A few programmers on HN think only they use laptops (and specifically Macbooks). Not surprising.
If you just bother to open your eyes just a little bit wider you would notice that there is a huge market for Chromebooks, budget laptops, gaming laptops, mobile workstations, ultrabooks for students, gamers, business people, bankers etc. New things are happening every month. We are seeing more efficient laptops from Intel and AMD. Companies like Framework are doing actual innovations in the decade old laptop area. And there are workflows that can only be done on Windows.
Apple products are only dominant the US. For the rest of the world they are more of an luxury item.
That said, I am not terribly interested in ARM-based laptops for now. Yes, they may be more energy efficient and all but that hardly matters to me compared to just having the same x86 architecture I run on my desktop and servers. That sweet binary-compatibility means less headache.
People underestimate the advantages that CPU architecture monoculture gave us, though they are getting admittingly less important year by year. Maybe one day I am going to run an ARM laptop or even RISC-V.
> ... just having the same x86 architecture I run on my desktop and servers.
Yep! For me, it's the same ARM64 architecture I run on my desktop and servers[1]. :-)
Hetzner's offering is very competitive, cheaper than their already rock-bottom x86 offerings. Then there's AWS Graviton, Oracle with their free tier (not sure how expensive that gets if you actually have to load it) and both Azure and Google also have ARM offerings.
A key element to Apple and ARM and why you are right outside the us is this:
1. Apple's chips are so far beyond everything else that it makes obvious sense for Apple only. Snapdragon is at least 30% slower single core while having worse Performance per watt.
2. Apple wasn't playing fair with their translation layer. The Rosetta layer cheats a little because apple also made the chip. The secret sauce is that the M1 has a hardware compatibility mode (That technically breaks ARM spec) for x86 memory order that basically gives near 1:1 performance.
3. Microsoft heavily botched their ARM rollout (again. Hello, Windows RT). The translation layer on W10/11 is just bad, not because of bad coding but just the technical limits of what they were trying to do.
4. Google is in a great place with ARM compatibility in Chrome OS as the only consumer-facing apps are either built-in or on the play store...which was designed for ARM in the first place. Problem is that nobody will give them a good chip for ChromeOS and the focus is on low end, so Mediatek is just cruising.
ARM is a great arch...but right now it is Apple VS x86, not ARM.
Their cores break the ARM spec in other ways too. Added instructions for AMX, new guard privilege modes, HCR_EL2.E2H can't be disabled, GPRs are clobbered on WFI, etc.
>3. Microsoft heavily botched their ARM rollout (again. Hello, Windows RT). The translation layer on W10/11 is just bad, not because of bad coding but just the technical limits of what they were trying to do.
It's not bad at all, however Intel patents heavily restricted the initial implementation, to the point they couldn't ship the 64bit emulation. Apple decided to wait out the patents.
Unfair … strange use of phrase. Innovative would be a better use of word as nothing prepare others to do the same … it is good to have a vendor play differently not follow the slow and dominated by arm player c.
The conclusion is on the ball but only current. M1 has been a bit old now and if other arm vendor and the two major architecture (ibm power for mainframe … cannot be counted) it is at least x86-32 plus x86-64 vs arm vs apple.
The wording of unfair is more of a fun use of the word. Because Apple vertically integrated the whole product and software supply chain, they are singularly able to do things others cannot. In that context, if one is playing "fair" on the terms of everyone else when they could do more...they are losing.
ARM has a lot more market share in people's minds than in actual numbers. One research firm says that ARM has 15% of the laptop market share in 2023, expected to increase to 25% by 2027. (Surprisingly, Apple only has 90% of the ARM laptop market.)
In the server market, just an estimated 8% of CPU shipments in 2023 were ARM.
I keep meaning to research this, and maybe this isn't the right place, but how are things going for Linux executables? Last I tried Linux on ARM it seemed like application-level support for ARM was very spotty.
It doesn't seem like a Rosetta 2-like effort is making it into mainline Linux anytime soon, if ever.
For open source applications it's generally pretty good. Closed source: not so much.
qemu-x86_64 is probably the closest there is to Rosetta; it works fairly well and I think conceptually it's identical or similar to Rosetta, but I don't really know what the performance is like, and it's of course not as integrated/automatic as Rosetta.
I suppose it depends on the distribution but most I've used (Manjaro, Void, Alpine) are close to 1:1 with x86. Of course third party applications have to compile for ARM if they don't intend to distribute source code.
That is spot-on. The fact of the matter is that it is Apple VS x86, not ARM. The M1/2 have dominant mindshare due to being actually better.
On Windows, ARM products just suck. The product is just bad because there is no reason to use it. The chips available are worse than x86 and then the software issue is bad due to a whole set of reasons that Microsoft can't change on their own..\
Google has that last 10% probably, ChromeOS moves ARM devices all day, every day. Just cheap ones.
Based on what? I would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either. The Windows "gaming laptop" I got a few years ago for game dev is perfectly adequate and has features missing from Macbooks:
- ethernet port
- hdmi port
- multiple usb A and C ports
- solid keyboard
Same for my work laptop, again Windows/x86 and no one I know with a work laptop is supplied a Mac either.
We live in different worlds. All engineers I know have Macs and the ones that don’t have Linux. The one guy on my team who uses windows is a constant problem as he has to find work arounds for every process we have/service we build.
Every company I've worked for provided a macbook to us, and all my coworkers use a macbook. When I have the option, I pick PC. My last company gave me a choice between mac or PC, and I picked the thinkpad. My current company gave me a macbook pro, but I opted to use my personal Windows machines instead.
I'm the guy who has to come up with a workaround, but it's never a problem for others. Usually I'm translating some bash command into powershell, which takes maybe 2 minutes. Everything else runs just fine, and I don't even need to use WSL. Windows is a perfectly viable development platform, if you give a shit about learning the differences between a unix-like environment and windows instead of just copping out and using WSL
Apple is doing what people hated Microsoft for.
It's amazing that a closed ecosystem is so welcomed by Apple fans. But I suppose man has always been tribal.
I work on a split team, Windows and macOS. We do straightforward Java work and most of the problems that we have are related to installing command-line software on Windows.
Installing Postgres, Redis, etc. on Windows is wildly complicated compared to on macOS or Linux.
Yes it’s a constant source of problems. Trying to live share and get any actual work done leads to constant crashes, simply git cloning and trying to docker-compose and yarn install is a convoluted mess etc. windows is just not friendly to the kind of development common these days.
If your dev environment is meant to be multiplatform, it's sounds a lot more like the other developers are checking in things that don't work on anything but macs.
Yep. I work in an entire office of engineers with only Macs (mostly ARM ones now) and I only have a Mac at home, besides a very old ThinkPad running Ubuntu. (Aside from FFXIV on MacOS, I've moved any gaming to PS5 and Switch.)
I haven't actively used Windows since 2008. It's such an obnoxious OS to use, and I have never seen a Windows laptop with quality in the same zip code as a Mac. There's always a terrible touch pad, keyboard flex, plasticky trash fit and finish, mediocre display or something that just ruins the whole thing.
I like the aluminum bodies of macs, but I hate the flat keyboards. In my view, no laptop brand has had a good keyboard since the Thinkpad T420.
In terms of build quality, apple laptops are pretty good, but I can't stand macOS and apple keeps fucking with their ports.
My Inspiron 16 has a good glass screen and a pretty solid aluminum body. It's got all the ports I want (HDMI, USB-A 3.0, SD card reader, USB-C, and a 3.5mm headphone jack). Personally, the macbook pro my company issued me is one of my least favorite laptops I've ever used. I also had compatibility or performance problems with x86 based software when I got my first M1 macbook, I don't know if they're improved anything since then
I just received a brand new Thinkpad from work. I don't even mind Windows but holy crap is that thing an absolute chore to use. I don't understand how this is still an issue while Apple has been putting out what amounts to the perfect laptop for like 10+ years now.
>I don't even mind Windows but holy crap is that thing an absolute chore to use.
What are your issues? I have a T490 that is a few years old and its great for my use. But I keep it docked in to a monitor and external mouse and keyboard 90% of the time.
> I haven't actively used Windows since 2008. It's such an obnoxious OS to use
You might want to modernize your perception of it, holding on to 15 year old views is not a very smart move in the tech industry.
Windows 10 and 11 are a joy to use, and to develop. I used a Mac for 15 years and switched to Windows to develop 5 years ago, and now macOS looks extremely antiquated and creaky for development.
Sure are a lot of extreme opinions on operating systems when they all seem pretty damned similar to me on the fundamentals.
Development work strikes me as maybe the least distinguishing kind of task to compare them on. Very few hard choices to make unless you're developing for Mac or iOS.
The operative word is "actively." I've certainly touched it since then and am just as unimpressed. Windows is a chore to use, and the best they've been able to manage to close the gap is shipping a glorified Linux virtual machine. I'll take Homebrew over that any day, and leave the VMs to Docker.
The windows UI itself is an unpolished joke that's a hodgepodge of things that haven't been touched since Windows XP and half-baked new things, with sad window management (ironic) that lacks the perfection of Exposé and Spaces. To say nothing about laptop battery life, plugging in and removing multiple monitors several times a day.
I would strongly consider not working somewhere if they didn't use Macs
MacBook Pros have HDMI ports and many USB-C ports. I also don't know any issue with MacBook keyboards except the 2016-2019 model years.
I work for a large financial services company and receive a MacBook Pro for my work.
My work laptop battery can handle all-day IntelliJ & web browsing without charging, I've never heard the fan and the laptop stays cool. It has a Geekbench multicore score of 13,649.
My personal laptop also lasts that long and stays cool, and doesn't even have a fan.
I would never buy an Apple laptop. I have one for work and I hate it. Linux and Windows are by far more productive for me, so all I need to do is keep getting better PC laptops. While Mac hardware does have a slight edge on cost/benefit at that price point, macOS is just too cumbersome for my needs.
EDIT: It's funny to see this downvoted. I'm literally speaking of my particular use case and needs! Are there people who believe Apples are better in all scenarios?
The whole "click once on the app for it to wake up, click again for it to know which window you wanted" makes using Mac OS highly unpleasant on a daily basis. Yes, I'm on Mac OS, and no, I don't like it.
As a daily Mac user for about 13 years now I have no idea what phenomenon you're talking about.
For any program that is open, even if it hasn't been in use for a while, I click it once, and it comes to the forefront immediately.
For programs that are not open, I click it once, and then if I wait for it to launch, it appears in the forefront. If I immediately click back over to my web browser and begin using it before the program launches, it does not appear in the forefront... because I interacted with another program after starting the launch.
They might be referring to how clicks don't register with an app until it has focus (the first click being to focus it).
On Windows you can, say, click once to pause on a video playing in a browser window that doesn't have focus but is visible. On macOS, it's two clicks, because you have to focus the app first.
I don't care for the behavior but it's so minor to me that it carries essentially no weight.
Ah! This does make sense. I mostly run things fullscreen on my laptop and use Mission Control to swap windows so I really only encounter this when my laptop is docked to a larger display.
It doesn't particularly bother me one way or the other to the point I didn't even think of this, despite also being a daily Windows users on my desktop computer.
Except for how there's no stable sort order for windows, even if you turn off the setting that's supposed to not rearrange it all the time. Mission control was probably one of the things I liked least about the Mac when I used one for work... To the point that I ended up using hammerspoon to create shortcuts to switch between my applications directly rather than deal with it.
Just chiming in to agree, I don't think we have a single mac in our entire company (100's of people). It's all just windows/x86 like every other business I've worked at.
MBP once again have HDMI ports and good keyboards. I wouldn't mind a single USB-A port but I don't particularly miss it, and 3 USB-Cs is plenty for my uses.
