Here's my variation; I can't stand the ergonomics of Apple computers. The screen doesn't tilt back far enough, they're heavy and slippery, and the only thing I could switch to from a Trackpoint is mind control.

I'm a Linux guy too, when I have to use a Mac I turn all the gloss off and it's ok, but without going to Nix I miss a system wide package manager and I like an open-as-possible community OS that runs everywhere. It's a shame Apple doesn't license their chips.

About a year ago I got a maxed out Macbook Pro, but the above combined with the fact I wasn't comfortable travelling with something that cost as much as a good used car made me return it.

Now I'm using a Thinkpad that was ¼ the price and it's great, AMD chip, 64GB of RAM, replaceable storage, fantastic screen, keyboard (and Trackpoint) means it can do just about anything. Yes, battery life is limited, around four hours with the 16" OLED (I haven't put any work into optimizing it, and this isn't a battery-first model), but I can handle it. I'll maybe get a Strix Halo laptop since I like running LLMs, but otherwise x86 has improved enough that it's pretty good. That said, I won't complain if it matches/surpasses Apple chips, and I'd consider running a headless Apple 'server' at home.

I have a 7.5 year old Asus Zenbook UX305CA. It was the perfect laptop for my use case, given I run all heavy stuff on remote servers. 3200x1800 HiDPI screen, 8GB RAM, no fan, rigid aluminium construction (so it feels high quality), and it runs Linux pretty reliably. It used to get at least 6-7 hours of doing actual work, and one night I forgot to hibernate it or plug it in, and it was still running the next morning.

Now, 7.5 years later, the battery is not so healthy any more, and I'm looking around for something similar, and finding nothing. I'm seriously considering just replacing the battery. I'll be stuck with only 8GB RAM and an ancient CPU, but it still looks like the best option.

Another useful thing is that you can buy small portable battery packs that are meant for jump-starting car engines, and they have a 12V output (probably more like 14V), which could quite possibly be piped straight into the DC input of a laptop. My laptop asks for 19V, but it could probably cope with this.

> work at a coffee shop

That doesn't sound super secure to me.

> for five hours.

My experience with anything that is not designed to be an office is that it will be uncomfortable in the long run. I can't see myself working for 5 hours in that kind of place.

Also it seems it is quite easily solved with an external battery pack. They may not last 12hours but they should last 4 to 6 hours without a charge in powersaving mode.

> I'm 100% on Linux, but I seriously hate it that I can't reliably work at a coffee shop for five hours. Not even doing that much other than some music, coding, and a few compiles of golang code.

Don't you drink any coffee in the coffee shop? I hope you do. But, still, being there for /five/ hours is excessive.

> I am never going to run a Mac (or worse: Windows) I'm 100% on Linux,

I'm guessing you're well aware, but just in case you're not: Asahi Linux is working extremely well on M1/M2 devices and easily covers your "5 hours of work at a coffee shop" use case.

Despite OP's complaints (which are valid) I run Fedora on my Framework 13 (AMD) and I get 5 hours of work (10 ish Firefox tabs, multiple VS Code instances, terminals and Slack) without issue.

It's not 8-12, and the fans do kick up. The track pad is fine but not as nice as the one on the MacBook. But I prefer to run Linux so the tradeoff is worth it to me.

> I seriously hate it that I can't reliably work at a coffee shop for five hours

just... take your charger...

try one of the newer amd or intel (TSMC-made) CPUs. its pretty much the same. keep in mind the battery size too. mbp has a huge and very heavy battery (the mbp is super heavy)

HP has Ubuntu-certified strix halo machines for example.