M5 MacBook Pro
Edit: okay, that garnered more attention than I expected, I guess I owe a qualification.
1. Everything is just slightly different. I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections. Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.
2. Not everything is supported natively on arm64. I had an idea and wanted to spin up a project using DynamoRIO, but wasn't supported. Others have mentioned the docker quirks.
3. The window manager. I'm not a fan of all the animations and needing to gester between screens (and yes, I've been down the hotkeys rabbit hole). To install a 3rd party window manager you need to disable some security setting because appearantly they work by injecting into the display manager and calling private APIs.
So my person takeaway was that I took the openness of the Linux ecosystem for granted (I've always had a local checkout of the kernel so I can grep an error message if needed). Losing that for me felt like wearing a straightjacket. Ironically I have a MBP at work, but spend my day ssh'd into a Linux box. It's a great machine for running a web browser and terminal emulator.
I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up.
Sounds more like a you problem, probably due to unfamiliarity. There are endless options for local dev on a Mac, and a huge share of devs using one.
Yes, I know about Yabai and the other things that modify the existing window manager. The problem is the window manager itself.
Outside of the windowing system, running native Linux if you're deploying to Linux beats using an amalgamation of old BSD utils + stuff from Homebrew and hoping it works between platforms, or using VMs. The dev tools that are native to Linux are also nice.
When it comes to multiple monitors, I want a dock on each monitor. I can do that in Plasma, but I can't in macOS, unless I use some weird 3rd party software apparently.
Task switching is.. not good? I don't get window previews I can switch through when I hover over the dock, but I do on Linux.
That just sounds like being accustomed to one way of switching tasks, honestly. If I want previews, I use Expose (three-finger swipe up/down or ctrl-up/down). But mostly I just use cmd-tab and haven't really needed to see previews there. Because macOS switches between applications, not windows, often there isn't single window to preview, and I'm not sure showing all the windows would work well either. For Expose it works well because the it can use the entire screen to show previews.
And then when you full-screen a window, switch to another app for a moment, and then you can’t find it without delving into the ‘window‘ menu.
First world problems. But daily annoyances.
Selecting a window and having all the app’s windows come to the fore
... would only happen if the application you switch to is enforcing it for some reason. Ordinarily you can interleave windows all you want.
Switching to an application by clicking on it in the Dock or Cmd+Tabbing to it will bring all its windows to the front, though.
So if I have two Zed windows and Firefox in front of one of them, I can't switch from Zed to Firefox and back to Zed without losing view of Firefox. Means I have to move windows around so they don't overlap, which seems so counterintuitive.
Imagine having N apps with M windows each, with the macOS model your number of presses to find a given window goes from O(NM) to O(N+M).
Going back to macOS where I don't get window previews forces me to think in terms of app icons, instead of the UI I've been staring at and will instantly recognize. And if I use the dock, I have to remember the window title's name to switch windows using the context menu.
Then you switch to macOS or Windows or even (not your) linux setup and hate it. When I manage to contain myself entirely to the terminal it's okay, but the moment I have to interact with GUI I start to miss those "just right" things.
I can relate. macOS hilariously sucks on certain GUI and terminal aspects. Not much you can do about GUI, just have to adapt to the way macOS wants to be used. For terminal, I use home-manager to manage my $HOME. It not space efficient and public caches are sub-par, but it's better than searching "sed in-place repace macos and linux cross-platform" for the 9000th time.
I like the hardware however. I really wish there was a good laptop using a competitive ARM SoC with great Linux support. I refuse to buy anything from Apple since they started the whole EU shenanigans and I don’t really now which laptop I will buy. I’m seriously considering only using a phone as my personal computing device now that Android takes convergence semi seriously.
I’m seriously considering only using a phone as my personal computing device now that Android takes convergence semi seriously.
Not really. Google, in fact, very opposes that convergence because it will hurt ChromeBook and chomecast sales.
Pretty much any android today and even Nexus phones let you go from usb-c to HDMI, but not Pixels. Because that's what chromecast is for.
Not really. Google, in fact, very opposes that convergence because it will hurt ChromeBook and chomecast sales.
They oppose convergence so much that they have just added a desktop environment when Android is plugged to a screen and a way to run Linux app with GPU acceleration.
Also Pixels natively support HDMI through usb-c and have done so for years. They do have terrible SoC however so I'm leaning more towards a Chinese phone personally.
I do nerd out when customizing the shell, though.
It not space efficient and public caches are sub-par, but it's better than searching "sed in-place repace macos and linux cross-platform" for the 9000th time.
When onboarding new devs, it's like Groundhog Day, where I will inevitably have the "did you use GNU sed or BSD sed" conversation at some point if they have Macs.
I'm going to have to look into home-manager
I'm going to have to look into home-manager
It's amazing, I have the same terminal environment in WLS2, macOS and linux. NeoVim with all of its native dependencies, all k8s tools, etc. Sometimes I run it issues something not working on macos, but usually easy to resolve, if not, I use homebrew via home-manager.
The newest Macbooks have insanely powerful hardware (I have an M4 Macbook Max). Yet they do not feel as speedy or instant on my machines with i3. There's always a perceivable milliseconds of latency, with response time from the keyboard to the screen. As someone who has tons of key bindings, I find this tolerable, but it can get a bit grating compared to just how instantaneous everything is on my Linux.
It was a bit of a struggle to get used to it, coming from windows.
The only thing I really miss now is alt-tab working as expected. (It's a massive pain to move between two windows of the same program)
Or otherwise you can enable the app exposé feature to swipe down with three fingers and it will show you only windows of the same app.
For example, if I open a new Firefox window, the Mac seems to force the two Firefox windows onto different desktops. This already is a struggle, because sometimes I don't want the windows to be on two desktops. I find that if I try to move one window to the same desktop as the other, then Mac will move the other desktop to the original desktop so they are both still on different desktops.
OK, got sidetracked there on a different annoyance, but on top of the above, CMD-backtick doesn't usually work for me, and I attribute it to the windows typically being forced onto different desktops. Some of the constraints for using a Mac are truly a mystery to me, although I'm determined to master it eventually. It shouldn't be this difficult though. For sure, Mac is nowhere near as intuitive as it's made out to be.
> two Firefox windows onto different desktops
To reproduce, get a second monitor, throw your web browser onto that second monitor (not in full screen), and then open a application into full screen on your laptop's screen (I frequently have a terminal there). Then go to a site that gives you a popup for OAuth or a Security Key (e.g. GitHub, Amazon, Claude, you got a million options here). Watch as you get a jarring motion on the screen you aren't looking at, have to finish your login, and then move back to where you were.
> Mac are truly a mystery to me
Or sometimes it just decided to open a link in a new chrome window instead of just opening a tab.... and not even consistently.
and disabling animations doesn't help, it's still slow.
Specifically, sometimes it works with my Safari windows ans sometimes it doesn't.
And sometimes when it doesn't work, Option+< will work for some reason.
But sometimes that doesn't work either and then I just have to swipe and slide or use alt-tab (yes, you can now install a program that gives you proper alt-tab, so I do not have to deal with this IMO nonsense, it just feels like the right thing to do when I know I'm just looking for the other Safari window.)
I'm not complaining, I knew what I went to when I asked $WORK for a Mac, I have had one before and for me the tradeoff of having a laptop supported by IT and with good battery time is worth it even if the UX is (again IMO) somewhat crazy for a guy who comes from a C64->Win 3.1->Windows 95/98->Linux (all of them and a number of weird desktops) background.
yes, you can now install a program that gives you proper alt-tab
Have you tried any that actually delivered on what was promised?
And actually replacing the alt-tab, not just adding yet-another-key-combination to use?
Have you tried any that actually delivered on what was promised?
It absolutely does.
Maybe I should just switch to using it 100% of the time like on Windows. (I was trying to have it the KDE way: Yes, window based switching instead of App based, also an option to switch between windows from the same application.)
It lets you map this key to fix this issue and allows many more mappings.
GNOME does this much better, as it instead uses Super+<whatever the key above Tab is>. In the US, that remains ` but elsewhere it's so much better than on MacOS.
That has terrible ergonomics for anyone using a non-US keyboard, though - the backtick is immediately above the option key so to hit together with CMD requires clawing together your thumb and little finger.
That's true, hence why I remap it to a "proper" key, above Tab with:
$ cat ~/Scripts/keyboard_remapping.sh
#!/bin/bash
hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":
[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000064,
"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000035},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000035,
"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x7000000E1}]
}'So many comments about how Linux isn't ready because of some admin task requiring to run a CLI command.
Then Windows apologists tell you that actually all your problems are because you didn't edit your install ISO or pirate a IOT enterprise edition. Because that's normal behaviour.
And it's becoming more common with Macs. I remember Snow Leopard was genuinely amazing, and a massive improvement over everything else. I had high hopes after Mountain Lion that we would get a feature release and then a performance release, because the performance releases just made everything so much better. Alas I just seem to get more whitespace.
Shame on me.
