Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> though it might be good for apple's bottom line, I don't think it's better for customers

The M1 MacBook Pro is the best laptop I’ve ever used.

I think the question whether it is a great laptop has already been answered; it is a great laptop given all the rave reviews. Speaking for myself, the issue is integration and the walled garden. Because beyond the performance, a big point of getting into the Apple ecosystem is seamless integration which means opting into multiple Apple devices (unfortunately Linux/Android are sadly not there yet when it comes to integration, it is ok but not amazing). Which brings the main concern - what if I get buyer's remorse? Now all my data is stuck inside, and based on my experience with iPhone 5S many years ago, getting data out of Apple devices is harder than pulling teeth. Linux/Android are miles ahead there so if I don't like a particular device, I can easily switch to another. For me, that is the biggest thing - I don't enjoy being a hostage (even though most people using Apple devices are happy willing hostages and I get why that is).

Another way to look at this is - if Apple is so confident that their setup is absolutely incredibly good - why not make exiting with the data super easy? After all, if it is so good, people just won't leave even with those options available, right?

You're clearly very confused regarding the Apple desktop experience.

MacOS doesn't take your data hostage, you can exfilrate everything to anywhere you want .

Hell, all macs have a special boot mode that turn them into usb hard drives so you can access everything from another computer.

The iOS is a walled garden but you were misinformed if you think macos locks you into its app store or locks your data away.

Even if you feel like that might change one day, it doesn't justify lying about the present.

I am not confused at all. I can certainly just run MacOS and run everything else Android. BUT that takes away from one of the main value propositions of Apple ecosystem - integration. So to get the full benefit, I migrate my phone to iPhone and that is where it begins.

Also, don't call people liars without evidence. Read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your argument is basically "macOS doesn't lock up your data but it integrates so well with iOS which means I can't help buying an iPhone. And now I have buyer's remorse because iOS DOES lock up my data". You don't need to use these integrations and you don't need to buy an iphone if you don't like your data taken hostage.

Even though i think your tone was unfriendly, which is rare and frowned upon, you still had interesting points and got my upvote. Someone else might have the guidelines handy.

Assume a positve intent, was a valuable lesson for me.

I daily drive a 16" M1 MBP but I'm very much outside the Apple walled garden - I've never used an iPhone, no airpods or Siri or even the apps like Contacts or iMessage or iCloud.

I can still say, the new Apple Silicon Macs are one of the best computing devices I've ever used.

In the long run, though, it will be hard to repair and the parts generally aren't swappable or upgradeable. When Apple was a participant in the PC ecosystem you had more options for repairs and upgrades. So 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now.

> 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now

I'm 3 years in and have never needed servicing. If I do, I'm fine having to go back to Apple. It's not a good fit for everyone. But it is for my niche. (Also, Apple stand out in having long first-party support runways for their products.)

Speaking as someone in tech, honestly I don’t care what happens to it in 5 years. It will be outdone by then by much better models and I’ll be upgrading, because $3k every three years for a device that I use everyday is pittance.

a valid strategy for sure.

otoh i hope to be burried with my m1 airbook (for home use) -- i hope never to buy another notebook class device, and just keep replacing the battery every 5 yrs.

It's an amazing machine, to be sure (I'm typing to you from one), but it's going to be so far behind in another 5-10 years. Its 8-16 GiB of RAM is already dwarfed by the 64 GiB options that Apple is selling today and the M1's speed just isn't going to be competitive to keep up with apps' demands in 2033. I do really like mine though. There's an X61 Thinkpad I felt the same way about that I still miss. Hm maybe I should dig that out of storage.

There is no long run in laptops. Ten years is already ancient, and there are lots of ten-year-old laptops still running.

Right, but if you want to keep it running, you probably need to replace the battery and may need to replace failing storage. I have an 8 year old laptop that still works but the battery is in terrible shape, and it's not an easy one to repair so it's not realistic to fix it. The machine otherwise is fit for purpose so it's a real waste.

