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Fair enough, but to be clear - I am not saying that apple software and products are free from problems. Far from it - butterfly keyboard, for example. I am jus

Fair enough, but to be clear - I am not saying that apple software and products are free from problems. Far from it - butterfly keyboard, for example. I am just saying Apple, for me, has the most reliable and consistent experience. And I have tried most options: - windows, linux, and macos for my personal and work machines - android, ios, and even windows phone (remember that?) So far, may experience has been the opposite of yours - my work laptop is a 2015 macbook pro 15 and still performs really well (no crashes), but I have BSODed a couple of times on my windows 10 laptop I bought last year. Doesn't say much, I know.

cwyers 6y ago
I don't really know if this is a head's up comparison -- Apple maintains very tight control over their hardware compared to Windows. So you're trading off, in that Microsoft has to manage an ecosystem with much greater complexity, but you have a blessed path for using Nvidia graphics cards.
- fakedang 6y ago
  This. MacOS fans will sing praises of Apple, while discounting that Apple messes up even though they have very few hardware types to service compared to Windows. And they still screw it up big time - I haven't moved to BigSur for this reason. That being said, Windows 10 cannot be in the business of "ship and keep calm", due to the number of businesses and governments relying on Windows.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    This is what I tell every macOS user looking to try Linux. Pick hardware that is officially supported. In every Linux thread on HN, macOS fans seem to disregard the fact that Linux has to support so many more hardware configs entirely. In fact they'd compare the experience of them installing Ubuntu on a $300 Best Buy laptop they got for $150 on Black Friday and wonder why the experience isn't up to par compared to their 2019 decked out $3000 MBP.
    - beardyw 6y ago
      I fully agree. I ducked out of Windows when Win7 support ended early this year and loaded Ubuntu on my aged laptop. My experience was ok enough. When it finally died in the summer I bought a well specced laptop loaded with Ubuntu from a Linux specialist (Entroware here in UK), and even now I am knocked out by how great the experience is. Now I would never want to go back to Windows.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    This. I also find it hard to believe how Apple can screw up bigtime with buggy OS releases considering they make and own the full hardware-software stack which has way less variety than what Linux and Windows have to deal with. Mac fans have defended Apple saying that "QA is expansive and they can't afford it", as if Apple is some low budget indie app developer in an incubator and not this trillion dollar goliath with insane margins.
    - salawat 6y ago
      Well... They aren't wrong on QA being expensive. The real problem though is you can't measure the savings of a prevented problem. Drives most of us that do it for a living nuts, because all the MBA types love metrics, but don't generally have the imagination to take the numbers and go 'Now imagine all those people got bitten by X.' They won't, but if they did, think of the tarnish. Being a QA is the most thankless way of making the world better imaginable.
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        >Being a QA is the most thankless way of making the world better imaginable. As a fellow dev, you might be getting ahead of yourself. I think there are plenty more professions that go thankless and that are actually making the world a better place. I hope this doesn't offend you but the thankless garbage men or street cleaners on my neighborhood have a bigger impact on my life than the people who do QA on the apps I use on a daily basis. If github, slack and outlook stop working I basically have that time off and go outside for a coffee. If my garbagemen stop picking up my smelly garbage, then I'm gonna have a pretty bad day. Again, no offense, just stating the facts.
LexGray 6y ago
Apple is very much a consumer level company. I’ve seen reviews quality wise that they are average with hardware failure rates. They do try... for instance I’ve heard the reason they always charge more for RAM is labor costs from running additional tests to fail chips other companies ship.
- indigo945 6y ago
  Apple may be a consumer level company, but then, business level hardware has ceased to exist anyway. Thinkpads are not what they used to be in terms of reliability.
  - cpach 6y ago
    It’s a shame really. Thinkpads used to be built like tanks. A friend of mine was once stationed in a jungle in South America. Most laptops couldn’t handle the humidity there. His IBM Thinkpad was the only one that held up.
- weego 6y ago
  Pretty much the entire music industry would disagree with you on apple being consumer level
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >I’ve heard the reason they always charge more for RAM is labor costs from running additional tests to fail chips other companies ship. Which is false. Apple uses the same off the shelf DRAM chips from established manufacturers found in any PC/Phone/Laptop. Unlike Flash storage, there is really not really bad performing DRAM per-se, just defective, And apple is no guarantee of free from defects with RAM fault in MACs being as common as in the rest of the PC industry. The extra price is just the Apple tax.
  - bzzzt 6y ago
    I don’t know, but if you’re shipping mainboards with soldered on RAM it could be worth it to test the modules before soldering to reduce the amount of returns where you have to replace the entire board.

