Really naive question but to mainstream consumer, is there a difference between Mac and Windows laptop?

[bill-p]

Is the main reason to get a Mac for mainstream consumers due to the integration of macOS and iOS? I do miss being able to answer a FaceTime call on my Mac and answering an iMessage directly on the Mac without picking up my phone.

So it's beyond that and you won't be able to just ignore the OS difference. Here are a few:

1. Software updates are not forced down your throat. You will not wake up one day to find your laptop trying to spend the next 2 hours updating to the latest software like you do on Windows. MacOS can be told to ignore updates altogether for a while, so the computer is always ready for you to use.

2. If you ignore the above, then on Windows, your display brightness can differ greatly between plugged in and unplugged due to power plans. There's no such thing on MacOS.

3. If I'm watching a fullscreen movie on my Mac, and someone asks me to do something very quickly on the computer, I can simply pause, swipe trackpad to go back to desktop, and then do that thing. Once done, I can go right back to the movie without having to change anything else. No such seamless workflow in Windows. Also picture-in-picture video mode doesn't work everywhere in Windows but it's standard on MacOS. As in I can right click any random video on any site, select picture in picture with it and have it displayed in a small window alongside my work window. Very useful when I'm trying to follow a tutorial.

4. If I switch audio hardware (for instance... from my MacBook speakers to my external bluetooth device), this works pretty much everywhere in MacOS, but it doesn't work with all apps in Windows depending on your app settings. In general, you can connect your Windows laptop to a TV and you may still have to fiddle with audio settings to get everything to work seamlessly and properly.

5. My clamshell MacBook can be plugged directly into power and an HDMI display/TV, then if I tap on a key or click the mouse, the device comes on, connects and just works. This does not work with all Windows devices and requires certain settings in BIOS that only comes with certain pro devices, but it's just a standard feature in MacOS.

6. In fact, even having the laptop open and everything, connecting an external display doesn't work all the time. You have to go into display settings, adjust settings for that external display (or for those external displays) the first time a connection is established before the display comes on. Connecting an external display to Mac works very different: it'll mirror the internal display and the external one by default on the first connection without any change in settings.

7. Try to add a network printer to Windows. Not seamless. Adding network printer on Mac? Just go to the menu, select add printer, wait for printer to appear, select it, done.

8. Beyond this, Mac-supported peripherals in general just... work. You should already have the right drivers for them. Just connect and boom, they're there. Scanning wirelessly? Go to Preview app, select File menu, the recognized scanners are already there. Just select one and follow the prompt to scan. Scanning on Windows? You better have a dedicated app for that, plus corresponding drivers.

Okay, so at this point, you can say I just can't stand Windows. Fair.

But beyond that... the base MacBooks are now fanless and in general silent compared to most Windows laptop offerings. Ignoring battery life and such, the base MacBooks make basically no noise. And couple with some of the more seamless things mentioned above, the experience of using a MacBook now in 2023 is: you just open it up, set it up, and use it. You don't worry about drivers. You don't worry about battery life. You don't worry about trying to "make it work" a certain way. For the most part, it just works for most of the basic tasks. And then anything more advanced, there are apps and such to support those use cases.

In general, the OS may not matter much but it's entirely possible to run Windows alongside MacOS now in a virtual machine, but the opposite is technically not true. If I need to do anything in Windows, I still can with MacOS, while vice versa is not entirely possible. x86 or not. So to me, a MacBook is beyond seamless, it's basically just a superset of Windows now. If I need Windows, I just spin up a virtual machine and use it like that. There's no loss of functionality even aside from maybe... touch screen? But I can just wirelessly connect my iPad as an external display in a pinch. There's no such thing for Windows that you can set up in the blink of an eye.

 

[xraydoc]

I love the design of Macs and used them for the past 10 years. For work, I was forced to get a Windows 11 laptop so I ended up getting a 17" LG Gram. When it comes to personal use, I mainly use my laptop for browsing (Chrome), Netflix (also on Chrome), and "errands" such as paying the bills online and answering emails (again on Chrome). The same holds true for a lot of friends and family members.

Putting aside the beauty of macOS, once you open Chrome, is there really any difference between a Mac and a Windows laptop? I mean one can say how much they can't stand Windows, but I don't find it very different to click on the Chrome app on the Dock or clicking on it in the Windows Start menu. Once Chrome is opened and you're watching Netflix or browsing the web, I find the OS pretty irrelevant.

Is the main reason to get a Mac for mainstream consumers due to the integration of macOS and iOS? I do miss being able to answer a FaceTime call on my Mac and answering an iMessage directly on the Mac without picking up my phone.

