Fair enough. I think that you have a number of slightly niche use cases, to be fair: for starters, most Mac users have no interest in pissing about with command line rubbish (unless it's for automation, and then we had Hypercard, then Automator, and now Shortcuts — all of which have GUIs. And for those who want to make the Mac dance natively, AppleScript is still one of the most intelligible programming languages out there). Mac users use their Macs as tools to get other things done and, given the machine's heritage, preferably through a GUI.
Second, I disliked the butterfly keyboard, so I didn't buy another Mac until the new Magic keyboard (which is absolutely lovely). You, near enough, had the Mac "forced" on you since you got it because it was available — not because it was the right tool.
Third, no one sensible would run Visio or Project: they are terrible applications, and far better native ones exist (see OmniGroup's offerings, for instance, at the higher priced end).
The item that I find most weird in your article, though, is your complaint about the chip architectures. As someone who proclaims to eschew the herd, one might have thought that you might embrace innovation — but this appears not to be the case. Intel has been coasting for years and needed a massive kick up the arse; AMD makes good chips, but lacks the marketing firepower (and subsequent corporate buy-in).
As someone who has been a Mac user since 1997 and has therefore lived throughout all of those chip transitions, I would say that Apple has made them remarkably easy (the most jarring change was from "Classic" MacOS 9 to the Unix-based MacOS 10 — and even that gave one options). On my M1 MacBook Pro (having recently replaced by 2013 MacBook Pro), for instance, the notoriously power- and chip-hungry MS Teams runs incredibly quickly — and it's doing it through the Rosetta 2 translation layer.
The simple fact is that for a "proper" Mac user, the chip transitions have been seamless — the problem is that you are not one of those: you are a Windows user who happens to have obtained a Mac. I have never wanted to run Windows on a Mac: the only times that I have done so, as a web developer, was when we needed to debug for Internet Explorer — and I ran Windows in VirtualBox. I can, of course, no longer do that on my M1 but, fortunately, our customers no longer require that sort of testing.
Each to their own, as they say, but I would suggest that Macs were never going to sit well with your use cases. As a long-time Mac fan (and shareholder), I am sad that it didn't work for you — but it is not a solution for everyone, and plurality is good (which is why you should not use Chrome)...
Like I said, it's a personal thing and those who are long time Mac users are bound to feel differently vis. familiarity with how to achieve various things.
I didn't have the Mac forced on me.... I could have spent the same money on a top-end Dell laptop and been happy enough. I'd actively wanted to sample the Mac experience for a while and it was one of those where I'd been scanning ebay when my colleague mentioned he was selling one of his (he had an Air and on of those tiny Macbooks as well).
I lived with the MBP15 as my main computer for 3 years and, believe me, if it had chafed my balls at any point earlier than that it would have been relegated pronto.
Your final analysis is correct: fundamentally I'm a Windows user. My current company (like most before it) is 99.9% Windows on the desktop and at the back end. I use Visio and Project - mightily flawed as they both are - because that's what every business I've ever worked in has used for my sort of job role. Interoperability with other vendors tools is far better in theory than practice.
That does also explain why I'm salty about the move away from Intel. In a Mac-only scenario, I could boot up a Windows instance on those odd occasions I needed Visio or Project, or stand up a quick lab to test something. That option is gone now. The new Apple silicon does seem to be received spectacularly well, but it doesn't do what I need.
I do see why people like Macs, and when they're good, they're very very good.
The mere - and whole - point of the article was that on balance, they don't work for me anymore as a daily driver. I've enjoyed my MPB15 very much and I still use it at times - I expect I'll continue to do so for as long as OSX supports it. Thereafter it'll be set free to gambol in a field running some obscure Linux distro.
Well, you know — I have been hanging about and reading your posts for all this time (thanks to the ancient technology known as RSS).
As I say, these things are horses for courses, so my comment was not meant to be any form of attack — just a minor defence of the platform. (I admit, I get a little precious about Apple: label me a fanboy, perhaps — but, y'know, I was never brought up to support a football team so my fandom needs some kind of outlet...!)
I totally understand about the compatibility issue although — my god! — things have improved since the late 90s. My company has a mix of Windows (sales people), Linux (hardcore developers) and Macs (everyone else), and it generally works pretty well — the main bugbear is swapping tenders from Pages to Word and back again (but I could use Word, of course — I just refuse to, and I'm basically the boss so...)...
Finally, I get why the inability to boot into Windows makes Apple silicon a deal-breaker for you. But my guess is that other chipmakers will follow Apple's lead anyway...
I have a couple of Linux Laptops set up for specific application on old Lenovo X230s that I use for 3DPrinting, EMail and Webbrowsing.
Linux has improved a lot but it is still too technical for general users. I am by no way and inexperienced admin but I still have to tweak and google around to set up some basic networking on the system. I've just upgraded my Ubuntu to 20.04.3 LTS and although I can browse to my NAS and click to connect drives I can't get the system to restore them on startup. Played about for a few hours yesterday with no joy. There was always another hurdle and there are so many ways to do everything that you can't mix and match. They even removed the clear to desktop button so I'm back to shortcut keys that I keep forgetting.
No matter what they say about Windows, and they say a lot, they really have it down to just plug and play. Linux is much much better from when I first started with it and I have used it for my EMail and Web Browsing for a decade now. It's only a pain if you want to do something outside the basics. Not that long ago adding a printer was a pain. So the basics are improving.
I've always avoided Apple because I didn't like being locked down to only buying Apple kit and not being able to add anything from third parties. Won't even touch their kit at all. Obviously, I'm in the minority as their stuff is used by a lot of people because of the simplicity.
I've been using Linux (in the right places) for years now. This T470 replaces an X220 I had which dual booted Win10 and Linux Mint. I run RHEL for back end stuff and Parrot for red-teaming.
In some senses, Linux has come a long way, but in others it now comes with a complexity and other caveats that just mean it's a huge overhead to run it. WSL2 and Docker support on Windows means I'm considering doing away with full fat RHEL in my company.
The only thing that would turn me away from Windows is if it went to a closed ecosphere, where you could only get apps from the MS Store. There's a notion that the purchase of Blizzard is a prelude to them shutting Steam and other outlets out of the marketplace. I don't think that's going to be the outcome, but if it is, Steam OS will become the #1 consumer OS overnight and Wine will become an enterprise grade product just as quickly.
It's a shame it would happen at the very time when the Linux community is being eaten alive by SJW cretins whose stock-in trade is ostentatious mediocrity. These savages even have Linus Torvalds over a barrel.
I went from CP/M to DOS and then Windows and haven't touched an Apple device in all that time! I was rather put off by a disastrous demonstration of an Apple Lisa back in the day.
I've tried to migrate to Linux on a number of occasions but always come across something that I wanted to do that had a free Windows programme available and seemed impossible (to me) to complete in Linux...
Fair enough. I think that you have a number of slightly niche use cases, to be fair: for starters, most Mac users have no interest in pissing about with command line rubbish (unless it's for automation, and then we had Hypercard, then Automator, and now Shortcuts — all of which have GUIs. And for those who want to make the Mac dance natively, AppleScript is still one of the most intelligible programming languages out there). Mac users use their Macs as tools to get other things done and, given the machine's heritage, preferably through a GUI.
Second, I disliked the butterfly keyboard, so I didn't buy another Mac until the new Magic keyboard (which is absolutely lovely). You, near enough, had the Mac "forced" on you since you got it because it was available — not because it was the right tool.
Third, no one sensible would run Visio or Project: they are terrible applications, and far better native ones exist (see OmniGroup's offerings, for instance, at the higher priced end).
The item that I find most weird in your article, though, is your complaint about the chip architectures. As someone who proclaims to eschew the herd, one might have thought that you might embrace innovation — but this appears not to be the case. Intel has been coasting for years and needed a massive kick up the arse; AMD makes good chips, but lacks the marketing firepower (and subsequent corporate buy-in).
As someone who has been a Mac user since 1997 and has therefore lived throughout all of those chip transitions, I would say that Apple has made them remarkably easy (the most jarring change was from "Classic" MacOS 9 to the Unix-based MacOS 10 — and even that gave one options). On my M1 MacBook Pro (having recently replaced by 2013 MacBook Pro), for instance, the notoriously power- and chip-hungry MS Teams runs incredibly quickly — and it's doing it through the Rosetta 2 translation layer.
The simple fact is that for a "proper" Mac user, the chip transitions have been seamless — the problem is that you are not one of those: you are a Windows user who happens to have obtained a Mac. I have never wanted to run Windows on a Mac: the only times that I have done so, as a web developer, was when we needed to debug for Internet Explorer — and I ran Windows in VirtualBox. I can, of course, no longer do that on my M1 but, fortunately, our customers no longer require that sort of testing.
Each to their own, as they say, but I would suggest that Macs were never going to sit well with your use cases. As a long-time Mac fan (and shareholder), I am sad that it didn't work for you — but it is not a solution for everyone, and plurality is good (which is why you should not use Chrome)...
Blimey! Morning, old chap :-)
Like I said, it's a personal thing and those who are long time Mac users are bound to feel differently vis. familiarity with how to achieve various things.
I didn't have the Mac forced on me.... I could have spent the same money on a top-end Dell laptop and been happy enough. I'd actively wanted to sample the Mac experience for a while and it was one of those where I'd been scanning ebay when my colleague mentioned he was selling one of his (he had an Air and on of those tiny Macbooks as well).
I lived with the MBP15 as my main computer for 3 years and, believe me, if it had chafed my balls at any point earlier than that it would have been relegated pronto.
Your final analysis is correct: fundamentally I'm a Windows user. My current company (like most before it) is 99.9% Windows on the desktop and at the back end. I use Visio and Project - mightily flawed as they both are - because that's what every business I've ever worked in has used for my sort of job role. Interoperability with other vendors tools is far better in theory than practice.
That does also explain why I'm salty about the move away from Intel. In a Mac-only scenario, I could boot up a Windows instance on those odd occasions I needed Visio or Project, or stand up a quick lab to test something. That option is gone now. The new Apple silicon does seem to be received spectacularly well, but it doesn't do what I need.
I do see why people like Macs, and when they're good, they're very very good.
The mere - and whole - point of the article was that on balance, they don't work for me anymore as a daily driver. I've enjoyed my MPB15 very much and I still use it at times - I expect I'll continue to do so for as long as OSX supports it. Thereafter it'll be set free to gambol in a field running some obscure Linux distro.
Well, you know — I have been hanging about and reading your posts for all this time (thanks to the ancient technology known as RSS).
As I say, these things are horses for courses, so my comment was not meant to be any form of attack — just a minor defence of the platform. (I admit, I get a little precious about Apple: label me a fanboy, perhaps — but, y'know, I was never brought up to support a football team so my fandom needs some kind of outlet...!)
I totally understand about the compatibility issue although — my god! — things have improved since the late 90s. My company has a mix of Windows (sales people), Linux (hardcore developers) and Macs (everyone else), and it generally works pretty well — the main bugbear is swapping tenders from Pages to Word and back again (but I could use Word, of course — I just refuse to, and I'm basically the boss so...)...
Finally, I get why the inability to boot into Windows makes Apple silicon a deal-breaker for you. But my guess is that other chipmakers will follow Apple's lead anyway...
Keep on keeping on!
I didn't take it as an attack, matey.
I know that - coming from you - if it was an attack I'd have been left in no doubt about the fact :-D
Nice to know you're still reading & I hope you're well and thriving.
I have a couple of Linux Laptops set up for specific application on old Lenovo X230s that I use for 3DPrinting, EMail and Webbrowsing.
Linux has improved a lot but it is still too technical for general users. I am by no way and inexperienced admin but I still have to tweak and google around to set up some basic networking on the system. I've just upgraded my Ubuntu to 20.04.3 LTS and although I can browse to my NAS and click to connect drives I can't get the system to restore them on startup. Played about for a few hours yesterday with no joy. There was always another hurdle and there are so many ways to do everything that you can't mix and match. They even removed the clear to desktop button so I'm back to shortcut keys that I keep forgetting.
No matter what they say about Windows, and they say a lot, they really have it down to just plug and play. Linux is much much better from when I first started with it and I have used it for my EMail and Web Browsing for a decade now. It's only a pain if you want to do something outside the basics. Not that long ago adding a printer was a pain. So the basics are improving.
I've always avoided Apple because I didn't like being locked down to only buying Apple kit and not being able to add anything from third parties. Won't even touch their kit at all. Obviously, I'm in the minority as their stuff is used by a lot of people because of the simplicity.
I've been using Linux (in the right places) for years now. This T470 replaces an X220 I had which dual booted Win10 and Linux Mint. I run RHEL for back end stuff and Parrot for red-teaming.
In some senses, Linux has come a long way, but in others it now comes with a complexity and other caveats that just mean it's a huge overhead to run it. WSL2 and Docker support on Windows means I'm considering doing away with full fat RHEL in my company.
The only thing that would turn me away from Windows is if it went to a closed ecosphere, where you could only get apps from the MS Store. There's a notion that the purchase of Blizzard is a prelude to them shutting Steam and other outlets out of the marketplace. I don't think that's going to be the outcome, but if it is, Steam OS will become the #1 consumer OS overnight and Wine will become an enterprise grade product just as quickly.
It's a shame it would happen at the very time when the Linux community is being eaten alive by SJW cretins whose stock-in trade is ostentatious mediocrity. These savages even have Linus Torvalds over a barrel.
Good post!
I went from CP/M to DOS and then Windows and haven't touched an Apple device in all that time! I was rather put off by a disastrous demonstration of an Apple Lisa back in the day.
I've tried to migrate to Linux on a number of occasions but always come across something that I wanted to do that had a free Windows programme available and seemed impossible (to me) to complete in Linux...
Thanks.
Aye, I actually bought CP/M for my Spectrum +3 in god-knows-what-year. 1989?
There's a place for Linux (see my comment above), but unless Microsoft do something catastrophically stupid, Linux will never win on the desktop.