[jstummbillig]

What you are looking at, tho, is not the pure hardware perspective, but the pure hardware numbers perspective, which excludes ergonomics, design, build quality and hardware/software integration as well as stuff like speakers and screens which might not be comparable because no other vendor does them exactly alike.

I always found this strange, when looking at personal computers – or, in fact, most anything in life. As if what can not be checked or compared on a feature list has no meaning. Do people really feel this way about the world or is it just a way to deal with insecurity about what is important?

The most confusing thing about this is, that, to me, the human experience is pretty much the opposite: The soft parts beat the feature list every time. The better design wins.

[neogodless]

First, I appreciate the experience differential between macOS, Windows and Linux. I've enjoyed each, and have no major complaints about any.

With the right hardware, I've really enjoyed installing and using Linux, while I struggle when drivers for networking have to be procured - I'm not experienced enough in that area to figure it out (or rather, I'm not motivated enough.)

For me, Windows and macOS alike just work and while I've had more issues with Windows, it's because I've used it 100x more often and thoroughly; a price I pay for the ease of getting into games. (I am not speaking about right now, a moment in time, but the decades through which I gamed.)

In my career, I was largely a developer of Microsoft-focused technologies, and the support for tools was always sufficient or better.

Anyway, to my point, the parts of the software and experience that would pain me would be the things I couldn't control, and the things that were meddled with. I avoided pre-configured laptops if I could, and if I couldn't, I would do a clean install of the OS immediately. With desktops, I could select the best performance/experience/price (including reliability, features, etc) compromise for each compatible component, assemble it myself, and have not only a perfectly customized kit suited to my personal tastes and needs, but also the experience of learning and building on my own.

Now all of that is irrelevant if your preference is either just very strongly what comes from Apple, or you're only looking at complete systems and comparing them. Since I can be ambivalent about OS, except for gaming, and the experience was quite good (for me, not for everyone, obviously), I could pick a Windows-compatible laptop that gave me the best "features for the price", or rather, great hardware for the price without too much software meddling (or meddling I could remove.)

Now, does it sound like I don't consider the experience, or that I'm buying hardware because of insecurity? It certainly does not seem so from my perspective. To say a "feature list has no meaning" is to claim that the features do not contribute to the experience, but that isn't accurate. Of course you have to understand how an experience is derived from a feature, or that feature list can't be used to aid in your decision-making process.

[Joeri]

What was likely meant by experience is things like the display (P3 retina 3K in the macbook air), the trackpad (still unmatched in any other device), the metal housing that is very refined and doesn’t flex at all, ...

In my experience if you want the level of physical build quality of a macbook, you end up in the price range of a macbook.

Windows vs macos vs linux, that is personal preference. I use all three and they all serve their roles well. I do find that windows and linux require more configuration and maintenance, but YMMV.

[proverbialbunny]

Some linux distros have gotten so polished these days that I find they require less maintenance than OSX on my MBP does. Though, most people who use linux want power not it-just-works, so I think there is going to be a preference towards the higher maintenance distros.

[reader_mode]

I have a 2018 core i9 5000$ MBP 15, it is by far the worst experience from a premium device I've ever had - when I turn on docker and an IDE people in the office start turning their heads towards me, the fan noise is insane - I need to power limit the device using third party software to make it usable it's ridiculous.

Apple sold the old MacBook air (2015 one?) untill 2018 ? And charged like 1000$ for it ? Have you used that crap ? My wife has it and I was laughing my ass off at how terrible the device was - the viewing angles on the screen were better on 400$ HP devices.

Apple keyboards have long been subpar, they have no touchscreen or 2in1 offering which is a perfect form factor for my mobile computing (iPad pro is nice but iOS only that's a deal breaker for almost any professional).

And the beloved macos was super rough in Catalina.

I need to develop for iOS occasionally so I'm forced to use a Mac or swap arround, but I'm sorry - Apple laptops were a bad deal for a long time from most perspectives - I would personally get an X1 over any previous MBP.

M1 and pricing change that for the first time in a long long time - I would recommend this laptop to anyone buying a device in this category.

[Droobfest]

If we’re talking about hardware ergonomics the lack of a del key and placement of the fn key alone make me never buy a macbook again. I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.

[pdpi]

> I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.

It's a matter of habit, and super easy to configure from the keyboard preferences in macOs. The trade-off is that ctrl is almost exclusively used for unix-y thing, and all the usual GUI-y things use Cmd. Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.

Incidentally, because of the pervasive support for readline shortcuts in all text inputs, del is just ctrl-D.

[Lio]

> Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.

On Linux at least you can use Ctrl-Shift-x, Ctrl-Shift-c and Ctrl-Shift-v for cut, copy and paste in the terminal. So again it's just a case of getting use to the shortcut differences.

On macOS Del can also be found on fn-Backspace and I often remap the right Alt key to Ctrl.

It's pretty easy to adapt to either with a little time.

[pdpi]

The point is that it’s just annoying that the terminal is a special application that has its own shortcuts for everything. I could use shift-ins or ctrl-ins too — but I don’t want to. I want the terminal to behave like any other application.

[mixmastamyk]

Some terminals have the feature called "smart copy." You may like it.

[jstummbillig]

To be clear, my comment did not relate to either Apple or MacBooks in particular.

Also, the value of each soft factor will differ from person to person. Good design highly relates to personal needs.

[nightski]

I guess if you redefine every feature someone cares about to be a "soft feature" then you are right. Kind of a pointless distinction though. Listing features matters because everyone cares about different features.

[Droobfest]

Yes I understand that and I guess I’m a bit salty. But part of my point is that you can make really great hardware and software of great quality, but one or two unfortunate choices can soil the whole thing for someone.

And Apple especially can sometimes be too stubborn to acknowledge people’s personal differences or an established industry standard.

[keyb0ardninja]

Sometimes? Don't you mean always?

[mcphage]

> the lack of a del key and placement of the fn key alone make me never buy a macbook again

What do you mean by these?

[Droobfest]

Macbooks and Apple keyboards in general lack a physical del key (in ibm keyboard terms). They only have a backspace, which they label delete.

Fn+backspace works as a shortcut, but they’re on completely different ends of the keyboard so you need 2 hands. Ctrl+D also sometimes works but is inconsistent across applications.

Also, unlike all other vendors, Apple places the fn key on the far end of the keyboard, instead of the much more used ctrl which is now in the middle. When typing I find it much easier to quickly hit the furthest key than the middle one so I often hit the wrong one.

[spacedcowboy]

Two things:

- Portables in the Mac world do lack a delete key (the delete-forwards key, that is) on the built-in keyboard, but that's more of a space-constraint than anything else. Mac keyboards in general do not lack the delete key; he usual full-size keyboard certainly has a delete key.

- Keyboards are a personal thing, and it's very easy to plug in any normal USB keyboard, and then get all the benefits of the [delete] key as usual. There's nothing else to do, just plug in your favourite keyboard..

[Mine came this morning: https://i.imgur.com/at1mGiT.jpg]