>I've never understood why so many programmers and sysadmins feel the need to go straight to the Mac without considering any other option.

One reason I like my Mac is because the number of options is so limited. More or less, all modern Macs are pretty good. Solid machines, good OS, good long-term support, few surprises. Just pick your price range.

Chromebooks? Well, I'm glad you found one that you like, but from what I've seen of others' choices, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some are okay, some are great, some are crappy, and there isn't necessarily a good cue (like price) to tell the difference.

I've done laptop Linux in the past (well, Linux and various BSDs), and the top recommendation for any problem you have with it is to change distros. When I was 26, okay, yeah, I liked doing that. I'm well and truly over that now. I'm aware that it's a heck of a lot better these days, but even so, it still seems like a bit of a moving target.

Another thing in Apple's favor is their hardware is quite good. The $600 Chromebook will be worth zip in a year, while I could probably get a significant percentage of the sticker price for my Macbook. Not that I'd sell it, because my previous 2011 Macbook lasted (with some upgrades) as my main axe for a decade. That's not nothing.

I think the sysadmins and programmers aren't just moo-mooing like cattle when they go for the Mac. They often have particular and very good reasons. E.g., in my case, I'd rather go back to a clay tablet and pointy stick than give up BBEdit.

You make some good points. For me, my Chromebook, if still working in a couple of years, will be handed down to my kids to watch YouTube and surf the net. I rarely sell computers once I've used them. While Apple does offer iCloud as a backup, I dislike storing anything locally. This is where Google really shines. If something happens to this Chromebook that's fatal, I take a ball peen hammer to the SSD and screen, chuck it in the trash, buy a new one, and in less than 5 minutes, I am back up and running with almost nothing to configure. This is hard to beat. Since I do most of my work on remote servers, I really don't need more than this, but I understand why others do and can appreciate it. I guess I'm just tired of quite a few people I work around looking at me and my choices with disdain because they're not Apple. I have nothing against Apple HW or SW. It's not my need or want, but I understand why others feel differently.

I tried chromebook for quite a while and I could just never quite get it to match my workflow.

One thing that always messed with me was how much work it was to set up. If you step off the yellow brick road, the work arounds get to be really funky and hard to automate. So I had android apps that I'd download and then log into. For a lot of years my password safe didn't work well with it. Signal was an issue for a long time until they got the linux containers or whatever working, though for that you'd have to reset to dev mode and get a bunch of stuff installed.

I really like the idea. I run a linux machine, (usually whatever flavor $work is willing to provide), and at the end of the day, I run a bunch of terminals with tmux, a web browser, and signal. So in theory that seems like it should work. And, it seems like that was getting better last I tried. But you really have to be bought in on the google way to make it go.

I haven't messed with it for a couple years so maybe I should fire up my pixel book and give it another shot.

>If something happens to this Chromebook that's fatal, I take a ball peen hammer to the SSD and screen, chuck it in the trash, buy a new one, and in less than 5 minutes, I am back up and running with almost nothing to configure.

This is a compelling feature, and I get it. I'm old school enough that I much prefer having things local. I'm also contrary enough that I don't like how much clout Google has, and paranoid enough that I don't trust Google. But I definitely get the appeal.

Way back in the day, Sun came around to the corporate office where I used to work to demo the Sun Ray. Most of the tech people dismissed it out of hand as a gigantic heap of crap (and as it turned out, they were right, or at least in agreement with the free market), but I understood the appeal.

everything on my apple computer is also backed up in the cloud. if something untoward were to happen to the machine, I would also be up and running in 5 mins or so after purchasing a new one. so I am not personally sure what you mean by saying that google shines in this dept. I don’t see any difference.

also, not sure if you meant this literally — would you please consider taking any destroyed computers to electronics recycling instead of throwing in the trash, if at all possible based on your location? these things contain stuff that’s not really desirable to go into landfills - heavy metals, batteries, etc

Point me to one competing laptop (Windows or ChromeOS) with:

- 10+ hour battery life even when working on periodic compiles, and easily 15+ hours web browsing