I haven't needed an ethernet port on a laptop since the mid 2000s troubleshooting why my newly installed stack of Cisco switches weren't working, and that sort of use cases is rare enough that having a dongle seems fine.
Conversely, about 80% of the people I know use Apple laptops for work.
I don't see ethernet ports making a comeback on thin laptops anytime soon though. They are handy for LAN parties, so bulky gaming laptops will keep shipping with them, but for everyone else it makes more sense to leave that functionality to a dock.
That's what's so great about capitalism: I'm not interested in any of those features on a laptop, so Apple is great for me.* You do, and several other companies compete for your business.
On a desktop (which these days isn't a tower) I do want some of those features, and I get them.
* except kbd, and I find the apple kbds just fine -- I even survived a couple of rounds of the infamous "butterfly" kbds. But I know some people were unhappy and eventually Apple got their act together.
> Based on what? I would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either
Yes because no one that you know buys an Apple laptop that must mean that Apple isn’t selling any…
> Same for my work laptop, again Windows/x86 and no one I know with a work laptop is supplied a Mac either.
I find the lack of self awareness…amusing.
Because no one you know uses a Mac laptop, that must mean no one uses one.
Well my anecdote from working at the second largest employer in the US that the vast majority of technical people prefer Macs even though they can choose Macs or Windows.
"Apple isn't selling any laptops" wasn't what was said. The original claim was x86 has "thrown in the white flag" and that Apple dominates the laptop market, which is a pretty ridiculous claim since x86 is still the vast majority of laptop sales and Windows is still the dominant laptop OS.
> Apple isn't selling any laptops" wasn't what was said
The parent poster said
> would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either
What relevance then was there in the statement that the original poster made?
> Apple dominates the laptop market, which is a pretty ridiculous claim since x86 is still the vast majority of laptop sales and Windows is still the dominant laptop OS.
Nor did I argue otherwise. I merely called out the silliness of the statement that because the parent poster “doesn’t know anyone who owns one” or that because every developer he knows uses a Windows laptop, that his anecdotal experience has any relevance.
I don't personally see MacBooks as a viable platform either right now, but I would say that this looks like a steady decline for windows x86 laptops until Chrome laptops take over or an arm-based windows replacement takes hold. "Hey this isn't a surrender, it's a war of attrition for the next five years!!!"
Given that 15-20 years ago almost all laptops were x86/Windows, "decline" is pretty much the only direction the platform could go in.
I don't expect either x86 or Windows to go away any time soon – in general I think x86 has been somewhat unfairly maligned, and for most applications (including laptops) it works pretty well and is even the best available choice. I would prefer to say "diversification" or "the existence of actual competition" rather than "decline", as that doesn't imply it's going away.
They're not arguing that Apple doesn't sell laptops, they're refuting that "Windows, Intel, AMD and Nvidia have [...] given the laptop market to Apple". Unless one thinks the laptop market only exists in the US, this idea simply can't match reality, not yet anyway.
Not if the anecdote contradicts an equally unsubstantiated generalisation, honestly. If you're going to complain about the quality of the discussion, do it with both sides, not just the argument you side against.
Well, it’s really not that hard to search on Google for “percent of laptops running ARM” and find something slightly less silly than “no one I know owns a MacBook nor does anyone I work with”
I've been hoarding apple devices too. I have a 12 inch macbook, recently brought it up to Ventura. But the blasted thing won't hold a charge. The battery is fine over 90% health but something is causing power drain while it sleeps even when I try to hibernate it.
It's impossible to find a use case for the thing. I might have to sell it.
If you just bother to open your eyes just a little bit wider you would notice that there is a huge market for Chromebooks, budget laptops, gaming laptops, mobile workstations, ultrabooks for students, gamers, business people, bankers etc. New things are happening every month. We are seeing more efficient laptops from Intel and AMD. Companies like Framework are doing actual innovations in the decade old laptop area. And there are workflows that can only be done on Windows.
Your claim is completely unfounded.