Age old debate: Mac VS Microsoft PC

[Kak]

Nothing like a Windows computer... Leave it working totally fine, come back to zero way to connect it to the internet. Just what I wanted to do this afternoon, reinstall Windows from scratch.

How are the M1 Mac laptops? Anyone have one?

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

Nothing like a Windows computer... Leave it working totally fine, come back to zero way to connect it to the internet. Just what I wanted to do this afternoon, reinstall Windows from scratch.

How are the M1 Mac laptops? Anyone have one?

I have one - I love it, but don’t use it that much except when traveling. At my home desk and at office I have iMacs, the 27” ones. Those use a 10-core chip, which isn’t the Apple M1 but rather Intel I think.

I’ve switched to Macs 10 years ago and never looked back. I hate Windows. On Mac I never got a virus, and stayed for YEARS without any antivirus (I do have one now). Never had a blue screen of death. Never had to reinstall OS. Never had to do anything. With an old Mac laptop I’ve had for 10 years, in year 6, I had an issue with the ventilator… it just got very loud and made a strange sound. Turned out it was just dirty. Apart from that I also had to change the hard-drive of that super old Mac laptop because it just died at one point and I almost lost a lot of important stuff if I hadn’t saved it before. Those were the only 2 issues I’ve had, and all with a Macbook Air. My M1 Macbook Pro - no issue. My 2 iMacs - no issues (except had to install additional RAM on both).

 

[Kak]

I have one - I love it, but don’t use it that much except when traveling. At my home desk and at office I have iMacs, the 27” ones. Those use a 10-core chip, which isn’t the Apple M1 but rather Intel I think.

I’ve switched to Macs 10 years ago and never looked back. I hate Windows. On Mac I never got a virus, and stayed for YEARS without any antivirus (I do have one now). Never had a blue screen of death. Never had to reinstall OS. Never had to do anything. With an old Mac laptop I’ve had for 10 years, in year 6, I had an issue with the ventilator… it just got very loud and made a strange sound. Turned out it was just dirty. Apart from that I also had to change the hard-drive of that super old Mac laptop because it just died at one point and I almost lost a lot of important stuff if I hadn’t saved it before. Those were the only 2 issues I’ve had, and all with a Macbook Air. My M1 Macbook Pro - no issue. My 2 iMacs - no issues (except had to install additional RAM on both).

Cool thanks!

So my wife has a ~2012 27" iMac and a ~2017 15 inch Macbook Pro... I bet the iMac is 10 years old, and its embarrassing that in most ways, it is still just as good as my 1 year old 11th Gen intel i7 PC laptop. Granted it was LOADED at the time. She just hadn't found any reasons to replace it.

I feel like I keep getting fooled by PCs and their "superior" hardware.

I gave up on Android phones a few years back and haven't looked back... Maybe it is time to just get Apple everything. I wish the iPad pro could do slightly more desktop crap. If they put Logic Pro and VST plugin capabilities on it, it would be all over. No more computers at all for me.

 

[Antifragile]

Nothing like a Windows computer... Leave it working totally fine, come back to zero way to connect it to the internet. Just what I wanted to do this afternoon, reinstall Windows from scratch.

How are the M1 Mac laptops? Anyone have one?

I have the latest MacBook Pro. 14 inch. Top spec on everything upgraded etc. love it.

Overpaid for it. I’m just writing emails lol.

 

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[Kak]

I have the latest MacBook Pro. 14 inch. Top spec on everything upgraded etc. love it.

Overpaid for it. I’m just writing emails lol.

I always get top spec phones and usually just medium computers. I’m not some machine learning, coding, video editing, creative freelancer…

Good job though… Knowing what you need.

I use a computer for communications, and more recently audio work, obviously… If it wasn’t for my radio show, I’d be done with computers all together.

 

[Antifragile]

I always get too spec phones and usually just medium computers. I’m not some machine learning, coding, video editing, creative freelancer…

Good job though… Knowing what you need.

I use a computer for communications, and more recently audio work, obviously… If it wasn’t for my radio show, I’d be done with computers all together.

Ok I also use it to open Excel sheets. So there $5k well spent.

 

[Kak]

Ok I also use it to open Excel sheets. So there $5k well spent.

It’s only money. Screw it. You should buy a jet ski to use as an office chair too.

 

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[Rabby]

Cool thanks!

So my wife has a ~2012 27" iMac and a ~2017 15 inch Macbook Pro... I bet the iMac is 10 years old, and its embarrassing that in most ways, it is still just as good as my 1 year old 11th Gen intel i7 PC laptop. Granted it was LOADED at the time. She just hadn't found any reasons to replace it.

