[HDarsi]

Been using Apple laptops the past 9 years. My first one, the MacBook Air (9 years old) is now used by the Mrs and ocassionally the kid. I use a MacBook Pro(the one with the touchpad above the keyboard layout for nearly 3 years now). None of the other laptops i've owned(including the premium ones) haven't lasted more than 4 years.

Pros -

• Hassle free maintenance - the old one still runs Photoshop etc., - i've only replaced the battery so far

• Lesser Virus and Malware attacks - I've seen many who use their macs without an antivirus software installed

• Love the way the Apple devices work together as a family - Handoff and connectivity between the laptop - ipad - iphone and apple watch - you start on one device and continue seamlessly on another without a hitch
• Can use any of the 4 USB C ports to charge or connect to anything
• Can charge the laptop in emergency using a power brick via usb cable

Cons -

• Compatible software is either either hard to get or pricey(i was searching for a tool to bulk strip the audio from MP4 video files - still searching for the right one)
• Battery drain when connected to external devices - lasts hours if i am using the laptop on its own, but drains v quickly when i connect to a projector or TV via hdmi(still using USB C - HDMI)
• Many applications my clients use are Windows only - MS Project, Visio, MicroFocus ALM etc., - i get around this by using Windows on a virtual machine
• Chrome, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams are not handled properly - can hear the exhaust running at full speed when used for more than 2 hours continuously, especially when running on battery power

For me the Pros outweigh the cons, and my next laptop will still be a mac.

[Rathore_13]

Originally Posted by GTO

I wish there was a "Toyota Innova" of Windows laptops as the default choice. thread[/url]).

There is Toyota out there in the windows world- Microsoft Surface Laptop. It is not really cheap but it is super reliable.

[coolmel]

I vividly remember getting our first home computer running Windows 3.2. Back then in the govt colony where I grew up that was also the only PC in the entire hood. Having friends over to play games wasn't uncommon! And then growing up I get reminded of getting a graphics card, then a colour monitor, so on and so forth. And then the internet happened. Got acquainted with Webshots and that's how the image of Lake Moraine is ingrained in my memory as if I am an alien. Moving on, then came along Windows 98, the infamous Vista etc etc. All along, the humble "dabba" and the entire "computer unit" was a prominent place in our home. More so for playing games. And we wrecked the heck out of all machines we got. At the same time, the customisability of Windows PCs was highly appreciated.

And as we grew up, gaming went down, Apple introduced Mac OSX and they literally ate into Windows Vista debacle. So I had my HP laptop for gaming and got a 24" iMac in 2008 for everything else. Used the max potential of the machine until its power unit gave way after 6 years of trouble free service. What attracted me to the Mac, coming from a Windows background was...no viruses! You cannot entice a common man better than this! I even signed up for Apple classes which were hugely beneficial. Although I won't deny, the Apple experience we get here in India is vastly different from abroad. Wish it was that good.

Anyways, back to now, Id still pick a Mac for doing work and a Windows PC for my gaming needs. Both are great in their respective departments. Customers these days are actually lucky. Back in those days we didn't have much choices. I will however give due credit to Apple for creating some great quality & industrial design machines which age oh so well over time. I know someone who still has the titanium MacBook! I wish they bring that back with the ARM Macs.

Cant make a choice yet? Flip a coin.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by GTO

I am buying a new Macbook Pro very soon. Hopefully, it brings better uptime & reliability .

Will take some getting used to but you won't regret it. I recommend the highest specification possible, for storage and ram. Display size is down to what you prefer. You can't upgrade anything on a new generation MacBook Pro as everything is soldered on to the motherboard. Pretty much default on most ultra books these days. The other thing to note is no current generation Mac Book lets you connect external devices directly, unless they are USB-C or Thunderbolt compatible devices. If you want to connect a external display, projector or even a simple USB device, you'll need something like a Promate dongle.

