alt Hacker NewsNot saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I buy if I want something as sleek and well-built and polished as Apple?
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To each his own. I liked may company issued ThinkPad so much I ended up buying one myself and I have been pushing back getting a replacement (HP Elitebook).
Some of your points are common, such as the touchpad being garbage, or that it runs hotter than an Apple Silicon MacBook Air. But most people consider ThinkPad keyboards to be way better than Apple's and while most (not all) ThinkPads have a plastic shell, they certainly don't feel cheap. Apple displays are typically really good, but ThinkPads have a lot of options, so it is hard to tell.
Your comment, especially regarding the keyboard makes me think you just love your MacBook. Why buy anything else?
Linux support is not great, but a lot of a significant part of what makes Apple great is in their hardware/software integration and they are not doing it open source. It means a MacBook without OSX is a lesser MacBook, but at least, it is not Windows 11.
So the weird answer is... a better model Lenovo. They vary from plastic disaster to metal or carbon fiber dream machine.
Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]...
As well as beautiful hardware that is a pleasure to use, Apple machines can be capable of running local models like gpt-oss-20B or Qwen Coder portably and without sweating. My 24GB M4 Mini was very cheap considering the local models it can run.
> weird keyboard layout
Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.
I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x.
The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.
edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in the laptop that day...
Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made sacrifices for a greater social good.
Mac hardware is overrated. Asus ExpertBooks, Thinkpads and Dell XPS models are all very nice, and have lasted for just as long as Macbooks do.
> The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy
I have a personal Thinkpad (Linux) and a company provided one (W11). The personal one basically never turns on the fan. The company one is hot all the time. Guess why.
It's such a shame that Lenovo discontinued the X1 Nano series. It's my everyday casual driver. I would buy a newer model instantly if necessary.
Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak. Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4 performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from CES.
This is also my problem. I am currently using my docked Macbook instead of my much more powerful desktop running Linux, even though I also want to use Linux more.
Why? Because as much as I want to get rid of my dependence on tech giants, Apple's products are just so damn good, and they Just Work^TM, especially with each other.
Having used Linux on/off for many years, I can say that it's definitely gotten better, but I am still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop. It doesn't have to be as polished as my Mac, but I'd like to at least not have to fight with Bluetooth especially, and things like the dongle for my headset not working and other issues like that.
If you want something a bit more like a Macbook Pro, consider the HP Zbook G1A.
It's basically built like a Macbook in terms of case and screen quality, but it's based on an AMD Strix Halo chipset - mine is an AI Max Pro+ 395.
The chip design is somewhat similar to Apple Silicon in that it's one big chip with unified memory - you can get them with up to 128GB of unified ram - that thing is a beast for running local LLMs.
Since HP also sells them with Ubuntu preinstalled, Linux support is quite good, though it requires some bleeding edge packages for everything to be supported.
In my case, I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc all work.
Huawei?
I mean, it's certainly not as seamless as an open x86 machine, but if you have an Air already you can always try Linux on it? The Fedora Asahi spin [1] supports pretty much everything on M1/M2 devices.
I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to other manufacturers.
Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to see that they've neglected and regressed their desktop OS, however I don't think anyone can argue that macOS is anywhere near as bad as Windows 11.