Windows 11 has made the āclean Windows installā an oxymoron | Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatwareāno longer.::Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatwareāno longer.
Windows 11 has made the āclean Windows installā an oxymoron | Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatwareāno longer.::Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatwareāno longer.
I donāt think you meant to double reply so Iāll respond here.
I didnāt touch 2-n-1 or ātablet modeā since itās not a target for their devices. I was specifically honing in on the claim of āAny gaming windows laptop has good battery lifeā (which I take to mean comparable) and āa chromebook running windows can do alot more for cheaperā
Both of those takes are either out of date or straight up not true. Especially when we consider the profile. Thereās a few laptops that came out since the M1 that hit the same battery life, but they often need to make a compromise on performance when on battery power ā which the M1 series did not. There are a few laptops that both hit the profile and the battery life that are on x86, but they are more expensive.
As for the Anti-Windows/Anti-Google stuff, itās extremely common in the FOSS community and theyāre represented at a much higher clip than a more general audience like /r/gaming on Reddit. In fact, the more into Unix-like spaces you go the more discussion there is about Windows being a many-layered shit show.
I never said āany gaming Windows laptop has good battery lifeā I literally said āany non gaming laptop Iāve used in the past whothehellknowshowlong has had great battery lifeā. Nice attempt at trying to twist things but thatās pretty bad.
As far as āa chromebook running windows can do alot more for cheaperā that is factually true. To my knowledge there isnāt a MacBook of any type that is convertible or contains a touchscreen, regardless of your personal feelings on that matter those are massively important features to a lot of users and the market demand reflects that in a very big way. Not to mention a Chromebook running Windows supports a much larger amount of software which, again, may not be important to you personally, but itās massively important to a lot of people especially with Apple ending OS upgrades going further. And before you run off trying to say āoh but what about boot campā well you still donāt have a convertible or a touchscreen.
I have spent the last 15 years of my life as a Linux user, and I spent 4 years of my life as a Mac user. The*nix community really needs to get over Windows and stop trying to pretend that Windows users are morons and are somehow completely oblivious to the existence of Linux. Itās an insane obsession
Ah, I missed a word. My honest mistake! Wasnāt intended, I skipped over the word as I was reading. You can understand how if that word was missing that it would be confusing. Iām not going to get into a performance debate over the space of ultrabooks, because itās all over the place compared to the M-series since itās release. Especially on the high-end side. For chromebooks though, you do take a massive hit on overall horsepower ā unless the trend of them āslapping in a Intel Celeron and calling it a dayā has broken recently.
This is the claim I find dubious. Given the rampant success of the Apple line since the advent of the M1, Iām unsure if the lack of a touch-screen mattered to general users. Especially since market for MacOS has grown since then. And youāre right, some may really care about a touch screen ā but Iād call it a mixed bag. Users may similarly care about things like having dope display, high quality speakers, or a GOAT trackpad. To point at one hardware feature that is missing and calling it a dealbreaker is a bit much.
And sure, a chromebook on Windows can run anything in the Windows suite ā itāll be rough for anything that calls for performance compared to an M-series at the moment. Think tasks like Blender, rendering out a video (my MBA chews through 4k footage at faster than real time playback!), high end photo editing, or particularly gross compilations that take a bit of time. My little Air can run games like Diablo4, we have Baldurās Gate 3 (which the betas running on Metal2/3 were awesome), or Fallen Order. Itās kinda sweet! Currently, we donāt use boot camp either (since there actually isnāt a fullblown ARM based Windows yet) generally we use translation layers (sometimes more than one). At the moment itās pretty rare for me to not have a native ARM build of software by major companies, and if itās not (looking at you game devs) Iāve gotten along quite well with x86 - > ARM translation and/or Windows->MacOS translation.
Like, Iām not claiming chromebooks donāt have a use case. Nor am I claiming a MacBook is the GOAT. Itās the specific claim āDefinitely does more than a MacBook Air and for a lot less,ā that I donāt agree with. Just on the silicon horsepower alone, and I donāt have to compromise on battery life, performance, and itās still light while still being itty-bitty! Downside, I pay more. Well, mine I paid $700 for.
