> There is no alternative. I feel trapped.

This is ironic, considering that you live out of a backpack! Honestly though, there are alternatives, but that's the problem with luxuries: once we have been spoiled, human pyschology makes it difficult to accept "less." We tend to describe things we want as things we "need." It seems that many Apple power users, myself included, tend to be perfectionists when it comes to computers. Unlike the rest of the population — the majority of whom don't live out of a backpack and can not justify the cost of Apple products (with the possible exception of an iPhone) — "good enough" just doesn't cut it.

Depending upon what you're using your computer for, you could have a "good enough" setup with just about anything, though it would probably be less comfortable to you than what you have now. For light use, a Chromebook can be instantly set up, and they can be found all over the world. For heavier use, any Windows 10 laptop can sync settings to the cloud and, coupled with Chocolatey and WSL, it's possible to emulate your current workflow. MacBooks are fantastic machines and I believe they offer immense value but, if you feel trapped, it's because the adventurous spirit that has carried you across the world has yet to extend itself to your computing environment!

I used to use macbooks exclusively, but for the last 2 years or so I have switched mostly to windows 10 because of work, and I hate it more two years later than I did when I started using it.

I am truly trapped. I will buy another macbook, I can't help myself. Even now I can feel myself justifying their flaws in order to propel myself towards the next model. There is no escape.

There is an escape, but you lose some ports and cores with it.

I like how you view this as a luxury and you’re right. But efficiency and near optimization are more virtuous luxuries, to me, than things I frequently think of like sugar or diamonds.

Having an efficient interface with which to work is really important to me. I suppose it’s a luxury to not have to wait 500ms between keystrokes in vim, but I want instantaneous response.

The MacBook touchpad is really useful and using another slows me down both physically as well as mentally since I know there’s a better option.

I had a Thinkpad x200s, and all in all, nothing came/comes close to it (tolerating the slightly thicker build, which is inevitable for highly serviceable machines).

I've been an MBA user as well, for reference. I use the mousepad little to none though. Possibly (but I'm not sure, since I haven't tried) IBM had such capillary distribution to support the quite bizarre use case of selling and repurchasing a new machine every few months.

Sadly, the line is over, and this type of build is obsolete nowadays.

X220i here, and even though modern browsers and applications do tax its CPU (leading to shorter battery life), I still get at least 5 hours out of a new (and inexpensive) 9-cell battery. Build quality is simply second to none, the hinges are still perfectly tight with no slop, even after 7 years.

x220 user myself, great little machine. Hard to break. I upgraded the disk, 16 GB RAM and new battery. I once dissassembled it completely to replace the CPU thermal paste and was surprised by how easy it was. Now I'm confident that whatever breaks I'll just fix it.

x1 (gen c5) is amazing as well. After almost a decade as a macbook user, i'm impressed by it & back to linux! :)

I have one of those from work and running NixOS in it, everything works perfectly and I love the machine.

Btw if thinking of a X1C for Linux use, I'd skip the latest for now due to them changing how the sleep works and it having issues even with Windows (losing battery while sleeping). The fifth model is great though, if you're not looking for the 8th gen CPU and HDR screen.

C6 definitely has too many drawbacks, but, I'd love to have the little camera cover. I'll have to 3d print one...

Unfortunately they don't pop up very often as refurbs, and they tend to be overpriced when they do.

> tolerating the slightly thicker build, which is inevitable for highly serviceable machines

I'm in the same boat, and I actually think the lack of serviceability is a feature. On the x220 you can change the disk, the memory and the keyboard just by unscrewing a few screws. On newer laptops, including the whole Thinkpad line, you'll eventually end up breaking little pieces of plastic involved in holding the bottom of the machines, regardless of how much care you take, using the right tools etc...

Especially considering that the gain is to be thin, which really doesn't add much to laptop. If you're restricted for space, then the width is the key factor (try to use anything bigger than a 13 inch on an airplane!). "Thin" seems to be a pissing contest between laptop manufacturers, which the marketing departments then took care of convincing buyers that it was an important feature.

I upgraded the RAM on my T470P a while back and there wasn't anything to break really, the clips where robust and it was 7 screws to take the back off.

