Sorry, off topic here but... Ulysses is available without a subscription? If so, that would be news to me. I thought the last non-subscription version was ~5 years ago. I tried keeping it running as long as I could but it stopped working with some macOS update or other. I happen to like it a lot but it's also kind of a poster child for apps that are being regularly tweaked with little dumb non-features, IMO, simply to justify charing $40/year.
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Trying to Justify Getting a Mac Mini M4
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Beelinks and such have better RAM and SSD for the money, but the M4 has Thunderbolt and a better CPU, at least for the moment. Do you need raw CPU power for video editing? Or do you need memory and storage? That's your call.
For me, M1 class CPUs (15000 or so on the Passmark benchmark) and 16 GB RAM are entirely adequate. My desktop has 1.5 GB storage though, and upgrading to 2 TB on a Mac mini is cost prohibitive. Also I would be short of USB ports, especially if I had to use an external drive.
Since you obviously enjoy performance, grab the M4 Pro mini. I am blown away with mine. I got the base 512 storage but use 4TB thunderbolt drive (thunderbolt 4 enclosure now, moving soon to thunderbolt 5 enjoying the same 7000MB/sec speeds as high performance internal drives) and for MUUUCH less.
I remember Snow Leopard fondly as well. I ran screaming to Mac after a few too many nightmarish years in Vista, and Leopard was my first, but Snow Leopard ran rock stable with minimal system overhead. I learned Logic and Final Cut in those days.
Depending on what you do, you may really get some mileage out of a premium Mac. I've spent 38 hours playing death stranding and rekindled my casual gaming fancy, too, in maxed out 4K. In a tiny machine that uses a small fraction of the power used for heat generation by intel machines... You might really like it on this side. ;-)
I remember Snow Leopard fondly as well. I ran screaming to Mac after a few too many nightmarish years in Vista, and Leopard was my first, but Snow Leopard ran rock stable with minimal system overhead. I learned Logic and Final Cut in those days.
Depending on what you do, you may really get some mileage out of a premium Mac. I've spent 38 hours playing death stranding and rekindled my casual gaming fancy, too, in maxed out 4K. In a tiny machine that uses a small fraction of the power used for heat generation by intel machines... You might really like it on this side. ;-)
YouTube is pushing m4 Mac mini videos in my algorithm for some reason! Stay off YouTube!!!
Sure, Mac OS is laid out the same as it was all the way back to Tiger (the first version I used), and others could probably make comparisons back further. But under the hood, things have upgraded. Can you honestly tell me that Windows 10/11 don’t look like XP? 2000? 95? Just because the dock is substantially similar and many menus are the same doesn’t mean macOS is the same.
Aside from that though, you say a well equipped pc. But you didn’t describe what that means to you. Are you running a 14th gen i9 or a Threadripper? A RTX 4090 or the latest AMD? What amount of RAM? SSD or HDD? If you said an 8th gen i9, 16GB, and a GTX 1060, then yeah, the Mac mini would feel substantially faster. But then you mention Creative Cloud but not your workload. Do you use After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Media Encoder? Or more photo-focus tools like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom?
Of course, the other problem is you came to an Apple forum asking to justify an Apple purchase. So in my eyes, if you’re here asking, you’re not looking to be dissuaded. You’re here for people who will tell you to buy it to do just that, and if that’s the case, then why are you waiting? If you only want the new and shiny object, wait a few months and see if you still feel the same. Save your money and continue using your PC. Apple has enough money; they won’t go bankrupt. Otherwise, if it’s just to get people to tell you to buy it, then let me be the next in line to say go buy one.
Why don’t you take a flash drive with a project to the Apple Store and try out the Creative Cloud apps on a demo unit? Without any information on your current setup and your project types, no one can give you any comparison.
Aside from that though, you say a well equipped pc. But you didn’t describe what that means to you. Are you running a 14th gen i9 or a Threadripper? A RTX 4090 or the latest AMD? What amount of RAM? SSD or HDD? If you said an 8th gen i9, 16GB, and a GTX 1060, then yeah, the Mac mini would feel substantially faster. But then you mention Creative Cloud but not your workload. Do you use After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Media Encoder? Or more photo-focus tools like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom?
