When it comes down to it, I think you'll find most people buy Mac for the software.
I've tried using Windows and Linux and it's just not as good. If this weren't the case, then I doubt Apple could charge such exorbitant prices for their hardware.
I've tried using Windows and Linux and it's just not as good. If this weren't the case, then I doubt Apple could charge such exorbitant prices for their hardware.
I mean here I am all VSCode + Linux (WSL2) + Office 365 + Adobe + Davinci Resolve + mathematical tools (SciPy/Maxima/Minitab) here. All are portable (apart from Minitab)
I will agree that native cloud sucks on Mac. I would disagree about the desktop apps, I think they are superior to Windows. Programming is also superior on Mac, in my opinion.
Personally speaking, the big thing I hate most about Windows are the defaults. Like, the default keyboard shortcuts i.e. using F keys in opinion, is very poor design. Also the lack of an additional modifier key makes Windows less ideal from this point of view.
Of course, each OS has their pros and cons. Windows just doesn't work for me.
I ended up going back to Windows to use these and switched to Studio One instead of Logic Pro X.
Except when it doesn’t. Like for example with macOS Ventura, where lots of people had huge problems with audio dropouts on USB interfaces.
The problem was never really acknowledged by Apple (as usual), but “magically” fixed in Sonoma (without any mention in release notes).
Leaving many users with the dilemma that they should upgrade to Sonoma asap to fix the USB problems, but on the other hand should wait with upgrading because maybe their DAWs or plugins are not compatible with Sonoma yet.
I think this applies to most things in life. Especially programming libraries at software companies. It's almost assumed that something will break when you upgrade any kind of system.
And downgrading these machines is somewhere between impossible and a huge pain in the b…
Then I bought my M1 Mac and was shocked to learn that I think it's actually the least sophisticated, by far.
Don't get me wrong, my M1 hardware competes with my 5950x Desktop system... which amazes me.
But, Jack2 on Linux was pretty cool, a little rough around the edges, but worked really well.
Now with Pipewire becoming the standard, I can't imagine why anyone would pick a platform besides Linux for any real time Audio+Visual routing/processing.
It's just so easy to pipe any of your data to any other piece of software, including over the network.
Software compatibility almost entirely non existent for industry standard workflows.
> It's just so easy to pipe any of your data to any other piece of software, including over the network.
Not a frequently required feature (or at all) for 99% of music production use cases.
Linux audio is getting there, but it's a million miles away from being a feasible choice for most people in the industry. I mean, I don't think I could find a single person who would trade their MacBook for a Linux laptop when its running their entire live setup.
And Apple has some spectacularly useless systems developers that manage to have at least a couple of daemons regularly blow up and use lots of CPU in every release. It is almost like some elaborate running joke.
I mean, what idiot wrote the calendar daemon. How the heck do you keep a job as a systems developer when you need to burn 70-80% CPU for prolonged periods of time to sync a calendar that hasn't even had significant use for years? Seriously, if anyone knows who wrote it, I'd be interested to understand how things went so wrong for them.
Yes, Apple's software sucks.
However, I don't buy Apple to use their software or their cloud services.
I use macs for the same things you do: run the applications I need to do my job. Applications that are not made by Apple. My list of requirements isn't long.
- Must be a unix variant
- Must be decent hardware (most laptops are horrible)
- Must be able to run the developer tools I use
- Must be able to run Fusion 360
- Must be able to run professional photo editing software
- Nice if it can run Ableton Live
I'm ready to pay a lot of money for an OS that neither annoys me nor demands work from me.
The apps themselves... yeah they're mostly the same.
IMO the last OS release that was extremely smooth and nearly completely bug-free was Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Nearly everything afterwards was a slow downwards spiral, both in terms of useability and quality.
The Apple ecosystem is closed, you must pay the Apple hardware tax to get in.
While I am a big NeXTSTEP fan, I am not paying for the experience in detriment of less capable hardware, specially when I can just rent Mac hardware from work from our R&D pool.