What exactly makes a Windows product “lesser”?
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Is It Me? Why Does It Seem No One Minds Apple's new Machines Are NOT UPGRADABLE?
- Thread starter gemini62167
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What exactly makes a Windows product “lesser”?
Because obviously your crappy-screened work Dell and your Macbook Pro are the only two choices out there. There aren't laptops where literally everything is replaceable and upgradeable such as https://frame.work...or like what I got in my Acer Predator Helios Neo 16" with a 2560 x 1600 500 nit IPS display. I also upgraded the RAM to 32GB and and extra SSD (1TB) for around $100. Oh, and it is my gaming machine as well as everything else as it has an RTX 4060.
HA! I mean the upgrades were $100. I bought it refurbed with a 2 year warranty for $1000.$100!?
Did you steal it!?
Surely you mean $1,000+!?
Oh I got you .. was joking about the actually fairly priced upgrade prices!
That went right over my head LOL. Totally missed it. I posted a while back about it, but it did save me thousands over an equivalent 32GB 2TB 16" Macbook Pro. Of course, my battery life is about 5 hours and the MBP's is about 25, so there is that.
I have a i9-14900k + 4070 desktop so I get you but they are cold, soulless machines from the depths of hell compared to my 2 year old MBP M1 Pro. Some of the specifications and importance is emotional as well as logical
I wish I felt that way, but they have been shifting Mac from being, as I used to say, "an awesome looking Linux that just works" to an increasingly locked-down iOS looking OS.I have a i9-14900k + 4070 desktop so I get you but they are cold, soulless machines from the depths of hell compared to my 2 year old MBP M1 Pro. Some of the specifications and importance is emotional as well as logical
Anyway, I quit using both my Mac and my iPad Pro a few days ago, and it feels sort of freeing. I don't know if it will last, but I now connect to work, do my writing, play the latest games, and everything else from this one laptop. Nice. And, honestly, in some ways, Windows 11 looks better than Mac OS does these days.
Importantly, to me, it has actual flexibility (even in how it can look).
It feels like a computer OS - not a more and more “terminal” to Apple subscription services.
I will keep using my iPad because I have not found a better alternative in that particular space. Same for my iPhone at the moment although I would switch in a heartbeat if there was a smaller option on the android side.
Well lets get that straight. I spent a chunk of my day working on Linux from my Mac as a terminal. I'd rather a Linux that just works and doesn't have all the horrible GNUisms. macOS is pretty good at that as it's actually one of the few remaining Open Group certified Unix platforms left! (yes macOS is proper Unix)
And Windows 11 looking better than macOS? Some of the day I have to use it for work and it's a crack house of an operating system. Upsells everywhere, advertising and privacy hellhole stuffed crapfest. On top of that it is extremely unreliable. Literally has gone back to windows 98 levels of problems.
Interesting, I use Windows 10 (I remote into a virtual desktop and servers from there) all day for work, as well as Windows 11 Pro for my home systems and I have never ran into the issues you do. Although, the first thing I do is run debloater software.
This used to be a big point of favor on the Mac side of things (and yes, I agree it is still a BSD system), but now with the announcement that they are going with AI as well, I think it will be up to the user to have proper system firewalls, Secure DNS, and other privacy tools on all systems where a corporation runs the OS. Mac included.
So, I can either fix the devil I know and is kind of transparent about how they are trying to violate privacy in the name of copilot, or the super-secretive one that doesn't let me know how exactly they are violating my privacy--especially with generative AI.
I might change my mind when this all comes out later this year and Apple decides to let us know exactly how it is going to work privacy-wise, but it isn't like I can disable it if I don't like it. That isn't the Apple way.
And as far as reliability, what vendor are you getting your PCs from? I haven't had an issue with really any of my PCs in like a decade? Seriously, it's been a decade since Windows had even a blue screen for me. Same with Mac, actually.
It's all a matter of personal perception and preference, though how we express that often turns it into perhaps more polarized statements of 'fact'. In reality, there's not been much to really choose between macOS and Windows for a long time now in terms of operability, and decreasingly even in appearance.
