Comment by Aperocky

4 years ago

It's just sad that we don't have the corresponding form factor in a similar laptop.

The biggest draw of mac:

1. slim, light 2. long battery life. 3. track pad.

That's all I want, but nobody else offers it on the same spec, the difference is even bigger with M1.

20 comments

Aperocky

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Symbiote  4 years ago

It is strange how many people will sacrifice so much for free speech and the right to bear arms (like tolerating school shootings and foreign interference in elections), but offer them the "freedom OS" and they'll pick the slightly better trackpad.

Does no one here have principles?

  • brailsafe  4 years ago

    Fuck yes I'll pick the slightly better trackpad. To a point anyway. Sitting for upwards of 8 hours a day typing code can be a depressing life trap to find yourself in. If every time I touched my trackpad I cringed because it feels like sandpaper, works like shit, and might not even have good first party driver support, only to be consoled by the the thought that I could install Windows on it if I wanted to, I'd probably not be too satisfied.

    I have an expensive chair, that I could only really get fixed by the company that made it. I could have a shitty chair that hurts my ass, messes with my posture, costs 1/12th the price, that I could sit in and re-assure myself that I'm free to get commodity parts anywhere I want, but I'd prefer not to do that unless I had no choice.

  • Aperocky  4 years ago

    I didn't say I was that kind of people.

    Your description of them was also not exactly flattering.

    • Symbiote  4 years ago

      Defending fundamental (in the USA, constitutional) rights is a generalization of people on HN.

      I thought your reply to a "Stallman was right" comment with "but trackpad!" had the most contrast between principles and minor convenience.

      1 reply →

Kaze404  4 years ago

I have the Dell Inspiron 7000 for those exact reasons and could not be happier. It runs Linux out of the box too :)

abvdasker  4 years ago

I think Razer would satisfy those 3 criteria. Razer is known for their line of high-end laptops with comparable design and arguably better specifications than the MacBook line. They are mainly marketed to gamers, but could easily double as development workstations. There's even a pretty well-maintained set of Razer hardware drivers for linux (https://openrazer.github.io/#project).

  • def_true_false  4 years ago

    They also have the cloud connected peripherals bullshit. Probably best to avoid Razer, if you want your expensive xmas light to work as a mouse even when you happen to be offline.

koyote  4 years ago

A Thinkpad Carbon X1 will be as slim and as light with excellent battery life.

I do not use track pads for actual work so I can't compare but I've heard that you can't really beat the Mac ones.

pbasista  4 years ago

You can run Linux on a Macbook.

  • miguelmota  4 years ago

    After running Xubuntu and Fedora on a MacBook for several months, I don't recommend it; not all drivers are available and sleep functionality is finicky. Running Windows on a MacBook was even worse in terms of graphics card support. Running linux on a cheap thinkpad will perform better imo.

    Alternativelym you can also run macOS on linux. I had luck with Docker-OSX

    https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX

    • pbasista  4 years ago

      Fair enough. I suppose that the experience depends heavily on the particular MacBook model and its age.

      For example, I have used a 13 inch MacBook Air (Early 2015) for almost 4 years now exclusively with Linux and I have had a very good experience with it so far. WiFi, Bluetooth, webcam, touchpad, card reader and sleep all work well. Battery time is very similar to OS X. The configuration took some time but it is well documented on the Arch Linux wiki.

      This model is now quite old and relatively many people use it with Linux. That is probably the reason why there are no major outstanding issues with it. When it was new, the situation might have been different.