I said “good riddance” to Apple and got a new Linux-first laptop, then proceeded to note down my first impressions.
Having used Ubuntu and Linux for 20 years, and having had a stint period with Apple, I decided to stick with Linux for good.
https://fredrocha.net/2024/11/27/2024-the-year-of-the-linux-laptop/
I want to be this guy but I’ve grown so accustomed to the level of polish and care for design that Apple has put into both their hardware and software. I just don’t see how the linux option will ever get close, like ever.
For the record I’ve migrated my windows gaming pc to Linux.
I switched from Linux to Mac a while ago and I’ve never gone back.
I’ll use linux all day long on servers, and VMs. But on the bare metal? nah.
Why not? I feel we need the anti-post here. :)
I just want to get work done, and I just don’t care about any of the benefits of linux. Mac OS legitimately just works for me, and that’s the only thing I want out of a computer.
Plus nothing comes close to the battery life of an Apple silicon mac. Doing the same work my AMD Thinkpad T14s gets about 4-6 hours on a good day, my Intel Thinkpad P1 gets 1-2 hours, but my M1 Macbook pro emulating x86 code through a virtual machine gets 10+ easily.
You’d be surprised, man. Of course you’d have to give up on some things, but it’s trivial stuff compared to what you gain in return. I personally was always very turned off by the way Apple likes to lock down all their stuff to their own ecosystem. I like to own my data and have the freedom to tweak my environments and what runs on my hardware. I also realize this is a plus for many people, just giving their soul away to Apple.
What parts of MacOS do you find easier to use? The newest Mac I own is a 2007 Macbook running 10.6 which I don’t mind too much, but whenever I’ve helped anyone else with modern MacOS it’s just felt kind of weird and unintuitive. I don’t like hate it, I could use it if I had to, it’s just weird.
Mac OS has changed a lot in the 15 years since that OS came out. 10.6 was the last OS where the only way to resize the window was dragging from the bottom right corner.
Some things take some getting used to. Apple intends for you to kinda “pile” windows on top of each other, while windows tends to encourage just maximizing them. Mac OS’s green button also defaults to going exclusive full screen and hides the bottom bar, while windows just makes it as big as possible without hiding the bottom bar. Linux distros by default tend to lean towards a windows approach, but obviously you can chose from any of 10 billion dekstops and window managers.
Also the new settings app sucks. I don’t think even the most die hard Mac OS users like Apple changing it around and making it worse for no good reason.