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Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows

keithop said:
ok been a few days now, how's it going? what's good/bad?
Click to expand...

😅😅😅😅😅

Good
- Quiet at all times.
- Speakers in the ASD are surprisingly good.
- Nice having everything playing well together in the ecosystem.
- Screen is really good (more on that below)
- More than enough performance, everything worked well.

Bad
- Cost, £2600 is steep for what is essentially my work machine.
- Text; so many inconsistent font sizes all over macOS. The text in Mail app is crazy small.
- Office again just not there on macOS.
- Scrolling with middle mouse button was an active effort to be precise.

So ultimately I have a £2600 machine that isn't feeling like a huge uplift in day to day tasks. I've not be wearing my glasses when working now and this has meant at normal distances the 5K retina isn't appreciated. The 4K Windows monitor is actually easier for me to read due to the fonts in macOS being rubbish. So I've sent it all back to Apple.

I simply need to accept that Windows is the right tool for me and get over this weird romance I have with the all Apple ecosystem life. I've even returned my iPhone and gone back to my Pixel 5 which does many things better than the iPhone, not least it feels so quick with a 90hz screen.

I still need a machine that isn't my work laptop. So I've picked up some parts to build a modest ITX desktop. A used bundle for £365:

  • Intel i5 12400 (6 Core, 12 Thread), Boxed with Intel Cooler
  • MSI MPG B760I Edge WiFi (Mini ITX, DDR4), Boxed with accessories
  • Corsair 32GB DDR4 LPX (2x16GB, 3600MHz, Black, CMK32GX4M2Z3600C18)
  • Corsair SF750
Tg6DJjd.jpeg


CcLRFiY.jpeg

(photos from the ad)

Plenty of power for me and the iGPU will work fine for now until I decide if a modest GPU makes sense. I then have a Coolermaster NR200P case in white coming along with some Noctua cooling and a Samsung 1TB gen 4 m.2. In total the desktop cost me £700.

For the monitor I'm going back to the trusty Gigabyte M28U I've had before. Smooth 4K 144hz, sRGB mode with adjustable brightness and a KVM switch.
 
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LiE_ said:
😅😅😅😅😅

Good
- Quiet at all times.
- Speakers in the ASD are surprisingly good.
- Nice having everything playing well together in the ecosystem.
- Screen is really good (more on that below)
- More than enough performance, everything worked well.

Bad
- Cost, £2600 is steep for what is essentially my work machine.
- Text; so many inconsistent font sizes all over macOS. The text in Mail app is crazy small.
- Office again just not there on macOS.
- Scrolling with middle mouse button was an active effort to be precise.

So ultimately I have a £2600 machine that isn't feeling like a huge uplift in day to day tasks. I've not be wearing my glasses when working now and this has meant at normal distances the 5K retina isn't appreciated. The 4K Windows monitor is actually easier for me to read due to the fonts in macOS being rubbish. So I've sent it all back to Apple.

I simply need to accept that Windows is the right tool for me and get over this weird romance I have with the all Apple ecosystem life. I've even returned my iPhone and gone back to my Pixel 5 which does many things better than the iPhone, not least it feels so quick with a 90hz screen.

I still need a machine that isn't my work laptop. So I've picked up some parts to build a modest ITX desktop. A used bundle for £365:

  • Intel i5 12400 (6 Core, 12 Thread), Boxed with Intel Cooler
  • MSI MPG B760I Edge WiFi (Mini ITX, DDR4), Boxed with accessories
  • Corsair 32GB DDR4 LPX (2x16GB, 3600MHz, Black, CMK32GX4M2Z3600C18)
  • Corsair SF750
Tg6DJjd.jpeg


CcLRFiY.jpeg

(photos from the ad)

Plenty of power for me and the iGPU will work fine for now until I decide if a modest GPU makes sense. I then have a Coolermaster NR200P case in white coming along with some Noctua cooling and a Samsung 1TB gen 4 m.2. In total the desktop cost me £700.

For the monitor I'm going back to the trusty Gigabyte M28U I've had before. Smooth 4K 144hz, sRGB mode with adjustable brightness and a KVM switch.
Click to expand...
The grass isn't always greener. I keep wanting a mac for the same thing, but right now, I have intel Unison for my phone connectivity to my PCs. It works adequately for what I want. iMessaging via my desktop while I am working so I don't have to pick up my phone every 10 mins to respond to people. I just pop into unison and it all works.

My current XPS workstation has all Noctua cooling and it's dead silent. The only thing that makes any noise at all is the GPU fans spinning when I am pushing it.
 
