. Had it hit the
| 11 year mark they probably would have offered to recycle it and
| maybe give you $50 off a new one.
|
| I've had extremely bad luck with Apple support and products.
| The last time I had to do some ridiculous process to prove it
| was still under warranty and they still tried to pawn it off on
| the retailer.
| wingspar wrote:
| Had an OLD iPhone that needed a battery. Apple ended up
| replacing the whole thing with a refurb, as apparently the
| replacement battery process went sideways and broke the
| circuit board.
|
| They broke it and made it right.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Dell (they couldn't repair 2 brand new machines that were
| shipped to us with broken WiFi and took so long to declare it
| unrepairable
|
| Didn't they use socketed WiFi cards? On every non hair thin
| laptop I could crack open, I always found the WiFi card to be
| mounted on a MiniPCI or newer socket, so unless that problem
| was due to the mainboard, it was just a matter of replacing the
| WiFi card and install the relevant driver.
|
| Also, if you know how to solder and have a really thin laptop
| with one available internal USB port, you can fit a small
| module such as this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225197524670
| Complete it with a small pcb antenna and you have a new WiFi
| card. Very useful also for small SBCs which beside the usual
| USB sockets usually have internal USB ports pins.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Socketed with a piece of conductive metal resting on at least
| one of the antenna leads. Quality stuff. (It's possible I
| just had bad luck.)
| loufe wrote:
| Everyone has their own unique experience. I bought an IdeaPad
| in 2012 and to this day it is working well enough that I
| haven't replaced it (though when I'm home I have a modern tower
| I built 2 years ago). I could not be happier with the build
| quality and longevity. I must have 10 000 hours absolute
| minimum on that device, I really wish there was a counter in
| the BIOS I could check.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I have a ThinkPad R61 from 2007 that still works. It's a
| core2duo 1.83ghz with 4gb of DDR2 and GMA950 graphics so even
| with a really lightweight Linux install it's basically
| useless-- but it boots right up and the battery still works.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| 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
| the rest the battery was really just for hopping from one
| outlet to the next (I don 't know if Apple laptops were like
| that at the time, but I do know that no subsequent laptop let
| me feel like I could leave my power brick behind when getting
| up from my desk until I got a Macbook)
|
| If I ever go back to PC-land, it'll be to an underpowered
| device from a business-oriented line. Worked once, so, maybe
| it'll work again...
|
| > Two years ago I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son.
|
| This especially is a big part of your problem. Discrete
| graphics card in a laptop = 2x the problems--and that holds
| even for Apple (in the Intel days, anyway). Gaming-marketed on
| top of that? Add another 1x for 3x the rate of trouble over
| baseline. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
| lrem wrote:
| I agree with Apple being the king of the hill... But it
| really isn't all that bad on the other side. There are some
| Windows laptops that will last you a work day on battery,
| albeit none of them can do considerable compute. I've seen
| some non-Apple hardware last for 5-ish years all right too.
|
| And if all you need from the laptop is Chrome and SSH, then
| Chromebooks are actually a pretty sweet deal. I still run a 6
| year old Pixelbook as the daily driver. Battery deteriorated
| to the point of lasting only 6-ish hours, but I have nowhere
| near that many meetings in a day. A new premium Chromebook
| should reliably last 10 hours and stay good for 5-ish years.
| bradstewart wrote:
| > If I ever go back to PC-land, it'll be to an underpowered
| device from a business-oriented line.
|
| I've had great luck with exactly this--used, midrange Dell
| Latitudes.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| The T series Lenovos are still great business machines -- I
| wouldn't buy any other Lenovo. I prefer my macbook for the
| most part, but sometimes you need different hardware.
|
| It's out of my wheelhouse, but I am looking for a gaming
| laptop manufacturer recommendation that is high quality...
| thrill wrote:
| "If I ever go back to PC-land, it'll be to an underpowered
| device from a business-oriented line."
|
| If I ever need a PC again, it'll be by running Parallels on a
| Mac Air.
| baq wrote:
| If only they made a Mac air with 64GB of ram. Alas market
| segmentation department won't hear any of it.
| paulmd wrote:
| Supply-chain rumors suggest the launch of a 15.6" MBA in
| the near future, leakers suggest it has M2 Pro as an
| option. If so it might offer 32GB (or like the mini vs
| studio, maybe that will remain a segmentation point).
| Current rumors are maybe June launch.
|
| I agree though, 16GB is tolerable for casual usage and
| consumption without massive swapping, but, 32GB would
| really be nice.
| [deleted]
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| You know what? I've only had my Steam Deck for slightly under
| a year, but I'm honestly astounded at the amount of abuse it
| has endured without showing any apparent problems. I'm very
| curious to see how long it lasts.
|
| I doubt it will be competitive with a Switch for durability,
| which is the closest mirror to a Deck that also has some
| similarities to Apple-style hardware-quality + lock-in.
|
| But that said, I've had problems with Apple laptop keyboards
| after only a couple years of use, and had a laptop monitor
| from Apple start to yellow bizarrely after less than a year.
| Nintendo joycons started having issues after under a year.
|
| Sometimes you're just at the bad-end of the bell-curve. It's
| a shame that online reviews aren't that helpful anymore; it
| can be hard to know what's real with consumer tech, and hard
| to know how big the lemon segment is.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Maybe Steam will give us a line of gaming laptops with the
| same build quality...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Wasn't the "Steam Machine" supposed to be an attempt at a
| gaming PC, but it failed?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| IIRC the Steam Machine was a specification and not a
| product you could buy, so quality varied. I'd bet that
| contributed to its failure.
| codeulike wrote:
| Everyone is aghast
| criddell wrote:
| > I've had quite enough of Microsoft's constant nagging to
| upgrade to Windows 11
|
| I'm surprised he's seeing a lot of nagging. That machine can't
| even run Windows 11.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You think that stops Windows 10 from showing popups? I get
| those every time I boot Windows on my 7700k. At first I thought
| they relaxed their requirements and clicked the ads to see what
| it'd do but then it would just tell me my machine is
| incompatible.
|
| I think they've fixed their detection recently but there are
| still references to Windows 11 all over the place.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Better still - I upgraded my gaming desktop with a new CPU
| the day Microsoft messed up the upgrade detection for Windows
| 11. The first time I booted it with the new CPU it showed me
| the "Upgrade to Windows 11" screen for the first time. I
| though "Oh, cool, my CPU must have been the bottleneck. Sure,
| go for it."
|
| Turns out, it was just coincidental timing and my desktop
| lacks TPM. It's still running Windows 11 and I've not run
| into any issues, but AFAIK I won't be able to re-install it
| if I ever format the drive.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If you ever need to reinstall there are ways to disable
| those checks entirely and run Windows 11 on unsupported
| hardware. No guarantees in terms of stability or security
| (who knows, Microsoft may just assume that certain modern
| instruction sets are available), but it's not entirely
| impossible.
|
| I've fought Windows enough that I'm not going to upgrade to
| an OS Microsoft tells me won't run stable on my hardware,
| but plenty of others have tried and succeeded in ignoring
| the limitations without a hitch... for now, at least.
| fmajid wrote:
| I don't think so. Time to recompile the newest p7zip (using this
| as an example because it dropped yesterday):
|
| - My M1 Macbook Air, 16GB RAM: 11s
|
| - My M1 Ultra Mac Studio, 128GB RAM: 6s
|
| - My HP DevOne (AMD Ryzen7 PRO 5850U, 64GB RAM): 51s
|
| - My home server (HP Z2 Mini G4, Xeon E-2176G , 32GB RAM): 17s
|
| - my Gigabyt Aorus 17G gaming laptop (i7-11800H, 64GB RAM): 35s
|
| On GeekBench the DevOne should be faster than the Z2:
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/16189462?baseli...
|
| and comparable to the M1 MBA:
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/6428909?baselin...
|
| Two conclusions:
|
| - GeekBench is an incredibly flawed benchmark
|
| - The M1 MacBook Air is an incredible machine, even more so when
| you consider it's a laptop.
|
| Now that M1 support is in the official Linux 6.2 kernel, I hope
| running Linux on Apple Silicon will soon become mainstream and
| usable.
|
| If the rumored M2 15" MBA comes out, I am totally getting one.
| eertami wrote:
| How are those the only two conclusions you came up with?
|
| If all other independent benchmarks and data points to the
| 5850U being roughly comparable in performance to the M1 - yet
| for you it appears to be 5x slower, then surely that suggests
| an anomalous result, or at the very least, an edge case that is
| not indicative of real world performance.
|
| The third, much more plausible conclusion:
|
| - Your testing method/setup is flawed or broken in some way.
| fmajid wrote:
| Different OS (macOS Ventura vs. Pop-OS), different compiler
| (LLVM/clang vs. GCC), different storage (internal SSD vs NVMe
| M.2), different filesystem. Running with full CPU parallelism
| in both cases, however. In fact the test was biased against
| the Mac because the M1 MBA was running on battery power and
| the HP DevOne was plugged in.
|
| Still, 5x worse performance at a real-world task that most
| closely approximates my use case is a significant difference.
| rfoo wrote:
| Different OS, different storage, different filesystem are
| all fair as you can say you are testing the laptop as a
| whole, so what was preconfigured matters. Also generating
| totally different code (compiler outputting x86_64 vs
| aarch64) is fair, because that's part of a real-world task.
|
| However, LLVM/clang vs GCC is too far and made the
| benchmark result completely nonsense. How can you make sure
| it isn't just that LLVM/clang is faster than GCC? Or even
| makefile detected clang so turned on different compiler
| flags.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > test was biased against the Mac because the M1 MBA was
| running on battery power and the HP DevOne was plugged in
|
| That does not matter at all for the M1 MBA. So no bias.
| eertami wrote:
| All you've accomplished then is to test LLVM vs GCC, not an
| M1 vs the 5850U.
|
| Apple Silicon strength is in efficiency and low power draw,
| they're mostly slower than high end AMD/Intel chips (which
| admittedly, use a lot more power). In no world is the 5850U
| 5x worse than the M1, it's just absurd to suggest so.
|
| When I run Docker containers on my M1 MBP, tasks are 15-20x
| slower than my Linux laptop. Obviously it would be
| ridiculous of me to suggest that therefore the M1 is 15x
| worse than my laptop's 2020 Intel chip.
| [deleted]
| klelatti wrote:
| > I wanted a cheap travel laptop I could replace without blinking
| an eye at the price. I live in Europe, Thinkpads are the most
| common enterprise laptops I see while travelling. I might even
| slap an asset tag sticker on the cover to make it even more
| inconspicuous.
|
| Fair enough - this seems like the key rationale.
|
| But given the amount of effort tinkering to get to an acceptable
| machine, I'd wonder if there isn't a machine that can be replaced
| at short notice 'on the go' that would represent a better
| compromise?
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| my laptop is plugged into a docking station at home as well as in
| the office. i only ever use it bare while in meetings, or
| travelling. So definitely no need for a mac in my case
| fafhnir wrote:
| [dead]
| hrchak wrote:
| I was using T480s for 2 years at previous company, it was the
| worst laptop i ever owned. throttling, terrible battery life.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| No mention of insanely fast NVMe on M1?
| mnd999 wrote:
| Isn't that only because they cheat and make fsync an noop
| though?
| adriancr wrote:
| Non-replaceable, when it goes bad then might as well throw away
| the laptop.
|
| Speed is also, what, 3GB/s?, I'm getting 7GB read, 5GB write
| speeds on my laptop.
| rozenmd wrote:
| The T480 I got came with a Samsung NVMe w/ 256GB capacity - I
| don't write enough to disk to notice the difference relative to
| my MacBook Air M1.
| jeswin wrote:
| > No mention of insanely fast NVMe on M1?
|
| It's only insanely fast compared to previous Macs. The commonly
| found Samsung 970Pro SSDs were doing read/write speeds up to
| 3,500/2,700 MB/s since 2018. And newer SSDs run circles around
| those speeds (like 10GB/s or more of read/write).
| qwytw wrote:
| Because it's not insanely fast? The 256GB is pretty slow (why
| is that even an option though?) the higher capacity ones have
| are considerably worse compared higher-end WD or Samsung2 SSDs
| and you can get a 1-3TB one for around $100-$300...
| prmoustache wrote:
| The lenovo also has NVMe.
|
| I use different machines, one with a regular sata ssd, 2 with
| NVMes and my work environment is on an NVMe enclosed in an usb3
| to nvme box that I use on any of these 3 laptops.
|
| Honestly outside of a benchmark the difference is only really
| noticeable on the nvme + usb3 enclosure when it can freeze the
| whole desktop for a few seconds when doing a large copy.
| Difference between sata ssd and nvme exist but only if you are
| timing your jobs completions, not really on regular day to day
| use. Difference is definitely much smaller than the spinning to
| solid state. I guess this is pretty much the same between the
| m1 NVMe and a regular PC NVMe.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| You mean infamously slower? Wasn't that what the whole base
| model discussion was about?
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/macbook-pro-m2-pro-mac-min...
|
| The upgraded speed is then perfectly adequate, but slower than
| a standard nvme ssd by a factor 3 or so.
|
| What you are probably thinking of is the RAM instead, which is
| standard lpddr5 ram but integrated into the chip (i.e. the RAM
| is not faster, but bandwidth is better). At absolutely
| ridiculous markup though.
| SaintSeiya84 wrote:
| Is not like newer Lenovo's ThinkPads are much more upgradable
| than an M1 you know?
