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Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows

One advantage I had when I purchased the Mac Studio is thanks to my years of owning iPhones, and for most of the time using them as my primary computer was a knowledge of how much internal storage I actually needed for the way I was using it. With the MS I got the 1TB internal with the intention of adding additional external storage. I have 20TB total external storage. The MS is configured to store most of the media files on the 14TB Seagate OneTouch Hub.
 
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The_Interloper said:
Just upgraded my desktop PC’s main internal NVMe SSD from 256gb to a Samsung 1Tb. Just £39.99 currently on Amazon UK.

The equivalent Mac Mini/Studio etc upgrade is £400 (and it’s actually only 768gb, as 256gb is costed in to the base price). It’s getting very, very hard to keep buying Apple products in my house.
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nail head hit. That is the main reason why I am so apprehensive to buy a mac.
 
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The_Interloper said:
The equivalent Mac Mini/Studio etc upgrade is £400 (and it’s actually only 768gb, as 256gb is costed in to the base price). It’s getting very, very hard to keep buying Apple products in my house.
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Can you actually upgrade the Studio? Honest question, I've not really followed the mac desktop sector enough to remember if they have upgradable storage AND they offer after purchase upgrades.

The point and shoot pro said:
why I am so apprehensive to buy a mac.
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The mindset with buying a mac is that its an appliance, albeit an expensive one, but an appliance nonetheless. You buy it for a purpose and don't change it. I may not agree with that mentality but for the general consumer, most don't ever upgrade their desktops, and even amongst hobbyists few ever upgrade a laptop. Apple is catering to the majority, while I don't agree with the that ideal, it hasn't hurt them
 
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maflynn said:
Can you actually upgrade the Studio? Honest question, I've not really followed the mac desktop sector enough to remember if they have upgradable storage AND they offer after purchase upgrades.


The mindset with buying a mac is that its an appliance, albeit an expensive one, but an appliance nonetheless. You buy it for a purpose and don't change it. I may not agree with that mentality but for the general consumer, most don't ever upgrade their desktops, and even amongst hobbyists few ever upgrade a laptop. Apple is catering to the majority, while I don't agree with the that ideal, it hasn't hurt them
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You know what they say......😄

As for upgrading a studio, that's a hard No. You cannot even really upgrade a pro other than put some cards in it and add a bit of Sata storage. I went for 12 gb to 64gb of ram in my dell laptop and from 16gb to 128gb of ram in my workstation. Plus I am thinking I am putting a new CPU in the workstation too. Can't do that with Mac Pro/Studio either. Upgrades are a way to keep your money spent working longer.

As I said in other threads, the needle has not moved in favor of mac vs. PC since....forever really. Probably a percent either way swing in market share but nothing fantastical. People have basically made their choices and stick with what they know.

It's only us loonies who have both, plus linux boxes etc. :eek:
 
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LeeW said:
People simply need to get over the upgradeability of Macs. The constant I am going to buy a Mac, oh wait I can't upgrade it, maybe I won't. You knew that, you know it's not going to change.

The flip-flopping of threatening to buy a Mac and then finding an excuse not to is as bad as buying one to switch back to Windows and back and so on..
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It helped me decide to pick up the 2020 (last) 27" imac.

I was able to pick it up for a great price, upgrade it to 64 GB of RAM for about $100, and an external 1TB SSD for about $80. Since it's Intel I installed Windows to the SSD and left macOS installed internally (thanks T2 chip..)

Best of both worlds for now. Only thing is I find macOS to be a much better laptop experience than desktop... janky scaling issues (for non-native displays), no native way to disable the awful mouse and scrollwheel acceleration, almost no form of window management at all... come on Apple, even the most obscure Linux environments have window snapping as standard.

Even booting from the external SSD, Windows 10 is faster/more responsive and manages windows so much better. I was planning on using macOS for as much as I could and just have Windows for all the software that doesn't run on macOS (of which there is a ton), but I think I'll do it the other way around where I use macOS for the software that doesn't run on Windows (ie. xcode) and do everything else on Windows. Eventually I'll get a display driver for it when the internals get retired and use it as a monitor since it really is very nice at that.
 
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LeeW said:
People simply need to get over the upgradeability of Macs. The constant I am going to buy a Mac, oh wait I can't upgrade it, maybe I won't. You knew that, you know it's not going to change.

The flip-flopping of threatening to buy a Mac and then finding an excuse not to is as bad as buying one to switch back to Windows and back and so on..
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Sir, this is a Wend—flip-flopping between Windows and Mac thread. That’s what we do here. :D
 
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I knew that upgradability was to become a thing of the past for Macs by the end of 2012, and then 6 months later when they unveiled the trashcan Mac Pro my concerns were validated. By the end of 2012 both the MBP and iMac had been glued together and other than RAM on the 27", no upgrade path that is officially supported. Didn't take long for them to remove the RAM upgrade from the mini too.

2019 Mac Pro was an exception, not the rule. Indeed a very niche exception at that given the high starting price and specs. For me this has been baked into the cake for a very long time. It would've taken a degree of naivety to believe that anything other than the Pro was going to become more upgradeable than it already was. Even then, we see what they did with the Pro in the end...

If it had been say 2002 or 1996 and you had presented these sealed non-upgradable computers to me I would've laughed and discarded it as junk. Even I used to laugh at the iMac for how annoying it was to replace the hard drive in a G4. But as I got older and my use case changed I became content with leaving things as they were and other than avoiding the Apple tax on RAM it hasn't bothered me very much having no upgrade paths. Would it be nice? Yes. Is it a necessity? Not to me.
 
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retta283 said:
I knew that upgradability was to become a thing of the past for Macs by the end of 2012, and then 6 months later when they unveiled the trashcan Mac Pro my concerns were validated. By the end of 2012 both the MBP and iMac had been glued together and other than RAM on the 27", no upgrade path that is officially supported. Didn't take long for them to remove the RAM upgrade from the mini too.

2019 Mac Pro was an exception, not the rule. Indeed a very niche exception at that given the high starting price and specs. For me this has been baked into the cake for a very long time. It would've taken a degree of naivety to believe that anything other than the Pro was going to become more upgradeable than it already was. Even then, we see what they did with the Pro in the end...

If it had been say 2002 or 1996 and you had presented these sealed non-upgradable computers to me I would've laughed and discarded it as junk. Even I used to laugh at the iMac for how annoying it was to replace the hard drive in a G4. But as I got older and my use case changed I became content with leaving things as they were and other than avoiding the Apple tax on RAM it hasn't bothered me very much having no upgrade paths. Would it be nice? Yes. Is it a necessity? Not to me.
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It's not really a necessity for me either, I just don't like being screwed without having dinner bought for me first.

upgrade to 32gb of ram on a mini it's 500 bucks. 32gb of DDR5 for a desktop is 150.00.

2tb upgrade of a mini is 750.00 and a 2tb 7800mb/s nvme is 179.00.

If they even made upgrades reasonably priced I would be much more inclined to buy a mini. I don't want to buy a low speced model to try out. then, have to sell it and buy a top model if I like using it.

BTW, those prices are Canadian Prices.
 
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LeeW said:
Thy did at least give us back ram upgradeability in the last intel MM, which wasn't fun to do. But then took it all back with AS. The reality is that it will never come back now.
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Which is perfectly fine if they charged somewhat reasonable prices for upgrades. Their upgrade prices are insanity. But as long as loyalist keep buying them, nothing will change.
 
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The point and shoot pro said:
Which is perfectly fine if they charged somewhat reasonable prices for upgrades. Their upgrade prices are insanity. But as long as loyalist keep buying them, nothing will change.
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Apple has always been goofy like that. When OS X came out the base level iMacs they were selling at the time couldn't run it, couldn't install it. Not enough RAM. Later on they were selling these very powerful for the time G5 iMacs with only 256MB of RAM which was a complete joke and an instant bottleneck. RAM has been their favored cheap-out but storage is just as well. Back then it really hurt, the switch to Intel and cheaper HDD prices lessened it for a time which is why it seems like it's worse now than it used to be. Not being able to upgrade does make it sting more, though.
 
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The point and shoot pro said:
But as long as loyalist keep buying them, nothing will change.
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I doubt the majority of Mac users would classify themselves as loyalists. I certainly don't see myself as one.

I pay that extra $200 here and there to get what I want because of the convenience and the benefit that a Mac provides. The benefits outweigh the additional cost plus the secondary market for Macs means I get a further benefit of a higher return when it comes to upgrading vs most PC-related devices.

Apple know their market, very well. They won't lose sleep over anyone who doesn't want to pay more for more. They have proven that. Sure they could do more but the simple fact is that they don't need to and won't. Margin remains way more important than having the largest market share or even close to it.
 
LeeW said:
I doubt the majority of Mac users would classify themselves as loyalists. I certainly don't see myself as one.

