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Comment by yazaddaruvala | Hacker News Reader

As someone who adores Apple hardware, I’m really looking forward to having the option of running Linux on my MacBook.

I’m also really looking forward to the changes in Asahi getting upstreamed. The Rust in Linux work has me really excited for the future of Linux.

I might even start contributing once Rust is more common!

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> I might even start contributing once Rust is more common!

as someone who's recently experimenting with Rust, why is that so? I mean if you have something in the kernel where you could give valuable contribution, why letting the language stop you? guess any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev, ain't it?

>guess any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev, ain't it?

Quite a number of Rust devs I've read about, have never been C devs. They came from dynamic languages or Java or similar, and stuck with Rust and learned it, as a more modern features-wise and less error-prone systems language than C.

I'm one such person.

I learned in C, it's the abstraction that exists in my mind for computers, but I'd never use it to actually write something, because of memory safety. I'd even been using Ada.

So, Rust was appealing in the ways C wasn't.

I would not want someone writing kernel code who can't understand what the rest of it is doing.

There is a difference between not understanding and not wanting to write C.

I'd be curious how C (and C++ for that matter) stacks up on some arbitrary "freshness" metric that measures some kind of statistic/statistics that indicate the average/median time it takes for the population of engineers to reach some particular level of "done"ness with a language.

I have no idea how you would measure it, but I'm assuming that C, VBScript, Perl, sed, AWK, bash, and Haskell (please don't hurt me I'm thinking about the code maintenance, time draining nightmare that is a real-world use case of mega-scaled purely functional codebases as opposed to a mixed dynamic with a purely functional core).

Curious what other languages would top the list. I'm going to assume also that some low-barrier entry scripting languages that are well designed, similar to Python, and languages that save the hypothetical, proverbial broken backs of their ancestors, like Rust, to be near the bottom of the list. I'm curious what that bottom part of the list would look like too, oddly enough. :D :))))

C is an amazing language. If you want to integrate into another language via FFI you basically have 0 other options.

That being said, it’s too easy to do something wrong in C. The desire to use Rust isn’t because C is stale, rather it’s too hard to write C correctly.

"amazing language"

ye ye, sure it is

uses physical pathes instead of logical namespaces for includes

average code base could be summed in such a way: everything is fucking "int" or its cousin - such a great tool for system modeling!

basic concepts as for $current_year are still non-trivial in C - like strings

when opening non-trivial codebase my VS Code goes crazy.

Maybe I do have high standards after using C# for years, but holy shit, writing Rust is 10 times better experience for me than using C.

My desire to write Rust is for both reasons. C tooling is awful, the language offers insufficient abstraction capabilities, and, finally, is unsafe.

Rust and C++ both have C FFI boundaries that the compiler can inline across. What more do you want?

Well for one, I don’t want to add another language to my tool chain. Many languages can compile C directly. For instance in Swift or Go you can add C source files directly to your project and have them compile as part of your Swift or Go build. You can’t do that with Rust or C++.

C is the lingua franca of the software development world.

Er....

Modern C++ now has nearly all of Rust and other modern language features built in, some as flags. At the same time it has 30 years of ecosystem, cruft, and bad habits. It’s entirely possible to write performant, memory safe C++, even in a functional style. It’s a bazooka, and won’t stop you from firing at your feet, but it is also the right tool for big jobs.

The main problem with C++ is that it's too vast, it does everything and everyone has its very own choice of a subset of the language he should use.

The result is codebases hard to navigate, code hard to undestand with lots of clever code and unintuitive syntax.

Except... you know... the most important feature of Rust... the borrow checker.

The last time I checked, there were only nascent efforts to add the borrow checker to C++.

That's the main reason to implement in Rust (the others being syntactic sugar like match, ?, and, of course, the library ecosystem that learned from ~ C++17's mistakes).

It still lacks memory safety.

I would also really love to read a statistics-based approach to all of modern software engineering. Like, does SOLID actually increase bugs? Is Agile more likely to slow things down? Etc.

This is the closest I’ve ever found: http://www.knosof.co.uk/ESEUR/

It strongly depends on the type of software being developed.

As the abstract of that book suggests (when referring to ego and bluster), 100% of the agile proponents I have encountered are incompetent. (This especially includes organizations that claim they are "agile").

Who said those people will be writing kernel code?

Rust for the Linux kernel is like 0.000001% of real life Rust use (which is not that big to begin with).

And it wouldn't be used the main kernel for the most part anyways, mostly (if not exclusively) kernel drivers.

