I'm going to pray that my first comment being a bit pro-Apple doesn't tarnish my Tildes reputation! As someone who has an M1 MacPro for work and an MSI PC for gaming/photo editing, I have a hard...
I'm going to pray that my first comment being a bit pro-Apple doesn't tarnish my Tildes reputation!
As someone who has an M1 MacPro for work and an MSI PC for gaming/photo editing, I have a hard time seeing companies compete with Apple's broad market laptops in terms of quality-of-life features for general consumers. For "power-users" and gamers there are likely better options in the category (XPS with dedicated GPU, gaming PCs, etc.), but for most users a MacBook Air's big, bright screen, 12+ hr battery life, decent port selection (can still plug in headphones), and light-weight aluminum body are going to make it an easy recommendation. Also, having used Windows and MacOS in work and day-to-day, I've found MacOS to really shine in terms of less notifications / prompts, less bloatware (compared to the Dell and MSI machines I've used), and less intrusive updates.
Would love to hear any thoughts from folks that have more experience in the consumer electronics space, to me it felt like the M-series chips really changed the game and the rest of the industry hasn't quite caught up.
I wouldn’t worry about that here. For the most part, tilderinos are good at criticizing apple for things they actually deserve, instead of the wholesale discarding of apple that you saw on Reddit,...
I'm going to pray that my first comment being a bit pro-Apple doesn't tarnish my Tildes reputation!
I wouldn’t worry about that here. For the most part, tilderinos are good at criticizing apple for things they actually deserve, instead of the wholesale discarding of apple that you saw on Reddit, especially /r/android. I switched completely from android/windows to apple a few years ago and shared some of my thoughts here on tildes. Almost everyone was able to understand that apple can execute on a product very well. When user needs align with what apple thinks user needs are, you get some really awesome products and services.
100% agree with you there. I’ve got a MBP M1 for work, an M1 Air for personal projects and a gaming desktop. The M series of chips have definitely changed my expectations for a laptop and what I’m...
100% agree with you there. I’ve got a MBP M1 for work, an M1 Air for personal projects and a gaming desktop. The M series of chips have definitely changed my expectations for a laptop and what I’m ready to give up in a machine.
I think part of the struggle for the rest of the industry might be coming from the x86 to Arm translation. It’s not been a big issue (at least for me) on the Macs because I don’t use anything that’s particularly heavy or would suffer from emulation(? not entirely sure how Rosetta works) but a lot of the reasons people end up with Windows include software support which I think hasn’t been great on the Arm version of Windows.
My only gripe so far has been with the M1 base’s limitation of 1 external screen without something like DisplayLink.
Hm, I wouldn't necessarily say that there's a significant "anti-Apple" sentiment. At least during the quiet times, there were a number of Apple laptop users (and, of course, a lot of iPhones...
I'm going to pray that my first comment being a bit pro-Apple doesn't tarnish my Tildes reputation!
Hm, I wouldn't necessarily say that there's a significant "anti-Apple" sentiment. At least during the quiet times, there were a number of Apple laptop users (and, of course, a lot of iPhones users), myself included. Perhaps the influx of users would change that.
In any case, yeah, the M series macbooks are extremely good. People on hardware forums tend to get too caught up in numbers - the overall macbook experience is second to none in the breadth of quality. Form factor and battery life are some of the most important parts of a portable computer.
As a developer, macs have always been the go-to, at least in the bay. You get a unix system and polished UI. That was true even when the intel macs were a harder value proposition to swallow.
As someone who routinely uses both OS’s I’d have to say I fully agree. macOS really shines in almost all tasks, and frankly I’d only recommend windows for gaming. The only big drawback with macOS...
As someone who routinely uses both OS’s I’d have to say I fully agree. macOS really shines in almost all tasks, and frankly I’d only recommend windows for gaming. The only big drawback with macOS is the lack of support for nvidia drivers, which unfortunately is critical for my work.
Even then though, I prefer Linux over windows, even though getting drivers working isn’t as straightforward. Not to mention that, at least for me, the vast majority of gpu utilization is over an ssh connection to remote servers anyway, so the lack of cuda support is not critical.
I also like that macOS seems to be more privacy focused than windows. Even if that’s just for marketing talk, I still prefer macOS to windows, which is baking advertising right into the OS.
MacBook Airs are really good machines overall, and the increased screen size + the chip + the acceptable price point on this one makes it a solid choice. As long as you're ok with the limitations...
MacBook Airs are really good machines overall, and the increased screen size + the chip + the acceptable price point on this one makes it a solid choice. As long as you're ok with the limitations of course (few ports, zero ways to upgrade after purchase and their upgrades before purchashing are not cheap).
I'm finding I use my M1 Pro a lot less like a Pro and more like an Air so now I'm thinking about a potential trade-in.
I'm going to pray that my first comment being a bit pro-Apple doesn't tarnish my Tildes reputation!
As someone who has an M1 MacPro for work and an MSI PC for gaming/photo editing, I have a hard time seeing companies compete with Apple's broad market laptops in terms of quality-of-life features for general consumers. For "power-users" and gamers there are likely better options in the category (XPS with dedicated GPU, gaming PCs, etc.), but for most users a MacBook Air's big, bright screen, 12+ hr battery life, decent port selection (can still plug in headphones), and light-weight aluminum body are going to make it an easy recommendation. Also, having used Windows and MacOS in work and day-to-day, I've found MacOS to really shine in terms of less notifications / prompts, less bloatware (compared to the Dell and MSI machines I've used), and less intrusive updates.
Would love to hear any thoughts from folks that have more experience in the consumer electronics space, to me it felt like the M-series chips really changed the game and the rest of the industry hasn't quite caught up.
I wouldn’t worry about that here. For the most part, tilderinos are good at criticizing apple for things they actually deserve, instead of the wholesale discarding of apple that you saw on Reddit, especially /r/android. I switched completely from android/windows to apple a few years ago and shared some of my thoughts here on tildes. Almost everyone was able to understand that apple can execute on a product very well. When user needs align with what apple thinks user needs are, you get some really awesome products and services.
100% agree with you there. I’ve got a MBP M1 for work, an M1 Air for personal projects and a gaming desktop. The M series of chips have definitely changed my expectations for a laptop and what I’m ready to give up in a machine.
I think part of the struggle for the rest of the industry might be coming from the x86 to Arm translation. It’s not been a big issue (at least for me) on the Macs because I don’t use anything that’s particularly heavy or would suffer from emulation(? not entirely sure how Rosetta works) but a lot of the reasons people end up with Windows include software support which I think hasn’t been great on the Arm version of Windows.
My only gripe so far has been with the M1 base’s limitation of 1 external screen without something like DisplayLink.
Hm, I wouldn't necessarily say that there's a significant "anti-Apple" sentiment. At least during the quiet times, there were a number of Apple laptop users (and, of course, a lot of iPhones users), myself included. Perhaps the influx of users would change that.
In any case, yeah, the M series macbooks are extremely good. People on hardware forums tend to get too caught up in numbers - the overall macbook experience is second to none in the breadth of quality. Form factor and battery life are some of the most important parts of a portable computer.
As a developer, macs have always been the go-to, at least in the bay. You get a unix system and polished UI. That was true even when the intel macs were a harder value proposition to swallow.
As someone who routinely uses both OS’s I’d have to say I fully agree. macOS really shines in almost all tasks, and frankly I’d only recommend windows for gaming. The only big drawback with macOS is the lack of support for nvidia drivers, which unfortunately is critical for my work.
Even then though, I prefer Linux over windows, even though getting drivers working isn’t as straightforward. Not to mention that, at least for me, the vast majority of gpu utilization is over an ssh connection to remote servers anyway, so the lack of cuda support is not critical.
I also like that macOS seems to be more privacy focused than windows. Even if that’s just for marketing talk, I still prefer macOS to windows, which is baking advertising right into the OS.
MacBook Airs are really good machines overall, and the increased screen size + the chip + the acceptable price point on this one makes it a solid choice. As long as you're ok with the limitations of course (few ports, zero ways to upgrade after purchase and their upgrades before purchashing are not cheap).
I'm finding I use my M1 Pro a lot less like a Pro and more like an Air so now I'm thinking about a potential trade-in.