Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop

The bit about HP’s naming scheme is painfully true, about many companies. Utterly dumb marketing strategies.

Your attention is drawn to https://system76.com/

the upgradability and interchangibility of parts in the framework ecosystem are needed to sustain a shelling point.

As for the PC ecosystem, there are no good x86 cpus with good power effciciency. Maybe geohot would like https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc ? Framework 13 does not have his specific touchpad complaint

Do you know about Framework? https://frame.work/

the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent. I'm on a thinkpad x9, which might be the closest I've seen, but the cpu performance just isn't as good.

Read the article.

I'm unsure if this is a joke or if you really didn't read the article

I don’t know. Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?

Asahi would have 100x more adoption if it was about better virtualization of Linux on macOS. It would be a DIFFERENT product and I guess that’s the point, right?

A good chunk of (but not all) his requirements would be fulfilled by an ASUS ROG Flow Z13

It has always been an embarrassment.

Vizio made a good laptop once and then they just existed the computer industry. They had a vision of high quality approachable laptops, desktops and pro platforms and their first gen was a good attempt, but they just didn’t follow on.

> Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?

High performance GPU for VMs, for starters. And the amount of crap that even a bare-bones macOS needs to load (and that consequently hog resources like RAM and CPU time) is a goddamn joke.

Honestly this describes a product I would want. I want the hardware of a MacBook that runs Linux and not MacOS.

The author wants to buy a whole new computer every year or two max, instead of upgrading components

That’s an impressive, so to speak, level of consumerism, reminds me of a self-professed minimalist that made the rounds here years ago, he practiced detachment from worldly possessions by throwing away his clothes after use and buying new ones, instead of washing them

I wonder why ThinkPads are not mentioned. It's not like I recommend them (I mean, I use one, but it's not like I've tried most laptops out there, so who I am to judge), but I was under the impression it's still a de-facto Linux laptop standard.

You cannot uninstall Apple Music. That alone is alienating.

I feel the same way, but I wouldn't be bold enough to call it dumb. I mean, I assume they know what they are doing. This is very inconvenient for me, as a buyer, but I suppose most companies just aren't Apple, so they throw at us a lot of various stuff hoping that something sticks. And, for that matter, Apple's product line gets more diversified each year too. now it's Air, and Pro, and Max, so I wouldn't bet it won't be G1 Ultra F12b in 10 more years too.

Amen. Not only do they make hardware in the US (though not laptops yet), they contribute great Linux software.

This is a refreshing take in some ways. I'm beyond tired of the usual rose-tinted attitudes towards customizability and after-engineered things.

It was a bit disappointing to see the cold shower not reach the thermals situation however, despite the heavy emphasis on performant parts. Apple's offerings are phone-like, they let them saturate then throttle. The alternative is the ugly gamer laptops with their jet engines. Not sure I can wholeheartedly prefer either.

All I want is a thinner Thinkpad X220 but with upped specs and newer ports. Framework-style upgradable motherboard would be nice but optional. The X220 already has a perfect keyboard, a mousing system that doesn't suck (sorry, I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise), a beautiful form factor for a laptop (if I want a laptop, I want it to be 12-14in for easiest portability), it's practically indestructible and has an array of ports that makes me wonder how people manage with just 3 USB-C ports. Maybe this is just me though.

You cannot uninstall Music.app indeed. There is one toggle that hides all of Apple Music. It completely hides it, to the point that a link online to the service will error out.

Honestly if you actually need high end specs then you should just build a PC.

"16 core Zen 5 CPU, 40 core RDNA 3.5 GPU. 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM @ 256 GB/s + stunning OLED" - Easily done as a pc build.

In a world where you can get this laptop with Linux, there's a new set of trade-offs -

- be prepared for a LOT of things not working because the size of the market for extremely expensive configurations with high end CPU + GPU + RAM + Monitor + Linux is practically zero.

- when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably

- will a new GPU/GPU architecture be a headache for the first X years...yes, and if you want to replace every 2 years, I guess you will have a permanent headache.

- will updating graphics drivers be a problem? yes

- is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not

- will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe

- will all the ports work/behave? probably not

- will your machine perform worse than a high end PC that cost 1/2 as much from 3 years ago... yes.

Starlabs is pretty close IMO

I think the point of him making his own laptop is that he would fix all those software problems.

Have you bought one?

I think it was fine 20 odd years ago. I had a Thinkpad T41p in 2004 and it was a great laptop. Even my Sony Vaio Z was nice in 2008 compared to the competition (although it had serious issues with the screen flexibility causing it to fail multiple times).

Since 2012 I've had 3 Macs, a 2012 Air, a 2020 M1 (this was a massive upgrade and the nicest laptop I ever used, even compared to my relatively new work thinkpad). I just cracked the screen on my M1 so bought a discounted M4 air on black friday. I can't tell the difference other than I like having magsafe back and only miss the touch bar slightly.

I’ve been feeling exact way for a while now. Tahoe brought it to a head. I just want a portable machine I truly own and control that doesn’t suck. Why is that so much to ask?

Ryzen AI 370 is a pretty badass mobile x86 chip. Enjoying my gpd win max 2 just fine, apple would have to make a 10" M4 to compete :)

How’s the battery life?

I get the complaint about naming but hp is different then apple. They sell a variety of configurations and one isn't neccesarily better then any other.

I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Valve puts out a laptop - the Steam Deck has notably good power management for a linux device of its class (and I've even heard of people using them as laptop replacements), though the idle power is still higher than a Macbook. They're going to have made a desktop, gaming handheld, and VR device; why not one more?

Is his build even possible today in a laptop?

In a desktop, you would need a top of the line threadripper for that 256GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Consumer grade Zen 5 desktops reach only about 80GB/s in real world testing, with a theoretical max of slightly over 100GB/s.

Cannot properly evaluate now. I never really use it without a cable for too long, and by now the battery must have slightly degraded too. Anyway, it never was Macbook-level, I guess, and it's an oldish model, so you should check actual reviews for current models that you are interested in, there always was plenty of them for ThinkPads (at least, the last time when I looked for a new laptop).

One model/configuration will never work because developers are awful, picky customers.

You’ll lose 90,000 of your 100,000 with one or more little nitpicks.

Probably 50% right off the bat because you chose a keyboard with or without a numpad.

Another huge chunk because you chose the wrong screen (Retina resolution? Low resolution? Refresh rate?)

Too bad, because I want this. Or at least the version of it I have in my head :)

AMD Strix Halo (a consumer mobile processor) has theoretical support for 256GB/s of memory bandwidth (quad-channel, 8000 MT/s LPDDR5X, must be soldered, supports 128GB at most).

Yes! I had a Vizio laptop (the thin one ala a macbook air) and it was absolutely fantastic, probably the best PC laptop I have ever had. It was lightweight, powerful, had a good screen (for the time) plus some things that few other laptops had at the time, like a TPM.

The memory is shared for the GPU, so you should probably compare with desktop GPU, so 1-2TB/s.

I mostly think of when geohot wanted to make his own RISC-V core and cranked out some basic verilog. It was incomplete and barely commented, and never touched again. I suspect we are going to get a few blog posts of analysis and then he moves on to something else

The old ones had hot-swappable batteries (a second internal battery - of decent size - kept the device going while you replaced the external one). I used to keep a couple of extra 50 Wh batteries in my backpack and therefore had excellent battery life. The power efficiency wasn't great though.

I now have a Z13 Gen 1 (AMD 6850U) running Fedora and the battery life is passable. It draws 7-8W at idle from a 51 Wh battery.