It wasn't noticeably different to my R50 a long time ago.

I think I'm going on 7 years with my x220. It simply refuses to die, and I love it.

I've been using a 13" MBP for years, and am almost astounded by how much I take it, and its trackpad for granted from reading this thread. Also-- Would love it if you could share an example of the bash you execute to restore everything right up to the sessions (redacted where necessary)!

Mid 2014 MBPr here. Got it the day after it came out for about $1000 after winning the Best Buy coupon lottery. I haven’t had a single thought of replacing it since. Its battery still lasts me all day, the laptop hasn’t slowed down on me, and is still completely silent. I’ve dropped it plenty of times and I’m getting a bit suspicious of how much longer it’ll last me. I’ve fallen in love with it though and I really hope I won’t have to replace it anytime soon.

> setup handled via a curl-to-bash of mine gets me exactly back to where I started, down to the sessions..

Wow. I'd love to know more about that.

Can you tell me more about "curl-to-bash"?

Setting up my mac can be a matter of days and I hate it.

Whoa, why? Or, more specifically, why are you not using migration from a prior Mac or from a Time Machine backup? The ease with which a Mac user can be up and running on new hardware is, to me, one of the larger advantages of the platform. I know, this being HN, that you likely have a number of FOSS tools installed; are they somehow not getting picked up properly by migration & backup?

True story: we were robbed in 2012, in a quickie smash-and-grab through a rear patio (glass) door. They were in and out in maybe 1 minute, and took only what they could see from the yard -- which included my Macbook Pro.

We're well insured, so I went and got a new one the next day, plugged it into my Time Machine drive, and went and had lunch. When I came back, my new machine was ready to go -- all my apps, all my data, and even all my app windows were restored.

Shit, I hope your data was encrypted

D00d. I read HN.

I think they mean the classic install process of "curl -s <url> | bash", used to download and then execute a bash script. The real question in my opinion is what kind of tools can fully set up an entire environment, including sessions, from a bash script? Homebrew only gets you so far.

Apologies for the self-plug but this is what I built for GitHub to do exactly this: https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/strap. Add Homebrew Bundle and a Dotfiles repo into the mix and you get what was described. This is obviously pretty Homebrew and GitHub centric because I work on both.

Just want to thank you for `strap` and your `dotfiles` repo's, Mike! They've been terrifically helpful in setting up my Mac environment.

Thanks for the kind words <3

I haven't played with it on my mac, but I've been headed down the path of setting up my environment with Ansible. I have one script that bootstraps Ansible, and it does the rest. That said, I haven't managed to get everything in there yet. It requires discipline to never set things up without putting them in configuration management (same as if you're configuring servers).

>Homebrew only gets you so far.

Homebrew has an app that can also handle installing Mac App Store apps. It also handles installation of third party fonts.

You then download and activate your dotfiles, copy over your data, and that's it.

For sessions, I guess a download of a recent cloud sync of your last tmux state for iTerm2 would do it (haven't tried).

Some of the old Boxen libraries (Puppet automation for things generally outside of the "run a command to install" area--like complex OS configuration and per-application setting installation) plus a bit of bash and a few Hammerspoon scripts gets me working. It's not pretty, but usually means the only things I have to do manually are install XCode and log into a few accounts (unless I'm changing hardware types or OSX vesions).

Possibly a complete image of the disk. dd'ing from an SSD with trim gets you zeros for the unused sectors, otherwise write a big file with zeros on the remaining space.

This data compresses quite well and gets you all the hidden and extra attributes an rsync might miss. That would be my unix-y approach.

I just rsync my home directory and re-run the nix installer.

Setting up my mac is a matter of letting things run overnight mostly (the rsync primarily).

Then chsh to zsh and log in/out and bam, back in business. I put all my apps in ~/Applications as well or as often as I can. I think screen flow is the only app that I need to install, but that is a bit of a one off and not often used so no big deal.

Agreed. Apple makes the best consumer mobile computer hardware by far, repairability issues aside. The touchpad is originally what sold me on my first MacBook (2013 13" Retina) and it is still the feature I miss the most on other laptops.

