I thought XP was pretty bad and it compelled my to switch over to Mac/Apple in the early 00s. I also liked that apple routers integrated easily since I’m on iphone/ipad as well. Fast forward to now I’m not too impressed with modern Macs/iphones. It seems like Apple is not innovating while their competitors are. I have a late 14 MBP and it’s getting harder and harder to update to the current mostly bloated Mac OSs. I use Windows for work and it’s come a long way. I’ll hang on to my MBP as long as I can and I’m not keen to get another MB but not sure what options I have since I don’t really want a MS laptop either.
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If it has a conventional hard drive then booting from a macOS installation on an external SSD might give it a real boost.
I think the 8GB RAM could be upgraded which would also probably help, but something best left to Apple or a professional as it’s not something I’d want to try:
I had a look earlier today and although I like tinkering a bit, I’m not going to take this on, apparently you have to lever off the screen and re-glue back it afterwards. There’s a company not too far from me that will upgrade the ram and put in an SSD to replace the HDD which should help. About £400 which considering the price of a new one may make sense.
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I quite liked XP, though anything was better than Windows Me!
Shame Apple ditched the Airport devices and Time Capsules but they undoubtedly had their reasons including pushing iCloud services.
I’m not as keen on Apple stuff as I used to be in all honesty.
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Running macOS from an external SSD is pretty easy, at least with older versions and while potentially slower than an internal SSD gave my old 2012 Mini a new lease of life.
Years ago I tried to sort something on a 2006 iMac, and gave up very rapidly after prising the case apart - some things are just too much of a faff unless you do them regularly. Ultimately I got Apple to sort the problem.
If you’re considering a RAM upgrade from a local company it makes sense to get an SSD in there as well.
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When upgraded mine, I had to plug my SSD into USB to copy over the data. Being USB 2, it was fairly slow process, but worked. When I then tried to boot from the SSD via USB, it was quicker than the HDD, but then got an extra boost when I inserted it into iMac 2009. No glue, but had to remove the front glass panel using some cheap suckers that I got on Amazon. It was attached via magnets. However you then have to remove some screws, which when you try and put them back later, kept sticking to the magnet, so was the worst part of the job.
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I’m assuming it’s the ARM version of Windows 11, Parallels simply had an option to download Windows 11 when creating the VM which worked quite well.
Edge is very snappy in Windows 11 and just seems to render fonts/pages better than Safari.
Unfortunately I agree about all the ads and ‘features’ in Edge. Not used it much hopefully some of the annoyances can be customised to ‘off’!
I think the transition to ‘Apple Silicon’ is to give Apple even more control over their hardware and product cycles. At least being ARM based the chips are a lot more energy efficient than Intel offerings, which in itself is a good thing, but there will be things we will no longer be able to do.
And that’s progress?
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No, it’s ‘Apple’s way or the highway’ these days.
Most customers don’t care.
Probably true, because “the whole world is now on your phone”……
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I may be wrong but I’d imagine most new Macs are purchased by those who’s first Apple exposure came from iPhones or iPads and love all the social media/communication type BS which they try to ‘improve’ every year. I’m just an old fogey who can’t be arsed with most of it.
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Maybe, but I have an iPod, iPad, iPhone, iWatch…….but do not have a Mac (only a beige overcoat……boom, boom………sorry, I’ll get me coat).
Seriously though, I’m always impressed watching our (millennial) daughters and their partners organising their lives on their smart phones (although they all have PCs for “serious” stuff)
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I was mainly thinking of a Studio as I could pop to the Apple Store and get something with more than 8GB RAM without build to order.
I’ve really not digested (and missed the announcement) the updated releases in January and the Mini with M2 Pro and 16GB RAM might suit me fine, but I’d rather have 32GB or more.
What’s stopped you? Gaming performance mostly?
The main thing that’s made me stick with Macs since 2006 is that I hated running AV software on Windows and don’t use it at all on Macs. Of course Macs are vulnerable generally due to social engineering catching users out/daft user software choices with malware but that’s true for Windows as well.
I’m so out of touch with all things PC these days I’m happier sticking with Apple.
