4 ms·

I’ve used a maxed out ThinkPad X1 Extreme and a maxed out MacBook Pro side by side. At a glance, very comparable specs. The MacBook Pro was a nicer experience.

I’ve used a maxed out ThinkPad X1 Extreme and a maxed out MacBook Pro side by side. At a glance, very comparable specs. The MacBook Pro was a nicer experience. Not loyalty, it’s just better. The complaints are typically more of a, “You’ve gotten so many things right and better than everyone else, why is this rough edge still a problem!?”

easygenes 6y ago
Re: the butterfly keys... Yeah, they’re way more susceptible to debris than scissor switches (and I guess more fragile if you like to hammer on your keys). I’ve had to turn my laptop over and blow it out once or twice. But honestly I prefer the key feel and it’s not been a problem. I see the appeal of where they were going. It was a compromise and it didn’t go over well for a vocal and large enough minority that they unwound it. I’ll miss my butterfly keys when I refresh though.
zamalek 6y ago
> why is this rough edge still a problem!? This perspective makes tons of sense. Safari is a rough edge for me, and I don't even use Apple - I think most of my hatred for the platform is derived from supporting that awful browser. For my wedding website, I simply wanted to overlay some lines on MapBox with shadows to look like strings and pins on a map. My approach used dynamic SVG (changing a path attribute when the map is moved/tilted/whatever). This performed perfectly on my PC, on my Pixel and even the shitty Samsung browser my fiance uses. It completely annihilated all Apple devices I tried it on (locking up my friend's iPhone entirely), I had to remove the shadows. I really wish they would get it right, or allow alternate browser engines.
philliphaydon 6y ago
Did you use a Carbon or X1 Extreme? There is no “carbon X1 extreme” I’ve used both side by side too. Other than the keyboard being better on Lenovo and trackpad being better on MacBook. The rest is same same to me.
- easygenes 6y ago
  X1 Extreme, sorry for the confusion. Edited the original. The trackpad was a huge one for me. I really couldn’t bear it. I did like the ThinkPad keyboard though. The 135W charger was also a ThinkPad win. I would be tempted by a ThinkPad in the future if they could get anywhere near as good a trackpad as the MacBook. Oh! Also the MacBook speakers and mics are lightyears better. The ThinkPad speakers are an embarrassing tinny downward firing mess. MacBook on the other hand shock me the sound comes from something so small (my 2015 MBP was already good and much better than 2019 X1E... 2019 MBP is totally another league.. made me stop packing Bluetooth speakers while traveling on some occasions).
  - philliphaydon 6y ago
    Oh yes the speakers. I think laptop speakers 10 years ago were better than what we get today. Apple still has quality speakers.
_coveredInBees 6y ago
Meanwhile my maxed out MBP 16 suffers from consistent kernel panics and reboots any time I plug into a thunderbolt dock. This is my first Mac after being in Windows land for a long time and getting fed up with recurring driver/firmware issues with my Dell XPS15 (fantastic hardware, terrible software/firmware integration though). There are definitely things that are nicer on OSX, but there are also a lot of warts that people seem to gloss over. Finder is an absolute abomination as a file explorer and it boggles my mind that this is the best OSX has to offer after years of refinement. Having to install a separate utility to switch mouse scroll directions when using a BT mouse is also ridiculous. You have to shell out money just to have basic features your OS should provide like window management (Better touch tool / magnet). External monitor rendering is really bad if you connect to a non HDPI monitor. Thunderbolt dock integration is pretty atrocious if you are trying to connect to more than one external monitor. And the OS keeps getting more locked down so opening a simple Word file takes > 5 seconds because of all the sandboxing going on in Catalina. There are definitely things OSX / MBP does much better, but everyone acts like it is far superior to Windows-based laptops, and I have unfortunately been rather surprised at the large number of pain points I have had with my MBP... none of which have anything to do with me having spent more time on Windows. There is a very good chance that a colleague of mine who has been a life-long OSX user and I will end up switching back to a windows-based laptop in a couple of years. Windows is far more dev friendly and with WSL2 + CUDA + GUI apps on the roadmap, a solid Windows laptop with an nVidia GPU looks like a much more interesting proposition even if I have to put up with some rough edges.
- nbevans 6y ago
  I totally agree about "Finder" - a better name might have been "Loser" - since it's only good at making you lose things. I switched from Windows to Mac about 6 years ago - because I needed an all-in-one system that could compile iOS, Android and UWP apps. However even 6 years later I still have problems with Finder - big problems - it just doesn't behave at all how I expect. I often find myself using Windows Explorer (in my Parallels VM) to navigate the file system because it is just so much easier and predictable.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  One thing that our IT people complain a lot about is that some of the macbooks don't have enough power on their USB ports/port replicator, so you can't attach some USB devices when on battery. Even more infuriating, for some projectors don't work without the notebook (because the port-replicator does not have enough power). I also find it very interesting that if there is a problem with a some website/file/software mac-users blame it on the software (and actually windows users agree even if it works fine for them), but if it's a Linux user that has problems, it's always "because he/she is using Linux"
fphhotchips 6y ago
I have the opposite. I have a now two year old midrange Lenovo Yoga and a brand new midrange MBP. The MBP runs hot under Thunderbolt, becomes unresponsive under even moderate load, and requires a dance of "turn the monitor on, turn the monitor off, unplug the cable, plug the cable in" everytime I wake it from sleep with an external monitor. I've had to download software to turn the fan curve to "always on all the time", because the combination of Radeon + Thunderbolt hits 70 degrees at idle, and if I don't, the CPU throttles to nothing. I can definitely see why the coffee-shop set would love this machine, since it works really well on the couch (disconnected from everything) but it's been borderline unusable tethered to my desk. In that situation, I don't care about the large trackpad, because I use the same external mouse as on all my other machines. Don't even get me started on third party software quality.
- easygenes 6y ago
  There’s an overheating issue with charging from the left side on MBPs that could be a factor. Otherwise, as a counterpoint, I have a great experience driving the Pro Display XDR with the MBP. https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you-shouldnt-charge-your-macbook-pro-from-the-left-hand-side/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you...
  - fphhotchips 6y ago
    I've played around with this, and it doesn't make a _huge_ amount of difference - I currently charge on the RHS just to be sure, but I have my external monitor dongle on the left. I'm sure the Apple product to Apple product compatibility is great, but I don't really want to have to buy an entire new monitor just so that my work laptop doesn't suck.