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LiE_ said:
Bad
- Cost, £2600 is steep for what is essentially my work machine.
- Text; so many inconsistent font sizes all over macOS. The text in Mail app is crazy small.
- Office again just not there on macOS.
- Scrolling with middle mouse button was an active effort to be precise.
Click to expand...
These are most of my reasons why my MBP is not my main laptop. I agree 100% on your list of cons, the mouse scrolling is down right horrible, text is bad, more so on a non-4k display and Apple's desktop pricing is such that it doesn't make sense to buy.

LiE_ said:
I still need a machine that isn't my work laptop. So I've picked up some parts to build a modest ITX desktop. A used bundle for £365:
Click to expand...
That's a huge swing in pricing, I wonder how this machine will compare with benchmarks vs the studio. If I was a betting man, I'd say the Studio would be mostly faster but not by a wide margin
 
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maflynn said:
That's a huge swing in pricing, I wonder how this machine will compare with benchmarks vs the studio. If I was a betting man, I'd say the Studio would be mostly faster but not by a wide margin
Click to expand...

For my usage I don't do anything CPU intensive. Running 20 tabs, while screen sharing on a Teams call and having some other background apps running, is about as bad as it gets.
 
LiE_ said:
I simply need to accept that Windows is the right tool for me and get over this weird romance I have with the all Apple ecosystem life. I've even returned my iPhone and gone back to my Pixel 5 which does many things better than the iPhone, not least it feels so quick with a 90hz screen.
Click to expand...

Again I could've written your entire post (including the swap outs, returns and rebuys) for my last few weeks :)

I agree with all the pros and all the cons.

If you DO find out how to accept that windows is the right tool and get over the romance with Apple, please let me know. I'm up for medication and possibly brain surgery to remove the apple portion of my mind.

Right now I'm sitting on my brilliantly overpowered windows machine, silent, perfect, working away everything great and a mac laptop has just appeared on a movie in the background and I'm instantly thinking I should swap back.....

Madness.

Thanks as always for sharing your flips and making me feel like I'm not alone :D
 
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keithop said:
If you DO find out how to accept that windows is the right tool and get over the romance with Apple
Click to expand...
It really doesn't need to be all or nothing. I have my MBP, and that gives me the benefits of macOS, and while its not getting used to the extent I thought it would. Its useful to have the Mac.

It couldn't hurt @LiE_ to have a MBA or something in his arsenal, and use that if the Mac does something better.
 
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About a month ago, I switched to a Surface Pro X and Surface Duo from MacBook Air and iPhone. As the weeks have passed, I've not only survived the transition (!) but found so many things these devices can do because of their form factors. I've now upgraded the Pro X to a 1Tb SSD for just £62 thanks to AliExpress.

I've sold the iPhone and MacBook Air. Next to go is the Apple Watch S7, replaced for just £180 with discounts and trade-ins for a Galaxy Watch Pro Titanium with sapphire glass. Life in Windows and Android land is just fine once you get past the initial shock of the new.

I've been using Apple gear since around 1994. Almost 30 years! And their stuff is still great, for the most part. But the advantages of Apple Silicon also mean a lack of upgradeability and frankly outrageous upgrade pricing (£200 for an extra 8GB RAM). The entry-level stuff is probably the best value now for most people.

I'm just at a point where I think the competition has mainly caught up. Windows and Android are both fine now and there's lots of weird and wonderful devices and form factors out there at knock-down prices if you know where to look. As for Apple desktops? Only the Mac Mini appeals to me now. The Studio is too expensive for my needs (and can't be upgraded) and who knows what the Mac Pro's future is?
 
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maflynn said:
It really doesn't need to be all or nothing. I have my MBP, and that gives me the benefits of macOS, and while its not getting used to the extent I thought it would. Its useful to have the Mac.

It couldn't hurt @LiE_ to have a MBA or something in his arsenal, and use that if the Mac does something better.
Click to expand...
I agree, I have a 27" iMac with expanded RAM (128G), a Mac Studio, an i9 Lenovo desktop, and a Dell laptop. (also an iPhone and an android phone, various iPads and android tablets. I'm a total OS/device geek, what can I say.)

I use them all for different things and they work well enough together. The Mac Studio is kind of the odd man out though, it doesn't get used much. The Apple Silicone is decent and the machine works well, but the switch away from x86 made this machine just not that useful. For work, it's all x86 and a big power9 server. I'm an IT Manager that still develops and Windows is the environment to do that.