Just from the pictures you can tell it doesn't feel like a MacBook's unibody.

XPS 13 has snapdragon x elite and is very well built. Not sure how good Linux support is, tho. I run Linux on my Intel-based XPS 14 and it's pretty good, apart from the webcam being totally uncalibrated and looking kinda shite, but at least it works.

I bought the StarLabs tablet, and it was... Okay.

The tablet itself has been good. The firmware support is good. The charger died, and the keyboard case is on its last legs. I had to solder the pins back on to keep it working. It's an acceptable keyboard case, but the 'a' key doesn't work super well. Still a decent product, particularly for a Linux convertable, but definitely not something I would give my dad.

> Consumer electronics naming is very simple. Make a good product with a simple name. “iPhone”, “comma”, “Z Fold”. Then every year or two, add one to the number of that product. If it’s a small refresh, you can add a letter after the number. “2 3 3X 4” “4 4s 5 5s 6 …” “2 3 4 5 6 7” Why is this so hard for companies like HP?

Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”

Apple loses some points here since every macbook from like 2007 until 2020 was just called “Macbook pro” with no year officially in the name so you have to be really careful when eg looking at used listings for macbooks. But since the M1 it’s been good with M<1-5>

The industry also didn't keep up with the trackpad, which should be simpler.

I agree about some criticisms of the framework. I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI. I also would prefer a thinner screen bezel, even if that means it's not swappable either.

But having easy access to internal hardware for upgrades is pretty huge. Rather than blowing 1-2k on a new machine every few years, it's just $200-500 for more RAM and a better CPU (assuming prices go back to normal in a reasonable amount of time)

It's not just you; I would also love a modern ThinkPad x220. I have a Framework 13 and I enjoy it, though I wish it had better battery life. The perfect laptop for me would be my Framework 13 with a classic ThinkPad keyboard.

Apple / macbooks seem to be doing fine

We could have had Xbox 720, 1080... but no. xbox 1 x one one x triple X amsterdam edition.

Thinkpads are probably fine if that's the price point you're shopping at, but the modern ones are not good value. HP has the best mobile workstation available currently.

tradeoffs :)

The HP Zbook Ultra G1A is a contender, but it's also the only contender to your point.

The blog is premised on the idea that Apple and MacBook are not doing fine.

Follow the Framework model. Make the hardware user configurable, maintainable, and upgradable.

> - when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably

Why probably? Going to sleep on lid close is common enough, it's even the default in all OSes/DEs. If you turn off sleep-on-close and drain the battery, that's on you.

> - is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not

> - will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe

> - will all the ports work/behave? probably not

These seem like odd things to doubt, when Framework has a perfectly working system for Linux and has been doing it for years. No hardware in their systems is unsupported in Linux.

Notably the critique of Framework in the original blog post does not offer these doubts. They are focused instead on the hardware design and tradeoffs between upgradability and uniform bodies. Those are real tradeoffs and Framework cannot solve them all without abandoning the upgradability part.

The reason of course being the awful software, not the hardware options. He makes that abundantly clear in the text.

> I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise

Everything non-Apple is. Apple's trackpad are great and have been for decades. I’ve done professional image editing on the go even with the tiny by today’s standards PowerBook G4s trackpads.

The real tragedy of our industry is that Apple got the basics right a few decades ago but seems determined to make their OS worse for pro user with every release. Yet no one else seems competent or willing to take on the challenge.

How much would you pay? Seriously.

There is market demand, but at what price? Hardware is a thin margin product.

Is it a few off the shelf parts placed in a custom CNCed block of aluminium or is it engineered, from the ground up, to suit purpose.

Getting an idea of what would people pay for such a product is step one.

5k?

That setting was removed[0].

[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253315335?sortBy=rank

You missed my point, the original comment is stating that the market for such a device doesn't exist because developers are too finicky and customisation focussed.

As a counter example - look at macbooks which are about as un-customisable as they come, but a large portion of developers use them. Meaning the market exists even if it's currently dominated by Apple (which as you/the post points out is slipping)

IMO, the benefits of an immutable OS install outweigh being able to uninstall/remove particular apps.

> I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI.

Strong agree. After all, their plug modules are really just dongles that are integrated into the body, which makes them worse IMO. More expensive, model-specific, etc.

I see this comment about how awesome Apple Trackpads are all the time here, and just assumed I was missing out because I'd never used a MacBook. But I got given a MacBook Pro recently for work, and I'm super underwhelmed. The trackpad on it is no better or worse than any other trackpad I've used.

George is probably too young to remember when we thought OS X was hot shit because it was UNIX compliant. That meant a lot back then.

However over the years they dropped the ball big time. Arch may be the new hotness but BSD was the once (and hopefully future) king.

On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.

Once Steve Jobs returned, he replaced the product numbering scheme with a quadrant: consumer desktop (iMac), consumer laptop (iBook), high-end desktop (Power Mac), and high-end laptop (PowerBook). The high-end models had a suffix (G3, G4, G5), but it got confusing with all the variants (e.g., Wallsteeet vs Lombard vs Pismo PowerBook G3, various revisions of Titanium and Aluminum PowerBook G4, etc.)

And a major consumer of space, because they have to accommodate bigger ports even if they're only doing USB-C pass-through.

I remember that story. I want to say it was the Soylent drink founder, but Google is steering me astray. Who was it?

Having an iBook or a PowerBook with Mac OS X was a big deal at a time when driver support for Linux was less commonplace than it is today. Even today there are driver issues with Linux on some laptops.

Part of the reason I bought a Core Duo MacBook the summer after my freshman year of college was because Apple was the only vendor I knew where I could purchase a fully-supported Unix laptop. It could also run Microsoft Office without having to dual-boot with Windows, though ironically I ended up just using NeoOffice (a Mac fork of OpenOffice), the Apple iWork suite, and LaTeX during my college years.

> "I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise"

Same for me, Apple included; trackpads are just a huge waste of space to me. Have to say that my hand-eye coordination is way above that of the average computer user, and my workflows involving complementary HIDs always focused on trackballs, digtizer pens, as well as gamepads/game controllers for other, non-game related stuff.

I also don't get why people still chase outdated form factors (laptops) by preference as opposed to market realities...

geohot: "I want a laptop with a high-end AMD chip, great Linux power management, good docs, solid build, and a normal name"

My brother in christ, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 5 AMD exists. Zen 5, aluminum chassis, legendary Linux support, actual power state documentation. They been doing this for 30 years. Dude, you're bikeshedding a product that's been sitting in the enterprise aisle this whole time

ThinkPads have been the Linux laptop for decades precisely because of the things he's wishing for. Public ACPI/power management docs, upstream kernel support, and AMD options with sane power profiles. He even admits the ZBook touchpad is fine but fails to acknowledge ThinkPads have had excellent trackpoints + multi-touchpads since forever.

Also don't like trackpads. I even use a ThinkPad keyboard on my desktop. The little rubber nub between G and H is just the ideal control for the pointer. And real buttons for clicking.

> Not only do they make hardware in the US

Many outside of the US would consider that a con today.

>the trade-off I’d prefer is 0 upgradability or customizability in exchange for less weight and more polish

This mentality is ruining everything. Not just computers, but everything including cars and appliances. It's disappointing - I thought geohot was more of a hacker. If he really wants a glued together, disposable piece of crap, you can't do better than Apple, and then just tolerate the OS and maybe VM Linux.

Link to the one that's so great, especially a Macbook contender?

