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Comment by europeanNyan | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you completely and yet it's practically impossible finding a worthwhile alternative. I've tried finding alternatives on my last upgrade cycle and it's like having to live with endless amounts of compromises just to get away from Apple.

For the iPhone, I tried looking at the Pixel for the Vanilla Android experience and long support, yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time. Not to mention the polish of the software, app ecosystem and stability.

Also, couldn't find anything coming near the value of a baseline Macbook Air M1 as far as build quality, battery life, stability etc. is concerned.

I like to also read comics and magazines on the iPad and that's also a market where I have no idea what an alternative would be. And that's the state of the tablet market for years now.

Maybe I could get rid of my Apple Watch, but it just works and has endless amounts of third party accessories. I've been looking at Fossil Hybrid Smartwatches and it seems like they are a hot mess of instability and bad support.

At the end of the day, it's about stability and ease of use. I'm way past the time where I had the time and found it really cool to try every new ROM coming out ("daily driver", "What isn't working? You tell me") and it seems like Apple still can't be beat at this front. Sadly.

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Probably the closest option to M1 on build quality and battery will be the AMD version of the Framework laptop... if you want can run Windows or Linux without issue. Will probably go that direction on my next purchase. Later this year and next year AMD are releasing new laptop CPU/APU that will absolutely kill on performance:watt, while they're a bit ahead of Intel at the moment, they're going to leap a bit further ahead if GPU perf matters to you. Not that Intel is asleep, just behind.

On the phone, I started with Android, so just kind of used to it... I've bought about every 2-3 generations for a while, currently on a Pixel 4a. I tend to avoid the high end, and find if you wait 3 months or so after a new release, the kinks are usually worked out by then.

As to the iPad, there really isn't a good alternative that I'm aware of... there are still a few Android options, none are great... the MS surface tablet and other convertable laptops are okay, but still not as nice a UX, it's not my thing so doesn't bother me, but can understand why if it works, it really works for you.

Watch is about on par, from what I understand.. again, not something I'm into personally.

I tend to take the Apple option for work (software dev, mostly web/svc oriented) only because corp Apple experience is generally better than corp windows.

I vote with my wallet.

The Framework laptop is my choice. It is not the best in every category, but it is mine.

I didn't like the weak hinges, I replaced them. I can replace the battery when I need. I can upgrade the memory or hard disk, or motherboard or screen when I need.

The thing with Apple is that their way of vertical tech integration results in highly polished, non-standard, unservicable machines. They are nice, but not worth the trade of ownership for me.

I feel exactly the same about Apple's software. It's great as long as your preferred workflow matches the Apple-blessed workflow. But if it doesn't, you're pretty much hosed.

Desktop Linux is not as nice or facile or polished, but it feels like "my" desktop because I can modify it. When I use MacOS, it feels like I'm just renting somebody else's computer. It's a very nice computer, but it can never be mine.

I mean, that’s your definition of “yours” though.

It’s like saying that buying a condo isn’t home ownership due to an HOA having some oversight. Some people are totally fine with that, it doesn’t mean it’s less “theirs”.

I would in fact argue that exact point.

How much you control something directly relates to how much you own it mentally and practically.

I regret to inform you that your point would not be a winning argument with a significant portion of the population.

In terms of "premium finish" feeling, I think that the Starbook from Star Labs might be in the convo - they actually make their own chassis, unlike so many other vendors.

https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook

(I know Framework isn't rebranding stuff - just throwing another in the mix)

Good luck getting one though, wait times seem bad every time I look.

my starbook arrived about a year after I purchased it, and was DOA.

>As to the iPad, there really isn't a good alternative that I'm aware of...

As someone who refuses to use Samsung phones because of the bloatware (and was using a Pixel 4a until the sim slot crapped out last week, of all things) I've actually been pretty happy with Samsung's tablets.

I still don't understand why people think in 2023 that Android can not be a viable alternative to an iPhone. I would never use an iPhone for certain software and UX related issues (biggest is the missing back gesture/button). My Pixel does better photos than ANY iPhone on the market.

Macbook Air M1, just look at Dell XPS series.

Samsung S9 tablets have an OLED display. OLED... you don't get that on any iPad.

Apple Watch really has no competitor which matches 100%. On certain areas like fitness (Fitbit) or hiking (Garmin) there can be also some good and better alternatives but it does not match 100% of the features.

I think there is always a choice except when looking at the Apple Watch.

Stuff like the 911 calling bug is a great example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713375

I had a top of the line XPS. Battery life is less than half that of the Air. The speakers in the XPS sound like they are from the 90s. It gets painfully hot on the bottom case. The keyboard wrist rest area is cheap plastic. It was thicker and heavier than the MBA. Intel Iris GPU (ie slow af) versus M1/M2 GPU.

One point to the XPS: the pixel density of the 4k 13" was absolutely LOVELY. I have never seen a screen so nice.

There is really no comparison overall, though: the Apple laptops blow them (and everything else in that category) out of the water.

The top end iPhones are similarly 2-3 years ahead of the flagship Pixel devices in build quality, too. I tried, really I did.

Same here. The XPS’s hard drive died within two years and I had to replace it.

The keyboard and touchpad also don’t hold a candle to MacBooks.

I bought a MacBook Pro in 2013 and my mom bought a Dell XPS at around the same time. Her laptop died, she got a Lenovo Yoga. That one died within a year and was replaced for free. The new one died after two years. When the M1 Air came out I gave her the old MacBook Pro, which she still uses every day, going strong (aside from battery life, but it's mostly plugged in).