Mac hardware is usually a generation behind or sometimes outdated, compared to a PC. I still find that it is more efficient in the way they run. It isn't a gaming machine though. For that, you are better off with a PC/laptop. Your options on the hardware side are infinite.

My primary applications (run on my office provided MacBook Pro) are Tableau for running forecasting and analysis, the usual excel, email, web browsing. Off all these, Tableau is the most resource hungry and it runs better on a Mac.

The other bonus with Apple products is their long term support. About a decade ago, there was some generation of the Mac Book Pro that suffered from poor solder contacts that lead to a series of motherboard failures. I am not sure if it lead to a lawsuit but Apple did issue a recall for them and they handed out free repair and replacement of the motherboard. My friend got his done after 6 years, even though his laptop had not failed. This was in India and he did not pay a penny for it. This sort of recall or replacement is not seen all that often with the usual Dell, HP's etc. If your motherboard or some component fails due to bad manufacturing, you're pretty much on your own.

For personal use, I still prefer a well spec-ed Windows 10 laptop. You can get exactly what you want down to a component level and I like fiddling, which you cannot do on a Mac.

[ampere]

End of day, it still is a choice and I think one can live with both.

For sure, the Apple experience once you get used to, is not easy to let go off! Plus the fact that you get the basic unix shell along with all the other Apple frontend is a great add on. In addition any Unix set-up for which one can buy offical SW versions is again Apple. (That again helps)

I have been using Apple for about 12-13 years. And my home compute is fully on an Apple all the way from MS office usage to Matlab to number crunching to Photo editing to video streaming. It has been a great experience for me.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I got my first Mac in 2009. It was one of the first things (after buying my Jaguar on Ebay) I bought when I arrived in Kansas City, USA. In those days Macs were still relatively rare and certainly we did not have Apple shops in Europe at the time. So visiting an Apple store was quite the experience too!

I got mine first in early 2008. The white Polycarbonate Macbook. And it is still functional and damn fast! (of course I upgraded to SSD). But like others have mentioned, increasingly Apple laptops are becoming a very expensive proposition. The way I have solved that problem is to live with Window laptops which is used for Mobility but have an Apple desktop for Home compute. I have been using the humble Mac mini upgraded to a SSD and boosted RAM. The hardware has been doing its job for the last ~10 years! At least that speaks about the reliability of the product.

Will change to an Apple desktop or mostly a configured Mini when needed. But will also be on the lookout since Apple plans to move to ARM. Again need to understand with changing markets (ARM being taken over by Nvidia!).

[greyhound82]

It all depends on work we are in to . For me it’s x86 + rtx gpu + ubuntu: my work is related to mathematics simulations and PC makes it easy for me to upgrade and Ubuntu OS is so organic for open source

[Abhineet Singh]

During my college days, I used to tinker a lot with Windows because of the amazing flexibility and tweaking options available in it.

Nowadays, I just want my laptop to be dumb proof and do what it is supposed to do. I don’t like tinkering with setting much and prefer to focus on my work. This has made me a fan of the MacBook. I also love the various functionalities available when you own other Apple products.

One issue that bugs me is the inability of MacBook to handle large MS Word or Excel files. Tracking changes on a lage Word file or working with a large data set has led to frequent crashes on the MacBook.

[snan]

I use both. And for me use cases of both are quite different. I use Mac for most of my creative pursuits like photo processing, Video creation etc and there is nothing in the windows ecosystem that I found come close to what I want. And the color management on the mac screens are simply awesome. To recreate the same in the PC one has to spend quite sometime with gray cards and what not. The experience of seeing a well shot photograph from a master (e.g. Steve McCurry) on a mac screen versus any windows machine (however good the on paper specs for the screen be) is almost a different experience.

But for official purposes I find Windows to be quite fine - especially the high end ones - but then they are no longer much cheaper than comparable Macs.

