What does it even mean to be a Mac user anymore?

Windows server is gradually dying out. Yes, there’s still a lot of legacy base, but Azure / AWS etc. is sucking up all that processing.

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Right. We diddle with defaults.write, SMC/PRAM resets, and running around signing in and out of iCloud on every device in our home, like civilized people. :wink:

This is true for the computers themselves, but I was talking more about external hardware in the form of driver support. If you have a legacy that’s essential to your business, with drivers that worked on Windows 95, the odds are much better that you can do something to get it to work on a later version of Windows than, say, trying to get drivers from even half a dozen years ago working on a current version of macOS - at least in my experience.

As for the hardware of the computer itself, Apple definitely supports hardware longer - but my experience is that most Windows hardware breaks or otherwise has problems long before you have to worry about running into EOL for the software you run. :slight_smile:

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At least those are mostly human-readable though. And SMC resets don’t exist on M1s IIRC :wink: But I agree with this in principle, our Mac methods are simply more familiar to us, not objectively better.

…and ends up editing plists for launchd, once or twice.

Joking aside, to feel like I can govern my computer I need to live in a *nix environment. macOS does that, with an awesome UI on top of that. Been in heaven since 2005 and never looked back.

It is a kludge but works very very well. If I were condemned to use a Windows machine I would possibly be using the WLS subsystem a lot.

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Personally I think support costs, rather than hardware, is the main reason corporations use Macs. In 2019 IBM had 7 engineers supporting around 200,000 macOS devices and 20 engineers supporting about the same number of Windows devices.

One hospital corporation that I am familiar with had a policy of replacing their PCs and printers every 36 months, regardless of its condition. It wasn’t unusual for staff to go to lunch and return to find their computer had been replaced.

Hardware is cheap compared to people.

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This stuck out to me, because I’ve been thinking the same thing on my fitness/health journey. For some reason Apple refuses to do a wearable that isn’t a watch. I like my Apple Watch, but I prefer mechanical watches. So I just bought (I’ll only keep one) an Oura Ring and Whoop 4.0. I like the data and insight from that, but want something a little less obvious.

I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts comparing the two once you’d had a proper run of them. I just restarted my Whoop membership and am using my old 3.0 until my 4.0 arrives.

If Apple made a band sans watch, I’d be all over it, but for now Whoop feels like the best form factor for me. I too love my mechanical watches :slight_smile:

It’s too bad because I really do love the idea of HealthKit and being able to just download an app with a different UI or different functionality backed by the same data. Just … not as a watch :sweat_smile:

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Regarding the form factor, is it the look? The size? Something else?

I’d always thought most of the objection to Watch was a “price for value” sort of thing, but at $18/month for a Whoop membership, that almost can’t be part of the equation. :slight_smile:

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I’ve used both Android and Windows for a long time, migrating to Mac in the last year. Android and Windows are capable operating systems and they work well.

However, apart from the availability of a few Mac-only apps I like, it’s the simple and smooth integration between devices that really sells. My iPad apps work well with iCloud. I often use live text to take a quick picture on my phone from a book or printed article and Airdrop the OCR’d text onto my Mac so I can paste it into a mindmap note. My text messages are available on all devices. Handing off a web page to or from my phone is simple. I can use my iPad to seamlessly add a quick drawing to a document on my Mac. When I don’t want to be disturbed I don’t need to change my status on three devices.

Much of this can be done using software on an iPad/Andoid/Windows setup, and I did, but it’s rarely frictionless.

I’ve started to use scripting and shortcuts for automation, which works well on MacOS too.

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I’m looking forward to more Apple wearables down the road but I have to say the Watch just keeps getting better (with a long way to go still).

For me, it’s actually the… “being a watch” part. I’m a big “dumb” watch fan, and have built up a collection over the years that I derive a lot of joy from. I refuse to wear two watches – the Whoop is more bracelet-like and so easier to wear alongside a watch. The Oura is even easier (ring, so entirely separate part of the body, although I also don’t want to wear two rings, and my wife might not love me replacing my wedding band with an Oura)

My ideal form factor, although it’s long gone, was the Jawbone Up. Miss that lil guy, although it’s accuracy surely sucks by todays standards.

Two? Pfft. Go for ten.

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I’m really with you. I’m getting kind of “over” the smart watch for now. I will always have an Apple Watch for working out (although I also have a Garmin Fenix for that. I’d even be ok if Apple insisted on adding stuff like a taptic motor in the band. Or a very small LED screen (think very small FitBit).

Looking forward to trying Whoop. I had Oura Ring v1 ages ago but the improvements are significant. I don’t mind another ring (probably will put it more on my right hand than my left) to wear. But what intrigues me about Whoop are the idea I can put it in clothing and the fact it can vibrate for a wake alarm. I like not waking my wife up when my alarm goes off in the morning.

Yeah, that was funny. I am starting to feel I find way too much time fiddling with preferences and so on. The ‘ideal’ settings for notifications in particular seem to me an enemy of the good enough. The new groupings and time out settings I haven’t even looked at recently: just another set of parameters to set, taht I will one day have to reset from scratch.