Not trying to start flamewars, but more and more I wonder how much are people willing to put up with such practices. On linux for 15+ years and everytime I try to use mac or win, it is an ordeal. And ads. F*cking ads in a system someone has purchased. And spying. Really user hostile environment. No, thank you.
Also the OS mostly “just works”, just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates
I pulled out my old windows laptop to debug why my Linux machine is giving me issues, and the mouse was unusable, making clicking anything impossible. It was adding momentum, and any precise movement or click just couldn't be done because it wouldn't move with small touches, and added 'weight' to anything bigger.
Anyway, I was sure something was up, checked settings, and found a new feature akin to 'more accurate mouse'. I disabled it and my trackpad started working again. Everytime I have to use that PC I get angry about something unbearable windows thought was a good idea. Tbh my Linux has been driving me up the walls recently. I think I just don't like computers at all.
Wild guess is they have to reject palm input mostly because they make them too big. I don't even put my palm on my thinkpad trackpad so I don't even know if it has such functionnality as it isn't even needed.
Gesture is more an OS functionnality but I am not sure how a trackpad can be better or worse for scrolling or clicking. You slide 2 fingers, it scrolls right? you click (or rather tap these days), it clicks? right? Can a trackpad click "less" or even "scroll less"?
OK maybe some handle better wet fingers, that is maybe the weak point of my current trackpad.
> I am not sure how a trackpad can be better or worse for scrolling or clicking. You slide 2 fingers, it scrolls right? you click (or rather tap these days), it clicks?
I laughed. I have a work HP machine. The click is only available on the bottom half or third of the trackpad, with no visual indication of the area. It takes a strong push. It’s bad.
The scroll is shiite too.
When you get one that doesn’t work right, you really miss a good one.
> We're 30+ years into trackpads on laptops and they're still terrible on Windows machines. Make it make sense.
The old Mac trackpads were great. The new Mac trackpads where they increased the size, and made it solid-state feel terrible to use. Make it make sense.
I've never been able to tell the difference between a cheap trackpad and whatever Apple uses, but I hear folks go on about it endlessly.
My guess? Most people don't care, but the discussions are driven by the few who do, because for them, it's a really big deal, and they'll pay accordingly. Similarly for "My code is unreadable unless it's on a 4k display at 220+ PPI" -- I'm sure it's true for them, but for me, a crappy FHD display I can get for $100 is great for coding.
I'm like this with Linux...I pay System76 a premium because I care about how they go about building their systems, both hardware and software. To normal folks, it seems like a crazy thing to pay a premium for, but for me, it's a great deal.
Very interesting point, and substantiated by the fact that every windows laptop user I see in the wild carried a mouse around with them. They do not care about this issue much, clearly.
I have to agree, unfortunately. Macbooks have their issues, and give me violent tendencies like any piece of hardware every now and then, but when it comes to UX and reliability, they are far, far ahead of anything I tried, and I tried a lot of hardware.
If you look at MacOS with a critical eye, it's nearly impossible to say it has good UX. It's outdated and everything requires more clicks. Finder stuck 20 years ago. Hard to find settings. Poor screen real estate. Hard to read text with transparent everything.
Let's kill this myth that "Macs are more intuitive to use".
To each their own, I find the UX absolutely horrible and not intuitive, it's also poorly translated for non-english users (like "Finder", "iCloud Drive" or "Spotlight" not translated in the interface for example).
I have to agree on the hardware quality though but that doesn't do everything as I still have to use the OS
Translating terms that are basically proper names is not trivial, and Apple loves to give these catchy quasi-proper names for their features. Often it can be better to leave them untranslated.
They are translated on your average Linux distribution though, you won't see nautilus but "Files", gnome-software but "Software", Gnome snapshot but "Camera" (I've put the English term here but each term will be translated to your language). See <a href="https://apps.gnome.org" rel="nofollow">https://apps.gnome.org and switch the language to see.
In comparison, both MacOS and Windows look more amateur with some leftovers not translated. (Like "Windows Update" on Windows for example)
Well yes it's translated by amateurs but as for the result, both KDE and Gnome are miles ahead in terms of translation quality compared to MacOS or Windows.
Mac build quality is nice indeed. And Nvidia sometimes doesn't play along, but that is a small price to pay for an everyday peace of mind.
My both parents use linux and are happy with it. If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.
>If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.
If thats all you do you might as well just use macos. Something comes up you can just send your parents to the apple store. Probably one of the last places on earth you can get a real life human in a real life building from a real life major company to sit down with you and walk you through your issue. They will do this for free, you only pay for an actual repair job, which you can also of course do there for a relatively fair price all things considered for oem quality work. Not sure where I would take any other laptop for repair. Do people even repair laptops as a business?
For software issues they have a real person - me, and for hardware ones they can be sent to ANY repair service. Just close to them there are like three vendors who do hardware work. But the thing is, for last 5 years or so I do not remember they actually had some issue with their box. Things just work and updates do not overhaul your system out of nowhere.
The major os updates on mac are entirely optional. They still do security releases for the other os's for a long time. This current mac I am on sonoma same as when I got it. That 2012 I kept on mojave. Its just the most polished unix os. The hardware is always set up to work perfectly with it. No driver support issues. Just works. Always works.
> but that is a small price to pay for an everyday peace of mind.
Running an AMD card on my Dekstop system. It's invisible as an Intel on-board graphics card, and this is a great thing.
Much greater than rebooting to a black screen because NVIDIA decided to not support your GPU anymore because it finished its economic life for the company, not you.
I will never buy/use DELL again. Even if the company completely reinvents itself, stops selling computers and just rebrands toasters, these combination of letters make me distrust anything they are physically printed on.
I'm not exaggerating, I had so many horrible experiences.
I've probably heard "this time is different" on the topic of PC laptops catching up to Macs a hundred times over the last decade, but it never is...
It's hard to rebuild trust after selling a computer (without a CD drive) without networking drivers and no indication of which wireless chipset it has, but including a CD with said drivers.
Aluminium is not build quality. It makes lying stuff inside cheap. And feels horrible on skin contact.
The good ThinkPads with Magnesium feel much better (both for hand and lap) and are lighter. And the expensive and complicated build allows maintenance (replacing a keyboard is a bless on the X13). Lenovo is just stupid and also allows to purchase low quality screens, low quality frames and even a Windows. A thing that Apple never allows, you cannot purchase a bad configuration.
The MBAs at Apple figured out much earlier, that a rigid metal frame is cheap and gives the impression of quality.
Aside from that?
Customers are guilty, wanting a shiny and quick solution. And governments and companies by following ultra rigid and outright stupid purchasing guide (ISO craziness and “we can drop Windows, we invested another 300.000 in a Windows only Application).
YMMV. I never had any issues holding a mac laptop. I know people think they are sharp but I genuinely struggle to replicate this when it comes up. As I am typing this comment the laptop is resting on my chest with the entire weight of either hand resting on the sharp side edge of this mac. When I type I move my right arm so that the soft fleshy part under the wrist is now resting with full weight on the sharp edge of the mac. No pain or any discomfort doing this. Currently pressing down as hard as I can on that edge just so see. Again, no clue what people are doing to be in discomfort here. Lead hands? Skin condition? Not sure.
I haven't abused this m series mac as much. But my old original aluminum unibody from 2012, that thing lasted about 12 years until water damage took it out. It fell to the floor on every corner multiple times. None are perfectly round anymore due to the force of the impacts. Never shattered the screen or affected anything with the computer.
I have a friend who ran over his with his f150. That did end up putting some cracks into the screen, but it still worked and he still used it in that state for a couple years at least.
It's just that mishmash of OSFMK (with BSD APIs of 1991 or so) with random additions of newer APIs does not necessarily make it a great Unix to work with in 2026
People really get hard up about it shipping with some older versions of some tools. But if you are really that much of a unix nerd then you'd also know that is solved in 5 mins with a brew one liner.
I am enough of a nerd to know that people will come with assumptions about libc based on Free/Net/OpenBSD and get burned because no, you can't fix the system libc with brew oneliner
If your work is so dependent on a certain libc version then congrats, macos is already a better thin client for connecting to a remote dev box host than windows out the box. You already have ssh and scp and rsync and tmux out of the box and the laptop is genuinely the best in the market from a hardware standpoint. I code like this. Computer can probably chug for 16 hours without hurting for a charger just running an ssh connection.
SSH and SCP are part of Windows for quite some time now.
As for tmux, I know UNIX since 1993, went through Xenix, DG/UX, Solaris, NeXTSTEP before GNU/Linux started to take off, worked across Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, OS/X before GNU/Linux really took off.
To this day I don't care tmux exists, just open a couple of terminal windows.
If you are going to mention jobs across sessions, nohup does the job.
If I wanted 16 hours for just SSH, I would have went with X-series thinkpad already back in 2015 or so when it easily reached 26 hours without suspend in my friend's testing. As a thin client it also sucks, because keyboard, never figured if they fixed grounding of the chassis, the "let's make your doctor ask if you're suicidal" hard edges near wrists, and so on.
Unix certification requires things like case sensitive file systems, which MacOS can do, but doesn't so they had to supply a special configuration for certification.
One thing Windows did right is keyboard based navigation. Most of the general public does not know or appreciate how close to productivity nirvana the alt key brings you.
Same is possible in KDE. Combined with hot corners, you can become "blazingly fast".
Once a colleague seeing me work looked at my screen, lifted his head and pointed to my colleague saying "Have you seen how this guy work, he's a maniac!".
Mastering the tool you have always brings speed and smoothness into your process, one step at a time.
Any app can has its extensive set of keyboard shortcuts, but when it comes to DE itself, it's not always the case.
Microsoft has Meta+ and Alt+ combinations dime a dozen, and it's consistent across versions. KDE has extensive programmability which allows you to design you own. Both allows you to pack so many features into a small number of keys and work across applications or in general without thinking.
A terminal? It appears. A window? You call it without thinking. Ran out of space, a new desktop is just an instinct...
I’m a Mac dude through and through but its shortcuts don’t hold a candle to windows alt shortcuts. Alt shortcuts are progressively revealed to the user and the entire UI is operable without having to memorize a series of hand cramping shortcuts.
I'm slightly aware of that, but I'm not sure how this works in real life where almost half of the "native" applications in macOS are Electron apps.
Indeed. TBH if I was running a Google- or even OpenAI-scale company (3000+ devices) I'd probably invest into creating a useful Linux distribution and hardware configuration myself (at that scale, it could maybe start to make sense).
Red Hat had most employees running a custom corporate RHEL build or Fedora on Thinkpads prior to 2018 or so, and even then most employees moved to Mac as soon as they were allowed to do so.
I was a true Linux believer, and I still switched to a Mac because I needed things to just work. Poor battery life, awful HiDPI support, strange driver issues all contributed. Yes, I could fix them. I opened bugs and could talk to the engineers responsible to get things fixed ASAP. Even so, it was a second full time job keeping up with it.
Most big tech companies let you pick Mac, Linux, or Windows. Whatever you’ll be the most productive with. Whatever you prefer. Most devs (75%?) seem to pick Macs. To each their own though.
> It seems that no other device makers are seeing the value in Apple's many-devices-acting-as-one approach. It makes for some serious vendor lock.
Xiaomi certainly does: they have billboards touting it: along the bottom they show phones, dishwashers, cars, laptops, and everything in between.
Google just announced Googlebooks, which deeply integrate with Android, even running Android apps from your phone, on your laptop. Both amd64 and arm64 architectures available.
