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points by neya 1 day ago | 0 comments

Welcome to 2016. Lightweight OLED displays have been in the market since a decade ago, but now we are praising Apple for catching up 10 years later for a laptop with a "pro" moniker? Damn, the Apple ass-kissing here never disappoints.

[–] tgma 1 day ago

I am a fan of OLEDs and have enjoyed secondary PC laptops with OLED, however, to be clear:

- Most OLED PCs were not anywhere as bright as the old MBP miniLED display.

- Almost all OLED PCs have terrible blue shift when viewed at an angle.

- Apple miniLED XDR displays are no slouches either. They are not quite OLED, but they implemented the dimming zones very well with uniform backlighting and deep blacks.

I have not seen Apple's on MBP, but I bet it meets or exceeds iPad Pro Tandem OLED which does not have the two problems above.

So no, it is not the same as the decade old PC OLED. And I have ignored all the potential durability issues.

[–] ako 1 day ago

I had a Lenovo thinkpad with OLED before switching to a MacBook Pro (first M1 Max, now M5 max). I don’t really mis the OLED display, it’s not that big of a difference (according to my 55 year old eyes…) the thinkpad also had a touchscreen, never used it, only by mistake. I would not pay extra for a touchscreen or OLED on a laptop. The photos on the apple website are not convincing, playing a keyboard on a vertical screen looks very uncomfortable.

Also don’t understand the iPhone duo, I’d rather have a normal iPhone and an iPad Air. Cheaper, and better for mobile use and for couch media consumption.

[–] internetter 1 day ago

Have you ever used a Mac? It is by and far the best laptop on average, and it keeps getting better.

[–] NexRebular 22 hours ago

The Apple Powerbook G3 PDQ is by and far the best laptop ever, indeed. Modular, easy to repair and even the CPU is on a swappable board. A breath of fresh air in the world of soldered in components!

[–] neya 1 day ago

I have 3 Macs running. I love them, but that doesn't mean I can't criticise them for falling behind.

[–] internetter 1 day ago

In what regard are they falling behind? There are lighter laptops, sure. Are there lighter laptops with the same performance, or the same battery, the same ergonomics, the same build quality, or the same screen quality?

[–] burningChrome 1 day ago

Gaming laptops they've never competed at all. Windows laptops offer far more form factors with easily upgradeable hardware. One of the only places Apple has an advantage is their chipsets. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips have significantly closed the gap on Apple's ARM based M-chips.

I just got a 16" MacBook Pro with an M5 pro chipset and its total pig compared to my 15.6" HP ZBook Power G8.

The only area I can see where Apple is still holding their own is their UI/UX has always been buttery smooth compared to Windows or Linux. Not a fan the new liquid glass, but its still a very smooth running UI regardless.

[–] neya 1 day ago

What build quality? You must be joking. My M3 Pro is at the service center as of this moment for touch ID replacement. Because, apparently the quality of the harness is so bad it gives up in under 2 years of ownership - google it, it's a known issue. Next, the cheap ass 5V regulator fries if you actually try to as much as use a phone connected to it for long periods. This was a known issue across multiple generations. This is a tech forum, ass kissing a giant corporation that doesn't care about you should be the last thing one would expect to read here.

[–] yoavm 1 day ago

In the OLED regard. Other laptops had this for a decade now.

[–] shahar2k 1 day ago

I pretty much daily use a MacBook Air and an arm windows laptop costing about half the price. I use the MacBook Air at home for administrative and basic tasks, but the arm laptop is actually useful and runs software that I need... MacBooks at this point are just like luxury cars they have way more features than they need and are polishing areas that appear good but not necessarily are good for everyday requirements.

[–] internetter 1 day ago

What is the battery life of your windows laptop which is half the price? What is the screen quality? What is the single and multi core performance? Does it beat even the macbook neo on even one of these metrics? At the same cost?

[–] random3 1 day ago

This comes as straight out of PC vs Mac commercials. You confuse technology with actual products.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

And Apple apologists confuse stale designs, unchanged chassis, and subpar spec sheets for “intentional design” and “holistic products.”

I think some of those folks should face some facts:

- The notch on the MacBook Air and Pro lineups is unnecessarily huge and embarrassing. It’s obvious that Apple intended to implement FaceID and couldn’t get it into the notch by their deadline, then they just left the huge notch there with barely any software consideration for it, like how your menu bar icons and menus can just disappear if there isn’t enough room with no recourse.

- There is no design or cost reason for Apple to be this late on offering a touch screen on their laptops. There is no downside to a customer who buys one and doesn’t want a touch screen, they can just disable it.

