> Consumer electronics naming is very simple. Make a good product with a simple name. “iPhone”, “comma”, “Z Fold”. Then every year or two, add one to the number of that product. If it’s a small refresh, you can add a letter after the number. “2 3 3X 4” “4 4s 5 5s 6 …” “2 3 4 5 6 7” Why is this so hard for companies like HP?
Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”
Apple loses some points here since every macbook from like 2007 until 2020 was just called “Macbook pro” with no year officially in the name so you have to be really careful when eg looking at used listings for macbooks. But since the M1 it’s been good with M<1-5>
On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.
Once Steve Jobs returned, he replaced the product numbering scheme with a quadrant: consumer desktop (iMac), consumer laptop (iBook), high-end desktop (Power Mac), and high-end laptop (PowerBook). The high-end models had a suffix (G3, G4, G5), but it got confusing with all the variants (e.g., Wallsteeet vs Lombard vs Pismo PowerBook G3, various revisions of Titanium and Aluminum PowerBook G4, etc.)
We could have had Xbox 720, 1080... but no. xbox 1 x one one x triple X amsterdam edition.
I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Valve puts out a laptop - the Steam Deck has notably good power management for a linux device of its class (and I've even heard of people using them as laptop replacements), though the idle power is still higher than a Macbook. They're going to have made a desktop, gaming handheld, and VR device; why not one more?
the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent. I'm on a thinkpad x9, which might be the closest I've seen, but the cpu performance just isn't as good.
It has always been an embarrassment.
Vizio made a good laptop once and then they just existed the computer industry. They had a vision of high quality approachable laptops, desktops and pro platforms and their first gen was a good attempt, but they just didn’t follow on.
I think it was fine 20 odd years ago. I had a Thinkpad T41p in 2004 and it was a great laptop. Even my Sony Vaio Z was nice in 2008 compared to the competition (although it had serious issues with the screen flexibility causing it to fail multiple times).
Since 2012 I've had 3 Macs, a 2012 Air, a 2020 M1 (this was a massive upgrade and the nicest laptop I ever used, even compared to my relatively new work thinkpad). I just cracked the screen on my M1 so bought a discounted M4 air on black friday. I can't tell the difference other than I like having magsafe back and only miss the touch bar slightly.
Yes! I had a Vizio laptop (the thin one ala a macbook air) and it was absolutely fantastic, probably the best PC laptop I have ever had. It was lightweight, powerful, had a good screen (for the time) plus some things that few other laptops had at the time, like a TPM.
XPS 13 has snapdragon x elite and is very well built. Not sure how good Linux support is, tho. I run Linux on my Intel-based XPS 14 and it's pretty good, apart from the webcam being totally uncalibrated and looking kinda shite, but at least it works.
Starlabs is pretty close IMO
I bought the StarLabs tablet, and it was... Okay.
The tablet itself has been good. The firmware support is good. The charger died, and the keyboard case is on its last legs. I had to solder the pins back on to keep it working. It's an acceptable keyboard case, but the 'a' key doesn't work super well. Still a decent product, particularly for a Linux convertable, but definitely not something I would give my dad.
Have you bought one?
The HP Zbook Ultra G1A is a contender, but it's also the only contender to your point.
Ryzen AI 370 is a pretty badass mobile x86 chip. Enjoying my gpd win max 2 just fine, apple would have to make a 10" M4 to compete :)
The industry also didn't keep up with the trackpad, which should be simpler.
All I want is a thinner Thinkpad X220 but with upped specs and newer ports. Framework-style upgradable motherboard would be nice but optional. The X220 already has a perfect keyboard, a mousing system that doesn't suck (sorry, I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise), a beautiful form factor for a laptop (if I want a laptop, I want it to be 12-14in for easiest portability), it's practically indestructible and has an array of ports that makes me wonder how people manage with just 3 USB-C ports. Maybe this is just me though.
> I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise
Everything non-Apple is. Apple's trackpad are great and have been for decades. I’ve done professional image editing on the go even with the tiny by today’s standards PowerBook G4s trackpads.
The real tragedy of our industry is that Apple got the basics right a few decades ago but seems determined to make their OS worse for pro user with every release. Yet no one else seems competent or willing to take on the challenge.
