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As someone who adores Apple hardware, I’m really looking forward to having the option of running Linux on my MacBook. I’m also really looking forward to the ch

As someone who adores Apple hardware, I’m really looking forward to having the option of running Linux on my MacBook. I’m also really looking forward to the changes in Asahi getting upstreamed. The Rust in Linux work has me really excited for the future of Linux. I might even start contributing once Rust is more common!

midoridensha 4y ago
Apple hardware is terrible. I wish someone could somehow make a laptop with the internals of an MacBook (mainly the CPU), but with the externals of a Thinkpad, including the far-superior Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics. And while they're at it, make it easy to pop the back cover off and replace components (esp. the HD) as needed.
- kleiba 4y ago
  Aesthetics lie in the eye of the beholder. But it is my understanding that the mouse pad on MacBooks are far superior to most other mouse pads. I don't know about the keyboard, though.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    MacBook's touchpads are quite famous at being better than most of the competition. Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable.
    - happymellon 4y ago
      How does a water spill render your Thinkpad unusable? Mine has drain holes to handle this situation, my work Mac can't handle crumbs. I don't want to think about how it would cope with liquid.
      - dathinab 4y ago
        There are some models where the keyboard itself isn't fully water safe, so there is a chance your keyboard dies but the rest of your system is fine. This is especially true if we don't spill water but some other harder to handle liquids. There are also some products published as ThinkPads which aren't really ThinkPads (like some(many?,all?) of the Yoga ThinkPads don't have any of the properties normally associated with ThinkPads, they are much less robust pretty much in every category and much harder to repair even if it's just the keyboard.
        happymellon 4y ago
        Wouldn't that be true of Macbooks as well?
        pxc 4y ago
        Yes, but with a MacBook the keyboard is screwed directly into the chassis, which is not threaded for them. It's literally designed never to be taken apart. To replace the keyboards, Apple internally used to replace the whole top case. You, the business user, are likely to just be handed a whole new unit. This happened a lot for years and years, as we all remember.
        happymellon 4y ago
        So, if I spill water on my Thinkpad, I can drain it and probably replace the keyboard. Either myself or using the Lenovo support who will bring me a keyboard. If I do the same on my Macbook, Apple have to replace it as everything is fixed in place and its gone for a week. I only say that as I've never had Apple Care able to repair anything same or next day. I still don't get the original point about Lenovo keyboards and spills because a spill would render a Mac unusable.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        4y ago
    - dathinab 4y ago
      > Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable. This kind of generalization is as far I can tell the source of a lot of pointless discussions around thinkpads. The truth is the quality varies, a lot. Sure wrt. most aspects the quality is at least good, but weather it's better or worse then a mac especially wrt. the keyboard is quite device dependent. For example the one I have has a better keyboard then any mac keyboard I tried and the keyboard is quite nice to type on and quite robust, much more then then any mac keyboard. There are some models where you can continuously pure water on it and they will be just fine. But then there are some thinkpads keyboards which aren't, but then apple had also keyboards for a while which died from a bit of dust. So in the end general statements like ThinkPads have the best keyboards or the most reobust ones or apple products have that are all kinda pointless. From both companies you can pick modules to get whatever result you want especially if you include some "fake ThinkPads" (published under the ThinkPad brand but not really thinkpads wrt. robustness, repair-ability etc.). My main point for favoring ThinkPads is that you can easily remove the keyboard and use an external keyboard until an replacement part arrives. (Just to be clear: I'm not speaking about the very old thinkpads; Only mean thinkpadish thinkpads e.g. mainly the T and P series but not e.g. the Yoga Thinkpad; Mean water and not liquids with a higher acidity)
- highwaylights 4y ago
  "Apple hardware is terrible" Interesting take. As an example I have an Apple laptop with a trackpad that is quite useable, something pretty much unheard of on anything else. The keyboard feels much better than my old Thinkpad, but this might be subjective. I've not been impressed with the recent models (although admittedly haven't spent long with them). I'm with you on the upgradeability/repairability/maintainability, but maybe a Framework is a better fit in that case. My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release).
  - nortonham 4y ago
    >My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release). I'm on my first macbook--a M1 air--and now I finally see what the hype wrt apple hardware is. I love thinkpads, but between the battery life, the speakers, display, just how light it is, never runs hot no matter what I do to it....I can't believe I went this long without trying one out. The hardware plus improving linux compatibility means I know this machine is worth it
    - Eldandan 4y ago
      I've been a diehard Thinkpad user for over a decade now (X201 my first back in 2010). Apple M2 Air is on another level despite not having a trackpoint. Just to add to your list: the aluminum shell feels nice too. Paired with the cpu it just never heats up, which used to be a drawback by acting as a big heat sink.
