Comment by whimblepop

> Until you need to repair something or change some hardware

How often does this happen, though? I have a 2013 MBP that still works perfectly. And I'm not even talking about the screen, which is ridiculously better than most new pc laptops. And then, of course, there's the touchpad, which, for some reason, is still unmatched in pc land.

It has 512 GB of SSD and 16 of RAM. This is basically what the new "upgraded" PCs people get at my office. In 2026, 13 years later.

Yeah, I'd use my decade-old mac any day rather than the crappy HPs at work.

By the time something breaks, you’re so far behind in tech that you’re not buying parts for it anymore. I used to be in the “must be able to fix/upgrade” and then realized in practice it never happens.

Totally neglects? FTA:

> The Framework is more expensive, slower (in most cases), louder (its fan ramps up quite often), has a pretty poor display, but it is a touchscreen, has a 360° hinge, and is more repairable and upgradeable.

> While the Neo is probably one of the easiest Mac laptops to repair in recent memory, the Framework 12 allows you to upgrade components including a DDR5 SODIMM, 2230-sized NVMe SSD, WiFi card, and even four modular ports around the sides. I outfitted mine with 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, and 1x full-size HDMI.

> Until you need to repair something or change some hardware

The overwhelming majority of people would just go buy a new one. The downtime for ordering parts and waiting repairs has a price tag, likely greater than the laptop's price. Maybe that will change with how the prices of everything have been soaring lately.

The author does mention it, they just don't deeply analyze it. Frankly, it goes without saying. If you are considering a framework and reading articles about it, you almost certainly understand the tradeoff and it was mentioned in the article. Given the build quality of Apple and the option to lock in Apple care vs. the insane cost of computer parts, it isn't that important. Especially for an entry level laptop.

I’ve had MacBook Pros for as long as they’ve existed and, honestly, I’ve never needed a repair.

The only real issue I’ve had was when I dropped one and destroyed the screen. It was covered by AppleCare, and Apple replaced it.

I usually get a new laptop every 3 to 4 years and pass the old one to family members. My dad is still using one that’s about 10 years old and it works fine for what he needs. No issues.

So the repair argument is a bit hard for me to relate to. I understand things break. But I also think taking reasonable care of your stuff goes a long way. “A stitch in time saves nine,” right?

I guess I’ve replaced the feet on a few of them but that’s a $5 dollar kit from Amazon and a screwdriver and a little bit of glue…

And for normal wear and tear, like battery life, Apple laptops can get a battery replacement through the Apple Store for a pretty reasonable cost.

Anyway, Apple makes good product products that don’t really break from me or my family. I’ve been really happy with all their stuff.

I had way worse luck, for example, building a PC to game on. Two or three years and I had to replace the power supply and I think four years and I had to replace the SSD. Like those things were annoying. I’ve never had hardware from Apple go bad on me.

(Not since I had a Performa 5200 and they had to send somebody out to fix the logic board.)

Pro motion and battery life for me

The biggest papercut preventing me from being productive on macOS is it's horrible window management which cannot be traversed with keyboard shortcuts like one does in WMs like bspwm and others on Linux and that absolutely insane ~500 ms delay in setting the focused window when moving between virtual desktops.

For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me.

Wow, this feature is so broken on macOS (I have a family shared Air M2) since at least a full decade that it's really not what I would have take as an example.

OTOH, switching users on Gnome or KDE login managers is flawless.

Pretty sure Linux has had this capability since the 90s.

Linux had this well before OS X

I'd partly count. I've always run a mix of Windows and Linux (these days mostly through WSL), but for whatever reason I find MacOS bothersome compared to a Linux desktop.

Strictly speaking, I'm not yet ready to move off x86 either, but it's getting harder to find high quality hardware in the PC world.

I'm a "Linux on Desktop" person, and the reason I use macOS on laptops is it's the best non-Linux OS which works great with Linux and comes with great hardware.

The funny thing is, I'm using macOS for ~20 years now, and there are "still" things which are way better on Linux. As a result, macOS is a laptop-only secondary OS for me.

I have a couple of Desktop computers both for work and personal use, and they run Linux exclusively, for 20+ years.

