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I think the adjective “mediocre” is a tad heavy-handed here. I’ve had a variety of laptops – PC and Mac – since the mid-2000s. Apple Silicon is far and away the

I think the adjective “mediocre” is a tad heavy-handed here. I’ve had a variety of laptops – PC and Mac – since the mid-2000s. Apple Silicon is far and away the biggest leap forward I’ve seen, bar none. On a recent 5 hour flight, I shut off WiFi and only had a terminal open. At the end of the flight, I still had over 90% battery remaining. That is monstrously impressive, if only for the screen’s power consumption. Add to that the fact that the terminal is nix instead of Windows (Powershell is not the same, and if you’re falling back to WSL then congrats on admitting nix tooling is superior), and it’s a very compelling machine.

angoragoats 3y ago
Yeah, I use an M1 machine for work, and you’re right about the efficiency. But as a creative pro or a developer (two of the target markets for Macs), your machine is the main tool you use to get things done. Calling a machine “Pro” and shipping it with 8GB of memory in 2023 is a slap in the face to those professionals when it’d be less than 1% more expensive to double it to 16GB. That’s why used the term mediocre, and I stand by it. I don’t have much to say about the terminal stuff other than that my personal thinkpad that runs Linux does the terminal thing a hell of a lot better than my Mac does.
- sgarland 3y ago
  If you’re running Linux on a laptop, then yes, that’s even better. However, AFAIK nothing has battery life close to Macs. I’d consider one if they did. My work Mac is perma-docked, but my personal Air spends most of its time on my lap, and I greatly value the battery life.
  - angoragoats 3y ago
    My Thinkpad T480 with high capacity battery gets about 10 hours of run time under Linux, running an editor, browser with a million tabs open, docker containers, and the occasional video playback. That’s enough for me, and I’m not convinced that a Mac would have meaningfully higher battery life with the same workload (especially running Docker, which is a hog on MacOS).

angoragoats 3y ago

Yeah, I use an M1 machine for work, and you’re right about the efficiency. But as a creative pro or a developer (two of the target markets for Macs), your machine is the main tool you use to get things done. Calling a machine “Pro” and shipping it with 8GB of memory in 2023 is a slap in the face to those professionals when it’d be less than 1% more expensive to double it to 16GB. That’s why used the term mediocre, and I stand by it. I don’t have much to say about the terminal stuff other than that my personal thinkpad that runs Linux does the terminal thing a hell of a lot better than my Mac does.

sgarland 3y ago
If you’re running Linux on a laptop, then yes, that’s even better. However, AFAIK nothing has battery life close to Macs. I’d consider one if they did. My work Mac is perma-docked, but my personal Air spends most of its time on my lap, and I greatly value the battery life.
- angoragoats 3y ago
  My Thinkpad T480 with high capacity battery gets about 10 hours of run time under Linux, running an editor, browser with a million tabs open, docker containers, and the occasional video playback. That’s enough for me, and I’m not convinced that a Mac would have meaningfully higher battery life with the same workload (especially running Docker, which is a hog on MacOS).