This thread is about a kernel DRM driver written in Rust, writing any DRM driver requires a lot of knowledge about how the rest of the DRM subsystem and the kernel works.

The subthread though is about whether "any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev, ain't it?", not about kernel drivers...

I understand C just fine, hacked on kernels before, could easily write “safe C”.

1. I just don’t enjoy C. At this point after writing so much code “for profit” it’s no longer a hobby in itself. If I’m writing code “for purpose” I need to enjoy it!

2. While I trust myself just enough to write some C, I don’t trust everyone else to retain a strong foundation for whatever I’m building on top.

3. C has carried the Linux kernel for its first 40 years. Having used Rust it’s clear the future (while maybe not Rust) is definitely not C. I want to make a contribution that will endure the next 40 years of Linux.

That's a pretty naive statement. No kernel dev knows what the rest of it is doing. Because the rest is a tens of millions of lines code base.

>guess any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev,

I'm sure they have the potential, but they might not want to learn/use C.

I'd certainly be much more likely to look at kernel dev if I can use rust than if I have to use C.

my point was more that given rust is so young people proficient in it have probably also experience in more classic low level languages

But that doesn't mean they want to deal with C code in their free time.

I used to write bare-metal C for my day job. It's pretty hard to get everything right when the language has so many sharp edges. I wouldn't want to use C for a bigger project (e.g. the kernel, drivers, a gui app) but I'd quite happily use Rust because the compiler will yell at me if I do something stupid

Not OP but I'm waiting for Rust support to be finished before I look at kernel development. Don't have any interest in writing C.

Honestly this is a bit of a fantasy. If you love Rust and hate C, and haven't looked into kernel development before ... it's a whole different ball-game than user-space Rust. With a variety of real-world hardware, and the complexity of modern CPUs, and demands of a variety of complex user-space software, you just don't have the "guarantees" and conveniences you want, at this layer. The hardware does what it does and you just have to deal with it. User-space C code can be way easier to reason about. For a small taste see https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/19/1105

Yes, but dealing with low-level stuff in Rust is going to be easier than doing that in C. See for example the blog post by Asahi Lina talking about how it was easier to program the M1 GPU driver in Rust than it would have been in C.

Even in best case scenario Rust code will be confined to individual subsystems and drivers for a very long time. And even in these subsystems you will probably still have to interact with a lot of C code from shared data-structures in other subsystems.

Most of Linux kernel is drivers, so if new drivers can be written in Rust, it's a huge win in safety for the whole world.

No, it's just not true. Just look at Google's recent Android statistics as a validation.

I'm not paid to contribute to the Linux kernel, albeit you may get some reputation benefits out of it. It's mostly a hobby: if it sounds fun, I might do it - otherwise no chance in hell.

Contributing to a C kernel sounds like a thankless job with crappy tooling and high potential for errors - and frankly just brings back horrible memories (ahhh, the segfaults).

Developing in Rust on the contrary is quite enjoyable and I'm definitely more inclined to contribute something.

Not really. C is a simple but dangerous language where the compiler doesn't do much for you, Rust is the opposite. It's like chainsaw juggling vs bridge.

Life is too short to desire writing in C and/C++.

I've been running Linux Mint on my MacBook Pro (2011 model) for the last year relatively issue-free.

For a couple weeks, I had DNS issues with the /etc/resolv.conf file, but I added a rule to the Network Manager to not touch that file upon reboot so everything works correctly now (except pinch to zoom on the touchpad).

Apple hardware is terrible.

I wish someone could somehow make a laptop with the internals of an MacBook (mainly the CPU), but with the externals of a Thinkpad, including the far-superior Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics. And while they're at it, make it easy to pop the back cover off and replace components (esp. the HD) as needed.

I have a mac m1 pro at work and it's hands down the best laptop in terms of hardware I've ever had if you forget extensability. By a far margin.

It makes no noise at all, to the extent that I even checked a dissasembly video to check if they had fans or just passive refrigeration. The display is the best I've ever seen in any laptop. The trackpad is excellent, the keyboard think is very good, the speakers, microphone and webcam are also very good.

I've owned before a lenovo T530, T460s and T580 and quite frankly if we're talking about just hardware this is even better and my last experience with the T580 was just bad. My perception of the lenovo brand was that they made the best laptops until then. In fact I asked to get a macbook because the T580 was so so problematic and not just for me.

I have to say I personally dislike macOS. In fact because now I'm working on 100% FOSS software I'm only using the laptop for corporate calls or situations where I have to deal with customer data, but the rest I do on my personal computer with ubuntu.

