Not at all. Everything you said, as well as your decision to actually test Windows as an alternative (and get real-world info. for your specific use cases), was eminently reasonable.
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I'm having to give up on Apple Silicon and macos
- Thread starter Danfango
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Firstly thanks for the comments. Well received and interesting all of them.
Quite frankly I'm going to look like a dick here.
I just put £1000 on the table for an experiment and trialled over nearly a month and it went as follows:
Firstly I bought a Lenovo Neo 50s workstation, a relatively meaty in perspective Intel i5-12400 and upgraded it with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. This is a mid-range current line desktop. This was plugged into my spare Iiyama 27" 4k monitor, Durgod K320 keyboard and reused the MX Master 3 I use with my Mac. I installed a fresh windows 11 64-bit install (not Lenovo crapware stuffed). Network was hard wired 1Gb ethernet to my router.
The good
1. Honestly it's pretty damn fast. It feels slightly more responsive than my M1 Pro MBP.
2. Virtualisation works pretty well. No issues there. I had a whole Kubernetes cluster running on it in the first afternoon.
3. Cheap. So so so so so cheap for what you get. I can't complain there at all. Even the O365 sub at £5.99 a month for personal with 1TB storage is crazy cheap.
4. It was nice to see some things in actual files rather than opaque containers.
The bad
1. Windows 11 is just absolutely ****ing horrible. I spent the first day battling with getting Windows 11 settings and privacy and generally getting it to stop bugging me every 5 minutes about something or other. Since then it's a constant stream of difficult to reproduce things I've had to do to it to stop it annoying me in some new way.
2. Power. This thing will quite happily suck 80W doing what my M1 uses about 20W for.
3. Microsoft's cloud stuff is garbage. The whole O365 and cloud sync stuff built into the OS is absolutely dire. It's unreliable. Within 3 hours of me doing something I'd managed to irreparably corrupt a OneNote notebook. I'm not even starting on OneDrive which has some serious consistency issues with syncing a mere 20Gb of files.
4. Sorry but absolutely nothing even touches the Studio Display. Side by side with the Iiyama which is 99% sRGB and I did colour cal on, it doesn't even compare. It's horrible. Add the Windows 11 HiDPI problems and required 150% scaling blurriness and it's obvious that the Studio Display is more than worth the money. You plug it in, it works and it looks bloody amazing. That's what you're paying for.
5. There is absolutely no competition for the stuff built into macOS. Mail/Calendar/Contacts/Notes/Reminders/Apple Music/Numbers/Maps/iMessage/Safari/Photos are nothing special independently but together they are absolutely amazingly good tools.
6. Microsoft have just discontinued custom domain support for outlook.com unless you fish out money for O365 business which is $$$. This is effectively free with anything but the basic iCloud sub.
7. There is no replacement for Apple Photos and Apple Music that works across iOS and windows. It just doesn't exist. There is nothing. I spend days looking. Spotify is not it for reference! Neither is Lightroom!
Conclusions
1. It's mostly bad on the windows side of the fence. I'm solving the virtualisation gap by renting cloud instances now and doing work on there. If you shut them down when you're using them it costs < $30 a month and there's no hardware around to depreciate.
2. You get what you pay for. I'm paying for Apple and I'm perhaps happier now I've tested this.
3. I probably look like a dick based on my first post but I am a big proponent of owning up to your mistakes. I will wear the dunce hat and sit in the corner and reflect.
4. I burned £1000 on this experiment. I will get perhaps £800 back when I bounce all the crap on eBay. So the total cost of this thread is £200. Please enjoy watching me pissing cash out of the window to hurt myself for no good reason.
As a side note I have sold my iPad Pro because it turns out it's mostly an ornament. The MBP and the iPhone do 95% of the work and the rest does not justify the cost. I will miss it for digital art but I hit cultpens.com and bought some toys to play with on paper for a change. Display is also faster than 120Hz
I've gone through this with Google, Microsoft and Apple as I tried using bits and pieces from different ecosystems and it just didn't work. I settled on iCloud as it was consistent across platforms though it wasn't close to providing the most powerful apps. That said, I'm actually fine with Windows 11 ARM - though I only do a few things on it.
