The market for people who REQUIRE Intel-based Macs is so tiny that it likely doesn't even show up on a list of Pros vs. Cons when they were originally making the decision to switch.
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Pool: How many customers will loose Apple because M1 migration
- Thread starter victor.espina
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With virtualization support from Parallels being available, this has become less of an issue.
People that want to do Bootcamp are out of luck, but running Windows on Intel Macs was always a bit of a compromise. Issues with unavailable to get use certain windows drivers, no Nvidia support, etc. If you really need to run Windows to its fullest, get a Windows system.
People that want to do Bootcamp are out of luck, but running Windows on Intel Macs was always a bit of a compromise. Issues with unavailable to get use certain windows drivers, no Nvidia support, etc. If you really need to run Windows to its fullest, get a Windows system.
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The reason I switched to Mac was because I could have both in one computer.
The ability to run Windows on my Macs was a bit of a draw when the Intel switch was happening, but I never bothered doing it for the simple reason that spending all that money on a Mac to run Windows on it seemed financially nonsensical.
I would rather buy a Mac to use it as a Mac, and a cheap Windows system for the few times that I might need it. Which is what I have done.
I realize there are some who value their dual-boot options, but my guess is these are a relatively small number of users, and is one reason Apple are taking their time in this transition. And that is beside the fact that users genuinely needing to dual boot or even run Windows exclusively on their Macs don't actually need to replace their present systems just because Apple are releasing new ones.
I would rather buy a Mac to use it as a Mac, and a cheap Windows system for the few times that I might need it. Which is what I have done.
I realize there are some who value their dual-boot options, but my guess is these are a relatively small number of users, and is one reason Apple are taking their time in this transition. And that is beside the fact that users genuinely needing to dual boot or even run Windows exclusively on their Macs don't actually need to replace their present systems just because Apple are releasing new ones.
Yes, this is 100% true.
Past 20 years, I work around 700+ users who have Macs and around 10% request Windows virtualization or Bootcamp install & support.
Most of them have not used Windows on their Macs as almost all programs have gone web based.
The only time I use Windows on my Mac is thru Microsoft Remote Desktop where I have connect to our many servers for users & groups AD access control.
this is especially true with the new AppleCare+ Forever option. I forsee "Apple Caring" for my iMac 2020 for the next 10-12 years unless it just cannot handle new software releases that I need. I was almost tempted to buy a 2019 Macbook Pro before the new ones come out for the same strategy..
I think Apple will lose hardly any customers over this and in fact I think they'll gain a ton more due to the improvements their own chips bring. The only people who care about bootcamp are the extremely small group of people who care about gaming on a Mac (get over it, Macs have always sucked for gaming, get a Windows PC or a console). While virtualizing Windows is useful, that is also a relatively small group plus there are alternatives these days (cloud VMs). For example, any business that has employees that need to run Windows supplies them with Windows machines in addition too or in place of a Mac. Yes, there are lots of Windows only apps used in various industries and the professionals who use them aren't bootcamping into Windows on a Mac; they're already using a Windows PC/laptop.
There's just not nearly as big of a reason to run Windows locally on a laptop anymore and I think it's funny that so many people on this forum think it's such a needed feature. It's really not anymore. So many apps are cloud based, cross compatible, etc. It's not like it was during the Intel transition.
I'm not saying that nobody needs to run Windows on a Mac. I'm sure there are people who would really benefit from it. However, that group of people is so small that Apple doesn't need to bother with them. It's more in their interest to make this kind of transition because the pros of moving to their own chips greatly outweighs the cons of loosing that small group of customers.
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I understand the reasoning behind wanting full x86 compatibility with Windows, that's an entirely valid concern and I'm not dismissing that. I personally use Boot Camp to play an occasional Windows game. However, it's apparently not a concern to Apple. According to sources with Apple Insider, "data gleaned from our relationships with service departments, approximately 2% of Macs brought in for servicing at Apple have Windows installed on Boot Camp."
Source Article
In a separate article, Apple Insider did a poll among their members and found that 35% of their readership often uses Boot Camp. So, hardcore Mac enthusiasts, as represented here on MacRumors, simply don't reflect the overall market. I think the split reactions to the interface changes made by Big Sur and the recently introduced M1 iMacs show a divide that is likely significantly less severe among average Apple customers, who just want a Mac for their daily computing needs.
Source Article
In a separate article, Apple Insider did a poll among their members and found that 35% of their readership often uses Boot Camp. So, hardcore Mac enthusiasts, as represented here on MacRumors, simply don't reflect the overall market. I think the split reactions to the interface changes made by Big Sur and the recently introduced M1 iMacs show a divide that is likely significantly less severe among average Apple customers, who just want a Mac for their daily computing needs.
People who say this make me fall down laughing.
Ok, say you didn’t switch. What computer would you buy, instead, that let you have both in one computer?
I think Apple's move was brilliant and served very well into the future trend with work from home or anywhere for that matter. Work From Home is not a fad, but will become more of the norm and people need a stable, but easy to use system with little downtime but high integration with iOS devices and so, it's a win win. I expected Apple to be selling more Macs into the future as they tightly integrate MacOS and iOS closer.
There was a need for Windows in the past in business and normal work related stuff, mainly for running specialized corporate programs and apps, but in today's world, pretty much all important apps like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Suite are agnostic. They run native which no longer necessitate having a real PC. So buying a real PC is really down to cost, flexibility and being expandable.
I got a modern PC now to tie me until I see a more settled landscape on Apple Silicon. I did that during the PPC transition where I got burned badly investing heavily in PPC while being assured by Mr. Jobs that they wouldn't abandon support. So today, I'm planning a wait and see approach.
Despite me being agnostic to whichever computing platform, I still like the Mac. Call me a sucker for Apple, but I really like its tight intuitive integration that I missed having with my PC.
If we want to go by anecdotes, from fellow Mac users I know, some are more annoyed with the changes in Big Sur than with Apple Silicon - notably, software incompatibilities due to dropping support for kexts. These changes apply to Intel Macs as well though, and it should be worked out eventually.
For me personally, I think that overall, the pros (cooler, quieter, much better battery life) outweigh the cons (not quite all my apps are universal yet). But at this point, I can't really justify replacing my current Mac.
For me personally, I think that overall, the pros (cooler, quieter, much better battery life) outweigh the cons (not quite all my apps are universal yet). But at this point, I can't really justify replacing my current Mac.
It's a myth that Apple always "just works"--no company makes perfect hardware or software. But in my own experience, it's NOT a myth that the entire Apple ecosystem, hardware and software, "just works" most of the time. More importantly, when I really need it to just work, it always does. Their handoff technology has certainly gone through its growing pains, but I was just thinking about this yesterday:
I wanted to go for a walk with the dog. I got him all ready, put my AirPods in, and left. Didn't grab my phone, didn't pair anything to anything else, just put my AirPods in and left knowing that my Apple Watch and AirPods would take over for my phone and would connect to each other and the cellular network automatically. Once we got started, I just said Hey Siri start an outdoor walk workout, my favorite walking playlist automatically came on, and I was all set. THAT is the beauty of when things just work.
My son just recently bought a gaming PC with Windows 10, and I helped him set it up. Big reminder of how not all computers just work the way they're supposed to.
You still can. The easiest way to make it work is with screen sharing. Keep a cheap Windows PC at home or work, and run it in a VNC window. To you, it's like having two machines in one.
Agreed. That is a big reason (and Apple probably knows it) what kept me with Apple and it's hard to walk away from such beauty of when things just work. I tried walking away during the PPC-Intel by using a PC then, but that only lasted a few years before I came back with a Mac Pro, a Mini and my MB Air plus the iPhone and Apple watch.
Well it might be to you, but to me that would be as useful as running a Windows machine via two 12 foot Mr Tickle arms that I've stuck thru my letter box, while simultaneously trying to view the desktop using the spyhole in my front door
Different strokes for different folks - for some of us ability to run a local windows instance (physical or virtualized) is the only way to get some parts of our job done In future that could mean lugging two machines around to cover all the options rather than just one.
I have my Intel Mac setup to dual boot into Windows 10. However, I rarely boot into Windows and I am definitely not interested in cluttering up my apartment with an additional Windows PC. I created the bootcamp partition on my Mac for a few reasons:
I may at some point want to run some Windows specific software development tools, some of which require the Windows Hypervisor to run (e.g. Docker for Windows).
I may at some point decided I want to run a game available only on Windows.
I use my machine to login to my work PC remotely. If my company messes up the MacOS remote access software I can switch to Windows.
I had a spare Windows 8 Pro license key so setting up Bootcamp was zero cost aside from the disk space.
After the Apple Silicon transition was announced, I did order a 2020 27" iMac. I figure this will meet my MacOS needs for at least 5 years. Bootcamp wasn't really a deciding factor for me, it is more of a nice to have than a must have. However, I did still want to be able to run x86 Linux VMs and Docker images. Also, its going to take a while before everything I use runs native on Apple Silicon.
In my experience, there are some situations where Macs frequently fail to "just work".
Major macOS upgrades often break things, and then I have to spend a day or two fixing them. My iMac, which is my primary work machine, is still running Catalina. I haven't upgraded to Big Sur, because I always have something better to do for the next couple of days.
Back when people still went to conferences, it was common to see a bunch of CS professors around a laptop, trying to figure out how to make it work with the projector. The laptop was almost always a Mac.
macOS has steadily become a worse platform for developing software that runs on Linux servers. First Apple replaced GCC with a version of Clang that does not support OpenMP natively. Then they moved system headers and libraries to a weird nonstandard location, and Clang fails to find them if it doesn't like the name of the symlink you use for calling it.
That said, I haven't really used Windows/Linux on desktop in 10+ years, except for limited purposes, so I don't know how that compares to the alternatives.
You can still install gcc on MacOS via brew or you can install something like Ubuntu Multipass and setup a build VM for gcc on Ubuntu. JetBrains CLion IDE can be setup to build and debug remotely using the gcc toolchain on the linux VM.
You can of course do something similar on Windows with Visual Studio and WSL 2 of course but MacOS at least lets you stay completely in Unix and avoid any Windows unpleasantness.
If you install GCC, you run into other issues. GCC uses the GNU standard library implementation by default, while the libraries you install from Homebrew link to the standard library used by Clang. And because I largely deal with research code, the build systems tend to be fragile if try to change any options from the default. (There are often exactly 0 people in the world who both understand what the code is trying to do and know good software engineering practices.)
Virtual machines are the easiest solution, but they increase memory requirements quite a bit. I hope some Apple Silicon Macs will have user-upgradeable memory, because otherwise future Macs will probably be too expensive for me.
They won't necessarily lose customers because everybody that thinks of Mac would look into MacOS and I would say people using Mac for Windows Operating systems are a few if anything Apple would continue support for Windows at the same time updating their own platform.
People who cannot comprehend a simple statement make me laugh.. tho I don't fall down, because Im not a toddler.
I was toting a Dell XPS, but there were a couple of Mac only programs that intrigued me. I saw that I could buy a Macbook Pro, get these programs and not lose anything on the Windows side, so I did that. What part of that is difficult for you to understand? Anyone who thinks you have to be either Windows or Mac, is a moron...
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I suspect it will be more like lose 1 gain 3, that type of thing. I know a few people who just can't live without Boot Camp, for good reason. So their choice is having a Mac and a PC or just using a PC so have chosen the latter.
Many people have complex workflows or reliance on things that won't work well using a remote connection or VM. Regardless, there are options for everyone.
Many people including me have signature disabled.
Many people have complex workflows or reliance on things that won't work well using a remote connection or VM. Regardless, there are options for everyone.
Many people including me have signature disabled.