[smooth indian]

-I selected Mac since I have been a Mac owner since 2008. I have owned a 2008 MacBook and a 2012 MacBook Air. Between me and my family we have had 3-4 MacBooks and 2 iPads over the last 12 years.
-I shifted to Mac because the user experience and OS stability was much better than Windows. Windows though have also come a long way especially since Satya Nadella took over. The surface tablets and laptops have truly energized the Microsoft brand with their pen-enabled touchscreens which made them very attractive for me. I purchased a Surface pro 3 in 2017. Its a good device with some caveats.

-I have installed Ubuntu on my Surface as a dual-boot out of my love for open source software. I have also experienced CentOS another linux distribution which seems much lighter and simple. Recently Google Chrome tablets such as Pixel Slate and Lenovo Chromebook Duet have become a curiosity for me.

-Apple still rocks for me especially since the new basic iPads with iPadOS and Apple Pencil compatibility have brought most of the possibilities of a Surface at a much lower cost. My 2012 MacBook Air still works well after 8 years. Apple devices tend to last and be supported for much longer than most Windows devices. The higher price tag can be accommodated due to several years of good service. I surely hope that the 20% markup on Apple devices sold in India is done away with as Apple shifts more and more of its manufacturing into India.

[51morris]

Originally Posted by GTO

Been a Windows user for 2 decades & am getting tired of the unreliability, bugs, software headaches, lack of stability, sleep & standby issues etc. Of the last 4 Windows computers I have owned, 3 have been troublesome.

I wish there was a "Toyota Innova" of Windows laptops as the default choice. I now also realise why "Maruti" is the default choice for lakhs of Indians. They just want something that is dependable & works.

I have been primarily a Windows user for the past 2 decades, but have owned a couple of Macbook Pros for a few years which I used only as a home computer.

I love the fact that the Mac just works always and also screams of quality and attention to detail. At the same time, the flexibility that Windows brings is unparallel - maybe I feel this way because I have been used to a Windows PC as my primary device.

Having said that, I have to agree with you, that Windows PCs have always been troublesome. I have not owned a single Windows machine that has just worked everytime I have used it.

Over the past 3 years, I was using a Dell XPS 9360 with an 8th-gen i7 processor and 16 gigs of memory. Even in this configuration, it would constantly stutter and sound like a helicopter about to take off even under the lightest of loads. I was contenplating on picking up a Macbook Air 2020 instead, having gotten fed up with the XPS. I then realised that what I do on the home laptop is browsing, media consumption, document editing and other such light tasks. So, evan a Macbook Air would be an overkill.

I took a bold step and decided to try Chrome OS!

Switched to the brilliant Google Pixelbook Go with an i5 processor and 16 gigs of RAM. I must say I am very happy with it - simply zippy and lightweight (both the OS and the laptop itself!) make it a pleasure to use. I am yet to come across a usecase where something I want to do cannot be done on Chrome OS.

[adv.yzr]

Greetings,

Having being a Window user since 2000, I switched to Mac in 2018. It was a giant leap of faith that I took because I was well-versed with the software and the shortcut-keys and everything of similar nature. I started using iOS in 2016 that's when I thought to switch to MacOS.

After having being used Mac for the last 2.5 years, I must say the experience is altogether different and seamless and much better than Windows. Offers no lag in speed or any hang in the software. I agree Windows offers so much more customisation and flexibility but still Mac is more user-friendly I feel and the synchronisation between your phone and laptop as a feature of need or convenience becomes very useful at times.

Nonetheless, it is always a personal choice and should always align with one's comfort and convenience.

Thanks.

[Navs]

Anyday, I would go for Macbook for its reliability and free updates to the latest operating system. For the last decade, I have been a MacBook user staring with Macbookpro in 2010 and upgraded to MacBook Air for its lightweight.
My MacBook Air is functioning well from 2015 apart from a battery replacement in 2019. I admire Apple's aluminum unibody construction, which is substantially more impact resistant than regular laptops. My Macbook survived all the abuse in these years and drops.
I also use Lenovo T495s with Windows os provided by my organization, and this laptop was replaced once in the last year due to screen issues.

