Purchasing Dilemma

Having used Windows 10 on a limited basis, don’t. The automatic updates are troublesome. It is clumsy. It makes me appreciate macOS all the more.

I am not brave enough to attempt a dual boot system. The only reason I have a windows 10 machine was my dad bought one, had issues with it. Gave it to me. I fired it up and was able to use it. He didn’t want it back. So it sits in a drawer in my desk. I bring it out once in a while to use it.

I can use office 365 through my employer. Additionally, I have pages, number and Keynote and use Google docs to do what ever I need.

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Windows 10 is painful. I have a PC for gaming and I have to use Windows 7 at work. It is so very very miserable to use. It’s not a surprise PC sales are plummeting.

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Thanks for your take on Windows. I used to be a power user, but really haven’t touched it in years (my work lets me work on a Mac). I really don’t want to move back to Windows, but for the first time Apple is really angering me with their hardware specs/choices.

Well to be honest, as someone who uses both environments regularly on a power user level, Windows 10 is a fine OS. I hope Microsoft would do away with stupid crap such as ads (or suggestions like they want to call them) on the lockscreen that diminishes the overall experience, but otherwise with powerful hardware and things like WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) I could live in a Windows environment even though there are things I’d like to be done in a macOS way. I’ve been waiting for a MacBook refresh with a usable keyboard for a while now while keeping a ThinkPad as my plan B, but now I’m skewing more towards getting the ThinkPad anyway, and that’s due to me realizing Apple is dropping subpixel antialiasing support in Mojave. While that’s a non-issue with retina screens, I’m still using a perfectly fine non-retina external monitor that I’d like to continue using also with my next computer, but if the text on a non-retina screen is going to be blurry on Mojave, then I’ll skip on getting a Mojave-capable Mac as the thought of scrapping a good and otherwise functional display just because Apple thinks I should spend close to 1000€ on a decent HiDPI display on top of getting a new Apple laptop for whatever obscene amount they’re going to ask in Euros this time around is rubbing me in all the wrong ways, especially with Apple trying to portray themselves as an environmentally responsible company.

Even more annoying is the fact that if Mojave does indeed end up being annoying to use on a non-retina screen, it means that I might have to keep the 2015 MacBook Air I bought for my wife in late 2016 running High Sierra for the time being. It will be good for approximately two more years unless Apple runs into another rootpipe “oh we can’t really be arsed to fix this vulnerability on older OS versions” issue even earlier on. After the two years or so when Apple’s not going to issue any further security updates for an older OS I’d need to scrap that machine way earlier than expected or change the OS it’s running to have it on something that you can actually keep connected to the Internet.

I actually borrowed my wife’s MacBook Air and had a brief test run with Mojave beta installed on an external hard drive. While the texts could’ve been prettier, they’re not as horrible as I thought and there are some new defaults commands that should be able to bring back some of the antialiasing, so it seems like a new Mac is still a possibility without a forced external display refresh. This is comforting in addition to the latest hardware rumors including an updated Mac mini. Interesting times.

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Unfortunately, though I like the idea (would do it myself if I were in school) my daughter is not keen on it.

As a university professor, I would be pretty disappointed to learn that one of my student’s only computer was an iPad. There are too many times that students are required to do things that are either hard (require some MacStories-style geekery) or impossible (certain pro software) on the iPad. Whatever you do, do not send your kids to college with iPads unless the curriculum is specifically designed for it, and the university or department specifically requires or recommends it. I would recommend an iPad Pro to my students as a secondary device to a proper laptop.

I am also a university professor and I have had a few students that have used iPad Pros as their main computing device. It generally works for them because they are primarily Arts and Humanities students and don’t require much more than Microsoft Office or the iWork suite. But as you note, my daughter (and many others) are not really into the MacStories geekery (though I confess did use my iPad Air 2 for almost a year as my day-to-day computer on campus). I just read on the Verge that it looks like Apple is planning a major refresh across all its lines, though it may be too late for my purchase.

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Perhaps this is ironic based on the way Apple advertises the iPad, but I teach in the arts (music composition) and would only recommend iPad to my students as a second device. Having said that, it is a fantastic second device for a musician.

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You don’t have to update right away. I’m always a couple versions of the OS behind because my laptop is my work computer and I don’t want to deal with upgrade issues ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah well there’s the issue that while Apple supplies security updates to at least two previous versions of macOS, they might not fix all discovered vulnerabilities if they think backporting the fix takes too much work. This is exactly what happened with the rootpipe vulnerability a couple of years ago. Only Yosemite got the fix while earlier versions were left vulnerable. So as far as I’m concerned, macOS is really supported only if you’re running the latest version.

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