He has a $2000+ Thinkpad X1 and it was basically his least favorite one in his lineup from last week except for the Framework's bad display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M96O0Sn1LXA

The snark doesn't seem warranted.

Edit: The laptop you're talking about is also 14" 1920x1200 or am I lost in Lenovo's awful website? A 14" Macbook is 3024x1964. The more I look, the worse it gets, especially after you hyped it like that.

> "the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent."

True. I think that's mostly because they model their merchandise after Apple's products. I find Apple's hardware utterly undesirable, tho. The only product of theirs I ever showed any interest in was their Newton line of handhelds; my dream machine is quite far removed from the stuff that's mentioned in the OP's article, let alone anything that maps to Apple's portfolio (and even more importantly, product philosophy).

I recently replaced my aging X1C7 with a T14s AMD and it has been quite nice!

And there are two Xbox Ones

Apple trackpads are so good that I prefer that over a full mouse for work

Dell XPS used to be like this, but unfortunately Dell discontinued them :'(

I'd love to hear people compare their system76 laptop to a Macbook, but it's really hard to find recommendations that don't just grade their non-Macbook on a curve just because it's not one.

Edit: Way too many issues on r/system76.

What to expect, when Microsoft decides to do stupid things like renaming .NET Core into .NET 5, thus everyone that doesn't pay attention to Microsoft world keeps thinking .NET is Windows only, as the .NET Framework was always known as plain .NET in most circles.

Yes. OneXfly apex. Amd 395+, oled panel.

You know as a company that you have gone out of the ability to create something if you come up first with name changes of existing products. Looking at you, Office (or whatever your name is today).

The framework model is the reasonable approach to people being finnicky about their laptop specs. You can't sustain "I want it just so" and "it needs to be a cnc-machined glued together brick, engineered to the last gramme" at the same time, without a step change in how we build hardware, but the framework comes pretty close

If linux power management got a bit better, and there was a good arm chip, it would be a great machine. Now it's just pretty good

Maybe they will spend more than five cents and get a decent hinge? I would love to support Valve if the build quality is good and the price is decent.

So the battery life wasn't excellent.

My laptop can go on for days as well as long as I plug it in to a power bank. I just need to lug them around, defeating the purpose.

Different priorities I suppose but I'd absolutely hate using that laptop. I want something designed to last, not be thrown out in a few years. IDK when it became cool to just expect everyone to have the money or care to buy a new <thneed> every few years. I guess it makes more money but since that seems to be the only thing companies with a marketing budget do people have forgotten there's an actual market for well built electronics that will at least survive 5 years

I think the kind of laptop this person wishes should simply be made illegal to make. We cannot sustain having all electric devices being thrown after a year or two, these things need to last, to be repairable and make it easy to grab pieces and materials when they die anyway

Maximum 32GB of RAM, which is a bad joke if you want to use it as developer system nowadays.

TL;DR: Waited for a decade for somebody to make a non-shitty notebook, went for macbook as the least bad option when the old one was falling apart.

Also the modern thinkpad keyboards are crap, and the trackpoint is unusable in the low profile style.

I switched to a macbook pro last year after having some contact with apple hardware in a customer project, from a thinkpad x230 with a x220 keyboard I've kept barely alive over the years. Now _some_ non-Apple notebooks (mostly from framework) can take sensible amount of memory, but at the time of purchase that was the only 14" notebook capable of taking a decent amount of RAM. The only other ones that could take RAM were some xeon workstation type builds - big display, shitty battery runtime, and same or more expensive than a fully specced out macbook.

Apple also seems to have put some effort into keyboards - with the current macbook pro keyboard being one of the best notebook keyboards currently out there. Not as good as the classic thinkpad keyboards, but better than anything lenovo made in over a decade. Dell never was that great, and did a massive step back in their latest model. HP is somewhat close, but still noticeable difference.

> I don’t care one bit about upgradability or customizability. After a year or two, I’m happy to throw it out and buy a new one. It’s not like upgradability is a bad thing, but it usually comes with tradeoffs to weight and power draw, and I’d rather it all be in one solid package glued together. And I don’t like customizability because I like when all the testing and polish work is put into one configuration.

Jesus christ. What a wasteful and selfish way to look at things.

Google Workspace hasn’t changed its name in a few years now. Do you think it’s due for a change or has it finally sobered up?

Unfortunately it idles at ~8W, which is quite far from the ~3W of the best in class laptops.

Frameworks (laptops) are all in on usb-c. That's the only port they come with. The modules are just type-c dongles. And they are too small - the official ethernet one hangs outside the body.

I don't understand what you mean by "outdated form factors". Are you saying that the laptop is an outdated form factor? What "market realities" are you noticing? Really interested in your viewpoint and would be grateful for some clarification.

The author of the article recently had a “laptop olympics” stream where he compared his laptops. He owns an X1 carbon but doesn’t like it at all, mainly because of the CPU iirc.

Zbook Ultra G1a 14 makes perfect sense:

Z means workstation

Book for notebook/laptop format, not desktop

Ultra is the line, like Pro in MacBook Pro

G1 is the first generation, that way you don't have to wonder

a for AMD

14 is the screen diagonal

To defend OP somewhat: his throw out should be someone else’s pre-owned and then we are square.

Not in defense: This is a customer who sees itself as an ultra pro user that only wants the best on all dimensions regardless of economics. Nice that there are about a few hundred of these customers in the world. This is a market that doesn’t exist and frankly, give this customer their wish and they only have other or more wishes.

Not everybody use/choose macbook though.

Having said that I do believe that many brands have way too mamy SKU and I widh they would be more opinionated on what they believe is better for their customers while maintaining clear and strong ethics (reliability should be #priority)

There's no reason such a laptop can't be repairable. Sure, it may be harder to do, but that's the tradeoff you choose when buying such a device.

The main obstacles to repairability in such devices are intentional: part serialization, lack of documentation, and so on. Those don't help making the device any more compact or easier to manufacture, it's pure greed.

Address those problems and you can happily have your ultra-slim, tightly integrated laptop. It may be slightly less repairable, but as long as repair isn't intentionally being prevented, life will find a way.

Selfish how, because he clearly does not say that upgradability or customizability are bad things? Its also not like hes proposing something that isnt reality for most manufacturers, especially Apple.

> I’m typing this blog on a HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14. Question to HP, who names this crap? Why do these companies insist on having the most confusing product lineups and names.

The reason is that they are not serious companies, this is why anything other than a real macbook and with a real macOS is not worth having spent time on.

There is such a reason: it isn't modular enough for the economics to favor repair over replacement, what with the economies of scale and that.

Part of their magic is the integration with the operating system in the form of gestures. Their UI for discovering those used to be stellar; every gesture had a little video preview. Right now I'd describe it as just okay. Check the 'trackpad gestures' section in system settings, or this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102482

I think the selfishness here is related to being fine with generating a pile of electronic waste that becomes a problem for everyone else, as long as he can avoid carrying a few ounces extra.

It's hard to recycle electronics, because separating materials that are chemically bonded together is very labor intensive and isn't worth it from the price of aluminum, copper, lithium, etc alone.

It would have to cost more to dispose of a laptop for this to work out financially.

I get near infinite battery life on mine if I plug it into a wall outlet.

This reminds me of the parody from 20 years ago of what would happen if Microsoft would re-design the iPod packaging - including the name of the product. It seems that nothing has changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

do the benefits of a closed-source OS outweigh being able to do whatever you want?

On his video channel he shows 4 laptops, including a ThinkPad Carbon, about which he said "it costed way too much considering what it delivered"

Restricting access to documentation, part serialization, or restricting OEMs from selling components directly has nothing to do with laptop form factor though.

