I was recently buying a Dell laptop for my sister and it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops. I didn't enjoy the process of looking through dozens of various lines that Dell has and then other companies like Lenovo and HP earlier in the process, just to find a "mid-range usable computer with a decent screen".
If you didn't know anything about laptops and wanted to buy your first one, it would be a nightmare to figure out what all those seemingly random numbers mean on most non-Apple laptops.
Apple continues to simplify the laptop naming scheme, we're at a point where it's simply:
Air OR Pro
Small screen OR big screen
All other details can be configured in the buying flow but there's not much to think about if you just want a simple laptop.
I finally made the switch to Apple after being thoroughly frustrated with Windows laptops.
It's not even close to a competition. Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them.
Most Windows laptops have abysmal batteries, to the point that you can barely call them laptops. The trackpads are downright unusable. The keyboards are a hit or a miss. And for some reason, so many companies are still shipping laptops with 1080p screens in 2024.
Anything even remotely within Macbook vicinity costs the same as a Macbook anyway.
Increasingly feels like most manufacturers have given up on the laptop as an innovation center and are happy to just scrape up the consumers who can't or won't buy Apple.
They are awesome, but not perfect.
Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with MacOS. Any one of these could be reason enough for people to look elsewhere.
Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears.
I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.
It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use.
To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely.
I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a legitimate design limitation where adding more display support is expensive in terms of die size.
Doesn’t matter though, because companies doing serious work are supposed to know to buy the business versions of laptops. They don’t buy Dell Vostro consumer grade PCs, they buy Dell Precision/Latitude/XPS business systems. Apple tells you right in the name of their system: Pro. If you’re a professional you buy the Pro model. If it’s too expensive then buy something else.
Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases.
There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571
The excuse is that this is Apple, and the solution to problems with them is to buy more things. In this case, get a $1,500 ultra wide curved monitor which is better than dual head.
For $1500 it's better to get one of the 43" 4K displays. I've used one for over half a decade now, and the ability to comfortably tile a browser plus four terminals side-by-side is unmatched. Or if you will, display 10 A4 pages of a document simultaneously.
I have a €500 43" 4K and it's great. But anything else feels so small now.
4k? I'm talking 5k. regardless of which monitor you get, point is $1,500 gets you a lot of monitor that is far better than dual head.
No, it's not. I've used ultra wides and I don't like them :-)
get a better window manager. but to each their own. :)
side steps the problem of single monitor output
Would a better window manager fix the fact that I don't like the way the image looks?
Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one.
The people who complain about specs per dollar were never Apple’s customers. “Why buy an Audi when a Dodge Neon SRT4 costs half as much and goes faster?” It has been this way for 40 years now. This just isn’t how they operate. When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product.
There are much cheaper ways to own a Max system if that specific spec is something you’re desperate for. For one thing, Apple themselves is selling the current model for $2700 refurbished. $500 off and it’s the exact same system with a brand new battery and full warranty.
Also, you should never buy a Mac without the student discount at the very least. Anyone can get it.
Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old.
Keep in mind that if you were buying a MacBook Air in 2010 you were paying over $1800 in today’s money.
Most people don't buy Macs. So why even sell them then?
They literally took away a feature that their cheapest Intel Macs could do, and restricted it to their most expensive Apple Silicon Macs. They should be lambasted for this.
A Raspberry Pi can do this for under $100. Come on.
If we’re talking about support for external displays this all seems entirely tangential.
So they impose arbitrary limitations that have basically nothing to do with the specs just so that people who are supposed to use more expensive machines wouldn’t buy the cheaper models? Sounds about right.
Apple is trying to maximize their revenue because they can. There is nothing wrong about a for profit company doing that. Trying to find any other explanation is a bit silly though..
Also note that 'support multiple external monitors' here actually means 'kinda support some monitors sometimes'. Just google and read the hundreds of threads about external monitor issues on M2 pros.
The only issue I have with external monitors on my M2 Pro – and it’s admittedly annoying – is that unless I turn everything on in a specific sequence, the primary monitor’s energy saving kicks in and turns off the screen before the Mac has synced video. It essentially bootloops.
This only happens on my Acer Predator, and only if I’m using DP —> USB-C. The secondary LG doesn’t care, nor does the Acer if it’s over HDMI.
The fix I’ve found is to wake up the Mac first with the external keyboard, then turn the Acer on and wait for sync, login, then turn the LG on.
While I’d obviously rather not have to deal with this, I feel like it’s at least partially on the incredibly aggressive power saving of the Acer, which I can’t find any way to disable or extend the timeout of.
M1 Max also supports two external monitors (plus built-in monitor).
Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB of RAM. There is no excuse.
there are AMD chips being sold right now that don't even support HDMI Org VRR let alone AV1 decode.
and those skylake laptops are stuck on HDMI 1.4b, so they top out at effectively 1080p60, but sure, you get three of them. And the DP/thunderbolt tops out at 4K60 non-HDR with crappy decode support, and you get at most like 2 ports per laptop.
the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?
HDMI 1.4b does 1440p75 or 4k30 and HDMI 2.0 was brand new at the time.
What a weird argument; no shit a bargain bin CPU from 10 years ago is worse than a brand new mid-range chip. That's the exact point I'm making. That Celeron was bad 10 years ago. 10 years of progress, billions of dollars of investment and you get the same maximum RAM capacity, less external monitors at a much higher price.
And you’re ignoring all the things that the apple will do that your chip won’t, or the things it’s massively better at.
It has 2x the bandwidth of a Radeon 780M and runs at 35w, it has as much bandwidth as a PS5. there are pluses and minuses to doing it both ways, but, detractors only want to look at the handful of areas where traditional chips have an edge.
"Cheapest" but not cheap. A $400 Steam Deck can do 3 external monitors with an inexpensive MST hub and has a single USB C port.
The MBA is an extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line too. And "Pro" doesn't even guarantee you more monitors. The $1600 M3 MBP is just as limited as the "consumer" Air.
Only if you ignore the shitty finger trackpad tracking on dell, windows (shit UX) or Linux (shit battery life and shit sleep/wake), and in general the real life battery duration in real life use cases.
Except they crippled it on purpose as a form of market segmentation. Claiming anything else is beyond absurd.
We really don’t know. Personally I’m not surprised that a chip that came from a smartphone has difficulty with multiple monitors. I’m guessing that the Pro and Max chips need a much larger die area dedicated to that functionality.
I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't end.
Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input. Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time.
Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.
Because if you agreed to pay $2500 anyway, you can agree to pay for an upgrade!
Apple is in the business of selling you hardware, specifically premium hardware. Think car dealership.
And Dell is not in that business? Or Lenovo?
People agree to pay ridiculous prices for memory or apple connectors - why not to charge them maximum?
I was amazed to see the new Air models support dual external displays!
EDIT:
mmmm... no.
FFS Apple.
I guess it's something of an improvement at least :-/
Interesting way of thinking about probably the biggest draw of the hardware.
Depends. To me, software is the thing that will keep me from Apple products. IMO Linux and Android are light-years ahead and are becoming even further ahead every year.
I have a hard time considering Linux "light years ahead" when they still can't even figure how to do HDR.
My daily driver before this was Linux and anyone who says "Linux is light years ahead" is kidding themselves
You have to set up a bash script to do something as basic as change the scrollwheel speed. Bluetooth is extremely spotty. Installing most software is still a pain unless you know all sorts of terminal-fu
You have to install software like UnnaturalScrollWheels or Smooze to get sensible mouse scrolling behavior out of MacOS (unless you use the horrific monstrosity of that Apple mouse that you can't use and charge at the same time). You have to install software like Rectangle to get actual window tiling + shortcuts for window tiling. You have to install Raycast/Butler to have a non-shit Finder alternative. There's dozens of basic UI/UX things Apple gets wrong that can only be fixed via either building your own hacks or paying for some ludicrously priced proprietary software (for example Smooze Pro).
I could go on, there's many basic features MacOS has been missing for going on a decade, let's not pretend they get it all right either.
How do you fix the keybindings on linux short of changing hundreds of separate software packages? Spoiler, I've and you can't. Why are there about eighteen million packages implementing each component on linux, each subtly broken and offering a different set of features? Because the community can't agree on anything (except keybindings adopted from the IBM PC, apparently) or commit to providing any single package that actually addresses all user needs.
Of course I don't expect everyone to share my opinions on what sane keybindings are, let alone what good software is in general, I'm just trying to illustrate how ridiculous you sound if you're trying to come off as engaging in the topic in good faith. I think it's pretty obvious why people prefer macos, personally, even if I don't agree with all the decisions apple makes for you.
Can any OS? I've got an (apparently) HDR-capable monitor but genuinely can't tell much of a difference on Win10/11, any Linux distro I've ever tried and my Macbooks provided by my work.
The whole HDR thing seems more like a meme or weird flex type of thing to me, I've never noticed it ever really making a difference for me.
Also a weird hill to die on when talking about relative strengths of each platform, but you do you.