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Yes, they are.
| SaintSeiya84 wrote:
| citation needed
| kosikond wrote:
| I have both T480 and M1Pro 14", and let me tell you once you go
| Mac, you don't want to go back. I am keeping the T480 for some
| Linux/Windows workloads, but that is it. MBP is just better in
| every regard. And even though I have maxed out batteries (plural)
| with 98% health on '480, MBP has twice the battery life.
| rickette wrote:
| Exactly, build quality and noise levels of mac are so much
| better. Not to mention the OS.
| code-blooded wrote:
| Because these are not exactly comparable. I have Thinkpad X1
| Carbon which is more comparable and I'm easily getting 8+hrs of
| battery life.
|
| But the real benefit is that it runs Linux. It's just a more
| productive environment for a power user. Docker uses little
| CPU, tools are the same as on my server, desktop environment is
| actually better and much more configurable.
|
| Last but not least I'm not supporting a walled garden, which is
| a deal breaker for me in the first place.
| mgranados wrote:
| > I'm tired of Apple's ecosystem, Apple ID, not being able to
| change any individual part of my laptop, being charged $200 USD
| for 8GB of RAM, being charged $200 for 256 GB of SSD, and so on
|
| aleluya
| wdb wrote:
| Sometimes I wished Apple would make macOS available to other
| manufacturers or able to buy it as a customer. I would be happy
| to pay $200+ to get a license of for it on a non-Apple hardware.
| marbell wrote:
| At least a ThinkPad with type-c Power supply, all old types are
| passed.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't understand the thought process where a laptop has
| insufficient battery life (the author tripled the size of the
| battery to compensate) but the user also added 16GB of memory
| they did not need, just in case. Do people not realize that RAM
| uses energy?
| Razele wrote:
| Men will literally buy Thinkpads over going to an Apple store.
|
| Self-delusion. Thinkpads and Dells are not good computers...
| cptcobalt wrote:
| This is kinda rad -- I am primarily a "desktop" user (well,
| iMac), but I have the occasional itch to have a laptop that I
| _barely_ care about, that doesn 't need to be fast, just more
| capable than a tablet on the go. Maybe I pick up a used T480.
| nafizh wrote:
| I bought a framework laptop 1 year ago, and trust me when I say I
| tried everything out there to improve the battery life on Ubuntu.
| It was still so bad I was always worried about the battery
| draining out, not to mention, just closing the lid doesn't work.
| Eventually switched to an m2 mac air. I barely have to think
| about the battery now, so I can focus on the actual work, and
| when work finishes I just close the lid.
| bedast wrote:
| > for contrast, a little bit of dust can break an Apple butterfly
| keyboard
|
| I might be wrong, but weren't these discontinued prior to Apple
| Silicon macbooks being released? If so, why is it noted if he's
| talking about an M1 Macbook Air?
| _justinfunk wrote:
| You know why.
| bedast wrote:
| Elaborate.
| bittercynic wrote:
| I think it's more about Apple's hardware frequently being
| very fragile in certain ways that higher-end thinkpads
| usually aren't. They've had the crumbs-in-the-keyboard
| thing, that may have been resolved now, but Apple's laptops
| seem to have had an extreme sensitivity to moisture going
| back to at least 1999.
|
| There are many advantages to Apple's laptops compared to
| others, but I think it's worth considering areas where they
| fall short when you're choosing your next machine.
| sneak wrote:
| It's generic Apple-bashing from someone who mistakenly
| believes that x32/x64 laptops with 6-7 hour battery life
| were the pinnacle of computing.
|
| The keyboards in the M1/M2 mac laptops are among the best
| ever shipped in any computers. They are absolutely not the
| janky butterfly ones Apple shipped some years ago.
|
| Mankind has not made a better machine than the M2 MBA,
| seriously.
| grokkedit wrote:
| > upgrades will cost you around $150 total on AliExpress
|
| I'm upgrading a thinkpad (x220) with new monitor and battery and
| a few more upgrades, so I have an idea of the cost of upgrading
|
| I'm sorry but the price of the upgrades is not that low, how do
| you get to that total upgrading:
|
| - monitor
|
| - wifi card
|
| - trackpad
|
| - battery
|
| that does not add up
|
| that said, I like the end result, and I'm really curious about
| the trackpad
| rozenmd wrote:
| ah I didn't count the battery in the $150 - apologies
| oezi wrote:
| I do own a T480 and Lenovo has stopped manufacturing
| batteries for it. You can get existing stock for horrendous
| prices or knock-offs.
| znpy wrote:
| Can confirm... just bought a thin battery for my x270 and
| paid about 100EUR for an original one, brand new.
|
| Worth it though, the x270 is very slim and still
| featureful.
| flatline-84 wrote:
| I've upgraded my x220 as well and it's good enough for basic
| dev work with about 8hrs battery life on the big battery. For
| the screen, are you using the Nitrocaster mod? I have it
| sitting here and the new IPS 1080p screen but I kind of regret
| not going for a 16:10 aspect ratio (which requires cutting the
| frame around the screen)
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Plus, now you can use Excel hotkeys like a boss.
| zmxz wrote:
| That's one awesome and cheap machine you got there, congrats, I'm
| really glad someone liked it and wrote a blog post about it :)
|
| I too am a Pop_OS user - it works, my reason for using it was
| nvidia drivers and getting GeForce to f*king work.
|
| As for M1 - I am really glad when people find what they like. But
| I really, really dislike Apple products. I hate the OS UI. I hate
| AppleID. I hate the fact I can't swap the SSD inside it. I just
| generally dislike any piece of hardware that I can't interact
| with. What if I want to have a RAID array with stupidly
| overpriced M2's?
|
| The synthetic benchmarks mean nothing to me and I don't feel the
| "speed" of M1 everyone tend to talk about. It also feels like
| every single Apple user suddenly became expert the moment M1 was
| released. It could be because I'm a dev and ex-gamer so I like
| fast things, so I bought myself an EPYC chip and a ton of other
| hardware for which everyone I know comment "but why? it's not
| like you can utilize all of it, why waste so much money?" -
| because I can.
|
| TL;DR: it's an awesome piece of hardware you got there, there's
| no need to use the best and the fastest and <insert reason>. It's
| enough to use something just because you like it or want to use
| it. This blog post just goes to show how powerful hardware we
| have, even the "old" hardware is still great.
| ljosifov wrote:
| I too got myself 2nd hand T480 + upgrade (for a 2nd work laptop).
| Mostly b/c I need the 64GB RAM. Other than that put 4TB SATA SSD
| + 512GB NVME in the WLAN M.2 slot, new batteries to 72Wh. May
| change the screen now I read this - the original really is bad.
| Usually I put Xubuntu LTS b/c "it just works", but may try PopOS
| next time. Want my laptops cheep & cheerful, don't particularly
| fancy thinking of/them expensive, irreplaceable and in need of
| complicated warranties/support.
| megous wrote:
| Funny how quickly people lose all sense, and just start quoting
| personal anecdotes as something relevant, especially when
| argument is something global like environmental effects, or when
| comparing brands.
|
| Yeah, Bobby is using his $2k Macbook Farty Air for 10 years, and
| poor Johny got his $300 Lenovo Shittop broken after 1 year and
| couldn't get a replacement in 1 day overnight eco shipping.
|
| At least compare somehting relevant, like return % numbers in
| e-shops or some actual research/data published by repair centers.
| Something with N > 2.
| jansan wrote:
| I am doing development on a T550 for the exact reason that it is
| not very fast. It is fast enough to develop my project, but the
| app that I am working on is quite resource hungry, so I want to
| make sure that it runs smoothly on the user's machine. There is
| no point in enjoying a super fast development environment when
| you later realize that there is a massive performance problem for
| your users.
| junipertea wrote:
| I love thinkpads but the T480 is basically objectively worse in
| every single aspect except price and repairability. I don't think
| I can go back from all day battery and quiet CPU during high
| loads.
|
| I could definitely use my T450 for however long I need and know I
| can replace parts, but I'd rather have macs for 5 years and
| upgrade for another performance bump. Some things are just nicer
| chinamn425 wrote:
| Lenovo warranty is fantastic.
| briffle wrote:
| Their everything is covered enterprise warranty does not
| cover roadside bombs in war zones :) That was an interesting
| call with some of our auditors in Bagdad... Thank goodness
| for online backup software.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| Be that as it may, the author is in Australia. All MacBooks
| have _minimum_ 2 years warranty.
|
| Display recently died on my MacBook Pro (M1 Max). Having to
| talk to a Genius rather than being able to book in the
| service online or via phone was infuriating. However, aside
| from that, warranty repair process was a breeze. They
| confirmed with me that all replacent parts have a minimum of
| _three_ years warranty from the date of replacement.
|
| I get that consumer protection laws suck or are nonexistent
| elsewhere in the world, but since the author is in Australia
| this laptop replacement makes even less sense.
| rozenmd wrote:
| was* in Australia.
| lmz wrote:
| What makes you think the Thinkpad in the linked article is
| still under warranty?
| nehal3m wrote:
| It might be. I used to order them for the business I worked
| for with 5 years on site warranty. Where I live that
| transfers with sale. T480 was sold into early 2019, so that
| would end the last warranty around early 2024.
| MrDOS wrote:
| That depends _entirely_ on where you are in the world. In
| Canada, for example, the (consumer) Lenovo service centre
| used to be notorious for taking weeks (three was common, I
| 've heard as much as seven) to return machines, and for
| providing essentially no feedback on the machine's status
| until they handed you the tracking number for the return
| shipment. Their warranty may be fantastic, but it's utterly
| pointless if they won't act on it in a timely fashion.
|
| (I say "used to be", because between this and Superfish, I've
| been telling everyone I know not to buy new Lenovo products
| for years, so admittedly, I have no recent data points.)
| petepete wrote:
| > ...except price and repairability.
|
| And keyboard.
| aniforprez wrote:
| Disagree. The M1 keyboards are just as good as any other
| keyboards now that they ditched the bad butterfly keyboards.
| I've used a Macbook with the older keyboards and they were
| certainly inferior to every single other laptop but the new
| keyboards I really can't complain about
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > The M1 keyboards are just as good as any other keyboards
|
| But ThinkPad keyboards are not "any other keyboards". For
| me, ThinkPads are the only laptops where I don't feel the
| need to connect an external keyboard. I'd say ThinkPad
| keyboards are as superior to typical laptop keyboards
| (including the MacBook keyboard) as Apple trackpads are
| superior to typical laptop trackpads (including the
| ThinkPad trackpad).
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| The last Thinkpad with a usable keyboard was a t420.
| jojobas wrote:
| And trackpoint. And running your OS of choice, free of "call
| home" crap if you want.
|
| _But apart from that, what did the Romans do for us?_
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Trackpoint is very divisive, you either love it or hate it.
| I come on the hate side, so moving to trackpoint from
| Apple's trackpad feels like a huge drawback.
| drclegg wrote:
| Thinkpad keyboards have been pretty bad for a few generations
| now. My old T470's keyboard flexed in the corners.
| [deleted]
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| >implying M1 MacBook Air has bad keyboard
|
| You would have a point if he was replacing something like
| 2019 Macbook Pro with the butterfly switches
| kristianp wrote:
| The newer models are called the Thinkpad T14, I believe. The T14
| gen 3 has moved to 1920x1200 resolution, 16:10 ratio. One sodimm
| is soldered though, with one slot for memory upgrades.
| gen220 wrote:
| I was a ThinkPad maximalist in my personal computing life for the
| last 5ish years.
|
| This year, I needed to interview for jobs without having access
| to a "work" laptop for the task (i.e. an overspecced MacBook
| Pro).
|
| Faced with the prospects of subjecting my ThinkPad/vim machine to
| video calls, I more or less immediately decided to fork over the
| money for an M2 MacBook Air.
|
| Unfortunately for my identity as a person invested in my
| principles, it's been a delightful experience. I'm glad that I
| have my ThinkPad (and its stack of batteries) in the closet -
| it'll always be there, and work exactly as I want it to. But I
| can already tell I'm going to drive this MacBook into the ground
| over the next 10 years.
|
| I know that I won't be able to repair it when it (eventually)
| degrades, but the diff of convenience in day to day ops pays for
| that inconvenience, in my experience. YMMV.
| djtriptych wrote:
| It's such a consistent experience I don't think you even need
| the YMMV qualifier.
|
| Source: I also own an M2 Air and have been blown away by it's
| performance in "day to day ops" as you call it. It is by a wide
| margin the best laptop I've ever owned (previous 6-7 laptops
| were all personal/work macbook pros)
| gen220 wrote:
| I mainly attached the qualifier to account for the cost of
| one's "inability to repair when [the MacBook] eventually
| degrades".
|
| For some people, meditating on this reality causes them a
| great deal of consternation. As somebody who consternates on
| that topic myself, I empathize with it deeply.
|
| For people possessing a will more galvanized than my own, no
| improvement in day to day ops is worth the pain of working on
| a platform like this. I don't think my experience speaks to
| them.
|
| For people like you and I, who are willing to seriously
| consider the trade-offs, and for whom the up-front money
| isn't an immediate concern, I agree it's almost a no-brainer.
|
| I think it speaks equal volumes on Apple's ability to produce
| world-class hardware at scale, and on software vendors'
| collective inabilities or unwillingness to produce quality
| videoconferencing software that works gracefully on older
| technology.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| Anyone with a T480 or similar gen Thinkpad should make sure the
| thunderbolt drivers are up to date, there was a firmware bug that
| caused the USB-C chip to be overwritten everytime a new device
| was plugged in, causing premature failure. The thunderbolt/c port
| is part of motherboard and not replaceable by itself.
|
| I own a T480 and only one of the C ports is usable even to charge
| due to this.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Be careful grabbing it by the corner like in the picture, it can
| flex the motherboard and cause the RAM to unseat
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/mh974q/for_everyo...
| petemir wrote:
| I had that problem for so long with a T490, I thought I was
| going crazy until I noticed the crashes always happened when I
| grabbed the computer. Luckily just re-seating the RAMs with
| some tough love made the problem disappear...
| exitb wrote:
| It doesn't always happen. I learned that the Thinkpad I just
| bought is prone to that behavior, but after months of not-so-
| delicate use it never actually happened.
| tbran wrote:
| I "fixed" this by using kapton tape to secure my RAM. Never had
| a problem. The mod in the link seems...risky.
|
| Kapton tape is the coppery-looking tape that tapes other stuff
| down inside a lot of electronics.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=kapton+tape
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| this is driving me NUTS with an old one i have. I never
| bothered to check why, i don't use it often enough. It's always
| been on my todo list to check into why.
|
| Thanks for the lead!
| tristor wrote:
| My experience has been that there is only two reasonable ways to
| buy a laptop for personal use:
|
| 1. Buy an Apple device new.
|
| 2. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude refurb/used via their
| outlet stores from their business line-ups
|
| With #2, you know exactly what you're getting, but you're getting
| it cheap, and the parts are possible to find (e.g. eBay) to fix
| it yourself.
|
| With #1, you know exactly what you're getting, and you're paying
| for a premium experience that you'll actually receive and isn't a
| sham or bait n switch (like it is with "premium" PC products).
|
| I have a stack of laptops on my desk because I physically
| separate the different types of work that I do (for many various
| reasons). 2 are Thinkpads, 2 are Apple, and one is a Dell
| Latitude. All of have been solid for years. My newest laptop in
| the stack is an M1 Macbook Pro 14" with the M1 Max, and it's
| FANTASTIC, it's easily the best laptop I've owned since I retired
| my /IBM/ Thinkpad T60p.
|
| There is no reason anyone should ever subject themselves to the
| torture that is buying a laptop "intended" for "consumers". There
| is no reason anyone should ever pay full price for any non-Apple
| laptop, because they all make annoying trade-offs that are only
| acceptable when you buy them cut-rate.
| adverbly wrote:
| Are you me?
|
| I have 3 refurb linux laptops strewn around the house, and my
| last 3 workplaces have always provided a macbook of some sort.
|
| One difference: For gaming/GPU heavy stuff, I still have the
| good old windows, full-tower desktop kicking around.
| Repairing/upgrading desktops is honestly easier than ever, so
| I've been happy to keep one in service for the odd game or two.
