That said I'd pay for a dev edition as you described it, that would be fantastic.

I get customers and most people don't know about it but it's kind of ridiculous that techy people in a tech forum don't know how to do it.

Why? HN has traditionally always largely been a macOS and Linux crowd. Why do we have to care about fixing an OS that is broken out of the box (that most of us don't use anyway)?

Far too many Linux users, especially, make fun of Windows and if you dig a bit you see that most of their complaints are things that are solved with 5 minutes of googling. Some complaints are philosophical, and those I agree with, but even in that case, I'd be curious how consistent they are with their philosophy when for example Linux desktop environments due weird things.

Summarizing a bit: Linux users with years or decades of experience of tinkering as sysadmins with Linux frequently make junior-level user complaints about Windows usage, frequently based on outdated information about it.

I say this who has been using both Linux and Windows for a few decades now and has a fairly decent level of sysadmin skills on both.

macOS isn't perfect but the issue you point out is more of a docker problem, not an OS one. I'm told https://orbstack.dev/ is the solution.

This is the only reason I have not requested a windows laptop from my company. WSL is better for docker development in basically every way than a mac can be (disclaimer: haven't tried orbstack yet, heard good things, but my base assumption is it can't be better than WSL2) except it is literally impossible to get hardware as good as the M3 or M4 for any other OS than macOS.

But the increasing market share of Macs and even Linux these days plus the ever increasing of OSS initiatives from Microsoft points out that Microsoft knows a lot fewer of their users are as captive as they were in the 90's, for example.

In other words, specifically those of a former Microsoft CEO (who understood the problem but not the solution):

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS ... YES

- "creatives" have always been a core Apple market and they've grown, so that market has grown; plus, since Windows is globally less dominant, a lot of "Photoshop/video editing software/3D modeling + Windows" folks are now on Macs

- gamers now have Proton + Steam on Linux + SteamOS so quite a few more of them are on Linux now, especially since Valve is pushing in this direction to keep Microsoft honest

- large number of regular office workers have iPhones, especially as you move towards the top of the hierarchy, and are far more tempted than they would have been in the past to try or use a Mac

- in many schools there are now Chromebooks instead of Windows laptops; this is primarily a US thing, but it does pop up in some other places, too

Windows is sort of stable but probably still bleeding users slowly.

The biggest difference between OSX and Windows is, Apple adds (some say steal) functionality from competition, and open source. They make it neat. On windows to have something working, you need a WezTerm, Everything for search, Windhawk for a vertical taskbar on the right, Powertoys for an app starter, Folder Size for disc management etc. If you spend a lot of time, Win11 can be ok to work with.

If Powerpoint and Affinity would work on Linux, I'd use Linux though.

Each OS is going to have extension applications to improve on the OOTB experience. This is an invalid argument to choosing one over the other.

Huh? Windows supports vertical taskbar.

The MacBook Air M4 supports two external displays now (with the lid open):

https://support.apple.com/guide/macbook-air/use-an-external-...

My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor, even though it has the same specs as her work Pro.

The MacBook Pro with the non-Pro/Max chip (i.e. MacBook Pro M3) has the same limitations as the corresponding MacBook Air (i.e. MacBook Air M3).

Funny how that was the other way around just a few years ago. Macs had inferior hardware, but they were supposed to have better software. At least that's what the Mac users claimed.

No. This is just you repeating marketing.

No Nvidia chip = B tier at best.

I have a $700 Asus with a 3060 that is better. Go ahead and scale up to a $2000 computer with an Nvidia chip and its so obviously better, there is nothing to debate.

No one cares about performance per watt, its like someone ran a 5k race, came in 3rd and said "Well at least I burned fewer calories than the winner!"

Nvidia chip = 45 minutes of battery life

1. Turning them on/off ala bumblebee isn't a solved problem. It's buggy, especially on not-windows. Even on windows, it's going to be buggy especially in regards to sleep.

2. You obviously lose the advantage of a nvidia GPU that way. If you have to always have it off to get decent battery life, which you do, then it's kind of moot. If you turn it on for your 30 minute workload then there goes 70% of your battery.

