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I just bought a brand new AMD ThinkPad with 64GB of memory for a good deal less than the 8GB Mac. No thank you.

by binkHN 3y ago

SamuelAdams 3y ago
Ram is not the only consideration in a laptop. In my experience Apple products have much better screens, trackpads, and speakers than any thinkpad product. Personally my machines have 16 GB of ram. If I ever need more I will ssh into an actual server (in my basement or cloud-hosted) and run a ram intensive workload there.
- bakugo 3y ago
  Doesn't really matter how great the rest of the hardware is if anything heavier than browsing the web brings it to its knees.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I can do a lot more than browse the web without my 8GB Air being brought to its knees.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Which it doesn't, since a 16GB RAM M1 Air can be used for photo editing, light video editing, music production, programming, etc.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > In my experience Apple products have much better screens That depends on the definition of "better". Mac laptops' screens are ultra brittle. To me the first quality of a laptop's screen is how sturdy it is. My laptop (LG Gram) has a screen which I can literally bend/deform and whose previous owner (I bought it from a friend) stepped on it when he woke up. People love to make full of "MILSPEC" (MILitary SPEC) because "that means nothing" but my LG Gram can literally be thrown down concrete stairs and it'll still work, like this dude (not me) on Youtube tried (skip at 0:35): https://youtu.be/herYV5TJ_m8 https://youtu.be/herYV5TJ_m8 Try that with a Mac laptop. To me that's a "better screen" than my Mac M1's screen that broke after 13 months, overnight for no reason, just out of warranty (because I didn't pay the 20% additional Apple tax to have an extended warranty).
  - fabifabulous 3y ago
    I have no idea what you are doing with your laptop. But I choose the one that‘s better 99% of the time. MacBook Pro it is.
    - SillyUsername 3y ago
      How would you know the better one unless you sampled the other 100 PC variants at the same price point? Perhaps you were taken in by marketing and better than average PC components? Me - running a Lenovo Legion with 5Ghz i9, 32GB, 2TB, 16GB 3080RTX and comfortably running large LLMs 34b, at a push 70b, at a 2K price point, whilst using a Mac Pro with M2 and 16GB at work that can't run any AI whilst working. Apple is the same price, but in my experience poorer performance with build time and lacks hardware features. Only benefit I've seen is the Mac lasts 2.5x on battery, but as it's a work machine it's nearly always plugged in :shrug:.
      - fabifabulous 3y ago
        I was referring to the mentioned LG Gram. However, running LLMs is still very niche and also with your system there are still big limitations.
  - jacurtis 3y ago
    > Mac laptops' screens are ultra brittle I'd be careful extending one anecdotal experience to an entire class of computers. Given how much scrutiny Apple goes under, for example the heat-gate fiasco on new iPhones and the many other "gate" events they have endured, I think that if this was widespread we would have heard about it. There were 26,000,000 macbooks and macs sold in 2022. You are using a sample size n=1 to extend to 26 million devices. In my anecdotal experience. I have never had a screen die on me or known someone who has had it happen. My family all has macbooks and I have had them for ~15 years. I've purchased about 5 personally over that time, averaging about 3 years per device. I have owned 4 additional macbooks through company device programs. I have watched ~30ish macbooks go through the hands of various family members over the same time period. I have never seen a screen just die randomly. My sister is terribly rough on computers and phones and she destroys computers but has started buying Macbooks because they are the only ones that last with her. So she has an opposite experience. That's not to say it doesn't happen. It is a tech product. I am sure it happened to you and has happened to others. But it isn't common. As ubiquitous as macbooks are, Apple would be under a lot of scrutiny if this happened to even 1% of their devices.
- drdebug 3y ago
  "Much better screen" is also not necessarily true for everybody. For example I can't stand the glossy reflective screen, from what I saw last time I stopped in an apple store it was pretty much a mirror. I find the mate screens on thinkpads vastly superior and less difficult on my eyes, and their trackpads are fine: the magic track pad on my mac mini m1 is fine too, but I don't prefer one over the other.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  > Better screens Thinkpads usually have multiple screen options with base < mac < premium. That is, resolution, dpi, ips vs oled, refresh rate,.... . That said: - X1 Carbon with 32GB ram, 2 TB of storage and OLED screen (only 2.8k instead of 4k) is about 2600€ - MacBook pro is 3600€. The air you flat out cannot get with that much ram. So color me unimpressed that 1000 more gets you something better.
tstrimple 3y ago
This seems suspect. It looks like Lenovo makes 4 lines of AMD laptops currently and 3/4ths of them have soldered ram. Of those, the cheapest option to get 64GB of ram seems to be the ThinkPad P16s Gen 2 which is just over $1600 or not "a good deal less" than the 8GB Mac. The other options are in the $2k to $3.8k range.
- binkHN 3y ago
  It's the most expensive one at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p14s-gen-4-(14-inch-amd)-mobile-workstation/len101t0070 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th.... I got it on sale for less than the current price.
- StillBored 3y ago
  shhhh... <wisper> You can get any number of the "low end" thinkpads, which have socketed ram, and put 64G in them for ~$100. And, of course, as other people have mentioned, if you are not getting 50% off the MSRP on a Lenovo you're doing it wrong. Wait a couple of days, and it will go on sale. </wisper> I tend to like the L14 line, because while they are a bit chunky, the parts are relatively easy to come by, and its built like a machine from a few years back, meaning everything can be swapped/upgraded. Swap the parts you don't like for something better. I've changed the ram and battery in mine for more capacity and find its nearly the perfect device for me now. I've been considering if one of the older t450ish timeframe keyboards will fit in it after noticing the older keyboards are much, much nicer than what is shipping on the more recent laptops.
afavour 3y ago
I assure you that the Hacker News crowd are very aware of the availability of ThinkPads. Those that choose to buy MacBooks have valid reasons for doing so.
mciancia 3y ago
I just send back a brand new ThinkPad with 64GB of ram to replace it with M1 Macbook pro with 32GB. Night and day, Thinkpad was a joke with thermals, noise and battery life. No thank you
theshrike79 3y ago
I like my laptops to be quiet and have 15 hour+ battery life. Can't get that with a ThinkPad.
nozzlegear 3y ago
Yeah but now you have a ThinkPad and not a Mac. They're entirely different things.

