Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows

[Steve Adams]

Never understood why people prioritize OS first. I let the apps dictate the OS 1st then personal OS preferences 2nd so that's usually Windows and Linux. Have used GS/OS on Apple IIgs and MacOS on Mac SE way back and recently MacOS on MBA M1 but still see very few or any attractions. Software availability is still limited, app context menus on the OS is still weird, having to use Finder to manually search and delete files across different folders to uninstall apps is horrifying, Apple trackpad is suppose to be the greatest thing since sliced bread but I can move the pointer with both meaty portions of my palm, subscription nagware is over the top, etc.

I go OS first as pretty well all software besides a couple of apple only programs (which are nothing special), are available on any platform at this point. I tried Mac 3 times. Each time getting seriously frustrated in the backwards way it operated. Last time I went with a mini full spec, 27" cinema monitor (VERY NICE), and an accessory storage drive in the same case as the mini. had the apple keyboard, "magic" mouse and touch pad. It was all pretty hardware but the OS was terrible. Been on windows since 3.11, and the only version I had any issues witih was ME. that was almost as a hot mess as MacOS.

 

[LiE_]

I'm shocked and surprised /s



3 months tops.

Fair. If I build/buy a PC it would now be in addition to my Mac. I always default back to Mac as the products are more appealing to me when it comes to simplicity.

Never understood why people prioritize OS first. I let the apps dictate the OS 1st then personal OS preferences 2nd so that's usually Windows and Linux. Have used GS/OS on Apple IIgs and MacOS on Mac SE way back and recently MacOS on MBA M1 but still see very few or any attractions. Software availability is still limited, app context menus on the OS is still weird, having to use Finder to manually search and delete files across different folders to uninstall apps is horrifying, Apple trackpad is suppose to be the greatest thing since sliced bread but I can move the pointer with both meaty portions of my palm, subscription nagware is over the top, etc.

Simplicity of the ecosystem. Apple provide great integration and first party apps and there is a lot of value in that. When I went Windows/Android there were always a few things that had quirks or more thought than I can be bothered with. I just want things to work with as little effortless as possible, I don't need things getting in the way.

What colour did you go haha.

If I were able to get my hands on a PS5 before building my desktop, I prob would have swapped my M1 Air for the iMac, then again when a larger screen one released. Would be nice having a silent system again, but am very happy with my build.

I flip flopped on my 12 mini out of bordem of iOS. The start of April tried a S21, rage quit from the finger print scanner after a week and bought a 12 Pro..

Silver was the only viable option my monochrome office decor. I have a 12 mini and love it, very comfortable to use. Before that I had a Pixel 5 for a while but there were just too many little things that annoyed me.

 

[Steve Adams]

People need to calm down. This doesn’t mean airtags are unsafe or untrustworthy. i trust Apple.

Fair. If I build/buy a PC it would now be in addition to my Mac. I always default back to Mac as the products are more appealing to me when it comes to simplicity.



Simplicity of the ecosystem. Apple provide great integration and first party apps and there is a lot of value in that. When I went Windows/Android there were always a few things that had quirks or more thought than I can be bothered with. I just want things to work with as little effortless as possible, I don't need things getting in the way.



Silver was the only viable option my monochrome office decor. I have a 12 mini and love it, very comfortable to use. Before that I had a Pixel 5 for a while but there were just too many little things that annoyed me.

This just goes to show the different things for different people. I find macOS and iOS have many little things that annoy the crap out of me whereas android and windows are much better.

 

[TopherMan12]

Fair. If I build/buy a PC it would now be in addition to my Mac. I always default back to Mac as the products are more appealing to me when it comes to simplicity.

That's pretty much where I am now. I have my gaming PC and I have my Macbook. I have far too much invested in Steam on PC to just give that up, but Mac has aspects I prefer for non-gaming use. And I recently decided to start moving from developing web apps to smartphone apps and so having a Mac makes sense. So I use Mac as my daily driver and fire up the PC for gaming. For me, having both just makes sense.

 

[MBAir2010]

This just goes to show the different things for different people. I find macOS and iOS have many little things that annoy the crap out of me whereas android and windows are much better.

Amen to this!
The ipad is getting cluttered, and just to move files to a usb drive is a huge long tedious task, especially when iOSX renames cat videos, train video, heron videos and frog videos to random long numbers.
but there is no need to fear, windows10 will fix all this soon!

 

[mainelyme]

That's pretty much where I am now. I have my gaming PC and I have my Macbook. I have far too much invested in Steam on PC to just give that up, but Mac has aspects I prefer for non-gaming use. And I recently decided to start moving from developing web apps to smartphone apps and so having a Mac makes sense. So I use Mac as my daily driver and fire up the PC for gaming. For me, having both just makes sense.

I agree. For those of us who care, it only makes sense to have both. I have an inexpensive gaming laptop to complement my 27" iMac. I like the Mac for reliable Time Machine backups, the default apps and iOS integrations, and the beautiful 5K display. I like Windows for the software and hardware compatibility, and for the advanced features in Office. I'll often remote into my laptop from my iMac so I can copy and paste across machines.

Also, yesterday Microsoft pushed an Outlook update that broke the Windows app for several hours. It was good to be able to reproduce the problem, and to have a working Outlook app over on the other OS.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I couldn't imagine life with just one OS. I need both. However, for personal computing and my light gaming? Mac all the way. For work? Windows.

 

[Steve Adams]

I have two backup systems in place becuase of my work. A 14tb Nas server, a 14tb drive in my workstation and 2tb of Onedrive. I have a third 14tb drive connected to my network in my workshop 700 ft away from my house in case of fire etc. I think I'm backed up pretty decently. I am done with ios too. I'm typing this on my galaxy a8 tablet and it's much better than my iPad for most everything.

 

[1BadManVan]

My wife has had her razer blade 15 for a couple weeks now. I gotta say, it’s a very well built machine, runs quick, games well with the Rtx 3060. Also her work machine and she’s definitely very happy

 

[Steve Adams]

I love my inspiron 2 in 1. I paid 549 cdn, upgraded the ram and ssd, and has been gold. It's been tossed in planes, boats, jeeps, utvs and more. It's been ridden hard and put away wet, and still looks new. My monitor cable is going screwy, so I may have to replace that. 15 dollars after 3 plus years of hard use is a win in my book. It's done everything I have asked of it. Video editing is a slow process, but everything else is fast enough for me. I am upgrading the ram to 32gb soon and a new 2tb ssd. It will be going strong for more years then. Doing on location work and more.

 

[mi7chy]

Simplicity of the ecosystem. Apple provide great integration and first party apps and there is a lot of value in that. When I went Windows/Android there were always a few things that had quirks or more thought than I can be bothered with. I just want things to work with as little effortless as possible, I don't need things getting in the way.

I keep seeing people repeating that without any concrete examples. From my experience, a lot of tasks on MacOS require jumping through extra hoops like different key shortcut for copying/pasting text from terminal to browser/textedit, SMB file share access changes behavior with MacOS updates, right mouse click requires two hands to press additional keyboard key, turning on fingerprint login doesn't work on cold boot, x doesn't quit out of program and seems redundant with minimize but different animation, no browser access for Apple Maps and accessing phone calls/messages, etc. Must be the type of integration between jail prison mates (Apple to Apple devices) but not with general public (Apple to cross platform devices). It's like it's made for the sake of being different and not because of better implementation or workflow.

 

[LeeW]

I keep seeing people repeating that without any concrete examples.

Equally, I keep seeing people wanting concrete examples, why? Does anyone really need to prove why it works for them?

I am in the same position, some things for me Apple/macOS/General Integration between devices provides a better workflow for me. No examples required. For other things Windows is great. I use both, happily.

 

[Kung gu]

I also switched from using Windows 10 on my 16" to macOS due to video codecs not playing properly on Windows and causing green tearing issues on movies that were streamed via Plex using the Raspberry Pi.

macOS, nvidia shield and apple TV played back perfectly but Windows was causing me video playback issues.

So far macOS is meeting my needs and 11.3.1 is super smooth and stable unlike 11.1 and 11.2. I cannot wait till 11.4 releases as Apple finally included Big Navi drivers. This was my biggest complaint and so happy to see it resolved.

 

[pshufd]

I did an experiment with running macOS under QEMU/KVM on Windows a while back and that the result worked but was unsatisfactory due to performance. I then tried QEMU/KVM on Linux and I was missing sound and there were some things that I couldn't configure. So I gave up both of them. The Windows version was immature in that Microsoft was putting in OS support for it and I had to use a Developer Build and it was obvious that it was a little on the rough side.

I happened to stumble on a YouTube video on sosumi which was a project designed as a one command-line command Catalina installation. I found it a little hard to believe but I tried it out this afternoon and everything worked - I had sound, internet, video - the stuff that you don't always get when going Hackintosh. I read that USB does not work out of the box but I found a video on how to get USB passthrough working. It's not an issue for me though. The issues that I want to fix are:

• Screen resolution
• Increase RAM allocation (default is 2 GB)
• Increase number of cores allocated (default appears to be 2)
• Increase disk size (default is 68 GB and I want to expand it to 160 GB)

This has been the fastest that I've gotten macOS up and running. It took four hours in all but this includes creating an Ubuntu installer, installing and upgrading Ubuntu, installing Catalina, configuring Catalina and then running some performance tests on it. This will be something to tide me over until M1X desktops come out. My old system has 48 GB of RAM and I plan to allocate 24 GB to macOS which should be fine. I can run on a Late 2009 iMac if everything is in RAM but I was bumping up against 16 GB on that system and I didn't want swapping to a HDD.

