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Anyone else abandoning ship?
- Thread starter ibivibiv
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There's not a shot I am abandoning ship. I was thinking about getting into PC gaming and I tried using Windows 10 via parallels today and it took me 10 minutes before I freaked out and nixed that idea. I'm not trying to sound biased here but imo OS X is so far ahead of the competition.
That's not going to work, there is no direct access to GPU from VM. Use bootcamp.
I don’t disagree with your reaction to Windows, but don’t let that deter you from building a PC gaming rig. For a gaming box Windows is nothing more than a boot loader for Steam and in that role its annoyances are greatly diminished.
You don’t actually have to use windows if you are just playing games.
Compelling thread. I jumped ship last fall, and then jumped back in earlier this spring with a renewed appreciation for both iOS and MacOS. Not without several caveats though. My punch list is as varied as most of the ones listed here. No need to rehash them. They’ve been covered plenty.
I appreciate the power users perspective quite a bit. It’s a looking glass for the rest of us. But it doesn’t matter all that much to those of us still grinding spreadsheets and emails and texts and overall basic communication. Sharing files, images, and information. That fluidity is still a preference based on our own familiarity with whatever OS.
What I want to bitch about is ID & password integration. What a damn mess! I spend far too much time guessing which browser or which email client can remember what I always, ALWAYS, want to do. Same old me, waiting to the same simple things.
Apple is trying, and so is MS. But neither has it figured out. I don’t condemn them for my having to use both due to software availability and limited platforms. But I sure do cuss both of them for not re-emerging and remembering my workflow. I just want to work on a file, save the file, and sometimes share the file. Isn’t that the common thread of computing?
Please dear computer gods. Stop asking me to recite your precious login info. It’s me. It my device and I paid for it. Let me just use it for once.
I appreciate the power users perspective quite a bit. It’s a looking glass for the rest of us. But it doesn’t matter all that much to those of us still grinding spreadsheets and emails and texts and overall basic communication. Sharing files, images, and information. That fluidity is still a preference based on our own familiarity with whatever OS.
What I want to bitch about is ID & password integration. What a damn mess! I spend far too much time guessing which browser or which email client can remember what I always, ALWAYS, want to do. Same old me, waiting to the same simple things.
Apple is trying, and so is MS. But neither has it figured out. I don’t condemn them for my having to use both due to software availability and limited platforms. But I sure do cuss both of them for not re-emerging and remembering my workflow. I just want to work on a file, save the file, and sometimes share the file. Isn’t that the common thread of computing?
Please dear computer gods. Stop asking me to recite your precious login info. It’s me. It my device and I paid for it. Let me just use it for once.
Yeah, that is not going to work, Parallels is not for that. If you want to get into gaming in any way you either need to Bootcamp Windows which will yield varying results or use a PC.
macOS does have a decent but limited library of games that are designed to work with it, install Steam and there are quite a few, most of Blizzards games also work. But it's a limited area, which is why gamers do not use Macs
Alternatively, you could use something like GeForce Now. There are a few services like it.
For gaming? No chance, macOS is miles behind.
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Yes, I didn't change it, as I hadn't decided already, but I'll stick to macOS for now. I'm not in the market for a MP at all, but it's enough for me to see, that macOS isn't dead yet.
This. I'm also in the mood of learning a new programming language, and Swift has always been really interesting to me. The announcement of SwiftUI might be what finally makes me learning it.
I have a decent self-built PC.
i7-7700k, 16 GB DDR4, 2x 1TB NVME and a GTX1070
Looking to upgrade it for improved gaming, not that it's poor by any means. The main issue is monitors, I have 2 Benq GW2270's, there is little point in going for an Nvidia RTX card without changing the display.
Looking for a single, wall-mountable display that gives me the real estate I have now but struggling to make my mind up.
i7-7700k, 16 GB DDR4, 2x 1TB NVME and a GTX1070
Looking to upgrade it for improved gaming, not that it's poor by any means. The main issue is monitors, I have 2 Benq GW2270's, there is little point in going for an Nvidia RTX card without changing the display.