easygenes 6y ago

Re: the butterfly keys... Yeah, they’re way more susceptible to debris than scissor switches (and I guess more fragile if you like to hammer on your keys). I’ve had to turn my laptop over and blow it out once or twice. But honestly I prefer the key feel and it’s not been a problem. I see the appeal of where they were going. It was a compromise and it didn’t go over well for a vocal and large enough minority that they unwound it. I’ll miss my butterfly keys when I refresh though.

zamalek 6y ago

> why is this rough edge still a problem!? This perspective makes tons of sense. Safari is a rough edge for me, and I don't even use Apple - I think most of my hatred for the platform is derived from supporting that awful browser. For my wedding website, I simply wanted to overlay some lines on MapBox with shadows to look like strings and pins on a map. My approach used dynamic SVG (changing a path attribute when the map is moved/tilted/whatever). This performed perfectly on my PC, on my Pixel and even the shitty Samsung browser my fiance uses. It completely annihilated all Apple devices I tried it on (locking up my friend's iPhone entirely), I had to remove the shadows. I really wish they would get it right, or allow alternate browser engines.

philliphaydon 6y ago

Did you use a Carbon or X1 Extreme? There is no “carbon X1 extreme” I’ve used both side by side too. Other than the keyboard being better on Lenovo and trackpad being better on MacBook. The rest is same same to me.

easygenes 6y ago
X1 Extreme, sorry for the confusion. Edited the original. The trackpad was a huge one for me. I really couldn’t bear it. I did like the ThinkPad keyboard though. The 135W charger was also a ThinkPad win. I would be tempted by a ThinkPad in the future if they could get anywhere near as good a trackpad as the MacBook. Oh! Also the MacBook speakers and mics are lightyears better. The ThinkPad speakers are an embarrassing tinny downward firing mess. MacBook on the other hand shock me the sound comes from something so small (my 2015 MBP was already good and much better than 2019 X1E... 2019 MBP is totally another league.. made me stop packing Bluetooth speakers while traveling on some occasions).
- philliphaydon 6y ago
  Oh yes the speakers. I think laptop speakers 10 years ago were better than what we get today. Apple still has quality speakers.

