If the OS is old, things like FFMPEG will not work with things like Audacity. And to use an old version of FFMPEG, you have to guess which one, then install a variety of dev tools to compile it, waay beyond the capability of the average "I just want to record my podcast user". Audacity itself has an extensive help article devoted to this issue for Mac.
If you have a new Mac, you'll find companies have given up going through the cost and time of certifying for each new Mac OS, like Evoluent (early vertical mouse maker), who gave up several versions ago and won't support using all the extra mouse buttons their product has on Mac.
If you want to use many audio plugins, you'll have to deal with special permissions if it didn't come from the app store. If you want to use zoom to let a remote tech control your screen, you have to find and set two security permisssions.
For all four of these issue on Windows, it just works.
UPDATE: As commenter below pointed out, experienced users have a different experience than new users, which doesn't invalidate the specific issues I've mentioned, and which I encounter every month, and sometimes weekly.
Having owned plenty of Thinkpads (Linux), Dells(Windows and Linux) and plenty of Macbook Pros, I can say, Apple's superiority of hardware is so far beyond the rest. Having an OS with a BSD-ish experience is really nice as well. I've spent 27 years in engineering and during most of that time I get the random "Linux is far superior", "I like Windows better" folks... but by and large, yes, Apple's tech has a ton of good will.
If you asked me 2 years ago I would say something different about Linux than I would said today, because I’m running a different distribution with a different desktop environment and that changed my experience completely, even though I’m running on basically the same hardware.
I run Linux in Apple hardware too, how does that rank in your comparison?
Hardware: Apple announced an ARM based CPU and started shipping. It was _mostly_ a seemless experience thanks to Rosetta2. The performance on these well-built machines was outstanding. Even the Intel-based machines previously had really strong performance. The machines themselves (on average) were among some of the most well-built. Yes, there were outliers with the butterfly keyboards. Yes there were outliers with silly features like the touchbar. We're talking on average.
Software: Apple's OS is just a boring Unix that works. Yes I realize that Unix is in name only - but on top of that XNU microkernel really is a lot of BSD. Having the GNU tools available AND Sound/Fingerprint Reader/HiRes Display that actually scales... that is still not the reality in Linux. (I still love Linux btw - I keep multiple machines around the house running it) So not having to spend a great deal of time fiddling with config files when I plug in an external monitor actually is a big deal. Most folks don't want the hassles of messing with pavucontrol just because they switched to their external audio setup. Most folks will appreciate when they drag a window to that exterinal monitor that the HiDPI didn't cause text to go wonky.
So those are the areas where Apple is just massively superior. They nailed it in the "it just works" department. They've nailed it in the "quality hardware" department.
Windows also does fairly well in a lot of these areas.
As far as running Linux on Apple hardware? I had a buddy come into a meeting running Gnome+Ubuntu on his MacBook Pro back around 2017... as soon as he plugged into the projector, it was a mess. I'm sure it's gotten better since then.
IMO, "consumer electronics enthusiasts" != "tech people"
Are you sure?
They also use it for their growing ad platform.
Can't let people find your app for free. You need to pay to defend your trademark and lead in a given app category.
Plus they've severed the customer relationship and inserted themselves as Mafia middlemen. They'll sell that to companies too.
Whether that'll lead to the government requiring Apple to break their encryption, it remains to be seen. I imagine Apple has a bit of an edge here anyway, since iCloud is allegedly e2e encrypted?
Im not really sure how that benefits me as a US citizen but that is who the majority of the population seems to want and once the rules are set you follow or face made up tariffs that rip you apart. Right.
I think we basically agree - just clarifying here.
And probably fewer still consider switching to the alternatives. Apple is, for better or worse, usually the least bad option.
Apple and Google both use immutable locked down OSes on their main products that prevents improving device security, such as IP & DNS filtering / blocking.
Microsoft user experience keeps getting worse. Latest version of Teams, as of today, says I'm at the "Calendar" screen and the navigation and content screen both show "Chat". "Calendar" was unpinned because I find Teams to be at interacting with content. No reason it should be a PDF viewer when the desktop application is actually usable allows for viewing chat and content at the same time.
I understand developing for those platforms makes money or is needed for other products. Unless I have to develop products that support those companies, I will never pay with my personal income to support those organizations.
Just laptop is good enough. Although currently switched back to apple silicon ATM for LLM, price and convince reasons, and as soonest linux on Apple Silicon reach some maturity, will switch over completely.
