I don't give any fucks about battery life or even total power consumption cost; I just hate that I have some crap-ass Apple mid-range (for them) laptop with only 36GB RAM and an "M4 Max" CPU, and it runs rings around my 350W Core i9-14900K desktop Linux workstation, and there is essentially no way I can develop software (Rust, web apps, multi-container Docker crap) on Linux with anything close to the performance of my shitty laptop computer, even if I spend $10,000.

That's actually wild. I think we're in a kind of unique moment, but one that is good for Apple mainly, because their OS is so developer-hostile that I pay back all the performance gains with interest. T_T

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kwimajs 6 days ago | parent [-]

To be honest, I haven't done any research on this, but it's something that crosses my mind from time to time. My laptop has 32 GB of RAM and an i7-14700H processor, with Linux Mint installed. I'm more than happy with its performance, especially considering I bought it for a price that was very cheap for the market.

I wonder what specs a MacBook would need to give me similar performance. For example, on Linux with 32 GB of RAM, I can sometimes have 4 or 5 instances of WebStorm open and forget about them running in the background. Could a MacBook with 16 GB of RAM handle that? Similarly, which MacBook processor would give me the real-world, daily-use performance I get from my 14700H? Should I continue using cheap and powerful Windows/Linux laptops in the future, or should I make the switch to a MacBook?

(Translated from my native language to English using Gemini.)

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veidr 6 days ago | parent [-]

I don't know for sure, either, but I suspect any recent Macbook with 16GB RAM would be a significant upgrade over 14700H.

I don't like macOS, so in recent years, I only use it on laptop (which for me is like, a few on-site meetings per year, plus a few airplane flights). What infuriates me is that my mid-tier Mac laptop for those use cases is now significantly faster than any Linux workstation I can possibly buy... and positively annihilates any non-Apple laptop machine on essentially every meaningful benchmark.

	▲	mixmastamyk 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There are a few new AMD rigs, for either games or unified memory applications that are competitive or narrowly beat Apple in performance (not efficiency).
	▲	vlod 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I really hoped that Asahi Linux had progressed. I want to use Linux on apple hardware.