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IMO, post like 2016, Apple had no such monopoly on ‘premium’ laptops in any capacity. There were better trackpads and keyboards in some, better screens in other

IMO, post like 2016, Apple had no such monopoly on ‘premium’ laptops in any capacity. There were better trackpads and keyboards in some, better screens in others, more compute in some, more ability to expand and repair in some, options for touchscreens, etc. …and most laptops were cheaper with flagships from any brand checking a majority of those boxes. Some laptops are even more expensive going well beyond MacBook capabilities if you needed the most color-accurate screens or the most CPU cores or the biggest GPU. Pick any major brand and they probably have something great. The only things you really don't get in alternatives is a) the Mac OS and software software & b) better resale value because Apple sells lifestyle products.

fouc 5y ago
I guess I've always looked at weight & battery life first, trackpad / keyboard & general build quality second, and then actual specs/performance third. As far as I can tell, Macbooks have always been the best choice for that. Especially once retina displays came out. And even now with the crazy performance of M1 Macbooks, that's gonna be hard to beat. weight, battery life, retina display (or 4.5K/5K display), great trackpad, snappy
- toastal 5y ago
  You may have already bit too hard into the ecosystem when you use Apple marketing terms like "retina display" instead of hiDPI. There are more than one better laptop across all of those metrics as a whole. One thing Apple does do significantly differently is moving along tech (for better or worse) because the other OEMs can be timid in their experimentation until a generation after a big switch in Apple hardware. I bought an ASUS Zenbook last year and I can thank Apple for setting trends for hiDPI, DCI-P3 displays, Thunderbolt, and big trackpads. But on the flipside, I can lament Apple for bad trends and it not having a 1/8" headphone jack and soldered RAM. And because it wasn't Apple I have a touchscreen+stylus and saved a lot of money. The newest trend of using ARM (and RISC) processors in laptops (could care less about what Apple brands it as) is a good one though. There have been attempts at good ARM chips, like Samsung's flagship ultrabook, but too many applications didn't run on it to make it feasible. I had an old Chromebook I slapped Linux on and it was a mess because certain applications, namely anything leveraging Electron or just having a .deb file, wouldn't run. For better or worse, people have to cater to Apple making such switches. Now you have started to see projects actually release binaries outside of x86.
nbzso 5y ago
Agree. They are working hard to kill all the good stuff in macOS and if they have a way to close it, as iOS and replace it with iPadOS with some xcode implementation, it is over. Better to invest in multi-platform software and run VMs. Luckily for me I have seen the writings on the wall and switched this year. On a harware level, instead of giving Apple ton of money I now run in the office custom pcs with water-cooling and laptops are Thinkpad X1 Carbons.

fouc 5y ago

I guess I've always looked at weight & battery life first, trackpad / keyboard & general build quality second, and then actual specs/performance third. As far as I can tell, Macbooks have always been the best choice for that. Especially once retina displays came out. And even now with the crazy performance of M1 Macbooks, that's gonna be hard to beat. weight, battery life, retina display (or 4.5K/5K display), great trackpad, snappy

toastal 5y ago
You may have already bit too hard into the ecosystem when you use Apple marketing terms like "retina display" instead of hiDPI. There are more than one better laptop across all of those metrics as a whole. One thing Apple does do significantly differently is moving along tech (for better or worse) because the other OEMs can be timid in their experimentation until a generation after a big switch in Apple hardware. I bought an ASUS Zenbook last year and I can thank Apple for setting trends for hiDPI, DCI-P3 displays, Thunderbolt, and big trackpads. But on the flipside, I can lament Apple for bad trends and it not having a 1/8" headphone jack and soldered RAM. And because it wasn't Apple I have a touchscreen+stylus and saved a lot of money. The newest trend of using ARM (and RISC) processors in laptops (could care less about what Apple brands it as) is a good one though. There have been attempts at good ARM chips, like Samsung's flagship ultrabook, but too many applications didn't run on it to make it feasible. I had an old Chromebook I slapped Linux on and it was a mess because certain applications, namely anything leveraging Electron or just having a .deb file, wouldn't run. For better or worse, people have to cater to Apple making such switches. Now you have started to see projects actually release binaries outside of x86.

nbzso 5y ago

Agree. They are working hard to kill all the good stuff in macOS and if they have a way to close it, as iOS and replace it with iPadOS with some xcode implementation, it is over. Better to invest in multi-platform software and run VMs. Luckily for me I have seen the writings on the wall and switched this year. On a harware level, instead of giving Apple ton of money I now run in the office custom pcs with water-cooling and laptops are Thinkpad X1 Carbons.