Switching from Apple to Lenovo | Hacker News Reader

Switching from Apple to Lenovo

ayedo.github.io

91 pointsynv88 comments

While Apple has certainly made their share of mistakes in designing laptops (like designing a laptop that will crash because it doesn't starts it's fans when the graphics card get hot, or the butterfly keyboard) general quality is how they trap you. People normal say that Apple lock you into their ecosystem, but that's not the main reason I generally choose Apple product. My reasoning is: That the hell else do you suggest I buy?

Windows is still to this day physically cramping up my hand when I use it. It's a slow incoherent mess. I love Linux, on servers, but I really don't want to manage my laptop and the desktop environments are still worse than macOS.

For hardware, the minute you want a good screen and trackpad, you might as well just get a MacBook of some sort, the price will be more or less the same and I get macOS.

I don't mean to sound like an Apple fanboy, there are other great products out there. Generally speaking though, if I just want my stuff to work, and work together, I don't have many options.

Agreed. I switched from macOS to Linux, and i don't see the point if you're not getting something very valuable out of it.

I am however, in my mind, so i'm quite happpy. Specifically, i'm toying with immutable operating systems. I view that as valuable because i feel confident in the stability and reproducibility of my system. I'd probably switch back to macOS if they offered something similar to NixOS, but that seems unlikely in the near future.

If i use Mac for my next laptop i'll probably stick Nixpkgs and HomeManager on it and touch the OS as little as possible outside of Nix.

so reproducible on the metal or on a VM on the host OS? I have a very little skin in the game but always interested in other peoples takes

(I am trying to relaunch github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation - basically I want to get ssh -X working for wayland on fedora)

Not sure i follow - but reproducible in the sense that i want a lockfile (ala Cargo, NPM, etc) for my entire operating system. Allowing me to rebuild it perfectly.

NixOS has a lot of flaws in my mind (though some may just be inexperience), but it has some super solid concepts of configuration first systems.

I have not played with NixOS - my project above was to build a workstation in docker that would hold all my daily stuff at a fixed defined level - like a lockfile I guess but a docker file.

I suspect that even the same docker file has much more wriggle room than a nixos definition - it again not too clear on that

If you invest some time building your own linux environment, e.g. Xfce or openbox, or kde.. You will probably found that once it completely works the way you customize it, it will work until You break it. I've seen testimonials of guys using rolling releases of Linux or, some debian based distro that runs for years without any issue. No scam installed alongside your OS. Well... I use arch btw.

Agreed. I've been a Linux desktop user since the mid 90s. It was difficult at first but that was also when Linux was in its infancy. I've had nearly the same working environment now for over a decade. I've matured it a bit but it's still just xfce, Firefox and vim on a thinkpad. The world of mainstream UIs has taken some wild shifts and each one seems to be intent on breaking muscle memory and changing core concepts that you're promised will make your life better, once _you_ adapt. I've never had those problems. My systems just work.

Ultimately, this is what I found since switching from Windows to macOS back in 2014. The build quality of their computers is second to none. There are some manufacturers that get close to Apple build quality, but their price is right up there, too.

Not to mention, the warranty coverage and support from Apple is second-to-none. I've had a few issues with laptops over the years (the late 2016 model, but not the keyboard), and both ways, the laptop was overnighted and the fix took a day, so I was without it for three days. With anyone else, it would be weeks of turnaround time.

My experience with Apple (in Germany) was mostly opposite: when I ran into hardware issues it made more sense to go to Apple's long term exclusive partners in the region, than into an Apple store, where I'd run into completely disinterested and barely competent Genius Bar interns.

Apple support in the US is second to none, in my experience. My experience with Apple support outside the US has been hit-or-miss but mostly miss.

I warn people against going to Apple authorised service providers in Singapore.

Most of them haven't been very ethical in their business — I've heard numerous cases of the authorised providers charging for additional labour and parts to replace an out-of-warranty MacBook battery, while the Genius Bar does it for a flat fee [1].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-sg/mac/repair/service

Don't get me started. The ones I had experience with in The Netherlands were also terrible. On a MacBook Air 2012, my 'f' key would always get stuck. I went to our local Apple authorized service provider, which was also the store where I bought the MacBook Air.

