Hacker News Reader

Comment by cardanome | Hacker News Reader

That is all true but even as a hardcore Linux and Thinkpad user, I have to admit it is a hard sell when no one can offer the quality of Apple.

Apple is the only hardware company where you can buy a product and it is good hardware wise. Sure other companies have flagship offerings but with apple you get a really good base model.

And that is where it breaks down for me. Pay 20% more for freedom? Yes, absolutely. But pay more for much worse? Yeah, not many people are going to be so idealistic.

I don't know why no one else can produce a laptop with decent battery life with an near silent fan and good display and overall great production quality. Yes, it is much easier when you are as big as apple and can rely on economics of scale but that doesn't totally explain the lack of quality when it comes to the competition.

View on HN

I think that people aren't seeing what Apple is doing through the lens of efficiency, and the wider impact that has on their software and hardware.

Them not having to support 30+ year old software means that they can be more nimble and make better hardware choices.

Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.

As a counter-point, look at WINE on Linux and Crostini's containerized software on ChromeOS, clearly it is possible to support varied software without over-complicating the OS. And that's what Rosetta 2 does as well, if it's held Apple back the last 6 years it hasn't shown at all.

It will be very surprising if we see any benefits from cutting Rosetta 2, especially worth gutting all the games and software this has empowered via Steam/WINE/CrossOver.

At this point cutting Rossetta 2 is probably to force the laggards like Sonos to start supporting Apple Silicon.

I just don't see how that's worth cutting off the ability to run Windows versions of Steam and games and software through Crossover and WINE. So much more software is being affected than just Mac apps that haven't been updated, yet transparently run just fine.

If Valve shut down Proton to force developers to release Linux versions of their games for the Steam Deck it would be unequivocally bad, right?

I disagree completely. Backwards compatibility has precisely nothing to do with why Windows is terrible nowadays.

And that's also entirely orthogonal to hardware - the hardware battle between ARM Mac and ARM PC is really a battle between Apple and Qualcomm (Apple won).

In hindsight, rather than relying on Snapdragon, Microsoft should have started designing their own high-efficiency ARM SoCs 15 years ago like Apple did. But I mean, everything is clear in hindsight isn't it.

The way Windows implements backwards compatibility is not sustainable in the long term, as it increases both maintenance costs and attack surface, but the current state of Windows and its dwindling appeal has little to do with it and more with poor design decisions, and a competition that has made better design choices. Linux has been a viable desktop for years, and Macs have been the gold standard against which everyone is judged since the 1980s.

Windows still owns the corporate drone desktop, but, oddly enough, that’s now being served as a VDI through a Linux thin client.

> Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.

Forcing people to create a MS account to log in their Windows computer, that's because of backward compatibility?

Pushing Copilot absolutely everywhere, that's because of backward compatibility?

GitHub being down almost daily, that's because of backward compatibility?

I've been using an asus zenbook 14 OLED with linux. Compatibility is great.

The screen blows apple out completely. It's clearly, obviously better. The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple. The keyboard feels better to type on, the trackpad is slightly worse, but not enough to annoy me.

The new Pop OS cosmic is a very fun OS concept for laptops with the autotiling workspaces as a fundamental primitive.

From a quick search online, the max brightness of your laptop is 400 nits SDR and 500 HDR. My M5 MacBook Pro is 1000 and 1500 nits.

Screen brightness is not something I will compromise on after having a taste of greatness.

I personally wouldn't mind spending 30-40% more for a Linux laptop with similar qualities + repairability. But I will not settle for something much more expensive and worst in some aspects.

There are also arguments agains repairability in Framework's laptop. I did the calculations and for the Framework 16, it would be cheaper to buy a gaming Asus laptop and throw it out in a couple years to replace it versus buying a framework and upgrading it. Utter insanity.

The Macbook Neo is about 500 nits but I'd bet the Asus laptop was more than $600 base.

Looks like the Framework laptops depend on model/screen, between 4-500 but with the new 13 pro hitting 700 nits. For a user replaceable screen, and backwards compatibility (I think), that's pretty solid.

The Framework philosophy was never that it was going to be cheaper.

Not sure if the M5 is that massively different but I have a M2 max laptop and the screen is noticeably brighter on the Asus.

Is the fan turning on often? Is it very loud?

From my research on Macbook alternatives only the Zenbooks looked like almost-an-even-match to me. Curious what's your experience with day-to-day fan noise and heat.