      - nortonham 4y ago
        I love thinkpads, but after getting used to a mac trackpad I see why people always raved about it. That being said I do miss the trackpoint, and I like the old school t420 keyboard.
- crypt0x 4y ago
  IMHO Keyboard quality in thinkpads dropped like a stone after the 230s. It’s like Lenovo lost the plans for how to build those. The keys in the recent ones are incredibly mushy.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    not if you have a model with a Chicony keyboard.
- perth 4y ago
  The issue with thinkpads has always been the externals! I've only enjoyed them for their budget internals and their openness via extensive reverse-engineering. The lack of a metal body of any sort more or less sentences them to an eventual crumbling, and iFixit rates most Thinkpad T420 body maintenance as "Moderate" to "Hard", so good luck repairing it when something on that plastic case cracks since it will happen eventually, and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.
  - nuodag 4y ago
    You can just order body parts from Lenovo (true, probably not for t420 anymore) or third party resellers, or just take them from another one. And there are a lot of Thinkpad service partners stores, mainly for business customers, I bring around 1-3 Thinkpads a month there for repair (we have ours close by).
  - boomskats 4y ago
    > there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs I pay around 50USD/year for an enterprise grade Thinkpad support plan with Lenovo, where they send an engineer to either my home or office the _next day_, complete with any spare parts needed to fix whatever might have gone wrong, whether it's accidental damage or a hardware defect. I've only needed that support maybe four or five times over the last decade, but each time it's been stellar: new screens, mainboards, keyboards, broken case parts, etc. No caveats or gotchas or 'ooh that voids your warranty' to worry about, ever. It gave me full confidence to run my company and equip all of my devs with Thinkpads that run on Fedora - so much so, that when we were acquired a couple of years ago, my only negotiating condition that caused a stir was the requirement that me and my team get to keep our Linux+ThinkPad stack. What I just described is the polar opposite to every experience I've ever had with anything to do with Apple, ranging from the genius bar arguments to the six week waits to fix our designer's spacebar that stopped working because someone dropped a a breadcrumb in there. It just doesn't compare. Side notes relevant to your comment: - the T420 that you mention is now an 11 year-old piece of hardware, I don't understand why you're referencing it - even so, plastic gets brittle over time. I don't know anyone with a 10+ year old MacBook that still runs - iFixit are heavily biased, or at least they were when the T420 came out (it's in the iName) - with all that said I still can't wait to be able to use a fanless desktop M2 as my daily driver (@LinaAsahi you're awesome)
- signa11 4y ago
  hmm, it seems you are talking about the framework laptop ?
- urthor 4y ago
  The words you are using are not true about modern Thinkpads sadly. Apple's screen, lower power management, chassis, touchpad, are all dramatically superior. The stereo on the Macbook Pro 16 inch is absolutely absurd. It's the stereo for my HOUSE. Apple's killed supply chain that delivers more for less. Modern Thinkpads have been ruined by the pivot to the ultrabook-esque approach. Thinkpad's are like models. There's simply no reason for them to be that skinny.
  - JamesSwift 4y ago
    Yeah the speakers in the newer macbook pro models (even the late intel ones) are really impressive. I almost never use them and when I happen to play audio through them I nearly always catch myself thinking "wow, those are really good".
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    Yeah, and that's kinda sad. However, old Thinkpads are still totally usable. I was using T420 until a year ago and the only thing that I hate about it was the absolutely awful screen. It was 1600×900 with absolutely horrible colors. There's a few ways to install a better display but it might be tricky [1]. Otherwise it was a decent “daily driver” laptop, in many aspects superior even to current gen MacBooks, particularly repairability, ports, keyboard quality. I'm using a 2020 MacBook Air now which I bought to try out the M1, and some aspects where it excels are screen (obviously!) and speakers, but I think those are comparable to a little more modern ThinkPads (xx40 maybe?). [1]: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Replacing_T430_screen_with_a_better_one https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Replacing_T430_screen_with_a_... (ThinkWiki got some terrible ads since I last checked it, get your ad blocker ready)
    - nortonham 4y ago
      I have T420 (and T430s) as well, but I think at this point it no longer qualifies as a daily driver. Even with 16GB of RAM there are times when the machine is just slow. Even with a replacement battery I only really get a couple of hours. Performance is just not there for anything serious. I've used linux and BSD's on it for about 5 years. It's true you can repair it fairly easily, but after getting my hands on a refurbished M1 MBA, there is a huge difference in quality, performance, battery life, etc.
- mort96 4y ago
  Are you thinking about the 2016-2020 Mac hardware? The loud and hot machines with broken keyboards and a useless TouchBar and no IO can be described as terrible. But their recent machines? Powerful, always cold, never makes a noise, pretty good keyboard, industry-leading touch pad, decent IO? I don't think you can defend calling those machines terrible, even if you prefer ThinkPads.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Yes, I can defend calling them terrible: they're terrible because they're ugly and the keyboards suck. The internals seem fantastic, but the outsides are awful (except the touchpads, and also the screens are reportedly excellent but I'm not sure if that qualifies as "internals" or "external"). What we need is a computer with the internals of a modern M1 Macbook, but the aesthetics and keyboard of a Thinkpad of yesteryear, plus a magnesium chassis.
