Pool: How many customers will loose Apple because M1 migration

[Jorbanead]

Seeing ads on Facebook marketplace for people trading their Macbook M1 for Windows laptop.

Seeing ads on Facebook marketplace for people trading their pc for a Mac. I can state useless observations too. Wasn’t that a fun exchange?

Apple just sold more macs than ever over this last year, and guess what macs sold the most? Really sounds like people hate these things…

 

[iHorseHead]

Mac or PC I wouldn't have bought a new Intel computer. That's why I went for a PC (Amd) before I switched back to Mac

 

[TopherMan12]

Unless you rely on something like Visual Studio heavily you should be OK without Windows to do programming, like lots of other developers.

Even then it depends on what type of development you are doing. I'm a .Net developer and I just recently started checking out Xamarin with Visual Studio for Mac, but I could use this M1 Macbook for 100% of my .Net Core work. The only thing it is lacking that I need is SQL Server tools, but I can use Azure Data Tools (also on Mac) for that.

 

[Rashy]

Ever since the 2016 MBP I had considered switching back to Windows. The XPS 9500 with its new design and 16:10 had became super tempting. In addition, Apple tends to screw up standards like OpenGL/CL which de-facto ruined my Blender 3D experience (no more GPU-rendering possible), followed by Catalina with audieu-32bit and the M1 with no more x86 and Bootcamp support. I was on the verge of jumping the golden cage boat.

However... I still love the overall ecosystem, the hardware quality, my iPad Pro and now the new iPhone 12 mini. Windows 10 still kinda sucks, looks ugly, and I am not much gaming anyways. Then came more and more reports about how easily the M1 smoked the competition (without any heat or smoke, ironically) and now I am quite hyped for the new 14"/16" MacBook Pros with the return of useful ports, omission of the touchbar and much more powerful M1X/M2 chips. Sounds perfect for my daily tasks, browsing, Photoshop, Serato DJ and Blender, which will also get M1 support with 3.0 just like the overall compatibility situation has significantly improved since November.

So they will lose some, but gain many more. Recent sell statistics prove a massive gain. People are fed up with Intel and their embarrassing Apple-basing ads just boost their bad reputation.

 

[snorkelman]

Doesn't even need to tempt new converts to OSX to outweight those losses

Most folks still running a 4/5/6 year old mac have had very little reason to move on from what they already had these last few years - given most performance gains have been incremental and the build quality (certain items aside) has overall been pretty good.

that's a whole lot of pent up potential sales that the ARM based boxes can make a decent fist of finally unleashing, versus the inertia that yet another year of snory old incremental x86 chip upgrades would have had no chance to break.

 

[MevetS]

Is not a myth. Far from that. You can find many articles online about it (like this one: Why programmers think Mac OS X is the best operating system to use - Macworld UK), but I can also see it in my own environment: most of my colleagues migrated to Apple at some point in the last years, and this is far from an isolated "tendency". You can find .NET, VFP or SQL Server programmers using Macs in every forum out there.

We are more than you think... we are Legion

A nice article. But until I see actual statistics showing that “A LOT” of users switched to Mac because thecould run Windows it is just a myth.

There my have been ‘a lot’ of programmers that switched, although again I’d like statistics not anecdotes, but programmers are just a part of the user base.

I expect most people buying an Intel Mac cared little if at all about running Windows.

 

[leman]

Is not a myth. Far from that. You can find many articles online about it (like this one: Why programmers think Mac OS X is the best operating system to use - Macworld UK), but I can also see it in my own environment: most of my colleagues migrated to Apple at some point in the last years, and this is far from an isolated "tendency". You can find .NET, VFP or SQL Server programmers using Macs in every forum out there.

We are more than you think... we are Legion

Macs are popular system for developers for mainly the following reasons: they are Unix, they offer a sane desktop environment (unlike Linux) and they offer good value for money in their respective market segment. Most of these developers are folks who do web applications and benefit from all the Unix-compatible infrastructure out there. Compatibility with Windows is certainly important, but it's not like it's going away.

 

[TopherMan12]

IMHO, getting a Mac just to do Windows apps development doesn’t make economic sense. I would think most developers getting Mac(s) are mainly targeting macOS and/or iOS (which is probably the majority) apps.

Visual Studio allows devs to write apps for Mac, iOS, Android, as well as .Net web apps. Any dev can do all of that on Visual Studio for Mac without Windows.

 

[leman]

Visual Studio allows devs to write apps for Mac, iOS, Android, as well as .Net web apps. Any dev can do all of that on Visual Studio for Mac without Windows.

You still need Windows for testing. I don't think Macs make much sense for Windows-only development. They make a lot of sense for cross-platform development however.

P.S. Of course, .Net 6 (previews already available) will have native support for Apple Silicon.

 

[TopherMan12]

You still need Windows for testing. I don't think Macs make much sense for Windows-only development. They make a lot of sense for cross-platform development however.

P.S. Of course, .Net 6 will have native support for Apple Silicon.

Sure.....you need Windows for testing Windows apps. but I was pointing out that VS isn't just for Windows. I agree that if you are developing entirely for apps to run on Windows then you might as well develop on Windows.

 

[spiderman0616]

Typical macrumors poster: “i will never buy another mac because [whatever perceived slight]!“ and ”This new mac sucks because it will be outdate because of [perceived reason] in 5 years, and I always keep my macs for at least 10!”

I’m sure Apple is really crying losing these folks as customers.

There was a story on here the other day about some most likely bogus report from Nikkei about AirPods sales going way down. I couldn't believe how many posters seemed to correlate this with their own personal issues with AirPods. "I don't like AirPods because ______ -- no wonder they're failing!"

No regard for the fact that a) All products get an inventory draw down after a holiday, b) all products slow down in sales eventually, and c) this report was from Nikkei, who is infamous for usually being wrong about Apple. Best to come to these forums for the entertainment, but that's about as far as it should go. There are a lot of commenters here that don't even like Apple.

 

[JMacHack]

How many customers will jump ship I can’t say, but judging by sales I’d say the Mac will be fine. I think we live in a different world now where being able to run Windows on a Mac is less important than when the Intel transition happened.

Likewise, being able to run ARM Linux is still a possibility, so that’s no loss.

 

[Hastings101]

Bootcamp’s popularity was before everything became so browser centric. Now so long as Chrome is available on macOS almost everything the average user wants to do can be accomplished on a Mac.

Sucks for gamers or those with specific Windows software needs, but obviously those groups aren’t big enough to hurt Apple or they wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.

 

[Maconplasma]

Bootcamp’s popularity was before everything became so browser centric. Now so long as Chrome is available on macOS almost everything the average user wants to do can be accomplished on a Mac.

And why would Chrome be the "trump card" to do nearly everything an average user needs to accomplish on a Mac? Why wouldn't Safari work, especially since it uses all of Chrome's extensions? That's sounds odd.

 

[TopherMan12]

Bootcamp’s popularity was before everything became so browser centric. Now so long as Chrome is available on macOS almost everything the average user wants to do can be accomplished on a Mac.

Sucks for gamers or those with specific Windows software needs, but obviously those groups aren’t big enough to hurt Apple or they wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.

The web browser became the great equalizer to some extent when it comes to many applications. Google docs proved that. Another example, ironically, is Microsoft's use of Safari to launch their xCloud gaming service on iOS. The need for specific desktop applications may never go away, but I believe it is the exception rather than the norm. Neither the computing world or Microsoft's own business strategy revolves around Windows anymore.

 

[dandeco]

They probably won't lose a lot of customers, and they'll make up for it by gaining more people, especially hearing how these M1 Macs perform a lot better than their Intel predecessors. It's just like Apple's PowerPC-to-Intel transition of 2006; in both cases the technology changed and performance got a lot better.

 

[thedocbwarren]

I will admit to being someone who switched to mac because of the safety blanket of being able to run windows (which I did, both via parallels and bootcamp, for maybe 3 months). I was very comfortable with Unix (I used many flavors at work for a long time), so from the beginning of OS X I was interested, but x86 made me pull the trigger.

Which is ironic, since I actually was the floating point designer for the PowerPC x704, designed for Apple, and had a Mac Power 6xxx or something sitting in my garage, unused, from when Exponential went under.

It's funny I was actually sad they switched to Intel, but then I was an IBM employee that just loved POWER. I never cared a whole lot for x86 on Mac. I think I might have bootcamped here and there for a game or two but I got sick of it and used a console. Now I use a VM on the M1. Love the new architecture!

 

[Tagbert]

IMHO, getting a Mac just to do Windows apps development doesn’t make economic sense. I would think most developers getting Mac(s) are mainly targeting macOS and/or iOS (which is probably the majority) apps.

Or server code.

Our server stack runs on Windows VMs. Most of the devs use MacBook Pros for their dev boxes but run some of the code in a local windows VM. I'm not sure what they'll do when these MBPs are ready to retire.

I was using a Windows VM to run Visio and if I was still doing those tasks, that would be a deal breaker. Yes, there are other diagramming apps, but none of them are useful when you have a legacy library of Visio diagrams.

At home, I moved from a MBP to an M1 Air and love it. I never installed the Parallels VM that I only ran on rare occasions. I have more flexibility there.

 

[ADGrant]

Even then it depends on what type of development you are doing. I'm a .Net developer and I just recently started checking out Xamarin with Visual Studio for Mac, but I could use this M1 Macbook for 100% of my .Net Core work. The only thing it is lacking that I need is SQL Server tools, but I can use Azure Data Tools (also on Mac) for that.

You should check out Rider from Jetbrains. Much nicer than Visual Studio for Mac or (IMHO) Visual Studio for Windows. All the Resharper technology is built in, the Git integration is better than any other IDE I have used and it even comes with a great Database tools which support all the major database servers, SQL Server, Oracle, SQL Lite and even MongoDB.

BTW You probably already know this but native Apple Silicon support for .NET Core will be released with .NET Core 6.

 

[ADGrant]

IMHO, getting a Mac just to do Windows apps development doesn’t make economic sense. I would think most developers getting Mac(s) are mainly targeting macOS and/or iOS (which is probably the majority) apps.

Well developers targeting macOS or iOS have to use a Mac of course but developers targeting Android, the Web or Linux often prefer Macs. If you are targeting Java or .NET Core on Linux, the experience will be fairly seamless. Scripting languages like Python or Ruby will also offer a fairly seamless experience. C++ will be a little harder, you will have to build on Linux at some point.

Developers targeting one of the many Windows desktop APIs or a legacy web framework (i.e. one not supported by .NET Core) do still need Windows of course.

 

[TopherMan12]

You should check out Rider from Jetbrains. Much nicer than Visual Studio for Mac or (IMHO) Visual Studio for Windows. All the Resharper technology is built in, the Git integration is better than any other IDE I have used and it even comes with a great Database tools which support all the major database servers, SQL Server, Oracle, SQL Lite and even MongoDB.

BTW You probably already know this but native Apple Silicon support for .NET Core will be released with .NET Core 6.

I've used PHPStorm a good bit so I am familiar with Jetbrains and their awesome products. My team is pretty much entrenched with Visual Studio Enterprise though. Visual Studio for Mac is good enough for me fooling around with other stuff though. Thanks for the recommendation though.

Yeah, I'm excited about the Apple Silicon support and .Net MAUI overall. Looks pretty slick.

 

[haralds]

It's old news that Apples earned a lot (A LOT) of new users when they made the transition from PowerPC to Intel, because the possibility of running Windows on Apple hardware, either via BootCamp or virtualization.

All those customers face now the situation where Apple may decide to stop building Intel-based computers in the near future to focus on their own chips... Do you think this situation may cause Apple to loose many of those customers that still need to run windows-based apps in their workflows?

Sales of M1 systems went up dramtatically.

 

[victor.espina]

Unless you rely on something like Visual Studio heavily you should be OK without Windows to do programming, like lots of other developers.

My daily workload consist of:

• Ionic/Cordova programming (done in MacOS itself)
• Java programming (done AndroidStudio for MacOS)
• SQL Server programming and support (done with SSMS in a virtualized Windows Server 2019)
• .NET WCF / Core programming (done with VS 2019 in Windows VM)
• VFP programming and support (done in the Windows VM)

So, as you can see, I heavily depend on Windows technologies that most probably won't fly on the x86 support of Windows ARM. I am every aware that since I don't code with XCode, I could perfectly use a normal PC with Windows to cover all my needs, but that is EXACTLY the point:

There are a LOT of programmers out there (like me) that migrated to Mac not because they HAD TO, but because they WANTED TO, in an attempt to improve their workflows with an mature and stable OS like MacOS, with the added plus that comes from using OTHER Apple products like iPhones or iWatchs, that work nicely with your Mac computer (and won't do it so nicely with a normal Windows PC).

When I migrated to Mac I did it because I wanted a computer that "just works" and let me do my job, instead of spending a lot of non-billable hours trying to keep Windows afloat. And that is EXACTLY what I've been enjoying for the last 14 years....

 

[victor.espina]

IMHO, getting a Mac just to do Windows apps development doesn’t make economic sense. I would think most developers getting Mac(s) are mainly targeting macOS and/or iOS (which is probably the majority) apps.

Not true at all. You are forgetting about the quality and durability of these machines. My MacMini has been in use for 6 years now and it works as perfectly and smoothly as the day one (with the exception of the wifi adapter), and it would probably keep workling perfectly for at least 3 o 4 years more. I've NEVER got that kind of life from ANY of the PCs I owned before I switched to Mac computers. Not by a long shot.

 

[victor.espina]

Over the many years I've used Macs, the only times I've had a full system crash was as a result of one of two things:
1. Bad RAM
2. Third part kext drivers.

Aside from the reliability issue with third party kexts, there are serious security implications.

Same experience here. The ONLY TIME I got a panic screen from MacOS was caused by a faulty KEXT. I can''t count how many BSOD I got during my time as PC user... even now, I got a BSOD from my VM windows from time to time