I pay that extra $200 here and there to get what I want because of the convenience and the benefit that a Mac provides. The benefits outweigh the additional cost plus the secondary market for Macs means I get a further benefit of a higher return when it comes to upgrading vs most PC-related devices.

Apple know their market, very well. They won't lose sleep over anyone who doesn't want to pay more for more. They have proven that. Sure they could do more but the simple fact is that they don't need to and won't. Margin remains way more important than having the largest market share or even close to it.
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I guess that's why I don't own macs anymore and am apprehensive to buy one. I like value for my money. macs do not provide value. They provide implied value with their cheap starting points now, but those systems are useless to me and I am not ponying up for the ridiculous prices for the system I need. If I can find a deal on a used one, I may go that route. I would love to have a maxed out mini and air. Both would suit my workflow nicely, but NOT at those ridiculous upgrade prices.
 
LeeW said:
Don't we all? But then not all value is equal.
Some prioritize monetary value others economic value. You appear to be the former, I am the latter. Neither is wrong of course but they are different.
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IMO, unless you have so much disposable income laying around, this is the very crux that should determine whether a consumer wants MacOS, Windows, Linux, or whatever OS is out there. Being as aware as possible - maybe to the point of being hyper-aware - of what you want from your machine saves a lot of grief and buyer’s remorse.

I always keep at least one figurative foot in macOS because of DevonThink. Most other tasks and entertainment, I can get on Windows if need be, but at this point, I feel like I don’t really interact with the OS directly. If I turn the power on, it’s straight to the browser or my app of choice for working or having fun or whatever else needs getting done.
 
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Farrgazer said:
IMO, unless you have so much disposable income laying around, this is the very crux that should determine whether a consumer wants
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Your available assets/income should of course determine what you can have, not necessarily what you want. But then we know that many couldn't afford an iPhone much less a Mac if it wasn't for credit. Take away credit and tell everyone to pony up the cash if they want it then Apple really would be in the ****, much like so many other companies.

But that is why Apple and again others benefit so much from the "it's $1,999" vs "it's $83 per month" to get money in the till and grow sales.
 
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There is a virtue that comes from working with limited income that is not supplemented by credit or loans of any kind. I have to think very hard for a long time about my purchases and I have next to never regretted a purchase in the last 10 years for this reason. I have had to return some machines, but mostly due to unexpected issues instead of buyers' remorse.

I do not use my line of credit that was made available to me after my bankruptcy was relieved and it is so liberating. That bankruptcy came about largely due to misuse of credit (combined with economic disaster in my sector in 2008) and I love being debt-free. Every month I come out clean. I don't get new toys very often, but I can live with that. I buy what I need.

There were many 'flip flopping' moments for me back when, I would be buying new monitors and computers while the old ones were still being shipped out for returns, kind of like the OP's situation was. All that did was add stress keeping track of all these packages and what I need to box up and label. Nowadays I am not fussed with it...
 
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LeeW said:
Your available assets/income should of course determine what you can have, not necessarily what you want. But then we know that many couldn't afford an iPhone much less a Mac if it wasn't for credit. Take away credit and tell everyone to pony up the cash if they want it then Apple really would be in the ****, much like so many other companies.

But that is why Apple and again others benefit so much from the "it's $1,999" vs "it's $83 per month" to get money in the till and grow sales.
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That’s why I place greater focus on the needs than the wants.

I am partially echoing @retta283 here - I’m not so poor that I can’t not afford to pony upfront the $2000-$2500 needed for a new Mac that suits my uses, but I’m not rich enough (nor do I have the kind of time and energy needed for reselling) to do this on a yearly basis, and to get the most powerful Mac or iOS device on the market at any given time. Nor would I want a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or Mac Studio in the first place, even if I had all the money in the world, simply because they are firstly not portable enough for my personal needs, and secondly way overkill.

I am only human, so I am fallible at times. But I strive to buy with purpose. For example, with Macs and iOS devices, I buy expecting a tangible ROI in the form of better productivity and more income. And I mean that in better work turnover, not as a collection investment. I would prefer not to rely on a line of credit, and I’ve been fortunate for not having to be put in that kind of position (yet).
 
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Farrgazer said:
I would prefer not to rely on a line of credit, and I’ve been fortunate for not having to be put in that kind of position (yet).
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It's a good position to be in. In years gone by I was more willing to use credit, but never to excess. Now at 50, I own my own house, have not a single penny of debt and have significant disposable income and assets as a result.

To quote my wife "Since we became debt free, you are such a miser".

Funny how that happens in life.
 
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