In this article, I aim to take a different approach. We will begin by defining a laptop according to my understanding. The I will share my personal history and journey to this point, as well as my current situation with my home and work laptops. Using this perspective, we will explore the current dysfunctionality of the standby function in modern laptops, followed by a discussion of why this feature still has relevance and right to exist. Finally, we will draw conclusions on what we can learn and take away from this.
Unpopular opinion: the only vendor that does sleep right is Apple. The only reason they can is the tight vertical integration of the platform where they control all the hardware, all the drivers, and can exercise control over all the applications in the App Store.
More open platforms are essentially fucked.
It’s not an unpopular opinion that Apple is the only one that does sleep right. It is an unpopular opinion that this is only possible because they have a complete walled garden and that open platforms are fucked, especially considering it is easy and common to install applications from outside the App Store on macOS. We used to have sleep figured out, that’s what S3 was. But then hardware vendors dropped it. So yes, drivers and hardware vendors are part of the problem. The Steam Deck is an example of an open platform where sleep works fine.
100% this. Sleep on Linux is perfect in my older XPS (after I manually enable it). Lots of reports of it not working on newer laptops.
While I agree it doesn’t have to be a walled garden, you do have to admit that apple wouldn’t ship a laptop that couldn’t sleep properly. They are so much better at real world design than other manufacturers who were happy to abandon s3 in favour of making laptops into phones as if anyone actually wanted that.
Sleep is hit-or-miss even on System76 laptops. Dead simple on my XPS, though.