- The 60Hz displays on the Air are not necessary for any kind of product quality or cost reason and are simply below-par for what you can get on similarly priced Windows laptops. 100% artificial product line anchoring.

- The idea that there was no such thing an OLED display that was “good enough for a MacBook Pro” before 2026 is absurd.

[–] calf 1 day ago

But Apple laptops are still the best recommended laptops on the market, despite these extra costs and margins passed onto the consumer, why is that?

[–] bigyabai 1 day ago

Marketing. macOS has a minority share of desktop operating systems, "best recommended laptops" is an easily-won Keynesian beauty contest.

But, that lowest-common-denominator design philosophy gave us innovations like the Butterfly Keyboard, Touch Bar, Dynamic Island, and now a touchscreen. None of those features inspire much faith in Apple's ability to listen to what their users want from the Macbook. Most people I know want a more powerful iPad, not an iPad-like Mac.

[–] calf 23 hours ago

So it cannot possibly be explained as Macs/macOS are still a better product despite some obvious flaws and drawbacks? It has to be cynical marketing and some kind of consumerist corporate conspiracy? I don't get your argument.

[–] Grombobulous 18 hours ago

If Apple is the better product why are they #4 in PC sales?

Lenovo sells over 2x more personal computers than Apple.

[–] calf 13 hours ago

You must be trolling if half dozen replies in this thread you want me to think that Marvel films are better than art films because they have a bigger market share. This is not worthy of serious reply and it seems the problem is your worldview, not the merit of any argument about Apple.

[–] bigyabai 14 hours ago

Macs and macOS have a very thin market segment: college students, mobile devs and prosumers. They market to them heavily, earning the Mac their recommendation.

Outside of those niches, in places like game development, backend work, high-performance ARM datacenters, edge compute and personal computing, Macs are a second-class-citizen and rarely get recommended. macOS has a niche, those people love it, but it has not broken out into the larger market for decades now. Macs are a minority, still.

[–] calf 13 hours ago

Macs are highly recommended by people in the know, like people in computer science departments over the last decade, by HN commenters and specialty magazines, etc. Those are better signals than the superficial market picture you paint.

They are great devices but they cost more. So you would not see them "recommend" in those industries you cite. Also it is reductive to accuse Apple of marketing.

What's much more plausible is that despite being a great product it also costs more. Not marketing nor the fact of being a minority.

It's also weird because your argument disingenuously ignores the wealth of HN commentary in the past about how great the M-chip MacBooks are. It's like ignoring actual reasons and doing this kind of armchair technical market analysis to prove one's point. It's a troll intellectual move to attribute success to marketing and failure to "because it is unpopular". Seeing your other replies in this thread suggests a common pattern of bias, not a one-off.

[–] neya 1 day ago

Because, Macs are the only products and the rest which use OLEDs since 2016 aren't, right?

[–] ksec 1 day ago

Do they have the same OLED? Same PPI? Same Tandem OLED? The First Tandem OLED on PC only came in 2022 IRRC, and laptop in 2024 / 2025.

Switching to OLED in 2016 makes zero sense when brightness and burn in issues are not solved.

[–] Danox 1 day ago

Single OLED doesn’t count but Tandem OLED does…

[–] cpursley 1 day ago

> Macs are the only products

The only ones that work as a unified product, yes.

[–] neya 1 day ago

WTF is even a "unified product"?

It's a fucking laptop. All laptops are "unified products". Stop throwing random jargon to cover up for the lack of merit to your argument.

[–] Danox 1 day ago

Apple is the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s. That’s operating system plus hardware under one roof, all the other companies are dead Sun, SGI, Digital etc…, Microsoft and Google dabble in hardware and both do nothing but lose money in the hardware area because just releasing a Me-too badly made product doesn’t work or I should say isn’t profitable.

[–] neya 1 day ago

> Apple is the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s.

> Microsoft and Google dabble in hardware and both do nothing but lose money in the hardware area

How is losing money relevant here, you started off the argument by saying Apple is the only vertical computer company left. Which is clearly not true and as your own comment contradicts.

You should try using a Surface Pro once. It is what the MacBook Pro is becoming now, only it is 5 years ahead. Yes, Windows sucks. But, the form factor and its usability is unmatched. I wouldn't just write it off as "dabbling".

[–] bigyabai 14 hours ago

I wouldn't bother. If you scroll through Danox's comment history, he repeats these same few talking points without any ability to substantiate his claims:

"Apple will bring memory in-house" (no further explanation, apparently)

"Vertical computers need a comeback" (ignoring why they originally died?)

"$GROUP needs to buy an ARM ISA license" (Arm has to make it worthwhile)

It's beyond my understanding how people can read the news and come up with this stuff. Perhaps it is beyond the commentor's understanding, as well.