It has essentially outlived 4 Windows laptops. I expect the M1 Air to still be relevant in a decade, as well.

The M1 won't, the SSD will wear out before that and with no way to swap, it will be landfill as well.

Do the M1s have especially short write lifetimes? I have a Toshiba from 2010 or so and the SSD is still fine even if the trackpad and speaker ports died years ago.

In 2013, TechReport did an SSD endurance test: for months, it ran non-stop write operations, a much more strenuous use case than what a regular laptop would experience, which will be primarily read operations. 4 months in, after writing 300TB, all the tested devices were still working without issue.

If the characteristics of the SSD in an M1 are sufficiently similar to the SSDs that were used back then (I have no clue if that's the case), wear out will be a non-issue.

Since 2013 there have been multiple iterations of SSD technology that increased storage density but sacrificed storage durability: https://www.howtogeek.com/444787/multi-layer-ssds-what-are-s...

This is why people are concerned about SSD endurance. An old SLC SSD's NAND would be good for many, many writes, tho the controller would often fail. Nowadays the NAND fails, but the controller is fine.

I'd note that the 2013 MBP also has an SSD that hasn't experienced any problems so far.

After 2 years of use, my M1 MBP has 5% write life used. Extrapolate that out and you get 40 years of lifespan.

I bought a mid-range Acer laptop in December 2012. I used that thing as my daily driver until 2018 until I finally got a desktop. In 2020 I repurposed that laptop as a server and it's been running ever since. For tens of thousands of hours.

My point is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on quality. Perhaps I'm pretty lucky in this sense, but I have had great longevity out of all of my hardware, and I have owned very few Apple devices.

Been running a XPS 9560 since 2017 and its rock solid. Windows 10 with WSLv2. Basically the key to any Windows machine is finding the combination of drivers that are stable. That is the trade off with Windows. They support a ton of hardware so naturally the driver quality varies. Apple's problem space is easy in comparison. One set of hardware, one set of drivers. A lot of the complaints about XPS hardware really boil down to the bad set of drivers Dell ships them with. As I get older it has become pretty clear the sweet spot is to be two generations behind the latest and greatest. You get the ideal spot between price, cheap replacement parts and stability.

So not turn key, but also not a rip off prison like Apple :)

Isn't a good high density screen typically a large power drain? Perhaps there's a trade-off that was made there…

It's not included because it's really hard to make a high quality screen, not because of the battery tradeoff.

My son bought a Dell XPS for exactly that reason. After 1.5 years, the battery life was at 50%. He called Dell support and they said it was normal. He's now in the market for a MacBook Air M2.

This is a limit of battery technology. Your Apple laptop will ha e shit battery life in a few years as well

Device manufacturers can engineer for longer useful lifespan by oversizing the battery, can't they? Do they all do that to the same extent?

To an extent, there's a limit for air travel, generally speaking as they can be dangerous. The m1/m2 are just killer in terms of lifetime and usage for general reading/browsing/email.. and still very long for even content viewing. Most people aren't rapidly draining their batteries, so the longevity gets to be a bit better overall.

AMD is getting pretty close and the perf:watt on the coming generation(s) for laptops (including integrated gpu) look to be really impressive to say the least...

They can also implement better battery management technology (cooling, charge rate curves, keeping the charge between 10%-90% instead of 0-100%, but reporting 0-100% to the user via scaling), etc, etc.

For a good counter-example, look at the early Nissan Leafs. They burned out their batteries in a matter of a few years, but battery replacements for other brands from that time are basically unheard of. (The inherent information asymmetry for new car purchasers is one reason Biden's IRA dictated minimum car battery warranties.)

Funny, I heard the total opposite about Nissan Leafs. The industry was guesstimating that batteries would last 8-10 years. The first Nissan Leafs (which was about the first commercially mass-available EV) had battery lives where something like 90% were still going strong and still 80% of original capacity left after 13 years.

Rather than the Leaf being problematic, it was the car that showed the market that worrying about the lifespan of EV batteries wasn't really necessary.

I had one of those early Leafs, the battery degradation was real. Newer vehicles seem to have much better curves.

I have an Apple laptop that is a few years old. It does not have shit battery life. Probably 90% of new.

Did you research this statement before making it?

Yep. Apple battery health in system preferences will show you how much the battery has degraded since the device was new. My ~2yo M1 MacBook Pro still has 92% capacity compared to when it was brand new.

I don't know if it's in System Preferences, but for me, System Information shows my mid-2015 MBP (running macOS 10.14.6 Mojave) still has a battery capacity of 8266mAh and a remaining charge of 8079mAh at 100%. Compared to the advertised capacity at launch of 8755mAh, that's a charge capacity of ~92% after ~five years (AppleCare replaced my battery during their recall). MacBooks are just built different.

I've owned several Apple laptops over the last 20 years for both personal and work use and they've all had reduced battery life over time. I've suffered one recall, another one which failed 1 month past the warranty and which the Apple Store said was quite normal(!), and several had degraded to the point I had to ensure they didn't drop down to below 20% (or some other magic number). After the first few I took into the Apple Store only for them to say "oh that's to be expected" I stopped going in. Not sure why people think Apple laptops are magically immune, they're not. They suffer battery issues just the same as other brands do.

Apple introduced battery charging limitation feature on MacBook in 2019 (or a few years ago?), while Windows laptops supported it in 2000s. That should be the reason for previous experience. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211094

Modern Macbooks are very strategic about when and how much they charge. You can override it if you know you need a full charge Right Now, but otherwise they will decide how much to charge based on your usage patterns, which keeps the battery alive much longer than on many other brands of laptop.