I use HDR all the time in Windows. Most newer AAA games support it, all my 4k movies, and being able to make true HDR photos and video is nice.
You won't notice a difference most of the time in normal desktop use because most desktop apps and the web are all SRGB, and get tone mapped accordingly when HDR is enabled. To really notice a difference with HDR content though, you need a good HDR monitor and not just one with basic DisplayHDR 400 certification, and either an OLED panel or mini LED full array local dimming.
Windows' HDR implementation is far from perfect (the gamma tracking on SRGB content is incorrect, for example), but it's a far cry from Linux where HDR support just doesn't even exist. I can't even realistically use Linux as an OS for a home theater PC anymore.
macOS is probably the gold standard when it comes to polished HDR support, especially with mixed mode use (HDR and SDR content on screen at the same time)
Linux on the Desktop has finally arrived !
I hardly expect folks on HN to have normal opinions about the usability of linux, but duly noted.
Good lord no, the hardware is the actual good part of these machines, the OS is a piece of crap hobbled by catering to the lowest common denominator. I wish I could just wipe it off my work M3 pro, cause it drives me insane on the daily
Ah this is why technical professionals all use linux, right?
Yes? Windows and Linux are by far the majority for most software work according to the SO Developer Survey[0]. Going by the survey, MacOS is 3rd after Win/Linux (of the 3 possible options).
[0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t...
Nah, it’s the single reason I have zero interest in Mac hardware.
i'd say the M processors are the biggest draw...
but yea, i agree, probably the 2nd biggest draw
Price: if that’s the major qualm that’s not really a product flaw. The best product usually commands the highest price.
Stuck with macOS: technically not true, Asahi Linux exists.
Connecting multiple monitors: a legitimate negative limitation unusual at the MacBook Air price point, but still something that only a small fraction of consumer laptop buyers care about.
apple products being the perfect exception :)
Asahi Linux is still missing features a lot of people consider key. M1 even STILL doesn't support DP alt mode for example. That's a pretty serious shortcoming on something like a MBA where the only video out is through DP alt mode.
I agree 100% with what you've said, but this sentence:
Basically boils down to "Apple is selling a much better product, and they know it." I.e. your first bullets (over priced storage, RAM, charging for multi monitor support) all just boil down to "Apple charges more because they can". The "you're stuck with MacOS" is obviously true but just highlights that Apple has always been about optimizing hardware and software together.
If anything, I think the "dark times" for Apple laptops was the late teens during the era of stuff like the butterfly keyboard, the touchbar, and too few ports. I think Apple consumers have consigned themselves to paying more for a much better product. What they're not willing to do (as much anyway) is to pay a premium for a crappier product. The butterfly keyboard especially was such a disaster ("We shaved .2 mm off the width, all at the minor expense of any key randomly stopping to work at any time!") Admitting mistakes in big corporations is hard so I'm glad they just jettisoned all that stuff.
These days I want Apple's hardware (the M chips specifically, but the trackpads/screens/cases are nice too) but can't stand their software. While I'm not a big fan of Windows either, it at least provides basic window management features by default.
I'm one of those industry long timers who can and will use just about anything, and has occasionally over the years owned macs of various form factors. For the past decade thanks to corporate work I've been entirely Windows and Linux based.
I picked my daughter up an m1 macbook air about a year ago. It was an absolute delight of a machine to use. Light weight, no fans, no hot bits during general usage, long battery life, a screen that didn't upset my eyes, and importantly the OS just got out of the way during general usage.
I wound up buying myself an m1 air about 6 months later.
My only gripe is that I wish it had more RAM, but even then the unified memory approach has made my expected ram usage vs actual ram usage a bit of an odd thing. It consistently uses less ram than I'd normally anticipate. That said, more ram by default would help fill in those times when I do load it up.
I picked up a M3 Macbook Pro and this thing works like an absolute beast.
I currently have Photoshop, Illustrator, VSCode, multiple Chrome windows - each with 20-40 tabs - and this thing is not even sweating.
I get 8-10 hours of useful work out of it even on battery.
Completely changed the way I work
How much RAM does it have, and have you ever wished you had more?
I have an M2 Air with 24gb and it has no problems running Brave with 800-ish tabs, development workloads (a bunch of VSCode projects, several docker containers, lots of iTerm terminals), low-end CAD and 3D printing apps, CaptureOne and a bunch of Electron apps in parallel with room to spare. I've found I can fit more into those 24gb than into the 32gb of the Intel Mac I had before that (however that's possible).
You're never going to read those, before the links rot.
Almost all of them have already been read and are waiting for me to build something to pull the links out of Brave and download/archive/index them somehow. I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but haven't yet.
This may help.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34847611
The browser should remember the date you last rendered a tab, and then if the link rots, it falls back to archive.org on that date.
Brave (by default at least) will ask you if you want to load the archive.org version when a page fails to load. Not 100% automatic but almost.
How are you managing all these? What are you using to search them?
I'm using Vimium for general use and have an Alfred plugin/thing/extension but even that's a bit unwieldy. How many windows is this?
I can answer this. I have a very similar workload to OP. I've found myself with resolve, affinity photo, chrome, vscode, spotify, ect open simultaneously, and have had absolutely zero struggle on my 8gb air.
If you become "enlightened" you can notice that sometimes when you, say, open your spotify window after a long time elsewhere, the spotify is briefly unresponsive. Not in a way you notice, more in the sense that if you are looking for it, you can see hints it is swapping.
The only time I wish I had more is when I got into iOS development and began running VMs on my mac.
If it's really swapping then won't that reduce the lifetime of the (irreplaceable?) internal storage?
Modern SSDs are resilient enough that most people will never wear them out with anything resembling a normal workload. Unless you're constantly swapping for several hours a day, it just isn't going to matter.
How many GB a day would be written with swapping? Modern SSDs have a lifespan of a few hundred to low thousands of TBW.
Totally not, enshittification ate SLC.
MacOS also employs memory compression, so it's not necessarily swapping to disk.
My MacBook Pro M3 has 36GiB RAM and does all of the comment above + music producing (dozens of VSTs on some 1-2 dozens tracks) + projection mapping and can run some LLM models locally like the Mistral ones.
I've only managed to hear the fan when chatting with a LLM, for anything else it's been an absolutely silent beast.
I have M2 Pro 16GB from a client. It's comfortable for typical dev work - tons of tabs open, Docker, VS Code etc. Though the swap is about 20GB now and sometimes it lags. Still it beats any Intel or AMD laptop I ever had in terms of performance. This machine is on a whole another level.
My own machines are M1 Max 32GB and they fare slightly better.
Mine has 16GB and I regularly use some Mistral LLM as well as OpenHermes.
The only things that ever seems to get my fan going are transcoding a video or a really long compile.
Never once has the fan run during web browsing or any of the many everyday tasks that used to bring my previous one to its knees.
I have an M1 Max with 32GiB and similarly - never had it complain or noticed it unhappy about anything, or felt I needed more RAM or CPU.
It's going to be hard to justify upgrading this thing for awhile.
Honestly haven’t felt like it didn’t have enough RAM even once.
My daily driver before this was a Ryzen 5700x desktop with 64GB RAM, so I know what a powerful processor + RAM combo feels like.
Haven’t even heard the fan even once.
My current and previous MacBooks have had 16GB and I've been fine with it, but given local LLMs I think I'm going to have to go to whatever will be the maximum RAM available for the next model.
Similarly, I am for the first time going to care about how much RAM is in my next iPhone. My iPhone 13's 4GB is suddenly inadequate.
I upgraded from a 2015 MBP with 16gb of ram to a M3 Pro with 36gb. It’s a night and day difference, the machine is much more responsive and I mainly use it 30 min a day, or sometimes for a few hours in a row. And charge about once per week, getting about 14hr battery life.
What were the things that held you up from making the switch?
Good that it works for you and your daughter!
I have to use macbooks at work, and they do bother me. The mirror-finish screen always reflects bright lights into my eyes, be it a window or a ceiling light at a distance. The OS is thankfully a certified Unix, but the GUI, while having a few brilliant features, also has warts like no way to align or snap windows, apps running without a window, with only a menu bar, with a window from a different app showing, etc. This continues for many years, so it's likely a design principle.
Of course, Windows is even worse in the GUI department, there's no comparison.
So, sadly, a Macbook remains the most sane computer for non-technical people :(
I read that Apple follows a document model, where the application is kinda a background thing a window is supposed to be for a specific task. Not like Windows where the main windows is the hub of interaction. So you use CMD + <backquote> to switch between these tasks and CMD + TAB for switching between applications. The menu bar is part of the application, but windows can modify it to suit the focused tasks.
I've used Rectangle for quick window management, but in time I've come to understand the philosophy so it does not bother me as much. It's more leaned into the desktop analogy than other OS.
Yes, and this is the reason why there is a shared menu bar and why many early macos apps had a number of floating windows, like Photoshop.
The desktop represents the active app, and a window is the active document in that app.
