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Was just in an Apple Store yesterday mulling over whether or not to switch back to macOS after 15 years on Linux PCs.

Both MacBook Pros and Airs are nice machines, but macOS, for me, it's a huge step back.

Unfortunately the Asahi project is underfunded (likely one of the reasons the project founder/lead jumped ship recently), and as a result M4 support is likely a year+ away.

Oh wells, let's see what Dell and Lenovo have on offer this spring/summer. Should be able to get a pretty decent PC laptop for less than the $4k+ an MBP 16" with 2TB/64GB will cost.

discuss

bdkoepke|11 months ago

If you have a perksatwork account, you can get a thinkpad with those specs for about $1.2k. During national holidays it goes for under $1k.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/le...

dpool|11 months ago

Might be worth taking a look at https://frame.work/.

virtualwhys|11 months ago

Until now I'd only heard of Framework laptops, but am blown away by the build-your-own process -- incredible, spec the machine just as you want it.

Going to dive into the details now, thanks...

wk_end|11 months ago

I love the idea behind Framework, but my admittedly old one is nowhere near comparable to a MacBook. It's really unpleasant to use, feels cheap, and performance/battery life are shockingly poor on Kubuntu. It's not a patch on a ThinkPad even, much less a Mac. Have they gotten considerably better since I bought mine (end of 2022)?

tapoxi|11 months ago

I love my Framework 14. I'm absolutely sticking with this company for all future PCs.

ivankra|11 months ago

I was pretty much in the same boat recently. Pulled the trigger and got M4 MBP - no regrets, great machine! Blows Intel-based competition by far away, double the speed of my beefy desktop build from 5y ago. Yea, I wish it could run Linux, but Mac OS works very well as a hypervisor and I still do all my day-to-day work in a familiar environment in Linux VMs. With all the supply chain attacks lately, I don't usually dare to develop on baremetal host anymore anyway. Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42541508

In fact, it's even better than Linux as a VM desktop host - finally a reliable suspend on lid close, smooth graphics in VMs, easy context switching between VMs, no silly fiddling with virgl and GPU passthrough etc. It Just Works. I can even play almost all the Windows games I care about - and at totally acceptable frame rates despite x86/ARM translation layers and lack of discrete GPU.

zdragnar|11 months ago

If you don't need a discrete graphics card and want maximum battery life, LG gram laptops are totally worth a look. I could easily write code and develop all day without plugging in at all.

microtonal|11 months ago

I got a Thinkpad T14 AMD Gen 5 a few weeks ago to use aside my MacBook Pro. Filled it up with 64GB RAM and a 2TB SSD for about 160 Euro each. In contrast to my previous Thinkpad experience 4 years ago, all the hardware just works out of the box. Even suspend/resume comes back without any devices lost, etc.

natnatenathan|11 months ago

Don’t forget to make a donation to Asahi, maybe it will be ready in time for your next laptop.

macco|11 months ago

ThinkPad P1 is fine, if Intel chipset works for you.

Great keyboard and touchpad and nice display.