Microsoft needs to throw something in the gap to slow down MacBook attrition.
The M processors changed the game. My teams support 250k users. I went from 50 MacBooks in 2020 to over 10,000 today. I added zero staff - we manage them like iPhones.
The M processors changed the game. My teams support 250k users. I went from 50 MacBooks in 2020 to over 10,000 today. I added zero staff - we manage them like iPhones.
Coffe shops, trains and airports in Europe? Nope, rare animal on tables.
European schools? Most countries parents buy their kids a computer, and most often it is a desktop used by the whole family, or a laptop of some kind running Windows, unless we are talking about the countries where buying Apple isn't an issue on the monthly expenses.
Popular? In Germany, the few times they get displayed on shopping mall stores, they get rountinely discounted, or bundled with something else, until finally they get rid of them.
Valve is heavily dependent on game studios producing Windows games.
The M processor really did completely eliminate all sense of “lag” for basic computing (web browsing, restarting your computer, etc). Everything happens nearly instantly, even on the first generation M1 processor. The experience of “waiting for something to load” went away.
Not to mention these machines easily last 5-10 years.
Even modern macs can be brought to their knees by something that rhymes with FrowdStrike Calcon and interrupts all IO.
In companies where I worked where the IT team rolled out "security" software to the Mac-based developers, their computers were not noticeably faster than Windows PCs at all, especially given the majority of containers are still linux/amd64, reflecting the actual deployment environment. Meanwhile Windows also runs on ARM anyway, so it's not really something useful to generalize about.
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-add-a-file-...
There are also insurance, compliance, and other constraints that IT folks have that make them unwilling to turn off scanning for you.
To be fair, the average employee doesn’t have much more than idiot-level knowledge when it comes to security.
The majority of employees would rather turn off automatic OS updates simply because it’s a hassle to restart your computer because god forbid they you loose those 250 chrome tabs waiting for you to never get around to revisiting!
So the pro-part of the tip does not apply.
On my own machines anti-virus is one the very first things to be removed. Most of the time I'd turn off all the swap file, yet Windows doesn't overcommit and certain applications are notorious for allocating memory w/o even using it.
One can bury the machine and lose very little basic interactivity. That part users really like.
Frankly the only downside of the MacBook Air is the tiny storage. The 8GB RAM is actually enough most of the time. But general system storage with only 1/4 TB is cramped consistently.
Been thinking about sending the machine out to one of those upgrade shops...
I could 3d print a couple of brackets and probably lodge a bigger SSD or the smaller form factor eMMC I think and pack it all into a little package one just plugs in. The port extender is currently shaped such that it fits right under the Air tilting it nicely for general use.
The Air only has external USB... still, I don't need to boot from it. The internal one can continue to do that. Storage is storage for most tasks.
So yeah, great deal. And I really wanted to run the new CPU.
Frankly, I can do more and generally faster than I would expect running on those limited resources. It has been a quite nice surprise.
For a lot of what I do, the RAM and storage are enough.
As someone who used windows laptops, I was amazed when I saw someone sitting next to me on a public transit subway on her MacBook Pro editing images on photoshop with just her trackpad. The standard for windows laptops used to be that low (about ten or twelve years ago?) that seeing a MacBook trackpad just woke someone is a part of my permanent memory.
I think part of the reason is that we manage Mac pretty strictly now but we're getting there with Linux too.
We also tried to get them to use WSL 1 and 2 but they just laugh at it :) And point at its terrible disk performance and other dealbreakers. Can't blame them.