If that's all you're doing, may as well get a Chromebook.

Web browsers do make the OS somewhat irrelevant, though that's actually what they're supposed to do.

It's the non-web everything else that's the difference. If you don't do anything else, then a Chromebook is probably good enough. However, there are integrations between macOS and your iPhone, iPad, etc., that make things operate seamlessly. Their degree of importance is entirely up to you.

 

[Longplays]

Speaking of alternative laptops be aware that non-Mac ARM laptops will be introduced near the end of this year.

Qualcomm Oryon chip specs to be unveiled at Snapdragon Summit 2023

Qualcomm has high expectations for its upcoming Oryon processors.

www.windowscentral.com

These ARM laptops are from ex-Apple engineers.

Let us hope that these can eat into x86 laptop's lunch.

 

[B S Magnet]

It continues to boggle my mind how anyone can put up with using Windows.

I feel similarly about every build of macOS since the introduction of Big Sur.

 

[redheeler]

There is a difference, although I am saying this purely out of my personal experience:

1. Display: Even on the lowest spec Mac I get a nice display (at least after 2012). I don't even have the option to go for a display that sucks. On the PC world they may include a display that makes my eyes bleed.
2. Font rendering: Mac OS X 10.6 has better font rendering than Windows 11, especially non-Latin characters. This surely has an impact on the browsers.
3. Scaling: In high resolution displays, the scaling on Windows today is no better than OS X Lion, which was released 12 years ago. 81/82 apps scale beautifully on my Mac without any GUI issue. The only one has a scaling problem is a GNU free software. I don't want to be harsh on open source software.
4. Backup: Time Machine not only backs up my data, but also my settings, my apps, and the settings of my apps, and more. I still don't see people discussing a go-to back up solution from Microsoft. By the way, Windows screws up my boot order/disk partition many times to the extend I have to physically, temporarily remove some drives during reinstall.
5. Crashes: On Mac I still get (almost) everything back after a force reboot.
6. Battery: it's just longer
7. Stickers: Though this is not a Windows problem. They are ugly and they sometimes have bigger stickers than the brand logo.
8. Trackpad: Apple really did a good job extending my hands. It's like my brain is directly connected to the Mac.
9. UI and Animations: They are mathematically beautiful, especially the curvature continuity.
10. OS update: Well I don't see memes mocking macOS forced updates.
11. UNIX foundation: very handy for my job

I believe these reasons justify my decision to purchase a Mac, despite the sky high price of RAM, SSD, out of warranty service, and the below par repairability, and software bugs in recent years.

I'd never use Windows as a primary OS because of the bad scaling, bad font rendering, forced updates, borderline spyware practices, and non UNIX/UNIX-like experience. Linux is the only worthy MacOS competitor for me. But not for a mainstream user – it's a huge shame that Linux never managed to achieve mainstream appeal.

 

[bobcomer]

deleted, this has gotten way of topic.

 

[bobcomer]

deleted, this has gotten way of topic.

 

[Serqetry]

I feel similarly about every build of macOS since the introduction of Big Sur.

Hmmm. I didn't like MacOS from Yosemite through High Sierra thanks to Jony Ive being out of his lane. Things started to improve starting with Mojave but I think Big Sur and Monterey were great. Ventura is a disaster between all the bugs and the horrific System "Settings". Doesn't look like we're ever going to get System Prefs back unfortunately, so at this point I'm just hoping Sonoma has less bugs.

 

[arcite]

Build quality, strength of global warranty and long life product support.

 

[B S Magnet]

Hmmm. I didn't like MacOS from Yosemite through High Sierra thanks to Jony Ive being out of his lane. Things started to improve starting with Mojave but I think Big Sur and Monterey were great. Ventura is a disaster between all the bugs and the horrific System "Settings". Doesn't look like we're ever going to get System Prefs back unfortunately, so at this point I'm just hoping Sonoma has less bugs.

I tolerate(d) Sierra and High Sierra (I skipped past Yosemite and El Capitan) by adding the macOSLucidaGrande re-skin utility, but the loss of elements I valued in Snow Leopard (a high water mark for Mac’s UI) can’t be masked entirely by that fix. Ive never should have been let near the UI/UX team (his pilfering Dieter Rams was more than enough).

Even so, the sheer flattening of UI buttons and elements in Finder, the loss of context in some of those UI buttons, and elsewhere throughout the WindowServer desktop environment, from Big Sur, onward (coupled with Mac’s move toward treating the menubar as a suggestion, rather than the fundamental anchor of what makes a Mac a Mac), has not sat well with me.