The main reason for my post however was a sense that Windows 11 just looks very polished and in some ways the GUI is better than macOS.
I think you might…
But than again - it doesn’ matter what drives customers towards purchasing a new Mac. As long as it works…
By the by… I’m on my 3rd MacBook pro in 12 years - change them every 4-5 years.
And a move towards Apple Silicon chips (starting with M1) is trully a game-changer for Apple.
For whatever reason, I’ve always thought that Macs were for people that didn’t know anything about computers, so they had to have something they could just switch on and go, and could afford it.
I’ve built many of my computers and upgrade a motherboard or whatever, whenever I need to.
Please don’t take any offence if you’re a Mac user, as this is just the way it has appeared to me and I’m not suggesting that this is the way it is.
I have a completely current, hard-wired, 3 computer, secure network at the mo, and it all cost me less than $1000. They were refurbs, but I don’t run the latest software. Win10, MS Ofice 19, and the like. Nothing ever seems to fail, but if it did I’d fix it myself. When I move to Win11, I’ll have to upgrade the chips, I believe.
The people I know with Macs, know how to turn them on and turn them off.
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I wouldn’t really disagree with what you say. And thats always been the issue for me anyhow, that you have to be a decent techie if you go down the Windows route. Or you end up buying a new computer ever two years when it goes wrong, and you dont have a techie in the family.
Certainly Macs are more expensive, but over a lifespan, I found it cheaper, and certainly less headache issues. Before I first moved across, I also checked that I could do everything that I did on Windows, and I could, so became a no brainer, and didn’t spend big chunks of weekends defragging, virus checking, and updating drivers and software with a prayer that it would work.
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Yes, for sure, good to be a techie, but the maintenance was always a drag. Lately tho, with this last group of pre-owned Dell computers (good recycling), I haven’t had any of the issues I used to have, like the ones you describe and more. They just work.
They were 5yo Dells when I got them and that was about 3 years ago. So for 8 years now the windows computers seem to have improved. These ones are Excel i5, about 24g mem, some SSD & some HDD.
I admit tho, that I was expecting to have maintenance issues when I set it up.
I use both Mac’s and PC’s - they are good at different things. I think I prefer the hardware of Apple - but I do prefer the OS software of Microsoft with Windows 10 + , but I can manage with OSX but it can be surprisingly frustrating and often need to drop to shell if I need to do anything other than simple OS activities.
Many quality/commercial applications work equally well on either OSs
At least with an iMac you can boot up into Windows - or OSX (which I regularly do) - as far as I am aware I can’t boot a Windows PC as OSX
I don’t think that’s any more applicable than for Windows users.
Once Acorn stopped making ARM computers I reluctantly bought a PC, and the main advantage there, apart from cost, was being easily able to upgrade RAM/internal drives/graphics cards/sound cards and so forth. Thereafter I built several PCs for myself/family, but for some reason switched to Mac in 2006.
Macs do carry a premium price wise, but I loved the fact that OS X/macOS seemed inherently more secure than Windows with no real need for any bloated AV/malware tools which installed at such low level into the OS that they impacted performance and often caused more problems than they prevented. Macs are not immune from viruses/malware if the user is duped into installing something malicious, and were probably safer back in the day simply due to far higher numbers of Windows users.
As for the price premium these days I think it’s interesting that they now include free OS upgrades (they were paid in the distant past) as well as the modernised (initially downgraded) iLife/iWork suite of tools which are pretty good for the aveeage user comprising photo/video editing tools as well as presentation/spreadsheet and document creation apps. The ‘business’ offerings are far simpler than MS Office, but many users barely scratch the surface of what those do anyway.
One thing Apple are bad at is change for change’s sake and dropping popular products - Aperture was a great paid for photo DAM and image editor but they abandoned it. They simplified many of the bundled apps too much and are potentially only now catching up. They assumed too early with iCloud that all users had perfect always on fast internet for backup purposes.
Going back to the original post, I’m really quite excited by the look and feel of Windows 11 under virtualisation software (Parallels), and I think it looks very polished. The pendulum swings and I’m interested in exploring Windows 11 more than I have been for almost 2 decades.
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