Also don't forget calibrated screens, great speakers, long-life (you can use one for a 7-8 years without even trying), and durable keyboards which doesn't become smeared wear-fests which defaces itself within a single heavy development session.
I always run Linux (Debian primarily) on my desktops and servers with a zealot-ish dedication, but what Mac and macOS brings to the table as a portable machine is irreplaceable with anything else.
Even a top end ThinkPad with a well groomed Linux distribution can't come close, sorry.
It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which could be a death knell for the laptop, and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec. They've come far in recent years, and I certainly wouldn't be sad if it was my main machine yet I don't expect them to be an outlier forever.
In some dimension Apple (and any serious manufacturer) is always going to be ahead - and they certainly are in non-gaming portable CPU/GPU combos right now. Alas, they aren't ahead in many other dimensions; my Fedora X1 Carbon is my strong preference over my M4 macbook pro and a large part of that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.
> It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which...
Yes, their butterfly switch keyboards were really bad. I skipped that generation. I own machines from 2006, 2014 and 2020.
> and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec...
Apple unfortunately does this sometimes, but interestingly just before changing CPU architectures. I sometimes think whether it was semi-intentional. I don't blindly support them, however.
> that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.
I'm way faster in my Debian + KDE system as well, but portables are always secondary machines for me, so Mac doesn't bother me much.
Also, I like running different operating systems and paradigms at the same time, so I can learn from all of them while developing some stuff for myself and others. However, as I said multiple times over the years, macOS is the "alternative" OS for me, not the primary one. Linux has that part for the last 20+ years.
Do regular people care about these things or is this a hn thing?
I find a trackpad (even a Mac one) is absolutely infuriating to use compared to a decent mouse.
Battery life/screens/magsafe I'm plugged into a dock 99% of the time so it's irrelevant, but when forced to occasionally, the ergonomics of looking down at a single small 1x in screen is just terrible if doing it for hours and also makes my back feel horrible.
I might be weird but actively prefer the trackpad to keyboard and mouse as I can let my fingers rest on the keyboard at all times and use the thumb when needed to touch the excellent trackpad. That’s better than removing the whole hand to grab the mouse just to click something.
I agree. Trackpads also come with gesture support for things like switching between windows which I found difficult to live without. Unfortunately it's not very ergonomic to use a laptop with it's trackpad when you're using multiple screens.
My home setup has both a trackpad and mouse (and a separate keyboard). I like them both. In practice I use 65% mouse and 35% trackpad I think. Trackpad is great for horizontal (or 2d) scrolling and gestures. Mouse has better ergonomics for accurate pointing, and is more natural in some apps (eg KiCAD).
Agree unfortunately. I hate apple, for the same reasons as everyone else, but I have both a MacBook and iPhone and can’t do much about it. It’s like politics a little, you can only choose the least bad, there is no good.
I have a Linux server, and use cloud Linux machines extensively, but at least the last time I checked, Linux desktop sucks. There are always memory management issues, doing a video call makes my fan sound like a jet taking off, not sleeping, put my laptop in my bag and it gets to hot to touch - that’s just off the top of my head, I’ve tried Linux laptops on multiple occasions and they suck.
I don't think "use distribution_name" can be a universal advice, the reality of Linux is that you need to research which particular distribution supports your particular hardware well enough. Or try several distributions until you find one that has the least issues.
That, or make hardware compromises and buy a laptop that provides official Linux support, which is likely to have a more Mac/Windows-like experience of things "just working".
This actually just happened to me... How did you fix it? I just finished proving that my issue isn't my peripherals or cords so it must be the GPU
if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software
and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues, something I haven't exactly had with either Windows or Mac
like my current gaming setup from a year ago(roughly) was setup once, I had to fiddle some minor tweaks during setup and since then it "just works tm". No issues, not know how needed, nothing. (At least for the Games I play.) But also not Nvidea which has in recent years increasingly more QA issues across _all_ OSes and _all_ hardware including their supper expensive AI cards... But that is more a Nvidea then a Linux Problem, by now, was different in the past.
I've never used a computer that didn't have occasional hiccups. The Mac I have for work has lots of weird bugs. One is that if it has been using WI-FI and I plug-in my dock with an Ethernet cable attached, I lose internet access because MacOS can't gracefully handle the new interface becoming available.
I also find Apple's choice to just continually create 1G swap files until the system locks absolutely baffling.
I've been regularly plugging/unplugging my usb-c docking connected to ethernet while being on teams video call without issues on both linux and windows but ultimately it depends on the protocol. Web/https stuff is usually more forgiving thanks to sessions being maintained "externally" from the protocol itself. Copying files via sftp be a different experience I reckon because you usually use a different source ip address when you switch and need to initiate a new connection.
if it's just about connectivity then yes, that should be normal, a OS should only switch the default interface _iff_ the interface it switches to is up and ready.
Idk. about desktop Linux, but my phone does the (WLAN -> Mobile) switch just fine.
If it's about _not reconnecting_ (e.g. which for many apps might require some manual pause/resume of streamed data or similar), then things are more complex as you can't keep your IP, so it then depends on weather the application uses HTTP3/Quick or similar protocols in implementations which are designed to be able to freely roll over to different IP addresses.
> One is that if it has been using WI-FI and I plug-in my dock with an Ethernet cable attached, I lose internet access because MacOS can't gracefully handle the new interface becoming available.
By default wired connections are higher priority. I've been on Wifi with a MacBook and patched in with the Network Settings panel open and see the change, which is reflected in the output of "netstat -rn". Underneath the hood most of the macOS kernel is (Free)BSD/Unix.
I've never experienced this behavior with a Linux or Windows machine.
I'm not talking about sessions dropping. It has the symptoms of an IP conflict, absolutely no traffic can pass until I disable Wi-Fi. Any other laptop I have ever used would just switch, maybe drop an SSH session, but not this.
There's also the fact that I can never trust the clipboard to actually copy when I tell it to. Several of my co-workers have expressed the same issue, so it's not just me. Sometimes, no matter whether I use the context menu or ctrl+c, it just doesn't copy what I have highlighted and paste whatever the last thing I copied was instead.
>> > and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
is for how how to have a reliable acceptable Linux experience and
I have less issues with rare occasional hick ups then I had on Windows
and Mac in the past. But that is long ago. Through just looking at
all the AD/snooping issues, how often windows seem to have broken updates
etc. this is way nicer on Linux and seem to be still not worse on Linux
then Mac.
> > but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues
the example here with my gaming setup _doesn't_ require "have enough Linux know-how",
after the initial setup it so far just did works
The initial setup was just running a trivial install + ~2 simple to do and find through search, but should-be-unneeded initial tweaks (both Steam specific).
through I currently happen to only care about games both available on Steam and running on Linux without Linux specific manual setup/tweaks (like Silk Song, Nine Sols, Detroit Become Human (but all native 4k)). And it's all AMD and no "unusual" consumer hardware components.
> if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software
> and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
A Linux sysadmin teammate of mine has >10 years of running Linux servers, and chose to install Ubuntu on his work Dell laptop, and in the ~2 years he's been running that thing he's had regular (2-3/month) issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions. Both Bluetooth and wired headset connections.
At my last job (pre-COVID) I had a Linux workstation at my desk and a Windows laptop. At where I'm currently at we're hybrid and so we get laptops and I chose a MacBook because I knew I could both do my daily sysadmin chores through Terminal and also have access to 'business apps'.
These are web apps, they are unlikely to use anything other than what the browser/OS provide them. This is most likely due to lousy audio drivers, an issue plaguing desktop Linux since its very inception.
Interestingly, Firefox handles all three like a champ. Even uses XDG portals so I can share a single window or just audio if I want. Chrome took ages to get support, and it's still hit & miss.
Teams refuses to work on Firefox, or at least did so not so long ago (like as in it "tells you no won't try" not as in "has bugs"). Same for slack.
I think to remember that the most absurd thing was that if you tell Teams "this is chrome" (even when it's FF) it did work just fine.
> issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions
I don't know about the app but it has been a solved problem on linux using the web browser early in 2020 when people started getting sent home due to the covid and remaining bugs were quickly ironed out.
I had very few issues using Pop OS on a Dell for all sorts of corporate stuff. It wasn't perfect - the sleep behaviour was particularly terrible - but it worked well with Teams and Google Meet. I later installed Fedora and that more or less fixed the sleep issue too.
I bounced around between Windows and Linux on my personal computers for the last 20 years. Generally I'd run Linux until something died or I needed Windows, and I'd return for a bit. I've been exclusively using Linux since 2019 or so. I don't think I'm going back.
Of course it works and is beautiful hardware and all that.
But don't fool yourself. You're subverted to Apple's rules the same as Microsoft users are to Windows.
I prefer to fight a little bit on an update on a unix system on something that is not working 100% to give up choices. When you use Windows, MacOS, Android you do not have choices. Choices are dictated from above, like it or not.
As for me every time I have to interact with something that is not BSD or Linux I suffer miserably.
We are trading usability & quality for freedom & privacy. We know that, but we're all so busy that we have to make that trade. I've used linux since 2000 for servers, I've used it (and still do sometimes) for workstations, but even 2026 linux workstations & laptops aren't at where macbooks were 15 years ago.
Yes, there is a whole moral discussion to be had, but as much as you win points for doing the better thing, the better things don't really pay bills.
The good news though is that we definitely won the server war. We can spin up VMs and install Linux without licences. We have access to software that works well, security updates, frequent releases, a massive ecosystem of free software, no advertising, very little to no licensing for software, and it works incredibly well. So much so, that we can't even imagine a world in which servers require licence keys or subscriptions or a marketplace account.
Imagine now, if laptops & workstations were as solved as servers are.
That's why we aren't there yet, because they're not.
It goes beyond that if you ask me. I think anybody in this discussion knows all these things, but ultimately they fall back to “…and my decision is the correct one.”
5000 people skip over an obvious flame bait thread. 1000 people read but don’t comment at all. 7 people who feel they’ve solved the problem of which laptop is best and want to tell everyone why they should switch to Linux/Mac or why Linux/Mac sucks post obvious comments about Mac hardware and nix freedom. But “the sentiment is rampant on hn” is the take away. The sentiment that is rampant on hn is that there is a sentiment rampant on hn.
Eh, I’d say there is a larger than standard proportion of stalwart know-it-alls here. Doesn’t mean your example is wrong. But man some people have everything figured out and still find a way to complain about it all.
Isn't the only difference that people using servers are expected to have deeper knowledge? As someone using Linux both on servers and on a desktop, I see little difference.
Apple doesn't even have a tiling window manager as far as I know.
SizeUp isn't a tiling window manager as far as a youtube video showcasing it goes and neither is Rectangle. It's more like an alternative to the Windows aero snap thing.
I'm sorry but objectively macOS window management is wholly subpar compared to the options on Linux.
Rectangle is a literal hack on top that hopefully works when you need it. Rectangle is great, but Rectangle, Yabai and whatnot can only hope that the undocumented private APIs that macOS _allows_ them to use today don't mysteriously break tomorrow.
Meanwhile a Linux window manager actually does its full job unencumbered because it's a _real_ first class window manager and not a hack.
> We are trading usability & quality for freedom & privacy.
Are we? Not sure what usability and quality improvement there are in an OS where you have to fight against its vendor's decision.
Most critics against Linux I read come from people who never took the time to choose perfectly supported hardware in the first place but just buy whatever bleeding edge stuff is available running on windows, then hope it will works. It is like criticizing Apple/macOS because it doesn't work well on an hackintosh really and is completely dishonest. I don't criticize windows because it doesn't work on the latest Macbook M8 ultra studio pro nor do I criticize iOS because it doesn't work on my Samsung Note tab 6 or macOS 27 because it doesn't work on a Microsoft Surface.