| tristor wrote:
| I did the same for desktops too. I finally retired the last
| desktop I built that was 12 years old. It could still do most
| games, but it was loud, power hungry, and annoying. I've
| replaced it with a Steam Deck and a Steam Dock, and at some
| point I might build a proper replacement gaming /
| workstation, but not any time soon.
|
| For personal use, most of what I want to do is possible on a
| laptop now. I really don't feel as much need for a desktop as
| I once did. I still use a "dock" and a mechanical keyboard
| when I'm not on the go, though.
|
| With the exception of the Steam Deck, I don't use Linux,
| though. The reason I have the Thinkpads is they work
| perfectly in FreeBSD & OpenBSD "out of the box". The Dell is
| running Windows for doing automotive tuning.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"There is no reason anyone should ever pay full price for any
| non-Apple laptop, because they all make annoying trade-offs
| that are only acceptable when you buy them cut-rate."
|
| I buy gaming laptops from ASUS. All are solid, last forever and
| even though I bought those new were very reasonably priced.
| Other than not being paper thin I see no trade offs but I will
| not pay extra for thin laptop anyways. I use those as portable
| desktops so the size does not matter. What does matter is that
| they have proper cooling and can work at 100% performance for
| hours non-stop without thermal throttling.
| softfalcon wrote:
| I agree. In my experience, trying to balance "thin" and
| "gaming power" together in the same device is a recipe for
| disaster.
| lhl wrote:
| I've been running Linux laptops for years now and have been
| enjoying using (well, mostly poking around) with a Framework
| laptop, however, recently I've been doing a lot of long-haul
| travel and it turns out that the battery life on the Framework
| was _really_ not cutting it on the road.
|
| I'd been meaning get an Apple Silicon Mac to play around with,
| and ended up picking up an M2 MBA before another long flight.
| Battery life was good in regular use (~9-11h so far), but what
| was surprising to me was how fantastic battery life was on the
| plane. On plane wifi, with much lighter use (lower brightness,
| mostly browsing, no file transfers or compiles), I used the Mac
| for 6-7h, and still had 50% battery life at the end of the
| flight. Also, it has had basically zero battery loss when
| suspended.
|
| I'm still using Linux on my desktop machines, but I guess I'm a
| Mac user again for travel...
| petodo wrote:
| I am uisng T520 as my work computer, used also wife's brand new
| T14 and honestly besides the thickness of the body the experience
| was underwhelming, there is pretty much zero reason for me to
| upgrade to newer much more expensive Thinkpad which will save me
| what maybe <5% of my time by being hardly any faster at anything
| I do. Now she got some new company Macbook and man that's one
| horrendous keyboard and lack of connectors, I think you cant even
| plug there regular USB (A) key.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| > 1366x768
|
| that's a really weird choice especially when you want to doa
| comparison with a macbook.
|
| > Windows
|
| also suboptimal in my opinion. thinkpads are fantastic linux
| machines. i'm running Mint xfce on my 480 and really wouldn't
| know what could be better about the experience.
|
| there are only three things i like better about macbooks: screen,
| switching workspace with 3 finger swipe, speakers
| rozenmd wrote:
| In the article I mention that I upgraded to a 1920x1080 screen,
| and Pop!_OS...
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| why do you even mention it then?
| fmajid wrote:
| Not the OP, but presumably to highlight the upgradeability
| of the ThinkPad.
| asah wrote:
| +1 Screen resolution is the top reason I stick with Macs. Once
| you gone retina, there's no going back and modern cellphones
| only reinforce this. It could be my aging eyesight, but I don't
| remember the last time I saw a pixel.
|
| Gamer laptops have the resolution but the price & weight are
| silly.
|
| Would love to be wrong - macos just feels klunky for linux
| development (slow homebrew, annoying docker, constant reminders
| to connect to apple cloud, etc).
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| i used retina and now am back to 1920x1080 on my t480. no
| problem.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Isn't retina just strictly worse? No oled, lower resolution,
| lower ppi, lower brightness, worse aspect ratio? They are
| decent screens, but by no measure the best.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| > ...alt-tabbing doesn't lag (it did on my Intel-based MacBook
| Pro 2019), ...
|
| Yeah, unfortunately this is by design. cmd-tab behaves different
| depending on how long you hold the cmd or tab key.
|
| cmd-~ is instant, and with stage manager it switches through
| apps. He could've also just installed windows arm preview on the
| M1, or asahi
| [deleted]
| turtlebits wrote:
| If I have to replace components to get a baseline usable machine
| (and am not able to buy one off the shelf), that is a hobby
| project and not something I can depend on to daily drive.
|
| As I've gotten older, that is not something I care to futz around
| with anymore. (also applies to the periodic OS reinstall)
| thom wrote:
| I too don't value my time very highly.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| ....and yet, here you are, posting comments
|
| hurry up, you'll keep the President and Secretary-General
| waiting!
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Depends on how valuable you think your time is. Benefits of not
| going Apple include not having to figure out which Docker
| containers are compatible or fast enough on your new hardware,
| not having to deal with macOS, not having to upgrade the entire
| machine when components fail or when you run into SKU limits.
|
| The author says he lives in Europe, taking the laptop out fir
| repairs can easily take an entire afternoon of travel that
| could be spent more productively elsewhere.
|
| Pick the best tools for the job. Sometimes that involves
| spending a couple thousand extra for a shiny Macbook, sometimes
| that involves spending an afternoon setting up a Thinkpad.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| >The author says he lives in Europe, taking the laptop out
| fir repairs can easily take an entire afternoon of travel
| that could be spent more productively elsewhere.
|
| I'm not sure if you understand how urbanised Europe is.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| weego wrote:
| Ok here's the thing. I used to build PCs, and I'd tinker with
| linux distros on laptops. Things would be flakey, need
| maintenance and upgrading and that was fun.
|
| That's fine when you're laser focused on your career and are
| in 'career as personality' part of your life, which is
| essential imo and I'm not sneering at it by making reference
| to it in that way.
|
| But ultimately, I now need to get to my desk just on time,
| know my machine will work and not just be an opportunity cost
| sink, and get what I've scheduled done and then clock off
| when I need to.
|
| Now, that can happen with custom bits and tinkery bobs, but
| I'd much rather have the insurance policy of using what I
| personally have experienced as the most solid and reliable
| hardware/software combo in the business and not concern
| myself with the other stuff, even if sometimes it's more fun.
| I work on a 13" 2013 mbp i7/16g ram and 2021 13" m1 / 16gig
| ram and have never had a single issue with either that cost
| me work time. Having to install more stuff to then claim "it
| just works" isn't just working, it's adding more "oh it now
| doesn't work for some esoteric reason" to the chain.
| gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 wrote:
| For a sizable segment of Apple's power users, this is
| really the core issue.
|
| Apple clearly has no love for power users for over half a
| decade, and thinking of going to windows after MacOS is a
| nonstarter, which really leaves the obvious choice being
| migration to linux until you start to seriously evaluate PC
| laptops along with realizing you're taking the onus of OS
| configuration on yourself ALONG WITH your work, as the
| previous commenter mentioned. That said, Ventura is such a
| bad MacOS release (and sign of things to come) that Apple
| has finally made it the pull off the band-aid moment for a
| lot of power user folks like the writer of the article,
| issues be damned. good -enough- will have to suffice.
|
| It's so tiresome that every single release of MacOS has
| fewer features professionals actually care about.
| rozenmd wrote:
| and I totally agree, I used to work on macOS _because_
| everything would just work.
|
| Except Pop!_OS 22.04 worked entirely out of the box. I
| didn't need to even open the terminal to do anything except
| clone my repos.
| ewf322333rrr wrote:
| and on mac nothing works:
|
| - worst window management than on any other OS
|
| - mouse scrolling works in a different direction and
| requires additional software to be fixed.
|
| - unlike windows, cannot even connect to Android without
| some additional software to copy pictures.
|
| - docker is extremely slow
|
| - my M1 already crashed 4 times in the last 6 months since
| I started using it - worse than any other OS/hardware.
|
| - poor multi-monitor support
|
| - poor support of monitors with lower resolution
|
| - non-standard keyboard shortcuts. All other OSes use the
| same shortcuts.
|
| - brew is very buggy when used with multiple users on
| single laptop
|
| - no way to configure a global variable on startup. You can
| use .zprofile etc. but this will not work with GUI
| applications started via spotlight.
|
| this is only a small portion of issues I had with macos.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| > mouse scrolling works in a different direction and
| requires additional software to be fixed
|
| You can change that in system preferences easily with a
| checkbox.
|
| > non-standard keyboard shortcuts. All other OSes use the
| same shortcuts.
|
| You could also argue that these shortcuts are standard to
| apple computers for decades and so are standard for their
| ecosystem.
|
| Not disagreeing with most of your points, but thought i'd
| just point those out.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| The main reason I love my M1 is that it's cool to the touch after
| switching from an intel based mbp to an m1, I went from an
| average of 90 degrees Celsius (there was definitely an issue in
| the factory with thermal paste I think) to an average of 40-50
| degrees Celsius.
|
| I can't imagine ever going back to an intel based laptop because
| of this (and in my experience, thinkpads don't run that cool for
| my uses with arch linux)
| ge96 wrote:
| Haha my cat would sleep behind the 2019, not anymore with the
| 2021.
|
| I did prefer the 2019 design more though (thinness). When I
| first got the 2021 it seemed cheap/hollow to me.
| barrenko wrote:
| It probably is a bit hollow.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple intentionally used terrible cooling, letting the CPU
| passively heat up rather than spinning up the fans because they
| didn't want or couldn't figure out how to deal with fan noise.
| The chassis got hot because Apple decided that was the better
| alternative.
|
| Intel's approach of "just send more power through the chip to
| make it faster" is definitely worse than Apple's own chips, but
| Apple has neutered their laptop CPUs for years. Had they gone
| with a modern cooling solution, the difference in heat wouldn't
| be so noticeable.
| LtWorf wrote:
| My macbook was basically unusable as a laptop in hot summer
| days because it would be too hot to put on your lap.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I had a 2019 i5 MacBook and the fans would be blasting and
| the thing still roasting hot. It's incredible how just one
| year later they released something revolutionary
| bsder wrote:
| I'll scream about Apple's bad practices any day of the
| week, but I used to go out of my way to configure my
| Macbook Pro's with max RAM, upgraded SSD, and an i5
| _specifically_ because that meant my fans were never
| audible.
|
| Yeah, everything i7 was a thermal problem, but that wasn't
| unique to Apple. And the i9 systems were laughable.
| However, with an i5, I _never_ had noticable thermal
| issues.
|
| If you're having thermal issues with an i5, something
| specific to your computer is broken.
|
| Now, my daily driver is a Lenovo Carbon X1 7th Gen. I'm
| quite happy, but I did the same thing. Big RAM, big SSD,
| and a reasonable i5. I never hear a fan.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I don't think anything was broken with this MacBook. It
| was the 13" one and I had to run docker which just made
| it hot all the time. Now I do an even heavier load on the
| 13" m1 and the thing is cold while being so much faster.
| dijit wrote:
| tbf it is a design consideration from intel: they openly
| consider that they are leaving performance on the table if
| they're _not_ running close to 100C.
|
| Which, while great for a desktop, is very uncomfortable (and
| loud) on a laptop.
|
| So far I haven't seen a way to configure it, turbo boost is
| commonly not an option to disable in laptop bioses (at least
| not the Dell Precision I had).
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Yes, I won't begrudge them that choice on desktop but given
| the fact that most of the consumer market as switched to
| laptops, it's not a great strategy...
| cybuerg wrote:
| Crazy how much hate this post is getting.
| LtWorf wrote:
| If you lack a personality, what computer you use is a good
| replacement :)
| DarthNebo wrote:
| I'd rather stick with 2X perf, 15+hrs of battery life, better
| trackpad, keyboard, webcam at not so different price point after
| all the upgrades OP did..
| gigel82 wrote:
| I don't really use laptops so have no horse in this race; but
| during the pandemic I was forced to set up a separate WFH desk
| and I used a Windows laptop and an (i7) MacBook Pro side-by-side,
| hooked up to 2 external monitors and sharing a keyboard / mouse
| with Barrier.
|
| Despite the machines having similar specs, I find the Windows
| machine snappier (even with all the Intune / VPN / spyware
| bullshit built-in) and really only use the mac as a browser box.
|
| Anecdote: browsing was super slow on the mac even though it's
| sitting right next to the Asus laptop and using the same WiFi
| network, so I bought a couple of USB Ethernet dongles. I found it
| surprising in 2021 that I need to download drivers and reboot the
| macOS machine to install an USB Ethernet dongle; Windows just
| picked it up in seconds (yes, it wasn't an Apple branded Ethernet
| dongle, just sorted by most popular on Amazon and with advertised
| macOS support).
|
| If I ever need to purchase a laptop for myself (though I don't
| have a reason for it), it will most definitely not be a mac.
| me551ah wrote:
| The thing that annoys me the most about M1 Macbooks is the lack
| of gaming ability. Even a basic windows laptop can play games
| like DOTA, Age of empires etc and so did the older macbooks. With
| M1, almost none of my games work.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| You're dishonestly miscategorising the issue, even if only by
| implication. It's not it being a "basic" laptop. It's about the
| operating system it's running.
| dontbesquare wrote:
| I've had pretty good luck running most older games via Windows
| with Parallels on my M1 Macbook Pro.
|
| Microsoft now officially supports Windows via Parallels as "an
| authorized solution" on M1 & M2 Macs.
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/16/23602718/microsoft-window...
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| priomsrb wrote:
| I use my M1 pro to play Dota 2 all the time. On medium settings
| I get between 60-100fps at 1440p.
|
| I probably game on it more than my gaming PC and consoles at
| this point.
| kylec wrote:
| While this is true, it's not really Apple's fault, most game
| makers just don't care about making their games Mac compatible.
| They don't even have to be Apple Silicon compatible, Rosetta
| does a surprisingly good job making Mac games for Intel
| playable on M1.
| LtWorf wrote:
| No? Whose fault it was when apple removed the ability to run
| i386 binaries on CPUs that could run them just fine?
| domh wrote:
| It annoys me that I have a bunch of games on my Steam account
| for 32bit only macOS (Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 etc) that
| just cannot be played on a modern mac. To be fair, Apple have
| gone through two CPU architecture changes since I bought them
| (Intel 32bit -> Intel 64bit -> ARM). Is this Valve's fault
| for not rebuilding the games, or is it Apple's fault for not
| making it work through Rosetta?
