PC guy. Bought my first Mac for Dev work....Surprised

Honestly, I'm not that big on the current Mac lineup.

4K/5K iMacs with the Retina screens no longer support Target Display Mode, so there goes my incentive for ever thinking to buy an all-in-one desktop in the first place. Maybe that'll change with Thunderbolt 3.0-enabled models down the line, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The recent MacBook Pros are the step in the right direction with DEDICATED GRAPHICS for a change, along with quad Thunderbolt 3.0 for some serious external GPU potential and Apple's penchant for being the only manufacturer to make trackpads not completely suck to use, but they just cost way too much for my liking. They also started soldering RAM ever since the Retina MBPs, and the non-Retina models use some godawful TN panels (albeit not "MainStreet" PowerBook G3 DSTN passive-matrix levels of godawful), making me wary of buying used ones.

That and Apple flat-out admitted they screwed up with the "trash can" 2013 Mac Pro, between the lack of updates and their tendency to overheat even with the "thermal core" heatsink design they were touting. Wanna cook one to death? Just load up both GPUs with something to crunch! It's the Power Mac G4 Cube mistake all over again, in so many ways.

Speaking of Power Macs, I actually do own a few: a 6500/250 I picked up from some neighbors (the sort who have been using Macs for a long time, given the Macintosh IIcx and corresponding peripherals in their collection), and a MDD FW800 G4 1.42 GHz dual that I snagged much more recently. Most of my time over the last week has been spent with the MDD, which would have been a much more pleasant time if I'd simply thought to TEST THE RAM FIRST, but now it's more or less running like it supposed to. Heck, it even boots Mac OS 9, thanks to recent advancements that allow OS 9 to boot on unsupported G4 systems!

I just need to drop in an AGP card with Core Image support, a PCI card with full acceleration under Mac OS 9 (you can't have both on one card, sadly), and then I should be set for any future Mac vs. PC Gaming Showdown pieces I might make in the future. Yes, I bought a Mac for gaming, counter-intuitive as that sounds. There's more out there than you'd think, particularly for the Classic Mac OS that SheepShaver is still unfit to run!

Also, using OS X Leopard on the G4 for a while just highlights how many utterly ass-backwards UI decisions Apple made with Lion or some later version, from the way full-screen apps get their own sorta virtual desktop (which means they don't come up in the Expose - er, Mission Control view) to the old Spaces implementation of virtual desktops to the lack of a redundant Launchpad (opening the Applications folder in the Finder is all the launch screen I need) to the "natural scrolling" default that I can thankfully uncheck. Maybe that's just the nostalgia filter kicking in since most of my past Mac experience is Tiger with a side of Leopard (and System 7/Mac OS 8 before that in my elementary school years), but modern OS X/macOS versions just feel really off to me.

Heck, some would say that OS X in general is a massive step back from the Classic Mac OS UI-wise. They love the "spatial" Finder, the retracting windows, the neat Application Switcher in the upper-right corner brought on with MultiFinder, not having to fight with permissions all the damn time, etc. They don't seem to mind missing modern amenities like preemptive multitasking or memory protection - you know, two big features they were scrambling to get into Copland until that completely failed as a viable next-generation Mac OS and they had to retool OPENSTEP into Mac OS X afterward.

Then again, there's the contingent that likes OS X precisely because of the UNIX underpinnings underneath - something that Apple made a bit of a selling point with Leopard, as I recall. "Hey, guys, we meet the Single UNIX Specification!"

So yeah, after all that ranting, you can tell that I have some rather mixed opinions on bitten fruit products in general. I can see why people like them, at least, particularly a decade ago when your main alternative was the crapfest we call Windows XP, but after Windows 7, I'm much less inclined to switch.

^ Excellent post.

NamelessPFG said:

Honestly, I'm not that big on the current Mac lineup.

4K/5K iMacs with the Retina screens no longer support Target Display Mode, so there goes my incentive for ever thinking to buy an all-in-one desktop in the first place. Maybe that'll change with Thunderbolt 3.0-enabled models down the line, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Click to expand...

