And they can typically setup their dev environment without a VM, while also getting commercial app support if they need it.
Windows requires a VM, like WSL, for a lot of people, and Linux lacks commercial support. macOS strikes a good balance in the middle that makes it a pretty compelling choice.
I was thinking more about software like the Adobe suite, Microsoft Office, or other closed source software that hasn’t released on Linux. Electron has made things a bit better, but there are still a lot of bigs gaps for the enterprise, unless the company is specifically choosing software to maintain Linux support for end users.
Sure, Wine exists, but it’s not something I’d want to rely on for a business when there are alternatives like macOS which will offer native support.
Most people don't need the Adobe Suite, and the web version of M$-Office is more than Ok for occasional use. Most other enterprise software are web apps too nowadays, so it's much less relevant what OS your machine is running than it was ten years ago...
Excel is essential and in most businesses that I worked with, most of the accounting and business side is run on it. I switched to Windows from Linux just because of Excel when WSL came out. If Linux would have Excel and Photoshop that would be a no brainer to choose it, but that will never happen
Apple fanboys like to talk about how cool and long lasting a MacBook Air is but a 500 bucks Chromebook will do just as well while allowing pretty much 90% of the use cases. Sure, the top end power is much lower but at the same time considering the base RAM/storage combo Apple gives it is not that relevant. If you starting loading it up, that puts the pricing in an entirely different category and in my opinion the MacBook Air becomes seriously irrelevant when compared to serious computing devices in the same price range...
There's still a huge market for people who want higher end hardware and to run workloads locally, or put a higher price on privacy. For people who want to keep their data close to their chest, and particularly now with the AI bloom, being able to perform all tasks on device is more valuable than ever.
A Chromebook "does the job" but it's closer to a thin client than a workstation. A lot of the job is done remotely and you may not want that.
Yes, but for those people if you consider the price of a fully loaded MacBook Pro it is a rather small win considering all the limitations.
If the only thing you care about are battery life (only if you plan to use it lightly on the go, because even the high-end Apple Silicon sucks decent amount of power at full tilt) and privacy I guess they are decent enough.
This is my argument: the base models are at the same time overkill and too limited considering the price and the high-end models are way too expensive for what they bring to the table.
Apple has a big relevancy problem because of how they put a stupid pricing ladder on everything, but that is just my opinion, I guess.
As long as they keep making a shit ton of cash it doesn't matter, I suppose.
But if the relevant people stop buying Macs because they make no sense, it will become apparent why it matters sooner or later...
Not at all, a Chromebook let's you run Linux apps. I can run full blown IDEs locally without problems. And yes, that is with 8Gb ram, ChromeOS has superb memory management.
Well, Google developed and deployed MGLRU to Chromebooks long before upstreamed it. Plus they use some magic to check the MGLRU working set size inside the VMs and balance everything.
Are you seriously arguing about mini-LED displays only found in expensive MacBook Pro when I mention a cheap 500 dollars Chromebook.
There is at least a 4x difference in price for those machines, it is ridiculous to even pretend they are somewhat comparable.
And if we are talking about expensive high-end hardware, mini-LED is worse than OLED found in those machines anyway so it's not like if that would be a strong argument.
My argument isn't about Chromebooks vs any MacBook.
My argument is against a base MacBook Air that is too expensive for relatively limited added utility against something like a cheaper Chromebooks.
Sure, the MacBook Air is better built and will do some things better but those things are not extremely relevant for someone who would be satisfied by an entry level MacBook Air, because while an MBA has some very nice attributes, in the end everything is limited by its RAM/storage (and to a lesser degree, ports).
For a concrete example, in my country the cheaper MacBook Air you can get is the old M1 design at 1k€, then there is the M2 refresh at 1.2k€ and M3 variant at 1.3k€.
But you can get an Asus Chromebook Plus for 600€ that has either the same amount of RAM and storage or more RAM (16Gb) or more storage (512Gb) depending on the variant you end up with.
The display is worse (100 nits less bright and worse resolution) but slightly bigger (14") and that may matter more to many people. It has an older Intel i5 (you can find some AMD options for better efficiency) but it hardly matters for the vast majority of people who just want a laptop to do the basics (basically the target of a MacBook Air). Its battery life would be a bit worse than an MBA but not in a way that can be relevant for the vast majority of customers.
One major advantage it has over an MBA is better ports selection, with an HDMI port, a USB A port and an SD card reader on top of the 2 Thunderbolt/USB C ports the MBA has, allowing a dongle free life without having to buy anything else, providing much better utility. That can be way more relevant for many peoples than a better build quality (that I would argue do not even bring better longevity, since with Apple you are hostage of the software support anyway).
You see I am not against MacBooks; in fact, I would advise purchasing a MacBook Pro for some specific use case.
But the reality is that the entry level Apple hardware is rather compromised for its price, and if someone would be satisfied by that choice, I'm arguing that there is another choice (worse on paper, better in some ways) but at half the price (40% off minimum).
If you start loading up a MacBook Air, you end up in MacBook Pro price territory and it doesn't make a lot of sense to not add the 100-200 more to get the much better machine.