Apple's batteries are covered under warranty up to 1000 cycles. I had them replace my battery that hit 80% capacity at 3 years right before AppleCare ran out.

I can’t believe my M1 Mac is almost 3 years old, performs just like the day I bought it (blazingly fast).

My work Thinkpad from the same period feels half way dead.

That's likely more a reflection of the software you run (and update over time) than of the hardware itself, no?

It helps that the Apple Silicon CPUs run so cool. In other laptops your CPU cooler and fans will fill up with dust causing the CPU to thermal throttle.

The key to battery life/health on the XPS is to use the BIOS functions to limit charging. My XPS-13 9370 has been plugged in most of its life (about 4 years now) and battery health has dropped from 96% to 93%.

I can't speak to the rest of the comparison to the Macs - they're probably better overall - but the battery life is a solved problem if you know to limit charging.

That's clever, but probably too clever for the 99% of people who don't even know what a BIOS is. You've got to wonder why Dell wouldn't do that kind of front end work themselves.

When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience.

Also, as someone who switched from Pixels and other Android devices to the Apple ecosystem . It’s nice that everything “just works.”

It’s kind of like running BSD or Debian stable after having been on Fedora/Arch/etc.

> When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience.

Isn't this because Android uses open standards for its SMS and iOS refuses to do so?

Does it matter for me as a user?

No, and I wouldn't want to imply otherwise. I was genuinely asking because my recollection is that the answer is "yes" but I don't recall.

This is correct. Google put a lot of effort into making carriers adopt RCS (which has most of the functionality of iMessage), but Apple will not adopt it to keep their "competitive advantage."

https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

I use an iPhone now but these kinds of business tactics and the others mentioned here really make me wish there were more competitive products on the other end.

RCS is pretty garbage without Google’s extensions. Of course this ends up being very similar to iMessage.

RCS as a baseline standard is proprietary, but google then slapped a bunch of proprietary extensions onto it that it refuses to license, so no, it's not.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

> Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one. Google has an RCS API already, but only Samsung is allowed to use it because Samsung signed some kind of partnership deal.

> If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has a whole sales pitch about how Google Jibe can "help carriers quickly scale RCS services, iterate in short cycles, and benefit from improvements immediately." So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.

Like c'mon google doesn't care about open-standards except insofar as that allows them to embrace-extend-extinguish. google's end goal is imessage but with google servers in the middle instead of apple ones.

Thanks, glad I asked - I genuinely was not sure.

Sorry, it sounded snarky/pointed, that was more adversarial than was ideal. It really is hard to ask a question these days, if it's political...

> there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now

To be fair, this criticism is fundamentally true of iMessage, too. Implementing all of iMessage's features in an open, trustless manner is impossible.

I loved Android back when I had the time to hack around with ROMs and crazy customization. It's fun. But these days in my busy working life, I don't have time for that kind of stuff, I just want something that works well and gets regular security updates. My Android phones weren't really cutting it.

Agreed Android is a suitable iOS replacement. Maybe a bit wonky at times but I’ve used both and they’re the same for my needs.

XPS is not comparable to M1. Not even close.

> I would never use an iPhone for certain software and UX related issues (biggest is the missing back gesture/button)

Um, swiping from the left edge takes you back on iPhone and iPad. Not sure how long ago did you last test the "missing back gesture" theory. Been using an iPhone for 3 years and has always been this way.

Not in several google apps — they deliberately break the convention.

just google ruining the experience as usual. same with youtube on iOS, they get away with it so why not try breaking the rules everywhere.

> Macbook Air M1, just look at Dell XPS series.

If you want an unusable trackpad, a middling keyboard, a fan that spins up and down at random when the laptop is just sitting there, a space heater for your backpack when you close the laptop and stow it away, and a pathetic battery life, then, yes, a Dell laptop is just what you need.

I'll admit, I have a more expensive Dell Precision laptop, so maybe the XPS is actually usable, but I'm not going to hold my breath. The one that I have is the worst POS laptop I've ever had the pleasure of being forced to use.

I had a personal XPS 13 back in 2015 or 2016 that I loved. Right now for work I have a Precision 5560 from 2021 which has all the drawbacks you listed and that I hate. I don't know if it's a year thing or a model thing, but certainly there is no brand consistency when it comes to Dell.

I have a Pixel 3a and longevity of phone is important. But Android is cutting down their supported cycles to 3 years. Unless something changes, in fall next year I will get an iPhone 14/15 (possibly refurbished) and keep it for 6/7 years. ios16 is still possible on the iPhone8 - a solid 6+ years of official updates!

Walled garden or not, their products are solid and supported. That is what most consumers look at. No hassle ownership for most.

> I still don't understand why people think in 2023 that Android can not be a viable alternative to an iPhone.

Because Google... I could live with not having iMessage or AirPlay, that's annoying but something I could live with. So it's either a de-googled Android phone or iPhone, and I do need a few apps which are only available in the App Store or Play Store, so I figure I'm limited to phones that can run something like CalyxOS, which basically limits me to Pixel or FairPhone.

The FairPhone isn't a terrible choice, but I'm not going to replace a functional iPhone with it... if it break maybe, or I can get a used iPhone.

It's not that I trust Apple all that much, I just trust them way more than Google at this point. I don't think Google is evil or bad, but their interest and mine doesn't really align.

>I could live with not having iMessage

So, literally any messaging app, something that non-Apple users have to do anyways, and have to deal with your bullshit about only going through iMessage when they have to send you SMS.