- high DPI display

- faster multicore CPU performance than a Ryzen 5800X desktop CPU

- less than 5 lbs

- good trackpad and keyboard

- decent build quality

I believe this doesn't exist outside an M1 Pro/Max MBP. My MBP14 uses less than 0.5W package power during a Zoom meeting, that's less than what modern AMD machines use at _idle_. My old MBP15 used over 2 watts package power at idle. I can hit all threads with a big C++ or Java compile and the fans won't even be audible, and my laptop fits in a backpack and is small enough to use anywhere. The extra cost (~$1000) is not really that big a concern when you make software engineer salaries and your laptop is a tool you use every day on side projects to improve your skills.

I personally don't like osx, but I see why developers and sysadmins go for them. it's nice to have a product with "good enough" posix compatibility that is supported by a large company. the price doesn't really matter to the individual when it's paid by their employer. and a wise employer recognizes that a brand new MBP is still a very small part of the total cost to employ an FTE.

I would've written something just like this a few years ago, but when the M1 was released, things really changed. It really is a lot faster than most other laptops for many types of work, and especially so for its price point.

What are you talking about? Apple offers the most powerful laptop on the market, with the lowest power draw and longest battery life, for the price of a midrange PC laptop.

> the most powerful laptop on the market

In what way?

Unsure where you've been for the last year, but there's no laptop that has a better single thread performance or GPU.

Even at twice the power draw and expense, there's nothing quite as good as a macbook at the moment.

However, this requires you to be using ARM and not x86, and it requires you to use MacOS which has _interesting_ performance characteristics for certain workloads.

M1 is a beast.

But Intel 11th and 12th gen laptop processors beat M1 in single-core processing. See chart: https://i.imgur.com/KoNjGq5.png

Here's an article from 3 months ago comparing them: https://www.pcworld.com/article/608419/laptop-brawl-apples-m...

(that intel laptop beat M1 Pro in multi-core too)

(and M1's integrated GPU got destroyed by RTX 3080 laptops in OpenCL but that could be due to architecture/emulation)

I think it's not a fair comparison since M1 runs much more efficiently. Almost different purposes.

You might be right but your citations of cinebench are misleading, geekbench has much different performance numbers, the m1 is only beaten by a brand new and much more power hungry/thermal cpu.

It’s also not exactly an indicator of real world performance which is why I avoided linking to benchmarks.

It's possible the M1 has been dethroned for single core performance, but what you link is not a good comparison.

Claims of future performance are going to be met with a clear shrug because ultimately I've been able to put my hands on an M1 for over a year, theoretical future CPUs are absolutely no consequence.

Additionally what is failed to mention here is how much battery life you get. Which, Apple is easily leading on.

I'm quite envious of the M1 to be perfectly honest, for the thermal envelope it's unbeaten, and its barely being challenged one year on. But you'll take my Dell Precision and my Linux installation from my cold dead hands.

I have Cinebench R23 installed and I can tell you 1T means 1 thread, thus single core as the article mentioned.

You can set how many threads the renderer will use. https://i.imgur.com/kBNvLe1.png

And it is pure CPU render. No GPU is used. It would be borderline comical if the article used a GPU benchmarking tool to measure CPU performance.

> Claims of future performance are going to be met with a clear shrug because ultimately I've been able to put my hands on an M1 for over a year, theoretical future CPUs are absolutely no consequence.

It is not theoretical. They ran their tests on a laptop that is already available for purchase.

When I replied there was commentary about AMDs upcoming 5nm CPU which seems to be gone now.

In fact, the entire tone of the comment has changed, not it's much more balanced.

Yes, the article shows a Geekbench win of 3% in single core performance. It fails to detail the enormous power consumption penalty Intel is paying to get that performance. That makes a huge difference in laptop usability.

Indeed the Geekbench was much closer. And I agree, the M1 does it with much better efficiency.

I wonder that gives Cinebench an advantage of almost 24% to Intel.

