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Comment by RileyJames | Hacker News Reader

When I upgraded my MacBook Air, I decided to try switching away from Apple. Primarily because the new MBP’s & Air’s were expensive, and all the new feature which made them expensive were things I didn’t want or need. I also wanted to give Linux another shot.

I went for a Dell XPS, and while there are things I don’t like (primarily keyboard & trackpad) I’ve got used to them. (Keyboard still shits me).

But, when the motherboard & power adaptor died on me. A dell technician came to my house the next day, sat at my kitchen table and fixed it on the spot.

After being an Apple customer, my mind was blown!!

They also shipped a new charger. (The tech might have been able to just give me one, but I think the charger might have died shortly after the repair, details).

I will probably stay loyal with my iPhone, primarily for iOS (but my 6S serves me just fine, I have no need to upgrade). But I don’t think I will ever buy another MacBook.

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For this reason MacBooks aren't really business devices in my opinion. What kind of business is okay with the service Apple provides? You have to send one employee to the Apple Store (if there is even one located near you), maybe get a replacement device, maybe wait for 2 weeks for it to return? This is so much more expensive than buying Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. with on-site support. On top of that you often get repair manuals for the slightly bulkier models.

We mitigate this risk by just having a spare device or spare laptop on premises. It works and it's cheap. We use tons of Macs in a business setting, and we're definitely not going back to PC's. The PC's were a nightmare (not in terms of the hardware, but because of the sofware) from a management and administration perspective. Primarily because of Windows. Using Macs running macOS has really been a gamechanger.

As a MacBook owner MacOS feels like abandonware to me.

When I reboot into Bootcamp and Windows 10 I feel like I'm using a machine 10 years in the future.

Whereas when I boot my games box into Windows 10 and it sits there saying "Applying updates" for 45 minutes before rebooting and then thrashing itself into unusability for another 45-60 minutes doing ... something ... I feel like I'm being trolled by MS.

I have the same experience with the force upgrades of OSX (due to xcode). Download is big, require massive 21G of free space, takes ages to update on older MBPs, everything gets more sluggish after the update and crashes more often...

That's just once per year?

Microsoft throws away all of your open work at least every month. NSDocument alone is 25% of the reason I stay with macOS.

I haven't used XCode in a while, but I was always amazed when I had to download the entire, massive, application every update. Android Studio has fairly consistent updates that are around 150-500mb on average.

You can turn this off. I haven't done an update in at least a year.

Wow. So you don’t apply security patches? Or am I not understanding what you are saying?

And then proceeds to show you adverts

> The PC's were a nightmare (not in terms of the hardware, but because of the sofware) from a management and administration perspective. Primarily because of Windows.

That's a human skills problem, not a software problem. Managing a large fleet of Windows PC's is a solved problem if your sysadmins know Active Directory. There are also third party solutions if Active Directory isn't your bag (we used one at a previous company to manage a large fleet of Windows PC's and servers - its name escapes me at the moment).

In what world is OS X more manageable on a large scale than Windows, that's the reason it's used in every large business to start with.

It's not large scale though. But if you have 50-100 fairly clued up users, macOS is better by an order of magnitude in terms of internal computer support tickets. The last people we had using Windows were struggling with all kinds of Windows-related issues and also the fact that Windows has bizarrely become terribly user-hostile. The UI is absolutely atrocious, in my opinion.

Yep! Issues like the above are among the reason I finally threw in the towel on MacOS after 20 years of being a Mac user. Between the precipitous diminution of their hardware repairability and upgradeability, software backward-compatibility problems, and unpalatable service model, it's clear to me that Apple hardware is no longer intended for the person who uses the computer as a tool for work.

After I switched to Linux / Thinkpad and only had to spend five minutes rather than an hour+ upgrading the hard drive, I wondered why I hadn't made the switch years ago [answer: brainwash].

What do you mean? Large enterprises will surely staff and train their own Mac support staff. I went to my companies walk up support desk in my building for an HP Zbook issue. They had a few Macs taken apart they were fixing.

