[zivkovicp]

Please excuse the long-winded answer...

I have also given up on Apple, but mostly because I can't see the value in it anymore, otherwise my experience with them has been satisfactory (Intel CPU models).

For the past few years I used a Microsoft Surface Pro because it seemed to have good build quality and high screen resolution, but despite this I have had to replace it as part of a recall due to a graphics hardware issue, so it was not without its flaws. On a side note, I found the Windows OS to be OK for non-dev work, but would always "work" on the Linux subsystem... so even though Windows supports it quite well, I would just suggest 100% Linux.

For 2022 I decided to buy a "gaming" laptop and switch to 100% Linux. The build quality is a little lower than Apple, and the screen resolution is not as good as Apple or Surface Pro, but it is still good, and when using my external monitor there is no difference.

The benefits are clear, however, for less than 50% of the cost I am getting superior performance, discrete GPU, excellent cooling, and NO LOCK-IN. There is also the added benefit of being able to play the occasional video game with great performance.

So far I don't regret it.

[jmyeet]

The M1/M2 Macbooks are a total game-changer. You made your switch in the Intel era. I certainly get that because it was the dark days of the pointless Touch Bar and the awful butterfly keyboard.

But now an M2 Macbook Air for $1500-2000 (depending on options) is hard to beat.

The only complaint seems to be in heat distribution. Some people use a cheap heat spreader on their desk. Apple definitely chose a stylish package over optimal thermal design. It's an issue but not a major issue.

EDIT: it's a sad day on HN when you mention how M1/M2 MBs are a big step up from the Intel MBs to a comment about laptop recommendations and you get a bunch of commentless downvotes. WTaF?

[neogodless]

The thread is about having terrible support from Apple, and the comment you replied to was about getting away from lock-in, but you reply that the more efficient Apple Silicon is a "game-changer." It doesn't change any of the above deal breakers, so your comment comes off as tone deaf.

[cruano]

> the comment you replied to was about getting away from lock-in

The comment was about them giving up on Apple because "I can't see the value in it anymore", and he pointed out how the value proposition changed with the non-intel macs

Exactly which deal breakers do you mean? it literally says "otherwise my experience with them has been satisfactory" ?

[zivkovicp]

Yes, for me it was the poor value proposition that made me switch. I do prefer to not be locked-in to their ecosystem as well, but I will admit that my overall experience with Apple is positive (phone/laptop/etc.).

OP seems to have a poor experience with them and is switching for that reason.

[jmyeet]

The comment I replied to was about bad experiences with Intel MBPs. Personally, I take no position on whether someone should or shouldn't use a Macbook. I'm not invested in that outcome. Use what you want.

But, at the same time, the particular shortcomings of Intel silicon MBPs is now out-of-date and it seems worth mentioning that.

[skyyler]

>EDIT: it's a sad day on HN when you mention how M1/M2 MBs are a big step up from the Intel MBs to a comment about laptop recommendations and you get a bunch of commentless downvotes. WTaF?

>to a comment about laptop recommendations

The thread's title is "Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?"

[zivkovicp]

I haven't used the new generation of MacBooks yet, but I might request one from my employer just to get a feel for it.

The Apple experience is more polished for sure, but after Linux, I doubt I will accept any form of proprietary OS/hardware for my personal computer ever again.

[jmyeet]

You can run Linux on Mac hardware. Linus Torvalds seems to have been doing this for the last decade.

Personally I find Linux desktop environments to be beyond awful with zero hope for salvation but to each their own. I certainly recognize a lot of the shortcomings of OSX but, more than anything, I don't want something I have to endlessly tinker with to get working (and keep working). For me, out of the box experience is paramount.

[ModernMech]

I think the downvotes are coming from calling it a “game changer”. How has the game actually has changed? What does the new AS MacBook enable that the other ones don’t, or other laptops don’t for that matter?

We live in an age of fast performance and great battery life on most any laptop. Having faster performance and better battery life isn’t changing the game —- that’s how the game has been played as long as laptops have been a consumer product category. If Apple’s support is the same, then the OP’s problem isn’t fixed. Their problem wasn’t performance and battery life.

P.S. I’m speaking as someone who owns both a MacBook Pro and a surface laptop, so I’m not exactly biased against MacBooks.

[jmyeet]

> How has the game actually has changed?

Battery life for one [1]. Many compare the Dell XPS 13/15 to the MBA/MBP and the XPS has realistically less than half the battery life [2] (the 5.5-7 hours being listed as "feasible" there also requires turning down the display brightness a lot).

The 2011 Macbook Air was heads and shoulders above anything else at the time for that combination of size, cost, power and battery life. Literally nothing else could compete on all of these factors. I mean Linus Torvalds used one [3] (and still does [4]).

On a pure hardware front, the M1/M2 Macbooks are at a similar point where nothing else can compete with that combination of price, power, battery life and form factor, to the point where people will run Linux or Windows on them. You can say it's not for you. You can also say you don't like OSX. That's all fine.

But anti-tribalism is just another form of tribalism. Being irrationally anti-Mac is no better than being irrationally pro-Mac. I'd argue it's worse because the anti-Mac tribalists think they're better than the pro-Mac tribalists.

[1]: https://www.laptopmag.com/news/macbook-air-m2-battery-life-s...

[2]: https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/laptops/dell-xps-13-...

[3]: https://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvald...

[4]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

[ModernMech]

> On a pure hardware front, the M1/M2 Macbooks are at a similar point where nothing else can compete with that combination of price, power, battery life and form factor

Like I said, the performance and battery improvements are marginal; it's the same game played a little better, not a changed game. The AS processor doesn’t enable completely new or novel ways of using the device, and in fact the form factor is still limited compared to competing options. The reason I use my Surface Laptop over my Macbook are old reasons -- touch screen support, pen support, and windows software compatibility. If my Macbook supported all of that, then that would be a game changer. But that's not what they did; they improved on some performance and some battery life, which as I said is a story as old as computing. It's not enough for me to consider my new Macbook as a "game changer" if the added benefits won't even cause me to pick it up over an alternative.

[cruano]

I think most tech people went from considering intel-based macbooks as a splurge, to the single best value proposition for consumer laptops.

Before there were many tradeoffs for choosing a macbook, most of them around performance/cost, but all of those are gone when the base $999 macbook air beats way more expensive computers.

I'd recommend this machines to literally everyone that needs a laptop, which is something I can't say for the rest of Apple products or any other piece of tech for that matter

[sgarland]

> M1/M2 MBs are a big step up from the Intel MBs to a comment about laptop recommendations and you get a bunch of commentless downvotes.

I don't get it, either. What Apple did with the M1 is nothing short of incredible. I bought a stock M1 Air (as in, 8 GB RAM model, since that's what stores carry) as my personal laptop a few months after launch, and could not be happier. The _only_ time I've experienced any issues was in running Minikube, and that was solved by installing Docker Desktop - on Intel, I use hyperkit to avoid that. I think hyperkit supports M1s now anyway.

[wyclif]

Also, no heat issues. And I don't ever think I've heard the fan spin up on the M1 MBP, and I've hardly been conservative with loads on it. They're great laptops.

[aerique]

Due to Lenovo shortages I could pick an MSI gaming laptop (GS66 Stealth) to replace my broken work laptop.

It's awesome. Happily been running Guix on it for the past six months. (As expected, since it is Linux on an unsupported machine, I had to put in some time to get it running smoothly but the person after me does not have to do that anymore.)

[mszcz]

Did a similar thing about 1.5 years ago. Bought a Lenovo Legion 15 with 4800H Ryzen and 32 GB RAM. Upgraded the drives to 1 TB NVMe and 4 TB SATA SSD. It's super fast, discreet graphics, replaceable storage and still cost less than half of a similarity configed Macbook Pro.

[specproc]

Also a happy Legion user, although the power brick is obscene.

[fbr]

I'm super happy with it. The perf are great.