I haven't had any update nor hardware support issue in the last 15 years because I have chosen hardware based on Linux support compatibility before purchasing them.
I don't even get the "quality hardware" argument. The only hardware I interact with is my high quality mechanical keyboard, trackball, and color calibrated monitor. All are vastly superior to any Apple hardware that I would interact with.
> Apple laptops are good and all the other ones are bad.
Bad or not as good?
For many people not as good can be good enough.
For instance I am mostly working from home, and will never spend more than 6 hours straight without a pause nor do I work "on the road" so I never cared about having a +11h of battery life. I understand it can be very valuable in some circonstances but it has never been a thing for me and for many people using their laptop mostly at home. I wouldn't trade having a forced siri install or the shitty keyboard that used to come with macbook a few years ago for more battery life than I actually need.
> I haven't had any update nor hardware support issue in the last 15 years because I have chosen hardware based on Linux support compatibility before purchasing them.
You're unique! Also I hear what you're saying about the vast choice of laptops available with amazing Linux compatibility
Yeah but the 1% can still accomplish whatever they want. It just may require a bit of code. No big deal if you’re in the 1%. And you get the added benefit of automatic security updates that don’t break critical system components like what happens from time to time in every Linux distro I’ve ever used over the last 20 years.
That simply isn’t true. You can disable whatever you want. You just may not be able to do it through the UI. I’ve customized my Mac to never phone home. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing. It’s even easier if you don’t, and just ask Claude code to do it.
You can’t disable “whatever you want.” As the OP explains, in macOS 27 a “Siri AI” process stays running, always, doing who knows what, even if you turn everything off via the UI and CLI. If you know of a way to disable this, please post it because I’m sure many people would be interested in it.
As another example of what you can’t disable: I don’t wish to subscribe to Apple’s paid iCloud offerings. Yet there are several places in the UI both in macOS and iOS where there are non-removable ads for the service under certain conditions. For example, when your local storage fills up. Oh and now there’s a non-removable 20GB+ Apple LLM model now taking up space on my 256GB ssd. Thanks a lot Tim/John.
Every OS is filled with showstoppers. And yes everyone is blind to their own OSs issues or quirks. You work around them and develop different workflows.
When I first tried macOS I hated it and had a long list of issues I could give. They are all still valid but it turns out they don’t actually stop you getting work done.
For people making a living on western software engineering salaries, why wouldn't (Apple) hardware be worth the price?
A lot of other crafts and jobs need way more expensive hardware. Software engineers "only" need a $1,000 - $3,000 laptop every 5 or so years. That's typically less than 0.5% of that 5 year's salary.
> why wouldn't (Apple) hardware be worth the price?
How about "not worth the cost" instead.
Not worth the cost of losing the freedom to run your own software and make your own choices.
Commodity laptops might be slower and less flashy, but if Linux goes in the wrong direction I can install FreeBSD or OpenBSD or my own vibe-coded OS or whatever.
Western society has for the last few decades surrendered principles for convenience, and the state of modern computing is a microcosm of the consequences. You're all consumers now, instead of users.
It's true - every current cockup in our custom production system comes from Apple-using developers.
All of our Linux stuff is rock solid and is what we actually use to communicate with our satellites. We will explicitly avoid Microsoft and Apple here.
This is really the only reason I have a MacOS system around. The M4 Air feels like what I imagined a laptop could be 15 years ago. No fans to block, can grab it and carry it around almost like a tablet, works great as a thin client into a more powerful system over Moonlight, it's light enough that I don't even think about carrying it around in my backpack even when I'm also carrying my work laptop, and it was cheap enough that if anything happens to it I won't be too concerned.
Compared to the last XPS I had, it's substantially better for my use case, since I'll generally be remoting into systems anyway.
I find my M2 Macbook Pro so much less pleasant to use than my x220 thinkpad (running Debian) that I only use the Macbook for CPU-bound activities to which the x220 thinkpad is unequal.
I find the Apple offering's keyboard worse to type on, its enormous touchpad is a chore to engage with compared to the venerable Trackpoint, and the operating system feels contrived to make simple things difficult.
The x220 thinkpad is 14 years old now. And has a 500 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. Perhaps in another 14 years Apple will be able to match it feature for feature.
One might well ask why I own Apple hardware at all. The answer is to buy entry into their walled garden as a developer.
Apparently it doesn't judging by the tons of articles published after every macOS update.
> just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates
And I am on a run of 11 years of update (since Fedora 25 or 26) without a single issue. Anecdotal evidences are just that. Anecdotal. Some people will have issues, others won't. Putting yourself in a situation where you have less risk of having issues like not using hardware from a company whose drivers are not maintained in the mainline kernel source tree goes a long way.
Fedora updated my Nvidia drivers 3 days ago and it broke my voice assistant. Yeah I fixed it and it can’t happen again but that sort of thing only happens on Linux (and windows probably)
I repeat: Putting yourself in a situation where you have less risk of having issues like not using hardware from a company whose drivers are not maintained in the mainline kernel source tree goes a long way.
> but that sort of thing only happens on Linux (and windows probably)
Ironically the website from the company that is supposed to make software "that just works" do not let me put their page in english and force it back to spanish ignoring my choice. Hum.
What piddly little complaints. Do you want those of us who are linux engineers as a day job to post links to every single linux desktop issue that we can find? Because we have decades of those just sitting in our heads and they far, far outweigh the number of macos issues. I wonder if I googled "broken linux window server please help i cant see anything but a terminal" how many pages I would find. Also by whatever bonjour magic I have never had a problem connecting to a printer. We're here for anecdotes right?
You might not know this since your main language is spanish, but in America for the last 20 years every single linux engineering job gave me a macbook pro to work from. Big tech, small tech. And the one that didn't, they gave us chromebooks that everybody hated, but you weren't allowed to use apple there and don't you dare complain about the chromebooks because you knew they weren't going anywhere.
Me and my peers who don't live the richard stallman life expect a macbook pro as our work tool and wouldn't take a job somewhere that throws us a $1500 thinkpad or system76 or whatever to do our day jobs. We can have those at home.
> You might not know this since your main language is spanish, but in America for the last 20 years every single linux engineering job gave me a macbook pro to work from. Big tech, small tech. And the one that didn't, they gave us chromebooks that everybody hated.
My main language is not spanish either, and for the record spanish is used officially by 14% of the US population (and is estimated by 18% by other sources) so you are taking a lot of shortcuts to decide where I am and what I talk.
> Me and my peers who don't live the richard stallman life expect a macbook pro and wouldn't take a job somewhere that throws us a $1500 thinkpad or system76 or whatever to do our day jobs. We can have those at home.
FWIW at the only job I got from a US tech company, we were given Dell laptops on which many dev installed linux. Company before that proposed Macs but many preferred linux running thinkpad due to the crappy experience at the time running docker on thermal throttling x86 macbooks.
So I smell a lot of uncalled for arrogance from your part.
Thinkpads are better than Dells and me saying Dell was just being used for ANY generic laptop and doesn't change the point of my post at all.
Did you have anything relevant to add beyond crying about me assuming you might not be working out of America since you not only don't use Apples for engineering work, but also speak Spanish as a main?
As someone who's first language is Spanish, that was completely unnecessary. You may ot know but in America Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language, with almost 20% of the population speaking it.
So in a US centric forum, most likely you'll find bilingual people that live in the US.
My point was that they may not be in America since they likely aren't aware that most of us in my field use MBPs and they specifically pointed out that they also main Spanish, but you can take it offensively for them, I don't care.
Why even mention it if they're in Amerca? We're talking about work laptops. Do you often find Americans randomly pointing out that they speak spanish in tech conversations for no reason at all?
Obviously it was a big point to their post.
edit: Oh look, he replied, and he's had one US tech job. Context clues are cool! I'm like a human LLM.
That's just not true. I updated MacOS on my work machine and Emacs stopped being able to read the filesystem. Any system breaks stuff on upgrade when that stuff isn't in the core testing path for the folks crafting the upgrade.
> Also the OS mostly “just works”, just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates
I pulled the same update, and it was annoying but it came nowhere near bricking itself. The integrated graphics worked, it just disabled the Nvidia open-source driver for the GPU. Simply (re)installing it fixed it. Notably, just asking ChatGPT for the solution worked (after pasting the output of a few commands).
You have an interesting definition of "bricked"
That's defined as "the device has become a brick, cannot be recovered". It was mostly popularized by broken firmware updates which effectively destroyed the device, as it could no longer be salvaged.
You calling a borked package install in userspace almost bricked is telling about your technical capability.
And I agree that people that are basically technologically illiterate should not use Linux.
They could if someone administers it for them, but if nobody can help them - it's just not the right choice.
Why? That term will also change due to common usage over time
We lost the battle over “literally “ a decade ago and I’m not going to spend my time fighting a bunch of people who would rather scroll through 5 second videos all day than pick up a book.
Sure, but probably only because they can call you if something happens.
It's fine most of the time, so it's not a big deal... But if you're unwilling and they're technologically illiterate: they will not be able to recover. Apple has the genius help desk which will sort them out, with Linux... You're gonna have to find "someone", "somewhere".
Can be done for sure, however once again: I would not recommend
> Sure, but probably only because they can call you if something happens.
I had my parents on Linux for a hot second, and got tired of them calling me for help. So I switched them to Mac, and then I discovered they still call for help. At least with Linux I knew the system well.
Just my 0.02, but Linux is a smarter choice today than it ever was, because AI is extremely good at fixing things. I can fix most anything on my machines, but I still use AI, because it does it while I'm doing other stuff.
Mmh, reading your comment leaves me a little divided inside.
Are you unaware that they likely want to talk with you, and the technological issues are likely just the vehicle for this?
I suggest you just help them and try to savor the time you have with them. The time is likely a lot shorter then you expect. But of course, just a random bystanders perspective
> Are you unaware that they likely want to talk with you, and the technological issues are likely just the vehicle for this?
Not the person you're responding to, but: They may want to learn to communicate honestly. I would find the situation described deeply irritating. Enough to cut contact for a while, even.
Like many other slang terms, the word "bricked" has been diluted to mean "moderately messed up." It's just how language changes over time.
For the vast majority of people, without much technical capability, “moderately messed up” is functionally equivalent to “bricked” as a purely technical slang term.
Yeah, but with Apple they can get help from the genius desk at the Apple store.
For both windows and Linux you'll have to find someone thats willing to help you, essentially. Usually a lot harder for those people. Especially with Linux ime, as even fewer places know enough to help you, even if they may be able to handle windows
I believe there is a whole market dedicated to give assistance to windows.
To use Linux on the desktop you first have to know about it for a start, so you are unlikely to end up with a linux OS without knowing anyone using it or an association/usergroup promoting it.
In vast parts of America, the "local PC shop" doesn't exist. It's BestBuy's GeekSquad (of dubious quality) or Apple's Genius Bar. There might be a repair shop somewhere, but most of the time, they just repair cracked screens.
Can these 'technologically illiterate' use Windows?
I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to get Windows to work (hard crash at random times) when it ran flawlessly on Ubuntu.
The issue appears to have arisen because Windows decided to update my graphics drivers, so making them (for reasons AMD perhaps need to sort out) incompatible with Adrenaline. A million reboots later, using arcane programs to clear out hidden installs, hidden config, and trying to get details from a system that will readily tell you it recovered but gets shy about what caused it to crash .. eesh.
