Managed to get work to agree to swap my Mac for a Windows laptop so I have Windows experience for both personal and work. That leaves my only Apple device as my iPhone which has been Google-fied a bit recently with my move back to Windows. I just need to see if I can convince my wife to move our shared calendar back into Google over the iCloud shared family calendar.
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Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows
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The discounts on bundles at Microcenter have sold out or the discounts aren't as good.
The $450 M4 mini deal is gone too. They are $500 now.
The $450 M4 mini deal is gone too. They are $500 now.
We're in that lull, where back to school stuff has run its course, but its too early for the holiday sales. The best option is to wait until the black friday incentives start popping up.
One thing that I found with DeskFlow is that apparently it prevents my iMac Pro from sleeping by itself. So I have to manually sleep it now. This doesn't happen on clients. I will probably need to move the server over to the Mac Studio as I generally am better about sleeping that system.
which windows laptop did you get? I struggle to find any laptops that are better than MacBooks.
It really depends on your use case. Some Windows laptops have touchscreens and Surface tablets running Windows or gaming are just a few examples of specialized hardware not available on a Mac. Gaming or certain legacy software is another area where Windows software may preclude you to Windows laptops.
Also what are the metrics that matter to you and what is your budget? Ram, cpu performance/efficiency, OLED screens, etc.
If you wanted a laptop with an Amoled touch screen then Windows is it. Something like Samsung Galaxybook, Dell XPS, HP Spectre are all very nice high end Windows laptops with exceptional build quality and components with a commensurate price. Generally these types of laptops are more expensive than their Apple laptop competition. They may have more ram or ssd storage and may have user replaceable ssd and rarely ram. If you go to the OEM website and build your laptop they will cost as much or more than a comparable MBP or MBA.
Apple laptops have gotten better in almost every metric that matters to most people while the cost had flattened or reduced with sales that Apple used to tightly control through 3rd parties with say a $50 discount at best. Now you can get sales at several hundred off, specially older models.
M series chips have really revolutionized Apple laptops and other OEM'S are struggling to be competitive. Intel and AMD while stepping up their respective games still lag behind Apple. CPU are now close in terms of performance and some desktops still outperforming Apple. Efficiency and thermal output is still a major bottleneck in AMD and Intel chips.
Unless you are a gamer or have some other specific use case I fail to see an advantage to a Windows laptop. If I need max performance and connectivity with in my opinion a superior technology to Amoled which is mini led then I get a MacBook Pro many times for the same price or less than a similar Windows workstation laptop. Obviously Apple has a sweet spot in terms of value since they make the most profit off of ram and ssd upgrades which I also actually think when you consider the high speed and unified architecture make sense.
I have generally bought Windows laptops over MacBooks over the years due to financial concerns and now I would buy a MacBook over a Windows laptop for the economics and I feel it is a better experience overall and the performance degrades less over time than Windows. If I can keep my MacBook longer because the hardware lasts and is good in the first place with long battery life and performance that doesn't deteriorate so fast why would you buy anything else??
Completely agree. I used to hate the RAM and SSD upgrade prices, but with the switch to 16GB RAM, I can just pay for the 512GB upgrade and make it work. I still need a Windows gaming setup (currently an RTX 4060 gaming laptop) but other than that, I plan on getting a 14" Macbook Pro this fall.
While not cheap, the M4 Pro mini and the M4 Max Studio are examples, where we get good amount of storage (512GB) and in the studio's case, 36GB of ram. I'm happy with the base model selections in this case.
Same, for the last 5 or so years I largely leaned towards PCs over a Mac. The M1 certainly shook up the industry but I will say not until the M3 and M4 did it mature to a point where I could effectly replace my windows machine. What I forgot after using windows machines so long, is how many things on a mac are dead simple. installing/uninstalling software, backups, system restores, updates, etc. The killer feature for me, is using iMessage, it allows me to keep in contact using my Mac instead needing to constantly text people via my phone - typing on an actual keyboard is so much better then my phone, though my daughters would disagree
Same, for the last 5 or so years I largely leaned towards PCs over a Mac. The M1 certainly shook up the industry but I will say not until the M3 and M4 did it mature to a point where I could effectly replace my windows machine. What I forgot after using windows machines so long, is how many things on a mac are dead simple. installing/uninstalling software, backups, system restores, updates, etc. The killer feature for me, is using iMessage, it allows me to keep in contact using my Mac instead needing to constantly text people via my phone - typing on an actual keyboard is so much better then my phone, though my daughters would disagree
I'll have to test using iMessage on my Yoga. I'm curious as to whether it works or not.