    - pprotas 4y ago
      You are entitled to your opinion, but many people like how the macbooks look like. They also like the keyboard. Many people also dislike how ThinkPads look like, and dislike how the keyboard works.
      - sbuk 4y ago
        I hate Lenovo keyboards. Too spongy, and key presses often don't register.
        davidy123 4y ago
        Was that a Thinkpad keyboard, though? It's a different category. Though they have declined over the years as they went to shallower keys.
        sbuk 4y ago
        P14s and X1, sorry, should have included that.
- frereubu 4y ago
  “Better aesthetics” is an entirely subjective judgement. Agree about being able to swap components though.
- StreamBright 4y ago
  As an ex-IBM guy who spent a decade on Thinkpads I disagree. > Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics Thinkpads are great for other reasons, partially that almost everything was replaceable as you pointed out. In the case of aesthetics, Apple is the clear winner.
- gloryjulio 4y ago
  Current mac is leagues beyond any mobile devices on the market and it's not even remotely close. I am force to use mac because of it.
- brozaman 4y ago
  I have a mac m1 pro at work and it's hands down the best laptop in terms of hardware I've ever had if you forget extensability. By a far margin. It makes no noise at all, to the extent that I even checked a dissasembly video to check if they had fans or just passive refrigeration. The display is the best I've ever seen in any laptop. The trackpad is excellent, the keyboard think is very good, the speakers, microphone and webcam are also very good. I've owned before a lenovo T530, T460s and T580 and quite frankly if we're talking about just hardware this is even better and my last experience with the T580 was just bad. My perception of the lenovo brand was that they made the best laptops until then. In fact I asked to get a macbook because the T580 was so so problematic and not just for me. I have to say I personally dislike macOS. In fact because now I'm working on 100% FOSS software I'm only using the laptop for corporate calls or situations where I have to deal with customer data, but the rest I do on my personal computer with ubuntu.
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    I can never understand how other people stand glossy displays but to each his own
    - perceptronas 4y ago
      I bought two monitors which are matte: 4K 27", IPS, sRGB. Biggest complaint is how hazy/non-clear they look. I personally started to think glossy displays are superior, but I understand others have their own preferences.
      - brailsafe 4y ago
        I typically work on a 30" Ultrasharp 2560x1600. It's pretty great for media at a distance and physical screen space, but it's so refreshing when I sit down with any of my MacBooks and use theirs for a smaller task. I'd really like a good 5k 30"+ IPS (not 27) but that's just a dream
    - filchermcurr 4y ago
      I'm the complete opposite. I hate how hazy and dull "anti-reflective" displays look. I understand being opposed to reflection, but I'd much rather have a display that's as sharp as humanly possible. To me it's kind of like washing your windows. Sure, it's fine if you don't do it. You can still see outside. The window works. You may even prefer that less light comes in if you're opposed to light for some reason. But once it's clean, you're really getting the full effect.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Frame.work? I rather have an ARM processor for the battery life but outside that it's a decent. Just the Linux support is lagging. Wish people would focus on support that type of far more open and repairable hardware instead of closed. That said, my macbook air m1 is the best laptop I ever had because of the battery life and solid hardware (and price... for the E999 I paid, there is nothing close even 2 years later). Frame.work with AMD + discrete Nvidia GPU I would buy, Frame.work with ARM I would buy, but the better part of the dream is that someone can make these boards and I can shove them in my existing frame.work. That's where we should be going.
  - abrouwers 4y ago
    I love my framework, and would buy it again. But man, I'm not sold the 12th gen intel chip is ideal. My battery life is pretty awful, and it doesn't take much to start the fan / generate heat. Even doing something simple like watching youtube :/
- teerak 4y ago
  As a Linux user I've had many Thinkpads. X1 Carbon does have a great keyboard. But there's to my knowledge no other laptop with a display as good as a Macbook's retina. Look at any Thinkpad next to a retina display, it's night and day. That's why keep using a 2015 MBP with Linux as my daily driver. Looks like I might be able to upgrade soon thanks to Asahi.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    The Dell XPS has a fantastic OLED screen that is better than anything I've ever used before. I think the Apple laptops have slightly higher pixel densities, but it's all the same when they're as dense as they are.
    - teerak 4y ago
      Thanks, I'll take a look at the XPS.
