I’m getting a laptop

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by MikaelaArsenault, Jun 11, 2018.

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  1. mongo

    mongo Senior Member

    Different strokes for different folks.
    I want no part of the Apple i-infrastructure, others love it.
     
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  2. Bob_in_OKC

    Bob_in_OKC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas
    For me, my PC is about like a hammer on which I’ve replaced the handle a time or two, and the head a time or two.
     
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  3. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    It's because it had to be able to downsize for tablets. In general, Windows 10 runs better on hardware that was designed for Windows 7. Microsoft have been seriously slimming down the OS as they basically rebuild from the ground up. Apple is doing nothing like this at all. They are resting on their laurels with the Mac OS. It's already great, so why change it? That strategy works for a while, but not long term.
    There's no effort or plan to merge capability beyond some ability to run iOS apps in a virtual environment on Macs. Heck, you still can't use a mouse with an iPad and there's no touch interface in the Mac OS. That's laughable to those of us who have been using Windows 8+ laptops and Chromebooks for 5 years or more. MacOS is seriously withering on the vine.
    Apple's Mac is in a 'sad state', says this popular developer: Do you agree? | ZDNet
     
  4. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I agree that the Mac hardware is in a sad state, it then there is the iMac Pro, which is an amazing machine and shows what is possible when they work to make it happen. In actuality the 2013 MacPro was also a really great machine. It’s a shame they put it in a cylinder instead of a box. Had it been in a box and included the same TB2 interfaces connecting to a stack of accessories, people would have swooned over it. But since it was outside the box, many ripped it. Funny though I don’t think I have ever heard a person that owned one slam it. I loved mine as still have it while I figure out how to retake it. Mine was upgraded BP from a 6 to a 12 core and served me very well for 4 years doing real work.

    Too many folks are just way too focused on specs and numbers that really don’t matter all that much to most people. My wife has the original MacBook 12” retina and loves it. I offer to update it all the time and she resists.

    As to MacOS, I don’t care for the annual updates, but they don’t bother me. The OS has been mature for quite some time and I haven’t seen any change in my workflow driven by the OS in a long time. Little improvements are OK, but I honestly don’t know what is needed at this point. I’m actually getting very aggravated with Win10 as while they have fixed some of the really bad scaling issues it suffered from for the first couple years, they can’t seem to keep the networking goodness that I loved working. At this point it’s causing me severe headaches, as I depend on DirectAccess to access my LAN!but it works for a day or so and them doesn’t for a day or so.

    Even worse is that MS has decided that they should be able to force things on me and have made it so you do not control your own PC. I control things like update schedules via group policy, but have had them time and again force updates to Win10 without permission. Nothing like being up against a deadline and have you machine decide to keep you offline for an hour to do an update. Even worse be at a job site and have to reboot and it go into an update and take you down.

    As to touchscreens, I completely agree with Apples approach on this. I detest a touchscreen on a laptop or desktop. It makes no sense and is completely unnatural. PC users think it’s cool because they don’t have access to Apple’s trackpads which still set the standard for the industry in size and function.

    Then there’s the biggest advantage to MacBooks, and that is the 16x10 form factor, in the PC world at the same time that the screens went short and wide, apparent added the Ribbon andthose of us that work for a living are forced to deal with a stupidly small vertical workspace. At least MS understands this and offers the excellent 3:2 aspect on their devices.
     
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  5. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    No, horses for courses, my wife has a macbook, it is when Apple devotees try and claim they are either virus free or value for money compared with equivalent non-apple products.
     
  6. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    That seamless "native" integration caused a whole world of problems for my wife recently when she had a problem with her icloud password and lost access to her emails for weeks on the macbook, because the password reset "feature" was so complicated, convoluted and illogical for even myself, who has worked in IT for nearly 35 years now - and the Apple system insisted on sending a reset password/email in "up to a week". They never arrived. She eventually had to take it into an Apple store.