Eh, I use the three families of OSās daily. My dev work is on a Windows machine, and the OS is kinda a hot mess. Granted, most of what informs my opinion most end users wonāt even notice or care about. I say if someone wants to use Windows, go for it. But, Iād only use it if I was literally paid to do so, but thatās my taste.
Iām not just making up demands of the market, touchscreen and convertibles are some of the highest driving factors in laptops right now and their demand is growing, Iām not talking about personal preference whatsoever here lol, Iām coming from an objective view on the subject. Yes Appleās specs havenāt lived up to the hype they generated and sales have been falling for a bit now.
For some reason you seem to be telling me the performance and capabilities of Chromebooks running Windows which I do find very strange as itās obviously a subject I have a great deal more experience as you can do a pretty large amount of anything you need to do on one. Gimp, SketchUp, YouTube, word, Excel (any office suite anything is going to run perfectly obviously) web browser with any movie streaming site you want. You still have a huge selection of games to choose from. And if Iām getting into the personal area of things I come from the audio industry (where Linux and MacOS arenāt practical options) and my little fleet of used $50 Chromebooks running Windows can do anything without day to day usage. Honestly I think people have forgotten that common programs and software have not really be increasing in system demand but CPUās, even on the low end have gotten far more powerful.
Cause youāre talking about running Windows on an Intel/AMD chip. Usually Intel Celerons on the cheap end. Itās not a niche area of knowledge. And plenty devices run that configuration stock. Just because Windows has been installed on it doesnāt raise the inherent upper bound of the silicon. And youāre right ā much like the smart phone market ā it is able to meet the needs of people handily and the lower end is much higher than what it used to be. And I agree that people are often overpaying for tech regularlly. But there are tasks the silicon is āpricedā out of because, while possible on the lower end chips, it becomes hard for them to keep up. That is why Iām confused whenever you claim a Chromebook ādoes moreā than a Macbook.
I brought up very specific things: rendering video, 3-d modeling tasks, and a set of recently released AAA titles that run well. Theyāre a family of common things people do with their devices that are really computationally expensive the computer was designed to do (prolly shouldnāt game on a Mac tho, but I find it funny). Those are in a different computation league than running GIMP, office, or a drawing app. Your claim was āDefinitely does more than a MacBook Air and for a lot lessā and Iām trying to point out there are things bound by the silicon it cannot do as well by comparison (granted we went off on a few tangents). Like, the headroom just isnāt there. The Celeron family gets blown out of the water, and those running Intel i3ās and Intel i5ās fall behind as well. Some of those i3/i5ās get suspiciously close to MacBook territory in price tho.
Iām wondering though, is all this time, were you meaning they get more ābang for your buck?ā If so, I agree, and I may have focused on āDefinitely does more,ā as in the set of things an ARM-silicon Mac can achieve is a subset of what a Chromebook can, and got really confused.
However, this device confuses both of us. Why.
ādoes moreā means more functional, I think I explained that up above. I think you have again sort of glossed over touchscreen functionality and the ability to flip your screen around into tablet mode. A laptop is a portable computer, touchscreen and screen flipping allow for the Device to be even more portable and functional for the user who had decided to purchase a laptop as opposed to a desktop.
This is all very important stuff to be aware of as for a lot of industries and use cases canāt make use of a laptops form factor as it is just too cumbersome. This is why they are so popular in stem and creative fields, not to mention healthcare, education, and service industries. This may not be as large of a factor for someone working in graphic design or software development but at the same time it really makes just as much sense as a typical laptop.
I could go on about the functional benefits of having a touchscreen and having a tablet but really that list is just so massive and everyone who uses one of aware of that which is why the market is shifting over that direction so quickly. Helped in part by the fact that they are popular purchases for companies to buy for their employees and anyone who uses a 2in1 at work is typically going to end up buying one for themselves as itās really not a great experience going back to how things used to be.
