MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days

I may be an outlier, but for me, the problem with non-mac machines is that they seem just careless.

Steve jobs famously said "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.", and this seems true to me for almost all hardware manufacturers, and to a larger degree still for software.

Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations?

There has been amazing workmanship for thousands of years. The Minoan culture made golden jewellery out of sub-milimeter spheres. Why should we now tolerate the insult that consumer computers are?

I'm on my 3rd(!) company supplied macbook in almost 2 years. Macbook Pro, 16'', 32GB. First Macbook: screen broke in the middle. Second Macbook: screen broke and MacOS is complaining that there's something wrong with the SSD. Third macbook I just received and can't tell what will break. But break it will.

I only move them around the house, never on the road. When I move them, I place them in a Thule Gauntlet. I really take care of these babies as I find it wasteful not to.

So that is my anecdata on the 'stability' and 'care' of Apple.

My experience differs from yours. Both are wrong and true. You could just be unlucky, and so can I. No need to completely write off Dell or Lenovo over that though.

It is extremely funny that people are able to come to conclusions like this from just 2 data points.

"Macbooks seem to be the only viable option these days", because I had bad experiences with two non-Macbook computers.

To be fair; I don't think that the author came to that conclusion only from those 2 anecdotes. But still, that is the way the argument is presented. And it really looks absurd.

I've worked in a software validation lab for the past 5 years where we have 100s of laptops in use. My bench has 8-10 laptops sitting on it at any given time, all of them running 24/7, though none of them doing anything particularly demanding. So I have what I believe to be some unique experience in this.

All of these laptops are higher end business models from major OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc...) I was an avid fan of Thinkpad T series laptops for quite a while, but in the last couple of years I've had a lot of problems with them and am no longer confident in that series. I've never been a fan of HP, and have had mixed results with their products. Their higher end business stuff is decent, but I've had issues here and there. Oddly, despite the many horror stories I've heard, the Dell Latitudes I've worked with have been the most rock-solid. No swollen batteries, no broken displays, no random bricking (happened to two different T460Ss I had), no BSODs.

I've personally not had great experiences with Macs in general, but have a lot less experience with them than PCs. I have not found Macs to be notably better than mid to high end PCs in terms of hardware quality.

not to sound like a curmudgeon but I for one will be in the cold cold ground before I ever declare macbook as the only viable option.

hackers are working hard on really cool daily driver laptops that respect your freedom and work to deliver an excellent computing experience.

system76 offers a good balance of performance and value: https://system76.com/laptops

pinebook offers a competitive and cheap arm daily driver: https://pine64.com/

and purism frankly rivals Apple levels of build quality and performance: https://puri.sm/

Definitely look very seriously at Framework. Bought one last year and it's easily been the best computer purchase I've ever made. Solved every problem I experienced with Dell and Lenovo. I run Manjaro Linux on it.

https://frame.work

I'm a Dell XPS 13 user here (with Linux) and I'm very happy I actually bought it twice (2014 and 2021). 0 problems, the laptop is always cold, no noise, everything works fine.

At work I had several MBP in the meantime. All of them with several problems. Docker extremely slow, Bluetooth not working, ports not working, noise like a nuclear reactor, extremely hot like you can actually make a pizza on top also the OS is very strict and hard to tell any other MBP user how to install things or how to configure it feels like a roulette and some of them if you open more than 6 apps it may reboot so good luck if MBP is your only option because you will be screw.

I just got my first thinkpad in 9 years, after having spent two years on a dell xps from hell. I have to say, this is the first time in a long while I'm back in love with hardware. Got a second-hand L14 AMD G1, upped the ram and SSD (yes you can do that!) and apparently there's even an option to add another m2 ssd since the ryzen in this thing has some spare PCIe lanes that are hooked up to the WWAN slot I'm not using.

My whole family and most of my colleagues use macs/iOS all over, and interacting with these things is plain infuriating to me. Plus, somehow Apple pulls an amazing PR stunt where somehow everything is purported to be easy, but really they rely on untold hours of non-volunteer work from family & friends who feel bound to help out with Mac handling, because they feel "it's apple, it has to be easy... right?"

Anyhow, these are my two cents.

Work just upgraded me to an HP EliteBook 835 G8. It's got a Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U and 24GB of RAM. I do mostly .NET/ASP.NET development and it's seriously fantastic. Form factor is good, repairability is good (granted our company is also an HP authorized service center), I/O is good (really only missing eth), and it has a matte display with a touchscreen.

I really think that Apple devices get so much clout mostly due to advertising.

My issues with my iPhone 7 radio made me switch to Android after they told me it was Qualcomm's fault that it wasn't bonded to the PCB properly.

My 2009 MacBook Pro 13" had some sort of issue where the SATA III part of the controller died and I was forced to either pay $800 for a new logic board because I had upgraded the RAM or use an optical drive HDD caddy which ran at SATA I(?) speeds. I had also had the logic board replaced once and the screen replaced twice less than a year after I got it as the screen had stopped working. Don't remember the actual cause of the issue, but seeing as it was covered I have a feeling there was a known issue with that line.

My girlfriend's 2011 13" MacBook Pro ended up with non-functioning USB ports due to a known but never recalled, even silently, issue with a chip on the logic board. Again, would have been a $500+ logic board replacement "fix".

My 2016 MacBook Air 13" started to develop a crack on the black plastic piece covering the hinge because of heat stress. I paid for the most "performant" SKU and after one major macOS update it was practically unusable.

My mom's 2017 MacBook Air 13" worked fine until this past year where the trackpad and keyboard died. Sure, got 5 years out of it, but this is also a very common issue as far as I can tell from research. Also, who the hell routes the keyboard through the trackpad? That's madness.