I'm sure a lot of the crowd that's using Windows as more than a browser OS would also find things to complain about. There's a ton of differences in how to do things at OS level, having to find other software, from time to time poor hardware support, different security mechanisms, being locked out of 80% of PC gaming by OS more than ARM... I guess the list could go on.

They're very loud online. If you hang out in any technology forum online, it feels like everyone is running Linux on their mac/Lenovo/Framework/etc.

No, but they are all on HN. And before that, Slashdot.

I don't believe that they have (yet) released a new display for the 12. But the 13 has gotten several upgrades, and I think the 16 just got it's first. So, most likely eventually yes.

i am not sure why btw but i read some articles on here about software not being idle on background properly a lot of times (fancy terminals etc.). for me tho 'it just happens' because im unsure how to measure it precisely..

maybe my linux had a big or wrong setup u know, but it was running very lean. Freebsd runs about as lean tho.

cannot be bothered ofc to go back and measure it is some hp-elitebook withh a ryzen and iGPU in there.

If i run things like Claude it sucks my battery. But if i just run my editors code all day myself its all gd..use firefox as browser on both. other then that its x,i3,hx,rg,fd,fzf. thats about all i use..(so u see i hate it when any laptop empties soon.... i hardly use anything of it). usually i dont even open x/i3.

The current leadership team at Asahi decided to prioritize upstreaming their existing work over reverse engineering on newer systems.

Given that you can score a used M1 Air for half the price of a new Macbook Neo (and have Linux be supported), it's an even better value compared to the Framework, for those who prefer Linux.

It's irritating to see it constantly recommended as a real option.

A Fedora live USB should just boot on an Intel MBP (maybe you have to hold Alt? Don't remember). Then you can install it to disk. I was happily running Linux on a 2015 model until recently, still a good machine for most things.

You may have more luck with Omarchy - apparently they test against most Intel Mac based models.

Owning a human is much more problematic, and anyway a human’s peak efficiency might be higher, but humans have to sleep and take breaks so overall probably not.

That’s what I would do too, but I haven’t found a desktop build that can rival a Mac Mini or Mac Studio on performance per watt. I haven’t looked super hard, but it seems like Mac is in a different ballpark.

last time I tried Linux on ARM (a month ago) nothing worked.

No sound, no webcam, no USB-C(iirc) and no video hardware acceleration.

It was a Thinkpad T14s with Snapdragon Elite X-2 if it matters.

I got a Surface Pro 7 soon after it was released and it was really great for the price. A good size to work on, decent battery, and actually worked well as a 2-in-1 device. The keyboard was a bit flimsy but still good enough for on-the-go work. Ran Windows on it for a few years then installed Linux and made it be a manager for my media setup, still working fine today.

Unfortubately Qualcomm killed open source support efforts for Snapdragon X*

TSMC doesn't do memory.

AMD actually got access to TSMC 2nm before Apple: https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-4-14-amd...

That, in the x86 universe, has some heavy penalties in performance terms. I got myself a fanless “student” laptop (another name for “rugged”, but sells for less) and, while performance is acceptable, it ain’t fast - like a 10 year old i3.

[flagged]

I've never had a smelly Mac, and I've owned maybe 10 different ones across personal and various work laptops. And 90% of devs I've ever met have used Macs and none of them smell either, so it's zero out of maybe 200+ in my personal experience.

Software has been riding on the backs of the insane hardware growth curves for the last 20 years. I miss the days of reading about how software engineers had to delete standard C libraries in build time to shave extra memory so they can stream more of the level in.

I also fully acknowledge that change starts with me, unfortunately those changes don't pay the bills.

I can almost excuse Apple for not being concerned about the relatively niche “mac as a server” use case. The thing that boggles my mind is how their keyboard and autocorrect experience get steadily worse with each release. This is the primary way to interact with their flagship device—the thing that generates an enormous share of their revenue. Why go out of your way to make that worse?

First I heard of this.

Apparently it's a meme and Zoomers are huffing their Steam Deck exhaust. Hmm.

From the descriptions I've read the smell is similar or identical.

Maybe they use the same magic ooze.

On an M4 Macbook Pro it's mild and faintly sweet but not really pleasant the way the LCD deck is. Requires a lot of heat for a long time to become noticeable. Vent is less convenient for sniffing.