What are we doing, and why?

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APPLE By Will Fastie Now you know what I alluded to a few weeks ago: Windows fanboy Brian Livingston is writing a comprehensive series about Macintosh
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Patricia Grace, dupontsr, fisher75, DLivesInTexas, rbailin, dataman1701, KjellW, jburk07, Norio

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Thanks for doing this series of articles.

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Elrod wrote:

Thanks for doing this series of articles.

You’re welcome. Let us know how you feel about it at the end!

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as a long time user of both the Mac and Windows,(I go back to the first Mac in 1984 and Windows 1.0 not long after) I can say I’m happy that you’re finally seeing that. We do need to consider both platforms whenever looking at an  upgrade. I also am a consultant to small businesses and nonprofits in the area and I have to say that in over a dozen years of doing this work I see vastly more problems with Windows machines than Macintosh. I enjoy using windows, I love the power keys set ups that are much more easier to deal with than the Mac world, but the day-to-day aggravations mount up.

I chose not to buy a physical Windows machine, and bought a Mac mini a year ago for my desktop machine. I am extremely happy with it and run parallels on it to keep my Windows skills up-to-date. It works wonderfully.

for small business people who are using primarily web-based products for their business, I have no problem recommending Apple. There are many though who are long-term Windows users and expect to see file explorer the way they always have, and for those users it’s usually Windows as a choice.

Thanks again for your great reporting. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing.

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Still Anonymous, Will Fastie

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Great Idea, I have been using a MacBook Pro running Windows 11 under Parallels desktop.  Offers the best of both worlds.  Look forward to Brian’s writings.

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Super excited about this series.  Lifetime Windows desktop user, but iPhone owner. Client base becoming more Apple and I have been considering low end M4 Mini simply to help me bench test end user scenarios.

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Will Fastie

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ok.  For the same $600, the Minisforum NPB7 has an Intel Core i7-13700H (Passmark: 27,126) vs. the Apple M4 10-core (Passmark 24,750) pretty close.  But the NPB7 has twice the RAM and 4 times the SSD storage.

The NPB7 has up to 4 displays ( 2 Thunderbolt, 2 HDMI) vs. the 2 (1 Thunderbolt, 2 HDMI) of the Mac Mini.  Ports are very different (MacMini: 2 USB-C front, nothing on back; NPB7: 2 USB3-A, 1 USBc front, 2 USB3-A, 2 USBc back.)

They are almost exactly the same size: 5” x 5” x 2” vs. 5” x 5” x 2.2”

Gimme the Minisforum NPB7.  And I did … bought 13 of them for my computer lab.  Apple? Sorry, you’re relegated to the 10%.  No, I’m not happy with Microsoft and Windows 11, but I’m not going to pay double to Apple for the same thing.

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Patricia Grace

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Very interesting about trying out the MacMini – I am in New Zealand and have just been screwed over by Microsoft with their unsolicited “upgrade” of 365 to include the co-pilot with extra cost of NZ$7 per month up from $10.  There used to be a way of downgrading but after over an hour on support chat including “The Supervisor” I was basically told hard luck – pay up – policy says you can’t downgrade.

For some reason I was paying monthly with the last month being December and, without my permission, they took $17 from the credit card instead of the $10 for the previous 11 months…

I said to their support supervisor, if I was delivering food to their house which was a $10 order but when I turned up I said that I had added on a $7 chili because it would go with their food and I’ve charged the credit card $17 whether they want it or not… then what would he say… he made no comment until prompted and then the usual bland corporate BS “we’ll make sure your feedback is blah blah blah”

Anyway – I was already considering going to the Apple side just because of the disrespect shown by Microsoft.  You do pay through the nose for Apple kit but what I’ve bought for my iOS developer has lasted and lasted as did my iPad (recently replaced)… so I look forward to the articles

Look out Rest of the World – Australasia is the pilot for this I believe…

Sorry for the rant

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$1400 for the best Mini and it’s still not as powerful as the fully configured Dell desktop that cost me the same amount of money. Also, it doesn’t have enough ports to handle all the things I have plugged into my computer and it’s not upgradeable. I need power for Photo and video editing and a dedicated video card is necessary unless you want to wait all day. Nope, no Mac for me.

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Patricia Grace

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Will, Great Idea for a thorough article! Long overdue. My householders are all die hard Microsoft users, from Dos to Win 11. My son was weaned on Vic 20, 64, 128 and Windows. He was forced into Apple indoctrination @ work, iPhone, iPad, Mac laptop and he HATED it. He convinced the powers 2B @ work to allow him to build a Windows power desktop PC, on their dime, of which he saved them BIG $$$ over pre-made configs. He proved that his productivity was greatly enhanced, in all his projects and duties. So a bunch of “APPLE” users with human DNA were perplexed! It will be very interesting as to what conclusions you make after you complete your project! Always enjoy your text! Thanks for what you do.
Sam DuPont, Florida

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Will Fastie

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bbg wrote:

Ports are very different (MacMini: 2 USB-C front, nothing on back;

I’m not following that. See Brian’s column for a photo of both the front and back. 2 USB-C front; 3 Thunderbolt, 1 HDMI on rear. Speaker jack also on front.

