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Comment by darrmit | Hacker News Reader

It’s not just the keyboard, either. I’ve been buying Macs since they switched to Intel in 2006 and the most recent MacBook Pros are the most problematic I’ve ever had.

- Bluetooth seems to be fundamentally flawed at a hardware level. AirPods, Plantronics, doesn’t matter. It just randomly connects and disconnects as it pleases.

- USB-C dongles are a minefield of poor functionality

However, I’ve run Linux off and on since 2007 and Windows for 20+ years and I still wouldn’t give up macOS as my daily driver. Even with the issues above it still has an excellent display, I like the keyboard (waiting to start having issues), and the battery life is the best I’ve ever had.

I’m glad to hear desktop Linux works for some people, but I just don’t have time to a.) tune and configure it to work and have decent battery life with whatever hardware I choose or b.) troubleshoot it when it randomly decides to break itself on update.

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> but I just don’t have time to a.) tune and configure it to work and have decent battery life with whatever hardware I choose or b.) troubleshoot it when it randomly decides to break itself on update

From my experience, troubleshooting macOS when it randomly decides to break is almost a Windows-like experience - lots of frustration and no sensible help on the internet (unless your problem is so trivial it gets solved by something like NVRAM reset, because this is the best advice you can count on online). I absolutely prefer GNU/Linux where, if something breaks, it's not that hard to get it back to sensible state.

From about 7 years of troubleshooting mac problems, it's actually worse than Windows problems. First, you find people discussing the problem where everyone claims it doesn't exist and no solutions are found. Then you find the problem and solution for mac os from 2008, and that solution definitely doesn't work, but might also break things worse. Then you decide, it's best to just make sure your headphones aren't on when you start itunes in 2014, because there is a 10% chance of really loud static instead of music (mysteriously fixed in the next major release)

It really is kind of amusing how forum threads with Mac owners asking for help usually have at least a few people that instead of responding to the question take the opportunity to relate how their Mac has been working perfectly for them and never had that problem. I like my Mac and my Windows and my Linux boxen, I'm not a Mac hater, but I only see this on Mac related forums.

And don't forget one of the most infuriating aspects of Apple community troubleshooting: The group of people questioning the premise of your problem and saying you shouldn't even want to do what you want to do.

Even worse than answers.microsoft.com. Ok, almost. (Let's not be too harsh here.)

I have gotten the same when posting to many technical communities. Sometimes it's a good thing (I've actually agreed in some cases) and sometimes it's awful.

I agree that it's infuriating when it's something reasonable that you're trying to do, but I've experienced this in many tech forums, and programmers have been some of the worst offenders in this category for me in the past, actually.

I've never really seen it for Windows forums -- everyone, including Windows fans, seems to admit at least Windows gets broken; so it's more hmm, that shouldn't happen, check this log or that log or do this rather time consuming thing (reinstall clean, etc).

For Linux forums, there is a small contingent of this never happens to me on Linux Yggdrasil, so try that. Except instead of a distro that died 20+ years ago and will not be getting updates, they have some other distro nobody has ever heard of and may not be getting updates.

It's like half the comments on this very thread.

Amusing in a "when did we stop playing on grass" kind of way.

You see it ITT as well!

Don't forget a radar bug ID which you can't see but any bug you file gets closed as a duplicate of it.

I curse this every time I am troubleshooting a Mac problem and someone replies to a forum thread with "reset the PRAM".

For my workstation, no matter the OS, I’m going to revert what I did.

If that doesn’t fix it, I’m going to format and restore with a backup. I have better things to do.

Of course it depends, but I'd say that formatting and restoring from backup takes way longer than fixing an average system hick-up - provided that you have access to meaningful logs, which is where GNU/Linux works pretty well.

Or you can just use a proper linux distro that allows systemwide rollbacks like nixos.

I just realized, wait, windows has had that feature since at least 2000! Is that not standard on linux distros?

But doesn't malware like to hide in there in Windows? I've had it turned off for years on my Windows machines for that reason.

