Comment by bayindirh
9 months ago
> I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.
Let me check the list.
- High DPI screen with color calibration and automatic white balancing, working 99% of the time. Ensuring your eyes always sees the color it expects without fatigue. Plus, HDR.
- Most decent external screens you plug will also have their correct color profile installed on the OS level, so they'll not show funny colors.
- 15+ hour battery life on an ordinary laptop if you don't abuse it. Even my M1 can handle me for a couple of days with light usage.
- Good quality speakers, decent stereo separation without being too tinny or boomy.
- Great quality cameras and microphones for its size.
- Great, backlight illuminated keyboard, with no flex.
- A realistic 8-10 year usage life without babying it.
- A full metal body, and keeping it light for that amount of metal.
- Built-in biometrics which runs on a proper secure enclave, without any "touch here, write absurdly long pasword you don't know there" shenanigans of Windows.
- A POSIX compliant, BSD descendant OS which can interoperate with Linux way better than Windows.
- A proper backup system which backs up whole OS and system state to an external drive, better than old "Windows 7 backup" and miles better than new "OneDrive only Windows Backup".
- Better radios, backend and port bandwidth than its class-equivalent machines. Essentially a loaded MacBook Pro is equivalent to a Z-Workstation Mobile from HP.
...and these are standard in almost every MacBook. I don't go through hoops to beg local distributors to build the machine I like via their configuration wizard, and wait them to import it if they feel like it, and pay 3x of its sticker price because it's a one off import tucked inside a bigger shipment. Even CTO devices by Apple are shipped in a week and comes to my door in another 1-2. I pay the sticker price for the device I want.
Do you need more?
Sent from my Linux desktop system.
It has some benefits, the battery life (you aren't getting 15 hours from it doing a normal workload), keyboard, cameras, are pretty similar to many other laptops. Linux exists so a pale imitation isn't needed, its not light, and there are plenty of as good if not better back up options.
What about the overall quality of the software and hardware being rather poor? No repair-ability, a limited OS now, low quality glass covering the screens, lack of long term support for many laptops now?
You are 100% getting 15 hours from a normal workload. The keyboard is better than any other laptop keyboard. The camera is better than any other laptop integrated webcam.
The quality of the software is same or better as Linux (because getting all your Linux desktop and command line software running is a brew install away).
The hardware is class leading. The screens are best in class. The laptops will last you 8-10 years and then you can install a Linux on them and keep them going for another 5.
Yes, repairability is poor, but improving.
I get why people make other choices, but the idea that Apple hardware is poor quality and the software is terrible just isn't the way to do it. Argue about purity of freedom, argue about cost (Apple hardware is expensive, because it's superb), argue about crappy dev account policies like the thread is here to support.
But, y'know, don't just make up stuff anybody who uses this stuff daily knows is just made up...
HP have a better webcam (Higher res and better colours), Z Book and Framework have the same keyboard basically, the software is no where near as good (far more locked down), considering M series have been out for 5 and many had very speedy failures I doubt 8-10 years especially for the base models on low ram. Multicore scores (so for any form of simulation or parallel computing) work M series are not even in the conversation in comparison with the latest AMD and Intel. Another key issue is due to architecture change, their reusability once they become unusable in their current form means its Asahi or nothing.
Repairability is non existant, a battery and some ports is not anything to shout about.
I have used Macs since the early 90's when they were repairable, pretty much consistently and I still have to on occassion but they have dropped the ball on every aspect. From the late 90's repairability and innovation have gone downhill. The late 00's to the early 10's brought it back and ever since then bar the odd thing that is pretty but less practical, just look at the touch bar and the removal of ports.
I have had Thinkpads, ZBooks, and other laptops such as Lets Note easily as long as a macbook and yes some of the pretty may be missing but that isn't what I focus on in devices.
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You're getting 15 when you're listening music all day while doing work. You get an hour or two more if you're working silent. If you want an equal keyboard to a MacBook, you will pay for top of the line systems from the big three (HP/Lenovo/Dell), and they are more expensive than their Apple equivalents for less hardware. I have never seen an equivalent internal webcam in none of any non-Apple notebooks, BTW. You can add a high end Logitech or a mirrorless camera, but that beats the purpose, of course.
Linux exists and improved a ton in the last two decades. It's great and is my primary OS, but macOS is not an imitation of Linux, by any stretch.
Tell me a backup solution which allows you plug your drive to a brand new computer, get a coffee and resume from the point you left, literally incl. open apps, documents, window positions, volume level, and even the playing song. I'm trying to contribute Back in Time in Linux and know Borg exists, but all of them are filling different roles. Windows / LLVM / BTRFS / ZFS snapshots are a thing but, none of them are easy to use by the layman.
"Low quality glass" issue exposed in 2014, and it's not "low quality glass", but "fragile coating" issue, and I believe it's due to harsh handling of the glass. Because, I have an 2008, 2014 and 2020 MacBooks. 2008 has an old fashioned matte screen, and 2014 and 2020 MacBook's screen coatings are almost spotless. They both have a single short line in the middle due to an oily key burned the coating because I didn't clean my keyboard and somehow pressed the machines so the keys made contact.
