Apple killed my interest in ARM and Macs

[teh_hunterer]

The only "volatile" thing is the CPU and motherboard and you usually get a 3 generations out of each. Not that I would bother upgrading in that window. I mean that bit of the PC was £400 (CPU+RAM+motherboard).

That's like 2 Apple upgrades here in the UK(+8Gb RAM +256Gb more SSD) 🤣

If I do, the guts of the machine will go in my eldest's desktop PC (she has a Ryzen 3400G at the moment)

Uh, OK. I wasn't really referring to your PC but you do you 👍🏻

 

[teh_hunterer]

That's a popular view, but it's mostly based on some misconceptions/poor wording in a 2020 interview. Apple has explicitly stated that they are not considering direct Windows boot and recommend the use of virtual machines instead. BootCamp would be technically possible, but require a lot of cooperation and a significant dedication of resources from both Apple and Microsoft to make possible, so I don't see it happening. Licensing is the smallest problem, custom nature of Apple Silicon is the real issue here (would require new drivers and changes to Windows kernel).

It's true as far as I can tell, as Microsoft have said they only provide ARM Windows licenses to OEMs.

My interpretation is that they wouldn't consider direct Windows boot or recommend anything other than VMs if the licensing makes the whole thing a non-starter.

But that's just my interpretation - they could very well still not do it even if Microsoft allowed it.

 

[Ethosik]

If you only take Apple's sale price into account, that is true.
But there is a but here.
You could purchase used or new 3-party parts for a lot less $.

I did that myself, on my Mac Pro 2019. It came with 32GB RAM. I upgraded to 192GB for €456 through e-bay this summer. Apple still charges almost €3800 for that. The memory alone cost as much as I paid for my Mac Pro this year, with 16-cores, 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and Vega II graphic card.
And I purchased my Mac Pro while Apple still sold it in the Mac store.
Try that with Apple Silicon Macs

Don't fall into this trap. I used my 2010 Mac Pro for far too long. I was missing so many enhancements. I finally replaced it as my main unit in 2019 with the i9 iMac (still had the 2010 Mac Pro in my workflow though but it wasn't primary system). Even with the same RAM and storage, my i9 iMac did nearly everything better. I regretted just hanging on to my 2010 Mac Pro for that long increase RAM here add storage there. You can't swap out to a new CPU in 9 years.....so I had a major jump in HEVC, CPU cores, newer PCIe, newer SATA/NVME, newer ports with USB-3 and thunderbolt, newer OS support, general performance, etc.

Things are not just about RAM and storage. And I massively regret falling into the "keep your system for 10 years and just upgrade when needed" trap.

 

[Ethosik]

Talking about Mac Pro 2019 means that you throw out of the window any value proposition.
It was massively overpriced to start with.

You should not compare GBs and GHZs but rather performance output in your workflows.
That's the big catch in upgrading desktop computers, you can go up to a point, but then your motherboard and CPUs are obsoleted and your upgrade path hits against a wall.

OMG it was ridiculously overpriced. The maxed out 2019 iMac was far far FAR FAR better than the base Mac Pro....and was $600 cheaper.....and it included a screen! Mac Pro base had 256GB of SSD for goodness sake.....AT $6,000!!!!

As I have posted before....I massively despise all in ones but that was the only option at the time. Matching the performance for the i9 iMac at the time, I would have to have spent $8,000 for the Mac Pro....and I still wouldn't get a decent screen.

 

[Ethosik]

If you cherry pick, sure. Your Thinkpad's RAM is also 1/2 of speed of the M2 MBA, and its processor is almost two times slower as well (I am not even talking about the GPU). It also comes with a low-end display and a low-endurance SSD. The price differences are there for a reason.

I agree....but NOPE....all that matters is RAM and SSD SIZES.....not speed....not quality of case, trackpad, CAS latency of the RAM, endurance of the SSD, OS itself (I will gladly pay a $500 extra fee JUST to use MacOS over Windows.....I despise Windows these days oh how I miss Windows 7 so much).

 

[Ethosik]

So you complain about Apple for higher prices even though their laptops have better displays? Your laptop is cheaper because it doesn't have the same manufacturing cost, explain to me how that is Apple's fault. Nobody cares if you choose another manufacturer because you don't need the displays Apple is offering and want to save money but spare us the hyperbole please.

RAM and SSD "capacity" is all that matters when people complain about specs. Who cares about the speeds or endurance of those two things, and who cares about display, ecosystem, build quality, ports, resolution, brightness, color gamut, etc....

Been the same old arguments for decades and its been so irritating.

 

[nvmls]

There are some points that I don't really agree with (like window management and backups)

Yea he was too generous with a 2.

 

[Ethosik]

These types of posts always read as though the expectation is that one platform will do everything. Magic bullet, if you will. My environment consists of a healthy mix of macOS, Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux, Docker, TrueNAS, locally hosted, and web hosted services, Android, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Google Chromecast. It is this way because each of these service a particular function quite well...macOS for daily drivers, Android for cell, wife on iOS, Win 10 for radio programming software, BlueIris, and Bluebeam, Linux with some Docker for locally hosted stuff, on and on...

Sometimes I think people need to temper their expectations or align them with reality. For example, macOS can't run Bluebeam anymore. Sad, I know. I can pout about Apple dropping x64, or I can spin up a Windows VM and move on with my life.

These things are tools, not religions.

Agreed. I mean I literally CANNOT stand Windows. I am so frustrated to use it at work, and I HATE turning on my custom built gaming PC (13900k and 4090 by the way). But I am not on a Windows board ranting about how much I hate it. I just treat it as a console these days, turn it on, get on Steam and hit Play on a game.

And people love to say "This won't work on Mac anymore". You all do realize Windows 11 cannot run EVERY SINGLE THING in existence? This is a reason why I have old dusty Windows XP and Windows 98 gaming systems around too.

 

[bobcomer]

It's true as far as I can tell, as Microsoft have said they only provide ARM Windows licenses to OEMs.

At one time, that was true, but not so anymore, a Windows licenses (home or pro) is a Windows license and applies to the arm version as well, so you can buy a valid license.

Microsoft will support Windows 11 on newer Macs through Parallels

Microsoft now officially supports Windows 11 on M1 and M2 Macs, but you'll need to use Parallels' virtual machine.

www.engadget.com

My interpretation is that they wouldn't consider direct Windows boot

That's more the boot environment on AS, Apple went with something different than the industry standard UEFI. To do bootcamp, a new loader would have to be created with both Microsoft and Apple's help. I don't see it happening more for Apple than Microsoft. Microsoft would do it to some degree, but they can't do it themselves.

Meanwhile, we do have virtualization and WoA runs pretty well that way, you just have to make sure you have a decent machine to run it. 16G minimum for the VM if you want the best performance, and I have an M2 Pro with 32G RAM, and it runs WoA quite well. I'd prefer to run it in a VM anyway, rather than Bootcamp. (but I don't do gaming at all, I have a console for that)

It's actually gotten better over the last couple of years. It doesn't run everything, but probably 95%, and performance has gotten better. And it's legal to run on a Mac.

 

[Ethosik]

Honestly some of this is a revelation for me. I've been in the Apple echo chamber for ages and convinced it was the right solution for me. Turns out it wasn't. It always pays to actually remain objective.

On that basis I did a light Kepner Tregoe decision analysis initially (to keep myself honest) and a LOT of research and introspection before I did this and came up with the following...

View attachment 2307030

This is all backed up with data / examples which is a 7 page word document I'm not linking here as it contains personal info. The 2-6 years of Apple lifespan is the span of actual hardware problems I've had where I would have to go back to Apple Store and get something replaced or repaired. iPhones require more repairs than anything (I did run 5 of the things for my family) and none of them broke from user issues for example. Mostly screen problems including fading and dark spots strangely across all models from iPhone 6s to 12 (3 handsets).

