Intel Mac's are the best Windows machines money can buy IMO and I still use some of MacOS's command-line UNIX tools. The hardware is very robust and if you use Parallels for instance, backing up a virtual machine in its entirety is a breeze. One of the things that kept me buying expensive Mac's for my lab is that the machines can run MacOS, Windows and various flavours of UNIX/LINUX. Then again I am a geeky scientist.
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Apple M1 kill switch
- Thread starter dogslobber
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In the Windows world, you can build great computers (even with good and quiet cooling) that Apple doesn't want to sell you, like a Mac "midi". Why should a Windows user buy a Mac mini or iMac (apart from maybe the design)?
I only use Linux when I tinker with my router’s firmware, and that’s virtualised. Linux, in all their flavours doesn’t strike me as a usable home computer OS. Mac OS High Sierra is so much more useful running my 2010 iMac.
I’m sick of Windows (both server and client) using it for work.
My M1 Mini will probably be useful for another 10 years.
I suspect tho. that Apple will make my wallet bleed for the supposedly 30” iMac. ?
I hated it when Apple flipped that kill switch on my IIe, I was so mad!
I also prefer macOS. But I still won't use an old macOS without support. Then I'd rather have an up-to-date Linux than and old an unsupported macOS with perhaps serious vulnerabilities.
Really? I'm curious to know what your reasons behind this are, there are a lot of Windows computers that are better either for specific use cases or as all round packages than Macs. For using Windows I'd take a 17" XPS or a Razer blade Pro over a 16" MacBook Pro easily. And certainly a 13/15" Surface Laptop over a 13" Intel MacBook Air. Bootcamp drivers are pretty mediocre, there's no graphics switching if you have a dGPU, the trackpad loses all the great Force Touch functionality, the thermals are poor, the displays are nice enough, but there's even nicer to be had from Windows OEMs (OLED, HDR, high refresh), design and build quality on the top Windows laptops is now at least on a par (just look at the new XPSs).
Intel Macs make rather terrible Windows machines. You don't get optimized platform drivers (and some hardware features are turned off), so your battery life goes down the drain. There is no official support — Microsoft and third-party vendors drop the phone the moment they hear you run Bootcamp. GPU drivers are hopelessly outdated (luckily there are enthusiasts that keep unofficial drivers alive).
The nice thing about Intel Macs is that they can run all the major operating systems in a VM, which is indeed a great asset. But running Windows exclusively? Unless you really want an AIO other options are much better.
Sure, Apple has a long history of doing that. (sarcasm intended)
Don't be a Chicken Little about something which has literally never happened.
I'll echo the sentiment that Boot Camp is rather mediocre at best. It's great that I can boot into Windows to play games that aren't available on the Mac, but driver support is dodgy. At least we finally got precision trackpad drivers. With the loss of Boot Camp though, I may need to go back to having two machines, which is less convenient. Either that, or give up on running all my Windows software.
when our old macs at work get to that point (security updates no longer available due to
hardware unable to run big sur or catalina (case in point, my mac pro 3,1), it's time to remove
them from network access. although, that machine is still getting security updates since it's running mojave (thanks dosdude1!)
still works great as standalone machines
Yes, you can get a more customised design using PC for Windows, but in general my Mac's (which tend to be desktops but also some notebooks) last about twice as long before hardware failure. Moreover, even using Mac's running Windows for data acquisition, a very demanding task, the Mac's seem to have about the same performance as PC's in my experience. I don't use Bootcamp but virtual machines instead and I have never had any problems with software or hardware compatibility or performance. Finally, I have had PC's crash so hard they were permanently unrecoverable. That can't really happen with a virtual machine because backups are easier to manage and use for restoration. Mind you I use my machines for work and not graphically intensive activities like games or media production. In any case, one of the things that that is essential for my work is having virtual machines on a Mac, and hopefully this will be workable with the new machines based on the M-series processors. And this does relate to what happens when Mac's get old. Very often I semi-retire them into the lab to run Windows data acquisition, analysis and visualisation. Horses for courses.
It's probably because you are buying cheap PCs... try one of the professional workstations (that cost as much as the Mac Pro) and you will get a completely different quality and lifetime expectations. In the end, you pay what you get for. But among premium-level products, Macs are just as good as anything else.
I say you should use it beyond its shelf life. Just use a different browser, lock it down, turn on the Firewall, FileVault and drive encryption, then be done with it. No need to freak yourself out. I have an “old” 2018 mini that I’ll use in this way, or I might dabble with Linux/FreeBSD for the hell of it.
History itself alone doesn’t echo what will happen in the future. So I can get your concern here.
Mind you guys M1 Mac can remain powered on in low energy consumption mode for a very long time. And if you pay attention during unboxing, they turn on the moment you open the lid, which is not the case for Intel Mac.
Apple doesn’t seem to have a reason to implement kill switch on Mac aside from activation lock. But they can if they want. Apple is also big enough that moderate PR damage will not hurt company much and they can continue to sell devices like crazy, knowing traditional Mac users are dwindling in numbers as time goes on. With that being said, bean counter Tim Cook May not let that happen. So we are fine, for now.
