> I agree that M1/M2 Macs are good, but I implore everyone to not get sucked into and stuck into the Apple ecosystem.
So much this. Every time I hear something good about the M1/M2 it's interesting but it's like "aah, such a shame I can never use it without loosing my sanity due to all of the strings it has attached".
>> Apple has been the butt of jokes at least since 2008 when I first got my first Apple product (an old 17" MacBook Pro). Back when I was looking at laptops then, I saw the same complaints that I see about the new MacBook Pro: too expensive, specs aren't good enough, etc., etc. None of this is new.
But actually some of it is new. I go back to the Apple ][ days, so I've seen my share of disdain of Apple products from people who weren't users of Apple products.
A lot of the uproar in the past several months, however, has come from vocal Apple users who feel let down.
> They sell expensive, shiny, conspicuous consumption items without practical use
Sorry, but I don‘t believe anyone who says this while looking at a modern day M1 macbook. I have the pleasure to own one for software development and graphical imagery work and frankly it‘s the single best computer I have ever used. No windows or linux machine comes close. It‘s a unix system where everything just works out of the box.
> 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now
I'm 3 years in and have never needed servicing. If I do, I'm fine having to go back to Apple. It's not a good fit for everyone. But it is for my niche. (Also, Apple stand out in having long first-party support runways for their products.)
> Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
If we go with anecdotes, in the last 2 decades, I used a mix of laptops from bargain bin to thinkpads. I used macs only the last 3 years (2 different mbp models) and those are the only ones that ever needed servicing.
1. Key caps falling off (replace the top),
2. Weird memory corruption on boot (out of warranty, get a new model),
3. Charging issues (replace the inside),
4. (kind of mac issue due to lack of ports) Their usbc-hdmi dongle started failing. (not serviced, get a new one)
I desperately wish this were still true, but I can't even see myself keeping my M1 Macbook Air as a Linux laptop. Too many compromises, too little power. Not to mention, it's a fragile little sucker too. I somehow managed to scratch the bezel on the second day of owning it...
> I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat.
Buying their products for the same reason everyone else does is "liking Apple".
> Even if there is a machine that approaches the performance and specs of a Mac, the thing Apple fans don't have to worry about is which machine to get because even the worst Apple device is miles ahead of the non Apple alternatives.
I love my retina MBP but that statement is pretty biased. There are plenty of PCs more powerful than any mac, often for less money. Even Windows 10 isn't so bad, i think that OSX Yosemite is pretty flawed as well.
Apple is still superior when it comes to the whole package, most importantly trackpad, battery life and overall experience, but if you don't fall exactly into Apples demographic you are pretty much out of luck.
> The core of Apple's problem at the moment is to some extent the opposite - the base M1 Macbook Airs were such a leap forward, that for many people there is no need to buy the M2 or M3 etc.
I am not willing to spend this much money on a product if it will not serve me well for 4-5 years.
The idea that people should be getting the new machine every year is new, and bad.
No idea what you mean. The M1 MacBook Air is the best machine Apple has produced for years and finally convinced me to update my old personal laptop. The battery life is insane despite the performance being better than any of the high end Windows laptop I have used for work during the past decade. Plus it was correctly priced at launch which is very rare for Apple which usually extremely overprices everything.
>FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time.
They are, though.
I'm on my 4th MacBook and all have lasted me at least 5 years. The reason I upgrade them is to get more speed/specs, not because they stopped working, I even sold them and made back some small $$.
PS The touchbar thing was nonsense, I didn't jump on that, as well as other gimmicks. Still the MBP is a solid option.
> I don't know about others, but I don't dare to buy Apple products anymore. My 2012 MacBook Pro is still going strong, but newer MacBooks don't have anywhere near the same build quality and durability.
Apple's history of design issues and ignoring them goes all the way back to the Powerbook G3 and G4 Cube. This isn't some sudden drop in quality. People just have short memories.
> Also, the build quality is the best. I have a macbook that has lasted 10 years and still works great
I have a Mid-2010 MBP that is a large and ugly paperweight.
Due to shonky quality control, it hard-locks every 5 minutes when using the GPU. This only started when Mountain Lion was released, but good luck rolling back if you want to actually use XCode.
Given that it was such a piece of garbage, and that (at the time) workers were jumping to their deaths rather than keep building Apple products, and more recently the crap with sneaky performance reductions on iPhone, I have sworn completely off Apple products.
There's this weird idea that the quality of Apple products has just always steadily increased over time until this most recent MacBook Pro.
If you've been using Macs long enough, you'll remember various iBook debacles, the horrific 2006 MacBook, the utterly bizarre 3rd gen iPod, and other past missteps.
They'll bounce back (even though I actually love the current MBPs).
>Macbooks are just so far ahead of everyone else that you can't even compare them.
They are awesome, but not perfect.
Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with MacOS. Any one of these could be reason enough for people to look elsewhere.
I’ve always heard the opposite. And in fact, my M1 Mac replaces an almost decade old MacBook.
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