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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I stopped buying Apple and switched to Thinkpads. Refurbished. With a decent backup system in place I can replace one on the fly as needed without breaking the bank but more importantly I can repair them. One spill was all it took to destroy my last Mac Pro: the whole machine was useless. I have kids and spills happen. As do drops, tugs, etc. My T450 suffered a spill: nothing. Disassembled, cleaned, back in business. But if it had been toast? Less than $200 to get another refurbished one.

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It's a great option if you can stomach Windows or put up with Linux, I agree.

This sounds like an Apple fanboy comment, tbh. Most people are used to windows and if they want an alternative, they'll reach for Linux. MacOS is more of a con rather than a pro since you're effectively locked in with no chance of switching.

This sounds like a comment from someone who thinks of Apple hate as a personality trait.

There's no lock-in in MacOS, which is easily demonstrated on any front you like. Of course, if you actually investigate such claims before making them, it'll put you in the awkward position of having to decide if you'd rather be ignorantly disingenuous our outright dishonest, so it's a tough spot for you.

That sounds more like a lack of perspective. Most people are actually locked in to Windows on non-apple computers due to a lack of knowledge (or motivation to change up their workflow), and even more people are locked in to mobile operating systems for the same reason.

Also, Asahi is a very polished distro with a lot of original work going into it, arguably one of the best Linux experiences around, so I have no idea what you mean by "no chance of switching".

On mac you are locked in whether you lack knowledge or have it.

This is just not true.

You are no more and no less locked into MacOS than you are under Windows or under Linux.

I'm not sympathetic to them, but there definitely ARE substantive arguments a FOSS devotee could make about MacOS that make sense, or which are at least grounded in fact. This is not one of them.

Asahi doesn't even support all the hardware on the few machines it supports. The only people who consider it "polished" are people who don't use Linux.

The hardware bring up they have done is amazing work, but it's a long way from daily driving. It's not the developers' fault apple uses bizarre webcams etc, but "best Linux experience" is not even close.

Yes, correct. If you can deal with almost any operating system that runs on general purpose hardware, and if you can stomach having the choice of which one to run.

I can only tolerate Linux. The other two are cesspools.

That said, Lenovo and the thinkpad brand are known bad actors. They were busted for phoning home and adding spyware. Not trustworthy.

Is there anything remaining when you nuke the Windows install to put Linux on them?

MSI and Gigabyte have a rep for firmware that has holes or phones home, but AFAIK Lenovo mobos aren't known for this.

Fresh install of Ubuntu or Fedora that formats the HDD should rid you of anything dubious.

It's called Windows Update Binary Table, and Lenovo did it 10 years ago on one model of their Ideapad (budget, low-end) line. The echo seemed to have hit them hard enough to never attempt it again.

You can patch out WUBT by replacing your bootloader with one that strips them out, though most boards have a toggle in the BIOS by now (my ASUS AM5 board had this anti-feature and the toggle too). Though you probably get more crapware on Windows Update these days.

Thanks, that's what I thought. Good thing too, have a couple ThinkPads of differing vintages around, both Linux.

> That said, Lenovo and the thinkpad brand are known bad actors. They were busted for phoning home and adding spyware.

I agree about lenovo as a whole, but IIRC that spyware was never on the thinkpad brand, only ideapads and other lower end machines.

I mean, preferences are obviously very personal, but describing MacOS as a "cesspool", or as equivalently "cesspooly" to Windows, is kinda of bizarre.

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