This is all anecdotal for sure, but I am staying away from Apple products from now on based on my experience. Especially these days with the machines having non-user-serviceable parts, I just can't take the risk anymore. What happens when my logic board inevitably dies? All of my data on that device is toast with no way to recover it. Ultimately you have to purchase something that's going to work and is serviceable... either by yourself or a service center.

I think Framework and System76 are largely replacing the best options from the traditional PC manufacturers for Linux users (and maybe many Windows users as well?)

Everybody blames Linux DEs for looking inconsistent, but every time I have to use Windows 10, I see an OS with more than 5 different UI styles. There's no consistency among the OS anymore eversince Windows 7.

Pardon me, but I think Microsoft should get their shit together if they want to stop losing users and devs to MacOS.

Having a new UI style on the Desktop and every single click on it leads to a completely unpredictable UI doesn't have anything to do with "center".

When people ask me what to get I always answer "just get a macbook" because even when I would love to give them a shiny Linux laptop, the amount of maintenance work on there is insanely high. Macbooks compared to my Linux systems are basically maintenance free once they are setup.

Of course that depends on whether you want to develop software on it...but let's not kid ourselves here: most users are not developers. And most users don't want to use i3wm or the Terminal.

> I strongly dislike MacOS because they force the "apple way" of doing things.

Complaining about this is like complaining that cats don’t behave like dogs.

macOS has its own idiosyncrasies. It may not be for everyone, but maybe this is the reason why things “just work” for the general public (and more).

I’m not aware of Windows working on Apple Silicon, but there is Asahi Linux which, I hear, has done a good job with their M1 support, although it likely comes with compromises (again, this is second hand information).

I dream of a device that's basically a laptop without a screen, keyboard, trackpad, etc. Just plug it into a usb-c hub it restores everything from where I left off last time. Then once I'm done put it in my pocket and go.

Then if I do want a laptop I could buy a chassis with a battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen, etc, etc to dock my device above in to.

Edit: Seriously considering taking the motherboard out of a steam deck and making a custom aluminum enclosure for it that only exposes the usb-c port.

Respectfully I disagree. In fact MacBooks are slowly become the LEAST viable option, at least for me personally.

It's all about personal requirements and I suppose, taste.

Don't get me wrong, the MacBook is a fantastic laptop, especially for the creative professional and laypeople.

For me, as a Linux user and enthusiast, MacBooks have slowly become less and less viable each year.

I bought my first MacBook in 2007, in college, and have used MacBooks as my primary choice of device until 2018. I still use a MacBook professionally, as it is what my company distributes for development machines.

They are beautifully crafted, well integrated, and optimized for a good amount of use cases.

What they are no longer good for is openness. They are slowly migrating away from being able to access low level things, and when you can it's highly limited. Each year, I feel like the OS and hardware creep toward iPad levels of openness.

A lot of open source software will stop being supported for M1 (MX moving forward) chipsets if they choose to ditch backwards compatibility with current architectures. Powerful tiling window managers are all but extinct on macOS, with the exception of yabai, which you need to disable a lot of security features just to use.

I bought my wife a MacBook for Christmas in 2020 and I was very jealous. The hardware and the OS are simply beautiful. However it simply doesn't work for me anymore.

I bought an XPS developer edition in 2018, slapped Arch Linux on it and never had any serious issues.

My next laptop will be another XPS, ThinkPad, Systemic, or a Star book, but I will continue to look at MacBooks with envy.

That being said, if MacBooks meet your requirements, it's hard not to argue that it's a good machine, if not the best, possibly lending to your feeling that it's the "only choice".

My family and I avoid this entire problem by simply not buying laptops. Our desktop computers--assembled for a fraction of the cost of buying a retail laptop and much more powerful--are more than serviceable. If you need mobility, then prepare for extreme tradeoffs, relatively speaking.

I think it is the factors in the world today that has drastically reduced quality of all system, including macs, I'll grand to a far less degree, but I use to be able to buy apple hardware and I just didn't worry about returns or manufacturing faults.

But in the last 3 years, we've seen endless failings, across all brands, Dells and their shit batteries and docks, Lenovo and their cheap build quality, faulty keyboards, screens with ghosting and dead pixels, cases cracking, Apples big issues we've seen is motherboards, and power circuitry.

It is just so frustrating to have to go through the read tape, and headaches only to be told that a new unit won't be available for a weeks.

I wish, there was a reliable vendor, but like so much else it just seems that quality is the lowest concern.

I miss the pre-2016 macs

I run a Dell XPS Developer Edition with Ubuntu preinstalled. I have had 0 problems with it. The only additional thing I did was disable the touchscreen because I never used it, but it did work.

I think you're likely going to encounter some faulty equipment from any vendor. I have enough family who swear by macbooks to know that the grass isn't much greener from their side and their hardware breaks too. I would be hesitant to switch ecosystems over 2 bad experiences.

Meh. The small company I work at has seen its fair share of weird macbook failures, I don't think that - among high end machines - they stand much above the crowd.

Funny screens, overheating, broken trackpads, the infamous keyboard.

They are definitely more annoying that you can't swap the disks if they need sending off for repair though.

Apple is not any better.

At 10th of this month I bought MacBook M1 that has 16 GB RAM and 512 GB disk. I did dual boot macOS Monterey and Asahi Linux. I could not find a way to turn off boot sound, selecting that menu option at macOS did not work. When I was away from keyboard, macOS did go to sleep mode, even when I tried make it not to at power settings. Asahi Linux did keep running, so my HexChat IRC etc did not stop when away from computer. Linux is still best work OS. I did like MacBook M1 is silent.

At 14th of this month I had to return MacBook M1 to warranty repair, because it does not boot anymore. It does charge to full, but does not boot.

Good luck finding working laptop.

I've used both of those laptops with Linux and had zero issues. We use Dell at work and it came with Linux installed though I did a clean install afterwards with no issues. If you are talking about just general reliability of the hardware rather than compatibility, I've personally suffered more issues from mackbooks in the past than Dell but that's just my personal experience. Maybe you just had a bad run of luck on that side?

Also, I have been wanting to try https://system76.com/ for quite a while but I can't get my work to approve one.

I cannot really accept a MacBook because it's a rental product where Apple has complete control over your machine.

Used a Dell XPS for a while, it's a fairly good experience with Linux (Ubuntu and Manjaro), but the build quality is pretty bad. Once it fell backwards from a coffee table and shorted the main board from the hit. I had to resolder a few SMD parts, was not fun. I also hit the corner or the "metal" lid which cracked and bent from an impact what wouldn't even scratch a MacBook. Needless to say, Dell's support was not helpful.

Now I've got a new 2022 ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16, and so far the experience is much better. It's a sturdy machine, without any Dell's creaking and bending, the keyboard is much better as well. ASUS Linux community at https://asus-linux.org/ is helpful and most of the features worked either out of the box, or with reasonable amount of tinkering. The price for it here in Shanghai is also reasonable, 12700h w/ nvidia 3060, 2T SSD, and 40GB DDR5 RAM is ~US$2250.

I'd say just unlucky. My Thinkpad Carbon X1 is rock solid, no issues the last 1.5 years even though my large cat frequently sleeps on it.

Ubuntu has run well on all laptops I have owned so far. I am amazed of high quality software that Linux distributions offer for free.

I am not going to use a closed source black box OS from Apple, with the possibility of remote surveillance of my device whenever the company or governments want.

Two options to consider, no personal experience with one of them though:

https://frame.work/nl/en

https://nl.starlabs.systems/

I despise Macs but I think you are right.

ALL modern windows laptops are broken inherently due to Microsoft's forcing of Modern standby on manufacturers, this means that pretty much every manufacturer has removed S3 sleep from their laptops, this means that laptops cannot and will not deep sleep.

You can't quickly shut the lid on any of the new Dell or Lenovo laptop, the fans stay on cooking itself if you put it into a bag (not covered under warranty btw) or just draining the battery.

Microsoft Modern / Connected standby is so broken that many people are returning their laptops (just hit Reddit to see how widespread this is)

I have just moved my company away from Dell as a primary provider because our $8K XPS 9710's are basically useless as laptops.

We even tried to set "Hibernate on Lid close" and "Auto Power on Lid Open" - Hibernate fails about 1/3rd of the time basically causing a hard reset and loss of anything that was open.

Our company is now a Mac only company and unfortunately for Dell its not likely going to change in the future.

> 1. Dell XPS: I spent over 20+ hours with their support going back and forth. I also had a tech come to my house to replace my motherboard before I gave up and demanded a return

Yeah, I've had a few of these and all of them have had issues. On one, the speaker blew. On another the battery died. On another the wi-fi died.

I was thinking recently about tech reviews, because they're usually all glowing for the Dell XPS series. But these reviewers probably get brand-new units, play with them for a week, and then send them back. I wish they'd focus on things like build quality (not just the materials), longevity, customer support, defect rate etc.

My wife has some cheap Acer laptop, it's all plastic, the thing gets thrown in her work bag like lunch, but it never dies. It's like a Toyota, and my laptop is like a Mercedes needing special care with cotton gloves.

My work laptop is a Macbook, and it feels way "sturdier" than my XPS. It certainly sees rougher treatment, and never misses a beat.

My last Lenovo Thinkpad was an utter disaster. Despite being a mid to mid-top of the line notebook for performance it was stuck with a critical flaw that frequently throttled the CPU down to .39 GHz. Apparently it was a well known bug with the thermal control software and the ultimate solution was just to replace it with another model from corporate IT.

Edit: The throttling would happen despite the CPU temperature being normal for average workloads. It certainly wasn't running at full power near 95°C and then slowing down to protect itself. We even tried providing increased airflow and a laptop cooling stand. It didn't help or make a difference on when it would drop down to throttling range. We tried all sorts of Windows power management settings, a few Lenovo power management apps, updating the firmware, and yet nothing helped.

My recently (ish) purchased System76 box "just worked" right out of the gate. More so than even I expected, as I had thought I would probably replace their PopOS distro with something else. But I gave it a whirl, found that it works just fine, and stuck with it.

I recently was in the market for a laptop for personal use, and wanted to spend around $1200-1400 USD for a Windows based machine. All I wanted was a decently powerful CPU, higher resolution screen, and a thin and light body. I simply couldn't get past the fact that most laptops in that price range are gaming focused, and have non-user replaceable components. They also tend to have plastic bodies and most I saw were running Windows 11. I got turned off by the PC market pretty quick.

I ultimately decided to get a new Macbook Pro 14in (on sale for $1750) and have 0 regrets so far.

FWIW I bought a new Framework laptop and it's worked perfectly with Ubuntu since day 1 YMMV - a major advantage of Framework over other brands is down the road if a component breaks I have a higher probability of being able to replace it as compared to most anything else (think: like an old thinkpad)

I'm shocked the LG Gram doesn't get more attention. It's a dream come true laptop for a non-Apple developer. It took me months to actually find it after needing to replace my Vaio, but going 2 years strong with no issues whatsoever.

