alt Hacker NewsBikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop
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> I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels Apple’s quality is degrading.
Tbh I don’t really feel this way. We all agree hands down that Macbook has the best hardware. Apple Silicon has been a huge success for speed and power consumption. I haven’t used the newest macOS but like the butterfly keyboard and touch bar I assume they’ll work out (or fix by reverting) the issues. It’s probably not even that bad. Sonoma is still receiving security updates so I’m good for now.
And most of the things that people want in a non-MacBook laptop are still a few years before falling off patent.
I’m fine waiting and playing around with Framework or Steam machines until then if I need another hobby.
The problem is, laptop companies don't "make laptops". They are big machines that puts parts together in the right configuration and call them "laptops". No thought goes into it. They are indistinguishable from any other deep pipeline of manufacturing, such as one that makes bicycles or refrigerators. New year, generate a new product ID, upgrade the CPU and RAM using the reference schematic provided by AMD/Intel, throw it in the ERP, make a BOM, and start rolling them off the assembly line.
What we see is a deep disconnect between visionaries and the companies that operate these deep pipelines. Apple has tried to maintain a connection between design and manufacturing by having great designers at the top (and other companies poach them).
A few daywalkers like Bunnie Huang walk both sides of the world.
I think the kind of laptop this person wishes should simply be made illegal to make. We cannot sustain having all electric devices being thrown after a year or two, these things need to last, to be repairable and make it easy to grab pieces and materials when they die anyway
I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Valve puts out a laptop - the Steam Deck has notably good power management for a linux device of its class (and I've even heard of people using them as laptop replacements), though the idle power is still higher than a Macbook. They're going to have made a desktop, gaming handheld, and VR device; why not one more?
All I want is a thinner Thinkpad X220 but with upped specs and newer ports. Framework-style upgradable motherboard would be nice but optional. The X220 already has a perfect keyboard, a mousing system that doesn't suck (sorry, I've never been happy with a trackpad: they feel too imprecise), a beautiful form factor for a laptop (if I want a laptop, I want it to be 12-14in for easiest portability), it's practically indestructible and has an array of ports that makes me wonder how people manage with just 3 USB-C ports. Maybe this is just me though.
The framework model is the reasonable approach to people being finnicky about their laptop specs. You can't sustain "I want it just so" and "it needs to be a cnc-machined glued together brick, engineered to the last gramme" at the same time, without a step change in how we build hardware, but the framework comes pretty close
If linux power management got a bit better, and there was a good arm chip, it would be a great machine. Now it's just pretty good
the whole pc laptop industry really is an embarrassment right now. It has been 5 years since the M1 Macbook release, and there is no real equivalent. I'm on a thinkpad x9, which might be the closest I've seen, but the cpu performance just isn't as good.
I wonder why ThinkPads are not mentioned. It's not like I recommend them (I mean, I use one, but it's not like I've tried most laptops out there, so who I am to judge), but I was under the impression it's still a de-facto Linux laptop standard.
I mostly think of when geohot wanted to make his own RISC-V core and cranked out some basic verilog. It was incomplete and barely commented, and never touched again. I suspect we are going to get a few blog posts of analysis and then he moves on to something else
I just don’t use laptops. My employer never required me to use one, and with remote logins and WFH there is also little need for mobility. A desktop setup is necessary for good ergonomics anyway, and then you may as well use a desktop computer. In a pinch, I can use an iPad with remote desktop on the go, but the need rarely arises.
I doubt there will ever be a market for a device with this specific (or many other kinds of other specific) set of requirements, especially if one insists on that 'last bit of polish'. Short of fully developed molecular nanotechnology or similar, allowing economic manufacturing of bespoke hardware in single copies, which is another world from the one we live in, I don't see such wishes come true, so the author (and others like him) will have to settle for something else.
I agree about some criticisms of the framework. I think they could do away with the plug modules and just go all in on usb-c. I don't mind the occasional dongle for HDMI. I also would prefer a thinner screen bezel, even if that means it's not swappable either.
