What improvements has Windows made in the last decade? I think what you're describing is a symptom of modern software development as a whole.

The tab key doesn't even work consistently across apps and screens.

Ecosystem integration is the shining difference between Apple and others, as it is radically better than any other available implementation.

I would argue that ecosystem integration is the only primary consideration that you need to use at the top/first-culling-step of the flowchart to either include or discount Apple products in any purchasing decision. Anything else is secondary, and has workarounds.

> UI has regressed

Honestly, I love the UI of MacOS 9.2.2 the most. But I don’t have a Time Machine or Elon Musk levels of wealth to chart a different course.

And sure, some UI decisions of late have been questionable. That is always the case with non-niche products that don’t have highly focused and largely conforming users. Apple moved out of that category back in the early 2000s, and it is forced to make the same UI tradeoffs that Microsoft makes.

I actually don’t mind the modern UI, and aside from a few warts I think they’re going in a very user-friendly direction even if power users feel slighted and abandoned.

I agree in general with your first point.

Regarding gaming I disagree: my gaming needs (using a Mac for everything else) are fully satisfied by an additional steam deck, a "console" running linux. Of the top of my head I know only of one game I would like to run it on the steam deck but can't.

> but both Mac and Linux are too far behind Windows or consoles to be considered as gaming machines.

That's absolutely not true, the vast majority of Windows games now run flawlessly on Linux via Proton. This is especially true for the kind of games you can expect to run on such modest hardware, i.e. not AAA games with kernel-level anticheat.

The Linux gaming runtime is free, much like Windows redistributables. macOS gets singled-out for not having DXVK/Proton, and rightfully so.

I agree that it isn’t as good as it was but compared to windows (with adds in the start menu, and two different settings menus for a decade as examples) it’s still better. More of a glass of warm cheap whiskey, than a glass of cool ice water in hell.

asahi is great and i hope they keep going but i can't help but wonder why apple appears to be fully singular in their arm dominance

My hope is they can extend support for the A chips as Asahi Fedora has been splendid for my M1 Pro

No, just supported by, say, Asahi.

This depends heavily on your use case. I'd get rid of Windows entirely if I could. For most people I'd say MacOS is the most sane and plug and play experience. The email/browser/note taking experience is better than on Windows, and easier than on Linux.

This gets less and less true when you start pluging peripherals and wanting to change the default behavior or use certain apps. But then they're not the target of the Neo.

Why? Like many people I don't do serious work on my laptop. It is used for Web browsing, email, and to SSH into other machines. A simple, affordable, but well built machine like the Neo would be ideal for this, on the condition that I can run Linux on it. I currently use an aging XPS in that capacity and the Neo would be quite compelling as a substitute.

Updating video drivers in Ubuntu is so so so much easier than under Windows it's ridiculous.

Windows has more drivers for more things, but if Linux has drivers (e.g. you buy a Laptop with Linux support) then driver management is massively easier.

I spent god knows how many hours getting the windows drivers for my last self built gaming PC working. Linux I just installed and was done. In reality the Windows experience was also a lot worse than having to drop to the console occasionally. It definitely required more in depth knowledge, even if everything was UI driven...

It's been Year Of The Linux Handheld for gaming since 2022, the best platform to play games is Steam Deck where updates are clicking "Update" in the System panel. You can run either Bazzite or SteamOS on your own hardware, although I haven't tried that.

In some distros you have rolling updates where it happens for you and you're always on cutting edge.

The same way I reconcile the fact that the 11" Macbook sold millions of devices; consumers don't care. They don't buy Macs as a conscious evaluation of what the device is capable of or how well it was made. Even the 2019 16" Macbook Pro, arguably the worst Mac ever sold, has millions of units floating around in Obsoleteland.

Personally I agree with the parent's comment. I used to buy Macs, but nowadays Apple alienates me. I'm one of the millions that don't buy a Mac because the hardware is gimped by arbitrary software limitations. Unless Apple changes that stance, I'm a lost customer. Cupertino has the market share statistics, they know where to find me.