this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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Tbf, I haven't touched a Mac in ages (and never personally owned one in my life), because the combination of the "luxury(tm)" device tax and Apple's vindictive anti-repair stance (and their walled garden on principle but that's not relevant here) basically put them on my "never buy and never recommend" list. I have heard of good work being put on a compatibility layer similar to Wine on their front, but I'd imagine specialist software that depends on GPU acceleration (in my case, CAD software) would struggle to run in that scenario on Apple Silicon.
(Plus, a used thinkpad is cheap as cheap can be and again, an entry-level, fully repairable and upgradeable deck will run you around $300 with much better game performance for it's portable weight class)
All good points. So here's what ya do - slide on over to your favorite used gear hub and pick up a 10 year old 8GB model for like $50 or $100. These things sold for thousands back in the day but now they're just beautiful old advanced-for-the-time hardware (that often run linux super easy if you get bored).
A little research will keep you to the ones that can be upgraded easily.
Grok all the rounded edges and backlit island glass-touchpad beautifulness. Wonder at how they got a good sound from tiny speakers in 1847 or whatever. Enjoy kicking around the candy colored icons and see how the configurations are just two clicks to wherever you want to be. It's like a vacation from scrolling through a textfile. Or, get jiggy with the BSD and go nuts. Get a free apple ID and smile guiltily when all your other cheap rescues line up behind it and interact seamlessly.
Just don't use your real name, keep behind your favorite recipe of networking, etc., obvs. And you might decide it's a good thing.
The Linux elders warned me about those who would tempt me towards ecosystem damnation... (/s)
In all seriousness, I just don't care. I have a nice, personal DIY desktop, and my work/business laptop is literally a rescued x86 device from an e-waste pile that I replaced the display panel for, installed 32GB of ram, and added an 1TB SSD. I have no value for those "Apple comforts". I've spent enough time in my IT career inside of those damned things to know I hate looking at one or holding one.
My favorite part of my last contract job was to smash an entire school's collection of discarded Macs with a sledgehammer.
Ah yes. I know you. You didn't swelter under the obnoxious blaring idiocy of Windows long enough. You're either too young to be terrorized by winsock issues or nerdy enough to have bypassed all gravitational social tech support requirements in the 90's/2000's.
Either way, the inevitable troubleshooting still holds appeal of some sort, and that's good. I've got a couple of classic stinkpads running various flavors of (well, I'm sure all Debian really) and they're lots of fun, it's true. But the idea that I can use a single laptop for weeks or even months without ever once encountering an error or odd behavior or required updates or even restarting is wonderful enough for me to be happy with it.
It's like if you ever got an ink-tank printer and suddenly didn't worry about buying printer cartridges anymore. That feeling of enlightenment, like there's a whole level of experience where no one gives a shit how many pages of things they print because it's free. Glorious.
(You do realize that some Linux distros are quite stable compared to Windows right? I haven't had to troubleshoot my Mint installation in years.)
Oh sure, sure. But the last time I had to troubleshoot my main system was . . . Probably a decade ago. I troubleshoot rebuilding old ones or some twit friend-or-family that has to run some microsoft garbage but for me, troubleshooting’s like - nothin’ at all! . . . nothin’ at all! . . . nothin’ at all!
All fair.
To be clear, Apple's compatibility layer is mostly inaccessible to the user. Even with the latest macOS, so you should have GPTK (Game Porting Tool Kit), you can't just run a Windows game. You have to do some work... or use something like Whisky. And the guy who made Whisky stopped working on it so people could pay subscription fees to CrossOver (which is not a bad product; in fact, it funnels money into WINE which helps everyone). So in theory with CrossOver your CAD software may work... or may not... but it sounds like it wouldn't be worth it for you to try.
But wait — just out of curiosity, how upgradeable is a ThinkPad? Typically the motherboard limits what you can do (e.g. if it's an AMD system, an AM4 means you can use most of the newest stuff, but there's some stuff locked behind AM5 you won't be able to touch, but it's the same on the Intel side as well). So, just curious how far you can actually take a $300 used ThinkPad. I used to build, so it's just that, a curiosity.
The Steam Deck is the most upgradeable, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff (I probably phrased that poorly in the prior comment), but the used thinkpad's milage probably varies based on which model you buy. Standard stuff like RAM, storage, and so on are easily upgraded though (unlike Apple who SOLDERS THEM IN for some "fuck you" reason).