cwyers 6y ago

I don't really know if this is a head's up comparison -- Apple maintains very tight control over their hardware compared to Windows. So you're trading off, in that Microsoft has to manage an ecosystem with much greater complexity, but you have a blessed path for using Nvidia graphics cards.

fakedang 6y ago
This. MacOS fans will sing praises of Apple, while discounting that Apple messes up even though they have very few hardware types to service compared to Windows. And they still screw it up big time - I haven't moved to BigSur for this reason. That being said, Windows 10 cannot be in the business of "ship and keep calm", due to the number of businesses and governments relying on Windows.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  This is what I tell every macOS user looking to try Linux. Pick hardware that is officially supported. In every Linux thread on HN, macOS fans seem to disregard the fact that Linux has to support so many more hardware configs entirely. In fact they'd compare the experience of them installing Ubuntu on a $300 Best Buy laptop they got for $150 on Black Friday and wonder why the experience isn't up to par compared to their 2019 decked out $3000 MBP.
  - beardyw 6y ago
    I fully agree. I ducked out of Windows when Win7 support ended early this year and loaded Ubuntu on my aged laptop. My experience was ok enough. When it finally died in the summer I bought a well specced laptop loaded with Ubuntu from a Linux specialist (Entroware here in UK), and even now I am knocked out by how great the experience is. Now I would never want to go back to Windows.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  This. I also find it hard to believe how Apple can screw up bigtime with buggy OS releases considering they make and own the full hardware-software stack which has way less variety than what Linux and Windows have to deal with. Mac fans have defended Apple saying that "QA is expansive and they can't afford it", as if Apple is some low budget indie app developer in an incubator and not this trillion dollar goliath with insane margins.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Well... They aren't wrong on QA being expensive. The real problem though is you can't measure the savings of a prevented problem. Drives most of us that do it for a living nuts, because all the MBA types love metrics, but don't generally have the imagination to take the numbers and go 'Now imagine all those people got bitten by X.' They won't, but if they did, think of the tarnish. Being a QA is the most thankless way of making the world better imaginable.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      >Being a QA is the most thankless way of making the world better imaginable. As a fellow dev, you might be getting ahead of yourself. I think there are plenty more professions that go thankless and that are actually making the world a better place. I hope this doesn't offend you but the thankless garbage men or street cleaners on my neighborhood have a bigger impact on my life than the people who do QA on the apps I use on a daily basis. If github, slack and outlook stop working I basically have that time off and go outside for a coffee. If my garbagemen stop picking up my smelly garbage, then I'm gonna have a pretty bad day. Again, no offense, just stating the facts.

LexGray 6y ago

Apple is very much a consumer level company. I’ve seen reviews quality wise that they are average with hardware failure rates. They do try... for instance I’ve heard the reason they always charge more for RAM is labor costs from running additional tests to fail chips other companies ship.

indigo945 6y ago
Apple may be a consumer level company, but then, business level hardware has ceased to exist anyway. Thinkpads are not what they used to be in terms of reliability.
- cpach 6y ago
  It’s a shame really. Thinkpads used to be built like tanks. A friend of mine was once stationed in a jungle in South America. Most laptops couldn’t handle the humidity there. His IBM Thinkpad was the only one that held up.
weego 6y ago
Pretty much the entire music industry would disagree with you on apple being consumer level
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>I’ve heard the reason they always charge more for RAM is labor costs from running additional tests to fail chips other companies ship. Which is false. Apple uses the same off the shelf DRAM chips from established manufacturers found in any PC/Phone/Laptop. Unlike Flash storage, there is really not really bad performing DRAM per-se, just defective, And apple is no guarantee of free from defects with RAM fault in MACs being as common as in the rest of the PC industry. The extra price is just the Apple tax.
- bzzzt 6y ago
  I don’t know, but if you’re shipping mainboards with soldered on RAM it could be worth it to test the modules before soldering to reduce the amount of returns where you have to replace the entire board.