Now you mention running AAA game titles and Iām finding that pretty hard to track down titles getting mentioned unless they are games of some serious age or you are trying to qualify games like baldurs gate 3 and the Sims 4 as AAA titles which is rather disingenuous. As far as I see people talking about with Mac gaming they tend to suggest people use Xbox cloud or other game streaming services. Obviously you get a much wider selection of games than the Mac available library when going that route especially with something like a MacBook Air where storage comes at a premium and typical AAA titles are coming in above the 100gb mark now. This would make things even more difficult for someone doing video editing as well especially if they are working in 4k resolution. You could go the route of using an external drive as well but that sorta saps the portability when you have all the extras hanging off your computer at which point if I was serious about doing either of those things I would be using a desktop anyhow to gain the benefits seen there. As for where our Chromebook stands in this situation, well, they can stream cloud service games and even stream games locally from a desktop gaming PC (as I commonly do) just the same as a MacBook Air can.
(Btw I got curious and tried using blender on one of the Chromebooks and Iāll be damned if it didnāt run surprisingly well, loaded a bunch of demo projects and it was pretty great. I also discovered that using touchscreen with blender was pretty awesome, made sculpting super easy as well as animating and modeling, camera controls are actually really intuitive, ran great in Evee and workbench, cycles was a little sluggish , but with evee in viewport render mode it was actually pretty smooth, definitely workable, material preview and solid were both pretty great as well)
Cloud gaming is an option! But I prefer to run games locally, and itās been a moving target since Apple switched to ARM processors. Iām not going to go into the gritty details, but it involves combining Microsoftās(x86->Arm) translation layer, Appleās Rosetta 2 (x86->Arm) translation layer, a Windows->MacOS translation layer (which I brought up above for software compatibility for the rare case software, or and equivalent, doesnāt have a MacOS build), and converting graphical api calls to Appleās Metal api (this last one flies over my head a bit on the particulars, Iām a backend developer). Mostly the community, and a company called Codeweavers, finding little optimizations per title. Most DirectX11 titles would ārunā tho weād have graphical bugs from time to time, or stuff straight up crashed. However, Apple recently debuted a āGame Porting Toolkitā during this yearās MacOS beta cycle at WWDC ā which was an actual first party translation layer for DirectX11/12->Metal calls. It was intended for developers since you do need to crack open a terminal and go to town, but that didnāt stop users from employing it themselves. Simply put, itās been rather amazing! Hereās a video, if youāre curious:
Video
Though, it is a bit out of date since weāve had newer versions of the Toolkit. Horizon Zero Dawn no longer slows down and thereās been framerate improvements across the board. I didnāt mention these titles since I havenāt run them locally on my machine, but I play Diablo4 on my MacBook Air using this method. Itās pretty neat, but if someoneās goal was to strictly āgameā theyād be better served with a Rog Zephyrus G14 near the same price. However, for those of us who landed on my M-series Mac, for whatever reason, itās been nice. Thereās been projects since then that does the terminal work for you and itās much more user friendly.
But, back to our dicussion. Which I might add has been rather civil, usually strangers responding to each other in disagreement on the internet quickly turns into throwing insults back and forth. Cheers for that š
As for the touch screen/ 2-in-1 stuff: I understand the benefit using that form factor. Infact, I urge users to purchase the correct hardware for what their use case is, nor have I claimed they shouldnāt be during our discussion. Iām not claiming the stronger statement āChromebook (or 2-in-1) users should be using a MacBookā. I donāt know everyoneās use case and budget, or what form factor best suits them. Iām responding to the stronger, blanket statement (and I know Iām paraphrasing) āChromebooks have more functionality than a MacBook for alot lessā by contradiction by giving usecases where Chromebooks may have issues with. Similarly, Iām pointing out the hardware matters, in particular when the user needs more robust silicon better suited for the job. Say they want to take advantage of a dedicated engine built onto the board that handles rendering video, or the neural engine that handles neural nets, or improved build times since Iām not using an Intel Celeron or whatever i3/i5 they can install under budget. In my case, I use all three. Plus, itās been a wonderful āgeneralistā device. But to say āit lacks a touch screenā and laying out sectors where one would be useful not only doesnāt discount users whose work flows call for stronger silicon but it also could apply to any non-touchscreen clamshell intended for Windows, or otherwise, in the same usecase.