I know someone with a modern Zenbook and it sounds like a jet engine at all times, battery life is awful too.

It hasn't been so bad for me to notice. Compiling rust you'll hear the fan, but you'll also hear it in a MBP.

The MBP will compile faster however.

> The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple.

That's the main issue for me. I am on M1 Max 32GB RAM. Except for local LLMs, there is absolutely nothing that gets even close to the performance limits of this device. As a result, all the work I do is performed in perfect silence. Very occasionally the device would get warm, never hot. Based on my usage, I could probably go for an Air model, except for how many external screens it supports.

Zero-noise is non-negotiable for me. It's lamentable how absolutely no-one comes even close.

> you get a really good base model.

Why does it matter to _you_ in particular that the base model is good ?

For a decade buying macs I never got the base model, I switched to the Asus ROG series and a Surface Pro, and again I'mm not on the base model of either.

I get that MacBooks are very good volume purchases and excellent value for those right in the target, but IMHO that's not the people writing in this thread.

I'm also not a fan of the "winner takes it all" view, customers should care about their very specific needs and do their research, it shouldn't matter that some product matches 80% of other people's needs if it doesn't fit them.

Base model used to mean glorified toy with severely compromised fundamentals. The Macbook Neo is not that. It is an excellent screen, excellent keyboard, and excellent silicon, encased in an excellent chassis.

As a remote work terminal / casual computing system, the compromises are IMHO almost entirely psychological.

> glorified toy

> remote work terminal / casual computing

I'm having a hard time grasping the difference

8 GB is certainly a compromise and the main reason I won't consider it, for the price in euros.

MacBooks are still unbeaten hardware-wise. Yes 8GB of RAM is embarrassing, no question about it.

I'll buy a Neo just for travel. I will remote to my machines with it.

Though I'm flabbergasted why has nobody else made as thin and lightweight laptop like Apple... for decades. And that includes no fan, or just a very quiet one.

I have no love for Apple at all. But the Neo is a game-changer and a well-deserved kick in the nuts of, well, every other hardware company really.

Not really, I tend to avoid computer appliances, other than phones and tablets.

I certainly am not paying 800 euros for a travel laptop, when a 350 euros Asus 1215B, that could be upgraded, was able to survive about a decade, with 8GB in 2011!

How is its fan noise?

An interesting perspective the designers of the Tesla Model S had was "battery bucks". The oft-cited example was some fancy wheel bearing which had a expensive per-unit cost which no normal OEM would even consider, because being half a percent more efficient didn't matter. Whereas for Tesla, half a percent efficiency reduced the need for hundreds of dollars of batteries.

I wonder if there's some opportunity for Apple to think about "RAM bucks" and turn memory efficiency into an economic opportunity. I find it difficult to believe that modern operating systems actually need to consume so much.

> MacBooks are still unbeaten hardware-wise.

I'm still fascinated by how people throw these praises around with no justifications what so ever.

Even staying within Apple lineups, as a thought experiment, do you think iPad Pro have inferior hardware ? they sure can't beat MacBooks, right ?

Point me at a laptop as small and quiet. Hell, let's forget weight. I'll gladly lug around 2.5kg machine if it almost never turns its fan on and is as compact.

Actually let's not care about compactness either. Can go up to 17". Just show me a truly quiet laptop.

You are misjudging me here. I'm moving back to Linux after using Macs for 7 years. My desktop Mac is soon going to be history. macOS makes too many choices for me that I dislike. We're not just talking stylistically or philosophically; those I can mostly get over if needed. We're talking objectively and technologically.

I want a good travel machine however. People look at you funny on meetups when your laptop starts blasting jet engines. Nobody is saying it out loud but you're becoming the odd one out and that has a social and career cost. (That's not even touching the fact that noisy machines stress me out and break my focus.)

I'll get a Neo for travel even if I hate giving Apple money. Because everyone else is two decades behind.

We could do the same exercise in reverse:

Point me at a laptop with a touch and pen support and detachable keyboard, within the 13" range and 260+ppi resolution, that can virtually run modern software and mid-tier games at workable speeds.

That's the bar my personal laptop clears, and no mac does. Should I be claiming that it has unbeatable hardware ?

