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Comment by traderj0e | Hacker News Reader

"After my last blog post I received tons and tons of emails from people mentioning that they switched to X or Y because of Liquid Glass, and much like them, I switched away from the Apple ecosystem thanks to these ongoing issues as well."

Then within 2 sentences: "So this blog post is about my painful journey trying to find a nice piece of hardware that works and feels just as good as Apple's hardware as a web developer."

So yeah I really don't get the motivation

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A Chromebook gets you the elegant UI, touchpad gestures, slim vertically integrated system architecture and the reliable sleep mode of a MacBook without Liquid Glass.

Plus Chromebooks have the better keyboard layout IMHO.

Oh I misread the author's complaints about hardware as "software." Ok assuming the author hates liquid glass enough to switch cause of that, and doesn't have the same standard of polish for hardware, at least the post is self-consistent.

I don't believe the claims of Lenovo hardware (esp trackpad) being as good as a MacBook's, but he thinks it is, so up to him. The keyboard layout is annoying cause control-C is both copy and kill.

With the default terminal you copy by selecting, like X11, and paste with right-click.

So select is select or copy, right click is open menu or paste, both depending on whether or not you're in the terminal. Control-C is also copy or kill, and iirc shift-control-c is nothing or copy.

There's a meta key on the keyboard, idk why they can't just do meta-c meta-v everywhere. Same in Ubuntu.

I .. don't get how anyone can consider ChromeOS to have a elegant UI.

I have a chromebook for traveling and light web dev work since years .. and it works, because I rooted it and allmost do not have to use the UI(I need the terminal and chrome dev tools). In general it got better, but is still horrible inefficient and not ergonomic. Or did you mean it looks good? Well, maybe, but for me a elegant UI means it does not get into my workflow and can do quickly what I want. Which .. it nativly cannot.

As someone using a Chromebook as my daily driver, not getting into my workflow and quickly doing what I want is exactly ChromeOS's UI. Especially virtual desktops combined with the touchpad: Switching between tabs, going forwards and backwards in history, switching virtual desktops and apps is all done with a few gestures.

Hm, maybe that part is more polished, but I don't use it. My pain points are very basic stuff, quickly opening a file explorer, finding files, copy paste, navigating folders. It all improved, but still feels awkward and is way slower (takes more clicks/key presses) than in linux or windows.

I have never had any problem with any of those things on any OS I have used. Pin the files app to your taskbar, boom, easy access to files and folders. Hit the circle key and type in the launcher box to search. Copy paste is...identical other than Ctrl vs cmd?

ChromeOS is fine. I wish they hadn't given up on Steam and models with dgpus, but I prefer playing games on a Switch these days anyway.

How can I copy a filepath?

How to go to a specific path? Not by clicking on the filepath like I can do in other OS.

(Apart from that, most of my hate comes from the early days of chromeOS, where the file browser was really, really slow. Doing cd and cp in terminal was blazingly fast, but in the filebrowser the same operations were crippling slow (on different devices), so much that I learned to avoid it. That bug/unoptimal implementation (?) got fixed some years ago and in general it improved, but it is still no joy for me using it)

Edit: I just intentionally tried out some things with my chromeOS device, and noticed many pain points are still there, but the file explorers "search" improved a lot. I allmost like it (more than that of windows file explorer)

I have one of those Morphius Chromebooks (ThinkPad Yoga C13, 16GB RAM + real SSD) and it's unusably slow in ChromeOS. I flashed the coreboot package and installed openSUSE, and now it's my primary machine and absolutely usable with 6+ hours battery life.

I don't understand how Google could screw up Gentoo so badly.

So does a MacBook on Sonoma or Monterey.

The author did a horrible job doing laptop research if the goal was to replace a MacBook’s build quality and overall vibe.

I have no idea why this random Mediatek chip was the qualifier for finding a system.

Just Josh Tech (YouTube) and their associated site bestlaptop.deals is my favorite resource at the moment for laptop reviews and for finding the best fit. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just think they are thorough and present with a critical eye avoiding a lot of hype YouTuber BS.

They aren’t the best at recommendations for Linux laptops as they don’t fully install the OS but they at least try it out on a live image.

To me the clear winner right now for people who like Linux and want something that’s a MacBook-like experience is the Framework 13 Pro. Framework appears to have resolved basically all of the shortcomings of the current revision (which still is no slouch), they’ve added a CNC aluminum build and haptic trackpad, and it’s a first-class Linux experience that’s Ubuntu certified.

Other than that, I’d be looking at options like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition 15, maybe even a Zenbook Duo 2026 if the idea of a second screen on the go is appealing and money is no object.

Someone looking for some discrete GPU performance that rivals or beats MacBook Pros equipped with Pro or Max chips can look at the Zephyrus G14/G16. Sure, they’re “gamer” laptops, but I really like them in person and they feel very premium. They’re pretty well established as the best thin and light gaming laptops on the market, very close in dimensions to MacBook Pro.

Given your chosen quotes, I don't understand your confusion.

The author explicitly acknowledges that Apple makes excellent hardware, and the desire to switch is driven solely by problems with the software (OS).

> All this made me realize Liquid Glass and Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated, yet their hardware is universally loved. So credit where it's due, they make great hardware.

I have no issue with liquid glass. IMO it’s a few people making a bunch of noise about vanishingly minor complaints. So, like all things, not universal.

Me neither. Much ado about nothing, just fodder for podcast fillers. I've been on the Mac since System 6. It's not a badge of honor, it's that we've been there before. Ups and downs all along, but at least for me who doesn't run anything in production on a Mac, all these squeals are annoying noise. Don't like it, get something else, it's just a machine, dude. Turnis will not read your emails.

Exactly this. Whenever macOS updates, I avoid any and all posts here, on Reddit, on wherever because it's just full of complaints and threats to leave macOS.

In the meantime, I update, note the minor (to me) changes and go about my work.

I mean, it’s prob easier to run chromeos in utm on the Mac…

But then you won't have the touchscreen to use with Android apps.

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