I liked the comment below describing Hotels (Mac) Vs home (ThinkPads). It's true that if you can be bothered to tweak and install some stuff then you end up with something of your own. Your way.
Never used Macs as old enough to remember the "no one got sacked for buying IBM" saying and it's true even if it is now Lenovo.
I'm now running a Yoga x390. It was the most I've ever spent on a laptop, and it was worth every penny. It's the perfect size, weight, battery life, performance combination, and is an absolute treat to use.
The Thinkpad feels cheap and poorly built compared to the MBP. The plastic creaks and it feels like it's going to fall apart when I carry it with one hand. The trackpad isn't nearly as good, and I had to dig into the X11 configuration to make it work reasonably. I've only had it for 10 months, and I'm already worried that the USB-C plug may be breaking.
Meanwhile, the MBP has sustained 6 years of abuse and still feels solid and works great.
As far as specs go, the Thinkpad is fine, but I'd be sad if I had to buy one with my own money.
I got an X260 on Ebay for ~EUR220 to replace an MBP whose screen went bad. The screen and touchpad are no match for the MBP, but it sparks joy in a way the MBP never did.
I imagine the drive and RAM would be first two items for the change, what about the CPU?
The hardware issue is the right side of the touchpad seems to be setup as a right click space. I want one finger left click no matter where I am on the touch pad and two finger right click. Reaching to the left side of the touchpad to click is super annoying and I often accidentally drag a tan instead of clicking on it.
Posting that in hopes someone knows a way to make the touchpad just one big space.
(Pair the ThinkPad with a Linux desktop using an external USB "ThinkPad-style" keyboard, and you've got TrackPoints + exactly the same keyboard layout (and OS layout/key bindings, etc) across laptop and desktop.)
I hope the next generation fixes this and/or we finally get good nvidia drivers.
Been using it on my Thinkpad P1 works well for my workflow, I almost always use the iGPU and for tasks that need dGPU
I am usually plugged into power. I get good battery life this way.
But I agree, MX250 option isn't worth it for the amount of GPU power it gives and the complications it brings under Linux.
>I hope the next generation fixes this and/or we finally get good nvidia drivers.
GPU offloading is being worked on by nvidia[2] so there is indeed hope.
[2] https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/08/nvidia-43517-linux-bet...
The problem is that the NVidia card never enters its high power saving states even when it's disabled.
I lose about 20% battery on standby overnight.
The T480 running Ubuntu really hit a sweet spot for me. I could get 32GB of memory (double the memory of other developer laptop options) and it has hot-swappable batteries for extended coding sessions off plug. I'm not a huge fan of dongles either, so the built-in ports (ethernet, HDMI, MicroSD card slot, etc.) were nice.