    As I said, if you have a need or desire for those native integration features, and you cannot get that elsewhere, and you are happy to pay a premium for it, then that is fine. You have no choice but to go with Apple. For those who do have a choice, they will choose Apple because they either don't care about the extra money, they are more interested in buying Apple than value for money or specs, or they are just ignorant of the options available.

    I bought a surfacebook pro 2, because it ticked the boxes of my requirements and was within my budget, I know I could have got a better spec laptop for the same price, but not without compromising on features. I use the detached screen as a moving map when I fly, I use it with screen flipped and closed on my piano when using my piano software. I am happy with it.
     
  7. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    My SB pro 2 has a touchscreen, and a keyboard, and a trackpad, and a pen/stylus, and can be used with usb or bluetooth mouse and keyboard. When one of its features is a detachable screen which becomes a tablet I think it makes every sense, trying to use a tablet (in either detached mode, or screen reversed and closed mode) with anything other than touchscreen is completely impractical. It sits most of the time in my garden cabin on the piano, and I work on it via RDP from my main laptop, I only use the trackpad when I take the whole laptop away on holiday and cant be bothered to plug in a mouse.
     
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  8. Rattlin' Bones

    Rattlin' Bones Grumpy Old Deaf Drummer

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    I've never had a Windows PC last more than 2 years. Desktop or laptop doesn't matter. After 24 months they're so slowwwwwwwwww. Bought a Macbook Air 6 years ago and it works like new still today. Built like a tank out of aluminum. Put any Windows PC or Google-based machine next to a Mac and you'll see the difference in quality. The others are pieced-together plastic components. The Macbook Air is a well-engineered integrated machine. I paid $800 for my Macbook Air 6 years ago. I'd be on my 3rd PC by now, along with incumbent issues of lost files and downtime.

    Plus my Macbook Air knows what I wanna do. Buy a new wireless printer and my Macbook Air says "hey I reco a new printer. Not only that but let me go find the drivers, you just sit back while I take care of everything for you". It's like that with everything. Updates are automatic and flawless. Integrates with my iPhone and all our our iPads. It's a brillant piece of equipment. And I forgot to mention virtually impervious to viruses malware ransomware etc. Never once in 6 years has there been any issue. In same time period at my office they've had to rebuild my Windows machine 3 times.

    And lets not talk about the operating system differences. There no comparison. Mac OS is so much more sophisticated and intuitive. It works 100% of the time all the time.

    MS Office version for Mac I've never had an issue. I've had 7 or so re-installs needed on my Windows machine. And of course the reboots needed when my Windows machine just stops working or freezes.

    We are an all Apple family now. My wife and 4 sons everybody has thrown away their PC's and we only uses Apple products.

    FYI I've been in IT for my entire life. I talked bad about Apple products for many years until I got so disgusted with yet another issue on my Windows laptop that I bit the proverbial bullet and bought my Macbook Air. And, other IT managers in my company (BIG Global Company) also almost exclusively own Apple products personally. It's funny to see us bring our personal machines into the office and they're all shiny silver Apples.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2018
  9. DRM

    DRM Forum Resident

    I still have Norton and Malwarebytes.
     
  10. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Are you saying Macs are more sturdy?
     
  11. James Glennon

    James Glennon Senior Member

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    It has to be a desktop for me, hugely important for good posture, after years of RSI (repetitive strain injury)!

    Word of warning, make sure your posture is correct when using a laptop!

    J
     
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  12. Claus

    Claus Senior Member

    Location:
    Germany
    Agreed... I still use my MacBook Air... no issues since I bought the laptop in 2012.
     
  13. Somewhat Damaged

    Somewhat Damaged Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    I could do with buying a new desktop PC to replace my seven or more years-old machine. It has ever changing issues with booting up. Once it’s booted up it’s fine – more or less. It sometimes fails to recognise the D drive but I just use the external hard drive if that happens. Now it’s going back to crashing within the first minute with Power Driver Failure messages. It hadn’t been doing that for many months ever since it updated from Windows 7 to 10. I think it’s time I stop limping along and buy something new. The problem is: what do I buy? It’s very confusing if you’re not up on the hardware.