Given that we are on here most people will not get on as well with Windows as they would with macOS. With all the resources Microsoft has you would think they would bite the bullet and develop a new OS (from scratch) for the future.
I've actually just ordered a new ITX motherboard with a Ryzen 9 and other components to build a PC, I've settled for an open test bench for now as ITX cases are still geared toward 3000 series graphics cards so waiting till something that meets my functional and aesthetic requirements comes along. Also waiting till AMD Radeon reviews are in to choose a graphics card, for now I will use the iGPU. I'll still have my TouchBar Intel mac, if It doesn't go well, worst-case scenario I'll have a really good gaming console/ remote backup computer to tinker with and eventually use for parts for a server.
I've actually just ordered a new ITX motherboard with a Ryzen 9 and other components to build a PC, I've settled for an open test bench for now as ITX cases are still geared toward 3000 series graphics cards so waiting till something that meets my functional and aesthetic requirements comes along. Also waiting till AMD Radeon reviews are in to choose a graphics card, for now I will use the iGPU. I'll still have my TouchBar Intel mac, if It doesn't go well, worst-case scenario I'll have a really good gaming console/ remote backup computer to tinker with and eventually use for parts for a server.
Their market is not interested in them doing this. They don't have the leverage Apple does for doing such a thing.
Couple of replies:
My daughter has a Ryzen ThinkPad. It's hot and noisy. No thanks! I've got a corporate Dell Precision 7670 here which is mandated by the day job. It's horrible and cost as much as a fully specced 16" M1 Max MBP. It gets used as an SSH terminal for a cloud VM nearly all day. I don't want anything to do with Intel or AMD laptops. They are absolutely horrible. Desktops I do not have a problem with. Desktop hardware is pretty damn good and the right price.
I don't think Microsoft building a new OS is the answer. They tried that with Windows Phone and look what happened. They screwed it up. Annoying but it was a nice platform at the time, again at a good price. I struggled for a bit to come up with a good word to describe the situation but I can only say that Windows itself is dilapidated. Windows 11 is unfortunately just another layer of paint over the problems. It's really cheap to paint something again and sell it. But they really need to solve the hard and expensive problems and that means fixing all the bugs, inconsistencies and schizophrenia in the platform. At the same time, build up respect and trust from users by not screwing up and dumping the upsells, shoddy marketing, launching broken products and stuffing telemetry down everyone's throats.
Unfortunately desktop Linux is even worse. But that's a whole other thread.
My daughter has a Ryzen ThinkPad. It's hot and noisy. No thanks! I've got a corporate Dell Precision 7670 here which is mandated by the day job. It's horrible and cost as much as a fully specced 16" M1 Max MBP. It gets used as an SSH terminal for a cloud VM nearly all day. I don't want anything to do with Intel or AMD laptops. They are absolutely horrible. Desktops I do not have a problem with. Desktop hardware is pretty damn good and the right price.
I don't think Microsoft building a new OS is the answer. They tried that with Windows Phone and look what happened. They screwed it up. Annoying but it was a nice platform at the time, again at a good price. I struggled for a bit to come up with a good word to describe the situation but I can only say that Windows itself is dilapidated. Windows 11 is unfortunately just another layer of paint over the problems. It's really cheap to paint something again and sell it. But they really need to solve the hard and expensive problems and that means fixing all the bugs, inconsistencies and schizophrenia in the platform. At the same time, build up respect and trust from users by not screwing up and dumping the upsells, shoddy marketing, launching broken products and stuffing telemetry down everyone's throats.
Unfortunately desktop Linux is even worse. But that's a whole other thread.
What I can suggest is that you buy a portable PC (e.g, GPD), and hook it to your Mac's monitor; then, you can integrate it to show into MacOS and so it all shows in a single window manager (e.g, through Moonlight). However, that solution is is a bit expensive and more clumsy.
If needs must and the machine is making you money and you can't use it to do the things you need to do then sure why more move away from arm.
I must admit I hated my works provided Dell XPS15, noisy, slow, phone integration doesn't work etc. So I took the opportunity to hand it back when a new starter arrived and got myself onto my own 16" MBP M1 Max 64GB Ram, 2TB disk...I love it, so fast/instant and so quiet, but for integration into Windows land there could be some challenges;
1. Parallels with Windows 11 ARM and Office works like a dream, no problems. Super fast, but as our rules allow BYOD so do the native M365 apps.
2. Docker, slightly more interesting. We've found a few of our existing docker images did not have an ARM version which caused a little bit of a pain. But guess what that is the amazing thing, we just build our own version as a colleagues of mine has the same challenge.
3. Azure SQL Server docker is slightly more challenging, but their 'Edge' release is ARM so can also be overcome.
4. My penetration test bundle and apps are also a bit more limiting into the ARM space, but not too hard to build from source opposed to use ready made binaries.
So all in all, so far I've always found a way around the challenge and that one has to be doing something rather special before something just doesn't work.
I must admit I hated my works provided Dell XPS15, noisy, slow, phone integration doesn't work etc. So I took the opportunity to hand it back when a new starter arrived and got myself onto my own 16" MBP M1 Max 64GB Ram, 2TB disk...I love it, so fast/instant and so quiet, but for integration into Windows land there could be some challenges;
1. Parallels with Windows 11 ARM and Office works like a dream, no problems. Super fast, but as our rules allow BYOD so do the native M365 apps.
2. Docker, slightly more interesting. We've found a few of our existing docker images did not have an ARM version which caused a little bit of a pain. But guess what that is the amazing thing, we just build our own version as a colleagues of mine has the same challenge.
3. Azure SQL Server docker is slightly more challenging, but their 'Edge' release is ARM so can also be overcome.
4. My penetration test bundle and apps are also a bit more limiting into the ARM space, but not too hard to build from source opposed to use ready made binaries.
So all in all, so far I've always found a way around the challenge and that one has to be doing something rather special before something just doesn't work.
🤣 As someone who has done similar things flipping and flopping back and forth between Windows/Mac and iOS/Android, I salute you.
Fully agree here. Windows 7 was the last good Windows.
As someone else mentioned, use the right tool for the job. There is a reason why I have 8 computers in my workflow. Yes two are Windows and I don’t like them.
How do you know your dislike of Windows isn't affecting the use of the tool for the job. Or even if it is the right tool to use?
I have a Dell Latitude 13" running a I5-8665U and I absolutely hate it. I use a KVM switch to switch between my home desktop and my work laptop. It takes a solid 20 seconds for the laptop to fully recognize, and resize the display. Its slow and painful
I understand your pain. Even though I worked for Freescale (formerly Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector) that made some PPC chips at the time, Apple going to Intel was great. To be able to have a system that could run MacOS, Windows, various Linux x86 at pretty much native speeds on one system was a blessing. It made test/developing sooo much more convenient.
Thankfully right about at the time of Apple moving to ARM I no longer needed to run other x86 OSs!
Thankfully right about at the time of Apple moving to ARM I no longer needed to run other x86 OSs!
When using other platforms it really makes you appreciate how far ahead of the game Apple is with things like desktop scaling, switching, mouse/touch pads, phone integration, etc...And the real big one, battery life....
Generally I agree, but one of my biggest gripes, and pain points is my MBP and mice. I have clear consistent scrolling on my mouse's scroll wheel on my laptop (when I use a mouse) Not so with the same mouse hooked up to my MBP. I'll roll the scroll wheel one "click" (that audible feeling as it rolls). Sometimes it doesn't scroll the application I'm using (word, chrome etc), sometimes doing that scrolls it 3x what you would expect. Very inconsistent.
As for the trackpad, I really do like the physical trackpad where I click on a corner it simulates a mouse button - I like that over needing gestures to invoke a mouse click - personal preference to be sure but its something I'm used too.
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At least for Linux-based operating systems macOS now provides a Virtualization Framework, to avoid all the issues with multiple OSes competing for resources. This is arguable a better solution than dual booting. Windows is left out at the moment.