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| It is most definitely Apple's fault. There might be a
| chicken-and-egg problem, but it mostly stems from Apples
| really poor support for backwards compatibility.
|
| There's been a few times when it seems like mac gaming could
| be making a comeback only for something like 32bit support to
| get removed.
|
| Rosetta will not be around forever, and when it goes, game
| developers for the most part won't be rebuilding their old
| games for a new platform.
|
| The lack of good high performance graphics also deters
| "serious" gamers, and gamers are generally trying to get the
| most performance out of every dollar, which is just
| antithetical to everything Apple.
| iakov wrote:
| It's really annoying given the fact that hardware is more than
| capable of running some oldies. Hell there is an official WoW
| build which runs super well, but no other blizz games are
| ported.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| Starcraft 2 works very well
| miklosz wrote:
| Last year I finally put my old 2012 13" MBP to rest. I have been
| using it for 8 years for work, commuting with it to work. 8 years
| of plugging it in and out at the office and at home. Then it was
| used by my daughter for another two years for home school during
| the pandemic, Zoom + Chrome. 10 years of daily usage. Could not
| ask for better machine. After that brief period with 2016 15" MBP
| and now base M1 Pro that I plan to use for at least another 3
| years at least. Sure, HDD upgrades would be nice, but I can live
| with the Transcend card in the SD Card slot as an expansion for
| file storage.
|
| Every now and then I think about getting second-hand X1 carbon as
| a machine I don't need to care about when travel. But then again,
| MBP + iPad Pro with universal control works so well it's like
| having a second screen on the go. I don't think there's another
| system that be near this level of integration.
|
| This thread has been very good source of information. It confirms
| my conviction that the Apple ecosystem of devices is
| unparalleled. No need to think about TP's
| [deleted]
| ostenning wrote:
| I've owned an upgraded T480 since they were released, run
| archlinux on it. It was a decent computer, but despite having
| upgraded the battery to the largest possible configuration and
| using all the tricks in the book to maximize battery life in
| linux - it sucked. The reality is these Intel processors are just
| a big inefficient hot mess.
|
| I ended up upgrading to the 14" M1 Max, and there is literally no
| way you can make a comparison of these two machines, they are
| worlds apart, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery
| life, single core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad -
| everything.
|
| The only thing the TP wins is bang-for-buck on the second hand
| market, and getting head turns from neckbeards, thats about it.
| scandox wrote:
| You know I've run Arch on Thinkpads forever and I never got one
| head turn from even one neckbeard. It's one of those dreams
| that never comes true.
| jarenmf wrote:
| I use my Thinkpad everyday for more than 2 hours on the
| train, with a big Arch and GNU stickers on the cover. I was
| never successful to grab anyone's attention.
| stodor89 wrote:
| _tips fedora in jarenmf 's general direction_
| bogantech wrote:
| 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.
| danuker wrote:
| Eh... the newer models aren't what they used to be. They
| used to have arrow keys you could feel. Now it's all flat
| cost-savings.
| ge96 wrote:
| I like the Carbons but I also have a Mac/use all three OS's
|
| It's hard for me buy a brand new device though idk... What
| sucks about used devices is the battery and replacements
| are usually fake.
|
| Funny M1 has been pretty good (cool) but with rider it was
| getting warm, open up htop and all cores working.
|
| I'm a fan of the screen the most on Macs.
| pletnes wrote:
| 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 seem objectively much worse. (And I have a
| beard!)
| xeonmc wrote:
| Highly relevant: https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments
| /10w3ke1/the_lif...
| [deleted]
| me551ah wrote:
| Can you run Arch Linux on the M1 Max natively?
| dontbesquare wrote:
| Linux 6.2: The first mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1
| chips arrives: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-6-2-the-
| first-mainstream...
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| So, no. The headline is clickbait and basically just wrong.
| prvc wrote:
| Trackpoint? Keyboard quality? Linux support for most/all
| components and features? Easily salvage data if some other part
| fails or is physically damaged by removing the SSD? Price and
| availability of replacement parts?
| jojobas wrote:
| But... Steve Jobs... Think different... Aluminium with laser
| holes!
| blensor wrote:
| I can not speak about how it would work with an MBP but the
| SSD replacing is a huge factor if you need it.
|
| 4 weeks ago we had to deliver a build of our game to Meta and
| 2 days before the deadline my laptop died out of the blue. I
| scrambled to buy a new one (didn't care which as long as it
| had enough oomph and I could source locally quickly).
|
| I went for a Lenovo Legion 5 ( or 7, I am actually not sure,
| it doesn't have a sticker on it and I don't have the box
| anymore :) )
|
| First thing I did was void the warranty by popping it open,
| installing the ssd from the other laptop and 30 minutes after
| unpacking the whole thing I continued working where I left
| off when the other one broke ( not literally since it was not
| suspended to disk but you get the meaning)
|
| The machine is actually quite nice and I am, so far, happy
| with it, but the whole experience was so incredibly easy that
| I would not want to go for any non linux machine.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| With a MBP, you'd just restore from a Time Machine backup.
| If you don't have one, that would be on you.
| blensor wrote:
| Restoring from a backup is of course something I would
| have resorted to if it would have been necessary, but the
| point I tried to make was that it was not necessary
| because there was a much quicker way to get back up to
| speed.
|
| Also not sure if the time machine backup would reinstall
| all the apps and settings exactly as they were before,
| but maybe it would, I honestly don't know the Apple
| ecosystem well enough for that.
|
| All I know was that a friend of mine had a very similar
| issue recently with a Macbook (don't ask me which one)
| and she had the problem that not all data was on the time
| machine, some recent stuff was there, some not so recent
| stuff was missing and some even older stuff was there
| again. That's probably some user error but she was
| expecting everything to be backed up correctly so she did
| not even know that there was a problem.
| efdee wrote:
| That's some Apple-sanctioned gaslighting right there.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Easily salvage data if some other part fails or is
| physically damaged by removing the SSD?"_
|
| Fair point. But important to remember you're just as likely
| to lose the whole laptop if your bag gets stolen or
| something, or maybe the SSD will itself fail. Regular
| (cloud?) backups are indispensable.
| abrouwers wrote:
| Isn't the apple device 2-3x the price, though? Doesn't seem
| like it's even fair to compare.
| manishsharan wrote:
| I am not a neckbeard and my T480 has 64gb of RAM and 2TB Nvme
| drive and wifi 6 card. I need a lot of RAM for my workload. I
| am running Ubuntu and lots of VMs with lots of databases and
| k8s clusters.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The battery life (and in some cases, horrifically bad TN panel
| screens) are what kills these older ThinkPads, Latitudes, etc
| for daily drivers. If I'm spending so much time at my desk that
| being tethered doesn't matter I'd be better off building a
| desktop with modern hardware, which confers the biggest
| benefits of ThinkPads while also being vastly more powerful and
| expandable. If space is an issue, ITX builds solve that pretty
| neatly.
|
| Really, somebody needs to develop power-sipping ARM motherboard
| board replacements (much as xyte.ch does with x86) for the
| various business notebook models.
| bluedino wrote:
| > horrifically bad TN panel screens
|
| The only 'great' ThinkPad screen is the 14" WQHD (2560x1440)
|
| The others are just...bad. So dim, dull colors, and the low-
| end screens are sad, terribly washed out TN panels
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Newer ThinkPads are a _lot_ better in this regard -- my X1
| Nano Gen 1 for example has a 16:10 2160x1350 450 nit matte
| IPS panel that looks excellent. These models aren 't that
| well liked by ThinkFans though.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >, build quality, screen quality, weight, battery life, single
| core & parallel processing, speakers, trackpad - everything
|
| Strangely mac fanboys always make sure to carefully avoid the
| subject of their crappy keyboard.
|
| It is worth using a lenovo over a Mac for the keyboard only.
| Who cares about a trackpad one barely use on a decent desktop.
| Mac users overly rely on a good trackpad because their desktop
| is terribly user-unfriendly. I spend all my time on the
| keyboard, not the trackpad.
| pixelesque wrote:
| The newer Thinkpad keyboards are getting worse unfortunately:
| I have a T480S which I really like the keyboard of (other
| than the annoying positions of the pageup/down keys), but I
| tried the T14S Gen 3 and preferred the M1 MBP 14's keyboard,
| so went with that (battery life and screen quality also
| played a part)...
|
| The 2016-2021 Butterfly keyboards were bad, but in my usage
| of the M1 MBP macs they're good again now.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The crappy "butterfly" keyboard that Apple put on Mac laptops
| for years was indeed very crappy, but that ended when Apple
| redesigned the keyboard before the M1 came out. The current
| keyboard is great.
| atmosx wrote:
| The butterfly keyboard was by all means crappy. The 17" M1
| keyboard is really good though. Granted that I am not a
| keyboard expert but I use a mechanical keyboard with my iMac.
| kuschku wrote:
| > screen quality
|
| > battery life
|
| > speakers
|
| > trackpad
|
| All things you can replace with the T480. Which I've done, and
| can just recommend. There's much better options than the ones
| shipped by default, including trackpads rivalling the M1, a
| screen that beats the M1, and a battery that has 20h+ capacity
| and can be swapped with a second one to double the capacity in
| seconds.
| shivanshchandra wrote:
| Thinkpads are traditionally scoring high points at
| repairability and durability. It almost become a must-go step
| for battery swaps right after getting an used Thinkpad model.
| ostenning wrote:
| > a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a
| second one to double the capacity in seconds
|
| Any computer that can be charged with a usb-c connection
| doesn't need additional proprietary external batteries, you
| can just use a generic battery pack, which is why the T480
| was the last TP with an external battery.
| kuschku wrote:
| If you want to a) have a huge external device connected all
| the time, b) destroy your battery with constant charge
| cycles so badly that you need to replace it every few
| months, and c) want to be unable to charge other devices
| from your laptop.
| ihateolives wrote:
| > c) want to be unable to charge other devices from your
| laptop.
|
| You just charge them with battery pack.
| kuschku wrote:
| 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.
| selectodude wrote:
| Having a cable go from my laptop to a battery in my bag
| isn't the biggest issue, even on my lap, but maybe things
| are different for your use case. Granted, since my laptop
| lasts >12 hours, I never really worry about battery life
| too much anymore anyway.
| dachryn wrote:
| can you actually link to the ones you recommend then?
|
| Because I am quite interested then in figuring out the
| economics side of obtaining one
| kuschku wrote:
| I've modded mine with 16 GB DDR-3 3200MHz RAM [2], a 2 TB
| NVMe SSD [3], a Wi-Fi 6AX card [4], the Innolux N140HCG-GQ2
| 1080p 100% sRGB 8-bit 400 nits panel [5] (based on the T14
| display), and the Lenovo 61++ battery [6].
|
| Depending on region and local pricing, all mods together
| should be around 300$.
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08LQG2SDS/ [3]
| https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MLJD32L/ [4]
| https://www.amazon.de/dp/B097TQ7HBF/ [5]
| https://www.xelent-store.de/Innolux-N140HCG-GQ2-400cd-Low-
| Po... [6] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B06WGMPFCD
| RileyJames wrote:
| Which battery is required for 20+ hour capacity?
|
| And which track pad are you referring to?
|
| The track pad has always been the hardest part about moving
| away from a MacBook. Love my XPS, but I HATE it's track pad.
| Battery life is another reason, but swappable batteries would
| be amazing (not on XPS)
| arein3 wrote:
| Same, but I think he might refer to an external trackpad.
|
| I haven't ever encointered people upgrading their
| trackpads.
| jojobas wrote:
| Does anybody even use the trackpad on a thinkpad?
| RileyJames wrote:
| It can be done in this case. Tho I'm unclear if the X1E
| is 'Macbook equivalent'.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/j0mrh5/t480_wi
| th_...
|
| Hence the question. Love to know a trackpad (even
| external) that is of a similar feel and quality as the
| MacBooks.
| kuschku wrote:
| Personally, I prefer the X1E trackpad over the feel of
| the trackpad on my dell XPS on or my friends' macbook
| M1s.
| scns wrote:
| Apple offers one if i'm not mistaken.
| eappleby wrote:
| I've used T series Thinkpads for years (mostly to mimic the
| environment of most of my clients), there are definitely
| better computers out there if you plan to swap out most of
| the parts. https://frame.work/
| kuschku wrote:
| Tbh, if I could put the framework's AMD motherboard in my
| T470, that'd be amazing. I love the thinkpad keyboard, I
| enjoy the X1E glass touchpad, the T14 Gen2 screen is
| amazing, my battery life is 13h of work in IDEA, and I got
| all of it combined for less than 600$.
|
| But I really dislike the hardware of the framework :/
| specto wrote:
| There is no AMD yet
| ihateolives wrote:
| > a battery that has 20h+ capacity and can be swapped with a
| second one to double the capacity in seconds.
|
| And which basically doubles the size and weight of the
| laptop.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, it ain't pretty, it's just possible. If you're a
| function over form kind of person, the ability to work for
| several days in a camp site or road trip without plugging
| it in is a terrific accomplishment and well worth the extra
| bulk. If you're the latter (form over function) then in the
| case of batteries, the cure is worse than the disease.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Does that actually matter? Seriously, it's less that some
| of the text books I used to lug around at school.
| qball wrote:
| Of course not. While not strictly a ThinkPad, IBM used to
| make some very loud "communication devices" that
| Americans famously toted around the European continent in
| the 1940s; the largest batteries available for them still
| didn't push its weight over 6 pounds.
|
| They seemed to manage that just fine. You can carry a
| computer across the office.
|
| That aside, the extended battery on the T480 is still
| bad- it raises the bottom of the laptop and prevents the
| laptop from sitting flat. This was avoided on the older
| models by designing the hinges and lid properly such that
| the 100Wh battery would simply stick out the back but
| they don't make them like that any more.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Why is raising the laptop bad? I have a few ThinkPads of
| that era - having the back raised is quite nice. The
| battery also provides a convenient carrying lip/handle.
| dnh44 wrote:
| I thought the same until I developed shoulder and back
| pain from carrying around too much stuff all the time. Be
| thankful that it still doesn't matter for you.
| messe wrote:
| > a screen that beats the M1
|
| By what metrics?
| kuschku wrote:
| By whatever metrics you want, you can choose which panel to
| install.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| Is it even possible to buy a panel with higher ppi than
| the mac pros? Genuinely asking here. I guess if you value
| 240hz you could run with that.
| kuschku wrote:
| Apple usually buys their panels from LG, most of the time
| you can get better price/performance if you buy the same
| panel directly or in other assemblies.
| astrange wrote:
| You can beat a 224ppi P3 display with working auto
| brightness and auto whitepoint (truetone)?
| kuschku wrote:
| Auto brightness and auto whitetone aren't features of the
| panel, but of the OS. Apple just mosattributes that, as
| always.
|
| And yes, 200+ ppi P3 displays are easily available, Apple
| just buys their panels from the same suppliers that are
| available to you.
| astrange wrote:
| They are features of other hardware associated with the
| panel like light sensors.
|
| And no, just because a contract manufacturer makes the
| panels doesn't mean they also designed them.
| antihero wrote:
| Can you link these things?
