What would I gain or lose by moving from PC to Mac

[Darth Vader]

FWIW I have never installed Windows on a Mac beyond this, just never needed to. I switched back in the G4 days, used Office, Photoshop etc in early days, but since then have migrated to Libre Office which does everything I need and I just use Apple’s built-in app for photography, plus I’ve got Pixelmater. It’s a bit irritating, but no way in hell would I pay Adobe subscription rates, so it is what it is. The killer app that ties me to the Mac (other than the ease of integration with everything else I use) is Logic Pro. I’d really not want to shift from that.

I have actually xfered a complete Windows installation from a PC to a Mac disk partition. This is useful for someone who needs to move from a Windows machine to the Mac environment but also retain the ability to use existing Windows applications and data.

I have upgraded several older Macs that have an NVMe SSD to 1TB for around £80 (WD Blue) so there is ample room for an old Windows installation and several different macOS if need be. Even Macs with soldered in SSDs can have an external M.2 SSD connected via USB as its fast enough with USB 3.x.

Fun.

DV

 

[Bob Edwards]

I've been Mac only since about 1994 and used Apple going back to 1979 or so - US 7th-8th grade. I have a windows laptop for work, but never use it, as all the things I need to do are web-based, and so easily accessible through Safari or Firefox.

As far as what someone would gain by switching, I couldn't begin to say. I can say that Mac OS just seems to work for me, while every time I have to look at my work laptop it seems . . . ungainly. But that, I would bet, is just familiarity. I would say that Apple hardware, the MBPs from 2016-2019 excepted due to the non-stop keyboard failures, seems to last longer and to be more trouble free. My main desktop is a 2012 Mac Pro, my main laptop is a 2015 MBP. I replaced the battery on the MBP earlier this year, but otherwise it has been flawless. And the Mac Pro has been turned on 24/7/365 and has never hiccuped.

So, to answer @Sloop John B 's original question, try one and see what you think.

 

[flutteringwow]

You will lose nothing, and gain everything. Stress reduced computing. Customer care you can just go online and chat with anytime, anywhere, other than finding out who made what component in your PC that's failed and then trying to find who to call and speak to etc. Such a ballache.

Aesthically Apple machines look better. Acoustically, Apple machines are quieter.

I've had one Apple product fail on me in ten years out of around twenty products I've had through that period. If we include family members, thats one in thirty. It was six years old. Before I switched to Apple, my PC's were always breaking down and my parents constantly on the phone trying to get help to fix their pc. Since they got a Mac, I generally have a much easier life as they never call for tech support!

If you really must run windows, its fairly simply on a Mac, and generally the Mac runs it better than a PC does, especially the new M1 machines.

https://www.parallels.com/uk/pd/gen...HQGxxE2SQj_n0oklRoowt3GD7I-njufBoCznoQAvD_BwE

 

[linnfomaniac83]

Your mind...I had an enforced spell on a mac a few months ago.
Of course, if you like updates that leave your compuer slower, or changes your settings, dislike ongoing support for peripherals and a generally accelerated march towards landfill, go mac!

That is the exact opposite of my experience as a very long term user of both platforms… I have a 24” 2007 iMac (2.8ghz core2extreme model) still in daily use, my daughter is still using my mid 2012 MBP daily for school.

Short of high end business machines which are cost equivalent of Macs, no windows based machine I’ve owned has actually stayed fully functional for more than five years, usually less. The Dell Latitude D630 I bought new is the longest lasting windows based machine I’ve owned and whilst windows 7 was still a relevant operating systems, it was great. I just run windows on a Mac these days, best of if both worlds in one machine. Not sure what the future holds for windows on a Mac with Apple silicon, but I only use it for one specific windows only application these days anyway.

 

[Nero]

If you really must run windows, its fairly simply on a Mac, and generally the Mac runs it better than a PC does, especially the new M1 machines.

https://www.parallels.com/uk/pd/gen...HQGxxE2SQj_n0oklRoowt3GD7I-njufBoCznoQAvD_BwE

That’s interesting. Presumably some sort of VM?

 

[linnfomaniac83]

I would dispute this as a) Macs seem to have a very long usable life (you’ll find plenty of working Apple II, LC, Classics etc out there, though some suffer from battery leaks), and b) they retain a resale value forever (i.e. past a certain age they become a vintage collectable). I’m an ex-IT manager so think of IT in terms of ‘total cost of ownership’, not purchase price, and viewed as an annual IT cost even the expensive ones aren’t too bad if you factor a ten year lifespan plus resale. Just keep the box and keep the item in good condition!

