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Comment by bfmalky | Hacker News Reader

I can't run Ableton or Lightroom on Linux, and Macs are almost 3x the cost of a similar spec'ed windows laptop.

The apps are quite specific to me, but I imagine there are similar killer apps for other windows users.

Ableton or Lightroom both have some level of support under Wine but it depends on the version you need. But both also have alternatives and IME killer-apps tend to become a lot less important once users have sufficient other motivations. Nothing is really irreplaceable.

I would love to replace Lightroom, but unfortunately the alternatives just aren't as good.

There are good alternatives to Ableton, but once you get to know a DAW it is hard to switch. And running a DAW with an ecosystem of 3rd party VST plugins and low level access to audio hardware on Wine sounds like a recipe for a bad time, but I confess I haven't tried it.

So, yes, these things are possible, but it is still easier to just use Windows.

>3x the cost of a similar spec'ed windows laptop

Man, I'm not so sure about that. The M-series Macbooks are just crazy good for speed and battery life. The basic bottom-tier Macbook is $1000 and will do for a vast majority of people. A $330 Windows laptop is going to be a phenomenal heap of junk. People were running Ableton on 16GB M1 Macbooks a couple of years ago.

Yes, the bottom tier MacBook Air is about £1k, but only comes with a 256gb SSD. You can get a decent windows laptop for about that price with 1tb of storage and 32gb of memory. A similar spec Mac is close to £3k. CPU wise they are all fine for real-time audio, but the extra storage really matters.

A $400 Windows laptop from Costco with a $50 memory upgrade is a pretty decent machine. Source: I'm using one right now.

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