Just bought my xmas present to myself early this year

Started by Xerra, September 16, 2020, 17:03:09

Previous topic - Next topic

Ashmoor

@qube - I mean no hate. You guys are obviously smart people and there must be some reasons for your choices. I just recently purchased a second hand macbook and everything feels weird and backwards to me, especially the fact that even after a few months of usage I still feel like the hardware does not belong to me but is somehow rented from Apple. I love the retina display though and how well apps handle it. I am sure I don't have enough experience with macs to form an objective opinion which is why I ask long time mac users for the reasons behind choosing apple.

I agree that in some areas even my 2014 mac is faster than my main win machine. For example switching the desktop background, takes a few seconds and screen flickers on windows but on mac is instantly switched.  Overall it just works. If I compare it to an older hardware win10 laptop, mac is way better optimized and more "usable" but falters under load.

"3.. PC's lose their value a lot quicker than Mac's."

Did you ever sell one of your old macs?

"4.. If you have other Apple devices then they all integrate with the Mac brilliantly."

I agree that it's nice to use iPad as drawing tablet for mac via blue tooth and expand screens. What else can you do? I could not find other interesting things online.

Streaming using OBS or even desktop recording is a pain on mac.

What do you do with the mac? Do you code, do you need it to make iOS apps? do you do photo/video editing?



Ashmoor

@Xerra

"Build quality.
Reliability.
Better OS.
Longevity.
Low value depreciation."

These all sound like quality of life. I can appreciate that. I got my pc in 2016, still running strong but had to change the PSU since we have almost weekly power breakdowns where I live and it eventually failed. What do you use it for?

"I've yet to have anything I've bought from them fail on me. I've had fucked PC's for decades prior to that."

I am seriously impressed and can only attribute that to extreme care or great luck. I purchased my iPad in late 2019 and about 2 months ago it got stuck in headphone mode. I can't fix it, we have no Apple service in Romania and their online tech support told me to go back to my vendor, they must have service for it.

Thanks for the answers




iWasAdam

I've resold old apple stuff and was amazed at how much they retain their value. Min 30% usually 50-70% even after 2-3 years. Keep all the packaging and you can get 80%. Keep it immaculate for lots of years and the cost goes up.

Pc stuff. Lost 3rd just by buying it. 1 year later... 50% if you are lucky. After that you are looking at what you can get.
£2700 laptop. 2 years later £90...

Derron

Bought my computer components 9 years ago for ... <400 eur. Placed in a 30eur SSD later on ... and a used 50 eur GTX 650 ti. Replaced my 19" screen with a 100 eur 24" screen 4 or 5 years ago.
Computer still works ... albeit 8gb RAM is no longer the best option, and the 4 cores AMD is not the fastest anymore.

But for the money I spent for the computer ... you would never have gotten this "performance per Euro" from apple stuff. And if you bought the Apple computer in 2011 - in almost any case you would not be able to develop stuff for new Mac OS X releases now.

I can still develop for Windows 10 and modern Linux distributions (yes, you can do that with your Mac too ... :)).


"£2700 laptop. 2 years later £90..."

I would not pay 2700 GBP for a laptop ... even 1000 Eur is ... dunno, laptops age so fast (Battery, display resolution, keyboard key prints fade out, ...). Still am using my 180eur HP Elitebook (spend 20 or so for an SSD). Does its job and has digitizer etc on board. Could surely still sell it for half of the buy price.
The higher the initial value the more (absolute) value you can loose.

I am with you that "oddly" used mac device prices are above "average" (not to say often rip offs :D). They seem to know that some dudes just buy such a device to do official builds of their apps for Mac OS X / iOS.



Regarding reliability: My dev computer only had a failed PSU 2 months ago ... with the old one running 9 years (think about 5 years active "24/7" time in total), replaced 2 or 3 usb mice (each 1-2 eur) and replaced 2 keyboards (my beloved cherry keyboards ...). Else my computers (laptop, dev computer -- even my old NAS) are running and running ... without overly disturbing OS hickups, flickering wallpaper changes, ...


But this is only my POV to it... if you are unsure each day on how to spend all this money laying around in your castle manor house ... then of course you could spend it on some more expensive stuff, maybe to save the tinker time you have with other solutions on Windows or Linux (setting up "share your private data with the cloud", how do I send data to my phone...).


bye
Ron

Qube

QuoteWindows 10 works very well, for me.  YMMV, obvs.
I've tried Windows 10 many many times since it's release ( even the latest update ) and personally I just can't gel with it at all, no matter how many times I try to like it. I have a VM of Windows 10 for testing software but I use Windows 8.1 with Visual Studio for development as Windows 8.1 ( once you replace the tile start menu with Start8 ) I find vastly superior both aesthetically and general usability. Going back to MacOS it's a lot more stable and secure than Windows ( the classic argument ).