Whether repair of such devices is economically viable is one thing and that's up to the market to decide, but making repair intentionally harder is a choice of the manufacturer and has nothing to do with how slim the laptop is.

I find it worse, because it's far too big for me... the thinkpad T series one is acceptable.

What I'd want in a hack laptop is a full size TKL keyboard (and full height, or close), with a trackpoint (or 2 -- add one near the arrow keys).

Heck most people won’t be upgrading every few years, the m1 Macs are still plenty good today, it sounds like this guy just wants a MacBook Pro that runs highly tuned Unix based OS that is not macOS

The naming fails at big cos is simply caused by having internal branding teams that need to justify their existence.

The reason is simple: corporate control. It's not a good reason.

If only you could take a big old stick and beat the "control freak" tendencies out of all the major corporations out there.

Of course different strokes for different folks. My favorite laptop at this point is a terminal for my home workstation which is far more powerful than anything mobile. That means I prioritize decent graphical performance, OLED screen, long battery life, and I don't really mind too much using WSL in Windows. All my development doesn't really happen locally any more.

Sorry I wasn't clear, my point is: that reason is completely separate from a laptop's form factor or method of construction.

You can have a somewhat repairable laptop even if it's slim and tightly integrated, and you can also have a completely unrepairable one even if all components are modular and accessible but then use strong cryptography to authenticate to each other.

Form factor is not the primary reason current tech is hard/impossible to repair, though the industry loves that people believe so, since it diverts attention from their intentional efforts to hinder repair.

I think you missed the last paragraph.

No, it's more like they sell to a bunch of verticals and they have checklist-orientated market segmentation where they can eke out a little extra profit selling a specific line to a specific industry because they need a specific doodad or certification.

There's plenty of good hardware outside the Apple world. Heck, whenever I get convinced to try Apple hardware or software, its quirks and obvious glitches put me off. Input lag is the topmost issue. It immediately washes off the "quality" impression. But I understand that Apple users are used to that and don't notice such issues.

I actually looked for a desktop trackpad for my desktop pc that is on par with my macbook trackpad. Didn't find one available.

that they're not doing fine software-wise

Since I switched to a macbook from a (proper) thinkpad I just carry a trackball with me when I expect to do longer stuff that requires mousing - the track pad isn't bad, but gets annoying over time. That also finalized my switch away from mice - before that I had both a mouse and a trackball on my desk, and while I still have that I can't remember when I last touched the mouse.

They used to be genuinely great, now they coasting on brand name and simply not being as bad as most laptops. DIY hardware upgrades are no longer possible, the keyboard is no longer a differentiator, and linux battery life is about 1/4 windows running on the same machine.

From what I remember the last time I bought a laptop, they also have a really annoying pricing model where everything is 30% overpriced but are running constant discounts

Not sure what laptop you confused it with, but T14s Gen 5 is sold with Intel CPUs only.

I agree with him. My personal laptop is an m1 MacBook Pro, and 5 years on it’s still a better experience than my work laptop which is a high spec dell with an i9 and 32GB ram. I’m more likely to chuck the dell than upgrade it because whatever combination of stuff it’s doing just doesn’t work.

Give me something solid that will last 5 -6 years with a serviceable (I don’t care if it’s glued or torx’ed or whatever in, just as long as it’s replaceable) battery, and I don’t care if the RAM and SSD is soldered to the chipset.

In the past I’ve replaced spinning rust with SSDs and that’s given that machine a lease of life but those kinds of upgrades don’t really exist anymore - adding an extra 8GB ram isn’t going to turn my stupid dell machine into something that works.

> If linux power management got a bit better

Honestly this is the thing that holds me back from using not a mac. My MacBook is always at the same battery level when I open it as it was when I closed it. My windows laptop regularly decides to do _something_ overnight and is dead when I try to use it, about once a week.

What would you recommend?

> input lag is the topmost issue

IME this is a massive problem on windows and android and apple actually gets it right. They occasionally have stupid animations but those animations are responsive and trigger immediately. I don’t experience 3-5 second stalls (seriously the share dialog on android is a disgrace, and the windows start menu has become the least reliable part of the OS), and the input devices track to on screen movements - something I can’t say for win/android.

> "Are you saying that the laptop is an outdated form factor?"

Yes, that's the gist of it. Classic laptops gave way to an acceptable interstage, the T-hinge convertible (with many great examples especially from IBM/Lenovo, HP, and Fujitsu), which was then superseded by the best of both worlds: the detachable. The latter chassis design, taken to its logical conclusion, is the best form factor for a modular, ultramobile to mobile general-purpose computing platform, i. e. it can technically be implemented as anything between a UMPC (i. e. a smartphone-sized and -styled slab) to something with a footprint of maximally 14 inches (example: HP's discontinued ZBook X2 G4 mobile workstation). Anything bigger I consider an antithesis to the form factor and therefore would not buy it, but that's obviously in the eye of any beholder.

One possible unrealistic "dream" design for me is, as weird as it sounds, a cross between a Nintendo Switch/Lenovo Legion Go (complete with detachable controller options!) and an improved Panasonic Toughbook G2, reworked as a professional-grade, maintenance-friendly mobile workstation (or a scaled-down, more maintenance-friendly and otherwise improved HP ZBook X2 G4 with ECC memory).

> "What 'market realities' are you noticing?"

Well, the above mentioned design is unrealistic as it would amount to an expensive general-purpose machine that needs a long-term support infrastructure. Not many companies on the market that are in a position to deliver on that promise for at least three continental zones (say, the Americas, the Eurozone and major parts of Asia). Or willing to do so.

Furthermore, the comment was a reflection on what is available on the market for the foreseeable future. I'm eyeing such a small mobile workstation for a) 2D graphics work and b) analysis of historical and archival data. I am even willing to put up with a classic laptop if I could get an ECC-equipped model. But none of these machines are mobile, they're all 16-inch+ brutes. No thanks.

So I have to look for other machines. ECC-machine? Fuck, most likely some mini-PC in addition to something mobile without ECC memory. Keeping that in mind, what are the options that come closest to the above ideal? Essentially only overspecialized, maintenance-averse gaming machines with pathetic battery life and a support quality somewhere between questionable and utterly inacceptable (Lenovo consumer division, OneXPlayer, Asus).

A Panasonic Toughbook G2 10-incher could be an acceptable alternative, but I'm not gonna fork over Panasonic-money for a non-ECC ruggedized machine without a DCI-P3 screen and a digitizer that's even worse than an Apple Pencil (I think they use either Microsoft's Pen Protocol or Wacom's AES tech).

Everything else is locked-down garbage with some sort of Fisher-Price OS, e. g. everything Apple, Samsung's Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro, etc.

I could agree that Apple’s software is a big trade off but the hardware seems fine.

I don’t think much has changed since the 16” and 14” MacBook Pros came out and both had better hardware than was previously on offer.

IMHO they got the formula right with the 14” and I’m glad they’ve stuck with it.

All I could ask for is maybe faster GPU or TPU and more memory. Possibly the ability to use an eGPU again.

Otherwise it’s fine. I worry much more about macOS and what they’ve done with the UI.

I don’t know what you mean by “market realities”. If the market wanted convertible laptops it would be willing to pay more for them.

For me it’s because my workflow is keyboard driven and I fined touchscreens annoying.

On the laptops I’ve had I generally disable touchscreen because I have no use for it and it gets in the way.

