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I may be an outlier, but for me, the problem with non-mac machines is that they seem just careless. Steve jobs famously said "The only problem with Microsoft i

I may be an outlier, but for me, the problem with non-mac machines is that they seem just careless. Steve jobs famously said "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.", and this seems true to me for almost all hardware manufacturers, and to a larger degree still for software. Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations? There has been amazing workmanship for thousands of years. The Minoan culture made golden jewellery out of sub-milimeter spheres. Why should we now tolerate the insult that consumer computers are?

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sedatk 4y ago
> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations? I think Microsoft's Surface lineup has been making good strides on that front, but they still have a long way to go.
- Terretta 4y ago
  > Surface lineup has been making good strides Making laptops and tablets was anecdotally a business MSFT didn't particularly want to be in but the OEM options for business workplace were that embarrassing the bar had to be raised by someone.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    That’s why I had heard they entered the market as well. But that basically proves the point of the original question doesn’t it. And it seems even Microsoft’s “people should be aspiring to this, come on OEMs do better“ models have plenty of problems.
- thrill 4y ago
  I was in love with my Surface, even after they took a month to repair it for warranty, but come on, having it die the day after the warranty expired, with no consideration for a replacement, has made that a one-and-done consideration. I sure did like fanless computing though. As a lifelong non-Mac guy (mostly unix, and then linux, since the days AT&T were sharing their code around college campuses), I'm about to go to the dark side and embrace the fruit simply because I think the whole deal will be better.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    I unfortunately can only affirm with my experiences: well engineered exterior feel, but plagued by unreliable hardware. My Surface Pro 4 managed to simultaneously experience flickergate and battery expansion, and the soft surface of its keyboard crumbled where my wrists touched it. Its refurbished warranty replacement then pulled off the signature die-a-month-out-of-warranty. The bottom half of a Surface Book in the family also died without any recourse (with no official replacements sold). Naturally, the unsupported, glued-down screens also make them some of the least repairable devices on the market. At least they had the sense to make the SSD removable—aside from saving you if spontaneous failure catches you out of a backup (as Microsoft will wipe all devices sent in for repair), it's also the only part salvageable from a "PC" of such form factor. That said, the Dells we've had seem to very reliably suffer from broken hinges.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  I have only had bad experiences with the surface lineup and I really wanted to like them. I lost a lot of money to MS as they refused to repair saying it was my own fault that they broke. One came broken from the shop as in that I bought it in an Orlando MS shop, opened it up in front of the shop and it was broken. I thought I needed to charge it, so I went to the hotel; when it was still broken 48 hours later, I had to leave (fly back home) so I sent it in for warranty repair 4 days after I bought it. Got an email a few days later that ‘this damage is not covered by warranty’. The thing was broken straight out of the shop; sure my fault I did not walk back in and ask if this was a charging issue but how did they blame me for it? I had this 3 times in different warranty stages with Surface products; all 3 lost because they refused to honour the warranty. Never had any issues with Apple; they always replaced anything under warranty (even if it wasn’t covered officially).
  - sedatk 4y ago
    I think Microsoft's been getting better in handling reliability and support. My Surface Laptop 3 has been rock solid after almost two years of use.
bostonsre 4y ago
> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations? To me, these details are less desirable, but the operating system and the way in which I utilize the computer to work and get shit done matters more. The niceness of the design (and don't get me wrong, they are super nice and beautiful) seems like superficial details to me. It isn't jewelry to me, it is a tool that I use to work.
- MBCook 4y ago
  I get that you prefer Linux or Windows. That’s completely fair. But that shouldn’t be a trade-off. You should be able to have your OS and a nicely constructed laptop. I got the impression the original post was more about quality than aesthetics (which are always up to personal taste).
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    We're just coming out of a five year period of many, if not most Macbook keyboards failing after two years.
kemiller2002 4y ago
The Laguiole flatware is beautiful. It is a true mark of craftsmanship, and it is priced as such. As much as I appreciate their elegance, I don't need a $100 spoon to eat my cornflakes in the morning. We tolerate less poor design, because spending time on money on something which in the end is not truly worth the time or money is focusing on something unimportant to most people....especially at a job they most likely hate.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  That's the thing. We spend a huge amount of time using computers. Considering not just the share of time but also the share of concentrated attention, they are an even more important object in our lives. Why would you not desire the tool you use to be the absolute best you can have? And if eating cornflakes is important to you, the Laguioles may be worth it. After all, they will probably last ten years or twenty. Compared to many completely irrelevant, even burdensome objects we own, that's not that much. Bruce Sterling once held a talk about minimalism and objects which stuck with me, long before Marie Condo commoditized the trend. He basically said: Spend a lot of money on things that you eat or put on your skin, on your bed, on your tools and beautiful objects. Get rid of the rest. At the core, what I cherish about Apple objects is that they don't steal my attention and efforts for some inferior, fake promise. Looking at them and using them is the same, there is hardly any broken promise. It's that integrity which counts.
  - ProAm 4y ago
    TBF Apple sold very expensive laptops with shoddy faulty keyboards for YEARS. People idolize and idealize Apple but tend to ignore the faults and failures. I truly believe Apple does not respect their customers. They have some good product and some bad ones too.
    - alphabettsy 4y ago
      I think the keyboard issue was overblown given what we saw at work with those machines. That said, the one person on my team with a failed keyboard was able to get it fixed very easily. One thing that makes me tend to prefer Apple is the stores and support. I recall support for HP and VAIO computers being extremely painful. PC manufacturers have so many models they don’t even have parts available for a computer that was being sold last year. That was my experience with a Samsung laptop.
digisign 4y ago
Most people want cheap hardware and software. That's about the whole story right there.
jdrc 4y ago
Because, if apple is an indication, it takes an enormous amount of investment to make a limited line of products that have those details ironed out. Just like most products, computers are also messy.
FpUser 4y ago
>"Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software?" I notice none of it on my ASUS and HP gaming laptops.
- deleted 4y ago
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xnx 4y ago
Or materials that look grimy/grubby from use and wear (e.g. Thinkpad touchpads). My go-to has been to run Windows (best OS) on Mac laptops (best hardware), but with M1, it looks like this will no longer be an option. Hoping for some magic cross-architecture emulation.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  Extremely important, I forgot that. I think we should ask for hardware to remain beautiful in use. Look around you: Except for things made out of wood, metal, paper, glass or ceramic, most things will fail that test.
- jedberg 4y ago
  > Windows (best OS) I'll admit, I haven't touched a Windows machine in over a decade, and it hasn't been my daily driver since 2002. The last version I used on a semi-regular basis was Win2K3 at work. I'm willing to give it another shot though. Why do you think it's the best now?
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    I have both Windows and macOS, macOS just has too many idiosyncracies and babies you into not allowing you to run whatever apps you want. Frequently I'll get stuff like, this app was not updated by the creator so you can't run it. At least with Windows I can turn off such annoyances.
- can16358p 4y ago
