Chromebooks aren’t really a threat. People who can use chromebooks as a daily driver probably already are. Also, most of the hardware is absolute garbage.
Apple isn’t all luxury. The Mac mini as fast af and starts at $599.
Apple just doesn’t have a “shit” category, like many other manufacturers.
Sure, a lot of people will choose Linux, but that won’t be a majority.
No, I actually have an 8GB M1 Mac Mini (only could get the cheapest one for tax reasons), and I tried doing software development on it. Running Xcode, VSCode, Chrome, and my own app on it at the same time let everything grind to a halt because it was swapping like crazy.
The problem is that I had to get the cheapest one to be able to add it to the tax writeoff in a single year, otherwise it’s split among three years (the tax code in my country is weird like that). If I could aftermarket-upgrade the RAM, I could just have bought the basic model and then upgraded, but that’s not what Apple wants me to do.
Also, how should I know that I needed more RAM? It’s not like they’re writing that on the box (quite the opposite actually, Apple says that 8GB is enough for everyone).
Yes and no. My previous Mac was a MacBook back when they still had RAM slots. I switched away from macOS because it became such an embarrassment of an OS.
I think Apple’s main selling point is essentially luxury and status. The “look at me, I have an Apple like you, can I be part of the cool club now”. It’s not about functionality, which you can get the same for much cheaper. Also Apple’s shiny-ness, which it kinda does have. But that’s what the author is (poorly) getting at, people are now saying “eh, it’s a phone”.
I agree with the “shit” category. There are too many shit products being put out for laptops and phones, so it’s easy to think to get away from that (and into the cool club) you need apple.
If you stop making Apple about the “cool club” and just focus on the actual hardware and ecosystem, there’s really not much competition in terms of quality and usability.
MacBooks right now in particular are so far ahead of everything else right now. Nothing comes close in terms of performance and battery life. Some laptops can do one or the other, but if it’s fast you can expect the battery life to be shit or vice versa.
The battery on their arm devices are insane. I can disconnect my laptop at 100% without shutting it down. Go home. Sleep. And then work another 8h without the battery dying on me.
It’s very impressive. I can’t think of other laptops that have comparable battery life/performance combo as that macbook pro.
My previous (work) dell laptop barely made 4h ( more like 3 ) and was in the same price range. While I’m not an apple fanboy at all, and there are basis things it just cant do natively ( keyboard window management needs an external app?? ), their macbooks are absolutely the best laptops I’ve ever worked with.
My Zephyrus G14 could do that too while running Visual Studio. AMD’s mobile chips are also pretty efficient and Windows laptops are not as far off from Macbooks in terms of battery life as people think.
12 is a stretch but the person I replied to said 8 hours which is pretty doable. I was working on building a game engine in Visual Studio which is something I’d consider intense. Granted my model is the 2021 version and AMD has made greater strides in efficiency since, I wouldn’t be surprised if the newer models can go a bit longer.
I’m not so sure about Chromebooks not being a threat, at least for people who just want to browse the web. A crappy laptop that Windows 11 will bring to its knees will run ChromeOS well. If people compare the performance of both OS’s on an equivalently priced laptop, they’ll notice ChromeOS is way faster and buy it. To get the equivalent OS performance of a $300 Chromebook, you need a $1000 Windows laptop.
Chromebooks aren’t really a threat. People who can use chromebooks as a daily driver probably already are. Also, most of the hardware is absolute garbage.
Apple isn’t all luxury. The Mac mini as fast af and starts at $599.
Apple just doesn’t have a “shit” category, like many other manufacturers.
Sure, a lot of people will choose Linux, but that won’t be a majority.
Apple definitely has a shit category, it’s the entry level with 8GBs of RAM. Completely unusable unless you’re only running a single app at a time.
That’s just not true at all, and you’re only mocking them for their dumb-ass ram comment. Get out of here.
No, I actually have an 8GB M1 Mac Mini (only could get the cheapest one for tax reasons), and I tried doing software development on it. Running Xcode, VSCode, Chrome, and my own app on it at the same time let everything grind to a halt because it was swapping like crazy.
I run the same software and it’s fine. And if you knew you needed more ram, you should have gotten it.
Well, it’s not like I can upgrade it.
The problem is that I had to get the cheapest one to be able to add it to the tax writeoff in a single year, otherwise it’s split among three years (the tax code in my country is weird like that). If I could aftermarket-upgrade the RAM, I could just have bought the basic model and then upgraded, but that’s not what Apple wants me to do.
Also, how should I know that I needed more RAM? It’s not like they’re writing that on the box (quite the opposite actually, Apple says that 8GB is enough for everyone).
Is this your first time buying a Mac?
Yes and no. My previous Mac was a MacBook back when they still had RAM slots. I switched away from macOS because it became such an embarrassment of an OS.
To what did you switch to?
I think Apple’s main selling point is essentially luxury and status. The “look at me, I have an Apple like you, can I be part of the cool club now”. It’s not about functionality, which you can get the same for much cheaper. Also Apple’s shiny-ness, which it kinda does have. But that’s what the author is (poorly) getting at, people are now saying “eh, it’s a phone”.
I agree with the “shit” category. There are too many shit products being put out for laptops and phones, so it’s easy to think to get away from that (and into the cool club) you need apple.
If you stop making Apple about the “cool club” and just focus on the actual hardware and ecosystem, there’s really not much competition in terms of quality and usability.
MacBooks right now in particular are so far ahead of everything else right now. Nothing comes close in terms of performance and battery life. Some laptops can do one or the other, but if it’s fast you can expect the battery life to be shit or vice versa.
The battery on their arm devices are insane. I can disconnect my laptop at 100% without shutting it down. Go home. Sleep. And then work another 8h without the battery dying on me.
It’s very impressive. I can’t think of other laptops that have comparable battery life/performance combo as that macbook pro.
My previous (work) dell laptop barely made 4h ( more like 3 ) and was in the same price range. While I’m not an apple fanboy at all, and there are basis things it just cant do natively ( keyboard window management needs an external app?? ), their macbooks are absolutely the best laptops I’ve ever worked with.
My Zephyrus G14 could do that too while running Visual Studio. AMD’s mobile chips are also pretty efficient and Windows laptops are not as far off from Macbooks in terms of battery life as people think.
Are 12+ hours of intense work realistic on those devices?
12 is a stretch but the person I replied to said 8 hours which is pretty doable. I was working on building a game engine in Visual Studio which is something I’d consider intense. Granted my model is the 2021 version and AMD has made greater strides in efficiency since, I wouldn’t be surprised if the newer models can go a bit longer.
I’m not so sure about Chromebooks not being a threat, at least for people who just want to browse the web. A crappy laptop that Windows 11 will bring to its knees will run ChromeOS well. If people compare the performance of both OS’s on an equivalently priced laptop, they’ll notice ChromeOS is way faster and buy it. To get the equivalent OS performance of a $300 Chromebook, you need a $1000 Windows laptop.
If a person just needs the internet, a Chromebook is perfect. I mean, ChromeOS and Google are not exactly a safe choice, but that’s a different topic.