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Unmatched Quality

My 2013 almost-top-tier Macbook Pro 15 I got in college lasted me almost 10 years. That aluminum beast cemented in my mind the lasting power of the Mac as a laptop platform.

Now, now, before the horde of legacy Thinkpad stans come at me with pitchforks – yes I know the same can be said about a nearly 10 year old Thinkpad that’s been through countless upgrades. But what the Thinkpads don’t have is the sheer engineering and art (thanks Johnny Ive) of the Macbook. It’s just beautiful to look at!

So I figure this laptop will last me until Apple will no longer support it. That’s how long – and even longer – I held on to my old Macbook.

Enough Already, Get To The Specs

Okay!

Insane right?

Ooooh! Top End Spec!! Bet You Hear The Fans All Day!

Nope. Not that I’ve taxed it a lot lately but It’s been silent. The CPU cores regularly hover around 41-45C but to the touch the machine stays less than luke-warm. It’s brilliant.

So … Do You Miss Your Tiling Window Manager?

Yes, but I am working on getting it there with yabai-tiling-wm-for-mac but… I’ve embraced the 1-app-1-workspace lifesyle and just swipe between the spaces.

Also really nice is to on a platform that the mainstream thinks about when developing applications. Things literally just work ™ and there are awesome applications like LittleSnitch that show exactly what is being connected and to where and the bandwidth. It can’t do deep packet inspection as that would likely require breaking TLS but it’s really nice.

In Conclusion

It’s too early to tell if I love this laptop and will be happy with this ridiculous price I paid … and for now it’s too early to tell but it’s really nice.

It’s silent. The trackpad is awesome. The keyboard travel is surprisingly good for something so thin. The battery life lasts for seemingly ever. And the screen is amazing.

All of the above should basically be par for the course given how expensive this is but the Apple Silicon transition is just amazing and being able to run electron apps and Docker without the laptop turning into a jet engine is a huge win.

And MacOS isn’t as annoying as I remember it. It’s kinda nice to be in a place that is distrusting of apps and prompts for access, it gives me a sense of security.

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