Then I'll be switching all the developers in our company over to a new machine.
(Currently running XPS 13, but we are due an upgrade, especially on memory)
The battery drain is annoying, it's around 30-50% per night depending on what addon cards you have. I've got a setup that puts it close to 40% per night so the laptop has to live on charger over night if I want to use it the next day.
However, the thing that's really stopping me from using my laptop (it has sat in my office for the last 3 weeks with its lid closed) is the touchpad. https://community.frame.work/t/subpar-touchpad/3962 External mouse only.
The mac-book killer was very much hyperbole from paid reviewers.
Edit: Also, the I'll throw in the speakers being absolute garbage as well. Think 1 step above 90s pc speaker. And the sound device has a constant background static when using headphones which clicks on when there's sound and then 2 seconds after any sound being played clicks off.
On battery - I am using "sleep then hibernate", which typically means 4-6% of battery drain overnight which happens while it is in first ~2hrs of sleep mode. Of course it means you now spend 30sec booting up, but I can live with that.
On touchpad - weird, my experience is opposite. I'd say this is the closest to Macbook experience I had, no issues whatsoever.
Speakers are a bit quiet, agreed, no static or anything, we occasionally use it to watch Netflix with my wife, while away from TV, interchangeably with her Macbook and definitely wouldn't call it garbage.
So, all in all I am in "quite happy" camp. Yes, not Macbook killer, but for me it is close enough and without any major inconveniences, but with all OSS benefits and presumably infinite upgradeability. I use Arch btw :)
I'm generally otherwise super happy with it though. The speakers don't bother me much, they're good enough for calls, and if I'm actually trying to listen to music I'll just use actual bluetooth speakers or headphones.
I'm most happy about the fact that they put an actually decent screen and key switches. Many other laptops that run Linux have shitty 1080p screens and shitty keyboards.
And the fact that I was able to shove in 2TB of SSD and 64GB of RAM all bought at market pricing, not at Lenovo or Apple pricing.
That’s the thing with running Linux as a desktop, you’ve gotta tweak it to get it just right.
Battery life is a non issue for me on the framework. The speakers on the other hand is a brutal downgrade.
More thoughts here comparing a 2018 mbp: https://erock.io/2021/11/01/framework-vs-mbp.html
Why buy a laptop with four interchangeable ports when my normal laptop has two USB-A, one USB-C, HDMI, microsd, and a charge port all at the same time? Heck you can't even charge the Framework unless you leave one port as USB-C.
I can agree that the speakers aren't stellar but that's something I don't care about on a laptop since I always have on headphones or I'm just using the speakers for video conferencing or something. Never experienced any background static when using headphones.
>That’s not subpar, that’s standard. There’s a reason why macbook touchpads are so widely praised.
Trackpad improvement in current gen PC is a very recent thing. After people trashing PC laptop trackpad for years, and Microsoft throwing in some R&D money to help improve the situation.
And again if you are comparing to a Macbook, most PC speaker has been garbage for years. Only when reviewer start comparing their PC laptop speakers to Macbook did they start to put effort into improving it.
I dont know any reviewer actually said it is Macbook Killer. It would actually be a stupid thing to say. ( Show them to me so I will take notes ). But I am not surprised because current generation so called reviewers have practically little hardware and supply chain knowledge.
There are of compromise being made to have it all fixable. But they also put in the extra effort in motherboard reliability design. And things that aren't so obvious. Compared to Macbook which is all integrated. ( Although that is changing now, you see more individual components "blocks" being used )
I think it is an expectation problem. And may be people should not have overhyped it so much.
Just because people have a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are hyperbolic paid reviewers. I love the trackpad, although I did have a minor issue out of the box where I had to click kind of hard toward the bottom center to get it to start working. I expect those things will go away as they get better. It's gotta be damn hard to put together such a complex hardware product.
Anyway, this is a 13.5" laptop so space is at a premium. I can't expect to include everything. But if they'll build a 15" laptop with NO NUMBERPAD and buttons on the touchpad, I'll consider buying it. I'll pay extras for those buttons and for the numberpad-less keyboard.
