Nick Janetakis takes us down the long and winding road of not buying a MacBook Pro. As someone who recently went down a similar thought process and ultimately bit the Cupertino bullet, I can really relate. Nick was looking to ungrade his development environment, which currently relies on a combination of Windows and virtualized Xubuntu. He walks through a lot of potential other solutions, including the always tempting hackintosh. Ultimately, he walked back from the MacBook, mostly because of cost and the current shipping delay on the new Touch Bar models.
For me, I ultimately went with a MacBook back in 2015. At the time, I was increasingly frustrated by the fragmented and terrible Windows audio situation. I was doing a lot of audio production, and the drivers for audio interfaces on Windows were either old or constantly caused system issues. For me, paying the Apple tax was a way to get a little piece of mind (plus Audio Hijack > VoiceMeeter).
Nick makes a great point here, these devices are tools. If they can save you time and frustration, then paying more up front might be worth it in the long run. But what Apple is offering isn’t for everyone, especially if you’re not all about #DongleLife.
Nick Janetakis comments:
Learn how I blew an entire weekend formatting my computer, playing with the Windows Subsytem for Linux and a Hackintosh, then almost bought a MBP.
Read more at: I Almost Rage Bought a MacBook Pro