It has it all. Lightweight, great battery life, big screen, full backlit keyboard, numpad, latest processors, USB-C charging and display, the only PC trackpad that beats the Mac. And with PowerToys, you can lay out the keyboard however you need.

Unless you need a dedicated GPU, it's the complete PC laptop in my opinion.

Dell XPS are absolute garbage. I had one and it had thermal problems galore and was clearly made of any old shit that was the lowest bidder frankensteined into whatever config they could ship. We had a few of the same spec and model and they had different RAM and SSDs in them.

The really annoying thing is that they tried so hard to replicate the MacBook packaging experience. This failed miserably when it wouldn’t come out of the box because the vacuum forming was wrong.

Shows how much QA goes into a product if they can’t actually not fuck up the box.

I have had enough faulty Macbook Pros back in 2015-17 to say that, probably, no company is immune.

I'm typing this from an old Thinkpad T470, which is still pretty adequate for development work, with an M.2 SSD and 32 GB RAM, running Linux. I don't feel constrained.

My Anecdotal Laptop History:

2006 HP Pavillion - dragged around the world. Felt a bit cheap/plasticy but never had any major issues.

2013 Macbook Pro Retina was a champ, a bit dated now. Saved me from massive back-injury when I fell on some ice and acted as a shield. Put a huge dent in the corner. Speakers rumbled a bit after. Unusable now due to MacOS limit.

2015 Asus Zenbook Pro still quite usable. Windows 10 still happy. Keys felt a bit plastic/motile but still decent to type on.

2022 Dell Latitude 7520 just arrived, extremely light and peppy. Overall has a very utilitarian feel with a backspace key and function row. Nice big trackpad. Hope it lasts a while.

Now the only funny thing is if you add up the cost of all the non Apple laptops it equated to the same cost as all the others combined.

Pavillion ~$800, Zenbook Pro ~$1299, Dell ~$1699, Macbook Pro Retina: ~$3700

Definitely got my eye on a https://frame.work/ soon for personal.

I've bought hundreds of Dell desktops, laptops, servers, etc., over the last 15 years. Rarely have I had any issues.

I had bad luck with the top spec 13" DELL XPS (2021) - Fan was loud, and audio jack randomly failed to detect headphones. Webcam was mediocre, audio quality was really really poor. It was ok for a machine that was only used for coding, but wasn't great for remote work / conferencing. Replaced with the M1 equipped 13" macbook which was about £400 cheaper (although also lower spec) and I'm very happy since. Despite the lower spec it does almost everything much faster. The only nuisance I had was a few Terraform providers not being released for ARM, and the occasional Docker woes with a few obscure images. The Macbook's overall quality and versatility beats the XPS by a good margin for my purposes.

I think they are, and have been for many years, in a completely different league to all other laptops.

- Much better battery life (both when you buy it, and how slowly it degrades)

- Windows is just a mess. MacOS is way nicer, and has the advantage for developers of being Unix based. And compared to linux, things generally just work which is a major boost to overall productivity.

- Build quality is unmatched and always has been. Materials are nicer, things fit together properly, they’re light, etc

- Touchpad is amazing

- Performance is great. It feels like the parts work together rather than individually, and the machine is optimised for real tasks rather than isolated benchmarks.

There are many good reasons to use a freer linux laptop but productivity is not one of them, in my experience.

I have an Asus ROG 14 2020 model with AMD Ryzen 5 that I'm very happy with - runs cool, battery life is great (easily lasts a day if I'm not gaming), has survived a few drops, and cost me half what a MacBook would have. Most of all I can easily dual boot Linux on it. The only thing missing is a webcam, but that's something I can live with as I use an external one most of the time anyway.

I would add that the quality of Asus laptops in general seems to be pretty great. I have another 9-year old Asus that was used extensively by my kid for her online classes the last couple of years. It still runs as well as it did when I bought it, and I've never had it repaired.

"I strongly dislike MacOS because they force the "apple way" of doing things."

What does that mean exactly? I'm genuinely curious about what Apple forces a user to do. I would think cost is a concrete example ... But does Apple restrict you from using some software? or executing some work related function? some other functionality? or is that "Apple way" with regard to Apple's user experiences?

I wish there was a "Vent HN:" for posts like this. I'm not saying there isn't a legitimate argument in the original post; but there's a lot of hyperbole & vague statements too. And venting can be healthy.

XPS is prosumer grade at best. You need a Precision or Latitude product (preferably a Latitude 7xxx) to get a quality product.

I was never able to find a non-gaming PC laptop with: 1. AMD processor 2. 16:10 120hz high refresh display 3. 9+ Hour battery life 4. 32gb ram 5. Less than 5lbs 6. Powerbrick that didn't weigh more than an Atari 5200

For what it's worth, when I purchased a desktop PC last year, I had to return 3 before I got one which wasn't problematic. Two of one model both shut off randomly, the first of the 2nd model had a bad hard drive (write failures while installing arch).

On the other hand, I had two 2018 Intel MBPs fail in the span of 4 days last month. Just my personal work computer. I set up 2 new MBPs in 1 week. Don't know the cause but after a while they would stop starting up properly. I ended up with an M1.

I speculate it's all related to covid shortages somehow but who knows.

I've also been a ThinkPad user since the IBM days, but my most recent work laptop was a Dell XPS15. It has been working fine for me.