  With ARM adoption it might again be an option. I'm using Windows ARM in Parallels on M1 Mac and use Visual Studio perfectly. Microsoft says "it might not work" yet it works flawlessly. YMMV though.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    But isn’t a huge part of Windows the ecosystem of applications? That largely doesn’t exist on ARM though correct? Or does Windows have an emulation solution built in for that.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Because every other computer manufacturer realized they can save on the BOM cost by shoving the whole computer under plastic gingerbread. That weight distribution? It'd cost way too much to redesign the product correctly. Flickering redraws? We don't make the OS, we just sell Microsoft's. Occasionally you do see PC OEMs that try for taste in the Windows ecosystem. Sony did that with their VAIO laptops, with the somewhat-inflated price tag to match. In fact, it impressed Jobs so much he literally just offered them an OSX license (which they didn't bite on).
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy? Look at all the fields where superior quality is a completely natural criterion (whether it exists may be another question): Watches, cars, pens, paper notebooks, furniture, fashion, jewellery, architecture, bikes, coffee machines ... What's more - if you look at the visual representations of computers - i.e. marketing material, art, illustrations, unix porn etc - all that highly values aesthetics and beauty. But the actual products are a disgrace to all of that!
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy? Because it needs to be affordable to the masses as a whole, and not just the upper middle class and up.
    - uniqueuid 4y ago
      I find it very sad to think that masses cannot have style. Some old Swiss everyday products are affordable yet beautiful; I am convinced both is possible.
      - chaostheory 4y ago
        Apple and companies in general need to make a profit. Those same "old Swiss everyday products" are most likely no longer affordable based on the modern cost of labor and materials.
bsder 4y ago
Why does nobody care about the janky Bluetooth mouse that's only janky on macOS? Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine). How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards? How garbagey is Xcode relative to any other IDE nowadays? I can go on ... and on. Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. And I use software to get my job done--the hardware merely needs to be sufficient (I generally customize my laptops to use an i5 (including mac)--which ducks a lot of the idiotic thermal issues). I'm sitting on a Lenovo Carbon X1 with Linux full-time now. I finally got tired of fighting craptastic software from Apple. If I'm gonna fight software, I might as well be on Linux. And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  > Why does nobody care about the janky Bluetooth mouse that's only janky on macOS? Which mouse? I've always had bad experiences with Bluetooth mice, but have chalked it up to BT being a shit protocol for mice. > Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine). Is it all USB 2.0 ports that die in that case, or just the ones on your external dock? Are you using an adapter of some sort as well? > How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards? This seems a bit petty to me. I don't disagree, but if they fix it they fix it, and afaik they have. Lots of improvement to make, but I quite like the current ones as much as I can. Laptop keyboards across the board are only going to be barely passable imo, because the feedback to me is less important than scrunching my hands together in a way that fucks with my shoulders. This is true of full size mechanical keyboards as well. I think it's important, if you care, to re-evaluate every so often. If a restaurant I like makes a thing that sucks once or twice, I'll wait a bit and try it again a while later, and it's no longer that important that I didn't like it previously
- AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
  I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion. I don't have the same issues you do with janky mice and USB 2.0 ports. I owned a previous Macbook Air with a "shittastic" keyboard and never had an issue– although I'm glad I now have the new M1 with a better keyboard. > Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. I had the unfortunate displeasure of being issued a top of the line Windows 11 computer for work, and it was a horrible experience. Basic things that Mac OS gets right like search, recursively deleting files, and bash environments Windows either struggles with or requires workarounds. > And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS. Linux is an incredible family of operating systems. Every few years I will try downloading and installing a few distros. I always run into issues with GPUs, sound cards, and WiFi. Once I get past those, I run into different sets of issues. One that sticks with me is the awful nested menus in XCFE. Apple in some ways have allowed some behaviour in their MacOS to regress, but it is still the top choice for me. Mac OS is not garbage. I'm sorry to hear that you had an awful experience with it, but I am still very productive with it.
bluefirebrand 4y ago
> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? Because the value of a laptop is the parts inside, not the presentation. Why would I care about those things? Or at least why would I care about them enough to make me spend more than I have to?
- can16358p 4y ago
  Well, because you'd be potentially looking at it and using it for hours almost every day for years as a professional? For me something I spend my time that much should look nice. That combined with the parts inside is perfection, which is the M1 MBP for me.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    How much are you actually looking at a laptop's aesthetics versus looking at the information displayed on a screen though? Does it really matter to you to have something pretty sitting on your desk while you work? That seems really weird to me. Personally I couldn't care less. Especially in the context of a professional work laptop which is a machine that goes onto the corner of my desk and I plug a bunch of other things into and basically ignore forever past that point.
    - can16358p 4y ago
      Of course I care if I have something pretty on my desk. I care about aesthetics of everything around me that I interact with/see/experience on my daily life, especially if it's something literally designed for me to look at for hours every day, like a computer.
  - ciwolsey 4y ago
    Listen to this person, they're a professional
- lawkwok 4y ago
  This is like asking why should you care about a creaky chair? It works as a chair regardless and you don’t even see it when you are sitting on it. Who cares about sticky castors when you are at your desk for hours at a time?
everyone 4y ago
Jewellery is a great analogy imo. Apple is a jewellery company imo. They sell expensive, shiny, conspicuous consumption items without practical use. I was shocked when I found out that macs are popular among people who actually work with computers and even make software. It will never cease to shock me. The only explanation I can think of is that this is a USA social class thing. In the USA the upper classes have Apple stuff and the lower classes have something else. Most people in software come from an upper or upper-middle background so they grow up in an Apple house. Those who don't get Apple anyway to blend in.
- pschastain 4y ago
  My last MBP only lasted 10 years of almost daily use so yeah, no practical use at all...
- jaffe21 4y ago
  >> I was shocked when I found out that macs are popular among people who actually work with computers and even make software. It will never cease to shock me. Yeah, wtf. It's not like people that build software for a living know anything about computers right?!
  - selfmodruntime 4y ago
    Yea, a unix based system with a good Desktop manager in a powerhouse of a laptop. Horrible, right?
- Delk 4y ago
  The combination of Unix, a polished user interface and a system that Just Works(TM) appeals to a lot of tech people. That combination at least used to be a kind of a holy grail.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    I would like to see the polished user interface that doesn’t lag on desktop switch, or the just works system, because neither of it is true of a last-intel MBP I use.
zitterbewegung 4y ago
Apple's taste and the ways they do things makes you love / hate your experience and your judgement of whether you should buy their product. The company is position as "we know what's best for you" and you can see this along their product line. General PC makers have a carefree attitude where here is what you want and they will give you the specs and it works however you want. Which means sometimes you will have to deal with managing your own experience. The design inconsistencies though are twofold. If we look at phones Samsung makes their own processor that they try to use with their phones and they are also not fabless but that processor continually either underperforms Apple's products. On the other hand the Apple tax is quite real. Also, Samsung's aesthetic at least at their phones is quite real although they might just abandon their standard flagships to foldable phones because the yearly update cycle for phones is stopping soon. Also, many manufacturers seem to just blindly copy Apple up to even their marketing (which I don't think many would disagree that Apple does the best out of any of their competitors).
- civilized 4y ago