I see this comment about how awesome Apple Trackpads are all the time here, and just assumed I was missing out because I'd never used a MacBook. But I got given a MacBook Pro recently for work, and I'm super underwhelmed. The trackpad on it is no better or worse than any other trackpad I've used.
It's not just you; I would also love a modern ThinkPad x220. I have a Framework 13 and I enjoy it, though I wish it had better battery life. The perfect laptop for me would be my Framework 13 with a classic ThinkPad keyboard.
I wonder why ThinkPads are not mentioned. It's not like I recommend them (I mean, I use one, but it's not like I've tried most laptops out there, so who I am to judge), but I was under the impression it's still a de-facto Linux laptop standard.
Thinkpads are probably fine if that's the price point you're shopping at, but the modern ones are not good value. HP has the best mobile workstation available currently.
How’s the battery life?
The old ones had hot-swappable batteries (a second internal battery - of decent size - kept the device going while you replaced the external one). I used to keep a couple of extra 50 Wh batteries in my backpack and therefore had excellent battery life. The power efficiency wasn't great though.
I now have a Z13 Gen 1 (AMD 6850U) running Fedora and the battery life is passable. It draws 7-8W at idle from a 51 Wh battery.
Cannot properly evaluate now. I never really use it without a cable for too long, and by now the battery must have slightly degraded too. Anyway, it never was Macbook-level, I guess, and it's an oldish model, so you should check actual reviews for current models that you are interested in, there always was plenty of them for ThinkPads (at least, the last time when I looked for a new laptop).
I mostly think of when geohot wanted to make his own RISC-V core and cranked out some basic verilog. It was incomplete and barely commented, and never touched again. I suspect we are going to get a few blog posts of analysis and then he moves on to something else
One model/configuration will never work because developers are awful, picky customers.
You’ll lose 90,000 of your 100,000 with one or more little nitpicks.
Probably 50% right off the bat because you chose a keyboard with or without a numpad.
Another huge chunk because you chose the wrong screen (Retina resolution? Low resolution? Refresh rate?)
Too bad, because I want this. Or at least the version of it I have in my head :)
Apple / macbooks seem to be doing fine
The blog is premised on the idea that Apple and MacBook are not doing fine.
You missed my point, the original comment is stating that the market for such a device doesn't exist because developers are too finicky and customisation focussed.
As a counter example - look at macbooks which are about as un-customisable as they come, but a large portion of developers use them. Meaning the market exists even if it's currently dominated by Apple (which as you/the post points out is slipping)
The reason of course being the awful software, not the hardware options. He makes that abundantly clear in the text.
[deleted]
Follow the Framework model. Make the hardware user configurable, maintainable, and upgradable.
I agree about some criticisms of the framework. I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI. I also would prefer a thinner screen bezel, even if that means it's not swappable either.
But having easy access to internal hardware for upgrades is pretty huge. Rather than blowing 1-2k on a new machine every few years, it's just $200-500 for more RAM and a better CPU (assuming prices go back to normal in a reasonable amount of time)
> I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI.
Strong agree. After all, their plug modules are really just dongles that are integrated into the body, which makes them worse IMO. More expensive, model-specific, etc.
How much would you pay? Seriously.
There is market demand, but at what price? Hardware is a thin margin product.
Is it a few off the shelf parts placed in a custom CNCed block of aluminium or is it engineered, from the ground up, to suit purpose.
Getting an idea of what would people pay for such a product is step one.
5k?
the upgradability and interchangibility of parts in the framework ecosystem are needed to sustain a shelling point.
I’ve been feeling exact way for a while now. Tahoe brought it to a head. I just want a portable machine I truly own and control that doesn’t suck. Why is that so much to ask?
George is probably too young to remember when we thought OS X was hot shit because it was UNIX compliant. That meant a lot back then.
However over the years they dropped the ball big time. Arch may be the new hotness but BSD was the once (and hopefully future) king.
Honestly this describes a product I would want. I want the hardware of a MacBook that runs Linux and not MacOS.
This is a refreshing take in some ways. I'm beyond tired of the usual rose-tinted attitudes towards customizability and after-engineered things.