Hold on. Which reviewers received payments in return for positive coverage of the laptop?
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/bios-3-07-windows-10-and-11-a...
Awesome that you're switching your whole team to Frameworks - my next work laptop will for sure be a Framework too :)
If you build/install the latest kernel (or a newer one) on Ubuntu I would expect a similar experience to Fedora (although Gnome and wayland versions can make a difference on some things.)
Generally speaking I haven't found it to be any better than my Framework optimized PopOS 20.04 NVMe boot setup:
- Rock solid Intel wifi (mostly thanks to Pop providing kernel 5.15.15)
- Fingerprint reader works (custom fprintd/libfprint debs, kind of hacky but works)
- PipeWire PPA for better bluetooth audio support
- Suspend-then-hibernate for battery drain issues
- Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting ATM
- Quickemu
- Still basically Ubuntu LTS for the occasionally goofy/proprietary stuff I need to run requiring it
Not encrypting the volume isn't an option for me.
Battery drain seems to be a common serious issue among enthusiast linux hardware, e.g. PinePhone, CutiePi and now Framework. Is this a coincidence or is it due to incompatible ACPI on non-standard hardware?
If you mean high consumption in "shallow sleep" -- I switched to "deep sleep" in the first day.
What kind of MBP have you looked at?
I agree with the ethos part, but the current M1 devices are pretty unique in the laptop space.
Hope they fix these issues.
Their community forum has a lot of users asking for solutions for the problems you mentioned and even Linux compatibility issues.
I really hope they fix these issues too. A friend made a joke, which I find hilarious: "you can always replace all the parts that are failing, isn't that the point?".
I suspect as a whole intel moved to these new fangled s0ix sleep states, which are not well supported in Linux and s3 state does not work well enough in these new Laptops.
I just hope my current laptop can hold out till whenever that is, else it'll have to be the 16" MBP with $400 for 32GB RAM upgrade :(
It seems a lot of developer-type folks have moved to cloud focused work, at least in my bubble the raw computing power seems to be less and less valued.
It’s pretty powerful so far (comparable to my 2019 i9 mbp roughly but I haven’t measured).
I’m not sure what battery life will be like. I haven’t finished tuning my installation so I can’t really measure reliably. Overall the hardware is really solid though.
Modularity could be a big advantage for smaller companies - getting a decent system (cpu/ram etc), and a great screen in one package is enough of a challenge.
Add in touchpad, keyboard, hinges, etc, and it's no wonder only the premium large manufacturers seem able to pull off an all-round great machine.
Plus the tablet form-factor is just more versatile than a clamshell laptop.
AMD vs Intel? Touchscreens? Strong opinions about screen aspect ratio and resolution, keyboard layout, touchpads, wifi chipset brand, GPU brand, etc.? All there.
I wish the company luck, but they are targeting the most picky consumer market there is.
HW development is insanely capital intensive and they're far away from the resources of the likes of Asus and MSI, let alone Lenovo or Dell.
The one thing the ended up keeping me from the Framework laptops was the lack of Home, End, Insert, Delete buttons. Having had a number of Thinkpad machines I have gotten used to using them all the time.
I also quite enjoy that I can put my hands on the keyboard and almost not move them at all while using the little knob for mouse-activities when keyboard shortcuts run out.
I'm also still not sure how I feel about the 3:2 screen. I've gotten so used to 16:9 & 16:10 that I think it'd be hard to go back to something similar to a 4:3 screen again.
This is what I've ultimately found to put me off the project - what I can customise I mostly don't need to, and the things I'd really like choice on: keyboard style, trackpad, etc. I can't.
Since it boots to desktop in 10-15 seconds I don’t have to deal with the overnight power issues everyone complains about. And since it doesn’t run a hundred automatic background processes it’s much quicker to start working than my MBP was.
Printing on the other hand…
I don't have one (yet?), so I can't speak to how well they actually achieved this goal, though.
* Intel only * Windows only
... sorry boy and mum are arguing over homework -- gotta run!