Quotemy PC is pretty quiet considering there are five 140mm fans running.  Obvs things get noisier if everything's under load but it's built for speed, not silence.
Probably personal preference but five 140mm fans alone takes up nigh on the space of my Mac. I got fed up a long time ago having a breeze block for a PC and no matter how good of a quality the internal fans were they were never as quiet as any Mac I've owned, even under heavy prolonged stress. I dont' even know my Mac is on without either looking for the light or putting my ear to it to hear the fan.

QuoteBut with PCs, you can upgrade parts as you want/need to.  From the CPU/GPU, right down to the hard drive (which is a two minute job).  Come back to me once you've managed to remove your lovely 27" retina screen without cracking it, just to get at the hard drive.
Yes you can upgrade a PC far easier than a Mac. Mac's are terrible for upgrading and self repairing but touch wood, out of all the Macs I've had, not one has ever died on me. Probably just lucky in that respect as anything can break at anytime. I wouldn't need to remove the 27" retina screen as I have a Mac mini plugged into an external GPU and into a monitor \o/ - Actually I did upgrade an older 21" iMac to replace the internal drive with an SSD one and it's not something I'd like to repeat again, especially as the screen are now virtually spot welded on.

QuoteAnd so they bloody should for the price you pay!  I don't have any significant problems integrating any of my devices across brands, from my Samsung A10 to my custom-built desktop PC, to my MSI laptop, to my Synology NAS, to my TV... everything works.
I just like the convenience of doing something on my phone / iPad and having it sync to my Mac. One silly thing I find useful is if I'm out an about I can jot things into notes and when I get home, turn on my Mac, the notes are waiting for me. Same with Safari bookmarks, etc.

Also if my phone isn't in front of me I can still receive phone calls and messages on any device I'm using. Another good thing is I can use my iPad Pro as a drawing tablet and a 2nd monitor at the click of a button. Another very handy feature is Time Machine which runs very efficiently in the background keeping backups of data and apps. Should I need to restore anything, for example a document or image I've saved over by accident or deleted etc, a quick visit into Time Machine, pick a day and time and restore that version. You can also use it to do a full system restore between Mac's if needed.

No drivers, no messing, familiarity between all devices and even better, my watch even tells me it's time to breathe :P - Actually talking of the Apple Watch, I love it!. Contactless payments, alerts, make phone calls ( finally I have the tech from Knight Rider ), use it for navigation with when getting lost in Belfast ( talking ).

QuoteDid you ever sell one of your old Macs?
I've sold all my older laptops and desktops and the worst return was 60% of the purchase price for ( at the time ) a four year old 13" MacBook Pro.

QuoteI agree that it's nice to use iPad as drawing tablet for mac via blue tooth and expand screens. What else can you do? I could not find other interesting things online.
I mentioned a couple of things above that I personally do extra with. One thing I do have fun with is when it's icy I sit on it and have the dogs pull me along at high speed, not a scratch on it ;D

QuoteStreaming using OBS or even desktop recording is a pain on mac.
Hmm, streaming I just use AirPlay as our Samsung TV supports it. For desktop recording I use Screenium 3 which I find works very flawlessly.

QuoteWhat do you do with the mac? Do you code, do you need it to make iOS apps? do you do photo/video editing?
Yes, yes and yes, lol. I also write music, slowly improve my 3D modelling skills and a lot of Remote Desktop support.

Having said all that I'm no Apple fanboy as once they don't do what I want or I'm fighting all the way to do things then off they go out the window at high speed.
Mac Studio M1 Max ( 10 core CPU - 24 core GPU ), 32GB LPDDR5, 512GB SSD,
Beelink SER7 Mini Gaming PC, Ryzen 7 7840HS 8-Core 16-Thread 5.1GHz Processor, 32G DDR5 RAM 1T PCIe 4.0 SSD
MSI MEG 342C 34" QD-OLED Monitor

Until the next time.

iWasAdam

#20
QuoteI would not pay 2700 GBP for a laptop ... even 1000 Eur is ... dunno, laptops age so fast (Battery, display resolution, keyboard key prints fade out, ...).

It was a work thing, custom build with 3 day turn around. but it's a fair comparison. And it was the last straw that made me turn my back on windows. Pst. What I didn't tell you was this thing was BIG. like HUGE. like I got stuck in train barriers with it - much to others amusement!

I think you nailed something very interesting about pc vs macs - pc's are generally lower quality. keys fade, etc. Mac hardware is vastly superior. The specs might not be cutting edge, but they last. they age very well and the focus on design keeps them looking like what they are 'design classics'

As Qube said - once you have more than one device they all just talk. I loved my sony phone and my palm. but trying to sync them together - forget it. buy a new phone and the hassle of attempting to transfer data from the old to the new... Yep I know that has got better. but better is not good enough (in my book). I want it to work.

Another things that Fecking bugged me to heck was windows install and new os time. Upgrade, transfer old documents to new system - just let windows do it for you :) Bollocks - it's the best marketing lies i've ever come across.
windows just got bigger and longer to install even thought the hardware was faster - it NEVER made sense.
You want to upgrade a windows machine - average is 2 days. first to get it installed maybe an hour maybe 2. Then install old software - cause it never does it correctly. never brings all the settings, never gets the drivers right. never works out of the box.

<opens window and shouts 'crabapples' at those young whippersnappers>

I could go on (and on and on...). But I will end with a little tale:
Me other half (who has the hand-me-downs) had issues. solved them and even got superb help from Apple themselves, with personal callbacks, private tech support and more. And, can manage almost any situation the mac throws. Windows.... say no more!

Sort of 'Here's your Mac Steak sir. vs Windows burger. you want fries with it?"

Derron

I only have ... BlitzMax on my Windows Laptop ... and git/sync stuff. All the other things are done in Linux and there the settings are stored in my home folder / partition / drive. If I did a fresh install, all the programme configurations would be still there (can be good... or not good :D). Reinstall the programme (or use one of these "reinstall what was installed before") and it is already configured.

But OS discussion ... think we love our choices and dislike the ones of "other tastes" ... quite normal I think.


Personally I do not like MS/Apple/...cloud stuff.  NAS + own cloud + the necessary "own" sync solutions.


bye
Ron

therevills

Can you fit a GeForce RTX 3080 in a Mac? End thread  :P

(MacPro doesn't count: Tower from A$9,999.00  :o)

Amon


Xerra

Quote from: Amon. on September 29, 2020, 10:18:04
So, Mr Xerra, has your new baby arrived. :)

Indeed she has. And the bitch is already stealing the show. It's fucking blistering working compared to the old one. I've attached a picture of her in all her glory.

To reinforce what Adam and Qube were saying in previous posts, I've never used Time Machine before but had an old PC hard drive I took out of my tower I had in the loft before I took it to the local dump. The PC died around 4 years ago - and wasn't much cop anyway. So I got a HD enclosure so I could use the drive as an external and had time machine up and running a couple of days ago just to synch up my other iMac onto the drive ready for when I replaced it. I literally plugged this one in, selected restore data when the new Mac asked me if I wanted to, selected the drive and an hour or so later it was done.

Everything I had on the other iMac was cloned over - not had to install shit, or copy over any files. It's just like I'm still on the old machine, if it wasn't running a bit quieter, so much more responsively and I didn't have a 27'inch screen instead. The only technical issue I had was finding out my old thunderbolt port adaptor for HDMI is no longer compatible so I needed to find a USB C to HDMI adapter to use the second monitor. Luckily my work laptop got replaced with one of those surface pro thingies and it's supplied with one of these leads to use it via HDMI, which I just threw in a drawer as I didn't need it.

So time to start using some of the stuff like Parallels which was always so chuggy on the old machine again. I wouldn't swap this iMac for any Windows PC you stuck in front of me.
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/

STEVIE G

Nice! Seems a shame your using a shitey £20 logitec keyboard and mouse with it (same as mine).  ;D

Qube

Glad to hear it's all arrived and working great for you \o/ - Now stop admiring the speed and get coding your game comp entry :))

QuoteSo time to start using some of the stuff like Parallels which was always so chuggy on the old machine again
He he, now you'll have Windows loaded up and good to go within a few seconds and definitely no chuggy chug chug :P
Mac Studio M1 Max ( 10 core CPU - 24 core GPU ), 32GB LPDDR5, 512GB SSD,
Beelink SER7 Mini Gaming PC, Ryzen 7 7840HS 8-Core 16-Thread 5.1GHz Processor, 32G DDR5 RAM 1T PCIe 4.0 SSD
MSI MEG 342C 34" QD-OLED Monitor

Until the next time.

Xerra

Quote from: STEVIE G on September 29, 2020, 22:50:07
Nice! Seems a shame your using a shitey £20 logitec keyboard and mouse with it (same as mine).  ;D

I'm a creature of habit. I even bought a new set when the old ones broke down. Magic Mouse and keyboard still in the box...
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/

Xerra

Quote from: Qube on September 30, 2020, 00:05:18
Glad to hear it's all arrived and working great for you \o/ - Now stop admiring the speed and get coding your game comp entry :))

Yes, sir!

I spent 3 days fucking about with high score table code for trying to do clever stuff and ended up binning the lot. I'm doing real well at the moment :)
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/