That sounds like a poor strategy over just running Windows Defender or the like

Or, use Darch with Ubuntu (or whatever you want).

https://godarch.com

Oddly enough, with enough history knowledge and resources like Microsoft Windows Internals, I find troubleshooting Windows to be a dream compared to MacOS. If something acts funny on Windows, I have a plethora of free and open source tools to instrument internal systems and audit operating system performance. Meanwhile on MacOS, it seems like any program not provided with the operating system is closed source and costs $100 a year, and when something breaks, I don't even know where to start looking. My wifi is not playing nice with my home wireless router? No clue what the issue is, guess it's time for my twice-weekly reboot

Very much there with you. I run MacOS on my MBP for work. I built a workstation at home and run Ubuntu on it. I decided to upgrade to latest Ubuntu drooling over the GNOME perf improvements and I have a system that wont connect to any network and the settings app won't open and would like to send a crash dump to Canonical :-(

I can afford such problems on my personal desktop, google the issues and spend a part of day fixing some poor QA release bugs, but not on a machine that I use and rely on for $ paying work.

This is why both my work and personal machines only run LTS versions.

I rather use rolling releases. This way the breakage is contained to 5-10 minute fixing sessions once in a few months, instead of a huge whole-day upgrading session every new release.

I haven't experienced whole-day upgrading sessions in a long time. YMMV.

Does that mean you don't have such issues when upgrading from LTS to LTS? No snark. Seriously asking. Are LTS versions generally better in this regard?

Canonical says LTS are for polish and non-LTS are new features: https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

> Interim releases will introduce new capabilities from Canonical and upstream open source projects, they serve as a proving ground for these new capabilities.

Yeah, I've had persistent trouble with LaunchServices and nothing I've found on the net helps. All the suggestions are wild shots in the dark.

> tune and configure it to work

You really don't have to do that. For example: I put Ubuntu Mate on a 2009 Macbook that could not run MacOs anymore (too slow). I had to install a wifi driver, and that was it. Everything else worked out of the box.

My current Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop is running the same OS, and needed 0 drivers installed.

I put Antergos on an Intel Nuc (that I later switched to Ubuntu Server). Again, no configuration, and no issues with drivers.

I will mention that Mate has some font scaling problems if you're running two monitors with different resolutions (spoiler: you can't), but I know that other distro's handle that just fine.

If you don’t have to tune Linux to get it to work, then why does every single complaint about Linux’s battery life in laptops get met with “install TLP?”

Of course Windows is shit in this respect too these days. I got two extra hours of battery life from my X1 Carbon by wiping the disk and installing Windows LTSB. But even then I still have to police things, watching for driver updates or software installs that randomly leave some service running that keeps the CPU from sleeping. It’s like nobody tests these things.

> It’s like nobody tests these things.

What's really happening is perverse incentive structures. Ideally all energy use of every app would be accounted for and, somehow, relayed back to the original "responsible agent" (e.g. a signed app being responsible for all its subprocesses). This then needs to be tied to some valuation.. in an app store, you could say e.g. lower commission based on energy efficiency, or just a higher ranking score.

Currently, resource usage suffers from the tragedy of the commons, and it will remain that way until we fix the incentives.

OSX is starting on that road, as you can see with the Energy tab in activity monitor. I wonder if they will take further steps with it, but it's a good start. (You'd then want e.g. browsers to allow push the accounting down to invidual sites; now we're suddenly attacking death-by-JS as well.)

One day! But until that day, you are right: nobody tests those things. Why would they? Honestly, if you're creating drivers for something, worrying about energy use is... is so inconsequential it's borderline altruistic. Who will ever, really notice? It's basically charity work. That needs to change.

Apple has public and private metrics for battery life that at least incentivize the internal teams.

There are also orders of magnitude difference between a sleeping device and an idle device, and an idle device to a fully loaded device. We are talking three weeks to 20 hours to 35 minutes. And that gap will only continue to get larger

The only thing I have had to configure on the last two laptops I've installed is, weirdly, to go to sleep when I close the lid.

The battery life on the X1 Carbon is about one and a half to two hours, which i think is acceptable given that the battery is reporting less than half of its original capacity.

