You must be one of those people who hasn't used Big Sur yet...Windows has issues, but it's inexcusable for Apple to have so many problems when they control literally all aspects of the hardware and software stack.
That being said, your options for superior laptop hardware include the business models of Lenovo and Dell, or if you need the graphical capabilities, Alienware or ASUS gaming laptops.
Windows laptops are hardier than their Apple counterparts at every price point. Everyone I know with an Apple laptop has had to have it replaced under warranty (in a few cases, multiple times), but my Latitudes from college and law school and my Lenovos from old jobs still work. I couldn't even tell you whether Dell or Lenovo warranties are any good because I've never had to use them. I got my cousins an HP laptop from Best Buy about a decade ago, and it's traveled all across India, in trains, on elephants, been dropped a few dozen times, and other than disgustingly sticky keys and a dented frame, it still works like new.
And with the superior hardware, you also get the freedom to install whatever software you want, to use whatever hardware you want, to not worry about whether software you purchased last year will still run on you computer, it's truly liberating. Sure, it's not as shiny or skeumorphic as Mac, but the trade-off is infinitely greater usability.
I don't mean to sound like a Windows fanboy, but once you understand why Windows is so much better you'll never want to use macOS again.
You DO understand that you're talking to a group of people that can and do run about every operating system available, right? I mean, you get that don't you? Every one on here runs everything. We are all well aware of Windows, and yet most of us seem to choose either Mac or Linux where possible. In fact, I'd venture to say most -- not all, of course, but most -- of us only use Windows where necessary.
Windows gets plenty of coverage on HN, but respective coverage isn't an indicator of OS popularity (or language popularity, etc). If that were true then most people on HN would be using raspberry as their primary gone OS.
Most people don't feel the need to talk about using Windows as their home OS of choice. I generally don't talk about it either, except on articles like this where OS preference is part of the discussion, and even then only in response to connects like the one I responded to.
Anyway osx is basically a piece of garbage anymore that breaks obnoxious inexcusable stuff regularly. recent favorite because this is what people used to use an example of it just working
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252174979
with that said, linux is a joke on daily desktop stuff too with exception for very narrow use cases
In my experience linux has been better than osx by a long shot. For general uses and gaming. I only boot into windows for some games and programs like autodesk fusion.
My parents had very little issues adapting to mint with the cinnamon DE.
I fail to see how modern linux is a "joke".
> unless there's some particular piece of software you need which isn't supported.
Lots of people need to run very specific pieces of software for their work, or their pastimes. If you want to switch to Linux, you have to look at all of the software that you use, and replace the products that don't have Linux versions. If you can't, then you can't switch.
High end PCB design is probably the last on the list. If I had to do ddr with bga SoC I'd probably pony up for Altium, windows only. For the 4 layer hobbies I've actually designed kicad works great!
meanwhile i have to recompile drivers to get a mouse sensitivity that isnt insanely too fast with an 800dpi mouse and various other fun things for desktop use
I grew up on old-school 90s Linux, where part of the fun was deciding which program you wanted to compile from source to accomplish a given task. So I may be biased... but I gave my girlfriend, a long time Apple user, an old laptop off of which I'd scraped Windows and put kubuntu on instead. She loves it.
Oh, and as for build quality, ThinkPad > Mac. Recent x86 Macs are glued-together pieces of shit that are optimized for being thin and light at the cost of all other concerns. They do not have adequate cooling, and when heat accumulates it has a tendency to break down the glue holding the system together.
I haven't evaluated the X1 Carbon, but my T450s is still screwed together. It's plenty thicc, but actually quite light in comparison to its size. It can also take a beating.
My point is: I still can't get anything better. For all it's weirdness and bugs, I don't see an alternative. I am impressed by SuSE Linux running on my old ThinkPad and I could live with it, but it's still worse.
Not to mention, the warranty coverage and support from Apple is second-to-none. I've had a few issues with laptops over the years (the late 2016 model, but not the keyboard), and both ways, the laptop was overnighted and the fix took a day, so I was without it for three days. With anyone else, it would be weeks of turnaround time.
OTOH, everyone I know with an Apple raves about their customer service (in the US)...because they've all had to replace their Apple laptops at some point. Every. Single. One of them.
Apple customer service is great because it has to be. If Apple didn't so readily fix/replace its hardware, nobody would buy a second Apple product after the first one failed on them.
I'm not really sure this is true. Last time I shopped for a laptop, the premium series ThinkPads (T or X series or so) cost pretty much the same as a similarly specced MBP. A Dell XPS didn't differ that much. The Apple hardware might even had a bit more oomph than a similarly priced ThinkPad or XPS, e.g. by having a CPU with a higher TDP.
An X1 Carbon from Lenovo would have cost more than almost any other laptop with similar specs.
Of course things might have changed in recent years, or pricing could be somewhat different in different markets (I'm in Europe). Cheaper series (such as ThinkPad E or L or whatever they've got nowadays) would of course also be cheaper. But based on what I saw, the old trope about Apple laptops being especially expensive didn't seem to hold if you compared it with premium models from other manufacturers, and not with value models.
FWIW, I ended up with Lenovo in any case and haven't been disappointed. But price wasn't really the reason.
I’ll second your experience though. I’ve used many machines, including daily driving both a Mac and Thinkpad currently for work, and find I prefer the Thinkpad. It has excellent Linux support (even fingerprint reader works on latest Ubuntu) and an excellent keyboard. The trackpad isn’t as good, but I prefer the nipple mouse.
Some older ThinkPad model I used at a previous job had a horrendous trackpad, though.
I picked the ThinkPad for personal use largely because of Linux compatibility, too. MacOS might be fine, but if you end up not wanting to use that, going back over to Linux might require way more effort than I was willing to put up with, even if the hardware itself would probably have been a fine choice.
Also, matte screens.
I've had Dell repair techs out to my house through warranty services for same day repairs. Apple offers no such thing.
I recommend Dell to my friends because the warranty coverage is so exceptional.
Most of them haven't been very ethical in their business — I've heard numerous cases of the authorised providers charging for additional labour and parts to replace an out-of-warranty MacBook battery, while the Genius Bar does it for a flat fee [1].
First they tried to put the blame on me, arguing that I removed the keycap before (I didn't). When they were finally willing to repair the laptop, they first gave me a lecture about how I should thank them for making an exception, because they were not obliged to repair the keyboard if I damaged the key by removing a keycap (which again, I didn't).
Apple make great products. Other companies make great products too. That there are no other options is nonsense.
Personally, I found and still find OsX terrible, but the redesign of windows to be mobile/touch first was high art which I assume is kept broken for mouse users to drive sales of surface.
I also am not much of a fan of the many common Linux window environments, but in the Linux case you actually have options (at great inconvenience to developers.)
I am however, in my mind, so i'm quite happpy. Specifically, i'm toying with immutable operating systems. I view that as valuable because i feel confident in the stability and reproducibility of my system. I'd probably switch back to macOS if they offered something similar to NixOS, but that seems unlikely in the near future.
If i use Mac for my next laptop i'll probably stick Nixpkgs and HomeManager on it and touch the OS as little as possible outside of Nix.
(I am trying to relaunch github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation - basically I want to get ssh -X working for wayland on fedora)
NixOS has a lot of flaws in my mind (though some may just be inexperience), but it has some super solid concepts of configuration first systems.
I suspect that even the same docker file has much more wriggle room than a nixos definition - it again not too clear on that
I can't recommend the XPS series enough- the 13" with 32gb ram is perfect for any developer.
Reiterating the parent, I just want things to work and work well together. I've been using computers since about 1980 and Linux since 0.9. At some point in my 30s I just decided custom tweaking and compiling from scratch was more self indulgence and a distraction -- I'm still working on my other distractions and bad habits, but Gentoo isn't one of them!
But when I was looking for another laptop recently, I obviously ditched Apple and picked ThinkPad instead for following reasons:
Only two USB-C ports, in fact only one usable since the other one is occupied by charger. Compare that to ThinkPad having multiple USB-A and USB-C, full HDMI, SD card reader, even Ethernet and docking station. Not sure how Apple can be considered for professional use.
MacOS is not great. I've been using all operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux) and I miss package manager the most in MacOS. It takes a couple of clicks (or a single command (`apt-get install`) to install trusted software on Linux. In MacOS world it's still pretty normal to visit a random website a download unverified DMG installer. That's like being stuck in 90s and I feel very unsafe doing that.
Windows is still to this day physically cramping up my hand when I use it. It's a slow incoherent mess. I love Linux, on servers, but I really don't want to manage my laptop and the desktop environments are still worse than macOS.
For hardware, the minute you want a good screen and trackpad, you might as well just get a MacBook of some sort, the price will be more or less the same and I get macOS.
I don't mean to sound like an Apple fanboy, there are other great products out there. Generally speaking though, if I just want my stuff to work, and work together, I don't have many options.