[kube-system]

My last Windows laptop was a 2-in-1 Yoga. It was the reason I switched to Macs.

Sure, the specs were good... on paper. But all of the little firmware bugs really destroyed the experience. Mine had both throttling and display output issues, which really suck for a development machine. Also Windows kind of sucks in general these days -- and when I installed Linux on the thing, then I got the classic lackluster power management issue where it would slowly discharge in my backpack. So there goes the battery life advantages.

Apple benefits from great vertical integration so their damn firmware usually works, and if there are issues, they tend to fix them, where as Lenovo and most PC integrators seem to be happy just abandoning products from last quarter and releasing fifteen new models instead. And it's posix and doesn't put ads in my start menu, right out of the box.

[dangus]

Throttling issues?

Did you know the MacBook Neo has no fan? It can go 2x faster FPS in games if it’s cooled better:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lswbpVtAhrc

Even a simple quiet and mostly-off fan would have been a $5 addition to the system that would have boosted performance by ~10%. But Apple wanted to make an iPad computer.

Apple advertises their subscription services directly in the system settings when you buy the system (they give you a trial that is shown as a system settings notification and when you refer it they do the thing where you have to cancel on the last day or else forfeit the remaining trial term before it’s over; accidental subscription dark pattern where you can’t turn off auto-renew without forfeiting remaining time) and also advertises apple subs via toast notifications.

As far as device firmware, I dunno, I felt like my Intel MacBook Pro 16” had pretty shit firmware that ended up abandoned because Apple went straight to M1 and the whole T2 thing where they tried to customize Intel’s stack never really worked all that well. Apple almost certainly half-assed that machine knowing their next platform was on the way.

Like the whole “instant open lid wake from sleep” that was great in the past but turned into crazy lag on those late Intel machines.

Oh yeah and I just got my last settlement check for my 2016 butterfly keyboard. That machine was a lovely ownership experience.

So this idea that only PC laptops have firmware issues and bad long term support…idk man, I just don’t fully buy that. I’m sure Apple is mostly better but I’ve had enough bad experiences that I don’t consider them to be anything wildly special.

[kube-system]

It didn’t have “throttling issues” as in “it implements throttling” but as in “the throttling was broken and it throttled when it wasn’t even hot”

> I just got my last settlement check for my 2016 butterfly keyboard

That’s nice, I didn’t get anything

[dangus]

Tomato, tomato. I would consider removing a basic feature like a small and quiet fan as “throttling when it wasn’t even hot.”

Sorry in advance to continue ranting about this, but the consumer-hostile bit is it’s used as a price segmentation strategy. Consumers don’t care if their laptop has a modest quiet cooling fan, but Apple acts like customers hate them. The cooling fan inside the Nintendo Switch has alienated zero potential customers, is basically inaudible, and it’s still an extremely portable device.

The only reason the MacBook Air M5 is slower than the MacBook Pro M5 is the lack of cooling. It’s done on purpose. It’s not “save costs and offer a cheaper product,” it’s “purposefully remove a ‘free’ benefit to push you up the product lineup.”

Similarly, it would have cost Apple almost nothing to bump the Neo to 12GB of memory but they’re going to hold back that upgrade so that first gen buyers buy their next system sooner.

I think I got the settlement email because I took my system in to Apple to get the keyboard fixed and the lawyers for the class action had my contact info as a result.