For completion, system shortcuts are also available in `System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts...` (where they can also be changed). (Although I don't think that's 100% comprehensive, e.g., I don't think `⌘⇥` for the application switcher is listed there.)
⌥k = ˚ (degree) ⌥e a = á
⌥p = π (pi) ⌥e e = é
⌥5 = ∞ (infinity) ⌥e i = í
⌥d = ∂ (delta) ⌥e o = ó
⌥8 = • (bullet) ⌥e u = ú
⇧⌥9 = · (middot) ⌥n n = ñ
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-the-keyboard-vi...
Or otherwise you can enable the app exposé feature to swipe down with three fingers and it will show you only windows of the same app.
If you have an Apple keyboard, CTRL-F3 (without the Fn modifier) will do the same. Not sure if there are third-party keyboards that support Mac media keys, but I'm guessing there are some at least...
https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/?q=windows#windows...
[ ] Change the way Tab moves focus ⌃F7
[ ] Turn keyboard access on or off ⌃F1
[ ] Move focus on the menu bar ⌃F2
[ ] Move focus on the Dock ⌃F3
[ ] Move focus to the active or next window ⌃F4
[ ] Move focus to the window toolbar ⌃F5
[ ] Move focus to the floating window ⌃F6
[*] Move focus to next window ⌘`
[ ] Move focus to status menus ⌃F8
[ ] Show contextual menu ⌃↩
End up with the focus just speeding off to the left without really intending to, since it ignores tab and now focuses on shift.
> Sounds more like a you problem
The biggest problem with Linux is poor interfaces[0] but the biggest problem with Apple is handcuffs. And honestly, I do not find Apple interfaces intuitive. Linux interfaces and structure, I get, even if the barrier to entry is a big higher, there's lots of documentation. Apple less so. But also with Apple there's just things that are needlessly complex, buried under multiple different locations, and inconsistent.
But I said the biggest problem is handcuffs. So let me give a very dumb example. How do you merge identical contacts? Here's the official answer[1]
Either:
1) Card > Look for Duplicates
2) Select the duplicate cards, then Card > Merge Selected Cards.
So yeah, maybe a lot of this is due to unfamiliarity, but it's not like they are making it easy. With Apple, it is "Do things the Apple way, or not at all". But with Linux it is "sure whatever you say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". If my Android phone is not displaying/silencing calls people go "weird, have you tried adjusting X settings?" But if my iPhone is not displaying/silencing calls an Apple person goes "well my watch tells me when someone is calling" and they do not understand how infuriating such an answer is. Yet, it is the norm.
I really do want to love Apple. They make beautiful machines. But it is really hard to love something that is constantly punching you in the face. Linux will laugh when you fall on your face, but it doesn't actively try to take a swing or put up roadblocks. There's a big difference.
[0] But there's been a big push the last few years to fix this and things have come a long way. It definitely helps that Microsoft and Apple are deteriorating, so thanks for lowering the bar :)
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/contacts/merge-contact-cards...
[2] Except it actually doesn't
1) The vast majority of users have only one contact-sync account, so it’s not an issue for them, merge works fine
2) For users that have multiple contact-sync accounts, they almost never want a feature to silently choose one account’s contact and delete the other account’s contact. So linking is really what these users want if the contacts live in different accounts.
It’s interesting feedback that a combined “link or merge” command would be what you’d expect. That’s a reasonable request; in my day we generally steered clear of combining destructive operations (merging) with non-destructive (linking).
I was more focused on the fact that the macOS implementation of “look for duplicates” is pretty broken; there’s a decent iOS implementation we never got around to migrating to macOS.
In fact, it's kinda the only solution unless you can push info upstream, and you shouldn't assume you have those privileges or even know their data structure. But that doesn't matter because what the user cares about is how the information is displayed.
It is primarily a display issue. No deletions needed
The critical issue is I, the user, can't identify if these two contacts are in the same address book or not. The only way I can find this out is to guess and check. I have to guess the address book and then search that name, then repeat. That's not a reasonable solution nor does it scale. It's trivially solvable too. Just tell the user what address book a contact belongs to!
That's what leads to the confusion. All the program is telling me is that there are two contacts with the same name, nickname, phone number, and birthday. But the contacts differed on email and notes. The UI feedback tells me "Apple doesn't know how to do a trivial database query" not "Apple doesn't want to destructively merge these contacts because they are in different address books." That is actually not an obvious thing and I chased multiple other issues first. This is especially bad because in my calendar I had 3 entries for this person's birthday and 3 contacts. 2 were linked to my iCloud address book and 1 to Google (by ctrl clicking on the date, but maybe (in hindsight) that's not actually accurate). I somehow got it down to two, which resulted in 4 birthdays on my calendar! That actually created a false flag because now the icons showed as of 1 was from google and now 3 from iCloud, with all 3 no longer linking to a contact. The feedback the programs are giving me is "Apple can't merge tables", right? Or at least that's a reasonable interpretation.
I think theres a relatively simple solution to this. 1) indicate on the contact card which address book the contact belongs to. 2) "Find duplicates" queries across address books. Present the option "link contacts" instead of "merge". It's obviously reasonable that a user would want this as you have that capability for a reason. I honestly think "merge" could be "link" in most cases, because depending on the data structure those will be equivalent (you reference a node. That node has children pointing to the different tables). I agree, you shouldn't delete data, but there's also likely no reason to (yes delete if you have duplicate pointers pointing to the same object unless these pointers are aliases)
The same idea applies to calendar events. I missed a ton of events when I first switched to an iPhone because I'll look at my calendar and see 3 copies of "Columbus Day" and 1 "Indigenous People's Day" (Apple does both!) and not what I had scheduled for 10am. The only solution I have is to disable the holiday tables from my Google calendar and outlook. Effectively that's "deleting" data. This looks like a fine solution but those calendars aren't identical. As a user I want the union. I want deduplication. Because who wants redundant information? It's clearly not something the user is intending (at least in this case). That's going to be true for things like birthdays too (which I'd be happy to import). Apple doesn't even distinguish that as a separate table for my Google calendar so I'm stuck with dupes.
Effectively it is a display issue. As a user that's what's critical to me because that's what makes the program useful. As a programmer, yeah, I care about details but my tech illiterate parents don't.
Tldr: who said anything about deleting data?
With Apple, it is "Do things the Apple way, or not at all".
Well kinda, you don't have to use all that much Apple software on macs though. If you can live with the window manager / desktop environment then you can use whichever apps you choose for pretty anything else.
If on MyHomeSSID:
Host FooComputer
Hostname 192.168.1.123
Else If tailscale-is-running
Host FooComputer
Hostname 100.64.0.123
How would you accomplish this? Well actually, I don't know ANYMORE[2]. The linked thread had a solution that worked, but `ipconfig getsummary en0` now redacts the SSID (even when running sudo!). Though `system_profiler SPAirPortDataType` still works and I can get the result in 4 seconds... So not actually a solution. Yet it shows the idiocracy and inconsistency of Apple's tooling. There was a solution, then Apple changed it. wtallis helped me find a different solution, and well... then Apple changed it. YET `system_profiler` still doesn't redact the SSID so what is going on? Why is it even redacted in the first place? I can just throw my cursor up to the top right of the screen and see the SSID information. If it was a security issue then I should not be able to view that information in GUI OR CLI and it would be a big concern if I could see it in some unprivileged programs but not in others.
And that's the problem with Apple. If I write some script to do some job, I don't know if that script is going to work in 6mo because some person decided they didn't want that feature. So I can find some other command to do the exact same thing and end up playing a game of Wack-a-mole. *It is absolutely infuriating.* This is what I mean by "constantly punching you in the face". The machine fights you and that's not okay.
[0] I put in quotes because the example I'm about to give is to some "complex" but others "dead simple". I'd actually say the latter is true
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41596818
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41633547
[side note] I've used a similar SSID trick to write myself a "phone home" program in termux for Android and other machines. I can get my GPS coordinates and other information there so you can just write a <50 line program to ping a trusted machine if your device doesn't check in to trusted locations within certain timeframes. Sure, there's FindMy, but does that give me a history? I can't set an easing function to track if my device is on the move. Can I remote into the lost machine? Can I get it to take pictures or audio to help me locate it? Can I force on tailscale or some other means for me to get in without the other person also having technical knowledge? Why not just have a backup method in case one fails? I'm just trying to give this as an example of something that has clear utility and is normally simple to write.
I don't agree with OP's sentiment that macOS is a bad dev environment, but surely I prefer Linux+KDE as an overall dev environment. I find that all the tools I need are there but that I'm fighting the UI/UX enough to make it a hassle relative to KDE.
This sounds like you think macOS is a good dev environment, but that you personally don't like the UI/UX (always safer to make UI/UX judgements subjective ["I don't like"] rather than objective ["it's bad"], since it's so difficult to evaluate objectively, e.g., compared to saying something like Docker doesn't run natively on macOS, which is just an objective fact).
Sounds more like a you problem...