Of course, the other problem is you came to an Apple forum asking to justify an Apple purchase. So in my eyes, if you’re here asking, you’re not looking to be dissuaded. You’re here for people who will tell you to buy it to do just that, and if that’s the case, then why are you waiting? If you only want the new and shiny object, wait a few months and see if you still feel the same. Save your money and continue using your PC. Apple has enough money; they won’t go bankrupt. Otherwise, if it’s just to get people to tell you to buy it, then let me be the next in line to say go buy one.
Why don’t you take a flash drive with a project to the Apple Store and try out the Creative Cloud apps on a demo unit? Without any information on your current setup and your project types, no one can give you any comparison.
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From reading your post, I think you've made your decision already. Not sure why you're asking any of us.
Would not recommend using a Mac on a TV for media streaming, a keyboard/mouse combo will always be needed and Apple TV 4K is the best experience for ease of use.
Personally, I went from a Mac mini (late 2018) to a Mac mini M4 and it was worth the upgrade. My former mini was excellent until about this year, then it really started to have some issues even with 32GB of RAM and an eGPU.
My Ryzen 7 build I only use for gaming, I don't trust Windows as my daily driver compared to macOS. Nor do I find Windows productive outside of my full-time job with a company that requires me to use it. I have two other PCs, but they run Ubuntu (testing for Plex streaming) and Bazzite (retro gaming box).
Would not recommend using a Mac on a TV for media streaming, a keyboard/mouse combo will always be needed and Apple TV 4K is the best experience for ease of use.
Personally, I went from a Mac mini (late 2018) to a Mac mini M4 and it was worth the upgrade. My former mini was excellent until about this year, then it really started to have some issues even with 32GB of RAM and an eGPU.
My Ryzen 7 build I only use for gaming, I don't trust Windows as my daily driver compared to macOS. Nor do I find Windows productive outside of my full-time job with a company that requires me to use it. I have two other PCs, but they run Ubuntu (testing for Plex streaming) and Bazzite (retro gaming box).
Watching this back and forth is rediculous. Yeah windows sucks. Microsoft breaks their own controller support and sends out updates that crash Ubisoft games among numerous other issues. Ahem Crowdstrike having access to the kernel anyone? So yeah Microsoft kinda sucks. But these are not daily issues or even month issues. Windows is built to run on a huge number of hardware configurations and bugs, crashes, and other quirks are bound to show up when so many external developers start getting involved (drivers). MacOS isn’t built for that level of compatibility and macOS’s kernel isn’t accessible by other software like windows’ is so yeah macOS runs better in practice. However, people have short memories and it’s obvious in this back annd forth that one side is either willfully ignoring or totally forgetting all the bugs and device bricking Apples updates have caused over the years.
I have a Mac and a PC. I prefer to use my Mac but more often than not it’s just streaming PC to the Mac display (Sunshine/Moonlight). Not because I prefer my pc but because Mac’s are ridiculously bad at gaming and giving a half hearted acknowledgment of that fact is laughable. It’s like saying Apple won’t brick any devices in 2025 with a software update. Back to my point, sure Apples made minor strides in the last few years to fix the gaming environment but Mac’s are niche and no one wants to make a native game for a different graphics api and a different architecture if they can help it. I use my pc for 3d modeling, gaming, video editing, video encoding, and other tasks and I rarely, if ever, experience an issue.
I’d recommend cjsuk upgrades from Windows ME or Vista because windows is hardly the garbage dump that ruined the world. Just like macOS is hardly the shining city on a hill that a lot of people here seem to believe it is. They both have their problems and a lot of them, it’s all personal preference. No point calling out one without calling out the other.
This is the same as saying:
“So I want to buy a BMW, but I'm not sure why and now I'm trying to justify it to myself.”
Or
“So I want to buy a drill press, but I'm not sure why and now I'm trying to justify it to myself.”
Or
…you get the picture.
We all WANT to buy things. Of course we do. All good advertising is an emotional appeal. All decisions are emotional decisions at their core. BUT, knowing theses facts means we need to step back and count to ten before buying anything.
If your rationalization is predicated on the idea that the user experience must be radically different than it was six years ago, you will be disappointed. Hope without proof is just dreaming.
Use your PC. When it can no longer run the software you need to run, consider your upgrade options anew.
Ah, that was the one in there that is subscription--which I why I waffle between that and Scrivener. Usually Scrivener wins--for the reasons you describe.
Old enterprise server isn’t a mini pc. Problem is intel, just like it was on Intel Macs with heat, throttling, and noise. I haven’t bought a Mac mini after 2009. The latest base model is great value, it made my raspberry pi setup look expensive.
I am someone in a similar situation, and I'll disagree here.
OGnerd here, back when you were leet getting an aBit BP6 and a couple Celeron 300as, a pencil and having a dual-core 450mhz personal system was close to have a super-computer.
Been neck-deep in the Win-Mac wars, building PC's, getting maximum bang for the buck, gaming, etc, etc.
Last decent system I built was a water-cooled AMD X6 Thuban. Since then I've been living of work laptops, with my current a 7 y.o. T460. Picked up a refurbed 4770 3.6ghz/16Gb desktop off NewEgg several years ago, but aside getting it up and running, its sat mostly while I used the laptop. Seems like my old Doom/Quake gaming addiction somehow died after almost 30 years...
Just decided to dump the desktop, the carefully curated(hoarded) cool knick-knackery boxes of stuff, and even Linux Mint for OS-X/MacOS.
Even having moved on from Windows ecosystem, Linux while emminently useable and fast, is a right PITA for high-DPI UX still. And, there are still a lot of pain points that seem to occur when you're not fiddling 24x7 trying to geek out an additional 1-2% improvement in this or that that really doesn't matter.
I know MacOS has its own set of warts, however even the Base M4MM is very close to a standard Ryzen 9xxx system I was contemplating building from Microcenter. Even the paltry 16Gb seems like it should easily handle all the actual no-prosumer work I want to use the computer for. I really believe its not only the ARM silicon vertical integration thats fantastic, but also Apple's total pwnage of the software stack and ecosystem that they've laser welded to that H/W that gives it stability and throughput.
So while I can't speak for the OP, there is definately a point in many techies lives where they finally outgrow the gamer lifestyle X86 breeds, and are few up with the Windows encroachment and en********ation of actual system use and realize Linux is the older, slightly 'slow' brother that MacOS has superceded.
I'm sure MacOS will disappoint me along the way, however at this time I highly doubt it'll approach the worries Windows or even Linux does.
I just want the tool to work without getting in my way wasting time.
If anyone else in X86 world is even thinking close to this way, its more than just a whim.
Its probably their subconscious finally getting through to them that they are wasting their time spinning their wheels instead of getting stuff done.
Its a 14 day, $500-600 refundable experiment one would be an idiot not to give a go.
As someone who just moved on from a fully functional dual boot Hackintosh (i7 8700 build), I can tell you that all tasks, even just OS snappiness, are dramatically Improved
And this is physically booting off the exact same NVMe stick
And this is physically booting off the exact same NVMe stick
I've downloaded a demo for Scrivener a couple times over the years, but the UI feels pretty crusty, and from what I've been able to find on their help documents, sync is very manual and clunky. I love Ulysses (and continue to pay for it) but I'm always on the lookout for a piece of writing software as well designed that I don't have to rent.
I think you need to read more. I spent a loooong time writing software on Windows. It is exactly the garbage dump I say it is. It's basically windows 3.1's win32 subsystem with 50 half finished layers over the top to try and re-invent the product, all now abandoned slapped onto a second attempt at VMS.
Spent 5 minutes trying to get your head around win32 and high DPI for example. Doesn't even work properly on WinUI either...
Interesting, why does all of my software look fine on it now then? Is it because they are no longer using Win32, etc., and instead went with current standards?
Although most of software for both mac and windows just uses third party frameworks anyway...so they kind of equally suck haha.
Probably because you walk through the open path in the forest ignorant of what goes on in the trees.