I would expect the vast majority of users will be using Linux though, so calling it Windows only seems a little misleading. There is an option to get no OS and avoid the Windows tax.
I'd love if Linux has as officially supported and just worked.
I think I will just have to get a Dell or HP or Lenovo by now (if not another Mac). By the time they will decide to sell on this side of the planet they will either go defunct (just a sad prediction) or customised laptops won't be a limited fad-like anymore.
If not, is it really that different than a thinkpad?
With framework that would be doubly unnecessary because the EC firmware is open source. Also they open source stuff having to do with their add on modules.
Plus, I'd wager a guess that Intel/AMD make you sign an NDA that would probably rule an open mainboard (I don't know this for sure). What may need to happen to get high end open hardware is for a company with the right ethos to become big enough to have negotiating power or to design their own SOC.
Framework is trying to strike a balance between producing laptops competitive with mass market offerings and providing users control. If you want freedom over all else you should probably buy a Librem or MNT reform.
Calling it "balance" is a big stretch when all the important hardware is closed and there are no independent 3rd parties selling replacement parts.
I recently got a new laptop with Ryzen 5 5600U, 32GB RAM, and 2TB SSD. The laptop is HP ProBook 445 G8. RAM and SSD were sold separately, the upgrade only took 10 minutes and 6 screws. I paid less than €1000 including the upgrades.
The laptop is comparable to the Framework professional they offer for €2280. AMD CPU is better, 15442 versus 11036 points of cpubenchmark.net (that’s 6 cores versus 4). Surprisingly, Intel GPU is better, 2 versus 1.6 TFlops FP32. RAM amount is the same, AMD has twice the SSD storage.
The only large downside is the display, my laptop has 16x9 1080p 14” IPS, the Framework has more pixels and 3x2 aspect ratio.
Also, this is what integration, that is, limiting the customization options, does for you.
Having a niche and highly customizable thing costs you extra.
Niche sure, but I'm not sure I agree it's highly customizable. Not all laptops are designed like macbooks with just a couple ports and soldered everything. There're still good models made in large volumes. They are often made for corporate sector, but who cares about their marketing as long as the hardware's good.
I have already replaced RAM and SSD in my laptop as soon as it was delivered. WiFi is user upgradeable as well, but I don't have a reason to replace that part. It does not need port expansion cards because all these ports are already built-in.
Also, for people in US or other countries where their online configurator works, that model is even more customizable than the Framework laptop: supports a choice of 5 CPU models, a few different display panels (albeit I have to admit none of them is as good as the one in the Framework), optional infrared webcam, couple options for keyboard.
And I guess Satoshi's paper on Bitcoin, which shows that Bitcoin is fundamentally run by whoever has the most CPU power, which has naturally triggered a CPU power arms race which has led to a corresponding increase in power consumption is also FUD.
(Once/if alternatives like Ethereum's Proof of Stake are the dominant force in crypto then yes, power consumption will not be a problem, but it is a very real problem now, and if it had simply been dismissed as FUD then solutions like Proof of Stake would never have been created).
> Printing on the other hand...
Oh dear. I haven't had to print with it yet, I hope it isn't too bad. My last experiences with Linux printing went well, but then again that was back when I was using Ubuntu.
If you're running arch with wayland and sway, then yes absolutely. For people who stick with the default (often Gnome) I haven't had to tweak anything in many years. So I would just s/Linux/customized Linux/ or something like that. Mainly it only matters because some people will be scared away by "you’ve gotta tweak it to get it just right" so accuracy is important to me.
We discussed investment with Linus only after his review, and before making a decision on it, he brought it in front of his community to flag the risks of future conflicts of interest. Since completing the investment, he has also continued to flag that potential conflict in additional videos he has posted.
That's a dealbreaker for me. I'm not one of those people that carries around en external mouse and stuff. I bought a laptop for a reason. "Better than the hot garbage trackpad on my wife's Dell" is not good enough.
My wife has a recent (2019-vintage?) Dell XPS and I can't stand using it. It's just a horrible machine, despite Windows 10 supposedly being good.
