Going from complaining about Apple not having enough polish in the fine details of their UI to suggesting we all switch to Chromebooks is so completely inconsistent that there must be other motivations.
In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying the software and running shell commands copied from the internet so you can run a text editor to change settings and drivers is the solution? They dropped a note about how they haven't actually tried development on the chromebook at the end but say they assume it would be okay. For someone telling us to switch to Chromebooks, they haven't even finished doing their own homework
Linking to an SEO spam website called technical.city for performance comparisons is another clue that this choice was driven by something else first and the reasoning was backfilled. The new MediaTek part is fast, but there's more to laptop performance than a single bar chart from a site citing ancient benchmarks like PassMark.
I can't read this as anything other than an attempt to make a contrarian choice and then present it as the superior alternative.
"After my last blog post I received tons and tons of emails from people mentioning that they switched to X or Y because of Liquid Glass, and much like them, I switched away from the Apple ecosystem thanks to these ongoing issues as well."
Then within 2 sentences: "So this blog post is about my painful journey trying to find a nice piece of hardware that works and feels just as good as Apple's hardware as a web developer."
So yeah I really don't get the motivation
A Chromebook gets you the elegant UI, touchpad gestures, slim vertically integrated system architecture and the reliable sleep mode of a MacBook without Liquid Glass.
Plus Chromebooks have the better keyboard layout IMHO.
I .. don't get how anyone can consider ChromeOS to have a elegant UI.
I have a chromebook for traveling and light web dev work since years .. and it works, because I rooted it and allmost do not have to use the UI(I need the terminal and chrome dev tools). In general it got better, but is still horrible inefficient and not ergonomic. Or did you mean it looks good? Well, maybe, but for me a elegant UI means it does not get into my workflow and can do quickly what I want. Which .. it nativly cannot.
As someone using a Chromebook as my daily driver, not getting into my workflow and quickly doing what I want is exactly ChromeOS's UI. Especially virtual desktops combined with the touchpad: Switching between tabs, going forwards and backwards in history, switching virtual desktops and apps is all done with a few gestures.
Hm, maybe that part is more polished, but I don't use it. My pain points are very basic stuff, quickly opening a file explorer, finding files, copy paste, navigating folders. It all improved, but still feels awkward and is way slower (takes more clicks/key presses) than in linux or windows.
I have never had any problem with any of those things on any OS I have used. Pin the files app to your taskbar, boom, easy access to files and folders. Hit the circle key and type in the launcher box to search. Copy paste is...identical other than Ctrl vs cmd?
ChromeOS is fine. I wish they hadn't given up on Steam and models with dgpus, but I prefer playing games on a Switch these days anyway.
How can I copy a filepath?
How to go to a specific path? Not by clicking on the filepath like I can do in other OS.
(Apart from that, most of my hate comes from the early days of chromeOS, where the file browser was really, really slow. Doing cd and cp in terminal was blazingly fast, but in the filebrowser the same operations were crippling slow (on different devices), so much that I learned to avoid it. That bug/unoptimal implementation (?) got fixed some years ago and in general it improved, but it is still no joy for me using it)
Edit: I just intentionally tried out some things with my chromeOS device, and noticed many pain points are still there, but the file explorers "search" improved a lot. I allmost like it (more than that of windows file explorer)
Oh I misread the author's complaints about hardware as "software." Ok assuming the author hates liquid glass enough to switch cause of that, and doesn't have the same standard of polish for hardware, at least the post is self-consistent.
I don't believe the claims of Lenovo hardware (esp trackpad) being as good as a MacBook's, but he thinks it is, so up to him. The keyboard layout is annoying cause control-C is both copy and kill.
With the default terminal you copy by selecting, like X11, and paste with right-click.
So select is select or copy, right click is open menu or paste, both depending on whether or not you're in the terminal. Control-C is also copy or kill, and iirc shift-control-c is nothing or copy.