First they tried to put the blame on me, arguing that I removed the keycap before (I didn't). When they were finally willing to repair the laptop, they first gave me a lecture about how I should thank them for making an exception, because they were not obliged to repair the keyboard if I damaged the key by removing a keycap (which again, I didn't).

> With anyone else, it would be weeks of turnaround time.

I've had Dell repair techs out to my house through warranty services for same day repairs. Apple offers no such thing.

Was that part of an individual purchase, or a corporate account? I think Dell treats companies really well.

You can buy that warranty coverage as an individual for very little money.

I recommend Dell to my friends because the warranty coverage is so exceptional.

I've never had to use my Dell (or Lenovo) warranties, because their laptops have never failed me. And they're all cheaper than their Apple counterparts of the same class.

OTOH, everyone I know with an Apple raves about their customer service (in the US)...because they've all had to replace their Apple laptops at some point. Every. Single. One of them.

Apple customer service is great because it has to be. If Apple didn't so readily fix/replace its hardware, nobody would buy a second Apple product after the first one failed on them.

> And they're all cheaper than their Apple counterparts of the same class.

I'm not really sure this is true. Last time I shopped for a laptop, the premium series ThinkPads (T or X series or so) cost pretty much the same as a similarly specced MBP. A Dell XPS didn't differ that much. The Apple hardware might even had a bit more oomph than a similarly priced ThinkPad or XPS, e.g. by having a CPU with a higher TDP.

An X1 Carbon from Lenovo would have cost more than almost any other laptop with similar specs.

Of course things might have changed in recent years, or pricing could be somewhat different in different markets (I'm in Europe). Cheaper series (such as ThinkPad E or L or whatever they've got nowadays) would of course also be cheaper. But based on what I saw, the old trope about Apple laptops being especially expensive didn't seem to hold if you compared it with premium models from other manufacturers, and not with value models.

FWIW, I ended up with Lenovo in any case and haven't been disappointed. But price wasn't really the reason.

This is true, retail Thinkpads are targeted at businesses so they’re priced fairly high. I’m sure many companies negotiate lower rates. Most of the reason you see these laptops so widely recommended is the secondhand market. Once those businesses buy new machines, the used market gets flooded with the old ones. This, combined with the repairability and upgradability of many models makes them pretty competitive machines if you shop for a used one that isn’t the latest model. Macs hold value better, which means used models are comparatively quite expensive.

I’ll second your experience though. I’ve used many machines, including daily driving both a Mac and Thinkpad currently for work, and find I prefer the Thinkpad. It has excellent Linux support (even fingerprint reader works on latest Ubuntu) and an excellent keyboard. The trackpad isn’t as good, but I prefer the nipple mouse.

I'm fine with the trackpad. It might not seem as high quality (feels a bit floppy somehow), but the click sensitivity is fairly consistent and it feels comfortable to me. Some other laptops I've used e.g. for work have had trackpads where clicking required too much force to feel comfortable, or the force required felt inconsistent. I prefer this one over those.

Some older ThinkPad model I used at a previous job had a horrendous trackpad, though.

I picked the ThinkPad for personal use largely because of Linux compatibility, too. MacOS might be fine, but if you end up not wanting to use that, going back over to Linux might require way more effort than I was willing to put up with, even if the hardware itself would probably have been a fine choice.

Also, matte screens.

Their customer service was not great for me: my work mbp16 failed within 6 months due to apparently some display cable breaking. Apple kept the laptop for over a month and I had to plead for status updates, which generally fell on deaf ears. When they did ship the laptop back, they got my name and address wrong in spite of confirming it multiple times, which caused further confusion and delays. I remain convinced that a vendor on Alibaba would have done better than Apple in a similar situation.

I've used my Lenovo warranty to get my x220 main board replaced. I've had that laptop for probably close to a decade now and it still works well.