>AirPlay

Chromecast is infinitely more ubiquitous. Also, if Apple didn't patent AirPlay and refuse to share it with anyone, you wouldn't be in this situation.

I will absolutely agree with Google being an absolutely dreadful steward of Android, but make no mistake: you gave Apple full support in locking themselves down in their own little playground, and now you're complaining you can't get out.

> Chromecast is infinitely more ubiquitous.

Chromecast is a device.

> Also, if Apple didn't patent AirPlay and refuse to share it with anyone, you wouldn't be in this situation.

Google Cast is just as proprietary as AirPlay. Both require licensing to be included in devices. I have an LG TV that supports both, an ancient Roku device that does the same, as well as supporting Miracast. I suspect you're confusing Chromecast and the Google Cast protocol with Miracast, an open standard; one dropped by Google in favour of their proprietary stack.

> Chromecast is a device

It's branded as "Chromecast built-in" when supported by a TV, not "Google Cast".

e.g. https://www.sony.com/image/89821bf64399cd4c34680e0988903e4b?...

Is that a recent rebranding? The SDK is still called Google Cast.

https://developers.google.com/cast.

It's probably a difference between developer facing and consumer facing, or software vs hardware branding.

Or maybe they just couldn't get a trademark for "Cast"?

>I would never use an iPhone... missing back gesture/button

One finger swipe right.

> I still don't understand why people think in 2023 that Android can not be a viable alternative to an iPhone.

Because some people, like yours truly, enjoy having a patched up-to-date mobile os, but also don't need to change their phone every other year. My Iphone 7 which I bought refurbished in February 2017, still works perfectly after a battery change. It has the previous iOS version, but it keeps receiving security updates. All the apps I need work on it (games may be too much for it, but luckily, I have a PC with a big-ass GPU for that). My dad's Galaxy S7 hasn't had an update in a while. He tried to install 1password, a freaking password manager which is basically a glorified notepad, says it doesn't support the phone and / or the android version. His GS7 is working fine otherwise, though.

> Macbook Air M1, just look at Dell XPS series.

This has to be a joke. I can wholly understand people not valuing build quality and preferring to save money over that or invest it someplace else. But that doesn't make it "comparable".

Have they finally fixed the touchpad moving by itself or ignoring your finger? The fan spinning like a jet engine for no reason? I hear nowadays everybody's on the "modern standby" bandwagon. How do you like your battery draining 50% while on your commute home while the PC supposedly sleeps? Or waiting around for it to wake up from hibernation? That's if you're lucky enough it doesn't burn down your bag because it figured it's as good a time as any to wake up and do who knows what, which absolutely couldn't wait.

I won't comment on the ipad nor the watch, since I've never owned any of those.

My android phone is from 2011. All the apps I want to run on it run on it. I know of some that won't, but I don't want to use them.

So what does this prove? Anything? Probably not.

I'd argue that games are a specific kind of app which require performance. It's likely that a brand new low-end phone supports the latest android os but not the latest power-hungy games. Though you can probably install them on it, just like I can install power-hungry games on my old iphone. It's just that it won't be an enjoyable experience playing them.

A password manager doesn't have any such requirements.

FWIW, Apple does release _some_ patches for previous iOS versions, but there absolutely are mitigations that are not back ported to older versions.

If you care deeply about security, I’d recommend having a phone that actually is using up-to-date OS.

I do care, that's why I'm thinking of getting a new one. But still, ios 16, the first which didn't support the iphone 7, came out in September 2022. The iphone 7 came out in September 2016. I'm not aware of any Android phone with such a long support cycle.

There is not even one that would have half that.

> I still don't understand why people think in 2023 that Android can not be a viable alternative to an iPhone.

I don't think most people -- even iPhone users -- hold that opinion. In the US, at least, the iPhone is still a status symbol. People have iPhones because they don't want their iMessage bubbles on others' phones to be the wrong color. They're locked into that ecosystem with various purchases and don't want to throw that away. They use a Mac and like the integration.

On top of that, I (as an Android user) am constantly uncomfortable running a mobile OS built by a company that exists mainly to track people's behavior and invade their privacy, with the goal of selling ads (and I am more vehemently anti-advertising than most people). As much as I don't fully buy "Apple's commitment to privacy", they are in a much better place in that regard than Android is. I lock my phone down and give nearly every app (including Google's) zero permissions, and only enable (and then immediately disable[0]) as necessary, but I'm still convinced my privacy posture would probably be better with an iPhone. But I don't want to live in that walled-garden nanny-state, so that's that.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

”…missing back gesture/button”

Swipe from the left of the screen goes back a page in the current app. Swiping right on the bar at the bottom goes back to the previous app used. Two different locations but the same gesture. What else is missing for a back gesture/button?

Back gesture on iOS only works within an app. Back button on Android works system-wide (cross-app).

Swiping along the bottom of the screen goes to the last used app.

It works but I prefer Android's intent based transition system.

What does intent based transition system mean? The advantage of Apple’s system is that it is unambiguous. I’ve heard from plenty of people that the “back” button or gesture surprises them from time to time.

> I would never use an iPhone for certain software and UX related issues (biggest is the missing back gesture/button).

During my time as an Android user, that back button struck me as the single biggest anti-feature in the Android UX. Every application implemented it differently, sometimes I'd find it bumped me right out of an app if I tapped it once too often, others didn't do that. I hated the thing; it required learning a different set of mysterious tendencies for every app and situation. So happy that it's not stinking up the screen of my first-ever iPhone.