My experience is you need far more expertise to run Windows. Maybe if MS tested they're releases so it didn't break itself all the time ...
Your argument is that Linux has better GPU driver support than Windows? Might want to do a bit of research on that one. You don’t remember Linux flipping Nvidia the bird?
Edit: I also experienced the Nvidia driver update that broke a bunch of things on my (Fedora) server last week.
I think you might be betraying your own technical literacy gaps with that comment. In many Linux distros, your package manager can update your kernel and boot loader, from userspace. Yes plenty of safeguards exist to try to prevent really bad things from happening. Furthermore, brick has become slang for “doesn’t work”. I dislike the linguistic shift just as much as you but we can give the benefit of the doubt that the point is that everyday Linux uses still encounter massive problems like this with higher than normal frequency.
Which is the whole point, no? There would be more Linux everywhere if it didn’t occasionally break in ways that require special expertise to fix.
> i think you might be betraying your own technical literacy gaps with that comment. In many Linux distros, your package manager can update your kernel and boot loader, from userspace.
You think wrong.
I maintain multiple Linux system on the side an know about it well enough.
The Nvidia drivers however are not bios/uefi in case you didn't know. That's what firmware is.
Those can still be flashed from a root Linux booted into a graphical interface, but nonetheless were not the topic of discussion.
Aside from that - a borked kernel can still be easily recovered for most nowadays, as they usually keep the old versions around with a simple picker after an unsuccessful boot.
Still, I'm unable to grasp the point youre making in relation to what I said. I thought I was very explicitly recommending against people without any technological capability to use Linux... You seem to agree?
My impression of you is not something that can be right or wrong.
This thread spawned off of a discussion about how people still use Apple because though Linux may be easier than it's ever been it's still hard for anybody to run a Linux desktop system without occasional downtime and repair when something breaks. That was the point of the comment you responded to.
You responded to
"and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt"
with
"well um axually you don't know what bricked means and that's probably a sign that you're too dumb to use linux. people who are too dumb to use linux shouldn't use it".
I felt like your response wasn't fair. So I replied. But to be crystal clear:
1. they did fix their problem, but it was not a fun time for them. I can empathize 1000% with that. Sometimes I just want to do something and Linux (and everything I sign up for when deploying it) itself gets in the way. When an apt update causes a boot failure, it's annoying and it gets in the way.
2. "bricked" has evolved colloquially. never mind that the author used the term "almost bricked" to indicated they knew it wasn't hard bricked but intended to communicated that it also wasn't functional. there's a way for you to add commentary about the definition of bricked without attacking the person's technical aptitude
All in all, you, me, and the comment you initially replied to are saying the same thing: to operate linux you need to have a level of tolerance to deal with the occasional issues that come with it. And for many people that's not the right balance. Even many technical people choose more stable and predictable daily drivers. Everything else you introduced to the discussion detracted from that point. That's why I commented.
The internet has redefined "bricked" as meaning something stopped working but is still fixable, because they loved the word "bricked" and didn't give a shit that it had a meaning already.
> Because Mac laptops are lightyears ahead of [hardware that runs Linux]
There was a discussion on this forum just a few days ago wondering why Apple is so hostile to open source support on its devices. And consensus here was that, no, it clearly wasn't due to competetive pressure.
But clearly it is. Because to many consumers, if you have to run MacOS to get an M6, you'll run MacOS instead of Linux. And that makes enshittifying MacOS as a revenue center very tempting.
> Also the OS mostly “just works”
Article is literally about the OS not working as desired, though.
> Because Mac laptops are lightyears ahead of any other hardware.
> Build quality (aluminum)
This is such an ignorant take. Every other laptop has an Aluminum shell. Dell, HP, you name it. My Sony Vaio came with a metallic shell in the early 2000s. As a Macbook owner, I am still extremely worried about coffee spilling on my keyboard. A problem that was solved decades ago by every other manufacturer but not Apple. My touchID randomly stopped working in under 2 years of owning my laptop too and the hardware needs replacement of the entire logic board. So, tell me again, where is this "build quality" that you speak of?
That's the problem with these things. Personal preference plays a huge role. And these discussions bring so many people setting their preferences as THE TRUTH.
we should strive and push to keep having these a alternatives. Which the industry is trying to remove.
I find the "Just Works" part of MacOS to be disingenuous. I use old hardware. You could call me a pack rat but I dislike getting rid of old, working technology. Unless you're on the bleeding edge of Apple technology. MacOS in particular doesn't "just work" anymore. In fact it's downright hostile to doing mundane things.
I have an old Macbook Air that's no longer supported by the latest MacOS. Trying to do anything on it is like pulling teeth. The simple act of running a modernish web browser is a horrible experience of "This App is no longer supported".
On Windows a laptop from the mid 2000's is still entirely usable albeit a bit slow. Not so with MacOS. You 100% cannot run a single piece of modern software. You have to dig around for forks that specifically support older versions of MacOS and if you want to run a browser with Plugins, good eff'n luck! Now you're trying to find a fork of Chromium that supports Adblock, but also have to find and old version of Adblock which isn't hip to all the new invasive ad technology.
Every time one of these threads comes up, the replies have the form “you’re not doing x right, or Linux would be fine.”
X is usually “pick hardware with good support in ToT kernel” or “use distribution Y” (where Y is somehow different in every post) or “do you really need feature Z that’s better on Mac? You’re making the wrong trade.”
To each their own but I’d rather not deal with XYZ and just get the thing that works.
p.s. I do hope they put a toggle back for Siri and their on device AI stuff
> To each their own but I’d rather not deal with XYZ and just get the thing that works.
Yes, but the point of the linked article is that this preference inevitably results in your device spying on you. To each their own indeed.
Edit: and of course I see your P.S. note. But that isn't really responsive. Most Linux users would point out (P.S.) that they'd like their hardware to be faster and lower power or their OS to be a little cleaner. But alas, you can't have everything.
I rent a Linux GPU server for AI projects and the NVIDIA driver has broken four times without me doing anything to break it. Nothing like that happens on my Mac. I've run Linux for projects for well over a decade, so not a n00b issue.
And soldered RAM and SSD, even battery replacement that with other computer is simple is a difficult task. Only USB-C ports, so you have always to carry a stupid adapter for normal things like connecting a USB stick or a network cable. ARM architecture so old software needs emulation to run, emulation that makes computer performance horrible.
Sure, Linux laptops are not "pretty", but I don't need a computer to be pretty, in fact I hope that someone starts to produce again laptops identical to old IBM thinkpads (not the insult to the brand that Lenovo is building) but with modern hardware, a computer that had every port you need on it, no adapter required, that you could have it fall from a ladder and not break, with removable battery, hard drive, with the trackpoint instead of those stupid trackpads, I want it even with a DVD burner fuck it. I don't care it to be small, I care it to be functional.
I don’t care about soldered SSD and RAM - just like nearly all other customers. It sucks yes, but I would rather have that then the hot, slow, short battery thinkpad (with a shitty display) that is my Linux box. Especially for the past few years where the m-series chips were dirt cheap.
A large portion of the HN crowd woefully underrates this aspect of macOS. The types who would get pleasure tweaking their OS and understanding it intimately are overrepresented here, though props to them.
I don't care what people say; macOS is the only OS I've ever used that has never booted to a black/blue screen with relatively cryptic error after performing an upgrade. Not once ever. Windows today is of course abusive to users and shouldn't be used, and as much as I absolutely love Linux as a server OS and for VM appliances, I get no joy whatsoever trying to figure out why the DE stopped working after letting the OS update itself or debugging subpar rendering from the Wayland compositor or X11. (Linux people still tell me this isn't a problem in 2026 but, guess what, my Ubuntu VM hit a black screen a couple days ago after upgrading with no other changes made to the installation, so they're wrong) That and so much graphical Linux software is written with the attitude of "I'm a freak who thinks context menus shouldn't exist so fuck the user and fuck anyone who tells me I'm wrong", yet so many DEs integrate these apps anyway.
The worst thing that macOS has ever overtly done to me is slightly change the look of its interface over the years, which is incredibly minor compared to all the changes that Windows, Ubuntu, Gnome, and KDE have gone through in the last decade. Does it pull lame crap like phone home? Probably, but these days I assume that just about all software thinks it knows better than I and constantly pings cloud servers. MacOS is not really unique in this regard. I will switch to my own Linux if Apple goes down the road of "use our AI or else", but for now I don't really see the venom towards macOS to be justified when it's incredibly easy to prove that the alternatives are usually very poor.
Oh yeah, and the hardware is excellent. (except for the keyboards which need TPU dam covering them or else dust kills them after a couple years)
> I don't care what people say; macOS is the only OS I've ever used that has never booted to a black/blue screen with relatively cryptic error after performing an upgrade.
This happened to me once with a Mac upgrade!
And it’s still fewer times than something has happened to one of my Linux machines, by an order of magnitude.
There are little annoyances with Macs and occasional frustrating problems, but after using them side by side with other operating systems for years it’s what I choose for the daily driver.
Most complaints come from people who have become familiar with one OS for a decade and then get angry when they use something else and it’s not the same as their familiar thing. There isn’t much value in those comparisons.
It's things like this that make me imagine what kind of Linux desktop we could have if one of them had the kind of budget that goes towards Windows and macOS. The kernel itself is great and tons of money is effectively invested towards it and its ecosystem. In my humble opinion, it's the Linux DEs that sometimes get really close to being as equally awesome but never quite get there. MacOS is by no means what I consider a perfect OS, but it's reliable enough that I haven't had to think to myself "what if my computer stops working tomorrow because reasons." I know it happens to people, but it seems relatively rare in contrast to the alternatives. The one big exception might be the removal of Rosetta, but developers and consumers have had an abundance of time to migrate to Apple Silicon. In general, macOS respects me enough such that it isn't constantly trying to make me adapt to new ideas. You know something? I hate that I'm practically kissing the rear end of a gigantic corporation that does other things that are anti-consumer and anti-developer. I don't worship Apple. I think GrapheneOS is better than iOS. But I appreciate that their desktop OS causes me the least number of frustrations. And speaking of GrapheneOS, it essentially benefits from Google's budget towards AOSP, and Linux DEs don't have this advantage. Imagine if they did and we had a Linux DE that was as solid as GrapheneOS, and without the BS that comes with Android.
It's been ages since I've looked at System 76. They have quite an impressive lineup of products now! I'll definitely be checking them out the next time I want a personal computing device that's not tied to Microslop or Apple.
> macOS is the only OS I've ever used that has never booted to a black/blue screen with relatively cryptic error after performing an upgrade. Not once ever.
Happened to me years ago. No biggie, installed a backup and noticed I had somehow removed the most important directory with all my work files from the the time machine back up. Hardly Apple’s fault, though, but I got complacent with ”it just works”.
Since then I come to conclusion that the saying should go: ”It works - until it doesn’t”. If it os not the OS, it is myself who messes something up.
These days I almost solely use Linux. I have M1 Mini as a media centre connected to TV and I have to use Windows crap at work. Opening my Linux seems like a hig from an old friend in comparison. I might need to read docs and fight with drivers every now and then, but fuck it, I don’t care. Because this one is mine.
It's funny because I wrote my comment this morning and then an hour later my manager told me unprompted about how his work Macbook updated over the weekend and got stuck in a boot loop! I have a feeling the blame might actually be on some IT department configuration going haywire, but it could be Apple's fault for all I know. That was an amusing coincidence.