I can never understand how other people stand glossy displays but to each his own

I'm the complete opposite. I hate how hazy and dull "anti-reflective" displays look. I understand being opposed to reflection, but I'd much rather have a display that's as sharp as humanly possible.

To me it's kind of like washing your windows. Sure, it's fine if you don't do it. You can still see outside. The window works. You may even prefer that less light comes in if you're opposed to light for some reason. But once it's clean, you're really getting the full effect.

Matte or glossy, the sharpness of the display (all other things being equal) will be exactly the same. Glossy displays just look "nicer" because we associate glossy surfaces with higher value: glossy magazines, brochures, photos etc.

Matte ends up with lower contrast because it defuses light and washes things out, especially in bright light. I think LTT did a video a while ago showing that it was actually worse in bright light than a glossy screen.

Matte surfaces prevent reflections by diffusing the light rays that hit them. They have the same effect on light rays that pass through them.

There is a reason your house and car windows are polished to a reflective surface. It provides more acuity.

I wonder if there's a way we could engineer a nanotech materical that passes light through a screen in one direction without diffusion, but in the opposite direction diffuses the light to prevent reflections.

this isn't quite right, because the coding used on matte displays definitely makes them a little bit less sharp as you can see comparing the close up: https://youtu.be/jFdtJzAgPtA?t=228

Sharpness is but glossy screens provide wider color range aka gamut, just like glossy photo paper.

It’s worth mentioning that MacBook glossy displays are noticeably better than many (not all, presumably) glossy displays out there, probably because of a decent anti-reflective coating. Some of them on the market look about as reflective as a pane of glass placed over the panel even when on, while in contrast I rarely if ever notice any reflections on my MBP and still have the advantages in image quality.

I far prefer this anti-reflective glossy setup to my previous ThinkPad which of course had a matte display.

> while in contrast I rarely if ever notice any reflections on my MBP

Really? I see my own reflection even in indirect sunlight and it's causing significant eye strain.

It might also depend on the model. The one in question is a 2021 14” MBP with the Mini LED display, and the only other MBP I owned had a matte display.

Yeah the Apple displays are almost like a black hole. I stuck a glass protector over my ipad and noticed the screen became massively more reflective.

Perhaps they've mastered the skill of not pointing the display at a light source...

I'd take a glossy display anytime of day, and have so, since 2005 or so, including external displays. Better color saturation, no artificial fuzziness (which is exactly what the "matte" is in the matte displays, they literally reduce glare through a mesh that also kills contrast and clarity).

I bought two monitors which are matte: 4K 27", IPS, sRGB. Biggest complaint is how hazy/non-clear they look. I personally started to think glossy displays are superior, but I understand others have their own preferences.

I typically work on a 30" Ultrasharp 2560x1600. It's pretty great for media at a distance and physical screen space, but it's so refreshing when I sit down with any of my MacBooks and use theirs for a smaller task. I'd really like a good 5k 30"+ IPS (not 27) but that's just a dream

For me the secret has been in managing the level of the backlight. If the screen is at least as bright as the ambient light level, reflections will not be noticeable. Kind of like how house windows seem so much more reflective at night.

In very bright conditions (like bright sunlight), the backlight can’t be bright enough. But in those conditions, matte screens suck too: they look super washed out, like there is a thick fog n front of the screen. (Optically it is the same phenomenon: diffused light rays start to overpower direct light rays.)

Are you exclusively working with the sun to your back?

It depends but I'd really hate to be limited by using my laptop depending on the lighting of the room I'm in

Let’s not act like most of the other matte displays on the market get bright enough to be useful with the sun hitting your screen anyway. Most aren’t enough to even be sitting out at noon.

My Fujitsu-Siemens laptop from 2005 was great in the sun.

The backlight obviously couldn't compete with sunlight, but the LCD behaved transflectively under enough light, so my Emacs session out in a meadow on a bright, sunny day was perfectly readable. That was unexpected. It wasn't an advertised feature. I don't even know if it was deliberate, but it worked great.

Why, do you often work at random unfamiliar rooms, or cafes that impose a specific seat to the patrons?

> best display.

Well, 6th place

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Best-Notebooks-with-the-Be...

But yeah it is pretty good.

I said it's the best *I've* ever seen. I never claimed it was the best in the market or that I had seen every other laptop in the market.

I don't know the criteria for rating the display quality, but scoring less than 2% from the best one is still arguably a very good rating.

The latest m1 MacBooks frankly felt like iPads with permanently attached keyboard. It offers none of the convenience of a typical Wintel laptop, namely getting software running out of the box, and the mouse and touchpad lag is atrocious. I don’t know how mac users put up with it.

