Comment by danieldk

I have both and would say that they just have different priorities. ThinkPad is an open platform, so you can run Linux. If you want to run Linux, modern MacBooks are no good. Yes, you could run Asahi on an M1/M2, but things like DP-Alt and Thunderbolt are still not supported. Whereas I could plug in my T14 Gen 5 AMD with Linux to a Thunderbolt display and it worked on day 1.

ThinkPads are also much more upgradable and serviceable than a MacBook. I popped in 64GiB RAM, 2 TB NVMe SSD, and a WWAN modem and it cost me almost nothing. However. doing so requires a less flat, less glued, etc. system, which requires other compromises. Getting a MacBook with similar memory and storage would cost 5300 Euro (compared to ~1400-1500 for the ThinkPad) and I still wouldn't have WWAN (far better CPU/GPU though, but I especially want the RAM/storage).

I fully agree though that for the price MacBooks have far better screens, cooling systems, and the unibody aluminium case is pretty much unbeatable. CPU-wise, AMD APUs have caught up a lot.

clunky, ugly, plastic, noisy with a crap screen and crap battery life

I think that's not really a fair characterization. There is are wide gap between a good ThinkPad and e.g. a cheap Acer (to which your description would apply). My T14 even gets 6-7 hours on Linux (which isn't exactly known for great battery life), so it would probably do 10 hours on Windows. I only head the fan when I load the system a lot and even then it's fairly quit. And the case, even though it's not aluminium is still pretty nice/robust.

I have M1 Pro and M3 Pro MacBooks to compare to. IMO MacBook and ThinkPads are great in different ways. Ideally I'd want to have a MacBook with the upgradeability/repairability of a ThinkPad that can run NixOS with all peripherals supported.