But as someone else said here, it's not a religion. The above is objective as was the original post. I do not have a problem if you are still happy using Apple stuff. I am just stating my position because it needs to be tested to make sure I am objective.

Some of this comparison is pointless. You cannot scan with a Mac for your note taking? You cannot use Outlook calendar on a Mac? You can't use Wired mice on a Mac? You can't use Teams on Mac for reminders? Why can't you have two Macs for redundancy like you do with PC? You HAVE to use an iPad for it? You can't use that same OneDrive and you can't even run Spotify on macOS?

The SAME ARGUMENTS can be applied to Windows as well depending on the program.

 

[zhenya]

Well quite frankly the amount of SKUs and the pollution of the "Pro" line with base model processors makes it a complete minefield to navigate to what might be considered a decent, usable computer with some longevity in it.

I mean a "Pro" class machine with 8GB of RAM, 256Gb of storage in 2023 is simply an insult even if it is consolidation of lines.

And please don't give me the 8GB works differently on macOS because it really doesn't when you throw professional workloads at it like Lightroom and Photoshop. The machines rapidly crap out.

The addition of a bunch of SKU's and some base models on the same platform actually makes it more of a "Pro" lineup, not less. Look at how many SKU's Lenovo has for any given Thinkpad model, or a Dell Latitude, etc. You can configure them from bare-bones specs to top tier and everything in between. The second-hand market is full of off-lease Thinkpads with minimal ram, base processors with integrated gpu's, and TN screens. If Apple wants to compete in the Pro Enterprise market, this is certainly a step in the right direction.

I've owned at least a dozen Thinkpad models over the last two decades, deployed many hundreds more. My current is a top of the line X1 Extreme. There are a lot of things, hardware wise, that Thinkpads continue to do well. However they are continuously let-down by the Windows operating system. I work back and forth, daily, between that Thinkpad and my M1 MBP. The Thinkpad is completely unreliable regarding battery life - it's lucky to go four hours, and that's if it hasn't half (or completely) drained itself in my bag. Windows continues to provide a clunky, slow UI that is a constant distraction to actually getting work done. It is the (extreme) exception rather than the rule that a Windows computer will distract you with something system related nearly every time you open it.

 

[teh_hunterer]

At one time, that was true, but not so anymore, a Windows licenses (home or pro) is a Windows license and applies to the arm version as well, so you can buy a valid license.

Isn't that licensee just for Parallels, or at least just for virtualisation?

It's actually gotten better over the last couple of years. It doesn't run everything, but probably 95%, and performance has gotten better. And it's legal to run on a Mac.

I actually do use Parallels. It's good, except for gaming, and battery life.

 

[flybass]

I tried the magic touchpad. There are three problems with it for daily use:

1. There is a noticeable latency over bluetooth. You can actually feel the lag with it if you compare it to the touchpad in an MBP. That makes fine positioning very difficult.

2. The BT craps out occasionally and it can take a couple of seconds for it to catch up. I have seen this on two completely separate macs in different places, one of them being in the Apple Store so I suspect this is a hardware or firmware problem.

3. It's really not accurate enough to do fine work. When you lift your finger slightly the cursor can and does move slightly.

None of these issues occurred with my MX Master 3.

The first point matches my experience. Apple really has dropped the ball on peripherals. They don’t even keep up with their own standards like lightning->USB-C. It would be nice if Apple made a standalone wireless fingerprint reader. Then we could buy good keyboards and still use Touch ID.

 

[bobcomer]

Isn't that licensee just for Parallels, or at least just for virtualisation?

For virtualization on the Mac, Parallels doesn't have any kind of exclusive agreement with Microsoft. It's just the best virtualization platform on the Mac right now. Given Microsoft phrasing I don't think it precludes using it on hardware either, if there were an adequate generic Arm "PC" available.

I actually do use Parallels. It's good, except for gaming, and battery life.

Very true for both. Virtualization is never good for gaming, I wouldn't even do it with a Windows desktop. Battery life is pretty tough subject when you have a whole OS that doesn't understand the underlying hardware and it's power saving capabilities. I'm almost always plugged in, so that doesn't effect me.

I use VM's a lot, both in Windows and on my Macs, so I always have to have a lot of RAM. I really wish the new M3 iMac could take more RAM, I'd buy one.

 

[hagjohn]

Long term Mac user here. I've had a Mac as a primary machine for 18 years, just switching over when they dropped Intel in there. I had a G3 blue Powermac before that but to be fair it didn't get used that much. My use cases are both professional and academic. From a professional perspective I need admin tooling for Linux machines. From an academic perspective I need mathematical tools and typesetting. From a personal perspective I need basic admin (spreadsheet, word processor) and Lightroom/Photoshop. And shared across I need time management stuff.

I was using an 14" M1 Pro / Studio Display combo as my workstation and portable machine with an iPad Pro as a portable machine.

Over the last year I've started to become very disenfranchised with the ecosystem for a number of reasons I will go into.

1. The M-series ARM processors were supposed to be a major technology jump and in fact they were on the first iteration. Since then things are starting to look a little less than what I hoped. The ecosystem remains pretty much closed. Despite the excellent reverse engineering efforts of many people getting quite far, any hope of retaining use of hardware after the supported OS is EOL'ed is looking unlikely. On top of that the disparity between nearly everything else on the planet being x86-64 is actually quite crippling. It brings a lot of overhead in when you consider things like docker and some commercial packages which have to unfortunately run under emulation. Whilst there are performance and power gains, the friction tends to kick you in the nuts in another way.
   
   
2. The pricing and upkeep costs are insane. The hardware is simply too expensive and the pricing isn't justified by the performance.
   
   
3. The segmentation and SKU breakdown of the M3 series is insane, as is the storage increments and the new "Pro" class machines that aren't Pro. It stinks of desperation and craziness.
   
   
4. The ownership risk is high. Despite some improvements on repair, the devices pretty much aren't what I'd call repairable by any reasonable standard. Sure you can swap ports out etc but battery replacements are extremely difficult and keyboard replacements mean replacing the entire top case assembly and battery via official paths. The one time I've had to execute on AppleCare, they didn't have an SKU in stock and I had to wait 2 weeks without a computer entirely. My only option was to buy another one (I'll get into that later).
   
   
5. The quality of support is declining. Every time I have to phone Apple support, it's a multi day round trip of phone calls passed around departments and broken systems in the background that people have to escalate and raise tickets to get sorted.
   
   
6. Every time there is a minor macOS release, something breaks. Maxima was the last thing that killed me and I ended up using a spare PC I have around for the kids to do work on. That just worked.
   
   
7. iCloud pricing. You get nothing decent for a lot of money. I'd rather give Microsoft the money for Office 365 which I have to buy anyway for Mac.

Anyway so the MBP M1 Pro's D key on the keyboard gave up after 18 months. It's a heavily used workstation. I expect better but I have AppleCare so off to Apple who, as it's a custom build, did not have a replacement or a repair capability. It was gone for two weeks. I ambled around the Apple Store and looked at the base price M2 Studio and the M2 Mini Pro and thought "I am not spending £1600-2000 to cover this". So I sat in a pizza place and scratched out some tradeoffs with a pen and paper.

Adding some experience I had doing some travelling this year with people eyeing up my iPhone 13 Pro uncomfortably because it's about 6 months' salary out there, I've got to say that I also feel a little dirty having all this ****. Also the 13 Pro is just out of AppleCare now so I now risk tanking it and having to pay to repair it or.

So I bought a whole load of PC bits and an Android phone.

1. A custom PC build. Intel i5-13500, Noctua cooler, 32Gb RAM, 1TB SN850X NVMe SSD, MSI B760 board, 850W Corsair power supply, Asus case, Asus RTX 4070 GPU, Dell 27" 4K monitor, Cherry keyboard and Logitech Mouse. That came to £1625, LESS than the 8Gb entry level MBP just announced and only fractionally more expensive than the M2 Pro Mini on its own. What the hell Apple?
   
   
2. A Lenovo ThinkPad T14 gen 3. Intel i7-1265U, 16Gb RAM, 1TB SSD. That came to £1027, considerably LESS than the 8Gb entry level MBP just announced. The battery sucks but you know what, meh, it's not that great on my M1 Pro when I'm doing actual work on it so I have to drag the charger around for that anyway. Also what the hell Apple?
   
   
3. A Google Pixel 7A. £449. This thing is better than my daughter's iPhone 14 and much cheaper. Actually get a 90Hz display and the battery lasts literally 2-3 days no problems at all. The camera sucks just the same as the one on a 13 Pro does. I use a mirrorless camera for anything I care about anyway. And thirdly, what the hell Apple?

All three things are in Apple's new Premium colour as well: black.

I'm in the process of getting all the remaining AppleCare refunded (each £300 in the bank between devices) and selling all the Apple crap.

At the end of the day, I get a workstation, a decent laptop and a phone and fully redundant hardware in case of failure and I'm up £1154 in cash which I will stuff in the bank. I can support this myself without having to deal with the vendor. And I can upgrade this if I need to without having to throw the whole thing away. And all the software I need actually works properly on it. And I get to retain my spare kidney.

Rant over.

Edit: I have a second set of problems I'll raise elsewhere in a few days on iOS ecosystem and what I consider to be the most abhorrently painful to use computer there is: The iPad Pro.

Go buy your Android phone and x86 PC and see how "great" it will be for you. I'm losing my patience on these types of posts after every release.

 

[mrmister]

Anyway so the MBP M1 Pro's D key on the keyboard gave up after 18 months. It's a heavily used workstation. I expect better but I have AppleCare so off to Apple who, as it's a custom build, did not have a replacement or a repair capability. It was gone for two weeks.

Every time I have sent a MBP or MBA in for a keyboard problem, which happened sadly twice due to the butterfly keyboard fiasco, the repair was done in one day. Shipping added a day on each side of course, but the laptop was repaired and shipped out the day it hit the depot.

Maybe you're not in America, or maybe you didn't do the thing where you send it in directly to AppleCare, which I recommend...but two weeks is radically different than any experience I've had in the last decade, including helping others get things fixed with laptops.

"as it's a custom build, did not have a replacement or a repair capability"


I don't understand this part either—they don't replace them, as a rule, and they did repair it. Maybe you took it into a third party store? Is this where your two weeks of downtime came from?

 

[mrmister]

Even the new 27" screen needs iOS software and updates. What happens when that is no longer supported by Apple?

For the umpteenth time...every monitor I use needs firmware updates. What happens when it stops getting firmware updates? It keeps working with the last firmware it was installed with...like literally every other piece of hardware.

 

[mrmister]

Anyway so the MBP M1 Pro's D key on the keyboard gave up after 18 months. It's a heavily used workstation. I expect better but I have AppleCare so off to Apple who, as it's a custom build, did not have a replacement or a repair capability. It was gone for two weeks. I ambled around the Apple Store and looked at the base price M2 Studio and the M2 Mini Pro and thought "I am not spending £1600-2000 to cover this". So I sat in a pizza place and scratched out some tradeoffs with a pen and paper.

Adding some experience I had doing some travelling this year with people eyeing up my iPhone 13 Pro uncomfortably because it's about 6 months' salary out there, I've got to say that I also feel a little dirty having all this ****.

