schmatzler wrote on 2020-01-09, 10:48:Apple is mainly used by creative workers, hipsters and people who don't know any better.
sigh... This is tired trope that really needs to die.
Sure, there are people who see their computer / tablet / phone / watch as a status symbol. Good for them. I don't know or care what that approval does for anyone. I don't think anyone is impressed with me as a person based on the logo on my laptop, nor would I care.
Meanwhile, I need tools to do work. In my industry, Mac is taking over PCs bit by bit. At my own company, where the engineers basically get to pick their platform, it's about 50/50. This is a group of people who base their career and earn their living by being technical SMEs. So they absolutely "know better". Some might be hipsters, most wouldn't know fashion or trends or anti-trends if they were slapped in the face with a Gucci handbag.
As an example, last week I was travelling again. That means long days without consistent access to power outlets. The power-efficient hardware design + OS X's power management are a godsend. I had to plug in to various wired networks and join several wireless networks to get my job done. The Mac networking system is agile and convenient - it takes much less effort to manually assign IPs, modify DNS, etc. The built in tools (SSH, wget, etc.) and the fully-baked graphical UI bring the best of Linux and the best of Windows together in one OS. Back to hardware design, the MBP is small, light, and well-balanced, and has a fantastic touchpad, which made it not only possible but pleasant to use while having to hold it in one hand and type / point with the other. I've always dreaded sleep mode on Windows (never seemed to work well), while on OS X, I close the lid any time I'm not planning to use it immediately. I reboot to upgrade the OS, and that's about it. It. Just. Works.
People sneer about how "it's just x86 but more expensive lawls" -- it's not. It's a sum more than its parts. A premium product. Not just a brand, but an actual culmination of design and engineering prowess. If you haven't lived with it for a month or so, you just don't know what you're missing. As someone who has used my share of Sony, Dell, and Lenovo products, this notebook - my first MBP - won me over utterly and completely. For an equivalent product (not just similar specs crammed in to a cheap plastic shell, but a truly equivalent build), it's not much (if any) more expensive, and even if it was, I'm willing to pay. It's worth every %@#$ penny and more. I was hesitant to switch, and while I still use both Windows and Linux, I wouldn't go back to either as a primary OS unless or until Apple really screws up, Windows gets significantly better at getting out of the way, or Linux gets fully caught up.