This doesn't make all that much sense with today's screen sizes and multiplatform apps.
It depends entirely on what you’re used to.
My earliest exposure to computers was a Mac (though Windows, Linux, and BeOS also came into the picture fairly early on) and I don’t find the Mac model the least bit problematic. On the contrary, I find the Win9X model overly simplistic and unmanageable past a small handful of windows.
I agree with your misgivings about window management in MacOS. The way Windows does it is so much more intuitive.
For window snapping, there are countless apps that will easy solve your problem. But I get why you would struggle - I still get frustrated at times with the way MacOS works.
Just download Rectangle for free. I recently switched from Dell XPS to M3 Pro and that was my gripe to. One install and it's much better, moving windows with ctrl+opt+arrows is also close to Windows and makes it fairly usable.
I think ThinkPads are better than MacBooks. You can get P14 with 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD, very fast and quiet CPU (AMD U series), decent battery, 2.8k OLED screen and it weights 1.34kg (weight between 13 inch and 15inch new Airs).
It also has imo better ports and a track point.
The problem is that Windows sucks more and more with every iteration and there is nothing Lenovo or other manufacturers can do about it. Lenovo also keeps shipping hot and loud Intel CPUs which hurt reputation of the ThinkPad line and may confuse new buyers. Still if you know what to choose you will get more for your money with P14 than Macbook air imo.
I have a Thinkpad P1 with 64gb. I love that it has a trackpoint. I hate that it had a fan. I guess not so much that it had the fan but that the fan constantly sounds like it is impersonating a helicopter. Not sure where it wants to take the laptop. Also the battery life is horrible, 1 hour or so. And Windows is sluggish. Otherwise, it is a great machine (I occasionally RDP into it when demoing thing for my Windows clients.)
My MacBook on the otherhand lacks a trackpoint (that will never be fixed) but is otherwise snappy and quiet. Sure it had some software/OS issues, but overall it is miles ahead of the Thinkpad.
It’s possible to buy an external keyboard with a trackpoint: not as convenient as having it builtin, but it’s great if you’re mostly using the laptop at your desk anyway
Imagine buying a MacBook Air only to need an external keyboard to be able to use it comfortably…
Imagine buying a MBP but using it at a desk 90% of the time... I'm perfectly fine using the machine while traveling but mostly use split keyboards with a non-QWERTY layout at my desk. I've been around enough computer users to realize that there is no "one-true device" that will be ergonomic and RSI-proof for 100% of users. Folks should listen to their body and take action when it complains.
My biggest complaint about the MBP was the lack of Trackpoint. I've survived. My work forces me to have both MacOS and Windows machines, and I'm very happy with my MBP. The P1 and sluggishness of Windows are huge letdowns.
I have a Unicomp Endurapro. However, my fingers and wrists favor split keyboards for longer periods.
To be fair it’s not exactly fair to be comparing this to a MacBook. Dell XPS, Lenovo X1/Z/? series would be closer equivalents, of course AFAIK while the battery life is much better fans/temperature are still an issue.
How so? A P1 is basically the same as an X1. Not even sure why they are different models.
You can technically get "more technical specs" for the money but the actual experience of using a TP will never be even close to a MBA. This is coming from someone who's used a T14, T14, a few yogas, and currently use a P14 for work.
The last point of TPs using loud and hot Intel CPUs cannot be understated. The P14 throttles so hard when I'm trying to do any work because it's using some sh*t Comet Lake U-series, that I literally breathe a sigh of relief when I can use my desktop computer that doesn't hang up every time I load up IntelliJ. MBs are so efficient for the power profile it runs circles around any x86 mobile CPU when on battery.
Obviously I've had 10x better experience with a trusty Ryzen 5600U over that Intel CPU. But still nothing close to a MB. Also the TP trackpads are sand paper garbage.
The Ryzen Thinkpads are the thing to beat for the 2020s. I don't want a $1,800 glass art installation that requires a warranty to reliably fix. I want a good laptop, and you can "fix" the majority of a Thinkpad's problems by simply selecting good internals from the start. In a reductive sense, it's no different than ensuring that you avoid the 12" or 16" Intel Macbook.
And I mean... maybe I'm crazy, but I'd skip on a Mac chassis any day. I've have Thinkpads handle drops at waist-height, my Macbook probably would break in too many places to count if it made the same journey.
You're right, but having seen what Docker does to a Mac I still choose to run native x86 anyways. The battery differential usually ends up moot anyways.
Macs are rather hardy computers and I used to see Thinkpad vs MacBook showdowns back in the day where people would run over both and other various things. The Mac’s would actually win a fair amount of the time because they’re less brittle.
Unlike iPhones, Macs are actually fairly hardy against physical damage. It’s a huge part of why I’ve been keen to buy them. Surviving a waist high drop is what I’d expect. The problem is the repair prices are FAR higher if something goes wrong.
I'll take a good trackpad over the trackpoint any day.
I also find something weirdly repulsive about the plastics they use on ThinkPads. A true Macbook alternative shouldn't be using much plastic at all, though.
Maybe I'm odd, but I much prefer the Thinkpad's body to the Macbook (I have both). I don't like the coldness of the metal chassis, either on my palms or on my legs if using it away from a desk. Thinkpad plastic does not feel cheap or weak to me, so that's not an issue.
I also can't stand the Mac keyboard, especially compared to the Thinkpad.
Those butterfly keyboards on older Macs are terrible: bad UX, impossible to self repair, costly for pro repair. Truly form over function, to a fault.
I got P14s with 64GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and other specs maxed out for $1050 (patiently waited for a sale from Lenovo). Other than the battery life, the P14s is roughly equivalent to a Macbook Pro M2 Pro for $3500.
Windows sucks in the default install, but if you know what you're doing you can remove all the junk from it and make Windows almost as efficient as, say, Linux (and way more efficient than macOS).
In my opinion, Macbooks are for people who'd rather pay more than take care of and optimize their laptops. I could have paid 3 times as much for a similarly spec'ed Macbook, but then I'd have to put up with a silly notch, not having a right Ctrl key, a keyboard getting shiny after a couple of months and other annoyances. So why even bother with Macbooks?
Besides the horrible touchpad, screen (did you really get > 1080p for $1050?) and the plastic body
I could get a desktop with even better specs for as much. Not exactly a fair comparison of course since different people have different needs (how much is never hearing the dans fans and a proper touchpad worth? Supposedly a lot to some people).
Can you explain what do you even mean by that? Do you get better battery life than with an M series macbook after these “optimizations”?
I can answer this as someone who, throughout last 6 months of his new job, used a Dell XPS 9570 with Windows, then PopOS, then Windows again, and just switched to an M3 Pro a week or two ago. No - you will never get close. That Dell could run fps games like CS:GO or Valorant with 100+ fps, had custom tweaks incl. thermalpads connecting to the chasis, exchanged thermal paste, was undervolted and with a custom fan curve. It still throttled from time to time. Granted - it was 8th gen i7, but it was on paper good enough to handle everything I do. Only on paper.
It also choke on my day to day work, which is WebStorm, Docker and Typescript web development. Indexing, autocomplete, builds(even with swc) took a really long time. I switched to PopOS for a while, but overal user experience was even worse to me, with constant issues ranging from monitors behaving weirdly, stuff crashing, requiring weird driver installations, even Docker didn't 'just work', I had to fight it half a day to get it to actually run. Went back to Windows until I got frustrated enough and just bought a 36gb M3 Pro, and I'm never going back. This just works, builds take 1/6th of what they did, I can run full swc build in 100ms, full tsc build takes 10 seconds(down from around 60), nothing ever stutters, nothing slows down, didn't hear fans yet. It does have some annoyances, mostly with window management, new keyboard layout and a ton of shortcuts needed to do basic stuff but once I learned those - it's really nice.
Offer and support desktop Linux?
Windows keeps dropping the ball and Linux just stands there looking at it on the ground.
I think that Canonical is doing an excellent job. It's been at least a decade that you could easily install Kubuntu on most computers and things would just work with no configuration. It's easy to use for the vast majority of use cases and reasonably secure.
IME battery life will suffer significantly. But otherwise I agree.
They just had a p14s for sale with 64GB ram for 1000 USD.... I just couldn't bring myself to buy a laptop with 4 hours battery life with typical usage... Will probably pick up an M3 Air.
Intel or AMD one? In my experience you get way more than 4 hours with an AMD one. I had an Intel one before and I agree: hot, loud, eats battery like crazy.
One of my ThinkPads had a debilitating thermal throttling issue. On occasion it would inexplicably limit the CPU to .39 GHz and the fans would spin at max RPM. Yet, it wasn't hot to the touch and it hadn't been doing anything to build up any significant heat. I tried several things, but to no avail. I simply had to be issued a new ThinkPad.
I distinctly remember running a firmware update and the utility had several typos in it: "Updating fimiware". Sure it's just a status message on an installer, but I lost a lot of confidence in Lenovo's quality control that day. I have no proof but I'm sure that thermal control code was outsourced.
