I have used computers for almost 40 years now – I remember working on an old Sperry machine in the 1980s… Then an old IBM PS/2 that ran on DOS! I went Mac in 1990, first at work, then at home (in 1991, I bought an LCII running System 7) and haven’t used a Windows machine for yonks – I think the last OS I used was Windows XP. I just prefer Macs, especially the ones with M1 chips.
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One of the more modern ones then. LOL
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M1 or M2 Mac is lightening fast. Get plenty of memory too.
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The Mac hardware is enough to draw me into their cult.
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Mac - works well, easy to live with, especially when setting it up privately.
Might seem expensive to start with, but tends to last much, much longer that Windows based hardware.
The Windows-in-Parallels is the ARM-Windows version? I read Edge is “native ARM” in there, but not many other software. (They also have a x86->ARM emulation. I’m really curious on feedback on that one - it may decide, if/when I make the jump to ARM-Macs.)
You can try Edge on macOS, but it may have to be downloaded from MS directly. (At least my Edge has it’s own auto-updater, so I did not download it from the store. I really dislike Edge for it’s MS-intrusiveness, advertisment, and stuff - but I have plenty of browsers on my Mac for different purposes. And sometimes Chromium engine is needed for specific sites.)
What’s really worrying me about the Mac is the shorterning support cycles for macOS - it seems like they downward-adjust it towards iOS more and more. My 2011 MacBook Pro ran out of support in 2020 (and no new major OS since 2018). It was getting slow and for some pandemic cases (live video session plus screen sharing) it was not fast enough. But for many things it’s still fine (and I upgraded HDD->SSD on it, increased RAM, and had fan+battery replaced - all without much hassle). In 2022 they started deprecating pretty recent Macs, given, that today a decent PC should last 10+ years, if not really broken beforehand.
I don’t know, if this a “we want to get rid of Intel” special wave of enforced obsolesence, or if they in general want to enforce a 5-7 years cycle here. (Which would be such a shame for the new Mx-Macs.)
Question about having the Studio on your shortlist: why the Studio?
The M1 Max CPU is not faster than the M1 Pro, it only has the faster GPU. And the Ultra gives power most people don’t need, without optimal scaling (you don’t get 2xMax speed) at a very hefty price. And for 1-4 threads (office use, browsing, …), any M1 CPU is exactly the same. (Pro/Max/Ultra can only bring their power to bear in very paralllel processing, except for very rare cases, where the bigger cache / faster RAM helps. And any M2 based CPU is faster single-core than any M1 CPU.)
So unless you really want the GPU or video processing unit upgrade or the many Thunderbolt interfaces / options for many external screens, it’s usually not worth the price in my opinion.
That was my argument earlier, and for iOS/iPadOS devices still is (especially with their OS updates).
But for Macs: no longer for me. If you have decent PCs, they last 10+ years as well. And Windows 10 supports them for a loooong time - much longer than macOS these days. I still see PCs from 2008-2010 around, if they have enough RAM and got an SSD upgrade. And I recently installed Win10 for friends on used machines form circa 2014 (i5, with 16 GB RAM and an SATA-SSD). Installation was blazing fast (no gaming PC, though), and it’s a shame, Win10 will be stopped in 2025 and those machines don’t get Win11 any more.
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I spent 30+ years in Level 2 then 3 support for Windows PC’s and servers. The fact they add in so many config options, and the instability of the OS (pre Win 7 mostly) means it’s paid me all my life without being made redundant.
Saying that, since retiring, I haven’t touch it, and hopefully never will. Yes it’s more stable these days, but still very complex, and when it breaks, it’s still a pain to get back. Even with later versions, there was always a risk as to whether the next patch update would leave you with a working device and/or apps.
Mac has everything I need, not to mention the ability to write shell scripts which has always been better than DOS command-line commands. Yes Windows has PowerShell, but that was limited and kept having to be updated.
I am only now considering changing my 2009 iMac. How many people still have a working Windows PC that far back? Also many of the latest apps work fine on it. I updated memory in its early days, then swapped the HDD for SDD a couple of years ago, which was a piece of cake - thanks to the onboard tools for Disk Copy.
I brought an iMac for my Mum who is 250 miles away around 2011, and it’s still going strong. I would not have been able to support her if I’d got a Windows device.
And of course, do I really need to say anymore than Time Machine? The closest Windows ever came to it was Netbackup, but was never very successful at doing full system restores.
Oh, and you can now of course run the Naim app on the current range.
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I own a small (but growing) company - we only use Apple Macs (11 employees).
Last year’s (2022) cost for IT support - 0 (null).
The only trouble we have comes from Microsoft Office (nowadays 365) and SharePoint.
This is where Apple has some additional homework to do - why can’t we have iCloud for Business in Europe?
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To do what is the response i usually give to such questions from friends. I think its more important to answer that before committing to an eco system. If the apps you want to use are not native and you need to go down an emulator route to run them then i think you have chosen the wrong machine. We are Apple users at home but i would not use a Mac for gaming, either a pc or console is much easier and would give more options. If your apps are cloud base and via a web interface it’s pretty much hardware agnostic or should be.
Me too. Had to use Windows at work and didn’t like it at all.
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macOS Ventura and Windows 11 are exactly the same
Strong preference for Windows and Android here.
I used to have macs but the walled garden crap meant they were unsuitable for use with my research for people with disabilities due being unable to connect certain assistive devices. I can still run software I wrote in the 1980s on my Windows 11 laptop, whereas the ipod Touch I foolishly bought as a remote is useless now - try running the Naim app on it!
I had to take an iPad on a long trip to the States a few years ago. It didn’t have enough storage for my music and videos as they don’t accommodate SD cards. Happy with my Samsung tablet at half the cost and it does what I want
My research unit had 15-20 pcs - they all lasted 10 years or more and almost never went wrong.
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I’m trying to get Power BI Gateway installed here.
The best thing I can do is praying. There is no other solution to get it working.
Note: it has completely removed my local office installation without asking.
I think that’s key.
For far too long Apple have underspecified their base models, and I’m too impatient to build to order.
My 2012 Mini had 16GB RAM (when you could easily upgrade them yourself) and never used to grind to a halt the way my M1 Mini with 8GB does - I’m not doing any intensive tasks just browsing, email, notes and that’s about it. Fell for the spin/earlyYouTube presentations that the 8GB base model was more than capable, but far too often it ends up chugging/beachballing due to low memory.
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Which model do you have?
It’s a mid 2017 Retina 4K i5 3Ghz 8gb ram
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That was alway something of an issue, even if you had well specced Mac Pros the GPU options were pretty limited, though not all bad.
Later Intel Macs with Thunderbolt 3 could use external GPUs but that has now gone by the wayside with the Apple Silicon chips.
iMac or Macbook?
iMac
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