- DrBazza 4y ago
  10 year cycle perhaps? I had a 2012 MacBook and at the time it was the best laptop I'd ever used in terms of screen, keyboard, even performance. I upgraded last year to an M1 Pro, and once again, it's the best laptop I've used, and I've had a lot of company laptops (Surface, Lenovo, Dell, HP) in that time. I completely missed the keyboard debacle, the Touch Bar, and all the other drama of the late 10s.
- coldtea 4y ago
  So, your "Apple hardware is terrible" wants the Thinkpad "keyboard and far better aesthetics", but stil prefers Apple internals especially "the CPU". In other words, you claim "the hardware is terrible", but your actual case is "I prefer the external design of the Thinkpad". I guess, I'll give you the keyboard. Which is more than compensated with the far greater touchpad, incredible speed, battery life, and coolness while all of the previous (of the M1).
  - jeltz 4y ago
    I vastly prefer the Thinkpad touchpad over the Mac one and do not get what people see in the Mac's touchpad. For me Macs have better cooling, better battery life, better CPU but worse input devices (keyboard and touchpad). Macs have better glossy screens but since I prefer matte screens I prefer the screen of the Thinkpad.
    - dathinab 4y ago
      IMHO general design of ThinkPad touchpads with the additional buttons at the top (if it's a thinkpad which has it) is much much better even if you don't use the trackpad. But if you don't use that buttons apple touchpads tends to be better in my opinion.
    - sosborn 4y ago
      IMO, the Apple touchpad really shines when you incorporate gestures and turn on "tap to click".
      - tstrimple 4y ago
        I'm still annoyed they moved three finger drag into the accessibility options. It's one of the defining features of the trackpad in my opinion.
        r00fus 4y ago
        Wow. I had no idea this was possible. Clicking and dragging (ie holding the click) on my Mac trackpad always felt cumbersome - this is a lot better.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  You are being downvoted into oblivion for that first line but I support you. Apple hardware look and feel is optimized for perception, not for practicality. I'll always prefer a laptop that's field maintainable even if it is a few mm thicker.
- culopatin 4y ago
  Im sorry but you’re letting your Thinkpad snobby side show. I understand where you come from because I thought the same thing. I used thinkpads for long time (as a choice) but the build is shit compared to what Apple is putting out. Maybe they were better in the past, but they need to keep up. I moved from thinkpads to the 14 MBP and I can’t think of a reason I’d want to go back to Thinkpad other than being able to run Linux. I’ll leave the “far superior” keyboard aspect aside because it’s personal preference. I got used to the Apple one and I type much faster than on my x220. But the screen? Come on. Mini Led, high brightness, just looks absolutely great. Thinkpads usually have shit brightness and basic coatings. I’ve even gotten panels from China to make custom replacements for some of mine because of the garbage panels they came with. Speakers are vibrating turds on thinkpads. One day my gf brought her laptop to bed to watch a movie and i thought “there is no way this is going to be enjoyable”. Then i heard it and I was blown away. I then ripped off the speakers off mine and I made custom housing for some speakers out of a MacBook Air for mine. They couldn’t live sounded better if the whole chassis didn’t rattle with the added bass and if the speakers fired up. The soft touch coating on the shell that peels off leaving half shiny half matte, classic no? They are tied on the hinges, both are solid. Thinkpads may have more ports, but honestly I don’t go around plugging my laptop to too many things.
- 12345hn6789 4y ago
  The last time Thinkpads had decent keyboards was 15 years ago. Nowadays the Mac keyboard is probably the best keyboard on the market for laptops
aulin 4y ago
> I might even start contributing once Rust is more common! as someone who's recently experimenting with Rust, why is that so? I mean if you have something in the kernel where you could give valuable contribution, why letting the language stop you? guess any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev, ain't it?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Not OP but I'm waiting for Rust support to be finished before I look at kernel development. Don't have any interest in writing C.
  - caskstrength 4y ago
    Even in best case scenario Rust code will be confined to individual subsystems and drivers for a very long time. And even in these subsystems you will probably still have to interact with a lot of C code from shared data-structures in other subsystems.
    - xiphias2 4y ago
      Most of Linux kernel is drivers, so if new drivers can be written in Rust, it's a huge win in safety for the whole world.
  - ploxiln 4y ago
    Honestly this is a bit of a fantasy. If you love Rust and hate C, and haven't looked into kernel development before ... it's a whole different ball-game than user-space Rust. With a variety of real-world hardware, and the complexity of modern CPUs, and demands of a variety of complex user-space software, you just don't have the "guarantees" and conveniences you want, at this layer. The hardware does what it does and you just have to deal with it. User-space C code can be way easier to reason about. For a small taste see https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/19/1105 https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/19/1105
    - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
INeedMoreRam 4y ago
I've been running Linux Mint on my MacBook Pro (2011 model) for the last year relatively issue-free. For a couple weeks, I had DNS issues with the /etc/resolv.conf file, but I added a rule to the Network Manager to not touch that file upon reboot so everything works correctly now (except pinch to zoom on the touchpad).