I, personally, do not find macOS to be such a huge UI win that I will absolutely not settle for anything a jot or tittle less. Especially now. Work makes me use a Mac, and while the UI is nice, recent macOS is much more full of jank and bugs that ruin the experience.

I grew up on old-school 90s Linux, where part of the fun was deciding which program you wanted to compile from source to accomplish a given task. So I may be biased... but I gave my girlfriend, a long time Apple user, an old laptop off of which I'd scraped Windows and put kubuntu on instead. She loves it.

Oh, and as for build quality, ThinkPad > Mac. Recent x86 Macs are glued-together pieces of shit that are optimized for being thin and light at the cost of all other concerns. They do not have adequate cooling, and when heat accumulates it has a tendency to break down the glue holding the system together.

I haven't evaluated the X1 Carbon, but my T450s is still screwed together. It's plenty thicc, but actually quite light in comparison to its size. It can also take a beating.

I'm not going claim that the macOS is perfect or bug free. It does indeed have some weird issues. E.g. font smoothing in Big Sur is a train wreck and you have to disable it to not strain your eyes if you're using an external monitor.

My point is: I still can't get anything better. For all it's weirdness and bugs, I don't see an alternative. I am impressed by SuSE Linux running on my old ThinkPad and I could live with it, but it's still worse.

I agree. In the last ten years I have had Macbooks, a Surface tablet, a Surfacebook, and am now on a XPS 13. I found that Microsoft's surfaces had great build quality, IMHO on par or better than the Apple laptops. Like the author of the article, though, what did them in was Windows. I switched to an XPS developer edition and have not looked back. Don't get me wrong - macos is pretty, but Linux makes coding and data science easy. I also ended up using PopOS, which I found to give an extremely good user experience. Perhaps I am too much of an old school 90's Linux guy, but I still find having a single repo system for 99% of my needed software amazing. I don't think I'll ever get tired of apt-get.

Yup, I've been running a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) since it was released, and I've had ZERO issues with the hardware or macOS. It just works. I do always run one major version behind the latest macOS release though.

Generally speaking though, if I just want my stuff to work, and work together, I don't have many options.

You must be one of those people who hasn't used Big Sur yet...Windows has issues, but it's inexcusable for Apple to have so many problems when they control literally all aspects of the hardware and software stack.

That being said, your options for superior laptop hardware include the business models of Lenovo and Dell, or if you need the graphical capabilities, Alienware or ASUS gaming laptops.

Windows laptops are hardier than their Apple counterparts at every price point. Everyone I know with an Apple laptop has had to have it replaced under warranty (in a few cases, multiple times), but my Latitudes from college and law school and my Lenovos from old jobs still work. I couldn't even tell you whether Dell or Lenovo warranties are any good because I've never had to use them. I got my cousins an HP laptop from Best Buy about a decade ago, and it's traveled all across India, in trains, on elephants, been dropped a few dozen times, and other than disgustingly sticky keys and a dented frame, it still works like new.

And with the superior hardware, you also get the freedom to install whatever software you want, to use whatever hardware you want, to not worry about whether software you purchased last year will still run on you computer, it's truly liberating. Sure, it's not as shiny or skeumorphic as Mac, but the trade-off is infinitely greater usability.

I don't mean to sound like a Windows fanboy, but once you understand why Windows is so much better you'll never want to use macOS again.

i bought a mbp a few years ago and do not use it full time and nevertheless ive had constant, ridiculous problems the entire time. not juat fresh post release stuff.and everytime i search i find many others who do too. there is a lot of blinders in the community i think.

Anyway osx is basically a piece of garbage anymore that breaks obnoxious inexcusable stuff regularly. recent favorite because this is what people used to use an example of it just working

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252174979

with that said, linux is a joke on daily desktop stuff too with exception for very narrow use cases

"linux is a joke on daily desktop stuff too with exception for very narrow use cases"

In my experience linux has been better than osx by a long shot. For general uses and gaming. I only boot into windows for some games and programs like autodesk fusion.

My parents had very little issues adapting to mint with the cinnamon DE.

