If it only were that simple... I'd gladly abandon Apple ecosystem long time ago.
For a lot of professional people it's mostly a matter of time vs cost. I am a developer, mostly working with ruby & python these days. What my options are? Mac, Windows and Linux.
Let's sum it down:
- Windows. Took them like 20 years to figure out how to make a working Terminal so no, really not a good candidate for people like me. I am glad they are catching up, but who knows when they will get stuck for 20 years on another important piece (not to mention their WSL is a prerequisite for a lot of work, and basically a VM)
- Linux. Good on paper but man, it's such a time sink. Dependency hell: you want to upgrade your httpd so you must upgrade 175+ other packages, one of which will break something. UI: clumsy but works if you have little expectations. Hardware: A mess, sleep never works, gfx performance is silly, at the end of the day mostly closed-source stuff that companies do not care about making it unreliable at best.
- Mac: Expensive? Kinda, yes, but not that much if you compare to similar hardware from other vendors (ie. Dell) assuming you do not compare apples to oranges (same cpu, same general performance, same form factor & quality). Does it break? Yes it does and it sucks. It shouldn't - not for that price, not for environmental reasons since they try to be so "green". Had my issues with Apple hardware more than once, but thank god they were not as serious as this.
Saying that linux is a good replacement for mac is like saying that k8s is good for everyone. Yes, you can deploy your blog on k8s but it will cost you a lot of time & energy. Same with linux - yes, I can work on linux, but its just sooo much faster and cheaper for me to just go and buy another MBP if my current one were to break. Some people (me) still like to play with k8s, others like to dig into linux stuff (not me).
What I am angry about with Apple is how they approach their failures rather than the failures themselves. I can understand mistakes that you cannot do anything about - famous iPhone 4 antena. They made tens of millions of devices that have an issue with antena in some edge conditions, well, shit happens, what can you do - it's not like they are going to replace all of them.
But MBP keyboards? Giving 4 years of free replacements is not the solution, a solution would be to create a replacement keyboard that would not break - and use that each time it gets replaced. Because 4 years old MBP is still a great machine that can do what's it supposed to very well, there is no reason to trash it.
If there were a law to force manufacturers to repair known defects (examples like that keyboard, screen laminate etc) for at least 10+ years, I would be first to vote for it. It's way to common for things to break after a couple years, things that could - and should - work for much more. And this is what I'd expect from companies like Apple, which would justify their green PR and prices bullshit.
On macOS, I can easily upgrade my nginx homebrew package, (same with httpd) each of them have like 2 dependencies and I don't think I ever had a conflict when doing so. Granted, not easy on windows, but see my comment about terminal ;-)
You're happy because you always want to use latest version of software and that's Homebrew works to be intended. Your latest httpd also depends on other packages but not a problem because you upgrade all packages and os.
If you want to use latest packages at all, you can use distro like Arch Linux, Gentoo, or etc.
Normal distros like Ubuntu and RHEL don't upgrade packages because of stability. If you use these distros but need latest software, you can use LinuxBrew (it seems that it's merged to Homebrew) to install latest software, or use Docker.
Anyway it's not pros for Mac but pros for Homebrew and it's also available on Linux. OTOH stable and secure macOS environment with many packages like Ubuntu, RHEL is difficult.
For a lot of professional people it's mostly a matter of time vs cost. I am a developer, mostly working with ruby & python these days. What my options are? Mac, Windows and Linux.
Let's sum it down:
- Windows. Took them like 20 years to figure out how to make a working Terminal so no, really not a good candidate for people like me. I am glad they are catching up, but who knows when they will get stuck for 20 years on another important piece (not to mention their WSL is a prerequisite for a lot of work, and basically a VM)
- Linux. Good on paper but man, it's such a time sink. Dependency hell: you want to upgrade your httpd so you must upgrade 175+ other packages, one of which will break something. UI: clumsy but works if you have little expectations. Hardware: A mess, sleep never works, gfx performance is silly, at the end of the day mostly closed-source stuff that companies do not care about making it unreliable at best.
- Mac: Expensive? Kinda, yes, but not that much if you compare to similar hardware from other vendors (ie. Dell) assuming you do not compare apples to oranges (same cpu, same general performance, same form factor & quality). Does it break? Yes it does and it sucks. It shouldn't - not for that price, not for environmental reasons since they try to be so "green". Had my issues with Apple hardware more than once, but thank god they were not as serious as this.
Saying that linux is a good replacement for mac is like saying that k8s is good for everyone. Yes, you can deploy your blog on k8s but it will cost you a lot of time & energy. Same with linux - yes, I can work on linux, but its just sooo much faster and cheaper for me to just go and buy another MBP if my current one were to break. Some people (me) still like to play with k8s, others like to dig into linux stuff (not me).
What I am angry about with Apple is how they approach their failures rather than the failures themselves. I can understand mistakes that you cannot do anything about - famous iPhone 4 antena. They made tens of millions of devices that have an issue with antena in some edge conditions, well, shit happens, what can you do - it's not like they are going to replace all of them.
But MBP keyboards? Giving 4 years of free replacements is not the solution, a solution would be to create a replacement keyboard that would not break - and use that each time it gets replaced. Because 4 years old MBP is still a great machine that can do what's it supposed to very well, there is no reason to trash it.
If there were a law to force manufacturers to repair known defects (examples like that keyboard, screen laminate etc) for at least 10+ years, I would be first to vote for it. It's way to common for things to break after a couple years, things that could - and should - work for much more. And this is what I'd expect from companies like Apple, which would justify their green PR and prices bullshit.