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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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