  > General PC makers have a carefree attitude where here is what you want and they will give you the specs and it works however you want. Which means sometimes you will have to deal with managing your own experience. You can't get whatever you want though. You can't get a machine with remotely the look and feel of a MBP. You have lots and lots of mediocre choices and no really good ones.
  - zitterbewegung 4y ago
    By whatever you want I meant is whatever you choose (like a cellular modem and touchscreen laptop) but I agree with you the look and feel is driven by Apple because they want to preserve margins by having a sense of taste that allows them to still have the Apple tax.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    A MBP is one thing. Sometimes there are machines that are in the ballpark. _Nothing_ comes close to the value proposition of the M1 Air. Obviously you can get PCs that are way cheaper. I found one for $150. Apple can’t touch that. But for $1000 you get an amazing screen, fantastic performance, unbelievable battery life, and absolutely no moving parts. All in a very light and thin case. You can get some of those qualities but nowhere near all. All the more amazing given Apple’s legendary margins. PC makers can’t get close despite making less money on each unit.
sjtindell 4y ago
It feels like 90% of the products I use these days I find myself asking, “did they even try using their own thing?” All these steps, all these weird one-offs, for my dead-simple, totally average idiot use case?
sascha_sl 4y ago
Yes. I own a very expensive 2021 gaming laptop / mobile workstation-ish laptop from Lenovo. A ton of people who have it have had issues with the touchpad getting unresponsive. I could fix for the most part by using a 300W brick over a 240W (don't ask me how, that must be a very interesting power delivery system, or maybe the battery controller is interrupt storming, what do I know). Lenovo's response has been to say they're aware of the issue, and otherwise ignore it / replace entire top shells only for the problem to return 2 weeks later. I also have a T495, a machine that absolutely should never have been released with the C-States it has. While AMD has issued a patch for them, Lenovo has not bothered to provide a BIOS revision that fixes it. Support for these products is essentially minimal to dead upon release. It feels like every OEM has become MediaTek.
wly_cdgr 4y ago
A great number of people care a great deal about creaking plastic and the other design atrocities you mentioned. Why do you think Apple is one of a handful of the most valuable brands in the world, while Dell laptops gather dust in Staples basements? "Developer experience"? Lol It's the aesthetically stunted and clueless nerds on HN who don't know the name of their hairstyle and aren't aware of the length or color of their shorts who are the outliers, not you
- can16358p 4y ago
  Even though I generally agree with your point about the topic, calling people "autistic nerds" isn't cool.
massysett 4y ago
Add “my Windows has ads for crapware even though I paid full price for it and bought direct from Microsoft” to the list.
goosedragons 4y ago
You can buy metal PCs. There's loads of them. Microsoft themselves even make them. Pretty sure every big OEM has at least one laptop with a solid metal chassis at this point. I prefer the plastic of my Thinkpad, it doesn't feel creaky, there's no "sticky-feeling texture". It doesn't boil on my lap the way metal MacBooks and PowerBooks have. It feels solid while also not denting from knocking it into a doorway by accident or worse yet deforming itself from it's own heat. You can buy quality PCs. You just gotta pay more.
- smackeyacky 4y ago
  Pay more for the corporate class laptops from HP or Dell i.e Elitebook Supported longer, better materials, better keyboards. I'd buy a second hand elitebook over a new acer or whatever any day.
  - culopatin 4y ago
    Yep, I use and deploy them at work. The only problem I have with them is the screen. That privacy filter could be a godsend for someone on an airplane, but for every day use at home or office, it really kills the image quality
    - throwing4321 4y ago
      Privacy filter means "HP Sure View Reflect" I guess?. There are 3 options for current HP Elitebook screens [1]. Only 1 of them has the privacy filter. I think the best option is to buy the middle one in that pic (low power, 400 nits). [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/hp_specs.PNG https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/... Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elitebook-805-G9-series-of-business-laptops-with-the-latest-AMD-Ryzen-processors-and-16-10-screens.589916.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elit...
      - culopatin 4y ago
        Unfortunately at work they all ship with the sure view filter, I have no say on that.
muzani 4y ago
Apple has the same problem. In college, we'd bring our own mice to the computer labs because it was better than the buttonless Apple mice they had there. Even today, the input devices have been IMO Apple's weak spot and the main reason I stayed away from MacBooks. I had a MBP, 2019 I believe. It was riddled with problems. True Tone color was wrong. Flickering on the display. The weird internet connectivity which often required some hacky restart. The touch bar was a terrible idea; this was a time when other laptops had high quality touch screens that were actually useful. The touch bar was a half-hearted implementation with a fraction of the benefits of a touch screen, but taking up a whole row on the keyboard. But then they make the best processors and have the most power in a compact space, so as OP said, there's really no other option. I gave it another chance and they've fixed all the problems from the 2019 model.
- brundolf 4y ago
  A key differentiator though is that when Apple gets something wrong it's usually a poor design decision, not careless craftsmanship. The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find
  - asiachick 4y ago
    > The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find I love this. Yes, those were horrible. The current Apple TV Remotes with the touch surface area is practically unusable by any but a twitch video gamer. Every time I watch my mom try to select anything I'd see her try to push the button and the touch surface would end up moving the selection. Eventually i bought her a 3rd party remote so she could stop being constantly frustrated. It's really hard to believe apple actually tested this with real people.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  The Touch Bar was a good idea. Replacing the F-keys with it was a _terrible_ idea. If they would've just added the bar above the normal F-keys, everyone would've either embraced or ignored it. But taking away function keys was just too much for pretty much everyone - especially ESC (which they rectified in a later iteration).
dbevv 4y ago
I dislike using touchpads very much. I go to great lengths to control everything with the keyboard, and fall back to a traditional mouse when I have to (I tried trackballs but I couldn't adapt). Whenever I'm forced to use a touchpad because I'm on the go or I don't have room to bring a mouse with me, I groan. That said, the implementation of the touchpad in a Macbook vs a regular touchpad in even a high end laptop is night and day. The software and hardware work together to make sure the touch surface is centered, and your fingers glide through it, there are no accidental presses, and esentially never misinput. The haptic feedback is so good that you can't really tell that you're not pressing a button. In comparison, the touchpad in what I consider the best Windows laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, is a steaming pile of shit, and fails every measure. I don't know how much of it is Apple's attention to detail versus their ability to do vertical integration -- Lenovo likely has very little control over how Synaptics implements their drivers -- but I would pay a hefty premium for an experience like a Macbook.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  I'm the same way and I'm mortified whenever I have the displeasure to use some PC or Chromebook laptop trackpad. PC manufacturers today still can't figure out how to make a trackpad as good as what Apple had 20 years ago.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Though part of it is thanks to apple themselves, for having a patent on that. Fortunately some company did find another way to reproduce this click feel through haptics and it will hopefully appear soon in other manufacturers’ laptops.
    - MaxikCZ 4y ago
      Even trackpads that were actually clicking were still miles ahead to what I have in my latest generation HP bullsh*t
    - neoberg 4y ago
      But the most important thing with Apple trackpad is not the haptics imo. If Apple went back to regular buttons tomorrow I wouldn't care at all. The tracking itself is light years ahead of any competition. This is still one of the big things keeping me from using Linux (even on Macbooks). Tracking and scrolling is just unbearable. (Yes I tried that driver, the other library, the recommended macos like settings, custom settings... I spent a LONG time trying to have something decent. Nothing is even remotely close.)
avar 4y ago
> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? I care way more that my Dell laptop is trivial to disassemble than that making it that way (cheaply) involves plastic, panel gaps and creaking joints.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Surely it’s possible to make laptops that can be disassembled easily and don’t creak. Apple used to do it. Dell used to do it. Why not now?
NoPicklez 4y ago
For me the only Windows based laptops which do care about detail are the Lenovo ThinkPads. These machines are simple, built well and in my 5+ year experience with all day use they're rock solid. However for my personal use I use a Macbook.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Unfortunately newer thinkpads are prone to goddamn cpu throttles, though that is in part due to intel. Nonetheless, at work I had to replace a brand new thinkpad t14 because other than manually tweaking the CPU frequency (which is not allowed by company policy but I did anyway, otherwise I may have thrown the laptop out the window which is even less in line with company policy) it throttled like crazy at random times. I even have this problem on my thinkpad t480, though it is not as bad there. The T14 throttles down to goddamn 4-600 mhz, where it is practically unusable. But I agree, for family members I always try to find a used <T480 laptop in good conditions, because these are faster than similarly priced low-end laptops (seriously, what they offer at the low-end is just criminal, they want to take advantage of the technically illiterate), and basically everything can be changed inside.
GraphenePants 4y ago
Given Windows' market dominance it stands to reason that most people believe them to have taste. It also remains unclear how these issues would impact your ability to do work.
- vmurthy 4y ago
  Hmmm, are you conflating the hardware the runs Windows or do you mean something else?
danamit 4y ago
That's personal taste, if Apple cares can they care to have a real keyboard, a bit of ports, and a camera shutter? I am super filtered by the Mac keyboard and I don't think it is intended for professional use at all. Also "it just werks" is not true at all, Macs have a super bad reparability. If you love Macs fine, but they are not that savoir of laptops as you claim, its a brand with its own loyal fans just like there is Thinkpads with loyal fans and people who say WHY NO ONE MAKE GOOD MUSIC TODAY EXCEPT TAYLOR SWIFT????? ONLY GOOD PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IS C# TODAY WTF???
- thundermuffin 4y ago
  As someone who had to sadly use one of the butterfly switch keyboards for a while at work, the new 14"/16" Macbooks both have the "old school" feeling keyboards, finally brought Magsafe back, and have ports for SD card and HDMI again. I feel like the thickness is so close to allowing an ethernet port that they should've just bumped it up a little more, but maybe they felt the average consumer wouldn't know what that is in 2022 (kidding, haha!). Sadly, still no camera shutter which is definitely a bummer, but I road my 2013 model into the ground hoping they'd bring back Magsafe because that's a must-have feature for me, hah.
pllbnk 4y ago
I can't stand Mac OS infantile looks and intentionally slow UI just so it would look smooth. Where do you find laptops with creaking plastic or weird textures like that? I get that there are more options to choose from in non-mac world but that doesn't mean you have to choose bad options. I go with Lenovo and never had any problems you are talking about. Macs, on the other hand, they have buggy UI and are extremely annoying if you want to use them in any other way than the "Mac way". Over the years they also had their share of hardware faults. Feels good to vent. :)
- nielsbot 4y ago
  Infantile? Which parts?
  - pllbnk 4y ago
    Rainbow-colored spinning loading wheel; jumping menu bar icons, trying to grab your precious attention for whatever reason; minimize button triggering "sucking" animation; app installation where you have to needlessly drag an icon onto Applications folder; pop-up windows which appear, then momentarily shrink and expand again. Sometimes it gives certain 1960's Batman TV series vibes.
- bzzzt 4y ago
  > intentionally slow UI just so it would look smooth. I get your anger, but it's not about trying to look 'cool'. For lots of folks it's more clear to see that (for example) a minimised window can be found in the dock by showing a transition. For people like you there's a preference (under accesibility - display - reduce motion) to turn it off.
  - pllbnk 4y ago
    Generally I stay away from Apple products or topics. The only reason I decided to comment was that I am forced to use Mac in my current work and after several stints I understood I was not going to get used to it. If people use it and like it, I don't mind. For me, it's just not intuitive; for instance, I wouldn't have thought of looking for this setting, let alone under accessibility options.
wink 4y ago
I guess you could also answer that with: because tastes are different. I actually prefer the feel of Lenovo's plastic to metal. I don't remember ever trying to balance a laptop, so not sure what uneven weight distribution would even mean. My x230 does creak a little when I press some point I am never touching while actually using it, only while holding it. On the other hand most keyboards on most laptops don't withstand the pressure I am using when typing. Apparently I also hold my laptops differently because with the older MBPs the edge at the front hurt my wrist more than working on any other laptop ever had.
Avlin67 4y ago
I would look to all mods and watercooling cooling rigs. When i enter an Apple I feel a lack of taste me too. Oh you were about laptop, well this is just opinionated remarks from fashionable wannabe geeks. Get a lenovo x1 carbon, you can even walk on it without worry as I did, wanna hard work ? get an eurocom with 128Gb Ram.
- mrslave 4y ago
  I'm off Lenovo X-s due to poor keyboards and poor warranty support. I was told (around the Gen5 era) that they often have slightly less powerful CPUs than similar competition though I have no idea if this is still true. They were also slower to offer better displays. Onto Linux-on-Dell XPS 13 for a few years, though admittedly I didn't pay for it so I didn't really have a choice. Still, I'm happy and would easily recommend the product. A lot of firmware upgrades happen over `fwupdmgr` too. The recently posted StarBook 14-inch looks interesting, but the screen isn't hi-res.
colburnmh 4y ago
The reason most other companies don't worry about that is two-fold: culture, and costs. Apple has a culture, built top-down, that quality is paramount. While this seems to have started to decay a bit on the software side, mostly due to the size of the systems they are dealing with, and the need to support multiple software and hardware platforms (MacOS, iOS, iPad, Watch, iPhone, etc.), it is still going strong on the hardware side. But the most demanding issue is cost. PCs are now a commodity. The margins in hardware are sustainable--barely. Therefore, every dollar (yen, yuan, etc.) invested in hardware design beyond the reference implementation provided by Arm, Intel, Nvidia, etc., is less money to the bottom line. And with lots of competition and rapidly iterating developments occurring at the chip and board level, the big gains in performance are driven by the chip manufacturers, not by the hardware platform providers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. Apple has managed to side-step that whole issue by providing an integrated platform that they completely control--more so now with the huge success of the Apple Silicon chips. This allows them to build compelling integrated solutions that don't run into the reliability problems posed by huge numbers of 3rd-party driver developers, support for add-in cards and other multi-provider issues. These are all things people complain about--the inability to upgrade or service their Apple hardware--but it provides a much more controlled environment, and allows Apple to spend more time working on all those attention-to-detail-items you mentioned, rather than testing, troubleshooting, and supporting an ever-growing plethora of hardware interopation issues. Apple hardware costs a bit more (not a huge amount), and has a lot fewer upgrade or customization options, but what you get for that is a more bullet-proof solution overall. And it means Apple engineers and designers have more time to make sure that the devices are light, well balanced, quiet, and durable. It's a trade-off, to be sure, but so far the numbers are shifting in Apple's favor--something that seems shocking if you were around in the '90s when Apple's certain demise was commuted due to a huge investment by it's then arch-rival, Microsoft.
asiachick 4y ago
Why doesn't Apple care about software quality? 12.3 broke copying large files (200mb+) from the finder to network shares (files get corrupted, bad data). Copy from terminal with cp, no issue. 12.3 broke airplay iOS 15.3 broke WebGL, tons of sites that rely on it are effed, (can't ask users to use a different browser on iOS) All 3 issues, 6 weeks+ still unfixed. etc.... PS: not saying that MS does better but "It just works" Apple is never actually true
Spooky23 4y ago
Enterprise drives sales. Big companies don’t care about what some accountant thinks about her laptop. A procurement officer at an insurance company will just do and RFQ and buy 50,000 laptops. The one the wins may be $2 cheaper than the loser.