Not only that, but being able to run very intensive work (Pro Audio, Development...) seamlessly is an absolute pleasure.

Its screen is one of the best screens out there.

The trackpad (and some keyboards) are an absolute pleasure.

The robustness of the laptop is amazing.

I don't care about the marketing of Apple, I don't buy anything new they launch, and I condemn all of their obscure pricing techniques for the tech they sell. But my M1 is rocking like the first day, after four years of daily use. That's something my Windows laptops have never delivered to me.

Apple has done a lot of things wrong, and I will not buy another Apple laptop in the future, but I don't want Nvidia on a Laptop, I want it to be portable, powerful and durable.

That is changing now, and it's amazing. I want my laptop to be mine, and to be able to install any OS I like. New laptops with arm64 and Intel Lake cpus are promissing, but we're not there yet, at least not that I have experienced.

Each to their own for sure, and for you, the nvidia requisite is important. For me it's not about brands, but usability for my work and hobbies.

Also, is it powerful enough to have it run a development environnent (docker compose/k3s with db & cachd, intellij/vscode, etc) without having issues?

Genuine questions, I am no fanboy of anything

Instead of slack I normally use localslackirc, so that alone probably saves a ton of battery rather than using the electron one.

When I compile a lot I still manage to get half a day on battery. If I want to save power I just ssh to a server and do everything there :)

edit: that model has also hotswap battery so if you really really need more battery life you can buy a spare.

But why?

I mean I can see why some want that. But why would I or most or devs in general want that? I very rarely code on laptop, and almost never when not at a desk.

But it's just not that big a deal. Sure, I COULD spend a day working without power, but it's 2025 and USB-C power delivery is a mature spec. My desk has power. My work desk has power. My living room has power. My bedroom has power. The coffee shop has power. Airplanes have power. My fucking CAR has power.

Where are you working that you need a full 6 hours of hard working power without occasional access to a power outlet and a battery bank won't meet your needs?

I would be satisfied with 2 hours of hard working battery, which is what Ryzen powered Windows laptops deliver. My girlfriend uses her $800 mid range Ryzen laptop to play games and other power hungry things off charger every single day. It's also what work laptops other than Macs have always provided. Sure, my Thinkpad from 2012 needed a giant tumor of a battery to provide that, but it was always an available option, and you could swap it out for a tiny battery if you really wanted to slim it down.

Never an option in apple land. Battery not good enough? Fuck you, too bad.

In reality, he probably just want to play CS2 :D

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

LTSC is a version like that

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/what...

as far as MS are concerned, that crap is their business.

Or, possibly, that crap is the multitude of little software empires build by the management layer now in control..

Interesting enough, that beyond release upgrades, happening may be once a year, all or may be 99% of updates took ~5 minutes of interruption of me, including needed reboot. I really wonder how others manage to have "entirely too long" updates.

I've not being using Debian setups lately, but on Ubuntu, alert on need-to-reboot packages after daily unattended upgrades run is happening almost every month. I'm kinda sure that Debian is on similar schedule here.

I find it dismaying that people on Hacker News willingly submit to incredibly user-hostile behavior from Microsoft and call it "the best of both worlds". Presumably a nontrivial proportion here are building the next generation of software products - and if we don't even respect ourselves, how likely is it that we will respect our users?

And I find it funny that the crowd that spends whole days implementing user-hostile features in yet another SaaS crapware has so much to say about Microsoft's bad behavior.

I honestly can't imagine anyone preferring all that. </rant>

I've often said that if Microsoft had just iterated on Windows 2000 forever I'd probably still be a full-time Windows user. If Microsoft had maintained an LTSC-like Windows variant that was installable from the normal retail installation media and with a normal retail product key (at the very least Pro, but ideally Home), that also likely would have kept me on Windows full-time instead of switching to Linux as my daily driver.

When I used to have free time it was great for games too

I on the other hand cannot get an affordable Mac that has the same GPU, disk space and memory size as my workstation class laptop.