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Comment by goosedragons | Hacker News Reader

I think slumping Mac sales just had more to do with Apple putting out tired, flawed products and letting them languish especially on the desktop side. Why buy a laptop that will cook itself and have the keyboard self destruct in a year or two or a desktop that hasn't been refreshed for 3+ years? Their investment in the late Intel era was particularly bad. Were they expecting AS earlier but just couldn't get it where they wanted?

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One reason for me not upgrading my 2009 MacBook until the M1 was I put a SSD in there, more ram, and it just purred along. Then somewhere around 2014 I installed Linux on it and I never looked back. I don’t have much to do but write documents on this thing, email and light web browsing. The thing was a tank, and it still goes after 10+ years. Fun fact the cd drive broke just after 1 year… I still think the screen is the most beautiful screen I own, and the keyboard/trackpad is solid what else do I need? M1 for me was just interesting to try something different.. and turns out it was a good gamble, and I have retired the 09 model as my daily driver, because it turns out having a battery that works is useful.

Very similar boat here. I even installed OpenCore to upgrade to unsupported Mac OS once my Mac was too old to sync my music to my new phone.

IMO, the only everyday computing task that can't be done with acceptable performance on a Raspberry Pi4 is opening a web browser.

Computers in general have just matured. Unless you're an extreme power user like a gamer or video editor, you don't need to upgrade that often anymore.

I have a fairly loaded M1 Pro MacBook and it's very nice. But I also have a couple 6 year old Macs in the house and, to be honest, aside from video and phoro editing which is all on my M1 now, I use all 3 systems pretty interchangeably--usually in the browser--except for the iMac which has a full setup (lighting/audio/etc.) to conference and record video.

Not just that, but changing machines is a chore. I'd be happy to only upgrade when my machines starts to disintegrate. Sadly, corporations don't agree with that.

Yea I mean I m not a hardcore gamer or graphics guy and I am not able to find a reason to upgrade from my MacBook pro 2014 retina. It works like a charm even though I m concerned if Apple would let me change the battery which may need replacement

My last MacBook Pro survived use as my daily driver for 8 years. “Anymore” is like a decade ago.

The last years of Johnny Ive were a curse.

Jony Ive put a sprightly charm into the dull personal computer. But he should have stuck to the oldest design tenet - "Don't change something drastic enough to make it less usable".

There are always bunch of people on both sides of the fence, but the usability & familiarity generally is perceived to have taken a dip with the flat glassy design. Admitted, now we are used to it (the iOS look & feel). But the change between skeumorphic & flat was a hard change & tad unpleasant for its times. Form should have never take precedence over function. This is something that the Thinkpad team got overwhelmingly right.

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