this article seems like a total ad

I haven’t used a Linux laptop in a while. Is there any that’s competitive to MBP M2 in terms of processing power and battery life? I’ve been working on an MBP M1 for ~1 years now and I’ve yet to hear the fan working or feel the heat (to be fair, it’s a work laptop and most development happens in the cloud). If only for this reason I find it hard to buy anything other than MBPs for work, unfortunately.

> Is there any that’s competitive to MBP M2 in terms of processing power and battery life?

Sadly, nope. And I'm not even on a MBP M2, just a maxed out MBA M1, The best laptop I ever had. Processing power is more than enough for what I develop, and after more than two years I can still easily work my day with a single charge. Meanwhile, coworkers suffer with Dell laptops running different Linux distros: power management problems, battery life is tiny, fans blowing like they're hoovers. Oh... and they all have more expensive laptops than me.

But Apple bad. Not professional. Or so they say.

I got a surface a few months ago and have been impressed with build quality. I’ve actually never had problems with dell or Lenovo laptops either in terms of ruggedness however I don’t know that I’m actually properly testing that attribute. I don’t view any of my computer usage as rugged tbh.

I just like using / writing code on macOS more than windows, not much else to it.

My work laptop is a MBP M1 Max, all development is local and I've never heard the fan or feel the heat like my previous work MBP Intel (Core i9). That machine sucked, it had the power but I could never be work for more than 2-3h away from a power outlet. The M1 Max lasts 7-10h even when doing Google Meet video calls (the biggest power drain I experience, much more than development running multiple containers with Rancher Desktop).

Nothing compares for battery life except really slow ARM laptops like Samsung makes.

But if 10 hours is enough I think ASUS Zenbooks and the ProArt line are pretty good Linux machines. They have faster GPUs and betters screens (OLED) too.

Processing power: plenty. Battery life: not really but who cares? Just plug in. The real question is why you would want a $2,000 laptop to run as a terminal emulator.

You haven’t used a Mac laptop recently I assume.

no I've just been using arm64 devices for like 6 years now and the advantages of the m1/m2 are present in any laptop or tablet that is arm64.

endless battery, fanless design, excellent performance for the kinds of tasks a developer does.

only downside is the m2 is probably faster in cpu/compilation times for certain things because of how fast it is

That's funny. It compiles so fast for a laptop that your break times are shorter. Bosses are happy. You're not.

new kind of first world problem just dropped: code compiles too fast

I'm interested and not trying to be sarcastic. Which non Apple laptop is arm64 with endless battery, good build quality, and descent performances at a fair price?

Define fair price first.

Comparable to the M1 Air.

Between $500 and $3000 perhaps, like most laptops.

my main computer is a Lenovo Duet 5 tablet/laptop hybrid. It gets more than 24 hours of battery life and is completely silent, runs cold and has an excellent OLED screen. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for.

its $500 and includes the kickstand and keyboard

I did mention in my previous comment that the m1/m2 are still faster than other arm64 devices but for the web development tasks that I'm doing a chromebook is better suited anyways due to the less locked down environment and the ability to run full linux apps.

macos is okay for development but I'm not targeting iOS so its benefits are wasted on me. (I still got an m2 Pro mac mini with 32gb of ram to play with machine learning but its turned out to be too slow to compete with even a rtx3060)

Thanks. That’s an interesting device. I ignored devices running ChromeOS. Of course it’s a lot slower than a M1 on the paper but I believe you when you say it’s good enough.

its really on the cheaper/slower end of the spectrum but chromeos is also super lightweight.

a joy to use! I hope to see something similar from apple in the future, I've heard whispers of oled ipads?

Are you also "sublinear"? Because that's who was being asked, as far as I see.

In any case, the claim that any ARM laptop before the M1 had excellent performance is new to me and I'd be interested in knowing what non-Apple ARM laptops exist that are competitive with M1/M2 Macbooks in battery life, heat generation, performance and utility for developers. I'm in the market for a new laptop.

It's not quite as fast but the Thinkpad X13s Snapdragon? Fanless, lighter than the 13" MBA, battery life seems good from reviews, offers M.2 storage and 5G if you need it. There is also an ARM version of the Surface Pro 9 which offers an iPad Pro like form factor but without the restrictions. Admittedly the current ARM PC offerings aren't as fast but they aren't terrible either.

MacBookPros have been pretty much for the past decade+ the undisputed leader of rugged hardware design. Nobody else to my knowledge sells machined unibody laptops at a competitive price point. (Only half jokingly posting this hoping somebody can't help to attempt to prove me wrong)

Machined unibody laptops aren't rugged hardware. They look nice, and are reasonably robust to minor wear and tear, but they definitely aren't "rugged". Put enough force info the body to bend it, and it's never the same again. A machined unibody like a MacBook offers no damping or shock protection to the boards inside.

Real ruggedized laptops, e.g. those sold by Panasonic or Dell, look very different. It's like the glass-versus-plastic question in phone screens. Glass looks nice, and withstands day-to-day abrasion better. But the stress necessary to shatter glass is way less than that of plastic.

You’re right in that they are not ruggedized. But for “normal” laptop use, it works very well and looks good too. However, if I were to do a geological survey or something like that, I might not use MacBook.

Why do you want a unibody? Isn't it better to open it up and and stick a multi TB ssd and 64GB RAM in, lioe I did with my EliteBook 840?

Old unibody MacBooks could do that. The lack of choice now is due to a non-standard architecture, which the Mac Pro seems to confirm (not “unibody”, but still the RAM is not extensible)

> the undisputed leader of rugged hardware design.

Glass and aluminum are ruggedized materials?