I fail to see how modern linux is a "joke".

I did away with the windows gaming partition earlier this year and went 100% Linux on the desktop (still have a mbp as a laptop). Their Proton innitiative is fantastic.

well, you can run valgrind on linux :-)

meanwhile i have to recompile drivers to get a mouse sensitivity that isnt insanely too fast with an 800dpi mouse and various other fun things for desktop use

I ran Linux on the desktop for 19 years before moving on to macOS. I can assure anyone that it's perfectly serviceable as a daily driver unless there's some particular piece of software you need which isn't supported.

This is the issue:

> unless there's some particular piece of software you need which isn't supported.

Lots of people need to run very specific pieces of software for their work, or their pastimes. If you want to switch to Linux, you have to look at all of the software that you use, and replace the products that don't have Linux versions. If you can't, then you can't switch.

I find as a developer there are very very few things I need windows for. Every year I need to start up windows less than the last.

High end PCB design is probably the last on the list. If I had to do ddr with bga SoC I'd probably pony up for Altium, windows only. For the 4 layer hobbies I've actually designed kicad works great!

ive been using kicad for everything lately as well but about to do a large bga and have the same thought

Big Sur 11.0 (and betas) were an absolute mess. However 11.1 is genuinely a great bit of kit.

You don't know me. But I used my 2012 MBP everyday, and its still going strong. Never had a single problem with it.

And I knew a guy who had just bought a 2013 MBP, and slipped on ice, and landed on his bag, and bent the thing in about a 20-degree angle around his hip, and even the dang screen still worked. Isn't anecdotal "data" fun?

> I don't mean to sound like a Windows fanboy, but once you understand why Windows is so much better you'll never want to use macOS again.

You DO understand that you're talking to a group of people that can and do run about every operating system available, right? I mean, you get that don't you? Every one on here runs everything. We are all well aware of Windows, and yet most of us seem to choose either Mac or Linux where possible. In fact, I'd venture to say most -- not all, of course, but most -- of us only use Windows where necessary.

I'd venture to say that the overwhelming majority of people on HN can and do use Windows at home, with a minority using Mac, and a rounding error using *nix as their primary home OS of choice.

Well, I was going to say that, given the amount and types of coverage Windows and macOS get around here over the past many years, I would have thought the evidence pointed quite to the contrary. But you have 10x the karma I do, so maybe you're more in tune with what's going on.

If we're playing the karma game, then I submit that I find GP's assertion highly unlikely. We have a lot of people on here dealing with Windows in a professional setting (like myself), but Linux being a rounding error does not match with the discussions on this site in any way.

Linux is discussed frequently in this site in development contexts, but almost never in the context of home use.

I think this forum is borderline hostile to "Linux for home use" discussions. We're here though.

I don't know why karma is relevant.

Windows gets plenty of coverage on HN, but respective coverage isn't an indicator of OS popularity (or language popularity, etc). If that were true then most people on HN would be using raspberry as their primary gone OS.

Most people don't feel the need to talk about using Windows as their home OS of choice. I generally don't talk about it either, except on articles like this where OS preference is part of the discussion, and even then only in response to connects like the one I responded to.

As a 100% Mac user since 2006, I've been trying to use Linux on the laptop (Ubuntu) for the past month or so. I find it ok. If I wasn't so used to the keyboard mappings/shortcuts it might be easier. Maybe ElementaryOS would have been a better OS if I'd had the choice.

Reiterating the parent, I just want things to work and work well together. I've been using computers since about 1980 and Linux since 0.9. At some point in my 30s I just decided custom tweaking and compiling from scratch was more self indulgence and a distraction -- I'm still working on my other distractions and bad habits, but Gentoo isn't one of them!

I was an apple fanboy, but using the 13" dell xps converted me. It's much lighter, the trackpad is fantastic (although not -quite- as perfect as the macbook), and you're not trapped in apple's ecosystem. Installing debian was relatively easy.

I can't recommend the XPS series enough- the 13" with 32gb ram is perfect for any developer.

Really liking my XPS 17, though I'd echo your comment re: trackpad.

