Apple Macintosh

What hackers pick instead

• Apple MacRecommended for excellent build quality and tight hardware-software integration that makes it reliable and easy to use, though critics dislike macOS UI changes and pricey upgrades.453recommend
• 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 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 57 comments. Each links to the original.

1. The mandatory graphic GUI - and MacPaint - made the point that the Mac was primarily a visual design tool that happened to handle text.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac”

2. I will never forget when the Mac first came out, my friend and I went to see one at a computer store.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes”

3. The Macs where for media people, not for the common worker on a boring office, where MS dominated.

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

4. none of them were as carefully crafted as a Macintosh with a tiny memory and a floppy disk

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “What Sun got wrong”

5. Still great at UI heavy stuff but not hitting the higher performance of top end machines

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail”

6. made huge functional improvements over the Smalltalk GUI, improvements still used today

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11”

7. a good product but started off weak in terms of capability and costly on price

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Amiga Screens: A Primer”

8. The care and attention to detail on every level of the machine was special.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “The Four Horsemen of Agentic Coding”

9. This was a wonderful experience as a kid and still warm my heart today

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

10. Mac users got their money's worth especially if they were creatives

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)”

11. The Lisa 2 was "only" $1000 more than the ($2495) Macintosh

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “I Recreated the Apple Lisa Computer Inside an FPGA – The LisaFPGA Project”

12. Apple clicked with me when our middle school computer lab

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “Apple at 50”

13. classic Macs were amazing

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Computing Across America (1983-1985)”

14. they were seen as very slow (compared to "contemporary" home computers of the time

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “July 23 1985, Commodore introduced its Amiga 1000: 10 years ahead of its time”

15. Those decisions prevented the Mac from becoming a performant gaming system

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Making Graphics Like it's 1993”

16. The Mac was just an expensive toy for people working on different media.

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

17. Fonts and QuickDraw (particularly the region manager) were really Mac/Lisa's biggest innovations.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386”

18. Mixing the two, as the Mac does, comes with some confusion and complication for the end user

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop”

19. looked awful compared to Macintosh which is probably why the author decided to go with that

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Os8088.com: IBM XT OS now has a Browser, CP/M 2.2 with Z80 core and MS Word 1.1a”

20. the Mac was okay but mostly got shepherded into what it was by the other Apple leadership

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence”

21. Classic MacOS was just barely good enough: crap multitasking, crap virtual memory

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS”

22. Early Mac design was excellent overall, but decided not to include these keys

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 2: The Mac side”

23. the overall display was crisper, and cleaner, brighter, better contrast.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes”

24. Imagine if a consumer focused machine like the Macintosh had shipped

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Back to the future: the story of Squeak, a practical Smalltalk written in itself [pdf]”

25. which was critical to getting a competitive product out the door

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera”

26. the original Mackintosh would have become obsolete very quickly

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac”

27. the Mac was something special, and even its spiritual successor

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Franklin's bad ads for Apple ][ clones and the beloved impersonator they depict”

28. from 1984 to 1994 it beat PCs on revenue, margin and mind share

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Steve Jobs Next Computer: His Forgotten Exile Years”

29. her budget was very glad of the chance to switch to the Mac

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “At IT School with Apple Lisa”

30. Apple's Mac later yielded many nice black-and-white games

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The Useful Personal Computer”

31. Macintosh was in fact not successful for many years

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Steve Jobs Next Computer: His Forgotten Exile Years”

32. the Mac, which in the long run was vastly superior

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him”

33. You can simply tell it to be fn keys instead.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys”

34. what I always liked about Apple and the Mac

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

35. But admittedly I did prefer the Mac.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Os8088.com: IBM XT OS now has a Browser, CP/M 2.2 with Z80 core and MS Word 1.1a”

36. the Apple Macintosh changed that

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “The Slow Death of the Power User”

37. industry-changing products

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The New Apple Begins to Emerge”

38. the Macintosh, and even more so the Lisa that came before it, were far more closed systems in comparison to the IBM PC

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Richard Stallman at the First Hackers Conference in 1984 [video]”

39. Even as Amigas and Ataris were much more open than their cousin's terrible grandchild of today: Apple.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Amiga Screens: A Primer”

40. The Apple Mackintosh is a significant culprit for the undeserved popularity of mice.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac”