I got a MacBook Air last year because Apple Silicon is insanely good. I never have to worry about battery life. I was working on an android app at the time, and Android Studio ran so much better on that thing than it did on my 11 gen intel DPS 15. Build times were almost instant, and unlike the XPS, the battery life was well more than I needed in a day. The XPS I would close everything and could squeeze out about 3 hours, and it was hot on my lap. Got my boss to buy me an M3 Max MBP for work, I’m truly a convert, can’t see myself ever going back unless windows laptops can leapfrog Apple in terms of performance and battery life. And for the Linux crowd, much of my work takes place in a Linux VM and it’s great, build times are noticeably faster than the WSL2 environment I used on the XPS.
Since then I’ve bought the rest of the Apple ecosystem. Like, other than a Vision Pro and HomePods, I’ve got them all. Started with an iPhone simply because it was phone upgrade time, the iPhone 15 series was about to come out with USB C, figured I’d give it a try since it would sync up all the stuff really well with my Mac. Figured I’d try the watch too, I kinda like it (got the magnetic link band for Christmas too, it’s an awesome fidget toy you can wear on your wrist).
My Sony WF-1000xm4 battery died in one of the buds. Now, even though they’re out of warranty I’m pretty sure Sony would replace them, but I figured since I’m increasingly all in on the Apple ecosystem, I’d try the AirPods Pro with their new USB C case. My review: they’re not the best earbuds for noise cancelling, but they’re serviceable, the sound quality is pretty good (I switched to Apple Music at the same time, they encode their music with noticeably higher quality than Spotify, so that’s an important factor here). The real magic though: I stick them in my ears, and then they just follow me to whatever device I’m using. Listening to a podcast while cooking and cleaning, then sit down to do some work, pause my phone, they connect right to the Mac. Get up, grab the iPad to go lay down in bed, the switch automatically. Best thing I’ve ever used in that regard, and they’re quick. Highly recommend if you have many apple devices.
Most recently I bought one of the new M4 iPad Pros. My review isn’t quite as rosy here, don’t buy this thing unless you really want to piss away money. Like, I enjoy playing around with the Apple Pencil and all, but really it says more about my financial discipline than the usefulness of the device. I am hoping to contribute better iPad support to some open source iOS apps. Also bought an Apple TV because my partner was ready to destroy the HiSense google tv we have because its interface is slow and unresponsive, and the audio and video would desync all the time. Crossy road on the TV is amusing.
So that was long, but that’s how I went from no Apple products to all Apple products in a year, save for my gaming desktop which is running windows solely for the reason that it has the best games compatibility and I don’t want to have to spend any more time babysitting it than I have to. RX 5800x3d, 64 GB RAM, 3080ti. It ultimately came down to Apple silicon being the best thing to ever happen to laptops, Apple switching to USB C, and optimism that governments are going to force them to open up the ecosystem a bit more.
I’m currently avoiding silicon until more apps are compiled to work on them. My last bad experience with this was trying to run virtualbox on the host and ununtu as a guest, and it ran slow as crap because some part of virtualbox wasn’t ready for silicon yet.
Disclaimer: I generally avoid Apple like the plague, my comment and experience are specific to a job that really wanted me to use a macbook in my role as a Linux systems admin. My specific complaint may well have been adressed literally years ago by now.
I got a MacBook Air last year because Apple Silicon is insanely good. I never have to worry about battery life. I was working on an android app at the time, and Android Studio ran so much better on that thing than it did on my 11 gen intel DPS 15. Build times were almost instant, and unlike the XPS, the battery life was well more than I needed in a day. The XPS I would close everything and could squeeze out about 3 hours, and it was hot on my lap. Got my boss to buy me an M3 Max MBP for work, I’m truly a convert, can’t see myself ever going back unless windows laptops can leapfrog Apple in terms of performance and battery life. And for the Linux crowd, much of my work takes place in a Linux VM and it’s great, build times are noticeably faster than the WSL2 environment I used on the XPS.
Since then I’ve bought the rest of the Apple ecosystem. Like, other than a Vision Pro and HomePods, I’ve got them all. Started with an iPhone simply because it was phone upgrade time, the iPhone 15 series was about to come out with USB C, figured I’d give it a try since it would sync up all the stuff really well with my Mac. Figured I’d try the watch too, I kinda like it (got the magnetic link band for Christmas too, it’s an awesome fidget toy you can wear on your wrist).
My Sony WF-1000xm4 battery died in one of the buds. Now, even though they’re out of warranty I’m pretty sure Sony would replace them, but I figured since I’m increasingly all in on the Apple ecosystem, I’d try the AirPods Pro with their new USB C case. My review: they’re not the best earbuds for noise cancelling, but they’re serviceable, the sound quality is pretty good (I switched to Apple Music at the same time, they encode their music with noticeably higher quality than Spotify, so that’s an important factor here). The real magic though: I stick them in my ears, and then they just follow me to whatever device I’m using. Listening to a podcast while cooking and cleaning, then sit down to do some work, pause my phone, they connect right to the Mac. Get up, grab the iPad to go lay down in bed, the switch automatically. Best thing I’ve ever used in that regard, and they’re quick. Highly recommend if you have many apple devices.
Most recently I bought one of the new M4 iPad Pros. My review isn’t quite as rosy here, don’t buy this thing unless you really want to piss away money. Like, I enjoy playing around with the Apple Pencil and all, but really it says more about my financial discipline than the usefulness of the device. I am hoping to contribute better iPad support to some open source iOS apps. Also bought an Apple TV because my partner was ready to destroy the HiSense google tv we have because its interface is slow and unresponsive, and the audio and video would desync all the time. Crossy road on the TV is amusing.
So that was long, but that’s how I went from no Apple products to all Apple products in a year, save for my gaming desktop which is running windows solely for the reason that it has the best games compatibility and I don’t want to have to spend any more time babysitting it than I have to. RX 5800x3d, 64 GB RAM, 3080ti. It ultimately came down to Apple silicon being the best thing to ever happen to laptops, Apple switching to USB C, and optimism that governments are going to force them to open up the ecosystem a bit more.
I’m currently avoiding silicon until more apps are compiled to work on them. My last bad experience with this was trying to run virtualbox on the host and ununtu as a guest, and it ran slow as crap because some part of virtualbox wasn’t ready for silicon yet.
Disclaimer: I generally avoid Apple like the plague, my comment and experience are specific to a job that really wanted me to use a macbook in my role as a Linux systems admin. My specific complaint may well have been adressed literally years ago by now.