So I'm going to do everything over again from the Ubuntu installation so that I set everything up correctly. I did figure out the screen resolution that last time I tried it on Linux but I didn't save how I did that.

 

[pshufd]

I'm trying Linux Mint as Ubuntu has some UI aspects that I don't like.

Overall I'm impressed with the newer distros - the UI and programs seem better than before. It seems like it is generally easier to do things like running programs or installing them.

 

[Steve Adams]

I like mint. Very windows like.

 

[LeeW]

I caved and bought a new Mac Mini. The M1 of course. 16GB/512GB. Only because my parents bought a base model which was delivered to me and I was 'just going to set it all up for you and bring it over' 5 weeks later they insisted it was brought over

For myself, I had bought (minutes after launch) and since sold the exact same device I have bought today but it was so I could get hands-on time with the M1 which was an unknown quantity at that point.

My expectations were that more was coming, so sell the M1 Mac Mini and wait a bit. Misjudged it totally. Thought it would be quicker than is currently happening due to supply chain issues. I just don't see a higher-end Mac Mini type device arriving before 2022. For my own needs, I can get by with 16GB Ram for now.

The bonus is that I got a refurb from the Apple store at £929 and my wife had £150 in Apple gift cards she forgot about, so used them to reduce it to £779 which frankly is a bargain for that spec (talking Apple bargain here).

Use the Mini during the day for all my server management and development needs. For everything else, the PC is there.

 

[maflynn]

I just don't see a higher-end Mac Mini type device arriving before 2022.

I don’t think we will see a higher end mini - ever. I think the higher end machines will be the 16” MBP and a larger iMac

 

[I7guy]

I'm trying Linux Mint as Ubuntu has some UI aspects that I don't like.

Overall I'm impressed with the newer distros - the UI and programs seem better than before. It seems like it is generally easier to do things like running programs or installing them.

I downloaded Linux Mint. I like it and will see what I can do with it.

 

[LeeW]

don’t think we will see a higher end mini - ever. I think the higher end machines will be the 16” MBP and a larger iMac

Not so sure, they are still selling the intel Mac Mini but I guess only as there are many that still need more than 16GB Ram. They could just drop that model. The M1 is base, I can't see them not providing a more high-end model with M1X/M2 that offers greater ram. Nothing at all preventing them from profiting in that area.

The mini remains a popular device. If Gurman is to be believed Apple is working on one, it may get sidelined/delayed or they may come up with a small Mac Pro. No idea, but I am placing my bets on something coming, just not soon.

 

[TopherMan12]

I don’t think we will see a higher end mini - ever. I think the higher end machines will be the 16” MBP and a larger iMac

Why would Apple stop refreshing the Mac mini line?

 

[maflynn]

The mini remains a popular device

I think you misunderstood me, The mini as it stands is an entry level machine and has been one of Apple's least expensive computers. I don't think we'll be seeing high end features, like a bigger GPU or more cores. I didn't mean they'd stop selling them

Why would Apple stop refreshing the Mac mini line?

I didn't mean refreshing but rather not making a higher end one.

 

[LeeW]

I don't think we'll be seeing high end features, like a bigger GPU or more cores.

Interesting. It will be nothing for them with the new chips to drop a better than M1 in there.

But I get the point that the issue here is likely in the past it was a simple device to neuter. No GPU and so on.

If they release an M2 and put that in the new, larger iMac and the MBP as well as the MM then it effectively becomes direct competition which it wasn't before. Why but a $2/$3k iMac M2 when you can but the MM at say 1/2 that price. Apple won't allow that to happen.

I don't think they will abandon that market segment though, the ones that need more but prefer the MM form factor.

I suspect the MM will remain as is, it will always get the base chip in refreshes. Still looking likely that the bridge between the MM and Mac Pro will be a neutered Mac Pro, better than the MM, not as good as the Mac Pro, as pricey as the iMac/MBP.

 

[maflynn]

Interesting. It will be nothing for them with the new chips to drop a better than M1 in there.

No question, but Apple wants people to be directed towards the higher priced products, so there's a clear delineation of what the Mini can and cannot do, so people will move towards the iMac and MBP.

What muddies the water (at least for me right now), is the fact that the Mini, MBA, MBP all are on the same silicone (for the most part). i do expect a 27" (or large) iMac with better specs - probably something similar to what the 16" MBP will have eventually.

 

[LeeW]

is the fact that the Mini, MBA, MBP all are on the same silicone

It is looking like the MBA will become a device on the same level as the 24" iMac, which is a range of 'ok' powered devices with colours to match the iMac, white keyboard and so on.

Keep the general consumer colour matched across all devices. Update one and change the colour you need to upgrade them all as it will annoy the **** out of them if there is a mismatch

It is clear they are creating that clearer divide going forward.

MBA - MM - iMac 24" - For the Masses, cheerful-looking, budget-friendly (by Apple standards).

MBP - MPM - MP - iMac 3x" - For the pros.