Macbook Air M1 > Dell XPS or whatever alternative

can't speak to other tablets but iPads get the job done. I have one of the oldest generation ipad Air that still gets updates. Got it secondhand. It does the basics well enough. I'm not sure an android tablet would even be getting that support.

Android phones come loaded with ad tech, malware, depending on a matrix of carrier _and_ manufacturer. Even if they don't start with it, if they actually get updates, any update could bring it along later. It's a metaphoric minefield, where you have to do significant research before finding the current mine-free path. Samsung in particular has a reputation for lacking scruples.

It has nothing to do with hardware.

If you care about privacy, then the only choice within the Android-sphere is GrapheneOS, which limits you to pixels, which arguably are not on the same level in hardware than iphones.

> I tried looking at the Pixel for the Vanilla Android experience and long support, yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time.

I have the opposite experience. A few months ago a friend of mine had to buy a new iphone because their phone couldn't hold a charge. Shortly after they received their new phone, towards the evening, they remarked how happy they were that their new iphone (literally a few days old) still had 36% charge after most of a day's usage. I looked at my 2.5 year old (at the time) pixel 4a and I still had 84% charge.

> having to live with endless amounts of compromises just to get away from Apple.

Having basic system functionality, such as GPU accelerated OpenGL, Vulkan, or OpenGL ES, seems like a catastrophic compromise. Like I can compromise about how the widgets of application foo and the widgets of application bar don't match each other, I couldn't care less. But no Vulkan support? Forgetaboutit.

> Also, couldn't find anything coming near the value of a baseline Macbook Air M1 as far as build quality, battery life, stability etc. is concerned.

I have a Surface Laptop 4 with an AMD processor and 16GB of RAM. I'm extremely happy with it, though I'll concede that the build quality is a click lower than a M1 MacBook Air (two of the rubber feet have fallen off of mine, being my main ding against it) and nobody can touch Apple Silicon's battery life. But aside from that, it's definitely in the same arena for build quality as an M1 MacBook Air (my wife's daily driver, so I'm not just saying that out of ignorance) with, IMHO, a better keyboard and a touch screen if you're into that sort of thing. Oh, and the facial recognition unlock is the best. I've had zero issues with stability—Microsoft pays more attention to squashing Windows bugs on their own hardware, it seems like.

Surface Laptop 5 has been out for about a year, but it was a totally microscopic incremental refresh. That means the Laptop 4's have dropped in price a lot, even though it's still 95% the same laptop.

My exact model of Laptop 4 can be had on periodic sale, refurbished on Woot.com for ~$700 or less, which is a screaming good deal IMHO for what you get. You could almost get two of these things for the price of one new M1 MacBook Air once you factor in the (IMHO mandatory) RAM upgrade.

> Oh, and the facial recognition unlock is the best.

This is scary as fuck. Combined with all the telemetry and tracking M$ is now doing without care from within its operating system.

Windows and Android are subsidized data collection applications which run on subsidized hardware. Simple as.

LOL, How would you unlock iPhone?

There's nothing valuable about your Windows telemetry. It just means if you hit a crash it's possible it'll get fixed.

Across every consumer-facing device where it has ever been deployed—which is probably in the billions at this point thanks to iPhone alone—consumer-grade biometric face unlock technology has a body count of precisely zero.

If I turn out to be the world's first facial recognition casualty, that would be SUCH a hilariously unlikely way to go that I almost couldn't even be mad about it.

> Windows [...] are subsidized data collection applications which run on subsidized hardware. Simple as.

How does Microsoft monetize (or even could)? Are you just saying random things?

Also you could just install Linux, of course battery life would likely be even worse then.

A refurbished Macbook Air M1 with 8GB of RAM (which works wonderfully for day to day stuff, even development with VS Code) is $849 directly from Apple. I never felt any slowdowns. The thing is chugging along nicely and I don't feel a need for an alternative any more. Apple Silicone has turned the industry upside down IMHO.

Does anyone have experience how IntelliJ runs on this machine?

Yes, none of the Jetbrains IDE's seem to be usable on a 8GB Mac. It invariably starts throwing errors about running out of memory after a while and then everything starts to lag (including typing).

Also you can't really run any other process alongside as long as it uses above ~5000-1000mb (so no Node for instance). Having a browser with more than a few tabs open alongside is also an issue.

Maybe a ~5+ year old version might work better.

Thank you very much.

I have an AMD 5700U linux notebook for work. I'll second that they're really quite great on battery and speed.

Apple has enjoyed, and seems set to enjoy for awhile longer, a full process node advantage over everyone.

People whiff that (cough RDNA3), and people overcome it kinda (Raptor Lake), but ceteris paribus, their shit is just from the future.

Having a bone to pick with Apple is a very reasonable thing, I’ve got a few gripes myself, but that’s why you buy something 2-3 years behind the cutting edge. It’s not because it’s better.

Based on reading Taleb, I have a theory and love to hear counterarguments if there are any:

Products are as good as the worst part. Apple‘s complete integration allows them to more easily fix the worst part since they have control over almost everything. Historically, "open" systems, as Bill Gates would call Windows together with the suppliers such as Intel and Dell, could get away with some bad aspects as long as they just threw in new CPUs with smaller transistors. Now that Moore‘s law and Dennard scaling have slowed down, fixing the worst part is the only way to find good improvements.

> Also, couldn't find anything coming near the value of a baseline Macbook Air M1 as far as build quality, battery life, stability etc. is concerned.

The ThinkPads are pretty good laptops, especially if you put Linux on them.

My brand new work thinkpad is total garbage compared to my two year old MacBook Pro. Only laptop where I need to use an external mouse.