Looking for a single, wall-mountable display that gives me the real estate I have now but struggling to make my mind up.
That's why I settled in on Chrome, its platform independent, its not perfect but it gets the job done. People are saying good things about the new Edge browser but so far inertia has settled in and I'm content with chrome
Both going at it in different ways, are trying. I'm generally happy with the hello microsoft stuff, seems to work well I didn't like the T2 chip and what it does - I think apple locked the machines down too much imo
The problem is if someone or some malicious program is trying to do something, there would be a lot of angry users if the OS didn't prompt you and thusly infected the computer, either for ransomware or other bad things.
Makes sense, as is usual from you. Thanks
Chrome comes with its own inconsistency too. Sometimes it remembers IDs & passwords, and sometimes not. My own google ID was recently compromised for the first time, and it has been a ridiculous PIA to get all of our machines to learn and accept the new password. Including endless email alerts letting me know of every step. Sigh..
My own situation may be more difficult or different than most typical users. I’m not sure. (I manage two different small businesses, using several devices and employees)
So I keep jumping back and forth on chrome. The default browser is the one that is always preferred, since that’s what each OS clearly wants me to use, (share button, open with, email, etc). But chrome always helps me make the transitions to the ‘other’ device, when safari or edge wants to get redundant about my next intention.
Even on a slow day, it’s a constant barrage of dancing around the passwords and user IDs. While I don’t own a Surface product anymore, Windows Hello on those devices was positively the fastest remedy I’ve seen. My iPad, iPhone, Mac Mini, and MBA with the fingerprint thingy are all far slower and cumbersome than the Surfaces I tried out. But in any of those cases, the browsers NEED a new solution. As soon as possible IMO.
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I like how safari uses iCloud passwords, as much as I like Google I had to move out from their ecosystem due to their intrusive tracking onto the customer... The only thing I use from them these days is Gmail and Youtube.
And I'm still pissed off about inbox thou
What's really weird is that Apple is checking off most of the boxes that I need for a pro/creative machine. But lately, I've been really turned off by the prices. I think that's the major reason why I'm not looking at purchasing another Mac anytime soon. I have my 2018 MBP (560X). I would have preferred the Vega 20, but it came out mere months after I purchased mine. Another reason why I'm slightly pissed off.
Looking at the new MacPro, it looks amazing, and finally has the hardware and upgradability I would be looking for. However, at that price, at the lowest end config? I could build my own using the same components and a RTX Titan for nearly half the price. I'm also not sure I really need, XEON processors and ECC Memory. I think I would do just fine with an i9 or an AMD Threadripper. Now you might say, then this Mac Pro is not for me. You would be correct. But then who is this machine for? And at what price? Usually, Apple was pretty decent when you priced a similarly configured machine with it's PC counterpart, but that sadly doesn't seem to be the case anymore. This Mac Pro is another over engineered machine we didn't really need. And you're paying the special Apple tax just for that. I mean it's an absolute joke that a monitor stand costs $999. I love the reaction from the crowd when they first announced it and the guy presenting was almost thrown off that the crowd wasn't clapping and cheering at the price. It seems like Apple really doesn't understand the variances of their customers needs. They over built and over engineered a pro machine that is priced for the super high end and those with deep pockets. That's fine, but there some of us who are professionals who don't quite fit into that special niche, who want something more powerful and upgradeable compared to the iMac Pro. It's not that I can't afford it, but now that I get older and you have family and business decisions that factor into spending, you now have to justify where and how you spend your money.
I think I'll wait and see what happens. I'll always love MacOS, but I'm not tied to it. I can do a lot of my writing, editing and coding (App/Game Development) on Windows. I'll be looking closely at what Microsoft does with Surface Book 3 and maybe build my own Ryzen3 or Threadripper machine with an Nvidia RTX card for gaming and editing. I hope Apple comes to their senses. The prices are really driving me away.