Boy, the way a lot of these Apple threads go, I'm amazed that anyone is able to get any work done on anything that isn't a MacBook.

Apple make great products. Other companies make great products too. That there are no other options is nonsense.

If for whatever reason you don't want to use Linux (or a BSD/etc) then you have two options for OS/GUI. So much for great products.

Personally, I found and still find OsX terrible, but the redesign of windows to be mobile/touch first was high art which I assume is kept broken for mouse users to drive sales of surface.

I also am not much of a fan of the many common Linux window environments, but in the Linux case you actually have options (at great inconvenience to developers.)

I've been using MacBook Pro with various Linux laptops in parallel for couple of years. Apple hardware and design are indeed exceptional. Great HDPI screen, awesome trackpad, like the keyboard despite all negative rumors.

But when I was looking for another laptop recently, I obviously ditched Apple and picked ThinkPad instead for following reasons:

Only two USB-C ports, in fact only one usable since the other one is occupied by charger. Compare that to ThinkPad having multiple USB-A and USB-C, full HDMI, SD card reader, even Ethernet and docking station. Not sure how Apple can be considered for professional use.

MacOS is not great. I've been using all operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux) and I miss package manager the most in MacOS. It takes a couple of clicks (or a single command (`apt-get install`) to install trusted software on Linux. In MacOS world it's still pretty normal to visit a random website a download unverified DMG installer. That's like being stuck in 90s and I feel very unsafe doing that.

I have one of each (Windows, Linux, Mac). On the whole, I don't find any dramatically superior.

PC laptops do have a race-to-the-bottom. Even top-of-the-line laptops are luck-of-the-draw. Lenovo is far more scammy than IBM ThinkPads of the golden age. I think the idea is you need to be 5% better than the competition to control the high-end market, and they cut quality until they hit that. Apple quality is much more consistent.

But with PCs, although really good laptops don't exist, you can build a perfectly fine desktop.

Windows has become surprisingly usable with WSL. It's also actually more stable than Linux or MacOS now. MacOS periodically stalls out using all CPU until my mouse pointer locks up, for reasons I can't fathom. Linux runs into oddball issues with complex device setups. Windows just works for me.

On the other hand, Windows is trying to become a SaaS, and seems to collect a ton of data, do hostile updates, and really wants to show me ads. For now, I've disabled all of that, but it's gotten harder to do so. If it goes further that direction, it might stop to be usable.

Linux has been going down the tubes the past few decades, but isn't bad yet. Complexity has grown, and stability has fallen, but it's still simpler than MacOS or Windows. I can understand and tweak the system. I'd never e.g. run a server on MacOS or Windows. Too much stuff going on behind the scenes.

On the whole, I find myself gravitating towards:

* Linux for software engineering, math, servers, or similar -- places where I do things by hand and want a lot of control.

* Windows for video conferencing, video editing, graphic design, and similar (which is odd, since this is Mac's classic strength, but I'm finding Windows to work better now).

* MacOS for general-purpose computing (e.g. writing documents, making a presentation, or browsing the web). It excels at normal things.

Surface devices are great really, no bloatware and clean Windows

I don't think update policy is hostile, it is an over-correction of the problem they had before, where average laptop had 3 trojans fighting for control. For the unwashed masses, its certainly an improvement

I don't mind security updates.

I DO mind updates which install increasing amount of Microsoft spyware and adware. Windows 10 wants to track my every motion, direct me to content, up-sell me crappy games and apps, or try to pressure me to do things in the Microsoft cloud.

I'd like it to be my computer. If I wanted my computer to be a lease from a corporation, I'd get a Chromebook.

I had a very positive experience with a t480s (also switching from mac), though I use linux...

The hardware feels much better for my needs than a mac: way better keyboard, matte screen and all the ports you'd expect including ethernet...oh and did I mention it's also way lighter?

What distro did you run? I have been contemplating the same with PureOS

I'm not the OP, but I ran ArchLinux with great success on my Carbon X1C. Everything other than the fingerprint reader were recognized and "just worked". I did also try Manjaro for a few months. It was not too bad either. I did have to fiddle with a few more things to get sound working properly (when I plugged into an external monitor).