PS: We've been in this for a very long time. Even during the PowerPC days, it was a meme to take a mac, adjust for exactly the same hardware specs and tout that the mac was unbeatable for the price. Thing is, having different hardware specs and tradeoffs is exactly the point of the PC market. I still feel great for the people that exactly fit the "one size fits all" offering, but getting a machine that perfectly fits one's needs is extremely valuable IMHO.

Sure but that's only a theoretical, as in, a non-existing argument. You don't get to tell me what I want in a laptop; I already stated it and stand by it.

"Unbeatable" comes from "satisfies all my hardware requirements". If you want to be difficult and try to grill me to append "...according to what I deem an important criteria" at the end of each sentence then that's a separate conversation, and one I'll refuse to have.

"the Neo is competitive for basic office and media stuff" can be a better way to put it. I'd say the Surface Pro is a more competent but pricier jack of all trade.

There's so many ways to express the same points with not much more words. Especially when the article is about a machine that is a completely different league from the Neo.

> "the Neo is competitive for basic office and media stuff" can be a better way to put it.

Agreed in general, though in my case it would be something like this:

"The Neo is a great thin client through which you can hop around your entire infrastructure and work remotely in it, through the Neo."

Because that is my use-case for it. Travel but not having to work on a machine with 8GB RAM.

It's not enough to be a primary workstation for anyone who reads Hacker News. But for me, a laptop is a secondary device for remote work. I have a base model M1 with 16GB of RAM, and honestly only got the RAM upgrade because I wasn't price sensitive. I'm typing this reply in a tab-infested Firefox right now, and even with a bunch of other programs open, active/wired memory is slightly less than 9GB.

ThinkPad X1 from 2 years ago was very solid and under Fedora everything but camera worked out of the box. And for camera issue I had to blame myself for not checking details of a specific model as Lenovo was offering at that time fully-Linux compatible model. It took about one and halve year before Linux fully supported it. And I already upgraded SSD on it which took less than 10 minutes.

The only complain is bad battery life. With several VMs running mostly idle it doesn’t lasts even two hours. But then I used beefy MacBook M2 at my previous work and with VMs it lasted only 4 hours.

> I don't know why no one else can produce a laptop with decent battery life with an near silent fan and good display and overall great production quality.

Isn't that the whole reason why Apple is the company it is? Steve Jobs wanted to control the software AND the hardware. That hasn't changed, they're still the only one really. That does get you some benefits

This is a common dilemma.

Apple's phones and laptop are 100 % the best in the market, but Apple is a terrible evil company - the walled garden stuff, the "you don't really own your device" stuff, the normalization of enshittification (removing headphone jack, nonreplaceable glued batteries, not giving charger with $1000 laptop, ...) that other manufacturers followed, the gold statue Cook gave Trump as a bribe.

But not just Apple. Teslas are the best electric cars on the market - but Musk got Trump elected, literally killed millions of people with his DOGE and did Sieg Heil on stage (twice, so we don't miss it). Or Garmin - objectively the best sport and adventure watches on the market, but evil anti-consumer planned obsolescence policies. You could go on.

I guess the choice is, am I willing to "suffer" (as much as using inferior product is suffering anyway) to not support these people? Or is my comfort mire important than doing the right thing?

And I'm not just being preachy - I have aging M1 macbook, aging Garmin watch and an aging ICE car and I spend few last months pondering. It's easy to prioritize comfort. Or I'm just being a whiny bitch.

(Funnily enough, for phones the dilemma really isn't there - you have just choice of Apple or Google having all your data and no matter how bad Apple is, Google is orders of magnitude worse.)

That is how GNU userspace exists in first place, no compromise.

The real alternative is GNU/Linux phones.

Not if you can't run you bank's app on it and without bank's app you can't have bank account. Or interact with government. Or talk to your friends because of network effects around social networks.

I wish it were a real alternative, but it is not the world we live in.

You can run a bank app with Waydroid, and you can (and should) switch from a bank that forces you into the duopoly. I did. Many banks have an alternative authentication device, too.

And that device is the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 OLED. The paper specs are great, all that's required is to turn it into a fully fleged Linux laptop and get rid of ChromeOS and core boot entirely. I just got hibernate working on it last night, wifi, sleep and sound and the fingerprint sensor works. There's some more polish and tuning to be done, but this'll be the machine I move off my apple silicon laptop for.

Apple hardware is only perfect when looked at through rose tinted glasses. The whole butterfly keyboard issue should be enough to indight them from being seen as perfect with hardware. There's a reason Applecare exists, and it's not just because of accidental spills.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com