And yeah, "It works – until it doesn't" is probably the most accurate statement that can be made about all technology. My original comment also can make it seem like I'm taking a dump on Linux, but my gripe is more about Linux desktop environments. Linux absolutely can be a really stable OS, but I've only been able to truly reach that for myself by compiling my own kernel and composing my own desktop environment from barely-related packages. This is where I totally relate to your sense of "fuck it, I don't care because it's mine." Maybe someday I'll end up completely switching to my own Linux OS.
Ya wayland v x11. I ended up having to sideload xcfe+x11 just to do 1) video streaming work 2) kicad
one was a permissions/capability issue, but the other was straight up performance. As someone said above, an AI agent drilled down on both workstreams immediately, so the pivot wasnt too rough
Yeah I hate the term "sideload", but I'm guessing they meant it in the sense that they installed a separate DE within a distro designed around its original DE. Ideally, the DE that ships with a distro should be able to solve problems like video streaming and KiCAD with relative ease in the year 2026. Although I'd be curious as to why exactly that person decided they needed to change their setup in that way, I also can't say I'm entirely surprised that they would end up needing to do something like that.
The idea of a distro being "designed" around a particular DE has always annoyed me too. I'd hear people saying they wanted to try KDE so they wiped Ubuntu and installed Kubuntu instead and it's like, buddy you could have just... installed KDE. I know some specialized distros are really all about shipping a nicely-configured setup for their specific DE, but your old standbys like Debian, Redhat, Arch, Slackware, these are all infinitely flexible.
The idea, I think, is to provide a sense of GUI unity that Windows and Mac mostly provide. While it's nice in principle, the reality is you're going to install other software and it's often going to use GUI libraries that are not going to perfectly match or match at all with your Linux DE. Personally, I've never found the need for a system to be designed so heavily around a DE. Like you said, it's entirely feasible and relatively straight forward to download Debian or whatever distribution and install a DE and chances are it will work ask expected. Well, until you perform an update/upgrade and boot to a black screen, but that's a different story. Once you've got your kernel and init system of choice, you can pretty much do anything you want. A premade DE is hardly even needed if you have a modest familiarity with how Linux works. The only downside is the added work from setting it up and debugging it, but people who use Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, MATE, LXDE, and so forth, end up doing that anyway eventually.
They’re not light years ahead anymore, this is an old assumption.
There are some incredibly good PC laptops out there with the same kinds of features of MacBook Pros and more: long battery life, haptic trackpad, aluminum CNC build, long sleep battery life, etc. Check out Intel core series 3.
They never were light years ahead. Apple fans have always drastically overstated how good their hardware is. It's good, yes, but it's not nearly as good as their fans claim. And it never has been.
I think there have been times where it has been legitimately far ahead, but those windows of time have been relatively brief. There have been time windows during the PowerPC and Intel eras where Apple’s systems have not offered an incredibly good value and/or have been plagued with design issues.
G4 versus Intel, Touch Bar, Nvidia graphics long term reliability issues, then after that Apple used inferior AMD discrete GPUs for years until Apple Silicon, prematurely removing HDMI and SD ports then putting them back, and now they make the only laptop on the market with a giant notch in the middle.
Yes, the M1 MacBook Air was amazing, but it’s 6 years later now and that chip is not really far ahead.
A lot of the claims of a superior software experience are overblown. Just because Apple has a short list of more refined elements doesn’t mean that someone deciding to use Windows or Linux is getting some kind of drastically horrendous experience.
Even a lot of “big apple advantages” like haptic trackpads were never really that big of an advantage. We see this now with the embrace of the MacBook Neo: all of a sudden the haptic trackpad wasn’t such a big deal because Apple got rid of it. (And, by the way, the Neo is a horrendous value compared to HP Omnibook options in the same price range, and it has poor battery life)
You’re right, even me giving them the opinion that they were light years ahead for a sustained period of time is generous.
At time of the introduction of Apple Silicon, MacBooks were an incredible value.
But for most of the rest of history, not so much.
They’ve been praised for being refined and having a wonderful trackpad but with the aura and marketing around Apple (including incredibly adept narrative steering surrounding “independent” tech journalists), a lot of those benefits have been overblown.
Of course we have many eras of Apple where they weren’t particularly compelling.
We had the era where Intel was wiping the floor with the G4.
We had the era where Nvidia dGPUs in Apple machines were dying left and right.
We had the Touch Bar butterfly keyboard era.
We had the post-Nvidia era where Apple was shipping incredibly inferior AMD graphics solutions in their laptops. They just wouldn’t buy the superior Nvidia products over childish corporate feuding.
We had the premature removal of the HDMI and SD card ports that had to be reversed.
We have the current era of the embarrassingly large notch.
The YouTubers and TikTokers who hold expertise in content creation and hanging out in Final Cut Pro all day tell their followers that there’s nothing better than a Mac, with almost no knowledge of the incredibly vast breadth of alternatives out there. In the present era, the PC industry seemingly has very little issue keeping up with Apple.
The MacBook Neo has quickly turned into a pretty bad value after rushing out the gate looking like an incredible deal, but both HP and Dell have put forth alternatives that are a better bang for buck with better battery life as a bonus.
We have two alternatives with Intel Core Series 3 and Qualcomm Snapdragon that will match or beat Apple on battery life and performance depending on workload, we have companies like Lenovo and even tiny companies like Framework who have no problem giving us haptic trackpads and CNC machined aluminum chassis, and then we see innovation you’d never dream of from Apple like dual screen laptops with the Zenbook Duo or
I used a macbook for work and the thing would constantly throw me popups, changing any setting was a nightmare, installing software required either a subscription or adding an aftermarket package manager, and the browser would inexplicably leave a frozen, uninteractable duplicate browser window anytime I fullscreened a google meet, which would persist regardless of trying to kill the process and sometimes even helpfully came back after a reboot (though rebooting did generally work)
This "just works" thing is propaganda. Computers never ever do that
Tbh I don't think my MacBook air m2 is better than my Asus Vivobook (arm64). They're different (Vivobook is bigger) - but I'd say the OLED screen is much better than the M2 screen.
The apple touchpad is better - but all touchpads suck. Still miss old school IBM ThinkPad stick.
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Build quality (aluminum), charging (magsafe), screen resolution, battery life, noise (or lack thereof), trackpad…
It’s like other vendors aren’t even trying.
Also the OS mostly “just works”, just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates
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The peak was my high school Gateway laptop.
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It's annoyingly non-deterministic.
I've never had a laptop mouse button ever break down on me.
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Anyway, I was sure something was up, checked settings, and found a new feature akin to 'more accurate mouse'. I disabled it and my trackpad started working again. Everytime I have to use that PC I get angry about something unbearable windows thought was a good idea. Tbh my Linux has been driving me up the walls recently. I think I just don't like computers at all.
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I find the Mac better for scrolling, clicking, gestures and zooming. It’s rejection of eg palm input and the size of the touch pad are great.
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Gesture is more an OS functionnality but I am not sure how a trackpad can be better or worse for scrolling or clicking. You slide 2 fingers, it scrolls right? you click (or rather tap these days), it clicks? right? Can a trackpad click "less" or even "scroll less"?
OK maybe some handle better wet fingers, that is maybe the weak point of my current trackpad.
lostlogin · · focus · HN ↗
I laughed. I have a work HP machine. The click is only available on the bottom half or third of the trackpad, with no visual indication of the area. It takes a strong push. It’s bad. The scroll is shiite too.
When you get one that doesn’t work right, you really miss a good one.
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The old Mac trackpads were great. The new Mac trackpads where they increased the size, and made it solid-state feel terrible to use. Make it make sense.
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My guess? Most people don't care, but the discussions are driven by the few who do, because for them, it's a really big deal, and they'll pay accordingly. Similarly for "My code is unreadable unless it's on a 4k display at 220+ PPI" -- I'm sure it's true for them, but for me, a crappy FHD display I can get for $100 is great for coding.
I'm like this with Linux...I pay System76 a premium because I care about how they go about building their systems, both hardware and software. To normal folks, it seems like a crazy thing to pay a premium for, but for me, it's a great deal.
prodigycorp · · focus · HN ↗
egeozcan · · focus · HN ↗
glimshe · · focus · HN ↗
If you look at MacOS with a critical eye, it's nearly impossible to say it has good UX. It's outdated and everything requires more clicks. Finder stuck 20 years ago. Hard to find settings. Poor screen real estate. Hard to read text with transparent everything.
Let's kill this myth that "Macs are more intuitive to use".
egeozcan · · focus · HN ↗
To be fair, the whole thread is about tolerating Apple because how good the hardware is :)
SirFatty · · focus · HN ↗
Sounds like you are talking about software also.
matt_kantor · · focus · HN ↗
egeozcan · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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boxed · · focus · HN ↗
realusername · · focus · HN ↗
I have to agree on the hardware quality though but that doesn't do everything as I still have to use the OS
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
realusername · · focus · HN ↗
In comparison, both MacOS and Windows look more amateur with some leftovers not translated. (Like "Windows Update" on Windows for example)
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
realusername · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
vitro · · focus · HN ↗
My both parents use linux and are happy with it. If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
If thats all you do you might as well just use macos. Something comes up you can just send your parents to the apple store. Probably one of the last places on earth you can get a real life human in a real life building from a real life major company to sit down with you and walk you through your issue. They will do this for free, you only pay for an actual repair job, which you can also of course do there for a relatively fair price all things considered for oem quality work. Not sure where I would take any other laptop for repair. Do people even repair laptops as a business?
vitro · · focus · HN ↗
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
poincareball · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
Running an AMD card on my Dekstop system. It's invisible as an Intel on-board graphics card, and this is a great thing.
Much greater than rebooting to a black screen because NVIDIA decided to not support your GPU anymore because it finished its economic life for the company, not you.
piskov · · focus · HN ↗
For example this dell is superb, has tandem oled with 200% scaling and runs linux (dhh runs this on onarchy)
<a href="https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/laptop-computers/spd/xps14da14260" rel="nofollow">https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/laptop-computers/spd/xps14da...
egeozcan · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not exaggerating, I had so many horrible experiences.
Zanfa · · focus · HN ↗
I've probably heard "this time is different" on the topic of PC laptops catching up to Macs a hundred times over the last decade, but it never is...
It's hard to rebuild trust after selling a computer (without a CD drive) without networking drivers and no indication of which wireless chipset it has, but including a CD with said drivers.
piskov · · focus · HN ↗
ho_schi · · focus · HN ↗
The good ThinkPads with Magnesium feel much better (both for hand and lap) and are lighter. And the expensive and complicated build allows maintenance (replacing a keyboard is a bless on the X13). Lenovo is just stupid and also allows to purchase low quality screens, low quality frames and even a Windows. A thing that Apple never allows, you cannot purchase a bad configuration.
The MBAs at Apple figured out much earlier, that a rigid metal frame is cheap and gives the impression of quality.
Aside from that?
Customers are guilty, wanting a shiny and quick solution. And governments and companies by following ultra rigid and outright stupid purchasing guide (ISO craziness and “we can drop Windows, we invested another 300.000 in a Windows only Application).
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
I haven't abused this m series mac as much. But my old original aluminum unibody from 2012, that thing lasted about 12 years until water damage took it out. It fell to the floor on every corner multiple times. None are perfectly round anymore due to the force of the impacts. Never shattered the screen or affected anything with the computer.
I have a friend who ran over his with his f150. That did end up putting some cracks into the screen, but it still worked and he still used it in that state for a couple years at least.
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
Previously either VMware Workstation or Virtual Box.
Also I am not speaking from a position of no experience, as some projects require being assigned Mac Books, that I gladly return after delivery.
