I'll install Linux or indeed buy a Mac instead moving forward.

I don't think they'll get many conversions out of it. They're fishing in a pool that already actively signaled that they don't like the bait.

The thinking is that MS' needs come first, and yours are way, way down the list, unless you're a volume license holder. So magnitude or logic of the gain doesn't factor much unless a policy hits the news with a stickiness of several months.

and it's a pool not paying them for services so they probably don't care about losing them.

So then why bother targeting them in the first place?

If the numbers go up, somebody looks good. Maybe even gets a promotion.

They don't need a lot of conversions. If 2% of users take them up on the ad, that's an increase in revenue and profit. If it pisses off 40% of users, that's not a problem, because only 0.001% of users are going to get so angry that they'll stop using Windows (and those users probably paid for a license anyway as part of the computer purchase, so it won't affect MS's revenues).

$999 macbook air is perfectly usable?

With a 256GB SSD? Please.

Some of us use computers for creative work and don't want to pay absurd markups for soldered on SSDs and RAM.

Well frankly it all depend on your job. I got a win10 256GB HP laptop at work and never felt fooled.

Most of the files I need are never permanently stored on my laptop so I'm pretty glad IT prioritized a good Graphic Card that support my 4k monitor + 1 ext 1080p display of my home config on top of the internal 1080p.

While yeah on my 7 years old personal mac laptop though, the 256Gb now seems limited because of my personal Photo Library. (Which is by the way the standard MacOS/iOS Photo library which is both available offline/synced/backed up using actually useful and configureable OS provided basic tools as opposed to adversial adware)

Yes, for most people it's fine. Cloud storage is a thing, and so is cheap external storage.

Well, they didn't qualify it that way. So no, it's not "perfectly usable." It's perfectly usable for people who don't do much with it. If I need a modern mainframe terminal, it barely matters what laptop or OS I use.

If I need to hold 2TB of samples and have room for 2TB of video I'm working on and prefer it onboard, I can't get that at any price on a MacBook Air, and a soldered on 2TB is hundreds more than plopping a 2TB in my laptop's spare slot. In fact, I can max it out with 8TB storage and 64GB RAM for the markup to get a 2TB SSD/16GB RAM Air.

You see the problem. I'm not saying everyone needs it, but the broad claim that a $999 Air is perfectly usable has some large and varied edge cases. If a $999 Air were enough for me, then I would have put a new battery in my old laptop and put Linux on it instead of upgrading. Apple's lineup was considered and dismissed for the absurd markups on storage and RAM.

Most people who have need for that much laptop really need a desktop instead.

Do what I did. Buy a xps 13 (dell has 'developer edition variants of these, so it fully supports linux). I actually bought the windows version because it was cheaper, instantly wiped it on boot and installed linux. I've upgraded to a 1tb ssd and might upgrade to a 2tb ssd given how cheap they are right now. Great experience though!

I need Serif (Affinity Suite), Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments to port everything to Linux or at least make it equally functional in Wine first. I could understand going to the trouble if I had anything remotely like the issues people say they have with Windows, but it's been an absolute breeze for me. Always has been. The few ad-ish things I see were trivial to remove. Staying on a local account was effortless. Updates need a reboot about as often as they did the last time I used Linux.

There just...aren't any issues. I don't doubt that all these horror stories I hear are true for the individuals, but I just don't experience it.

I know its probably not what you're looking for, but Bitwig has a similar workflow to Ableton, and has first class Linux support.

A few years ago I was in a similar situation, but decided in the end to not allow myself to be tethered to an operating system, and did away with all the software I couldn't use elsewhere.

That's an interesting way to put it! I always felt tethered to Linux every time I tried to use it consistently. I kept running into stuff that would be easy on Windows, but was an ordeal or downright impossible with what was available for Linux.