I don't. I'm constantly shifting between my Linux desktop and a Mac for work. I also picked up a personal MBP with as much RAM as Apple allowed (still far overpriced and limited options) about a year and a half ago. While I don't regret it, it's still not my first choice.
If there's "endless options for local dev on a Mac" then I don't know how to describe the flexibility that a decent laptop running Linux gives you, comparatively. Honestly I think the Mac only excels in one area still today and that is: the breath of their paid for software library. The polish of Mac used to be the draw, but OS X has degraded over the years as Apple shifts to unify IOS and OS X. And don't get me started on the garbage that iCloud is that Apple continues to force feed harder and harder having, clearly, taken cues from the Windows team in Redmond.
I'm really hopeful we start to see more ARM options in non-Mac laptop formats soon. Because, while trivial, it is nice to be able to run small models for a variety of reasons.
It is interesting though that I see a "huge share of devs" using a Mac to write code targeting Linux environments when they could actually simplify their development environment by ditching Mac. To each their own.
Really wish someone could have figured out something a bit better in that space in particular. Docker compose is a "least worst" option for setting up a project with devs when many are uncomfortable with other solutions, but it really takes the oxygen out of anything that might "work"
The hardware was great, but life on a Mac always felt a bit convoluted. Updating the OS was especially frustrating as a software developer because of all the interdependent bits (xcode, brew, etc) that often ended up breaking my dev environment in some way. It also always amazed me at the stuff that was missing. Like, how isn't the default terminal app fully functional after all these years? On the plus side, over the time I used it they did add tiling and the ability to hide the notch.
Finally at the start of the year I moved back to Linux and couldn't be happier. Had forgotten just how nice it is to have everything I need out of the box. The big thing I miss is Affinity Photo, though that looks like it's in the middle of dying right now.
* Finder - this is my most hated piece of software. It doesn't display the full file path and no easy way to copy it
* I still haven't figured out how to do cut/paste - CMD + X didn't work for me
* No Virtualbox support for Apple Silicon (last checked 1 year ago)
* Weird bugs when running Rancher Desktop + Docker on Apple Silicon
But still Apple hardware is unbeatable. My 2015 Macbook pro lasted 10 years and the M1 is also working well even after 4 years.
There's also a couple of open source VM utilities. UTM, tart, QEMU, Colima, probably others.
* Finder - this is my most hated piece of software. It doesn't display the full file path and no easy way to copy it
View -> Show Path Bar to display the full path of a file.
When a file is selected, press Option-Cmd-C to copy the full file path. Or just drag the file anywhere that expects a string (like the Terminal, or here). That strikes me as quite easy.
Cmd-X, -C, -V work as expected, what exactly is the problem? (Note that macOS, unlike Windows, doesn't allow to cut & paste files to avoid loss of the file in case the operation isn't completed. However, you can copy (Cmd-C), then use Option-Cmd-V to paste & move.)
Now, that might not be completely easy to discover (though, when you press Option the items in the Edit menu change to reveal both "tricks" described above, and contain the keyboard shortcut).
At any rate: when switching OS, is it too much to ask to spend a few minutes online to find out how common operations are achieved on the new OS?
But really, I just don't use that many desktop apps (or at least, not generic ones) so I don't have much of an issue on MacOS.
These days I am also now working from home full time, so it kinda hit me. "Why the hell am I trying to work from this MacBook when I have my really great gaming desktop that runs Linux now?" Moved my work over and have been incredibly happy.
I'll have to give the Fedora Asahi Remix a go on my MacBook Pro though. That's a great idea!
It has improved a bit over the years and is generally fine if you just need to knock out a few commands. But I don't find it to be a very pleasurable experience compared to the alternatives. It feels very much like Apple implemented "just enough" and no more.
The window manager. I'm not a fan of all the animations and needing to gester between screens (and yes, I've been down the hotkeys rabbit hole). To install a 3rd party window manager, you need to disable some security setting because appearantly they work by injecting into the display manager and calling private APIs.
Specifically for this, there's Aerospace (https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace) which does not require disabling SIP, intentionally by the dev.
For using the vanilla macOS workspaces though, if you avoid using full screen apps (since those go to their on ephemeral workspace that you can't keybind for some stupid reason), if you create a fixed amount of workspaces you can bind keyboard shortcuts to switch to them. I have 5 set up, and use Ctrl+1/2/3/4/5 to switch between isntead of using gestures.
Apart from that, I use Raycast to set keybindings for opening specific applications. You can also bind apple shortcuts that you make.
Still not my favorite OS over Linux, but I've managed to make it work because I love the hardware, and outside of $dayjob I do professional photography and the adobe suite runs better here than even my insanely overspeced gaming machine on Windows.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves as local LLMs become mainstream and support for local hardware matures. Perhaps, the energy efficiency of the Apple Neural Engine will widen the moat, or perhaps NPUs like those in Ryzen chips will close the gap.
I still don't have it fully set up
Highly recommend doing nix + nix-darwin + home-manager to make this declarative. Easier to futz around with.
Though if you don't like Nixlang it will of course be a chore to learn/etc. It was for me.
Really useful for debugging though
I've poked around articles and other posts about this, but I'm not sure I quite get it.
If I just need to install packages, would brew just work for me?
I have a collection of bash scripts in my dotfiles for setting things up, and I've been meaning to adapt them for my linux laptop. It seems like Nix may be helpful here!
The OS also has weird rough edges when used from the terminal - there are read-only parts, there are restrictions on loading libraries, multiple utilities come with very old versions or BSD versions with different flags than the GNU ones you might be used to coming from Linux, the package manager is pretty terrible. There are things (e.g. installing drivers to be able to connect to ESP32 devices) that require jumping through multiple ridiculous hoops. Some things are flat out impossible. Each new OS update brings new restrictions "for your safety" that are probably good for the average consumer, but annoying for people using the device for development/related.
The OS also has weird rough edges when used from the terminal - there are read-only parts, there are restrictions on loading libraries, multiple utilities come with very old versions or BSD versions with different flags than the GNU ones you might be used to coming from Linux, the package manager is pretty terrible.
You use nix or brew (or something like MacPorts).
And they are mighty fine.
You shouldn't be concerned with the built-in utilities.
I've had it make major (with breaking changes) updates to random software when asked to install something unrelated.
System-wide dependencies installed via home manager, and project-related installed via nix flakes which is created on project basis
I can spin up a new identical environment on new macos in 15 mins
the workarounds on the internet are like "just build the image so that it uses the same uid you use on your host" which is batshot crazy advice.
i have no idea how people use docker on other platforms where this doesn't work properly. One of our devs has a linux host and was unable to use our dev stack and we couldn't find a workaround. Luckily he's a frontend dev and eventually just gave up using the dev stack in favour of running requestly to forward frontend from prod to his local tooling.
Things I prefer: Raycast + it's plugins compared to the linux app search tooling, battery life, performance. Brew vs the linux package managers I don't notice much of a difference.
Things that are basically the same: The dev experience (just a shell and my dotfiles has it essentially the same between OS's)
It may seem like a small thing, but when you have literal decades of muscle memory working against you, it's not that small.
What messes me up when I'm working on a linux machine is not being able to do things like copy/paste text from the terminal with a hotkey combo because there is no CMD-C, and CTRL-C already has a job other than copying.
IMO apple really messed up by putting the FN key in the bottom left corner of the keyboard instead of CTRL. Those keys get swapped on every Mac I buy.
I agree on the Fn key positioning... I hate it in the corner and tend to zoom in when considering laptops for anyone just in case. I've also had weird arrow keys on the right side in a laptop keyboard where I'd hit the up arrow instead of the right shift a lot in practice... really messed up test area input.
But in the end the biggest thing to remember is in MacOS a window is not the application. In Windows or in many Linux desktop apps, when you close the last or root window you've exited the application. This isn't true in MacOS, applications can continue running even if they don't currently display any windows. That's why there's the dot at the bottom under the launcher and why you can alt+tab to them still. If you alt+tab to an app without a window the menu bar changes to that app's menu bar.
I remember back to my elementary school computer lab with the teacher reminding me "be sure to actually quit the application in the menu bar before going to the next lesson, do not just close" especially due to the memory limitations at the time.
I've found once I really got that model of how applications really work in MacOS it made a good bit more sense why the behaviors are the way they are.
What "permission headaches"?
I know that it's possible to script that since Homebrew handles it automatically, but if you just want to use a specific app outside of Homebrew, experience is definitely worse than on Linux/Windows.
I'm often envious of these Macbook announcements, as the battery life on my XPS is poor (~2ish hours) when running Ubuntu. (No idea if it's also bad on Windows - as I haven't run it in years).
Thanks for the heads-up.
MacOS is great for development. Tons of high profile devs, from Python and ML, to JS, Java, Go, Rust and more use it - the very people who headline major projects for those languages.
2ish hours battery life is crazy. It's 8+ hours with the average Macbook.
It's 8+ hours with the average Macbook.
Did I get a dud? I rarely get over 2.5
Have you checked your Battery Health?
