Reading about Macs, I'm beginning to suspect that different vintages are very different.
I'm no Mac fanboy, at all. But I love my 2014 MBP, best money I ever spent on tech. Its 2020 now, it runs like new, withstood mechanical stress, battery still holds all day with careful use. Bluetooth works fine. Keyboard is fine for laptop. CPU is fine for intensive calculations. Terminal is as good as Linux. Homebrew 'just works'; I can't count how many times I got my apt package manager into a major pickle, that required awkward backtracks. I went through a number of system upgrades that didn't break anything. 'Setting up' the computer involved powering it up, I didn't have to debug my hardware like I had to every time with new/upgraded Linux.
This is 180 deg different to my Linux experience, never mind Windows (that's a disaster). Linux is cute, but caused me issues with all the points above.
Sounds like this is very different to your experience, so much so that perhaps it is just that Macs have a large variance in quality over the years. Reading what I see now, I'm not sure I would buy another Mac. This makes me sad - my trusty 2014 MBP is the perfect computer, as far as I'm concerned, but surely at this age its days are counted.
People who seem to share this opinion often mention the 2014 vintage.
I'm no Mac fanboy, at all. But I love my 2014 MBP, best money I ever spent on tech. Its 2020 now, it runs like new, withstood mechanical stress, battery still holds all day with careful use. Bluetooth works fine. Keyboard is fine for laptop. CPU is fine for intensive calculations. Terminal is as good as Linux. Homebrew 'just works'; I can't count how many times I got my apt package manager into a major pickle, that required awkward backtracks. I went through a number of system upgrades that didn't break anything. 'Setting up' the computer involved powering it up, I didn't have to debug my hardware like I had to every time with new/upgraded Linux.
This is 180 deg different to my Linux experience, never mind Windows (that's a disaster). Linux is cute, but caused me issues with all the points above.
Sounds like this is very different to your experience, so much so that perhaps it is just that Macs have a large variance in quality over the years. Reading what I see now, I'm not sure I would buy another Mac. This makes me sad - my trusty 2014 MBP is the perfect computer, as far as I'm concerned, but surely at this age its days are counted.
People who seem to share this opinion often mention the 2014 vintage.