midoridensha 4y ago

Apple hardware is terrible. I wish someone could somehow make a laptop with the internals of an MacBook (mainly the CPU), but with the externals of a Thinkpad, including the far-superior Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics. And while they're at it, make it easy to pop the back cover off and replace components (esp. the HD) as needed.

kleiba 4y ago
Aesthetics lie in the eye of the beholder. But it is my understanding that the mouse pad on MacBooks are far superior to most other mouse pads. I don't know about the keyboard, though.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  MacBook's touchpads are quite famous at being better than most of the competition. Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    How does a water spill render your Thinkpad unusable? Mine has drain holes to handle this situation, my work Mac can't handle crumbs. I don't want to think about how it would cope with liquid.
    - dathinab 4y ago
      There are some models where the keyboard itself isn't fully water safe, so there is a chance your keyboard dies but the rest of your system is fine. This is especially true if we don't spill water but some other harder to handle liquids. There are also some products published as ThinkPads which aren't really ThinkPads (like some(many?,all?) of the Yoga ThinkPads don't have any of the properties normally associated with ThinkPads, they are much less robust pretty much in every category and much harder to repair even if it's just the keyboard.
      - happymellon 4y ago
        Wouldn't that be true of Macbooks as well?
        pxc 4y ago
        Yes, but with a MacBook the keyboard is screwed directly into the chassis, which is not threaded for them. It's literally designed never to be taken apart. To replace the keyboards, Apple internally used to replace the whole top case. You, the business user, are likely to just be handed a whole new unit. This happened a lot for years and years, as we all remember.
        happymellon 4y ago
        So, if I spill water on my Thinkpad, I can drain it and probably replace the keyboard. Either myself or using the Lenovo support who will bring me a keyboard. If I do the same on my Macbook, Apple have to replace it as everything is fixed in place and its gone for a week. I only say that as I've never had Apple Care able to repair anything same or next day. I still don't get the original point about Lenovo keyboards and spills because a spill would render a Mac unusable.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        4y ago
  - dathinab 4y ago
    > Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable. This kind of generalization is as far I can tell the source of a lot of pointless discussions around thinkpads. The truth is the quality varies, a lot. Sure wrt. most aspects the quality is at least good, but weather it's better or worse then a mac especially wrt. the keyboard is quite device dependent. For example the one I have has a better keyboard then any mac keyboard I tried and the keyboard is quite nice to type on and quite robust, much more then then any mac keyboard. There are some models where you can continuously pure water on it and they will be just fine. But then there are some thinkpads keyboards which aren't, but then apple had also keyboards for a while which died from a bit of dust. So in the end general statements like ThinkPads have the best keyboards or the most reobust ones or apple products have that are all kinda pointless. From both companies you can pick modules to get whatever result you want especially if you include some "fake ThinkPads" (published under the ThinkPad brand but not really thinkpads wrt. robustness, repair-ability etc.). My main point for favoring ThinkPads is that you can easily remove the keyboard and use an external keyboard until an replacement part arrives. (Just to be clear: I'm not speaking about the very old thinkpads; Only mean thinkpadish thinkpads e.g. mainly the T and P series but not e.g. the Yoga Thinkpad; Mean water and not liquids with a higher acidity)
highwaylights 4y ago
"Apple hardware is terrible" Interesting take. As an example I have an Apple laptop with a trackpad that is quite useable, something pretty much unheard of on anything else. The keyboard feels much better than my old Thinkpad, but this might be subjective. I've not been impressed with the recent models (although admittedly haven't spent long with them). I'm with you on the upgradeability/repairability/maintainability, but maybe a Framework is a better fit in that case. My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release).
- nortonham 4y ago
  >My Air outperforms my desktop, has close to 20 hour battery life in my normal use, and is completely fanless. It's not perfect, but I don't see anything else that comes close (if I did I'd probably switch.. macOS is driving me more crazy with every release). I'm on my first macbook--a M1 air--and now I finally see what the hype wrt apple hardware is. I love thinkpads, but between the battery life, the speakers, display, just how light it is, never runs hot no matter what I do to it....I can't believe I went this long without trying one out. The hardware plus improving linux compatibility means I know this machine is worth it
  - Eldandan 4y ago
    I've been a diehard Thinkpad user for over a decade now (X201 my first back in 2010). Apple M2 Air is on another level despite not having a trackpoint. Just to add to your list: the aluminum shell feels nice too. Paired with the cpu it just never heats up, which used to be a drawback by acting as a big heat sink.