- Sleep when closing the lid barely if ever works (netflix keeps playing, etc.)
- When it does sleep, the network doesn't work when you wake it back up (have to reconnect to wifi manually)
- Randomly spinning up the fans when it's supposed to be asleep. Wake it up to discover windows update decided to do whatever it does
- Trackpad just doesn't work well in general. Lousy palm rejection, fiddly multi-touch
- Camera is on the bottom of the monitor so everyone on zoom gets a great view of your knuckles, and up your nose.
It's like nobody at Dell dogfoods their own products. It's just a thoroughly shit-tier machine.
This is with a pair of akg K371.
Speaking of chassis, that makes offering different screen aspect ratios really hard, as you'll usually have a different sized/shaped chassis for a different aspect ratio. That might mean a different mainboard layout, different keyboard, different touchpad, and different battery, at least. That would vastly complicate Framework's offering, something I'm sure they're in no position to do as such a young company.
You can't change the CPU brand. Moving from Intel to AMD (or from the current Intel CPUs to a newer generation of Intel CPUs) would require an entirely different motherboard.
I used to be all in on the FOSS hardware train but at some point you just want to get some work done rather than debugging wifi drivers.
There is an issue with ram timings not being supported that affects the more flashy ram chips. I was lucky enough that it didn't affect the 32gb module I bought but it could've been a return (they need to update the supported ram timings in the bios but haven't)
I really like the keyboard, although I would prefer the layout was more macbooky (the function key kills me but I've swapped it with the ctrl) and the screen I'm pretty happy with. The 100% / 200% scaling thats supported in fedora though is awkward. 100 is a bit squinty 200 is waay to big.
I like the laptop but have struggled to use it. I'm starting to wonder if my touchpad is actually defective.
And then maybe 5% of the time in graphics editing for which it doesn't matter.
For other locally run apps, scaling at 125% or 150% would be perfect but I think it's just a matter of time before Linux supports it properly without eating CPU.
A lot of outlets have pointed out that the M1 chip came out in this kind of interim period between Intel and AMD releases, so performance comparisons were a little misleading.
If you compare M1 chips to more recent AMD chips (I'm less clear about Intel), they're more similar. There's differences in power use and singlecore versus multicore attributes but overall they're much more similar than you'd conclude based on when M1 first came out. M1 is still very nice and efficient, but not absurdly better, or maybe even better at all.
There's a lot of issues with memory use (leaks, excessive use) on M1 laptops. There was just a post about this here on HN. The issue is sometimes raised without awareness of it as a general trend, but it keeps coming up over and over. So far I haven't seen any explanation for why it happens or how to avoid it, but it's real. Just Google "macbook memory leaks" and you'll see plenty of discussion. As far as I know, there's been some red herring solutions but no actual resolution.
3-4seconds would drive me insane :O
(Fab = Semiconductor fabrication plant, in case anyone didn't know)
You could obviously wire up an off-the-shelf USB3 hub controller in such a way as to get two USB3 Type-C ports in an expansion card. (I don't think two type-As would fit.) However, you won't be able to charge the laptop, use external displays, or connect external GPUs through either of the ports... which is kind of the expectation that people have with Type-C ports. If they sold such an expansion card, there would probably be plenty of people angry that they can't just have this one card for charging and dongles, and then fill their other bays with storage drives.
Related example: fiber-optic Type-C cables for long-run use basically only come in two flavors, DP and Thunderbolt. And the source device has to use that one specific altmode; there is no downgrading to USB 3 or 2.
[0] https://community.frame.work/t/dual-usb-c-expansion-card-moc...
Why bother when no other manufacturer does? Just give me two USB 2.0 ports for peripherals.
But I was (and still am) pretty critical of the headphone dongle that apple and many android phones make you use, so there may be some hypocrisy in what I say.
I bought an all-metal, tiny USB-C to 3.5mm dongle and it’s started cutting out, too - and it wasn’t cheap, at about $40.