I want a good screen, a decent keyboard and a good trackpad. That’s it.

Seeing the latest Valve Steam Machine made me disappointed. No replaceable GPU, soldered memory, no socketed CPU. I really hope Valve isn't going to lead the way for unrepairable gaming PCs.

It's a major reason. Back when TVs were made of tubes, you could expect any tech-savvy guy to be able to learn how to go in there and swap the tubes out.

Nowadays? A techpriest that can take apart Apple's iPhone stacked PCB assemblies, replace large BGA components in there, and then put them back together and have it work is a rare specimen. And "rare" means "expensive".

A hour of labor of someone who does neurosurgery on electronics isn't going to be cheap.

Not that Apple has any good reasons to make it even harder on the madmen who attempt and learn such repairs.

Xbox One Kinect, Xbox One non-Kinect, Xbox One S with disc drive, Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, Xbox One X

And then you have the various drive options, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, game bundles, day one edition. We are talking about dozens of variants.

What would be the reason for their laptop to exist? People on the move get the steamdeck. Others get the GabeCube. Based on the steam hardware stats / graphics cards, there's very little laptop usage. I'm not sure there's enough market to get them interested.

not only does OP imagine a powerful customer base, theyre all aligned enough that one configuration fits all. im doubtful

why are Apple (Foxconn) assembly workers paid so little?

I think valve want other companies to make the hardware in the long term. They are just trying to prove / jump start demand

> "I don’t know what you mean by 'market realities'."

The reality that a certain crowd, I count myself among them, has to/or might have to choose laptops because machines in their preferred form factor either a) implement too many inacceptable but technically entirely avoidable compromises, or b) don't exist at all. That market reality. Like, when you have to settle for a laptop.

The gestures are there in KDE already https://github.com/NayamAmarshe/ToucheggKDE

Maybe soon; https://www.notebookcheck.net/Framework-Laptop-13-gets-ARM-p...

Apple sells an external trackpad. But AFAIK it requires the computer to have Bluetooth. Not sure how well it works with a non-apple os, though.

The assumption here is that the MacBook is better because of soldering components rather than because Apple simply made a better chip and has a better OS than Windows.

Is there a reason to believe that if Apple didn’t solder memory on, it would make the performance/battery worse, as opposed to making the device slightly heavier/bigger?

> Input lag is the topmost issue

What do you mean? I haven't daily driven a Mac in almost five years now. I mainly run Linux and occasionally Windows on regular PCs. Whenever I open a MacBook, the first thing I notice is how reactive it feels. Sure, I could do without the animations, but I think that's a different issue. This impression is all the more pronounced if I'd been using Windows just before, but that's probably because Linux is a pretty bare i3 setup.

Apple Silicon is a slightly customized ARM processor soldered onto a main board. That's not the reason for it's better performance.

Microsofts support for these is still kinda bad ime, which is easily the biggest impact on their battery longevity.

Furthermore, Most super intrusive and performance hindering spyware aka antivirus is only deployed on windows, hence it gets double-punched by having subpar processor support and wastage in the processes running in corporate environments. The latter being the biggest performance impact.

These are however all software, not hardware bound issues

I just don’t use laptops. My employer never required me to use one, and with remote logins and WFH there is also little need for mobility. A desktop setup is necessary for good ergonomics anyway, and then you may as well use a desktop computer. In a pinch, I can use an iPad with remote desktop on the go, but the need rarely arises.

Because they put assembly in countries with cheap labor, and optimize the assembly process so that most workers don't have to perform any complex operations, or any operations that involve thinking.

Things like PCB manufacturing? Putting those BGA chips where they go? Done entirely by machines.

Now, a notable exception to this rule is the "rework" or "remanufacturing" lines - where actual human specialists take devices that failed QC, or used devices, diagnose them, and bring them up to standard.

Those can be very involved. But official manufacturing still has strict limits on how far are they willing to go - and unofficial refurbishment lines have them beat on repair complexity.

If I dare to ask, why do you care so much about naming ?

It's something that has always bothered me in reviews as well. To me a product is primarily supposed to be used, and I also don't want to buy a new one every 6 months.

For instance I like my headphones very much, been using them for 4 years now. I did a ton of research and read a bunch of reviews before buying them, and to keep the exact and unique product name somewhere for research, but from the point they were delivered to me whatever they're named has been completely irrelevant. Same for my computer or phone, I could check the marketing name, and there is skew number somewhere on the product, but in my everyday life it's completely useless.

I'd argue having a impossible to remember but perfectly unique and SEO friendly names wins over using common names like Apple does, for my purposes at least.

I agree but as the HN post few months ago about a guy who uses glasses to connect to his phone as an external screen, this would be great. Having ability to work outside and have a nice big screen... thought of working in the summer outside and have a daily dose of vitamin D... Working entire days in my office in my house is comfortable but kind of sad. When you are finally done it is late and sun is setting already.

> On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.

Nokia model numbers (and "series" numbers, too) in the 00s were far worse.

Yes, and I am afraid that gaming PCs will move from the fully modular repairable computers we have today to small little boxes where you can only upgrade the SSD.

It literally works this way already, it’s called MacBook.

Did you even read it?

He says so in the first paragraph:

> My dream laptop is simple, a MacBook with Linux, supported by a company that is user aligned.

Maybe because I want to know if Xbox ASS is better than Xbox PEE without having a manual on my hands? Or what Microsoft Surface pro ai copilot means?

This has got to be part of it at least for some industries. I never understood why marketing teams would keep things so convoluted on purpose. Seemed like the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

TDS

I can't tell you how many people are confused that (1) Microsoft dropped "Core" from .NET 5+, and that .NET 4.8 and .NET 8 are not the same thing.

Microsoft jumped from .NET Core 3 to .Net (Core) 5 to avoid people conflating .NET Core 4 with .NET Framework 4.

Now tech adjacent people in my world, including people from Microsoft, think .NET Core 8 and .NET Framrwork 4.8 refer to the same version.

Luckily that problem will go away as we do our now biannual ritual of upgrading .NET versions, frustratingly.

My favorite from Apple is "the new iPad" that they used to refer to the 3rd gen iPad.

I also want it. I dislike this idea "make it illegal I don't want other people to have the freedom to do something I dislike". Of you don't like unupgradable products, then don't buy them. I like upgradability - apple makes some things like the SSD non-uogradeable without much benefit. But many other parts gain different benefits when you don't try to make everything infinitely upgradable. I really want this non-enshittified macbook alternative!!!! Shut up and take my money.

Not OP, but basically share that opinion.

Traditional laptops have their place, but I think most people would be better served by other form factors.

For instance a good amount of people use their laptops basically like a desktop and dock it to an external screen 90% of the time. For that specific use case, a tablet form factor will have better thermals, and lend itself better to have a separate and better keyboard and pointing device. The other 10% will still be a decent experience with either the detachable keyboard or straight bringing along an external keyboard if the work sequences are exepected to be long enough.

People more on the go but needing a powerful setup when needed now have access to devices that can expand the screen real estate beyond the 15" traditional limitation. Lenovo has been pushing the enveloppe on that front, and the build quality isn't bad either.

Gaming laptops are better served by Steam Deck/ROG Ally type of form factors etc.

The market is decently diversified and the form factors I'm describing are as far as I know selling better numbers than people clinging to Thinkpads and macbooks would expect.

I have no idea what that is. Is it the Google suite of office tools or something?

Easy, do you want links to podcast interviews from .NET team members where they mention this still being an issue with .NET adoption outside traditional Microsoft shops.