Yup: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T-...
I've experienced that myself, and from that point on I told myself I would never buy another TP ever again. The issue confuses me because I've used the low-tier IdeaPads with an AMD H-series CPU and honestly I've had similar battery life but without the unlivable throttling. The IdeaPad is thicker but I prefer it over my work ThinkPad for everything.
Not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like the ThinkPads have been technical specs, but the overall experience is worse due to the software.
If so, I might challenge your final comment, which is "you get more for your money". Ultimately, I think people want a great experience, not a bunch of specs.
The last time I tried the P14 it has insane thermal throttling, as do most windows laptops. Is that no longer the case?
Fortunately there's Linux which is has a great number of fans on Thinkpads. It's not for everybody, but Thinkpads are great for it.
I just got a T14S to replace my macbook m2 (because I wanted to use NixOS). It's a bit disappointing: the laptop is ok, but the macbook feels so much better.
The opposite ("macs are overpriced") is something I've never been able to understand. Back in 2013 when I bought my current laptop, the mac book air was the thinnest, lightest, longest battery life, nicest keyboard, and a bunch of superlatives I don't remember, and it was somewhat over £1000. The closest non-mac "ultrabooks" I could find in shops at the time cost the same, and felt like cheap rubbish. And this laptop just refuses to die, and handles my workload just fine after all these years. I'm dreading the day I have to replace it.
It's simple: People without much money have basic needs and want a ~$600 laptop but Apple doesn't sell one.
It doesn't matter if the $1000 Macbook has better battery life than a $1000 Dell because they don't have a $1000 budget.
Apple does partially cover that market, but only via refurbished.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGN63LL/A/refurbished-133...
The thing that's really sad is that the build quality on sub $1k laptops is just such shite
That's not the same thing. If you're budget conscious then you presumably need to keep it for a long time, but now you've got a used battery and a machine that will fall out of support sooner.
The secret to this one might be refurbished Framework laptops. Sure, you've got a used battery, but now it's easy to replace and costs $50 instead of $250.
Refurbished devices from Apple generally come with new batteries, and sometimes other parts will be replaced as well if needed. I’ve bought several devices refurbished and they’ve been excellent. With iOS devices they even replace the outer shell as standard.
Refurbished iOS devices from Apple generally come with new batteries. They replace the batteries in Macbooks if the existing battery is already defective. That doesn't mean it can't have 3 years of use on it already, and then fails 3 years sooner, it just means it's not already below the threshold for immediate replacement when you buy it.
You can check the charge cycle count on the battery, and have 14 days to return the device if it's a concern.
That's different from being "overpriced."
Overpriced would be "costs more than it should for what it is," not "costs what it should but is more product than I can afford."
But it's also that, because their bottom configurations are weird/crippled.
It's hard to find a PC laptop with a 4k screen for much less than $1000, but then the $1000 machine has 12 cores and 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Apple's $1000 laptop has 8 cores and 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, i.e. overpriced.
Okay, but DDR5 is ~$3/GB and NVMe SSDs are ~$0.10/GB, so really that's only a value difference of like $100 and you could just upgrade it. Except that Apple charges $25/GB for DDR5 and $1.28/GB for storage and then solders everything, so you'd actually have to pay an extra $800. Except that the Macbook Air isn't available with 32GB of RAM, or more than 8 cores, so then you need the Pro, which is even more.
The bad part of Apple DRAM is that it's not upgradable or replaceable unless you can figure out how to open up the M3 multi-chip-module and nanosolder a new RAM module.
The good part is that the DRAM is connected to the GPU as well as the CPU.
Nothing stops them from doing both together. Put 8GB or 16GB on the APU package and then have a couple of SODIMM slots for more. The more wouldn't have the same bandwidth but it doesn't need to, because you're using it for browser tabs and filesystem cache, to keep that stuff out of the fast memory and preserve it for what needs it.
Moreover, they could put the APU in a socket and then if you wanted more of the integrated memory you could replace the APU without having to replace the entire machine.
I'm not sure those people are the intended Macbook audience, though. How many of those people wouldn't be roughly as productive using an iPad or something? I've found myself doing almost all my non-development, non-media stuff on an iPad Air as of late and the environmental constraints have been really helpful for focus.
(My iPad Air was $599 new, and I use a shockingly pleasant $30 case-and-keyboard combination for typing--no, it's not a mechanical keyboard, but c'mon.)
iPad has a tiny screen and a tiny keyboard. It's not a laptop.
As far as screen size goes, my iPad is about the same size as my 11" Air was, though not widescreen. And the keyboard's small, but Apple has prior art there too and you can get a bigger iPad if you really want to (though, sure, it costs more).
It's not a laptop, no--but that's also not inherently a bad thing. If you need what a laptop can do, sure. I have a 32GB M1 Max for a reason. But more and more it seems obvious to me that the median computer user doesn't need that, and the affordances from overlap with their more accustomed part of the ecosystem (their phone) are strong and pretty valuable.
I have tried several different iPads over the years and I have never found them to be useful in any way. A laptop is superior in every situation for me.
Also the M1 MacBook Air was on sale many times for $700. That's less than $100 more than your iPad Air + keyboard.
No, it's I need a 2 TB SSD in my machine. That costs $100 for a PC laptop, and $600 for the Mac. I need at least 16GB of memory, that's $300 for the Mac, and $60 for the PC.
It's the fact that Apple is grifting everyone who needs more than the base specs.
I probably can't justify the expense myself anymore - last time I had a hefty student discount. But this doesn't make them overpriced, it just makes me poor.
When have MacBooks ever had the nicest keyboard? They have pretty good keyboards, but I have 10 year old ThinkPads with keyboards that I prefer.
Are thinkpads considered "ultra mobile" (or whatever the buzzword is nowadays)? I thought they were more hefty? The thin/lightweight laptops from back then had crappy clickety keyboards.
Of course they were heftier, but "nicest keyboard" and "nicest keyboard given ridiculous thickness constraints" are a world apart. No idea what you mean about crappy Thinkpad keyboards. The old Thinkpad keyboards are widely acknowledged to have been great.
It seems like you've changed my requirements and then decided the thinkpads were a great fit.
Not at all. Maybe what you intended to write was "nicest keyboard given my other constraints". But that's not what you wrote. And it's not what "superlatives" suggest either.
Keyboard feel is very subjective. Different people like different things about keyboards.
I'm still using an original M1 Air and the thing is used nearly all day for light casual web usage, and I only plug it in about two times per week -- the energy efficiency is no joke. This kind of battery life really spoils you and when you see other laptops that nearly require the plug charging all the time, tethered, you realize what a big deal these M chips are for true portability.
I've been out of the house all day (6+ hours) with my M1 Pro and it's only just starting to get close to needing to be plugged in. What have I been doing all day? Just running the 23 different docker containers required for my local dev environment. This thing is an absolute beast.
Do you think the new M3 Air w/16 GB could be comparable CPU wise to the M1 Pro? I am guessing GPU wise (for inference like apps) it probably falls behind.
CPU was never the problem with the Air it's the thermal system. Depending on what you're doing the device simply can't soak up enough heat and so it ends up throttling the CPU.
It takes a long operation e.g. compilation for 10-20 mins before it really starts to fall behind the Pro models.
Thanks.
I end up forgetting my charger when I go on trips because 99% of the time when I unplug my laptop at home (to use in a different room), I never need the charge cable. It used to be 50% of the time I'd take the cable with me, so I could be somewhere else for 2+ hours. Now I so rarely bring the charger that it just doesn't even occur to me when I'm unplugging the thing to pack.
It's night-and-day compared to the Intel MBPs.
Now that laptops (including but not limited to macbooks) can charge via USB C I just have one charger that I take for both my phone and laptop. Sometimes I take two cables so I can charge both at once. Sometimes I don't bother.
My problem was that I brought a USB-C to lightning cable to charge my phone off my computer, but I forgot a USB-C brick (and magsafe or USB-C cable) so that my computer had power. Fortunately there were Apple employees at the conference and they let me borrow a charger while we were hanging out at the bar!
The problem is the storage is not removable in the Apple Macbooks.
It is disturbing it didn't sink the Macbooks. It speaks volumes of how little people care about their own data. About their own privacy. There should've been zero sold. It truly is dismal and a very large systemic problem a laptop like this is sold.
Because when it breaks, are you going to wipe it and restore from backup? No. You will just hand it over to a repair person and even an ethical shop much less Apple doesn't even have a chance to hand the disk back before handling it. An unknown amount of complete strangers will access your everything. Your medical records, your banking, your private photos, everything.
And people pay real world money for this, money they worked hard for. It's unfathomable to me.
Won’t it be encrypted with FileVault?
Nobody has access to anything unless you give them your password. Macs have full disk encryption built in. If you aren't using FileVault, you are doing it wrong.
FileVault encryption is on by default. The encryption key is derived from the login password and the login screen has delays to avoid brute-forcing the password.
Additionally, data in the flash chips are always encrypted by the unique key burned in the M chip (previously T2 secure enclave).