    - nortonham 4y ago
      I love thinkpads, but after getting used to a mac trackpad I see why people always raved about it. That being said I do miss the trackpoint, and I like the old school t420 keyboard.
crypt0x 4y ago
IMHO Keyboard quality in thinkpads dropped like a stone after the 230s. It’s like Lenovo lost the plans for how to build those. The keys in the recent ones are incredibly mushy.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  not if you have a model with a Chicony keyboard.
perth 4y ago
The issue with thinkpads has always been the externals! I've only enjoyed them for their budget internals and their openness via extensive reverse-engineering. The lack of a metal body of any sort more or less sentences them to an eventual crumbling, and iFixit rates most Thinkpad T420 body maintenance as "Moderate" to "Hard", so good luck repairing it when something on that plastic case cracks since it will happen eventually, and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.
- nuodag 4y ago
  You can just order body parts from Lenovo (true, probably not for t420 anymore) or third party resellers, or just take them from another one. And there are a lot of Thinkpad service partners stores, mainly for business customers, I bring around 1-3 Thinkpads a month there for repair (we have ours close by).
- boomskats 4y ago
  > there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs I pay around 50USD/year for an enterprise grade Thinkpad support plan with Lenovo, where they send an engineer to either my home or office the _next day_, complete with any spare parts needed to fix whatever might have gone wrong, whether it's accidental damage or a hardware defect. I've only needed that support maybe four or five times over the last decade, but each time it's been stellar: new screens, mainboards, keyboards, broken case parts, etc. No caveats or gotchas or 'ooh that voids your warranty' to worry about, ever. It gave me full confidence to run my company and equip all of my devs with Thinkpads that run on Fedora - so much so, that when we were acquired a couple of years ago, my only negotiating condition that caused a stir was the requirement that me and my team get to keep our Linux+ThinkPad stack. What I just described is the polar opposite to every experience I've ever had with anything to do with Apple, ranging from the genius bar arguments to the six week waits to fix our designer's spacebar that stopped working because someone dropped a a breadcrumb in there. It just doesn't compare. Side notes relevant to your comment: - the T420 that you mention is now an 11 year-old piece of hardware, I don't understand why you're referencing it - even so, plastic gets brittle over time. I don't know anyone with a 10+ year old MacBook that still runs - iFixit are heavily biased, or at least they were when the T420 came out (it's in the iName) - with all that said I still can't wait to be able to use a fanless desktop M2 as my daily driver (@LinaAsahi you're awesome)
signa11 4y ago
hmm, it seems you are talking about the framework laptop ?
urthor 4y ago
The words you are using are not true about modern Thinkpads sadly. Apple's screen, lower power management, chassis, touchpad, are all dramatically superior. The stereo on the Macbook Pro 16 inch is absolutely absurd. It's the stereo for my HOUSE. Apple's killed supply chain that delivers more for less. Modern Thinkpads have been ruined by the pivot to the ultrabook-esque approach. Thinkpad's are like models. There's simply no reason for them to be that skinny.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  Yeah the speakers in the newer macbook pro models (even the late intel ones) are really impressive. I almost never use them and when I happen to play audio through them I nearly always catch myself thinking "wow, those are really good".
- notpushkin 4y ago
  Yeah, and that's kinda sad. However, old Thinkpads are still totally usable. I was using T420 until a year ago and the only thing that I hate about it was the absolutely awful screen. It was 1600×900 with absolutely horrible colors. There's a few ways to install a better display but it might be tricky [1]. Otherwise it was a decent “daily driver” laptop, in many aspects superior even to current gen MacBooks, particularly repairability, ports, keyboard quality. I'm using a 2020 MacBook Air now which I bought to try out the M1, and some aspects where it excels are screen (obviously!) and speakers, but I think those are comparable to a little more modern ThinkPads (xx40 maybe?). [1]: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Replacing_T430_screen_with_a_better_one https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Replacing_T430_screen_with_a_... (ThinkWiki got some terrible ads since I last checked it, get your ad blocker ready)
  - nortonham 4y ago
    I have T420 (and T430s) as well, but I think at this point it no longer qualifies as a daily driver. Even with 16GB of RAM there are times when the machine is just slow. Even with a replacement battery I only really get a couple of hours. Performance is just not there for anything serious. I've used linux and BSD's on it for about 5 years. It's true you can repair it fairly easily, but after getting my hands on a refurbished M1 MBA, there is a huge difference in quality, performance, battery life, etc.
mort96 4y ago
Are you thinking about the 2016-2020 Mac hardware? The loud and hot machines with broken keyboards and a useless TouchBar and no IO can be described as terrible. But their recent machines? Powerful, always cold, never makes a noise, pretty good keyboard, industry-leading touch pad, decent IO? I don't think you can defend calling those machines terrible, even if you prefer ThinkPads.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Yes, I can defend calling them terrible: they're terrible because they're ugly and the keyboards suck. The internals seem fantastic, but the outsides are awful (except the touchpads, and also the screens are reportedly excellent but I'm not sure if that qualifies as "internals" or "external"). What we need is a computer with the internals of a modern M1 Macbook, but the aesthetics and keyboard of a Thinkpad of yesteryear, plus a magnesium chassis.
