The Orange Nerd

Apple

I've never been an apple fanboy. Why do I use their products ?

First mac and first impressions

I got my first mac at work, a macbook pro 15" (2019). I did not like the keyboard, nor the lack of HDMI port which forced me to always have an adaptator at hand. But I appreciated the overall build quality.

Talking about the OS, I liked the menu bar, which reminded me the Amiga Workbench; all the apps using the same top-placed menu, instead of apps having their menu in their own window. I'd love Gnome to have a similar menu approach. In fact, I'd love Linux to have such a user interface, minus the file requester. POSIX compatibility was also greatly appreciated, as it meant access to a large part of the Unix/Linux software library.

The more I used this machine, the more I liked it.

Apple Silicon

Following the release of the M1 mac mini in late 2020, I was reading and watching a lot of reviews, because I was interested and very curious to know the performance and compatibility of the ARM transition. As the reviews were very positive, I bought a 16 Gb machine which at the time became my daily driver.

I appreciated the gain in compilation speed (I was often compiling Rust code), and even for simple tasks like internet browsing, the gain was very noticeable. But really, one of the thing I liked the most, was the complete lack of noise.

Nowadays this mac mini is no longer my daily driver nor my hacking machine (see the Linux section). I've done a fresh install of the system, I still use it regularly and appreciate it. It's more a machine for relaxing and basic uses (this site has been partly written on this machine with the Zed editor).

At work, I've traded the i7 Macbook with a M1 Pro Macbook, with the same gains cited a few lines above, less heating, and much more battery life. The presence of an HDMI port is much appreciated. The only thing I dislike on this machine is this stupid notch.

Android to iPhone : The Good and the Bad

Since my first smartphone, I have always been an Android guy, I liked the system and had no issue with it. I especially loved my S7 Edge. But I had a big problem with software updates being limited to two years. I like to keep my machines for a long time, and not receiving software updates and even worse not receiving security updates any more was a major problem for me. This is the only reason that made me switch to an iPhone in 2021.

When I got my iphone, I discovered the differences. On the positive side, the apps were faster and much more polished (in 2021; more on that later). Airdrop is very handy. The photo quality is very high. No bloat software. And that's pretty much it. In fact, when I compare to other phones, iOS seems totally outdated and has missing features like Samsung DeX or Google Desktop Mode. I also don't like how notifications work.

Let's continue with the negative aspects, which are hard to understand when coming from the Android world. The first one is the stupid Messages app. Not everyone has an iPhone, in fact in my family everyone has an Android, so I don't care of iMessage (really, in France iMessage is not a thing). When I had my S7 I used Textra which was a very good sms app, when I had my iphone I was shocked by how primitive the messages app was (and still is). No customization is possible, outdated look and features. At least now we have RCS.

Another big negative is music. On Android I put my music on a SD card (I've ripped all my CD collection). Easy when you change your phone. On iPhone the Music app is clearly made to consume the Apple music service, and to listen your own music, you have to import your titles into your library on the Mac, then sync with your phone. Totally non practical. Nowadays I use VLC as a music player, and as a way to upload my music on my phone. Much more convenient, but not as much as the SD card.

The photos situation is not very different. The simplest way to back up the photos (without paying Apple for extra cloud storage, and they will constantly try to convince you to do so) is to connect to icloud from a browser and regularly download the photos, then delete them from icloud to save space. That will work whatever the OS on your computer. Again, not as convenient as the SD card.

To sum up, the price to pay for more polished apps (this is not true anymore, sometimes the Android version is even better, for exemple the Mastodon app) and longer software support (which was the main motivation that pushed me to the iPhone in 2021) is a bit high. Even more since the software support has been improved by major Android manufacturers. My next phone will probably not be an iPhone.

Next Personal Laptop ?

I'm starting to think about replacing my personal aging i7(7th gen) Asus laptop:

With Panther Lake Intel has an interesting proposition, but I'm always afraid of proper Linux support. AMD has very good support and very nice mobile chips. But for a mobile usage, nothing beats the power efficiency of the Apple M chips, making Apple laptops the best package.

As I have a macbook pro for work, I know they have a great build quality, age well, and have a nice autonomy on battery power. Since this purchase is not planned anytime soon, I'll see how things and needs evolve. But the fact is I'm thinking more and more about leaving Apple for my personal devices.