Yes, and the fan blows directly onto your mouse hand, making mouse usage awkward as well.

Actually this is my favourite feature of my work thinkpad. Especially during winter. Really. Besides tons of disadvantages of the platform for the price.

Agreed. I got a gen10 thinkpad (with Linux). The power supply makes a crackling noise. After 6 months the fan starting making grinding. The screen flickers when the CPU is loaded, and once a week the whole thing just locks up. Worst laptop I've owned.

Did work install any crapware on the laptop? Or is it bad even without?

The software is fine. The computer isn’t slow at all. It’s just not a well designed computer.

Use to be 100% linux person. I've gone through many thinkpads. M1 Air is so far beyond them it's not even close.

Battery life is (not exaggerating) 5x or more in my experience.

It's honest to god, much faster.

Completely silent and cool. (one of my thinkpads almost burned me it got so hot, and the fans get so loud)

I've never had a single crash, random restart, failure to sleep, failure to charge, driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads.

>driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads.

Those are Linux driver issues, not HW issues.

> Those are Linux issues, not HW issues.

The touchpads on my wife's T470 and my T480 have very similar intermittent issues, despite her running Windows and me running Linux.

That only matters in a technical sense -- as a consumer, I want a flawless out-of-the-box experience. I don't care if X isn't working because of Y or Z; I only care that it isn't working.

Incompatibility is a two-sided issue, there are enough laptops out there that work perfectly fine in Linux. But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others.

People always complain about Lenovo in these threads, I think because they are held up as the “good non-Apple laptop” brand for whatever reason. I suspect this reputation makes people assume they can just grab any random model and it will work perfectly. That’s just a roll of the dice, maybe weighted in favor of working, but still random.

>But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others.

Sure, that's why there's now a dozen Laptop brands that ship with Linux compatibility in mind.

And when I can’t join a call because the Wi-Fi has stopped working I’m sure everyone will appreciate that distinction

Did Lenovo sell you the laptop with Linux compatibility explicitly stated?

They are very likely hardware issues that the Linux driver is simply not working around rather than being actually wrong.

If you're using Linux and there are no good, reliable drivers for your machine, it might as well be a hardware issue.

If you're too lazy to make a Linux driver for your hardware, it's a hardware issue.

Maybe some HW companies don't have the budget to write drivers for the 3% userbase that is PC Linux users, especially since most commodity HW is in a constant race to the bottom in terms of pricing so profits are slim as it is.

So better check for the HW you're buying it, if it's compatible with the SW you intend to use, especially now that there's almost a dozen laptop brands selling Linux-ready laptops. Like you don't buy an X-BOX hoping it will run your Nintendo games collection and the blame Mycroft when you realize it doesn't work, do you?

And calling those driver devs "lazy" is a huge slap in the face, especially if you knew how overworked and underpaid people in that industry tend to be, as the profits are also very small. Not everyone is rolling in cash like Nvidia, AMD and Intel.

This sub can be quite pretentious at times.

As a user, I don't really care about the root cause..

A 5x battery life improvement seems like the baseline had some issues, unless your MacBook goes like a week without charging.

My M2 MBA routinely goes past 10-16 hours of life time with simple coding stuff (phpstorm and PHP in Docker), and it stays comfortably cold all time. Most Windows laptops struggle to get more than 3-4 hours and will fry off your balls if used as actual laptops.

The poster was apparently a 100% Linux person previously, though. I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke. For example on Reddit I see somebody complain that they only get 5 hours with my laptop model (zenbook flip 13)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/ry0nwb/the_asus_flip_...

But it is pretty easy to get 14 in Linux I think, at least if you believe the battery indicator.

> I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke

Nah, it's common across all x86 devices. Even Apple's old lineup... which is why they went for M in the first place, Intel couldn't be arsed to deliver something power efficient.

I guess I find this troubling because it would seem to indicate that I spend multiple hours a day typing at a dead laptop, hallucinating that it is still working.

To be fair, Windows has better battery optimisations for new laptops. Many hardware supported sleep modes are still missing from Linux kernel, for example, when I checked last time.

Huge differences come probably from the lack of user skills, less about the OS. Or just broken drivers.

Isn't battery life generally much worse on Linux compared to Windows?

It is pretty configurable. I don’t see why it should be worse (assuming of course you don’t have driver problems).

And the configuration is pretty helpful, for example I have an OLED screen, so I can get some power savings from making things mostly black.

Plus the hard drive can mostly be idle; you don’t have Cortana or whatever they call it now poking around for interesting bits.

Most recent Thinkpad was X1 Carbon with Kubuntu, running intellij / browsers / docker would last around 3 hours or so. M1 Air is 15+.

I also have a Anker 737 battery, with it I can double the macbook's battery if fully charged. The Thinkpad would only charge partially, so wouldn't even double.

That’s weird, I wonder which program did it.

I typically get a day of work out of my Zenbook flip 13; I haven’t really measured the battery performance rigorously because it is easily long enough that I don’t think about it (the battery indicator will say 14 hours, but those are of course pretty flaky). I’m a vim/Firefox with ads blocked guy though so I guess I must not be making it work very hard.

> The ThinkPads are pretty good laptops, especially if you put Linux on them

I used ThinkPads for 7 years until getting new M2 Pro, mostly with Linux.

Touchpads on Thinkpads are not getting even close to Macbooks. You need external mouse.

Also the the basic screen quality on current Macbook Pros is beyond their top quality products. Try to look for 1000 nits screen? Not even gaming laptops have quality ones.