_coveredInBees 6y ago

Meanwhile my maxed out MBP 16 suffers from consistent kernel panics and reboots any time I plug into a thunderbolt dock. This is my first Mac after being in Windows land for a long time and getting fed up with recurring driver/firmware issues with my Dell XPS15 (fantastic hardware, terrible software/firmware integration though). There are definitely things that are nicer on OSX, but there are also a lot of warts that people seem to gloss over. Finder is an absolute abomination as a file explorer and it boggles my mind that this is the best OSX has to offer after years of refinement. Having to install a separate utility to switch mouse scroll directions when using a BT mouse is also ridiculous. You have to shell out money just to have basic features your OS should provide like window management (Better touch tool / magnet). External monitor rendering is really bad if you connect to a non HDPI monitor. Thunderbolt dock integration is pretty atrocious if you are trying to connect to more than one external monitor. And the OS keeps getting more locked down so opening a simple Word file takes > 5 seconds because of all the sandboxing going on in Catalina. There are definitely things OSX / MBP does much better, but everyone acts like it is far superior to Windows-based laptops, and I have unfortunately been rather surprised at the large number of pain points I have had with my MBP... none of which have anything to do with me having spent more time on Windows. There is a very good chance that a colleague of mine who has been a life-long OSX user and I will end up switching back to a windows-based laptop in a couple of years. Windows is far more dev friendly and with WSL2 + CUDA + GUI apps on the roadmap, a solid Windows laptop with an nVidia GPU looks like a much more interesting proposition even if I have to put up with some rough edges.

nbevans 6y ago
I totally agree about "Finder" - a better name might have been "Loser" - since it's only good at making you lose things. I switched from Windows to Mac about 6 years ago - because I needed an all-in-one system that could compile iOS, Android and UWP apps. However even 6 years later I still have problems with Finder - big problems - it just doesn't behave at all how I expect. I often find myself using Windows Explorer (in my Parallels VM) to navigate the file system because it is just so much easier and predictable.
cycomanic 6y ago
One thing that our IT people complain a lot about is that some of the macbooks don't have enough power on their USB ports/port replicator, so you can't attach some USB devices when on battery. Even more infuriating, for some projectors don't work without the notebook (because the port-replicator does not have enough power). I also find it very interesting that if there is a problem with a some website/file/software mac-users blame it on the software (and actually windows users agree even if it works fine for them), but if it's a Linux user that has problems, it's always "because he/she is using Linux"

fphhotchips 6y ago

I have the opposite. I have a now two year old midrange Lenovo Yoga and a brand new midrange MBP. The MBP runs hot under Thunderbolt, becomes unresponsive under even moderate load, and requires a dance of "turn the monitor on, turn the monitor off, unplug the cable, plug the cable in" everytime I wake it from sleep with an external monitor. I've had to download software to turn the fan curve to "always on all the time", because the combination of Radeon + Thunderbolt hits 70 degrees at idle, and if I don't, the CPU throttles to nothing. I can definitely see why the coffee-shop set would love this machine, since it works really well on the couch (disconnected from everything) but it's been borderline unusable tethered to my desk. In that situation, I don't care about the large trackpad, because I use the same external mouse as on all my other machines. Don't even get me started on third party software quality.

easygenes 6y ago
There’s an overheating issue with charging from the left side on MBPs that could be a factor. Otherwise, as a counterpoint, I have a great experience driving the Pro Display XDR with the MBP. https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you-shouldnt-charge-your-macbook-pro-from-the-left-hand-side/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you...
- fphhotchips 6y ago
  I've played around with this, and it doesn't make a _huge_ amount of difference - I currently charge on the RHS just to be sure, but I have my external monitor dongle on the left. I'm sure the Apple product to Apple product compatibility is great, but I don't really want to have to buy an entire new monitor just so that my work laptop doesn't suck.