I know from experience that entry level Apple hardware is a terrible deal, both because I made the mistake myself or I had to help/fix the issues for other people that made those choices. I have a cousin who remind me every time how much he fucking hates his entry level iMac (an old one with a compromised Fusion Drive and minimum RAM) even though it was rather expensive compared to most computers.
My answer is always the same: you spent a lot, but not enough, because with Apple you do not deserve a good experience if you don't go above and beyond in your spending.
In my opinion it is way more disingenuous to advocate for entry-level Apple hardware to people who would be very much satisfied with products costing half as much. The value is just not there, Apple went way too far in the luxury territory in locking down everything and creating a pricing ladder that is engineered to confuse and upsell customers to extract as much money as possible.
For someone who really needs a computer to do more intense work, provided they can work around the tradeoffs of Apple Silicon/macOS and they are willing to spend a large amount of cash, Apple has some great hardware for sure.
For everyone else the value is extremely questionnable, especially since they are going full steam ahead into services subscription and the software can be lacking in some ways that will require purchasing even more stuff, the total cost of ownership doesn't make sense anymore.
For example, their iPhone SE is absolutely terrible, at 500€ you pay for 6 years old technology with small screen compared to the footprint, terrible battery life, etc. A 500€ mid-range Android is so much better in so many ways that it is just stupid at this point...
As for OLED, I don't think burn-in is a significant concern anymore, and if it is I would argue that you are using it too much like a desktop. In my country you could buy 2 decent OLED laptops for the price of an entry-level MacBook Pro anyway so it doesn't matter as much (and replacing displays of hardware manufacturers other than Apple is much easier and cheaper, so there is that).
I think the MacBook Pros are very good for some niche applications, but at viable minimum 2.23k€ price (16Gb RAM/512GB storage) there are a lot of good options so it really requires a careful analysis of actual use case. If you do things related to 3D or engineering it is probably not worth it...
You usually don't need either for software development though, and if you do the free or online alternatives are often good enough for the rare occasions you need them. If you are a software developer and you have to spend significant time using Office it means you either are developing extensions for Office or your company management is somewhat lacking and you are forced to handle things you should not (like bureaucracy for instance).
Where I’m at my email is in Outlook. Having to use the web version sounds annoying. I also end up getting a lot of information in spreadsheets. Having to move all that to the online version to open also sounds annoying. The online version is also more limited, which could lead to issues.
I could see a front end dev needing Photoshop for some things, if they don’t have a design team to give them assets.
There are also security software the company says laptops must have which isn’t available for Linux. They only buy and deploy this stuff with Windows and macOS in mind.
A couple weeks ago on HN I saw someone looking for a program to make a demo of their app (I think). The comments were filled with people recommending an app on macOS that was apparently far and away the best option, and many were disappointed by the lack of availability elsewhere. I find there are a lot of situations like this, where I might be able to get the job done on another OS, but the software I actually want to use is on macOS. Obviously this one is a matter of taste to some degree.
It’s not as big an issue as it was 20 years ago, but it’s still an issue for in many environments.
I would love to buy Apple hardware, but not from Apple. I mean: M2 13 inch notebook with access to swap/extend memory and storage, regular US keyboard layout and proper desktop Linux (Debian, Alpine, Mint, PopOS!, Fedora Cinamon) or windows. MacOS and the Apple eco system just gets in your way when you're just trying to maintain a multi-platform C++/Java/Rust code base.
WSL for normal stuff. My co-worker is on Windows and had to setup WSL to get a linter working with VS Code. It took him a week to get it working the first time, and it breaks periodically, so he needs to do it all over again every few months.
I'm developing on Windows for Windows, Linux, Android, and web, including C, Go, Java, TSQL and MSSQL management. I do not necessarily need WSL except for C. SSH is built directly into the Windows terminal and is fully scriptable in PS.
WSL is also nice for Bash scripting, but it's not necessary.
It is a check box in the "Add Features" panel. There is nothing to install or setup. Certainly not for linting, unless, again, you're using a Linux tool chain.
But if you are, just check the box. No setup beyond VS Code, bashrc, vimrc, and your tool chain. Same as you would do on Mac.
If anything, all the Mac specific quirks make setting up the Linux tool chains much harder. At least on WSL the entire directory structure matches Linux out of the box. The tool chains just work.
While some of the documentation is in its infancy, the workflow and versatility of cross platform development on Windows, I think, is unmatched.
This. I have to onboard a lot of students to our analysis toolchain (Nuclear Physics, ROOT based, C++). 10 years ago I prayed that the student has a Mac, because it was so easy. Now I pray they have Windows, because of WSL. The tool chain is all compiled from source. Pretty much every major version, but often also minor versions, of macos break the compilation of ROOT. I had several release upgrades of Ubuntu that only required a recompile, if that, and it always worked.
Unless he is doing Linux development in the first place, that sounds very weird. You most certainly don't need to set up WSL to lint Python or say JS in VSCode on Windows.
That sounds wild, you can run bash and unix utils on windows with minimal fuss without WSL. Unless that linter truly needed linux (and i mean, vscode extensions are typescript..) that sounds like overkill
Windows requires a VM, like WSL, for a lot of people, and Linux lacks commercial support. macOS strikes a good balance in the middle that makes it a pretty compelling choice.