itsJoelle

For some reason you seem to be telling me the performance and capabilities of Chromebooks running Windows which I do find very strange as it’s obviously a subject I have a great deal more experience as you can do a pretty large amount of anything you need to do on one

Cause you're talking about running Windows on an Intel/AMD chip. Usually Intel Celerons on the cheap end. It's not a niche area of knowledge. And plenty devices run that configuration stock. Just because Windows has been installed on it doesn't raise the inherent upper bound of the silicon. And you're right — much like the smart phone market — it is able to meet the needs of people handily and the lower end is much higher than what it used to be. And I agree that people are often overpaying for tech regularlly. But there are tasks the silicon is 'priced' out of because, while possible on the lower end chips, it becomes hard for them to keep up. That is why I'm confused whenever you claim a Chromebook "does more" than a Macbook.

I brought up very specific things: rendering video, 3-d modeling tasks, and a set of recently released AAA titles that run well. They're a family of common things people do with their devices that are really computationally expensive the computer was designed to do (prolly shouldn't game on a Mac tho, but I find it funny). Those are in a different computation league than running GIMP, office, or a drawing app. Your claim was "Definitely does more than a MacBook Air and for a lot less" and I'm trying to point out there are things bound by the silicon it cannot do as well by comparison (granted we went off on a few tangents). Like, the headroom just isn't there. The Celeron family gets blown out of the water, and those running Intel i3's and Intel i5's fall behind as well. Some of those i3/i5's get suspiciously close to MacBook territory in price tho.

I'm wondering though, is all this time, were you meaning they get more "bang for your buck?" If so, I agree, and I may have focused on "Definitely does more," as in the set of things an ARM-silicon Mac can achieve is a subset of what a Chromebook can, and got really confused.

However, this device confuses both of us. Why.

I never said “any gaming Windows laptop has good battery life” I literally said “any non gaming laptop I’ve used in the past whothehellknowshowlong has had great battery life”. Nice attempt at trying to twist things but that’s pretty bad.

Ah, I missed a word. My honest mistake! Wasn't intended, I skipped over the word as I was reading. You can understand how if that word was missing that it would be confusing. I'm not going to get into a performance debate over the space of ultrabooks, because it's all over the place compared to the M-series since it's release. Especially on the high-end side. For chromebooks though, you do take a massive hit on overall horsepower — unless the trend of them "slapping in a Intel Celeron and calling it a day" has broken recently.

As far as “a chromebook running windows can do alot more for cheaper” that is factually true. To my knowledge there isn’t a MacBook of any type that is convertible or contains a touchscreen, regardless of your personal feelings on that matter those are massively important features to a lot of users and the market demand reflects that in a very big way. Not to mention a Chromebook running Windows supports a much larger amount of software which, again, may not be important to you personally, but it’s massively important to a lot of people especially with Apple ending OS upgrades going further. And before you run off trying to say “oh but what about boot camp” well you still don’t have a convertible or a touchscreen.

This is the claim I find dubious. Given the rampant success of the Apple line since the advent of the M1, I'm unsure if the lack of a touch-screen mattered to general users. Especially since market for MacOS has grown since then. And you're right, some may really care about a touch screen — but I'd call it a mixed bag. Users may similarly care about things like having dope display, high quality speakers, or a GOAT trackpad. To point at one hardware feature that is missing and calling it a dealbreaker is a bit much.

And sure, a chromebook on Windows can run anything in the Windows suite — it'll be rough for anything that calls for performance compared to an M-series at the moment. Think tasks like Blender, rendering out a video (my MBA chews through 4k footage at faster than real time playback!), high end photo editing, or particularly gross compilations that take a bit of time. My little Air can run games like Diablo4, we have Baldur's Gate 3 (which the betas running on Metal2/3 were awesome), or Fallen Order. It's kinda sweet! Currently, we don't use boot camp either (since there actually isn't a fullblown ARM based Windows yet) generally we use translation layers (sometimes more than one). At the moment it's pretty rare for me to not have a native ARM build of software by major companies, and if it's not (looking at you game devs) I've gotten along quite well with x86 - > ARM translation and/or Windows->MacOS translation.

Like, I'm not claiming chromebooks don't have a use case. Nor am I claiming a MacBook is the GOAT. It's the specific claim "Definitely does more than a MacBook Air and for a lot less," that I don't agree with. Just on the silicon horsepower alone, and I don't have to compromise on battery life, performance, and it's still light while still being itty-bitty! Downside, I pay more. Well, mine I paid $700 for.

Eh, I use the three families of OS's daily. My dev work is on a Windows machine, and the OS is kinda a hot mess. Granted, most of what informs my opinion most end users won't even notice or care about. I say if someone wants to use Windows, go for it. But, I'd only use it if I was literally paid to do so, but that's my taste.

I don't think you meant to double reply so I'll respond here.

I didn't touch 2-n-1 or "tablet mode" since it's not a target for their devices. I was specifically honing in on the claim of "Any gaming windows laptop has good battery life" (which I take to mean comparable) and "a chromebook running windows can do alot more for cheaper"

Both of those takes are either out of date or straight up not true. Especially when we consider the profile. There's a few laptops that came out since the M1 that hit the same battery life, but they often need to make a compromise on performance when on battery power -- which the M1 series did not. There are a few laptops that both hit the profile and the battery life that are on x86, but they are more expensive.

As for the Anti-Windows/Anti-Google stuff, it's extremely common in the FOSS community and they're represented at a much higher clip than a more general audience like /r/gaming on Reddit. In fact, the more into Unix-like spaces you go the more discussion there is about Windows being a many-layered shit show.

Man, I can't wait until Asahi Linux starts humming, cause the only thing I don't like about my Fedora system was the hardware itself.

This UI is gorgeous tho, nice work!

Please show me a Chromebook with 12 hours of battery life (Hell, even a x86 device) that has the same profile.

I'm pretty sure a Chromebook can't run D4 either o.o

Look, I'm down for the anti-Apple circle jerk, but let's hang on the side of reality, at least.

What?! They have been taking marketshare since the M1 series.

Heck, even iPadOS is gimped so the Mac doesn't get stepped on. Which is a shame because the M1 Air has pretty darn close to the same silicon.

I suspect it's a function of engagement. Trump's edictments are hot, so some will click on anything vaguely related to it. Even reporting on chirping does the trick since people want more of the "story" even though it's not a development.

I have the option to use MacOS or Linux at mine, but the constant chirping from the Windows lifers whenever I have an issue would drive me mad.

"iS iT bEcAuSe YoU'rE nOt On WiNdOwS???"

It's as if applications suddenly detonate whenever they touch anything else.

This isn't meant to be argumentative, and intended more for you to clarify.

One of my special interests is cults, and from my understanding anyone is susceptible to tactics used by a cult. Generally, people need to be in a pretty vulerable state at the time, which is why Scientology sets up shop across the street from a Hospital, for example. Imagine someone recieved bad news or had someone pass, and then the members can provide something that makes someone more likely to join. This property is why cults spanned levels of education, affluence, and influence. Now how "Maga"ism intersects with cultish stuff makes it hard for me to parse.

So when you say "these are people..." are you talking about the sets of people who are attracted by the cult are the "most shitty" or the "most shitty" people are most susceptible?

That was the stat that stood out to me, and made me wonder if there's something within the "MAGA" mind that explained it.

Oh, yeah, that stuff makes me mad dizzy.

I'm a developer as well, but I think we're comparing professional literacy to general user literacy. I think we should be fine save some new form factor (idk, fucking AR, I guess?) or paradigm that upends UI design in our 60s