[autocorr]

That's certainly have an informed comparison if you have a T480 that you've tested! I'm not trying to be combative and say that various features are pointless, just that they are nice-to-haves and not really that necessary in my view. I primarily code and make my font size large anyway, so am not a category that benefits much from a high-density display.

Consensus can't be divined from comment threads, but many threads on HN related to Apple hardware generally bring people out of the wood-work venting about keyboards, battery life, touch bar, mag-safe, ports, software regressions, etc. with sentiments of "if I wasn't beholden to macOS/Photoshop/Final-Cut-Pro I'd switch to something else". So it may not be obvious from someone who just reads about Macs from HN comments that they are either (1) the best hardware or (2) a joy to use (although let me be the first to admit that's a completely flawed way to form an opinion about anything lol).

Personally I think the largest reason people move or stick to Linux/BSD is that there are unique features that can't be found in other OSs, and that these balance out the utility of features lost. This would be in contrast to fulfilling full feature-parity with no switching cost. For Linux/BSD, I would consider this things related to the nature of free software and user control.

[criddell]

> I think the largest reason people move or stick to Linux/BSD is that there are unique features that can't be found in other OSs

I was going to argue with you, but now that I think about it more, I believe you are right. People use Windows or Mac generally to run some specific software (for example if you need Visual Studio or want to play certain games, you are going to use Windows and probably don't think about the OS very often).

Conversely, users pick Linux because they want to run Linux.

Considering both Linux and MacOS are Unix, what kinds of things can you do in Linux (or BSD) that you can't do in MacOS? Is it all about the window manager?