There's a meta key on the keyboard, idk why they can't just do meta-c meta-v everywhere. Same in Ubuntu.
So does a MacBook on Sonoma or Monterey.
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Given your chosen quotes, I don't understand your confusion.
The author explicitly acknowledges that Apple makes excellent hardware, and the desire to switch is driven solely by problems with the software (OS).
> All this made me realize Liquid Glass and Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated, yet their hardware is universally loved. So credit where it's due, they make great hardware.
I have no issue with liquid glass. IMO it’s a few people making a bunch of noise about vanishingly minor complaints. So, like all things, not universal.
Me neither. Much ado about nothing, just fodder for podcast fillers. I've been on the Mac since System 6. It's not a badge of honor, it's that we've been there before. Ups and downs all along, but at least for me who doesn't run anything in production on a Mac, all these squeals are annoying noise. Don't like it, get something else, it's just a machine, dude. Turnis will not read your emails.
Exactly this. Whenever macOS updates, I avoid any and all posts here, on Reddit, on wherever because it's just full of complaints and threats to leave macOS.
In the meantime, I update, note the minor (to me) changes and go about my work.
The author did a horrible job doing laptop research if the goal was to replace a MacBook’s build quality and overall vibe.
I have no idea why this random Mediatek chip was the qualifier for finding a system.
Just Josh Tech (YouTube) and their associated site bestlaptop.deals is my favorite resource at the moment for laptop reviews and for finding the best fit. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just think they are thorough and present with a critical eye avoiding a lot of hype YouTuber BS.
They aren’t the best at recommendations for Linux laptops as they don’t fully install the OS but they at least try it out on a live image.
To me the clear winner right now for people who like Linux and want something that’s a MacBook-like experience is the Framework 13 Pro. Framework appears to have resolved basically all of the shortcomings of the current revision (which still is no slouch), they’ve added a CNC aluminum build and haptic trackpad, and it’s a first-class Linux experience that’s Ubuntu certified.
Other than that, I’d be looking at options like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition 15, maybe even a Zenbook Duo 2026 if the idea of a second screen on the go is appealing and money is no object.
Someone looking for some discrete GPU performance that rivals or beats MacBook Pros equipped with Pro or Max chips can look at the Zephyrus G14/G16. Sure, they’re “gamer” laptops, but I really like them in person and they feel very premium. They’re pretty well established as the best thin and light gaming laptops on the market, very close in dimensions to MacBook Pro.
I mean, it’s prob easier to run chromeos in utm on the Mac…
But then you won't have the touchscreen to use with Android apps.
I scrolled to the bottom and this passage caught my eye:
I immediately closed the tab.forest for the trees engineer behaviour
It's possible that your own opinions are coloring this perspective. As a Linux user, if you gave me the choice between switching back to macOS or dailying ChromeOS instead, it's objectively (sadly) true that the ChromeOS machine would do a better job handling my daily tasks. Going back to macOS would require me to keep multiple desktop machines around for gaming, filesystem manipulation and native Linux containers. ChromeOS would be viable for all of those.
> You can technically game on some Chromebooks, but come on.
I just want the Steam edition of Dwarf Fortress, really =)
> If you were trying to do native Linux development on a Chromebook you'd be going through more obstacles.
Not really. Crostini has been supported for years, and it uses less resources than macOS containers while supporting normal filesystems instead of virtualizing it on APFS like Docker does.
Have you heard of this?
According to their GitHub, this should solve the issues you mentioned with Linux development on macOS. Note: I have not used it myself as I find macOS+Brew sufficient for my tasks.
https://github.com/apple/container
Or just develop your app on macOS and run it on Linux. I’ve been doing that ever since OSX came out and had no problems. Worst case these days I have a virtual machine build an app or library for x86, but I still do all the dev on the Mac.
I find people who make these complaints about Linux just like Linux better. Totally fine. From my perspective, sure, some things are slightly different or need a homebrew install, but there’s plenty about Linux that’s as big or bigger pain as some of the stuff on the Mac.