I just read that Intel plans to sell Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake as their solutions for 1H2026. Their plan was to be in volume manufacturing for Panther Lake and the desktop equivalent by now to ship new products late 2025/early 2026. That they are pushing out a half-year implies yields that are not ready for production and it's a really bad sign for their fabs (which they have no customers for). The unfortunate effect is that it allows AMD to slack off (no clue what their products and schedules are).
I'd personally be fine if they fabbed Panther Lake on TSMC. I think that Panther Lake is more efficiency cores and the addition of low-power cores. So somewhat more performance and potentially even better battery life. Arrow Lake was a bust and the jury is out on Nova Lake.
Its been years since I had macOS running virtually on a PC, but when I did, I don't think I ever got iMessage to work. Maybe things have changed but there was a lot of hurdles to overcome and hoops to jump through. I basically gave up.
I got it to work as far as the macOS side goes.
I'd have to add the device on my iPhones for them to get the messages instantly.
I've had this problem with my Macs as well where some Macs would get all messages, some would get some and some would get none. I fixed that on the iPhone side.
Doing macOS VMs is really easy today - mostly because x86 performance has improved so much. VMs used to stutter a bit on older hardware.
Tell me more. What software do you use for this, and are there websites you used to set this up? Does it work with the latest Mac OS?
I use Windows 11 -> WSL -> Ubuntu Terminal -> QEMU. You can find videos to do this on YouTube but they always have one, two or three things that are missing so that it doesn't work. If you can resolve those issues, then it works fairly well.
I'm running Ventura right now. I can run Sonoma and Sequoia but it runs with a blank wallpaper and resolution is fixed - there are no scaled resolutions offered. I think that the directions to fix the resolutions are in the notes but I haven't gone digging into it. It took me about a week on and off to get it working (Monterey, Ventura, Sequoia, Sonoma).
I'd rather not post links as I'm not sure if it's allowed. Pretty easy to find with a YouTube search though.
Yeah that reminds me too much of my Hackintosh days. I’m done editing .plist files. I’ll just get an M4 MacBook Pro LOL.
I haven't had to edit any .plist files. It's more about digging stuff out of the notes file and fixing things if they are a problem.
I've thought about getting a MacBook Air 13 but that would mean carrying two laptops. Better than the Yoga and my 16 inch MacBook Pro though.
My software just runs a lot better on Windows.
Yeah that makes it tough. I don’t have any software that runs better on windows except games. So when I go somewhere, just need a Mac.
In fact, the games I play the most right now all have Mac clients….but that is relatively rare.
That's an interesting post.
For me it's that I want performance for video editing etc and for a while I was convinced by the whole 'M series laptops docked is basically a desktop' replacement and that's all well and good, when it works, and for me it just didn't work. I also never really got on with OSX as a desktop software.
I''ve said before on this thread, I've had an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and an M2 Max MacBook Pro and Pro Display XDR all break on me. Three screen failures on the laptops and the ProDisplay XDR stopped working with laptops entirely, defeating the purpose of why I bought it in the first place. So whilst everyone raves about M series chips and Apple reliability and quality both of my laptops failed within the first two years of ownership (in fact the M2 Max failed three times - two displays and a battery). Apples customer service has been terrible, so I've sold the Prodisplay XDR and broken M1 and plan to sell the M2 Max and am just hobbling on using it with a broken screen until now.
I paid £3000 for my M2 Max and for a screen failure just outside of warranty they expected £840 even though the laptop doesn't have a single mark on it they claimed it was damaged.
So basically, I don't trust them with high end machines because to me they have been unreliable and I'm not prepared to pay apple repair prices / buy a new one every 2 years.
My plan going forward had been to completely ditch Apple products because I feel completely let down by them after how much I spent. I plan to build a desktop PC so that if I have any issues or need to upgrade I don't have to buy a whole new system. So for the laptop I really don't need much performance since that will be handled by the desktop. I do need a laptop though, so I have been looking at windows alternative and nothing really stood out as any better than a MacBook Air, and even options like the surface laptop 7 are at least as expensive as the M4 MacBook Air and have worse performance/touchpad/speakers etc. If you start looking at more premium laptops, as you say they are often even more expensive than the MacBook Pros and I don't really trust any companies laptops to be reliable for the long term.
So I reckon I'll end up just going custom PC build and a MacBook Air and treating the laptop the way apple intended, as a disposable piece of tech you throw in the bin when it inevitably breaks.
Nothing amazing, just the corporate special Dell Latitude 7450 (I'm a lead cloud developer for a health insurance company in the UK). It's no match for the MacBook Air M2 it's replacing, but I am finding for my role in the corporate world it's easier to be fully integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. My personal desktop is also Windows and I'm not a fan of switching between 2 different OS on 1 screen. The keyboard input, mouse handling, font rendering and even the way the colour profiles apply to the monitor create micro annoyances that add up.