Point is you can do that w/ framework. Fat luck getting dell or some other behemoth to design a device you can do that with. They have done a stellar job given how many have had hopes and dreams to do similar but haven't even got a product in people's hands.
I would say that installing Linux is like being able to tune your guitar or a chef being able to sharpen their knives, but it's an order of magnitude easier than either of those things.
Agree with sibling that maintaining preinstalled Linux is a good sign that all the guts and peripherals are compatible, although that might be a perverse incentive to use a bleeding edge kernel/distro to accommodate flashy hardware. If anything, they should install a boring LTS/Debian Stable, completely stock other than a custom wallpaper.
For personal laptops/desktop I don't care if it's preinstalled for me or not since the very first boot is going straight into my usb installer since it's extremely unlikely that they checked all the boxes I will check (especially getting my LUKS passphrase correct!!). But for my wife or parent's laptop that's exactly what I want. If dad runs linux I can help him out a ton more, even SSHing into his machine to set things up or install updates, etc, but I'd prefer he be able to turn the thing on and connect it to his wifi and start using it without me having to be there.
I think this is doubly true when you consider the elevated support task they have by the nature of how upgradable/repairable the laptop is. The number of issues I’ve seen from people (and I’m just an owner who lurks a bit in some of the communities) who didn’t know how to properly insert RAM or have had other more basic problems (which is separate from the more widespread issue of installing the wifi cards, where the antenna cables were legit the most difficult I’ve ever dealt with and I have years of experience — Framework sent me a replacement cable and card and that was great), makes me sympathetic to them trying to grow their support teams at an even pace and not inviting a bunch of support queries that can tie-up even the more established Linux hardware vendors.
So yes, I agree, better Linux support would be great. The good news is that it’s already becoming an enthusiast computer so Linux support, especially on newer kernels, is already better than on many other enthusiast laptops (the suspend issues and some recent kernel regressions for wifi are obviously issues but they aren’t isolated to just the Framework), so hopefully that will help. But a hardware startup can only focus on so many things and if being explicitly Linux-first isn’t one of those things (and due to market size, I think that probably makes sense when you have mainstream aspirations), it probably isn’t a good idea to over-promise in that respect — especially when the DIY options and unofficial support is really strong/encouraged.
So if that's a reason for you to not buy a computer, I'd suggest that Linux may not be for you.
The Framework I got for personal use, on the other hand, worked OOTB with a Linux USB installer.
That philosophy is probably part of the reason, why linux on the desktop stays in its small niche inside tech circles.
Most people, myself included, indeed want a system that "just works" - to get the actual work done. And then if the basics work, I can enjoy the full freedom to tweak it to my needs in infinity.
But only very few people enjoy "freedom to tinker", when it means "mandatory tinkering" to get basic functionality.
My best linux times were indeed, when stuff just worked. I was really surprised the first time I used a live Linux cd and everything "just worked". No manual driver installing, like I had known from windows. It booted up and everything was just there.
It was different, but it worked. And then I discovered the endless possibilities and freedom to change ANYTHING.
But fast forward to today: my quite modern laptop still has standby/resume issues on linux, making it hard to enjoy it at times. And I don't feel like compiling the kernel myself to maybe see a slight improvement.
People elsewhere in this thread complain about the battery in sleep for the Framework, and I confirm the same with mine, but losing a few percent a night is nothing compare to the Dell, which goes from 100 to 0 overnight.
native-comp doesn't do anything for start up. Good tip though—I've been running bleeding-edge Emacs for a while now. ;-)
I ran `esup` and figured out most of the slowdown is from the otherwise excellent straight.el [1] package manager. I put
(setq straight-check-for-modifications '(check-on-save find-when-checking))
[1]: https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el#my-init-time-got-slo...
So if 10 minutes of installing an OS and tweaking a few settings stops someone from spending years with a computer, I'm a bit confused by their attitude.
However there also seems to be a problem with battery drain when the laptop is sleeping which kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop for me.
It would be great if that was supported out of the box as well.