For example, see Mandy Mantiquila interview with Nick Chapsas, if I remember correctly it is one of them.

When you go looking for a car will you buy the Peugeot 3008 because it has a higher number than the 208 ? Or will you do research, go to the company site and look at the product description, compare the specs and make your opinion about what best fits your needs ?

Right now there's about 5 lines of Surface devices with each their very specific purpose and tradeoffs. I'd be shocked at someone buying one solely based on the how the name sounds or what they assume it means without looking at the actual product pages.

I’m lucky to have flexible working hours, so I can take breaks during the day and go out for errands, for a walk or bike ride.

Working outside in the sun sounds nice, but display/glasses technology isn’t quite there yet for that, and I’d still want an ergonomic chair and proper ergonomic keyboard on a stable surface (table), for any extended work.

You’ve identified the real problem. This person’s preferences (and yours and mine) are guided by externalities being priced poorly.

If the consumer was responsible for the real cost of disposal and someone said “I don’t care about repairing it” then it wouldn’t be selfish at all.

But it’s extremely hard to do that. Because if you price proper disposal higher you’ll just get improperly disposed stuff.

A tax on the products to account for this is highly regressive. It’s a complicated muddle.

There are lots of ways of "just not working" but IME the problem with corporate Windows laptops is often the enterprise software crap on them rather than the hardware, necessarily.

My work laptop with a high(ish)-end AMD laptop CPU and reasonable hardware quality drains the battery in a couple of hours. It also doesn't feel any faster than my personal three-year-old more lightweight (also AMD, same brand) laptop. In some cases the private device is faster despite its lower specs. Its battery would also easily last 5 times longer than the work one, probably, if I used it on the road.

(Incidentally, the poor battery life isn't much of a practical concern with the work device either because I need to use it at the desk 98% of the time anyway. But I can certainly see how crappy software and configurations can make using those devices a pain.)

> Give me something solid that will last 5 -6 years with a serviceable (I don’t care if it’s glued or torx’ed or whatever in, just as long as it’s replaceable) battery, and I don’t care if the RAM and SSD is soldered to the chipset.

I'm okay with that, even if I'd personally prefer the serviceability. But I'm honestly not okay with the idea that it's fine to just toss a laptop after two years. I want people who do that to get their own planet.

Also, an 8 GB RAM upgrade makes little sense nowadays but a 16 -> 48 GB or 32 -> 64 GB or 32 -> 96 GB upgrade can actually make an otherwise reasonable device better if the amount of RAM becomes a bottleneck.

I suspect it does not work well outside Apple world. And that's kind of the thing with "I want Apple hardware but with Linux software": Software is actually important in the user experience with the hardware.

The power management is one of my biggest issues with my Framework 16 but I am hoping it gets better over time with newer linux releases as it has for other laptops I've had.

I suspect they were referring to the first Xbox. It used to be colloquially referred to as "Xbox One" before Microsoft decided on their piss-poor naming scheme after the 360.

It's google's b2b offering (suite of tools including gmail, google docs, drive etc). It's an Office 365 competitor and changed name more times than I can remember. GSuite, Google Apps, Google Apps for Work, Google Apps for Business...

Electronic devices usually get thrown away because nobody wants them anymore because they are obsolete. Having removable RAM will do you little good if you can only fit ddr3.

Well, top performance electronics is usually going to be more expensive than the more nominal options.

And if there's not enough to go around to begin with, it might as well be a niche of some kind, you can't expect everyone to choose the most expensive option by any means.

Now if the user base is nowhere near the majority, and you're already in a high-dollar niche anyway because of the desired performance level, might as well escalate from the merely expensive, to the glaringly overpriced in addition. That's a well-worn playbook.

When the sweet spot is hit with loads of customers striving to afford the top-shelf items, while in actuality everyone is settling for a shadow of what should be offered by the biggest business machines companies, it's not the hardware that's the problem. Too few people are grumbling and accept they just have to make do with what they have.

Most buyers do not use consumer electronics as money-making machines, the genres and cost-structures have undergone generations of evolution to be optimized for consumption of the electronics, as actually opposed to the business machines they once were.

If you want to use yours as a money-making machine, it will probably pay for itself even if the purchase price is a small multiple of the popular budget consumer version. But way more money is being put into making it difficult to tell the difference, more money than most small companies are even worth.

>supported by a company that is user aligned.

Interestingly, you can't buy that with money, even from the most financially-oriented of companies.

> After a year or two, I’m happy to throw it out and buy a new one.

Sincerely, fuck you.

Nobody with this mentality should be designing anything. I know many people at most hardware companies think like that and they can go fuck themselves too. But at least they have the excuse of getting fired if they make things too good. You don't.

The Apple Magic TrackPad works well on Linux, both via Bluetooth and USB-C. I used one for a few years.

> When you go looking for a car will you buy the Peugeot 3008 because it has a higher number than the 208 ? Or will you do research, go to the company site and look at the product description, compare the specs and make your opinion about what best fits your needs ?

You're comparing model to generation, not sure what's that supposed to mean.

Yes, I will buy Peugeot 208 over 207 because it is obviously newer. And the point isn't that I'm buying solely because of a number, the point is that it is much more intuitive to have simple naming over "jerk my co, pilot, ai".

Those aren't really good names either, IMO. Even the 360 was just OK. They should just have gone with Xbox 2. Or Xbox 3 and skipped a number if they really were worried about lagging behind PlayStation as it's sometimes alleged.

I mean mouse (Magic Mouse, precisely) and trackpad lag. The Magic Mouse also had random stuttering, a really horrible experience on brand new hardware. There were also other pain points. Returning to "standard" PC hardware and Linux was a real bliss.

Touchegg kinda sucks (gestures are not 1:1 but rather just "triggered"), and you also don't need it. KDE and Gnome (as well as some WMs like Niri) have native touchpad gesture support on Wayland. Using my touchpad for history navigation also works flawlessly on Firefox with two fingers (essentially just horizontal scrolling).

I would pay almost anything for a Thinkpad T530 with a modern AMD chipset, a high resolution screen, and USB-C.

That thing is my platonic ideal of a laptop

Interesting. Are multi-touch gestures supported ?

(like these: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102482 )

College students playing video games in class? Also in dorm rooms where they don't have space for a whole monitor/keyboard/mouse setup.

But yeah seems like a game adjacent market... Which might be fine but isn't there MO.

High end machines which can easily pull 100W+ are just bad in general for portability - running at max will last less than 1Hr, will the sleep mode actually work reliably and not drain battery? - this is an issue in most OSes/laptops. Will video playback in the browser not be properly hardware accelerated and drain the battery super fast? yes linux has issues here.

Framework were explicitly ruled out, so: Integrated Oled - you really want some integration, If you can't set the brightness, goodbye lifespan, oled also have many different subpixel layouts which can make the text blurry/fringe, maybe you wont notice but then why buy an oled in the first place for work? While a monitor will definitely have pixel shift/burn in protection built in, if integrating a panel into the laptop without putting in any work, that support might not come out of the box

Even if it was a framework, everything is distro specific, but I think you only need to know that a "dock megathread" exists to realise that "perfectly working" is a stretch and a lot of people have hardware they can't connect and doesn't work.

That said if I was to buy a laptop - a mid end framework I just do the basics with would probably be great.

> You're comparing model to generation, not sure what's that supposed to mean.

If you can accepts different schemes depending on the maker's intent, I really don't get why you're distressed by XBox naming different console lines with different monikers. I guess it all comes down to whether you like the name or not, and there was nothing to argue on from the very start.