Looking at the new MacPro, it looks amazing, and finally has the hardware and upgradability I would be looking for. However, at that price, at the lowest end config? I could build my own using the same components and a RTX Titan for nearly half the price. I'm also not sure I really need, XEON processors and ECC Memory. I think I would do just fine with an i9 or an AMD Threadripper. Now you might say, then this Mac Pro is not for me. You would be correct. But then who is this machine for? And at what price? Usually, Apple was pretty decent when you priced a similarly configured machine with it's PC counterpart, but that sadly doesn't seem to be the case anymore. This Mac Pro is another over engineered machine we didn't really need. And you're paying the special Apple tax just for that. I mean it's an absolute joke that a monitor stand costs $999. I love the reaction from the crowd when they first announced it and the guy presenting was almost thrown off that the crowd wasn't clapping and cheering at the price. It seems like Apple really doesn't understand the variances of their customers needs. They over built and over engineered a pro machine that is priced for the super high end and those with deep pockets. That's fine, but there some of us who are professionals who don't quite fit into that special niche, who want something more powerful and upgradeable compared to the iMac Pro. It's not that I can't afford it, but now that I get older and you have family and business decisions that factor into spending, you now have to justify where and how you spend your money.
I think I'll wait and see what happens. I'll always love MacOS, but I'm not tied to it. I can do a lot of my writing, editing and coding (App/Game Development) on Windows. I'll be looking closely at what Microsoft does with Surface Book 3 and maybe build my own Ryzen3 or Threadripper machine with an Nvidia RTX card for gaming and editing. I hope Apple comes to their senses. The prices are really driving me away.
Ok and I understand that, but...
So you're ok with them reading everything you send and receive?
Not having a go at you so much, but I have lost track of the people on MR that scream about Google and privacy which is why they will never use their phones but are happy to use Chrome, Gmail, Drive and so on.
Freelance pros get paid around £500 per day though, so they can afford that monitor in 10 days.
Even freelance pros have mortgages, other debt, have to eat and all the other costs associated with life before buying a monitor, so a bit more complex than daily rate * 10.
I could build a decent machine for less than the cost of the stand needed to use the monitor. Although it does look like a cool mechanism.
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Don't really have a choice here, since it's one of the emails I'm not able to take the accounts from here and put them on iCloud
I have been thinking about this for months on end. I want to switch to another email provider, but my gut tells me that all the reliable email services do this.
I’ve used Proton Mail, but this is more of a niche product IMO.
Do you know of any reliable, mainstream email providers that don’t “mine” your emails? Serious question: not sarcasm.
I would always treat any 3rd party email service with suspicion. To be fair Google has said that it stopped scanning emails to use in conjunction with ad delivery although they probably said the earth is flat at some point.
The reality is they offer the best out there, I tried outlook.com a while back, my email is connected to my domain which is my surname, it has been in use 20 years now so I get a lot of spam, using outlook.com I found out how much, 50-100 emails of crap every day that was not being filtered out. Gmail? Not a single spam email in years and never binned an email that I wanted to see.
If you want to make sure nobody is reading your mail apart from you (and the NSA) then you set up a shared hosting account using something like cPanel and use that with a domain. But cost and time is any issue there. Well, cost is minimal.
Otherwise, Gmail is really the best option right now.
If it is that important to you, grab a low cost AWS server with the domain of your choice and set up your own email server. Just configure it with the proper blacklists and don't allow relays. The cost will be pretty low assuming you don't have a huge volume of email (although that doesn't count the constant pounding on your host as people try to hack into it).
I used to run mine locally when I had a public IP and email hosting wasn't free. I don't send anything over email that is sensitive and/or embarrassing. Let them snooze on my email and they host my domain mail for free.
Wow, no. If you have experience in running mail servers then great if you don't then it can be challenging. You risk the chance of mail not being delivered or even rejected as untrusted and end up on a blacklist that stops your mail getting anywhere. Been there and made those mistakes over 20 years of being in the hosting industry.
You could install something like https://www.iredmail.org/ but even then you need to understand more than just accepting it works.
Honestly, the easy, cheap and hands-off approach would be to get a cPanel shared hosting account that you can attach your email domain to, that is as configure and forget as you will find if trying to do it yourself.