Apple stores are for consumers like you and me. No large company is going to send an employee there. It’s likely the company has support contract with Apple or a 3rd party.

Beside you can just overnight your laptop to Apple for repairs anyway.

I was an employee in a startup and had to take my MacBook Pro to the Apple store myself when it had recurring kernel panics. They bought a new MacBook Pro in the meantime for me to use, since there weren't any spares available at that time and Apple doesn't provide loaners. Since then, the machines have gotten even more expensive, the extras have been reduced and they've gotten less reliable. Only Apple fanboyism keeps the brand alive in companies, usually when someone influential likes having a MacBook and an iPhone.

Not every company is big enough to have service contracts with Apple. The IT department (two people) at that startup could fix Lenovo and HP machines thanks to them being the business models.

Yes I agree for startups but middle to large size companies would probably have a dedicated Apple guy. It’s why I said large entprises.

Even startups can get service at Apple stores but if there’s not one close by in can be a serious pain.

Large enterprises are not what I'm talking about. Those already have large-scale support contracts and don't need the on-site support for each device. I'm talking about small to medium businesses and freelancers. Those often don't have the money to have a spare $2,500 laptop around just in case the manufacturer needs 2-3 weeks to repair the broken computer.

At least in Denmark, the official Apple repair company sends someone to collect the laptop, and posts it back after the repair.

It's still worse than the best Dell etc can offer, but it hasn't taken up too much of my time. The number of necessary repairs is presently very high though.

(I only know about the Dell service in theory. There hasn't been a problem with any of the laptops, and when a server HDD fails I prefer that they just mail the new drive.)

>What kind of business is okay with the service Apple provides?

Bunch of large enterprises do this and contract the service/management to people like IBM. Employees demand it and these days are likely to get Macs as an option.

I've been using a 2014 rMBP for the last 3 years at my job. Getting a Dell for my refresh next month. Dont want to keep fighting with MS Office on Mac anymore.

Apple Enterprise support programs exist. They're partially ran by IBM and on-site.

Has somebody experience with this? Is it comparable with Dell's?

I had a dell XPS laptop for work a long time ago, and it was one of those desktop replacement models with a desktop GPU. I was extremely unlucky and it happened to have a doomed GPU model - bumpgate, I think - so it would typically fail after a few months.

Dell came to my workplace during work hours, on a day's notice, 6 different times, to replace the GPU for free because it was under warranty.

I've had some bad experiences with Dell in the years since (their monitors have absolutely horrible firmware now so I can't recommend buying them anymore) but their warranty service was great then and is still pretty great now. Cross-ship RMA for things like monitors is a great perk.

HP also offers on site customer service. I bought the next business day one for the laptop I'm using right now. I payed it a less than 100 Euro for 36 months in 2014. It's more than 100 Euro for each following 12 months period. This should be telling about their expectations of durability and/or availability of spares.

I got the screen replaced for free at home after about one year (a failing contact in the hinges). I sent them a video recorded with my phone to demonstrate the problem. The technician came the next day.

I had to change the keyboard twice (an arrow key years ago and the left ctrl-shift keys died a few months ago). The customer service doen't replace keyboards but the replacement parts are cheap. I bought them on Amazon and looked at videos on YouTube to learn how disassemble and reassemble the laptop (a ZBook 15 first series.) I like that I can open it and replace RAM and disks, which I did. I could even replace CPU and GPU much like in desktops. OK, it's 3 kg and not slim, but it's worth the extra weight and size.

That option for on-site tech support is pretty good, but very very expensive.

In the UK at least, all XPS devices come with on-site repair included in the warranty.

Back in 2014 when I got it for 3 years, it was at around the same price as AppleCare at the time for an equivalent device. I don't remember the exact price, but I do remember thinking that the price was about the same as AppleCare.

Look into Asus laptops. Doesn't have to be ROG but very much worth the money

Asus? I damaged my Asus panel myself and they refuse to repair it (no warrenty claim, just "here, take my money, fix it plz") or sell me replacement parts.

Never again.

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