I don’t know what to say about your experience with Apple hardware.
It seems you might be in the UK and I don’t know what consumer laws are in effect and warranty outside USA. I thought Europe had 2 year warranty laws. In the US it is only one.
I think the thing is I don't know how you use your devices or environments. Not saying anything just that it is something I can never know definitively.
Laptops are fragile. I have a Samsung Galaxybook 4 pro x360 and it has a super thin touchscreen, thinner than any Apple laptop. It flexs when moving it. I have read tons of complaints about screen failures. I have to be careful with laptops and I can't tell you how many times I dropped laptops and had some catastrophic damage. It really sucks.
With Apple m series devices everything os on chip, ssd, ram, cpu, GPU. If any one of those components fail you have to replace the entire system. You can't just repair a cpu or ram on the chip. So this gives us customers a completely different risk profile from older gen devices. This means that a long term warranty or indefinite warranty program is a much bigger need than in the past since repairing a m series MacBook is prohibitively expensive. I am not saying I like this but if you do a risk assessment for a number of years it makes sense to pay for the warranty if you plan on keeping your devices long term. A lot of people will bank what they would spend on Apple Care and just put that money away and many times they can save significant amount of money. It is a personal risk assessment.
So I can understand through your experience your hesitation to buy from Apple but I will say to you all electronics these days are a lottery. Windows OEM'S suffer from similar issues and their warranties and repair cost may be very similar or worse than your experience with Apple.
As a consumer I have learned that you have to be proactive and persistent with product issues after sales no matter Google, HP, Asus, Samsung, or Apple. You have to be a pest but polite at the same time and at any opportunity talk to someone above the first person you speak with. Eventually you can get thi gs repaired even in some cases after warranty expires. You have nothing to lose to give things a try.
I have no reason to suggest you buy any product as this is your Dominion and I am just relating my experience over the years.
I really like Asus in terms of value and build quality. Never had an Asus with a hardware failure. Lenovo has been the absolute worst in terms of hardware reliability and HP second but HP repaired outside of warranty. Samsung has a spotty record on hardware repairs and some design issues. That being said Samsung has some of the best 2 in ones you can but if willing to pay. My personal choice would be Asus but Samsung very close second.
I wish you the best of luck and whatever you choose it lasts a long time and is durable.
The problem with Asus is updates. BIOS and drivers.
I hang out in r/Lenovo and the biggest hardware problem on laptops is hinges. They are plastic on a lot of models and they break. This has been an industry-wide problem around the pandemic but I'm hopeful that the newer designs are better.
MSI changed their design and it looks to be better. My Yoga is new and it will hopefully take a while to determine reliability.
Most of the failures are in the sub-$1,000 laptops which happen to sell the most. From what I can tell, reliability is based on your price range and they are segmented at under $1,000, $1,000 - $2,000, and $2,000 and up.
The hinge problems at several laptop companies are reminiscent of Apple's Flexgate problems up until they fixed them in the M2 MacBook models.
There is a huge variety of Windows laptops out there from basically game consoles to 18-inch laptops. There are far more options with screen resolutions too which is pretty attractive to me as I like to run on 4k on my desktops and laptops for charting.
I hang out in r/Lenovo and the biggest hardware problem on laptops is hinges. They are plastic on a lot of models and they break. This has been an industry-wide problem around the pandemic but I'm hopeful that the newer designs are better.
MSI changed their design and it looks to be better. My Yoga is new and it will hopefully take a while to determine reliability.
Most of the failures are in the sub-$1,000 laptops which happen to sell the most. From what I can tell, reliability is based on your price range and they are segmented at under $1,000, $1,000 - $2,000, and $2,000 and up.
The hinge problems at several laptop companies are reminiscent of Apple's Flexgate problems up until they fixed them in the M2 MacBook models.
There is a huge variety of Windows laptops out there from basically game consoles to 18-inch laptops. There are far more options with screen resolutions too which is pretty attractive to me as I like to run on 4k on my desktops and laptops for charting.
The downside of using iMesssage on the Mac, is it altered how my phone notifies me of incoming texts. It stopped making sounds, and I missed a text last night that would have saved me from a lot of issues. Not the sender's fault, my fault for not seeing it.
Stll I love this feature but I think I'll kill the app or shut my studio down when I'm not going to use it for an extended period of time.
Stll I love this feature but I think I'll kill the app or shut my studio down when I'm not going to use it for an extended period of time.
It makes a sound on your Mac though. I can see the problem when you leave your office for a while and take your phone.
I get email and text notifications on my watch which is one of the reasons I usually don't have my phone with me.
One other reason why I like it on the Mac is that I have two phones and it combines the incoming text messages.