It can be challenging to set up an email server but with the information available now, it is much easier than it was 20 years ago. All it takes is a bit of research. If privacy is that big of a concern, that is the way to ensure it is safe.
There are a number of ways to approach the issue. It all depends on how much importance you place on your email privacy and whether it is in your hands or another companies. I don't place all that much importance on it since I host my domain on google but its free and I knew the trade offs when I transferred my email there..
I have been away from this thread for awhile. Interesting responses. I always find it curious how those that decide to stick with Mac feel they have to justify it by bashing Windows. Why? I use three different systems and they all have strengths and weaknesses. In trying a different system, one has to have the mindset to accept that system for what it is, and be prepared to enjoy the adventure. Too many Mac fans go in with the idea of comparing everything to how MacOS does things, and if it is different than MacOS then the other is inferior.
With that attitude you are doomed from the start in trying anything else, and that is what will keep you locked in to Apple and at the mercy of whatever prices they charge or things they do. For me I am not going to pay $6000 plus for a machine that I can't spec, and lacks value in key areas. But as a PC user, I can have a powerful machine, spec to my needs, at a decent price. This is how my desktop is set up, it has exactly what I want.
With Apple well...
With that attitude you are doomed from the start in trying anything else, and that is what will keep you locked in to Apple and at the mercy of whatever prices they charge or things they do. For me I am not going to pay $6000 plus for a machine that I can't spec, and lacks value in key areas. But as a PC user, I can have a powerful machine, spec to my needs, at a decent price. This is how my desktop is set up, it has exactly what I want.
With Apple well...
The rebuttal to this is:
1) There are objective methods to gauge the efficiency of a product design, as it compares to another.
2) Less efficient designs are objectively inferior for the general populace, regardless of individual quirks/taste.
• The MagSafe is, in my estimation, a more efficient design. It solved a problem. The replacement of it with an interface that does not solve said problem is a step backward in product quality.
• Slimmer machines are less efficient when it comes to performance-per-decibel, due to reduced space for cooling (fan noise). They also tend to have inferior audio. Audio quality has gone backward.
• Keyboard comfort has gone backward. Although I don't greatly mind typing on my 2013 MBP, my 2008 model was clearly more comfortable due to its softer keys. The 2013 keyboard is better than the more recent designs. My spouse has one of the new ones and I am not impressed, nor am I impressed with the too-large trackpad and the touchbar. Both of those interfere with ergonomics, like where I can rest my hands.
• The dongle design is clearly inferior, from an efficient functionality standpoint, to having readily-accessible ports. The dongle design is efficient for Apple's profit-seeking, not for user satisfaction/productivity.
• While anecdote does not define the norm, the norm does exist. It is not merely another anecdote. It's also not defined by Apple's decisions. Apple's design choices can be objectively measured, rather than falsely assumed to be ideal from a user's point of view. There is a clear conflict of interest between a corporation's profit-seeking and a customer's value-seeking.
Apple has a rather captured audience, as Windows 10 is an atrocious alternative and Linux is kneecapped by lack of software options. The company knows this and pushes the boundaries of exploitation as far as it can, the mandate of all for-profit corporations. With better competition in operating systems/platforms, Apple would have to offer better products than it does. Unfortunately, the state of Windows continues to deteriorate so I do not expect anything but deterioration from the Apple side of things.
Linux could be a good platform with more investment into professional-quality UI and much better software flexibility (i.e. professional programs actually being available on it). However, given that there is no megacorp behind Linux-on-the-desktop to a serious-enough degree, it is unlikely to happen any time soon. One of the biggest problems with Linux is that developers lack UI design skill/vision and everyone wants to have splinter projects. Amateurism coupled with fragmentation yields inferior results. Apple does do software/UI clarity + consistency better than the competition. Unfortunately, the competition, both in mobile and on the desktop, is so half-baked that it doesn't have to do its best.
Because Windows 10 is terrible and Linux isn't even half-baked as a desktop platform. The quality of the competition, as in so much of tech, isn't very good. Tech is riddled with duopolies and that doesn't give consumers much in the way of ideal choice.