Never mind the 21" model never had TDM. They had to engineer the heck out of the 27" 5K just to get 5K to work (in 2014). In 2014 MST-based 4K displays were still a thing. The 5K iMac was a truly unique device intended to solve a specific problem. Clearly they weren't meant to solve any problem you were having. I have a 5K iMac and I love it, but I only need one screen.

NamelessPFG said:

The recent MacBook Pros are the step in the right direction with DEDICATED GRAPHICS for a change

Click to expand...

MacBook Pros have had discrete graphics on many models since.. uh.. 2006? The very first ones had Radeon chips, they flip-flopped between nVidia and ATI/AMD over their lifespan. The 13" models were the ones that didn't have dedicated graphics.

NamelessPFG said:

That and Apple flat-out admitted they screwed up with the "trash can" 2013 Mac Pro, between the lack of updates and their tendency to overheat even with the "thermal core" heatsink design they were touting. Wanna cook one to death? Just load up both GPUs with something to crunch! It's the Power Mac G4 Cube mistake all over again, in so many ways.

Click to expand...

We have several of the Mac Pros at work and they have all performed flawlessly. The 2013 Mac Pro felt like an intern pet project that was forgotten as soon as the intern went back to school. A shame but hey, sometimes companies make mistakes. Whoa.

NamelessPFG said:

Also, using OS X Leopard on the G4 for a while just highlights how many utterly ass-backwards UI decisions Apple made with Lion or some later version, from the way full-screen apps get their own sorta virtual desktop (which means they don't come up in the Expose - er, Mission Control view) to the old Spaces implementation of virtual desktops to the lack of a redundant Launchpad (opening the Applications folder in the Finder is all the launch screen I need) to the "natural scrolling" default that I can thankfully uncheck. Maybe that's just the nostalgia filter kicking in since most of my past Mac experience is Tiger with a side of Leopard (and System 7/Mac OS 8 before that in my elementary school years), but modern OS X/macOS versions just feel really off to me.

Click to expand...

In an company of a few thousand Macs I've never had anyone bring up any of this stuff, but I guess if you're used to it then the changes may not suit you. Change is hard for some people. I can't speak of any of it, as I have a pretty minimal workflow on my Macs, without a lot of windows and if I have multiple desktops they have dedicated apps full-screen on them. Since they are the only thing running on a Space, Mission Control gives the app name at the top of the screen. I dunno, I never had an issue with it.

The only reason I have a MBP at all is because I was issued one for compatibility testing for work.
It mostly sits in it's case and collects dust.

There are people who are DEFINITELY well served by Mac as a platform.
There are people who at least find the Mac platform useful.
I'm one of the people who simply has no use for the platform and who resents the paucity of offerings of outdated, unserviceable equipment for premium pricing simply for a logo.
For me, a computer is a tool. Not a lifestyle choice.

Chas said:

The only reason I have a MBP at all is because I was issued one for compatibility testing for work.
It mostly sits in it's case and collects dust.

There are people who are DEFINITELY well served by Mac as a platform.
There are people who at least find the Mac platform useful.
I'm one of the people who simply has no use for the platform and who resents the paucity of offerings of outdated, unserviceable equipment for premium pricing simply for a logo.
For me, a computer is a tool. Not a lifestyle choice.

Click to expand...

You sort of contradict yourself. I agree with your premise of using a machine because you need it... then you go on to say it's a lifestyle choice. And I also disagree with your premise about the hardware. It's like you want to seem balanced, but you really aren't.
If you don't like Mac's, that is fine, but it's going to take quite a bit for me to ever move away from the platform. And that is for work reasons. I don't really do much else other than productivity.

Look at it from this perspective as well maybe, as someone who's doing the damn helpdesk. With Macs on the other end your helpdesk calls go down by like 75-90%.

I have several customers who run Macs, some of them ever since and some of because of my suggestion to get a Mac instead of Windows. Those users had little to NO understanding how a computer works, what you need to do to maintain stability, security and reproducable productivity, coupled with TimeMachine asa safety net if things go south. All of those "noobs" who switched to Mac and yes, PAID MORE, are very very happy I could convince them as they now have a machine they can just use and dont need to be their own admin.

