alt Hacker NewsI also raised an eyebrow at "the vast majority of laptops are only sold with a specific proprietary operating system: Microsoft Windows", but after looking at some estimates it seems legit. Probably only about 1 in 10 laptops is a Mac. Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
It got me thinking though: what is a laptop? People probably count Chromebooks, and that seems fair. Is a SteamDeck a laptop? Is an iPad with a keyboard case a laptop? Is a Microsoft Surface Pro a laptop when it has its keyboard attached?
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Software devs absolutely live in their own little world. Regular people don’t even know what an OS is. All the details of computing have become so abstracted away from the user that they’re completely unaware.
> what is a laptop?
There's actually a very simple answer to that! A laptop is a mobile device with the set of functionalities that macOS has, but iPadOS hasn't :)
I wish this was ironic (I'd love to use the iPad Pro as laptop), but it isn't.
Try finding a PC manufacturer that lets you choose Linux instead of Windows when customizing your PC. I remember one or two companies offering it, and even giving a discount for it (~$100?), but the rest simply default to Windows.
Others let you choose Linux, but you have to pay to remove Windows. They can't install their bloatware (or are unwilling to, anyways), so you have to pay the unsubsidized price.
Clearly a computer is a laptop if you can use it comfortably while it’s sitting on your laps.
A laptop is whatever uses a rigid clamshell form factor with a screen that folds down over the keyboard. A screen with a flippy floppy detachable keyboard is not that, so:
- A chrome book is a laptop, it uses the laptop form factor.
- A Steamdeck is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor.
- An iPad is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor out of the box, it needs peripherals to even pretend to be one.
- A surface Pro is also not a laptop, but the Surface Laptop is. Just "having a flippy floppy magnetic keyboard pre-bundled with it" doesn't make a tablet a laptop. Having a rigid clamshell design makes it a laptop.
And yes, that makes the Asus Zenbook a laptop, because it is. It just has the circuitry in the screen instead of the base. Hell, Asus literally calls them laptops themselves.
Or as Apple once (in)famously asked, "what's a computer?"
> It got me thinking though: what is a laptop?
A cat.
> Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.
They actually don't, which is why the vast majority of software developers would never "raise an eyebrow" to the very well known obviously true statement that the vast majority of laptops are only sold with Microsoft Windows, regardless of what they themselves or their coworkers use.
bro, ethernet and cellular data is called WiFi now
I can't think of any software engineers I personally know who use Mac. In my industry, pretty much anyone who uses Mac is in a managerial position.