But having easy access to internal hardware for upgrades is pretty huge. Rather than blowing 1-2k on a new machine every few years, it's just $200-500 for more RAM and a better CPU (assuming prices go back to normal in a reasonable amount of time)
One model/configuration will never work because developers are awful, picky customers.
You’ll lose 90,000 of your 100,000 with one or more little nitpicks.
Probably 50% right off the bat because you chose a keyboard with or without a numpad.
Another huge chunk because you chose the wrong screen (Retina resolution? Low resolution? Refresh rate?)
Too bad, because I want this. Or at least the version of it I have in my head :)
Add ECC memory to the list. For some reason, laptops with ECC memory support are incredibly difficult to find now, and so are the ECC DDR5 SODIMMs, even before the current price hike. I want to have a rock solid mobile workstation, that isn't necessarily more powerful than a midrange consumer gaming laptop, that would show warnings and errors before corrupting my data.
How much would you pay? Seriously.
There is market demand, but at what price? Hardware is a thin margin product.
Is it a few off the shelf parts placed in a custom CNCed block of aluminium or is it engineered, from the ground up, to suit purpose.
Getting an idea of what would people pay for such a product is step one.
5k?
Surely OLED is bad for a productivity device due to poor text rendering. For games or media, sure.
I could agree that Apple’s software is a big trade off but the hardware seems fine.
I don’t think much has changed since the 16” and 14” MacBook Pros came out and both had better hardware than was previously on offer.
IMHO they got the formula right with the 14” and I’m glad they’ve stuck with it.
All I could ask for is maybe faster GPU or TPU and more memory. Possibly the ability to use an eGPU again.
Otherwise it’s fine. I worry much more about macOS and what they’ve done with the UI.
the upgradability and interchangibility of parts in the framework ecosystem are needed to sustain a shelling point.
As for the PC ecosystem, there are no good x86 cpus with good power effciciency. Maybe geohot would like https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc ? Framework 13 does not have his specific touchpad complaint
Of course different strokes for different folks. My favorite laptop at this point is a terminal for my home workstation which is far more powerful than anything mobile. That means I prioritize decent graphical performance, OLED screen, long battery life, and I don't really mind too much using WSL in Windows. All my development doesn't really happen locally any more.
Dell XPS used to be like this, but unfortunately Dell discontinued them :'(
There's plenty of good hardware outside the Apple world. Heck, whenever I get convinced to try Apple hardware or software, its quirks and obvious glitches put me off. Input lag is the topmost issue. It immediately washes off the "quality" impression. But I understand that Apple users are used to that and don't notice such issues.
The naming fails at big cos is simply caused by having internal branding teams that need to justify their existence.
Honestly this describes a product I would want. I want the hardware of a MacBook that runs Linux and not MacOS.
>the trade-off I’d prefer is 0 upgradability or customizability in exchange for less weight and more polish
This mentality is ruining everything. Not just computers, but everything including cars and appliances. It's disappointing - I thought geohot was more of a hacker. If he really wants a glued together, disposable piece of crap, you can't do better than Apple, and then just tolerate the OS and maybe VM Linux.
> After a year or two, I’m happy to throw it out and buy a new one.
Sincerely, fuck you.
Nobody with this mentality should be designing anything. I know many people at most hardware companies think like that and they can go fuck themselves too. But at least they have the excuse of getting fired if they make things too good. You don't.
If someone makes a linux laptop that is as good as the a bleeding edge apple macbook air, it is shut-up&take-my-money.
But it is hard to imagine a company spending the time to smooth a linux config on their hardware config and make sure it reaches the "just works" that apple has!
Boy would I love it! Please, someone do this! Getting tired of Apple's walled garden become ever more locked up and enshittification.
I’ve been feeling exact way for a while now. Tahoe brought it to a head. I just want a portable machine I truly own and control that doesn’t suck. Why is that so much to ask?
