1y ago

Is a Mac more than a big iPhone? (Serious post)

So, I have an iPhone, which I like, but we use Windows and Linux computers in our household. I'd never seen a Mac boot up until the other day after a friend gave me their old Mac Mini. I was excited to check it out, got it all set up and logged in -- but it really just seemed like a giant iPhone regarding what it did and could do (meaning, I would just stick with Windows and Linux for our computing needs, rather than swap over to the Mac). I was disappointed.

What am I missing?

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19 comments

Reasons I use my M1 MacBook Air:
Real estate. Thanks to AirPlay and the Thunderbolt port, I can have three desktops going at once with all my open windows.
Intel binaries still run on it via Rosetta 2.
Control -- I have more access to the OS, the command line, etc.
Virtualization -- Apple Silicon is built on ARM, so I can virtualize any ARM-based Linux distribution using VMware Fusion. (I run Fedora in a VM.)
Input -- despite iPads having the ability to accept keyboard and touchpad input these days, the pointer is still pretty clumsy.
And lots more, but that's a good start for me.
- How were you able to make multiple desktop work since M1 only supports one out of the box?
  
  M1 does only support one display natively; I think you can get around this with a usb hub. You can also airplay to displays/tvs that support it (anything you can plug an apple tv into, and many newer tvs). You can also use an iPad as a separate display if you have one.
  There are a lot of nice things you can do, especially if you own multiple apple products (like, you can airplay music or video to your computer from your iPhone, or copy-paste between devices that share an Apple ID)
  Some stuff is annoying though. Linux support on M-series chips is still evolving (though very usable), it's really not super straightforward to record the audio of your Mac (think screen recording that also captures whatever audio is passing through your AV Devices) because of implementation decisions way back.
  Generally, I use a Mac though; because I get enough utility out of stuff like AirPlay, AirDrop, iCloud, and other random stuff that you kinda need to "just know about" to make up for the downsides of not being able to completely control my system.
  Nix/nixpkgs is pretty well supported on Mac, though, so it's not like I'm forced to use all the default binaries MacOS ships with.
  Also, their displays are really really good on the Macbook Pros and the speaker quality (especially on the 16") is by far the best sound quality I've seen come out of a laptop. That doesn't matter if you have a Mac Mini, though.
  
  If one is Thunderbolt and another is AirPlay, it works. I have a 50" AirPlay-capable TV mounted in my office, and a 27" 4K display on my desk. I use a cable for the 27" and AirPlay for the 50".

19 comments