Turn on FileVault. Don't give anyone your password.
Pretty fathomable.
Non-removable storage isn't the problem. You have identified one actual problem: privacy. But even this isn't a real problem if you turn on system-level drive encryption:
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/volume-encryption-w...
Soldered-in components make for higher quality, lower cost production. Anecdotally, every Windows machine I've had has failed. Every MacBook machine I have replaced after 4-5 years when I wanted to upgrade to the latest technology.
As others have said: encryption. Even before they supported full-disk encryption, I made it a habit of making yearly encrypted disk image files where I store all my financial and medical data. I open them when working on the info, close them afterwards. Even some attack that somehow bypassed disk encryption (like a browser hack or something) won't get anywhere.
This reminds me of this investigation by CBC Marketplace[0], where cellphone and laptop repair techs spend time looking through customers' devices.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXAXabAzbk0
I am in the group of people who go for Full HD. It's enough for me, my eyesight is relatively bad. Then again, I use 3 monitors.
You'll like the way Apple does their screens even more then. They're 3-5k screens but they essentially scale up their UI 3X so it still looks like a 1080p except 3x sharper.
They are what Apple calls "Retina" displays.
If you can't see the extra sharpness it's not really a pro...
A 13"-15" 1080p screen is pretty similar PPI to a 27" 4K display. This is pretty nice because if you have both at the scaling level elements are the same size on both.
meanwhile Mac Studio users waiting for 5k monitors @ 144hz
There's a volume zones of people who want "a laptop and nothing more", will pay for better materials and Apple has perfected that segment with a few caveats [0].
To your point, then comes the lower end ("just give me something cheap"), the corporate middle ("the same laptop as at work"), and the super high end (gaming, CAD, anything needing special software or a discrete GPU), with the outliers (linux etc)
IMHO windows laptop nowadays are for people who either don't really care, or have already a very specific target or limitation.
For instance Lenovo or Asus definitely care about pushing laptops' limits and design. A lot. IMHO more than Apple.
[0] resistance to abuse isn't there. A macbook's screen will be dead pretty quick if not handled with appropriate care. A Lenovo Flex for instance will take it a lot longer.
It's a bit more nuanced. Lenovo/Asus seem to be experimenting a lot more, but more like by throwing (relatively) easy-to-build variations at the wall to see what sticks, then release a few more polished SKUs. Apple doesn't really do that, but they do attack those limits and design aspects they care about very aggressively and with a ton of resources (e.g. battery life pre-M1, manufacturing tolerances).
One of the issue is laptops aren't a growth angle to Apple. For instance the efforts they made towards the CPU and processing architecture wouldn't have made sense without the other products benefiting from it.
We've seen that with the touchbar: it got a first release, and basically no improvements, no bug fixes, no better support from there. A laptop only feature gets no love from today's Apple.
Even the iPad saw little to no progress in recent years, outside of sharing specs with the mac.
I posit we'd see a foldable/bendable phone from Apple before we ever see something significant form factor change in laptops.
The touchbar got shit on and it was probably expensive at the same time. Worthy innovation perhaps, but the customers didn't value it. I think that was the reason it faded out. I actually used it for audio adjustments, but I didn't need it.
Until you want more memory or a larger SSD then the Macbook is all of a sudden double the price of the equivalent PC laptop.
That's basically true, but with Apple becoming more and more expensive that does leave a very large low-end market for them to play in.
Recently got a ThinkPad T14s gen 4 with top-of-the-line AMD 7840U, 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD, for just a bit over $1k. It has very good build quality, is powerful yet quiet, and has decent battery life. It supports up to 4 displays. That's basically one of the best Windows laptops you can get.
Of course, it does not have high-DPI mini LED screen, great speakers or 18 hours of battery life, but none of that really matters, and I'd choose this any day over a similarly speced Macbook Pro 14 that would cost me $2,399.
pls define decent battery life because for different people decent means different things. My biggest problem with windows laptops is battery life. My dell work laptop is spec't higher compared to my home m1 air but the ~4h battery life, worse trackpad and worse audio make it a worse experience overall...
You will not find a x86 machine that beats an Arm machine on battery life. 4h is bad for a windows laptop though. But if track pad and battery life is your thing, a Mac it is.
I've been positively delighted by my two Intel Alder Lake laptops I use during travel for play (ASUS Vivobook S 14X OLED, 12700H CPU) and work (Lenovo V14 G3, 1255U CPU) respectively. I can get 4 to 8 hours off of them depending on use with the charge limited to 80% for longer overall life, and as I just mentioned the hardware are quite powerful in their own right.
Both of my laptops I just mentioned have wonderful touchpads. Frankly though, this absolutely will vary by several country miles depending on manufacturer and even model. I suppose I got lucky here.
I'm gonna be honest: I fucking hate screens bigger than 1920x1080 (or x1200 for 16:10 screen ratios). My laptop for play has a 2880x1800 screen, but I've got it rendering at 1920x1200 because so many programs just assume pixel densities around that area and either can't or won't handle scaling.
I also have to still do some scaling up even at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 at laptop screen sizes anyway because everything is so small, but it's still less compatibility headaches compared to physically denser pixels.
4 hours isn't exactly good... To me 4h sounds kinda bad For trackpads it depends, there are some windows laptops with good ones, like dell xps or the carbon line, but mostly these are worse compared to macbooks, if you haven't tried mac trackpad - you should definitely try one
That's 4 hours of running the screen (by far the biggest power drain) and doing stuff, it ain't no M*-powered Macbook but to me that's impressive and in the realm of practicality.
My prior experiences with older hardware have been barely an hour or two, which is impractically retarded.
I also have an M2 Macbook Air and find its battery life even more impressive (literally days between charging), but I don't really use it because it doesn't satisfy my requirements which include games (for play) and clean interoperability with other Windows machines at home (for both play and work).
I’ve been an Apple only user the last 20 years, but they simply lost me with the garbage they sold since 2016. The M series was too little too late. It also didn’t help that macOS didn’t get better anymore and the yearly release cycle only made it more buggier. I’m happy with AMD finally catching up to intel and nvidia with a performance to price ratio Apple will never deliver.
I’ve been an Apple only user the last 20 years, but they simply lost me with the garbage they sold since 2016.
If they lost you eight years ago, then you haven't been an Apple user for the last 20 years.
Also, 2016 was eight years ago. Get over it. Or at least find an axe to grind from this decade.
What keeps me from Mac is some people report some weird incompatibility issues with third-party things. Like external mouse, keyboard, monitors. All of my mac user friends complained about this to some extent.
Plus, on my laptop I just simply upgraded the RAM with another 16GB of RAM which will give me some breathing room for at least another year.
For me, a windows computer "just works". Everything I connect I know will work as expected. Not looking forward to learn some new quirks. Even the top left action buttons just irk me to death.
It is not correct, unless you select minimal amount of ram and SSD. Select versions with proper amount of memory and MacBook becomes much more expensive than comparable windows machine.
Tastes differ. My work MacBook unlocks with a fingerprint (with random sensitivity, if my hands are too dry, for example, it does not register) even in 2024. My Windows laptops had been unlocking with face recognition for 10 years or so. I find the latter much more convenient, especially when I have the laptop on a stand and use an external monitor and keyboard/mouse. Does not look like Apple is ahead of anything here. Hardware wise Apple is actually okay for the price in the low end, but you can only add memory/SSD/CPU (at ridiculous $/{GB,GHz} ratio) for the higher end, you can't get an OLED display, or a good keyboard, or bigger battery at any price.
Yeah, whoever managed (or didn't manage) the Surface trackpad project needs fired. Can't count how many times I have belted out obscenities while working on my Surface Pro. Garbage. I forgot it had a touch screen and I never flip the screen. All that caused the trackpad to be ignored, I guess. Again, hot garbage.
I have a MacBook Pro M1, which is pure fluid bliss. It cost less, it's faster, and the battery lasts for days.
Similar stories. I usually had a windows laptop and linux and VNC'd into the linux box and with win 10 and 11 I just got tired of fighting all the garbage that microsoft tries to push on you in the OS. I really just want to get to work, so I bought a top of the line M2 macbook air and couldn't be happier with my decision. Apple has their apps on there but I don't get pop ups and ads and have to go through a bazillion privacy settings to turn of MS spying on every little thing.
The weird part of that argument to me: to arrive to that point you've already made a ton of choices that need to be educated.
You decided on the form factor: you don't want a convertible (neither a Surface like tablet + keyboard, nor something like a Yoga).
You decided to forgo touch.
You decided you don't really want to game. You also evaluated you don't need anything Windows or x86 only.
Then sure there's about 10 models. But at that point is it much complicated than say, choose from the DELL XPS line ?
In my experience, most people looking for "just a notebook" don't care about any of those things. They want a low maintenance, high performant (for day-to-day tasks, not gaming) portable computer with a great battery that runs Chrome, Office and Spotify, and comes with great customer service - nothing comes close to being able to bring your Mac to the next Apple Store.
