The fancy metal case isnt properly grounded- I get occasionally a slight tingling /shock from it when I have it plugged in.
Battery life is on par, at best, with my other laptops.
Macos doesn't let me configure or change the things I want to configure or change. Some programs are usability / discoverability nightmares.
Performance of most programs is, at best, similar to linux or Win10, and is frequently worse against other machines with similar hardware.
I have used several models of MacBook and an Air, and personally will not purchase another again... I am tired of paying top dollar for a mediocre experience.
This is an extremely disputable claim. Wifi chipset used by Apple is by far the best in class in my experience. I have 4 laptops - ASUS, Thinkpad, HP laptop from work and MBP 16". All of them get a visit to the special room once a week at least. If we use my commode as a benchmark of wifi radio performance, when I am sitting on it and watching Monty Python, I can get every single joke with MacBookPro 16 streaming smoothly at 320p resolution. Not so much with other products of similar class.
What's so "best in class" about that? I don't regard Broadcom as being particularly great.
Maybe your MacBook just has a better antenna. Or it just happens to be configured in just such a way that it works better in that one room in your house.
My HP Spectre x360 has not had a problem with the reception once, but I can barely attend video calls or load Jira with the macbook. Likewise, my wife's chromebook and my previous surface book 2 were all perfectly happy.
That said, the Dell XPS 13 was pretty close to equally bad as the macbook, though I haven't had it in a long enough time that I've since re-arranged my sitting area- whether it actually was worse or not I'm not sure.
> This is an extremely disputable claim
I don't think it is; GP couched their assertion pretty clearly as only referring to laptops that they have used. Your personal experience doesn't really change that.
I can confirm. I have 2019 Macbook Pro and I have problems with the wifi + overheating and occasional restarts of the mac. I had to do multiple SMC restart. I'll switch to XPS 15 with linux dual boot.
I always noticed it when the device was plugged in.
There have been other comments about this, but to make it clear: It's the charger that's not grounded. You will see this effect with every other laptop / charger on the market which has no ground connection in the wall socket. It comes from y capacitors [1] in the switch-mode-power-supply.
[1] http://www.vicorpower.com/resource-library/articles/back-to-...
Can confirm the issue with the latest 2 versions of MBA
Not sure about US. But I think it's the same as the duckheads are only 2-prong iirc so they can't possibly be grounded.
I don't know why Apple thinks it's okay for my computer to run a current through my body. I would love to know what happened at Apple that caused this situation. It's just patently insane.
It's been like this since the earliest days of the metal PowerBooks. Though the un-grounded duckheads appeared only with the later models (the "hockey puck" power supply always had grounding and in fact always had an extension cord). In my house the living room sockets didn't have grounding (at that time it was only mandatory in "wet areas") so I noticed it even then.
It's mainly an issue because of the metal enclosure. On a plastic one you wouldn't notice. And it's not serious current, it's just some induction of the power transformer on the internal shielding.
But yeah I agree, even the duckheads should have proper grounding! The grounding is done through the ground 'pin' that the duckhead clips on to, so technically it should be able to get a third-party duckhead with all three pins. Though I never looked to see if they were available.
With my feet on the ground, the metal body of my MacBook was “tingly” all over. Feet off the ground, no more tingling.
I’d love to better understand what was going on (and whether it’s potentially dangerous).
FWIW, I was using the Mac power cord with the ground pin. Does this just mean that the wiring in their garage isn’t properly grounded?
Not if they are double insulation/class II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appliance_classes#Class_II
that is the whole point.
I had a surface book 2 which was actually really nice, but broke down within 2 years, and best buy couldnt get parts to repair it anymore and just refunded the money (laptops are one of tge few things I will always pay for an extended warranty).
Currently, i use an hp spectre x360- a windows partition for gaming, and pop_os for everything else. I was very unimpressed trying to get a few different linux distros to run well on it, though i was trying some strange combinations. Pop_os just works. Literally no tweaking needed whatsoever.
Lenovo's 6th gen carbon x1 got rave reviews, but there was a lot of mixed messaging about newer models and arch, so I never really bothered when i was last looking.
How is the T495 with kernel 5.8? How does the GPU handle day to day life, and video acceleration? And more importantly, does the T495 have soldered RAM?
The awesome thing about the T480 is how I could upgrade a bunch of things, from Wi-Fi card, to RAM, to NVMe drive, and I would not like losing that.
The new T14, unfortunately, will take forever to show up in Brazil, so the T495 seems to be the logical option.
It has 8GB soldered and you can put additional 16GB on the second slot. For me this is good enough.
Hardware video acceleration works out-of-the box with kernel 5.8.
I am not sure if the nvme slot is soldered, but as far as I remember, it's not. It has an additional slot for a standard 2.5 inch drive which you can use to increase capacity.