When I switch between my Mac and Windows boxes (several times each day), I don't find any great difference between them, so to me the argument that one is notably superior to the other is dubious. My personal preference is for the Mac however, almost entirely because with Apple's tight control over hardware, OS and much of the software, the user experience to me is just a bit smoother and more polished. However, that's rather tempered by the fact that some of Apple's software is amongst the most egregious crap on the market.
I would generally agree, but it's been waning substantially
Getting weird little bugs and niggles here and there on macOS more and more and it's taking the shine off.
I experienced the "black screen no screensaver" bug -- figured it was related to my 2015 15" being on OCLP.
Nope! Current M mac users report it endlessly - it's just Sonoma being a bug fest
Today I started getting "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd" issues on the same machine.
Dig into it and, alas!, it's a problem for fully up to date brand new M series Macs too!
Also, I use MenuBar hiding ... that shows correctly when I move the cursor to the top.. oh...about 1/2 the time?
Totally maddening..
Apple are shipping some buggy arse garbage software these days.
It's what infuriates me about "the car" and "the Scuba Mask" and other distractions
They've taken their eye WAY off the ball of simply shipping pure quality, up and down the stack.
It's a bit late for me to say we're getting off topic, but yeah, the 'it just works' stopped being true quite a while back, and now it's 'as long as you don't mind too much, and use your system exactly as we suggest, it mostly works, most of the time'.
But, let us not forget the holly mess of updates Windows suffers from time to time, and the large doses of poorly engineered clutter that can make the user experience difficult until a cleanup and debloat is done. And even then, the bugs and issues which can take months or years to fix. Plus, the security/threat landscape is worse (though somewhat improved) and the more perverse personal data policies.
The problem is, I think, that Apple and Microsoft are trying to make the OS into something far more complex than it really needs to be. The more they bundle into it, the more likely it is for something almost tangential to the use of the system to cause it to fall over because of a single piece of marginal code. When they engineer these 'features' in, they add failure points. In the old days (sigh), all these extras were discrete applications, which at least in macOS, ran on the surface so couldn't really cause instabilities.
Booting up my DOS machine now. It's the only sane thing to do!
Your thoughts were much appreciated, thanks for the time!Sure seems that way
Agree about off topic - I take my share of blame
Cheers
Interesting, I use Windows 10 (I remote into a virtual desktop and servers from there) all day for work, as well as Windows 11 Pro for my home systems and I have never ran into the issues you do. Although, the first thing I do is run debloater software.
This used to be a big point of favor on the Mac side of things (and yes, I agree it is still a BSD system), but now with the announcement that they are going with AI as well, I think it will be up to the user to have proper system firewalls, Secure DNS, and other privacy tools on all systems where a corporation runs the OS. Mac included.
So, I can either fix the devil I know and is kind of transparent about how they are trying to violate privacy in the name of copilot, or the super-secretive one that doesn't let me know how exactly they are violating my privacy--especially with generative AI.
I might change my mind when this all comes out later this year and Apple decides to let us know exactly how it is going to work privacy-wise, but it isn't like I can disable it if I don't like it. That isn't the Apple way.
And as far as reliability, what vendor are you getting your PCs from? I haven't had an issue with really any of my PCs in like a decade? Seriously, it's been a decade since Windows had even a blue screen for me. Same with Mac, actually.
I agree with your perspective on the AI stuff to some degree but there are other concerns I have there. They are well discussed on other threads so I'm not going down that route. The principal objections are power usage, environmental issues, social issues and the fact that it's just hallucinating garbage that looks and sounds feasible without any contextual understanding or intelligence really. To quote Claud Shannon, they only called it Artificial Intelligence because they kept getting automata papers sent to them incorrectly and needed some funding. There is literally no intelligence in AI.
But anyway the point with Windows is that the amount of egress data is horrific compared to macOS. There was a day when firewalls were to keep things out not in. Apple still haven't managed that level of carnage yet.
With respect to hardware reliability, the major concern is Dell laptops which are quite frankly awful steaming turds. They have a median lifespan in our org of about 18 months. Also their TB docks last median 9-12 months. We have so much dead stuff that we can plot statistical distributions of the failures! But our parent company only wants to deal with Dell so we're stuck with them.
On software reliability, I have found many critical bugs in windows over the last 20 years. I held a case open on MS Connect for 9 years once. I had someone at MSFT phone me up pleading if they can close it. NOPE. Then they just deleted everything in Connect and fired their QAs and it got 10x worse. What we have now is not much better. I have perpetual problems with InTune, display drivers, docks, audio crapping out, mic/headset plug unplug stuff. I mean if I unplug the dock from my Dell, sometimes it actually blue screens due to the thunderbolt driver. And it's not specific to hardware. I built my own desktop machine, a fairly hefty custom 14900K + 64Gb + RTX 4070, and the problems are the same as a **** Dell.
I just don't get those problems on the mac. Everything just works!
You and I are having very different Mac & Windows experiences of late it would seem
That is so weird, I have literally had multiple Dells and HPs for work without any issue. I even had a Dell G17 RTX 2060 that lasted like 4 years before kicking the bucket? I have had multiple Surface Pros - including a Surface Pro 2017 my wife still uses for client presentations, and my 9 works fine.
I have built machines (so many) over the last 20 years to make multiple hackintoshes and they are all still working. Currently my daughter is using a 3060Ti and Ryzen beast I got from iBuyPower, my wife is using a similar machine (but with a 3050), and I have the aforementioned Acer Predator Helios. All cost less than equivalent Macs. All rock solid.
Of course, all of my Macs (which is far fewer - mainly an M1 MBP 13" and was like a 2015 MBP 15" before that...) have all been rock solid too.
What is this "computor" you talk about? A new android phone?
Most did their hews and haws when Apple released the m1. No-one is impressed by no aftermarket upgrade options… I always bought the highest end processor Mac Pro, and added a gfx card and ram plus storage afterwards. Lower initial buy-in price. Now it is all with Apple tax included up-front...
The supposed advantage and reasoning is that unified memory acts as vram aswell. Which while true, doesn’t take away from the fact that the Apple tax is non-negotiable.
IF Apple atleast allowed to upgrade the whole cpu/gpu/ram package, say a M3 16gb ram to a M3 Pro 32gb ram, it would be better then nothing… Alas no such luck.
Most did their hews and haws when Apple released the m1. No-one is impressed by no aftermarket upgrade options… I always bought the highest end processor Mac Pro, and added a gfx card and ram plus storage afterwards. Lower initial buy-in price. Now it is all with Apple tax included up-front...
The supposed advantage and reasoning is that unified memory acts as vram aswell. Which while true, doesn’t take away from the fact that the Apple tax is non-negotiable.
IF Apple atleast allowed to upgrade the whole cpu/gpu/ram package, say a M3 16gb ram to a M3 Pro 32gb ram, it would be better then nothing… Alas no such luck.
I find it intriguing when HP and Dell machines are lumped together. My experience was their reliability was vastly different
Before I retired, I experienced multiple updates (at work) of both laptops and desktop workstations. The periodic updates always alternated between Dell and HP. There was a distinct difference between the quality of the HP and Dell machines, which was well known by the entire engineering staff. The Dell machines were clearly superior and significantly more reliable. It was a rare occurrence for a HP machine to last more than 2 years without some sort of hardware failure, particularly the laptops. Conversely, the Dell machines were built like tanks.
If they weren't trying to use component upgrades for big profit bumps, they'd set 16/32/64 RAM standards across lines as it made sense, soldered down, and then use socketed NVMe across the board.
That would be the best of both worlds.
On the board RAM gives tangible benefits, or so I'm told
Non-socketed SSD/NVMe does not -- in fact there are socketed NVMe solutions that ship now that are faster than Apple SSDs.