this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't get why even use their "blessed" hardware.

When I was at school, a few things made me want it:

  1. Apple was still kinda fine back then, playing nice with FOSS community;

  2. I had good memories from using QuickTime under Windows 2000;

  3. I've been Jobswashed by a few books for kids saying how innovative he was;

  4. I had a PSP, it was really cool to use for listening to music, playing games, reading books in the Web (over wi-fi) and even Skype, and I thought iPhones seem kinda similar;

  5. I was possessed by imitated (was bored, wanted to feel something real and heroic) romantic feelings and real (bright hair, greenish-gray eyes, warm smile, subtle voice, and at that moment she seemed intelligent and nice ; turned out not as honest though) sexual desire of one girl who had an iPhone, a perfect product placement, one can say;

  6. Apple's UIs back then seemed very usable, only later I actually tried them and realized that even Windows makes me less furious;

  7. It still wasn't today's Apple, they seemed trustworthy.

None of this applies today.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

One exception nowadays: Business notebooks - and that's only because the rest of the notebook market went to shit. If you want a somewhat compact notebook with more than 64GB of RAM, decent CPU performance and good battery life Apple currently is the only one offering something.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

A lot of people say that you can get X laptop with similar specs for $600 or whatever. But they usually have shit screens or are made from cheap plastic.

I still think Apple is a bit expensive, but a comparable windows laptop is not too much cheaper in most cases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Screen is another thing - but I can live with that, mostly - it's a bit hard to find x86 notebooks with decent resolution (not talking retina style, just better than "1080p on a 14 inch display"). And while the screen itself is nice on the apples I'd prefer a lower resolution one if I can get a matte screen instead.

But fact is that nobody wants to sell you a proper x86 notebook. It's almost impossible to find something with more than 32GB of RAM, and while there are a few with more than 64GB they're all xeon based monsters larger than 16", as far as I can tell can't really be ordered, and have a price tag equal or larger to a full spec 14" mac book pro. And obviously you can't really think about battery life with intels space heaters.

It's especially sad as current mobile Ryzen CPUs could very well compete with Apples ARM CPUs - the one thing Apple is better at is the absolute low power state, as soon as it has too actually do something the power (and TDP) curve is very close to mobile Ryzen. But pretty much every manufacturer fucks up the thermal design, or gimps it in other ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Just curious about what you do that needs 64gb ram?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Lots of chrome, 1 VM with 8 gigs of ram. I was using > 28 gigs of ram on my old laptop so when I got my new one I made sure to get 64.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Not the person you responded to, but my m1 max macbook pro is used to dry run changes to my kubernetes cluster by running 4 virtual machines and networking them. My previous pc could pull it off fine, but my macbook can run a virtual cluster for hours on battery.

Because of the unified memory, you can use all of your ram as video ram for the purposes of running a massive LLM if you want local AI. there’s a plugin I run for VScode that emulates github copilot but runs entirely on device and offline.

Apple’s ARM implementation is really nice for getting a lot of specific work done. Mine spends most workdays docked and being used as my primary workstation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah it’s the package. The semi broken entryspec mbp from 2015 I got to repair and keep has a mousepad that is at least on par with my current 2 yo high tier thinkpad. Now take a laptop from that era and the difference becomes more noticeable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

It's just hard to trust them. So - buying an Apple laptop to install Linux there? Doesn't seem to make much sense, though Linus Torvalds seems to be of a different opinion.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because you’re getting a product that you know isn’t a cheap knockoff that will burn your house down, and you know it will charge your phone at the fastest speed it’s capable of.

You can of course get the same experience buying third party, but then you have to spend time doing research on which one to buy for your device, and the reputable third party brands can cost just as much as the Apple ones anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

and you know it will charge your phone at the fastest speed it’s capable of

Are you really advocating for buying an Apple-branded USB-C cable?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, why not? A quick look at Best Buy and I can see that the Apple USB-C cable is $15.99 and the cheapest reputable third party USB-charger is $13.99. You save a whopping $2.

So if you’re a deal-oriented shopper you’re probably not even going to buy from a reputable third party, you’ll probably go with the $6 one from the gas station of dubious quality. And you’ll probably be fine. Or maybe after 3 months it causes a short and burns your house down. Best $10 you ever saved.

Or you can take literally all of the guesswork out of it and just go with whatever manufacturers cable, spend the extra $10 on a cable that will last you years. The point isn’t buying something Apple branded, they don’t even brand it physically. The point is to just buy something guaranteed to work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

OK, where I live the price difference is not the same.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you can get a much better deal on a Belkin or Anker cable or anything you know is a decent brand then I’d say go for it. You don’t NEED an Apple cable. It’s just a fool proof way to get a cable that you know will work well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Well, thx, but I already have a couple of noname Chinese cables with braided cover (to avoid breaking) which seem to be as good as anything else I've touched, and were kinda cheap.

No strategy was involved in buying them, though, so I'll remember you advice.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I can get a Anker 2 pack 6 feet USB-C cable for $11 lol. Why in Christ's name should I buy an Apple-branded cable?

But then again, I don't have anything from Apple, so moot point I guess