I actually use the iMac more at home than anything because of the monitor and it runs Windows VM's quite well with that much RAM. The i9 desktop gets all my batch type jobs that take a lot of processing.
 
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maflynn said:
It really doesn't need to be all or nothing. I have my MBP, and that gives me the benefits of macOS, and while its not getting used to the extent I thought it would. Its useful to have the Mac.

It couldn't hurt @LiE_ to have a MBA or something in his arsenal, and use that if the Mac does something better.
Click to expand...

I know that logically you're right but I've always preferred to be all in.

I think that's more important on the apple side, it just all works together so well.

On the windows/android side, well, tbh it's looser integration means that I don't feel like I lose much by using the iphone instead of android. (although phonelink is getting better)
 
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The_Interloper said:
I've been using Apple gear since around 1994. Almost 30 years! And their stuff is still great, for the most part. But the advantages of Apple Silicon also mean a lack of upgradeability and frankly outrageous upgrade pricing (£200 for an extra 8GB RAM). The entry-level stuff is probably the best value now for most people.

I'm just at a point where I think the competition has mainly caught up. Windows and Android are both fine now and there's lots of weird and wonderful devices and form factors out there at knock-down prices if you know where to look. As for Apple desktops? Only the Mac Mini appeals to me now. The Studio is too expensive for my needs (and can't be upgraded) and who knows what the Mac Pro's future is?
Click to expand...

Exactly this. Apple models and pricing excel at two things. First, the truly "base" model of Apple devices, without any upgrades (and those upgrades are laughably, outrageously overpriced). Second, Apple mobile devices are still desirable, iPhone, Macbooks, iOS and OSX are always rock solid and safe. I do love Apple Watch too, great with iPhone.

But the rest of the lineup, and Mac desktops, monitors, other peripherals and audio devices leave a lot to be desired. You are right, the base Mac Mini with the M2 appears to be the only price-to-performance desk machine worth a look.

The Studio lineup is very expensive for what you get, and the necessary upgrades are absurdly overpriced. The monitor lineup is even worse, screen and stands are ridiculous and an instant hard pass for many. Also shows why the 27" iMac at ~$1800 a few years ago was such a steal; we bought quite a few of those for our office. But, no more, and unfortunately, we're right at that point where these machines start to age out. Hard to believe my 2017 27" iMac with Radeon Pro 580 is already six years old and is absolutely smoked by modern PC CPUs and GPUs.

This is a big gap in the Apple lineup, and of course people are looking to PCs for a solution.
 
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Velin said:
But the rest of the lineup, and Mac desktops, monitors, other peripherals and audio devices leave a lot to be desired. You are right, the base Mac Mini with the M2 appears to be the only price-to-performance desk machine worth a look.

The Studio lineup is very expensive for what you get, and the necessary upgrades are absurdly overpriced.
Click to expand...
Even at the low end, the Mac is getting difficult to justify. The M2 Mac Mini with 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD is decent value at circa £600 (currently £579 at Amazon UK, but out of stock). But for 16Gb you're stuck with Apple-only as a a retailer, and it's now up to £850...

Meanwhile, you can pick up a Ryzen 5 5600G with 16Gb RAM and a 480Gb SSD for £295, with tons of internal upgradeability. My youngest son has a 2nd-Gen i7 on its last legs, but he already has a decent Nvidia card for gaming that could be popped straight into this. And all his schoolwork is via the web, Office and Teams.

I know that tower will be louder but it's under a desk and he's always wearing headphones, so who cares? As much as I continue to have an emotional attachment to Apple, it's becoming harder to justify the Mac in my world and I know my son would outright refuse the Mini - because it can't game - and take the much cheaper PC.
 
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The_Interloper said:
About a month ago, I switched to a Surface Pro X and Surface Duo from MacBook Air and iPhone. As the weeks have passed, I've not only survived the transition (!) but found so many things these devices can do because of their form factors. I've now upgraded the Pro X to a 1Tb SSD for just £62 thanks to AliExpress.

I've sold the iPhone and MacBook Air. Next to go is the Apple Watch S7, replaced for just £180 with discounts and trade-ins for a Galaxy Watch Pro Titanium with sapphire glass. Life in Windows and Android land is just fine once you get past the initial shock of the new.

I've been using Apple gear since around 1994. Almost 30 years! And their stuff is still great, for the most part. But the advantages of Apple Silicon also mean a lack of upgradeability and frankly outrageous upgrade pricing (£200 for an extra 8GB RAM). The entry-level stuff is probably the best value now for most people.

