Apple Eco-system/ products - My review after using for 1 year

Hi All. I have been an apple user for 1 year. My thoughts for using Mac books started way in 2018 since I started my programming carrier.

I was initially a Windows user but the automatic update feature alone made it my enemy. After a single update it ruined my audio and network drivers, kept having issues. Finally I changed my operating system to Linux (Ubuntu). I loved Linux. It was clean compared to Windows but the catch was lack of support to my dedicated graphics card even though it was fine with the Intel's integrated graphics. In the meantime I came to know Mac OS is also based on UNIX (which was the core of LINUX operating systems in the beginning.), that made a temptation to try a Mac book. So I bought an used Mac book Air 2017 as a try out, it was a great experience for me. Even though the machine was not capable for all my resource intensive tasks but I loved it the way it was. Then in 2021 I bought the M1 Macbook Air for $899. Wow, its great.

I am developing web applications with the machine. In the meantime me and my friends started a company in which most of the business and planning meetings were online. There comes the twist in the story. The mac books have no inbuilt tool to screen record with the internal audio (a.k.a Desktop audio). There were other 3rd party tools like Blackhole, Loopback, Sunflower, ... to do recording of the internal audio, but those where a hit or a miss. In the urgently scheduling meeting those setup took enough time. I need to record all the meetings because as I need to write and learn from summaries of these meeting, we cannot miss or have gaps in what people conveyed in the meeting. This became a headache for me. My collegues told me to use inbuilt recording feature of Zoom, Google meet or Team but most of them needed business subscriptions. How many I can subscribe when there are dozens of collaboration apps (Slack, discord etc and the list goes on). I tried all possible ways but never got a proper solution.

Another concern was related to RAM and Swap storage. (This is bit advanced topic. Anyone can google it check what this issue is.). As I started Mobile app development, 8gb RAM became not enough for me to work with. So I was checking the price of 16gb version with 512gb SSD, it is about $1600 - $1700 in India. Even for 16gb ram + 256gb SSD it is more than $1400. These are to0 much for a laptop when laptops of good built quality were available for $800 -$1000 with a higher warranty period.

Ohh ohh. The talk was on the apple ecosystem, right. There comes a new folk "The iphone". The excited me after the M1 mac book's experience bought an Iphone XR. A great piece of hardware if you are not a geeky person. Very less software bugs and great camera, amazing UI.

But when it comes to customizations and functionality it made me sad. As a long term android user, I was wondering why I need to do these many circus to send a screenshot to a whatsapp/ telegram group. I used downtime alternatives in Android during my work hours to reduce distractions and it worked flawlessly but it was a hell when it came to Iphone, the inbuilt downtime is just rubbish, when you block social media you cannot even use Safari. You all might see why this person is so loud about such silly thing, but folks these are really important to me.

On my personal suggestion, if you are a person who believes in "It just works" Iphone is a great choice. If you want to go beyond that, shut up (thats what apple says).

Now, I am trying to find a good linux laptop instead of mac book and a stock UI android phone for my Iphone.

Summary

Pros of apple devices:

1. Clean user interface.
2. Less software bugs.
3. Reliable
4. Software updates are easy and pausable (I am hitting you Windows).
5. Great speakers (I will defenitely miss those).
6. Flawless network connectivity (Wifi and Bluetooth).
7. More ....

Cons

1. Price for performant machines are too high compared to the base version. (It is clear that apple uses the base versions as a bait).
2. Eco system is not that great to where it is being appreciated for.
3. Internal audio recording in mac os is a hit or miss. (Too important for me).
4. Upgradabilty is sent to Mars after the Apple silicon based Arch. .
5. I/O Ports are at 2030 where we need to expect everything in the universe should be in type C (where the iphone will be an expectation, since Tim Cook got the lightning port from heaven).
6. Hypocrisy in Privacy centric advertisement in one hand and trying to build an AD empire (Poor facebook, got all hit - I am not a supporter of Mark Zuck).
7. Apple silicon macbooks are not yet ready to use all programming related tools and frameworks. (E.g, Docker works but cleaning and composing for x86 arch. , there are difficulties).

I am writing this article from my Macbook, long live my mac dreams. Apple please wait till I am extremely rich.