If you have an intel-based Mac, it's the same expected battery life as Windows and 2.5 hours on an intel MacBook battery sounds decent for something 5+ years old.
Gaming is another story though, or any other uses that put a lot of stress the GPU.
I had been a Linux notebook user for many years and have praised it on this board years ago. But today the Linux desktop has regressed into a piece of trash even for basic command line usage while providing zero exclusive apps worth using. It's really sad since it's unforced and brought upon Linux users by overzealous developers alone.
Mac OS trounces Linux in absolutely every way on the desktop it's not even funny: performance, battery life, apps, usability, innovation. Available PC notebook HW is a laughable value compared to even an entry level Apple MacBook Air. Anecdata but I have no less than five "pro" notebooks (Dell Lattitude, XPS, and Lenovo Thinkpad) come and go with basic battery problems, mechanical touchpad problems, touchpad driver issues, WLAN driver issues, power management issues, gross design issues, and all kind of crap come and go in the last five years so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.
The one thing Mac isn't great for is games, and I think SteamOS/Proton/wine comes along nicely and timely as Windows is finally turning to the dark side entirely.
Mac OS trounces Linux in absolutely every way on the desktop it's not even funny: performance, battery life, apps, usability, innovation.
performance - I don't agree battery life - absolutely apps - absolutely usability - I don't agree innovation - I don't agree
One significant annoyance associated with Linux on a laptop is that configuring suspend-then-hibernate is an arduous task, whereas it just works on a Macbook.
But, the main thing is commercial application support.
With HN, Linux user comments are voted-up so often that they're worthy of a bingo square.
My 2012 MPB still lives on running debian (not ideal because some driver quirks, but miles better in terms of responsiveness and doing actual work on it than whatever OSX i could put on it)
I honestly agree with the parent. I'd love a macbook M because the hardware is simply fantastic, but if i can't put debian on it, then i'll pass
Some of this is probably brew not being as useful as apt, and some more of it is probably me not being as familiar with the Mac stuff, but it's definitely something I noticed when I switched.
The overall (graphical) UI is much fluider and more convenient than Linux though.
The problem is their philosophy. Somewhere along the way, Apple decided users should be protected from themselves. My laptop now feels like a leased car with the hood welded shut. Forget hardware upgrades, I can’t even speed up animations without disabling SIP. You shouldn’t have to jailbreak your own computer just to make it feel responsive.
Their first-party apps have taken a nosedive too. They’ve stopped being products and started being pipelines, each one a beautifully designed toll booth for a subscription. What used to feel like craftsmanship now feels like conversion-rate optimization.
I’m not anti-Apple. I just miss when their devices felt like instruments, not appliances. When you bought a Mac because it let you create, not because it let Apple curate.
I just want shit to work, and most modern devs function many levels above the OS most of the time. Stuff I write is gonna run in a browser, a phone or a containerized cloud env. I don’t care about how configurable my OS is I just want to do my work and sign off.
My work got me a similar M4 MacBook Pro early this year, and I find the friction high enough that I rarely use it. It is, at best, an annoying SSH over VPN client that runs the endpoint-management tools my IT group wants. Otherwise, it is a paperweight since it adds nothing for me.
The rest of the time, I continue to use Fedora on my last gen Thinkpad P14s (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U). Or even my 5+ year old Thinkpad T495 (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U), though I can only use it for scratch stuff since it has a sporadic "fan error" that will prevent boot when it happens.
But, I'm not doing any local work that is really GPU dependent. If I were, I'd be torn between chasing the latest AMD iGPU that can use large (but lower bandwidth) system RAM versus rekindling my old workstation habit to host a full size graphics card. It would depend on the details of what I needed to run. I don't really like the NVIDIA driver experience on Linux, but have worked with it in the past (when I had a current gen Titan X) but also did OpenCL on several vendors.
Also, note that thunderbolt not yet supported[2].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20241219125418/https://social.tr... [1] https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/issues/262 [2] https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overvie...
but local dev on a Mac is not fun
What are the differences though? I have mbpr and a pc with Fedora on it and I barely see any differences aside from sandboxing in my atomic Kinoite setup and different package manager.
People often hating on brew but as a backend dev I haven't encountered any issues for years.
There isn't a "dev switch" in macOS, so you have to know which setting is getting in your way. Apple doesn't like to EVER show error alerts if at all possible to suppress, so when things in your dev environment fail, you don't know why.
If you're a seasoned dev, you have an idea why and can track it down. If you're learning as you go or new to things, it can be a real problem to figure out if the package/IDE/runtime you're working with is the problem or if macOS Gatekeeper or some other system protection is in the way.
I much prefer a framework and the repairability aspect. However, if it's going to sound like a jet engine and have half the battery life of a new m series Mac. Then I feel like there's really no option if I want solid battery life and good performance.
Mac has done a great job here. Kudos to you, Mac team!
https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overvie...
> To any Linux users,
Since I mostly live in the terminal (ghostty) or am using the web browser I usually don't have to deal with stupid Apple decisions. Though I've found it quite painful to try to do some even basic things when I want to use my Macbook like I'd use a linux machine. Especially since the functionality can change dramatically after an update... I just don't get why they (and other companies) try to hinder power users so much. I understand we're small in numbers, but usually things don't follow flat distributions.
> I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections
I think what ends up being more complicated is when a program has a different name under a distro or version[2]. Though that can be sorted out by a little scripting. This definitely isn't the most efficient way to do things but I write like this so that things are easier to organize, turn on/off, or for me to try new things.
What I find more of a pain in the ass is how commands like `find`[3] and `grep` differ. But usually there are ways you can find to get them to work identically across platforms.
> Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.
[0] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...
[1] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...
[2] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...
[3] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/tree/master/rc_fil...
Linux is too ugly for me to use as my main device. Same with what I’ve seen of Android.
Unless you're talking about the look of the physical machine. Well then that's an easier fix ;)
I can write up all the details, but it's well covered on a recent linuxmatters.sh and Martin did a good job of explaining what I'm feeling: https://linuxmatters.sh/65/
For your dotfiles there's not too many differences just make a separate entry point for zsh that only includes the zsh + macOS things (a few system calls are different in macOS) and then set your .zshrc to load the zsh + macOS version instead of the Linux or "universal" one. This is trivial if you've split your dotfiles into multiple separate files to import individually from a central master file per OS.
For window management you want to use CMD + ` to switch windows in the same app and CMD + Tab to switch apps. You also want to utilize the touch gestures for App Expose and Mission Control.
The only thing that's still wonky is the touchpad Natural Scroll vs the mouse wheel scroll, there's a third party "Scroll Reverser" app that can give you normal mouse wheel scroll and Natural Scroll on the touchpad at the same time. Hopefully some day Apple will make that a native feature.
Stop trying to install third party window managers.
I really liked Windows when WSL came out, but the direction Microsoft seems to be going makes me want to run the other way.
Windows or macOS... for the hardware working well, generally just works as expected. The tradeoffs you make with each, are different. But it's usually not a hardware thing, as to why (in my experience).
I just put Linux on a 5th-gen ThinkPad P1. It works... mostly. Sound works... at about 50% volume of what Windows or macOS would output. This has consistently been an issue with me, every time I've tried to use Linux on the desktop.
It ends up being some set of compromises to use Linux.
And when video is a frequent part of my work and personal use... the quality of it on Linux just doesn't cut it.
For server usage... forget it. Linux wins, hands down. Zero contest. :D
Unfortunately I do a lot of C++… I hate the hoops you have to go through to not use the Apple Clang compiler.
Now with Swift, and the whole security legistation ongoing issues across several countries, Apple seems to only care to the extent it needs for their uses of LLVM, Metal Shading Language (C++14 dialect), and IO / Driver Kit frameworks.
They aren't contributing to clang as they once were, Google also not after the whole ABI break discussion.
On Windows land, it isn't much better, it appears that after getting first place reaching C++20 compliance, Microsoft decided to invest their programming language budgets on .NET, Rust and Go, asking the community what features that actually care about in newer standards.
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Implement-C23-...
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Implement-C26-...
So it is going to be hard going forward, expecting the very latest features on the three major compilers, when the contributions get reduced.
I'll probably replace it with a framework at some point in the near future.
I kind of did the opposite. I have a first-gen Framework and really enjoy it, but WOW that thing runs scorchingly hot and loud. Too hot to put on your lap even doing basic workflows. Battery life is also horrible, maybe ~4 hours if you're doing any sort of heavy work, ~6 hours if you're just browsing the web. Did I mention it's loud? The fans spin up and they sound like a jet engine. The speaker on it is also substandard if that matters to you - it's inside the chassis and has no volume or bass.
Last year I replaced it with an M4 Pro Macbook and the difference is night and day. The Macbook stays cool, quiet, and has 10+ hour battery life doing the same sort of work. The trade-off is not being able to use Linux (yes, I know about Asahi, the tradeoffs are not worth it) but I have yet to find anything that I can't do on linux.