Windows in comparison works for "us" who attend this forum very well since maybe XP, since we know a lot about it, patch it, tweak it, update drivers, reinstall from scratch aint an issue for us etc etc etc.. those kind of guys can use any machine and get something out of it, those others dont get that, what they get were BSOD's in the past, drivers installed that were "ancient" as no one dared to update anything, MS updates were not done for months if not years, a Backup was a thing they never heard of nor did it work out of the box...etc etc..no need to stress this point, we all know those kind of computer users.

For those guys a Mac is a real pleasure as it just works as it should, day in day out.

Sure, I do understand why many pro users want this or that from Apple and they are not wrong in asking that. I myself would also like a Mac Pro again that has parts I can repair myself, exchange a GPU after 1-2 years, insert drives etc.. . No doubt.

BitMaster said:

Look at it from this perspective as well maybe, as someone who's doing the damn helpdesk. With Macs on the other end your helpdesk calls go down by like 75-90%.

I have several customers who run Macs, some of them ever since and some of because of my suggestion to get a Mac instead of Windows. Those users had little to NO understanding how a computer works, what you need to do to maintain stability, security and reproducable productivity, coupled with TimeMachine asa safety net if things go south. All of those "noobs" who switched to Mac and yes, PAID MORE, are very very happy I could convince them as they now have a machine they can just use and dont need to be their own admin.

Windows in comparison works for "us" who attend this forum very well since maybe XP, since we know a lot about it, patch it, tweak it, update drivers, reinstall from scratch aint an issue for us etc etc etc.. those kind of guys can use any machine and get something out of it, those others dont get that, what they get were BSOD's in the past, drivers installed that were "ancient" as no one dared to update anything, MS updates were not done for months if not years, a Backup was a thing they never heard of nor did it work out of the box...etc etc..no need to stress this point, we all know those kind of computer users.

For those guys a Mac is a real pleasure as it just works as it should, day in day out.

Sure, I do understand why many pro users want this or that from Apple and they are not wrong in asking that. I myself would also like a Mac Pro again that has parts I can repair myself, exchange a GPU after 1-2 years, insert drives etc.. . No doubt.

Click to expand...

^ This.

SuperSubZero said:

Never mind the 21" model never had TDM. They had to engineer the heck out of the 27" 5K just to get 5K to work (in 2014). In 2014 MST-based 4K displays were still a thing. The 5K iMac was a truly unique device intended to solve a specific problem. Clearly they weren't meant to solve any problem you were having. I have a 5K iMac and I love it, but I only need one screen.

Click to expand...

Hey, if it works for you, fantastic! But now I'm kinda spoiled by multiple monitors and thought that, hey, if I had to have a 5K screen with the associated price premium, having a monitor that doubles as a Mac wouldn't hurt. Could be a backup system, a server hiding in plain sight while I use Windows primarily (for things like compiling Mac versions of GameMaker Studio projects), stuff like that.

A sensible person would just buy the Mac mini for cost-effectiveness in that scenario, I suppose, but I've found those to be rather overpriced and underpowered, especially since they took the axe to the quad-core Mac mini server and soldered the RAM on successor models. They're at the point where you might as well just buy a MacBook Pro instead and get more computer for your money.

SuperSubZero said:

MacBook Pros have had discrete graphics on many models since.. uh.. 2006? The very first ones had Radeon chips, they flip-flopped between nVidia and ATI/AMD over their lifespan. The 13" models were the ones that didn't have dedicated graphics.

Click to expand...

I'm well aware of the past dedicated GPU options, including some very early, kludgy attempts at switchable graphics. They're just not common on recent models, and all the existing options are hopelessly underpowered and obsolete.

Meanwhile, you start looking at Windows laptops, and there's plenty with at least a GTX 1060 for less than the cost of a typical MacBook Pro! Some of 'em even pack Thunderbolt 3.0, too.

SuperSubZero said:

We have several of the Mac Pros at work and they have all performed flawlessly. The 2013 Mac Pro felt like an intern pet project that was forgotten as soon as the intern went back to school. A shame but hey, sometimes companies make mistakes. Whoa.

