| Not an M1 user, but my journey was Windows only for a long time, then moved to a company that required me to work on Mac (and write software for Linux). I then left and started working for myself and bought an entry level 13 inch MBP (2017 version). As a general non-development computer user (i.e. using standard office/productivity apps), I really enjoy working within the Apple ecosystem. As others have said, if you work within the ecosystem the way it was intended, it's a very positive experience. If you try and fight it, or treat it as Windows/Linux, your experience will be less positive (similar to if you try and treat Gmail as if it were Outlook). I'm a big user of multiple desktops and gestures. For development, I actually use VSCode in remote SSH mode (which is absolutely incredible). I have a reserved t3a.xlarge Linux instance running in AWS which I basically do all my development on. It's backed up once a day using AWS Backup. Disclaimer is that I do this through my company so I enjoy a significant tax break on all of this (as a business expense). I can imagine that you might not want to spend your own money to do this. For me, this means my development environment is hermetically sealed and I don't get any clashes between my user applications and development applications. I also write a lot of x86 specific software in CPP which runs on Linux. Moving between developing on MacOS with Clang (I always had problems with GCC on MacOS) to Linux with GCC was tricky. The eventual move to Arm by Apple would make this even harder. As a general rule, I try and favour cloud services as much as possible and keep minimal data actually on my machine. I like the idea that I could throw my laptop under a bus and be up and running again very quickly (I basically need a browser, a terminal, and LastPass - any other apps are a bonus). Again, for me the driver is that if I don't have a functioning machine, I can't work and can't earn money. I don't particularly care who has my data (within limits). Again, I have a specific set of circumstances and use cases but this is my experience. |