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but "If you upgrade the screen, batteries, trackpad,
| speakers, RAM and SSD and then it's a pretty good laptop"
| isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
|
| A 38-horsepower 1980s Mini 1000 is a fast car, if you install
| the engine and drivetrain from a Toyota Celica GT-Four.
| victorp13 wrote:
| Did you... just quote my favourite car of all times, the
| GT-Four?!
| kuschku wrote:
| > isn't exactly a ringing endorsement
|
| Why not? Consider it a DIY kit, not a product, and you'll
| be happy. People build their own IKEA furniture with
| countless mods applied to it, why not do the same with a
| laptop? The framework is popular for a reason.
| doubled112 wrote:
| They are popular around here but I'm not sure they're
| popular in general.
|
| I discuss laptops with a fair amount of people in real
| life and none have heard of the Framework laptop. They
| do, however, know what a MacBook Pro or ThinkPad is, and
| some even know they can customize the latter.
| jojobas wrote:
| The best things in life can't be bought ready and require
| thought and even sacrifice.
| dijit wrote:
| Ikea furniture requires you to build it.
|
| The best beds on the planet are pre-assembled.
|
| Not saying the _exact_ thing you 're saying isn't true
| (IE; the best things in life are actually not _things_
| but relationships and experiences); but it is
| categorically untrue that "the best products require you
| to build them".
| jojobas wrote:
| Messing with a few screws and latches is not exactly
| "building". "The best bed" depends on who's asking, and
| it would have to be built for you.
|
| Similarly, you could hire someone to build a laptop for
| you if you categorically object.
|
| Rather than a bed, a better analogy is a home - even the
| best ready plan can be improved for a particular family.
| Apple just doesn't allow that.
| dijit wrote:
| At what point is it building then?
|
| Assembling could be considered the right term I would
| suppose, but equally I wouldn't say that the author
| "assembled" his laptop, since it involves disassembly.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Erm, I believe it's spelled "SillyCar".
| Snoozus wrote:
| Binky!
| megablast wrote:
| > and there is literally no way you can make a comparison of
| these two machines
|
| This is such a weird thing to say.
| blindriver wrote:
| I mocked Apple's focus on weight and portability and thinness
| until I got a recent Macbook pro for work. Holy shit they are
| heavy! Be careful what you wish for, I suppose!
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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 machine doesn't go from frigid to boiling
| in 3 minutes either. I can't imagine I'd be happier with a 14"
| MBP, I just don't care enough about saving 5 minutes to put up
| with macOS and locked down hardware.
|
| The only thing I miss from the 2018 MBP is the ability to
| charge from the left or right side.
| criddell wrote:
| The MBP running Linux in a VM will probably give you the T480
| experience - it will be relatively slow (but still fast
| enough) and use a lot more battery.
| thoughtbag wrote:
| I can tell you now that 2022 was the year of Linux on the
| desktop with Apple+Parallels! :)
|
| I have a mini datacenter on my desk right now with 5 Debian
| machines running, 1 Windows 10, 1 OpenBSD machine as
| gateway for the others. No lag.
|
| Just now I fired up YouTube on 3 of these Debian machines
| in Firefox as well as one in the Windows 10 VM. All running
| full screen 1080p videos (a wide second display with 3
| VM's, the main display showing the Windows VM). No lag.
|
| Also, I have _never_ heard the fan on this thing. Unsure if
| it has one! :)
|
| The CPU/GPU combo is of course great, but it's the 400GB/s
| memory bandwidth that makes all the difference I think.
|
| ([edit] oh, and the battery life is nuts.)
| vlod wrote:
| Would you mind sharing your machine spec please? Thanks!
| mort96 wrote:
| 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.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Yes, and depending on preference, it's better. With a
| properly working trackpoint, you barely need to move your
| hand or fingers at all. Complete screen navigation from
| slight finger pressure. No swipes, no wrist movement, no
| carpal tunnel, no RTS. The single best control system ever
| invented, once you learn to stop trying to use it like a
| mouse or trackpad. Trackpoint combined with touchscreen is
| the best.
| rkta wrote:
| Yes, because I have to move my hand off the keyboard to use
| the trackpad.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Fair. But don't you move your hand off the keyboard to
| use a _mouse_ when using a desktop PC? Or do you have a
| trackpoint on your keyboard there too?
| rkta wrote:
| I avoid keyboards without trackpoint.
|
| And for the rare case where I have to do something which
| requires a lot of mouse pointer motion (e.g. CAD modeling
| or reading schematics) I prefer a real mouse over a
| trackpad.
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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.
| mbreese wrote:
| You still need to shift your hand position. One of you
| hands leaves the home row, or at least that's how I
| always used the track point (and I started using them in
| the 90s). Is it as much of a shift as a trackpad? No, of
| course not. Is it a panacea of speed because your hands
| don't have to move as much? Not at all. Keyboard
| shortcuts are still much faster.
|
| You like them or you don't. There's no real need to
| explain about it anymore than that. Honestly, on my
| Thinkpads, I used the trackpad just as much as the point.
| Maybe I'm just not very good at it, but it takes some
| skill to use the point. The physical click buttons are
| nice though.
|
| I also don't use 3 finger shortcuts on my Mac either, so
| maybe I'm just crazy.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" 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.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Just spent about 30 seconds there testing this on my m2.
| Couldn't convince it to move the cursor with anything
| below the knuckles.
| pxx wrote:
| That's definitely not the case in my experience. Has this
| improved in the recent past?
| macintux wrote:
| I have small hands and still have trouble with this, to
| the point where I almost always have an external
| keyboard/trackpad with me.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think it depends on your style. I have problems with
| mine, because I typically type with only my fingertips
| touching anything. So if my palm hits the touchpad, it
| registers as a mouse movement. The only solution I've
| found that works pretty well for me is to rest my palms
| on the touchpad when I type, which seems to give it a
| better clue. But this isn't how I type on any other
| keyboard, so I keep forgetting.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Yes, it does. At least to me.
| nullwarp wrote:
| As someone with slightly larger than average hands - Yes
| it does, it happens all the time on both of mine.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Nope. It definitely happened to me on my MBP because of
| the giant trackpad.
| jq-r wrote:
| Not sure if that's the case anymore. Had various Apple
| laptops in the last 15 years and palm rejection worked
| great. Not so with the 16in M1 MBP. It has trouble with
| it especially when I wear sleeves. The trackpad might be
| just a bit too large.
| qball wrote:
| >Is the trackpoint really that important
|
| Yes. The arguments for it are the exact same ones Vim
| evangelists make (ergonomics, speed), but having the
| TrackPoint there applies those advantages to every other
| program on the system as opposed to just the one.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I've had thinkpads for years, first a T420 and now an X1C
| (and I use vim a lot) and I can't seem to integrate the
| track point into my workflow.
|
| Either it's too fast and it overshoots, or it's too slow
| and it distracts from what you're trying to actually do.
|
| How long did it take you to become proficient with it to
| the point you prefer it over a mouse / trackpad?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yeah, I tried repeatedly with an IBM laptop years ago to
| get used to the nub, and couldn't get accurate with it
| without dropping to like 1/20th my mouse-using speed.
| Even the shit-tastic trackpad was way, way better. But of
| course I just did what a lot of PC laptop owners do and
| ended up carting a mouse everywhere (I'd have to have the
| power brick anyway, and once you're in "I'll need a bag"
| territory you may as well toss the mouse in)
| reirob wrote:
| Are you touch typing? I am sincerely curious. For me,
| because I am touch typing, the trackpoint was a big
| advantage over the trackpad - I don't have to lift the
| hands from the keyboard. This is how I got used to the
| trackpoint.
| xeonmc wrote:
| About 5-minutes into first trying a ThinkPad ever
|
| The trick is to use the stick as a Force sensor, instead
| of treating it like a capacitive Position stick on
| console controllers. In other words, you use your skin to
| "pull" the stick transversely so that the shearing force
| maximizes the feedback to your fingertip's cutaneous
| nerves.
|
| The common mistake for those who gave up after 5 seconds
| of trying is attempting to "push" against the stick which
| is very difficult to do because there is barely any
| height to the nub, and in order to reverse directions
| you'd then need to shift your fingertip to get leverage
| on the opposite side of the dome.
|
| When you instead use the shearing technique, it enables
| considerable finesse over not just the magnitude but also
| rapid modulation of the direction you are applying it in,
| effectively using the skin itself as both a sensor and a
| transducer.
|
| Also remember to turn off the operating system's mouse
| acceleration, and turn up the driver's pressure
| sensitivity to max.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > 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've never wanted a nipple mouse, but to each their own and I
| know some people love them. What I have wanted is a giant 6"
| diagonal multi-touch trackpad.
|
| Linux is very much a non-goal for me, and if I want to, I can
| always SSH into a remote instance or run a VM.
|
| I don't miss type A at all, and the 14/16" M1/2s have a much
| broader variety of ports which largely solves the dongle
| issue. [edit] the only place I have a lot of Type A devices I
| also have a thunderbolt dock with gigabit ethernet too.
|
| > The machine doesn't go from frigid to boiling in 3 minutes
| either.
|
| That's a feature of the Intel CPU on the 2018 15" MBP. You
| will not find the same on an M1/2. In fact I'm not sure it
| even warms up?
| niclo wrote:
| > You will not find the same on an M1/2. In fact I'm not
| sure it even warms up?
|
| My M2 does quite regularly with only Chrome, Slack, VS Code
| and a few docker containers running.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I hate that sub downvotes facts that they don't like
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| You're confusing facts with anecdotal evidence.
| ghc wrote:
| 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.
| niclo wrote:
| 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.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Can't you run Docker on a remote host? I always have a
| 64GB memory EC2 instance near if required.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I use my company-provided M1 Pro MBP for mobile dev
| (Xcode, Android Studio) and battery life and heat are
| both great for that use case. Very rarely run Docker, but
| when I have it's seemed more resource hungry than
| anything else running.
| mariosisters wrote:
| I write code full time. I run Docker as little as
| possible, preferring to run everything "natively". It's
| so much simpler than figuring out how to get whatever
| shitty webstack working with reloading etc. It's faster.
| Battery life is better. There's no downside in my
| experience as macOS is a good enough *nix that almost
| everything Just Works(tm).
|
| The only time I run Docker is to test an image locally,
| which is in general only to debug my Dockerfile.
| paulmd wrote:
| Run arm64 ubuntu in a VM and use arm64 images and it
| should be very fine?
|
| I have a 256GB (with easy/cheap room for 768gb) 28c
| haswell-e server sitting in my basement though too. Costs
| like 1/3 of a macbook pro if it comes down to it.
| acdha wrote:
| I switched to using Podman when the licensing terms came
| out and it was clear we weren't going to be able to get a
| procurement through. The move was generally painless and
| the battery life is great - no noticeable impact unless
| I'm actually hammering the CPU in a container.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Can confirm.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You could also launch a Linux VM and run your docker
| containers in there. That ought to work better than just
| running docker in Mac OS and letting it manage VM
| instances on its own.
| Vrondi wrote:
| You shouldn't pay more money for a top-shelf laptop, then
| need to do this.
| Vrondi wrote:
| By the time you have a giant 6" trackpad, then a
| touchscreen just absolutely makes more sense, but oh, yeah,
| right, Apple insists on being a decade+ behind the times on
| laptop hardware features while insisting they're better.
| tstrimple wrote:
| It does not. Touching the screen requires moving your
| hand even further away from the keyboard and requires
| getting your screen all smudged up. I abhor touch screen
| laptops. They make much more sense in convertible laptops
| with pen input.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I actually disagree. It's all about ergonomics. Holding
| your hand/wrist up to the screen all day is unnatural and
| tiring - not to mention smudgey and annoying. The large
| trackpad being planar with the keyboard allows you to use
| without physical stress for extended periods of time.
|
| Their position is if you want to fing on something, fing
| on an iPad.
|
| If you want to type, point and gesture, get a MacBook.
|
| I'm very ok with that and personally satisfied that Apple
| didn't jump on that bandwagon.
| ho_schi wrote:
| Using still an ThinkPad X220 here with Archlinux. There two
| important things in any laptop, the built-in keyboard and the
| built-in screen. This is the I/O-Interface! Customers often
| do the mistake and doesn't invest in the best available
| screen. You cannot make this mistake with Apple, because they
| offer no options for the screen. Regarding keyboards,
| selecting a ThinkPad is always safe.
|
| I had to buy the X220 from a shop, not directly from Lenovo:
| * TN-Panel -> IPS-Panel * ISO-Keyboard -> ANSI-
| Keyboard * Bluetooth 3.0 -> Bluetooth 4.0 LE
|
| All with original replacement parts. I bought it because I
| wanted to remain the the seven row keyboard, which provides
| better layout/grouping. The X220 will reach it 10th year in
| next winter. The keyboard provides excellent tactile feedback
| and concave keys. Bonus, TrackPoint. The TrackPad is
| superfluous for me. The frame is made of polycarbonate (feels
| nice on skin contact) and reinforced with magnesium.
|
| Apples keyboard doesn't provide a good feedback on press and
| the keys have no shape guiding the fingers. They make
| superiors chips through TSMC, especially the M1/M2 without
| any PRO/MAX which allows passive cooling. But I don't want
| use MacOS. And while aluminium is a nice material for cars,
| bikes and planes it doesn't feel good with skin contact. We
| don't use keyboards or mice with aluminium because it doesn't
| feel well. I know, the aluminium frame makes it shiny and
| sturdy and allows to glue in stuff (cheap) but I don't like
| that. I even don't like it with my smartphone.
|
| 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.
| deeesstoronto wrote:
| Also still using a X220 (X230 motherboard swapped) with
| Debian and a T430s (with 1080p swap) with Windows.
|
| Agreed that the X220 form and function is excellent. The
| 7-row keyboard is amazing. The IPS screen is serviceable.
| The swappable 9-cell batteries give around 10 hours of
| battery life each. The i7-3520M is noticeably faster than
| the i5-8250U in my surface pro 6, even though benchmarks
| suggest it shouldn't be.
|
| Just tried a new T14. The keyboard is decent. I haven't
| found any laptops with a keyboard as good as the 7-row.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Also still using a X220 (X230 motherboard swapped)
|
| Is there any advantage to swapping the X230 motherboard
| into an X220 chassis vs. putting the X220 keyboard on an
| X230?
|
| I upgraded to an X230 from an X220 for Vulkan support,
| but have swapping in the X220 keyboard on my todo list.
| Curious if there's a good reason to go the other way.