I feel like I keep getting fooled by PCs and their "superior" hardware.

I gave up on Android phones a few years back and haven't looked back... Maybe it is time to just get Apple everything. I wish the iPad pro could do slightly more desktop crap. If they put Logic Pro and VST plugin capabilities on it, it would be all over. No more computers at all for me.

The macs last practically forever (most of the time), and perform better than other machines with much higher specs. They don't descend into the engineeromarketing hype of "it has a 50 trillion megaflop 9 billion core processor!" while forgetting to mention that the bus speed, RAM, cache or heat management is the real bottleneck o n the system, and youll never use more than a few centiflops . I switched to macs for teacher computers years ago, and linux for anything that's not a mac. Everything got easier and more reliable. I have criticisms, but they're night and day better than most of the windows computers in my experience.

 

[Rabby]

It’s only money. Screw it. You should buy a jet ski to use as an office chair too.

They cost 3-4x as much as a PC, but if you consider how much you pay the humans, considering increases in efficiency due to not rebooting all day, plus the cost of humans who fix malfunctioning electronics for the other humans, the cost is negligible.

 

[MitchC]

They cost 3-4x as much as a PC, but if you consider how much you pay the humans, considering increases in efficiency due to not rebooting all day, plus the cost of humans who fix malfunctioning electronics for the other humans, the cost is negligible.

This is exactly why I use Mac for myself.

I’m good with computers and was always able to have my pc running well and fix any issues that came up but with a Mac I don’t even need to think about there ever being any issues. I just open it up and work then close it, you don’t even need to turn them off unless it’s a major update.

Plus as you said you never really need to upgrade unless you want to. I started my business on a 2012 MacBook Air and I’m sure I could still be running it on that today if I wanted to.

 

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[Andy Black]

Hmmm… you guys talking about Macs…

I always said “no way” because of how much I use Excel, and I saw someone trying to use Excel on a Mac once.

Except now I use Google Sheets exclusively.

 

[Raja]

Nothing like a Windows computer... Leave it working totally fine, come back to zero way to connect it to the internet. Just what I wanted to do this afternoon, reinstall Windows from scratch.

How are the M1 Mac laptops? Anyone have one?

I do full-blown web development and app development(flutter) on my m1 MacBook air 8GB ram. works good enough though I would wish to upgrade it to 16GB ram because it lags sometimes when its ram usage goes above 15GB(because of swap memory).

I think air is good enough for most cases plus its more light and portable.

 

[ji612]

Mac hardware is difficult to fix yourself. It becomes obsolete in a few years. And you can't repair it yourself. Or replace it's parts easily.

If you're not a gamer, you can get an old thinkpad x200 for cheap on ebay (be sure it comes with all the components). You can fix it, modify it, replace it's parts. It's durable.

 

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[Raja]

Mac hardware is difficult to fix yourself. It becomes obsolete in a few years. And you can't repair it yourself. Or replace it's parts easily.

If you're not a gamer, you can get an old thinkpad x200 for cheap on ebay (be sure it comes with all the components). You can fix it, modify it, replace it's parts. It's durable.

I used to think like that too, now I don't care. only criteria is, it should get the job done

the convenience alone makes it worth it

 

[ji612]

I used to think like that too, now I don't care. only criteria is, it should get the job done

the convenience alone makes it worth it

Buying a macbook makes me more dependent on Apple. Getting an old thinkpad x200 on the other hand makes me more independent. That's the way I see it.

 

[Raja]

Buying a macbook makes me more dependent on Apple. Getting an old thinkpad x200 on the other hand makes me more independent. That's the way I see it.

I don't use apple service so I am not dependent on apple.

for notes, I use notion, google suite, for music Spotify, my tech stack is open source
and to be frank google chrome is all you need for most cases.

most people use apple apps and that's how they get dependent on apple but it is just the person's choice.


instead of ThinkPad, I would suggest XPS for windows then for me my windows laptop crashed 2x a day so not even having to turn on/off the laptop feels amazing to me.

 

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[nothingness]

I'm converting my Thinkpad X230 into a Hackintosh; x86 hardware + Mac, because there's a piece of software for writing non fiction that only works on Mac: Vellum. Create beautiful books.

I use linux for everything else, my Thinkpad 4k P14s AMD G2, and my custom built desktop. I can't go back to windows!!! Thing is things like HP printers just work on Linux vs not working on windows / Mac. With Proton / Wine emulation built in things are going well for Linux now.

 

[ji612]

I'm converting my Thinkpad X230 into a Hackintosh; x86 hardware + Mac, because there's a piece of software for writing non fiction that only works on Mac: Vellum. Create beautiful books.

You could use LaTeX. There's a vim-latex-live-preview plugin you could use with neovim. Luke Smith has videos about this. Look it up. Just a suggestion.

I use linux for everything else, my Thinkpad 4k P14s AMD G2, and my custom built desktop. I can't go back to windows!!! Thing is things like HP printers just work on Linux vs not working on windows / Mac.

Nice.

With Proton / Wine emulation built in things are going well for Linux now.

Steam deck's releasing this year!

 

[MitchC]

Mac hardware is difficult to fix yourself. It becomes obsolete in a few years. And you can't repair it yourself. Or replace it's parts easily.

If you're not a gamer, you can get an old thinkpad x200 for cheap on ebay (be sure it comes with all the components). You can fix it, modify it, replace it's parts. It's durable.

Not to be too much of an Apple fanboy but this just isn’t true.

You can get 6+ years out of a MacBook, if not more. I’m still running an iphone 10 and see no reason to upgrade. I have an old 8 that still works too. Someone I know is still using a 5.

Instead of fixing modifying and replacing parts in a pc someone should just get a Mac (even a used one from 2016) and get back to work. Believe me this used to be me.

Old PCs run great with an ssd upgrade etc but the software still lets them down. Security is another issue. Not to mention privacy.

 

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[ji612]

Old PCs run great with an ssd upgrade etc but the software still lets them down. Security is another issue. Not to mention privacy.

I don't use proprietary software.

You're right about SSDs.

 

[Kak]

Buying a macbook makes me more dependent on Apple. Getting an old thinkpad x200 on the other hand makes me more independent. That's the way I see it.

My problem is getting an old thinkpad means windows. Windows sucks.

It’s also old… Which trades my 11th Gen i7 ASUS in for something that will clearly be slower.

I’m sure this is a good option for people looking to save some money and get a durable work PC… But for me, if I wanted a thinkpad I’d just buy it new. If I’m going to sit down and actually do task work, the tools for the job BETTER work right or I’m going to be pissed.

I read up on the iPad OS16 last night. With their M1 iPad pro models, they are expecting to get real external monitor support and some desktop apps like Logic Pro. Which means I’ll be covered when this all happens. As soon as it does, I’ll buy the baddest a$$ iPad anyone has ever seen.

Until then, I have a fresh install of windows on my laptop. Hopefully it lasts until September without problems… Yeah right.

 

[MTF]

Until then, I have a fresh install of windows on my laptop. Hopefully it lasts until September without problems… Yeah right.

I have no idea what you're doing with your PC but I've never had any problems with any of mine. My current Dell is 3.5 years old and runs as fast as when I bought it with no reinstalls. I assume the difference is the SSD drive.

Either way, I'm a Mac hater so you won't get any objective thoughts from me on this topic lol.

 

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[Antifragile]

Not to be too much of an Apple fanboy but this just isn’t true.

You can get 6+ years out of a MacBook, if not more. I’m still running an iphone 10 and see no reason to upgrade. I have an old 8 that still works too. Someone I know is still using a 5.

Instead of fixing modifying and replacing parts in a pc someone should just get a Mac (even a used one from 2016) and get back to work. Believe me this used to be me.

Old PCs run great with an ssd upgrade etc but the software still lets them down. Security is another issue. Not to mention privacy.

I’m right there with you. I still have my Mac from 2010! It works. I use it as my cycling trainer screen for the app. Nothing wrong with it. But for the same reason (they last me forever), I seem to then buy powerful MacBooks when I feel like upgrading.

This whole “replacing inner parts” is of no interest to me.

 

[Kak]

I have no idea what you're doing with your PC but I've never had any problems with any of mine. My current Dell is 3.5 years old and runs as fast as when I bought it with no reinstalls. I assume the difference is the SSD drive.

Either way, I'm a Mac hater so you won't get any objective thoughts from me on this topic lol.

What’s your opinion about Microsoft “Teams” and your vaccination status? That will tell all.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@Andy Black @Fox can one of u pull out the Mac vs pc convo and create a new thread? It’s a bit big for the random chat thread.thx!

 

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[ji612]

My problem is getting an old thinkpad means windows. Windows sucks.

You can install an os other than windows on it. In fact, no one who gets an older thinkpad installs windows on it.

It’s also old… Which trades my 11th Gen i7 ASUS in for something that will clearly be slower.

Yes, but at what cost? You see, your cpu has a backdoor in it. It's called the intel management engine.

You can't remove it.

You can fully remove the intel management engine in an old thinkpad x200 and replace it with libreboot.

I’m sure this is a good option for people looking to save some money and get a durable work PC… But for me, if I wanted a thinkpad I’d just buy it new. If I’m going to sit down and actually do task work, the tools for the job BETTER work right or I’m going to be pissed.