How is this worse than a MBP that can’t “run the internals at full power” when it doesn’t take breaks to cool off (except maybe outside in winter?)? (Edit: my currently adjacent sibling comment claims that MBPs don’t run at full power off AC either, so their internal utilization seems strictly worse. Reminds me of how Apple arranged with Intel to buy a weaker (and presumably cooler and cheaper) variant of the Xeons available to anyone else for iMac Pros).
> I can SSH to wherever I want and get ‘the Linux experience’.
Depending on your definition of ‘the Linux experience’. For me X is half the GNU/Linux/*BSD experience: dwm, sxhkd, keynav, xcape, the Compose key, simple highlight + middle click/Shift+Insert copypasta. (Edit: xteddy, xeyes, xcowsay, buckle, etc. too).
Not that I as someone who has used Adobe products on macOS for a class and prefers free-as-in-freedom alternatives ever would.
I had a 2018 13" Macbook Pro and XPS 13 running Ubuntu. Former with Retina, latter with 4k. The Macbook's battery on a daily basis was never a huge problem for me unless running heavy applications like video chat. The XPS 13 has to be tethered to the power brick to run at 4k for more than a few hours. During normal dev work, I can't really get more than 90 minutes where the Macbook would last maybe 4-5 hours.
I suspect it's deeper than better hardware. Linux laptops just have worse battery life (nb4 "just install X Y Z with apt", that's not an acceptable solution when the OS is installed by the OEM and driver stability is still a problem on Linux laptops)
The other problem that I had with my iPhone is that for the first few days it was getting really hot. I called the Apple support and they told me that it is "normal" - just wait for about a week. OK they where right, after a week problem was gone, but for something that costs a lot of money I would expect better.
Macbooks (I got one at work and I own a small 13'' MBP) are OKish. My only complain is that they can heat up to really high temperatures (maybe I will appreciate it in the winter).
When it comes to Linux, it a good OS but it still has troubles with hardware accessories. About I year ago, (I have a 4 year old PC with Ubuntu) I tried to connect Bluetooth headphones with it and it was a total disaster. I tried about 2 different Bluetooth dongles and installed at least 2 different BT stacks, without effect. After about 15 mins the BT disconnected. I searches the Internet but I couldn't make it work. It may be connected to the fact that I was running quite old Ubuntu 16 LTS back then.
It makes a huge difference in audio quality over bluetooth in my experience.
*edit: Just realized I posted the wrong link. https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/better-bluetooth-...
[0] https://helpguide.sony.net/mdr/wh1000xm3/v1/en/contents/TP00...
Even still LDAC seems superior from my comparison to my Android and iPhone audio.
See this thread for some discussion on it. https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/bion53/force_macos_t...
Follow this guide: https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/31/mac-how-to-force-aptx-aac-on-...
So as I was saying I'm tempted to move back to Linux for my work laptop for LDAC over BT support as well as other reasons of course.
You can also force them to connect with AptX by following this guide: https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/31/mac-how-to-force-aptx-aac-on-...
But there are some companies which have started doing the same thing:
- System76
- Tuxedo
These companies test their devices well on a distro and well, it reflects in their pricing too!
Just here to point out that they use a standard commercial off-the-shelf TPM manufactured by Infineon. It's not custom hardware. As with all TPMs, it is the firmware/OS that decides whether to use it for lock-in purposes or freedom.
So they can never achieve the same integration as Apple.
Dell, Lenovo, Purism, Pine64 et al. do.
The two in your parent may (at least System76’s laptops are said to) use Clevo hardware, but they can still ship with custom open source firmware.
It’s also not as if Apple sells their own custom CPU at the moment. Even then, they’ll probably buy other parts from third parties (eg. they buy iPhone OLEDs from Samsung, though they’re said to calibrate them differently).
And finally, integration can be seen as a bad thing. It’s conducive to lock in (see above comment on ARM Macs ending Hackintoshes).
I'm pretty sure Purism's are just standard barebones too, but with some extra modifications like hardware switches. They showed how they solder the wires to the motherboard - if they'd designed it themselves they wouldn't have to do that.
Pine64, indeed, that's true. The enclosure is standard (the PB Pro is the same as my Chinese "ChuWi" laptop :') ) but indeed they made a custom motherboard. I really like that company.
I've had lots of silly issues with bluetooth, wifi and other things not quite "just working" lately on my 2017 MBP. Don't get me started on the keyboard situation. Apple's standards have been slipping on that front. But they are undeniably still very good laptops overall. If it wasn't for the weird keyboards, they'd make pretty decent linux laptops too. As it is, the touchbar is a PITA for that, even if you do manage to get that working (apparently it is doable).
