Apple Megathread
IntroductionOkay, before anyone freaks out. No, this is not going to be the 'LMFAO PCs BTFO, MAC FOREVER' thread. I recently bought a Mac, which means I've basically used or interacted with every type of Apple Product over the past 10 years, and I have a general understanding of it. So I will be giving my perspective on it as a person who has used basically
any well known operating system. I will talk good and bad about these products.
MacsSo this year I have bought my first Mac. It is an M1 Macbook Air. I have been thoroughly impressed. While the baseline 8GB Ram and 256GB Hard Drive puts
the $999 at a steep entry point, and any other Mac in the past 5 years would've turned me off with that kind of spec, the CPU has made all the difference. For those
who don't know the M1 CPU is a modified ARM processor. Arm is a 64bit RISC processor. Basically this means it uses less low-level functions to accomplish the same goals.
This means the CPU uses less energy and is more efficient, but typically programs are larger because there are more instructions at an Assembly level.
Even as an early adopter, meaning most programs run through an x86_64 to ARM Emulator, this is an absolutely amazing laptop. It's blown away laptops with twice the ram and capacity in terms of storage and efficient use of ram. Even through the emulator. Using the emulator, known as Rosetta 2, most software runs pretty well. However, just like modern versions of Linux, and apparently the latest verisons of MacOS before this, x86 applications that were 32bit are incompatible out of the box.
MacOS is an impressive OS with some pretty cool and intuitive features. Swiping between different fullscreen applications is pretty handy. Similar to the Windows feature of having multiple desktops, but it's actually easy to use and not annoying. But MacOS also lacks a pretty big feature out of the box, Locking windows to the side of the screen or dragging them up to the top to make them fullscreen is not a default feature, and adding it costs money. Absolutely ridiculous. Also, as of this generation of Macs, BootCamp is no longer supported. You can still connect to other windows desktops through the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, but that doesn't help you if you want to use something other than Windows.
The MacBook Air as well as the Macbook Pro, both have 2 USB C ports and a HEADPHONE JACK PORT. I will bring this up again in the iPhone review. But this is pretty good.
A few years back I'd get upset at no USB A ports, but basically every computer for the past 5 years has had a usb C port and so has every android phone. So if you don't have a USB A to USB C port, then you're a bit behind. But if you've been in the Mac Ecosystem and only recently upgraded to a Macbook with these USB C exclusive designs, then you may have a point, but again I'll leave that in the iPhone Review.
The battery life is pretty astounding, this is likely because of the ARM Processor. Now it's not the mindblowing levels many reviewers will tell you it is. Many claiming insane things like "I don't even carry my charger" or "it lasted me 2 days!". Unless you just carry it around as a paper weight/flash light, then these claims are stupidly optimistic.
However, it does hold a charge pretty well, as after using it under a decent loads, I typically only need to charge it every .5 to 1.25 days. Which depending on what I'm doing is pretty good. Heavy loads like playing The Talos Principle definitely hits that .5 day mark. However, browsing and coding through RDP tends to get me closer to a day.
The Display is a 2560x1600 6:10 2K Display with 400 nit brightness. Pretty good, but not quite HDR quality. But it's one of the more high-res displays I've seen in a laptop at this pricepoint. Many laptops around $999 offer 4k displays, but those usually end up bumping the price up 200-300 dollars. And beside that, even if they do, they all bafflingly choose 16:9 displays, which leave a stupid chin at the bottom of the display. I get 16:9 is a desktop monitor standard, but following standards without reason leads stupid decisions like this. I've heard the argument that "but that would just leave black bars around the top and bottom of the screen on video." and to that I say having a temporary black border at the top and bottom of the display is better than having a permanent giga-border at the bottom of the display.
I give the MacBook Air a solid 8.5/10. Best Laptop on the market for the price. but not the best contemporary laptop for the price that I've ever seen.
iPhonesNow on the other end of the spectrum, we have the iPhone. If you like taking decent photos at an expensive price, just get a decent purpose-built camera. If you're just bought into the ecosystem, then this may still make sense, but the iPhone has to be the most frustrating fragile glass rectangle of design incompetence since the Galaxy Note 7. Ever since the iPhone 7, apple has dropped the headphone port, which wouldn't be so bad except, for some reason beyond my understanding, they stuck with their stupid lightning port. I guess it's proprietary, but if you can put a headphone port and a USB C port on your loving mac you can put it on this over priced slab of glass.
But even if it was still on there, this phone drives me up a wall with how it's designed. Unlike android phones, the iPhone is not a portable computer with a touch screen, it's more like a tonka tablet. Transferring files is a nightmare, using it to work on files is typically a disaster, and usually only proprietary blue-tooth items will connect to it.
Alongside that, using this phone and it's apps can be the most un-intuitive and frustrating experience. While I praised apple for ignoring the monitor standard in laptops, and going with a 16:10 display, I'm going to shred them for ignoring well-known control standards and trying to nintendo it. The problem with this method is sometimes you launch a Nintendo Wii and sometimes you launch a Virtual Boy. And the iPhone's UI and Gestures are an awful experience. Almost all of them are exclusive to the phone, and that sets the iPhone on a track for a steep learning curve.
This also means jumping from an iPhone to an Android device is also a learning curve. The iPhone is not a good first phone for anyone, it's not a good phone to show someone how smart phones work and what they're good for. The iPhone is not a good phone for daily use or as a work phone. The iPhone is just a total disaster. Avoid it at all costs.
I'm giving this a -5/10
loving avoid this garbage. It's less than worthless, and it will rewire growing minds to a locked down and broken interface.
OtherAppleTV is okay, I guess. I wouldn't give it a yes or a no, I'd say you're probably better off with a roku stick if you don't have an iPhone, a Mac or any device that uses apple's services and you must have a smartTV stick. But it's just okay. There's not really much to say here, and honestly, I really don't like these things in general. I'd say hooking your laptop up to your TV gives you a more responsive and enjoyable experience than any of these smart-sticks or even the built-in smartTV stuff.
I'll give it a 5/10.
