My DAW PC hates me though I shower it with nothing but love..time to switch to a Mac?

[germanpool]

I have never understood this. My experience has always been 100% the opposite.

What is there to understand beyond people having different experiences and preferences? Makes perfect sense to me.

I changed from PC to Mac years ago, much prefer Mac OS to Windows but no biggie if I had to jump back for whatever reason, it's only a computer after all.

[BONES]

It's pretty simple - I don't understand how a computer can work perfectly well for one person and not for another or how one person can find all sorts of issues with one computer but another person, doing exactly the same kinds of things, can have no issues. It should be like a car - if two people have a 2016 Corolla with 50,000km on the clock, they will have pretty much the same experience. It is very much the exception for someone to have a bad experience so how is it that a computer, which is several orders of magnitude less complicated, can offer such different experiences to people all doing the same kind of work with it?

TBH, I also struggle to understand how you can prefer macOS to Windows. It's window management is appalling, for starters, and Apple knows it because they have bolted on a couple of different features to try and improve it over the years, instead of just doing it properly. I mean, it took them the best part of 20 years to get around to putting a maximise button in the toolbar, FFS, and even then it doesn't work very well.

[BertKoor]

@Bones: you should read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig.
It addresses this specific issue.

[fairlyclose]

It's pretty simple - I don't understand how a computer can work perfectly well for one person and not for another or how one person can find all sorts of issues with one computer but another person, doing exactly the same kinds of things, can have no issues. It should be like a car - if two people have a 2016 Corolla with 50,000km on the clock, they will have pretty much the same experience. It is very much the exception for someone to have a bad experience so how is it that a computer, which is several orders of magnitude less complicated, can offer such different experiences to people all doing the same kind of work with it?

TBH, I also struggle to understand how you can prefer macOS to Windows. It's window management is appalling, for starters, and Apple knows it because they have bolted on a couple of different features to try and improve it over the years, instead of just doing it properly. I mean, it took them the best part of 20 years to get around to putting a maximise button in the toolbar, FFS, and even then it doesn't work very well.

Much of the IT industry is run by ruthless greedy arseholes with shitloads of lying marketeers manipulating the public. Apple are the worst for all of that in my experience, but no end of companies just flat out lie and deceive people as to what their products can do and how reliable they are.
Generally speaking, at the consumer level, IT has been a disaster, delivering very few actual benefits but many illusory ones. The philosopher Albert Borgmann - hilarious name for what he writes about - has been brilliant in exposing how IT has just replaced rather than improved. Similarly Virilio's quip - did the ship not bring the shipwreck - is apposite. Information Technology has destroyed information

[Double Tap]

Bones, you have a point about how MacOs manages windows, (if you mean eg press the Windows key and left arrow, I think, to make an application fill the left half of the screen). It's one of the things that I missed straight away after switching to a Mac. If your workplace allows, you can install something called Rectangle that does the same thing (with different shortcuts).

[BONES]

That's just one example. Another is the way a dialog box doesn't necessarily belong to the application, so it's quite easy to lose an error message under the main application window, which leaves you scratching your head as to why your software has suddenly stopped responding.

Interestingly, snapping windows to the sides of the screen was a feature in the first version of OS X but everyone hated it so they removed it at some point, or maybe just switched it off by default and hid it away. I remember spending a day at the ABC (Australian version of the BBC), going around switching it off for everyone when we first got OS X there, in about 2004, I think.

Much of the IT industry is run by ruthless greedy arseholes with shitloads of lying marketeers manipulating the public. Apple are the worst for all of that in my experience, but no end of companies just flat out lie and deceive people as to what their products can do and how reliable they are.
Generally speaking, at the consumer level, IT has been a disaster, delivering very few actual benefits but many illusory ones. The philosopher Albert Borgmann - hilarious name for what he writes about - has been brilliant in exposing how IT has just replaced rather than improved. Similarly Virilio's quip - did the ship not bring the shipwreck - is apposite. Information Technology has destroyed information

You don't think the car industry is the same? It's actually against the law for a company, especially one that is publicly held (like Apple), to tell lies to the public. Anything that might screw with the share price is a no-no, so they have to be very, very careful what they say most of the time. The problem isn't Apple, it's the legions of brainless, unquestioning idiots who fall under it's spell. I get it for some people, like my brother, who only uses his computer for email, Zoom and watching Netflix but I absolutely don't understand how people who actually use their computer for anything serious cannot see Apple for what they are. That anyone would go out of their way to defend a ruthless, money-grabbing corporation at all, that really does my head in.

I use Windows because it makes sense for what I need to do but there is no way in the universe that I would every buy into anything Microsoft was selling, just because I happen to use Windows. Microsoft have screwed me over royally on more than one occasion so they can get f**ked as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile, Apple seems to make a game of screwing their customers over, just to see how much bullshit they are willing to put up with. I reckon even Apple are surprised at what they get away with.

[Double Tap]

No the snapping windows to the side behaviour is still there in Big Sur, for me anyway. Maybe it's Rectangle.

I feel like I've had that dialogue box problem with both Windows and Mac, although nothing like the problem I had where Kontakt's "this instrument has changed..." box came up behind the instrument, making it look as though it had frozen. Can't remember which DAW though.

[fairlyclose]

You don't think the car industry is the same? It's actually against the law for a company, especially one that is publicly held (like Apple), to tell lies to the public. Anything that might screw with the share price is a no-no, so they have to be very, very careful what they say most of the time. The problem isn't Apple, it's the legions of brainless, unquestioning idiots who fall under it's spell.

My understanding is that in Australia Apple opposed consumer warranty law for years until they were forced to comply after lengthy litigation. Many consumers were f**ked over without redress. Their service/repair system has been outrageous and I experienced their representatives/fanboy admins lie about their products first hand when an academic eg they would continually tell us that they had never had a problem with equipment before, ours was the first complaint etc when I knew there had been dozens and dozens of returns of faulty equipment. I even heard one representative tell an academic that windows couldnt do video so he had to buy, with his grant money, a very high end Apple machine with shitloads of software - to do a simple task any old windows machine could do with no extra software at all.
Of course capitalism encourages rampant greed - and neo liberalism is ideologically committed to the idea that a society that privileges greed and selfishness is the best society. So of course other industries are similar.

[chagzuki]

I'm using both and don't have strong feelings on the OS, other than that Mac OS on an M1 laptop is much nicer than Windows 10 on a laptop. A few years ago Apple were looking to be in a poor position, but things started shifting when the 2018 iPad Pro came out; it was clear that the processor was a game changer and that tech was entering a new phase.

[dellboy]

The one thing that might be true about Apple stuff is that it holds its monetary value. Windows machines do not get much on the second hand market. I actually made a profit on my Intel Mac Mini last year. I bought in a special sale for £395, used it for a few months to try out Logic Pro, put it on ebay for £325 start and got £450 back !

It was an ebay no fee deal so I kept it all. A profit on a computer, that's got to be a first

[BONES]

That depends. I always try to buy my machines cheap and sell them while they are still current models. I rarely lose more than a few hundred bucks over a year or so. The other thing is that part of the reason they lose value is because there are so many good deals that you don't have to pay retail when you buy new. It also means you can get a stonkin' good machine that's a year or so old for an absolute bargain. That's what I did last month. My new machine is a current model, I can go into any shop and buy one new for Au$2498, but I got it on eBay for Au$1140 from some idiot who bought it in February and then got a new job that came with a MacBook Air. I expect to sell my old one for basically what I paid for it two years ago, too, given how cheap it was. Even if I lose a couple of hundred, it will still cover the cost of the new one.

I'm using both and don't have strong feelings on the OS, other than that Mac OS on an M1 laptop is much nicer than Windows 10 on a laptop.

Really? How many screens does your laptop have? Mine has two -

One of them is a touchscreen, so I can do all kinds of things with my Windows 10 laptop you can't even dream about with your M1 Mac, like have my USB audio device, my Roli Blocks and a mouse all plugged in at the same time, whilst running it through an external monitor, without a USB hub. Best of all, it only cost me US$813 with 16GB of RAM, discrete (nVidia) graphics and a 1TB m.2 SSD. I can't imagine there is anything so great about macOS that you'd be willing to miss out on all of that, let alone pay a huge premium for the privilege of missing out.

A few years ago Apple were looking to be in a poor position, but things started shifting when the 2018 iPad Pro came out; it was clear that the processor was a game changer and that tech was entering a new phase.

Except the benchmarks in no way support your assertion. The M1 is very slightly better for some tasks but measurably inferior for many others. And that's ignoring the fact that Apple will make you buy two devices to get the functionality the rest of the universe can get from a single Windows 10 device. SO not only does Apple fool you into paying a huge premium, they make you do it twice.

[chagzuki]

Except the benchmarks in no way support your assertion. The M1 is very slightly better for some tasks but measurably inferior for many others. And that's ignoring the fact that Apple will make you buy two devices to get the functionality the rest of the universe can get from a single Windows 10 device. SO not only does Apple fool you into paying a huge premium, they make you do it twice.

One certainly has to be careful with Apple purchasing decisions, and markets move fast, so who knows where things will be in a years time. But they've done a lot right recently, and some products have been IMO amazingly good, the iPad pro being one of them.

[Serhii Kot]

I can't imagine there is anything so great about macOS that you'd be willing to miss out on all of that, let alone pay a huge premium for the privilege of missing out.

As we talking about mobile computers, how is the battery life on yours?

For example, my m1 air can give me 7-9 hours of work in Logic with connected Novation Launchpad x (Leds on minimum brightness).

[fmr]

I can't imagine there is anything so great about macOS that you'd be willing to miss out on all of that, let alone pay a huge premium for the privilege of missing out.

As we talking about mobile computers, how is the battery life on yours?

For example, my m1 air can give me 7-9 hours of work in Logic with connected Novation Launchpad x (Leds on minimum brightness).

When everything else fails, comes the batery longevity to the arena?

Who in his perfect mind would run a recording or editing session on battery? What do you want the charger for? Or do you plan to do that recording/editing session while jogging?

[Double Tap]

It's almost as if - and hear me out because I may lose some people at this point - it's almost as if there's pros and cons to Windows and Mac, and some of them suit some people more than others, depending on their needs, situation, budget and personality.