If you use an alcohol free screen cleaner (which is dirt cheap here) or a camera lens cleaning solution, with a clean cloth (e.g. the one Apple provides inside the box), you can't damage the screen. Of course, Apple can go above and beyond and use fluorine coatings on these screens (which are used in high end camera lenses), which will easily double the price of the whole machine.
I agree on the repairability, but I'll note something else: dependability. None of my Macs needed any service. 2014 one needs a new battery after 10 years, and that's acceptable. One friend managed to fry their MacBook Air by abusing it a bit with AI workloads, but it's fixed under warranty for manufacturing error. I know ~20 people with Macs, and nobody except two (who both emptied a mug coffee on their keyboards) needed a service.
Also, on the iPhone side, if you send your phone in for battery replacement, any damaged part of your phone will be replaced free of charge if there's no external damage on that part. Apple changed my speaker for free on my iPhone, because they found its performance subpar. No info, no questions asked. "We changed your battery and speaker. You only pay for battery. Enjoy your phone, have a nice day". That's good service if you ask me, and the phone returned in a condition that nobody could tell that thing was opened and its battery replaced. The phone was out of warranty for 2 years when that happened.
On the OS side, there's no real limitation except you need to enable external kernel modules via recovery menu, and if we're talking about SIP, praising Nix and immutable systems and loathing macOS SIP is hypocrisy, so there's that.
On the reliability of macOS underpinnings, that laptop is up for 60 days (because of an update induced reboot), and it never crashes and fragments its memory so nothing works. So, I don't know if that this is not reliable, what is.
By long term, you mean 7 years? Heck, you can't even get 7 years of support and spare parts for enterprise hardware unless you pay an arm and a leg (don't ask me how I know), and Apple gives you 7 years of HW/SW support for anything they build. How this is not LTS?
I wish accessibility was a part of the list. I love MacOS, but accessibility issues turn m away real quick.
https://www.applevis.com/comment/188371#comment-188371
Accessibility is a really hard topic, and it's very hard to appreciate and sounds/feels backwards if you don't depend on them.
Wish more people worked on them, and OS were designed to accommodate accessibility technologies better.
That's the price of freedom. Freedom is worth giving up all of those things
The thing is, my Macs work as front ends to my Linux systems. So, there's nothing non-interoperable, or non-removable from these systems.
There are some applications with no Linux equivalent, but it's not a MacOS problem, it's a development effort problem.
Sounds like you want Asahi Linux so you can stay on apple hardware ( . ᴗ . )
Currently, no, but in the future I might migrate out of support systems to Asahi.
One of the reasons I use macOS is I get to inspect how they do some things. I carry the experience to Linux via the small tools I develop. Apple is one of the last "purveyors of magic" when it comes to user interfaces, and studying them, iterating on them and implementing them is both a good learning experience. Also, it feels nice when something you write (with a GPL license no less) has the same magic feeling of frictionless productivity.
I am keeping a close eye on it for sure. The last time I tried it wasn't quite there yet and still had too many rough edges for my taste.
Also, macOS's audio stack is unmatched, Windows and Linux are an absolute mess for anything audio-related. It's doable on those OSes but very far from a pleasant experience.
My coworker would disagree with you. Slack and Teams never remember the microphone, frequently fails to initialize the device correctly and have to rejoin the meeting. _Never_ have that problem on Windows or Linux.
Asking as a Linux user for whom PipeWire works fine (for recording, live-streaming, as well as playback), what does macOS do better?
Latency for the most part. It's almost non-existent and has effectively no visible load on the system. Also, you can plug any advanced interface via USB or Thunderbolt and carry massive amount of audio data just by selecting that device from a list. It's simple, it's transparent, it's fast and it works.
While I agree that Pipewire works great and pretty transparently for single channel capture and multichannel playback, I don't know what happens when you add a 6 channel audio interface and start recording on all of them at the same time.
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Oh, yes, that's very true. I forgot that since I'm not recording for quite some time now.
> Better radios,
Other things are good, but radios are wired. Even the latest mbps still can't switch the AP transparently - no mesh support at all it seems.
I use my 2014 and 2020 Macs with mesh and old-school multi-ap networks which broadcast same SSID all the time, and I see it as switches APs from the wireless reception bar, without any drop in connectivity. Mesh enabled or not.
Interesting.
2020 is ambiguous - there's both Intel and M1 MBP from that year. I can tell you that M2 can't handle TP-link meshes.
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you forgot the touchpad that's better than a mouse
Yes. The gestures are also great and very natural. Magic mouse is also very intuitive, too.
It's a shame that drag-lock is not on by default. It makes life much easier.
That's true.
My wife swears by the Magic Mouse. I love the idea of a mouse that you can make gestures on, but it doesn't fit well in my palm. I have huge hands. It's just too flat and it hurts my hand. Now, my wife has a backup one in case the battery dies.