I actually wouldn't mind a linux laptop except that seems to involve a lot of compromises on form factor, sucky touchpads, plasticky/fugly designs, screen resolution, driver compatibility, and manufacturers with not so great reputations on the quality and support front. Apple is also problematic for support lately of course.
I recently bought a new camera and the ability to take the usb-c power cable and plug that into the camera to quickly transfer some photos is quite nice. I don't really miss the memory card slot that much. I also charge my phone of my laptop via usb-c when on the road. I once watched 8 hours of offline netflix on my phone on a transatlantic flight and left the plane with a full charge on my phone and 80% charge on my mac.
I've been considering a linux laptop for ages but there are not a lot of models that meet my requirements of having a form factor that isn't hideously ugly (no "gaming" laptops please), has decent specs for CPU, memory, ssd (this eliminates 98% of the market), an hdpi screen (now we are talking 2, maybe 3 models), and a touchpad that comes reasonably close to what I'm used to. There are not a lot of things in the market that come close enough that I would consider them and none that I'm aware off that don't involve compromising on at least a few things I care about.
This is the 16" MBP with the 5600m with HBM2 memory.
Armchairers' consensus is Apple botched design and CPU is overheating. Idk. Maybe it's intended design as a form of cTDP.
Modern macbooks can ship with a 40 or 60 amp power supply, whereas they should have 90 or 120 amp power supplies. They assume, mostly correctly, that the really intensive workloads will complete before the internal battery is in trouble.
Right, but the initial problem was that full performance wasn't even possible from the battery, regardless of how much charge you were willing to sacrifice.
I also just had to reboot my MBP 16 because every so often when the VPN connection drops, there is no way to resuscitate the WiFi network connection without a full reboot :-/
As someone who moved from an XPS to MBP to have a smoother experience with less hardware glitches, I have been sorely disappointed. Once WSL gets full support for running GUI apps and CUDA support, I will almost certainly be moving away from the MBP. The direction of OSX is concerning, and I find it insane that their sandboxing results in a 5 second wait to open a simple Word or CSV file. I booted up my 5 year old XPS a few weeks back and it felt so much snappier than my fully loaded MBP 16!
Crazy as it is, I've found this to be less common after upgrading the firmware on my monitors.
I also have a Linux Thinkpad. It's not perfect either, but it is definitely better.
The Linux Thinkpad also more reliably associates with my Bose headphones. It was hard to pair them the first time around, but after that, they've auto-connected. The MBP will occasionally get into states where it won't find the headphones or the headphones don't find it, and I have to request they manually connect. The MBP does this with my old phone, too…
I do have to agree with the article on the points about the touchpad (MBP's is superior) and on the emoji support. (It's getting there in Linux… but slowly.)
I'd recommend Terminator over gnome-terminal, though.
The same monitor worked perfectly without any configuration on both Windows and Linux.
The same cannot be said for my experience docking and undocking the T480s with the same monitor and cable.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089GKTC5B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
I run NIxOs on a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2.
I really love it and it “sparks joy” for me too. Especially because I understand how it’s lit together and sort of “built it” and contribute to the Platform. Very satisfying.
I'm not saying it can't be a great experience if you have a well defined use case such as development. But for an all-round, no compromises experience when stepping outside of development (and this does annoy me btw) I find MacOS to give the least worst set of compromises.
I even watch DistroTube and read r/unixporn. I love Linux!
I love Linux, have used it from the very beginning, want to use it on the desktop more, may buy a small NUC to host it and some containers for development -- but I'm not sure I want to spend any time thinking about hardware compatibility and living with it 100% on the desktop.
That said, all the recent reports of Mac hardware concern me. I'm really hoping their next product line is a return to the early 2000s form. We bought a lot of those at the company I was at, and it was a no-brainer.
I could flip it -- convert to a Linux laptop and keep a Mac mini on the desk for media projects.
A Lenovo Legion I bought recently for my kid is nice... but I don't see the hardware lasting as long as the MacBook Air has. I'll see if it even lasts 3-4 years. If it's like the Dells I've owned, it'll "work" but won't feel solid.
- retina-like resolution 15" screen - 32GB RAM - slim and light without a flimsy plastic case - good battery life - good trackpad - keyboard home row centred
I could not find anything. I couldn't even find something with the first three items.
I'm starting to think it might make sense to go with a cheaper MacBook and a little pocket server like this: https://liliputing.com/2020/08/first-look-gmk-nucbox-2-4-inc...
Cheap laptops don't care HiDPI displays because it's cheap. Gaming laptops less care HiDPI displays because it's too much resolution on current GPU.
Most premium models provide both FHD and 4K model, FHD is for battery life and price.
Other than that, the XPS15 was a front runner.
I look forward to going back to my old 13" which has an SD slot and MagSafe and all the rest, even though it'll feel crazy slow. The 16" is, for sure, a beast when it comes to performance, but I have found the downsides to be significant.