However not using a smartphone is probably good for one's mental and physical healthy now days. It is understandable if your work require you to have one, but if I'm not getting paid, why would I even get a smartphone?
Back in the 80's there are investment people managing billions dollars and deals over pen paper and a land line!
If you don’t want one because of some principled stance that’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s no value in them.
The DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. need to force a breakup of first party app stores, first party payment, first party web browser, and first party messaging. They also really need to require web installs without hidden menus and scare walls.
We'll see a proliferation of offerings if that happens.
I actively invest my personal income to organizations / businesses that are working to provide viable alternative. All are fruitful in reducing the barrier to a viable product. From improving hard-ware design to getting software in a stable state. Currently waiting on a phone from EU from a company on their attempt.
Went with a Farirphone 4 running /e/OS/. Yes, /e/OS/ is based on AOSP. This phone has a high chance of full postmarketos support. It is the closet from being disconnected from Google that I find to be stable. Postmarketos would allow for a quick jump.
In the mean time, still investing in companies and organizations that don't want to help Google in the smartphone market. It is a long-term investment.
Linux is better.
That worm has turned, at least five years ago
Oh, and if you have problems running Linux on Macs... That isn't Linux's fault.
Hopefully either Asahi support improves in the near future or Snapdragon X Elite support in Linux becomes a bit better.
* Xcode 26 is kinda neat, though
This is really just a cheap rhetorical trick. Linux [0] can run just as much software, if you include VMs, but you can't legally virtualize MacOS, therefore buying a Mac is the only way to legally run their software, in addition to everything else. Now, you are technically correct, but the casual interpretation of
> Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available.
isn't really that you can simply run everything unavailable on MacOS in a VM (or several layers of VMs). It's the same as arguing that Powerpoint is all you ever need, as it is Turing complete.
[0] And so can Windows, if you run said VMs in a Linux VM.
Maybe you shouldn't go around policing people's opinions.
It's funny that this exact phrase could have been written about Apple in 1998.
Mac OS 8 had no preemptive multitasking or meaningful address space protections. A single bad pointer dereference in user mode took down the entire system, and a single busy loop without a yield locked up the entire system.
Both of these were universally admitted to be bad and outdated by technically minded people.
By 1997 they had looked at replacing it with BeOS or NEXTSTEP, and purchased the latter with the goal of replacing Mac OS. The Rhapsody OS, an OS8 style UI with NeXT underneath, had already been started. Before that, they had also attempted and failed to write a next gen classic Mac OS (Copland).
Windows 9x had a lot of problems, but had preemptive multitasking and much better address space isolation. Windows NT 4 Workstation was also a thing at the time and much better. It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product.
Rather: It took them two more releases until they offered a version that had a price tag (setting the price was a conscious decision by Microsoft) that made a Windows NT derivate also affordable to non-professional users.
And that's just in the Microsoft vs Apple camp. If you left that then Unix, BSD, BeOS, etc also blew it out of the water.
MacOS 8 looked pretty, but it was far from a "good" OS.
98 just crashed, or showed something DOSish white on black before rebooting.
edit: Hrrm. According to Wikipedia it did. Still can't remember that, though.
Aye repent! Aye repent!
Your reasoning also isn’t sufficient. The classic Microsoft Kernel was able to support a much wider variety of hardware because it was modular (internally, not architecturally). The classic Macintosh Kernel had a far smaller ecosystem to support and couldn’t even add support for hardware that existed on many of their own devices that would make the kernel on-par with the 9x kernel and be transparent (except for improved usability) for users.
So to recap, OP claimed that OS 8 (not A/UX) was superior to 9x. And that’s simply false. Many consider the 98 kernel garbage, even for its time; and yet it’s objectively better to OS 8’s.
If we’re simply arguing Apple hardware OSes versus Intel options (as you seem to be conflating this to), then the latter still wins with Xenix, any number of Unices, BSD, Linux, etc; all more stable and better supported than A/UX as well as better UI-centered OSes (NT, OS/2, BeOS, XFree86, etc).
Not arguing. The context is that MS had much more capable hardware to run 95 on than the 68020 based Macs.
> seem to be conflating
Not really. Just providing some context as to why MS was able to get a jump while Apple got held back by hardware.
MacOS 8's initial release was after PowerPC-based hardware was already released. The OS had a separate kernel for that hardware. MacOS 9 never ran on 68k hardware (with an MMU or not).
It was perfectly capable of having that functionality, yet didn't.