Virtualization | Apple Developer Documentation
Create virtual machines and run macOS and Linux-based operating systems.
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Not sure I know what you mean here. I need programs exclusive to Windows so I’m forced to use it as part of my workflow. So there is no other “tool” I can use for this part.
Yes fair enough, when using a third party mouse some of those settings that can be really useful have to be switched off as the traditional wheels don't provide enough granular information to deal with the adaptiveness.
As you say preferences. I love being able to click with gestures, or anywhere with a left click. Especially the bigger the touchpads become the more comfortable I find it. And to be fair on Dell their XPS large touch pads do allow you to do that but default settings are switched off and I keep forgetting where the setting is to switch it back on. So I guess more my fault than Dell's
There aren't linux/opensource alternatives for those programs? If you didn't have that tool how much would your workflow suffer? No one should be forced to use a tool/OS they hate there has to be a way for you to drop it and still get work done.
Not sure why you are even arguing this point there are plenty of tools where there is no equivalent on other platforms, there are also plenty of situations where an alternative is not allowed for reasons of confidentiality, integrity and/or availability. Pretty standard and normal especially in professional settings.There aren't linux/opensource alternatives for those programs? If you didn't have that tool how much would your workflow suffer? No one should be forced to use a tool/OS they hate there has to be a way for you to drop it and still get work done.
No. Not as feature rich and it would drastically slow down my workflow with those poor alternatives.There aren't linux/opensource alternatives for those programs? If you didn't have that tool how much would your workflow suffer? No one should be forced to use a tool/OS they hate there has to be a way for you to drop it and still get work done.
I know. It is a shame that folks that really hate Windows, and are not constrained by work requirements still have no choice but to use that platform.
That is a shame.
The transition to AS has been varying degrees of painful for those of us still held hostage by x86. I bought a 2019 15” MBP to be able to boot Mojave for 32-bit apps when feeling sentimental, but mainly because I regularly run three Windows VMs at a time (used Acronis to image the company-issued Win10 ThinkPad just so I could run the company stuff in a VM). I prefer the Apple build quality, the display quality, battery life (Apple always seemed to squeeze out more performance/life from Intel cpus than other OEMs), and I tolerate Windows for work. It’s so nice to swipe between work VM and macOS on a single machine.
Anyhow, I plan on running this MBP for at least four more years (assuming Ventura+1 is last macOS supporting Intel). Since my 2019 MBP is maxed out and even with a 9th Gen cpu and Vega 20 gpu it’s still plenty fast for Windows work, instead of buying a new PC, just going to run Windows on the MBP and look at grabbing an M2/M3 in the next 24 months to continue on with Apple. I’m going to put off buying a PC for as long as possible and hopefully when the 2019 MBP is no longer viable, there will be a suitable/useable solution for dealing with Windows on AS (whether emulation or ARM-compatible) in a few years
Anyhow, I plan on running this MBP for at least four more years (assuming Ventura+1 is last macOS supporting Intel). Since my 2019 MBP is maxed out and even with a 9th Gen cpu and Vega 20 gpu it’s still plenty fast for Windows work, instead of buying a new PC, just going to run Windows on the MBP and look at grabbing an M2/M3 in the next 24 months to continue on with Apple. I’m going to put off buying a PC for as long as possible and hopefully when the 2019 MBP is no longer viable, there will be a suitable/useable solution for dealing with Windows on AS (whether emulation or ARM-compatible) in a few years
The enterprise leans heavily in the windows/pc direction for many reasons. A single platform, for the entire business simplifies rollout, management, and support. In my career I've only worked with medium to large organizations, so I can only speak about what I've been through, but the tools that we have to support computers is slanted heavily towards PCs.
A for instance, there's an initiative at my company to prevent non-compliant computers from accessing our corporate network. What I mean by non-compliant is that they need to have certain configurations, like virus scanners, password controls, i.e., your password expires, deep scanners and software to inventory what's installed.
Do you know the biggest offender in the listed, by an order of magnitude? Macs. I'm not saying macs are bad, or incapable of having those programs or settings, but it highlights the issues of my IS department to manage the computers.