| jacobgorm wrote:
| I have a T14g2, and while the keyboard is indeed
| reasonable, it is a far cry from keyboards TPS used to
| have, and the front chassis wedge is so sharp it gave me
| long lasting and very painful CTS-like symptoms after a
| single long day of coding on a train (I've since fixed
| that issue by padding the corners with Sugru). The camera
| is also extremely poor, both in terms of image resolution
| and light sensitivity.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > 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 of juice vs 17-22h for
| an M1/2 MacBook Pro.
| ho_schi wrote:
| Yep. We should mention here improvements within the last
| decade? The X13 Gen3 (AMD) also should allow run
| theoretically 17 hours[1]. I think a peak was reached
| with the MacBook (Polycarbonate Body) or T430s which
| allowed to replace the battery at the device bottom with
| a coin, easy maintenance and sturdy frame. And good
| balance because the weight counteracted the open display.
|
| With "peak" I mean the situation that a thing reached a
| point where it was actually good and then get impaired.
| Sometimes because another feature was added but didn't
| fit. Or just for the sake of change. The seven vs. six
| row keyboard layout is such a thing. The 16:9 screens
| where everyone immediately wanted the 16:10 back
| (happening right now). The MiniSD-Slots replacing the SD-
| Slots...
|
| [1] https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/Thi
| nkPad_X...
| eptcyka wrote:
| How does one achieve 17 hours of battery life with an X13
| Gen3 AMD? I can manage maybe 6.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Do you have a discrete GPU? Disable it. Run TLP and
| powertop to see what uses too much power and to adjust
| tweakables.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I do not have a discrete GPU, have run TLP and Powertop
| and have adjusted the tweakables. Maybe it's my 1440p
| display.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If you use zenmonitor, what is the package power on a
| typical workload? It should be 2-3W maximum normally. If
| it's too high, it's a too common case of manufacturers
| setting insane tweakables, and can be remediated using
| amdctl/ryzenadj/zenstates (or in some BIOSes using the
| PBO2 setting). Otherwise, it can sometimes be a bad SSD
| using a lot of power.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I'll try those out, thank you for the tips.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The big problem with newer AMD ThinkPads from what I've
| heard is use of some second-rate (mostly Realtek)
| components in places, which in comparison to those used
| on Intel models don't perform as well and are more likely
| to cause trouble under Linux.
| gmokki wrote:
| I just swapped the realtek wifi of my P14s amd gen 2 with
| Intel ax210. Cost was around 10EUR.
|
| I think since around one year ago upstream kernels do
| support the realtek wifi card properly.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > 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 laptop or phone manufacturer I've ever used?) but
| they hold up better than any others I've seen. I expect
| the Silicon devices will fare even better, having truly
| _stupid_ -long initial battery life (people who are like
| "LOL who the hell needs 14 hour battery life?"--this is
| why, if you want 8 hours of battery life after owning the
| device for five years; it's not just some niche oddball
| thing, it's about device longevity, in addition to being
| handy surprisingly-often in the meantime)
| paulmd wrote:
| I think it's the "way higher quality battery". There are
| a lot of very low-quality non-OEM batteries, I've rarely
| had those last more than 6 months and they were wildly
| unsatisfactory even then. I managed to source a NOS OEM
| thinkpad battery off ebay and that was significantly
| higher quality than the usual junk but still, I think
| Apple is picky about batteries.
|
| While on the whole I'm not overly fond of the non-
| serviceable battery model on laptops, I do believe Apple
| when they say they lose money on their repair service as
| a whole. I just had my iphone 8+ battery replaced after 4
| years (yeah it was starting to get real bad lol), I made
| a point of having it done at the apple store knowing that
| 4-year-old glue might not want to let loose, it ended up
| having a different problem and they ended up replacing
| the whole phone with a refurb, for the $49 cost of the
| battery repair. Sold, absolutely came out ahead on that,
| was starting to get glitchy anyway and it was a refurb
| phone in the first place, honestly was crossing my
| fingers they'd break it anyway.
|
| If you have an expensive MBP I think it'd be a hard sell
| to not take applecare, if you end up needing even 1
| display replaced you come out ahead. That's the model,
| Apple really wants you on Applecare and they lose money
| doing it, it's all part of the package deal of ownership
| (which of course is not offered to secondhand owners,
| that's where they make the money).
|
| It's more of a mixed bag on the cheaper models... display
| replacement still has a decent service charge plus the
| applecare fee and it's not all that worth it on a say
| $700 laptop. You're gonna have paid a total of like $500
| anyway if you need to use it, at some point the laptop is
| just totaled and you get a new one. Also probably not
| worth it on desktops (with the possible exception of
| imac). But on a $3000 macbook pro? Yeah I'd do it there
| for sure.
| kemayo wrote:
| The Apple Silicon models will probably also benefit from
| being the first(?) ones to run their entire life with
| Apple's new optimized charging behavior. E.g. my laptop
| spends most of its life plugged in running a display, and
| so it has its battery charging kept on hold and is
| occasionally charged up to ~80%. I can only assume
| this'll help the battery life in the long term...
| paulmd wrote:
| Check out the application "aldente" for a tool that lets
| you manage this behavior directly... it can stop charging
| at a specific battery level regardless of what "optimized
| charging" wants to do, it allows "sailing" mode where it
| won't start recharging until the battery is discharged to
| a specific level, and it allows halting charging when the
| battery is above a certain temperature.
|
| It does what it says on the tin in terms of system
| behavior at least, no idea how much it will actually help
| in terms of battery life.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I wanted to like the x220s I found and then upgraded (well
| only the best one). I think the keyboard is great. I stuck
| an IPS screen into it (no nitrocaster).
|
| The good one ended up having the power port die on me and
| while struggling to pull the thing a part to get to it (of
| course it is possible, but it's tested my patience :) ) the
| top case basically crumbled apart. I swapped the good parts
| to the other one, but it sits idle now. I just don't feel
| like I can be productive with a small 768 screen. I can't
| avoid the fact 1080 is my minimum.
|
| I think my T430s is really good (with 1080 adapter and the
| keyboard is fantastic), but it can end up having the same
| issues with the top case with small cracks in the top case.
|
| The TP I was able to keep from my last job has none of the
| problems. It is a T470p. Maybe there was some effort into
| material quality over the years, but it survived a really
| hard fall with some minor damage on the top and bottom
| case. It also is much easier to service :) It's the 470
| that's the better overall one I have had, with the 430
| being the one with the better keyboard.
| dijit wrote:
| > T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you
| noticed.
|
| Without battery.
|
| The battery itself weights 7oz, which goes up to 13oz with
| the _extended_ battery (which the parent said he bought)
| mhd wrote:
| > they are worlds apart, build quality, screen quality, weight,
| battery life, single core & parallel processing, speakers,
| trackpad - everything
|
| Well, depending on your job and work setup, that might matter
| more or not. If you're tied to one desk or another, battery
| life is rather secondary - if you're on international flights a
| lot, 12 hours of battery are a godsend.
|
| Performance is another matter. Plenty of users have systems
| that are still basically terminal multiplexers. An ancient i3
| with 8 gigs of RAM can do that. Others do heavy processing
| work, where the M2 just wins.
|
| Ergonomics? Well, do you work with just your laptop? Inside or
| outside? Totally docked? Trackpad ergonomics or keyboard
| ergonomics? (classic Apple vs. Thinkpad topic, although they're
| both worse than 20 years ago, keyboard-wise)
|
| (Generally greybeard me thinks laptops are horribly overrated
| and -designed, but that's a totally different discussion)
| kwanbix wrote:
| A year ago I was given a Macbook M1 at work. Really nice
| battery and mostly silent. However I couldn't stand macOS so I
| asked for a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Battery was worst but not by
| that much, I mean, maybe the M1 would do 25% more actual time.
|
| I really like what Apple has done with the M1/M2, however, I
| cannot stand the non-mate screens, not having a TrackPoint, the
| keyboard, the metallic body, and macOS. It also doesn't help
| the obsession of Apple of making everything thinner at the cost
| of ports.
| astrange wrote:
| The products haven't really been trying to get thinner since,
| I don't know, 2017? Certainly not since Ive left.
|
| They've even regrown ports again.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yeah. M1 MBA owner using it as a cheap daily-driver/thin-
| client, probably will upgrade to a MBP M1 sometime, I'm not
| going back to Intel. Maybe a 11th-gen for AVX512 but really I'd
| want to move onto a 6800U or similar at this point, and the
| selection of "AMD + good display + good KB + repairable
| hardware" is not very deep.
|
| I know they've said it'd be a huge amount of effort and they're
| not planning on it, but I really wish there was a Framework
| laptop with a 6800U or similar.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| "neckbeards" is quite funny
| paines wrote:
| >The reality is these Intel processors are just a big
| inefficient hot mess.
|
| Well that may or may not be the thruth but Linux and the cpu
| itself has sweepdstep, which can and should clock down to like
| 800Mhz when idle saving a lot of power. What I found the
| biggest drain was the display. Dell XPS 15 is a nice (linux)
| machine, almost everthying works out of the box, BUT the
| battery life is a joke. The 4k display is the biggest betteryt
| hog here (check with powertop). Also I do not understand why
| the manufactures build muxless machines for dedicated GPUs.I
| want to disbale nvidia complelty, unseen on the PCI bus via
| bios setting....
| noja wrote:
| > and getting head turns from neckbeards
|
| Where is all this hate coming from? It seems unjustified.
| scandox wrote:
| I take the remark more benignly. I think it's meant in an
| affectionate manner.
| swyx wrote:
| yes, with this post sitting comfortably on #1 on the king
| neckbeard forum, it is as certainly getting head turns from
| us as it is certain never to become more than a passing
| bemusement
|
| *neckbeard used affectionately as an equal opportunity
| mindset that has evolved from its origins like many words
| have; there are women neckbeards too, as are neckbeards
| with no beards or for that matter no neck
| danuker wrote:
| > or for that matter no neck
|
| Are you referring to our robot overlords? Or corporate
| personhood?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> with this post sitting comfortably on #1 on the king
| neckbeard forum_
|
| I'll have you know my beard is full, luxurious and grey,
| as befits someone with 20+ years of Unix experience.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Now here's a nickel, get yourself a better computer
| implements wrote:
| > there are women neckbeards too, ...
|
| Colloquially known as _legbeards_ ...
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=legbeard
| mhd wrote:
| Don't we have "greybeard" for that? My meme game isn't as
| good as it once was, but I do remember the horrible
| "neckbeard nests" pictures...
| esperent wrote:
| Neckbeard means a sexually creepy anti-feminist nerd.
| Basically someone socially awkward who is unable to connect
| with other humans romantically and has channeled that into
| a combination of hatred towards their desired sexual
| partners and a love of computers or other "nerdy"
| endeavors. Which is both weirdly specific and extremely
| common in both males and females.
|
| I don't think there's any way to use the term
| affectionately. Unless there's another meaning?
| 3np wrote:
| Your proposed meaning is a more recent interpretation.
| Searching online I see the mysogynism angle becoming more
| prominent in the 2010s:
| https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/how-neckbeards-
| have-...
|
| here's from stackexchange from some years prior:
| https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/3173/whats-the-
| non-l...
|
| https://metatalk.metafilter.com/23545/Neckbeard-is-this-
| a-wo...
|
| I've seen it used as a synonym for "unix beard".
| https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Receiving headturns from neckbeards is a whole lot better
| than getting headturns from youngsters sipping latte at
| Starbucks.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Resorting to silly Mac user stereotypes that were barely
| true when they dropped in 2008 is a good way to tell people
| you've never used a Mac or been to a Starbucks in a decade.
| wongarsu wrote:
| This is the comment where I now get offended that you
| said that as if not using a Mac or not going to Starbucks
| are shameful.
|
| It's rare to see such a flame war on hn
| alexvoda wrote:
| As a coffeebeard I wouldn't be caught dead (nor alive) in
| a Starbucks.
| [deleted]
| thfuran wrote:
| No, they said it as if GP had no idea what they were
| talking about.
| astrange wrote:
| That's actually a 2000s political stereotype rather than
| a tech stereotype (he's just said "Mac users" instead of
| "liberals"), but I think Starbucks is more associated
| with suburban soccer moms now.
| 10xDev wrote:
| Remember you are only hurting yourself, not Apple.
| huijzer wrote:
| It's an interesting fight which Apple is taking on with the ARM
| chips. Basically everybody else, including Microsoft, Dell, HP,
| and Intel, would like to see Apple Silicon disappear to not lose
| market share in their x86 devices. For example, GitHub to this
| day still does not support GitHub Runners on Apple Silicon. In
| turn, this makes it way harder for developers to compile
| aarch64-darwin binaries.
| dools wrote:
| I got an M2 MacBook and the battery life is insane.
|
| As for any maintenance issues, get AppleCare and live a happy
| life. I run my macs for 6+ years and only retire them when apple
| stops releasing OS updates for them.
| afgrant wrote:
| I'm in the same mindset. My 2009 MacBook got regular OS updates
| until 2017, then security updates until 2019. I replaced that
| one with an M1 Air and it's been smooth sailing.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I then get those macs put linux on them and use them another 6+
| years :)
| anonymous344 wrote:
| aside the hardware, when I changed from macbook (2019) to
| thinkpad, the biggest advantage and source of happiness is to
| never need to touche Finder again! It is horrible! the desktop,
| gui, cmd-tab, and whole user experience with 2 monitors (could
| not get 3 monitors to work) is just awful. With win 10 latest
| update it's a breeze
| iakov wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I've switched from Win10 to Mac for work last summer and it's
| been great so far. IMO Finder and Explorer are both garbage
| with different colored glitter mixed in, but general experience
| of working on MacOs is so much better than everything my
| Windows and Linux boxes offered.
|
| This laptop has 16 gigs of ram (my windows workstation has 48),
| can run on one charge whole work day and then some, emits zero
| noise and is very responsive no matter how many tabs and live-
| reloading applications I have running. Super impressive to me.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, I just got on it earlier.
|
| My first Mac was a mid-2012 MBP. I loved it, and it lasted
| until my then-two-year-old poured a glass of milk into the
| keyboard in 2016. I used various Windows machines for a
| while, then bought a new MBP in 2018. I had that one for less
| than a year because I realized I just wasn't using it much -
| I always had laptops issued to me for work, and a Linux box
| on Linode that I could SSH/RDP into.
|
| When the M1 came out I bought a 14" MBP. It's only got 8GB of
| RAM, but it's faster in actual usage for anything but
| graphics-heavy gaming than my (admittedly, aging) gaming
| desktop.
|
| I used to be fine programming in Windows, and that was before
| WSL/WSL2. These days the experience is much better but it's
| still easier just to dual boot or SSH/RDP.
|
| macOS, OTOH, has gotten a ton better in that time. There are
| a few nagging things I don't like but it generally just stays
| out of my way and lets me treat it like a Linux box with a
| nice, relatively consistent WM.