Mind you guys M1 Mac can remain powered on in low energy consumption mode for a very long time. And if you pay attention during unboxing, they turn on the moment you open the lid, which is not the case for Intel Mac.
Apple doesn’t seem to have a reason to implement kill switch on Mac aside from activation lock. But they can if they want. Apple is also big enough that moderate PR damage will not hurt company much and they can continue to sell devices like crazy, knowing traditional Mac users are dwindling in numbers as time goes on. With that being said, bean counter Tim Cook May not let that happen. So we are fine, for now.
Just imagine a second such a thing existed.
What kind of court action would Apple get for that ? What kind of customer reputation would they get, and how long would the consequences last ?
As a comparison point, consider what happened when it was found that the OS was slowing down some iPhone in software when it detected the battery was weaker. That was no kill switch and there was a technical motivation.
On the other hand, as said by many others in the thread, OS updates will eventually stop coming and some newer software will not run. (which a Linux install might mitigate)
They probably don't have actual reasons. This claim was actually true for a brief time about 10 years ago, when Intel was still crushing it, and Apple was getting the best binned cpu's and doing their normal apple design magic. It wasn't true for long after that, but the meme has become stuck in people's minds so they keep on thinking it despite no further evidence. Here's a 2013 CNET article about it:
MacBook Pro declared 'best-performing' Windows laptop
A PC services company placed Apple computers in the No. 1 and No. 6 slots as the best-performing Windows laptops.
I actually like the Lenovo X1 series WAY more for running Windows than the M1 MBA I have. Lighter, switchable SSD, better keyboard, MicroSD card reader, USB-C, USBA, HDMI, trackpoint, actual trackpad buttons. It's *much* better hardware. I wish Apple actually made something like it rather than those aluminum things with not many ports. Aluminum may look cooler, but it's heavier!
And you can take it apart without a stupid pentalobe screwdriver. (worst screw design EVER)
On which specific macos systems/versions did Apple do this previously?
Seems like unfounded fearmongering on the verge of trolling.
As to how long will Apple provide supported OS for the M1 systems? Look to a bit of history.
Released in 2017, macOS High Sierra supported Macbook Pro's & Airs built in 2010. The last security update was November 2020.
Given that I'd anticipate a solid ten years of security patching support. Get back to me in 2030 or so if that doesn't prove to be the case.
To each their own. I have been using plastic flexy windows laptops for decades, and I do not miss it. And unless you're talking about the X1 nano, the MBA is still lighter. Performance-wise, the M1 MBA wipes the floor with the X1 nano (not sure about the carbon or other variants, but I'd suspect they beat the MBA). All that said, if I actually *wanted* to run Windows, I would not buy a macbook.... and certainly not the M1 lol. Although, I guess in theory you can run ARM Windows on it, if you truly hate yourself.
There is no solution because they have been out for less than a year. Porting an operating system to a new architecture takes time, 10 years from now when the macOS updates stop, linux will be available to install.
No, they aren't. Not by a long shot. In fact, there is a lot of *much nicer* and more capable hardware out there if you don't need macOS, and often also with much better support than what Apple offers (like the privilege to schlepp your $10k Mac Pro to the nearest Apple Store and deal with some Genius Bar employee who might or might not actually know the hardware, while every other workstation manufacturer provides on-site repairs as standard for its machines, usually for 3 years).
At least for me, I use Apple hardware because of macOS. If I didn't need macOS then there's no way in hell I would use a computer made by Apple.
I work at a UK university, so we get cheap PC's with lifespans of mayflies, whether we like it or not. Thus what you said might be true - I can't really say.
All I can say is that I have had PC's from Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Sony, even Compaq in the early days (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable
), and regrettably godawful no-name brands recently over the past 10 years, since I work in a UK university and the PC's we buy are determined centrally. Throughout this entire time, which spans from the mid 1980's, Mac's have simply been more robust and have had enough processing power to do what I needed them to do. After the switch to Intel processors, it came to the point I'd rather buy Mac's because they got the job done, even emulating Windows, without fizzling and smoking (yes, I've had PC's that literally caught fire). No doubt one's impressions of computers depend on what you use them for. Mine have been used predominately for office tasks, data acquisition, data analysis, and data visualisation. I do not care if some specialised rig shaves off a few nanoseconds of processing time for a task. I am looking for productivity, which is a combination of hardware optimisation and good user interface.
iPadOS/iOS is a classic example of kill switch so if MacOS starts modeling after that with essential apps/services like browser, app store, etc. dependent on OS updates then you should be worried.
Typical OS life cycle of x64 Mac is run MacOS until it's no longer supported then run Windows or Linux. The fact that M1 killed off Windows and Linux options is a kill switch.
Typical OS life cycle of x64 Mac is run MacOS until it's no longer supported then run Windows or Linux. The fact that M1 killed off Windows and Linux options is a kill switch.