And battery life...

And performance...

When you have enough performance on your machine, the physical touch, screen and overall stability goes beyond everything else. Thinkpads have better durability on keyboard tho.

I also used to have one of those OLED Thinkpads and that was the biggiest mess I ever hard. They even cancelled OLED screens on all products for 4 years after that. The screen just broke every one month.

The nipple on the ThinkPad is unsurpassed. It's basically the reason I can't migrate away from them.

I have tried to use nipple many times but maybe I was unfortunate with it. I was not able to get good enough drivers on Linux for it, and as a result it was never accurate, but very clunky instead.

This was on Linux. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I won't go back unless I'm absolutely forced to.

I agree that I liked it on Windows. But I was not able to get the same experience on Linux.

I've used Linux+Thinkpads for years.

W-series, P-series, top of the line

Switched to Mac M1 this year, and....longer battery life, better performance, higher resolution, brighter screen...it's not even close.

I have an M1 Pro 14 and a work-issued P14s, which is awful. Creaky plastic, the worst trackpad I've ever used, has a terrible display, spongey keys and runs unfathomably hot. All. The. Time. Every time I see someone recommending Lenovo, I cringe. It is night and day when compared to the MacBook Pro.

Weirdly I have both of these as well and feel total opposite. Give me the Thinkpad keyboard any day of the week. The mac keyboard feels down right anemic.

I wish mac would stop making the track pad so damn big though, the amount of palm activations I have on that thing drive me bonkers.

I'm intrigued by this. I'm typing this one-handed on the MacBook with my other hand resting on the trackpad without interference of any kind. The hinged trackpad on the P14s takes between 5-10 minutes to be useable from a cold start (these happen often due to the combination of an anaemic battery and power-hungry Intel processor); it's as though it needs to warm up. It is a pile of overpriced junk not worth the value of the parts it's made with. I've had other ThinkPads and generally disliked them - even the X series, but that boiled down to personal taste - not a fan of the aesthetic - and a crap trackpad. This P14s, though, is unmitigated shite.

My experience of the P14s says that either I have a dud (other colleagues complain vociferously about them, too), your MacBook is defective, or both. None of which are ideal!

I have zero love for the trackpad+keyboard.

But 80% of my usage with external keyboard and mouse.

I've found Thinkpads to be trash for the past few years. Could be bad batches, but I sent back my X390 three times for warranty repairs and its replacement T14gen3 once so far.

Tachiyomi makes Android significantly better for comics/manga than iOS.

It's one of the reasons I sold my iPad for a galaxy tab s7+. Every alternative I tried on iOS was just shit in comparison, paperback especially.

> yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time

I miss the days when I charged my cell phone twice a week.

It didn't take 100 mexapixel photos or display 4K cat GIFs, so I understand why.

But I miss that battery life nonetheless.

I have found that my newest phone (Samsung S23) has significantly better battery life than my old Pixel 3a ever did. I really have to try hard to run the battery down and with my normal usage it easily lasts two days.

I only charge my iPhone 12 about every 2 days as well - at least with normal usage. But I can also easily run it down with an audiobook playing all afternoon over Bluetooth. No idea why that uses so much power.

When I’m at home I’m so close to charge points all day that I don’t worry about it. And when I’m travelling, I bring an external usb-c battery pack that can fully charge my phone about 6 more times or give my laptop another few hours of use.

Sure, more battery life would be strictly better. But I’m happy with the state of things right now.

Apparently the EU has legislated toolless user replaceable phone batteries by 2027. I’m curious if apple plays ball and if so, what iPhones will look like in a few years.

> Apparently the EU has legislated toolless user replaceable phone batteries by 2027.

The legislation calls for phone owners to be able to remove batteries “with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble it.”

Essentially, no glueing the screen to the battery, which is sensible. I take umbrage with the "without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge". Manufacturers should make available specialised tools commercially and be allowed to request deposits for specialised tools by individuals looking to perform one-off repairs to ensure return. Otherwise, it's reasonable. I doubt we'll see a significant change in the form factor.

You can still buy basic phones that last all week, they're very cheap.

But nobody wants a phone, they want a tiny portable computer.

> But nobody wants a phone, they want a tiny portable computer.

Yes, including me. I want everything :/

A modern smartphone will last for literally weeks if you turn off all data and only use it for calls, the batteries are massive to support streaming video and playing games.

I charge my Pixel 5 pretty infrequently, couldn't give a number though. I leave it in battery saver mode automatically when it's below 70%, and often I will just plug it in to a quick charging cable (the one from my steam deck actually) for 20 minutes to "top up" (may not fully charge but who cares). I only notice my battery life about once every other week. Other than frequent photography, I guess I don't do very much intensive processing on my phone though.

I recently bought a Sony Xperia 10 IV and the battery easily lasts 4 days. Performance is great too, at least for my usage (I don't play games on the phone though).

It's largely the background data-hungry apps and the obsessive screen time with foreground apps. As someone who almost uses their phone like a dumb phone, I charge my Pixel 5a about once every 7 days now, when it gets to around 20% remaining. It was more like 10+ days when I first got it, but that was also before I decided that avoiding the 0-20% range might be better for long-term battery health.

The most power-hungry apps I run are Slack, the built-in GMail and Messages clients, the Garmin app to periodically sync with my watch, and sometimes Firefox if I actually spend time browsing there instead of on my preferred laptop environment. The camera app also eats power when actually taking pictures or video, but I guess I rarely do.