|
| I still have my Windows desktop because it's better suited
| for gaming and has better support. If not for that I'd be
| full macOS.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I currently use a ThinkPad T480. I switched from a Macbook after
| they started using those godawful butterfly keyboards. The
| keyboard was my primary motivation for switching.
|
| But apart from the keyboard, the rest of the laptop simply
| doesn't hold up. The battery is mediocre, the trackpad doesn't
| even fall in the same league. Windows is a hot mess and Ubuntu,
| while good for dev work, is just too user-unfriendly and filled
| with tiny annoyances.
|
| I'll be switching back to the newer MacBook soon.
| buro9 wrote:
| This is replacing an old M1 Air, with an old T480 and upgrading
| bits.
|
| As a cost efficient way of getting a good computer this is a
| reasonably good reminder that other options exist and old
| ThinkPads were produced in unreasonable numbers and can be
| obtained easily on eBay (businesses selling off their old stock).
|
| For me, I've a work 3y refresh cycle coming up and a dilemma - an
| M2 Mac vs a ThinkPad X1. I just don't like MacOSX at all, and I
| do love Linux, and once in a blue moon because I'm a Director I
| need to delve into large Excel sheets that even an M2 struggles
| over but Excel on Windows does great at. I find myself seriously
| considering Windows 11 Pro on an X1 with WSLv2 for my Linux daily
| driver (it's not like I'm doing eBPF work and need a specific
| kernel capability). And this dilemma feels, weird. Because all I
| see is everyone with Macs. Still, the ThinkPad is likely to win -
| I have another 6 weeks to decide.
| prmoustache wrote:
| When you spreadsheet app struggle, tou know it is time to
| convert to a database. You'll work much faster with an sqlite
| database anyway. Even converting csv + perl/ruby/python is more
| convenient than that piece of shit of excel anyway.
|
| By the way libreoffice calc seem to handle better large
| spreadsheet files.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Why is it such a point of developer provide to pretend that
| Excel doesn't provide any value? Are we still not past this
| blind spot? I write Python every day and there's still plenty
| I'd rather do in Excel, even on macOS where it's absolute hot
| garbage.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am not a dev.
|
| There are tons of non developers who actually learn to use
| python or R to manipulate large dataset. Why couldn't a
| accountant or manager do that as well?
|
| Excel is not especially easier to learn than sqlite if you
| start doing funky things with multiple sheets/documents
| relations and all. It is actually programming without
| giving it the name.
| buro9 wrote:
| Spreadsheets are owned by Finance and Accounting - I'm in Eng
| and wouldn't be able to get them to let go of Windows +
| Excel.
| prmoustache wrote:
| You can still convert back your data to csv or xlsx once
| you finished your work on it. Most db clients actually
| support that.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| sleepychu wrote:
| Depends if these are really spreadsheets or specialist
| "applications" made of excel formulas by "non-technical"
| users.
|
| If you are really looking at large file based table data and
| are similarly unable to persuade the author to produce a
| sensible format, I've had a good time with VisiData
| Octabrain wrote:
| I needed a new laptop and due to that, I've recently spent quite
| a lot of time browsing reddit, various forums and this sacrosanct
| place, trying to find information about experiences with laptop's
| brands and configurations. I ended up purchasing a Lenovo P15v
| AMD due to its upgradability and internal ports (RAID capability,
| non-soldered RAM memory) but was very close to get a Mac M1/2
| laptop. I ditched the idea in the end because I want a fully
| functional Linux system on it. I don't like MacOS at all (I have
| enough having to deal with it on my company assigned computer)
| but I have to admit that the quality of their devices is beyond
| anything on the market, also the simplicity of their product
| lines.
|
| Anyways, if one day Linux reaches the point where it's fully
| compatible with the M* series I am not gonna have second thoughts
| on purchasing one, right away.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| I think I saw something about kernel compatibility just the
| other day. No idea what the other pieces are the puzzle are.
| fmajid wrote:
| The Linux 6.2 kernel released yesterday has official M1
| support. It takes a lot more than just the kernel to have a
| functional machine: GPU and (W)LAN drivers, power management
| support, etc. But we are getting closer.
| rvz wrote:
| Yeah. I would have done the same and would skip buying the M1
| MacBook Air, or just replace it with a M2 MacBook instead one
| rather than downgrade to a ThinkPad.
| crawsome wrote:
| It all depends what your use case is.
|
| Also, rant on how Apple was once my favorite, and now I hate them
| as much as 90s Microsoft. (M$ is no angel either with all their
| telemetry...)
|
| I manage macs at scale, and I notice they are getting worse and
| worse. After managing 150 Macs as MDM admin, I want Mac to get
| off the train they're on and start being predictable again.
|
| Intel macs run like crap now, while the M1s chug along nicely.
| I'm convinced Apple bakes engineering obsolesce into their old
| products to keep you on that 3 year device renewal period. They
| got sued for it more than once for the "Battery throttling" on
| the iPhone, and likely one of the only times they will ever get
| caught doing it. And they had an excelent PR push of "Battery
| health = performance, not my fault"
|
| We've had to straight-up replace fully-decked-out 2019 i7s with
| 32GB ram because they run so badly with modern software. Our
| graphic designer has a $3000+ laptop that is useless for their
| job. Massive fuckery is going on, because these are powerful
| machines.
|
| Why suspect malice when you can suspect incompetence? Apple has a
| track record of lying about their throttling, so I assume there's
| a culture of it and it pads their bottom line.
|
| The T480 is looking great, other than the bad keyboard they
| adopted after they killed-off the last genuine thinkpad
| keyboards. An optional video card would have been great for the T
| line, but you'd have to go with W or P for that I think.
|
| I don't trust big companies in General, but Apple makes too much
| money for just a computer and software company. Their ecosystem's
| walled garden and "we know better" settings are repellent to me,
| and I've since given up my iOS device for LineageOS so I can use
| my hotspot without it automatically turning itself off (They
| surely know better about my hotspot practices).
| kylec wrote:
| I'm all for pushing back on the idea that just because it's
| "old", that it's useless and needs to be replaced. Lots of old
| machines are still perfectly good at a lot of stuff, and can be
| had and upgraded for cheap, which is awesome!
|
| However, there's no way to slice going from a M1 MacBook Air to a
| ThinkPad T480 as anything but a downgrade. The screen is worse,
| the CPU is worse, the battery is MUCH worse, it's thicker,
| heavier, the list goes on. If the author of the post is happier
| with his new laptop, that's great, but this isn't really a path
| it makes sense for anyone else go follow him down.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Heavier? A 14 inch macbook pro is 1.6kg. The t480 is 1.3kg and
| the non-s weighs the same as the macbook. So what are you
| talking about?
| kylec wrote:
| The M1 MacBook Air is 1.29kg
| phrz wrote:
| The T480 _with a battery_ is 1.6kg, or 1.8kg on the extended
| pack. https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/Think
| Pad_T...
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Yes, that is why I wrote "same as macbook". And a T480s is
| 1.32kg https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/Th
| inkPad_T...
| lmedinas wrote:
| It's an interesting post but i guess at the end it all ends up
| because the Author got tired of Apple and wanted to use Linux.
| Through the post its difficult to find another reason, specially
| when the Mac is clearly superior in nearly all the points
| mentioned: screen, battery, CPU, etc...
|
| Regarding MacOS i use it for years (I do have machines with
| Windows and Linux at home) as my main Desktop OS and im also
| getting frustrated with some Apple decisions lately. But for a
| plain Desktop/Workstation OS MacOS at the end does everything
| Linux does at the end of the day its a matter of taste.
|
| With Laptops i think Apple still has the edge, on Workstations,
| you can build a damn good PC with a Ryzen 7x and an NVIDIA/ATI
| GPU and have lots of advantages compared to a Mac Studio for
| example.
| seszett wrote:
| 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 practice is their screens.
|
| But _replacing_ a Macbook M1 with a Thinkpad only makes sense if
| the Thinkpad is better in some aspects, not if it 's just good
| enough. Otherwise you would just keep your somewhat better laptop
| and replace it later if you ever have to, right?
| philipphutterer wrote:
| It didn't say so in the post but I suspect 8GB RAM were just
| not enough and an upgrade was necessary anyway? And future
| upgrading was mentioned. In my opinion this is a valid point
| actually and should be very much considered when buying any of
| the modern all-fixed-no-upgrades machines, I mean its not just
| the Apple machines.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I've used an 8GB M1 Air for the past 2 years and it's totally
| fine. My brother got the 16GB and there is no noticable
| difference in performance for any of my usual apps.
|
| Going from 8GB -> 16GB in an M1 just doesn't make much
| difference, except perhaps for a few specialised apps that
| require a ton of VRAM.
| rr888 wrote:
| Thanks I've been debating this. 8GB just feels wrong but I
| hate to pay that Apple upgrade premium.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I think it's very clear. The article clearly states that the
| hardware is objectively worse, but not in a way that matters to
| the author.
|
| The software and Apple's business decisions are the problem it
| seems. That's actually the same reason I would prefer a
| Thinkpad to a Macbook myself. The author wants to be able to
| upgrade or repair their laptop when it breaks.
|
| That does make the Thinkpad a better product for the author.
| locallost wrote:
| He was tired of Apple's shit, it sounds like a divorce to me.
| It's better in all of the aspects the author stated: price,
| ability to repair etc. All valid points, that are more or less
| or not at all important for other people.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| He wanted a large SSD, 32GB RAM, sturdy build, many ports, and
| Linux. How does it not make sense?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I like Macbook hardware, but I left because MacOS is only
| getting worse. It's not hard to sympathize with others who feel
| the same. Nevermind the downward spiral of design trends and
| wasted screen space, Apple has made no efforts to improve MacOS
| as a compatible dev platform. UNIX certification means very
| little when the most popular open source software is broken
| out-of-box on your OS, and your hardware vendor actively avoids
| implementing open APIs like Vulkan. There's no point for me to
| buy a laptop that Apple owns.
|
| For many people, it's less about the hardware and more about
| telling Apple to fuck off. I'm among the latter, getting kicked
| off MacOS when Apple made the overnight decision to depreciate
| 32-bit software. Onwards to greener pastures, I suppose.
| Reason077 wrote:
| It's not made by Apple, but MoltenVK is free, open source,
| actively developed/maintained and works well on M1/M2
| hardware. It's used by many commercial game ports to Mac/iOS
| devices.
|
| https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a nice project, but more of a testament to how high
| the demand for a standardized graphics API is. If Apple
| could commit to an open graphics API stack, a lot of
| industries could start depreciating DirectX.
| karteum wrote:
| > But _replacing_ a Macbook M1 with a Thinkpad only makes sense
| if the Thinkpad is better in some aspects, not if it 's just
| good enough. Otherwise you would just keep your somewhat better
| laptop and replace it later if you ever have to, right?
|
| Being able to remove the SSD (to recover data), to easily
| replace parts and repair the computer (especially when
| travelling a lot), to keep control and ensure a long-tife to
| your machine (rather than being stuck with no software upgrade
| when Apple decides the machine is too old), having better
| connectivity (hdmi, ethernet, sd...), etc. All of those are
| aspects where the Thinkpad is better than the M1 and can
| effectively be considered as upgrades ! Raw CPU horsepower and
| battery life are not the only criteria that matters. (and maybe
| once the author realized that, he also considered it was
| worthwhile to sell his M1 while it still had some value on the
| 2nd hand market rather than keep it and lose all the value if
| anything happens to the machine that is not easily fixable)
| kaba0 wrote:
| To be fair, it's not like thinkpads would get that "up-to-
| date software" ever - their intel CPUs are full of throttling
| bugs and there are plenty of unanswered forum posts left with
| hacks like a python script going on every other second fixing
| the issue..
| joshvince wrote:
| This is cool, but I think you lost me when you said "it just
| works out of the box" about your OS. I mean, sure, but you've had
| to order a new screen, touchpad, battery and RAM. That's a lot of
| boxes to work out of
| reidrac wrote:
| I got a refurbished ThinkPad T470 for PS200 and it is like new.
| May need to add more RAM (came with 8GB), but that's it.
|
| I don't really need to upgrade my hw often, only when it breaks
| and it is clear it was so outdated is not worth repairing it. OK,
| it all depends on your requirements, but I don't see myself
| buying a new laptop ever again. Both because price and cost to
| the environment.
| andirk wrote:
| I think most of us use Mac because it's the breed standard. If it
| was something else, then we'd all use that.*
|
| * Obviously not Windows though. A linux flavor
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Just got myself an X13, love the screen ratio and the keyboard is
| almost as good as my old T42 which finally died. Not thrilled
| about everything being soldered on but every TP I have owned has
| outlived its own usefulness so I am not too concerned, even my
| $250 e11 is still going strong all stock and just shy of 10 years
| old. First computer with AMD and first computer with a remotely
| decent GPU which is kind of fun but I don't really need it. So
| far my favorite TP since the T42.
|
| I do wish they would release another e11 that is not a yoga,
| going to miss that computer when it finally dies.
| zinxq wrote:
| Last year I upgraded to a Thinkpad Carbon. Almost immediately, I
| couldn't stand the keyboard. This sent me down a rabbit-hole of
| what was wrong with the keyboard (as it looked almost identical
| to my previous Thinkpad).
|
| The answer is that Thinkpad has slowly evolved their keyboards to
| be slimmer. Reducing the travel on the keys with each step.
|
| Some of the new ones are down to 1.3mm of travel. I realize this
| is a personal preference, but I noticeably make more errors under
| anything less than 1.8mm of travel.
|
| Hence, I got rid of the Carbon and bought a Thinkpad T14 Gen 2
| which is pretty much the latest model with 1.8mm. The Gen 3 was
| available, but they trimmed it down to 1.5mm.
|
| I realize this is a pretty picky hill to die on, but I can't
| express how significant it is for the reliable use of keyboard
| for me. I'll be buying T14 Gen 2's until I die it seems from here
| on out. Everything else about the laptop is just fine. Runs any
| linux I throw at it, 4k screen if desired, all the upgrade-
| ability I might want.
|
| (If you get lucky, you can even find one with a proper Ethernet
| port. Some come without because apparently during the chip-
| shortage, they removed that feature)
| nehal3m wrote:
| Is the Gen3 keyboard compatible with Gen2? If so you could
| upgrade to a Gen3 and swap out the keyboards.
| __anon-2023__ wrote:
| Where did you get the info about the key travel? I have an
| X1-Carbon Gen 6 and I feel that the key travel is good, but I
| wouldn't mind a better "click" feeling when I hit the keys,
| like in a Macbook or a Surface.
| sgsag33 wrote:
| I would never buy a Apple laptop.
|
| You don't know what it does as its a closed system. But even
| heavier for me counts the fact that you can't replace its hdd
| which will fail after years of usage no matter what. Also you
| will not receive any security updated after seven years.
|
| Don't give up your freedom just because of laziness!
| pancrufty wrote:
| You _can_ replace it now.
| sgsag33 wrote:
| Officially? Would be surprised as its soldered to the
| motherboard!
| okamiueru wrote:
| Well, you can still replace it. You just have to replace
| the parts attached to it as well.
| sgsag33 wrote:
| Which is the logic board aka the computer itself...
| that's not very sustainable for sure.
| okamiueru wrote:
| Indeed. I was being facetious
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I once spilled an entire can of beer onto a Thinkpad X220.
| The fix involved a screwdriver, a sponge, a $50 replacement
| keyboard"_
|
| I once spilled half a glass of red wine all over my M1 MacBook
| Air keyboard. The fix involved quickly turning it upside down,
| sponging it off, and letting it dry out. OK, some of the affected
| keys were rather sticky afterwards and required popping off the
| keycaps and cleaning underneath. Some of them are still not
| perfect and I need to have another go with some isopropyl
| alcohol. But it certainly didn't require buying a replacement
| keyboard!
