Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mschuster91 29 days ago
> The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs.

Ever since the MacBook Neo, that's no longer the case. And frankly... Apple has now demonstrated that an old iPhone SoC is enough to drive macOS. I think that it should be feasible for them to run macOS on iDevices as a hypervisor-style guest, yielding you the full macOS experience when plugged into an USB-C dock.
2 comments
okanat 29 days ago
Macbook Neos are limited by whatever extra A-chips Apple has. They are okay for very simple office tasks. If you need something like Intel Core5 level performance though, PCs are still cheaper than equivalent M-series Apple chips. If they have both style users, it is cheaper to get a bulk discount from Lenovo/Dell/HP than splitting your users into camps. It is easier to administer too.
link
mschuster91 29 days ago
> Macbook Neos are limited by whatever extra A-chips Apple has.

Fair point. But they are also showing people that you can have decent Apple performance at a price point previously reserved for budget Windows laptops.

> It is easier to administer too.

Meh, that's... not as clear as it used to be. Yes, in a full on corporate world based on on-prem AD, GPO and the rest of the MS architecture that might be the case, but even there, IT already has to support Macs because marketing/PR and IT usually demand macOS. And with Windows, it has always been a huge effort to keep up with MS and patchdays randomly breaking stuff. Apple is far more stable.

link
kypro 29 days ago
Yeah, even before Neo, since M1, I've been urging people to buy a Macbook Air if they could afford to.. Or consider buying second hand if new is out of their price range.

Budget Windows hardware is trash and the OS is so full of bloat that within a couple of years a budget Windows laptop will be barely functional. For a long time now arguably the only reason to go Windows is if you're a gamer or a business user with very specific software requirements.

link
bunderbunder 29 days ago
Yes. I use both at home because reasons, and despite the much lower per-computer price tag PCs cost me about twice as much money on an annualized basis because they need to be replaced so much more often.

But for a lot of people a Mac is still out of reach because they don’t actually have that much disposable cash on hand at any given moment. Which might not be how the situation has to be, strictly speaking, but I’m not here to bother them about their spending patterns.

Also for most people who don’t have the computing needs of your average Hacker News follower, Chromebooks might be the real elephant in the room. The Chromebook users in my life seem to have easily the fewest computer worries.

link