I also _despise_ the macOS window manager. It's so bad.
Here's my repository: https://github.com/lkdm/dotfiles
I use Linux at work and for gaming, and Mac OS for personal stuff. They both build from the same dotfiles repository.
Some things I've learned is:
- Manually set Mac's XDG paths to be equal to your Linux ones. It's much less hassle than using the default system ones.
- See my .profile as an example on how I do this: https://github.com/lkdm/dotfiles/blob/main/dot_profile.tmpl
- Add Mac OS specific $PATH locations /bin, /usr/sbin, /sbin
- Do NOT use Docker Desktop. It's terrible. Use the CLI version, or use the OrbStack GUI application if you must.
- If you use iCloud, make a Zsh alias for the iCloud Drive base directory
- Mac OS ships with outdated bash and git. If you use bash scripts with `#!/usr/bin/env bash`, you should install a newer version of bash with brew, and make sure Homebrew's opt path comes before the system one, so the new bash is prioritised.
I hope this is helpful to you, so feel free to ask me anything about how I set up my dotfiles.
I'm as much of a fan of Mac OS as the next Linux user here, but it's a very decent hypervisor and Stuff Just Works out of the box, for the most time. No more screwing around with half-baked qemu wrappers for me, vfio, virgl and what not. And running stuff without virtualization is a non-starter for me, I've been concerned about supply chain attacks before it became fashionable. Of course it would be even nicer if new Macs could run Linux natively, and I hope Asahi project will succeed with that, but until then I'm pretty happy running Linux desktop virtualized on it.
arm64 support is very decent across all the different OS now, I hardly miss Intel. I can even reasonably play most AAA games up to maybe mid-2010s on a Windows VM that's just a three finger swipe away from my main Linux desktop.
Note that there certainly are quirks around arm64, however, coming from windows, i am no stranger to have to deal with such issues so they bother me less.
The best thing is, that i can confidently put mac into my backpack without worries of it performing a suicide due to not-fully-sleeping (common windowns issue)
(I have a handful of patches in DynamoRIO.)
To install a 3rd party window manager you need to disable some security setting
Depends what you mean by window manager, but an app like Magnet does not require disabling security settings.
but i absolutely hate MacOS26, my next laptop won't be a macbook
It's a shame what they did to this awesome hardware with a crappy update
Also for dev, set up your desired environment in a native container and then just remote into it with your terminal of choice. (Personally recommend Ghostty with Zellij or Tmux)
Everything is just slightly different. I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections. Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.
This seems like a very unfair complaint. macOS is not Linux. Its shell environment is based on Darwin which is distantly related to BSD. It has no connection to Linux, except for its UNIX certification.
As a Linux user, I sometimes dream about the Apple hardware, and I tell myself "How hard can it be to get used to MacOS?! It has a shell after all!". The OP reminded me that it can be quite difficult.
Sorry you made your first gen chip so good that I don't feel the need to upgrade lol.
Sorry you made your first gen chip so good that I don't feel the need to upgrade
M1 MacBooks are ~5 years old at this point, and if you've been working a laptop hard for 5 years it's often worth getting an upgrade for battery life as well as speed.
But I'd say that how much it's used is also an important factor.
The lower power and heat of M-devices might result in meaningfully longer battery life, and I'm curious to find out.
I haven't booted up the older M1 recently to check, but I remember it was throwing replace battery warnings well before I got the upgrade and that I think that triggering below 80%.
I use Al Dente to further optimize battery and calibrate it now and then
Also, the majority of time it’s been in my van, which is pretty chilly most of the time.
From my understanding, battery health is based on use and environment.
2. Batteries age faster in the beginning and then their ageing rate plateaus. It's the same for electric cars. E.g. a Tesla can lose 5% efficiency in the first 30k miles, but will lose the next 5% over 60k+.
It'll probably be around $200-$300 if you want an official battery. More like half that if you're willing to accept a 3rd party one.
Even if a local shop somehow sourced a legit, new Apple battery, why wouldn't I go to the Apple Store if it's the same cost and would only be the battery?
(For $299, Apple replaces the speakers, touchpad, batteries, top case, and keyboard and provides a parts and labor warranty for 90 days)
Then it started having issues waking up from sleep. Only the OG Apple charger could wake it up, then it would see it actually had 40-60% battery but something had gone wrong while sleeping and it thought it was empty.
Intel MacBooks had terrible SMC issues, so maybe this won't afflict the M-series. Just sharing because I could still use that MacBook a few hours between charged, it just couldn't be trusted to wake up without a charger. That's really inconvenient and got me to upgrade combined with new features.
No fan noise, no warmth, unless you are really really pushing it.
in terms of speed, it makes it feel like the original retina did when they first came out. oh and a pretty fast disk as well.
Chip, memory and storage are really fast, but I’m fully convinced that the OS is crippling these machines.
Used it for a week and came to the same conclusion, I felt absolutely no difference in day to day usage except that the MBA is nice and slim. And better battery.
I'm still doing fine with a 16gb M1 Air, I mostly VPN+SSH to my home desktop when I need more oomph anyway. It lasts a full day, all week when you just check email on vacation once a day.
My colleagues on m3/m4 have a night and day difference in programming performance.
CPU, memory bandwidth, latencies, working on javascript projects that involve countless IOs on small files...It really shows. I can't wait for the upgrade.
The M5 is expected to be ~4150 and MT of ~15500
And nearly 3x speed for SSD.
And yet there is nothing about the new MacBook Pro ( on M4 at least ) that feels faster. I would much rather pay for macOS upgrade that increase performance rather than useless features after features.
edit: suggested retail price also dropped with EUR 100. Mind is less blown now. It seems like a good thing in fact.
edit2: in Belgium, the combined price of the 70W adapter and 2m USB-C to MagSafe is EUR 120.
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-macbook-pro-does-no...
USB-C chargers are everywhere now. Monitors with USB-C or Thunderbolt inputs will charge your laptop, too. I bought a monitor that charges over the USB-C cable and I haven’t use the charger that came with the laptop in years because I have a smaller travel charger that I prefer for trips anyway.
You don’t have to buy the premium Apple charger and cable. There are many cheap options.
I already have a box of powerful USB-C chargers I don’t use. I don’t need yet another one to add to the pile.
Had a similar issue with my 2018 MBP Intel - the 86/87 Watt Apple charger was the only thing it would come to life with as the battery aged if the device got too low.
In 2018 I had a phone that entered a boot loop: battery depleted, plug it in, it automatically starts booting, it stops charging while booting, it dies due to depletion, it recognises it’s plugged in and starts charging, boot, stop, die, start, boot, stop, die… I tried every combination of the four or five cables that I had with a car USB power adapter and someone’s power bank, nothing worked. Diverted on my way home (an 8 hour journey) to buy another phone because I needed one the next day. When I got home, I tried two or three power adapters with all the cables and finally found one combination that worked. I learned the lesson that day that allowing devices to deplete completely can be surprisingly hazardous.
In my experience a low-power charger will revive, you just must wait for it to hit enough SOC since it is effectively starting off the battery. This does take a while, but starting dead on a supply that can't guarantee enough power would be dumb.
Even a Studio Display, which can provide more power than my M1 Pro can use, won't wake it from this state. Apple wants $300 for a replacement battery so I'll just buy a new MacBook at that price, but the charger situation doesn't bode well for M5 MacBook buyers who wonder why their Mac is dead one day (and they just need the exact charger the system wants, but Apple didn't provide it)
Apple wants $300 for a replacement battery
Looks like iFixit shows thinks it's only a "moderate" difficulty replacement and should only cost you $109
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+14-Inch+2021+Batter...
I don't want to use a 3rd party battery in a device I carry with me most places I go...
USB-C chargers are everywhere now
USB-C 15W Chargers may be everywhere, but higher power charger required for MacBook Pro is not.
I would have agreed if the devices is using 10W or 20W where you could charge it slightly slower. Not for a 70W to 100W MacBook Pro though.
2. a 15w charger will charge your macbook pro fine, slowly, but fine. I had to charge mine few times on a mobile one and you can work plugged or it will charge easy over night
Premium phones and notebooks have been released with powerful chargers
Which phones released with charger that powerful enough to charge macbook when using. And must be PD compliance too.
I actually have very few USB-C chargers. With everyone leaving them out of the box, I don’t happen to have a bunch of them by chance. They took them out of the box before giving time for people to acquire them organically. I never bought a single lightning cable, but almost all my USB-C cables had to be purchased. This is not great, considering how confusing the USB-C spec is.
Other than the one that came with my M1 MBP (which I will lose when I sell it), I have had to purchase every charger I have.
Not being able to charge a $1,500+ laptop without buying a separate accessory is crazy to me. I’ve also seen many reports over the years comparing Apple chargers to cheap 3rd party ones where there are significant quality differences, to the point of some of the 3rd party ones being dangerous or damaging. I don’t know why Apple would want to open the door to more of that.