I just installed OpenBSD to my ThinkPad X200. 5 hours of battery life, everything worked out of the box, and closing the lid suspends the machine, opening it up brings it awake. Every time.

I tend to go with older laptops, but they are definitely fast enough and I like how robust the experience is.

So just 4 hours with a new battery? For light usage, the minimum is 8 hours. (Even my first-gen Macbook got that much, 12-13 years ago.)

This guy has a Windows 7 sticker, so I believe it is a 2012-2103 gen 1. 4-5 hours seems to be reasonable.

If the battery is reporting less than half, wouldn't that also be something that really needs to be configured?

It's old, I got it used, and I haven't replaced the battery yet.

> If you don’t have to tune Linux to get it to work, then why does every single complaint about Linux’s battery life in laptops get met with “install TLP?”

That's evidence that there exists something that Linux users recommend to people who complain about having battery problems on Linux, not evidence of widespread problems with Linux that require expertise to get the operating system to "work" at all.

Another legacy hardware user here. I have a HP laptop from early 2008 that pretty much can't run anything. I no longer have Linux on my daily driver, and I'll need to occasionally break out that laptop for dev purposes. Ubuntu has been a godsend for that laptop.

Unfun fact: although the Wi-Fi spec is backwards compatible, a lot of places only serve 802.11n and forward making legacy hardware impossible to use on their network.

> You really don't have to do that.

Actually you don't have to do that, which is not the same thing at all.

I find this one of the oddest moves of those who (for reasons mysterious to me) find OS's worthy of advocacy. When you say to them 'with Linux I find X', their response is "no you don't". Where is the conversation supposed to go from there?

I install a couple of distros on every new laptop I buy, and perhaps once again during its lifetime. I have in reality found it a tremendous pain and time-suck, with each attempt taking a few days reading and fiddling, more than in total I've spent 'administering' desktop OS X or Windows over a couple of decades.

I've persevered out of a combination of nostalgia (I did run Slackware full-time for some years), wistfulness about some gnu/linux goodies (i3 etc), and ethical preferences. But on every occasion I just find it to be more time than it's worth. I have many more important things to do with my precious and limited time on this planet than mess with OS's

[ as an aside, I was prompted after writing the above to try again, and added a Fedora 29 partition to play around with. I'm pleasantly surprised by how much immediately works. Early days as yet ]

I tried putting Linux on my 2015 Macbook Pro and found that sleep was totally broken with no workaround, which is a dealbreaker on a laptop. It was a known bug for a year before a patch hit the kernel to fix it, and that kernel didn't come with a standard Ubuntu install until a year after that.

> USB-C dongles are a minefield of poor functionality

Since most of my peripherals have a detachable cord, I just bought a couple of USB-C <-> whatever cables and now I'm fully 'native' USB-C. Suddenly the couple of USB-A host devices I have around feel incredibly legacy (an old MacBook, Xbox One).

> Bluetooth seems to be fundamentally flawed / USB-C dongles

I do have a USB-C-to-many-things hub but I never use it now, yet it should be noted that the thing is so badly shielded that it throws WiFi down the curb every single time I used to plug a device or even SD card into it, so it might affect bluetooth too. I have zero issues with the same devices but using USB-C cables.

I have the same thing happening with a Maxtor usb stick. When I plug it into my 2017 MBP (via a usb-c to usb-a dongle), wifi connectivity will drop to what feels like an unreliable 1200 baud connection.

Apparently, it is an issue due to the metal unibody. It took me way longer than I care to admit to figure out the usb stick was causing the problem. :-(

Fun fact: try gently swiping your finger over the unibody while charging, and then without charging. You'll feel something like a vibration in the former case.

I prefer quality plastic.

Also, the trackpads on Mac just work. I recently made a foray back into Windows a few years ago and was disappointed to learn that PC trackpads have made little progress in the intervening decade. Is it really easier to touchscreenify your entire software stack than to build a sane touchpad?

In terms of sensitivity it's good, but the new MBPs also have this enormous trackpad that makes it so I can't use the keyboard without accidentally swiping it all the time and moving the cursor in a way that does something I don't want.

