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David Heinemeier Hansson on the Framework 13 Laptop from Daring Fireball RSS feed.

David Heinemeier Hansson on the Framework 13 Laptop

Speaking of fascinating perspectives, here’s David Heinemeier Hansson, who recently switched from Mac, on the Framework 13 laptop:

Those are all the good parts, but there are plenty of drawbacks too. Compared to a modern MacBook, the battery is inferior. I got 6 hours in mixed use yesterday. The screen is only barely adequate to run at retina-like 2× for smooth looking fonts. Linux is far less polished than macOS. But somehow it just doesn’t really matter.

First of all, 6 hours is enough for regular use. If I’m doing more than that in a single stint without getting up, I’ll be paying for it physically anyway. And the somewhat cramped resolution has made me fall in love with full-screen apps again, like I used to do with that 11” MacBook Air.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Mac-vs.-Wintel rivalry was the tech rivalry. Other rivalries came and went — like Netscape-vs.-IE, Word-vs.-WordPerfect, Quark-vs.-Pagemaker, C-vs.-Pascal — but the main event was always Mac-vs.-Wintel. When the smartphone revolution occurred that rivalry was eclipsed by iPhone-vs.-Android. But it’s still there.

I’m fascinated following DHH’s switching saga. And my personal devotion to and reliance upon MacOS is such that, if the best-available MacOS-running laptop I could find got me only 6 hours of battery life, I’d accept it. I certainly remember getting less than 6 hours of battery life with a PowerBook. I specifically remember when it was dicey whether you could get through a coast-to-coast flight using a fully-charged Mac laptop. I lived. But nowadays, I wouldn’t fret boarding a coast-to-coast flight with my MacBook Pro only half-charged.

Apple silicon has spoiled me. I don’t even turn the display brightness down when running my MacBook Pro on battery power. I literally just don’t worry about it. It’s like two competing alternative universes when it comes to performance-per-watt. Presumably that’s what Microsoft seeks to change with Windows-on-ARM and these imminent new Surface laptops based on new chips from Qualcomm.