I assume a lot of people will use a phone charger, then call support or leave bad reviews, because the laptop is losing battery while plugged in. Most people don’t know what kind of charger they need for their laptop. My sister just ordered a MacBook Air a couple weeks ago and called me to help order, and one of the questions was about the charger, because there were options for different chargers, which confused her and had her questioning if one even came with it or if she had to pick one of the options. This is a bad user experience. She’s not a totally clueless user either. She’s not a big techie, but in offices she used to work with, she was the most knowledgeable and was who they called when the server had issues. She also opened up and did pretty major surgery on her old MacBook Air after watching a couple YouTube videos. So I’d say at least 50% of people know less than her on this stuff.
Apple positions themselves as the premium product in the market and easy to use for the average user. Not including the basics to charge the internal battery is not premium or easy. I can see it leading to reputational damage.
Takes like 10 hours and isn't officially supported I think, but it does work.
On the go, I've bought a small GaN with multiple ports. At home, I already have all of my desks wired up with a Usb-c charger.
This is especially true for someone moving up to an MBP from an MBA, which takes less juice.
When it was announced, I expected it to be at least 4000 AUD (~2600 USD). When I heard it was starting at 1500 USD instead (~2300 AUD), I was astonished and very excited. And it still is that price… but only in the US. In Australia it is 4000 AUD (the 32GB/1TB model, which is 1700 USD, ~2600 AUD). So I sadly didn’t get one.
Is the rest of the world subsidising the US market, or are they just profiteering in the rest of the world?
Americans pay the same amount, but… stochastically.
PS: Health care is similar. Australians pay a fairly predictable amount via taxes and Medicare, Americans gamble with bankruptcy every time they break a leg. But hey, if they don’t break a leg then the “system works”!
People in other countries will get pissed but ultimately suck it up and buy a product. People in America will take it as a personal offense due to the current Maoist-style cult of personality, and you'll get death threats and videos of them shooting your products posted onto social media. Just look at what happened to that beer company. No such thing would happen in Germany.
The world is essentially subsidizing the tariffs for Americans.
I was told the opposite thing would happen. Sounds like a great deal for us Americans!
Under EU rules, if the goods you buy turn out to be faulty or do not look or work as advertised, the seller must repair or replace them at no cost. If this is impossible or the seller cannot do it within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you, you are entitled to a full or partial refund. You always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee from the moment you received the goods. However, national rules in your country may give you extra protection.The 2-year guarantee period starts as soon as you receive your goods.
If a defect becomes apparent within 1 year of delivery, you don't have to prove it existed at the time of delivery. It is assumed that it did unless the seller can prove otherwise. In some EU countries, this period of “reversed burden of proof” is 2 years.
where in the US it's only 90 days
As far as I know, the US has zero warranty laws. It can be zero days.
https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/embedded-mac-w...
Chargers don’t change quickly. If I lost my charger from 2019, the ideal replacement in 2025 would be literally exactly the same model—and mine still works like new and looks good. I have nothing to gain from buying a new charger.
We should be cheering the EU for ending an abuse that the US has long failed to.
Also, it still bundles a USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable.
If you sell your old laptop when you buy a new one, you generally sell it with old charger. And different Apple laptops take chargers of different maximum watts (they're compatible but not optimal), so they're not all the same anyways.
There's a reason they generally make sense to bundle. Especially with laptop chargers, which provide a whole lot more power than some random little USB-C charger you might have. Sometimes letting the free market decide actually gives customers what they want and find most useful.
If you sell your old laptop when you buy a new one, you generally sell it with old charger.
Sounds like a symptom of incompatibility. I’ve only ever included the charger when it was specific to the laptop.
And different Apple laptops take chargers of different maximum watts (they're compatible but not optimal), so they're not all the same anyways.
Chargers automatically provide whatever power level is needed, up to their max, and charging power isn’t the steady tick upward we’re used to elsewhere. The MacBook Pro did get a faster charger a few years ago, relegating old ones to that “compatible but not optimal” state, but meanwhile MacBook Air chargers got slower, and most releases didn’t change the charger. Certainly there are sometimes benefits to buying a new charger, but it happens much less often than new device purchases, and even when there are benefits purchases should still be the customer’s choice.
Sometimes letting the free market decide actually gives customers what they want and find most useful.
I agree, but “free market” doesn’t mean lawlessness, it means an actual market that’s actually free. Actual market: companies compete on economics, not e.g. violence or leverage over consumers. Actually free: consumers freely choose between available options. Bundling is a very classic example of an attempt to circumvent free market economics, using the greater importance of one choice to dictate a second choice.
Bundling is a very classic example of an attempt to circumvent free market economics, using the greater importance of one choice to dictate a second choice.
Only when there's no competition and you can use that to abuse market power.
But competition for laptops is strong. Most consumers want their laptops to come with a charger, even if you personally don't. That's why they're sold that way.
Like, nobody says the free market is failing because Coke forces me to buy carbonated H2O along with their syrup at the grocery store. The market prefers it when they're bundled.
Most consumers want their laptops to come with a charger, even if you personally don't. That's why they're sold that way.
Citation needed, on both counts. Plenty of counter-examples in this thread. Non-tech people I know aren’t charger crazed, they’re mildly amused or annoyed by their inexplicable excess of chargers.
Like, nobody says the free market is failing because Coke forces me to buy carbonated H2O along with their syrup at the grocery store.
I’d say it is indeed failed / nonexistent there, it’s just that nobody cares, because its potential benefit is so small it’s outweighed by overhead. Chargers aren’t laptops or cars or houses, but, as you said, there’s a lot more to them, and they’re more expensive and contribute significantly to e-waste. There actually is a charger market, and it’s better when it’s more free.
To be clear, the healthier market I’m envisioning is one where consumers can make charger purchasing decisions freely, not one where nobody’s allowed to also offer a bundle.
Non-tech people I know aren’t charger crazed, they’re mildly amused or annoyed by their inexplicable excess of chargers.
"Charger crazed"? Huh?
They're amused by too many cheap underpowered phone and small device chargers. Not laptop chargers. Those are bigger and you don't usually have any extra.
There isn't much of a "charger market" for laptops, except people who want a second one for a second location. I've never heard of anybody with a Macbook who wanted to buy a non-Apple charger instead. And now Magsafe is back!
Like, my Macbook also bundles a keyboard, a screen, a trackpad, a battery, and so forth. Sure the charger isn't connected with adhesive, but it's still a unified product. You need a charger to use a Macbook, and most people don't have an extra laptop charger with enough power otherwise.
Forcing them to be sold separately for laptops is just silly.
I'll take the discount and use one of my 12 existing USB-C chargers.
Don't forget the environmental impact of a smaller box
Compared to the marginal environmental impact to source materials, build hardware and parts, assemble, ship, stock, and transport to customer each unit, the box could be 10x larger and it wouldn't make a dent.
ship ... the box could be 10x larger and it wouldn't make a dent
This is not how shipping works.
A larger box, even by 1 inch on any direction, absolutely makes a huge difference when shipping in manufacturing quantities. Let's not pretend physical volume doesn't exist just to make an argument.
10 planes flying with MacBooks == much different than 1 plane (in other words, when you 10x the size of something, as you suggest, it does actually have a huge impact)
A smaller box allows more to be carried. But if we go that route, it's trivial to ship them without any box and box them domestically - and that's a 2-3x volume reduction right there.
it's trivial to ship them without any box and box them domestically
Ah yeah I can't imagine any scenario where this could go wrong
Like man in the middle attacks
Replacement/fake products
... or you know, damage? Boxes provide... protection.
it's trivial
Anytime you catch yourself thinking something is trivial, you're probably trivializing it (aka think about it more and you'll probably be able to think of a dozen more reasons packaging products is the norm)
Germany: 1758 USD (1512 EUR) without charger.
US: 1599 USD with 70W charger.
This feels like is an insult.
Apparently, in Europe, the box will not contain a charger[1]. This is absolutely mind-blowing to me.
Same, for a laptop??? Really? Wild. You can charge these with USB-C chargers too.
Air’s don’t have to be just cheap. I want a thin and light premium laptop for walking around and a second Mac (of any type) for my desk.
The only possible issue I can think of is battery life, but if I'm carrying around my laptop I can throw a charge cable in the bag to keep my phone juiced.
AT&T is "about as bad" as what? You gave no information.
From what I read, even for x86 laptops, they are for from the best and that’s a really low bar in 2025
Franework [sic] ... they are for from the best [sic] ... from what I read
That's a lot of typos to just repeat someone else's first hand experience you read about. I guess I should have opinions on Airbus vs. Boeing, too -- mind you, I've never flown a plane, but you know, I've read some stuff online so I'm basically an expert.
I know that if they say the laptop last 3 hours on a battery compared to 13+ hours that 13 > 3. I learned that when I was 4 years old.
I also know that if it’s an x86 laptop, that it is going to run hotter than my M2 MacBook Air.
If I read the dimensions of the laptop and read the dimensions of my laptop, I can easily say it’s “bulky”.
