Best Laptop I’ve Ever Owned

[TrueBlou]

Longevity is the biggest trade off if you don’t use a laptop as a laptop with some regularity. Even with Apple trying to manage the battery better in later models, it still has a finite lifetime and can exhibit other symptoms such as swelling.

Well, my response was in relation to someone questioning why you would buy a laptop over a desktop system. And the point was that with the three currently available M1 systems, you’re losing nothing in performance by choosing a laptop over a desktop system, for a change.

If you literally never have a need, or desire, to work away from a desk. Then in that case, I’d certainly like to think that a desktop would be purchased over a laptop.

I like the flexibility, I work from home (even before the pandemic hit), but even when I’m at home working, sometimes I like to lounge about on the sofa, or work in the garden during the nice weather. There are many other circumstances where I need to take my work with me, I won’t bore you with them all.



I’ve missed that since I got rid of my MacBook Pro, due to despising the Touch Bar. So it’ll be nice to have a reasonably powerful portable again.

And of course, it’s possible to use a laptop as a “laptop”, at a desk, while hooked up to a large monitor as well, you just don’t connect power.

 

[mcvaughan]

Anything potentially holding you back from the switch? I’m thinking about an iPad Pro, but the new MBP has me rethinking everything.

I guess it really depends on your use case. I mean, if you're doing something like drawing, the iPad is a better fit. My use case are business apps, so the MBP makes more sense.

 

[Jimmy James]

There's certain aspects of this machine that I really like but also a whole lot I don't.

Yesterday I thought I'd do some work outside on my favourite bench by the river. Took out the Macbook, realised it was nigh on impossible to use outdoors because the screen is so glossy, couldn't see anything because of all the reflections.

Then I came home, hooked up the Macbook to my monitor via USB-C, lo and behold, my external monitor looks terrible under MacOS. Not quite as unusable but far from pleasant. Everything's nice and crisp under Windows and I can scale everything to 125% to make things bigger without losing sharpness, not so under MacOS.
It's either tiny and blurry or reasonably sized and ULTRA blurry.

Then there's the keyboard, which is acceptable but nothing to write home about, and still a lot of software issues. To be fair, I expected there to be software issues on an entirely new platform, but I never expected to have a browser that doesn't support uBlock Origin in 2020.

There's a lot to like here, like the absolutely perfect trackpad, the unreasonably good sounding speakers and the insane battery life, but the external monitor issue is almost a deal breaker to me.

Oh, and how cool is touch ID? I didn't think I'd care much about it, but unlocking and waking up the Mac in a split second with one press of a button is so neat, haha.

This is concerning me. My introduction to Mac was using an external monitor 12 years ago and I found this same lack of sharpness.

Since then I’ve exclusively used the laptop screen and it’s been fine.

I’m planning on getting a mini next year and it’s back to desktop use.

 

[magbarn]

There's certain aspects of this machine that I really like but also a whole lot I don't.

Yesterday I thought I'd do some work outside on my favourite bench by the river. Took out the Macbook, realised it was nigh on impossible to use outdoors because the screen is so glossy, couldn't see anything because of all the reflections.

Then I came home, hooked up the Macbook to my monitor via USB-C, lo and behold, my external monitor looks terrible under MacOS. Not quite as unusable but far from pleasant. Everything's nice and crisp under Windows and I can scale everything to 125% to make things bigger without losing sharpness, not so under MacOS.
It's either tiny and blurry or reasonably sized and ULTRA blurry.

Then there's the keyboard, which is acceptable but nothing to write home about, and still a lot of software issues. To be fair, I expected there to be software issues on an entirely new platform, but I never expected to have a browser that doesn't support uBlock Origin in 2020.

There's a lot to like here, like the absolutely perfect trackpad, the unreasonably good sounding speakers and the insane battery life, but the external monitor issue is almost a deal breaker to me.

Oh, and how cool is touch ID? I didn't think I'd care much about it, but unlocking and waking up the Mac in a split second with one press of a button is so neat, haha.

Weird, Big Sur looks great hooked up to my M1 MBA and M1 Mini on my LG 55" OLED.... HDR! Text is sharp too!

 

[Zazoh]

I’ve done both. Laptop wins. I have a dedicated office in my house so I bought a Mac Mini a year ago. Experiment failed. So nice to grab the laptop and move to a different room, patio, bar, couch and work. Traded the mini and moved to the MBA. I can still clamshell when I want, and move about when I want.