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sedatk 4y ago

Terretta 4y ago
> Surface lineup has been making good strides Making laptops and tablets was anecdotally a business MSFT didn't particularly want to be in but the OEM options for business workplace were that embarrassing the bar had to be raised by someone.
- MBCook 4y ago
  That’s why I had heard they entered the market as well. But that basically proves the point of the original question doesn’t it. And it seems even Microsoft’s “people should be aspiring to this, come on OEMs do better“ models have plenty of problems.
thrill 4y ago
I was in love with my Surface, even after they took a month to repair it for warranty, but come on, having it die the day after the warranty expired, with no consideration for a replacement, has made that a one-and-done consideration. I sure did like fanless computing though. As a lifelong non-Mac guy (mostly unix, and then linux, since the days AT&T were sharing their code around college campuses), I'm about to go to the dark side and embrace the fruit simply because I think the whole deal will be better.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  I unfortunately can only affirm with my experiences: well engineered exterior feel, but plagued by unreliable hardware. My Surface Pro 4 managed to simultaneously experience flickergate and battery expansion, and the soft surface of its keyboard crumbled where my wrists touched it. Its refurbished warranty replacement then pulled off the signature die-a-month-out-of-warranty. The bottom half of a Surface Book in the family also died without any recourse (with no official replacements sold). Naturally, the unsupported, glued-down screens also make them some of the least repairable devices on the market. At least they had the sense to make the SSD removable—aside from saving you if spontaneous failure catches you out of a backup (as Microsoft will wipe all devices sent in for repair), it's also the only part salvageable from a "PC" of such form factor. That said, the Dells we've had seem to very reliably suffer from broken hinges.
tluyben2 4y ago
I have only had bad experiences with the surface lineup and I really wanted to like them. I lost a lot of money to MS as they refused to repair saying it was my own fault that they broke. One came broken from the shop as in that I bought it in an Orlando MS shop, opened it up in front of the shop and it was broken. I thought I needed to charge it, so I went to the hotel; when it was still broken 48 hours later, I had to leave (fly back home) so I sent it in for warranty repair 4 days after I bought it. Got an email a few days later that ‘this damage is not covered by warranty’. The thing was broken straight out of the shop; sure my fault I did not walk back in and ask if this was a charging issue but how did they blame me for it? I had this 3 times in different warranty stages with Surface products; all 3 lost because they refused to honour the warranty. Never had any issues with Apple; they always replaced anything under warranty (even if it wasn’t covered officially).
- sedatk 4y ago
  I think Microsoft's been getting better in handling reliability and support. My Surface Laptop 3 has been rock solid after almost two years of use.

bostonsre 4y ago

> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software? About inconsistent spacing? About janky color combinations? To me, these details are less desirable, but the operating system and the way in which I utilize the computer to work and get shit done matters more. The niceness of the design (and don't get me wrong, they are super nice and beautiful) seems like superficial details to me. It isn't jewelry to me, it is a tool that I use to work.

MBCook 4y ago
I get that you prefer Linux or Windows. That’s completely fair. But that shouldn’t be a trade-off. You should be able to have your OS and a nicely constructed laptop. I got the impression the original post was more about quality than aesthetics (which are always up to personal taste).
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  We're just coming out of a five year period of many, if not most Macbook keyboards failing after two years.

kemiller2002 4y ago

The Laguiole flatware is beautiful. It is a true mark of craftsmanship, and it is priced as such. As much as I appreciate their elegance, I don't need a $100 spoon to eat my cornflakes in the morning. We tolerate less poor design, because spending time on money on something which in the end is not truly worth the time or money is focusing on something unimportant to most people....especially at a job they most likely hate.

uniqueuid 4y ago
That's the thing. We spend a huge amount of time using computers. Considering not just the share of time but also the share of concentrated attention, they are an even more important object in our lives. Why would you not desire the tool you use to be the absolute best you can have? And if eating cornflakes is important to you, the Laguioles may be worth it. After all, they will probably last ten years or twenty. Compared to many completely irrelevant, even burdensome objects we own, that's not that much. Bruce Sterling once held a talk about minimalism and objects which stuck with me, long before Marie Condo commoditized the trend. He basically said: Spend a lot of money on things that you eat or put on your skin, on your bed, on your tools and beautiful objects. Get rid of the rest. At the core, what I cherish about Apple objects is that they don't steal my attention and efforts for some inferior, fake promise. Looking at them and using them is the same, there is hardly any broken promise. It's that integrity which counts.
- ProAm 4y ago
  TBF Apple sold very expensive laptops with shoddy faulty keyboards for YEARS. People idolize and idealize Apple but tend to ignore the faults and failures. I truly believe Apple does not respect their customers. They have some good product and some bad ones too.
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    I think the keyboard issue was overblown given what we saw at work with those machines. That said, the one person on my team with a failed keyboard was able to get it fixed very easily. One thing that makes me tend to prefer Apple is the stores and support. I recall support for HP and VAIO computers being extremely painful. PC manufacturers have so many models they don’t even have parts available for a computer that was being sold last year. That was my experience with a Samsung laptop.

digisign 4y ago

Most people want cheap hardware and software. That's about the whole story right there.

jdrc 4y ago

Because, if apple is an indication, it takes an enormous amount of investment to make a limited line of products that have those details ironed out. Just like most products, computers are also messy.

FpUser 4y ago

>"Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? About flickering in software?" I notice none of it on my ASUS and HP gaming laptops.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

xnx 4y ago

Or materials that look grimy/grubby from use and wear (e.g. Thinkpad touchpads). My go-to has been to run Windows (best OS) on Mac laptops (best hardware), but with M1, it looks like this will no longer be an option. Hoping for some magic cross-architecture emulation.

uniqueuid 4y ago
Extremely important, I forgot that. I think we should ask for hardware to remain beautiful in use. Look around you: Except for things made out of wood, metal, paper, glass or ceramic, most things will fail that test.
jedberg 4y ago
> Windows (best OS) I'll admit, I haven't touched a Windows machine in over a decade, and it hasn't been my daily driver since 2002. The last version I used on a semi-regular basis was Win2K3 at work. I'm willing to give it another shot though. Why do you think it's the best now?
- cercatrova 4y ago
  I have both Windows and macOS, macOS just has too many idiosyncracies and babies you into not allowing you to run whatever apps you want. Frequently I'll get stuff like, this app was not updated by the creator so you can't run it. At least with Windows I can turn off such annoyances.
can16358p 4y ago
With ARM adoption it might again be an option. I'm using Windows ARM in Parallels on M1 Mac and use Visual Studio perfectly. Microsoft says "it might not work" yet it works flawlessly. YMMV though.
- MBCook 4y ago
  But isn’t a huge part of Windows the ecosystem of applications? That largely doesn’t exist on ARM though correct? Or does Windows have an emulation solution built in for that.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Because every other computer manufacturer realized they can save on the BOM cost by shoving the whole computer under plastic gingerbread. That weight distribution? It'd cost way too much to redesign the product correctly. Flickering redraws? We don't make the OS, we just sell Microsoft's. Occasionally you do see PC OEMs that try for taste in the Windows ecosystem. Sony did that with their VAIO laptops, with the somewhat-inflated price tag to match. In fact, it impressed Jobs so much he literally just offered them an OSX license (which they didn't bite on).