It was a bit disappointing to see the cold shower not reach the thermals situation however, despite the heavy emphasis on performant parts. Apple's offerings are phone-like, they let them saturate then throttle. The alternative is the ugly gamer laptops with their jet engines. Not sure I can wholeheartedly prefer either.
Honestly if you actually need high end specs then you should just build a PC.
"16 core Zen 5 CPU, 40 core RDNA 3.5 GPU. 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM @ 256 GB/s + stunning OLED" - Easily done as a pc build.
In a world where you can get this laptop with Linux, there's a new set of trade-offs -
- be prepared for a LOT of things not working because the size of the market for extremely expensive configurations with high end CPU + GPU + RAM + Monitor + Linux is practically zero.
- when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably
- will a new GPU/GPU architecture be a headache for the first X years...yes, and if you want to replace every 2 years, I guess you will have a permanent headache.
- will updating graphics drivers be a problem? yes
- is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not
- will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe
- will all the ports work/behave? probably not
- will your machine perform worse than a high end PC that cost 1/2 as much from 3 years ago... yes.
> - when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably
Why probably? Going to sleep on lid close is common enough, it's even the default in all OSes/DEs. If you turn off sleep-on-close and drain the battery, that's on you.
> - is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not
> - will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe
> - will all the ports work/behave? probably not
These seem like odd things to doubt, when Framework has a perfectly working system for Linux and has been doing it for years. No hardware in their systems is unsupported in Linux.
Notably the critique of Framework in the original blog post does not offer these doubts. They are focused instead on the hardware design and tradeoffs between upgradability and uniform bodies. Those are real tradeoffs and Framework cannot solve them all without abandoning the upgradability part.
Is his build even possible today in a laptop?
In a desktop, you would need a top of the line threadripper for that 256GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Consumer grade Zen 5 desktops reach only about 80GB/s in real world testing, with a theoretical max of slightly over 100GB/s.
AMD Strix Halo (a consumer mobile processor) has theoretical support for 256GB/s of memory bandwidth (quad-channel, 8000 MT/s LPDDR5X, must be soldered, supports 128GB at most).
The memory is shared for the GPU, so you should probably compare with desktop GPU, so 1-2TB/s.
I think the point of him making his own laptop is that he would fix all those software problems.
I get the complaint about naming but hp is different then apple. They sell a variety of configurations and one isn't neccesarily better then any other.
The bit about HP’s naming scheme is painfully true, about many companies. Utterly dumb marketing strategies.
I feel the same way, but I wouldn't be bold enough to call it dumb. I mean, I assume they know what they are doing. This is very inconvenient for me, as a buyer, but I suppose most companies just aren't Apple, so they throw at us a lot of various stuff hoping that something sticks. And, for that matter, Apple's product line gets more diversified each year too. now it's Air, and Pro, and Max, so I wouldn't bet it won't be G1 Ultra F12b in 10 more years too.
Just from the pictures you can tell it doesn't feel like a MacBook's unibody.
tradeoffs :)
Amen. Not only do they make hardware in the US (though not laptops yet), they contribute great Linux software.
[deleted]
A good chunk of (but not all) his requirements would be fulfilled by an ASUS ROG Flow Z13
I don’t know. Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?
Asahi would have 100x more adoption if it was about better virtualization of Linux on macOS. It would be a DIFFERENT product and I guess that’s the point, right?
> Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?
High performance GPU for VMs, for starters. And the amount of crap that even a bare-bones macOS needs to load (and that consequently hog resources like RAM and CPU time) is a goddamn joke.
You cannot uninstall Apple Music. That alone is alienating.
You cannot uninstall Music.app indeed. There is one toggle that hides all of Apple Music. It completely hides it, to the point that a link online to the service will error out.
The author wants to buy a whole new computer every year or two max, instead of upgrading components
That’s an impressive, so to speak, level of consumerism, reminds me of a self-professed minimalist that made the rounds here years ago, he practiced detachment from worldly possessions by throwing away his clothes after use and buying new ones, instead of washing them
Read the article.
I'm unsure if this is a joke or if you really didn't read the article
> Consumer electronics naming is very simple. Make a good product with a simple name. “iPhone”, “comma”, “Z Fold”. Then every year or two, add one to the number of that product. If it’s a small refresh, you can add a letter after the number. “2 3 3X 4” “4 4s 5 5s 6 …” “2 3 4 5 6 7” Why is this so hard for companies like HP?
Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”
Apple loses some points here since every macbook from like 2007 until 2020 was just called “Macbook pro” with no year officially in the name so you have to be really careful when eg looking at used listings for macbooks. But since the M1 it’s been good with M<1-5>
On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.
Once Steve Jobs returned, he replaced the product numbering scheme with a quadrant: consumer desktop (iMac), consumer laptop (iBook), high-end desktop (Power Mac), and high-end laptop (PowerBook). The high-end models had a suffix (G3, G4, G5), but it got confusing with all the variants (e.g., Wallsteeet vs Lombard vs Pismo PowerBook G3, various revisions of Titanium and Aluminum PowerBook G4, etc.)
We could have had Xbox 720, 1080... but no. xbox 1 x one one x triple X amsterdam edition.
I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Valve puts out a laptop - the Steam Deck has notably good power management for a linux device of its class (and I've even heard of people using them as laptop replacements), though the idle power is still higher than a Macbook. They're going to have made a desktop, gaming handheld, and VR device; why not one more?
the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent. I'm on a thinkpad x9, which might be the closest I've seen, but the cpu performance just isn't as good.
It has always been an embarrassment.
Vizio made a good laptop once and then they just existed the computer industry. They had a vision of high quality approachable laptops, desktops and pro platforms and their first gen was a good attempt, but they just didn’t follow on.
I think it was fine 20 odd years ago. I had a Thinkpad T41p in 2004 and it was a great laptop. Even my Sony Vaio Z was nice in 2008 compared to the competition (although it had serious issues with the screen flexibility causing it to fail multiple times).
Since 2012 I've had 3 Macs, a 2012 Air, a 2020 M1 (this was a massive upgrade and the nicest laptop I ever used, even compared to my relatively new work thinkpad). I just cracked the screen on my M1 so bought a discounted M4 air on black friday. I can't tell the difference other than I like having magsafe back and only miss the touch bar slightly.
Yes! I had a Vizio laptop (the thin one ala a macbook air) and it was absolutely fantastic, probably the best PC laptop I have ever had. It was lightweight, powerful, had a good screen (for the time) plus some things that few other laptops had at the time, like a TPM.
XPS 13 has snapdragon x elite and is very well built. Not sure how good Linux support is, tho. I run Linux on my Intel-based XPS 14 and it's pretty good, apart from the webcam being totally uncalibrated and looking kinda shite, but at least it works.
Starlabs is pretty close IMO
I bought the StarLabs tablet, and it was... Okay.
The tablet itself has been good. The firmware support is good. The charger died, and the keyboard case is on its last legs. I had to solder the pins back on to keep it working. It's an acceptable keyboard case, but the 'a' key doesn't work super well. Still a decent product, particularly for a Linux convertable, but definitely not something I would give my dad.
Have you bought one?
The HP Zbook Ultra G1A is a contender, but it's also the only contender to your point.
Ryzen AI 370 is a pretty badass mobile x86 chip. Enjoying my gpd win max 2 just fine, apple would have to make a 10" M4 to compete :)
The industry also didn't keep up with the trackpad, which should be simpler.
All I want is a thinner Thinkpad X220 but with upped specs and newer ports. Framework-style upgradable motherboard would be nice but optional. The X220 already has a perfect keyboard, a mousing system that doesn't suck (sorry, I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise), a beautiful form factor for a laptop (if I want a laptop, I want it to be 12-14in for easiest portability), it's practically indestructible and has an array of ports that makes me wonder how people manage with just 3 USB-C ports. Maybe this is just me though.
> I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise
Everything non-Apple is. Apple's trackpad are great and have been for decades. I’ve done professional image editing on the go even with the tiny by today’s standards PowerBook G4s trackpads.
The real tragedy of our industry is that Apple got the basics right a few decades ago but seems determined to make their OS worse for pro user with every release. Yet no one else seems competent or willing to take on the challenge.
I see this comment about how awesome Apple Trackpads are all the time here, and just assumed I was missing out because I'd never used a MacBook. But I got given a MacBook Pro recently for work, and I'm super underwhelmed. The trackpad on it is no better or worse than any other trackpad I've used.
