Comment by benoau
1 day ago
As nice as Apple's hardware is it's all undermined by who they are as a company, intentionally limiting their devices more and more while they relentlessly argue in courts and to regulators that we owe them more and more for using our devices.
Rosetta 2's retirement announcement was when I realized I won't buy another Mac, I'm not interested in a computer that is preoccupied with stopping me from running software. Work can buy them for me but I won't spend my money on a platform like that anymore.
Depending on how their Supreme Court argument goes in a few weeks I will stop buying an iPhone too, if they establish the precedent that any method of paying for Netflix deserves a $5/month fee then they will leverage that to extract the same fee everywhere else.
That is all true but even as a hardcore Linux and Thinkpad user, I have to admit it is a hard sell when no one can offer the quality of Apple.
Apple is the only hardware company where you can buy a product and it is good hardware wise. Sure other companies have flagship offerings but with apple you get a really good base model.
And that is where it breaks down for me. Pay 20% more for freedom? Yes, absolutely. But pay more for much worse? Yeah, not many people are going to be so idealistic.
I don't know why no one else can produce a laptop with decent battery life with an near silent fan and good display and overall great production quality. Yes, it is much easier when you are as big as apple and can rely on economics of scale but that doesn't totally explain the lack of quality when it comes to the competition.
I think that people aren't seeing what Apple is doing through the lens of efficiency, and the wider impact that has on their software and hardware.
Them not having to support 30+ year old software means that they can be more nimble and make better hardware choices.
Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.
> Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.
Forcing people to create a MS account to log in their Windows computer, that's because of backward compatibility?
Pushing Copilot absolutely everywhere, that's because of backward compatibility?
GitHub being down almost daily, that's because of backward compatibility?
As a counter-point, look at WINE on Linux and Crostini's containerized software on ChromeOS, clearly it is possible to support varied software without over-complicating the OS. And that's what Rosetta 2 does as well, if it's held Apple back the last 6 years it hasn't shown at all.
It will be very surprising if we see any benefits from cutting Rosetta 2, especially worth gutting all the games and software this has empowered via Steam/WINE/CrossOver.
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The way Windows implements backwards compatibility is not sustainable in the long term, as it increases both maintenance costs and attack surface, but the current state of Windows and its dwindling appeal has little to do with it and more with poor design decisions, and a competition that has made better design choices. Linux has been a viable desktop for years, and Macs have been the gold standard against which everyone is judged since the 1980s.
Windows still owns the corporate drone desktop, but, oddly enough, that’s now being served as a VDI through a Linux thin client.
I disagree completely. Backwards compatibility has precisely nothing to do with why Windows is terrible nowadays.
And that's also entirely orthogonal to hardware - the hardware battle between ARM Mac and ARM PC is really a battle between Apple and Qualcomm (Apple won).
In hindsight, rather than relying on Snapdragon, Microsoft should have started designing their own high-efficiency ARM SoCs 15 years ago like Apple did. But I mean, everything is clear in hindsight isn't it.
I've been using an asus zenbook 14 OLED with linux. Compatibility is great.
The screen blows apple out completely. It's clearly, obviously better. The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple. The keyboard feels better to type on, the trackpad is slightly worse, but not enough to annoy me.
The new Pop OS cosmic is a very fun OS concept for laptops with the autotiling workspaces as a fundamental primitive.
Is the fan turning on often? Is it very loud?
From my research on Macbook alternatives only the Zenbooks looked like almost-an-even-match to me. Curious what's your experience with day-to-day fan noise and heat.
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From a quick search online, the max brightness of your laptop is 400 nits SDR and 500 HDR. My M5 MacBook Pro is 1000 and 1500 nits.
Screen brightness is not something I will compromise on after having a taste of greatness.
I personally wouldn't mind spending 30-40% more for a Linux laptop with similar qualities + repairability. But I will not settle for something much more expensive and worst in some aspects.
There are also arguments agains repairability in Framework's laptop. I did the calculations and for the Framework 16, it would be cheaper to buy a gaming Asus laptop and throw it out in a couple years to replace it versus buying a framework and upgrading it. Utter insanity.
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> The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple.
That's the main issue for me. I am on M1 Max 32GB RAM. Except for local LLMs, there is absolutely nothing that gets even close to the performance limits of this device. As a result, all the work I do is performed in perfect silence. Very occasionally the device would get warm, never hot. Based on my usage, I could probably go for an Air model, except for how many external screens it supports.
Zero-noise is non-negotiable for me. It's lamentable how absolutely no-one comes even close.
> I don't know why no one else can produce a laptop with decent battery life with an near silent fan and good display and overall great production quality.
Isn't that the whole reason why Apple is the company it is? Steve Jobs wanted to control the software AND the hardware. That hasn't changed, they're still the only one really. That does get you some benefits
> you get a really good base model.
Why does it matter to _you_ in particular that the base model is good ?
For a decade buying macs I never got the base model, I switched to the Asus ROG series and a Surface Pro, and again I'mm not on the base model of either.
I get that MacBooks are very good volume purchases and excellent value for those right in the target, but IMHO that's not the people writing in this thread.
I'm also not a fan of the "winner takes it all" view, customers should care about their very specific needs and do their research, it shouldn't matter that some product matches 80% of other people's needs if it doesn't fit them.
Base model used to mean glorified toy with severely compromised fundamentals. The Macbook Neo is not that. It is an excellent screen, excellent keyboard, and excellent silicon, encased in an excellent chassis.
As a remote work terminal / casual computing system, the compromises are IMHO almost entirely psychological.
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ThinkPad X1 from 2 years ago was very solid and under Fedora everything but camera worked out of the box. And for camera issue I had to blame myself for not checking details of a specific model as Lenovo was offering at that time fully-Linux compatible model. It took about one and halve year before Linux fully supported it. And I already upgraded SSD on it which took less than 10 minutes.
The only complain is bad battery life. With several VMs running mostly idle it doesn’t lasts even two hours. But then I used beefy MacBook M2 at my previous work and with VMs it lasted only 4 hours.
This is a common dilemma.
Apple's phones and laptop are 100 % the best in the market, but Apple is a terrible evil company - the walled garden stuff, the "you don't really own your device" stuff, the normalization of enshittification (removing headphone jack, nonreplaceable glued batteries, not giving charger with $1000 laptop, ...) that other manufacturers followed, the gold statue Cook gave Trump as a bribe.
But not just Apple. Teslas are the best electric cars on the market - but Musk got Trump elected, literally killed millions of people with his DOGE and did Sieg Heil on stage (twice, so we don't miss it). Or Garmin - objectively the best sport and adventure watches on the market, but evil anti-consumer planned obsolescence policies. You could go on.
I guess the choice is, am I willing to "suffer" (as much as using inferior product is suffering anyway) to not support these people? Or is my comfort mire important than doing the right thing?
And I'm not just being preachy - I have aging M1 macbook, aging Garmin watch and an aging ICE car and I spend few last months pondering. It's easy to prioritize comfort. Or I'm just being a whiny bitch.
(Funnily enough, for phones the dilemma really isn't there - you have just choice of Apple or Google having all your data and no matter how bad Apple is, Google is orders of magnitude worse.)
And that device is the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 OLED. The paper specs are great, all that's required is to turn it into a fully fleged Linux laptop and get rid of ChromeOS and core boot entirely. I just got hibernate working on it last night, wifi, sleep and sound and the fingerprint sensor works. There's some more polish and tuning to be done, but this'll be the machine I move off my apple silicon laptop for.
Apple hardware is only perfect when looked at through rose tinted glasses. The whole butterfly keyboard issue should be enough to indight them from being seen as perfect with hardware. There's a reason Applecare exists, and it's not just because of accidental spills.
But Rosetta was always meant to be just a temporary compatibility bridge. Surely you too would consider it kind of crazy if they were today, still, pouring time into maintaining Rosetta 1 for people wanting to run PPC software on macOS/x86. The first Arm build of macOS is now 6 years old, and when Rosetta 2 is ultimately removed from macOS in late 2027 it will have been available to us for close to 8 years. That's a pretty generous amount of time given to us to move forward.