I have other issues with it (USB-C DP alt-mode, fan noise) but I've already ranted about those on HN.
This can be done with an infrared camera, should be able to see which components remain hot after a long period of 'sleep', or a voltmeter for the more electrically inclined.
My bet is that its some kind of bus that isnt powering down and continually waking up the devices on it.
Changing the mode is just a matter of changing one line in one file. But getting hibernate to actually work is a bit of hassle, especially if you have any kind of encryption or non-standard file system. This said - I managed to get mine working on encrypted Btrfs.
What use cases are there that absolutely requires these features when boot times are so short?
What programs are you using in such a fashion that simply having the program autostart at boot is not feasible?
A bunch of browser tabs are open, and I don't feel like recovering them at relaunch.
I have my app windows set up exactly the way I like them, down to the pixel.
I'm used to my phone, TV, microwave, wristwatch, stereo, and car not needing to boot up.
I used to have a nasty habit of opening a text editor during the day and taking random notes during phone calls or as I worked. Several forced restarts (administrative, accidental or hardware related) forced me to start using those sticky-note apps. I've moved to Joplin now (very structured, supports markdown, syncs to dropbox periodically, is multiplatform)
The browser thing resonates though. It's not just which websites are open, but what state they're in (ie: logged in, midway through filling out a long form or survey). In a pinch I'll just 'kill -9 firefox' so after the reboot it automatically restores tabs and windows, but it's still messy. Sites that require authentication will just bounce you to the login page and may not "remember" where you were trying to get to. Maybe we need hibernate for browsers.
I could understand if you're away from a plug and/or on the move though.
Also if cars have computers, don't they cold boot when you turn the car on? Phones and smart watches never truly "turn off" their screen goes into sleep mode which is fast to turn on
On my Framework (running Windows) I have it set up to hibernate when the lid closes to preserve battery. It takes about 10 seconds to get back into the desktop when I open the lid again. It's not like I'm opening/closing the lid dozens of times a day; I open it, work for a few hours, then close it. It's not like a phone where I power it on for a few seconds every hour or so to check notifications.
Because it’s way more convenient. Next time you go to open your front door, take out your phone, start a timer for 30s, and then put the key in the door once the timer expires. Once you’re used to something being near-instant, there is no going back. Waiting is frustrating.
Personally I haven’t used hibernate in over a decade and my machines typically run 6 months until I have to reboot for updates. If I had to wait ~10 seconds every time I wanted to google something, I wouldn’t use my PC nearly as often as I do today. Maybe that’s why mobile is dominant in so many categories like web search.
Fortunately most distros have gotten to where we are. Fedora works amazingly well OOTB on so much hardware, and I've heard great things about Pop and other popular distros.
You're right that this is why I use my phone to do quick searches so often- it's on and searching within seconds. Even faster to use my voice to search instead of typing.
Relative to the rest of the laptop space though? I think I'd simply call the M1 "competitive". It's not the first laptop we've seen with a powerful iGPU (AMD's Vega graphics were first to the party in that regard), and it's CPU performance is good but not great (it's effectively a quad-core system no matter how you end up using it). On the higher-end, it's almost a little embarrassing how hard Intel about-faced with Alder Lake and took Apple to the cleaners with a more bloated ISA, decidedly worse silicon and a complete lack of experience designing heterogeneous systems.
So far, the only unique thing I've seen from the M1 is the battery life. I anticipate other manufacturers will catch up on that front as we transition to big.LITTLE and more dense silicon packages, so I'm not really that worried for the rest of the industry. I'm glad Apple has made a laptop that their fans can enjoy, but x86/32-bit support is non-negotiable for my workload, and they have yet to prove themselves with higher-end hardware. Time will tell, but I'm just happy that the performance wars aren't as much of a blowout anymore.
I don't understand. About-faced and take to the cleaners? (Not a native speaker)
About-face is a military-derived term that means "to turn around quickly", as if commanded to.
"take to the cleaners" is a phrase usually used in sports that describes one team completely defeating another in one game/instance.