You could just get a Chromebook for that and save yourself a ton of money. It's what my wife did, and she's not wanted anything else for seven years.
It isn't close to an apple device in terms of materials or performance, but at a tenth of the cost of a pro it makes a lot of sense.
I've had a couple of Chromebooks and enjoyed them, but I never found one with a keyboard that didn't feel terrible to type on. Does one exist today?
I'm guessing if you want quality materials, you have to pay for it. I don't know if the pixel line of Chromebooks are still a thing, but even if they are you can just get a higher end laptop with more appropriate levels of local SSD storage and an actual OS for what I remember Google charging for them.
Higher end Chromebooks run Linux well.
That's why my actual laptops are Thinkpads and Macs, sure--but I can hope, right?
Laptops in my household are a mix of Macs and Chromebooks. All are >5yrs old. Love the resilience and useful life of both.
If I gave these requirements to my parents they'd go to a random computer shop and come back with probably a random 13 or 15 inch DELL. And that's what millions of people get at work as a standard supplied computer.
I am not saying the mac isn't good at filling that niche, just that people who really don't care about computers also don't care if it's a mac, and will probably be fine with any recent default configuration machine from a major maker.
PS: > bring your Mac to the next Apple Store
You need an Apple Store. In my experience people have come to terms with shipping devices and waiting for repairs. Cloud sync helps a lot in that respect, as keeping another computer around has become decently manageable.
> If I gave these requirements to my parents they'd go to a random computer shop and come back with probably a random 13 or 15 inch DELL.
And if I did that, they'd also come back with that DELL - and then I'd be stuck doing tech support for them for however long the thing lasts. I cannot begin to count the number of times they've gone and bought some junk computer that they got upsold on.
This is not an experience unique to me, either. The non-Apple laptop segment is (mostly) a broken experience in comparison.
I stopped doing tech support for family members using Windows. THAT was the main reason they changed to Mac. And now, hardly do any support for them at all.
Ah really? Ever heard of worldwide on-site next day repair warranty?
And in my experience most people looking for "just a notebook" don't want to pay the prices Apple demands. Especially when they see prices on the non-Apple laptops.
You’re going about your decision tree backwards. People don’t say “I don’t want a touchscreen” or “I don’t want to game”. You don’t make decisions based upon what you don’t want to do… you make them based upon what you do want to do.
I was talking with my dad recently, and he wanted a new computer that could handle email, a little Excel, Facebook, and some other light web browsing that didn’t get stuck in an infinite reboot loop for system updates (which somehow his Windows got stuck somehow). There are a bagillion options for Windows laptops that fit those needs. He ended up not being able to make a decision and is still using his same old laptop.
Whereas my son wanted a desktop computer that would support playing Valorant at 60fps at 1440. That narrowed things down substantially and ended up building one to his specs.
If a Mac fits your requirements, then you have far fewer decisions. And that’s part of the point. For the a long time, Apple has stuck to a restricted set of SKUs. This is by design. It’s not that they couldn’t offer a touchscreen, or a convertible, or a xMac. It’s that they’ve been there… had many form factors and SKUs and it almost killed the company.
Even if you say you want a Dell laptop — have you ever tried to browse their site? If you say you want a laptop you’re presented with 68 options (I just did this). 68.
That's what OP said? Because now you have already decided you don't want to game, etc.
This is the iPhone versus Android discussion all over again. Yes, many will be happy with the iPhone, but they also often didn't know they had the option to buy an Android phone that could do something the iPhone couldn't that they'd like to be able to do (like copy&paste or whatever). Ignorance is bliss for some. Others want the choices, and Apple have nothing for those buyers.
it is amazing how much the android crowd loves to shit on apple "brainless sheeple" etc given how little they clearly know about the products themselves.
I keep bringing it up over and over and it's never not true, the android crowd is just so utterly uncivil and it's completely normalized and accepted as public discourse. The AMD fanbase has the exact same problem. It's constant "brainless sheep" and "the ONLY reason anyone buys [not my brand] is [infantilizing and insulting remark goes here]".
If anyone on the other side did anything remotely like that they'd be slapped with a mod comment etc. But if you point it out, that people are misbehaving and acting out, you're the bad guy, because acknowledging the constant microaggressions is the greatest crime of all.
> Because now you have already decided you don't want to game, etc
That’s exactly what I’m not saying. If you want to play games (with Windows only games), then a Mac won’t work for you. If you get a Mac, that means that gaming likely wasn’t part of your decision tree.
Think of the choices as a positive selection. I want to do X, does computer A allow me to do that? People make decisions based on positive selections… not negatives. If gaming isn’t on your requirements list — you aren’t actively rejecting gaming… you just don’t care one way or the other. The post I was replying to asserted that if you chose a Mac, then you’ve already decided not to do X and not to do Y and that you don’t want form factor Z. But that’s not it… decisions are made based on what you DO want. They aren’t made based upon what you don’t want.
Some people just prefer one ecosystem over the other… it doesn’t mean that they don’t know that other options exist. It’s not ignorance, it’s just a different choice than you made.
68 versions of hot garbage until you click on "Business."
Then you have to pay real money and you might as well buy a Mac.
Am I so glad though that Apple didn't buy into the touch for the laptops. Now this comes with a caveat, if you have some like the Yoga that the hinge can go all the way around, touch isn't bad. But god, in the early 2010s when everyone was throwing touch on their laptop screens, I hated that so much. Laptop hinge only goes 120 degrees or something like that, lets throw touch screen on it! horrible idea.
Although I heard many complaints about the Yoga. Never owned one, but if I had a laptop with a touch screen, that seems like the route to go. The Surface too, but I've also heard those stop feeling snappy pretty quick and tons of thermal issues.
In LTT's recent video reviewing the Vision Pro he predicts Apple is going to go to touchscreens on their laptops because users will be used to it coming from the headset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuHOf_kZK6Q
Yes. A thousand times more complicated. I usually get Apple gear for myself, but am always asked to help friends and relatives with PC laptop buying decisions...
People just shop by price and look. XPS and Yoga target specific segments of the market.
The average punter buys whatever crap they have on sale at Target or Best Buy.
Oh come on, you're overexaggerating a bit. If you follow your pattern with Apple, you'll end up with a measly 8GB/256GB model which will only be useful for basic browsing.
(And with more and more Electron apps, might struggle even with that once you hop onto a video call.)
Video transcoding is done on the GPU and has nothing to do with memory/storage.
And there isn't a trend towards more Electron apps. Increasingly developers are using Tauri which is Rust based and extremely lightweight.
Tauri is not that much different from Electron honestly.
That is simply not true. My Tauri app is 38MB: https://github.com/harana/search/releases
Electron Framework alone on macOS is 356MB.
And this is reflected in memory usage as well.
The Tauri app just uses the system WKWebView. Memory usage can be misleading due to reporting, see e.g. https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/5889
Yeah not sure how it qualifies as lightweight...
Is there a single popular Tauri app? What are the most popular?
The point is that it's growing:
https://github.com/tauri-apps/awesome-tauri
I must be doing something wrong then. I've got one of those measly models and I do quite a bit more than just basic browsing without any problem. Video calls are the least of that, and they work fine.
Weird flex
Video calls require trivial amounts of memory and no real storage at all. Video editing, on the other hand, would pretty quickly fill up a 256GB drive. If you want to play with the fun new AI stuff, 8GB of RAM isn't enough.
Modern machines also have a nefarious failure mode. It used to be that you needed more memory to cache the hard drive, but SSDs are pretty fast and that doesn't matter as much anymore. So now you have the opposite problem -- if you're out of memory and start swapping you don't notice as much, because SSDs are pretty fast. Except that now you're silently wearing out your SSD. Which in the Macs, is soldered.
I do all of my development on a measly 8GB/500GB model. The only application that has performance problems for me VCVRack, and that’s only after I surpassed 900 modules
I bet it struggles if you open 800 browser tabs and 900 VCV rack modules.
I have the base level M2 Air and it’s anything but a basic browsing machine.
Runs everything I throw at it development wise, while a good few other things are open and it has never felt slow. Compare that to any Windows laptops with the same spec and it would be chugging along with just Chrome open.
This is just FUD. Even my kids 2017 laptop doesn't "chug along with just Chrome open". It can run chrome and a game too just fine.
While they do swap more often than one with more RAM (obviously), at least with the M1s, the SSDs are stupidly fast, to the point that you barely notice it for day-to-day work. They nerfed the SSD on M2 base models; not sure about M3.
For the record, on my base M1 Air, I generally have Safari, Spotify, and Alacritty open at any given time. I can also run Docker Desktop if necessary, although I prefer colima since I don’t need any of the bloat.
"will only be useful for basic browsing" nah.
Anyone who says the 8/256 Airs are throwaway machines has literally never used one. Full stop. You have an opinion about what 8gb of memory is capable of, which is influenced entirely by Intel CPUs and Windows. It hits different on the M1 platform and MacOS.