I just bought a brand new AMD ThinkPad with 64GB of memory for a good deal less than the 8GB Mac. No thank you.

by binkHN 3y ago

I just bought a brand new AMD ThinkPad with 64GB of memory for a good deal less than the 8GB Mac. No thank you.

Ram is not the only consideration in a laptop. In my experience Apple products have much better screens, trackpads, and speakers than any thinkpad product. Personally my machines have 16 GB of ram. If I ever need more I will ssh into an actual server (in my basement or cloud-hosted) and run a ram intensive workload there.

bakugo 3y ago
Doesn't really matter how great the rest of the hardware is if anything heavier than browsing the web brings it to its knees.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I can do a lot more than browse the web without my 8GB Air being brought to its knees.
- piva00 3y ago
  Which it doesn't, since a 16GB RAM M1 Air can be used for photo editing, light video editing, music production, programming, etc.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> In my experience Apple products have much better screens That depends on the definition of "better". Mac laptops' screens are ultra brittle. To me the first quality of a laptop's screen is how sturdy it is. My laptop (LG Gram) has a screen which I can literally bend/deform and whose previous owner (I bought it from a friend) stepped on it when he woke up. People love to make full of "MILSPEC" (MILitary SPEC) because "that means nothing" but my LG Gram can literally be thrown down concrete stairs and it'll still work, like this dude (not me) on Youtube tried (skip at 0:35): https://youtu.be/herYV5TJ_m8 https://youtu.be/herYV5TJ_m8 Try that with a Mac laptop. To me that's a "better screen" than my Mac M1's screen that broke after 13 months, overnight for no reason, just out of warranty (because I didn't pay the 20% additional Apple tax to have an extended warranty).
- fabifabulous 3y ago
  I have no idea what you are doing with your laptop. But I choose the one that‘s better 99% of the time. MacBook Pro it is.
  - SillyUsername 3y ago
    How would you know the better one unless you sampled the other 100 PC variants at the same price point? Perhaps you were taken in by marketing and better than average PC components? Me - running a Lenovo Legion with 5Ghz i9, 32GB, 2TB, 16GB 3080RTX and comfortably running large LLMs 34b, at a push 70b, at a 2K price point, whilst using a Mac Pro with M2 and 16GB at work that can't run any AI whilst working. Apple is the same price, but in my experience poorer performance with build time and lacks hardware features. Only benefit I've seen is the Mac lasts 2.5x on battery, but as it's a work machine it's nearly always plugged in :shrug:.
    - fabifabulous 3y ago
      I was referring to the mentioned LG Gram. However, running LLMs is still very niche and also with your system there are still big limitations.
- jacurtis 3y ago
  > Mac laptops' screens are ultra brittle I'd be careful extending one anecdotal experience to an entire class of computers. Given how much scrutiny Apple goes under, for example the heat-gate fiasco on new iPhones and the many other "gate" events they have endured, I think that if this was widespread we would have heard about it. There were 26,000,000 macbooks and macs sold in 2022. You are using a sample size n=1 to extend to 26 million devices. In my anecdotal experience. I have never had a screen die on me or known someone who has had it happen. My family all has macbooks and I have had them for ~15 years. I've purchased about 5 personally over that time, averaging