Comment by bxparks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bxparks | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I agree that the iPads are the best of the breed out there, and Apple does support their hardware longer than most. But once the support stops, the hardware is locked and there's no alternative.

So to answer some of the other questions that my post generated, I basically stopped using tablets. The kitchen tablet was replaced with a cheap Chromebook. My travel tablet was replaced with a MacBook Air 11 2015 that I got on eBay, and installed Linux Mint on it. I believe the 2015 MacBook Air model is one of the last MacBooks with a replaceable battery, and it is still one of the best 11" laptops ever made.

My other laptops are a bunch of Dell Latitude 7000 series and Dell Precision series laptops, running Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint. All of those have replaceable battery, upgradable RAM slots, and replaceable SSD or NVMe slots. I cannot bring myself to buy a laptop with a glued-in battery.

I just checked, and since a year ago Apple uses pull tabs instead of glue - so the batteries are relatively easily replaceable.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/27/macbook-pro-battery-pul...

As a side note though - how often do you replace batteries in notebooks? I think the only one time I ever did it was in 2008. I think most of my Macbooks survived over seven years each, and were passed on to my family - the batteries were never an issue - neither for me not for others who got my laptops.

Thanks for the info, that's good to know. I'll definitely consider going back to the MacBooks when Linux on the Apple Silicon chips becomes a reasonable option after Apple drops support for these new laptops.

I get almost all my laptops from eBay, so I often replace the batteries soon after purchase, then maybe every 3-5 years (?) after that. I replaced the battery on my 2014 MBA in 2020. I get the impression that I use my laptops longer than average. My Windows 10 laptop is a 2011 model with an Intel i7-2620M processor whose batteries have been replaced twice.

> The kitchen tablet was replaced with a cheap Chromebook.

Chromebooks get eight years of security updates from Google, similar to iPads. Is the attraction that you can install a Linux distro on it after support ends?

What do you mean the hardware is locked once Apple cuts support? Did the iPad stop working? Are you referring to Apple services no longer working?

The last time I checked a couple of years ago. All Apple services still worked on an old first gen iPad from 2010.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com