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  • Hacker News
  • 20 years ago I bought a G3 iBook because the hardware was lovely and the system was supported perfectly by stock Debian woody. (Hands up if you remember having to bless your laptop with “holy penguin pee”, part of the output of the yaboot bootloader used in PowerPC systems!)

    Times changed and the best hardware for me right now is a Dell XPS from the model lines a few years back that looked like an aluminum sandwich with a black plastic filling. These machines are fantastic but (1) no OLED, (2) now high speed refresh rate, and (3) the keyboard isn’t great.

    Could this modern Apple hardware bring me back to Free OS on pretty hardware, or is there something else I should try?

    by gorgoiler
  • An frequently overlooked point is the display brightness. The pro models offer 1600 nits peak brightness, which makes these good units for looking at HDR content, especially if you like to take photos or edit videos. Meanwhile the Air maxes out at 500 nits, so the effect and contrast is drastically reduced for those models.
    by quitit
  • > The nano texture display is great at reducing reflections. I could immediately see the difference when placing two laptops side by side: The bright Apple Store lights showed up very prominently on the normal display, and were almost not visible at all on the nano texture display.

    This is a quiet boon for those who enjoy working outdoors but find the sun/brightness a problem.

    by nomilk
  • It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
    by rottencupcakes
  • One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits) compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).
    by carbocation
  • > My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the nano-texture display! :)

    I agree on the nano-texture display having used one in person for a little bit. It's sort of like an ultra fine matte texture that isn't noticable while using it, but is noticable compared to other devices in the same room. I hope it becomes a more standard option on future devices.

    That said, I've used Thinkpads with matte displays and while not as fine, they mostly have the same benefit.

    by accrual
  • > I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting.

    I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick.

    I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.

    by jofzar
  • > I still don’t like macOS and would prefer to run Linux on this laptop. But Asahi Linux still needs some work before it’s usable for me (I need external display output, and M4 support). This doesn’t bother me too much, though, as I don’t use this computer for serious work.

    “I don’t use this computer for serious work.” Dropped $3K on MBP to play around with. Definitely should have gotten MBA

    by dr_pardee

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