I've been using Ubuntu for 3 years now, and now that I'm about to upgrade my 13 y.o. laptop, there's a dilemma for me between choosing some top(ish)-spec x86_64 laptop or macbook pro M4.

The former just keeps me going with Ubuntu, but forces to still dual-boot Windows for some creative software I use that Ubuntu lacks (a certain DAW and a CAD modeller). The latter gives me an awesome (or so it seems) OS that is much closer in spirit to Ubuntu than to Windows and supports everything I need, but leaves me vendor-locked to whatever user-hostile directions Apple might take in the future.

I'd like to ask people who had been using both Ubuntu and MacOS, what would you advise? And MacOS users in particular, are you happy with the direction it has been evolving, and with that of Apple itself?

Be careful, your laptop battery life might drop off a cliff. A lot of laptop manufacturers have tightly coupled power integrations with Windows.

  > I'd like to ask people who had been using both Ubuntu and MacOS, what would you advise? And MacOS users in particular, are you happy with the direction it has been evolving, and with that of Apple itself?

that being said, personally i am not so happy with apple's direction either, which is sliding (much much more slowly than windows) in the direction of buggy software updates, worse overall ux and more and more marketing driven changes...

i really like ubuntu and kde (kubuntu) and i feel like at some point the ux polish of it and the "de-polishing" of macos at some point will converge where i'd just install linux alongside macos and not miss much (but there are lots of reverse engineering issues remaining)...

so my idea is to stay on macos for while more while figuring out how to plug holes (such as smoother iphone integration) and getting more accustomed to kde/linux/ununtu before fully jumping ship...

idk if that is super helpful, but its where im at now in my thinking.

Hi, had to create an account just to answer. Vendor lock-in is not that much of a problem with macOS; you can install pretty much anything you want and it looks like it will still be in the future unlike mobile platforms. MacOS is very easy to get used to so the transition shouldn't hurt :) If your only concern is vendor lock-in, I think you should be good with macOS. I am saying this as someone who switched to Asahi because I wanted more freedom relative to the desktop environment (wanted a real tiling window manager). MacOS + Apple hardware is an incredible combination that has not been reproduced anywhere. Maybe one thing to be careful of: you cannot install Linux on M3 and M4, so if you want to make a switch later on, you won't be able to. Ah and btw you can dual boot Asahi on M1 and M2!

Hope I helped a little :)

With Tahoe Apple lost me as a customer with their greatest USP: great UX. now it’s no longer any better than the best of Linux, where there is no one monopolist steering the ecosystem.

So I’d go with Ubuntu.