Enterprise Macs Look Tempting
To say that I’m not a big fan of Apple would be a massive understatement, but despite that general distain for the fruit company, a Mac at work doesn’t feel like it would be all that bad.
I’m not going to go into details about my dislike for Apple. Let’s just call that a fact. I don’t like them. I’ve owned their products. I’ve supported their products at past jobs. I don’t like them. Moving on.
I was reading an article by Jonny Evans this morning. I take what he says with a massive grain of salt as I think Evans would sell all of his major organs if Tim Cook asked him to. Seriously, his column is “Apple Holic”. Not unbiased news.
The article claims that according to a survey 62% of employees would opt for Apple given the choice. I didn’t delve into the actual survey, but Jonny doesn’t make a distinction between iDevices and Macs, which I think may give the survey some misleading conclusions. There’s also the fact that at home, 62% of people don’t choose Apple. So why would they choose Apple at work when they’re not choosing Apple at home?
A quick glance at my work PC gave me a good idea. My laptop is a base model. It’s clunky and slow and crammed full of security software that makes it even slower. My company obviously didn’t spend top dollar on this thing. A quick DDG check, and it looks like when I got the device, it was already a year old. I have a forth generation model, and the OEM was already selling the fifth generation when my company bought it. I’ve been using that computer for almost three years now. I’m due for a replacement soon, but even though I expect I’ll get a newer model then, I don’t think I’m going to be getting anything close to the top of the line. I’ll get the cheapest thing my company can buy that will do the job.
What do I require to do my job? Not a lot to be honest. I only run a couple things, and very few of the things I run are products I would choose for my own personal use. Microsoft Office for documents and email. A web browser. A terminal. PyCharm. Atom. That’s about it.
I’m going to trade in my crappy laptop for a newer crappy laptop.
So this is where Apple starts to look tempting. As I’ve stated before, I don’t like Apple. I’m not a huge fan of Windows though either. Given a choice, I’d prefer Linux for my work computer. Unfortunately I haven’t been given that choice. Given the choice between macOS and Windows, I’d still choose Windows, but it’s more of a “lesser evil” thing for me.
Despite the fact that I don’t like Apple, they don’t make bargain products. There’s no model they sell that would be equivalent to the laptop I have. If I were to get an Apple device, the hardware would necessarily be an upgrade over what I would get if I got a PC. macOS also has a reputation for being more secure than Windows. Whether that reputation is deserved or not is a whole other discussion, but it has it. Because of that our Enterprise IT department doesn’t cram Macs full of every security application they can find.
The long and short here is that I would get better hardware with less junk running in the background. That’s tempting.
Now the real question. Could I stand using it?
That’s a really big question. I don’t actually know. Is Outlook that different on a Mac than Windows? Is a terminal SSHed into a remote Linux host that much different than a WSL terminal SSHed into a remote Linux host? Are PyCharm and Atom that much different on a Mac?
What I really want is a nice computer running Linux so I can just go about my day in peace. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem likely. The big question in my mind right now is whether or not using a bargain bin laptop crammed full of stuff I don’t want or need still the “lesser evil” when the other option is a Mac.
Day 31 of the #100DaysToOffload 2021 Series.
Looking for comments? There are no comments. It's not that I don't care what you think, it's just that I don't want to manage a comments section.
If you want to comment, there's a really good chance I at least mentioned this post on Fosstodon, and you can reply to me there. If you don't have a Mastodon account, I'd suggest giving it a try.
If you don't want to join Mastodon, and you still want to comment, feel free to use my contact information.
Also, don't feel obligated, but if you feel like buying me a ☕ cup of coffee ☕ I won't say no.