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Comment by wolvesechoes | Hacker News Reader

Guy is talking about laptop lasting for 5 years as not something that is special, and you respond with awesome sound quality.

Apple threads are always so funny.

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Have you used the cheap Dells and HP laptops that most people buy (not high end IBM machines)?

They tend to be plastic junk.

Yes thinkpads are good, but most laptops are trash disposable hardware

They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

> even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years

Every plastic laptop I've bought has busted within two years, whether it's mechanical stress or poor heat design. They feel less like reliable tools and more like toys. Looking specifically at you, thinkpads.

Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro I bought for myself for college 17 years ago still boots. The battery is dead, but that's an incredibly long life for any hardware of that complexity.

Booting once a year isn't "life" for a computer.

In my experience and my family's you are lucky if they last 3 years. If they last 5 years there's usually a subpar experience, e.g. they overheat significantly at 2 years. OTOH, we have a few macbooks > 10 years still working.

There's the need to dust fans and then there's the possibility that OS computing requirements have risen which isn't often a Linux thing on old hardware.. OsX had exactly the same problem and had to make a minimizing release IIRC.

Computing kind of stagnated since 2010 and plenty of hardware since then still works fine today and is usable enough for many tasks. Apple was nice for needing not all that many different drivers but its statnge integrations like drive fans to bios are obnoxious.

And macbooks aren't overheating?

I've owned old macbooks… I got scalded by the metal screws on the bottom in the summer because apple thought looking sleek was more important than proper cooling.

The other laptops overheat soon after purchasing, often with just the bare OS running. There is a 3 yo laptop that my parents still use, but it has to always be plugged in, and the fans will spin loudly even in suspension.

My >10 yo macbooks also have bad batteries. One of them won't last one minute, and will also overheat with minor workloads. They were not immune to overheating when new, but unreasonable overhearing (for the time) definitely didn't become an issue at within 3 years of purchase.

And that's with Intel macbooks. My M1 from Dec 2020 works like new (I'm sure the battery life has shortened, but not in a way that I notice). It overheated a couple times running LLMs—that's it. That's how I know the fans work.

Put KDE and see the overheating disappear.

ARM MacBooks aren’t overheating.

No, it was intel piece of shit that promised new nodes for years and never delivered.

Macs were designed up to the thermal specs that should have been but never came.

Hence the m1: enough is enough

I am on my 3rd Thinkpad already and while I still like them they are not close to Apple quality. On my current one keyboard touches the screen when it's closed so the screen becomes dirty quickly. After Windows 11 upgrade it auto-dims on battery after like 30 seconds and I can't figure a way to turn it off. Hibernation never worked properly (apparently AMD/Windows issue). You don't need to deal with any of that on a Macbook. I would switch instantly if I didn't need to run Windows.

> Hibernation never worked properly

You can blame microsoft for that unfortunately. They made the vendors to change how it all works to workaround windows issues and it didn't even work.

It is amazing that after decades Microsoft still cannot nail such an important usability issue... There's no way I can use Windows laptops full time.

Problem is they screwed it up for linux users as well, due to hw changes.

The consumer ones yes. The business are very reliable, and easy to repair.

I always buy second hand / refurb of repairable models.

I've been burned by Apple before. Not touching their stuff again.

Uh he provided counter points to your distortion field comment, he doesn't have to just +1 the exact point of view of the parent comment.

But here I'll bite: I've had MBPs for work for like 15 years now and I bought a personal high spec Thinkpad. I now regret that purchase because my work machine is better than my personal machine in literally every way. My over $2k Thinkpad just sits there gathering dust because I don't want to use it. And unlike MacBooks, the secondary market for it is nothing so I can't just sell it and recover most of the loss.

My 12" powerbook from 2002 lasted well into 2011 until I formally retired it by giving to a mate.

Most of my macbook airs have lasted at least 7 to 8 years. None have actually died and were still intact, but I just gave them away, so I don't know how much longer they lasted.

My 2015 macbook pro (pre butterfly) is still going strong today; I did a battery replacement myself which was a huge pain in the arse, so it definitely feels replenished.

I have replaced many of my family members laptops with M-series laptops, nay issue, and I have a feeling they'll easily go a decade, though at some point they'll all need the battery replaced (but I will probably just have Apple do it this time - unless it is easy now with the repair manuals being available by Apple).

I only recently retired a 2011 MacBook Pro which was running clamshell constantly for nearly all that time, with only one battery replacement due to swelling.

The sound on MacBooks is impressively loud and clear, but it's also not actually good sound. Because it couldn't be, in that form factor. So for things where you actually care about good sound (i.e., music, movies, TV), you probably still want headphones or speakers anyway.

it does actually sound good

If you bought even a small bluetooth speaker that sounded the same as an MBP, you'd think "this thing kinda sucks... no bass, but at least it's small; what do you expect". Either that or you aren't someone who cares about sound (which is fine)

I have a stereo system with a DSP which I've spent quite a bit of time adjusting with tools like REW. I do care. I'm obviously adjusting my expectations because the laptop is indeed small but it really does sound great and I prefer it to typically boomy resonating bass-heavy tuning of small speakers. It's also very good at stereo separation, can even do behind-the-listener flyby from a Dolby Atmos test file.

I’ll wager you have not listened to high-quality music or movies on a recent MacBook Pro. I’ve never heard a BT speaker of any size sound that good.

(The HomePod Mini sounds quality really sucks by comparison, FWIW.)

> I’ll wager you have not listened to high-quality music or movies on a recent MacBook Pro.

Because of this conversation, I just watched Ne Zha (the first one, from 2019) on my M1-generation MacBook Pro. It sounded okay. I didn't hate it like I'd hate listening on a tablet or something. But...

> I’ve never heard a BT speaker of any size sound that good.

My MacBook Pro didn't sound as good as the smallest bluetooth speaker that I personally own and use (Marshall Kilburn), which is battery powered and whose primary daily use in my life is playing podcasts while I shower. It definitely didn't sound as good as the budget brand PC speakers I use with my TV (Edifier 1700BTs), either-- with or without a subwoofer. It didn't even sound as good as my wireless earbuds, let alone my headphones.

I don't think my tastes are that fancy. I've never had a surround sound setup. I've never tried a pair of IEMs. I've never owned or pursued a "audiophile"-grade equipment. I'm not a basshead, either.

I can appreciate some of the nice qualities of my MacBook's speakers relative to the form factor. But at the end of the day it still clearly falls in the "not real speakers" bucket. They're laptop speakers, not magic.

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