You're just retroactively applying rationale to a bad design and making bad faith arguments (or "explanations"). Even Apple knew it was bad, that's why they threw it out.
None of these were issues on Windows 98.
Are any applications on your Mac touching Rosetta right now? You'd better hope not because those single percentage gains from ARM evaporate fast.
Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
>it doesn't matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done
'Essentially' is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but, putting that aside, A. you're wrong, I've recently ran into Rosetta throttling and B. it's not a good reason to begin the project at all, it's only a good reason when it's already done. You're essentially ceding "Yes, I've been wrong and this has been a fool's errand for the past x years until right this moment as the project is done". It's not done and it'd a weak argument.
>Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
Specifically what are the numbers? Because I have performance/tdp numbers and the M-series performs well but it isn't a categorical difference. In fact, that's no difference, it performs okay but AMD is at the top of the heap currently. Sad.
I use a lot of nonstandard software (not just a browser), not a single piece needed Rosetta.
I agree recent AMD chips are power efficient like the M series (though I don’t have one to compare with) but I thought everyone agreed the comparable chips in 2020 weren’t?
>...I thought everyone agreed the comparable chips in 2020 weren’t?
Possibly, but it was likely far, far closer (see maybe the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U) than justified defense of the project.
Anyways, with the addition of the Rosetta translation layer there's no way the Apple M1 was as efficient as the Ryzen.
Performance and efficiency has been great for me. I've never run into rosetta throttling. I've got the numbers - trust me bro.
Of course, they really aren't, which is pretty obvious. It doesn't make sense that Apple would randomly invent some categorically new CPU technology when they don't even own an instruction set or foundry and that they would simply be concocting some vendor lock-in supply chain scheme.
It sounds like you've already done the work... why not just share the numbers. I'm just asking to see what you claim to have. Unless... you don't have them and you're just making stuff up.
The real difference maker is efficiency. MacBook owners simply do not need to worry about whether they are plugged in or not; the performance does not change and the battery lasts many hours, even on demanding tasks. Occasionally you can cherry pick a benchmark where AMD appears to be competitive, but always at much higher power draw.
AMD and Intel users don’t really appreciate how much of a qualitative difference that is. Being even close in performance, while offering far superior reliability and battery life, puts apple silicon in a league of its own.
Share your numbers please. I’m having trouble finding reliable sources that aren’t YouTube videos or forum posts, but nothing I’ve been able to find contradicts my claims.
Can you please define and explain the meaning «Rosetta throttling»? Rosetta 2 is static binary translation + JIT optimisations at the run time. Is Rosetta injecting delays slots or delay loops into the translated code? Or, is it injecting branch instructions that consistently fail the branch predictor? Something else? Since you seem to have analysed specific code paths, the esteemed congregation on here is eager to pick the disassembled code apart.
Without the direct evidence, such claims are as credible as that of a vegetable vendor at the local farmer market claiming that spinach they sell cures cancer.
"Mostly" is not good enough. The user experience of Apple is still good, the developer experience is woeful
The echo chamber is still reverberating. People say that MacOS is good because other people have told them so. The people claiming that is better don't have an earnest effort outside of the ecosystem to support their claims. I was forced to use MacOS at work up until a little over 1.5 years ago, I have perspective on both, and it is categorically incompetent. It doesn't hold a candle to dev on Linux.
As for Windows? Windows 7/11 are probably still better than MacOS (as you implied with your comment about neglect), but it's probably as bad or slightly better than Win 11.
They’re all perfectly viable options with strengths and weaknesses. None of them are especially great. I’m partial to MacOS, personally.
It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told.
This is so entirely true.
I've installed so many different Linux distributions (and multiple Windows versions) on my personal laptop. Currently noodling around with NixOS.
I've never been tempted by a non-macOS laptop for work.
Whatever faults macOS has, it is very good at staying out of my way for getting work done, and all the small ancillary bits (eg webcam and audio support for chatting) have worked flawlessly for me for two decades. I cannot say the same about either Windows or Linux.
Maybe you're speaking for yourself? I absolutely love my Macbook and the M-series are the best devices I've ever owned.
> - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality
Really? I haven't noticed.
Wait, do they?
I mostly remember:
- A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality
- Aimless products like the Vision Pro that seems to have failed as the "get the devs excited" premium SDK launch everyone described it as
- Rocky start issues on Apple Intelligence, nerfed Siri, etc.
- Unexciting iPhone launch and lots of ridicule levied on Liquid Glass
It's the laptop to get for compute/battery, which definitely is not nothing, but I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform.