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Comment by ofrzeta | Hacker News Reader

"Until recently, if I wish to do some programming in a coffee shop or during a family trip, my only options are the corporate-provisioned MacBook or my iPad Pro 2020, neither of which is ideal." - why not buy a Macbook Air? It's more or less the same price and form factor as the iPad but has a keyboard. You can get a Macbook Air M1 for around 800 USD now.

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I have my org's macbook pro, a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the later two could simply be merged. I like how performant and silent the MBA is but there are lots of situation where simply using a tablet is more comfortable, and carrying all three devices is simply not feasible.

The Surface has always been in my eyes but from what I've seen the linux support is not as trivial with newer models.

If what you want is a good 2 in 1 I personally heard only good things about the Lenovo Yoga that my SO is using.

I have one of those for work. It's pretty amazing, but I have to run Windows on it. My IdeaPad, though, runs Fedora for three years now, and I am typing this on it: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400

I daily openSUSE Tumbleweed on a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and while I don't use the 2-in-1 functionality a lot, I've found it to be a solid experience.

> a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the latest two could simply be merged

Un-crippling of Apple Silicon iPads with Magic Keyboards, which have a superset of MacBook Air features, can happen via:

  - Competition from Linux on Qualcomm Oryon tablets and 2-in-1
  - New Apple leadership
  - EU regulation to unlock dual-boot of other operating systems, like Linux/BSD
  - Future jailbreak

That's also my wish. The Asahi project somehow gives me a bit of hope but I remember the authors saying that porting it to an iPad is simply not possible because of some booting mechanisms, and dev'in on a jailbroken device was not its preference, which is understandable.

Those who saved blobs for iOS 16.3.1 can run VMs on their jailbroken Apple Silicon iPad.

https://x.com/utmapp/status/1708907045314035986

  Apple removed Hypervisor support from XNU in iOS 16.4. Here is a diff of iOS 16.3.1 and iOS 16.4. What this means is that even if a jailbreak/TrollStore comes out for iOS 16.6.1/17.0, there will not be UTM virtualization support, even on M1/M2 iPads.

MacOS app to save blobs: https://github.com/airsquared/blobsaver

An iPad as is has never really appealed, but if I could run macOS in a VM - or something to that effect - I would be very tempted.

Sadly it doesn’t seem that Apple are really interested in offering that.

I have used various Surface devices as well - and whilst they are fine with the keyboard attached, I’ve never loved the touch experience on Windows.

Touch screen and pen support seem to be very important to the author, based on the article. Taking company device for personal use is also apparently a no-no.

My Lenovo Carbon X1 has a touch screen option and is quite awesome. The Dell XPS serie also offers touchscreen options.

Overall it feels like the author is not much aware of the higher range in the non Apple laptop class beside Surface.

Not a big problem per se, but article like that are always following a journey / story so it sort of should be mentioned.

Looking forward to Linux touch-enabled Dell XPS Arm 2-in-1 based on Qualcomm Oryon.

The author is complaining about the 2K of the minisforum being on the lower end. Most lenovo tablets/convertibles still ship with 1080p or worse screen except for the >3k$ variants.

Lenovo is, for some reason, a friggin joke when it comes to screen resolution and quality. Their consumer laptops tend to have better resolutions on-paper than their pro lines. Good luck finding anything better than 1080p on 12 inches...

I am perfectly aware of the non-Apple tablet market and I also think Surface is literally the best there is, as crappy MS is. Because no one else is even trying. The screen, aspect ratio, writing feel, builtin kickstand, ...

Does Apple have exclusive deals, investments or IP licensing with tablet display vendors? Apple is also the only vendor with 4:3 aspect ratio tablet displays.

The 4:3 thing as you say. I've been wanting a tablet just for displaying sheet music. I asked some forum once but was told pretty much the same, only Apple. Why?

Android manufacturers not understanding market.

When your largest competitor for 10+ years has 4:3 screens, why not copy?

People got sued last time they copied apple's rectangle

4:3 screens preceded Apple iPad by many years, e.g. IBM Thinkpads.

Probably all three + economies of scale. Display panels are something like $15/unit, and initial fees for a panel with non-standard resolution can be in low millions. I think you'll also be asked to purchase all productions of that panel unless there are other market demands for it. Most tablets don't even sell like Surfaces on rainy days, and it's hard to justify those fees and conditions.

Not the Author, but I am currently also looking at a new 2-in-1 for myself. And by far the biggest Factor pushing me to a minisforum v3 is the Price.

I am currently looking at a old 3rd gen lenovo x13 yoga or the Minisforum

While I personally would love the new Qualcomm Surface Pro, It's just not worth the price.

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