But then I don't even care about 5g versus 4g/LTE for the most part, so perhaps I'm just not noticing limits that affect others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier
T-Mobile comes with 5GB of high speed data per month to use for roaming in Canada and Mexico and lower speed data roaming almost anywhere else in the world.
It’s just one of those things that it’s convenient not having to worry about WiFi when we travel and hotel WiFi depending on how busy they are is often pretty bad.
But especially with a laptop, as often as we travel, I don’t think I’ve ever needed to tether to my Mac accept for brief periods of times when our condos shared WiFi went out (I work remotely).
I wouldn’t pay for a separate line for a computer. I am sure others would.
On another note, I did give my mom my previous iPad and kept the data plan so she doesn’t have to worry about WiFi when they take road trips.
The Apple Silicon chips all run in a version of always on these days because the efficiency cores are so, well, efficient.
Additionally, while you may want to burn the battery in multiple devices and deal with having to manage that, I don’t want to.
Apple has been selling cellular iPads since the beginning and I love never having to worry about pairing mine.
Tethering to an iPhone or iPad Is much better than it used to be, but it’s still not perfect.
Apple makes their own modems these days and even with Qualcomm had a capped per device license fee more than covered by the premium they charge for cellular in, say, the iPad.
I know so many people who want this convenience and are willing to pay for it that it just seems like stubbornness at this point that they’re willing to put modems in iPads and not MacBooks.
We're discussing a MacBook someday with a built-in phone, the closest I've found is an iOS device wired to my MacBook as a wired hotspot. It's like having fast wifi everywhere.
Using my personal phone (that I also use for other things like calls) wouldn't be like having wifi everywhere on my Mac, for example if I walk away from my laptop while on the phone the Mac would lose internet.
You sort of have to experience it first hand.
Why carry around two cellular modems?
Why not? If I had both with me, I'd rather just have my phone on Airplane mode preserving the battery and my focus.
Are you ever out and about with your computer but not your phone? I've been happy to hotspot my computers and tablets to my phone, which I always have with me.
I'd really really like to be. The amount of dependence I have on the phone being there at all times is insane. I just want to leave with my laptop and be good to go, no possibility of receiving a call or getting distraced with stupid group chats.
My phone recently died spontaneously, and if I didn't replace it immediately, I can't work online from cafes or anywhere else without depending on the place having open wifi.
I have bought cracked-screen iPhones since Personal Hotspot allowed wired connections back in the 2000s, velcro'd them to the back of my MacBook screen and have been living the "I have internet on my Mac everywhere" life since then. With 5G, I can't really tell when I'm on Wi-Fi vs. when my MacBook opts for the hotspot connection.
I'd love a cellular MacBook and would also insta-buy, but I've given up hope until the next network upgrade.
Apple has over 2.3 billion active devices of which a small percentage are Macs (an estimated 24 million were sold in 2024 and around twice that in iPads).
The most difficult to scale part of a cell network is number of devices connected, not bandwidth used anyway and cellular Macs aren’t going to add significantly more load to a network. And that assumes that Apple even cares what a carrier thinks.
I’m in Australia, not the USA, and for all people like to complain about internet here, we have excellent mobile coverage and it’s relatively affordable, but it’s all priced by usage.
I have 4 devices on my plan with shared 210GB of 4G usage between them for around AUD$200 (USD$130) a month on Australia’s best network (Telstra). I work remotely from cafes a lot (probably around 20-30 hours a week) as a developer and get nowhere close to that usage. I update all my apps, download all my podcasts, listen to lossless music and stream video whenever I want during breaks (although I’m not a huge out-of-home video consumer). I do literally nothing to limit my bandwidth usage and am lucky to use 30-40GB a month across all my devices.
The most difficult to scale part of a cell network is number of devices connected, not bandwidth used
Not a network engineer, but isn't it possible that it's only wasy to scale the number of devices because mobile devices play nice with the network? For example, battery life depends on batching network requests, meaning the incentives are aligned between Google, Apple, and the carriers?
If every device defaults to treating the network like a LAN, like MacOS is accustomed to being able to do, that may change the part of the network that's easy to scale
Anyone who has tethered their machines to a phone with a middling connection knows how bad the computer experience cna get.
Like you mentioned 50 gigs a month per device... when I had to tether my machine for a week I was finding myself using 10 gigs _a day_, and this was ~6 years ago.
Not an argument that this stuff is impossible, of course, but I do think these machines are different beasts.
(I have used the low data mode on macOS, it helps but only handles a small part of the problem)
Yes, I mentioned that in the post you responded to.
Not sure which apps, if any, respect it, but it's there
It reduces data consumption for me about 1/5. Not nothing, but the Mac can easily consume hundreds of GB of data a week doing "normal" activities. YouTube on a MacBook is many times more data than the equivalent on a phone screen.
cracked-screen iPhones
Sheesh, what do you have against MiFi 4G pocket routers?
My craving has been answered by the GPD WIN MAX 2, a 10" mini laptop with lots of ports and bitchin' performance (AI 9 chip sips battery). It's windows, but an upgrade to pro to disable the annoying stuff via group policy + never signing into a Microsoft account, it's amazing how much faster it is than a machine that's always trying to authenticate to the cloud before it does anything. Wake from sleep is also excellent which was the main thing that kept me using MacBooks. Anyway it's the first computer I've bought in a decade that has some innovation to it.
Edit: there's a slot for a cellular modem but I haven't done enough research to find one that will play nice on US networks
I hope this is the case. I don't know if I would buy a cellular MBP (just wouldn't use it enough) but better tethering is a huge win for me.
I just tether to my phone. Wouldn’t that work?
we went from 10 hours to 24 hours in 5 years - impressive
i wonder why they advertise gaming on the laptop, anyone plays anything Meaningful on macbooks?
I'm happy to hear your games work well for you, but it sounds like the games you're playing aren't demanding compared to modern AAA titles. Most games released in the last year or two don't run well on my 2080 test system at anything approaching decent graphics.
Whether or not the M5 GPU is actually capable of that level of performance or whether the drivers will let it reach its potential is of course a completely different story. GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
A 2080 is about the same performance as a 5060
A 5060 outperforms a 2080 by roughly 20% on most titles, across the board, not cherry-picking for the best results. They are not about the same.
you should be able to run at like 1080p High or better
This is disconnected from reality. 1080p low/medium, some games are playable but not enjoyable. Remember, I actually have a 2080, so I'm not just guessing.
GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
Rich coming from someone who claims a 7 year old graphics card is "about the same" as a card which has 2.5x better RayTracing, has 3x faster DLSS, faster VRAM, and much better AI capabilities. The 2080 can't even encode/decode AV1...
This is disconnected from reality. 1080p low/medium, some games are playable but not enjoyable.
Is it? Most people care the game is fun which is unrelated to the settings you use (framerates do impact enjoyability though for fast paced games).
Even visually, the difference between settings hasn't been significant for decades at this point.
5060 outperforms a 2080 by roughly 20%
Is this a typo? I’m surprised the difference is so small after 3 generations.
A NVIDIA 2080 graphics card from 2018 still surpasses the M5 for gaming.
How much energy does it burn while surpassing the M5?
What you can't do is run them expecting to have every detail knob maxed out and very high framerates.
Yet blind test after blind test shows that most people can't even fully appreciate extra vs medium details.
I'm happy to hear your games work well for you, but it sounds like the games you're playing aren't demanding compared to modern AAA titles.
That's why I made the specific distinction in the comment you're responding to
When a $599 Windows laptop with a 3060 can play AAA titles and your $1599 MBP can't, I wouldn't normally call that great for gaming.
Most games just flat out do not work that I've tried. Plenty will stop you with anticheat.
About the only sorts of games that actually work well over WINE on this rig (m3 pro) are ones that came out 15 years ago.
Native games like no mans sky actually got worse over time. When I first got this mac I was so impressed by the performance of nms even though its an old game at this point. I could run it entirely on ultra. Then nms put out an update and that ended, back to medium-low and no AA unless I want to experience pervasive graphical glitches like flashing purple.
Other games have some internal lock to their fps I'm not sure why even as native mac games. This is true for cities skylines. It is capped at 40fps, maybe through rosetta layer limitations? I'm not sure.
The M5's GPU specs seem to put it near a high-end NVIDIA card from 2018. Impressive as all get out for a power-friendly chip, but not really what I think of when I hear "good for gaming"
The trend I see that is more concerning is that previously mac friendly game devs have already abandoned the platform. Valve no longer maintains mac os builds of their games like cs or tf2. City skylines 1 had a first party mac release but City skylines 2 skipped mac os.
I'm still pretty happy with my 16gb M1 Air, but it would be nice to know some closer to real world differences.
Macs barely got faster for ages with Intel - they just got hotter and shorter on battery life.
20% per year is a doubling every 4y. That is awesome.
Macs barely got faster for ages with Intel
Intel chips were getting faster. It's well documented (and glaringly obvious in the i9 16") that Apple just didn't want to accommodate the full TDP. They tweaked their ACPI tables to run the chips until they hit the junction temp so they were both constantly hot and constantly throttling. Apple tweaked all of their Intel chips in this way, which was a software solution to the Apple-designed hardware simply being unable to cope with the thermal stress.
We know this because the Intel Macbook Pro chassis was only ever used to run Apple Silicon chips that were passively cooled, not Pro/Max variants. The old MBP chassis designs are so awful that Apple doesn't consider them viable for cooling ARM CPUs. I blame Ive, not Intel.
Intel chips were getting faster
Do you consider margin-of-error, single-digit gains to be worth arguing over? Intel offered 14nm for 4 years straight: Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Coffee Lake Refresh—four different names, same process node, and 3-7% gains each year. Such fast.
The old MBP chassis designs are so awful that Apple doesn't consider them viable for cooling ARM CPUs
You don't put a 15-20W chip into a thermal system built for 90W+. The old chassis wasn't "too awful" for Apple Silicon, it was completely unnecessary.
How did we already get to no-one being impressed by 20% better PER YEAR already.
When has 20% been impressive? When Intel to M1 happened, the jump was huge ... not 20%. I can't think of anything with a 20% jump that made waves, even outside of tech.
When I used to do user benchmarking, 20% was often the first data point where users would be able to notice something was faster.
4 minutes vs 5 minutes. That's great! Kind of expected that we'll make SOME progress, so what is the low bar... 10%? Then we should be impressed with 20?
People aren't upgrading from M1, M2, M3 in numbers... so I don't think it's just me that isn't wow'd.
I used to upgrade about every year or two, there were massive gains... now, I'll hold out 3-5 years and not even think twice about it.
I'm still pretty happy with my 16gb M1 Air, but it would be nice to know some closer to real world differences.
I’m confused — they made a comparison that is directly relevant to your situation and you don’t like it?
Most people with an M4 won’t be looking to upgrade to an M5. But for people on an M1 (like you) or even an older Intel chip, this is good information!
Everyone buying their high end gear is buying something waiting to be refreshed now.
Looks like the Pro and Max will be on a three month delay.
AMD is somewhat of an exception/unique case though, having chipsets and monolithic depending on the use case and console/semicustom offerings, so that doesn't map fully.
Also, let's not forget in Apples case, that they actually go phone first, the Air+iPad, then Pro and finally Studio. Feel that the lower end devices should priority personally though, efficiency gains are more valuable in connected devices with limited space for batteries over my 16 incher with 100wh.
Course, would be nice if we just got the entire range updated at once, but I doubt even Apple could pull such a supply chain miracle off, even if they bought all of TSMC and the entire island to boot...
Smaller chips means more of a wafer is usable when a defect exists
Everyone buying their high end gear is buying something waiting to be refreshed now.
Most of their buyers aren’t buying the highest end parts. Those are a niche market.
Focusing on the smaller parts first makes sense because they’re easier to validate and ship. The larger parts are more complicated and come next.
People in the U.S. are starting to think about their Christmas shopping lists right about now.
The standard practice is to start by producing the chips with the smallest die size.
Buyers who walk into an Apple store for a base MacBook Pro will wait if they hear a new model is coming out. So if you have a buyer basing purchases on the generation number, it makes sense to launch that model as soon as possible.
Pro/Max buyers generally are checking into specs and getting what they need. Hence the M2 Ultra still being for sale, for some niches that have specific requirements.
Bad news for anyone who buys the M5 MacBook Pro as an "AI" machine and finds it can't fit any of the more interesting LLMs!
At this point, I get the soldered on ram, for better or worse... I do wish at least storage was more approachable.
Their sales copy for reference:
M-series chips include unified memory, which is more efficient than traditional RAM. This single pool of high-performance memory allows apps to efficiently share data between the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine.... This means you can do more with unified memory than you could with the same amount of traditional RAM.
Still not the fastest ram, that they use for dedicated GPUs, but faster than most x86 options.
I’m not trying into be a fanboy and maybe it’s a little bit “cope”, but apple has always put as much RAM as is necessary for the computer to work—and not a lot more—in their base models.
:)
I know it’s silly, but I think I represent over 90% of apples customers in that way
You're not silly, you're just able to see reality.
Apple knows who is buying the bulk of their computers, and it isn't power users ... most people buying computers don't have a clue what RAM is even used for.
I'd hit beachballs, but macOS balances 8GB of RAM fine even with Tahoe for regular users
I know people complain at every release. But I look at the three choices presented and they are all disappointing to me. It's a huge turnoff to see the only initial differentiator presented to be a choice between "measly" amounts of RAM and storage to "barely acceptable" amounts.
To get even close to the specs on my Surface Pro I'd have to hit the configurator and spend at least $1000. Even more to hit the config of my work issued HP notebook.
I don't really use local LLMs but think 32GB RAM would be good for me... but I am so ready to upgrade but trying to figure out how much longer we need to wait.
I got the cheapest m1 pro (the weird one they sold thats binned due to defects) with 32gb ram and everything runs awesome.
Always get the most ram you can in mac world. Running a largish local LLM model is slowish but it does run.
A mac out of memory is just a totally different machine than one with.
probably because most of the devs building the software are on the highest ram possible and there is just so much testing and optimization they dont do.
'Real-world idle' efficiency on the newer chips is the main reason I've got the (slight) itch to upgrade, but 64GB+ MBPs certainly don't come cheap.
From a buyer's perspective, I don't like it at all.
As an other example the current ultra part is the M3, and it was released early 2025, after even the M4 Pro/Max, and a good 18 months after the M3 was unveiled. We might not see an M4 Ultra until 2027.
Also, I read that the keyboard is slightly different between the Air and the Pro, I'm not a big fan of that chicklet design they released
Screen is 3024x1964 @254 pixel density for the Pro. The Air says it is 2560x1664 @224 but interestingly if I do a full screenshot the resultant image is 2940x1912(?).
The Air screen seems brighter, but who goes outside in the sun these days for any more than 10 minutes?
- m4 -> m5, same core number and distribution, "neural accelerators", higher memory bandwidth
- max storage increased from 2 to 4TB (and probably an extra kidney in price)
Everything else is strictly identical.
The marketing blurb claims 2~3x the performances of the M4 for AI stuff (I assume that's the neural accelerators), 20% for CPU tasks (compiling), 40~80% for GPU tasks (gaming and 3D rendering).
However, it is not just because of the larger display.
M5 14" starts at:
10-Core CPU
10-Core GPU
16GB Unified Memory
512GB SSD Storage
M5 16" starts at:
14-Core CPU
20-Core GPU
24GB Unified Memory
512GB SSD Storage
So it's the cost of 4x more core CPU, 10x (double) the core GPU, and +8GB memory.
https://www.macworld.com/article/2942089/macbook-pro-m5-pro-...
https://www.macworld.com/article/2942089/macbook-pro-m5-pro-...
SSD has double the speed. I guess they say this only for M5 MacBook Pro, because the previous M4 has always had slower SSD speed than M4 Pro at 3.5GB/s. So now the M5 should be at 7GB/s.
I assume no update on SDXC UHS-III.
But I gave up on waiting and just got Ethernet put in in the places where I'm likely to sit with my laptop - now I plug in to charge and automatically get 2.5 Gbps Ethernet at the same time using a USB-C dock and a long USB 3 cable.
I suspect the M5 Pro/Max chipped MBPs will bring some of these improvements you're looking for.
The M5 Pro refresh will come later.
Did they announce this or are you speaking for Apple?
This has been their release strategy for past generations.
I have to say if I had any choice I would delay my purchase until the 16” catches up rather than buying a generation behind. If I see specs saying M5 14” is more performant for my workloads than my more expensive 16” I’m even more motivated to delay. Most product managers would be aware of these things.
I can see an overlap with people who want smaller computers who also want max power, but I just would not believe that is a significant group. (again, all personal observations)
- normal - pro - max
pro and max had way more cores and gpus and supported way more ram. today's release is the basic version of the new cpu; if you want more ram you can get the m4pro or m4max based MacBook Pros, or wait for the M5pro/max to come out.
I would be happy to sacrifice the EU keyboard and have the AI instead :-)
It used to be a little less 'weird' when the base M-chips were only available in the Air and 13" MBP.
What do you do on wifi that requires more than 10gb per seconds... on a laptop, you'd fill up the base model ssd in under a minute of download
Sounds like maybe they didn't want to try and fit their new N1 chip this go around so they could re-use some components? MacBook still has the same broadcom chip. Or for a pro differentiating feature when the M5 Pro/Max comes out later. There's a rumored MBP re-design, so I'm guessing we'll see it then along with it having the N1 for WiFi 7.
(I had just been looking at macs a few weeks ago, and had noticed how close in price macbook pro and macbook air were for same specs -- was thinking, really no reason not to get pro even if all I really want it for is the built-in HDMI. They are now more price differentiated, if I am remembering right).
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/12/nx-s1-5363025/apple-iphone-ta...