Omg I've become an Apple fan-man!

[GrifterGuru]

I just downloaded a free LibreOffice set onto my Macbook air, or whatever they call it. And bingo, GrifterGuru nailed it. Looks like the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation packs work just about like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I guess I thought Libre was a Unix based deal from looking at it years ago, and then forgot about it. Thanks!

@Winegrower

No Worries. I use it on Windows in place of office.

 

[savarin]

as soon as my educational copy of office ran out I switched to libre and never looked back.

 

[GeneT45]

LibreOffice maintains pretty good compatibility with MS Office as well (in terms of sharing files). The only place I've seen issues is with LO Calc / XL that uses scripting or fancy features. These days I don't have to worry about compatibility, but when I did, it was nice to have.

I run Linux (Kubuntu) on a ThinkPad and this one's been going for ~6.5 years and doing fine. I've heard some negatives about the newest ThinkPads, but in the absence of something clearly better, that's what I'll get next time. I have a Windoze PC just for CAD, but FreeCAD may yet free me from the chains of Microsoft.

GsT

 

[SouthernChap]

Spying, backdoors, reporting keystrokes, telemetry, browsing habits et -al are amongst other major issues.

They all do it mate.

Anybody who thinks their data/privacy is safe with any corporate provider, be it MS, Apple, or Google is kidding themselves.

That battle was lost the moment Adam Smith started writing so eloquently yet amorally about how our economies/societies should work (the Russians and Chinese lost it again in a different way, when they allowed zealots and power hungry evil men to take control of their societies).

I've used a few Linux distros back in the day and liked them. Cleaner, faster, and once you'd got a Linux mindset, not particularly more complex to configure and use. For a while I ran a dual boot with Windows only used for gaming and flight sim usage.

Honestly though, these days I just don't have the energy to concern myself with the remaining clunkiness (which isn't much nowadays, I'll grant) of a Linux distro. My PC is a tool and frankly after nearly 30 years of being a reasonably good/competent programmer, I'm pretty bored with computing generally.

I happily run a Win11 install with Edge as my usual browser (yeah, yeah, I'll give Brave a go sometime if I can be arsed) and Word and Excel for office-y type stuff and FreeCAD and Solidworks Maker Ed. (both of which I'm staggering around in like a drunkard on a trampoline but am making progress with) for CAD.

I have an android phone and have done since the early days of smartphones, these days, I buy my daughter or son in law's cast offs as that means I get a phone one or maybe two gens out of date.

My biggest problem with Apple is their hypocritical positioning of themselves as some kind of cool, more kindly, less corporate entity. It's BS and it irritates me intensely.

Sure, MS and Google don't use adverts that say "Hey! We're corporate capitalist bastards and don't give a tuppenny crap about anything but the bottom line" but Apple's marketing has been for a long time so mendacious and slimy that come the revolution, higher up execs in MS and Google will have to wait for me to get finished with a pair of pliers and a blow torch and the Apple board, before it's their turn! (I'm absolutely joking by the way, violence begets hatred and more violence, and no revolution that was achieved through immoral means ever worked out well!).

Brand loyalty is crazy and should be anathema to anybody working in any rational engineering pursuit. We should be concerned with the behaviour of products, (i.e. does given product enable/help me to perform my task efficiently such that the products usage is transparent; bonus points can be had for aesthetics but these do not override functionality of course).

Brand aversion is less crazy, just as long as it's based on sufficient knowledge of the current product set and/or the behaviour of the company vis-a-vis our personal principles.

 

[Mauzinette]

The reasons why I won’t be ditching Windows or MacOS anytime soon are MS Office, Adobe Creative Cloud and Fusion 360/Solidworks.

Fusion 360 runs on Linux, but requires constant tweaking. For Office and Creative Cloud there aren’t alternatives that could be taken seriously in a professional setting.

 

[pdentrem]

The two iPads I sold are still being used today. Kids and grandkids are using them to play games etc on them. Naturally the games were on the units or quickly added before limitations from providers. Surprising the screens are still unbroken!
Android stuff has issues with updates as well, software not compatible with hardware. All systems are built to a price point and every one of them will have a failure point, ie battery life, humidity encroachment in the chips, capacitors drying out etc.
There is no reason to replace just because one cannot get the latest update. My current laptop is Win 8.1 and still I can use Auto2000 Education edition and the tax software. My even older one, still works and runs Vista.
Linux has the great advantage of allowing the use of older equipment in today’s time. My HP Z800 workstation is 15 years old but one would not know it today.

 

[Chip Hacket]

LibreOffice maintains pretty good compatibility with MS Office as well (in terms of sharing files). The only place I've seen issues is with LO Calc / XL that uses scripting or fancy features. These days I don't have to worry about compatibility, but when I did, it was nice to have.

I run Linux (Kubuntu) on a ThinkPad and this one's been going for ~6.5 years and doing fine. I've heard some negatives about the newest ThinkPads, but in the absence of something clearly better, that's what I'll get next time. I have a Windoze PC just for CAD, but FreeCAD may yet free me from the chains of Microsoft.

GsT

I like it! I run Linux Mint on a ThinkPad, a Dell OptiPlex for projects, and another Dell OptiPlex as a file server. I also use Mint on my old Sony for media purposes. For AutoCAD, I have a Windows PC, but I feel the same about the Microsoft chains. I've tried FreeCAD, but I've been using AutoCAD forever (mostly for schematics), and I just don't want to relearn another tool. As it is, my project to-do list will probably never be complete, so I don’t want to backtrack. Muscle memory is a powerful thing.

 

[MikeInOr]

I broke ways with Apple back in 1985 when I wanted an Apple ][e but my father bought me an 8088 Columbia PC (IBM clone). Other than the library of games I had acquired illicitly at highschool for the ][e I have never had any use for any Apple gear... ever!

I can understand that for the uninitiated the PC world can be more complex to navigate with the amount of cheap junk and it is easier to just spend 2x or 3x the amount of money for Apple hardware. Leveno/ASUS laptops and ASUS motherboards have always been very reliable and very well made for me. It has been well over 20 years since I have bought a new computer for myself, I just upgraded a piece at a time through the years and reuse the old hardware for Linux based home servers.

TrueNAS is a beautiful free Linux based storage server / entertainment server that insulates me from having to maintain a high level of Linux intelligence.

PfSense is an excellent BSD based firewall that runs great on old hardware and is also free for home users. I truly pity the folks that don't have pfBlocker on their home edge appliance. I couldn't live without it!

The Microsoft development world puts food on my table so there isn't much chance I will get away from the MS environment anytime soon. I am doing my darn-est to keep subscription software out of my system but Microsoft and Google are doing a heck of a good job of forcing even the hardest headed hackers like me into submitting to their Orwellian vision of the universe.

P.S. I won't buy any smart phone that I can't root and put my own OS on.

Microsoft, NVidia, Google and Cisco stock have been MUCH more productive for my IRA than Apple over the years... but Apple does well enough that I don't sell it and buy the others. Microsoft and Google are absolute snakes... but if I can't subvert their monopolistic practices I will at least money on them. I would be happy to take a hit on my IRA if the Justice Department can whack them off at the knees. Apple is impotent in their tech market positioning in comparison to Microsoft and Google. NVidia is just AI hype but I have owned them long enough that I can withstand a major correction or two and still come out well ahead of the S&P 500.

 

[pdentrem]

I too have MSFT stock. I was enticed in buying it when they started to become more like a utility structured company. I recently sold half of the position to put the increase in dollar value to work at a better yield.
Pierre