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I’m in an environment where I support a mix of both Windows and Mac users.  My day-to-day driver is still Windows 10, and I don’t expect that to change, other than upgrading to Win 11.  But given the need to support Mac users, several years ago, I acquired an old MacBook Pro from a user that was upgrading, and more recently, when that maxed out what Apple would support, I invested in an entry-level M1 Mini.

I don’t do a lot more with my Mini than maintain software configurations, but there are occasions where I may spend the better part of a couple of days mostly living on the Mac (as I also do with my Linux box) working on a specific project.  Since I have Microsoft 365, I have it on both Windows and Mac, and I am able to see differences within Microsoft’s products, or on occasion, take a look at other products, some of which may be ports of Windows stuff, and others that may be Mac-specific.

The practical bottom line for me is that if I have a Mac user that I’m working with, I’m better able to really see what they’re doing (including the specifics of the Mac UI), rather than trying to project my experiences from Windows or Linux.  Underneath, the concepts may be mostly the same (and yes, I like working from a Terminal window on the Mac), but to an end-user (especially non-technical), the differences matter, and my ability to seem them directly.

I don’t believe that either platform is superior or inferior to the other.  Both have different design philosophies (again, as does Linux), and sometimes, which may be preferable may not be an objective “best”, so much as what kinds of things you’re trying to do.  For mainline stuff like web browsing, email, Microsoft 365, etc., it probably doesn’t matter, and personal preference (and experience) are valid drivers of what you choose.

On the other hand, there are things that Mac does better than Windows, and things that Windows does better than Mac, and they’re not entirely interchangeable. And even if both can do a particular task reasonably well (but differently), there is also a question of collaboration. If you prefer Mac, but are working in an environment with mostly Windows users and need to collaborate on something, it may be better to have everybody working in Windows.  But it also goes the other way, as well.

One consideration of interoperability is the question of what software is available.  Something like Microsoft 365 or Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird may be available for both platforms, but with Microsoft, there are limits of their support, where Mac versions are considered to be consumer-grade, with shorter support windows, and where the components that interact most deeply with Microsoft server infrastructure are unavailable.  For those, it’s Microsoft or nothing.

And there are enough applications that are Windows-only, that the only way of running them is in finding some way of having Windows available, whether doing multi-boot on a Mac with BootCamp, emulation via Wine, or running Windows within a virtual machine. Wine (or commercial implementations, such as Crossover or Parallels) are cautionary tale. The underlying development of Wine is predominantly gaming, and while Wine may be suitable for many of the latest games, it may not be a great approach for other stuff, which may or may not work adequately.

It really comes back to what is “best” is what works best for you, and what you’re trying to accomplish.  For many, either platform will be adequate.  If you’re wanting to do graphical or media content, Mac may work better.  If you’re serious about gaming, you probably want Windows. But absent those kinds of differences and user preferences is cost.  Apple considers a Mac to be a premium product and charges accordingly, and typically, the cost differential (especially when Mac was using Intel processors) is that a Windows box and a Mac will cost around 1/3 more for the Mac, with similar configurations.

That said, right now, while Microsoft is pushing into Windows 11 and higher hardware requirements may be a time to review what really works best for your current usage (rather than decisions made a decade ago), but switching between the two may have the effect of simply moving from one vendor’s walled garden to another.  Microsoft and Apple may have less annoyances than the other in certain areas, but there will be new areas that may be just as annoying, if not more so.

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windbg, PKCano

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A couple of additional items to muddy things further:

Mac has a finite lifespan of support from Apple.  Each time that Apple does an annual upgrade, there is a new list of machines that are no longer supported and will not be able to run the latest version of MacOS.  That window tends to be about 7 years from the initial release of the platform.  And for some reason, Apple often retires support for Air models a year before other models of the same vintage.

Thus, with the release of MacOS 15 (Sequoia), most 2018 and 2019 Macs can run that, but 2018 and 2019 MacBook Air models max out at MacOS 14 (Sonoma).  Apple will continue to support those machines on older O/S versions, but we’ve found that some security updates are applied only to the most recent release, and not older releases.  With this week’s release of MacOS 15.3, even though 14.7.3 and  13.7.3 (Ventura) both had releases, some of the security fixes are only in 15.3. And other Mac 2018 and 2019 models will also max out at Sequoia, when the next release comes out in September.  The result is very good hardware that is no longer supported by its manufacturer.  For somebody that has a 2018 or 2019 model, that means accepting less-than-complete security updates.  And for models that are 2017 and older, that means no support of any kind from Apple.