And yes, as you note, the loss of System Prefs in exchange for a very Windows-like Settings, along with that vexatious window title bar “re-imagining”, and the slow but steady increase in subtle inconsistencies and even sloppiness in the UI (which is easier to point to in action than it can be to describe succinctly) are why I’m sort of done with any expectation that the high standard of “finishedness” and adherence to consistency which founded the evolution of System 6 through (somewhere between) Snow Leopard (and either of Mavericks or Mojave) is going to be reined back in anytime soon, if ever again.

I would gladly return to pay for major release updates knowing that doing so would assure greater care toward consistency and UI adherence than what I’ve seen erode away gently since, well, Yosemite. I would gladly pay for a major version which is given the time it needs to mature fully before the next major version is rolled out, even if that takes longer than exactly 12 months. I would also gladly pay for a lot less telemetry, but I recognize how Apple’s business model has changed to re-imagine the customer as a quasi-product whilst giving shareholders the extreme predictability of a 12-month calendar cycle of expectation (i.e., WWDC, Macworld, etc.).

Nothing good lasts forever, I reckon.

 

[Serqetry]

I tolerate(d) Sierra and High Sierra (I skipped past Yosemite and El Capitan) by adding the macOSLucidaGrande re-skin utility, but the loss of elements I valued in Snow Leopard (a high water mark for Mac’s UI) can’t be masked entirely by that fix. Ive never should have been let near the UI/UX team (his pilfering Dieter Rams was more than enough).

Even so, the sheer flattening of UI buttons and elements in Finder, the loss of context in some of those UI buttons, and elsewhere throughout the WindowServer desktop environment, from Big Sur, onward (coupled with Mac’s move toward treating the menubar as a suggestion, rather than the fundamental anchor of what makes a Mac a Mac), has not sat well with me.

Yosemite was just hideous. I can't fully explain what was wrong with it, but I just couldn't stand to look at it after the beauty of Mavericks. There was almost no contrast in anything, turning on the Accessibility options helped but it also made it look more like old System 7 on classic Macs. Between that and audio problems with Logic Pro... I decided to just to remove myself from the modern MacOS cycle and go all the way back to Snow Leopard. As it got harder to run software I jumped back up to Mavericks, the last good looking MacOS that seemed to run Logic Pro 9 without many issues.

Mojave was a huge improvement because it brought back contrast with dark mode, albeit in a different way than properly defined buttons. Dark mode support was still limited and got much better with Catalina and later. At this point I'm used to the way Monterey and Ventura are flattened, but I definitely wish we could go back to a non-flat UI but at least it does look good again for what it is... and honestly even Mavericks is a bit unpleasant to look at by comparison due to the lack of dark mode, despite having beautiful buttons and icons.

Firing Scott Forstall and giving Jony Ive control over anything more than the industrial design of the physical machines was the biggest mistake Apple has ever made... and even that was a mistake because he lost his mind, taking away every port and giving us things like the butterfly keyboard. I'm so glad he's not a problem anymore, but he sure did a lot of damage.

 

[ChrisA]

I just went through this with a few very casual users who ended up buying Macs. Here is what they were thinking...

• The #1 one thing they see and understand is the price.
• Because of the above, they noticed Chromebooks.
• They don't know the difference between an OS and a web browser. Yes this is true. They literally can't see the boundary between macOS and the Amazon website. Some things are happening on the web server, some in the browser and some in the local OS. They don't know where these boundaries are.
• Because of the above, explaining how the OS is different is impossible.
• What won them over was to show how the Mac is tightly integrated with their iPhone. Photos, messages and passwords and so on stored on one device are accessible on the other. And now with M1 and M2 even some iPhone apps run on the computer. The integration is good and you don't have this with a Windows PC.

That said, price is still the #1 factor in making the decision for most people.

For others, they remember that it took them ten years to learn how to use MS Windows, and they fear it will take them ten years to learn to use Mac OS. It is hard to explain that, no, the learning curve is VERY fast.

 

[B S Magnet]

Firing Scott Forstall and giving Jony Ive control over anything more than the industrial design of the physical machines was the biggest mistake Apple has ever made... and even that was a mistake because he lost his mind, taking away every port and giving us things like the butterfly keyboard. I'm so glad he's not a problem anymore, but he sure did a lot of damage.

Along the same lines as Ive being handed the keys to UI, I have lamented the entire tenure of Craig Federighi being handed the keys to macOS development after Bertrand Serlet was relieved.

 

[Icelus]

Didn't even know that was a thing, is that there new line-up?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/intel-now-has-ultra-chips.2393116/

 

[B S Magnet]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/intel-now-has-ultra-chips.2393116/

Yah. Intel Core Ultras started appearing on test boxes in late April and news hit on May 1st.