The new thinkpads are as bad as apple macbooks.

Until then, I have a fresh install of windows on my laptop. Hopefully it lasts until September without problems… Yeah right.

 

[Boogie]

I use linux for everything else, my Thinkpad 4k P14s AMD G2, and my custom built desktop. I can't go back to windows!!! Thing is things like HP printers just work on Linux vs not working on windows / Mac. With Proton / Wine emulation built in things are going well for Linux now.

Honestly, as a techie, I think too many people spend too much time thinking about their machines and OS and not just producing. It becomes a massive action fake and the object of mental masturbation for people who aren't in that part of the technical world.

For example, your setup may be great, but how much time did you spend learning the OS and the setup? How much time doing the initial configuration and research? If you grow a normal, non-technical business, how hard will it be to find people that can work with you? Did you cut the size of the labor pool or increase the billing rate of those who can help you? You might be able to take that on. I don't know your background, but should most people? Can you bill for the hours you spent learning? Can most people?

A lot of people seriously disregard the amount of time spent learning a new OS so they can save a few dollars of what is often called Microsoft tax, but Windows is just easier and better supported than Linux for most things people want or need to do. If someone is a computer enthusiast, then fine, learn whatever you want. But it all may come at a cost of time and a cost of people.

Everyone has to figure in their time to learn the thing to get it done. I think many if not most people should just avoid Linux and use Windows or Mac. No learning new skills and you can go to the store to get a drop in replacement. More games and other commercial software. Best Buy is 5 min away and the OS is pre-configured. If you're a geek, then Linux or some Unix variant is great. I tend to use a Unix myself, but would I run a small office on it when I might need non-technical workers? Not a chance unless I've also provided software that is turn-key or web based for the people to run.

 

[MTF]

Lol! I’m curious. What’s your opinion about Microsoft “Teams.” That will tell all.

I don't use it though I know that my dad hates it.

I use various products, not necessarily from Microsoft. I'm not their number one fan.

All I'm saying it that I don't get people complaining about slow PCs. To me, it's a question of how you take care of your device, not the device in itself.

 

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[Raja]

I have no idea what you're doing with your PC but I've never had any problems with any of mine. My current Dell is 3.5 years old and runs as fast as when I bought it with no reinstalls. I assume the difference is the SSD drive.

Either way, I'm a Mac hater so you won't get any objective thoughts from me on this topic lol.

you would love dell xps then

 

[Kak]

Honestly, as a techie, I think too many people spend too much time thinking about their machines and OS and not just producing. It becomes a massive action fake and the object of mental masturbation for people who aren't in that part of the technical world.

For example, your setup may be great, but how much time did you spend learning the OS and the setup? How much time doing the initial configuration and research? If you grow a normal, non-technical business, how hard will it be to find people that can work with you? Did you cut the size of the labor pool or increase the billing rate of those who can help you? You might be able to take that on. I don't know your background, but should most people? Can you bill for the hours you spent learning? Can most people?

A lot of people seriously disregard the amount of time spent learning a new OS so they can save a few dollars of what is often called Microsoft tax, but Windows is just easier and better supported than Linux for most things people want or need to do. If someone is a computer enthusiast, then fine, learn whatever you want. But it all may come at a cost of time and a cost of people.

Everyone has to figure in their time to learn the thing to get it done. I think many if not most people should just avoid Linux and use Windows or Mac. No learning new skills and you can go to the store to get a drop in replacement. More games and other commercial software. Best Buy is 5 min away and the OS is pre-configured. If you're a geek, then Linux or some Unix variant is great. I tend to use a Unix myself, but would I run a small office on it when I might need non-technical workers? Not a chance unless I've also provided software that is turn-key or web based for the people to run.

This exactly!

It needs to just work. I don’t need power. I don’t need to be different for the sake of being different. I don’t need more privacy, although it would be nice. I need it to turn off and on, connect to the internet, send emails, the occasional video chat, and to grind a finished episode of my radio show into a normalized and processed audio file. And… I need it to do those things every time I ask without surprises and drama.

Yesterday my high end ASUS laptop caused drama.

An example for me was trying to learn Adobe Audition. I know it’s “the best ever” for audio people. So I’m like ok, I guess it would be cool to see what it can do and learn it.

It took me hours and hours to even learn half of my typical workflow I accomplish in Hindenburg before I gave up. It might be better for someone, but not me.

That’s how I feel about Linux. I’ll put it on a computer and 1/3 of the stuff I normally use isn’t supported and I don’t understand how everyone else doesn’t have that problem. I’m not some power user. I have very simple requests. I don’t know how you Linux guys tolerate it.