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At the end of the review, the author also complains about Apple neglecting Mac hardware which 'is no longer running circles around the rest of the PC industry'.
by whitecarpet 10y ago
At the end of the review, the author also complains about Apple neglecting Mac hardware which 'is no longer running circles around the rest of the PC industry'.
I had the same thoughts a few weeks ago—I needed to buy a new notebook and coming from many years on several Macbook Pros, I was disappointed that Apple hasn't done any significant refreshes for years. So, I decided just to get a nice Thinkpad and put Ubuntu or Windows on it. This journey—and it was a journey taking weeks—was infuriating and I realized that Apple is still way ahead, even with three years old hardware.
To make it short: I faced so many frustrations on the other side just to buy a non-Apple notebook. I lost so much time with find the right notebook that I finally decided for a three year old Macbook Pro maxed out with a Intel quad core HQ CPU—which runs circles around all current notebooks, performance-wise and battery-wise, even the just launched Kaby Lake U series.
Here just a few of these disappointments which brought me back to a 'coasting platform' as the author says: even the best trackpads in the non-Apple-world are still crap, Thinkpad suffer from display lottery (two suppliers two qualities), displays not matching Apple quality and brightness, PWM for brightness control, hidpi screens are still not fully supported by the OS as on macOS, on Windows it's ok, on Ubuntu so-so, but never the consistent crispiness of macOS, good non-Apple-hardware is not cheaper, Thinkpads can get really, really expensive, too much choice with little difference, worse quality control, battery-time never matches Apple's, very often tacky designs (except Thinkpads), innovation takes wrong direction (who needs 2-in-1s), 5K display support (Windows is kind of capable, Linux not), wake-up problems (notebooks don't come back from sleep and if something is not working, trackpad, Wifi, etc.)...
It's often very small stuff but my notebook is my daily driver and it's shocking that a three year old MBP still crushes all brand new notebooks from competitors.
- limeyy 10y agoI've been going through the same motions. You end up with Thinkpads as the only viable alternative (esp with the numeric keyboards, which I like); but once if you get decent specs, they become as pricey as mbp's, plus there is the lottery of quality you randomly get. I'll wait a month, see if Apple does an event.
- NovaS1X 10y agoI see this train of thought in Apple-centric forums like MacRumors and here on HN. The typical "I can't believe Apple is doing X!" or the "Why hasn't Apple upgraded X yet, Apple is dead! I'm moving to X company now". I work in IT. I see and use many different laptops all the time. These people really don't get how bad a lot of the other options are, even when they look great on the companies marketing page. The reality is that innovation in laptops died when the tablet and phone boom took the market by storm. Apple hasn't been innovating with the Mac, but neither has anyone else. Any new MacBook Pro will be just another step above the already steaming pile of trash that the majority of "PC" laptops are.