Apple makes the best looking consumer computer hardware, but a Thinkpad destroys it in every department except the Trackpad. Keyboard (no contest), upgradability, RAM, ruggedness, even price.

I see people say that Thinkpads are more rugged than Macbooks and have to wonder what that opinion is based on. My own experience is that they're at least on par. (unless we're talking about the specifically-engineered "toughbook" style Thinkpads)

I've dropped my Macbook Air, open, from a standing height onto a tile floor (accidentally, obviously), and the only damage was a slightly bent corner of the lid. That was 3 years ago and I'm still using it every day. And my home beater is a 2008 Macbook Pro that I've dragged all over the world; the only failure so far has been a fan, which I replaced myself.

In my case, my opinion is based on:

- All (newish) thinkpads having spill-resistant keyboards.

- The best-selling ones (X & T series) meeting the Mil-SPEC 810G standard.

I use a Mac though, because I got tired of fighting to get Linux properly running on my thinkpad

edit:format

I've been impressed with the durability of MacBooks in the past, but sadly the "survives a fall from the top of a refrigerator without a scratch" feature has been superceded by "keyboard exposed to air, several keys stop working". They're way too flaky these days for the nice aluminum unibody to offset.

Good point. I haven't bought a laptop in a while, so my view is probably outdated. I do like the keyboard on my Lenovo work laptop though.

I had kept repairability issue aside until I had to go for flash drive replacement of my 2012 13" MacBook Air recently.

Apple support (which is a 3rd party in my country) said ~$400 and local repair guys quotes like $350 or so. The new MBA (last year's) is available for ~800 here. Apparently I can't get any other brand's flash drive fit in there.

That laptop worked just fine (battery, screen all). I wish I can find a way to give it another year or two. Maybe boot from a memory card or so and leave it plugged all the time?

Here's what you want:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-air/2012

Just replaced the internal SSD on a 2012 MBA myself - works great now :)

Thank you. I will try to find its equivalent available in my country (IN).

You can also boot off a Thunderbolt 2 or USB SSD drive for better performance. I duct-taped one to the back of my screen a few years ago when I didn’t have time to get a repair done.

> I cannot find anything comparable in terms of size/weight/battery and build quality. Especially the trackpad, nothing is remotely close. Otherwise I'd get that and put Arch on it.

Arch on a macbook is a great experience

I tried for a while, and running it natively really hammered the battery, got nowhere close to the same uptime as when running macOS. Running it in a VM was OK on battery, but of course there's CPU/RAM overhead, and the trackpad _feels_ nice, but it still doesn't quite move in the right way.

when using powertop on my MBP 2014 I can get 7-8 hours of battery.

What’s the catch? If powertop is so good why isnt’t it built into distros?

The tweaks don't always work without any issues: speakers make static or USB ports get disabled even with wireless mice, for example. Distros don't want to cause problems like this.

> If powertop is so good why isnt’t it built into distros?

well, it's usually just an `apt install` or `pacman -S` away. I don't think that distros are optimized for laptop use cases.

Some distros don't offer a laptop-optimized build explicitly. But many times this is because the optimization is performed as an automated step during the installation process.

That said, some popular distros do offer laptop modes during install. Off the top of my head, I think Ubuntu and Gentoo do.

Oh that'd be enough for me, I'll give it a go.

What about the trackpad though? Of course the hardware feel is the same and great, but it doesn't move quite right, like it does with macOS, or you would with a mouse.

I think it's funny how your entire comment reads as a love story, then ends with "There is no alternative. I feel trapped".

Compare

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-700-ser...

Looks like you get twice the ssd for the money and similar performance but you get a better screen on the apple. Of course you could of course spend more and get a model with a better screen as well.

1300 vs 700. Even if you get 25% resale value after 3 years and say 20% for the thinkpad you will have paid 975 vs 560 for the thinkpad.

