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comment by johnnyFive
johnnyFive  ·  2481 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking

Apple is kind of heading in the same direction, now that there's an app store (and OS X certainly phones home at least some). My bigger complaint with them, though, is that their hardware is still really overpriced, and they're hostile to upgrading (even when they don't solder the RAM in place, it's still a huge PITA to get to).

I'm planning on buying a new machine in April, and I'm on the fence about whether it'll run Linux or Windows 10. The only reason I'm remotely considering the latter is gaming compatibility. And if I do go Windows 10, I'm installing Steam, Firefox, and nothing else, and will use my Linux laptop for anything involving actual information.





user-inactivated  ·  2481 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The only reason I'm remotely considering the latter is gaming compatibility.

FYI, in case you didn't know. Good Old Games has a huge Linux compatible library.

johnnyFive  ·  2480 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It is definitely good, and I always check it out when I'm game-shopping. The main games that are prompting the upgrade, though, are Doom and Subnautica, neither of which have Linux versions. I know people have gotten Doom to run on Wine, but it's hardly the same thing.

Plus VR support on Linux is virtually (heh) non-existent right now.

WanderingEng  ·  2480 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm in this same camp, except I'm not in the market for a new machine and will keep my mid-2012 MacBook Pro running as long as I can. That's the last with user replaceable parts. I upped the RAM already and have been lazy about a solid state drive. But it's an easy swap.

johnnyFive  ·  2480 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I still debate a MacBook as my next laptop, but as always I can't really justify the price. That and by all accounts the bar thing on the new ones is terrible.

I bought a first-gen MBP in 2007 for law school, and I loved it. We didn't need Word back then, either: all exams had to be printed out on our own (so I just used Pages), and my one big third-year writing assignment I wrote in LaTeX and submitted as a PDF. I used Pages and OmniGraffle for note-taking and Adium for IM. It was great. (Helped that I was able to double the RAM for like $20 a year after I bought it, too.)

At that time (2007-2009) there were only a handful of Mac users. I saw the woman who runs the helpdesk (for whom I worked while I was in school) a couple weeks ago, and she told me that they're now easily 50-50. The computer lab has iMacs with Windows VMs, but people boot into macOS more than half the time. Academia seems to be really embracing Apple. The legal profession still revolves around Word, but I wonder how much longer that'll be the case (really it's only necessary now for trading stuff between lawyers; all filing is done either electronically or printed.) Cloud services are posing a bit of a problem from an ethical standpoint, which is why I never used any Google service for anything when I was in private practice.

Anyway, these days the only reason I even still use a laptop is for posting nonsense online while watching YouTube or Netflix on a second monitor during my work-from-home days. Once I get a new gaming desktop, I'm installing Linux on my old one and putting it in the home office for that purpose, and will be using my laptop for e-mail, hubski-ing, and the like downstairs. (New desktop is going to be gaming only.)

user-inactivated  ·  2481 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Apple has been a walled garden since the introduction of the iPhone. And agree that the hardware is nice stuff but at a 50% premium from what it should be.