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
p_l · · focus · HN ↗
It's just that mishmash of OSFMK (with BSD APIs of 1991 or so) with random additions of newer APIs does not necessarily make it a great Unix to work with in 2026
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
p_l · · focus · HN ↗
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
As for tmux, I know UNIX since 1993, went through Xenix, DG/UX, Solaris, NeXTSTEP before GNU/Linux started to take off, worked across Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, OS/X before GNU/Linux really took off.
To this day I don't care tmux exists, just open a couple of terminal windows.
If you are going to mention jobs across sessions, nohup does the job.
p_l · · focus · HN ↗
happymellon · · focus · HN ↗
So no. The MacOS you use is not Unix.
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
They buy macOS and then complain macOS isn't Linux, duh!
prodigycorp · · focus · HN ↗
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
Once a colleague seeing me work looked at my screen, lifted his head and pointed to my colleague saying "Have you seen how this guy work, he's a maniac!".
Mastering the tool you have always brings speed and smoothness into your process, one step at a time.
Geezus_42 · · focus · HN ↗
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
Microsoft has Meta+ and Alt+ combinations dime a dozen, and it's consistent across versions. KDE has extensive programmability which allows you to design you own. Both allows you to pack so many features into a small number of keys and work across applications or in general without thinking.
A terminal? It appears. A window? You call it without thinking. Ran out of space, a new desktop is just an instinct...
spockz · · focus · HN ↗
prodigycorp · · focus · HN ↗
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
BoxwoodSeed · · focus · HN ↗
whh · · focus · HN ↗
It seems that no other device makers are seeing the value in Apple's many-devices-acting-as-one approach. It makes for some serious vendor lock.
tomp · · focus · HN ↗
rolisz · · focus · HN ↗
quietsegfault · · focus · HN ↗
I was a true Linux believer, and I still switched to a Mac because I needed things to just work. Poor battery life, awful HiDPI support, strange driver issues all contributed. Yes, I could fix them. I opened bugs and could talk to the engineers responsible to get things fixed ASAP. Even so, it was a second full time job keeping up with it.
QuiEgo · · focus · HN ↗
robotresearcher · · focus · HN ↗
gumby · · focus · HN ↗
Xiaomi certainly does: they have billboards touting it: along the bottom they show phones, dishwashers, cars, laptops, and everything in between.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://9to5google.com/2026/09/21/googlebook-launch/" rel="nofollow">https://9to5google.com/2026/09/21/googlebook-launch/
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
I always run Linux (Debian primarily) on my desktops and servers with a zealot-ish dedication, but what Mac and macOS brings to the table as a portable machine is irreplaceable with anything else.
Even a top end ThinkPad with a well groomed Linux distribution can't come close, sorry.
Normal_gaussian · · focus · HN ↗
> and durable keyboards
It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which could be a death knell for the laptop, and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec. They've come far in recent years, and I certainly wouldn't be sad if it was my main machine yet I don't expect them to be an outlier forever.
In some dimension Apple (and any serious manufacturer) is always going to be ahead - and they certainly are in non-gaming portable CPU/GPU combos right now. Alas, they aren't ahead in many other dimensions; my Fedora X1 Carbon is my strong preference over my M4 macbook pro and a large part of that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, their butterfly switch keyboards were really bad. I skipped that generation. I own machines from 2006, 2014 and 2020.
> and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec...
Apple unfortunately does this sometimes, but interestingly just before changing CPU architectures. I sometimes think whether it was semi-intentional. I don't blindly support them, however.
> that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.
I'm way faster in my Debian + KDE system as well, but portables are always secondary machines for me, so Mac doesn't bother me much.
Also, I like running different operating systems and paradigms at the same time, so I can learn from all of them while developing some stuff for myself and others. However, as I said multiple times over the years, macOS is the "alternative" OS for me, not the primary one. Linux has that part for the last 20+ years.
tonyedgecombe · · focus · HN ↗
fizzynut · · focus · HN ↗
I find a trackpad (even a Mac one) is absolutely infuriating to use compared to a decent mouse.
Battery life/screens/magsafe I'm plugged into a dock 99% of the time so it's irrelevant, but when forced to occasionally, the ergonomics of looking down at a single small 1x in screen is just terrible if doing it for hours and also makes my back feel horrible.
irpap · · focus · HN ↗
ta8903 · · focus · HN ↗
andruby · · focus · HN ↗
andy99 · · focus · HN ↗
I have a Linux server, and use cloud Linux machines extensively, but at least the last time I checked, Linux desktop sucks. There are always memory management issues, doing a video call makes my fan sound like a jet taking off, not sleeping, put my laptop in my bag and it gets to hot to touch - that’s just off the top of my head, I’ve tried Linux laptops on multiple occasions and they suck.
BoxwoodSeed · · focus · HN ↗
Anonyneko · · focus · HN ↗
That, or make hardware compromises and buy a laptop that provides official Linux support, which is likely to have a more Mac/Windows-like experience of things "just working".
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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coderedart · · focus · HN ↗
eks391 · · focus · HN ↗
dathinab · · focus · HN ↗
if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software
and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues, something I haven't exactly had with either Windows or Mac
like my current gaming setup from a year ago(roughly) was setup once, I had to fiddle some minor tweaks during setup and since then it "just works tm". No issues, not know how needed, nothing. (At least for the Games I play.) But also not Nvidea which has in recent years increasingly more QA issues across _all_ OSes and _all_ hardware including their supper expensive AI cards... But that is more a Nvidea then a Linux Problem, by now, was different in the past.
terminalbraid · · focus · HN ↗
> but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues
These are defining qualities of something that does not "just work"
jeltz · · focus · HN ↗
Geezus_42 · · focus · HN ↗
I also find Apple's choice to just continually create 1G swap files until the system locks absolutely baffling.
kavok · · focus · HN ↗
Krutonium · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
I've been regularly plugging/unplugging my usb-c docking connected to ethernet while being on teams video call without issues on both linux and windows but ultimately it depends on the protocol. Web/https stuff is usually more forgiving thanks to sessions being maintained "externally" from the protocol itself. Copying files via sftp be a different experience I reckon because you usually use a different source ip address when you switch and need to initiate a new connection.
dathinab · · focus · HN ↗
Idk. about desktop Linux, but my phone does the (WLAN -> Mobile) switch just fine.
If it's about _not reconnecting_ (e.g. which for many apps might require some manual pause/resume of streamed data or similar), then things are more complex as you can't keep your IP, so it then depends on weather the application uses HTTP3/Quick or similar protocols in implementations which are designed to be able to freely roll over to different IP addresses.
So both yes and no :)
Geezus_42 · · focus · HN ↗
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
macOS has a 'service (priority) order':
* <a href="https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/05/service-please-manage-multiple-mac-network-interfaces-priority/" rel="nofollow">https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/05/service-please-manage-mul...
It's no different that having multiple default gateways in Linux (with different metric/priorities):
* <a href="https://superuser.com/questions/1600190/change-order-of-routing-table-move-entry-up-or-down-in-linux" rel="nofollow">https://superuser.com/questions/1600190/change-order-of-rout...
By default wired connections are higher priority. I've been on Wifi with a MacBook and patched in with the Network Settings panel open and see the change, which is reflected in the output of "netstat -rn". Underneath the hood most of the macOS kernel is (Free)BSD/Unix.
Geezus_42 · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not talking about sessions dropping. It has the symptoms of an IP conflict, absolutely no traffic can pass until I disable Wi-Fi. Any other laptop I have ever used would just switch, maybe drop an SSH session, but not this.
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
Geezus_42 · · focus · HN ↗
dathinab · · focus · HN ↗
>> > and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
is for how how to have a reliable acceptable Linux experience and I have less issues with rare occasional hick ups then I had on Windows and Mac in the past. But that is long ago. Through just looking at all the AD/snooping issues, how often windows seem to have broken updates etc. this is way nicer on Linux and seem to be still not worse on Linux then Mac.
> > but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues
the example here with my gaming setup _doesn't_ require "have enough Linux know-how",
after the initial setup it so far just did works
The initial setup was just running a trivial install + ~2 simple to do and find through search, but should-be-unneeded initial tweaks (both Steam specific).
through I currently happen to only care about games both available on Steam and running on Linux without Linux specific manual setup/tweaks (like Silk Song, Nine Sols, Detroit Become Human (but all native 4k)). And it's all AMD and no "unusual" consumer hardware components.
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
> and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up
A Linux sysadmin teammate of mine has >10 years of running Linux servers, and chose to install Ubuntu on his work Dell laptop, and in the ~2 years he's been running that thing he's had regular (2-3/month) issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions. Both Bluetooth and wired headset connections.
At my last job (pre-COVID) I had a Linux workstation at my desk and a Windows laptop. At where I'm currently at we're hybrid and so we get laptops and I chose a MacBook because I knew I could both do my daily sysadmin chores through Terminal and also have access to 'business apps'.
fsflover · · focus · HN ↗
Could it be due to a poor support of Linux by these proprietary apps? Possibly even intentional.
Anonyneko · · focus · HN ↗
tadfisher · · focus · HN ↗
dathinab · · focus · HN ↗
I think to remember that the most absurd thing was that if you tell Teams "this is chrome" (even when it's FF) it did work just fine.
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
I don't know about the app but it has been a solved problem on linux using the web browser early in 2020 when people started getting sent home due to the covid and remaining bugs were quickly ironed out.
leoedin · · focus · HN ↗
I bounced around between Windows and Linux on my personal computers for the last 20 years. Generally I'd run Linux until something died or I needed Windows, and I'd return for a bit. I've been exclusively using Linux since 2019 or so. I don't think I'm going back.
elorant · · focus · HN ↗
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loloquwowndueo · · focus · HN ↗
liendolucas · · focus · HN ↗
But don't fool yourself. You're subverted to Apple's rules the same as Microsoft users are to Windows.
I prefer to fight a little bit on an update on a unix system on something that is not working 100% to give up choices. When you use Windows, MacOS, Android you do not have choices. Choices are dictated from above, like it or not.
As for me every time I have to interact with something that is not BSD or Linux I suffer miserably.
imdsm · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, there is a whole moral discussion to be had, but as much as you win points for doing the better thing, the better things don't really pay bills.
The good news though is that we definitely won the server war. We can spin up VMs and install Linux without licences. We have access to software that works well, security updates, frequent releases, a massive ecosystem of free software, no advertising, very little to no licensing for software, and it works incredibly well. So much so, that we can't even imagine a world in which servers require licence keys or subscriptions or a marketplace account.
Imagine now, if laptops & workstations were as solved as servers are.
That's why we aren't there yet, because they're not.
baxtr · · focus · HN ↗
Some people understand the concept of trade-offs but don’t understand how other people don’t want the same trade-offs as they do
Forgeties79 · · focus · HN ↗
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
ianaye · · focus · HN ↗
dcow · · focus · HN ↗
BoxwoodSeed · · focus · HN ↗
Apple doesn't even have a tiling window manager as far as I know.
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
BoxwoodSeed · · focus · HN ↗
A tiling window manager is a different concept.
vscode-plz-stop · · focus · HN ↗
I'm sorry but objectively macOS window management is wholly subpar compared to the options on Linux.
Rectangle is a literal hack on top that hopefully works when you need it. Rectangle is great, but Rectangle, Yabai and whatnot can only hope that the undocumented private APIs that macOS _allows_ them to use today don't mysteriously break tomorrow.
Meanwhile a Linux window manager actually does its full job unencumbered because it's a _real_ first class window manager and not a hack.
