this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Only if I cared for a Windows computer, which I don't.
If it makes Apple better; or if it makes Linux on arm better then it makes it better all around.
Being something of a Linux novice, I tried having a go with Asahi on my M2 MacBook Air a few weeks back. After a couple of days of struggling to figure out why I couldn’t install a number of different extensions, it gradually began to dawn on me that Linux on ARM is essentially non-existent right now.
So yeah, I’m all for this speeding up development of that sort of thing, because as it stands it’s so very close to being daily usable.
Linux on ARM has existed for longer than MacOS on ARM. Do you want to know the problem? That the hardware manufacturer, Apple, didn't provide any kind of support for it. Asahi is a community project developed by volunteers.
When Linux is supported by the manufacturer, it works like a charm, both ARM and amd64. If you need an ARM example, linux in Raspberry Pis have been running flawlessly for years.
Ah yeah, that’s a fair point.
Like I said, I’m a Linux novice. I jumped from Windows XP to OS X 10.4 back in ‘07 and have only used Macs since. But as much as I appreciate how good Apple’s hardware is, by the time my M2 Air has lost OS support I’ll be very, very keen indeed to be using something other than macOS.
And yes, I meant no shade at all to the folks behind Asahi. What they’ve managed to do so far is nothing short of astonishing. It’s just not quite at daily driver level for people who don’t really know what they’re doing. Not that they advertise it as such, of course.
They're trying to catch up to Apple, rather than the other way round. Competition is good but they are barely going for the same markets.
So many people don't get this.
The Windows market is SMB and Enterprise, which Apple essentially never went after (not since the Power PC at least, even then not so much).
It doesn't matter if the Mac is "better" by whatever metric you want to use (I find them nicely designed) - the OS has always been as bad as Windows 11 from a usability standpoint - and I've used them since '85, supported them since '92.
Nevermind trying to use them in most business settings. I know a few in the SMB space, some of which are for print production, where the tradeoffs are worth it. One is for a CEO who just has to have a Mac, and he's always complaining that he has to RDP to a Windows machine because the software they use doesn't exist for Apple - at all.
I currently have a MacBook Air (that I inherited) ... Nice to touch, but actually using it, like my iPhone and iPad, is a frustrating exercise if you want to do anything that isn't sanctioned by the Apple High Priests.
I also have an Apple TV that's now in a drawer. I despise having to use a second remote - despite the Apple TV using HDMI. My 10 year old DVD player can be controlled via HDMI... Come on Apple.
Apple may as well not exist in the business world. If they all disappeared today, it would be trivial to replace them, vs the reverse.
Out of interest, what can’t you do with macOS that you can with Windows?
I use a Mac at work - and am the only Mac user in the company. The only reason I keep a Windows VM is because there’s some annoying compatibility issues with Excel when linking to documents on our shared drive, so if I’m doing that, I’ll do it in Windows for the benefit of the others.
To be fair, we don’t use any proprietary software, or anything like that, but for general day to day office work, my Mac is 100% capable.
The startup world is almost entirely Apple, maybe a windows box for someone in finance who can’t be assed to learn how to do things outside of excel. If someone tried to take the macs away at any of my last five jobs, there would be riots.