I'm just at a point where I think the competition has mainly caught up. Windows and Android are both fine now and there's lots of weird and wonderful devices and form factors out there at knock-down prices if you know where to look. As for Apple desktops? Only the Mac Mini appeals to me now. The Studio is too expensive for my needs (and can't be upgraded) and who knows what the Mac Pro's future is?
Click to expand...
Oh the duo. What a device hey?
 
The_Interloper said:
Even at the low end, the Mac is getting difficult to justify. The M2 Mac Mini with 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD is decent value at circa £600 (currently £579 at Amazon UK, but out of stock). But for 16Gb you're stuck with Apple-only as a a retailer, and it's now up to £850...

Meanwhile, you can pick up a Ryzen 5 5600G with 16Gb RAM and a 480Gb SSD for £295, with tons of internal upgradeability. My youngest son has a 2nd-Gen i7 on its last legs, but he already has a decent Nvidia card for gaming that could be popped straight into this. And all his schoolwork is via the web, Office and Teams.

I know that tower will be louder but it's under a desk and he's always wearing headphones, so who cares? As much as I continue to have an emotional attachment to Apple, it's becoming harder to justify the Mac in my world and I know my son would outright refuse the Mini - because it can't game - and take the much cheaper PC.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I purchased my dell 2 in 1 notebook for 999.00 cdn. It came with 12gb of ram and a 512gb ssd. It now has a much faster 2tb ssd and 64gb of ram. Add in the touchscreen, 2 in 1 operation and pen and I have a deadly system for on the go editing work. I also plug in extra drives, a second 14" touchscreen monitor etc and have my home system setup on the road.

I love it. Cannot get any better than that.

As for the tower, pop in noctua fans and it's silent. I am sitting beside my workstation at about 2 ft away from me if that, and the only thing I can hear is the spinny drive every now and then. the cpu, gpu and case fans are silent unless I am encoding video or using AI photography software at which point the gpu fans kick in but it's still barely noticeable.
 
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The point and shoot pro said:
Oh the duo. What a device hey?
Click to expand...
There's certainly nothing else quite like it. 😄 Got it for £280 brand new and it's just...insane for that price. At £1450, no way. Probably not for even half that. But £280? Yes, all day long.

Yes, it has shortcomings (no NFC, no 5G) but the dual AMOLED screens are just terrific and I will never tire of flicking apps between screens, dragging text/photos from a browser on one side to OneNote on the other, watching a video while browsing email etc.

Also, the Galaxy Watch with GPay solves the lack of NFC and the Surface Pen is terrific with it. Like having a little electronic Moleskine with you at all times.
 
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The_Interloper said:
There's certainly nothing else quite like it. 😄 Got it for £280 brand new and it's just...insane for that price. At £1450, no way. Probably not for even half that. But £280? Yes, all day long.

Yes, it has shortcomings (no NFC, no 5G) but the dual AMOLED screens are just terrific and I will never tire of flicking apps between screens, dragging text/photos from a browser on one side to OneNote on the other, watching a video while browsing email etc.

Also, the Galaxy Watch with GPay solves the lack of NFC and the Surface Pen is terrific with it. Like having a little electronic Moleskine with you at all times.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I would use mine for...Electronic moleskine. But I will probably grab the duo 2 because of NFC, I don't always wear my watch. So, I would need NFC.
 
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Velin said:
Man, at $370 U.S., that's a smoking deal. A business lunch + tip (in the U.S.) would cost more than this machine.
Click to expand...
I can't believe the prices of NVMe SSDs now. 1Tb drives from Kingston, Crucial etc around the £38 to £45 mark. Higher spec Samsungs for £55. Cost of upgrading the Mac Mini from 256Gb to 1Tb? £400. :oops:
 
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The point and shoot pro said:
I am not sure if I missed it or not, do you have a gpu? If not, you should get a 6800 then you can have the best of both worlds. Snazzy just did a hackintosh that flattens the studio and it sounds very similar to your build.
Click to expand...

Using iGPU for now while I ponder the GPU. I have a PS5 which I play games on so no burning desire to get a beefy GPU.
 
LiE_ said:
Using iGPU for now while I ponder the GPU. I have a PS5 which I play games on so no burning desire to get a beefy GPU.
Click to expand...
I was thinking more along the lines of popping a 6800 in there, load on MacOS and have the best of both worlds. Opencore make hacks awesome now. And like I said, Snazzy did one and it was a barn burner!

 
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