Have you ever tried to trade in an Apple prdoduct? They ask you to enter the serial number and then bizarrely ask you to indentify to device. You basically have to refer to MacRumors to get it right. Apple has the same problem, if not worse.
Dell has XPS 13, XPS 15, and XPS 17 and now the plus designation. It's pretty easy.
Disregarding that there are 10 different laptop product lines to choose from, if I've already somehow decided that what I want is an XPS and I want a 13 inch screen size, my first two search results are
- XPS 13 Laptop
or
- XPS 13 Laptop
https://i.imgur.com/2SHL91Y.png
I gather that one of these is a newer revision than the other, but it's a lot more confusing than "M2" and "M3". I need to know whether I want (up to) a Core Ultra 7 155H vs a Core i7-1250U, and whether (up to) Intel Arc Graphics is better than Intel Iris Xe graphics.
Scrolling down further adds the XPS 13 Plus and XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop. How does XPS 13 Plus compared to XPS 13 Laptop? What about to the other XPS 13 Laptop, is it better than both? Or is this a weird side-grade where you get a different form factor which is in some ways nicer, but then also comes with all the dumb parts of the Apple's "Touch Bar" and none of the good parts? (that's my 10 second interpretation of the product, but more clueless customers will have absolutely no idea)
Isn't it the same with Apple? You choose between Air or Pro 14" or Pro 16".
But then there are all the variations with different amounts of RAM, SSD, processors (M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max)
And every little upgrade costs you 10X compared to a PC laptop.
No not really, I already narrowed down the product lines to only XPS. And 13" is actually one of their less messy sizes, there are the 4 XPS models and 7 Latitudes.
Then within each of these the configurable parts vary, but you're potentially picking processor, RAM, GPU, SSD, and even display resolution. It's not any simpler than the options within one of Apple's laptops, except Apple has a total of four laptops in all sizes.
If you wanted a 15" laptop from Dell, you have 1 XPS, 2 Latitudes, 4 Inspirons, 2 Vostros, and 2 G Series. All of which are an ambiguous mix of actually different models or new/old revisions of the "same" models.
Looking at pricing on the XPS 15, 64 GB RAM adds $450, the RTX 4070 is $1200, upgrade from i7-13700H to i9-13900H is $450, you can option Windows 11 Pro for $50, there's a higher resolution screen for $300 (or $800 if you didn't option the fancy GPU), it's not cheap over here either.
The one place where it really feels like Apple is screwing you compared to Dell is SSD pricing.
I like how one is Intel i7 and one is Intel 7. Mind that the i7 is a -U, which is totally different from a -H or a desktop i7.
Yes, Apple changed to a randomized serial number format in 2021. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/14/apple-preapres-for-rand...
So, if you have a device made after that transition and Apple doesn't already know the details (e.g. because you didn't buy it direct), they'll also need to know how much RAM and SSD space it has.
But they manufactured it. They couldn't keep a database mapping serial numbers to specs?
That's a great point. My guess is that Apple doesn't share that data with their trade-in partners, which would include the web-based trade-in estimator. I don't recall having to share this when I brought stuff into an Apple Store for an in-person trade-in.
You can identify your machine here: https://checkcoverage.apple.com
It's also available inside of the about this mac screen.
Multiple orders of magnitude easier than the PC laptop space.
I’ve done a trade in a few times with Apple and it’s always been simple. There’s a serial number on the device, or you could just select it from devices attached to your account
Huh, the xps itself has 36 SKUs in Germany. Then there’s Latitude, Inspiron, Vostro, Alienware, Gaming Pro, Mobile Precision Workstation…
I've traded in multiple and only ever had to enter the serial number.
Actually I just did this the other day with an iPad Pro and it was kinda neat. Instead of asking me to enter the serial number, it said something like “it’s this device” or “use this device”. After I tapped that it just continued on and asked me about the condition of the iPad.
I have seen that serial number prompt before though, I don’t know what makes it ask for a serial number versus prompting to use the current device’s serial number. I’m not even sure how it knew what device I was on to be honest.
I just tried their Apple "Trade In" Tool.
They ask for serial which you can copy and paste from the "About this Mac" dialog box that is in MacOS.
From there it asks you the year of your laptop which is also in the same dialog box.
From there it asks you which CPU version and core count you have (for M series laptops with multiple options.) To get this info, you click on "More Info" on the same dialog box(In Sonoma you also click System Report and it is all there).
Afterwards it just asks the condition of the laptop (ie, does it turn on, screen cracked etc.)
I don't see why you would need MacRumors for this.
I've traded in multiple Apple computers over the years and never had to refer to some external site like you say.
This will sound slightly provocative but I genuinely wonder: why would anyone buy anything else than an apple laptop? Gaming? ideology? budget constraints? lack of familiarity with MacOS?
They are marginally more expensive, but they also very easy to sell second-hand. I'm speculating that the monthly cost is on par with a PC.
I don't like MacOS these days, I like the idea of being able to repair my computer if something breaks, and I want the option to at least attempt data recovery if I have a drive failure.
While I can sympathize with you, I'm not seeing myself repairing my MBA. It would be like trying to repair an F1 car. Not doable for the average person and even the constructor just swap the broken piece. I also backup everything important and encrypt the whole disk. I'd say the tradeoffs are worth it for the combination of lightness, quiet, performance, display and battery life I got. It's the perfect portable device for general purpose computing.
And backups seem a lot easier on Mac OS.
If you need Windows programs for your work, or need the ports, or want to play games, that kinda answers the question. The Mac laptops are otherwise just better for most people. And the often-repeated "every user is different" is not really true; most people fit the mold.
Which mould though? I'd say most fit the Windows mould, but I'm guessing you mean the Apple mould.
I mean that most people who buy laptops fit the mold of needing web browsing, email, documents, and maybe file management. They can solve that with Windows, Mac, or maybe even Chromebook. There isn't usually a reason they need one in particular, the Mac just tends to be the nicest option, or the Chromebook if you're on a tight budget.
Reasons for buying other laptop (at least for developers):
1. Better choice of desktop environment (KDE/GNOME vs OS X)
2. Wider/better selection of applications
3. Better development environment
4. Ease of deployment of your own apps
5. Better fit for your budget (why spend 3000 Euros on a limited set of features, when you can spend the same amount and get huge number of features/better features)
6. Capability to connect upto 3 external displays (which Macbook has got only recently)
There's no chance I use a Linux laptop again. The Mac will run all the open source type stuff out of the box most of the time, or if you're really deploying for Linux only then you use Docker anyway.
#2 is untrue unless you're installing Windows. #3, well somehow there's no iTerm2 equivalent on Linux, and the terminal emu is one thing you'll always use even when SSHing elsewhere. #6 is a serious point, though.
Lots of people doesn't see Apple laptops like you obviously do. Ask provocative questions and you'll get likewise answers. For my needs and my opinions:
- The software is worse. Linux is better. Windows has much broader options. I run both.
- I game.
- Ideology? Yes, Apple is an awful company.
- Familiarity? I have used it enough to know it cannot do a lot of things I need, want, like, etc.
- Budget? Yes, but not because it is too expensive, but because it cannot do anywhere near what Linux and Windows can do (for me) for way less.
What is the monthly cost of a Mac that can run games, run old software I require for work and hobbies and (importantly) isn't locked down in either hardware or software so I can use it for something completely different later in life?
Yeah, the Mac model for long term use is that you sell it later in life so you can get whatever it is that you need later in life. (Not saying that it is a good thing nor a bad thing).
Based on "marginally more expensive", I have to say you live in a bubble and likely won't understand the replies.
Just to point out one fact -- people buy $289 Gateway laptops from Walmart and use it as their daily driver.
They aren't marginally more expensive. I'm writing this on a Chromebook I bought for $300 before the pandemic. Including electricity, cables, etc., I figure it has cost me about $6.50/month.
Definitely agree with the simplicity of purchasing an Apple computer compared to other laptop manufacturers. Headphone brands and monitor makers also suffer from this same fate :/
Not that simple when there are multiple generations of each on sale, with wildly different prices should you change the storage or RAM toggle.
The MacBook Air used to have a multiple USB-A ports plus video, now it 2 ports that have to handle everything. So now the dongle/no dongle question has to become considered as well.
Agreed that even Apple products have gotten confusing. But still 1-2 orders of magnitude less I feel than other laptops?
I think the lineup and config options on Apple laptops and tablets are carefully planned to make you spend more than you intially thought.
You start with the idea of cheap model, then start going the ladders up.
Maybe, but I know plenty of non-tech people that just buy the baseline MacBook Air and are happy with it.