The work is done. Why not just leave it in? Or FOSS it so the community maintains it, like WINE?
Microsoft maintains backward compatibility seemingly forever and it means a lot more complexity, more surface area for vulnerabilities, and critically that they are unable to ever get developers to buy-in to any new ideas. Developers know their current app will keep working, so why bother with the re-write? Then due to the lack of adoption, they kill the project and try something else. I believe this to be one of the core reasons why Apple is able to successfully launch in areas that Microsoft has routinely failed.
It’s been 6 years. If anything hasn’t been updated by now, it’s either been abandoned or the developer needs a hard deadline. There are various programs out there where I question if it’s been abandoned. Periodic exercises like this help make it clear.
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Maintenance ain't free and letting one of the core elements of OS to be developed by community could lead to undesirable outcomes (ranging from battery/perf impact to introduction of some new bugs or esoteric workarounds). Consistency in codebase and software is important, especially for bigger companies.
Far too many companies aren't willing to embrace newer paradigms/toolchains/software on the principle - if it works don't touch it or inventing some wild workarounds. I think in the end it's for good
Apple wants everything to be consistent. I have mixed feelings on it, because I do greatly despise windows, partly because of how inconsistent everything is. It’s chock full of half finished “migrations”. Like, programs still installing to “Programs Files (x86)” Which doesn’t matter but adds the tiniest bit of friction.
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... and this is how Apple proves it doesn't give a shit about gaming on their platform again ...
Forcing developers off of Rosetta 2 is a pro-consumer move because it gives the ultimate incentive for developers to modernize. I don’t want to use Lightroom (replace with whatever app is part of your workflow) through x86 emulation, I want Apple to bitch slap Adobe into porting it to native. Microsoft will be forced to expend resources to support x86 emulation for all of eternity.
Apple throwing their weight around in a pro-consumer way (Rosetta, ask app not to track) is why I use their devices
> I want Apple to bitch slap Adobe into porting it to native. Microsoft will be forced to expend resources to support x86 emulation for all of eternity.
I don't understand how you can say that Apple is more pro-consumer than Microsoft here, considering that Microsoft guarantees that no matter whether the vendor is unwilling, out of business, dead, or otherwise unavailable, you can still run your software. Apple says you need to go find someone to put tens to hundreds of man-hours into updating software from god-knows-when, and if you can't do that, you can just go fuck yourself.
You say yourself, Microsoft is willing to put in the work to ensure that their customers will be able to run their binaries forever. Apple spits in your face and you thank them for it.
Apple dropping 32-bit support resulted in me losing access to 3/4 of my Mac Steam library. Not every piece of software is built with an endless update treadmill in mind, no matter how much Apple would like to force the developers into one with their breaking changes and developer program subscription.
This would result in people losing access to a bunch of software just so Apple could shrug and shift the blame elsewhere. Because in the mind of an Apple fan, nothing is ever Apple’s fault.
1. A ton of software won't get updated even with customers losing access to stuff they bought in the Apple app store. I've been through this multiple times with Apple where existing software is just suddenly unavailable to those who’d installed it.
2. Consumers losing the choice to use apps they bought or downloaded is not pro-consumer (if they want to continue getting OS security patches etc). As you said, it's a conscious choice by Apple to cause customers to lose access to software they'd bought etc, as Microsoft’s approach allows us to still use software from multiple decades ago.
(I’d gotten a piece of paid software from the iOS + iPad app store in 2011. I lost access a few years later during another Apple change.)
3. However, I think you're right that we will see more and more companies cause customers to lose access to existing software, features, etc that customers had bought, but similarly frame it as a good thing, forcing ‘modernization’, etc.
If you’re worried about OS security patches, shouldn’t using software that hasn’t been updated in 6 years be of similar concern?
I’m not arguing that software needs to be updated every 2 weeks, as is the trend now. However, 6 years, when there have been major architectural changes and UI changes. At some point the software should be deemed abandoned and it’s time to find something new.
Even a simple update to support the M-series chips means the dev is still around and can release updates, even if there have been no other feature updates in 6 years as its finished software. The occasional sign of life on finished projects is helpful.