about 3 years per device. I have owned 4 additional macbooks through company device programs. I have watched ~30ish macbooks go through the hands of various family members over the same time period. I have never seen a screen just die randomly. My sister is terribly rough on computers and phones and she destroys computers but has started buying Macbooks because they are the only ones that last with her. So she has an opposite experience. That's not to say it doesn't happen. It is a tech product. I am sure it happened to you and has happened to others. But it isn't common. As ubiquitous as macbooks are, Apple would be under a lot of scrutiny if this happened to even 1% of their devices.
drdebug 3y ago
"Much better screen" is also not necessarily true for everybody. For example I can't stand the glossy reflective screen, from what I saw last time I stopped in an apple store it was pretty much a mirror. I find the mate screens on thinkpads vastly superior and less difficult on my eyes, and their trackpads are fine: the magic track pad on my mac mini m1 is fine too, but I don't prefer one over the other.
diffeomorphism 3y ago
> Better screens Thinkpads usually have multiple screen options with base < mac < premium. That is, resolution, dpi, ips vs oled, refresh rate,.... . That said: - X1 Carbon with 32GB ram, 2 TB of storage and OLED screen (only 2.8k instead of 4k) is about 2600€ - MacBook pro is 3600€. The air you flat out cannot get with that much ram. So color me unimpressed that 1000 more gets you something better.

tstrimple 3y ago

This seems suspect. It looks like Lenovo makes 4 lines of AMD laptops currently and 3/4ths of them have soldered ram. Of those, the cheapest option to get 64GB of ram seems to be the ThinkPad P16s Gen 2 which is just over $1600 or not "a good deal less" than the 8GB Mac. The other options are in the $2k to $3.8k range.

binkHN 3y ago
It's the most expensive one at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p14s-gen-4-(14-inch-amd)-mobile-workstation/len101t0070 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th.... I got it on sale for less than the current price.
StillBored 3y ago
shhhh... <wisper> You can get any number of the "low end" thinkpads, which have socketed ram, and put 64G in them for ~$100. And, of course, as other people have mentioned, if you are not getting 50% off the MSRP on a Lenovo you're doing it wrong. Wait a couple of days, and it will go on sale. </wisper> I tend to like the L14 line, because while they are a bit chunky, the parts are relatively easy to come by, and its built like a machine from a few years back, meaning everything can be swapped/upgraded. Swap the parts you don't like for something better. I've changed the ram and battery in mine for more capacity and find its nearly the perfect device for me now. I've been considering if one of the older t450ish timeframe keyboards will fit in it after noticing the older keyboards are much, much nicer than what is shipping on the more recent laptops.

afavour 3y ago

I assure you that the Hacker News crowd are very aware of the availability of ThinkPads. Those that choose to buy MacBooks have valid reasons for doing so.

mciancia 3y ago

I just send back a brand new ThinkPad with 64GB of ram to replace it with M1 Macbook pro with 32GB. Night and day, Thinkpad was a joke with thermals, noise and battery life. No thank you

theshrike79 3y ago

I like my laptops to be quiet and have 15 hour+ battery life. Can't get that with a ThinkPad.

nozzlegear 3y ago

Yeah but now you have a ThinkPad and not a Mac. They're entirely different things.