  - pprotas 4y ago
    You are entitled to your opinion, but many people like how the macbooks look like. They also like the keyboard. Many people also dislike how ThinkPads look like, and dislike how the keyboard works.
    - sbuk 4y ago
      I hate Lenovo keyboards. Too spongy, and key presses often don't register.
      - davidy123 4y ago
        Was that a Thinkpad keyboard, though? It's a different category. Though they have declined over the years as they went to shallower keys.
        sbuk 4y ago
        P14s and X1, sorry, should have included that.
frereubu 4y ago
“Better aesthetics” is an entirely subjective judgement. Agree about being able to swap components though.
StreamBright 4y ago
As an ex-IBM guy who spent a decade on Thinkpads I disagree. > Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics Thinkpads are great for other reasons, partially that almost everything was replaceable as you pointed out. In the case of aesthetics, Apple is the clear winner.
gloryjulio 4y ago
Current mac is leagues beyond any mobile devices on the market and it's not even remotely close. I am force to use mac because of it.
brozaman 4y ago
I have a mac m1 pro at work and it's hands down the best laptop in terms of hardware I've ever had if you forget extensability. By a far margin. It makes no noise at all, to the extent that I even checked a dissasembly video to check if they had fans or just passive refrigeration. The display is the best I've ever seen in any laptop. The trackpad is excellent, the keyboard think is very good, the speakers, microphone and webcam are also very good. I've owned before a lenovo T530, T460s and T580 and quite frankly if we're talking about just hardware this is even better and my last experience with the T580 was just bad. My perception of the lenovo brand was that they made the best laptops until then. In fact I asked to get a macbook because the T580 was so so problematic and not just for me. I have to say I personally dislike macOS. In fact because now I'm working on 100% FOSS software I'm only using the laptop for corporate calls or situations where I have to deal with customer data, but the rest I do on my personal computer with ubuntu.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  I can never understand how other people stand glossy displays but to each his own
  - perceptronas 4y ago
    I bought two monitors which are matte: 4K 27", IPS, sRGB. Biggest complaint is how hazy/non-clear they look. I personally started to think glossy displays are superior, but I understand others have their own preferences.
    - brailsafe 4y ago
      I typically work on a 30" Ultrasharp 2560x1600. It's pretty great for media at a distance and physical screen space, but it's so refreshing when I sit down with any of my MacBooks and use theirs for a smaller task. I'd really like a good 5k 30"+ IPS (not 27) but that's just a dream
  - filchermcurr 4y ago
    I'm the complete opposite. I hate how hazy and dull "anti-reflective" displays look. I understand being opposed to reflection, but I'd much rather have a display that's as sharp as humanly possible. To me it's kind of like washing your windows. Sure, it's fine if you don't do it. You can still see outside. The window works. You may even prefer that less light comes in if you're opposed to light for some reason. But once it's clean, you're really getting the full effect.
tluyben2 4y ago
Frame.work? I rather have an ARM processor for the battery life but outside that it's a decent. Just the Linux support is lagging. Wish people would focus on support that type of far more open and repairable hardware instead of closed. That said, my macbook air m1 is the best laptop I ever had because of the battery life and solid hardware (and price... for the E999 I paid, there is nothing close even 2 years later). Frame.work with AMD + discrete Nvidia GPU I would buy, Frame.work with ARM I would buy, but the better part of the dream is that someone can make these boards and I can shove them in my existing frame.work. That's where we should be going.
- abrouwers 4y ago
  I love my framework, and would buy it again. But man, I'm not sold the 12th gen intel chip is ideal. My battery life is pretty awful, and it doesn't take much to start the fan / generate heat. Even doing something simple like watching youtube :/
teerak 4y ago
As a Linux user I've had many Thinkpads. X1 Carbon does have a great keyboard. But there's to my knowledge no other laptop with a display as good as a Macbook's retina. Look at any Thinkpad next to a retina display, it's night and day. That's why keep using a 2015 MBP with Linux as my daily driver. Looks like I might be able to upgrade soon thanks to Asahi.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  The Dell XPS has a fantastic OLED screen that is better than anything I've ever used before. I think the Apple laptops have slightly higher pixel densities, but it's all the same when they're as dense as they are.
  - teerak 4y ago
    Thanks, I'll take a look at the XPS.
