Comment by nwatson
10 months ago
I use Apple-Silicon MacBook Pro and Mac Mini for software development. I hardly ever use Apple software for business/personal/productivity. Jetbrains IDE tools, Docker, Homebrew work great. I install Chrome browser and use Google services, AWS and GCP consoles, etc. via the browser. YouTube for video, Google Music app.
As for all Apple software, I might use Preview or Numbers (spreadsheets) on occasion, and I'm forced to use Finder, which I hate. And Terminal works well. I avoid Safari.
Apple "PC" hardware is solid. I use third party apps though, little Apple software, there are better alternatives. I've used Android since the HTC Dream (I think it was the first Android phone in the USA) and have stuck with Android since, with few problems.
Edit: I thought the Apple Vision Pro would be interesting (I couldn't justify the expense) but I saw the value supposedly would be greatest for those fully bought into the integrated Apple app ecosystem and iCloud. I'm not the target user.
> Apple "PC" hardware is solid. I use third party apps though, little Apple software,
Same. I have two "deal-brakers" when it comes to notebooks: 1) it's got to sleep consistently and without problems when I close the lid. 2) it should be silent when I'm doing simple things or nothing at all.
I have never seen a Linux or Windows laptop that does these things well. Even Intel MacBooks would spin up the fans seemingly at random. I don't think I've ever heard the fan in my M1 MBP. I'm looking forward to the new M4 MBA to replace an older Windows 10 laptop, which spins up its fans all the time, and sometimes doesn't sleep, sucking the battery dry in the process.
My Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Nano gen 1 running KDE Plasma Arch Linux with an intel i5 meets your criteria.
I have Lenovo ThinkPad T14s AMD, which always goes to sleep and wakes up just fine. Bluetooth works, it's fast, quiet and has a long battery life.
AND I can use Linux, which is a dealbreaker for me as my favorite operating system.
https://asahilinux.org : Exists
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I'm on a Lenovo Yoga 6 w/Gentoo and Sleep/Hibernate work as expected. Mostly quiet, until heavy work.
Had to swap the WiFi module to get the power management to work properly.
MacOS is a lot less solid than it used to be. Not just in UI terms, but the current networking stack is garbage compared to the Snow Leopard era, we've had versions of the OS ship that couldn't read FAT32 properly, frameworks are breaking all over the place, and they have locked down any attempt to fix it.
Snow Leopard and other releases were a mess and macOS had huge network bottlenecks that limited throughput to 2gbps even with a 10gbps or faster network card until recently. macOS is way ahead of windows or Linux in terms of kernel and os guarantees for user security. There will be bugs when products change so I’m glad they continue to evolve the stack.