In my perspective, Macbook is suitable for a reliable home computer for the basic requirement and designing needs. Windows will be the option in case someone is looking for more functionalities.

[adew1902]

Quite an interesting topic for discussion; so I thought to add my two bits for whatever it is worth. Spoiler Alert, my vote goes to the Mac.

I have actually been using both for a considerable period of time. The windows laptop is my work machine (provided by my company) while the MacBook is my personal laptop.

About 5 years back when it was time to replace my Sony Vaio (which I had used sparingly and which surprisingly did not last long), for whatever reasons I decided to switch to a Mac. I bought myself a MacBook Pro 13. I have not looked back since then and if it were not for the prohibitive costs of new Macs and some other emerging trends that I mention below, I could swear that I will never go back to an alternate computer.

Firstly in general Mac computers wear very well, the build quality is top notch there is absolutely no flex whatsoever in the chassis or the display panel. The displays even if not HD+ have excellent viewing angles and colour accuracy. Five years down the line I have not seen any degradation in brightness or colour representation. Although I bought mine in 2015 technically it is the MacBook Pro 2012 model; I can stick my neck out and say that most windows laptops 8 years later, with all the precision drivers built in cannot rival the refinement and functionality of the Apple trackpad. It is an absolute joy to use and just for that only I would not want to go back to a windows computer/ laptop.

I have since then replaced the spinning drive to an SSD and that has brought a dramatic performance jump to an already smooth experience. Boot up takes seconds, and even though there’s hardly any heavy lifting in my personal workflow, (a lot of mails, web browsing, occasional light video editing, some photo editing a bit of XL and Word) I have never experienced a stutter or a lag. Generally everything works without drama just as it supposed to. Alas my mid 2012 MacBook Pro has kind of come to the end of its life cycle with Catalina being its last Mac OS , no Big Sur for this baby. Looking forward to the new Apple Silicon line of Laptops & someday with a lot of spare cash burning a hole in my pocket I will consider an upgrade.

Having said that there are 2 things to consider; firstly if your use profile is heavily invested into MS Office components then understand that Word, XL PPT work best on a windows laptop you will never have the full feature experience of these applications on a Mac. Especially if your work requires you to deal with complex XL sheets with macros, you are better off sticking to Windows OS. Also if you happen to be even a marginal gaming enthusiast then Macs are not for you.

But here’s something else to think about, most of our workflow personal or office for most of us is centred on the internet and cloud. Consider a typical day at office; for me 80% of my time is spent doing emails, another 10% on the intranet on web based applications and maybe just a fraction of time doing any offline work. It is even more so for my personal use of a computer. Now with MS and Google offering cloud based applications with full functionality and at very competitive prices (or even free) in Office 365 and Google Suite and with all else being easily accomplished in the browser the OS is kind of becoming irrelevant. Unless you are into creative enterprise requiring special software such as Adobe or Final Cut Pro all that most of us will ever need is a robust feature rich fast browser that works across OSs.

I have dual booted my MacBook to offer me an Ubuntu or a Linux Mint and a handful of other Linus distributions just for fun & honestly I can get all of my personal work done as efficiently and as safely as I can on Mac OS.

I am looking with great interest at development with Chrome OS and Chromebooks which are based on the philosophy that all you need is a browser. A few years down the line I can bet many of us will migrate to them. Simple fast and cheap. A Windows PC/Laptop or a Mac will be an overkill.

[embee]

Apple brings online store to India September 23, 2020

Apple will launch the Apple Store online in India on September 23, offering Apple’s full range of products and support directly to customers across the country for the first time. The new online store will provide customers with the same premium experience found in Apple store locations around the world, delivered by online team members who are ready to offer their expertise.








Source: https://www.apple.com/in/apple-store-online/
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/...-september-23/

[sup?]

Originally Posted by embee

Apple brings online store to India September 23, 2020

I have been wanting to buy an IPAD PRO for more than a month now and can't find stocks anywhere. Hope the Apple online store has stock when it opens on the 23rd.