[kwanbix]

If you are OK with the closed apple ecosystem, sure, but I mean, 20% is not that much for 99% of the population.

Don't get me wrong, I really admire what apple has done with the M CPUs, but I personally prefer the freedom of being able to install linux, bsd, windows, and even weirder OSes like Haiku.

[traceroute66]

> but I mean, 20% is not that much for 99% of the population.

As long as you're ok being tethered to the wall, and even then, guzzling power.

The whole point of Apple Silicon is that its performance is exactly the same on battery as tethered to the wall AND it delivers that performance with unmatched power efficiency.

Its the same on pure desktop. Look at the performance per watt of the Mac Mini. Its just nuts how power efficient it is. Most people's monitors will use more power than the Mac Mini.

[pico303]

My “fancy” Windows work laptop has 45 minutes of battery life, while my M3 MacBook Pro will go 14 hours compiling C++ or running JavaScript and Docker images, and do so twice as fast as my work laptop could. I’d say you get what you pay for, but my work laptop was around the same price as my M3.

I wouldn’t be opposed to going back to Linux. But once you stop looking for power sockets all the time and start treating your laptop like a device you can just use all day at any moment, it’s hard to go back.

[spwa4]

That's because your company's security department has virus scanners scanning every bit of code (including 99% of the virus scanner itself).

[pico303]

My company literally has four different apps “protecting” me now, including two different malware scanners. Neovim runs like it’s a 286. That said, before they’d installed everything it still wasn’t any faster than my Mac.

[zdragnar]

I was just looking at an HP laptop with a snapdragon X processor that claimed 34 hours of battery life while watching video.

It'd be tempting if I had any idea what the software compatibility story would be like. For example, the company I'm contracting with now requires a device monitor for SOC2 compliance (ensuring OS patches are applied and hard drive encryption remains on). They don't even want to do it, but their customers won't work with them without it.

Surprise surprise, a quick check of the device monitor company's website shows they don't support ARM architecture devices at all.

[thewebguyd]

It may still work. The prism emulation is pretty good, almost on par with Rosetta2.

I have the surface laptop 7 with the X elite in it. The only thing I've ran into that outright didn't run was MSSQL server.

It's not my main machine, that is still an M4 Macbook pro but I hop on it occasionally to keep up with what Windows is doing or if I need to help someone with something windows specific. I've got WSL2, Docker, VSCode, etc. all running just fine.

It's decent, but not amazing. Feels a little slower than my M2 Air I have but not much, most of that is probably just windows being windows.

Would be nice to be able to get Linux running on one of these

[zdragnar]

Sadly, I'm doing dotnet work, including a legacy webforms codebase. Not running mssql server directly, but lots of other tools- visual studio, sql server profiler, sql server management studio, that sort of thing. EVEN IF all of that worked, I have already verified from the company that supplies the device management software that they don't support non-x86 architectures.

[thewebguyd]

Bummer. They are neat little laptops, and with the X elite 2 (assuming they end up in some windows laptops and aren't exclusively for the new android chromebooks) it's about the closest we'll get to a MacBook on Windows for now.

I wish Microsoft put more pressure on vendors to support ARM.

[dijit]

The last Snapdragon X Elite claims really didn't pan out though.

Which left me bitter quite honestly as I was looking forward to them a lot.

[dijit]

I keep hearing this, but I'd venture that a majority of those making it will most likely end up on Windows full time anyway. Which is not materially worse than MacOS, no matter how much MacOS is shooting themselves in the foot.

[davrosthedalek]

With WSL2, Windows is better, sad, but true.

[dijit]

Hahahahhahahahahhahahahahaha

No.

Even if it was better than lima (and the builtin posix/unix environment), which: it ain’t, it doesn’t nearly make a dent in the mandatory online account, copilot shit and all the rest.

[illusive4080]

This is a very subjective take.

If you like Windows, you’ll find it better with WSL2. In fact, I see many developers at my org who claim they’ll switch to Windows (from Mac) when we make it available internally.

However, if you love Mac, you'll never find Windows palpable no matter what.

And then there’s all shades of gray.

[planb]

You may like Windows better, but WSL2 is just a virtual machine with all the downsides (slower, no docker) that brings . In fact, on my windows PC I still use WSL1 for that reason.

[Zak]

It does not appear to me that Macs are closed in the sense that iOS is. It is possible, at least to install Linux on Apple silicon Macs.

There are certainly many more options on the PC side, but it's not because Apple actively blocks users from running another OS.

[kwanbix]

As far as I understand, the only Linux you can install on an M CPU is Asahi linux. Apple is not doing anything actively, but is also doing nothing to help linux be ported.

[dagmx]

A big issue there is that there’s a massive backlog of patches to land in the kernel and Asahi are currently working on reducing that.

Once that’s done, any distro should be able to work.

[dmitrygr]

You have no idea how much work everyone inside the kernel and iBoot teams at Apple put into making it possible to run Linux on those MacBooks!

[whycome]

20% is just the performance difference. They noted the low cost for an Air model as well. What would an equivalent be at that price point? Would it have the same passive cooling and weight features?

[carlosjobim]

How about running your Linux and Windows etc virtually on a Mac? From what I've understood, people say it works great. But I haven't any experience myself.

[Greed]

Agreed. Even as an enthusiast if I could take the performance hit and keep the M4's battery life, I'd do it in a heartbeat just for the ability to run linux.

[elAhmo]

Huge majority people don't really case about whether an ecosystem is closed or not. Power users, such as developers, actively chose Macbooks, and those users are most likely to care about that.

You really think an average person shopping for a computer at Bestbuy cares about installing a different OS on their machine?

[jamespo]

I'd like to have haiku as a boot option, but how well does it work on modern laptop hardware?

[MangoToupe]

> I personally prefer the freedom of being able to install linux, bsd, windows, and even weirder OSes like Haiku.

I certainly don't think that matters to the vast majority of the population

[VBprogrammer]

The majority of the population is running a $300 laptop from Amazon. They certainly aren't popping used car money every 2-3 years like the real enthusiasts are.

[MangoToupe]

> They certainly aren't popping used car money every 2-3 years like the real enthusiasts are.

Sorry, I don't get the reference. What sort of expenses are you referring to? For the price of a used car you can get pretty much any workstation money can buy.