Click to expand...

I'm glad to hear that none of 'em have failed on you, though I'm still largely partial to the "cheese grater" Power Mac G5-esque models for obvious reasons. It's just that, well, Nehalem/Westmere/whatever they're calling the Xeon equivalents is ancient by today's standards.

I suspect that half the reason Apple's been dawdling on a new Mac Pro is that they've been waiting for Intel to get Skylake-X out the door already; it's shaping up to be the much-needed step up that the HEDT side of things that Intel sorely needs right now.

SuperSubZero said:

In an company of a few thousand Macs I've never had anyone bring up any of this stuff, but I guess if you're used to it then the changes may not suit you. Change is hard for some people. I can't speak of any of it, as I have a pretty minimal workflow on my Macs, without a lot of windows and if I have multiple desktops they have dedicated apps full-screen on them. Since they are the only thing running on a Space, Mission Control gives the app name at the top of the screen. I dunno, I never had an issue with it.

Click to expand...

I can adapt given enough time, but the current fullscreen/Mission Control implementation feels disjointed to me because of that, as if application windows are no longer managed in the same space, if that makes sense. I hope there's a tweak somewhere to restore the old window maximize behavior.

There's also a litany of other UI complaints I've heard from long-time Mac users, like how Snow Leopard ignored creator codes and went purely by file type associations. These are the kind of people who would use plain text files for both simple documents and programming code, among other things. That particular bit doesn't really screw with my computing methods, but I could see why they're irritated.

Some people just really hate change, though, and it's not just Macs. We all know those few people who hated going from Windows 9x to NT/2000/XP, again to Vista/Win7, and don't get me started on Win8 onward. Heck, I'm sure I could find some Linux users who could rant at length about undesirable changes in KDE or GNOME or whatever DE of choice they used over the years.

UnknownSouljer said:

You sort of contradict yourself. I agree with your premise of using a machine because you need it... then you go on to say it's a lifestyle choice. And I also disagree with your premise about the hardware. It's like you want to seem balanced, but you really aren't.
If you don't like Mac's, that is fine, but it's going to take quite a bit for me to ever move away from the platform. And that is for work reasons. I don't really do much else other than productivity.

Click to expand...

I'm not trying to get you to move away from the platform.

I'm simply saying that *I*, personally, am not a good fit for the Mac constellation of hardware, services and software.

If it works for you, and you're happy with it, more power to you.

I'm a hardcore thinkpad person, I still much prefer the older thinkpad keyboards and layout. The macbook retina screen is amazing even compared to my 4k ips thinkpad. The weight of the macbook is superior but it's 2017 and still I'm stuck with 16gb ram on $3k macbook. I've got 4x the ram on my work laptop. I think I had 16gb to 32gb on my pc laptops since 2011.

Macs are a pain in the ass to repair. BUT I can usually charge more to fix a mac than a pc and the clients don't care.

IceDigger said:

Macs are a pain in the ass to repair. BUT I can usually charge more to fix a mac than a pc and the clients don't care.

Click to expand...

They are becoming virtually unrepairable now. The 2016 MBP touchbar models don't even have removable storage anymore.

That said, best thing to do is (1) GET THE APPLECARE, (2) DON'T DROP IT and (3) DON'T DROP LIQUID NEAR IT.

That covers most of the bases. If you live near an Apple Store or certified Apple repair place it just goes there for replacement etc. Apple is pretty good with recognizing faults even far past the warranty. My 2011 17" had a known GPU issue and they swapped out the board in 2016, for free. At work we've had probably 50 of the 2011 models get their boards replaced free, and now we're dealing with the Retinas with delamination of the anti-reflective coating. Again, they replace the whole top panel for free, despite many of these being out of warranty.

Lifelite said:

That's a very interesting
way to use an iPad. I need access to a command line/terminal though, I do a good portion of work in that environment.

Click to expand...

https://panic.com/prompt/

I use it all the time. Works perfectly, especially with an external keyboard.

Also I just can't use a touchscreen...I really don't like them outside of my phone.

Click to expand...