When I first start using a phone, I go through a little effort to disable things I don't want via the system apps menu. For me, that includes the Google Assistant and their native launcher, because the last thing I actually want is to trigger search functions willy-nilly. If I want to search, I'll open Firefox and search...

I don't get these battery issues people have. I use a 3 year old Huawei P30 Pro, and I still get 2 days of battery life when charged to full. Apparently I average around 4 hours of screen time per day.

> I've tried finding alternatives on my last upgrade cycle and it's like having to live with endless amounts of compromises just to get away from Apple.

Everything is a compromise.

A while ago, I wanted a new notebook:

I looked very hard at a 16" M1 Pro with 64 GB of RAM, at approximately USD 4000, tiniest storage possible. I really really wanted to run this with Asahi Linux.

I purchased a Dell Inspiron 7610 with 16" display (and known design touchpad design defects), 3K resolution, sort of light-weight, Tiger Lake 11800H CPU, Intel + Nvidia hybrid graphics, now running at 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, 2 TB of very fast PCIe 4 SSD, 1 TB of PCIe 3 SSD.

Professionally I run this with Windows 11 Professional + VMware Workstation -> Fedora 38 because of an Azure VPN; in my private life this is plain Fedora 38 dual-booted.

Why? USD 1700. Less than half the cost.

Native podman / docker. CUDA. The (still) dominant architecture (x86). I am typing on Proper Keyboards anyway.

>I tried looking at the Pixel for the Vanilla Android experience and long support, yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time.

my pixel has good battery life.....I know it's anecdotal but it's been fine.

I've always been an android user on smartphones. Was samsung in the past but now I have a pixel. I like the pixel and vanilla android experience overall. Android allows some freedom to customize, I like their call screening, and the wide choice of apps. Pixels are also starting to be supported for longer; maybe not as long as iphones but it's always been an android issue and they're finally starting to address it. Stability is there imo. I have all the apps I need to do what I do everyday but obviously everyone is different.

I own a variety of different hardware including apple products, but I'm not 100% reliant on their ecosystem, so I'm keeping the pixel for now.

>Also, couldn't find anything coming near the value of a baseline Macbook Air M1 as far as build quality, battery life, stability etc. is concerned.

Agreed

My strategy is to go all-in on Apple as my daily drivers, and then to tinker with Linux in my spare time. For example, my main phone is an iPhone, but I recently bought a used OnePlus 6 with the intention of installing NixOS on it. My laptop is an M1 MacBook Air, but I code in Linux VMs, and have a Linux NAS at home.

As many of my services as possible are self-hosted, and as many of my apps as possible are FOSS, but I access them with Apple hardware. And as my M-series Macs age, they'll become Asahi machines.

This is the best compromise I've found. The truth is, Apple stuff still does Just Work, and having an actual Unix base is nice too. Open standards and protocols can get you a long way away from the walled garden aspect of Apple to the point where really they're just nice computers that don't really infringe on my life in any way.

On the app development side of mobile, I find Android so much more messy to develop for. It has its perks like the Jetbrains IDE and ability to use bleeding edge libraries (Jetpack), but those don’t counteract the downsides like needing a laundry list of third party libraries to do practically anything, there being no well-supported vendor-preferred “happy path” for various things, Java ecosystem baggage, fighting Proguard, etc.

And that doesn’t even get into the “fun” of there being differences between the versions of Android shipped by different vendors significant enough that maker and model-specific bugs and behavior inconsistencies are a concern, which is only a thing because of manufacturer insistence on deep customization (compare to Windows where if it runs on fine your PC, it probably does for 99%+ of other PCs too).

Apple is an ecosystem much more than windows is. Devices work together and enhance each other. So jumping to Linux isn't as easy as Everything has to change.

It's more like emigration or a divorce it will hurt and it's a big change. For most it's not worth the bother.

I've found that ChromeOS + Pixel 6 is fine. I have a Fitbit Sense 2 for a watch (I hate the idea of my watch telling me I have a meeting coming up lol).

ChromeOS is great. The host OS "just works" and I have a VM/container env to do development in. It feels secure, operationally straightforward, and low maintenance.

I don't really care a ton about my phone. It works, battery is fine. It makes phone calls, plays music. idk. I care way more about my laptop.

> Also, couldn't find anything coming near the value of a baseline Macbook Air M1 as far as build quality, battery life, stability etc. is concerned.

And the trackpad! I always evangelize the Macbook trackpad because that shit is bananas, as it were.

I used to think that, but my latest Asus laptop has a trackpad just as good as the macbook (which I use professionally). Actually, I like PC trackpads more, just because they tend to be reasonably sized rather than the monster trackpads on most macbooks (although, fortunately, they seemed to not be quite as big in the M1/M2 iterations!).

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that it's as good as the MacBook. Can you detail what model Asus laptop you're using? I'm legitimately curious what the hardware is.

The only trackpads I've found that feel close to Apple's on a hardware level are the ones produced by Sensel (https://sensel.com), and those aren't in every laptop. Then you have the driver situaton on top of it, and Apple's tight vertical integration just always seems to give it the edge - I literally never experience invalid taps or movement, etc.

https://rog.asus.com/us/laptops/rog-strix/2021-rog-strix-sca...

Not only does it have a great trackpad (with an ability to become a numberpad), it also has an optomechanical keyboard, with "blue key" like feel. Plus a 3080 in it for games. It also has great cooling, so the fan only is on if you're hitting the 3080 hard.

It is certainly the most fun laptop I've owned (it has led backlights for the keyboard, too)! Granted, it runs windows, but win11 is pretty nice, honestly. No idea how amenable it is to putting linux on.

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