uniqueuid 4y ago
All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy? Look at all the fields where superior quality is a completely natural criterion (whether it exists may be another question): Watches, cars, pens, paper notebooks, furniture, fashion, jewellery, architecture, bikes, coffee machines ... What's more - if you look at the visual representations of computers - i.e. marketing material, art, illustrations, unix porn etc - all that highly values aesthetics and beauty. But the actual products are a disgrace to all of that!
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy? Because it needs to be affordable to the masses as a whole, and not just the upper middle class and up.
  - uniqueuid 4y ago
    I find it very sad to think that masses cannot have style. Some old Swiss everyday products are affordable yet beautiful; I am convinced both is possible.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Apple and companies in general need to make a profit. Those same "old Swiss everyday products" are most likely no longer affordable based on the modern cost of labor and materials.

bsder 4y ago

Why does nobody care about the janky Bluetooth mouse that's only janky on macOS? Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine). How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards? How garbagey is Xcode relative to any other IDE nowadays? I can go on ... and on. Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. And I use software to get my job done--the hardware merely needs to be sufficient (I generally customize my laptops to use an i5 (including mac)--which ducks a lot of the idiotic thermal issues). I'm sitting on a Lenovo Carbon X1 with Linux full-time now. I finally got tired of fighting craptastic software from Apple. If I'm gonna fight software, I might as well be on Linux. And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS.

brailsafe 4y ago
> Why does nobody care about the janky Bluetooth mouse that's only janky on macOS? Which mouse? I've always had bad experiences with Bluetooth mice, but have chalked it up to BT being a shit protocol for mice. > Why does nobody care that my USB 2.0 ports on my external USB-C docks die in about 20 minutes necessitating a reboot--again, only on macOS (and only on newer macOS versions--old ones work fine). Is it all USB 2.0 ports that die in that case, or just the ones on your external dock? Are you using an adapter of some sort as well? > How many years did it take Apple to (sort of) fix their shittastic keyboards? This seems a bit petty to me. I don't disagree, but if they fix it they fix it, and afaik they have. Lots of improvement to make, but I quite like the current ones as much as I can. Laptop keyboards across the board are only going to be barely passable imo, because the feedback to me is less important than scrunching my hands together in a way that fucks with my shoulders. This is true of full size mechanical keyboards as well. I think it's important, if you care, to re-evaluate every so often. If a restaurant I like makes a thing that sucks once or twice, I'll wait a bit and try it again a while later, and it's no longer that important that I didn't like it previously
AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion. I don't have the same issues you do with janky mice and USB 2.0 ports. I owned a previous Macbook Air with a "shittastic" keyboard and never had an issue– although I'm glad I now have the new M1 with a better keyboard. > Macbooks may look pretty, but the software has been becoming increasingly garbage. I had the unfortunate displeasure of being issued a top of the line Windows 11 computer for work, and it was a horrible experience. Basic things that Mac OS gets right like search, recursively deleting files, and bash environments Windows either struggles with or requires workarounds. > And, surprisingly, my experience on Linux has been better than the last year or two on macOS. Linux is an incredible family of operating systems. Every few years I will try downloading and installing a few distros. I always run into issues with GPUs, sound cards, and WiFi. Once I get past those, I run into different sets of issues. One that sticks with me is the awful nested menus in XCFE. Apple in some ways have allowed some behaviour in their MacOS to regress, but it is still the top choice for me. Mac OS is not garbage. I'm sorry to hear that you had an awful experience with it, but I am still very productive with it.

bluefirebrand 4y ago

> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? About sticky-feeling texture? About uneven weight distribution? About the sound that materials make when handling them? Because the value of a laptop is the parts inside, not the presentation. Why would I care about those things? Or at least why would I care about them enough to make me spend more than I have to?

can16358p 4y ago
Well, because you'd be potentially looking at it and using it for hours almost every day for years as a professional? For me something I spend my time that much should look nice. That combined with the parts inside is perfection, which is the M1 MBP for me.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  How much are you actually looking at a laptop's aesthetics versus looking at the information displayed on a screen though? Does it really matter to you to have something pretty sitting on your desk while you work? That seems really weird to me. Personally I couldn't care less. Especially in the context of a professional work laptop which is a machine that goes onto the corner of my desk and I plug a bunch of other things into and basically ignore forever past that point.
  - can16358p 4y ago
    Of course I care if I have something pretty on my desk. I care about aesthetics of everything around me that I interact with/see/experience on my daily life, especially if it's something literally designed for me to look at for hours every day, like a computer.
- ciwolsey 4y ago
  Listen to this person, they're a professional
lawkwok 4y ago
This is like asking why should you care about a creaky chair? It works as a chair regardless and you don’t even see it when you are sitting on it. Who cares about sticky castors when you are at your desk for hours at a time?

everyone 4y ago

Jewellery is a great analogy imo. Apple is a jewellery company imo. They sell expensive, shiny, conspicuous consumption items without practical use. I was shocked when I found out that macs are popular among people who actually work with computers and even make software. It will never cease to shock me. The only explanation I can think of is that this is a USA social class thing. In the USA the upper classes have Apple stuff and the lower classes have something else. Most people in software come from an upper or upper-middle background so they grow up in an Apple house. Those who don't get Apple anyway to blend in.

pschastain 4y ago
My last MBP only lasted 10 years of almost daily use so yeah, no practical use at all...
jaffe21 4y ago
>> I was shocked when I found out that macs are popular among people who actually work with computers and even make software. It will never cease to shock me. Yeah, wtf. It's not like people that build software for a living know anything about computers right?!
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  Yea, a unix based system with a good Desktop manager in a powerhouse of a laptop. Horrible, right?
Delk 4y ago
The combination of Unix, a polished user interface and a system that Just Works(TM) appeals to a lot of tech people. That combination at least used to be a kind of a holy grail.
- kaba0 4y ago
  I would like to see the polished user interface that doesn’t lag on desktop switch, or the just works system, because neither of it is true of a last-intel MBP I use.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Apple's taste and the ways they do things makes you love / hate your experience and your judgement of whether you should buy their product. The company is position as "we know what's best for you" and you can see this along their product line. General PC makers have a carefree attitude where here is what you want and they will give you the specs and it works however you want. Which means sometimes you will have to deal with managing your own experience. The design inconsistencies though are twofold. If we look at phones Samsung makes their own processor that they try to use with their phones and they are also not fabless but that processor continually either underperforms Apple's products. On the other hand the Apple tax is quite real. Also, Samsung's aesthetic at least at their phones is quite real although they might just abandon their standard flagships to foldable phones because the yearly update cycle for phones is stopping soon. Also, many manufacturers seem to just blindly copy Apple up to even their marketing (which I don't think many would disagree that Apple does the best out of any of their competitors).

civilized 4y ago
> General PC makers have a carefree attitude where here is what you want and they will give you the specs and it works however you want. Which means sometimes you will have to deal with managing your own experience. You can't get whatever you want though. You can't get a machine with remotely the look and feel of a MBP. You have lots and lots of mediocre choices and no really good ones.
- zitterbewegung 4y ago
  By whatever you want I meant is whatever you choose (like a cellular modem and touchscreen laptop) but I agree with you the look and feel is driven by Apple because they want to preserve margins by having a sense of taste that allows them to still have the Apple tax.
- MBCook 4y ago
  A MBP is one thing. Sometimes there are machines that are in the ballpark. _Nothing_ comes close to the value proposition of the M1 Air. Obviously you can get PCs that are way cheaper. I found one for $150. Apple can’t touch that. But for $1000 you get an amazing screen, fantastic performance, unbelievable battery life, and absolutely no moving parts. All in a very light and thin case. You can get some of those qualities but nowhere near all. All the more amazing given Apple’s legendary margins. PC makers can’t get close despite making less money on each unit.

