I take a lot for granted about my M1 MBP.
And it all becomes noticeable when using anybody else's computer.
The screen, the speed, the battery life, the fan, the heat. Its all so... crippling on other people's machines.
It isn't that it is superior in every single way, but it is the balance of features that hits a sweet spot, making other cars feel like they have noticeable bugs.
Things that I thought had been solved decades ago, things like how to make basic switchgear that doesn't feel like it's going to break off in my palm*. How to indicate a turn signal in the center of my field of vision rather than where non-essentials like HVAC normally go. How to let me change HVAC settings without feeling around on a touch screen. How to support Carplay like a base model Corolla. The most basic mitigations for NVH so highway speeds don't sound like a mouse sneaking cheese in a wind tunnel. How to make ACC intuitive rather than a song and dance of checking what color a piece of text is. All suddenly were suddenly lost.
* I guess now we know why the OG Model S needed Mercedes window switches.
Pixels aren't there to be seen, there is literally no display which wouldn't be, ceteris paribus, better at high DPI.
It's like speakers which hiss: easy to ignore until you spend time with ones which don't.
The notion that I care about a clearer picture on the screen I use to make my living, for hedonic reasons, is pretty comical actually. It's straightforward ergonomics which pays off in a lot of ways.
I've had to rip the dGPU out of the machine and cut the fan thresholds back to virtually nothing just to make the machine tolerable now. A lot of what Apple does is stuff you don't need, but it definitely spoils you.
There are M1 machines with fans, but you can rest assured they did the tuning so that you don't end up paying thousands for a machine with poorly thought out fan curves that don't incorporate basic hysteresis.
Will never forget that era of the Mac.
That taught me?
That larned me?
I also get 7-8 hours of work (that is compiling code during these hours) and something like 12 hours without compilation work.
I'm using Archlinux with Sway and enable/disable GPU as needed. It's not as perfect as Apple's new M2 but it's close to competition.
Anyway, I’m so focussed listening to the lack of fan noise that I sometimes hear a ‘phantom’ fan noise. Like the lack of fan noise doesn’t seem right so my brain makes it up.
I love this m2 Air so much.
The problem is everywhere. The HVAC industry really cheaps-out on rubber grommets.
Then, I found myself using the earlier machine, without the high DPI. That learned me. It was hard to imagine all the work I'd done staring through a screen door at those pixels.
Similarly, I've been using the M1 MPB since I got it. I only remember that it never makes noise when I'm reminded of it, such as in this conversation.
At some point, I'll end up using an Intel laptop of any sort, and I'll hear that whirring noise. It will be jarring, I've grown used to laptops not making sound they way phones and tablets don't.