(if your use case is running MacOS and using compiled-for-ARM software)

I mean for most users, Rosetta + the ever expanding number of apps/games build for MacOS over the last decade, means it really isn’t the barrier it used to be. Plus there’s always parallels.

> the ever expanding number of apps/games build for MacOS over the last decade

I was under impression that the number was shrinking after Mojave cut support for 32-bit apps/libraries, since many developers never bothered to update their apps and games to 64-bit, much less native ARM.

That’s a fair point, though ultimately everything will be 64-bit in time so there’s a bit of an asterisk there.

Hell Apple has ultimately been vindicated going whole-hog on USB-C. Anyone who’s made the swap got over the dongle stuff pretty quickly.

I'm fully willing to forgive them for that snafu when they decide to kill off the Lightning connector for good.

Amen. It's such a flagrantly anti-consumer plug at this point

>Apple has become too expensive

I’d argue the new Mac mini is one of the best computer deals on the market.

With the M1 line being ARM, they are now offering something unique, but in the past I would basically agree with you. I'm probably going to buy my first MacBook in the near future just to have an ARM laptop running GNU/Linux that's more powerful than the Pinebook Pro.

> I've never understood why so many programmers and sysadmins feel the need to go straight to the Mac without considering any other option.

One reason is availability. Chances are, the PC laptop you took such pains to spec out are not nearly as available in case you need one on short notice. If I dropped my Macbook in the ocean this morning, I can walk into an Apple store and have a reasonable replacement by afternoon. Unless your PC specs are ok with random consumer/gaming laptops from Best Buy, you are likely looking at several days minimum wait, probably a lot more if they happen to be at the point in the product cycle where last year's model is in low stock and next year's hasn't come in yet.

Apple also have this problem. If you want a laptop with 2TB+ storage you must get it as a BTO option. Or if you want a 14" machine with 32GB RAM. You have to be happy with Apple's random SKU choices that go light on SSD and RAM choices but heavy on CPU performance. Either pay a bunch more to get CPU performance you may not want or need to get the storage and RAM you do need or wait.

At least with a lot of PCs you can upgrade RAM/SSD yourself and get it quick from Amazon rather than wait two weeks for the factory in China to do it for you.

I'm not sure - what makes a Chromebook cheaper than similarly specced regular laptop? I've looked at price/perf/quality and they seem to be fairly comparable.

Why not just buy a regular laptop and put Chrome OS on it?

You can't just put Chrome OS on any laptop. It's cheaper by far, and there's not dealing with cruft building up, updates mangling your install, patch Tuesday nonsense, slowing down over time, drive-by downloads, you name it. I admit that I do most of my work on remote machines, so I don't have to have a machine with heaps of horsepower to crunch code, compile, etc. I also don't use an IDE. I write code in a terminal window. I'm not a pure programmer, more dev/ops. I do work with a fair amount of code, but it's all Linux (Bash, Python) or PowerShell based, meaning the majority of my work is done in terminal windows. This approach doesn't work for everyone. My work-issued laptop runs Fedora 35 and it's a lower-end machine (i5 processor, 8GB RAM, run-of-the-mill Dell workstation laptop). I can use Remmina for RDP stuff, and the rest I can do with a terminal window.

As a frequent Chromebook user, Google does a lot of work on the touchpad drivers to make it a pleasant experience that you don't usually see outside Apple.

Where can I learn more about web development on Chromebooks? I thought it was just Chrome made to boot as an OS, not that you have full Linux access.

ChromeOS has natively supported running full linux containers for a several years, with basically full GUI support. You can essentially treat it as a normal linux dev machine whose browser lives outside your chroot.

I guess running gitpods or code-server counts?

I'll admit to salivating over this way of working, all the grunt happening somewhere else but my keystrokes being low latency (since they're locally rendered and lazily synced by the web browser).

But anyone who says a chromebook is comparable to a macbook is smoking something.

I'm not even saying that as an Apple Lover, I use linux, but I'm aware of the limitations of the platforms.

IME most people use macs not because they think they're better than everyone else; but because the development experience is very "happy path" -- and the hardware build quality is high.