> Yes, I will buy Peugeot 208 over 207 because it is obviously newer

That's a disturbing logic to me, but you do you.

I like the joke where windows 9,..10,..11 would eventually give us windows 1995 again.

HP is like they assigned good people to the right task, had everyone make a draft, pulled it from their hands and declared it finished. The combined drafts do not resemble a product so they also have someone make a draft solution for that problem.

> Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”

Not so easy: even for old PlaysStations, there existed different versions:

1. PlayStation, PSOne, PlayStation Classic

2. PlayStation 2, PlayStation 2 Slim

3. PlayStation 3, PlayStation 3 Slim, PlayStation 3 Super-Slim

4. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Slim, PlayStation 4 Pro

5. PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, PlayStation 5 Slim, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Slim, PlayStation 5 Pro

And then Sony used the PlayStation branding for other consoles, too:

- PlayStation Portable

- PlayStation Vita

- PlayStation Portal

- PlayStation TV (which is also called PlayStation Vita TV)

I admit that this design is not the most aesthetically pleasing one, but it really contains all the relevant information - which in my opinion cannot be said about the Apple packaging.

If someone makes a linux laptop that is as good as the a bleeding edge apple macbook air, it is shut-up&take-my-money.

But it is hard to imagine a company spending the time to smooth a linux config on their hardware config and make sure it reaches the "just works" that apple has!

Boy would I love it! Please, someone do this! Getting tired of Apple's walled garden become ever more locked up and enshittification.

Microsoft did that because it thought you were too stupid to understand that the Xbox 2 was the same generation of the ps3.

Cars are a poor analogy because model year works as a version number. I'd rather have a 2025 Peugeot whatever than a 2015.

I think what you listed matches with what he suggested, they just have words instead of a letter for the variants. Which is actually better in this example because the "Slim", "Pro" and "Digital" mean what you would expect them to mean here, versus the "a" in "Pixel 9a" in somewhat obtuse.

Dell is messing this up badly even though they almost got the strategy, "Dell Pro 14 Premium" is a real product and "Dell Pro Max 14 Plus" is also a real product, there's no way anyone knows what that means.

The MacBook currently has two models, each available in two sizes, each size has three to six default configurations. There are dozens of MacBooks before you even get into the customization options.

> The assumption here is that the MacBook is better because of soldering components rather than because Apple simply made a better chip and has a better OS than Windows.

That's your assumption - my point is that I don't care as long as it's actually good. The only part I really care about is the battery because it has a limited number of cycles that is shorter than the lifetime of the rest of the components.

> IME the problem with corporate Windows laptops is often the enterprise software crap on them rather than the hardware, necessarily.

I work for a small org, the laptop was bought from Dell and shipped to me. It's running vanilla Windows 11 with OpenVPN and Windows Defender, with a decent sized dev drive. There are so many issues with it - keypresses being 10-20 seconds delayed, random window tearing/partial display updates, the machine deciding to ignore sleep and just dying while the lid is closed. These aren't things that will be solved by replacing the SSD, or the RAM, they're likely CPU (and as a result motherboard) replacements.

> Also, an 8 GB RAM upgrade makes little sense nowadays but a 16 -> 48 GB or 32 -> 64 GB or 32 -> 96 GB upgrade can actually make an otherwise reasonable device better if the amount of RAM becomes a bottleneck.

There's practically no devices (framework is the only one that comes to mind) that will ship with that little RAM and allow an upgrade by that much, even in the desktop space. My 2015 Macbook pro (the device before this) has 16GB RAM , giving it an extra 32GB isn't really going to help it much, the problem is that it's "i7" is an order of magnitude slower than a 3/4 year old replacement device (and ironically probably closer to the Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 258V which is in my work machine)

> These are however all software, not hardware bound issues

Completely agree, which is why the only part that I really care about being replaceable is a battery - the hardware from 2017/2018 holds up to most use cases.

The gaming laptops that have been made a bit less game-y without the RGBs and thick chassis turned out to be the sweet spot for me. Some compromises here and there, sure, but they mostly have the hardware I want. Asus has a good line up that works very well with Linux from 13 to 16 inches, all with dGPUs, AMD CPU (though Intel is also there), high-refresh rate OLEDs etc.

I doubt there will ever be a market for a device with this specific (or many other kinds of other specific) set of requirements, especially if one insists on that 'last bit of polish'. Short of fully developed molecular nanotechnology or similar, allowing economic manufacturing of bespoke hardware in single copies, which is another world from the one we live in, I don't see such wishes come true, so the author (and others like him) will have to settle for something else.

I don't know about the magic trackpad specifically, but on my HP Elitebook I can use gestures. I'm running i3 and it doesn't support much out of the box, but I was able to configure stuff using libinput-gestures.

More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Gestures

why are you so deliberately not getting the point?

if I ask you to choose between xbox 360, xbox one and xbox series s which one is the latest?

and then if I ask you to choose between ps2, 3, 4 and 5 which one is the latest?

what do you think are your chances to get it right for xbox?

Surely OLED is bad for a productivity device due to poor text rendering. For games or media, sure.

That's why you'd want to be able to replace the mainboard, screen, keyboard, speakers, trackpad, etc., and not just the RAM. Like https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform, but presumably easier for non-technical people to use.

The half-life of Apple kit is so high, they are arguably a lot more sustainable than their repairable PC counterparts.

Apple laptops I have that boot include a 2007 iBook (my folks used it until this Summer and then bank websites would stop working with the Chrome browser they could get working on it), which I'll be putting a BSD or Linux distro on over Christmas, a 2012 Intel MBP that has Linux on it and a couple of 2015-2017 era MBPs that I inherited via one means or another.

I'm typing this on an M4 MacBook Air I picked up cheap during Black Friday sales. I fully expect it to still be functional in 10 years.

I don't think I've ever had a PC laptop last close to that.

OLED doesn't support subpixel rendering, but if the resolution is high enough, this doesn't matter (Apple doesn't use it either, and text looks great on their devices, but not if you use external low-dpi monitors).

Add ECC memory to the list. For some reason, laptops with ECC memory support are incredibly difficult to find now, and so are the ECC DDR5 SODIMMs, even before the current price hike. I want to have a rock solid mobile workstation, that isn't necessarily more powerful than a midrange consumer gaming laptop, that would show warnings and errors before corrupting my data.

Yes, if they did not solder on the memory it would use more power. The longer the lines are to your DRAM, the more impedance there is and you need higher drive power on your memory controller. LPDDR has been soldered forever as far as I know, though with the introduction of CAMM (compression attached memory modules), this has changed. I don’t know but I would bet money CAMM is still higher power for less bandwidth than DRAM packaged on the SoC base die or however apples does it.

I can’t find it either. It may have been him, washing machines are the kind of alternating current appliances that he avoided in preparation for living in space

HN was so enamored with him when his deal was about hacking eating into being more productive by not having to chew

Posting from a Thinkpad X61s laptop (Jan 2008) running Trisquel Linux 11.

(I take your point that I would not be able to participate in this discussion using the original operating system that came with this laptop).

I’m sure they manage to hit 120fps smoothly too just like MacOS? …

Apple’s support for MacOS can been shorter than their laptops longevity (the longevity of their laptops got quite bad when then tried to make them as thin as an usb-c port). So Linux support is also important there imo, and as the original post pointed out because Apple makes it so hard to for Linux to support their hardware, long-term software support may be something to think about before buying a MacBook.

I hate that iPad, it’s still on my shelf.