2 big drawbacks: the plastic is super fragile and you will need an external microphone (or your coworkers will complain about fan noises)

[aerique]

Have you tried this for fan noise?: https://github.com/TurboGraphxBeige/isw

[zivkovicp]

I bought an HP Victus, mostly because I came across a great deal and it has GeForce RTX 3070 graphics.

I'm running Pop! OS linux and it worked out of the box, no special setup necessary. So far I'm happy with it and starting to ask myself why I didn't do this earlier. :)

[ur-whale]

> For 2022 I decided to buy a "gaming" laptop and switch to 100% Linux.

I researched this option before opting for an LG gram. I might research it again soon.

Would you care to share exactly what gaming laptop you picked?

[Darmody]

Not OP but if I were to buy a laptop right now, it'd be the Inspiron 16 plus.

Last gen i7, 3050/3060, up to 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, 3k 16:10 screen, good battery. And i think they sell it without dedicated graphics card too.

Now I have an Inspiron 7677 which works great on linux except for the fingerprint and the webcam.

Oh, I forgot.

The Tuxedo Pulse 15 gen2 is also a great laptop I think. It's not a gaming laptop, it's more like a Macbook. Ryzen 7 5700U, up to 64GB of RAM, 2k screen, huuuuuuge battery, good connectivity, etc. And you can put your own logo on the lid.

[sofixa]

Not OP, but I've heard great things about the Asus ROG Zephyrus line, and that's what I'll probably get when i refresh my current Asus laptop which id approaching 8 years.

[kitsunesoba]

The problem I ran into with a Zephyrus G15 that I owned for a short bit is that it was inanely fussy about GPU drivers. I had the 5900HS/3080 version, and under Windows if I we’re running anything other than the OEM Nvidia drivers, I’d lose 20% GPU performance without a corresponding reduction in heat. Didn’t matter if the drivers came from Nvidia or Windows Update, same problem.

What made it worse is that locking the Nvidia drivers to a specific version is not straightforward — if you only lock the main driver with Windows policy manager, Windows Update will update other parts of the Nvidia driver and leave you with drivers that are partially broken.

I didn’t try Linux since this machine was intended mostly for gaming.

I ended up returning it at the end of its return window, because I don’t have time for a machine that won’t run properly without absurdly specific drivers. Built a gaming tower with the money instead, which has not only been better behaved but doesn’t sound like I’m cooking it alive when I’m running games on it like the G15 did.

[maxsilver]

I love my older ROG Zephyrus G14. Use it everyday for heavy Ruby on Rails + Java, with some gaming on the side (Control, Warframe)

It doesn't necessarily look great, but it's not offensively gamerish. There's a nice utility that lets you turn the fans off/on and GPU on/off, so it gets good battery life with GPU off. USB-C charging supported, nice matte screen, 120hz+ refresh rate. I have mine setup with 40gb of RAM (one 8GB dim is baked on, one is upgradable) and with a replacement Intel wifi chip.

When I need a replacement, I'll probably get the newer 2022-ish G14. They upgraded the USB-C ports (both now support display out), they put better WiFi in by default, and they went all-AMD for CPU+GPU, all of which seem like great ideas to me.

[APhoenixRises]

I had a Zephyrus G15 (2021) which ran great, but the screen brightness wasn't great. When I heard this year's G14 had a brighter display and an AMD CPU and GPU, I dove in and installed Fedora. Other than standby, everything just worked.

The thing I will ding Asus about is serviceability. It's easy enough to remove the screws to take the bottom panel off, but there was always one screw for NVME/Wifi that had so much loctite that I ended up needing a special pair of plyers to remove.

[parasubvert]

I have a 2020 ROG zephyrus g15 and it’s great other than the noise/heat which is annoying but not a deal breaker. and prior to 2022 there was a lack of camera. It doesn’t compare to the new M1/M2 laptops (I bought one for my parents and it’s incredible) but I’m satisfied for my needs, which needed to be Linux/Windows with a DisplayPort for VR.

[geraldwhen]

Asus rog laptops have high pitched, loud fans that run while idle.

The trackpad is also terrible.

[epage]

I have a ROG Strix (12th gen intel) and no whine. Been using WSL so far but need to try again to see how well Linux runs on it.

Overall, its been a solid machine so far and had sufficient battery life for me to program on flights half-way across the US without concern. My only regrets are I wish the thunderbolt port used the integrated gpu (never need discrete and sometimes windows gets stuck switching) and no webcam.

[rickstanley]

How long do you think you can get out of the battery life? IIRC they advertise 7-8 hours

[epage]

I've not really tested it besides it working for me flying between Austin and Portland.

[rickstanley]

It depends on the model, for instance, G15 2021 doesn't have this problem.

[rickstanley]

Which model do plan buying? I'm trying to get my hands on G15 2022, doesn't have the "gamey" look, has a good battery life (9 hours or so) and just powerful enough with a 3060

[zivkovicp]

I bought an HP Victus 16", AMD CPU, 32GB RAM

Ultimately the deciding factor was the price and the GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, it was on sale, and Linux drivers were available for all of the hardware.

I'm running Pop! OS and haven't had any issues.

[mmusc]

Some of the lenovo legion laptops don't look very "gamey". You still get the excellent cooling and performance. Only complaint is the battery life but I use it mostly on my desks so its not really an issue.

[rickstanley]

Legion 7i Slim looks pretty slick, but unfortunately it doesn't have Ethernet port, and I haven't heard good things about the wireless card in terms of performance, but it also depends on your router (if it supports WF 6)

[inawarminister]

I've been using an Ideapad Gaming 3 laptop for a year now, zero issue with Pop-OS.

[als0]

If I may ask, what do you think of the LG Gram?

[TacticalCoder]

Not GP but I'm very happy with mine. Can't speak for every model but I've got an old 15Z970 with 24 GB of RAM (from 2017 I think).

LG Grams aren't cheap laptops. They don't have the retina display. But they're nice, lightweight (lighter than Mac laptops) and overall feel good.

I'd say it doesn't feel as polished as the latest Mac laptops but it feels way sturdier. My M1 Macbook Air always felt like it's screen was brittle: some porcelaine to be manipulated with the greatest care or it'd break. And break it did, after 10 months, seemingly for no reason.

While my 5 years old LG Gram is still going perfectly fine.

I use it every time I'm not at my beasty desktop.

[blep_]

I have one too (17Z90N), and it's pretty nice, as laptops go.

~10h battery life on Linux with minimal tweaking, decent keyboard and touchpad, huge screen (I've tried to use the tiny laptops that are popular these days, and they just do not work for me).

Things I don't care much about and so explicitly won't review: camera, internal audio (I only ever use headphones), battery life when closed (I just go put it on my desk and plug it in when I'm not using it)

My one major complaint is that the edges are unreasonably sharp. Seriously, I don't know who designed this thing, but they apparently use laptop keyboards very differently than I do. I have been considering filing them down.

I also got it on ebay for what I now realize is significantly below the price it would've been new. I don't think it's worth $1800, but I don't think any (personal) computer is worth $1800, so adjust your weighting of this opinion as desired.

[benjaminwootton]

I am the same with regards to value. Even though I can stretch to it, the prices for MacBooks in the UK are off the charts. Tempted to look elsewhere on principle next time.

[zivkovicp]

That's really what did it for me, I like Apple products and think they are great quality, but I don't think they are good enough to justify the price; and for me, the "status" that comes with it (if any) is worthless.

[andrei_says_]

For me the value of Apple is to develop and design on the same machine, reliably.

A privacy-oriented OS that allows me to run photoshop Lightroom etc. in addition to dev things.

At this point I wouldn’t touch Windows with a 10-foot pole.

[tmaly]

If your primary usage is development, I still think the resolution on the screen is a very important factor for your eyes.

[feet]

Seconding this.

Eluktronics has some well spec'ed machines