We are trading usability & quality for freedom & privacy. We know that, but we're all so busy that we have to make that trade. I've used linux since 2000 for servers, I've used it (and still do sometimes) for workstations, but even 2026 linux workstations & laptops aren't at where macbooks were 15 years ago.

Yes, there is a whole moral discussion to be had, but as much as you win points for doing the better thing, the better things don't really pay bills.

The good news though is that we definitely won the server war. We can spin up VMs and install Linux without licences. We have access to software that works well, security updates, frequent releases, a massive ecosystem of free software, no advertising, very little to no licensing for software, and it works incredibly well. So much so, that we can't even imagine a world in which servers require licence keys or subscriptions or a marketplace account.

Imagine now, if laptops & workstations were as solved as servers are.

That's why we aren't there yet, because they're not.

That simply isn’t true. You can disable whatever you want. You just may not be able to do it through the UI. I’ve customized my Mac to never phone home. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing. It’s even easier if you don’t, and just ask Claude code to do it.

The thing is most people don't care about having a choice, they just want it to work. In fact having choice taken away from them is a good thing.

Probably 99% of Apple / Windows users aren't very tech literate so if they have to fight an update they'll just think it's broken.

It's just basic business practice, cater to the 99%, don't worry about the 1%

Nobody is fooling themselves about this, we have stuff to do with the device beyond focusing on it

Fedora updated my Nvidia drivers 3 days ago and it broke my voice assistant. Yeah I fixed it and it can’t happen again but that sort of thing only happens on Linux (and windows probably)

> and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

> but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues

These are defining qualities of something that does not "just work"

> if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software

> and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

A Linux sysadmin teammate of mine has >10 years of running Linux servers, and chose to install Ubuntu on his work Dell laptop, and in the ~2 years he's been running that thing he's had regular (2-3/month) issues with audio during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meetings sessions. Both Bluetooth and wired headset connections.

At my last job (pre-COVID) I had a Linux workstation at my desk and a Windows laptop. At where I'm currently at we're hybrid and so we get laptops and I chose a MacBook because I knew I could both do my daily sysadmin chores through Terminal and also have access to 'business apps'.

Reliability, yes. UX, no.

If you look at MacOS with a critical eye, it's nearly impossible to say it has good UX. It's outdated and everything requires more clicks. Finder stuck 20 years ago. Hard to find settings. Poor screen real estate. Hard to read text with transparent everything.

Let's kill this myth that "Macs are more intuitive to use".

To each their own, I find the UX absolutely horrible and not intuitive, it's also poorly translated for non-english users (like "Finder", "iCloud Drive" or "Spotlight" not translated in the interface for example).

I have to agree on the hardware quality though but that doesn't do everything as I still have to use the OS

Indeed. TBH if I was running a Google- or even OpenAI-scale company (3000+ devices) I'd probably invest into creating a useful Linux distribution and hardware configuration myself (at that scale, it could maybe start to make sense).

> It seems that no other device makers are seeing the value in Apple's many-devices-acting-as-one approach. It makes for some serious vendor lock.

Xiaomi certainly does: they have billboards touting it: along the bottom they show phones, dishwashers, cars, laptops, and everything in between.

> but that is a small price to pay for an everyday peace of mind.

Running an AMD card on my Dekstop system. It's invisible as an Intel on-board graphics card, and this is a great thing.

Much greater than rebooting to a black screen because NVIDIA decided to not support your GPU anymore because it finished its economic life for the company, not you.

>If you mostly use just the browser and reading e-mails, I don't see any better system even for someone who is non-technical.

If thats all you do you might as well just use macos. Something comes up you can just send your parents to the apple store. Probably one of the last places on earth you can get a real life human in a real life building from a real life major company to sit down with you and walk you through your issue. They will do this for free, you only pay for an actual repair job, which you can also of course do there for a relatively fair price all things considered for oem quality work. Not sure where I would take any other laptop for repair. Do people even repair laptops as a business?

I pulled out my old windows laptop to debug why my Linux machine is giving me issues, and the mouse was unusable, making clicking anything impossible. It was adding momentum, and any precise movement or click just couldn't be done because it wouldn't move with small touches, and added 'weight' to anything bigger.

Anyway, I was sure something was up, checked settings, and found a new feature akin to 'more accurate mouse'. I disabled it and my trackpad started working again. Everytime I have to use that PC I get angry about something unbearable windows thought was a good idea. Tbh my Linux has been driving me up the walls recently. I think I just don't like computers at all.

I am confused here. While I generally like Mac hardware the trackpads are quite mediocre. Lenovo and Dell have better ones. What are they better at?

I can't say I've ever been impressed by an Apple track pad. Or their insistence on removing actual buttons for them.

The peak was my high school Gateway laptop.

> long-life

> and durable keyboards

It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which could be a death knell for the laptop, and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec. They've come far in recent years, and I certainly wouldn't be sad if it was my main machine yet I don't expect them to be an outlier forever.

In some dimension Apple (and any serious manufacturer) is always going to be ahead - and they certainly are in non-gaming portable CPU/GPU combos right now. Alas, they aren't ahead in many other dimensions; my Fedora X1 Carbon is my strong preference over my M4 macbook pro and a large part of that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.

Next time you try Linux on the laptop, go with Void.

Every OS is filled with showstoppers. And yes everyone is blind to their own OSs issues or quirks. You work around them and develop different workflows.

When I first tried macOS I hated it and had a long list of issues I could give. They are all still valid but it turns out they don’t actually stop you getting work done.

One thing Windows did right is keyboard based navigation. Most of the general public does not know or appreciate how close to productivity nirvana the alt key brings you.

WSL is such a pain compared to just using a unix os from the get, which is of course what macos is. People forget that it is in fact a unix distro.

I might be weird but actively prefer the trackpad to keyboard and mouse as I can let my fingers rest on the keyboard at all times and use the thumb when needed to touch the excellent trackpad. That’s better than removing the whole hand to grab the mouse just to click something.

False. Get one with Linux pre installed (Dell developer edition, system 76, framework) and it just works as well.

YMMV. I never had any issues holding a mac laptop. I know people think they are sharp but I genuinely struggle to replicate this when it comes up. As I am typing this comment the laptop is resting on my chest with the entire weight of either hand resting on the sharp side edge of this mac. When I type I move my right arm so that the soft fleshy part under the wrist is now resting with full weight on the sharp edge of the mac. No pain or any discomfort doing this. Currently pressing down as hard as I can on that edge just so see. Again, no clue what people are doing to be in discomfort here. Lead hands? Skin condition? Not sure.

I haven't abused this m series mac as much. But my old original aluminum unibody from 2012, that thing lasted about 12 years until water damage took it out. It fell to the floor on every corner multiple times. None are perfectly round anymore due to the force of the impacts. Never shattered the screen or affected anything with the computer.

I have a friend who ran over his with his f150. That did end up putting some cracks into the screen, but it still worked and he still used it in that state for a couple years at least.

> This has changed recently

I've probably heard "this time is different" on the topic of PC laptops catching up to Macs a hundred times over the last decade, but it never is...

It's hard to rebuild trust after selling a computer (without a CD drive) without networking drivers and no indication of which wireless chipset it has, but including a CD with said drivers.

I will never buy/use DELL again. Even if the company completely reinvents itself, stops selling computers and just rebrands toasters, these combination of letters make me distrust anything they are physically printed on.

I'm not exaggerating, I had so many horrible experiences.