BitWig in particular seems to draw a very different crowd from Live. The knives come out any time someone approaches the community with the idea of scale support in the MIDI roll. The support Ableton added in 11 is precisely how I imagined it when asking for that feature. It's a tremendous benefit to my workflow. The hack you had to use before wasn't really adequate, and it's still required in BitWig. And probably always will be either out of fear of backlash or because the devs agree.

I also can't help but think they're aiming for a very different sort of music than I make. They're always talking about generative music and possibilities and all the whacky stuff you can do with BitWig being modulations all the way down. I...don't care about any of that. The Grid is neat, but it's not M4L. I use an assortment of devices and occasionally make my own. The LFO device and automations cover all my needs.

BitWig as a Live alternative is not much of one, but that's okay. It couldn't last long if that was a real selling point. It will have to continue differentiating itself, and I have to think about that when choosing a DAW. Ableton has spent the last 20+ years making Live into something that thinks about music the same way I do. It's already well matched to me. BitWig is going to spend the next 20 years becoming something different.

If the commenter can't open their existing Ableton files in Bitwig, and/or use the existing VSTs they've likely spent years with and collected or designed presets for, it makes somehow converting to an entirely new DAW far too daunting and complex a process for any serious producer.

I myself use Logic Pro, and have files from Logic and GarageBand from over - (holy crap I'm getting old) - 17 years ago, that still open and play in Logic - (minus the occasional missing plug-in) - and I've used Logic for so long at this point that there is literally almost no barrier between my imagination in terms of composition, engineering and production and the actual software and hardware.

To switch to a solution such as Bitwig not only removes access to the 17+ years of files I've got (who knows how many years of files the original commenter has) - it makes it so I can no longer, e.g. just send a Logic or Ableton file to a fellow producer - which I often do, and is often done; for collaborations - it removes access to the incredible library of software instruments included with Logic that I've slowly became a veritable genius with over more than a decade...

Ultimately, unless you pretty much started with Bitwig, or Ardour, etc - I couldn't ever see a seasoned producer who has settled into their closed-source DAW of choice ever seriously considering this.

BitWig can at least open Live sets now: https://www.bitwig.com/support/technical_support/importing-a...

It's nice to know I have an escape hatch if I ever start having any of the negative experiences people report with Windows. I just...don't. I've used it since it came on a stack of floppies and it's just been a breeze. Even doing weird destabilizing stuff at worst left it in a state I could fix easily. Usually by just rebooting or unrolling a driver. Things are even better now with Reliability Monitor since it helpfully correlates errors with what caused it most of the time. And those once-useless troubleshooters are actually useful now.

edit: Out of curiosity, I checked. 978 Live sets since I started using it in 2018. It just barely edges out my Reaper set collection from before I moved to Live.

Believe me I know, I had to go through the exact same situation. However, I also considered what terrifying repercussions that'd have for how much control any single company can have over my life.

I understand why people don't want to, it took me a good few years between wanting to move onto Linux and actually doing so, but in the end I'm glad for it. If your priorities are different thats fair enough, but I'm never going back.

While I have my complaints with the Apple ecosystem, I similarly have to agree that in my case as an audio producer - MacOS 'just works' - I rarely have to do updates, there's no intrusive advertising; I'm an Apple Music user and I love how it syncs between my Mac, Phone, and Watch so seamlessly...

Logic is a phenomenal piece of software with an incredible value for it's price and feature set, and I've still got an Ableton instance as well, the VSTs or AU's work perfectly in both.

I've honestly never had issues with my Mac/Logic setup so I've been using it for more than 15 years. I will probably continue using some variation of this setup for as long as I continue to produce music.

Gonna move to Proton, thank you.

I'm loving Proton on Ubuntu.

yup.

I'll pay $0 and install Linux instead. I'll recommend it to others too.

Hell I'll do literally anything in my power to run Linux, including reverse engineering Windows software. I refuse to accept ads in my OS.

Running Active Directory would be easier than that

Well, that's what I did.