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Comment by barnabee | Hacker News Reader

I dunno, I bought a MacBook Pro because:

- I cannot stay happy with a WM/DE config on Linux. Most of then can’t even render a desktop at a reasonable size (or even consistent across all apps)

- I like the hardware and I’m not particularly price sensitive

Now I can add the performance for local AI to the reasons to do so again.

I almost entirely use open source software though, and I don’t think I use anything Mac specific except Alfred.

As far as I can tell, there is no viable alternative for people who are simultaneously very demanding of their tools and unwilling to spend half their life fiddling with configs.

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I bought another Macbook Pro because I've used Windows, Mac, and Linux and I like Mac the most.

I have an iPhone and I like that, too. I had an Android before.

Like you I'm not particularly price sensitive.

These are just my preferences, I don't think it makes me a cultist.

Agree. I also use an iPhone. I have a Pixel running Graphene (I refuse to do Googled Android, or Chrome) and I want to like it, I really do, but I always go back to the iPhone. I don’t feel like a cult member (that’s what they all say…).

I’ve realised that while I consider my laptop a computer, to which I need full access and control, the phone for me is basically an appliance. It’s like my washing machine but for messaging, web browsing, and ordering shit. Conceptually I want it to be unencumbered and open source, but in reality I try not to spend all day staring at it and when I do have to I just want it to work. (I get it, that’s how they get you! I’ll donate money to fixing that, but I don't have the time, patience, or energy to use the alternatives in their current state.)

Thinkpad X1 Gen 11 + Linux Mint = everything works.

(Well, I had to update the kernel for the wifi)

And it has a hash key!!

Does “everything works” mean that for you, close to zero effort will be required over the next 6/12/18/24/36 months?

Because my problem isn’t finding a way to be happy with a Linux setup at a point in time but finding a way not to have to do a bunch of work every so often just to keep stuff working.

And 48/72/120 months (I've only just replaced my Dell Inspiron that has been happily running Linux since 2010). Security updates are pretty slick now, I don't expect them to break anything. Upgrading to the next Mint major version can be a touch tricky sometimes, but same with MacOS.

Once something works (and only WiFi didn't work out the box), it keeps working.

I dug into the hash key thing - of course the US Mac has a 'hash key' as SHIFT+3. However the UK Mac (from 2015 anyway) replaces it with the £, requiring SHIFT+ALT+3 (or something like that) for #. This was mind mindbogglingly annoying for software dev.

> there is no viable alternative for people who are (...) very demanding of their tools

How about the simple demand to have a task bar with readable titles instead of icons?

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