The thing is that the older Mac hardware doesn’t have to be abandoned, if you’re willing to run another operating system.  Mac hardware generally works fine with Windows, and I think that at least some of the 2018 and 2019 models include support for TPM 2.0 and 8th-gen Intel processors, meaning that it should be possible even to install Windows 11 on those machines. I know from friends that are developers that do multi-platform work who claim that the best machine for running Windows is a Mac.

One further option is that even if it can’t run Windows 10 or Windows 11, an older Mac is often a good candidate for installation of Linux, and I’ve seen machines as old as 2010 that are still capable of running Ubuntu.  I have a co-worker that’s enthusiastic about such builds, as a way of keeping otherwise good Mac hardware in circulation, even if Apple lost interest years ago.

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pmcjr6142, windbg, Will Fastie

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I have a 2017 macBook Air that is no longer supported by Apple. I installed Linux Mint on it as described here:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/installing-mint-22-cinnamon-on-2017-macbook-air/

It’s a base model and when it was running macOS it was just another computer – I didn’t really like it and I didn’t really dislike it, although it did have a nice display and touchpad. Now, though, the thing just flies! Too bad it wasn’t very impressive when it was running macOS. If had been I just might have been a Mac convert.

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Still Anonymous wrote:

Mac has a finite lifespan of support from Apple.

Yes, but it’s better than it was in the past. My ca. 2010 mini stopped getting updated at about the four-year mark.

This would change quickly if Macs were sold in any quantity to the US federal government. That’s why Windows has a 5+5=10-year cycle – GSA schedules.

This might change with Apple’s silicon now in all of Apple’s systems. It’s one thing to blame the other guy (e.g., Intel), and another to point at one’s own difficulties.

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windbg, satrow

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Thanks for writing these articles.

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Thanks for the series, Will.

Now I’ve used the Windows platform ever since I moved from the Atari ST, just after the dinosaurs were no longer supported.  I am not involved with code development, not really a gamer, and not really able to keep up with new gadgets and constant upgrades.  I bought the fastest components I could afford, and kept them as long as I could.  my current desktop is about 10-12 years old, and W11 broke the camel’s back.  Screw Micro$oft.

My son drank the cool-aid long ago and has Apple products.  I’ve been hit up for upgrades in one way or another, and while The box is pretty and slick, I can’t bring myself to enter a closed system.

I needed to learn a smidgeon of RHEL for work a few years ago, downloaded several distros of Linux to revive laptops that were given to me when I told friends how much some repairs would cost, and used Linux on these at a beach house for several years.  When W11 rolled around, I decided to go for Linux as my forever platform.  This has been a perfect solution.  I always refused to use MSOffice, going for OpenOffice.org and now LibreOffice.  Always used Firefox and Thunderbird.  My employer didn’t care which browser I used, as long as I got my work done.  Now I’ve saved one friend from buying expensive new stuff by reviving his with Linux.  He’s not technically savvy, he’s thrifty, and so far is happy as a clam.  My wife’s office has two aging W10 desktops.  She will retire sometime in the coming couple years, so she doesn’t need W11 computers.  I already have her using Libreoffice, and nearly everything else is email and online searches.  Linux is in her imminent future.

I think AskWoody should think about getting a Linux Department started.  There’s a lot of thrifty types out there, who are going to need help.  From my searches for some solutions, a basic description of Linux, its kernel and shells, why do they do it this way, where they put stuff and why.  Maybe a description of how it’s becoming possible to run some windows programs, and run windows games.  And how there’s a whole lot of free programs to accomplish most if not all tasks that we’ve downloaded windows programs from 3rd party sites and come to love.  The freedom to customize is without bounds.

Do I sound like a Linux evangelist?

You betcha!

 

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Charlie

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Towson_Steve wrote:

I think AskWoody should think about getting a Linux Department started.

Try this Forum:
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/forum/askwoody-support/linux-for-the-home-user/

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I’m a teacher and last year, we finally got iPads to use for teaching. They’re great for writing and using as a blackboard replacement, but obviously aren’t laptops. I’m a life-long Windows user, but im constantly annoyed by MS, Win 11, failed updates, constant ads etc. – so I gave it a try and bought a MacBook. To be honest: took me about a week to get used to it and I’m not looking back. Rock-solid OS, no ads, simple updates and yes, some UI issues or “weird” design issues, but Microsoft or Linux do have them, too.

Privately, I have changed my Laptops to Win 10 Enterprise IoT 2021 and will receive Updates until 2032. Wholly different OS, no Windows Store, no forced MS account etc. Just the way Win 7 was.

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