Different priorities I suppose but I'd absolutely hate using that laptop. I want something designed to last, not be thrown out in a few years. IDK when it became cool to just expect everyone to have the money or care to buy a new <thneed> every few years. I guess it makes more money but since that seems to be the only thing companies with a marketing budget do people have forgotten there's an actual market for well built electronics that will at least survive 5 years
The bit about HP’s naming scheme is painfully true, about many companies. Utterly dumb marketing strategies.
Honestly if you actually need high end specs then you should just build a PC.
"16 core Zen 5 CPU, 40 core RDNA 3.5 GPU. 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM @ 256 GB/s + stunning OLED" - Easily done as a pc build.
In a world where you can get this laptop with Linux, there's a new set of trade-offs -
- be prepared for a LOT of things not working because the size of the market for extremely expensive configurations with high end CPU + GPU + RAM + Monitor + Linux is practically zero.
- when closing the lid and walking to the coffee shop will the battery be dead before you finish your coffee? probably
- will a new GPU/GPU architecture be a headache for the first X years...yes, and if you want to replace every 2 years, I guess you will have a permanent headache.
- will updating graphics drivers be a problem? yes
- is the text in your "stunning oled" going to be rendered correctly in linux? probably not
- will the wifi chip work in linux? maybe
- will all the ports work/behave? probably not
- will your machine perform worse than a high end PC that cost 1/2 as much from 3 years ago... yes.
This is a refreshing take in some ways. I'm beyond tired of the usual rose-tinted attitudes towards customizability and after-engineered things.
It was a bit disappointing to see the cold shower not reach the thermals situation however, despite the heavy emphasis on performant parts. Apple's offerings are phone-like, they let them saturate then throttle. The alternative is the ugly gamer laptops with their jet engines. Not sure I can wholeheartedly prefer either.
George is probably too young to remember when we thought OS X was hot shit because it was UNIX compliant. That meant a lot back then.
However over the years they dropped the ball big time. Arch may be the new hotness but BSD was the once (and hopefully future) king.
I get the complaint about naming but hp is different then apple. They sell a variety of configurations and one isn't neccesarily better then any other.
A good chunk of (but not all) his requirements would be fulfilled by an ASUS ROG Flow Z13
geohot: "I want a laptop with a high-end AMD chip, great Linux power management, good docs, solid build, and a normal name"
My brother in christ, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 5 AMD exists. Zen 5, aluminum chassis, legendary Linux support, actual power state documentation. They been doing this for 30 years. Dude, you're bikeshedding a product that's been sitting in the enterprise aisle this whole time
ThinkPads have been the Linux laptop for decades precisely because of the things he's wishing for. Public ACPI/power management docs, upstream kernel support, and AMD options with sane power profiles. He even admits the ZBook touchpad is fine but fails to acknowledge ThinkPads have had excellent trackpoints + multi-touchpads since forever.
I don’t know. Just run Linux in a VM on macOS. What exactly is Apple not permitting you to do?
Asahi would have 100x more adoption if it was about better virtualization of Linux on macOS. It would be a DIFFERENT product and I guess that’s the point, right?
> I’m typing this blog on a HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14. Question to HP, who names this crap? Why do these companies insist on having the most confusing product lineups and names.
The reason is that they are not serious companies, this is why anything other than a real macbook and with a real macOS is not worth having spent time on.
> Consumer electronics naming is very simple. Make a good product with a simple name. “iPhone”, “comma”, “Z Fold”. Then every year or two, add one to the number of that product. If it’s a small refresh, you can add a letter after the number. “2 3 3X 4” “4 4s 5 5s 6 …” “2 3 4 5 6 7” Why is this so hard for companies like HP?
Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”
Apple loses some points here since every macbook from like 2007 until 2020 was just called “Macbook pro” with no year officially in the name so you have to be really careful when eg looking at used listings for macbooks. But since the M1 it’s been good with M<1-5>