- If you have hairy pets, then you may appreciate the MacBook Air's fanless design.
- Fanless == quiet
- Apple screens are some of the absolute best you can buy.
- If you have other Apple electronics (iPhone, Air Pods, Apple Watch, etc.) then it will integrate well with them.
- Excellent battery life.
- Excellent speakers and microphone array.
- Not dependent on cloud services that suffer major security beaches every year.
- Not using the same cloud services to data mine everything you do on your computer.
- Offers AppleCare as insurance to replace your stuff whenever there's a problem (vs. a standard time-limited warranty).
- Apple Script, Automator, and Shortcuts to automate what your Apple stuff does far beyond what you can do in Windows.
I don't care for much of what Apple provides, but the premium design and conveniences of a highly integrated ecosystem are worth the trouble. I would love to find something non-Windows that's better than my Macbook Air. If Google could make something like a fanless version of the 2013 Chromebook Pixel, it might just be good enough for me.
If there's one thing I'd caution against, as a user of a Macbook in the United States, it'd be the use of Touch ID / Face ID for logging in to your Apple products. Biometrics are not protected by the 4th amendment, so you can be compelled to unlock your device without a search warrant. For all of the security features Apple producs are reputed for, this is one big gap that doesn't ever really get talked about. For this reason I commend Microsoft for having a PIN option for Windows Hello authenticaiton.
- compared to the MacBook Pro, you basically get the same power with a slightly inferior display and without active cooling (which can inhibit long running high-cpu tasks)
- compared with AMD/Intel: It will give you the better hardware (build quality, trackpad, battery lifetime) for a markup. Depending on your use cases, compute power can be either better or worse (gaming on M* is not that great, for example)
- If you want to go beyond the base models, Apple charges ridiculous amounts for RAM and SSD, and those cannot be upgraded after purchase
- Operating system/ecosystem is a matter of personal preference
I personally still love Apple (Unix with decent UI), but like too much things these days, the list of disappointments grows longer. Not as long as with Windows, though.
That being said, if you're on a budget, you're good with a decent AMD/Intel notebook (e.g. a Thinkpador XPS) with Linux. That'll be a work horse and probably lacks some of the "wow, that's nice" effects that you might still get with a mac.
I don’t know. I use a Mac for work, a Win for entertainment and a Linux for development. My feeling is Mac has great hardware and is good for certain development work but overall it is inferior in the other two for their respective usages.
Plus it has a lot of “round” corners to build up frustration throughout the day.
Try it out in person. My M4 screams from a compute perspective, but the 15" is much too big imho. I regret not getting the 13". Recommend the platform, but form factor will be personal preference.
I have an M3. It's got a great screen and battery life, but I found out when I tried to start up Tor in a VM that it won't work with the chipset (?!). No Whonix either. So that's annoying.
Anytime I want to do anything CPU intensive I'm on a remote machine anyways -- it's a good portable "deck" for jacking into the net.
Reasons to get one:
- If you have hairy pets, then you may appreciate the MacBook Air's fanless design.
- Fanless == quiet
- Apple screens are some of the absolute best you can buy.
- If you have other Apple electronics (iPhone, Air Pods, Apple Watch, etc.) then it will integrate well with them.
- Excellent battery life.
- Excellent speakers and microphone array.
- Not dependent on cloud services that suffer major security beaches every year.
- Not using the same cloud services to data mine everything you do on your computer.
- Offers AppleCare as insurance to replace your stuff whenever there's a problem (vs. a standard time-limited warranty).
- Apple Script, Automator, and Shortcuts to automate what your Apple stuff does far beyond what you can do in Windows.
I don't care for much of what Apple provides, but the premium design and conveniences of a highly integrated ecosystem are worth the trouble. I would love to find something non-Windows that's better than my Macbook Air. If Google could make something like a fanless version of the 2013 Chromebook Pixel, it might just be good enough for me.
If there's one thing I'd caution against, as a user of a Macbook in the United States, it'd be the use of Touch ID / Face ID for logging in to your Apple products. Biometrics are not protected by the 4th amendment, so you can be compelled to unlock your device without a search warrant. For all of the security features Apple producs are reputed for, this is one big gap that doesn't ever really get talked about. For this reason I commend Microsoft for having a PIN option for Windows Hello authenticaiton.
> I will not reveal anything about my life
What a strange thing to say. You could have just said what you plan to use the laptop for (or not), in vague terms, and left it at that.
Depends on what you define as "worth it":
- compared to the MacBook Pro, you basically get the same power with a slightly inferior display and without active cooling (which can inhibit long running high-cpu tasks)
- compared with AMD/Intel: It will give you the better hardware (build quality, trackpad, battery lifetime) for a markup. Depending on your use cases, compute power can be either better or worse (gaming on M* is not that great, for example)
- If you want to go beyond the base models, Apple charges ridiculous amounts for RAM and SSD, and those cannot be upgraded after purchase
- Operating system/ecosystem is a matter of personal preference
I personally still love Apple (Unix with decent UI), but like too much things these days, the list of disappointments grows longer. Not as long as with Windows, though.
That being said, if you're on a budget, you're good with a decent AMD/Intel notebook (e.g. a Thinkpador XPS) with Linux. That'll be a work horse and probably lacks some of the "wow, that's nice" effects that you might still get with a mac.
I don’t know. I use a Mac for work, a Win for entertainment and a Linux for development. My feeling is Mac has great hardware and is good for certain development work but overall it is inferior in the other two for their respective usages.
Plus it has a lot of “round” corners to build up frustration throughout the day.
Plus it’s too expensive.
Try it out in person. My M4 screams from a compute perspective, but the 15" is much too big imho. I regret not getting the 13". Recommend the platform, but form factor will be personal preference.
If I'm traveling with it, even if only occasionally, I definitely prefer the 13" size.
Framework is another good option: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027725
I have an M3. It's got a great screen and battery life, but I found out when I tried to start up Tor in a VM that it won't work with the chipset (?!). No Whonix either. So that's annoying.
Anytime I want to do anything CPU intensive I'm on a remote machine anyways -- it's a good portable "deck" for jacking into the net.
If you need a laptop, a computer to get work done in a conventional sense, it is of more practical value than any iPad or Windows machine.