Another vote here for ThinkPads.

I have a t480s and an X1C for work, both with arch and they both run beautifully using the same configs and dotfiles on both (with a few minor changes around display resolutions).

They're solid machines if you get a good one and the keyboards are IMO the best you can get.

I had an older X1 yoga that ran Arch great. I now have a newer X1 yoga and got lazy and just threw Ubuntu on it. Since 20.04 everything including fingerprint reader is working great.

I run Debian on a T470. Everything works perfectly.

I have a T480, little thinker, but hot swappable battery. What a fantastic machine!

Running Gentoo on it, with Windows dualboot for Pioneer rekordbox :l

I got a Lenovo t450s some years ago but never found Linux support to be specially good. In fact, I remember I found some issues with the trackpoint's buttons.

That, along with the fact that Lenovo would not agree to refund you the never used Windows license (as other vendors like ASUS did) put them in my black list.

If you're assessing the Windows and Lenovo combo against the benchmark of "Apple-like" experience, then of course you're going to be disappointed, because you can never be as Apple-like as the real thing.

What the author has forgotten is that Apple have built one vision of personal computing, but that's not necessarily a perfect vision or best experience for all people.

People moving in the opposite direction might have similar complaints about lack of hardware options, form factors, backwards compatibility, ecosystem lock in, OS inflexibility, etc. and forget that that's not what Apple is optimising for.

That said, I really wish Microsoft would tackle some of the obvious things. Settings vs. Control Panel is embarassing. I don't hold out hope, given Windows doesn't seem to be a priority for them.

I unfortunately decided to move to Apple with the 2019 Macbook Air, which had the awful keyboard. It genuinely took a chunk out of they joy out of programming for me, to be typing "correctly" and then suddenly a character is skipped or doubled.

The great thing is that I identified that as the only major flaw I could find. So I'm waiting a bit and getting the new M1 on the post-holidays with the fixed keyboard.

Also as the author suggests, I loathe window since it feel all of the time that they are trying to scam or trick you. I've used Linux forever, which has issues for sure, but at least you feel the system is on your side and the internet people are as well. I was pleasantly surprised about macOS being fairly on the user side (though I do know of the issues e.g. installing 3rd party software).

There are also Linux ready ThinkPads. I would never ever work again on a laptop which doesn't have a trackpoint (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick). Being able to operate everything without moving the hand away from the keyboard is just great. I also have Macs, but I neither like the keyboard nor the single button trackpad.

Another commenter echo'd this here but it's the same for me. I find running WSL2 on windows easier to get up and running and way more stable than running Linux and macOS which just 5 years ago would be the anectote of a crazy person.

Things really just work, I get a stable desktop environment, not the prettiest compared to macOS but at least the window + virtual desktop management is leagues better, and an even better development environment without dual booting.

Curious, I went the opposite direction: I used Windows for decades, and WSL since I first heard of it. When I switched to Kubuntu i felt like I was finally home. I always heard bad things about KDE but the thing that I found there might be the best desktop environment at the moment. I like it better than OSX even.

Ofc there are some annoying things on Linux machines (e.g. having to research more before buying hardware), but Windows isn't without it's annoyances as well (e.g. bloatware like MS Edge that will try to get your attention once in a while, some things that you can easily achieve on a linux machine are cumbersome or impossible to solve, and the ways you do it change much faster than on Linux etc)

I use both. But for dev stuff I prefer Linux by a lot.

Moved from an iMac to a self-built Win10 workstation after the Catalina update completely bricked my Mac's firmware and Apple store in my area wanted to bill me 1.5k EUR for the repairs without any guarantees it'll work. Suggested I buy a new machine.

So I did. Went with a slightly odd choice of Windows 10 for Workstations, but the stability, extensibility with PowerShell, WSL2 and ReFS are super solid. Great for development, great for the Adobe suite.

