{"id":1556,"date":"2023-06-23T21:45:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T03:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/?p=1556"},"modified":"2024-12-06T07:58:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T14:58:01","slug":"my-computer-is-the-best-and-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/my-computer-is-the-best-and-the-worst\/","title":{"rendered":"My computer is the best and the worst"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have an excellent Thinkpad T590 running Ubuntu 22.04 &#8212; one of the best Linux laptops I&#8217;ve had, and yet it&#8217;s the worst. I have a snappy iPad Pro that is one of the best tablets I&#8217;ve ever used, and yet it&#8217;s the worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How can a computer be the best and the worst? Each has strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Strengths of the Thinkpad + Ubuntu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>My target deployment platform is Linux, and so developing on Linux is a much closer fit than using Windows or Mac.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Speedy docker &#8212; it&#8217;s native. <s>On a Mac, it&#8217;s never native because it&#8217;s not Linux, and always goes slower &#8212; at least 10x slower, sometimes 100x slower, depending on whether the docker image is intel or uses native instructions.<\/s> On an M2\/M3 Mac, with a native-instructions docker container, it is far faster than the old Intel.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Intel Iris Pro GPU with in-kernel drivers means that the display just works, including with external monitors. Suspend and resume work as well. It&#8217;s way better than with proprietary drivers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Command line tools have all the GNU power options I want and to which I am accustomed. I.e things like &#8220;grep -P&#8221; for perl-style regex.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Powerful computer, not too heavy, 5 hours of battery life, even after 4 years of use.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Robust materials. It doesn&#8217;t fall apart. Excellent keyboard, including a number pad.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Matte screen &#8212; reducing glare, and nice to look at.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chrome. Most critical things I need run pleasingly well in Chrome &#8212; Outlook, MS Teams, etc.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No ads inserted by the OS \u2014 Windows is annoying that way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No Microsoft overlord forcing MS Edge on users.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Gnome desktop. No, it&#8217;s not particularly exciting, but it works, and it has great window snapping, very much like Windows.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Weaknesses of the Thinkpad + Ubuntu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Bluetooth audio. My Bose headphones work far better with my iPhone or iPad than with Linux. Linux bluetooth audio drops randomly, or is lower quality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Audio with multiple possible output sources. My MS teams in-a-web-browser audio is always a challenge in this scenario.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sometimes audio and\/or bluetooth doesn&#8217;t work after a suspend\/resume cycle, and I have to reboot the computer. Lately, I&#8217;m in many more conference calls, and unreliable audio is frustrating. Happily, I can switch to my iPad, where audio just works &#8212; every time.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anemic built-in speakers, and tinny-sounding audio from built-in microphone. It&#8217;s subtle, but low audio quality makes it hard to listen to calls as effectively, and adds stress. This goes for the remote end of the call as well. There&#8217;s a reason podcasters invest in quality microphones. In my experience, Apple hardware has much better built-in speakers and microphones than any PC I&#8217;ve ever used. That said, purpose built-external mics are always better quality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apps. No WhatsApp for Linux (maybe that&#8217;s a good thing!), and same for many other apps that have no web-based option, forcing me to use my smartphone without a physical keyboard.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No fingerprint reader, no face unlock. Linux has been largely left behind in biometric authentication support.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Viewing of thumbnails in the file explorer stinks compared to Windows or Mac.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Strengths of the iPad Pro<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Instantly available and ready to go, 99.9% of the time, unlike Ubuntu, which is okay, but not as pleasing in this regard.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>FaceId to unlock &#8212; so much faster than with a password or a pin.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apps &#8212; so many to choose from. There&#8217;s an app for everything.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Excellent sound and microphones &#8212; great for conference calls, and it can even service an entire team in a conference room doing a remote call with people elsewhere &#8212; with its built in capabilities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Keyboard. Yes, I have one, and it makes my life better.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bluetooth: It&#8217;s reliable, unlike with Linux &#8212; especially important with audio.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Touch screen.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apple pencil.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Weaknesses of the iPad Pro<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The apps for Google docs and Google sheets are surprisingly anemic compared to the web-browser experience &#8212; i.e. almost unusable, other than for viewing and simple editing. I&#8217;d just use them in Chrome, but Google dumbs down the online in-Chrome experience for iPad, forcing me to use the apps.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Side-by-side google docs. I often want to look at two documents at the same time, but Google docs doesn&#8217;t let me do that. It&#8217;s one at a time or nothing. Desktops are so much better.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chrome. It&#8217;s running on a powerful M2 processor, yet Google Chrome disallows the extensions that improve my life. Desktop Chrome is so much better.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Copy and paste within apps. Why is it, that in a web browser, I can copy-and-paste the portions of a conversation that I want (such as just the phone number or just the address), and paste them elsewhere, but within an app, it&#8217;s the entire text, or nothing?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apple pencil for writing notes. Apple notes places the translated text wherever it pleases.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apple pencil capabilities are underutilized. Most apps (Apple Notes, Apple Freeform, Miro, MS Whiteboard, etc.) don\u2019t seem to support the pressure sensitive nature of the pencil.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Operating systems and the hardware they run on are like footwear. Flip flops, running shoes, irrigation boots and ski boots each have their place. That said, I don\u2019t want to be lugging around all at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have an excellent Thinkpad T590 running Ubuntu 22.04 &#8212; one of the best Linux laptops I&#8217;ve had, and yet it&#8217;s the worst. I have a snappy iPad Pro that is one of the best tablets I&#8217;ve ever used, and yet it&#8217;s the worst. How can a computer be the best and the worst? Each &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/my-computer-is-the-best-and-the-worst\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My computer is the best and the worst&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaredrobinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}