| I want to share a personal anecdote, as I recently spent quite a bit of time deciding whether or not to leave Mac OS for linux (Manjaro) this year for my personal computing needs - primarily because of gaming. Ultimately, I did make the switch.
Several years back, Apple broke most of my steam library with Catalina.
I wasn't a serious gamer, but I had a lot of nostalgic games from the aughts and early 2010s that ran great (pre-Catalina) on my top-of-the-line mid-2015 retina MBP. I finally retired that machine this year and bought a higher-end gaming pc for less than half of what it would cost me to get a less-than-the-best Apple Silicon MBP. Yeah, it's heavy. Battery life isn't great. But my phone has replaced so much of my mobile computing needs that I don't really need to take a laptop with me when I'm traveling unless it's for work, in which case I'll have my company-issued machine with me anyway. I never thought I'd leave MacOS for Linux - but I recently got back into gaming and basically wasn't willing to spend $4k+ on a machine I couldn't game on when all of my personal project needs, etc. can be attended to on a cheaper gaming laptop. The fact that Apple Silicon is an absolute beast, graphically, made it all worse somehow. Like having a Ferrari in your garage that you aren't allowed to drive - only pay for and look at. Am I Apple's target demographic? Apart from being a developer - probably not. I don't do a lot of multimedia stuff (at least, I don't do anything that isn't adequately served by a PC with a solid GPU). Because I grew up on linux I'm right at home there with all of my non-work dev / geek / fun stuff and that probably makes me an outlier. Apple's success clearly speaks for their business savvy - and, there's now a number of chinks in my (previously 100%) Apple loyalty across my wide array of gadgetry (several Apple TVs and one each for me and my wife of: laptop, ipad, iphone, watch, airpods). After a disappointing battery experience with my airpods - I replaced them with some excellent-sounding soundcore buds. My apple watch needs to be replaced soon and I'll probably get a Garmin (again - battery life and consistent failure to capture VO2 max on outdoor runs, other frustrations). I enjoy VR gaming and plan to upgrade from a quest 2 to a quest 3 instead of buying a vision pro. What's next to go in my Apple line-up? I don't know but I've become much more open to shopping around for non-Apple tech than I was in, say, 2016 when it seemed to me that nothing else could compete with Apple. I wonder how true this is for Apple's "geek core" of tech professionals, and how much of it is just my unique little anecdote? And, in any case - does Apple care? They've cornered the market for both the technical-artistic and "luxury" class. Plenty of meat on those bones without worrying about the geeky whims of the pesky few that are open to (and capable of) something like abandoning Mac OS for Linux. Still, it was sad to give up my Mac OS personal computing environment. I love Apple - but for what I care about, Apple just doesn't seem to love me. We'll always have our iOS time together I guess, for now anyway. |