But, this discussion has been rather useful to me. I never actually considered reformatting a Chromebook to run Windows, and will be including them in my recommendations going forward (after I do the easy, but thankless, task of installing Windows for them).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=CcYyvzHtJVM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
Iām open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Yeah when I was saying āChromebooks have more functionality than macbooks for a lot lessā I was literally saying āChromebooks have more functionality than macbooks for a lot lessā. I was not saying āChromebooks can run resource intensive programs faster than macbooks for a lot lessā as performance doesnāt mean function and anyone wanting to play games will be better suited with a Windows gaming laptop than a MacBook or Chromebook no matter how you slice it and it the hope is for extended battery life while gaming you are going to be better suited streaming games anyhow. And as I noticed in that guys video he was having to use an SD card so we know that storage limitation is a factor.
As far as video goes I canāt say as I havenāt tested it but I did do some quick poking around and it appears that the Celeron chip in the Chromebooks I use does support Intels quick sync so that leads me to believe itās not gonna be too bad, especially in the area of rendering final output. Iām not all that knowledgeable as far as video goes but I do work in the production world and as far as video goes I have only seen macbooks used for video a handful of times and Iāve never actually seen a Mac used on a large scale production. This is coming from a live production and broadcast perspective (think music festivals, concerts, sporting events, political functions, high profile streaming events) so the use of gaming spec laptops and desktops are likely chosen for their higher performance, stability, and support cycle. Which is likely similar logic behind why PCās are used for professional non-linear video editing as well.
I did see you slipped back a little bit on the 2in1 situation though. I think there might be a misunderstanding here in that clamshell vs. Convertible is a matter of usage and need, in reality there isnāt actually a situation aside from outliers in not aware of where having touchscreen or convertible would be undesired (you mentioned some people may want matte screens but there are matte screen protectors you can get for very cheap that work great with touch).
Ah, isnāt there a quote about āevery discussion should start with establishing definitions.ā For me, I suppose, I interpret the āfunctionalityā of a device, be it a phone or w.e., Iām focused on what problems or solutions it provides and often I bound by the specs. Anyhow, that was precisely how I read it and was extremely confused. I understand the take now.
Oh for sure, I was just using it as an example use case and demonstration of perfomance. Getting into benchmark comparisons, or rendering runtimes, or L2 cache performance is super boring and boils down to ānumber go up, big good,ā ya know? That being said, when you do come across a game that is Metal based itās pretty nuts 'cause then you get the full power of the reduced instruction set of the processor without the computation bloat of translation layers, and on general applications ARM vs x86 Intel builds make a huge difference on battery life (Though, Metal games are super rare). While it runs on everything, WoW had a Metal build at the device launch and that puppy ran for 8-9 hours on battery (which, like itās WoW, come on š¤£). Iām really excited for the Metal release of Baldurās Gate 3 coming the first week of Sept cause I suspect it will be lovely too.
Def, I think he runs the AppleGamingWiki (or one of them) so heās testing tons of stuff constantly. Personally, I keep I a library of 5-6 games plus my various IDEs and various software without external storage.
Absolutely. At that performance clip Apple sucks on the high end (like I can at least defend the āpremiumā hike of the entry level MBA, but what the fuck š¤£). Sure, they have a āMacProā thatās offensive and obsene in pricing. If you want a good laugh take a look. Play around with a few builds, itās a wonder to behold. There might exist a rendering studio in the world that has a workflow built around FinalCut or something, but at that point an Applications Analyst should start waving the warning flag about saving tons of money switching to another application. I know MKBHDās Production Company has a horrifyingly expensive MacPro, but thatās the only one that comes to mind. Theyāre trying to target speed to the umpteenth degree, but I canāt speak to how much better it does at that clip versus a similarly priced PC (Iād wager it doesnāt, but he swears by it so idk š¤·).
Correct, I suspected there was a definition mismatch of āfunctionalityā and made arguments relative to the language to eek it out. Though, I imagine a consumer wouldnāt be likely exclude a product for having a touch screen or being a 2-n-1 (since these features are optional) and wouldnāt elimate a MacBook ā however, if one wanted/expected it they would certainly pass over the device on the snap or consider it a concession. In my personal experience, I do have people poke my Mac screen from time to time since itās the default on Windows devices. Iām curious if Apple moves to include it going forward, since they are offerring to serve iOS apps on MacOS if the developer opts in.