Apple Mac

Long-term owners

I switched to Mac 20 years ago out of sheer frustration over the total lack of coordination between hardware and software

Nov 2025 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• Apple Mac StudioRecommended for running large local AI models thanks to huge unified memory, plus quiet, efficient everyday performance; critics note slow prompt processing and high prices for upgrades.319recommend
• Apple M1 MacStill fast enough for web dev, everyday work and Linux years after release, and cheap used. Critics note soldered, hard-to-upgrade storage.48recommend
• Apple IIRecommended as an open, expandable, hacker-friendly 1977 computer that was everywhere in classrooms; critics cite its price and limited graphics and hardware.46recommend
• Apple MacintoshRecommended for its graphical interface, attention to detail, and strength in visual and creative work. Critics say it started out costly and limited, with weak multitasking and slow performance for demanding tasks.34recommend
• Apple M-series MacPeople recommend M-series Macs for battery life, displays, trackpads, quiet operation and efficient chips. Common caveat: poor Linux support and limited hardware documentation.34recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 894 comments. Each links to the original.

1. If you're happy with the base model, then Apple has a great value/price ratio, but there's nothing below it and any upgrade is really bad value for the money.

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Apple to Skip High-End M6 Mac Chips in Favor of AI-Focused M7 Line”

2. All (well, most. all of what I care about) of the flexibility and ease-of-use and efficiency of linux, stuffed into a gorgeous, well engineered product.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey”

3. I recommend Mac's to the people in my life because when they have a problem they can take the machine to the Apple Store in the mall.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19”

4. Turns out they just kept making more and more high quality devices and not one organization has figured out how to compete with them

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges”

5. I use their products more than Google's or Meta's. But I don't like the trajectory they've been going down for the past decade or so

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Silicon Valley startups: being evil, again and again”

6. the out of the box experience is still super simple and easy for people who do not have a comfortable relationship with computing

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality”

7. it's much less likely to randomly break, mainly due to the fact that the hardware the software runs on is extremely predictable

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

8. The most annoying thing about Apple is when the OS updates and suddenly you have a different experience like liquid glass.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”

9. I switched to Mac 20 years ago out of sheer frustration over the total lack of coordination between hardware and software

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change”

10. When I bought my Mac a few years back, their ram prices were 2-3x market price. If anything, they are competitive today

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Tell HN: Apple Price Gouging”

11. Userspace tools and UI is terrible and have no control over but the hardware and the software integration is top notch.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “I said no and Apple said yes”

12. completely silent (and trust me, I'm quite sensitive to that), lasts on battery long enough, as fast as possible

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “As of JDK 27, Oracle engineers will thus stop maintaining the macOS/x64 port”

13. No driver problems (well, first party ones at least), good performance and I can still run any software I like.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Apple M6 Pro achieves the highest single-core CPU score in Geekbench 7”

14. Their hardware is excellent, but when I've tried using a Mac as my main machine, my productivity suffered.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12”

15. you cannot choose an affordable laptop with great build quality and speed and battery unless you buy a Mac

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

16. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Just Lost Me”

17. it seems like I have to install a restart-required update for my Macs at least every two weeks nowadays

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Get your Windows license refund”

18. The final straw with Mac for me was when I accidentally hit “No” when asked if I wanted to give my terminal access to the file system.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “More Mac malware from Google search”

19. I for one have lost all hope and trust that Apple can steer the Mac platform in a direction that still intersects with my interests.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Welcome (back) to Macintosh”

20. Mac randomly autocorrects dashes to em-dashes (caused me a world of pain once when it did that in a GUID in a config file)

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes”

21. I still have problems explaining settings on a mac since they were entirely reorganized to confound my phone help efforts

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Web archive is down (DDoS?)”

22. My least favorite thing on the Mac is when they have one of their infamous negative number error codes in the alert box

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence”

23. One of the reasons I’m still inclined towards Mac laptops for “daily drivers” is precisely because it’s disruptive to have to do a full shutdown

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft”

24. Apple is still one of the very few companies that has an ideologically better approach that results in technically better products.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Apple's slow AI pace becomes a strength as market grows weary of spending”

25. If Amiga had any success outside of teenage gamers, that stuff would have all been historical, just like it was on the Mac.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition”

26. the only way to have a "premium" laptop experience with Linux, is to buy a Mac and run Linux in either a container or VM

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “I'm returning my Framework 16”

27. Within months I was convinced that every default English keyboard I'd ever seen except the Mac one is strictly worse.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “The Rise of the Em-Dash in Hacker News Comments”

28. You can always buy multiple Macs. I think Apple's great differentiator could be making frontier class models local.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future”

29. I've never been a fan of the Apple/Mac ecosystem even though I can respect what the Mac is on an engineering level

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS Foundation”

30. Are they more private than a company like meta or google who has much worse incentives for privacy than Apple?

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Pro with All‑New M5 Pro and M5 Max”

31. Not every product iteration changes the world, but they’ve pushed the industry forwards much more than most.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Anthropic becomes the 'Apple of AI': Most revenue despite being most expensive”

32. they've left their boot loader open enough for the asahi community to reverse engineer tons of functionality

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?”

33. Apple is doing a much better job of consistently talking and walking respect for user privacy for many years

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “People keep flocking to Linux, not just to escape Windows”

34. Since all Macs since the M1 have very fast memory available to the integrated GPU, they’re very good at AI.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades”

35. For a remarkably long time, you could get way cheaper high resolution laptop displays than the competition.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software”

36. Those platforms had their problems, but they proved you could do a lot better than Windows for reliability.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Software may be getting worse, but it used to be horrible”

37. As a long-time Mac user who has switched back to PCs for personal use but who still uses a work-issued Mac

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Apple Design Official Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup”

38. Macs don't play well with low dpi screens. However on high dpi screens they are better than anything else.

    Mixed · Nov 2025

39. corporate Macs also have endpoint management and still provide better experience vs corporate Windows PCs

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”

40. However, I'm not saying Apple is great, but at least not all their decisions are only to make more money.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability”