Talk me out of switching to Mac

[uOpt]

It is true that getting a custom built PC is a lot of trouble, whether you do it yourself or pay somebody.

This is not true. I has a local shop that I trust (Central Computers) put together a machine for me and they only charged me a small fee to do it and their component prices were comparable to any online prices. We went over each component, helped me make choices and a day later I had my machine which has been working perfectly ever since. I got exactly what I wanted for a decent price.

But the problem is finding such a shop, no?

[BONES]

Summary: “So, maybe Apple computers work well, for now.. but soon!”

So you don't understand the concept of trust? I suppose that makes you a perfect target for Apple's brand of charlatanism. In the 15 years or so that I had to use Macs at work, it was always one step forward, two steps back. Why on Earth would you think that will ever change? When, for example, do you think Apple will start making laptops or iMacs with touchscreens? They've been popular in PC laptops for more than a decade now so why haven't Apple done it yet? I'll tell you why, because it might hurt iPad sales, which probably makes them a lot more money than Macs do. So you're buying a third tier product from Apple; an afterthought, a vestigial part of their business they probably only keep going for nostalgic reasons.

It’s important the people know, when Mac users claim they’ve had no major issues, it's lies.

Provably so. You don't need to go to Google, you can search here for threads about the massive upheaval caused by macOS updates in the past.

The computer is their product.

Not really. The phone is their product, followed by the tablet. Mac is about as important to their business as Surface is to Microsoft's.

Ever wonder why you can’t turn telemetry off?

Can't you? I wouldn't know. I want Microsoft to see how I use my computer so they can improve my experience. The "telemetry" they collect is all anonymous, why would it bother me how much they collect?

Why you can only temporarily “defer” updates?

You can defer updates for as long as you like but, again, what sort of idiot would do that? Unlike Mac users, we don't have to fear updates because Microsoft has more than a million beta-testers finding the bugs before they hit the consumer user base. I'm one of them and even using pre-release builds, the one and only issue I've ever had was it re-assigned the drive letter for my microSD card during the update. Hardly the end of the world and fixed before that update went live.

Why they’re putting adverts in the file explorer?

They aren't. OTOH, this from The Verge, 16 March 2022 -

"Apple spams you with offers for Apple Music, Apple Fitness, and iCloud if you buy a new iPhone, and we’ve even seen full-screen ads for Apple TV Plus if you own Apple’s TV hardware. Google will hound you with pop-up ads until you give in and buy a YouTube Premium subscription."

That's it. You need ASIO drivers for low latency.

And Apple users need Core Audio, so f**king what? The reality is that most PCs ship with Realtek "soundcards" these days and Realtek have been including ASIO drivers for years, which means the out of the box experience for any new PC you buy will be as good as CoreAudio, even if you don't have a specialised I/O device/card. CoreAudio is just another way Apple keeps you locked in and makes extra work for 3rd party vendors. It's what they do, like making their own ridiculous file formats so that developers have to add support for them and/or users have to search online for conversion utilities. Then, whenever it suits them, they'll abandon that format and it won't work on your Mac any more. They are just a bunch of money-grubbing c**ts whose underhanded tactics should really be illegal in this day and age. Yes, they are all c**ts but Apple is easily the worst of them, locking you into their walled garden at every turn. That so many otherwise rational human beings are so willing, happy even, to drop their pants and bend over for them beggars belief.

Biggest thing that makes MAC interesting is the ability to aggregate multiple ASIO soundcards. Can't do it on Windows 11

OK, so a good reason for maybe 1 in 10,000 people to use Mac. There is one compelling reason anyone else might want to switch, and that's if you want to use Logic. Honestly, that's it. Beyond that it's just personal preference - you either like to be bent over and f**ked up the arse on a regular basis or you don't. Simple as that.

[vstdls]

I have a 9 year old 27" iMac, "top of the line" $$$$ model. About to become a 20 lb paperweight. Too much of a hassle to retrofit hardware to update (even just the SSD), too much of a hassle to install Windows or Linux on it. Going rate on Ebay is $150. Too much of a hassle to ship.

I have a 9 year old Windows machine that couldn't be upgraded to Windows 11. It died 6 months ago. My 12+ year old Mac Mini is still going strong and now serves as my Windows and Linux computer. I upgraded it to 16gb RAM about 8 years ago, and replaced the hard drive with an SSD when it took over Windows/Linux duties. It also can't be upgraded to Windows 11.

Anything can take Windows 11. Anyone that believes otherwise.....good for them?

But you're right Jamcat, an old Mac is only useful when it's been converted to a PC.

Everything BONES said is true.

[Double Tap]

Talk me out of getting a Mac

Shan’t. You can’t make me. Lalalalalalalala


Okay. Look, do you find yourself wanting to tweak everything and look under the hood and see how it all works? Stick with a PC. Or do you find yourself never actually buying new RAM or upgrading your motherboard or thinking 'fantastic, today's the day I'm going to update my BIOS'? Then get a Mac.

Otherwise it's almost exactly the same. I've had a Mac four years now and the big difference for me is that by this stage my PC laptops were starting to creak whereas this M1 MBP is still doing everything I expect it to and is maybe just slightly worn round the edges. But it was about a third more expensive and I've spent loads more on external hard drives than I probably would have done otherwise.

[PAK]

So you don't understand the concept of trust?

