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Comment by whatarethembits | Hacker News Reader

Battery life is the only thing stopping me from getting out of the Apple ecosystem. As soon as a viable Linux laptop with "enough" battery life becomes available, I'll make the switch. At that point there's nothing on Apple side that couldn't be done better in Linux (with a bit of work, but that's okay).

I travel a lot, and often on standby for work during that time. I need to be confident that when I pull the laptop out, there's ALWAYS enough juice to respond to a situation immediately without worrying about anything else.

If Framework offered hot swappable batteries, even if a quick restart is required, I'd be fine with that because at least I wouldn't be stranded in that case. And I'd be happy to pay as much as a MacBook, or a bit more even, purely for ideological reasons. Apple's dominance is bad for all of us.

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Instead of a hot-swappable battery, why not just carry a large battery-bank that can charge your laptop over USB-C? That way you don't even need to reboot.

Browsing around on Amazon, I see there's actually quite a few battery banks that with over 60W of output, and ~100Wh of capacity for under 100€

I assume for the same reason some people like integrated WWAN modems, it's annoying to have a device dangling off the side

> why not just carry a large battery-bank

Not being allowed to use those on an airplane could be one reason.

You can use a power bank up to 100Wh on a plane, which can be enough for a laptop

I specifically mentioned under 100Wh because that's the limit for planes.

> why not just carry a large battery-bank

And a mouse, because non apple laptops are hard to use with just the trackpad.

And the huge power adapter for the "gaming" laptop.

... sadly, it means I'll have to stick to Apple hardware for longer. As much as I think Cook is an idiot who's trying to dumb their products down to the point they're not even usable for power users, let alone developers.

> And the huge power adapter for the "gaming" laptop.

Not if you get a properly standard-compliant laptop that uses USB PD for charging (like Framework)

I've actually bought a gaming laptop for someone this year. Asus. It comes with a brick proprietary charger that delivers the full power it can use and also with an USB PD that can't fully power it. Guess it works if not gaming, or gaming at reduced fps.

You know this isn't a thread about Asus, right?

Seems to be about the need for large accessories that double the volume and weight of a laptop.

> And a mouse, because non apple laptops are hard to use with just the trackpad.

Have you ever used a Framework's trackpad? It's very good.

> And the huge power adapter for the "gaming" laptop.

First of all, Framework laptops are not gaming laptops. Second of all, Framework ships smaller power adapters than Apple because they invested in Gallium Nitride chargers which are significantly more compact than other options.

Personally, I wouldn't even carry around a power bank, I just mentioned it because the person I was talking to said they wanted to carry around a hot-swappable battery, and I thought a power bank was a better option.

> Have you ever used a Framework's trackpad? It's very good.

The hardware is the same in most quality laptops including Apple. It's something they do in the software that makes it far less annoying to go trackpad only on Mac OS.

Charging is a lossy process. Charging a battery, then using it to charge another battery isn't as efficient.

Plus, depending on how/where it's used, having to wait for it to recharge while connected to a power bank might be a non-starter. You also don't necessarily want to recharge while transporting in a bag either because of heat concerns.

When you say "Apple's dominance", are you referring to a potential dominance?

Because in terms of actual dominance, Apple is far from that in laptops. Lenovo, HP and Dell each sell more laptops than Apple, and those three alone make up 60% of the market.

https://www.industryresearch.biz/market-reports/mobile-compu...

Dominance in power efficiency perhaps.

Completely disproportionate, off the charts dominance (relative to everything else I have tried in (mostly hardware, but also software) quality, attention to detail and UI/UX would be my opinion. Power consumption would be part of that.

Granted, I haven't tried most of the newer niche Linux-focused laptops, which I intend to do.

Have to say that UI/UX suffered a lot at least on iOS side with the latest OS releases.

There's a few things for me, and the saddest part is I'm a very die-hard Linux user. Until a couple months ago when I had to start traveling, I've been using Linux exclusively for work.

1. The battery life, as others have mentioned.

2. The quality of the hardware: The screen is incredibly nice, the trackpad is VERY nice to use, and no other laptop has even come close.

3. It's so quiet. The fans almost never spin unless I've been compiling something for over a minute. I don't know how they do it but any other Linux laptop I've used, including desktops, have been super loud when running similar tasks.

I really haven’t had a problem with my Lemur Pro from System76, which I got in spring of 2022. I did have to replace the battery once when there was noticeable swelling. Prior to this, I had always used a MacBook.

How can LLM inference be done better on non Linux?

I can run models on my 96GB RAM MacBook Pro incredibly well.

As soon as someone tells me how this can be done in Linux, I'm ready to switch.

Just get a power bank for your laptop. I know it’s not the best solution but $100 and you have a battery pack you can use for all your devices

I think you could shut down a framework, swap the battery, and boot back up in probably 3 minutes or maybe only 1.

My first Apple laptop, a Titanium PowerBook, you could sleep the machine and swap the battery and not have to reboot.

> swap the battery

I count 14, 8 and 5 screws to swap the battery:

https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery/425

https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery+Replacement+Guide/85...

https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery/278?lang=en

Windows ARM laptops are quite good in that regard, but I'm not sure how close they're to Macs.

You are forgetting the touchpad, it does make a difference

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