The real answer is that you either rename the product right around version 10 (because 17 is too big for iPhone versions) or you use the year like sports video games.

Easily replaceable batteries would certainly extend the useful life of many devices, though.

But the trackpad, the rigidity, the screen wobble, the battery life.

It’s annoying. I wish I could just buy a framework and stop this boring chore. But there’s nothing out there right now.

That was a very interesting post / comment (the XR glasses guy). I wonder if that setup is still holding up. Glasses guy, if you’re reading this, can you comment please?

Is burn in still a concern?

> I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels Apple’s quality is degrading.

Tbh I don’t really feel this way. We all agree hands down that Macbook has the best hardware. Apple Silicon has been a huge success for speed and power consumption. I haven’t used the newest macOS but like the butterfly keyboard and touch bar I assume they’ll work out (or fix by reverting) the issues. It’s probably not even that bad. Sonoma is still receiving security updates so I’m good for now.

And most of the things that people want in a non-MacBook laptop are still a few years before falling off patent.

I’m fine waiting and playing around with Framework or Steam machines until then if I need another hobby.

> The trackpad on it is no better or worse than any other trackpad I've used.

Compared to the thinkpad trackpad, it is light-years ahead. It is also more robust - functions with a little bit of dirt/oil/dirt/water. Get some oil on the thinkpad trackpad and you need to spend 10 mins wiping it away for it to work without driving you nuts.

Even hardcore thinkpad fans have grudgingly admitted to the superiority of the Macbook trackpad. Check the thinkpad forums to see their envy.

The problem is, laptop companies don't "make laptops". They are big machines that puts parts together in the right configuration and call them "laptops". No thought goes into it. They are indistinguishable from any other deep pipeline of manufacturing, such as one that makes bicycles or refrigerators. New year, generate a new product ID, upgrade the CPU and RAM using the reference schematic provided by AMD/Intel, throw it in the ERP, make a BOM, and start rolling them off the assembly line.

What we see is a deep disconnect between visionaries and the companies that operate these deep pipelines. Apple has tried to maintain a connection between design and manufacturing by having great designers at the top (and other companies poach them).

A few daywalkers like Bunnie Huang walk both sides of the world.

> That's a disturbing logic to me, but you do you.

Buying 2025 model over 2014 is truly disturbing.

The screen is great. There are third party driver boards to use them as external displays.

Post history is exactly what one would expect...

I tried this for a virtualized full screen gnome desktop environment but the latency was unbearable. I also couldn't get passthrough of command/caps lock etc to the virtual machine stable. Finally connecting an USB device (like a yubikey) didn't work seamless.

I'm tired of this insane right-wing opinion that having an opinion against waste is just virtue signalling, so we shouldn't care about anything because it's all just "signalling" and it's somehow more honest to not give a shit about anything. It's tired and it's disgusting and it's how we get a world where we don't care about improving our society or our environment.

I do care. You might not, but that's a you problem and not anything to do with me signalling anything. I'm being honest about everything I say. You not accepting that says more about you than it does about me.

I'll actually answer your question, it's horrible. I have a X1 Carbon and get maybe 3-4 hours on Linux.

Sony never used the names "Slim" or "Super Slim" because the product was the same and ran the same software.

If he made this I would buy it in a second. Right now my non-work daily driver is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon because I fell for the Thinkpad meme, but it's honestly pretty terrible all things considered. Battery life sucks, touchpad sucks, the shell is plasticky and weird. Mac-tier hardware that runs Linux would be extremely welcome.

The reason would probably have to be because the employees themselves want such a device; maybe there could be some angle of having an ARM dev machine for the Steam Frame. I agree that it seems unlikely though.

> Wait wait wait OMEN MAX 16z-ak000 has a lot of capital letters, that one must be the best, right? But there’s also an HP EliteBook, Elite sounds like the best, do I still want a ZBook?

To be fair the names chosen are usually cringe and towards a specific market. To posit:

“Pro”, “Elite”, etc: professional audience.

“Epic”, “Fury”, etc: teen gamers.

“Yoga”, “Zen”, etc: you can guess.

You get the idea. The garbled names with an a, z or i suffix for slightly different SKUs is obnoxious and as hotz mentions confusing. But more to the point their marketing departments suck and lose to the Apple gorilla.

Reminds me how Porsche sells one car in a hundred configurations and they all cost a lot and yet they all suck.

It doesn't have to be thrown out. It can be re-used by someone else. Just build durable electronics. It will last a decade easily. Upgradeable laptops are actually less sustainable: people buy not 1 or 2 laptops, but 1.6 laptops: effectively throwing away 0.6 laptop.

Also I see no reason why a non-upgradeable laptop would also be non-repairable.

Yup, the "switch desktops/spaces" input lag is the absolute worst on Mac. It's remarkable that Apple has a reputation of being good at UX.

And, sadly, also the price. I’d also love to get one but when I last needed a new laptop it was about 60% more expensive than the similarly-spaced Zenbook OLED I bought instead.

Agree; the choosing ports thing is a gimmick. These days, one video/charging-capable USB-C on each side, plus a USB-A and maybe an SD slot somewhere are enough for most use cases.

>It's tired and it's disgusting and it's how we get a world where we don't care about improving our society or our environment.

Which piece of ewaste are you currently on? Nehelem? Sandybridge? Haswell? (perfectly capable high-perfomance computers, btw!)

You dodged the question, obviously, you have never actually DONE anything to reduce waste and instead want to guilt-trip other people. That's easy and costs nothing.

Because it's just "an opinion" that you have - primarily - to feel better about yourself. For which you don't ever PAY the price for, but everyone else is supposed to.

> so we shouldn't care about anything because it's all just "signalling" and it's somehow more honest to not give a shit about anything.

The only thing you give a shit about is feeling good about yourself.

People see right through this. It's the dishonest "feel-good" bullshit people have zero patience for these days.

You can absolutely put your money where your mouth is, today, right now. Upload a picture of your Framework 13 or Thinkpad T/X-series pre-T440, etc.

I presume most of the people on this site make enough to make purchases based on values instead of solely economics.

Alternatively, you can run for government on policies to price in externalities like this. Good luck winning your election!

The quality of asus firmware development for power management things is basically shovelware

A Peugeot 208 is around 17k euros. Throwing that money at a dealer solely because it's one more than the number before is disturbing, yes.

Edit: When you're saying the 207 is from 2014, you're already doing your research past looking at the number. I'm not even sure what we're still discussing.

Do you actually want the 2025 touchscreen version above the 2015 all physical button model for instance ?

And what if it's still sold but at a third of the price ? "it's newer" is the main decision factor when it's throwaway money. Otherwise you're thinking a bit longer about what to buy for 17k euros.

In case anyone wants to actually get into this, cyberdeck development communities are a good place to start.

https://youtu.be/o00P7wHbd2c

https://youtu.be/2VDRO9jjZzo

Really fun stuff if you have the necessary electronics knowledge!

MacOS is abysmal with backwards compatibility. In the music space, everything just breaks every few years. With Snow Leopard, Lion, Catalina, Sequoia. While Windows versions work forever, you're stuck having to upgrade and buy new versions of software to run on newer versions of MacOS. That's if you're lucky. Sometimes you might have no path and you need to look for new software.

The half life is no different. Apple doesnt use higher quality parts. Thats just perception from their premium product marketing.

Every time I see this comparison its always "My $3000 apple laptop is still usable after 5 years while my $700 chromebook is slow after 4 years".

Yeah why isn't anyone else making hardware for niche operating systems that is on par with a $4T luxury, bespoke hardware company's products!