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Comment by LoganDark | Hacker News Reader

Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).

I still have my mid-2015 MBP running triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Arch Linux. That machine could run everything...

I now have to keep around a physical PC desktop in order to run games like ARC Raiders. I use OBS with a capture card to use my MacBook's screen as a monitor for the PC, and an application called Deskflow to forward the MacBook's keyboard to the PC (I connect the mouse directly). Also, SonoBus for voice chat, since the PC doesn't have a microphone built-in. It works well enough.

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> Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).

I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux).

But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.

I really hope they dial back Liquid Glass after the guy who ruined it all left. I love the glass effect itself, but the rest of the design could use a lot of work.

Tried Moonlight/Sunshine?

Works for me without any extra hardware. Just a network connection between the machines. Haven't tried voice chat though.

Edit: Steam streaming works pretty well too, but feels a tiny bit more laggy than the above. Also running non Steam games is a bit of a pain.

Using the capture card allows me to avoid compression artifacts and a majority of network congestion (and get 120Hz!), and connecting the mouse directly eliminates additional latency and jitter. The keyboard still suffers from it, but in a shooter (like, say, ARC Raiders) mouse input is definitely most important - I can deal with a slight keyboard delay.

I may still look into those for the keyboard input, but the only improvement I foresee really making is getting Ethernet for the MacBook (I moved my one line to the PC since the MacBook's Wi-Fi is so much better). Haven't decided between a passive or active switch yet.

As someone who sarted with Apple in the PowerPC days I couldn't agree more. To me it seems like the only real advantage is good battery, but I can't figure out who exactly is running powerfull/complicated software on the go where it matters.

If you just need to browse the web and whatnot, just get a cheap tablet?

For all the good softwares, it seems like you just get much better performance out of a much lowered priced PC. I just don't get who is benifiting for the 1-2 hours of supplementary runtime out of a MacBook and this is wortht the price delta as well as the hassle of dealing with all the specificity of that software implementation.

But then again, my experience with Apple users is that they are not the most logical peoples around, so maybe that's just it.

I still like some parts of macOS but it has been very hard to justify considering how Apple has been behaving lately.

If Apple manages to produce a decent iMac soon enough, it might just bite the bullet once again, but otherwise I'm out.

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