For my home laptop, I had been using, for around the last 4 years, an HP Chrome 13 g1 Chromebook (6Y75), which I really loved. Got one for my son for last Christmas for $120 landed. 16GB RAM, 32GB SSD, 2560x1440 display. The original one I got for $550, it was refurbed on woot. List price was more over a grand, but I wasn't prepared to spend that on the experiment.

For the longest time it didn't support the Linux containers, but that got remedied last year. I was mostly using it for the browser and using a Chrome extension to SSH into my work machines. With the Linux containers, it's a full Linux environment, though with some restrictions.

However, over it's life it lived very well up to the "just works" idea that I got it initially to try out. OS updates are super fast (they just show up and when you reboot next they are there, <30 seconds).

If you need a full laptop running Linux, you're going to just need to get a laptop. I'd probably consider another Dell, it has worked fine. My last Thinkpad had some weird battery issues, and because of it's slim config it had two small batteries and I wasn't quite ready to have work buy $300+ of batteries for a problem I couldn't reliably reproduce.

But, I'd definitely consider a Chromebook with Linux containers for lighter duty work.

I had a very bad experience with a mid-range Dell. And so did many other people I know.

Ditched that and switched to a low-range HP. All my work was on the cloud anyway. Worked really nice and exceeded all expectations. Linux worked just out-of-the-box.

Then I owned a high-range Asus, and it was the best laptop I have ever seen or used. Loved the product.

I use high-range Asus from that point in my life. Great experience. Linux works, has NVIDIA GPU w/ CUDA, everything just works great! Couldn't complain.

Made two friends switch to high-range Asus for life, as well.

You've tried two models of two non-Mac brands and one Mac laptop, and have concluded that all laptops except Macs "seem" to be problematic...

What a ridiculous post.

I'm probably old by HN standards, and I've been fortunate enough to have and use a personal computer since the mid/late-80s. Throughout that entire time frame I have consistently seen the market be a race to the bottom. While that has been detrimental to my engineer's mind and my artist's soul, I also understand it completely. Without that race to the bottom, computers would never have seen as widespread of adoption as they have. There's a democratization to moving downmarket.

The unfortunate effect, though, is that even many brands that were upmarket at one point have moved downmarket to build their business model around volume as economies of scale and commoditization have taken over the industry. I remember in the mid-90s when IBM stopped supplying mechanical keyboards with PC desktops, where other manufacturers had stopped long ago, thus removing another reason to pay the premium for an IBM. I can tell you as well that the current generation of Thinkpads are a far cry from the T60 and X30 of yesteryear.

As it happens, I too have come to the same conclusion. I've been using Macbooks and old refurbished Thinkpads for personal computing devices for several years now. Luckily if you build your own desktop, you still have many high quality options to choose from in assembling it, but for laptops Macbooks are the name of the game, everything else is just grossly inferior from a craftsmanship, aesthetic, and build quality perspective. Frankly, I think companies stopped moving downmarket and started staying in place while cutting costs as much as possible, and somewhere along they way they just stopped caring. Apple is the only laptop-producing company left that seems to care about it's products, and I hope they stick to it.

I also used to always run ThinkPads (and Precision workstations with pointing sticks). I these days run a System76 Lemur Pro with a USB thinkpad keyboard I stick on top. The built-in keyboard is good, but trackpads and I have never gotten along. They've come a long way. Another option that friend got was the Frame Work. I helped him assemble it, and it also is a great GNU/Linux machine. Everything just works.

The current state of general pc (x86) machines has been awful for some time but a Mac is infinitely worse IMO, awful keyboards, fragile design, useless OS for anything except basics but there are a number of reasonable machines out there just overpriced (because the market is dominated by idiot consumers) or not quite right.

For me personally the keyboard is one of the most important things and nobody gets it right anymore however I recently got a cheap Acer (usually use Asus but their keyboards took a horrible turn) which doesn't have the most awful keyboard and common keys do not require a 3 finger contortionist exercise.

It works reasonably well on either windows or Linux, despite being an AMD disaster - I got the AMD variant of the swift 3 and aside from being typical modern ultrabook filmsy crap (like appple, too), it's actually ok (but depending on WiFi environment may want to replace the mediatek, although it's only caused me issues on garbage consumer AP's like isp provided).

As for the buying experience well that's locality dependent, I ordered online and picked it up from a robot machine a few hours later (alza cz)

> they force the "apple way" of doing things. But it seems to be the only option these days to buy a computer with ease and get a computer "that just works".

Replace "computer" with "laptop" and the above statement might be true. I use desktop computers because I've worked remotely for almost my entire career, and I haven't had a problem with a desktop since the 90s.

I've used a variety of Mac laptops, from the 1.25Ghz PowerBook G4, to a later model Intel based PowerBook. In each instance, I found the OS experience to be clunky, and equivalent programs that were available for Windows hard to find. The former point has probably since changed, as it seems everyone has a Mac laptop for work and study. I also found that the machines slowed down after a few years of usage, with no discernible reason. Hardware wise the laptops always felt well built.

Fast forward to 2015, the first gen Surface Book feels similar. The build quality surpassed the PowerBooks I was used to, Windows was pretty decent for getting things done. I've used it for 7 years now without any problems, although I know that when the battery comes to the end of its life, a replacement will be difficult to arrange. The whole thing feels proprietary which means I haven't bothered to install Linux on here, but I don't require it in daily life/work. The OS still feels fast, and it's easy to troubleshoot what could potentially slow it down with Windows.

The author doesn't say what the intended purpose/use of the laptop is; it's interesting to me that in the Dell and Lenovo lines the author isn't going for the Precision or whatever the current version of the Lenovo P50 is (I bought my P50 in August 2016 and it's 4-core CPU, 1TB SSD, and 64GB of RAM still gets the job done and the hardware just won't quit). The tradeoff of the units I mentioned compared to what the author mentioned is weight... I get that if you're constantly on the move with your machine it's nicer to have a 3 point laptop versus an 8 pound laptop but personal preferences being what they are I would rather have the more robust hardware and heavier duty system than something lighter.

Oh -- and my P50 could apparently withstand waterboarding... though I'll just take Louis Rossmann's word for it (and video) rather than trying to duplicate the experiment myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3xI8dUdm0

> Recently, I decided it was time for an update.

I recently bought a refurbished x270 from an IT supplier outlet:

- 1TB SSD

- 16GB RAM

- IPS display

- A keyboard you can _actually_ use

- for about 500$

I still have a desktop at home for heavy duty lifting, but for light tasks or doing some work sitting in the garden or at a cafe, it is the perfect form factor. It is running Debian 11 + KDE plasma 5 with no issues.

Don't underestimate the upgrade-ability of old thinkpads, they are sort of modern Theseus ships.

> I use Linux on the often so it was important for me to purchase a laptop that was compatible.

Instead of a laptop, have you considered purchasing a VR computer?[1]

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-l...

I disagree. I have used Windows for work, and then moved to a MacBook Pro 2018. Granted, the M1 has better performance but I am someone who uses two external monitors at the very least. Paying as much for a device that supports only one ext3rnal display is ludicrous to me.

I convinced my current CTO to let me use a Linux machine, and I bought a ThinkPad P14S with Ryzen 7 5800H. I will definitely prefer companies which allow me to use a ThinkPad. I'm on Ubuntu running qtile, with custom tooling for myself that I wrote in Rust. I blaze through my work because of how comfortable I've gotten with the experience. If someone offers me a buttload of money to work with a Mac, I will ask them to give me a cloud machine and use mosh to do all my work. But yes, for the same money, the company that gives me a ThinkPad and tells me to install my own OS gets my yes anyday. It's a far better developer experience.

I don't get it — there is a market for a high quality robust laptop — and yet it does not exist.

Why our choice is an ancient refurbished pre-shit ThinkPad or Mac? You can't throw a rock without hitting a random developer — but they all type on self-destructing shittops… And they type emails to customer support instead of coding.

Let me answer with a question: do you really need a laptop? In the past and not for a little timeslice I've always favored laptops because well docked are essentially equivalent and can be easily moved if/when needed. Few years ago seen the involution of them I go for a desktop.

Essentially modern laptops, mobile workstation included, to my eyes are more and more craptops more and more similar to mobile "smart-crap". Some still need them, students for instance, hybrid workers, people who work out of an office etc. But others can accept the loss in portability to gain in quality, upgradability and comfort. A classic, self assembled, desktop with eventually caddy and 2.5" classic ssds to being able to move data, if not the entire OS, around as needed. Not as free as a laptop, but doable under certain circumstances.

Wow. So if this is universally true - that all non-macs are garbage - why is it that review sites like Notebookcheck rate some non-macs machines close to (albeit not matching) a Macbook?

For instance:

2021 Macbook Pro 16" gets a rating of 93 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2021-M1-P...)

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 G4 has a 90 rating (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P1-G4-laptop-r...)

Are the reviewers just not evaluating machines on any real world basis? Grading on some ridiculous curve?

Apple's service network, via physical stores can not be beat!

I had an issue with my Samsung smart phone at one point. However, I couldn't part with the phone for x number of weeks, to send it in, for an assessment.

After that, I realized ease of support on iPhone was the biggest differentiator between Apple and other brands

This kind of crap happens with Apple as well.

Where Apple shines is in providing an Arm laptop - that's unrivalled as of now. They still have some issues with those laptop but maybe the next generation will be good.

On my side, I'll just switch to desktop pc I can assemble and get an Arm Macbook if I need to travel.

I can recommend the HP ZBook (or any other mobile workstations), it's built to last. It's not cheap but still cheaper than a spec'd out MacBook. I have the x360 version so you can even have a touchscreen and pen - that's definitely not possible on MacBook :)

I'm on thinkpad P53 since 2019, beefed up with 128Gb of RAM, running Arch on it. Had no problems with this laptop and overall good experience (though, my expectations are not high when it comes to OS, I don't mind scripting it or fixing it on my own when something does not work). It's more a mobile workstation than laptop, mainly because of Nvidia GPU for CUDA. Before making this purchase I was considering a few Dell models as I had good experience with multiple Dell laptops, but 128Gb capable motherboard won and I don't regret it. I have never used MackBook before, so I'm not judging if it would be better or not (I guess maybe more expensive? And maybe it's more of a hassle to run Arch on it?)

Definitely not as much of a fan of the T580 as much as I was of the T440s it replaced (still going, I only changed so I could give the T440s to someone else to replace their consumer ultrabook that predictably shat the bed and wasn't fixable).

The T580 is much more plasticky, and it's also the last one since they ditched the 2.5 inch bay, and they still don't give you two drive slots (unless you get the 15p) except for sourcing one of about 2 models of SSD that fit the WLAN slot, which is getting harder and harder. And the suspend battery life is maybe 20% of what it used to be, but I could probably fix that if I wanted to.

Anyway, it doesn't quite feel as amazing to me as the T440s was, and I know some people hate the '40 machines.

Stay with the "Mac way". It's far better than Windows. Take disk imaging, for example. As far as I'm aware you need special software to image a Windows system but with Mac OS X it's a feature. OS X is also BSD Unix so you have far superior cli.

We provide Macbooks for every developers that wants one at our company. For the past 8 years, with NO exeception, every single one of them had to go change something (screen, keyboard, the whole logic board and etc).

For me, without a shadow of doubt, macbooks has been the least reliable peace of technology that I've used for the past years. I can't deny that their support is awesome and they will change anything without questions if you have the money to pay for the repair or you are still under warranty. However, I would really appreciate if I didn't have to use the service.

I haven't used the new M1's, I really hope that they are more reliable.

The big difference to me is that Apple only makes business grade laptops while everyone has consumer and business grades. Consumer grades you can't really trust IMO. The business grade DELLs were okay, but doesn't stand out. I did use a Lenovo X240 for years and was very happy with it but I surrendered it when I left that company.

I'm surprised about the Carbon X1 but I've not heard positive things about the newer models so not completely surprised.

These days I'm using gaming-level laptops based on OEM from Clevo and Tongfang and I've been really happy with them. However, I do up-spec my machines.

You experienced a 6 sigma event of two laptops from top tier manufacturers in a row turning up defective. I believe, most people never bought a defective laptop in their life time. I haven't.

I actually bought 5 Macbooks M1 for friends and family last year, because it's a trendy gift. I tried one for myself. I liked screen brightness. I didn't like that many programs weren't available without creating an Apple account, very expensive memory and SSD, and lack of games. So I went with a Gigabyte gaming laptop. 4k oled display, 3080 GPU, 32GB RAM and 1.5TB SSD for $4k - much better bang for money imho.

I went from a 2013 Macbook Pro (died and haven't had time to fix it) to an HP elite x2 g4 Tablet running Linux and it's mostly what I wanted - https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr... . It's felt more repairable than a surface pro, and haven't really encountered any linux issues.

I say this while having pretty meh experiences with earlier generation (~2019 and earlier) HP elite models used for work.

You are unlucky - Macbooks are fine options, but the only viable laptop based on anecdotal experience? The M1s even have serious issues and limitations with external displays that are well-documented.

Try the HP “z” devices. They aren’t Macs, but are way better than Dell stuff at most price points. Metal, decent build quality, many are upgradable. They are mobile workstations, but have some lighter options.

Usually if you go for the workstations, they have a longer lifecycle and get some engineering TLC, the CAD/GIS/high end audience usually has its own budget and doesn’t skinflint as much as normal corporate IT.

Lenovo is overrated and Dell sells so many models that you need to do alot of homework to figure out what is good and what is junk.

I actually agree with you. Anything other than a MacBook is indeed just a crapshoot. Chances are, if I buy non-Apple, I’ll get some half-baked hardware with no customer support beyond the bare minimum. If my MacBook fucks up (rare), I can take it to the guys at the Apple store and know it’ll be sorted out. This is really important. They’re expensive computers if you’re only looking at a spec sheet. If you look at:

+ Build quality

+ Screen quality

+ Software cohesiveness

+ Customer support

+ Longevity

+ Resale value

A MacBook is basically a no-brainer today. Even a MB Air is good now. Apple is killing the laptop game right now.

For a personal non-AAA-gaming machine, especially one for learning and exploring, I'll probably fetch one from Dell refurbished when there is a 20% or more discount and install Linux.

Are you buying from them directly? I think it might ne bad luck since I never encountered those issues. However I haven't made any purchase this year so could be wrong.

Coming to this discussion late, but at my last job they had to ban employees from using Macbooks outside of the office because they were too fragile compared to their (heavier but) sturdier PC counterparts running Windows or Linux.

The Macbooks generally spent more time being shipped to and from Apple warranty centers for repairs then they did being used for work.

Maybe we were just unlucky, but it says something when more than 4 dozen Macbooks were utter pieces of crap.

What about thinkpads again? I think they have the better keyboard anyway compared to other lenovos (or at least used to). personally on 2020 m1 here though.

I am still using a 2011 macbook pro I got for free ~7 years ago. It had a bad GPU and Apple replaced the internals for free in 2016? I think. Only problem now is some newer software doesn't like that I am stuck on an older version of IOS. Everything else is perfect (at least for the fact that it needs a new battery every 1.5 years or so, only garbage quality ones available for this model aftermarket now).

Dell and Lenovo (laptops) have been so bad lately, my company has stopped supplying them. HP seems solid for enterprise and Asus is decent for SMB.

Wow! Why suffer the slings and arrows of such garbage? Thinkpads were last good in 2000.

MacOS - mini or macbook - is just a life-changer. It's like having your own Tesla instead of walking or taking the bus. Don't be so put off by the marketing and fandom that you actually make yourself suffer. Just get one.

Years from now you'll still be accelerating, and your former troubles will be laughable.

I gave up on PCs because of all the crap-ware that always comes loaded on these machines. Yes, Apple more or less forces you to do things a specific way but that's better than spending 2 days uninstalling bloatware on a brand new machine and then still having to fight with "management engines" that slow down the laptop while also being impossible to remove.

Most people are fine with "just works". I want more

BTW got a huawei matebook as of late. Pretty decent - tries to look like a macbook too

None of the machine/platform is perfect. Some have more issues than others. My mac(s) have had issues occasionally, both hardware and of course software related. But I still prefer a Mac to a Thinkpad (my second choice). In my opinion Macbooks tend to last longer and have proved to be a lot more value for money over a long time.

Why are people using laptops? It's a form factor that compromises functionality and performance for mobility. Not sure if you've noticed but there's been a global pandemic going on for the last 2 years and we don't need to lug computers around anymore. Build yourself a nice desktop and forget about laptops.