Though the only experience I’ve had with macs are at apple stores.

> namely getting software running out of the box

Why do you mean? The lack of a package manager?

> and the mouse and touchpad lag is atrocious.

I don't know which timeline you're commenting from, but as someone that works with both Lenovo and Apple laptops, there is simply no comparison. The Lenovo's trackpad borders on unusable. In fact it is unusable when booting/waking from 'sleep'. It literally has to warm up! I use an MX Master 3S with both, and it works fantastically well connected via Bluetooth on both platforms - surprising so for the Lenovo.

This would be great arguments against Macbooks, if any of these were slightly true. Like "touchpad lag is atrocious" wtf? This is utterly false. And "getting software running out of the box", what are you even talking about?

None of this comment makes any sense at all. MacBooks can be bought with tons of software preinstalled (or did you mean it's missing apt-get? Try brew). And the mouse/touchpad are as good as it gets.

MacPorts is a better alternative to Homebrew. More packages, better design, and created by an ex-Apple engineer who was also behind FreeBSD’s ports system.

Parallels runs Windows 11 & Debian wonderfully in my experience for running anything I can't in MacOS. If someone could just get a good port of Android running well on an M1 it would be the ideal solution for me.

> Android running

sounds like you’re consumer type of user.

i dabble in embedded development and more often than not oem release drivers and tool chain for Linux and Windows, and those drivers are too low level to be emulated properly if at all.

It depends on the domain. Most scientific software, on the other hand, works out of the box on Linux and Mac, and if you want to get it to build and run on Windows, well, you're most likely going to be the first one so good luck if there are any issues as the authors won't bother with non-unixy compatibility.

You could try running Waydroid in Asahi - that's theoretically possible, at least.

Are you thinking about the 2016-2020 Mac hardware? The loud and hot machines with broken keyboards and a useless TouchBar and no IO can be described as terrible. But their recent machines? Powerful, always cold, never makes a noise, pretty good keyboard, industry-leading touch pad, decent IO? I don't think you can defend calling those machines terrible, even if you prefer ThinkPads.

Yes, I can defend calling them terrible: they're terrible because they're ugly and the keyboards suck. The internals seem fantastic, but the outsides are awful (except the touchpads, and also the screens are reportedly excellent but I'm not sure if that qualifies as "internals" or "external").

What we need is a computer with the internals of a modern M1 Macbook, but the aesthetics and keyboard of a Thinkpad of yesteryear, plus a magnesium chassis.

I personally think they're good-looking, they diverge from Apple's traditional "ultra-sleek form over function" design style and enter the area of a somewhat industrial look IMO. They can be described as boring, but they're not exactly eye-sores. But this is clearly subjective. Personally, I don't buy computers based on looks, as long as they don't look like those gnarly "gaming"-branded products.

The keyboards though? I've had a range of laptops, some Dells, some HPs, a 2021 MacBook Pro and a 2011 MacBook Pro, I would simply describe the keyboard as "meh". Most of the laptops O've had have been slightly less comfortable to type on, but they've all essentially done the job (with the exception of one Dell which had a truly terrible keyboard).

No offence, but it looks like you feel the need to describe everything as either "terrible" or "amazing", the keyboards can't just be "not as good as they should", they have to "suck", the externals can't just be "boring", they have to be "awful". I think there's a version of what you're saying which people would agree with (or at least find unobjectionable), but as it is, nobody will agree with you that an objectively average laptop keyboard "sucks" or that an aesthetic lots of (most?) people like is "ugly".

You are entitled to your opinion, but many people like how the macbooks look like. They also like the keyboard.

Many people also dislike how ThinkPads look like, and dislike how the keyboard works.

I hate Lenovo keyboards. Too spongy, and key presses often don't register.

Was that a Thinkpad keyboard, though? It's a different category. Though they have declined over the years as they went to shallower keys.

P14s and X1, sorry, should have included that.

“Ugly” and “suck” are highly subjective and depend on people’s personal tastes. You could say that MacBooks are terrible for upgradeability but “keyboards suck” is pretty generic.

Older MacBooks did have issues but Apple generally delivered on what most mac users wanted.

I guess ThinkPads are pretty in the same way an old Quattro or Golf are, generously, but to me it's a real reach to call them prettier.

With the exception of the notch I think they are in top end of good looking laptops. The ThinkPad Z13 beats it in terms if aesthetics. But still. The new style is miles and miles superior to the all to common wedge shape.

What do you mean “reportedly”?

