Did they? My MacBook is much worse at multitasking. In fact the OS I've found to be best at multitasking is Debian/Ubuntu.
[EDIT] And when I do still run into trouble, it's almost always Electron chat apps. Slack, Teams, and Discord. All terrible at being respectful of system resources. Closing the program and restarting it usually temporarily fixes the problem, but that shouldn't be necessary.
That and also ultra-wide tabs which change in size as you close them with a middle click, which is really annoying and you sometimes close the wrong tab. Close them with the cross and they stay the same size and neatly collapse, you can even then middle click to close the remainder and they stay the same size. Silly difference in behaviour IMO.
It's the little things that put me off. Shame, as Passkey support is great.
A website could just run <download big json blob and append to array> in a tight loop and the browser has to try to make decisions on not hosing website performance if the user wants to actually use the crappy website while simultaneously not hosing battery/machine performance.
ff a decade ago would just randomly die on me within 2 days.
Most of the issue is that I have to fight with nvidia video drivers every month or two. Something happens and they stop operating and it grinds my entire system to a crawl when everything is software rendered. YouTube basically kills my computer.
When I go with Mac or Windows, the main feature is that they have designers to make more than a Potemkin UI, and they care about the end to end UX. No, “oh go complain to some other vendor.”
Ubuntu is very very impressive for free. I certainly acknowledge how great that is, and how important that is to the ecosystem.
Anyways, sorry about the rant. I’m calming down.
The fix was a reversion and then CLI install of the nvidia 515 drivers.
You can disable that too.
If you want a good Linux experience, you should look for hardware with first class Linux support. Likewise, good luck with macOS on non-Apple hardware--it's possible but ymmv
Thats a good description for many linux GUIs. They look like they can get the job done, but to really get the job done, you have to use what the developers of said UI likely themself use - the terminal.
It feels like a lot of the UIs in Ubuntu are there just so they can claim it’s an OS that can take over for Windows or Mac.
Even a lowly old i3 can encode videos with ffmpeg while you browse the web provided you start ffmpeg with a `nice -n 19`. On a Mac, it seems to be ignored.
Desktop distros switching to a more user-friendly scheduler, and loading a ‘small speaker’ EQ via Pulse on detecting internal speakers (= laptop) are two massive, low-hanging fruit improvements for Linux that just don’t seem to be done.
My previous laptop was a similar Lenovo X1 Carbon with Debian and wow do I miss it, but I don't have too much of a choice since I do mobile app development :(
I swore that would be the last Apple computer I ever bought, but then they released the M1s… and they are very good.
Would recommend getting an M1 if at all possible. There’s still time to ask Santa for one.
Macs have famously-long usable lives — my sister uses a 7-year-old iMac, for example. The latest macOS Ventura supports Macs made in 2017. I'd be very surprised to hear about people using 2021 Framework laptops as their daily driver in 2026.
It's a bit odd to be saying this about pre-M1 Macs, as they were "just" Intel machines, same as everything else.
I've had 3 MBPs, every single one has had at least one issue, well before 7 years, usually around 1.5 to 2. The first two had battery recalls, the middle one had cable-gate, the middle one's display was also very temperature sensitive (it would have glitched lines artifact on the screen if the ambient temperature wasn't near 70F), the later MBP suffers from keyboard-gate and from constant thermal throttling. (Likely because the vents are choked with dust, but MBP's user hostile design prevents me from opening it up and pushing air through it, which is likely all it requires. They hate the user so much they used screws worse than Torx. I think they're Pentalobe, but don't quote me.)
My current Magic Trackpad is also highly temperature sensitive. The "click" will lock up at high temp. (I.e., the trackpad will fight you, if you attempt to click, if the ambient temperature is warm.)
> I'd be very surprised to hear about people using 2021 Framework laptops as their daily driver in 2026.
I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad at about that age. (It is a 2017 model, so, 5 years.) The biggest thing wrong with it at present is it requires AC power. (The battery connection is bad. It lived through two bike crashes, though, and I suspect that's a side effect of it. I should see if that's repairable, one of these days, but I've put up with that for the time, as with COVID, it doesn't really travel much anymore.) The TrackPoint™ is also wonky, but I think that's because sunlight has chemically hardened the nib like an old eraser. I have more nibs… somewhere. I should look for them or order more…
> They hate the user so much they used screws worse than Torx. I think they're Pentalobe, but don't quote me.
Yes, Pentalobe: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+clean+your+MacBooks+fan+...
An M1 Mac should last double that, easily - so long as you don't underspec it. My family has multiple November 2020 M1 MacBook Airs that are still working good as the day we got them.
It's probably not as good as an M1, but it'll last you more than two years
6+ years is the norm for me on Macs.
However, I don't think I know how decreased battery life would lead to overheating?
Certainly, dust inside the machine will lead to overheating (or at least, more fan activity) over time. Coats the heat sinks, etc. Perhaps that's it?
I did get the battery replaced once, it was free. The screen got replaced twice, also for free (the second time they just did it when replacing the battery because the person at the Apple Store noticed a slight wear on the edge anti-reflective coating)