[the_snooze]

For laptops specifically, the technical specs don't matter for most use cases, but the "quality-of-life" things absolutely do: screen resolution and brightness, keyboard and trackpad comfort, and battery life.

It's hard for me to recommend most ~$500 Windows laptops when they skimp out on those things to lean into specs, while older-model Apple Silicon MacBook Airs are just a bit pricier but absolutely deliver on quality-of-life.

[Spivak]

Yep, Apple likely got a bunch of lifetime customers during the decade long period they spent not leaning into specs in favor of putting every dollar into quality of life.

Gamers and power users of course shunned them for so long saying, "you could get a better laptop for half the price!" but it's a testament to how good the build quality was that the full force of tech enthusiasts telling everyone not to buy it wasn't enough to sway people away.

Everywhere but the low end the point has become kind of moot these days for the most part, Apple has beefy specs now and mid-high range Dells and Thinkpads have good build quality and QoL. I think speaker quality is the most noticeable difference between Apple and Dell where Dell just doesn't value it as anything other than an afterthought.

[SR2Z]

> Gamers and power users of course shunned them for so long saying, "you could get a better laptop for half the price!" but it's a testament to how good the build quality was that the full force of tech enthusiasts telling everyone not to buy it wasn't enough to sway people away.

I've had two Intel MBP cook themselves to death within two years.

The best laptop I've ever used was an Thinkpad X1 Carbon and I'll die on that hill - I find that Apple's build quality for a lot of stuff is ridiculously overrated and on-par with PCs that cost similarly. The lack of cooling is awful and the extra survivability of MacBooks is helped a lot by their status as shiny prestigious toys for people who don't care that much about using their computers.

Obviously plenty of people get real work done on them, but I'm not sure that they're actually more reliable for the price.

[HWR_14]

Thinkpads had excellent build quality for most of their history.