‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

The Forgetful CPU (Linux on M4)

267 points · 203 comments · signa11

  1. sscaryterry · · focus · HN ↗
    Imagine how big Apple would/could be if they embraced open hardware. They do have a moat here. macOS is so bloated, I hate it, but the hardware is just so much better than anything else.
    1. palata · · focus · HN ↗
      Is the hardware so much better, or is their integration superior? macOS can be bloated but still more efficient, right?

      I mean, the "so much better" in my experience is really the battery life.

      1. Quothling · · focus · HN ↗
        They are the only laptop company who makes a fanless laptop that never gets hot to touch with long batery life. I'm still on my m1 air with the smallest configuration you could get at the time. Yet it's somehow capable of matching my T14 i7 with 32gb og ram for most of the work I do, and it does it without getting hot or having it's fan sound like it's a fighter jet taking off. To be fair my t14 is a corporate windows machine, so it's not like it's a fair fight.

        I'd love to replace it with something like a framework or a tuxedo, but they all get hot to touch. Maybe I'm in the minority, but a laptop not heating up when you turn it on is one of the most important things for it. It doesn't matter much for work, because it'll sit in a dock anyway, but I rarely use my m1 air at a table.

        1. throwaway202528 · · focus · HN ↗
          I was required to use a Macbook Air in my last job. I hated small things like the window management, the keyboard lack of delete, home, etc keys. There were ways to work around this. Cold aluminium in an aircon office though was no fun, and the keyboard lacked travel.

          For I came from almost a decade on Debian. I had become used to the ways of GNOME, I enjoyed GNOME 3 even and had no gripes about systemd.

          Now I am in Windowsland. This is hell. I have no filesystem and cloud works the exact opposite way it should pretending we all see the same thing. I cannot email an attachment without closing - why is this? The concept of a shared folder has changed to everyone sharing their 'personal drives' while having no user-facing audit on what is shared with whom and via what link. Somehow a 4-digit pin is as authorative as a password to everything but a network printer that demands passwordy login. At the sane time, windows lacks handy preset printing like mac or linux - its there but buried, like everything in windows, thus not handy. The sleep key wakes the laptop and bypasses all login security. Copilot cannot be turned off unless done so by an organisation admin. At the same time, trusty fallback productivity tools like VBA fail as there is no filesystem - productivity workers are cripled using their 'everything looks like a nail if all I have is a windows hammer tool'. Teams still isn't as good for simple chat as Windows Communicator was a decade and a half ago and there isn't another option in the windows stable in sight. A 10th gen Intel chip gets overpowered by this all every hour or two. Possibly triggered by Adobe Acrobat - software that no one needs - trying to install a further part itself again.

          Corporate Windows is a horror. How did it get so bad?

          1. Quothling · · focus · HN ↗
            I'm fortunate enough to have WSL so I frankly do everything in bash. I am also in control of the Intune endpoint exceptions for development machines, to make sure they are allowed to run stuff like cargo, but it has the advantage of letting me remove my devices from the Adobe Acrobat group.

            It's still hilarious when defender does it's thing and the fan goes mach 1, or when the firmware updater force reboots in the middle of a meeting after you've clicked the 10 minute extend two times.

            It is what it is. I'm sure we'd figure out a way to make enterprise IT horrible on any OS.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.