I think both are true. For non-tech people, or people who don't use a computer for real hard work, who want a decent laptop, they probably just buy the baseline Air. But once you get into doing some more professional stuff on a laptop that needs power, then you fall into talking yourself into more than what you intended. I am experiencing that right now. At the time I didn't have a lot of money, working full time to support a family and going to school, so when I needed a new laptop I got the base MBA M1. Fantastic laptop. But now I am doing more intensive stuff (I also make a lot more now so I can afford it) on it and I am looking at upgrading to an M3. I am playing with the GPU and some ML, so I probably should get more than a base model M3. From there it is, whatever I decided, the next upgrade it just an extra $200. More ram would be nice. Oh wait, for another $200, I can also get the better processor with 2 more cores for CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, why not? Oh wait, $200 more and I can double the RAM. Next thing you now, I started off with $1599 and now have talked myself into a like $2200 (haven't made the purchase yet, but that is what I am looking at).
I hate dealing with USB-C, but on laptops, it hardly matters. Pretty rare that I'm plugging in anything besides power.
I doubt this is much of a constraint in the real world. Most people plug power in, perhaps an external mouse, and that's it. (They should be plugging in external storage for backups, which might require an extra port, but I doubt most people do in practice).
I'm pretty much USB-C only at this point, but even before then I never understood the fixation on "dongles".
Not everything. MacBooks have MagSafe for power, which frees a port for power or having to use an adapter with power passthrough.
Though it’s not a big issue in practice. When at home or the office, I just plug into a display with a USB or Thunderbolt hub. On-the-go, the Apple adapter works great.
Having to plug more than one cable is annoying anyway when you move between desks.
There's still some weirdness as you get higher in the lineup. They start to break out into different variations of each chip, with varying degrees of memory for each variation. Like you can get a Macbook Pro with an M3 Pro chip with 11 core CPU/14 core GPU, or an M3 Pro chip 12/14 cores, or an M3 Max chip with 14/30 cores for $400 more or 16/40 for $900 more. And if you do the 14/30 M3 Max, you can choose 36 or 96gb memory, but if you choose the 16/40 Max, you can choose 48 64 or 128gb memory.
Love my macbooks that I've had, but yea. When shopping, it is rather aggrevating that there is no such thing really as just M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, and M3 Ultra. Its really M3, M3 Pro (11/14/15), M3 Pro (12/18/16), M3 Pro (14/30/16), M3 Max(14/30/16), M3 Max (16/30/16), M3 Max (16/40/16).
Okay, without googling tell me: what is an Apple model number Z15T_5108?
You would think so, but unfortunately not. Apple is quite good at upselling and their price gating for screens, ram etc. is very opaque. In other words: whether you want the air with non-sabotaged specs or the pro or the pro pro or the pro max is not simple.
Anyone who says this has never used an 8/256 Air post-M1, and is complaining about them hypothetically. They're fine. They're fantastic computers.
You can upgrade to 16/512, which puts the machine at $1500. This is $200 cheaper than a Dell XPS 14 16/512. "But the Dell has dedicated graphics" no it doesn't. "But, well, the Dell has a higher resolution display" no, its actually 1080p, the Air is higher resolution. "But, but, the dell, its, uh, no wait never mind don't buy Dell, buy a (insert some other brand)" the thing a lot of people really don't want to accept about Macs, right now, is that they're actually so extremely obviously the best computer money can buy that its irresponsible to buy anything else at $1000 and above (unless you're gaming or doing AI, but get a desktop at that point).
Just checking: are you saying that the M2 and M3 make 8GB/256GB viable, or that they were for the M1 Air too? Because I had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM for a while, and that thing was painful. I haven't had to be careful about how many tabs I had open in a browser for a long time--but I also haven't had 8GB of RAM in a long time, either.
I’ve had my base M1 since a few months after launch, and the only slowdowns I’ve experienced are when I turn on low power mode. Even then, it’s more that apps are slow to launch, not that they’re unresponsive once open.
I generally have between 4-10 tabs at any given time; how many do you have?
Meanwhile, HP elitebook with current AMD chip, 2560xwhatever, 120Hz screen, 1TB of storage, 32GB of ram, both replaceable, 1200€. Comparable macs cost at least twice that, so color me highly unimpressed that twice the price gets you a nice machine.
An HP Elitebook 645 G10 with an AMD Ryzen 5, 1080p display, and 32gb of memory costs exactly $1,919 US Dollars. They're running a sale on the 830, so you could get that for only $100 more than an entry-level Macbook Air, but you'd get a much less powerful CPU, worse battery life, larger frame, and worse screen [1]
Again, I think a lot of people on here have this bubble-sense that laptops are cheaper than they actually are, because its been so long since we've bought laptops. Or something. Laptops are crazy expensive, all of them. And the degree to which Windows OEMs have fallen behind Apple in both pricing and performance is deeply concerning.
[1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mlp/laptops/elite-352503--1
Newegg's feature selector is pretty good at sorting through this. Just uncheck all the bad screen resolutions and CPU models and see what's left. Bonus: Require at least 32GB of memory in an exact power of two, excluding all the junk that solders 8GB to the system board.
It is perfectly possible to have dual-channel 12+12GB configurations and also unbalanced 8+24GB configurations, so your test is not really accurate.
12+12GB doesn't result in a power of 2. 8+24GB does, but there are no 24GB DDR4 SODIMMs to make it with, so that's only possible with DDR5. Moreover, even though that is possible, you can then look at the specs to confirm that it isn't the case, having already filtered out all of the junk where it clearly is the case, e.g. when the machine has 40GB.
Is your system your enemy? Serious question.
Having suffered through many Dell laptops (flagships) I'd rather flush the money down the pan than buy one machine from them.
What Dell is selling in comparison to Apple is legacy technology with shoddy workmanship.
my sister needed a laptop that runs windows so dell was one of the many options
If you know what you want then most sites will have filters to narrow down the choices very quickly. If you don't know what you want and nobody told you what you need then any model is probably fine.
I don't get it. What's so great about Apple's lack of choice?
Er, no. You still need something. You just don't know what.
I think System76 also has a pretty simple evaluation process. You mostly just select the form factor you want and then configure it. Also, unlike Apple, they make it easy to get a machine exactly tailored to your needs. They don't force you to pay $$$ for an expensive processor when you just want a bit larger SSD and some extra memory...
If you remember back in the day, Nokia also had a crazy number of SKUs for their phones. Nokia is no longer the power it used to be. Could it mean many SKUS means a lack of focus ? Thinking you can out market / out segment your competition rather than try to concentrate more on the product ?
I find AMD also has less SKUs than Intel. Here, as a challenger you can't really afford to segment the market as much as the leader. You need to concentrate your offerings in a few potent products.
The only non-user friendly defaults in the Mac purchasing flow are the 8G RAM and 256G SSD. I think in 2024, 16G & 512G should be the default, with an option to downgrade.
With such bloated webapps now a days, those 8G of RAM are going to cook too fast...
Ah. Apple fanboys and their partly-usable, overpriced laptops with notches. You have to buy ONCE, it's not like you have to worry about what other laptop you could've bought every single time you use one. Do the research, buy a $600 laptop. It's usually adequate for everything except gaming.
> it boggles my mind how most other companies (maybe Framework is an except) still have dozens or even 100s of SKUs for consumer laptops
And the crazy thing is, despite Dell having 170+ laptop SKUs they don't use that fact to actually have a wide range of products.
You'd think with 170 different SKUs they could produce an ultrabook with ports, wouldn't you? A modernised version of the E7270? Apparently not, though.
Having 100s of SKUs is an information denial tactic to ensure that users forfeit all of their consumer surplus[0] and pay exactly what they are willing to pay in the hopes that they get a "good one".
The problem with this tactic is that there's a lot of SKUs that give people a terrible experience and they jump to another brand.
Apple's solution to this is to instead have 50 SKUs, organize them by a few very easily understandable categories, and then price every SKU exactly within $50-$75 of one another so that there's always a meaningful upgrade for slightly more money. This is also why Apple is very stingy with storage and RAM. They use the cost of upgrades to pull you to higher priced SKUs, which then need their own upgrades, and OH LOOK there's an even nicer base model for just a little more!
[0] The amount of money you save when the thing you want to buy turns out to be cheaper than what you were willing to pay.
Really surprised not to see any mention of the 2x2 grid Jobs introduced in 1998: Pro, Consumer, Desktop, and Portable. It was the solution to exactly this problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10cZg8pLmXk about 6 minutes in.
They do it so that the consumer can't price match nor return swap from one retailer to another. The model number ultimately becomes a type of trace to reveal which retailer sold the device.
If a normal person just wants a “simple laptop,” they can go to Best Buy or whatever brick and mortar and pull one off the shelf. They don’t need to dig into hundreds of SKUs unless they want to do so.
It pretty easy with no competitor for the MacOS segment.
All those numbers try to hide that they basically sell all the same.
I've always assumed that the number of SKUs is so that retailers can have a (relatively) unique model and avoid price comparisons. Like mattresses.
Even at a logistical / production level.. having all theses different units, options, suppliers, information, incompatibilities, tests, after sales.. insane.
This was Apple’s secret - they punch bigger with large quantities of components.
When the original iMac came out, it was by far the #1 computer SKU. It was way better than competing products at the price range because of those economies of scale.