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Finally made it to my first big NASCAR race – the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin.
COTA is a gem. Thanks to Texas hill country, there are great views around the whole track.
I recently picked up a hilariously boring hobby: collecting watches. It’s time for me to thin the herd a bit – I’m still learning plenty about the differences between a watch I appreciate and a watch I use. So these are up for sale on eBay (since I haven’t been doing this long enough to have a reputation on the marketplaces without fees):
Back in February, I sold my 2017 MacBook Pro. For a couple of years, I had been grumbling about the direction Apple products have taken. I did have problems with the infamous butterfly keyboard. I actually liked the touch bar – except for its tendency to freeze at the exact moment I need to mute my sound quickly. And I couldn’t help noticing the many useful things that had disappeared from my older MacBooks:
I understand and appreciate the iterative design process, especially efforts to simplify products to their essence. But recently Apple seems to be obsessed with making everything thinner at the expense of almost anything else, including a lot of features people rely on all day at work.
I’m not talking about niche features. I’m talking about a reliable keyboard and a usable power cord in machines that easily cost two or three grand. The idea of sinking more money into one of those machines just seemed like buying a time bomb that would eventually interfere with my work.
At the same time, I picked up a new gig in an all-Windows shop. I used a company-issued laptop with Windows 10, and I was excited to try out the new Windows Subsystem for Linux for a real project. That experiment exceeded my expectations – it wasn’t just serviceable in an environment where I was required to use Windows, but it was a legitimate way out of my recent Mac woes. It’s always been my opinion that Windows 10 is great. But I want to talk about switching from MacBooks to a ThinkPad here, not about switching from macOS to Windows 10.
So about a month ago, I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad for all my consulting work. ThinkPads have their own cult following, but of a very different culture than Apple. Mac industrial design is mostly about a consumer market, but you’d never see a ThinkPad in a hip product placement on a top movie or TV show. They’re all-business, they don’t grab attention anywhere, and they like it that way. And the vast majority of ThinkPad customers aren’t enthusiasts; it’s mostly bulk corporate sales.
That corporate customer base makes ThinkPads a fundamentally different product from a Mac. But considering how many things the Mac has been sacrificing in the uncompromising pursuit of thinness, it has some big advantages to offer someone who likes their aging Mac a lot more than the new ones:
But not everything carries over perfectly for someone used to Apple products:
So it’s been a month now. I had cold feet when the device was coming, and was prepared to ship it back and buy a MacBook Pro and a silicone keyboard cover. But I’m so happy with it. In some ways, I think my preferences might be more suited to a ThinkPad in the first place – I get a similar kind of joy from other belongings that are built with durability in mind, like my Toyota truck or my Levi’s jeans. The unibody MacBook used to be a great fit on that list, but the ThinkPad has been quietly getting better and better at this for 26 years now.
I know some people would be better served by a different choice. Windows 10 won’t fit everyone’s needs as well as it does mine (especially for multimedia work). I also have a high opinion of the Microsoft Surface line in terms of the overall package, which looks a little more like Apple’s in general. And heck, a lot of my gripes about current Macs can be worked around with an external keyboard. Lenovo even offers the ThinkPad keyboard in an external bluetooth model 😉
CPU: Quad-core Intel Core i7-8650U (8th-gen Kaby Lake R, 15W, 1.9GHz base / 4.3GHz turbo)
GPUs: 2GB Nvidia MX150 discrete; Intel UHD 620 integrated
Memory: 32GB DDR4-2400
Display: 14.0″ WQHD (2560 x 1440) IPS anti-glare (non-touch)
Storage: 1TB SATA SSD (I used one I bought earlier this year)
Biometrics: Touch fingerprint reader, IR face login
Dimensions: 13.25″ x 9.15″ x .078″ / 336.6 x 232.5 x 19.95 (mm)
Ports, oh so many ports: Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, SDXC, 2x USB 3.0 type-A, 1x USB type-C (full capabilities), 1x Thunderbolt 3 (full capabilities), 1/8″ headphone/headset