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Comment by MindSpunk | Hacker News Reader

Intel MacBooks were overpriced, under powered, overheating junk. They ran outdated processors at launch day and charged a premium because they had the best screens and track pads money could buy.

Apple Silicon Macs are a 180. Fantastically fast and efficient hardware stuck with an increasingly locked down OS, zero upgrade path and still a premium price.

If you’re holding on to the memory of Intel Macs I can certainly agree, they were not great.

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Outdated processors or Super ULV processors? Their obsession with maximizing battery life meant that the processors were unable to throttle highly. Clearly they knew Apple Silicon was coming so they took their time re-engineering the devices. Why bother? At the same time i've heard stories of Apple being very pissed at Intel for delivering such poor chips for their target thermal design.

The trackpad is a device-selling feature though. They really are that much better than the competition.

There are now thankfully more haptic trackpads on the market, and honestly while mac trackpads still seem a bit better than at least what I've used (some Synaptics solution on a HP laptop; no idea how they compare to e.g. Sensel which is allegedly closer to or even better compared to Apple) the difference isn't big IMO.

But yeah, going from a more standard trackpad to a decent, large haptic one is night and day and basically made me stop using a mouse on-the-go in most situations. It now genuinely seems crazy to me that you can buy expensive, "premium" laptops without one.

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