The resale of a MacBook after 3 years is way more than 25%

I can find 2015 retina macbook pros with 1tb of storage that originally sold for 1800 for 600 at this point which is aprox 33% resale value after 3 years. This is only slighter higher than prior estimate. There also may be a transactional cost in moving it ebays cut + shipping OR a time cost/risk in selling it yourself via craigslist for cash. This is not counting the cost of refurbishing to make ready for sale for example replacing the battery. If you spend $30 shipping give ebay 50 and pay 80 for a battery and sell at 600 you may only net 440 or around 25%.

Here is an interesting analysis of why used macs may be worth more. Authors thesis seems to be that because apple lacks a low end and has a smaller pool of buyers there is more demand among cost conscious buyers. It also holds back in 2015 that used apple products are worth twice as much as other vendors products in the same portion of their lifecycle but seems to have hard numbers only for phones and from 2013 so not neccesarily relevant to present laptops.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/apple-tax-macs-hold-resale-val...

https://gizmodo.com/one-huge-reason-to-not-switch-to-android...

I further hold that resale value is of negligable value to most uers who will either break a device, pass it on to a family member, lose it, or hold onto it until it is effectively of negligable resale value.

It would be disingenious to take maybe money into account when making a purchase unless you specifically plan to upgrade frequently and use the money from said sale to offset the cost of newer models.

For example one could spend 1800 then sell for half in 2 years and put it towards the next 1800 machine. One could spend not much more than 900 per year after the initial investment. So say over 10 one would have purchased 1 machine at 1800 at year zero one for 900 each at year 2 4 6 8 for an average cost per year 540 per year.

Of course people are vastly more likely to say purchase for 500-900 and use for 3-5 years then rinse repeat for a cost of 100-300 per year.

Wouldn't it be easier to just wipe the drive before TSA?

I think people are really confusing TSA with border control. TSA cares about people bringing knives and bombs on planes. US CBP/ICE or similar is a very different thing from TSA. I've never heard of TSA asking for any more detailed inspection of a laptop than swabbing it for chemical residue, and asking that it be powered on to confirm it's a real working laptop. CBP/ICE on the other hand are a totally different story (as documented extensively by the EFF, etc).

people definitely conflate the two, especially since the TSA has in the past taken great interest in peoples laptops. I don't think they currently have the authority to do any sort of accessing of the data on peoples computing devices.

I would be disinclined to try to tell TSA what their authority is, just as I am disinclined to tell them in person that it's flipping stupid to require me to remove my belt.

Telling the hands of the government that they don't have the authority seems like a very fast ticket to a very inconvenient travel delay. There's almost certainly some rule or administrative thing where they Can Get Away With pretty much what they say you can, and then you're stuck finding a lawyer.

Really depends on their comfort/paranoia level. If the device is taken out of their sight for more than a few minutes, they'd be highly suspicious. More so if you are crossing borders of countries known to be hostile.

> Really depends on their comfort/paranoia level. If the device is taken out of their sight for more than a few minutes, they'd be highly suspicious.

If your expected adversary is a nation-state intelligence agency, what do you expect to do? Take your laptop with you everywhere you go, all the time? Leave in your apartment for a theoretical attacker to execute an evil maid attack on it?

FDE is highly useful against ordinary adversaries. People with the financial/staffing/training resources to run surveillance on you 24x7 and access your equipment while it's unattended, that's an entirely other ball game.

You are considering only the extremes. There's also a ground between ordinary adversaries and nation-state agencies.

Take for example China. There are plenty of rumours about business executives taking throw-away electronics while crossing the border or how China installs some random software on people's devices when crossing a border neighbouring a certain province[1]

FDE can also lead to increased suspicion when crossing a border and refusal to unlock the system can pretty much lead to a denial of entry or, worse, detention. FDE also doesn't help in cases when a random border crossing can require installing a malicious boot-loader or a persistent malware somewhere in the system.

In the China story, they might not be installing a persistent bootloader but there's nothing really stopping them from doing that.

Honestly, in certain cases (and I'd rather say, a lot of cases) it's just easier to have no device than deal with what they did to your device after the fact or just sell the device after entering if you are suspicious of it.

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-a...

A nation-state also has a gap between the most advanced capabilities and what can be used on a routine basis.

For instance a TSA screener is not going to have access to the latest and greatest because information about it gets leaked people will take counter measures.

>Take your laptop with you everywhere you go, all the time?