It's not just you; I would also love a modern ThinkPad x220. I have a Framework 13 and I enjoy it, though I wish it had better battery life. The perfect laptop for me would be my Framework 13 with a classic ThinkPad keyboard.
I wonder why ThinkPads are not mentioned. It's not like I recommend them (I mean, I use one, but it's not like I've tried most laptops out there, so who I am to judge), but I was under the impression it's still a de-facto Linux laptop standard.
Thinkpads are probably fine if that's the price point you're shopping at, but the modern ones are not good value. HP has the best mobile workstation available currently.
How’s the battery life?
The old ones had hot-swappable batteries (a second internal battery - of decent size - kept the device going while you replaced the external one). I used to keep a couple of extra 50 Wh batteries in my backpack and therefore had excellent battery life. The power efficiency wasn't great though.
I now have a Z13 Gen 1 (AMD 6850U) running Fedora and the battery life is passable. It draws 7-8W at idle from a 51 Wh battery.
Cannot properly evaluate now. I never really use it without a cable for too long, and by now the battery must have slightly degraded too. Anyway, it never was Macbook-level, I guess, and it's an oldish model, so you should check actual reviews for current models that you are interested in, there always was plenty of them for ThinkPads (at least, the last time when I looked for a new laptop).
I mostly think of when geohot wanted to make his own RISC-V core and cranked out some basic verilog. It was incomplete and barely commented, and never touched again. I suspect we are going to get a few blog posts of analysis and then he moves on to something else
One model/configuration will never work because developers are awful, picky customers.
You’ll lose 90,000 of your 100,000 with one or more little nitpicks.
Probably 50% right off the bat because you chose a keyboard with or without a numpad.
Another huge chunk because you chose the wrong screen (Retina resolution? Low resolution? Refresh rate?)
Too bad, because I want this. Or at least the version of it I have in my head :)
Apple / macbooks seem to be doing fine
The blog is premised on the idea that Apple and MacBook are not doing fine.
You missed my point, the original comment is stating that the market for such a device doesn't exist because developers are too finicky and customisation focussed.
As a counter example - look at macbooks which are about as un-customisable as they come, but a large portion of developers use them. Meaning the market exists even if it's currently dominated by Apple (which as you/the post points out is slipping)
The reason of course being the awful software, not the hardware options. He makes that abundantly clear in the text.
Follow the Framework model. Make the hardware user configurable, maintainable, and upgradable.
I agree about some criticisms of the framework. I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI. I also would prefer a thinner screen bezel, even if that means it's not swappable either.
But having easy access to internal hardware for upgrades is pretty huge. Rather than blowing 1-2k on a new machine every few years, it's just $200-500 for more RAM and a better CPU (assuming prices go back to normal in a reasonable amount of time)
> I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI.
Strong agree. After all, their plug modules are really just dongles that are integrated into the body, which makes them worse IMO. More expensive, model-specific, etc.
How much would you pay? Seriously.
There is market demand, but at what price? Hardware is a thin margin product.
Is it a few off the shelf parts placed in a custom CNCed block of aluminium or is it engineered, from the ground up, to suit purpose.
Getting an idea of what would people pay for such a product is step one.
5k?
the upgradability and interchangibility of parts in the framework ecosystem are needed to sustain a shelling point.
As for the PC ecosystem, there are no good x86 cpus with good power effciciency. Maybe geohot would like https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc ? Framework 13 does not have his specific touchpad complaint
I’ve been feeling exact way for a while now. Tahoe brought it to a head. I just want a portable machine I truly own and control that doesn’t suck. Why is that so much to ask?
George is probably too young to remember when we thought OS X was hot shit because it was UNIX compliant. That meant a lot back then.
However over the years they dropped the ball big time. Arch may be the new hotness but BSD was the once (and hopefully future) king.
Honestly this describes a product I would want. I want the hardware of a MacBook that runs Linux and not MacOS.
This is a refreshing take in some ways. I'm beyond tired of the usual rose-tinted attitudes towards customizability and after-engineered things.
