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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

I'm still not sure why.

The section doesn't really answer the actual question. It's cheaper, good enough, replacement parts are cheap, and I understand that argument; I myself use alternatively some kind of very old Thinkpad (that I don't remember the specs of), a 2011 Macbook Air, or a recent Macbook M1 and for what I do with them (little more than running Firefox and ssh) the only difference that matters in practice is their screens.

But replacing a Macbook M1 with a Thinkpad only makes sense if the Thinkpad is better in some aspects, not if it's just good enough. Otherwise you would just keep your somewhat better laptop and replace it later if you ever have to, right?

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> But replacing a Macbook M1 with a Thinkpad only makes sense if the Thinkpad is better in some aspects, not if it's just good enough. Otherwise you would just keep your somewhat better laptop and replace it later if you ever have to, right?

Being able to remove the SSD (to recover data), to easily replace parts and repair the computer (especially when travelling a lot), to keep control and ensure a long-tife to your machine (rather than being stuck with no software upgrade when Apple decides the machine is too old), having better connectivity (hdmi, ethernet, sd...), etc. All of those are aspects where the Thinkpad is better than the M1 and can effectively be considered as upgrades ! Raw CPU horsepower and battery life are not the only criteria that matters. (and maybe once the author realized that, he also considered it was worthwhile to sell his M1 while it still had some value on the 2nd hand market rather than keep it and lose all the value if anything happens to the machine that is not easily fixable)

To be fair, it’s not like thinkpads would get that “up-to-date software” ever - their intel CPUs are full of throttling bugs and there are plenty of unanswered forum posts left with hacks like a python script going on every other second fixing the issue..

He was tired of Apple's shit, it sounds like a divorce to me. It's better in all of the aspects the author stated: price, ability to repair etc. All valid points, that are more or less or not at all important for other people.

I like Macbook hardware, but I left because MacOS is only getting worse. It's not hard to sympathize with others who feel the same. Nevermind the downward spiral of design trends and wasted screen space, Apple has made no efforts to improve MacOS as a compatible dev platform. UNIX certification means very little when the most popular open source software is broken out-of-box on your OS, and your hardware vendor actively avoids implementing open APIs like Vulkan. There's no point for me to buy a laptop that Apple owns.

For many people, it's less about the hardware and more about telling Apple to fuck off. I'm among the latter, getting kicked off MacOS when Apple made the overnight decision to depreciate 32-bit software. Onwards to greener pastures, I suppose.

It's not made by Apple, but MoltenVK is free, open source, actively developed/maintained and works well on M1/M2 hardware. It's used by many commercial game ports to Mac/iOS devices.

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

It's a nice project, but more of a testament to how high the demand for a standardized graphics API is. If Apple could commit to an open graphics API stack, a lot of industries could start depreciating DirectX.

I think it's very clear. The article clearly states that the hardware is objectively worse, but not in a way that matters to the author.

The software and Apple's business decisions are the problem it seems. That's actually the same reason I would prefer a Thinkpad to a Macbook myself. The author wants to be able to upgrade or repair their laptop when it breaks.

That does make the Thinkpad a better product for the author.

It didn't say so in the post but I suspect 8GB RAM were just not enough and an upgrade was necessary anyway? And future upgrading was mentioned. In my opinion this is a valid point actually and should be very much considered when buying any of the modern all-fixed-no-upgrades machines, I mean its not just the Apple machines.

I've used an 8GB M1 Air for the past 2 years and it's totally fine. My brother got the 16GB and there is no noticable difference in performance for any of my usual apps.

Going from 8GB -> 16GB in an M1 just doesn't make much difference, except perhaps for a few specialised apps that require a ton of VRAM.

Thanks I've been debating this. 8GB just feels wrong but I hate to pay that Apple upgrade premium.

He wanted a large SSD, 32GB RAM, sturdy build, many ports, and Linux. How does it not make sense?

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