DrBazza 4y ago
10 year cycle perhaps? I had a 2012 MacBook and at the time it was the best laptop I'd ever used in terms of screen, keyboard, even performance. I upgraded last year to an M1 Pro, and once again, it's the best laptop I've used, and I've had a lot of company laptops (Surface, Lenovo, Dell, HP) in that time. I completely missed the keyboard debacle, the Touch Bar, and all the other drama of the late 10s.
coldtea 4y ago
So, your "Apple hardware is terrible" wants the Thinkpad "keyboard and far better aesthetics", but stil prefers Apple internals especially "the CPU". In other words, you claim "the hardware is terrible", but your actual case is "I prefer the external design of the Thinkpad". I guess, I'll give you the keyboard. Which is more than compensated with the far greater touchpad, incredible speed, battery life, and coolness while all of the previous (of the M1).
- jeltz 4y ago
  I vastly prefer the Thinkpad touchpad over the Mac one and do not get what people see in the Mac's touchpad. For me Macs have better cooling, better battery life, better CPU but worse input devices (keyboard and touchpad). Macs have better glossy screens but since I prefer matte screens I prefer the screen of the Thinkpad.
  - dathinab 4y ago
    IMHO general design of ThinkPad touchpads with the additional buttons at the top (if it's a thinkpad which has it) is much much better even if you don't use the trackpad. But if you don't use that buttons apple touchpads tends to be better in my opinion.
  - sosborn 4y ago
    IMO, the Apple touchpad really shines when you incorporate gestures and turn on "tap to click".
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      I'm still annoyed they moved three finger drag into the accessibility options. It's one of the defining features of the trackpad in my opinion.
      - r00fus 4y ago
        Wow. I had no idea this was possible. Clicking and dragging (ie holding the click) on my Mac trackpad always felt cumbersome - this is a lot better.
speed_spread 4y ago
You are being downvoted into oblivion for that first line but I support you. Apple hardware look and feel is optimized for perception, not for practicality. I'll always prefer a laptop that's field maintainable even if it is a few mm thicker.
culopatin 4y ago
Im sorry but you’re letting your Thinkpad snobby side show. I understand where you come from because I thought the same thing. I used thinkpads for long time (as a choice) but the build is shit compared to what Apple is putting out. Maybe they were better in the past, but they need to keep up. I moved from thinkpads to the 14 MBP and I can’t think of a reason I’d want to go back to Thinkpad other than being able to run Linux. I’ll leave the “far superior” keyboard aspect aside because it’s personal preference. I got used to the Apple one and I type much faster than on my x220. But the screen? Come on. Mini Led, high brightness, just looks absolutely great. Thinkpads usually have shit brightness and basic coatings. I’ve even gotten panels from China to make custom replacements for some of mine because of the garbage panels they came with. Speakers are vibrating turds on thinkpads. One day my gf brought her laptop to bed to watch a movie and i thought “there is no way this is going to be enjoyable”. Then i heard it and I was blown away. I then ripped off the speakers off mine and I made custom housing for some speakers out of a MacBook Air for mine. They couldn’t live sounded better if the whole chassis didn’t rattle with the added bass and if the speakers fired up. The soft touch coating on the shell that peels off leaving half shiny half matte, classic no? They are tied on the hinges, both are solid. Thinkpads may have more ports, but honestly I don’t go around plugging my laptop to too many things.
12345hn6789 4y ago
The last time Thinkpads had decent keyboards was 15 years ago. Nowadays the Mac keyboard is probably the best keyboard on the market for laptops

aulin 4y ago

> I might even start contributing once Rust is more common! as someone who's recently experimenting with Rust, why is that so? I mean if you have something in the kernel where you could give valuable contribution, why letting the language stop you? guess any dev who can write Rust today is also a good C dev, ain't it?

Gigachad 4y ago
Not OP but I'm waiting for Rust support to be finished before I look at kernel development. Don't have any interest in writing C.
- caskstrength 4y ago
  Even in best case scenario Rust code will be confined to individual subsystems and drivers for a very long time. And even in these subsystems you will probably still have to interact with a lot of C code from shared data-structures in other subsystems.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    Most of Linux kernel is drivers, so if new drivers can be written in Rust, it's a huge win in safety for the whole world.
- ploxiln 4y ago
  Honestly this is a bit of a fantasy. If you love Rust and hate C, and haven't looked into kernel development before ... it's a whole different ball-game than user-space Rust. With a variety of real-world hardware, and the complexity of modern CPUs, and demands of a variety of complex user-space software, you just don't have the "guarantees" and conveniences you want, at this layer. The hardware does what it does and you just have to deal with it. User-space C code can be way easier to reason about. For a small taste see https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/19/1105 https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/19/1105
  - Ar-Curunir 4y ago

INeedMoreRam 4y ago

I've been running Linux Mint on my MacBook Pro (2011 model) for the last year relatively issue-free. For a couple weeks, I had DNS issues with the /etc/resolv.conf file, but I added a rule to the Network Manager to not touch that file upon reboot so everything works correctly now (except pinch to zoom on the touchpad).