My takeaway from this whole experience is that computer people will give up practicality for fashion just as much as anyone else.
plugged into a specific port
So, is it wireless or not? Or is it one of those Bluetooth dongle things from the 1990's?
If the mouse is Bluetooth, why not just have it connect directly to the computer? Every Mac since 2003 has had built-in Bluetooth.
External displays of variable DPI unusable without a paid app like switchresx.
Suspend always drains the battery if using any kind of usb or microscope drive. Endless hacks to finally get it to fully hibernate when closing the lid. Updates break it over time and a new way has to be figured out.
x86 support suddenly thrown away in new updates, decimating game libraries.
Out of date OpenGL and heavy push into proprietary Metal.
App notarization that was promised to just be used for security now being used for iOS related business punishments, bleeding into the desktop.
Windows with WSL gets all the advantages of the terminal in OS X and finally was enough for me to move. With the WSL 2 GPU integration gets rid of the remaining issues, especially as it moves into GPU display application support and not just GPU compute.
Hold Option and click the Scaled radio button again. You'll see a list of options.
Yes, I realize that's silly.
Source?
https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/17/apples-epic-retaliation-u...
macOS is certified Unix. Has been for over a decade.
A more consistent argument would’ve been: “open source advocate, Gimp, Inkscape and others run even better on my mac than on linux” (would disagree on that, but at least it would be a more consistent argument)
To be an open source advocate I have to only use open source software? How would I drive my car? Or use my phone? Or my TV? It's just not practical.
I advocate for mostly open source server side software. I wrote a Masters dissertation on Linux and normal peoples interactions with the Linux desktop. I record a podcast twice a month (selfhosted.show) and edit it under Linux sometimes and sometimes on Mac.
My argument, such as it is, is that the tool I use to build and maintain my open source infrastructure doesn't need to be open to allow me to further the open source agenda. Linux changed my life and I do everything I can to give back to the community.
Things are not manichaean zero sum game.
The way now is really not even on the desktop, Linux lost there and now the world has moved on. The war is on mobile, and Android isn't truly open in the way that Linux upstream is due to binary blobs and baseband. Hopefully someday we'll see a truly open mobile platform rise to supremacy, but right now we have two separate walled gardens on mobile and not much else.
Within those walled gardens, advocacy can be to use apps which are open source vs proprietary options (e.g. to use andOTP instead of Authy, or Bitwarden instead of LastPass, as a simple example).
Existing inside the walled garden we're all forced to exist in is not hypocrisy, it's pragmatism. Using the best tool for the job and acknowledging the deficiency of open options is just being realistic, not an example of a fall from purity. Not everyone is Richard Stallman.
Being dogmatic and pure about the license of every piece of software you use might win internet points but it’s not going to actually get the job done.
Sure. But I wouldn't go around calling myself an "open source advocate" while supporting some of the worst.
Someone can support and advocate for a software development model and for the freedoms and opportunities that can allow for without having to go all-in and ensure that every piece of software they buy, use, or support follows that same model.
A really great way discourage people from advocating for OSS is to harangue them for daring to use Photoshop in lieu of Gimp.
Obviously it’s really convenient and rewarding when best-in class products are also OSS, but that’s not the world we live in.
It strikes me as a really shitty message to say that the only way you can advocate or support something is to go all-in on the model. If the goal is to get more people using and adopting and developing with open tools, yelling at them for not being the pinnacle of “purity” sure seems like a strange way to do it.
If someone calls themselves a “free software advocate,” I’ll agree that that implies a much stronger dogma to a specific set of licenses — but that’s an ideological movement that is materially different from OSS.
A list of my open source contributions include co-founding Linuxserver.io, the Self-Hosted podcast, blogging extensively about open source software (blog.ktz.me) and work for Red Hat. I say this not to be 'look at me' but to show that I try to put my money where my mouth is. I wonder what the other commenters have contributed.
I did this ultimately for a few reasons. MacOS lets me run Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom, etc), Fusion360, has a good terminal (iTerm and zsh unix like shell) and Logic.
Mac hardware is still some of the best in the business, no other vendors seem to be able to catch-up. The XPS line is a great example, the battery that Dell chose to put in that laptop can’t run the internals at full power when not connected to AC. There are plenty of other comments about Thinkpads here (I have a T480s through work) and find the overall experience just fine.
The MacBook on the other hand, I use for 8+ hours every day. It’s the machine I reach for first. It sparks joy. It just works when roaming on WiFi, always. It just works with Bluetooth headphones, always. It just works with external displays, first time, every time. To put it simply, the machine gets out of my way and lets me get real work done. I can SSH to wherever I want and get ‘the Linux experience’.
My personal desktop runs Arch and KDE but for a portable, annoyingly, I still think Macs are the only way to go. But damn do I wish they had a SD card slot.