sjtindell 4y ago

It feels like 90% of the products I use these days I find myself asking, “did they even try using their own thing?” All these steps, all these weird one-offs, for my dead-simple, totally average idiot use case?

sascha_sl 4y ago

Yes. I own a very expensive 2021 gaming laptop / mobile workstation-ish laptop from Lenovo. A ton of people who have it have had issues with the touchpad getting unresponsive. I could fix for the most part by using a 300W brick over a 240W (don't ask me how, that must be a very interesting power delivery system, or maybe the battery controller is interrupt storming, what do I know). Lenovo's response has been to say they're aware of the issue, and otherwise ignore it / replace entire top shells only for the problem to return 2 weeks later. I also have a T495, a machine that absolutely should never have been released with the C-States it has. While AMD has issued a patch for them, Lenovo has not bothered to provide a BIOS revision that fixes it. Support for these products is essentially minimal to dead upon release. It feels like every OEM has become MediaTek.

wly_cdgr 4y ago

A great number of people care a great deal about creaking plastic and the other design atrocities you mentioned. Why do you think Apple is one of a handful of the most valuable brands in the world, while Dell laptops gather dust in Staples basements? "Developer experience"? Lol It's the aesthetically stunted and clueless nerds on HN who don't know the name of their hairstyle and aren't aware of the length or color of their shorts who are the outliers, not you

can16358p 4y ago
Even though I generally agree with your point about the topic, calling people "autistic nerds" isn't cool.

massysett 4y ago

Add “my Windows has ads for crapware even though I paid full price for it and bought direct from Microsoft” to the list.

goosedragons 4y ago

You can buy metal PCs. There's loads of them. Microsoft themselves even make them. Pretty sure every big OEM has at least one laptop with a solid metal chassis at this point. I prefer the plastic of my Thinkpad, it doesn't feel creaky, there's no "sticky-feeling texture". It doesn't boil on my lap the way metal MacBooks and PowerBooks have. It feels solid while also not denting from knocking it into a doorway by accident or worse yet deforming itself from it's own heat. You can buy quality PCs. You just gotta pay more.

smackeyacky 4y ago
Pay more for the corporate class laptops from HP or Dell i.e Elitebook Supported longer, better materials, better keyboards. I'd buy a second hand elitebook over a new acer or whatever any day.
- culopatin 4y ago
  Yep, I use and deploy them at work. The only problem I have with them is the screen. That privacy filter could be a godsend for someone on an airplane, but for every day use at home or office, it really kills the image quality
  - throwing4321 4y ago
    Privacy filter means "HP Sure View Reflect" I guess?. There are 3 options for current HP Elitebook screens [1]. Only 1 of them has the privacy filter. I think the best option is to buy the middle one in that pic (low power, 400 nits). [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/hp_specs.PNG https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/... Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elitebook-805-G9-series-of-business-laptops-with-the-latest-AMD-Ryzen-processors-and-16-10-screens.589916.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/CES-2022-HP-announces-the-Elit...
    - culopatin 4y ago
      Unfortunately at work they all ship with the sure view filter, I have no say on that.

muzani 4y ago

Apple has the same problem. In college, we'd bring our own mice to the computer labs because it was better than the buttonless Apple mice they had there. Even today, the input devices have been IMO Apple's weak spot and the main reason I stayed away from MacBooks. I had a MBP, 2019 I believe. It was riddled with problems. True Tone color was wrong. Flickering on the display. The weird internet connectivity which often required some hacky restart. The touch bar was a terrible idea; this was a time when other laptops had high quality touch screens that were actually useful. The touch bar was a half-hearted implementation with a fraction of the benefits of a touch screen, but taking up a whole row on the keyboard. But then they make the best processors and have the most power in a compact space, so as OP said, there's really no other option. I gave it another chance and they've fixed all the problems from the 2019 model.

brundolf 4y ago
A key differentiator though is that when Apple gets something wrong it's usually a poor design decision, not careless craftsmanship. The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find
- asiachick 4y ago
  > The Magic Mouse and the Apple TV remote from a couple years ago are two of the most beautifully-crafted examples of bad input devices that you can possibly find I love this. Yes, those were horrible. The current Apple TV Remotes with the touch surface area is practically unusable by any but a twitch video gamer. Every time I watch my mom try to select anything I'd see her try to push the button and the touch surface would end up moving the selection. Eventually i bought her a 3rd party remote so she could stop being constantly frustrated. It's really hard to believe apple actually tested this with real people.
theshrike79 4y ago
The Touch Bar was a good idea. Replacing the F-keys with it was a _terrible_ idea. If they would've just added the bar above the normal F-keys, everyone would've either embraced or ignored it. But taking away function keys was just too much for pretty much everyone - especially ESC (which they rectified in a later iteration).

dbevv 4y ago

I dislike using touchpads very much. I go to great lengths to control everything with the keyboard, and fall back to a traditional mouse when I have to (I tried trackballs but I couldn't adapt). Whenever I'm forced to use a touchpad because I'm on the go or I don't have room to bring a mouse with me, I groan. That said, the implementation of the touchpad in a Macbook vs a regular touchpad in even a high end laptop is night and day. The software and hardware work together to make sure the touch surface is centered, and your fingers glide through it, there are no accidental presses, and esentially never misinput. The haptic feedback is so good that you can't really tell that you're not pressing a button. In comparison, the touchpad in what I consider the best Windows laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, is a steaming pile of shit, and fails every measure. I don't know how much of it is Apple's attention to detail versus their ability to do vertical integration -- Lenovo likely has very little control over how Synaptics implements their drivers -- but I would pay a hefty premium for an experience like a Macbook.

wildrhythms 4y ago
I'm the same way and I'm mortified whenever I have the displeasure to use some PC or Chromebook laptop trackpad. PC manufacturers today still can't figure out how to make a trackpad as good as what Apple had 20 years ago.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Though part of it is thanks to apple themselves, for having a patent on that. Fortunately some company did find another way to reproduce this click feel through haptics and it will hopefully appear soon in other manufacturers’ laptops.
  - MaxikCZ 4y ago
    Even trackpads that were actually clicking were still miles ahead to what I have in my latest generation HP bullsh*t
  - neoberg 4y ago
    But the most important thing with Apple trackpad is not the haptics imo. If Apple went back to regular buttons tomorrow I wouldn't care at all. The tracking itself is light years ahead of any competition. This is still one of the big things keeping me from using Linux (even on Macbooks). Tracking and scrolling is just unbearable. (Yes I tried that driver, the other library, the recommended macos like settings, custom settings... I spent a LONG time trying to have something decent. Nothing is even remotely close.)

avar 4y ago

> Why does nobody care about creaking plastic? I care way more that my Dell laptop is trivial to disassemble than that making it that way (cheaply) involves plastic, panel gaps and creaking joints.

MBCook 4y ago
Surely it’s possible to make laptops that can be disassembled easily and don’t creak. Apple used to do it. Dell used to do it. Why not now?