PS As an example I’ve got a near-mint boxed Mk 1 G4 Mac Mini upstairs, it is pretty much useless as a computer now, but I bet I could get £100+ for it as a collectable. It only cost about £400 new and was usable for about 5-6 years (shorter than usual as Apple migrated to Intel a year later), so not a bad TCO. I actually fired it up a year or two ago and it still works fine. My current 13” mid-2012 MacBook Pro is also cosmetically near mint (I do 95% of my work with it docked to an IBM Model M keyboard and a mouse), it still works perfectly at present and when I do retire it I’ll just box and store it as it is a classic laptop now. The last fully serviceable and upgradable Apple laptop.

Yep, and thinking about total cost of ownership, I’ve had windows play “computer says no” way too many times in mission critical situations, it can cost you a nights pay and your reputation when your computer fails… the only oppsie I’ve had when using a Mac was a few weeks ago whilst I was playing at a charity event… an external hard drive failed (thankfully had a backup with me).

I was responsible for sound and lighting at the handover event at the ICC when the new Birmingham library was handed over to Birmingham council by Carillon, my mate was DJ-ing between band sets and his toshiba laptop decided to update and go into a boot loop before he even got started, I loaned him my then new mid 2012 MBP… it’s still working and has never missed a beat.

 

[david ellwood]

Watching people attempting to connect MacBooks to projectors in presentations because they insisted they were ‘better’ used to be an endless source of entertainment.

As for reliability, your Mac will only work for as long as Apple decide your hardware is OS current.

 

[flutteringwow]

That’s interesting. Presumably some sort of VM?

I used to use it when some software was only Windows based. I still use it for my cars diagnostics machine on an old Macbook. It makes the computer dual bootable, so you can have either Mac OS or Windows. Works perfectly. I believe the new editions do have a VW function so you dont have to log out and log back in to switch to Windows. Parallels has been around for decades.

Watching people attempting to connect MacBooks to projectors in presentations because they insisted they were ‘better’ used to be an endless source of entertainment.

As for reliability, your Mac will only work for as long as Apple decide your hardware is OS current.

Yes those few buttons and an adaptor can be tasking when doing it for the first time. Simple case of 'not done it before' etc.

Most machines work fine on new software, however when they become whats called a 'legacy or vintage' product in some models around ten years for Macbooks, they stop supporting them with hardware, so you cant get replacement parts etc. Old machines run the new OS's fine as @linnfomaniac83 mentioned, a 2007 and 2012 still in use daily. Having just sold.a 2013 Macbook Air running Big Surr with zero hitch, for £200, when it cost £600 originally, I'd say that investment one makes is still a good one.

I take it you have never owned a Mac?

 

[canonman]

Having just sold.a 2013 Macbook Air running Big Surr with zero hitch, for £200, when it cost £600 originally, I'd say that investment one makes is still a good one.

Absolutely. My 2009 MBP worked faultlessly until it was inadvertently introduced to Chablis one evening a couple of years ago. Even selling it as a faulty laptop, I got more for that than a crappy Dell 2012 17 in that worked. Mind you, you could go and cook a full breakfast whilst it was booting up.

 

[AndyU]

As for reliability, your Mac will only work for as long as Apple decide your hardware is OS current.

Had two Sony laptops. Both broke. Got fixed, then Sony stopped making laptops. Support zero. Subsequent HP laptop stopped taking Windows 10 updates. Support zero. The last operating system Microsoft said they would make. A lie. Current Acer that I have lying about won’t upgrade to Windows 11. All my Apple kit has upgraded effortlessly for years. And upgrades happen under my control. 24/7 support. And shops full of nice people all over the world.

 

[KrisW]

If you really must run windows, its fairly simply on a Mac, and generally the Mac runs it better than a PC does, especially the new M1 machines.

https://www.parallels.com/uk/pd/gen...HQGxxE2SQj_n0oklRoowt3GD7I-njufBoCznoQAvD_BwE

This is not true anymore. While older, Intel-based macs could run Windows pretty well when natively booted (or run in a VM), M1 macs are a completely different CPU architecture to (the vast majority of) Windows laptops, so they can’t run the normal retail builds of Windows natively, and must translate the code as they go (a process known as hardware emulation). This incurs a performance penalty.