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| As a counter point, I spilled a gigantic can of energy drink on
| my t420 and my fix was literally doing jack shit, not even
| shutting down the computer because the laptop had drain holes.
| A key was sticky a bit I guess.
| mrzool wrote:
| > for contrast, a little bit of dust can break an Apple butterfly
| keyboard
|
| Butterfly switches have been discontinued by Apple in 2019, Macs
| with Apple Silicon do not have them.
| gigatexal wrote:
| M1 to T480? Odd. I plan to go thinkpad to M series once all the
| Asahi Linux work is complete and upstreamed so I can run Fedora
| on it just as well as on x86.
| tomxor wrote:
| Welcome to the dark side.
|
| After enduring a decade or more of Apple, tasting the modicum of
| control and self determinism you gain from a cheap x86 + linux as
| a developer, makes it hard to look back. People getting over the
| threshold of trying is understandably hard due to how easy it is
| to become entrenched in the ecosystem. Also bad past experiences
| of getting linux running probably don't help, but it's a very
| comfy place to be as a dev these days, and pretty much guaranteed
| to be smooth with certain hardware like a TP.
| nkotov wrote:
| I don't upgrade my computers (or my phones) as much anymore so
| serviceability isn't as important to me. I have both a MacBook
| Air M2 and a T480 and I love the flexibility. Most of what I do
| is on the M2 but every once in a while, I run into edge cases
| such as printer drivers that only work on Windows or upgrading
| video production firmware.
| sschueller wrote:
| The biggest contrast here and what we should be concerned about
| is the fact that this old Thinkpad can be upgraded and still be
| used vs an old macbook that if speced too low is now useless and
| ends up on a landfill. Not even considering that new macbooks if
| locked are unusable on the secondary market and get tossed even
| if the hardware is perfectly fine.
|
| It's as if we have given up on "solving" climate change in favor
| of short term profits...
| nicbou wrote:
| In practice old MacBooks tend to have a much longer useful life
| in my experience. I'm working on a 12" Macbook and I love it.
| It's still decently fast for.the lowest specced Macbook from 6
| years ago.
|
| It supplements a 2017 Macbook Pro that's still overkill in
| 2022. Both have excellent battery life. If it wasn't for the
| nearly free upgrade I got in 2017, I'd probably still rock a
| 2012 model.
| kdtsh wrote:
| I've got a 2012 MacBook Air which I bought second hand (maybe
| third or fourth hand, or more?) for $300 a couple years ago.
| The hinge is floppy probably due to being dropped several
| times, the FaceTime is busted, I replaced the battery but it
| still runs out in less than 2 hours, and I don't think macOS
| even gets security patches for the version it's running - but
| install Linux and it's _fine_, plus it's tiny.
|
| I could probably run it as a rudimentary media server if I
| didn't already have one, or palm it off to a young kid who
| doesn't care that it's a bit banged up, or use it as a
| machine of last resort. I don't use it like I use my M2
| MacBook Air and would never suggest someone daily drive it
| unless they had no other choice, but I can't justify throwing
| it away because it's completely solid and still works. I
| could also probably get $100-150 out of it if I really wanted
| to sell it - if anyone can tell me of another 10 year old
| laptop with resell value like that I'd like to know.
|
| I don't think I've owned a non-Apple laptop for more than 3
| years, with the exception of a particularly long-lived Lenovo
| laptop I got in 2013. Every other one has had critical
| hardware die that I didn't feel inclined to replace mainly
| due to costs outweighing benefits. Except for a few weird
| years in the late 2010s, Apple makes stunningly reliable and
| long-lasting hardware in my experience.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Basically it's unusable but it still turns on? Is this what
| apple users consider as "durability"?
| seszett wrote:
| To add a counterpoint, my Macbook Air from 2011 (model
| A1370 IIRC) running Linux is totally usable and I do use
| it as a daily driver (well, not _daily_ but I use it on
| the days when I need a small laptop, which is several
| days a week). I suppose macOS cannot be upgraded on it
| anymore but I never liked macOS and never really used it.
|
| I replaced its battery three times now, and the fracking
| awful magsafe 1 cable countless times, but other than
| that everything works, including the camera, and I took
| enough care of it that it's basically as good as new. The
| hinge is a bit weak indeed, but it's only noticeable when
| I'd like to almost close it without totally closing it. I
| think it's acceptable for a 12 year old computer. It runs
| about four hours under Linux on a 4680 mAh battery.
| Gigachad wrote:
| You can fix the hinge with a screwdriver. It's a bit of a
| pain but not a terribly hard fix.
| matthiaswh wrote:
| The T480 they just got is already 5 years old.
|
| Maybe other manufacturers don't have long lifespans, I can't
| say, but Lenovos tend to hang around forever and are easy to
| sell when you want to upgrade.
|
| See all the people commenting here about their 12 year old
| x220. I still use an 8 year old x250.
| LtWorf wrote:
| In practice my old macbook fell apart after 4 years and I've
| since stopped buying them.
|
| Now I also don't need dongles, nor a dedicated charger.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Old MacBooks used to be more upgradable. I did upgrade my old
| MacBook and did prolong it's life. Current MacBooks have 0
| upgradability. Once the specs are too low, that's that.
|
| Also, current MacBooks used in corporate environments do not
| reach the second hand market because the SSD is no longer an
| independent component. They get shredded. Perfectly good
| barely old computers get shredded because one component is no
| longer separate.
| ShrimpHawk wrote:
| I agree; used a 2015 Macbook Pro until last year when I
| purchased the M1. 7 years of life for a laptop is exceptional
| and I expect to get similar out of my current one. You'd be
| hard pressed to find laptops with that level of longevity.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| >It's as if we have given up on "solving" climate change in
| favor of short term profits...
|
| That is such non sequitur. Old hardware gets old that is
| nothing new. All of us _could_ do our work with laptops from
| early 2000s, but we don't because we want the benefit of 20
| years of hardware improvement.
|
| Why is upgrading an old laptop any better than buying a new
| one? The parts had to be produced anyway and unless you are
| upgrading frequently your old laptop will still be noticeably
| behind in performance.
|
| Sure on some metrics they are fine, browsing hackernews and
| sending emails is solved and can be done with pretty much every
| computer.
|
| >Not even considering that new macbooks if locked are unusable
| on the secondary market
|
| I also don't get what you mean by this. At least my macbooks
| aren't "locked" in anyway. I can reset them and resell as I see
| fit.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Please recycle your old computers, don't throw them in
| landfills.
| dnh44 wrote:
| >Not even considering that new macbooks if locked are unusable
| on the secondary market and get tossed even if the hardware is
| perfectly fine. It's as if we have given up on "solving"
| climate change in favor of short term profits...
|
| Making this argument without acknowledging the impact it has on
| the market for stolen Apple goods makes it an intellectually
| dishonest one I think.
| ribit wrote:
| I wouldn't be able to do it. I spend a significant part of my day
| in front of the computer and having to deal with a poor ergonomic
| of a budget tool would drive me very frustrated. I also have no
| desire to tinker with my computer or the installation.
|
| But I think it's great to hear these stories and to know that
| there are people for whom these kind of decisions work.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| This is how I think. People go crazy over these laptops and all
| I can think is "how the heck do you work on a laptop all day?"
| gspencley wrote:
| I have to use an M1 for work with 32GB of RAM. While I have no
| doubt that the hardware is quite powerful, it is the slowest
| FEELING machine that I have ever used in my life.
|
| Every personal device of mine runs Linux on much older / weaker
| x86 hardware; one of those systems dual boots Windows 10, and
| they all provide a snappier user experience than just spinning up
| a web browser on the M1 that I use for work.
|
| I have no idea why this is, and when I complained about it we ran
| benchmarks and non-scientific tests (i.e: let's see how long it
| takes to compile something) to compare my system with my
| coworkers to rule out something defective - they had the exact
| same numbers.
|
| I suspect it's software related. The difference between Linux and
| OS X is night and day, but even Windows 10 on a ~5 year-old
| desktop (can't remember the CPU off hand but it's an Intel) feels
| much snappier.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I also do all of my development on various ThinkPads I've owned
| throughout my life: T480, T490, P51..
|
| I like cheap, upgradeable laptops over Macs since:
|
| * I can put what I want in them. I don't want to pay Apple 200
| euros for 8GB of RAM.
|
| * It's not a treasure. I take care of it because it would be
| annoying to have to replace it, but my wallet wouldn't cry over a
| cheap second-hand machine
|
| * They run Linux well
|
| * My P51 has a Quadro dGPU that can play basically all games
| before 2018, which is enough for me (and better than what a M1
| can do)
|
| I literally don't see an advantage to owning a M1 besides better
| resolution (why people want a trillion pixels on their screen I
| don't get also. I can see perfectly fine without 4K) and build
| quality.
| danielbln wrote:
| The main advantage is the CPU. The M1/M2 are blazingly fast,
| and basically never get even warm. I have to _really_ crunch
| the machine to even hear the faintest hum of the fan. Battery
| lasts for ever, it's like a phone, charge once a day if that.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Modern CPUs are more than quick enough for my purposes. If
| you're compiling huge amounts of C/C++/Rust, I see why a
| powerful CPU might be nice -- still, at my job we have a lot
| of CI pipelines that just run in the cloud, sidestepping the
| issue completely.
|
| For normal text editing, shell use, web browsing, IDEs, etc.
| my i7 is barely even challenged. And any game that can run
| with my Quadro GPU won't use more cycles than my CPUs got in
| it.
|
| I do agree the battery life of M1 is quite nice though. I
| basically keep my laptop plugged in all day so it's not
| really an issue for me.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Before getting my 2021 16" MBP with a M1 Max, I'd read
| comments like yours and get the idea that I'd be able to
| encode video without it getting warm :-P This is not the
| case, at least not with the M1 Max.
|
| It does get warm if we push it hard for a few minutes. This
| could be easily avoided if Apple started the fans at low
| speeds earlier, but instead they let the SoC run at 80-90oC
| for 2 or 3 minutes before the fans kick in at low speeds and
| that heat needs to go somewhere. There are 3rd party apps
| that let you control fan speeds, which is what I do.
|
| With this said, coming from a 2019 16" MBP (Intel) it was a
| huuuge improvement. The damn thing would get warm doing basic
| tasks. At full power, it would throttle even with the fans at
| 100% and because the Intel processor was allowed to use more
| than the 100W the computer could take, any very long tasks
| would drain the battery. M1/M2 macs are nothing like that.
| danielbln wrote:
| I would consider video encoding as "really crunching the
| machine" though.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| According to apple themselves the M2 is slower than current
| intel or amd chips, though not by much. And you are much more
| limited on RAM and on storage and on GPU performance.
|
| The power consumption under load is impressive though (about
| half).
| kuschku wrote:
| In an ideal market, you could buy a T480 with an M2 CPU.
| Which would be a much better laptop, for a much better price.
| It's only due to market distortions due to big players trying
| to be anticompetitive that we're stuck with this choice.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I literally don't see an advantage to owning a M1 besides
| better resolution (why people want a trillion pixels on their
| screen I don't get also. I can see perfectly fine without 4K)
| and build quality.
|
| I don't know how the TP screens look, but for me, I'd want a
| mac because text looks much, much better than on my laptop.
|
| Note that I'm comparing an almost 10 yo MBP (late 2013 15"
| retina) to a late 2021 HP. The latter's colors and viewing
| angles are comically bad, but even leaving that aside, text is
| not as sharp as on the MBP. And actually, shitty colors do make
| it less comfortable in the long run. I have to pump up the
| contrast on screen elements to tell them apart. Plus, the
| current trend of ulta-skinny fonts doesn't help either, and
| produces an ungodly rainbowy mess, especially on darker
| backgrounds.
|
| And don't even get me started on that HP's cousin, an almost
| 2000 EUR computer (with middle of the road specs, not some
| ridiculously specced beast) that has a 6 bit panel, and is
| basically unable to display darker oranges.
| [deleted]
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Lenovo's anti-consumer behavior makes Apple look like a charity
| with a perfect rating on www.charitynavigator.org.
|
| It doesn't matter that he's running Pop!.
|
| Strong aftermarket sales lead to value retention which drives new
| sales, and Lenovo's 2023 position seems to be to generate as much
| ewaste as possible, especially in their workstation and server
| lines.
|
| Between secure boot "oopsies", rampant (and ongoing) GPL
| violations, constant spyware campaigns, and vendor locks for CPUs
| every time I see someone at a FOSS conference with a Lenovo
| festooned in stickers I chuckle inside because they're oiling the
| same machine they're raging against.
| hochul-azul wrote:
| The only reason I elect Apple is because it has an OS that isn't
| Windows and isn't Linux. I spend a lot of time fixing other
| people's operating system problems, I don't want to do it at
| home.
|
| There is no way I will ever again run Linux as a daily driver. I
| had to do it a decade ago, and it was fine. It isn't fine now.
| contingencies wrote:
| Also Aussie, also won't be buying another Mac. Issues I have
| include: crapstore, refusal to upgrade XCode which makes the
| hardware soon-useless (at least brew is complaining), and _three_
| different upgrades that killed third party USB drivers (one
| killed my favourite keyboard, one killed my non-Apple branded USB
| network adaptor, and one killed connectivity with some CHxxx UART
| driven microcontrollers). I would say quite seriously that Apple
| is no longer suitable for development. I will be focusing on
| Linux desktops again from now on.
| fbnlsr wrote:
| I've replaced a Macbook Air with a ThinkPad T480, which I've
| upgraded with a 250 GB SSD and 16 GB of RAM, and a bigger
| battery.
|
| It's just the perfect laptop for me. The keyboard feels super
| nice (I don't like those arrow keys though), battery life is
| excellent, and the screen is sharp enough. Its only drawback are
| the speakers, but that doesn't bother me much tbh.
|
| Amazing laptop, couldn't recommend it enough.
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