[DoofusOfDeath]

Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography.

My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM.

We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10.

Here are the major criteria for the replacement, which need to remain true for 3+ years after the computer's purchase:

(1) It must legally run current Adobe products. (2) Can support > 16 GB RAM during its lifetime. (3) There must be minimal unplanned downtime. (4) The price can't be exorbitant, relative to a medium-high end PC. TCO should also be reasonable. (5) It must be convenient to transfer photos from her camera's SD card. (6) We'd like to minimize the time and attention we put into initial setup and maintenance.

So the most obvious options (currently) are:

* Apple: MacPro, iMac, or MacBook Pro

* PC: Windows 8 or Windows 10

Here's how I score the options, although perhaps someone will correct me:

(1) Easily satisfied by all options listed.

(2) No MacBook Pro satisfies this. Fast SSD for swap is helpful but sub-optimal.

(3) Windows 10 (non-enterprise) fails this, because of unavoidable updates. MacPro and iMac fail this because (AFAIK) Apple doesn't offer loaners for these during warranty work.

(4) For initial purchase cost, the MacPro is a fail, and the MacBook Pro is nearly a fail. However, all current Apple products are potential TCO fail given the lack of user-replaceable components.

(5) AFAIK the desktop Macs fail this, although connecting an external USB reader should be easy enough. I suspect the MacBook Pro would be more hassle, given its ports/dongles mess.

(6) All of the options should satisfy this criterion well-enough.

As far as I can tell, the winner is a Windows 8 PC.

Why is no Apple product a viable winner, given our criteria?

- Nothing in the current lineup meets all our criteria.

- We don't know if/when something will be added that meets our criteria.

- We're not sure what Apple's longer-term plans are, so we don't want to invest time/money into a PC-to-Apple transition, just to need to reverse it in a few years.

The three issues listed immediately above strike me as a pointless fail in Apple's strategy, at least relative to my wife's business's needs.

[secabeen]

Looks like the only blocker for Windows 10 is the "minimal unplanned downtime." Although Windows 10 does have mandatory updates, I have yet to see one that requires immediate and sudden reboots. Yes, if you get prompted for an update reboot and delay it a few times, the system will eventually force the update, but a simple workflow change of rebooting the system every night when you're done working with it and are going to bed would eliminate the unexpected updates and the associated downtime.

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm not particularly concerned about unplanned reboots. The real issue is some Windows 10 updates have caused problems which made the computers unusable until remediated.

There are some points in the business calendar where 1-2 days of downtime is catastrophic. For example, shortly before the deadline for submitting highschool senior photographs to the yearbook publisher.

If we could purchase a version of Windows 10 which allowed her to delay installing updates for 1-2 months until a crunch time is over, that would probably be acceptable.

AFAIK only Windows 10 Enterprise allows that, and I'm not aware of any legal way we can get that.

If we do have to go the Windows 10 route, my contingency plan is to look into setting up a firewall (external to the Windows 10 box) that blocks all relevant Microsoft IP addresses.

[pdimitar]

The "immediate forced reboots" on Windows 10 are vastly overhyped and received much more negative press than they should have. I am yet to experience a reboot when I didn't want it. Anecdotal for sure but I've set my inactive hours inside Win10's settings and never had a problem.

Windows 10 is your best answer. It's gonna be supported very long and it's a 99.9% painless upgrade from Windows 7.

Definitely invest in a mid-to-high range PC would be my advice. I have 5-year old i7 3770 CPU and I am yet to find something that makes it choke. Only refreshment I did to my now 5-year old PC was to increase RAM from 16 to 32GB and to get GTX 980 (was 650 before). The PC is flying whatever I do -- and I'm a programmer, trust me I do a lot.

[DoofusOfDeath]

I mentioned this in another post, but the issue with updates isn't that they're immediate, it's they they're forced.

My wife needs her system to be stable during certain points in the yearly business calendar, and an unavoidable, potentially-breaking update is a serious concern.

But why Windows 10 rather than Windows 8? Both will receive security updates for a long time, and (AFAIK) Windows 8 doesn't have the issue of unavoidable pushed updates.

The only real downside I know of to Windows 8 is its bad UI, but I'm told there are 3rd-party shell replacements which approximate the Windows 7 interface.

[pdimitar]

I don't have extensive experience with Win8 first-hand, but I've heard from many people that Win10 has a much better backwards compatibility. Practically almost nothing ever broke for people, while conversely Win8 had a lot of complaints.

I can't argue either way though. I as a programmer took the plunge one afternoon around 8 months ago and never looked back. Win10 is superior to Win7 -- my girlfriend's graphical processing software (and part of her games) even started working faster after her upgrade.

All of that is anecdotal of course but strategically speaking, Win10 will be around for much longer.

[daxelrod]

For (3) check local independent repair shops. I know of several Apple-authorized repair shops that rent inexpensive loaners while they're working on your computer.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Thanks for the tip!