With a small laptop, this is a very small problem.

>Leave in your apartment for a theoretical attacker to execute an evil maid attack on it?

Security cameras?

With very basic training anyone can maintain good physical opsec, the much harder part is keeping your software secure.

>Leave in your apartment for a theoretical attacker to execute an evil maid attack on it?

TPM + FDE?

This isn't about fancy "infosec" threats, this is about TSA breaking or stealing your laptop, or alternatively ordering you to unlock it or they won't let you (a non-American) into the country.

yeah if you're going through the trouble of selling and buying a new mac it really seems a drive wipe is more than sufficient but I may be missing something. in general traveling without a computer is easier than travelling with one.

I can see how selling a used MacBook(purchased in the USA from a state without state taxes) could just be sold off as a used item in say Europe, before returning back to the US. The difference in cost could actually be a net positive.

Now, if all your files live in the cloud, and you have your setup automated completely, why not?

The keyboard layout is an issue.

For dev work an US keyboard is actually preferable.

While we’re here, let me just add another little form of “geographic advantage” (?) to the mix: you all know cmd-‘ pages through windows of the same application. On a US layout ‘ is right up next to tab, which makes it extremely convenient to remember the mnemonics of cmd-‘ and cmd-tab. In US intl ‘ is shoved down next to lshift, and the premium key top of tab is the useless §.

Why? Apple, why?!

US English keyboards are available in most places alongside the local variants (though I guess you can’t guarantee they’ll always be in stock)

Or a benefit, depending on who you ask. (I prefer ANSI keyboards)

It is ridiculous how hard it is to get ANSI keyboards here (Germany). Laptops are ok (Macs, Lenovo and Dell) but external keyboards (especially mechanical ) and any other laptop brand are a huge hassle.

> More than once when faced with crossing an annoying border (TSA, sigh) I'd sell the Macbook at my origin and simply pickup a new one at the destination.

Wow! I've heard of this as a practice reserved for the ultra-paranoid, but never actually seen somebody who does it. What's your threat model? Do you have some reason to believe that the US three-letter-agencies might target you in particular? Are you famous in security circles?

How frequently are you traveling? And is it usually for extended periods of time? I'm curious for more details, if you can share.

I'd also like to know more about your config restoration process. Is it literally just running your script? What other things does it do?

My process is fairly streamlined as is, with most things except software installs done automatically. But I'm always on the lookout for improvements.

Continuously the last two years, 30+ countries. :)

What kind of details are you looking for? I unbox at the Apple store and:

- Temporarily turn off Spotlight & Time Machine (Permanently) because it helpfully tries to index everything and tinker with a handful of system preferences while a memorized curl|bash runs

Mostly appearance related. This can also be automated but doesn't seem worth it as it only takes a minute. I don't use iCloud.

- Selective sync with Dropbox (which was just installed for me), mostly for the 1Password folder, while the rest of the script runs. Read HN or better yet about the new surroundings.

- Manually run software update and reboot into my now familiar machine

- Turn spotlight back on

I do forget to remap the esc key each time I do this, or the name of the thingie that helps you do that, that's about the only noticeable difference between old and new machines.

>I do forget to remap the esc key each time I do this, or the name of the thingie that helps you do that

I don't suppose it's Karabiner[1], is it? This is the one I'm most familiar with, as it's been around under a few names for a very long time.

If so, this is in `brew cask`[2], which I am assuming is somewhere in your script's mix.

1. https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

2. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/...

I'm not sure to which key you want to remap esc to, but if it is to any of Command, Option, Control, fn or Caps Lock, you can do that from the Keyboard Preferences: https://i.imgur.com/whzlIW9.png

OS X by default lets you rebind the capslock key to esc :)

>and setup handled via a curl-to-bash of mine gets me exactly back to where I started, down to the sessions..

could you explain this exactly? i browse hacker news casually and this part is a bit over my head

The buyer of your MacBook may be dangerous.

Entering country: buy Macbook and SSD/RAM.

Leaving country: remove/hammer old SSD/RAM, install new, and sell.

Or rely in Linux proper frigging LUKS drive encryption