- Pretty much every modern Windows trackpad has two finger scrolling that works fine.
- You can also get mice with free scrolling wheels like the Logitech MX Master line that switch between free spinning and ratcheted. Sometimes ratcheted scrolling is better particularly for gaming or if you only want to scroll a small amount.
- Wifi works on my Linux laptops too. Sleep too. Just don't buy crap that doesn't work with Linux.
- Maybe there is an Apple store 2 hours away. Maybe there's one 5 hours away. Or a an hour flight away. Maybe 2 hours is still too far away for you so you're stuck mailing the stupid thing while your friend gets the Dell tech show up at his house.
- Just get the size you want and spend considerably more. Want a 16" laptop? Just spend $1500 more.
- Try explaining to your tech illiterate friend why their 13" M1 MBP only works with 1 monitor while their old 13" Intel MBP worked with two.
- At least you can use your favorite WM on Linux?
> Just don't buy crap that doesn't work with Linux.
See, this is exactly my point. Blame the user... I don't want to have to research what works well. Even if I know it works, it may take quite a while to figure out how to get it to work. It took me two weeks of recompiling kernels to get my T42 to go to sleep, and the trick was "acpi_sleep=s3" as a boot parameter. (Technically, it went to sleep just fine, it just hung in the kernel on wake, which was arguably worse) Judging by other comments sleep is still an issue. That's with one of the major features of a laptop...
(The wifi wasn't a problem per se, it's just that Ubuntu broke the auto-detection at one point. It was working prior, and they've since fixed that, but I've never had that problem on a Mac.)
> why their 13" M1 MBP only works with 1 monitor while their old 13" Intel MBP worked with two
How many people are trying to power two monitors off a 13" MBP? I'm not saying Apple doesn't have issues (I'm using a 2018 MBP that's had the keyboard replaced once, and the letters have dissolved off five keys so far, and I wasn't happy about needing to buy it because I wanted to wait until the keyboard problem was fixed, which it was six months later, but my 2012 MBP stopped displaying pixels thanks to a client project which involved compiling all day, triggering the nVidia heatsink problem), but if you're the kind of person that needs two monitors, cheaping out on the laptop doesn't seem like a great idea. Next you'll be telling me they don't have enough RAM on their 8 GB laptop to run all the programs that would make two monitors useful...
> At least you can use your favorite WM on Linux?
Actually, I cannot. My favorite WM is sawfish, which requires some package that is a major pain to compile (or maybe there are too many for me to spend the effort, and the only extant packages are 32-bit, can't remember). The default Ubuntu thing was awful, GNOME too dumbed down, KDE apps crash all the time for me (but maybe I have some setting in the .files I've been copying around for 20 years?) and KDE's aesthetics historically managed to make Windows look polished. No, I explicitly don't want a tiling WM. So I've settled on XFCE, which has about the visual polish of KDE, but at least it's lightweight. And I spend most of the time on the Mac, where the window manager does what I want. (With the exception of sawfish's raising the app under consideration during Alt-Tab, that's a great feature, don't have to look at those icons, just look for the window I want)
Is it crazy to expect a $1000 laptop these days can handle 2 external monitors? Especially when it's predecessor could? If you're just using 2 monitors to look at spreadsheets or a web browser why spend an extra $1000 for more CPU and RAM you might not even need? Even crappy Intel integrated graphics will do it so long as there's the video outputs.
I’ve ran MacBook for mobile dev and pc for in home for over a decade. Swapped to new m1pro and finally ditched my windows desktop. Still keep a local esxi server with windows dev vm in case. But Best upgrade I’ve had in awhile.
Didn't have that problem with another keyboard on the same MacBook, and I haven't had that problem with the same keyboard on a Windows machine.
I have mac, linux, and windows machines at home and in the words of Three Dead Trolls "every OS sucks"
Would you reconsider this wording, so that we can focus on your story rather than a flippant mention of their gender?
“Some girl” is definitely not nice phrasing and only furthers gender stereotypes.
I read the same post and I only focussed on the story and flippant mention on gender never crossed my mind until you brought it up..
- solid and beautiful chassis, no plastic-y uninspired 2008-Dell design here.
- large, beautiful, high-DPI screen looks great and has crisp text. You can seamless rescale the UI to get effectively a 17" resolution or 13", depending on how big you want your UI elements to be.
- the trackpad feels fantastic to your fingers! Two-finger scrolling through a document is so natural and ergonomic. Whenever I use the stupid Windows mouse wheel, it's either 3 lines at once, which is not enough, or one page at a time, which is way too much; I've never used a Windows laptop with a trackpad, I hope scrolling on that doesn't work like the mouse wheel.
- macOS is a Unix that works. Sleep works out of the box, every time. Wifi works, and connects instantly when you open the lid. After configuring the settings on first install, I basically never do sysadmin again for the life of that version of the OS. (I re-install from scratch when I upgrade; I know the happy path will work, but as a software developer, I know upgrading has all kinds of edge cases)
- macOS has a very consistent look and feel, and looks elegant. It also has all sorts of little details that go practically unnoticed but add up to a better experience.
For non-technical users:
- there is an Apple store within about 2 hours where you can talk to a live person, try out the machine in person, etc. which makes you feel secure.
- I have had exactly one macOS tech support request in over ten years (some girl did not know how to free up disk space). Contrast with Windows, where the problem is practically un-debuggable, or Linux, where once your problem goes off the rails of the config UI you'd better know how to use the command line.
- Comes with a lot of useful software (Pages, Garage Band, iPhoto, etc.), unlike Windows which comes with nothing (and a few toy apps like Notepad and Paint).
- You don't need to be a tech expert to buy a Mac. Just get the size you want and it works.
Contrast this with Windows, where every program looks completely different (makes Linux look consistent). Windows is user-hostile (forced reboots, resists creating a local account, I cannot edit the Send To menu anymore, etc.) The user-experience of Windows is the equivalent of the Big Ball of Mud design pattern.
Contrast with Linux, where you can do absolutely anything you want, but nothing ever fully works. If you had more time you could fix those little corners, but it's just not worth it. Or you'd have to add features to this app. Or your favorite window manager (Sawfish) gets harder and harder to install. Or you fight with Pulse Audio / Jack / ALSA for this particular sound program.
And if your primary value is spending as little money as possible, Apple will drive you nuts. For what you get, the price is fair, it's just that there's no option for a lower trim model. Don't need Thunderbolt? Too bad, you're getting a fast interconnect whether you want it or not.
The thing is, there is something intangible about high-end stuff that goes from "this does what I want and I don't think about it" to "I enjoy the experience of using this". It's a little like wearing high-end fabrics, or eating at a high-end restaurant. Necessary? Absolutely not. But it's that enjoyment it gives that creates the "fanaticism".