IgorCRD · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
goosejuice · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
Are we? Not sure what usability and quality improvement there are in an OS where you have to fight against its vendor's decision.
Most critics against Linux I read come from people who never took the time to choose perfectly supported hardware in the first place but just buy whatever bleeding edge stuff is available running on windows, then hope it will works. It is like criticizing Apple/macOS because it doesn't work well on an hackintosh really and is completely dishonest. I don't criticize windows because it doesn't work on the latest Macbook M8 ultra studio pro nor do I criticize iOS because it doesn't work on my Samsung Note tab 6 or macOS 27 because it doesn't work on a Microsoft Surface.
I haven't had any update nor hardware support issue in the last 15 years because I have chosen hardware based on Linux support compatibility before purchasing them.
intrasight · · focus · HN ↗
goosejuice · · focus · HN ↗
iainmerrick · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
Bad or not as good?
For many people not as good can be good enough.
For instance I am mostly working from home, and will never spend more than 6 hours straight without a pause nor do I work "on the road" so I never cared about having a +11h of battery life. I understand it can be very valuable in some circonstances but it has never been a thing for me and for many people using their laptop mostly at home. I wouldn't trade having a forced siri install or the shitty keyboard that used to come with macbook a few years ago for more battery life than I actually need.
intrasight · · focus · HN ↗
monkey_monkey · · focus · HN ↗
You're unique! Also I hear what you're saying about the vast choice of laptops available with amazing Linux compatibility
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
pattle · · focus · HN ↗
Probably 99% of Apple / Windows users aren't very tech literate so if they have to fight an update they'll just think it's broken.
It's just basic business practice, cater to the 99%, don't worry about the 1%
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
kingkawn · · focus · HN ↗
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
angoragoats · · focus · HN ↗
As another example of what you can’t disable: I don’t wish to subscribe to Apple’s paid iCloud offerings. Yet there are several places in the UI both in macOS and iOS where there are non-removable ads for the service under certain conditions. For example, when your local storage fills up. Oh and now there’s a non-removable 20GB+ Apple LLM model now taking up space on my 256GB ssd. Thanks a lot Tim/John.
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
angoragoats · · focus · HN ↗
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
angoragoats · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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spixy · · focus · HN ↗
I am satisfied with current set of choices on my Win 10 & Android 13.
xeyownt · · focus · HN ↗
As for the OS, everytime I tried MacOS, I find rapidly major showstoppers. It's like people are just blind to them.
If I'd qualify each platform, I'd say Windows is a toy, Mac is a piece of art, Linux is a tool. I picked my category.
Gigachad · · focus · HN ↗
When I first tried macOS I hated it and had a long list of issues I could give. They are all still valid but it turns out they don’t actually stop you getting work done.
andruby · · focus · HN ↗
A lot of other crafts and jobs need way more expensive hardware. Software engineers "only" need a $1,000 - $3,000 laptop every 5 or so years. That's typically less than 0.5% of that 5 year's salary.
dingaling · · focus · HN ↗
How about "not worth the cost" instead.
Not worth the cost of losing the freedom to run your own software and make your own choices.
Commodity laptops might be slower and less flashy, but if Linux goes in the wrong direction I can install FreeBSD or OpenBSD or my own vibe-coded OS or whatever.
Western society has for the last few decades surrendered principles for convenience, and the state of modern computing is a microcosm of the consequences. You're all consumers now, instead of users.
MarkWayneNewton · · focus · HN ↗
JKCalhoun · · focus · HN ↗
lightedman · · focus · HN ↗
All of our Linux stuff is rock solid and is what we actually use to communicate with our satellites. We will explicitly avoid Microsoft and Apple here.
Silagi · · focus · HN ↗
Compared to the last XPS I had, it's substantially better for my use case, since I'll generally be remoting into systems anyway.
RunSet · · focus · HN ↗
I find the Apple offering's keyboard worse to type on, its enormous touchpad is a chore to engage with compared to the venerable Trackpoint, and the operating system feels contrived to make simple things difficult.
The x220 thinkpad is 14 years old now. And has a 500 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. Perhaps in another 14 years Apple will be able to match it feature for feature.
One might well ask why I own Apple hardware at all. The answer is to buy entry into their walled garden as a developer.
NullPrefix · · focus · HN ↗
Can Mac laptops run QubesOS?
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
Apparently it doesn't judging by the tons of articles published after every macOS update.
> just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates
And I am on a run of 11 years of update (since Fedora 25 or 26) without a single issue. Anecdotal evidences are just that. Anecdotal. Some people will have issues, others won't. Putting yourself in a situation where you have less risk of having issues like not using hardware from a company whose drivers are not maintained in the mainline kernel source tree goes a long way.
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
> but that sort of thing only happens on Linux (and windows probably)
Yeah right.
<a href="https://support.apple.com/es-es/guide/mac-help/-mchl4e4b758d/mac" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/es-es/guide/mac-help/-mchl4e4b758d...
Ironically the website from the company that is supposed to make software "that just works" do not let me put their page in english and force it back to spanish ignoring my choice. Hum.
swozey · · focus · HN ↗
You might not know this since your main language is spanish, but in America for the last 20 years every single linux engineering job gave me a macbook pro to work from. Big tech, small tech. And the one that didn't, they gave us chromebooks that everybody hated, but you weren't allowed to use apple there and don't you dare complain about the chromebooks because you knew they weren't going anywhere.
Me and my peers who don't live the richard stallman life expect a macbook pro as our work tool and wouldn't take a job somewhere that throws us a $1500 thinkpad or system76 or whatever to do our day jobs. We can have those at home.
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
My main language is not spanish either, and for the record spanish is used officially by 14% of the US population (and is estimated by 18% by other sources) so you are taking a lot of shortcuts to decide where I am and what I talk.
> Me and my peers who don't live the richard stallman life expect a macbook pro and wouldn't take a job somewhere that throws us a $1500 thinkpad or system76 or whatever to do our day jobs. We can have those at home.
FWIW at the only job I got from a US tech company, we were given Dell laptops on which many dev installed linux. Company before that proposed Macs but many preferred linux running thinkpad due to the crappy experience at the time running docker on thermal throttling x86 macbooks.
So I smell a lot of uncalled for arrogance from your part.
swozey · · focus · HN ↗
Did you have anything relevant to add beyond crying about me assuming you might not be working out of America since you not only don't use Apples for engineering work, but also speak Spanish as a main?
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
And no I didn't get fired from that US tech firm for installing Linux on my laptop, I actually asked about it during my interviews.
xtracto · · focus · HN ↗
So in a US centric forum, most likely you'll find bilingual people that live in the US.
swozey · · focus · HN ↗
Why even mention it if they're in Amerca? We're talking about work laptops. Do you often find Americans randomly pointing out that they speak spanish in tech conversations for no reason at all?
Obviously it was a big point to their post.
edit: Oh look, he replied, and he's had one US tech job. Context clues are cool! I'm like a human LLM.
Propelloni · · focus · HN ↗
preg_match · · focus · HN ↗
I think a lot of the people who go on about Apple software quality are full of it, frankly. They either just don’t care or don’t notice the bugs.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
HumblyTossed · · focus · HN ↗
Definitely windows. It often forgets things.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
I pulled the same update, and it was annoying but it came nowhere near bricking itself. The integrated graphics worked, it just disabled the Nvidia open-source driver for the GPU. Simply (re)installing it fixed it. Notably, just asking ChatGPT for the solution worked (after pasting the output of a few commands).
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
That's defined as "the device has become a brick, cannot be recovered". It was mostly popularized by broken firmware updates which effectively destroyed the device, as it could no longer be salvaged.
You calling a borked package install in userspace almost bricked is telling about your technical capability.
And I agree that people that are basically technologically illiterate should not use Linux.
They could if someone administers it for them, but if nobody can help them - it's just not the right choice.
dingdongditchme · · focus · HN ↗
hiccuphippo · · focus · HN ↗
mingus88 · · focus · HN ↗
We lost the battle over “literally “ a decade ago and I’m not going to spend my time fighting a bunch of people who would rather scroll through 5 second videos all day than pick up a book.
Anoian · · focus · HN ↗
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
It's fine most of the time, so it's not a big deal... But if you're unwilling and they're technologically illiterate: they will not be able to recover. Apple has the genius help desk which will sort them out, with Linux... You're gonna have to find "someone", "somewhere".
Can be done for sure, however once again: I would not recommend
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
I had my parents on Linux for a hot second, and got tired of them calling me for help. So I switched them to Mac, and then I discovered they still call for help. At least with Linux I knew the system well.
Just my 0.02, but Linux is a smarter choice today than it ever was, because AI is extremely good at fixing things. I can fix most anything on my machines, but I still use AI, because it does it while I'm doing other stuff.
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
Are you unaware that they likely want to talk with you, and the technological issues are likely just the vehicle for this?
I suggest you just help them and try to savor the time you have with them. The time is likely a lot shorter then you expect. But of course, just a random bystanders perspective
richie_adler · · focus · HN ↗
Not the person you're responding to, but: They may want to learn to communicate honestly. I would find the situation described deeply irritating. Enough to cut contact for a while, even.
NamlchakKhandro · · focus · HN ↗
aqfamnzc · · focus · HN ↗
numbsafari · · focus · HN ↗
pwdisswordfishq · · focus · HN ↗
Shorel · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
I wonder why? If nobody can help them, they are fucked on any OS.
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
For both windows and Linux you'll have to find someone thats willing to help you, essentially. Usually a lot harder for those people. Especially with Linux ime, as even fewer places know enough to help you, even if they may be able to handle windows
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
To use Linux on the desktop you first have to know about it for a start, so you are unlikely to end up with a linux OS without knowing anyone using it or an association/usergroup promoting it.
Propelloni · · focus · HN ↗
colejohnson66 · · focus · HN ↗
pbhjpbhj · · focus · HN ↗
I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to get Windows to work (hard crash at random times) when it ran flawlessly on Ubuntu.
The issue appears to have arisen because Windows decided to update my graphics drivers, so making them (for reasons AMD perhaps need to sort out) incompatible with Adrenaline. A million reboots later, using arcane programs to clear out hidden installs, hidden config, and trying to get details from a system that will readily tell you it recovered but gets shy about what caused it to crash .. eesh.
My experience is you need far more expertise to run Windows. Maybe if MS tested they're releases so it didn't break itself all the time ...
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
Edit: I also experienced the Nvidia driver update that broke a bunch of things on my (Fedora) server last week.
dcow · · focus · HN ↗
Which is the whole point, no? There would be more Linux everywhere if it didn’t occasionally break in ways that require special expertise to fix.
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
You think wrong.
I maintain multiple Linux system on the side an know about it well enough.
The Nvidia drivers however are not bios/uefi in case you didn't know. That's what firmware is.
Those can still be flashed from a root Linux booted into a graphical interface, but nonetheless were not the topic of discussion.
Aside from that - a borked kernel can still be easily recovered for most nowadays, as they usually keep the old versions around with a simple picker after an unsuccessful boot.
Still, I'm unable to grasp the point youre making in relation to what I said. I thought I was very explicitly recommending against people without any technological capability to use Linux... You seem to agree?
dcow · · focus · HN ↗
This thread spawned off of a discussion about how people still use Apple because though Linux may be easier than it's ever been it's still hard for anybody to run a Linux desktop system without occasional downtime and repair when something breaks. That was the point of the comment you responded to.
You responded to
"and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt"
with
"well um axually you don't know what bricked means and that's probably a sign that you're too dumb to use linux. people who are too dumb to use linux shouldn't use it".