A Virtual Machine is different from an emulator, in that a VM runs on the same type of CPU as the hosted operating system: because the CPU is the same, the instruction code in the hosted OS can be run directly by the CPU, just as fast as the native OS - this is what software like QEMU or VMWare does. However, when you have a different kind of CPU (as Apple now does), it is unable to execute the Intel CPU instruction codes contained in your Windows install, so another piece of software is needed to first translate those instructions into blocks of ARM operation codes that do the same job. This translation layer process takes time, and can never produce better code than the original. (Apple’s “Rosetta” system for running old Intel software is such a layer). Translation can be done on-the-fly or ahead of time. The latter (used by Rosetta) gives faster execution times in exchange for a slow startup, but is impractical when you’re emulating a whole OS and its applications.

Basically, Parallels on a new mac is fine if you need some low-performance line-of-business application that your employer uses for raising POs or whatever, but it will grind to a halt if you try using it to run something like SolidWorks.

The “Macs even run Windows better than PCS” thing in general is bogus: an equivalently-priced Windows laptop will run Windows as well as or better than a Mac will. There’s are no free lunches, and people shouldn’t be surprised that paying three times as much for a laptop gives you a longer working life and better performance; the only difference is that there are no cheap Mac laptops to directly compare with cheap Windows ones, and because Windows laptop customers are allowed to buy to their budget, it’s no surprise that the majority of Windows laptops cost a lot less than Mac ones. One thing is true, though: a second-hand Mac you can buy for £400 is an inferior computer to a new Windows laptop you can buy for £400, and both have about the same amount of life left in them.

Actually, this is a bad time to buy a second-hand Mac anyway. Most Mac users arrived after the last big architecture change (2005), and don’t remember the drastically shortened support for PowerPC models once the Intel ones had filled the range; towards the end, new software was only available in Intel-native builds, which were just unusable on the PowerPC machines - not much point in having an OS if you’ve no application software to run on it. If you are buying now, do not buy an Intel-based model - you will find it becomes unsupported by software producers very quickly, and its resale value will drop like a stone.

 

[gintonic]

no windows based machine I’ve owned has actually stayed fully functional for more than five years,

never had a Windows PC or laptop become non functional. Only time a BSOD was from a faulty video card. Nothing to do with Windows.

My recent procurements (100s of laptops and 1000s of desktops) at work over the last 10 years showed me we had more Apple laptop failures than Windows ones. Our Windows desktop are totally hammered by our students and a failure is rare, and more often than not relates to coffee spilled on a keyboard.

his toshiba laptop decided to update and go into a boot loop before he even got started,

user configurable. All my machines update on a timed basis during downtime setup by me, and I never have an issue.

 

[SteveG]

Again I dispute the price aspect if you view it as TCO (and care for your kit). PCs, even really sought-after high-end ones like say Panasonic Toughbooks lose value far faster than Macs and have a shorter useful life. The only way to really win on TCO is to self-build a desktop/server case machine and keep upgrading it, but who the hell uses a clunky old desktop machine in a home environment these days? I do 98% of my daily work with an iPad!

That's fine if you've a very lightweight user, but for anything that needs grunt an iPad won't really cut it (plus I find I really don't like the OS on an iPad although it's bordering on OK on a phone - although I like Android more). I still use a desktop (one I built myself and upgrade on occasion) for gaming however a decent spec (i7 based) laptop plus a decent monitor, keyboard and mouse is good for work stuff.

 

[Rcook]

I procure several 100 laptops per year and have stopped procuring Apple products as they fail more frequently (average time 2 to 3 years) than traditional PCs (4 to 5 years).

My wife uses both platforms, and prefers Windows.

Apple provides a closed environment.

Choose the tool that best meets your needs, not by brand

Pretty much this.