Do they still ground through the user like the intel models?

This is fixed with using a power cable on the charger block instead of the bunny-ears adapter. Apple removing the power cord in favour of only including the bunny-ears adapter was such a mistake

It doesn't help that the power cord extension they used to ship (and can still buy for $20) flat out refused to be coiled in any sort of way. Even a large loop would spring back straight immediately. Absolutely awful experience. I kept my old power cord extension from my MagSafe 1 charger from 2009 for this very reason.

Apparently they still do [1], even though I have an M1 and never experienced any of the "micro vibrations" that I had on the old Intel Macs.

[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-m1-max-almo...

Oh, I finally have something of value to add to a HN thread!

I was always bothered by this and managed to fix it a few months ago. I had grounded my power-plug-box to the central heating system with some copper (don’t ask), but was wondering why I still got those vibrations whenever I was charging the MacBook.

Turns out, charging through just the monitor (via Thunderbolt) solved this: the monitor was grounded. The default MacBook charger (EU) plug just has just two prongs; a third one for grounding exists, but has to be attached separately.

Edit: indeed, this was on a 14” 2021 MBP. They definitely still get the vibrations when connected to a power source without grounding.

Yup, and you feel static charge when it's plugged in, too.

Actually my 2019 13" is still pretty good, but the new 16" M1 pro, though huge, puts it to shame in all of those dimensions.

"Apple hardware is terrible"

Interesting take. As an example I have an Apple laptop with a trackpad that is quite useable, something pretty much unheard of on anything else.

The keyboard feels much better than my old Thinkpad, but this might be subjective. I've not been impressed with the recent models (although admittedly haven't spent long with them).

I'm with you on the upgradeability/repairability/maintainability, but maybe a Framework is a better fit in that case.

My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release).

>My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release).

I'm on my first macbook--a M1 air--and now I finally see what the hype wrt apple hardware is. I love thinkpads, but between the battery life, the speakers, display, just how light it is, never runs hot no matter what I do to it....I can't believe I went this long without trying one out.

The hardware plus improving linux compatibility means I know this machine is worth it

I've been a diehard Thinkpad user for over a decade now (X201 my first back in 2010). Apple M2 Air is on another level despite not having a trackpoint. Just to add to your list: the aluminum shell feels nice too. Paired with the cpu it just never heats up, which used to be a drawback by acting as a big heat sink.

I love thinkpads, but after getting used to a mac trackpad I see why people always raved about it. That being said I do miss the trackpoint, and I like the old school t420 keyboard.

I'm really rooting for Asahi, but I'm not an advocate for desktop Linux. And I love Linux.

macOS really nails as much of making a consumer-facing operating system as I feel it's possible to get right without taking something else away. XProtect, GateKeeper, SIP and the enclave just feel like the optimal combination of methods to secure the machine while not overwhelming the user.

I wish it was possible as a power user to get more information from logs in the background to ensure everything is working as it should, but Eclectic Light Company have that covered quite well (https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/ if you want to check out their tools).

It's also kind of love/hate. There's a lot of locking down that happens - some it for genuine user protection (cool), some of which is to do with market competition (the whole Epic debacle).

Sometimes they change things that shouldn't be changed and I don't know why (the Settings screen on Ventura is horrid and makes it harder to see permissions settings). Then they announce end-to-end encryption for photos and iCloud and I'm back onboard.

It's also why I don't understand the Windows 11 hate. I run it on another machine and I'm loving it as a direction for Windows - more of the security apparatus runs in the background like macOS, but the information is still available to you as a power user. Mandating TPM2 is absolutely the right call (they have workarounds for non-TPM2 machines), and being able to have cryptographic trust roots down to the boot image is a massive user-friendly feature.

I wish there was a means by which Linux could have software certification so that malicious applications could have their certificates invalidated, but I get that as the FOSS community is decentralised there's a who-watches-the-watchmen question. Having a mechanism baked in at the kernel level could be useful to solve this if it allows me as a user to "subscribe" to an authority if I choose (i.e. if I'm using Ubuntu, I could choose to use a Canonical or Google whitelist for signed apps, or none at all, sort of analogous to how the web has had multiple certificate authorities for many years, except that I could freely choose my own authority for whitelisting if I wanted to).

I can't really compare anything to windows because (luckily) I don't have to use it.

I just wanted to try one of the new M1 machines, and was aware that MacOS has some unix/bsd roots that would make it feel a little familiar. After using it, it feels like a team of people made unix/bsd into a user friendly OS, even if it is more locked down than a linux distro.

The words you are using are not true about modern Thinkpads sadly.

Apple's screen, lower power management, chassis, touchpad, are all dramatically superior.

The stereo on the Macbook Pro 16 inch is absolutely absurd. It's the stereo for my HOUSE.

Apple's killed supply chain that delivers more for less.

Modern Thinkpads have been ruined by the pivot to the ultrabook-esque approach.

Thinkpad's are like models.

There's simply no reason for them to be that skinny.

Yeah, and that's kinda sad. However, old Thinkpads are still totally usable. I was using T420 until a year ago and the only thing that I hate about it was the absolutely awful screen. It was 1600×900 with absolutely horrible colors. There's a few ways to install a better display but it might be tricky [1].

Otherwise it was a decent “daily driver” laptop, in many aspects superior even to current gen MacBooks, particularly repairability, ports, keyboard quality. I'm using a 2020 MacBook Air now which I bought to try out the M1, and some aspects where it excels are screen (obviously!) and speakers, but I think those are comparable to a little more modern ThinkPads (xx40 maybe?).

[1]: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Replacing_T430_screen_with_a_... (ThinkWiki got some terrible ads since I last checked it, get your ad blocker ready)

I have T420 (and T430s) as well, but I think at this point it no longer qualifies as a daily driver. Even with 16GB of RAM there are times when the machine is just slow. Even with a replacement battery I only really get a couple of hours. Performance is just not there for anything serious. I've used linux and BSD's on it for about 5 years. It's true you can repair it fairly easily, but after getting my hands on a refurbished M1 MBA, there is a huge difference in quality, performance, battery life, etc.

Yeah the speakers in the newer macbook pro models (even the late intel ones) are really impressive. I almost never use them and when I happen to play audio through them I nearly always catch myself thinking "wow, those are really good".

Im sorry but you’re letting your Thinkpad snobby side show. I understand where you come from because I thought the same thing. I used thinkpads for long time (as a choice) but the build is shit compared to what Apple is putting out. Maybe they were better in the past, but they need to keep up.

I moved from thinkpads to the 14 MBP and I can’t think of a reason I’d want to go back to Thinkpad other than being able to run Linux.

I’ll leave the “far superior” keyboard aspect aside because it’s personal preference. I got used to the Apple one and I type much faster than on my x220.

But the screen? Come on. Mini Led, high brightness, just looks absolutely great. Thinkpads usually have shit brightness and basic coatings. I’ve even gotten panels from China to make custom replacements for some of mine because of the garbage panels they came with.

Speakers are vibrating turds on thinkpads. One day my gf brought her laptop to bed to watch a movie and i thought “there is no way this is going to be enjoyable”. Then i heard it and I was blown away. I then ripped off the speakers off mine and I made custom housing for some speakers out of a MacBook Air for mine. They couldn’t live sounded better if the whole chassis didn’t rattle with the added bass and if the speakers fired up.

The soft touch coating on the shell that peels off leaving half shiny half matte, classic no?

They are tied on the hinges, both are solid. Thinkpads may have more ports, but honestly I don’t go around plugging my laptop to too many things.

As a Linux user I've had many Thinkpads. X1 Carbon does have a great keyboard. But there's to my knowledge no other laptop with a display as good as a Macbook's retina. Look at any Thinkpad next to a retina display, it's night and day. That's why keep using a 2015 MBP with Linux as my daily driver. Looks like I might be able to upgrade soon thanks to Asahi.

The Dell XPS has a fantastic OLED screen that is better than anything I've ever used before. I think the Apple laptops have slightly higher pixel densities, but it's all the same when they're as dense as they are.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the XPS.

So, your "Apple hardware is terrible" wants the Thinkpad "keyboard and far better aesthetics", but stil prefers Apple internals especially "the CPU".

In other words, you claim "the hardware is terrible", but your actual case is "I prefer the external design of the Thinkpad".

I guess, I'll give you the keyboard. Which is more than compensated with the far greater touchpad, incredible speed, battery life, and coolness while all of the previous (of the M1).

I vastly prefer the Thinkpad touchpad over the Mac one and do not get what people see in the Mac's touchpad. For me Macs have better cooling, better battery life, better CPU but worse input devices (keyboard and touchpad). Macs have better glossy screens but since I prefer matte screens I prefer the screen of the Thinkpad.

IMHO general design of ThinkPad touchpads with the additional buttons at the top (if it's a thinkpad which has it) is much much better even if you don't use the trackpad.

But if you don't use that buttons apple touchpads tends to be better in my opinion.

IMO, the Apple touchpad really shines when you incorporate gestures and turn on "tap to click".

I'm still annoyed they moved three finger drag into the accessibility options. It's one of the defining features of the trackpad in my opinion.

Wow. I had no idea this was possible. Clicking and dragging (ie holding the click) on my Mac trackpad always felt cumbersome - this is a lot better.

Aesthetics lie in the eye of the beholder.

But it is my understanding that the mouse pad on MacBooks are far superior to most other mouse pads. I don't know about the keyboard, though.

MacBook's touchpads are quite famous at being better than most of the competition.

Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable.

How does a water spill render your Thinkpad unusable? Mine has drain holes to handle this situation, my work Mac can't handle crumbs. I don't want to think about how it would cope with liquid.

There are some models where the keyboard itself isn't fully water safe, so there is a chance your keyboard dies but the rest of your system is fine. This is especially true if we don't spill water but some other harder to handle liquids.

There are also some products published as ThinkPads which aren't really ThinkPads (like some(many?,all?) of the Yoga ThinkPads don't have any of the properties normally associated with ThinkPads, they are much less robust pretty much in every category and much harder to repair even if it's just the keyboard.

Wouldn't that be true of Macbooks as well?

Yes, but with a MacBook the keyboard is screwed directly into the chassis, which is not threaded for them. It's literally designed never to be taken apart.

To replace the keyboards, Apple internally used to replace the whole top case. You, the business user, are likely to just be handed a whole new unit. This happened a lot for years and years, as we all remember.

So, if I spill water on my Thinkpad, I can drain it and probably replace the keyboard. Either myself or using the Lenovo support who will bring me a keyboard.

If I do the same on my Macbook, Apple have to replace it as everything is fixed in place and its gone for a week. I only say that as I've never had Apple Care able to repair anything same or next day.

I still don't get the original point about Lenovo keyboards and spills because a spill would render a Mac unusable.

Me neither. I think everything after that (bogus) original point has just been others highlighting that some ThinkPads don't have spill trays as awesome as those that are demonstrated at 28:30 or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3xI8dUdm0

I was just agreeing with you that the situation with spilling water on a macOS keyboard still definitely seems worse.

Right, okay it sounded like you were defending the original point! Which really confused me.

> Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable.

This kind of generalization is as far I can tell the source of a lot of pointless discussions around thinkpads.

The truth is the quality varies, a lot. Sure wrt. most aspects the quality is at least good, but weather it's better or worse then a mac especially wrt. the keyboard is quite device dependent.

For example the one I have has a better keyboard then any mac keyboard I tried and the keyboard is quite nice to type on and quite robust, much more then then any mac keyboard. There are some models where you can continuously pure water on it and they will be just fine. But then there are some thinkpads keyboards which aren't, but then apple had also keyboards for a while which died from a bit of dust.

So in the end general statements like ThinkPads have the best keyboards or the most reobust ones or apple products have that are all kinda pointless. From both companies you can pick modules to get whatever result you want especially if you include some "fake ThinkPads" (published under the ThinkPad brand but not really thinkpads wrt. robustness, repair-ability etc.).

My main point for favoring ThinkPads is that you can easily remove the keyboard and use an external keyboard until an replacement part arrives.

(Just to be clear: I'm not speaking about the very old thinkpads; Only mean thinkpadish thinkpads e.g. mainly the T and P series but not e.g. the Yoga Thinkpad; Mean water and not liquids with a higher acidity)

IMHO Keyboard quality in thinkpads dropped like a stone after the 230s. It’s like Lenovo lost the plans for how to build those.

The keys in the recent ones are incredibly mushy.

not if you have a model with a Chicony keyboard.

You are being downvoted into oblivion for that first line but I support you. Apple hardware look and feel is optimized for perception, not for practicality. I'll always prefer a laptop that's field maintainable even if it is a few mm thicker.

Frame.work? I rather have an ARM processor for the battery life but outside that it's a decent. Just the Linux support is lagging. Wish people would focus on support that type of far more open and repairable hardware instead of closed. That said, my macbook air m1 is the best laptop I ever had because of the battery life and solid hardware (and price... for the E999 I paid, there is nothing close even 2 years later). Frame.work with AMD + discrete Nvidia GPU I would buy, Frame.work with ARM I would buy, but the better part of the dream is that someone can make these boards and I can shove them in my existing frame.work. That's where we should be going.

I love my framework, and would buy it again. But man, I'm not sold the 12th gen intel chip is ideal. My battery life is pretty awful, and it doesn't take much to start the fan / generate heat. Even doing something simple like watching youtube :/

“Better aesthetics” is an entirely subjective judgement.

Agree about being able to swap components though.

The issue with thinkpads has always been the externals! I've only enjoyed them for their budget internals and their openness via extensive reverse-engineering. The lack of a metal body of any sort more or less sentences them to an eventual crumbling, and iFixit rates most Thinkpad T420 body maintenance as "Moderate" to "Hard", so good luck repairing it when something on that plastic case cracks since it will happen eventually, and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.

> there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs

I pay around 50USD/year for an enterprise grade Thinkpad support plan with Lenovo, where they send an engineer to either my home or office the _next day_, complete with any spare parts needed to fix whatever might have gone wrong, whether it's accidental damage or a hardware defect. I've only needed that support maybe four or five times over the last decade, but each time it's been stellar: new screens, mainboards, keyboards, broken case parts, etc. No caveats or gotchas or 'ooh that voids your warranty' to worry about, ever. It gave me full confidence to run my company and equip all of my devs with Thinkpads that run on Fedora - so much so, that when we were acquired a couple of years ago, my only negotiating condition that caused a stir was the requirement that me and my team get to keep our Linux+ThinkPad stack.

What I just described is the polar opposite to every experience I've ever had with anything to do with Apple, ranging from the genius bar arguments to the six week waits to fix our designer's spacebar that stopped working because someone dropped a a breadcrumb in there. It just doesn't compare.

Side notes relevant to your comment:

- the T420 that you mention is now an 11 year-old piece of hardware, I don't understand why you're referencing it

- even so, plastic gets brittle over time. I don't know anyone with a 10+ year old MacBook that still runs

- iFixit are heavily biased, or at least they were when the T420 came out (it's in the iName)

- with all that said I still can't wait to be able to use a fanless desktop M2 as my daily driver (@LinaAsahi you're awesome)

Barely relevant anecdotes:

My mom daily drives my old 2012 retina Macbook Pro. Neither of us have ever had any problems with it. So it's possible for macs to hit the 10+ year mark!

I also still use my X200 tablet (not as a primary machine anymore, but it decoratively runs Creatures Docking Station 24/7). No crumbling or even any signs of aging plastic. That thing is still a tank.

I owned a 2012 rMBP (the 15 with the proper quad core) and it was an absolutely excellent laptop. I had it as a secondary machine for design/music work but used it quite a lot, and sold it to a mate of mine who used it every day until it died around 2019 I think.

Is your tablet the one with the 400nit outdoor screen?

Metal dents. Metal scratches. And if you get any of the colors other than boring bright grey then it's really easy to scratch. And at least things like keyboard replacement, SSD replacement are easy to replace on ThinkPads.

Nothing's cracked on my W520 yet, and I don't have to worry about plugging in the power adapter damaging the finish like I did with my Space Grey MBP.

I dropped my aluminum body Dell XPS 13 on a tile floor (it was in my messenger bag, but I don't think that helped much). It hit the rear corner and mushroomed the metal quite a bit, but nothing broke. I'm reasonably sure that if it was a plastic body it would have broke.

Most Thinkpads are not normal plastic. The W520 is carbon fiber and glass reinforced plastic over an alloy frame.

You can just order body parts from Lenovo (true, probably not for t420 anymore) or third party resellers, or just take them from another one.

And there are a lot of Thinkpad service partners stores, mainly for business customers, I bring around 1-3 Thinkpads a month there for repair (we have ours close by).

> and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.

But a widespread network of service companies that will happily fix your devices, in most places way denser then the network of apple stores. (Not to mention providing on-site warranty services)

You dont need an Apple Store when the parts are sold everywhere by everyone, not only in a hipster store.

10 year cycle perhaps?

I had a 2012 MacBook and at the time it was the best laptop I'd ever used in terms of screen, keyboard, even performance.

I upgraded last year to an M1 Pro, and once again, it's the best laptop I've used, and I've had a lot of company laptops (Surface, Lenovo, Dell, HP) in that time.

I completely missed the keyboard debacle, the Touch Bar, and all the other drama of the late 10s.

As an ex-IBM guy who spent a decade on Thinkpads I disagree.

> Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics

Thinkpads are great for other reasons, partially that almost everything was replaceable as you pointed out.

In the case of aesthetics, Apple is the clear winner.

The last time Thinkpads had decent keyboards was 15 years ago. Nowadays the Mac keyboard is probably the best keyboard on the market for laptops

Current mac is leagues beyond any mobile devices on the market and it's not even remotely close. I am force to use mac because of it.

hmm, it seems you are talking about the framework laptop ?

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