> Rosetta 2's retirement announcement was when I realized I won't buy another Mac, I'm not interested in a computer that is preoccupied with stopping me from running software.
This is the 3rd time this has happened in roughly 2 decades by the way.
ppc/ppc64 -> x86_64 x86_64 -> x64 only x64 -> arm64
I much prefer Apple just forcing the developers to update their apps. Perhaps it’s just me though.
Continue to support obsolete hardware just cause doesn’t make any sense. Apple had to move on just like they had to move away from Motorola, IBM and Intel. Apple also had to move away from AMD and Nvidia, Broadcom, and probably Qualcomm, and with the current memory crisis, Apple may have to take memory in house too. Many of the moves were done not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
When is reasonable to stop supporting a platform that only hinders the user experience? Should they have supported PPC emulation forever? x86 is on the way out in for most consumer devices. Apple is usually a bit early to drop technologies, but still acknowledges and fixes real mistakes (USB-C-only laptops and the associated keyboards) when they impact customer experience.
> When is reasonable to stop supporting a platform that only hinders the user experience?
When people who care about it can carry on the torch.
Dropping support wouldn't matter if anyone outside of Apple could keep it alive instead, or if Rosetta 2 users could stay on the last supported OS and keep their devices secured through community patches etc.
> USB-C-only laptops
I think it's hilarious that Apple managed to get criticised for being both too early AND too late with USB-C.
To be fair, they were criticized a lot for dropping the 30-pin connector and going to Lightning too. At the time they said they designed Lightning to last 10 years (about how long 30-pin lasted), because they knew how disruptive a port change is with all the accessories people have. It lasted from 2012-2023, 11 years. So they made good on their promise.
> Should they have supported PPC emulation forever
Yes.
Linux hasn't even bothered continuing supporting processors in the same family, dropping support for 386:
* https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-sup...
and more recently, 486:
* https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-devs-start...
and here we are expecting support for completely different CPU classes. :)
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Supporting everything forever is how you end up with Windows
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Apple moved ahead with thunderbolt five should they keep thunderbolt four? Moving to thunderbolt five is necessary if you want to drive more information to a 5K or 6k monitor or any other peripheral.
> x86 is on the way out in for most consumer devices.
Define "consumer devices"? I am holding on to my AMD Ryzen machines until they literally fall dead. I have no complaints from them. Maybe some modern or even next-gen ARM CPUs will be even better on Linux but I don't think we are quite there yet.
x86_64 is here to stay for a long time still.
But maybe you literally meant x86 as in the 32-bit CPU arch? If so, I'd mostly agree but not quite; they could be used in low-power micro-PCs for a long time still as well.
Right, I mean, like Jeff's content but it sort of felt like he was metaphorically "punching down" in this video.
Of course Apple can make a relatively cheap mass produced device that can outcompete on price / spec -- they've been making iPads for almost two decades now. They just threw a keyboard on one and changed the bootloader to boot OSX. Good for them. 20 years of R&D paid off for one of the largest and most valued and profitable companies in the world.
If I want a relatively cheap machine I can actually run Linux (or for other people, Windows) on, or can upgrade or repair... Apple is not in the running.
The other day i saw a slick scifi movie and really liked the interface in one of the random background terminals. I thought id recreate a working version of it. I snapped a screenshot on my iphone where i was watching, but lo it was blacked out? Same after several attempts. Ugh fine, go to my macbook, fire up netflix in a browser there, screenshot from desktop. Nope. Still blacked out.
Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
Is this just "Person discovers DRM, c. 2026" dressed up as a complaint about Apple?
That's a bit disingenuous isn't it? Being unable to use any screenshot tool to capture an image on my laptop's browser was surprising to me, yes. Or are you arguing that Apple's implementations are no more restrictive than on any linux machine, so as such there is no case to be made for anything DRM related that a non-Apple device is superior (less limiting) in any way? Or... I suppose what is your actual argument here?
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Only if you are solely an Apple user, because it's literally not a problem anywhere else. I've taken tons of photos of movies with my Pixels.
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