That said, if Liquid Glass is the complaint and your solution is a Chromebook, wow. Just, wow.
Or embrace UNIX, and take into account each flavour.
Can I put Ubuntu on this and it works exactly the same as on any other ARM machine? Supposedly yes https://docs.getutm.app/guides/ubuntu/ but have you actually done it?
Honestly this and Crostini both look like there are too many caveats. I'd just SSH into an Rpi for anything that won't natively run in macOS. And would not even deal with Chromebook.
P.S. I +1'd bigyabai's comment only to save it from being marked dead; why is someone downvoting that??
I've used UTM before to install Ubuntu on my Mac Studio (M4) and it even supported my 4K70 monitor.
To be fair there is some config and tweaking required, but for a free tool it seems pretty good. Parallels has a better EXPERIENCE but I don't use VMs often; when I need raw Linux I just use one of my homelab servers.
> have you actually done it?
Yes.
What do you mean by "works exactly the same?" The same as Ubuntu installed on an ARM laptop? No, there is not GUI, DE, and a lot of tools are stripped.
You can literally pull this down and get it up and running in minutes:
https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/
Rosetta is not necessary to get this working either. Now, there maybe some warts with DNS that you might encounter depending on if you have a certain VPNs running, use dnsmasq, etc.. But there are potential workarounds for many issues.
If you want a full VM, I would recommend Lima/Colima. If you need a full VM with GUI and all, then maybe use something like Parallels, VMware Fusion, etc..
I mean like same as Ubuntu on an x86 laptop for general work. This is assuming you don't have any specific need for x86 binaries, but you also never know what might randomly require it. Would've tried it myself but I'm away from my Mac rn. I'll try again.
Last time I tried UTM specifically for reading an ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot, I couldn't get it to interface with the reader, but that works on Chromebooks' Linux VM supposedly.
> I mean like same as Ubuntu on an x86 laptop for general work.
I would say no, but then again, I would also not recommend using any type of container for that type of work either.
I use Container on macOS to build containers for things like Claude Code, Node.js, Java, etc.. You know, software I want no where near my host OS. I mount a directory in the container, if needed, and it's smooth sailing.
I do believe Container allows for one to run x86 containers with Rosetta, but I also know once you enable Rosetta, it's easier to reinstall your OS than to uninstall. I like to keep things tidy, so I will not go down this path.
> ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot
I would not use Container nor any other containerization tool for this task regardless of whether it is possible or not. I would be surprised if any VM client would be able to get this working too, but I've been out of the VM world for a bit.
It's also worth mentioning that come macOS 28, Rosetta will be dead and gone except for a select set of video games. That version of Rosetta will essentially be stripped down to the point of working just enough for those games and nothing more. So, I would not get too attached to the idea of running x86 binaries on macOS for too much longer.
I believe there may be some tools that can read ext4 on macOS, but UTM not reading from the host's SD Card is unsurprising. I have never used UTM, but I would imagine it would not have the capability to pass the SD reader through, but I could be entirely wrong.
I'd seriously recommend buying the cheapest burner Chromebook, x86 machine, VPS, or whatever you need if you think running x86 binaries and reading/writing to/from ext4 formatted storage will be in your future. You could maybe try an external USB SD reader, but I cannot comment if that would work either.
I use this tool all the time. Mainly for running various LLM cli tools and whatnot. No way will I install those tools on my host OS due to my unfounded paranoia.
Container still has a few warts. Mainly, Container and mDNSResponder on macOS do not always play nicely together. If you use a VPN that binds to port 53, you will also have a bad time. Container-to-Container name resolution is also hit or miss.
However, none of these issues have prevented me from accomplishing what I need. Though, I can see where friction may arise between some corporate network environments and Container.
Crostini has been WIP for years, unless you happen to buy a Google device, this is what will happen in most OEMs,
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...