Shorter version of original post:

"Recently my Mac laptop's D key broke. For some reason it took two weeks for that to be fixed. I also recently was in a country where people can't afford iPhones. So I solved this situation by spending a lot more money on an entirely new set of PC stuff. Posting here helps me feel good about my decision to buy all new tech at great expense while pretending it is somehow a wise fiscal decision. Stay tuned for the next time I want to switch to something else and need to feel good about it."

 

[jbmelby]

Long term Mac user here. I've had a Mac as a primary machine for 18 years, just switching over when they dropped Intel in there. I had a G3 blue Powermac before that but to be fair it didn't get used that much. My use cases are both professional and academic. From a professional perspective I need admin tooling for Linux machines. From an academic perspective I need mathematical tools and typesetting. From a personal perspective I need basic admin (spreadsheet, word processor) and Lightroom/Photoshop. And shared across I need time management stuff.

I was using an 14" M1 Pro / Studio Display combo as my workstation and portable machine with an iPad Pro as a portable machine.

Over the last year I've started to become very disenfranchised with the ecosystem for a number of reasons I will go into.

1. The M-series ARM processors were supposed to be a major technology jump and in fact they were on the first iteration. Since then things are starting to look a little less than what I hoped. The ecosystem remains pretty much closed. Despite the excellent reverse engineering efforts of many people getting quite far, any hope of retaining use of hardware after the supported OS is EOL'ed is looking unlikely. On top of that the disparity between nearly everything else on the planet being x86-64 is actually quite crippling. It brings a lot of overhead in when you consider things like docker and some commercial packages which have to unfortunately run under emulation. Whilst there are performance and power gains, the friction tends to kick you in the nuts in another way.
   
   
2. The pricing and upkeep costs are insane. The hardware is simply too expensive and the pricing isn't justified by the performance.
   
   
3. The segmentation and SKU breakdown of the M3 series is insane, as is the storage increments and the new "Pro" class machines that aren't Pro. It stinks of desperation and craziness.
   
   
4. The ownership risk is high. Despite some improvements on repair, the devices pretty much aren't what I'd call repairable by any reasonable standard. Sure you can swap ports out etc but battery replacements are extremely difficult and keyboard replacements mean replacing the entire top case assembly and battery via official paths. The one time I've had to execute on AppleCare, they didn't have an SKU in stock and I had to wait 2 weeks without a computer entirely. My only option was to buy another one (I'll get into that later).
   
   
5. The quality of support is declining. Every time I have to phone Apple support, it's a multi day round trip of phone calls passed around departments and broken systems in the background that people have to escalate and raise tickets to get sorted.
   
   
6. Every time there is a minor macOS release, something breaks. Maxima was the last thing that killed me and I ended up using a spare PC I have around for the kids to do work on. That just worked.
   
   
7. iCloud pricing. You get nothing decent for a lot of money. I'd rather give Microsoft the money for Office 365 which I have to buy anyway for Mac.

Anyway so the MBP M1 Pro's D key on the keyboard gave up after 18 months. It's a heavily used workstation. I expect better but I have AppleCare so off to Apple who, as it's a custom build, did not have a replacement or a repair capability. It was gone for two weeks. I ambled around the Apple Store and looked at the base price M2 Studio and the M2 Mini Pro and thought "I am not spending £1600-2000 to cover this". So I sat in a pizza place and scratched out some tradeoffs with a pen and paper.

Adding some experience I had doing some travelling this year with people eyeing up my iPhone 13 Pro uncomfortably because it's about 6 months' salary out there, I've got to say that I also feel a little dirty having all this ****. Also the 13 Pro is just out of AppleCare now so I now risk tanking it and having to pay to repair it or.

So I bought a whole load of PC bits and an Android phone.

1. A custom PC build. Intel i5-13500, Noctua cooler, 32Gb RAM, 1TB SN850X NVMe SSD, MSI B760 board, 850W Corsair power supply, Asus case, Asus RTX 4070 GPU, Dell 27" 4K monitor, Cherry keyboard and Logitech Mouse. That came to £1625, LESS than the 8Gb entry level MBP just announced and only fractionally more expensive than the M2 Pro Mini on its own. What the hell Apple?
   
   
2. A Lenovo ThinkPad T14 gen 3. Intel i7-1265U, 16Gb RAM, 1TB SSD. That came to £1027, considerably LESS than the 8Gb entry level MBP just announced. The battery sucks but you know what, meh, it's not that great on my M1 Pro when I'm doing actual work on it so I have to drag the charger around for that anyway. Also what the hell Apple?
   
   
3. A Google Pixel 7A. £449. This thing is better than my daughter's iPhone 14 and much cheaper. Actually get a 90Hz display and the battery lasts literally 2-3 days no problems at all. The camera sucks just the same as the one on a 13 Pro does. I use a mirrorless camera for anything I care about anyway. And thirdly, what the hell Apple?

All three things are in Apple's new Premium colour as well: black.

I'm in the process of getting all the remaining AppleCare refunded (each £300 in the bank between devices) and selling all the Apple crap.

At the end of the day, I get a workstation, a decent laptop and a phone and fully redundant hardware in case of failure and I'm up £1154 in cash which I will stuff in the bank. I can support this myself without having to deal with the vendor. And I can upgrade this if I need to without having to throw the whole thing away. And all the software I need actually works properly on it. And I get to retain my spare kidney.

Rant over.

Edit: I have a second set of problems I'll raise elsewhere in a few days on iOS ecosystem and what I consider to be the most abhorrently painful to use computer there is: The iPad Pro.

That’s too bad. Enjoy Windows.

 

[Veeper]

Hyperbole is never very convincing when trying to make a point, and the OP is full of hyperbole. A lot of it just wrong, too (or at least highly subjective). Even the poster himself called it a „rant“.

Also, please link to the follow-up rant on the equivalent PC forum. I’m sure you’ll find lots of stuff on the Windows side of the fence to be angry about, too.

OP asserts opinion as industry-wide fact, and then acts as though Apple maliciously drove him to an Android phone and Windows machine.

Poor little fella.

 

[triptolemus]

I'm losing my patience on these types of posts after every release.

Better click on the thread and provide a pointless comment then.

 

[johnsc3]

One can't make everyone happy. If Apple does not satisfy your very specific set of requirements (like reliance on highly specific x86 software), then it is only wise to use some other tool. Especially if you don't need performance and are happy to sacrifice quality/ergonomy to save some money.

I don’t understand how a guy says he’s been a Mac user for 18 years and now complaining about prices. 🤷🏿‍♂️

 

[Joe Dohn]

But, by not having bootcamp there will be more pressure on developers to create a macOS version of their software. Otherwise they’ll run the risk of users switching to competing software that does support macOS. I think it will be good for the Mac ecosystem in the long term, they may have the market share to pull it off at this point. All part of Apple’s master plan

Or users may simply give up on MacOS and switch to Windows. Your strategy only works if MacOS holds a significant pie in the market share or is a monopoly, two things which aren't true today.

 

[Joe Dohn]

[...] custom nature of Apple Silicon is the real issue here (would require new drivers and changes to Windows kernel).

No, no changes would be required. Windows already runs on ARM. And in fact, Parallels already has virtualized Windows drivers. If Apple is REALLY lazy, they can just emulate a generic ARM processor and boot Windows based on this approach.

 

[Regulus67]

For the umpteenth time...every monitor I use needs firmware updates. What happens when it stops getting firmware updates? It keeps working with the last firmware it was installed with...like literally every other piece of hardware.

I am not aware of any time I ever had to update the firmware for any of the monitors I had/have.
So my question highlighted my ignorance on how they function.
Sorry if I annoyed you