what i want in a laptop

lately i've been thinking about the state of personal computing. with the direction things are going with iDevices, Android devices, cloud computing, etc. more and more we are expected to use "devices" (not computers!) that we don't own. a great example of this is the recent Apple macOS OCSP signature verification debacle. a few days ago, any Mac running one of the past two releases of the operating system was unable to open third-party applications due to a server failure on Apple's end. My current understanding of the underlying system that failed is this: Apple has modified execve to, when called, send a hash of the binary it has been asked to load to ocsp.apple.com to ensure that the software is not on an exclusion list. Binaries included on the exclusion list could be many: malware, programs enabling software piracy (as Win32 anti-virus programs have long misidentified as malware), or simply programs Apple finds offensive. In a way, it's an extension of the iOS App Store and its strict review process to the Mac platform, but all the more insidious, since, to the average user the software distribution model hasn't changed. After all, you can still eschew the Mac App Store entirely and sideload .app packages downloaded from the internet as you please. At the same time though, Apple can revoke user access to that sideloaded software through a modification to their revocation server settings. This is really bad, and I'm confused why people accept it. I was recently gifted a 16-inch MacBook Pro to replace a dead laptop, and I think it's going back. There will certainly be features I miss, most notably AirDrop, which I think is basically unparalleled on any other platform and I find enormously convenient in low-internet/no-internet settings. Anyway, it's time for a departure. Here is what a computer must be to me.

  1. Great speakers. I've been totally spoiled by the 6-speaker setup on the MacBook Pro. It almost sounds better to me than my dedicated sound system.
  2. Good enough display. I don't need much here, really. I managed with a 1336x768 all through high-school and much of college, and I didn't miss much. I think 1920x1080 is my new limit, because my X220 display did get cramped at times.
  3. Great input devices. The 2016-era MacBook Pros burned me and I am unwilling to compromise on this. Similarly, junky trackpads are just no fun.
  4. At least 16GB of RAM. Because we live in the Electron hell that is 2020, and I use Discord to keep in touch with friends and VSCode for some languages with nice LSP support. Additionally, this gives a good amount of breathing room when working on large proof engineering projects.
  5. Great Linux support. It's really sad, but macOS isn't a morally acceptable Unix anymore.
  6. Open hardware, if possible.
  7. Great upgradability and repairability. I'd like a laptop I could install an LTE (or something else) modem in should the fancy strike. I'd also like a laptop that I can easily repair while on a roadtrip, as long as I have spare parts. Genuine parts availability is also an important consideration here. Though the ThinkPad series has a high-volume aftermarket, the quality isn't there; most of the parts I've used to service my X220 are much cheaper feeling than OEM parts and don't exactly inspire confidence.
  8. Long battery life: I go on lots of roadtrips a lot and short battery life was a huge annoyance with my X220. A big battery lets me charge my laptop off the alternator while driving during the day/every few days and not need to scramble for power after 4 hours of use at night.
  9. Good outdoor screen visibility: This has become really important to me lately, especially in the COVID-19 world. I do a lot of work on my laptop outside, often while camping. It's so much fun, but doing so with tons of sun glare and low visibility can be annoying and it's not always so easy to find shade. I think probably around 400 nits is the usability cutoff for me now.
  10. Low-weight: I have a history of shoulder problems and hope to take this laptop hiking for some mountain-top coding and proving. Low weight makes that a little nicer.

Non-requirements:

  1. Thinness: I never really understood this. My backpack can fit textbooks easily, so why not have a laptop as thick as a textbook. Not only could it fit

MNT Reform seems to check off almost all the requirement boxes for me, except 1 and 4. As for the first, I can't say for sure, but I doubt the BOM budget went into great speakers for that device. The upside however is that the case is roomy and it should be easy to mount as many speakers as I want inside. I imagine it might be challenging to get the speakers to output audio reasonably on Linux, but I think I'd be willing to invest time in that task. As for the second, MNT Reform will ship at first with an IMX8QM paired with 4GB LPDDR4 on a system-on-module SO-DIMM (! this is super cool.) While this is an anemic amount of memory, the fact that the whole SoM is on a SO-DIMM means upgrading it is a very real possibility even for those of us unlucky enough to live outside 深圳. It seems like there are plans to being a faster processor and up to 16GB of RAM to the Reform with a new SoM in the next year or so. The possibility of an FPGA-based SoM with lots of RAM is even more exciting. That would allow me to run an open-hardware processor design (perhaps my own, perhaps proven-correct) making the whole system even more trustworthy.