MacOS, Ubuntu or Windows?

MacOS, Ubuntu or Windows?

  • MacOS

    Votes: 16 35.6%

  • Windows

    Votes: 12 26.7%

  • Ubuntu

    Votes: 7 15.6%

  • Other Linux Distro

    Votes: 10 22.2%
  • Total voters
    45
AppleAndMango

AppleAndMango

Active member
Out of the operating systems I've used Windows, Ubuntu and MacOS I've always preferred MacOS even if I'm paying a premium for their hardware in comparison for alternatives. I'm toying with the idea of moving to Windows considering the cost difference especially with the price hike with the 2018 Mac laptops and I came across this thread which is fairly outdated so I'm wondering in 2018, are you still Mac or PC?
 
The only way you could ever get me to use Windows as my daily driver would be if you paid me a significant amount of money, or you smashed all my Mac hardware.

Even if I disregard the privacy concerns of Windows 10 and the constant updates that interrupt me, for my personal needs Windows is just not as good of a development OS as macOS is. I do concede that the way I laid out my development environment is unique to me, so it's an issue of my own making, but it works for me.
(If you're curious, the issue is that I use symlinks quite extensively for my vB3/vB4/XF1 work, and symlink support / stability in Windows leaves something to be desired.)

The fact that I own an iPhone and thus have the ability to text / make calls via my desktop is also a huge boon.

However, the biggest factor that makes me prefer Macs, is how long they actually last. I am currently using an entry-level 2012 Mac Mini (2.5 GHz Dual-Core i5-3210M), which I bought for £500 ($640). I've since put about £200 ($255) worth of upgrades into it (16 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD). It works perfectly as a web development machine and general web browsing machine. I have no serious complaints about the speed of it.

I challenge you to find me a Windows computer that cost £500 in 2012 that you can put £200 worth of upgrades in and have it work this well in 2018 - especially when you consider the form factor. Furthermore, I challenge you to attempt to sell that computer for £200+ in 2018.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say no-one can meet either of those challenges.

If you want an all-in-one device that can do work, leisure and gaming, then don't buy a Mac. Even if you buy the most expensive Mac Pro and push the specs up to the £10,000+ price range, it's going to get destroyed by a £1,000 Windows PC for gaming.

If you want a work / general browsing machine, and you're willing to accept that you are not going to play any games on it, then unless you are on an extremely tight budget, buy a Mac. It will retain both speed and value way past what a Windows machine could ever hope to achieve.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to add that we are now living in a bizarro world where Macs have better plug-and-play support for legacy hardware than Windows does.

I can plug my laser printer/scanner combo from 2011 into a Windows computer and it will refuse to work because drivers don't exist anymore, but when I plugged it into my Mac mini saw macOS install drivers automatically from Apple via the App Store. After installation, the printer was identified correctly in the Printers & Scanners preference pane in macOS (i.e. as the actual make & model, not just as "generic printer").

🤔


Fillip
 
I have some of all 4, but my main one I use is my late 2012 I7 Mac Mini (obtained when it was first released). All I've done to it is bump the memory up to 16GB and recently replaced the fan in it (that was about $12).
I've also got a Surface Book (I7, 1TB, 16GB RAM) that I use for remote access and client related work since most of their networks are Windows based.
Then for playing at the house I have a couple of desktops that run various flavors of Linux at different times so I can keep my feet wet with them.

As for what @DragonByte Tech was referring to with Windows and it's updates... I've got 3 desktops from a clinic I do work for sitting here at the house, all 3 are doing Windows 10 updates and all three have been running all night long since they have not been updated in a while. One is showing 14% done on the OS upgrade, the other is showing 18% done and the third is at 19% done. For the 7 windows machines I've had to do updates for before these, I've downloaded over 18GB of data - well outside what I normally use. The Windows 7 machines gave me fewer problems (albeit not problem free as I had to use some tools to get some of the updates to apply). I always hate updating a windows machine, and being responsible for 32 desktops, 10 Surface Pro's and 5 Surface Books at that clinic can be fun - especially when you consider I don't get paid for it.
 
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Not used windows for over 12 years, installed Ubuntu on my laptop about 12 years ago then updated to a Macbook Pro about 6 years ago and apart from dropping it a few times and having to replace the harddrive all is good. After the second time of dropping it I went with an SSD replacement, best thing I ever did.....
 
MacOS. Windows is only good for gaming.

I did try both. About a year ago my iMac's hard drive died, then in December display started to show weird lines. It's an old iMac, warranty is already over. Then there is issue of terrible Apple support in Estonia - it takes them 2-3 weeks to do basic repairs and they charge fortune. So I've decided to buy new computer. New iMacs come only with Retina display, which I'm not fan of because it makes edges of graphics smooth so its easy to miss errors in design and they are massively overpriced in Estonia. I've heard good things about Windows Subsystem for Linux. Its basically Ubuntu within Windows. Windows did come a long way to help developers. So I've built a new PC.

Windows for development was bad. It appeared I cannot run services in WSL, so Apache, mySQL and Express have to be ran using Windows versions. That made it annoying. Need to run something in shell as administrator? Can't run 2 shells at the same time if one of them is ran as admin and other one as normal user because reasons... Development speed dropped massively.

Never again. Windows is a piece of junk. Their permissions system is worst **** ever created. Its the most illogical operating system there is. WSL is a good attempt at making things better, but it just doesn't work well enough to be usable.

After almost 8 months of trying to make it work, I've made backups of all my work, formatted hard drives and installed Hackintosh on that PC. Also bought refurbished Apple keyboard from eBay for half price of new one that looks and works just like new. That was 2 weeks ago. In last 2 weeks I did more work than in 3 months before that.

Now I have PC that runs OSX that is faster than new iMac while costing much less and if something goes wrong I can replace hardware myself.

Want to do web development work? Don't use Windows.
 
It's a shame Apple started soldering everything on the motherboard beyond the 2012 Mac Mini's, Apple's storage/RAM upgrades are so expensive. I'm looking for someone who's made the transition because I want their experience, I can't afford Mac's anymore unless I buy used which I don't want.

Thanks for your responses anywho!
 
Arty said:
Also bought refurbished Apple keyboard from eBay for half price of new one that looks and works just like new.
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For my Mac mini, I bought an old full-size wired Apple keyboard (with numpad) from a 2nd hand retailer in the UK called CeX for £20 ($25 / €23) and it works beautifully. I don't need it to be wireless, and I don't need a trackpad component, but I sure do love that it has a numpad.

Came with a 2 year warranty as well.

AppleAndMango said:
I can't afford Mac's anymore unless I buy used which I don't want.
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There's really no reason not to buy used, assuming you buy from a site with good buyer protection such as eBay. I've bought multiple pieces of Apple hardware used, including the Apple Watch I'm wearing right now, and I've never had a problem.


Fillip
 
DragonByte Tech said:
There's really no reason not to buy used, assuming you buy from a site with good buyer protection such as eBay. I've bought multiple pieces of Apple hardware used, including the Apple Watch I'm wearing right now, and I've never had a problem.
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I'm contemplating it, can't believe the condition of some of the laptops I've seen on eBay... How can people treat their £1000+ purchase so badly, even some sellers trying to sell old 2012 MacBook Pro's for over £600 ridiculous!
 
Definitely Windows. I prefer having full access to my rig and being able to exchange parts as I see fit, and not having to resort to pre-build rigs that I have to send in when a part breaks or turns out to be a bottleneck in the future. Not to speak of the overpricing of Apple hardware in general. Being able to build my own rig at least gives me full control over how much I want to spend on what part, and not a two-item checkbox whether I want 16 or 32 gigs of ram.

Sure Linux would be a choice that solves the above problem too, but let's be real: no one got time to set up all that stuff himself. The "selling point" of being able to set up and customize everything to your liking unfortunately comes with the liability of having to do so. A few of my former colleagues and former fellow students complained about it literally every time the discussion was brought up. And compared to windows, Linux still only runs a subset of applications (and especially games).

Having privacy concerns in 2018 is imo a big luxury problem. I've been using windows 10 for quite a few years now, yet have to experience any "negative backlash" because someone sold and published my private data to an employer, insurance or w/e. Maybe my data is just too boring to be taken into consideration, who knows.
Windows 10 has plenty of options to limit the transmitted data, and switching to a local user account also removes the necessity of storing your profile in the cloud. Not to speak of the fact that there are plenty of tools to limit it even further, if you wish to. Automated updates can still be turned off as in previous versions, or delayed until later, if you're currently working, just as in previous versions.

I do agree that MacOS is a solid system, and it sure has its use cases, especially in corporate areas and for people who work with audio/visual data, but for the day-to-day home usage, I consider the hardware and brand ridiculously overpriced.
 
DragonByte Tech said:
I challenge you to find me a Windows computer that cost £500 in 2012 that you can put £200 worth of upgrades in and have it work this well in 2018 - especially when you consider the form factor. Furthermore, I challenge you to attempt to sell that computer for £200+ in 2018.
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Dell XPS series. Schenker business laptops. Lenovo Thinkpads. There are quite a lot. Especially in the ~600€ tier for 13-15" laptops. It's not like that Apple uses any kind of magic, they pretty much use the same quality hardware like anyone else.
My pumped up XPS 17 from 2011 was a bit more expensive, ~1200€, but well, it's a 17" screen, right? And it had a graphics card which was capable of gaming, considering it was 2011. Not to mention the i7. Strip that down, fit it to your screen size and you will find a lot more. From that time.
Just the battery is garbage now, but eh, it's been 7 years.
My current MSI will last for the next century aswell.

Yay, the second challenge sounds nice, because people won't automatically pay more for the Apple logo, even if the hardware is garbage compared to the same hardware from another manufacturer, right :D?
DragonByte Tech said:
If you want a work / general browsing machine, and you're willing to accept that you are not going to play any games on it, then unless you are on an extremely tight budget, buy a Mac. It will retain both speed and value way past what a Windows machine could ever hope to achieve.
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Well, it's way easier to fill your Windows machine with garbage because there's lot more to do so :p Neither hardwarewise nor softwarewise it's Windows or the respective system which slows you down, it's your habit and usage. Do care a little bit about your environment and it will last way longer.
 
Lukas W. said:
I do agree that MacOS is a solid system, and it sure has its use cases, especially in corporate areas and for people who work with audio/visual data, but for the day-to-day home usage, I consider the hardware and brand ridiculously overpriced.
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You can always install OSX on custom built PC. That's what I did. It took one day to install it and make it work, biggest issue was configuring GeForce graphics card. Now it is running flawlessly. OSX is free these days.
 
Arty said:
You can always install OSX on custom built PC. That's what I did. It took one day to install it and make it work, biggest issue was configuring GeForce graphics card. Now it is running flawlessly. OSX is free these days.
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Good to know, that's something. Still not gonna do it as I don't see what explicit benefit it would offer over windows, even without taking into consideration that I use my machine for gaming quite a lot.
 
Lukas W. said:
Having privacy concerns in 2018 is imo a big luxury problem. I've been using windows 10 for quite a few years now, yet have to experience any "negative backlash" because someone sold and published my private data to an employer, insurance or w/e. Maybe my data is just too boring to be taken into consideration, who knows.
Windows 10 has plenty of options to limit the transmitted data, and switching to a local user account also removes the necessity of storing your profile in the cloud. Not to speak of the fact that there are plenty of tools to limit it even further, if you wish to. Automated updates can still be turned off as in previous versions, or delayed until later, if you're currently working, just as in previous versions.
Click to expand...

In my opinion the privacy "issues" with Windows 10 are blown way out of proportion, from what I gather it's just telemetry data? I'm no Microsoft fanboy but the conspiracy theories I've read about Microsoft "spying" on what you're doing on your machine are laughable... Can you imagine the amount of storage Microsoft would need to store everything on millions of Windows hard drives not to mention the constant bandwidth congestion of networks by uploading all this information, just seems so unrealistic to me for any company to do such things. Conspiracy's spread like wildfire on the internet, anyone will believe anything.
 
Did you know that Microsoft has several hosting departments? For example Microsoft Azure, which is the direct competitor to Amazon's AWS platform.
So neither storage nor bandwith would ever be a problem for them.
 
For sure not for Microsoft, but in the UK the average upload speed is 10Mbps on which the entire country would be in havoc if our PC's suddenly saturated our connections.
 
Arty said:
You can always install OSX on custom built PC. That's what I did. It took one day to install it and make it work, biggest issue was configuring GeForce graphics card. Now it is running flawlessly. OSX is free these days.
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Would you happen to have a guide or anything for this? Just noticed that the 2015 MacBook Pro's with removable SSD's use a custom connector so I can't even upgrade the SSD unless I buy a used SSD that costs way more than SSD's for probably any other laptop. I'm really bored of Apples greediness, running MacOS on non-apple hardware would be my way of saying **** you to Apple.
 
AppleAndMango said:
In my opinion the privacy "issues" with Windows 10 are blown way out of proportion, from what I gather it's just telemetry data? I'm no Microsoft fanboy but the conspiracy theories I've read about Microsoft "spying" on what you're doing on your machine are laughable...
Click to expand...

Ehrrrm...
Could you please watch this as an example (say from 7minutes 15 secs onwards)

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