Why Apple's move from Intel to ARM means we should stop buying Macs

Dude, when they come out with a 20 hour battery life laptop that does everything macOS does now - who won’t buy one?

If you’re a student/professional that uses Lightroom/Photoshop, etc there’ll be no question that you’ll get the laptop with the better battery life for the same performance.

Great news! All of those Intel Macs will become scrap, sold at a loss or given away to someone who can install Linux on it!

After 5 years Apple can't get parts for your computer, so I don't think running the latest compatible software is the problem. For most laptops the battery or keyboard will be pretty reduced I would have thought.

So I don't think the situation materially changes enough to stop buying Macs, unless of course you already stopped buying macs for these reasons, so this article is in my opinion misleading.

It might help justify people who have left the Mac ecosystem feel better, judging by the target audience.

I'm mainly just worried about how this will affect my development environment and ability to compile linux libraries and things like homebrew apps on the command line.

I can only imagine that changing the CPU architecture will mean pretty much every tool I use is going to break and have to be fixed (or abandoned) by random open source developers slowly over the coming years.

Or am I wrong? Will this all be seamless?

We have been discussing this and it is somewhat problematic, although it depends on how long the intel macs last. The Mac Pro Range are the most expensive things ever and owners will want to sweat them. It could be that security fixes will continue for longer than OS releases, which is the biggest concern. Failing that, my six month old maxed-out MBP 16 might be running Linux this time in 2026.

I second this. Start focusing on improving battery life on Windows laptops already.

I'm sort of happy this is going to push processor manufacturers to get the best power efficient general computing out there, but developer productivity is key.

The author claims to know many people who happily run five year old machines. I guess I might know a few too, but I know many many more who jump on every new generation just as soon as they can. This is especially true in the Apple world, where in pre-COVID times people literally slept on the sidewalk to get in the store first on launch day. The number of people who actually care about Apple support for a five year old product is probably pretty small.

There are reasonably-debatable reasons why people should stop buying Macs. A shift to ARM is not one of them.

What will people think about the new laptops?

Personally this kind of vertical integration from a company that isn't shy about imposing it's opinion would be a worry.

I doubt I will want such a device unless it is very open and can run alternate OSs etc, even if I never will.

pcworld lol

I'm actually thinking of getting a 2019 MacBook Pro. I like the butterfly keyboard and mostly believe the outrage was fake news like a lot of things nowadays with outrage culture. Not to mention it's 3rd gen, failure probability would be lower.

I'm also aware that at most I'd have 4-5 years, BUT if you take Windows into consideration, then you can definitely double that time. There's just no premium laptop manufacturer like Apple, all competition just looks like an attempt to be like them. I'd get a great trackpad, design, screen (most important to me) and somewhat both of OS worlds. Doesn't seem like a bad buy.