NoPicklez 4y ago

For me the only Windows based laptops which do care about detail are the Lenovo ThinkPads. These machines are simple, built well and in my 5+ year experience with all day use they're rock solid. However for my personal use I use a Macbook.

kaba0 4y ago
Unfortunately newer thinkpads are prone to goddamn cpu throttles, though that is in part due to intel. Nonetheless, at work I had to replace a brand new thinkpad t14 because other than manually tweaking the CPU frequency (which is not allowed by company policy but I did anyway, otherwise I may have thrown the laptop out the window which is even less in line with company policy) it throttled like crazy at random times. I even have this problem on my thinkpad t480, though it is not as bad there. The T14 throttles down to goddamn 4-600 mhz, where it is practically unusable. But I agree, for family members I always try to find a used <T480 laptop in good conditions, because these are faster than similarly priced low-end laptops (seriously, what they offer at the low-end is just criminal, they want to take advantage of the technically illiterate), and basically everything can be changed inside.

GraphenePants 4y ago

Given Windows' market dominance it stands to reason that most people believe them to have taste. It also remains unclear how these issues would impact your ability to do work.

vmurthy 4y ago
Hmmm, are you conflating the hardware the runs Windows or do you mean something else?

danamit 4y ago

That's personal taste, if Apple cares can they care to have a real keyboard, a bit of ports, and a camera shutter? I am super filtered by the Mac keyboard and I don't think it is intended for professional use at all. Also "it just werks" is not true at all, Macs have a super bad reparability. If you love Macs fine, but they are not that savoir of laptops as you claim, its a brand with its own loyal fans just like there is Thinkpads with loyal fans and people who say WHY NO ONE MAKE GOOD MUSIC TODAY EXCEPT TAYLOR SWIFT????? ONLY GOOD PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IS C# TODAY WTF???

thundermuffin 4y ago
As someone who had to sadly use one of the butterfly switch keyboards for a while at work, the new 14"/16" Macbooks both have the "old school" feeling keyboards, finally brought Magsafe back, and have ports for SD card and HDMI again. I feel like the thickness is so close to allowing an ethernet port that they should've just bumped it up a little more, but maybe they felt the average consumer wouldn't know what that is in 2022 (kidding, haha!). Sadly, still no camera shutter which is definitely a bummer, but I road my 2013 model into the ground hoping they'd bring back Magsafe because that's a must-have feature for me, hah.

pllbnk 4y ago

I can't stand Mac OS infantile looks and intentionally slow UI just so it would look smooth. Where do you find laptops with creaking plastic or weird textures like that? I get that there are more options to choose from in non-mac world but that doesn't mean you have to choose bad options. I go with Lenovo and never had any problems you are talking about. Macs, on the other hand, they have buggy UI and are extremely annoying if you want to use them in any other way than the "Mac way". Over the years they also had their share of hardware faults. Feels good to vent. :)

nielsbot 4y ago
Infantile? Which parts?
- pllbnk 4y ago
  Rainbow-colored spinning loading wheel; jumping menu bar icons, trying to grab your precious attention for whatever reason; minimize button triggering "sucking" animation; app installation where you have to needlessly drag an icon onto Applications folder; pop-up windows which appear, then momentarily shrink and expand again. Sometimes it gives certain 1960's Batman TV series vibes.
bzzzt 4y ago
> intentionally slow UI just so it would look smooth. I get your anger, but it's not about trying to look 'cool'. For lots of folks it's more clear to see that (for example) a minimised window can be found in the dock by showing a transition. For people like you there's a preference (under accesibility - display - reduce motion) to turn it off.
- pllbnk 4y ago
  Generally I stay away from Apple products or topics. The only reason I decided to comment was that I am forced to use Mac in my current work and after several stints I understood I was not going to get used to it. If people use it and like it, I don't mind. For me, it's just not intuitive; for instance, I wouldn't have thought of looking for this setting, let alone under accessibility options.

wink 4y ago

I guess you could also answer that with: because tastes are different. I actually prefer the feel of Lenovo's plastic to metal. I don't remember ever trying to balance a laptop, so not sure what uneven weight distribution would even mean. My x230 does creak a little when I press some point I am never touching while actually using it, only while holding it. On the other hand most keyboards on most laptops don't withstand the pressure I am using when typing. Apparently I also hold my laptops differently because with the older MBPs the edge at the front hurt my wrist more than working on any other laptop ever had.

Avlin67 4y ago

I would look to all mods and watercooling cooling rigs. When i enter an Apple I feel a lack of taste me too. Oh you were about laptop, well this is just opinionated remarks from fashionable wannabe geeks. Get a lenovo x1 carbon, you can even walk on it without worry as I did, wanna hard work ? get an eurocom with 128Gb Ram.

mrslave 4y ago
I'm off Lenovo X-s due to poor keyboards and poor warranty support. I was told (around the Gen5 era) that they often have slightly less powerful CPUs than similar competition though I have no idea if this is still true. They were also slower to offer better displays. Onto Linux-on-Dell XPS 13 for a few years, though admittedly I didn't pay for it so I didn't really have a choice. Still, I'm happy and would easily recommend the product. A lot of firmware upgrades happen over `fwupdmgr` too. The recently posted StarBook 14-inch looks interesting, but the screen isn't hi-res.

colburnmh 4y ago

The reason most other companies don't worry about that is two-fold: culture, and costs. Apple has a culture, built top-down, that quality is paramount. While this seems to have started to decay a bit on the software side, mostly due to the size of the systems they are dealing with, and the need to support multiple software and hardware platforms (MacOS, iOS, iPad, Watch, iPhone, etc.), it is still going strong on the hardware side. But the most demanding issue is cost. PCs are now a commodity. The margins in hardware are sustainable--barely. Therefore, every dollar (yen, yuan, etc.) invested in hardware design beyond the reference implementation provided by Arm, Intel, Nvidia, etc., is less money to the bottom line. And with lots of competition and rapidly iterating developments occurring at the chip and board level, the big gains in performance are driven by the chip manufacturers, not by the hardware platform providers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. Apple has managed to side-step that whole issue by providing an integrated platform that they completely control--more so now with the huge success of the Apple Silicon chips. This allows them to build compelling integrated solutions that don't run into the reliability problems posed by huge numbers of 3rd-party driver developers, support for add-in cards and other multi-provider issues. These are all things people complain about--the inability to upgrade or service their Apple hardware--but it provides a much more controlled environment, and allows Apple to spend more time working on all those attention-to-detail-items you mentioned, rather than testing, troubleshooting, and supporting an ever-growing plethora of hardware interopation issues. Apple hardware costs a bit more (not a huge amount), and has a lot fewer upgrade or customization options, but what you get for that is a more bullet-proof solution overall. And it means Apple engineers and designers have more time to make sure that the devices are light, well balanced, quiet, and durable. It's a trade-off, to be sure, but so far the numbers are shifting in Apple's favor--something that seems shocking if you were around in the '90s when Apple's certain demise was commuted due to a huge investment by it's then arch-rival, Microsoft.

asiachick 4y ago

Why doesn't Apple care about software quality? 12.3 broke copying large files (200mb+) from the finder to network shares (files get corrupted, bad data). Copy from terminal with cp, no issue. 12.3 broke airplay iOS 15.3 broke WebGL, tons of sites that rely on it are effed, (can't ask users to use a different browser on iOS) All 3 issues, 6 weeks+ still unfixed. etc.... PS: not saying that MS does better but "It just works" Apple is never actually true

Spooky23 4y ago

Enterprise drives sales. Big companies don’t care about what some accountant thinks about her laptop. A procurement officer at an insurance company will just do and RFQ and buy 50,000 laptops. The one the wins may be $2 cheaper than the loser.