this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Chromebooks aren’t really a threat. People who can use chromebooks as a daily driver probably already are. Also, most of the hardware is absolute garbage.
Apple isn’t all luxury. The Mac mini as fast af and starts at $599.
Apple just doesn’t have a “shit” category, like many other manufacturers.
Sure, a lot of people will choose Linux, but that won’t be a majority.
As much as I don't want to give LTT credit, I think Linus has a point with Chromebooks. Google is playing the long game with them. Students almost exclusively use them these days, and anecdotally, most of them are getting chromebooks and the like for college now that they're getting to that age. That's at least been the case for almost every family member I've had that's started college in the last 5 years.
It's only going to continue as the average Chromebook legitimately is becoming more powerful, and Steam compatibility is improving. You're going to see a whole lot of people who see no need for a PC/mac.
Most people just need a phone.
In general life? Sure. Students? Absolutely not, at least not once you get to college. Sure you can get away with only using school computer labs, but trying to do homework without a computer is borderline impossible these days. Most online homework sites either outright don't work on mobile or are such a pain in the ass that they may as well not.
Some websites/apps just aren’t possible on mobile devices. Those people would need a capable screen. Like a tablet.
To be fair, in my uni only the programming courses depend on using computers for homeworks. Most are still (thankfully!) on paper.
I had basically the opposite experience. Probably 90% of my homework assignments required some sort of janky website to function.
For a while recently, I had my laptop not working properly so had to use just a phone before the needed part arrived. And after that, I refuse to believe someone could willingly and longterm live with just a phone as a primary device. No. This is actually frustrating.
Most people just have a phone.
Which is good in the short term and bad in the long term imo.
It's good because it gives Microsoft and Apple competition, so they'll be forced to adapt to these users who have found that they don't need the desktop app stuff. More services will move to the cloud (like Office), which means less vendor lockin for client devices.
In the longer term, it means more stuff is in the cloud, which means less individual control over their data. That means vendor lockin must shifts from client devices to services, but now you can't just use a compatibility layer like WINE if you want to switch. So we'll then play a cat and mouse game with regulations like the GDPR as companies innovate new ways to screw you over.
So yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about Chromebooks. I'm personally teaching my kids to use Linux (if they want to play games, they use my Linux machines), so hopefully there's enough people pushing against everything going to the cloud to maintain some amount of competition to keep them in check.
I think I generally agree with all that. One good side effect is I think this will be the push that gets Linux a bit more mainstream*. It's pretty easy to sideload Linux onto most Chromebooks, so I think a good chunk of kids that like tinkering with stuff are going to try it out, more so than the past. ChromeOS is a lot more restrictive than windows, so there's a bigger incentive to get around it.
Yeah, same. But then again, if Linux really did a push to appeal to the mainstream, it would probably lose what I like most and it. That's basically what ChromeOS is (bundling popular, proprietary nonsense), and I'm not a fan.
Apple definitely has a shit category, it’s the entry level with 8GBs of RAM. Completely unusable unless you’re only running a single app at a time.
That’s just not true at all, and you’re only mocking them for their dumb-ass ram comment. Get out of here.
No, I actually have an 8GB M1 Mac Mini (only could get the cheapest one for tax reasons), and I tried doing software development on it. Running Xcode, VSCode, Chrome, and my own app on it at the same time let everything grind to a halt because it was swapping like crazy.
I run the same software and it’s fine. And if you knew you needed more ram, you should have gotten it.
Well, it's not like I can upgrade it.
The problem is that I had to get the cheapest one to be able to add it to the tax writeoff in a single year, otherwise it's split among three years (the tax code in my country is weird like that). If I could aftermarket-upgrade the RAM, I could just have bought the basic model and then upgraded, but that's not what Apple wants me to do.
Also, how should I know that I needed more RAM? It's not like they're writing that on the box (quite the opposite actually, Apple says that 8GB is enough for everyone).
Is this your first time buying a Mac?
Yes and no. My previous Mac was a MacBook back when they still had RAM slots. I switched away from macOS because it became such an embarrassment of an OS.
To what did you switch to?
First Windows 10, then Linux.
I'm not so sure about Chromebooks not being a threat, at least for people who just want to browse the web. A crappy laptop that Windows 11 will bring to its knees will run ChromeOS well. If people compare the performance of both OS's on an equivalently priced laptop, they'll notice ChromeOS is way faster and buy it. To get the equivalent OS performance of a $300 Chromebook, you need a $1000 Windows laptop.
If a person just needs the internet, a Chromebook is perfect. I mean, ChromeOS and Google are not exactly a safe choice, but that’s a different topic.
I think Apple's main selling point is essentially luxury and status. The "look at me, I have an Apple like you, can I be part of the cool club now". It's not about functionality, which you can get the same for much cheaper. Also Apple's shiny-ness, which it kinda does have. But that's what the author is (poorly) getting at, people are now saying "eh, it's a phone".
I agree with the "shit" category. There are too many shit products being put out for laptops and phones, so it's easy to think to get away from that (and into the cool club) you need apple.
If you stop making Apple about the “cool club” and just focus on the actual hardware and ecosystem, there’s really not much competition in terms of quality and usability.
MacBooks right now in particular are so far ahead of everything else right now. Nothing comes close in terms of performance and battery life. Some laptops can do one or the other, but if it’s fast you can expect the battery life to be shit or vice versa.
The battery on their arm devices are insane. I can disconnect my laptop at 100% without shutting it down. Go home. Sleep. And then work another 8h without the battery dying on me.
It's very impressive. I can't think of other laptops that have comparable battery life/performance combo as that macbook pro.
My previous (work) dell laptop barely made 4h ( more like 3 ) and was in the same price range. While I'm not an apple fanboy at all, and there are basis things it just cant do natively ( keyboard window management needs an external app?? ), their macbooks are absolutely the best laptops I've ever worked with.
My Zephyrus G14 could do that too while running Visual Studio. AMD's mobile chips are also pretty efficient and Windows laptops are not as far off from Macbooks in terms of battery life as people think.
Are 12+ hours of intense work realistic on those devices?
12 is a stretch but the person I replied to said 8 hours which is pretty doable. I was working on building a game engine in Visual Studio which is something I'd consider intense. Granted my model is the 2021 version and AMD has made greater strides in efficiency since, I wouldn't be surprised if the newer models can go a bit longer.