I know I'm in the minority here, since I do so much on the keyboard and don't use the mouse or the fancy trackpad features, but it's really infuriating.

Edit: I must be getting old, because I much prefer the ~2015 MB Airs: no touch bar, yes appropriately sized trackpad and magsafe.

Older Apple laptops had palm rejection that basically worked, but the palm rejection on the MacBook Pro trackpad doesn't work properly for many people, and there's still no fix for it.

This is surprising and disappointing, because Apple's iPad (for example) still has excellent palm rejection.

Combining the awful butterfly keyboard with the disaster of a trackpad, it's really one of the least usable laptops Apple has ever produced.

The only thing that has worked for me is to use an external keyboard and trackpad. ;-(

I'm 'old' too: when I finally decided to replace my 2010 15" MBP last summer I opted for a 2015 model. Keyboard durability, battery life and ports were the main considerations, but ease of repair factored in, too. (I mean, 1/10 is better than 0/10, right?)

The work-issued 2017 MBP I was using at the time is bit smaller and lighter but the bigger trackpad and brighter screen were not worth the downsides for a personal machine that I expect to use for at least five years.

I got my company to purchase me a 2015 last year too. Best choice ever. Love the keyboard, have spilled wine on It and it still works and I have all the ports I need!

The bigger trackpad is a huge downer in other ways too. I can't keep the laptop on my tummy while lying on a sofa.

Does anyone know the motivation for making them big and so close to the edge?

Meanwhile, if you're like me and don't like how the mouse or trackpad respond, you're SOL, because there is zero configuration allowed. Try using a non-magic mouse on a mac. It's hell.

What? I do have a non-magic mouse. What issues do you have?

Pointer speed was atrocious and turning off stupid acceleration was impossible without crazy plist hacking

I paid $20 for USB Overdrive, an excellent third-party driver, so I could continue using my ancient MS Intellimouse when its drivers took a turn for the worse. You can set speed and acceleration separately, and the curves are as good as the MS ones.

It sounds like you're spending as much time on finicky Bluetooth and USB-C as you might spend on battery tuning on Linux.

> I’m glad to hear desktop Linux works for some people, but I just don’t have time to a.) tune and configure it to work and have decent battery life with whatever hardware I choose

So you are comparing a finely tuned OS for a specific hardware to using linux with whatever hardware you throw at it? Why don't you just pick a specific hardware that works with linux well e.g. thinkpads?

> Why don't you just pick a specific hardware that works with linux well e.g. thinkpads?

You can't, because Lenovo changes out the hardware randomly every year. Look at the long list of Linux problems with the latest X1 Carbon: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...

But does it really? I’m using Xubuntu on two different Thinkpads, an old T420 and a pretty recent T580.

On both, I have the same awful problems with waking up the laptop after it went to sleep mode (when closing the lid). It will wake up at first, allow me to enter the password in the screen locker, then screen goes black and that’s it. Have to reboot then, losing all unsaved data. Google search shows, plenty of people out there with the same problem, but the only “solution” seems to be “oh, just disable screen locking”.

So if Thinkpads are the known-good choice for Linux... then I don’t want to know how it behaves on other laptops...

I'm not sure it's the MBP thats the problem with the Bluetooth - My iMac at work has the mouse disconnect randomly at least a couple of times a week.

We've also got it happening to us on our 2015 MBPs in work, at least 3 of us have experienced it. Some more than others.

I use AirPods daily with my 2015 MBP and never have disconnect issues. When I first got the AirPods it was far less reliable but I believe a firmware update a couple months after launch cleared up whatever issues I was having.

I happen to have two 2015 15" MBPs, both with Mojave installed. My personal laptop works flawlessly, no disconnects or issues. My work one has constant disconnects, unrecognized devices, etc. It's frustrating.

How about wifi? I am experiencing random wifi disconnects ever since the mid-2014 MBP all throughout the current-gen 12” MB. It’s so infuriating that I had to disable wifi and Bluetooth altogether and switch to a dongle with an Ethernet connector. I changed routers and even my home (!!) to see if the issue persists (it does). And I’m not alone, forums have similar cases dating years prior to me.

> a.) tune and configure it to work and have decent battery life with whatever hardware I choose

Literally all you have to do is install powertop.

> b.) troubleshoot it when it randomly decides to break itself on update.

I've been running Linux desktop for almost 2 years now and I've never had that happen. Unlike when I used Windows, where a W10 update would be forced into my system and either change functionality or fundamentally break something.

I'm on a 2013 retina and wouldn't swap for the new ones even if somebody paid me to. It has regressed in a bunch of ways and the only thing I would get for that is a slightly faster CPU. Which doesn't really matter. If I had a significant workload, I would not put it on a laptop anyways.

I've tuned and configured my WindowMaker desktop in 2003, and it didn't change much since then, through many, many upgrades of hardware and software, switch to 64 bits, etc. Oldies are goldies. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

The whole selling point of Macs - the lack of need to 'tune'. Yet I even had to do this with my 2014 model - otherwise, the laptop would run hot to the touch. It is troubling to see the trend happening.

Flexgate

>Even with the issues above it still has an excellent display, I like the keyboard (waiting to start having issues), and the battery life is the best I’ve ever had.

I don't understand this.

I understand not liking Linux Desktop(I hate it, but LOVE LOVE LOVE Ubuntu Server, fav OS of all time)

And... the screen is what has you sold on Apple OS?

I'm flustered at this logic. Pretty screen-> Good operating system

I only imagine you use your laptop as a facebook machine. Would a cellphone do?

It is good experience to be able to buy Apple device and be sure that everything there is pretty good. Choosing among thousands of alternatives is pretty frustrating. What brand should I choose? HP, Dell, Lenovo, IBM, Acer, Asus, whatever? I need good display, fast CPU, good battery life, enough RAM. Pretty vague requirements. You are buying Macbook and it's just good, you don't have any regrets, because its CPU is one of the fastest, RAM is enough for most tasks, build is good, devices are just working with all drivers included, etc. I think that people love Apple because of that. They put their trust to this brand, they are paying astronomical margins and they expect to receive the best in return. It's hard to earn that trust.

There are several Apple laptops buying once is still a decision to make based on cost. And it might not work out like mine where the space keeps on decreasing and on restart it comes back. If not for ios programming i would have preferred a windows/linux laptop.

>buy Apple device and be sure that everything there is pretty good.

The alternative is that you spend 30 minutes of research and get a superior product cheaper.

This isnt an opinion, this is reality.

You can find a computer with better specs than Apple, cheaper. I'm not sympathetic to the 'mom' who doesn't know what RAM is, they get penalized by Apple for being an uninformed consumer.

Is there any reason for a 'Nerd' to pick Apple?

> spend 30 minutes of research and get a superior product cheaper.

I'll humor you.

dell.com * Choose between home or work → I'll go with work since it's for development * Choose between Latitude, Vostro, Inspiron, Precision, XPS, G Series, Chromebook, and Deals → I'll go with Precision as I'm a professional creator (whatever that means). * Choose between 3000 Series, 5000, or 7000 → I'll take 5000 for the performance * Choose 5520, 5530, or 2-in-1 5530 → umm I'll guess at 5530 because it's a little cheaper * Now it lists 4 actual models I could buy

The comparable mac is 11% more, but if you buy an Office license for Windows and can use Pages/Numbers on a Mac then the price is the same.

The real difference in my opinion is that Apple does a good job of directing you to the right machine, and you know that your purchase will be good. Whereas Dell and others offer a myriad of confusing options (e.g. Inspiron vs Vostro?) and some of those options will be complete crap.

I'm sure I could repeat the process and get a better deal elsewhere but it will certainly take me more than 30 minutes to find it. So, yeh, for price sensitive consumers you can optimize for price. Not all of us 'nerds' prioritize for price however. I work in an office with Dells, Thinkpads, Asus, etc. Some of those machines are complete duds, as well we are starting to cycle out 2 year old laptops because their specs when purchased were crap, while my 2015 mac still outperforms those.

In my experience: it’s ”unix” on a laptop that just works.

Easy access to up-to-date tooling through brew: zsh, docker, bash, vim et al.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Linux only user since the 90’s and for many years used the dell xps developer edition.

But, the mac touchpad (I know, I’m doing it wrong) and screen coupled with superior battery time as well as solid sleep/wakeup makes for a great experience.

The new air, without the ridiculous touchbar and updated keyboard is actually pretty great.

One nerds ¢2.

Yes Linux does indeed just work on new Dell laptops now. I can personally testify that wasn't always the case. In years gone by it was a world of pain for the 1st 6 months while open source developed drivers for hardware they hadn't seen until the laptop was released.

That all changed when Dell started selling versions of their laptops with Linux pre-installed. And it didn't change a little bit either, in many cases it was a complete reversal. Drivers got released on Linux _before_ Windows - in particular Intel video drivers were repeatedly released on Linux before Windows in my case.

I presume that's developers are moving to Linux now. That was driven home to me just now when reading the Bling Fire post here, learning Bling Fire is an internal library used by MS's Bing search engine - then noticing all the instructions had a very nix'y feel, and the benchmark environment was Ubuntu.

What is "unixy" about brew or docker?

Well, it’s a different paragraph and sentence isn’t it? :)

Whether the tools are “unixy” is of course an interesting discussion. :p

I guess my line of thought was: kind of “unix” -> kind of “posix” -> kind of compatible with a lot of your familiar tooling.

All this equals pretty good platform for many nerds.

I could have made myself more clear.

I don't know much about brew (or MacOS at all) but docker is native linux technology. Docker for Mac runs linux in a VM in the background. The MacOS docker experience is similar to running anything in a VM: slower, memory limits, poor IOPS.

True, but the overhead is not that bad due to HW virtualization support.

Macos can use the xhyve hypervisor (bhyve port) which again points to “unixy” roots — it runs freebsd for example.

Through the years I spent quite some time hacking about to get bsd running on other hypervisors, and for the longest of time it was just a hassle with abysmal performance (vmware esx, xen/xenserver).

Docker on osx is by the way completely seamless from a UX perspective.

As a mobile/laptop dev experience I still think the new air is great. ;)

macOS is a BSD system. I think that was the point

I wish...

macOS is its own thing, where some functionality is provided by some very old versions of BSD tools. But using it feels pretty different from using a modern BSD variant.

> Is there any reason for a 'Nerd' to pick Apple?

You are making a typical nerd assumption, which is to equate "better product" with "better specs".

The rest is just marketing.

Apple is very good at Marketing.

EDIT: Will someone explain what this theoretical 'non spec' thing that matters is? The Apple logo?

> EDIT: Will someone explain what this theoretical 'non spec' thing that matters is? The Apple logo?

Mostly the OS. I don't cringe before plugging into an unfamiliar external display. The touchpad isn't so bad it makes me feel like I have to carry a mouse if I plan to use the device for any length of time. The built-in "office" suite of apps are my favorite I've used, anywhere. Preview is indispensable for working with PDFs—I've never even known PDFs to be more than barely tolerable to work with outside Apple's world. It's Unixy, so many of my preferred tools work natively on it. It has lots of built-in stuff that's less convenient or works less well on Linux (modifier key remapping, screen sharing, and more).

I've been around the block with Linux on the desktop. Around and around and around, in fact. I could tolerate Windows—not as a work OS, but for gaming, anyway—all the way from 3.1 to 8, but 10's aggressively unpleasant. Now MacOS is the only desktop OS that doesn't drive me to swear at it multiple times a day while using it. That's worth some money, when I have to use some OS just about 365 days a year.

Touchbar's beyond dumb and into "harms UX" territory, though. The keyboard two generations ago—on the fatter Macbooks that still had disc drives—is noticeably better than either since, and the butterfly keyboards are awful. Unfortunately every other option is so much worse that they can afford to screw up badly for years on end and I still can't bring myself to switch.

My answer would be pretty much the same. Although I prefer the fit and finish of Apple hardware, I could live with the hardware of a high-end laptop from another manufacturer. But I'm absolutely unwilling to give up MacOS in exchange for Windows or Linux (and I say that as someone who used Ubuntu for many years on the desktop).

> Will someone explain what this theoretical 'non spec' thing that matters is?

That's hard to do, since you're being vague about the meaning of "specs".

How about this: you find an example of a non-Apple laptop that you think has "the same specs" or better as a 15-inch MBP, and I'll point out how it's different.

It’s almost as if an Apple troll script broke free from alpha testing long before it was ready.

“But the replies are just canned crap you found on online forums from five years ago.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll fix it before it is public-facing.”

Oops, guess not.

> The alternative is that you spend 30 minutes of research and get a superior product cheaper.

Then it breaks and you have to send it back for warranty and wait months until they repair it. Plastic breaks, etc. It's not that simple.

“Specs” are a very minor piece of what most people, including nerds, care about in a laptop.

“Why would anyone ever buy a BMW, when you can get a Dodge Challenger with more horsepower for cheaper?”

Marketing?

EDIT: Specs are everything. Not just HP. Specs are how many USB ports the vehicle has. The colors of buttons. The comfort.

Also, I wasnt sure if you thought a BMW was actually better. They are lower rated, but BMW has a huge marketing presence in the US.

In response to your edit: if you define "specs" broadly enough to include the comfort and the color of buttons, then sure, "specs are all that matters", tautologically.

On the other hand, with this broad of a definition, no, there is no other computer on the market with the same "specs" as a Macbook Pro.

If you really think marketing is the only reason someone could prefer a more expensive but lower horsepower car, then this conversation is a waste of time.

Lots of reasons. I’m pretty comfortable with my nerd cred (was programming graphics algorithms in C in high school) but buying a windows laptop was a Byzantine experience for me. I need a good screen, good battery life, and good keyboard/touchpad. There are Windows laptops that have one or more, but it’s hard to find one that has all four, and even if you do, there is no guarantee that the same model will have the same qualities on the next iteration.

Because they are so cost sensitive, Windows laptop makers build SKUs based on the hardware that’s available and cheap. So maybe you get a great display, but there was a good deal on crappy touchpads. Or you get a lottery where the same laptop can come with screens of widely varying quality (Toms hardware just did a piece about this with respect to Lenovo).

My Windows laptop purchase recently went like this. I was looking for a replacement for my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina 15”. Dell was out because of coil whine (which has been a problem with Dell machines since I owned an XPS 15 17 years ago). I stare at text all day so a high-DPI display is clutch. But almost every PC vendor make you choose between 4K and 5 hours of battery life, or HD and 10 hours. No well balanced 3K display with 8-10 hours like Apple has. (Again, this is because they’re stuck with what the hardware manufacturers are offering, they don’t have the clout and margins to demand custom panels.) Same thing with Lenovo’s 15” laptop options (they do have a 3K 15” display but it’s quite dim). HP didn’t have Precision touchpads. The Surface machines I’ve owned have been a Q&A disaster (it took them how long to get connected standby working?) And the 15” Surface Book is too much fiddily convertible tablet shit I’d never use. I ended up with an X1 Carbon, which was a bit of a compromise because I wanted a 15” screen. But it ticked the boxes of good screen (WQHD), good battery life, etc. It took a lot more than 30 minutes, and in the end I didn’t get exactly what I was looking for.

Even then it wasn’t sunshine and rainbows. Lenovo has awful quality control. I had to reinstall the Os to get rid of Lenovo crap-ware (and gained 2 hours of battery life in the process). I got a few dead pixels within 6 months. They replaced the screen, but now the bezel is peeling (it is just a fucking sticker, on a laptop that’s $1,500 even heavily discounted). The fibocom WWAN module has never worked properly (like requires a reboot every day after getting disconnected). So the one paper advantage over an apple machine is a dud. (And again, it’s because Lenovo sources parts from whatever is on sale that day—the Sierra modules that come on other iterations of the X1C are great.)

Native iOS development (for almost a decade now, jesus), and I've yet to find a touchpad that feels as good (tell me another to go try and I promise I will, although I'm sure it'll be tough to overcome my own muscle memory/bias).

As for the touchpad, those of us with ThinkPads just use the TrackPoint, which is (IMO) better than any touchpad. Off-brand TrackPoint-esque pointing sticks (on Dells or HPs) are usually absolute junk and go to maximum speed no matter how lightly you push it.

The touchpad has the advantage of being immediately intuitive, but after a little work on an old ThinkPad (an X220 from eBay is about $130 shipped) you’ll probably be able to appreciate both sides. I like how I don’t have to leave home row to do a little clicking around.

If you end up getting a machine of that era, maybe try this guide for my favorite OS, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370327

> As for the touchpad, those of us with ThinkPads just use the TrackPoint

Our standard-issue work laptop is a thinkpad, and I find the trackpoint super annoying. It's good for quickly adjusting the cursor while typing (which you can do just fine using the keyboard), but awful for moving long distances or scrolling (lack of inertial scrolling).

Have you tried the MacBook Touchpad? All my windows and linux machines have been Thinkpads and while I prefer to use the trackpoint on them, the touchpad on a MacBook wins easily in my experience.

The apple hardware: crap keyboard, any slight usage leads to blaring fans and immediate thermal throttling. Options mean end users could actually pick something that fits their needs and not have to live with what Apple thinks YOU need. There have been times when choices haven't been good on the non apple side but in recent years the apple's few top down dictated choices on the hardware side have led to clearly inferior products.

My non-negotiable requirements for a laptop are as follows. If there were a non-Apple model that fit these criteria, I would consider switching. Do you know of any?

(1) Unibody metal construction

(2) Extremely high-quality and high-resolution screen

(3) All-SSD storage

(4) High-quality trackpad with multi-touch gesture support (all gestures must work perfectly 100% of the time, and the acceleration/deceleration should feel physically natural)

(5) Unix-like operating system pre-installed out of the box (no having to set it up myself) and fully supported. (Doesn’t have to be macOS. Ubuntu or FreeBSD would be fine).

That kind of looks like throwing a darf, and then painting the bullseye after.

In any case, the Huawei Matebook pro x would seem to fit all but the default unix OS requirement.

I dont think any PC comes with any unix os by default, other than apple, but given the ease of setup I'm not inclined to view that requirement as anything other than a way to select what you wanted a first

I guess your definition of "ease of setup" is not the same as mine.

If I could be guaranteed that everything work perfectly out of the box with no weird driver issues when I burn and install an Ubuntu .ISO, I agree that the OS being default is not a necessity.

But I've only heard of this being the case on a small whitelist of "known to work well with Linux" devices, like Thinkpads, etc., which don't fulfill the other conditions.

Again, I'm not just arguing ideology, here: I'd be genuinely happy for you to show me a non-Apple laptop that meets my criteria, if one exists.

> any slight usage leads to blaring fans and immediate thermal throttling

This has been my experience with Windows machines, interestingly. On the other hand, if my Mac makes fan noise I know exactly what caused it and it's going to be a compile job I kicked off, not some random driver spinning out of control in the background…

I send easily 8-10 hours per day looking at my screen. Screen quality has a large effect on how tied my eyes are at the end of the day. When I was younger it wasn't as noticeable but I'm not young anymore and my eyes are noticeable happier with the MacBook Pro screen that any other screen I've tried.

For me it's an issue of eye health.

There are plenty of non-Apple hidpi laptops.

Just like there is more to cameras than megapixels, there is more to a display than resolution. Simply saying “hidpi” does not necessarily solve the problem.

How is win or linux support for those these days?

Pretty poor. At fractional scaling on Windows, expect that even preinstalled applications (Computer Management, for instance) will be very fuzzy. GNOME works fairly nicely, but as usual expect glitches and strange scaling problems with non-GTK applications, multiple monitors, etc.

I continue to prefer a screen where it has a high pixel density but is plenty usable without any scaling.

Dunno about Windows, but on GNU/Linux (Plasma user here) it's pretty solid these days. It's problematic on X11 only when you have multiple screens with different DPIs, but I connect external screens only for movies or slides, so that's a non-issue for me - plus if you're fine with Wayland (I'm not yet, but it's close) it's pretty much solved there.

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