Linux laptop, touchscreen, 3:2

Hardware
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I guess most photo and video editors don’t care about touchscreen and pens anyway - so a final shout out to the 2013-2015 Macbook Pro retina series with Nvidia or AMD GPU, 15.4" 2880x1800 (220 ppi).

Mac Notebook Graphics Cards - Macs By Capability: EveryMac.com - ctrl + f search for “DG” or “GeForce”

Wonderful display and hardware in general, keys and trackpad and all.

Full size HDMI port and two USB 3 ports.

16GB DDR5 in all of them (IIRC) and NVME upgrades are trivial (thanks to ifixit). Battery is a glued in messy affair, you may find repair shops taking them in though.

Linux drivers are solid across all distros and quirks well documented.

Supported Models | OpenCore Legacy Patcher is Sonoma compatible with caveats - Legacy Metal Graphics Support and macOS Ventura - Sequoia · Issue #1008 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher · GitHub

I found a 1TB 2013 (2GB GT 750M) for €190 and a good condition 2015 (2GB AMD R9 M370X) for €90 (!).

And am slightly tempted to top it off with a 2017 27" 8GB VRAM retina iMac…

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Framework 13 Pro has a 2880x1920 (3:2) touchscreen now.

1 Like
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nice!

Looks like a €1500 base config though! Or about 4-5 retina Macbooks and a DaVinci Studio and DXO license :slight_smile:

Timing seems about right if some of them hit the €5-700 used market in a few years when my retro macs and books may be worn out.

And the pen tablet discovery opens the pool quite a lot if it turns out to be a keeper, sure seems like it at first try, can’t imagine ever again fumbling around a photo or video editor UX with a mouse.
The touchscreen method w/o pen is quite different and not really comparable, definitely worse ergonomics for one.

Huion Pen Tablet - Inspiroy Series Drawing Tablets incoming next.