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Comment by mtlmtlmtlmtl | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why USB support should even be an issue. Is the controller integrated into the SoC or something? Or is it a chipset thing?

Feels like Apple have made this a lot harder than it needed to be. Of course they're masters at designing great hardware with ridiculous flaws. Like somehow being fragile despite the metal construction. Missing connectors, weird keyboard design choices. Soldered-on components. I bought a Macbook Pro once almost a decade ago. Never again. Never before or since have I felt less like I actually owned the hardware I'd bought.

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I often have to read this kind of comments about apple, but it never aligns with my personal anecdotes about apple, and it never mention actual hardware or brand whose qualities are so much more valuable than apple's.

You sound like anything but apple is good, but there's a lot of awful hardware out there, that is for sure. How to you avoid it ? What's your foolproof buyer method ? I might sound snarky, but I'm also genuinely interested !

Before I buy a laptop, I pretend I accidentally put my fist through the screen, and shadowbox the process of replacing the panel.

For example with Thinkpad that meant finding a compatible panel based on specs they publish about all their models, then finding a teardown and rebuild video published on the Lenovo website for the model.

I was really interested in an m1 laptop but I tried my process with it and all research pointed to "send it in to apple care" which I don't want to do because I know how to use a screw driver and order parts, that should be enough.

>Self Service Repair is intended for individuals with the knowledge and experience to repair electronic devices. If you are experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices, Self Service Repair provides you with access to genuine Apple parts, tools, and repair manuals to perform your own out-of-warranty repair.

https://support.apple.com/self-service-repair

Is that the thing where they mail you a pelican box of parts?

Yeah, display, battery, and storage replacement being doable is absolutely key to me. But even more importantly, the display needs to be well shielded, especially if it's an LCD panel, because with those one crack is enough to make the entire display unusable. The Macbook I had was very vulnerable if it fell and landed in its side. It's because Apple prioritise a thin bezel over durability, I think.

There's plenty of terrible hardware out there, indeed. Personally I prefer Thinkpads. I've owned a lot of shitty laptops over the years, though the Macbook Pro(2013/2014 retina) is the only one that's managed to become permanently dead as yet. The others I've been able to repair to some extent. I've had my Thinkpad for six years now and it's still going strong. It's not even a powerful model, I just run pretty low-overhead stuff on it and test the stuff I code remotely on my home workstation through a vpn. It's sturdy as hell though. 6 years of not-so-gentle use and no accidental damage has happened. The Macbook display was damaged and useless after 3 months, because it was dropped, once. Of course it was deemed user error, because it was. But man, I expect a bit more sturdyness from a $1400 laptop built in metal by a company that is supposed to deliver "superior quality" at a hefty premium.

I expect to keep my Thinkpad for another 5 years at least. But I might switch to Framework at some point if they can match the Thinkpad build quality. For laptops I value sturdyness and repairability over all other considerations, because I'm clumsy as hell. Apple products are far too fragile for me and far less sturdy than they look.

I really like my thinkpad and basically all my family has second hand thinkpads, but let’s not pretend that they are flawless — their last few generations of intels have terrible throttling issues.

Sure, that could be, I don't have any issues, though my thinkpad also just has an i5 in.

> Apple products are far too fragile for me and far less sturdy than they look

Amen.

"What's your foolproof buyer method ?"

Reading trustworthy test sites, before buying anything expensive. Which has gotten a bit harder, due to LOTS of paid content, but it still works, if you know how to spot the signs of a bad site.

Apple is kind of in their own price-point which is (potentially) justified by their quality. The main alternative is "buy something cheaper".

Is their any laptop that is even in the same ballpark on a performance-battery-life plot?

Apple used their own physical transceiver for the USB3/DP/TB port. They probably could have found an existing one that worked and supported Linux but it doesn't seem to be unreasonable to develop their own. To support the astounding bandwidth of USB3 and above these devices are a marvel of engineering. Every different cable needs the hardware to re-tune its timing and analog circuitry to match.

Sure, they can develop their own. But nothing is stopping them from also providing drivers/patches to the Linux kernel. Many companies that develop hardware do.

Apple is not charity. Why would they do that? It have to be economically justified.

They’d sell a lot more to Linux-only users… but that’s obviously not their goal, and Apple seems to be unusually good at being ruthless in their prioritisation.

You just need to care about Macbook. It's a luxury item after all. I made the same mistake treating my first Macbook as ordinary laptop. Of course it broke very quickly. Bad USB port, GPU issues, keyboard issues, broken SSD, broken audio port and so on.

I bought my second Macbook and I'm using mostly wireless accessoires to prevent port damage. I don't use its built-in keyboard and touchpad to prevent them from breaking. I don't disconnect it from power to prevent battery damage. I bought huge SSD (2TB) and don't fill it with data to prolong its life.

And you know what? It works wonders. This macbook works without hiccups for almost a year! Sure, I'll need to replace my Apple Keyboard soon, but that's just $250, not $5200.

Oh no, be careful. You should keep it in a dry clean room with external cooling, only ever run a stripped down minimalist, headless linux distro to avoid taxing the hardware too much. Only ever use it through SSH.

I hope this is sarcasm.

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