My business is supplying IT kit. The only sensible reason to go down the Mac route is if it does something a PC can't, or if there is a specific piece of software you need to run that is only available on Mac (about the only one I can think of is ProTools). Otherwise, a Windows (or other o/s PC or laptop) will do pretty much anything 99% of people need and cost a lot less. There are a great many myths in this perennial debate, mostly propagated by Mac fans, including:

"Macs don't get viruses" - yes they do, hence why anti-virus software is available for them. Most viruses and malware infections come from user error.
"Windows PCs are unstable" - in the days of Windows 95 (and it's descendants Windows 98/Me) and Windows NT maybe, even then they were mostly caused by faulty or not great quality hardware (most commonly RAM and hard drives). Since then Windows has been very stable IME - I have used Windows 10 all day every day since 2016 and can't recall any blue screens. Windows 7 much the same. The Mac users who say this usually then say they haven't used a PC in years.

So as Gintonic says, buy the right tool for the job. Either will be stable.

 

[Tony L]

That's fine if you've a very lightweight user, but for anything that needs grunt an iPad won't really cut it (plus I find I really don't like the OS on an iPad although it's bordering on OK on a phone - although I like Android more).

It depends how you define ‘lightweight’. I spend a simply absurd amount of time starring at an iPod screen running this place, sufficient that one battery charge on my year old Pro doesn’t get me through the day! I produce a lot of content here and I’ve not typed anything on a keyboard for pfm for maybe five years now (I only use my MBP for accounts spreadsheets, server admin, music creation etc). All content is just typed on the iPad or iPhone and I may be at home or out somewhere while I’m doing it. One thing for sure is I won’t be sitting at a desk - when at home I’ll be in front of one of the systems or have the TV on!

The more we move to a web/cloud-based way of working I’d put money on desktop and even laptop computers becoming increasingly extinct in both a business and certainly the home environment. There is a big shift happening at the moment, I’m astonished by how effectively and fast typical young folk can type on a smartphone, I suspect most people I see on the tram or whatever could beat me on their phone if I was using my Model M (I’m not especially fast as I’ve never needed to be, I always did ‘think work’ not data entry).

Sure, architects, product designers, film editors, accountants, programmers etc etc will still need powerful desktops with big screens, but I suspect the rest of us are moving away from them now. I love the look and design of the huge cheese-grater Mac Pro but even if it was affordable I’d have nowhere to put one and no actual use for it if I had! I’m at the point where I don’t need a desktop at all, but I do need a laptop for maybe 2-5% of my business workflow, which is annoying as it means I need to have one, but another significant upgrade of iPadOS capability might do away with that.

 

[SteveG]

My definition of "lightweight" perhaps includes anything you can do on a poxy little screen and/or without a proper keyboard and mouse!

Work wise I deal with lots of large spreadsheets and presentations and also create a lot of documents, and while a decent amount of memory and processing power helps with that it's more the screen estate and quality plus a good keyboard & mouse that helps.

For personal stuff I do a lot of photo related stuff and some gaming - so as well as having a decent screen then it also needs a lot of performance, especially on the graphics side.

Also as I get older and my eyes get tired I find I like small screens less and less!

 

[Joe P]

The student labs at work have both Macs and PCs, but my rough estimate is that Macs are more common. The profs mostly use Macs of various descriptions — laptops, notebooks, desktops, minis.

Just another anecdote, but where I am people who learn, study and do research in CS lean toward Macs. To be fair, the profs run them as VMs emulating a Windows machine emulating an IBM 360/75 mainframe but that’s just for shits and giggles.

Joe

 

[gintonic]

Just another anecdote, but where I am people who learn, study and do research in CS lean toward Macs. To be fair, the profs run them as VMs emulating a Windows machine emulating an IBM 360/75 mainframe but that’s just for shits and giggles.

our Profs are mainly Linux on Intel. We have a few Mac users, just a handful left. I no longer procure Apple hardware for the department- research grant holders can procure Macs from their grants if they wish.

I've a big i9 (dual boot Win10 and Kali Linux) with 64g on my desk in the office but it hardly gets used for its compute power these days. I run my simulations on the cluster or use the hashcat rig for password cracking...

at home I use two old i7s, one is a big desktop 3rd gen i7 with 32g, good for complex spreadsheets with lots of calculations and a few Tb data. The other is a NUC purely used for work corporate activity through the VPN.

Strangely I was delivered a new i7 32g laptop to replace my Surface4 last week. Seems good.

 

[webster]

I run my simulations on the cluster or use the hashcat rig.

Naturally - doesn't everyone?

 

[Joe P]

I forgot to mention, one guy has a quantum computer!

I don't think it runs any classical OS.

Joe