Hope that helps :p
The only complaint I have is that sometimes the keys leave an imprint on the screen but that could just be my bag being too tight. I would definitely have this problem with a Thinkpad or high end HP anyway. Speakers are the best I’ve heard and the chasis is stiffer than my car’s. The screen is awesome…. In a thread about a framework laptop I don’t think I can find something that’s “eh”.
Unless you’re talking about it not being upgradable, but that’s not a build defect.
To me it just looks like the IT equivalent of a john deere tractor. It'll get the job done, bit fancy, but their going to bleed every dollar out of you to do it...and your stuffed if it breaks and you want to fix it. Also after you've been in their loop for a decade....fat luck breaking out of that companies buying cycle easily. Which results in me thinking....eh avg build. avg device. Its definitely nothing special that's just marketing hype.
I still think that the MacBooks are all above the average of what’s out there.
Not sure if the quality is actually any different. But my first impression was "what the fuck is this?".
Con. It can't even run code from a whole segment of apps because of archi it's built on.
Result - Perf was nothing out of line with expected results from what you'd expect the market to come up with for the next range of products.
It's really nothing special from the user end of things.
1) The hardware is first class. Everything is back where it should be and improved. You can't get hardware like this anywhere else. 2) It is extremely fast. Nothing ever slows down. I can't figure out anything to throw at this thing that will turn on the fan even. 3) It just works. No drama. This is very valuable if your real value is writing code and not doing sys admin.
I suspect if my Windows laptop was closer to the other devices it would be slower, but Linux just feels so much faster than macOS in actual tasks. The interactions are so much "snappier", whereas with macOS most interactions feel like a chore (I think it's the animations).
- have an insanely long battery life
- stay completely silent
- have excellent performance
The other laptops which can theoretically beat the MBP at some tasks utterly fail at being silent or having long battery life under load.
And the other silent laptops (chromebook maybe) can’t manage heavy workloads.
So it is very unique in the laptop space.
I don't think I've ever noticed a logout from restarting a browser.
But agreed, the interface is not as snappy as windows and Linux.
I adore the Framework but I really wish there was a REAL non-Apple competitor in the laptop space. The M1 is just _so_ quiet and fast, I really have to try hard to get the fan to spin up. Can't really speak for battery life since it never leaves my desk where it's plugged in haha.
It's a shame I despise macOS so much or else I'd use this work laptop for personal stuff more often.
That's better than many x86 laptops in full-on sleep mode. With the OS running.
People underestimate just how good modern power management can get when the vendor cares.
I have an old 2013 MBP that wakes up from sleep quicker than I can open the lid.
This is one of the niceties I've lost when I moved to a PC last year (the others can mostly be attributed to cheap "enterprise" hardware).
My current laptop takes longer to wake from sleep while also sucking the battery dry. Talk about lose-lose.
And when I have 20 programs open, even if it only takes 15-30 seconds per program to get them going again that's a bunch of time I didn't need to waste. And even the programs I have that autostart still require prodding to get them into the right state.
Debugging I can understand, as that's a bit of a different beast than a program that can run unattended.
Developing an application in Lisp and there's all kinds of state in the REPL right now. Gotta pick kid up from preschool, just close the lid and it'll be exactly as I left it when I come home.
Have a document open in an ad-hoc fashion (i.e. it's some PDF for work, not something on my autostart list) and I get interrupted. Close lid. Document is still there when I open it again, and what's more it's open to the exact spot I stopped reading.
Say no more. In my experience most of the "linux is fine for laptop usage" folks tend to be "laptop is actually a desktop that I rarely if ever take anywhere" folks also.
As a simple example open documents in libreoffice. I don't want to automatically start LO every time I turn on computer. If I have documents open I want to be able to return to the same place when I came back.
I don't know if it's able to handle reopening the last document, and even less if it can take you back to the position where you left off. This is probably application-dependent.
However, like others here, I would much rather have a functioning sleep that allows the computer to both wake up fast and not drain the battery. I don't really care for it to check my mail while it's in my backpack without any kind of network access, or whatever it is it does instead of sleeping.