Meh - there's pro's and cons to each. I went cold turkey on laptop's when the 12.9" iPad Pro went out and I really tried to make it my primary device. But I do a lot of forum whoring and text selection in iOS still drives me batty. I don't think it's an inherent problem with Touchscreen's but Apples recent implementations of text selection. the first two iOS releases where Apple introduced text selection I had no problems. It was only in later iOS releases when they tried to enhance text selection by making it more "helpful" in expanding auto selection that it really started to drive me nuts unless I really zoom in consistently (which gets old quickly).

Last month someone had a batch of 8GB RAM 13" MacBook Air's for $750 so I snagged one. After a year of typing on the SmartKeyboard (which I really like) it's been very hard to get used to the MacBook Air keyboard again (which I really liked before I switched to the iPad Pro and SmartKeyboard a year ago). But having precision control over text selection makes my online posting habit a lot more pleasurable.

There are times I catch myself trying to touch the MacBook Air screen though, so I think more than anything it's more habit then inherent flaws with one over the other.

I do think Apple will have to reverse their hardline stance on "no touchscreen on macOS" eventually. One thing Microsoft did a good job with are the Surface laptops. I wouldn't use touch on a laptop all the time, but there are certain times where it make more sense than a trackpad and certainly wouldn't hurt to be an option.

Speaking of the lack of touchscreens on macOS, I feel like that was one big missed opportunity for the iMac Pro.

I mean, let this sink in for a second: how many Mac users are the creative sorts to drop massive dosh on a Wacom Cintiq or similar monitor?

Apple has their Pencil now, they have their own in-house digitizer tech, and they have this big opportunity staring them in the face if they'd just take advantage of it! As it stands, you can use an iPad Pro with ASTROPAD on any Mac to turn it into a quasi-Cintiq, but then you get to put up with video compression over effectively USB 2.0 bandwidth (the new iPad Pros they just announced with their supposed USB 3.0 support may mitigate this), and it's still just a 12.9" screen tops.

Of course, it would also help if every iMac since the G5 models wasn't so rigidly mounted. A return to the "lamp/sunflower" iMac G4 design with monitor arm would be pretty sweet for that, but I have a feeling Apple dropped that because larger display sizes would've been far too heavy for most monitor arms and the small computer base balancing it.

Yeah, a digitizer screen would have been nice for the iMac Pro. However, I strongly suspect (having owned quite a few Macs, including the Mac Pro) that the screen is going to get nice and toasty. Apple always runs the hardware really hot.

TechLarry said:

There isn't a damn thing to hate about the touch bar. Wtf is wrong with people. Some people would complain about a zit even if it was oozing gold puss.

Click to expand...

Sorry about the late reply, I didn't even see this pop up in my alerts. Their dislike stems from the fact that it isn't implemented very well and the tools Mac provided for integrating it into various programs and functions is not well fleshed out yet. So that even when they want to add features of the touchbar to their applications, oftentimes there isn't really a good way to do it with the limited toolset Apple provides them. They believe it could become a better tool down the road, but feel it's not as polished as other features Apple has premiered in the past and so are disappointed with its initial release and uses.

I will be needing to buy a mac for pretty much the same reason.

I had a macbook pro a while ago, when they first started using intel cpus... I guess it was about 11 or 12 years ago? It did me pretty well for what it was but that thing was pricey as hell. At the time I was bouncing around server rooms, predominantly screwing with unix and though I would try out the "unix based os" hehe. I did unlock root which was cool and let me do more with it. I was also traveling A LOT so the media capabilities, including a remote was fucking awesome.

I was thinking this time around just getting a mac mini to hide inside my cube case and a KVM switch.

For you new MacBook users (or even if you're not new), do yourself a favor and check out the gestures tutorial for the trackpad: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204895

When working with full screen apps (or even when using RDP to Windows machine), being able to quickly switch between all of my full screen apps makes me feel efficient. It's quick and efficient enough that it feels like I'm using multiple screens sometimes, IMO.

If you're using a 2016+ MBP, then the trackpad also supports Force Touch like an iPhone. Press a little harder and there is more it will do for you: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352

Just simple things like this keep me coming back after working with Windows all day.