As for why they sort of work, they have engineers who spent thousands of hours in the guts of their internal abstraction frameworks over the top (and Qt etc) trying to work through all the edge cases. That has been me before. Sometimes they miss them. Even Microsoft's own software craps out on a regular basis. Particularly their development tools (Visual Studio Classic + SQL Management Studio in particular). You'll be sitting there on your nice 200% scaled desktop and a 100% scaled window will pop up half way through or the toolbars will suddenly be tiny. And god forbid you drag a window between two different DPI screens.
There is as you say though that a lot of the applications use third party frameworks anyway, mostly for portability. Even Microsoft have abandoned their own frameworks and are doing half the crap on Edge runtimes. New outlook for example is a web app running in a browser engine. And why are they doing that? Because windows is such a mess they spent years trying to rewrite a new UI framework prototyping Windows Mail (now defunct), gave up and used Typescript / React instead and plopped the outlook.com runtime over the top.
End user experience on those web apps is TERRIBLE. I know absolutely no one who wants it. They want decent native apps back. But that means competent investment in UI frameworks that work, not the abandoned MFC, ATL, XAML+WPF, WinUI how many versions stack. But no the only thing anything seems to use, even the third party frameworks, still sits on win32 which is as old as time and poorly designed from the start.
Due to the general incompetence of the whole industry we really just ended up with 50 web browsers running on our crap and eating up all the RAM and CPU instead. And every single one has different UI controls which confuse the hell out of most of the users.
Apart from the Mac ironically. I don't think ANY of the supplied apps, other than Safari obviously, use any browser technology. And they use one of two UI frameworks which have the same visual appearance and work properly across multiple DPIs, scaling contexts and screens etc.
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No, but there are a ton of cross platform apps that do in fact use the third party frameworks—Electron for instance is widely used on Mac. Obsidian, Notion, Todoist, etc.,
Good luck, I bet you use Mac apps that use these frameworks, such as Electron, already. Unless you are literally sticking with Apple stock apps. That's my point. It isn't that Windows is that great, it's that they mostly all are using a shared code base across platforms anyway. Very few companies are bothering with native coding anymore.Thanks for recommending me not to use those things
I use Notes / Reminders
I have no electron or web container apps on my Mac at all. Not one. There are a couple of Qt things in there.
In addition to the default apps, I have VLC, handbrake, Lightroom, Photoshop, LTspice, LinearMouse, Maxima, R, command line devs tools, bunch of unix things off homebrew, Julia, MacVim, TeXshop, MacPass, Calibre. Yep none.
My argument is companies should build native apps rather than make their users suffer.
Mac is hardly the infallible panacea. My work is making me migrate to a Mac. I’ve been testing it for the past week. I’m on the latest update, and already had to force quit apps a few times, I’ve submitted two crash logs to Apple, system had a kernel panic one time, and I’ve seen numerous points of unexplainable lag launching or using certain apps. (Ironically, I can’t remember the last time Windows 11 blew up on me, even in a beta.) This was all on a brand new M3 Air machine. I’ve also had a lot of positive experiences with it.
For day to day, it’s very smooth and seamless, especially since the rest of my stuff is all Apple. I really enjoy the ecosystem integration. I love the build quality and battery life. Display looks great, even if I’m only limited to 60Hz on the Air. (It is much smoother and more fluid than Windows at 60Hz.)
So yeah, win some, lose some. No system is perfect.
(As an aside comment, it feels a lot like I’m using a more polished Linux release.)
For day to day, it’s very smooth and seamless, especially since the rest of my stuff is all Apple. I really enjoy the ecosystem integration. I love the build quality and battery life. Display looks great, even if I’m only limited to 60Hz on the Air. (It is much smoother and more fluid than Windows at 60Hz.)
So yeah, win some, lose some. No system is perfect.
(As an aside comment, it feels a lot like I’m using a more polished Linux release.)
The Mac mini M4 is a nothing short of a symbol of technological progress to me. It's extraordinary that this simple, small, relatively inexpensive object for many people replaces the boasted towers of yesterdecade.
I still know I don't need it, so for now, I'm just happy to see it's there. But the time will come. ^ ^
I still know I don't need it, so for now, I'm just happy to see it's there. But the time will come. ^ ^