I felt like your response wasn't fair. So I replied. But to be crystal clear:
1. they did fix their problem, but it was not a fun time for them. I can empathize 1000% with that. Sometimes I just want to do something and Linux (and everything I sign up for when deploying it) itself gets in the way. When an apt update causes a boot failure, it's annoying and it gets in the way.
2. "bricked" has evolved colloquially. never mind that the author used the term "almost bricked" to indicated they knew it wasn't hard bricked but intended to communicated that it also wasn't functional. there's a way for you to add commentary about the definition of bricked without attacking the person's technical aptitude
All in all, you, me, and the comment you initially replied to are saying the same thing: to operate linux you need to have a level of tolerance to deal with the occasional issues that come with it. And for many people that's not the right balance. Even many technical people choose more stable and predictable daily drivers. Everything else you introduced to the discussion detracted from that point. That's why I commented.
ffsm8 · · focus · HN ↗
Did you seriously forget what you wrote in your first sentence if your former comment?
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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HumblyTossed · · focus · HN ↗
ajross · · focus · HN ↗
There was a discussion on this forum just a few days ago wondering why Apple is so hostile to open source support on its devices. And consensus here was that, no, it clearly wasn't due to competetive pressure.
But clearly it is. Because to many consumers, if you have to run MacOS to get an M6, you'll run MacOS instead of Linux. And that makes enshittifying MacOS as a revenue center very tempting.
> Also the OS mostly “just works”
Article is literally about the OS not working as desired, though.
neya · · focus · HN ↗
> Build quality (aluminum)
This is such an ignorant take. Every other laptop has an Aluminum shell. Dell, HP, you name it. My Sony Vaio came with a metallic shell in the early 2000s. As a Macbook owner, I am still extremely worried about coffee spilling on my keyboard. A problem that was solved decades ago by every other manufacturer but not Apple. My touchID randomly stopped working in under 2 years of owning my laptop too and the hardware needs replacement of the entire logic board. So, tell me again, where is this "build quality" that you speak of?
kwanbix · · focus · HN ↗
I prefer the X1 Carbon’s body a thousand times over Apple’s unibody design, which I find cold and uncomfortable, and it tends to dig into my wrists.
And I’d take a TrackPoint over Apple’s trackpad a million times over.
Of course, that’s just my personal preference.
xtracto · · focus · HN ↗
we should strive and push to keep having these a alternatives. Which the industry is trying to remove.
mrob · · focus · HN ↗
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m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗
gahko · · focus · HN ↗
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wedemmoez · · focus · HN ↗
officeplant · · focus · HN ↗
The ancient wisdom of "never nvidia" when using Linux/BSD continues to ring true into the future.
Jzush · · focus · HN ↗
I have an old Macbook Air that's no longer supported by the latest MacOS. Trying to do anything on it is like pulling teeth. The simple act of running a modernish web browser is a horrible experience of "This App is no longer supported".
On Windows a laptop from the mid 2000's is still entirely usable albeit a bit slow. Not so with MacOS. You 100% cannot run a single piece of modern software. You have to dig around for forks that specifically support older versions of MacOS and if you want to run a browser with Plugins, good eff'n luck! Now you're trying to find a fork of Chromium that supports Adblock, but also have to find and old version of Adblock which isn't hip to all the new invasive ad technology.
MacOS is not for poors it appears.
QuiEgo · · focus · HN ↗
X is usually “pick hardware with good support in ToT kernel” or “use distribution Y” (where Y is somehow different in every post) or “do you really need feature Z that’s better on Mac? You’re making the wrong trade.”
To each their own but I’d rather not deal with XYZ and just get the thing that works.
p.s. I do hope they put a toggle back for Siri and their on device AI stuff
ajross · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, but the point of the linked article is that this preference inevitably results in your device spying on you. To each their own indeed.
Edit: and of course I see your P.S. note. But that isn't really responsive. Most Linux users would point out (P.S.) that they'd like their hardware to be faster and lower power or their OS to be a little cleaner. But alas, you can't have everything.
FuriouslyAdrift · · focus · HN ↗
alsetmusic · · focus · HN ↗
onixdebian · · focus · HN ↗
alerighi · · focus · HN ↗
Sure, Linux laptops are not "pretty", but I don't need a computer to be pretty, in fact I hope that someone starts to produce again laptops identical to old IBM thinkpads (not the insult to the brand that Lenovo is building) but with modern hardware, a computer that had every port you need on it, no adapter required, that you could have it fall from a ladder and not break, with removable battery, hard drive, with the trackpoint instead of those stupid trackpads, I want it even with a DVD burner fuck it. I don't care it to be small, I care it to be functional.
frotzozmoo · · focus · HN ↗
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natnatenathan · · focus · HN ↗
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
A large portion of the HN crowd woefully underrates this aspect of macOS. The types who would get pleasure tweaking their OS and understanding it intimately are overrepresented here, though props to them.
I don't care what people say; macOS is the only OS I've ever used that has never booted to a black/blue screen with relatively cryptic error after performing an upgrade. Not once ever. Windows today is of course abusive to users and shouldn't be used, and as much as I absolutely love Linux as a server OS and for VM appliances, I get no joy whatsoever trying to figure out why the DE stopped working after letting the OS update itself or debugging subpar rendering from the Wayland compositor or X11. (Linux people still tell me this isn't a problem in 2026 but, guess what, my Ubuntu VM hit a black screen a couple days ago after upgrading with no other changes made to the installation, so they're wrong) That and so much graphical Linux software is written with the attitude of "I'm a freak who thinks context menus shouldn't exist so fuck the user and fuck anyone who tells me I'm wrong", yet so many DEs integrate these apps anyway.
The worst thing that macOS has ever overtly done to me is slightly change the look of its interface over the years, which is incredibly minor compared to all the changes that Windows, Ubuntu, Gnome, and KDE have gone through in the last decade. Does it pull lame crap like phone home? Probably, but these days I assume that just about all software thinks it knows better than I and constantly pings cloud servers. MacOS is not really unique in this regard. I will switch to my own Linux if Apple goes down the road of "use our AI or else", but for now I don't really see the venom towards macOS to be justified when it's incredibly easy to prove that the alternatives are usually very poor.
Oh yeah, and the hardware is excellent. (except for the keyboards which need TPU dam covering them or else dust kills them after a couple years)
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
This happened to me once with a Mac upgrade!
And it’s still fewer times than something has happened to one of my Linux machines, by an order of magnitude.
There are little annoyances with Macs and occasional frustrating problems, but after using them side by side with other operating systems for years it’s what I choose for the daily driver.
Most complaints come from people who have become familiar with one OS for a decade and then get angry when they use something else and it’s not the same as their familiar thing. There isn’t much value in those comparisons.
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
grahamburger · · focus · HN ↗
colejohnson66 · · focus · HN ↗
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
delis-thumbs-7e · · focus · HN ↗
Happened to me years ago. No biggie, installed a backup and noticed I had somehow removed the most important directory with all my work files from the the time machine back up. Hardly Apple’s fault, though, but I got complacent with ”it just works”.
Since then I come to conclusion that the saying should go: ”It works - until it doesn’t”. If it os not the OS, it is myself who messes something up.
These days I almost solely use Linux. I have M1 Mini as a media centre connected to TV and I have to use Windows crap at work. Opening my Linux seems like a hig from an old friend in comparison. I might need to read docs and fight with drivers every now and then, but fuck it, I don’t care. Because this one is mine.
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
And yeah, "It works – until it doesn't" is probably the most accurate statement that can be made about all technology. My original comment also can make it seem like I'm taking a dump on Linux, but my gripe is more about Linux desktop environments. Linux absolutely can be a really stable OS, but I've only been able to truly reach that for myself by compiling my own kernel and composing my own desktop environment from barely-related packages. This is where I totally relate to your sense of "fuck it, I don't care because it's mine." Maybe someday I'll end up completely switching to my own Linux OS.
cdaringe · · focus · HN ↗
one was a permissions/capability issue, but the other was straight up performance. As someone said above, an AI agent drilled down on both workstreams immediately, so the pivot wasnt too rough
floren · · focus · HN ↗
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
floren · · focus · HN ↗
ravenstine · · focus · HN ↗
Grombobulous · · focus · HN ↗
There are some incredibly good PC laptops out there with the same kinds of features of MacBook Pros and more: long battery life, haptic trackpad, aluminum CNC build, long sleep battery life, etc. Check out Intel core series 3.
I’m a very happy with my Framework 13 Pro.
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
Grombobulous · · focus · HN ↗
G4 versus Intel, Touch Bar, Nvidia graphics long term reliability issues, then after that Apple used inferior AMD discrete GPUs for years until Apple Silicon, prematurely removing HDMI and SD ports then putting them back, and now they make the only laptop on the market with a giant notch in the middle.
Yes, the M1 MacBook Air was amazing, but it’s 6 years later now and that chip is not really far ahead.
A lot of the claims of a superior software experience are overblown. Just because Apple has a short list of more refined elements doesn’t mean that someone deciding to use Windows or Linux is getting some kind of drastically horrendous experience.
Even a lot of “big apple advantages” like haptic trackpads were never really that big of an advantage. We see this now with the embrace of the MacBook Neo: all of a sudden the haptic trackpad wasn’t such a big deal because Apple got rid of it. (And, by the way, the Neo is a horrendous value compared to HP Omnibook options in the same price range, and it has poor battery life)
Grombobulous · · focus · HN ↗
At time of the introduction of Apple Silicon, MacBooks were an incredible value.
But for most of the rest of history, not so much.
They’ve been praised for being refined and having a wonderful trackpad but with the aura and marketing around Apple (including incredibly adept narrative steering surrounding “independent” tech journalists), a lot of those benefits have been overblown.
Of course we have many eras of Apple where they weren’t particularly compelling.
We had the era where Intel was wiping the floor with the G4.
We had the era where Nvidia dGPUs in Apple machines were dying left and right.
We had the Touch Bar butterfly keyboard era.
We had the post-Nvidia era where Apple was shipping incredibly inferior AMD graphics solutions in their laptops. They just wouldn’t buy the superior Nvidia products over childish corporate feuding.
We had the premature removal of the HDMI and SD card ports that had to be reversed.
We have the current era of the embarrassingly large notch.
The YouTubers and TikTokers who hold expertise in content creation and hanging out in Final Cut Pro all day tell their followers that there’s nothing better than a Mac, with almost no knowledge of the incredibly vast breadth of alternatives out there. In the present era, the PC industry seemingly has very little issue keeping up with Apple.
The MacBook Neo has quickly turned into a pretty bad value after rushing out the gate looking like an incredible deal, but both HP and Dell have put forth alternatives that are a better bang for buck with better battery life as a bonus.
We have two alternatives with Intel Core Series 3 and Qualcomm Snapdragon that will match or beat Apple on battery life and performance depending on workload, we have companies like Lenovo and even tiny companies like Framework who have no problem giving us haptic trackpads and CNC machined aluminum chassis, and then we see innovation you’d never dream of from Apple like dual screen laptops with the Zenbook Duo or
mike_bob · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvXZVJXIyqM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvXZVJXIyqM
ngl Mac users are to computers as Tesla drivers are to cars, they buy them because they don't want to learn anything.
advael · · focus · HN ↗
This "just works" thing is propaganda. Computers never ever do that
e12e · · focus · HN ↗
The apple touchpad is better - but all touchpads suck. Still miss old school IBM ThinkPad stick.
NamlchakKhandro · · focus · HN ↗
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