Same story here. I was a ThinkPad user and bought my first Mac when the M1 was released. It just felt dumb to get anything else even when compared on paper.

I'm happy with my purchase but I'm still not a fan of Apple and their philosophy in any way. If there was a real competitor to the M1, I would switch in a heartbeat.

I’ve ended up buying multiple machines the last several years.

One thing I’ve noticed is that nearly every damn laptop I’ve had the past few years has power management issues.

Usually it’s some issue waking from a sleep state, but I had a modern Thinkpad just give up and die recently after months of continuing getting stuck in sleep states.

Rocking a Asus vivobook flip tm420. Ryzen 5700u, nvme storage, 16gb memory. Enough grunt to run a VM win11 ontop of base win11 install. Cost me 1300 bucks, battery lasts 6-8 hours running VM and main os both with your average admin workloads (browsers with 50x tabs and a few office apps).

It also has a 360 hinge so it can become a tablet. Love it. Great for work, any workloads that are heavier and I'm on a desktop. Only downer is no usb-c charging but eh that's barely the end of the world. Rig gets treated rough like the tool it is. Cops a thrashing. People overthink laptops imo.

I advise my clients against any major vendor lock in or bs high priced gear. Also having worked fixing Dells and lenovos under big corp contracts I advise against those too. Their support/diag is terrible. The money you save not buying their overpriced bs you can use for a few hot spares and still have coin leftover to spend on your local IT guy.

Deadset go do it on a desktop if you need more grunt than 1500 bucks can buy you. If your doing long haul sessions of work 8+ hours go use a desktop with a real keyboard and mouse too your ergo w/ a laptop is probably terrible. I'm not a fan of having laptops used as desktops, short runs sure but if your leaving it plugged in at a desk 8 hours a day get a desktop. Less ruined batteries, less headaches for me as your IT lol.

Tldr dell are AVG, Lenovo are AVG, apple are also AVG. Buy something cheap that gets the job done you'll replace it in 36 months anyways.

Dell XPS is (or was) their high end gaming line. For features and quality you want the Dell Precision line.

You're right, nothing is made to last.

But Macbooks aren't any better.. You'll be paying for a new logic board exactly 1-2 years later out of warranty.

Lenovo has firmware issues which makes an extreme amount of laptops go black screen on resume suspend.

Dell XPS has had coilwhine for ages.

All laptops suck nowadays.

i've got a refurbed evoo with a Ryzen 5, it cost 225$ from walmart, it'll run anything, linux, win11 - you name it. I use every port on the laptop when i'm at my desk, its super lightweight and the battery life is admirable. my point here is that its all about the users preference, if you want something totally plug and play, you're going to have to pay for it and then you will still probably have issues. i've got an old gaming rig that i've transformed into a proxmox host, between the laptop and being able to connect to any of the VMs, I find that I have everything i need to stay productive, keep my data safe and not be limited by hardware or cloud costs.

Been using an HP Envy for the past 4 years. Works great and has a lot of the craftmanship that I think is lacking with a lot of other laptop models. Only downside is the touchpad is too small, but they remedied that with their latest model.

Funny enough, I have both XPS 13 and X1 Carbon, one bought by myself, another by my previous company. Have no complains about any за them, both are solid high quality machines. Like the X1 keyboard more because of longer key travel.

Well from the comments here Mac sucks or windows sucks or it’s the year of the Linux desktop.

Seriously my win 10 laptop is always installing updates.. mostly kid plays Roblox on it.

I used centos for years then Ubuntu and still have Ubuntu on a machine or 3.

M1 is amazing tho.

When it comes to laptops:

"This my laptop, there are many like it, but this one is mine."

I look at apple's website, put the sliders to the right, and do it again in 5-6y.

I can't be bothered to figure out who has xyz feature or whatever. I don't care.

Have you tried Slimbook? Neat design and full Linux compatibility.

It looks like you just have been unlucky. I have seen failing brand new Macs for colleagues. I personally never had a serious hardware problem with new computers.

I was in the same boat in December. My 2013 MBP was starting to show its age and I was hesitant to go with a new MBP because of the new processors. I ty

Assuming you’re in US and there’s a Costco nearby just go and buy a Thinkpad at Costco. I believe they also have a nice return policy.

This is becoming even more the case given that Asahi Linux is maturing and you can already run Linux (somewhat stable) on an ARM MBP.

For me it is the build quality, obscene 18hrs+ battery(+standby) life & unplugged performance which is the same as plugged in.

I've been using Asus laptops since 2012 (3) and never had a problem. The one from 2012 is still working.

Razer makes some nice PC laptops these days. They're even moving away from purely gaming focused machines.

I have been happy with Lenovo ThinkPad (e14) and works reliably. Good luck with Mac (and overpaying too).

Chromebook with keyboard-only applications (like Vimium) have done wonders to my productivity

Haven't tried Linux on it but I love my ASUS so far after a few months. G513IE-PH74

Agreed. I’m back in the market and for a MacBook myself. They simply work far better.

I've never owned a Mac of any type and never had to return a PC or PC laptop.

I have few laptops by Asus and HP. All work like a charm and were cheap for what they offer. The oldest ASUS still in use after some 10 years. Runs some specialized control applications. Should I create a post and title it "ASUS laptops seems to be the only viable option these days"

I'm keeping an eye on the PowerPC chromebook project.

“But it seems to be the only option these days to buy a computer with ease and get a computer ‘that just works’.”

Some people will disagree, but IMHO: Yes.

Why not buy a System76 machine?

My Surface machines are great. Using a Surface Book Pro right now, and I have two other lower-end ones.

What's your question?

frame.work

yes i agree