    I do basic internet stuff and extensive word processer usage on Word. I manage my iTunes etc. I edit the occasional 3 minute video out of 10 minutes of raw footage. I don’t play any games. I don’t edit giant picture files.

    I like the sound of solid state drives to give me super-fast boot ups. That’s about the only technical innovation I’ve heard about that excites me.

    Any recommendations for a new PC? Preferably something I can just buy on UK Amazon without any faffing about. I’ve no budget in mind so say £600 to £1000. I assume if very lightweight video editing is my biggest power drain then I don’t need anything super expensive.
     
  14. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Windows isn't the best operating system, and one of its drawbacks that it clutters itself up with junk which slows the machine down over time. But that is not the hardware's fault. You can bring it back to speed by re-installing Windows. Or you can install a Linux on it and circumvent that problem from the start. I don't think you can do that on a Mac, can you?
     
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  15. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Half the problem with windows pcs is the amount of software and applications you can install on them, it is this which makes PCs run slower over time. If you are careful about what you install, with MacOS you have to change your preferences to be able to install unsigned applications, then there is no reason your windows laptop cannot run as beautifully as it did when you bought it. I just checked and I bought this laptop I am on now in Jan 2014, it runs perfectly well now, and would still outperform an equivalently priced Macbook of the day. My guess is you treat your Macbook differently than you did your previous windows laptops, either purposefully or because you have little choice.
     
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  16. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    The Windows slowdowns are pretty much a thing of the past. Haven’t had an issue with it for Win10. Also much better with viruses with Defender. I don’t run A/V on my network PCs at the office, but I do have things locked down pretty well so users can’t install anything, and my SonicWall scans everything as it arrives.

    I too have used nearly all of the Surface products and they are solid products, but I find them limited by their lack of decent I/O options. TB3 is a requirement for me on any new machine. Also the keyboard on the Surface Pros is better than the earlier versions, but still terribly lacking. The Surface Laptop in nice but the material worries me in the field for durability, and it has terrible port options. The SurfaceBook is nice, but also lacks in the port department, and has awful balance for working on the go. I frequently have to use the laptop while walking around and it’s very uncomfortable to hold the machine in one hand and operate it with the other. Not the norm for most folks, but I am programming lighting controls and usually moving around or working in an electrical room.
     
  17. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Reinstall the OS? Sure you can.
     
  18. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Anyone?
     
  19. Bob_in_OKC

    Bob_in_OKC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas
    I would hate to admit in public that my PC gets slow within two years. That’s user error.
     
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  20. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    No, I mean install a different OS than one made by Apple.
     
  21. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    You can install Windows natively, Apple even encourages this by providing drivers, etc.


    Boot Camp - Apple Support
     
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  22. Rattlin' Bones

    Rattlin' Bones Grumpy Old Deaf Drummer

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    Yes. My Macbook Air is built out of all-metal aluminum. It's not a plastic case.

     
  23. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    The Asus Zenbook would likely be the closest. Not as elegant as the MacBook, but certainly an option for those living on the dark side!

    Asus ZenBook 3 vs. Apple MacBook: Super Skinny Laptop Face-Off

    I have never used BootCamp much, but you can install just about any OS you like in a VM using any number of apps, though I prefer VMware Fusion. To be fair, you can do this just as easily on a PC with VMware Workstation, but not many folks do. I run about a dozen different servers, mostly MS, but some Linux, along with several Win10 desktops on an HP server using VMware ESXi and it is brilliant! BUt in either case the base OS is the native one.
     
  24. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    Actually a baremetal MacOS reinstall is usually simpler than a PC because it's one step, I never have to go out and spend hours digging up all the hardware drivers after the OS goes on.
     
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  25. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    There we go. So at least one option. Even objectively, it doesn't meet the requirements of "cheaper and better", but at least it's comparable. Some here would imply you'd be an idiot to pick the Mac version of a particular laptop style/capability. But I never see that conclusion drawn by any professional comparisons.
     
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