Few people were repairing their Intel MacBooks, even if they were more serviceable. It's not really typical of Apple users to expect to have to open their devices (me included, and I've been using MacBooks since the PPC days)

It's not bad to want to pull apart and service your own laptop, but for me it's a tool to get a job done and if it breaks I'll send it to Apple to fix

My previous Intel Retina MBP lasted from 2012 to 2020, and now my dad uses it because it still works fine. My younger brother uses my ~2008 17" MacBook Pro (it only runs on wall power, though). Repairability has just never been much of a concern in my use of Apple stuff

My main device is Apple Intel from 2009. It’s taken a few repairs that are not possible today to keep it running to modern standards.

The 2013 Macbook pro 13" has been my longest running laptop for work, and swapped it for the M1 two years ago because of the reviews. One of my kids is still using it for school.

I never had a laptop for that long before. And just had to replace the battery once, by an after market one. The keys on the keyboard disappearing is the only notable aging symptom.

Maybe an outlier, but based on that, I'm confident the M1 may last long too.

Yep, my M1 macbook pro is the best laptop I've ever owned too. And if asahi linux is anything to go by, its a surprisingly open system from a software perspective.

But I also think the abusive, controlling behaviour they exhibit when it comes to their hardware is shockingly bad. (See: any of Louis Rossman's videos).

I also think its awful how controlling Apple is over the software that runs on iPhones. For example, apparently the city of SF needs to pay Apple millions of dollars a year to allow iphones to be used as clipper tickets. Why is apple paid money for this? Users have already bought the NFC chips in their phones from Apple. Installing themselves as an unaccountable, monopolistic middleman is disgusting behaviour.

I genuinely don't understand how you can describe a company as abusive, controlling and disgusting and yet give them $1000+ dollars of your money for a computer. Why would you support a disgusting abuser?

Because the abuse is obviously not the whole story, The product is still the best laptop you can buy in spite of the abuse, control and disgusting behavior of Apple.

How can I buy their products? Unfortunately its the easiest thing in the world to drop a bunch of money on a beautiful product that I love to use. Of course I feel gross for doing so. If someone else made a product which was as nice to use but without compromising my ethics, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But that product doesn't exist.

Apple is the the only big tech company which at least nominally cares about user privacy. Google, culturally, doesn't really make any products which don't depend on their cloud services. Last time I owned an android phone, I tried saying no to most of the modals google throws up asking permission to upload my personal data. Some features broke in horrible ways - presumably the devs didn't actually test what happens when people refuse consent dialogs. And lots of features become flat out unavailable. For example, their AI assistant. Despite all that, they still ended up storing more data on me than I'm comfortable with. I think android is only a viable OS if you let google track everything you do. I don't want that, either.

On the computer side, the framework laptops look lovely. I've moved to linux for my desktop workstation and my next laptop might be a framework laptop. But there are absolutely compromises. Battery life isn't as good. Linux isn't as cohesive as macos - keyboard shortcuts are all over the place. I tried to configure linux to feel like macos but some apps won't let you use the meta key as a modifier key. Linux doesn't integrate with an iphone at all. Being able to copy+paste from laptop to phone is an absolutely killer feature. Or take a photo and airdrop it across. Or stop my phone alarm by talking to a siri smart speaker elsewhere in my house.

There are no options for everyday computing that I'm entirely happy with. For now, like it or not, Apple has my business.

What payments are you talking about? Apple doesn’t charge transaction fees for Apple Pay.

Apple doesn’t charge you transaction fees when you use Apple Pay. They absolutely charge your bank.

Systems using your NFC chip like clipper don’t work through Apple Pay. My understanding is organisations building apps using the iPhone nfc chip like that have to pay apple millions for the privilege. On android the equivalent api is free and open.

Are payments free Google Pay?

My understanding is whenever you make a payment a myriad of companies get paid. I would assume Google is one of those?

That doesn't change wether or not NFC is open of course.

They do use Apple Pay and say so on their own web site. Apple Pay is a payment network, just like the credit and debit card companies. They all charge fees, typically 0.2% for cards, and 0.15% for Apple Pay. But somehow the card systems are fine, but Apple Pay is extortionate? OK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com