I dunno, seems like the author had their mind made up from the get go. I use a T480 with Windows and its been a great experience. Lenovo doesn't bog down the image with their own software and it only had their firmware manager.

> Lenovo doesn't bog down the image with their own software and it only had their firmware manager.

Even if they don't, the first thing I would do when buying a new computer is nuke the hard drive and do a fresh install.

For me nowadays, it's Linux (NixOS) with LUKS+LVM, but I would do it when I used Windows as well.

I would have bet the move would be towards Lenovo + Linux but no, it was a Lenovo running Windows.

Apple gear is nice, but you can't compare the price of a Lenovo having a fast Ryzen with the latest MBP. I bought the Lenovo at 1/3rd the price. Considering the difference I think the bumps I encountered are worth the $$$$ saved.

In my opinion, the apple trackpad is superior to all other laptops. And this gap between the trackpads make it difficult to justify a switch to non-apple laptops.

I'm surprised I had to scroll this far down to find this comment, it's the reason I can't switch away from macs. There is no even close competitor to the mac trackpad.

I've always kept both. For family members, they all use Macbook Airs. For me, I have the 2018 MacBook Pro. I also use a Lenovo Carbon X1 and a Dell XPS15. Apple kills the Dell in build quality. The X1C is a fantastic build quality, and the lightest of the 3. But, it does feel like a laptop from 10 years ago. The black with red highlights makes it feel like an AS/400. I can't knock the machine though. It's a solid performer.

All this said, I have no idea what the Windows experience is on any of these machines. I can't imagine I'd want to try it. ArchLinux with Gnome works well enough for me as a macOS replacement. I do most work in a Terminal and Web browser, so it feels like almost any environment would do.

The most insightfull part of the article, to me, relates to Lenovo's website and customer communication:

"Everything seems to be on sale all the time, there are laptops of different generations of the same product line being advertised to you."

I feel this is on point, and i felt the same buying monitor from LG, it took hours of research to tell the difference between their models, etc - its arcane and impossible for the uninitiated. While building a good OS is hard, getting half decent website and legible model names surely isn't?

My 2014 MacBook Pro died a few weeks ago. The logic board fried when waking from sleep after a battery replacement. There are no official replacement batteries. I'm trying to find a suitable computer to switch to.

2014 MacBook Pro:

+ Repair parts are easy to find

+ Skilled repairers can fix the logic board (e.g. Louis Rossmann, Paul Daniels)

+ Retina screen, good webcam

+ Full size USB, HDMI, SD card slots.

+ SSD upgraded to 4 TB, currently possible up to 8 TB, presumably more in future.

- Original batteries swollen. Replacement batteries broke 3 logic boards in a week due to power surges when waking from sleep.

- Not sure who to trust in order to replace the battery safely.

2016-2020 Intel MacBook:

+ AppleCare would allow me to have it fixed for another 3 years.

- No full-size USB, HDMI ports.

- I can't upgrade the SSD, or remove the SSD and recover data elsewhere

- Important chips for repair, e.g. ISL9239, are not available. https://youtu.be/gmRd9IVE6dc?t=490

- No MagSafe

2020 ARM MacBook:

+ M1 chip is very fast.

+ Good battery life

- Cannot boot into Linux or Windows, which I will need for work.

- No more Target Disk Mode

- Cannot sync iPhone over USB (contacts, calendars, music, bookmarks, photos)

Non-Apple:

- No Time Machine

- Software compatibility: AppleScript, Office, Keynote/Numbers/Pages, Skype

- Cannot sync iPhone over USB (contacts, calendars, music, bookmarks, photos)

- Generally heavier, worse webcams, non-replacable batteries

- No leaked schematics, boardviews, parts, iFixit guides for repairers.

Even though the repairers (especially Rossmann) say many terrible things about Apple, I still think the documentation and parts are easier to find for old Macs than for average PCs. It's been 6 years though, and I don't think Apple are going to change their mind. I want to be able to move away, but it's really hard to find a decent alternative.

>No Time Machine

There are plenty of ways to sync files or clone disks, either natively or using third party applications, both free and commercial.

>Software compatibility: AppleScript, Office, Keynote/Numbers/Pages, Skype

Office and Skype are available for Windows. Windows has PowerShell and it is cross platform, available on both MacOS and Linux.

>Cannot sync iPhone over USB

On Windows, you can use iTunes or SMB via Files.

>Generally heavier, worse webcams, non-replacable batteries

That depends on the brand and model. There are many laptops that are lighter than the MBA and offer more ports.

Apple's 720p webcam in their laptops is not that great, it is a decade old at this point and on par with many other laptops. You can find Windows laptops with 1080p webcams, but they are usually on premium models.

Brands Dell, Lenovo, and HP (and other brands) have replaceable batteries which use screws and brackets to hold them in place. You might mean user replaceable and this is the same as Apple, the manufacturer will only allow authorized service for battery replacement. Unless you have an onsite service (which many brands offer), you need to mail the laptop to the manufacturer for a battery replacement. That said, there are plenty of third party sellers of batteries for Windows laptops.

>No leaked schematics, boardviews, parts, iFixit guides for repairers.

Dell, Lenovo, and HP (and other brands) have freely available hardware support documentation on their websites. You can find repair guides for many of these laptops that available from third party sites including iFixit and YouTube.

My last Apple laptop switched off the WiFi everytime I stick the USB in it. And I still remember one of the Air models that placed cooler right on the cap inside, not related to any heating part like CPU or whatever.

I've switched to Thinkpad x270 with Ubuntu 20 on it after 13 years of MacBooks and I'm so happy with it! Lenovo is cool!

I use a mac for my main...but the office has to run some old activex windows program. We managed to snag a few T490s on sale, which wasn't bad. But basically we wiped the drive with a fresh install, and it seems to work ok for people who were working on some decrepit Dells before upgrading. Screen and trackpad setup really sucks. I've gone to keeping the program alive on my NUC desktop and RDP'ing in from my mac...

Have newer Lenovo laptops fixed the keyboard matrix issues where typing too quickly causes the speaker to beep?

Words like “should”, “would” or anything that may risk an n-key rollover problem have plagued Lenovo laptop keyboards for me for many years now. I have a couple years old T480 that still does this and typing on it is miserable. The keyboard feels nice enough but the constant missed keys and beeps drive me crazy.

I have an x220 and t450 that I've used with Windows 10 and Arch and have never run into this issue.

Once upon a time, some iPhone 6s has TSMC and some has Samsung A9 Processor. Can we call this "cpu/chip lottery"?

Couldn’t agree more about everything said here and there is still so much more you could complain about.

Switching from OSX to widows. Bad idea, anyway!

It works fine nowadays in general for software development with: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about

You can even have VS code running extension on it and such: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl

Source: I did software development on a window machine recently for a job.

It unfortunately doesn't work fine as an OS. I moved to Macs over two years ago, had to work on multiple Macs(2 2018, 1 2020) and literally had ONE issue during update which was solved in 15 seconds by rebooting into whatever the name of the super menu in Macs. My girlfriend on the other hand routinely faces issues with Windows updates, drivers issues, WiFi not working, random restarts, noise issues. And this is on 2.5k lenovo, which puts it into the same bucket as my MBP. If she didn't need Windows for work she would switch to Mac without looking back.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame Windows for all random behavior with arbitrary hw and sw configurations. If you build a Windows desktop with compatible components, it mostly works fine. If you install SW from parties who don’t have adequate expertise or quality control in place, you will start experiencing weird behavior. This is because Windows let’s the installed apps/drivers do a lot.

Windows 10s should fix some of these issues by restricting what the SW can do and what SW one can install to the machine they own, but not everyone wants to be restricted like this.

Some $500 windows laptop are perfectly reliable, and some $3000 laptops are full of issues- unfortunately all I can do, is but one online, and return it if it has issues.

I had self-built 3 desktops over 10 years and they have been rock solid. With a laptop there is an entire team of engineers to select and vet parts, I threw together random parts. It is still a mystery to me how that is possible.

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