Hopefully we both understand it enough to know it probably isn’t best placed in any large corporations

An OS, for most, is just a way to run apps. It’s doing its job best when it’s not noticed. For the minority, who mess with registry settings, you’ll have to learn the command line and plist editing on Mac OS. Both can be made to do much the same stuff usually.

The bigger differentiator, lately, has been the hardware. IMO It’s very well suited for audio tasks. I’d say the opposite for, eg, 3D use (due to no Nvidia cards). Not a fan of touch laptops here (Arm aches, mouse more precise.. ). Has the iPad impacted Apple’s lack of TS laptops? Probably.

Not really. The phone is their product, followed by the tablet

The phone’s 50% of revenue. Then services. Then “wearables”. Then Mac. Then iPad. The point was they make money selling higher margin hardware. This is not the model Microsoft uses to make money from Windows consumers. That’s why you don’t get to turn off the telemetry, but their business customers do.

I want Microsoft to see how I use my computer so they can improve my experience.

Great. I’m sure you’ll also welcome their CoPilot AI. Be sure to let it take screenshots of your machine every few seconds. Don’t worry. It’s AI. It’s the future, innit.

Unlike Mac users, we don't have to fear updates

Hmm. It appears you may use Google rather selectively? Who knew

[jamcat]

I have a 9 year old 27" iMac, "top of the line" $$$$ model. About to become a 20 lb paperweight. Too much of a hassle to retrofit hardware to update (even just the SSD), too much of a hassle to install Windows or Linux on it. Going rate on Ebay is $150. Too much of a hassle to ship.

I have a 9 year old Windows machine that couldn't be upgraded to Windows 11. It died 6 months ago. My 12+ year old Mac Mini is still going strong and now serves as my Windows and Linux computer. I upgraded it to 16gb RAM about 8 years ago, and replaced the hard drive with an SSD when it took over Windows/Linux duties. It also can't be upgraded to Windows 11.

Anything can take Windows 11. Anyone that believes otherwise.....good for them?

But you're right Jamcat, an old Mac is only useful when it's been converted to a PC.

Everything BONES said is true.

Windows 11 requires a TPM2.0 module, so Windows 11 won't install on anything older than 2017. And I'm not going to install any hacks or cracks to get around MicroSoft's limitations, even if they are arbitrary.

But here's a new one: yesterday for no apparent reason Windows 10 started telling me it wasn't activated. I was able to eventually get to a screen that let me fix it, and lo and behold, it discovered my digital license. But why did it dump it in the first place? Yet another buggy Windows update to blame?

[jocknaethick]

00

[lunardigs]

People act like that's what Linux is like too, but it's nonsense.

[Uncle E]

...and Blue Screen of Death??? Last time I saw one of them, was installing SP2 on an old Win XP laptop circa 2003.

Gaslighting is evil.

[uOpt]

Blue Screen of Death aka a kernel panic is usually caused not by the OS itself but either by bad hardware or bad drivers.

While it is reasonably easy to avoid bad hardware or hardware with bad drivers when building a desktop the situation isn't as easy on laptops. Laptop vendor driver packages for Windows can be real garbage, and then you do get BSODs.

It's hard to put bad hardware into a Mac these days.

Linux mostly has drivers only shipping with the kernel, so you don't get bad vendors ones. You might get none, though.

[jamcat]

I read that in nerd voice

[bmanic]

I switched to a Mac Mini M1 (2020 base model!) four years ago and don't regret it at all. Had been a life long Windows user up until then.

It takes a while to get accustomed to OS X and some googling every once in a while but other than that, it's all pretty straight forward.

By far the worst part of OS X has been the system updates. You can't always be 100% certain things will be compatible with new OS X versions. Then again, I've noticed that Windows 11 suffers from this same thing.. guess it's par for the course in this new brave world. Luckily, on Mac you can at least force it to NOT update, unlike Windows where you have to go through a lot of hoops to keep the system as is.

Another issue with the current crop of ARM Macs is that you can't be sure that older software works, whereas Windows has traditionally been exceptionally good at backwards compatibility.. but even that has changed with Windows 11.

The Mac Mini M4 is by far the best bang for the buck currently. It's a similar situation as with the Mac Mini M1. The amount of processing power you get for just 700€ (about the price it costs here in Finland) is amazing! It's got extremely good single core performance which is very nice for music apps when you run long serial chains of instruments and fx.

In short: Get a Mac! Don't fear the dark side!

[Haptix]

Windows has traditionally been exceptionally good at backwards compatibility.. but even that has changed with Windows 11.

Could you elaborate on this a little please?

[machinesworking]

By far the worst part of OS X has been the system updates. You can't always be 100% certain things will be compatible with new OS X versions. Then again, I've noticed that Windows 11 suffers from this same thing.. guess it's par for the course in this new brave world.

Just addressing this a bit. The main thing is OS change 25 years ago and the major chip changes, which IMO is over and done with, Apple has never tried to be the absolute fastest PC out there, which eliminates the only "reason" for them to switch. We're at the end of legacy code issues, and after this it's just going to be companies like NI with massive technical debt who occasionally experience some issue related to that debt and some new lock down that Apple does for security.

In terms of the latest OS version IMO it's always a good idea to let others pave the way. I'm still not on sequoia for instance, I pretty much stay a version behind for 4-6 months. Point updates I always do though.

[jocknaethick]

...and Blue Screen of Death??? Last time I saw one of them, was installing SP2 on an old Win XP laptop circa 2003.

Gaslighting is evil.

I am strictly electric...my mother and father, did however live with gas lighting!!!