Testing old new waters with Linux
Testing old new waters with Linux
I was using a MacBook as main device at home since ~2019 and at work since ~2022.
For me MacBooks are a near perfect combination of robustness, ease of use and flexibility.
With the Apple Silicon transition Apple added performance, no fan noise and battery life to that already long list.
The macOS software ecosystem is full of really nice apps. From home banking (MoneyMoney) over system stats (iStatMenus) to awesome Git clients (Fork). All are perfectly tailored to the very limited set of variation that can happen in Apple land.
Then I decided to go all-in: Apple keyboard, iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and even an Apple Studio Display and I was happily living the Apple dream 😀 (I left out the Apple Mouse. Sorry but everyone needs to have a line that is not crossed 😉)
Last year a few things happened: I got bored, Apple decided to use some really dubious arguments to get itself out of some EU regulations and promised AI things that were not even remotely finished (as it turned out lately they seem to have been caught off guard on that end) so I decided to go back to Android again.
To be honest: It felt wrong in iOS land for me the whole time. I’m an Android developer at heart and I think this won’t change that easily. It feels right to carry a device around that can contain the apps that I love most developing. Maybe weird but I’m sure there are some people out there that can understand me.
Replacing my iPad with a Samsung Tablet made the Apple Studio Display useless for the “tablet connected to monitor” use-case. Not that I do that very frequently but just knowing that this is not an option drove me nuts so I sold the Studio Display and went with the Samsung Viewfinity S9.
So at that point I was already half way out of the Apple ecosystem.
Since the beginning of this year I frequently ran into capacity issues on my M1 MacBook (512 GB) so I was seeking a replacement with more storage (and RAM, I had 16GB).
I quickly configured a M4 MacBook and immediately discarded that idea seeing the price. I don’t have CPU performance issues, I just wanted to increase memory and storage so I also had a look at used MacBooks that meet my requirements.
At that point I realized that it would cost me around 1600€ to do that upgrade.