Apple
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to the largest Apple community on Lemmy. This is the place where we talk about everything Apple, from iOS to the exciting upcoming Apple Vision Pro. Feel free to join the discussion!
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Community banner courtesy of u/Antsomnia.
The best way to describe the Mac upcharges for memory is “just save more and deal with it”. The company is ruthless, we all know it.
At the very least, this current generation of Macs are top of their class in performance, even beating out some desktop configurations (it’s not like it was 6-10 years ago). Remember, windows laptops under 1000$ are far less performant and efficient than the MacBook Air.
At the very least, macOS has zero ads. I’ve never once been nagged about iCloud/Apple intelligence/upgrading my machine. It’s well worth it in my opinion to have a machine that has kept this implicit promise to me for almost 2 decades now.
I’m a Mac/Linux person. I enjoy it — you can keep almost all of the Unix/Posix CLI stuff that you like in both places, and Mac OS is IMO less enshittified than Windows in general.
What is the app?
You can easily feel right at home on a Mac with console, homebrew, tiling WM etc. You can find scripts for plenty of things on GitHub.
Before I switched to framework 13, my old MacBook looked and felt like old gnome (with the two taskbars) mixed with i3.
The hardware is good, specially those M* chips, one downside is that with certain languages the keyboard shortcuts are not the same, specially for coding, characters like {[|}] are sometimes annoying to find compared to Linux/Windows keyboard.
Macs are good machines. The company that makes them is unabashedly cutthroat, Machiavellian, and heartless, unfortunately.
A lot of devs I know use Macs, but they get their company/clients to pay for them, so I don't know if that's much of an endorsement.
I’m freelance, so technically my company will pay for it 😅
“Mac”iavellian. I see what you did there.
You can buy an external clip-on webcam if that's the main reason why you want a new computer
What’s the application and can you run it in a windows virtual machine?
I could run it in a windows virtual machine, but I literally use that app 40+ hours a week.
I’d basically turn on the computer to launch a virtual machine. I’d be better off just keeping my Linux laptop for personal use and Mac for work.
Fair enough. Separating work and play can have its benefits.
I could run it in a windows virtual machine, but I literally use that app 40+ hours a week.
That's what we do at work, and it's just fine. Granted this is running on nice mac hardware and not like a 5 year old computer with integrated graphics.
Yeah, I don't see a problem with this, this is basically what we did at work too, if any it helped a bit because the 4 GB of RAM PC that I used couldn't cut it anymore with the software lol.
An Operating System is a tool. Would you be annoyed because you had to use a hex key on a bolt with a hex socket, when what you really like using is a robertson drive? If the work you are doing is dependent on a particular OS choice, then use that OS and get over yourself.
That said, if this is for work and you want to avoid the crapware in Windows 11, talk with your IT team. By default, Recall is removed on commercially managed devices. I'm not 100% sure, and can't be arsed to look it up at the moment, but this likely refers to devices managed via Intune. Assuming your IT team isn't stuck in the 90's, they are probably doing this already. Telemetry can also be mostly disabled via Group Policy, and many IT organizations will already be doing this. Or, as you have arrived at, use a Mac and disable the telemetry.
On the other side of that coin, if you expect privacy on a work owned device, I have bad news for you. More and more organizations are using Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products on all endpoint devices. Yes, this includes Mac and Linux devices. So, your organization is watching you browse porn on your work device. If you are doing something and you don't want someone watching over your shoulder, don't use a work device. Keep your work device for work and your personal device for everything else.
The M-series MacBook Pros are very good machines, even though they cost a lot of money. The performance/price ratio was a lot worse for the Intel-macs, but that has shifted. I would probably get one of those if I were you - you're likely not going to have to switch computers as often that way and have a more competent machine for a longer time that way.
Get a cheap desktop and run Windows on it. Remote Desktop into that machine to run your app.
You can use TwinGate or Tailscale to access your desktop from anywhere.
Sadly it’s video conferencing that is preventing me from doing that. The video conferencing app is the one that only works on windows and mac.
I know MS Teams an Zoom both work on Linux, Google meet is web only and obviously works as well. Sometimes the web page of these suckers will give you some pain for using Linux just for the lols but using User-Agent switcher to pretend you're a Chrome on Windows 11 will suffice to let it work.
(Not entirely legal) get ahold of a Windows Enterprise key (not Pro or Home). No ads and you can turn off all the features completely like recall and telemetry. The only reason Windows is around so much is they try their best not to piss off enterprise customers by making everything configurable. Pro and Home users end up being the ones getting the short end.
- Windows vm within linux
- Wine/bottles
Ask work for a windows VM image/key. Alternatively have you tried running the windows application in wine/proton?
Yeah, sadly it does not work. Even their support team suggested I try to use the Android version of it in Linux though an emulator, but that also did not work.
I’m assuming you already tried to get the work application to run on Linux via Wine or Proton? I know Valve has been putting a lot of R&D effort into Proton for their Steam Deck, trying to improve compatibility.
If you’ve got time to wait, put a flag on slick deals dot com for Mac airs and if you see specs you like grab it. I got an m2 24gb 2tb for 1500$US. If it’s a refurb make sure it’s got AppleCare