Compared to the cheap plastic laptops HP, Dell etc sell they sure are! For many years I've dropped my MBPs, MBAs, and ipads and have only had one failure, yes a broken ipad screen.

But "undisputed leader"? No there are plenty of more rugged devices used in construction, the military etc.

Sounds like you've got a guardian angel! I wouldn't trust my Macbook to take a spill from waist height, even compared to a plastic HP/Panasonic machine. My ex went through so many broken iPhones that he considered Applecare an operational expense.

They're machines that hold up well in backpacks, but hearing "rugged" used to describe them is funny when a cup of coffee could decommission the whole thing in seconds.

I use MacBook Pro for these reasons: a) Availability of high-quality native applications. b) I like macOS. Good GUI with a Unix underneath. (Installing Homebrew and GNU Coreutils makes it much fresher.) c) The hardware is really nice.

If I was a heavy gamer, perhaps I would consider Windows.

There’s one thing I miss from Linux though: Native support for cgroups. I can live without it, but it sure would be convenient.

Some people have a preference for macOS and/or Macbook hardware.

Or you want a 14 hour battery life, doesn’t sound like a 747 when you open a few Chrome tabs.

Not to mention the fact that a Mac laptop won’t fry your nuts when you put it on your lap.

Lol. My MacBook Pro loses battery even when plugged and is constantly at 100% fan speed no matter what it is doing (or not doing).

Are you talking about an ARM Mac or x86 Mac?

x86, a 2019 model (and I had this behavior from the start).

I'm aware it's uncomparable to the ARM-based ones, but people were saying the same BS back when it was only Intel.

No one said ever that x86 based Mac laptops had great battery life or ran cool.

Ok buddy lol

So find one mainstream review that gushed about how cool an Intel i9 ran or how quiet it was. I couldn’t find one.

Who talked about i9? And were did the part about battery life go? I could easily find one but you'll keep moving the goalpost.

You did.

> x86, a 2019 model (and I had this behavior from the start).

> Lol. My MacBook Pro loses battery even when plugged and is constantly at 100% fan speed no matter what it is doing (or not doing).

They have i5's and i7's. I'm not even sure they have i9's actually...

They very much came with i9 options

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP809?locale=en_US

As surprising as you may find it, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on good hardware. The stereotype of any non-macbook being a toaster is practically a strawman at this point (while people are so quick to forget the atrocity of the i9 macbook).

The M1/M2 chips are just that good. My old 2015 Macbook turned into a toaster/jet engine if I only looked at it funny, macbooks between 2015 and 2020 were garbage, crappy keyboards, crappy USB ports and the thermal energy monsters that are Intel chipsets. It only really changed with the 2020 Apple silicon laptops, and they are just that good. A blazingly fast workhorse with outrageous battery runtime that rarely ever gets hot, and I think I heard the fan maybe once? since I bought it 3 years ago.

I'm sure there are great laptops out there, but at least in my company the other Dell or Lenovo (including Thinkpad) machines just don't stack up to that.

So where are the other laptops that have a 14 hour battery life, run cool, and have the speed of an ARM MacBook Pro?

No one is “forgetting” about the i9. It sucked like every other x86 laptop sucks.

But this is 2023 not 2020.

Show me the laptop that is as good or better than the new 15” MacBook Air at the same price. Needs the same or better specs, build quality, and local in-person support (i.e. a worldwide dense network of retail stores). Good luck!

Dell XPS? Thinkpad T15?

If you pay for the Nvidia card you could even outperform the M2 Ultra for kicks and giggles.

And battery life, quietness and generates very little heat?

Dell XPS spec’d to meet the 15” MacBook Air requires the nicer screen which makes it $2,000, the screen is higher resolution than the MBA but it’s 100 nits less bright. MacBook Air is $1,700 after adding memory and storage to meet the XPS. The MBA is $300 cheaper for a laptop that is thinner, the same or better specs in almost every category, miles better better build quality (plastic trash vs aluminum) and actually has a network of stores throughout the world. So nowhere close to the 15” MBA, but I appreciate you trying.

The T15 isn’t available so I’ll look at the T16. The cheapest T16 is $1,570. The comparable MacBook Air is $1,500. The T16 has a 300 nits low resolution screen, slow DDR4 RAM (didn’t know they made RAM this slow these days), and is made of cheap plastic. And again, no worldwide network of stores to support your device.

So you’ve really failed to come anywhere close to the specs, build quality or support system of a MacBook. And this is without considering the huge advantages you get with Apple silicon over intel.

Mac hardware is better though. My HP Elitebook from last year is a pretty good device: good screen, solid build, nice glass touchpad, really great keyboard. But the screen resolution is only 1080p, the battery lasts for 6 hours and the fan noise is meh. These are quite expensive premium Windows laptops that cost somewhere between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro.

Overall I'm happy with my Windows laptop considering that the competition for a Windows laptop is not better, but MacBooks are really a lot better with battery life, screen quality and fan noise.

That's what I did. I have a HP Elitebook that runs Linux + Windows 11 (really, Windows is not the Windows from 10 years ago, developer experience is pretty great these days, I much prefer it to macOS). For iOS app development I have a Mac Mini.

Nothing special indeed about a Macbook Air M1. I need to hear my machine working, but this thing does not even have a cooling fan. I can always put on noise-cancelling headphones if my machine sounds like it's about to lift off. Not to mention Apple Silicon is a joke, the Threadripper in my almost mobile workstation beats it any time. Not to mention the battery cannot even last a standard Earth day, so why not just stick to power outlets?

Sure, the (lack of) ports and the non-upgradability can be meaningfully criticized, but then again a lot of competitors are copying those anti-features. But to say there is nothing special about these machines... well, maybe not to you. Some people hate noisy laptop fans, and this total silence is a game changer.