It was a bit disappointing to see the cold shower not reach the thermals situation however, despite the heavy emphasis on performant parts. Apple's offerings are phone-like, they let them saturate then throttle. The alternative is the ugly gamer laptops with their jet engines. Not sure I can wholeheartedly prefer either.
Honestly if you actually need high end specs then you should just build a PC.
"16 core Zen 5 CPU, 40 core RDNA 3.5 GPU. 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM @ 256 GB/s + stunning OLED" - Easily done as a pc build.
In a world where you can get this laptop with Linux, there's a new set of trade-offs -
- be prepared for a LOT of things not working because the size of the market for extremely expensive configurations with high end CPU + GPU + RAM + Monitor + Linux is practically zero.
- when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably
- will a new GPU/GPU architecture be a headache for the first X years...yes, and if you want to replace every 2 years, I guess you will have a permanent headache.
- will updating graphics drivers be a problem? yes
- is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not
- will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe
- will all the ports work/behave? probably not
- will your machine perform worse than a high end PC that cost 1/2 as much from 3 years ago... yes.
> - when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably
Why probably? Going to sleep on lid close is common enough, it's even the default in all OSes/DEs. If you turn off sleep-on-close and drain the battery, that's on you.
> - is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not
> - will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe
> - will all the ports work/behave? probably not
These seem like odd things to doubt, when Framework has a perfectly working system for Linux and has been doing it for years. No hardware in their systems is unsupported in Linux.
Notably the critique of Framework in the original blog post does not offer these doubts. They are focused instead on the hardware design and tradeoffs between upgradability and uniform bodies. Those are real tradeoffs and Framework cannot solve them all without abandoning the upgradability part.
Is his build even possible today in a laptop?
In a desktop, you would need a top of the line threadripper for that 256GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Consumer grade Zen 5 desktops reach only about 80GB/s in real world testing, with a theoretical max of slightly over 100GB/s.
AMD Strix Halo (a consumer mobile processor) has theoretical support for 256GB/s of memory bandwidth (quad-channel, 8000 MT/s LPDDR5X, must be soldered, supports 128GB at most).
The memory is shared for the GPU, so you should probably compare with desktop GPU, so 1-2TB/s.
I think the point of him making his own laptop is that he would fix all those software problems.
I get the complaint about naming but hp is different then apple. They sell a variety of configurations and one isn't neccesarily better then any other.
The bit about HP’s naming scheme is painfully true, about many companies. Utterly dumb marketing strategies.
I feel the same way, but I wouldn't be bold enough to call it dumb. I mean, I assume they know what they are doing. This is very inconvenient for me, as a buyer, but I suppose most companies just aren't Apple, so they throw at us a lot of various stuff hoping that something sticks. And, for that matter, Apple's product line gets more diversified each year too. now it's Air, and Pro, and Max, so I wouldn't bet it won't be G1 Ultra F12b in 10 more years too.
Your attention is drawn to https://system76.com/
Just from the pictures you can tell it doesn't feel like a MacBook's unibody.
tradeoffs :)
Amen. Not only do they make hardware in the US (though not laptops yet), they contribute great Linux software.
A good chunk of (but not all) his requirements would be fulfilled by an ASUS ROG Flow Z13
I don’t know. Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?
Asahi would have 100x more adoption if it was about better virtualization of Linux on macOS. It would be a DIFFERENT product and I guess that’s the point, right?
> Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?
High performance GPU for VMs, for starters. And the amount of crap that even a bare-bones macOS needs to load (and that consequently hog resources like RAM and CPU time) is a goddamn joke.
You cannot uninstall Apple Music. That alone is alienating.
You cannot uninstall Music.app indeed. There is one toggle that hides all of Apple Music. It completely hides it, to the point that a link online to the service will error out.
That setting was removed[0].
[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253315335?sortBy=rank
IMO, the benefits of an immutable OS install outweigh being able to uninstall/remove particular apps.
Do you know about Framework? https://frame.work/
The author wants to buy a whole new computer every year or two max, instead of upgrading components
That’s an impressive, so to speak, level of consumerism, reminds me of a self-professed minimalist that made the rounds here years ago, he practiced detachment from worldly possessions by throwing away his clothes after use and buying new ones, instead of washing them
Read the article.
I'm unsure if this is a joke or if you really didn't read the article