Not trying to start a flame war, but Mac laptops are pretty much best in class across screen, keyboard (now, no comment on previous gen), battery, and weight. There are PC laptops that compete with individual parts of the lineup (the Dell XPS was competitive with the MacBook Pros for a while), but overall Macs are generally a great choice.
If you're an iOS user, the integration with the OS across devices can be pretty great (Messages on desktop, Airdrop, Tethering).
If you're an iOS dev, you have nowhere else to do your work.
When it comes to the software, well, I honestly fail to remember when was the last update of macOS with a single interesting thing for me.
Like Windows, every update doesn’t bring anything useful (to me) and just makes things worse.
And I said that as an old tech enthusiast who used to be really excited by OS updates. I’m really far from the usual "I don’t like change" guy, I actually like new things. But all I got in the last 5-10 years was just more walls, less freedom, and not even a single cool thing to help swallow the pill.
So, after 15 years, I’m not buying a Mac anymore, neither an iPhone as my next smartphone (but in the smartphone space it’s worse because you can’t escape the shit).
I can think of one kind of cool thing for me in that period in that it can kind of maintain iPhone tethering that stays even if you close the lid. Although it's still a bit clunky. The rest I'd be quite happy going back 5 or 10 years. In fact I still miss being able to run 32 bit stuff.
The value I get from macOS is that it avoids the increasing enshittification of Windows and that it mostly preserves a higher level of ergonomics and consistency than any other os I’ve experienced.
It’s secure, does not spy on me, and integrates beautifully with iOS.
I will agree with you that Windows enshitification is waaay faster. But it’s not like macOS is going in an interesting direction anyway.
In fact most macOS improvements are only for the users who are 100% working within the Apple ecosystem (using Apple apps everyday). But those users are better served with an iPad anyway.
Also, having a real UNIX command line with native productivity apps like MS Office and the Adobe Suite on the same OS is incredible. WSL2 on Windows is okay, but not nearly as cleanly integrated as macOS is in this regard.
What is "real UNIX" these days? I'm not sure it's that big a pro anymore. Outside MacOS who is using "real UNIX" and not Linux? It's just different enough to cause problems if you're not careful.
A platform does not need to have revolutionary changes year-on-year to still matter or be important to its users. That does not mean it "doesn't matter" — macOS works just fine for a lot of people.
Incremental quality-of-life improvements are nice from time to time, and bug fixes are always welcome, but otherwise I would be quite happy for them to leave good alone.
How many products have been ruined by people insisting that nothing can ever be finished and it’s critical to keep adding and changing major stuff every year because god forbid sending email work the same today as it did yesterday?
I would go further to say it's the changes (additions or otherwise) that have made macOS less relevant and will likely not be the OS on my next computer(s). They have actively not left good alone.
What more do you want an OS to do? What do you expect Apple to add to MacOS? Just don't break stuff. Fix bugs. Once in a while some new kind of hardware or network protocol might need to be added. That's it.
macOS is mature and has been for a long time. There's plenty of evidence Apple still cares about it - pooh pooh the new features all you like, but they're adding them! They keep improving security with every release in meaningful ways. And the recent acquisition of Pixelmator indicates that maybe the iLife suite (which is effectively a part of macOS) will soon come with a really great image editor for everyone who doesn't want to pay for a Photoshop subscription, something the Mac was historically quite weak at out of the box.
Doesn't mean prosumer level computing is done, though. Computers are such general and flexible devices, we'll probably return to innovating them at some point. Mobile and tablet were a chance to reset and fix the biggest problems computers had for regular people: horrific manageability and security issues stemming from the need for backwards compatibility. That was the Big Win of the past 15 years.
Adding something to excite computer geeks would require something much more paradigm shifting. My guess is that the next big feature to land will be a really slick integrated AI agent experience. "Siri, research dolphin speech and write me an app to decode it". Apple's in a good position to integrate AI agents directly with the OS instead of having them be hacked onto remote VMs or running in a terminal, and it'd finally yield ROI for all the effort they put into stuff like Shortcuts and AppleScript.
Be careful what you wish for anyway. Going further would require them to get serious about competing with the web. Air supply to OS innovators has been choked off by browser devs for decades; you can add cool APIs all day and nothing will use them because the browsers don't expose them. It'd mean extending Safari so people can write Mac specific web pages, applet style. You might not want that.
Looking at new macOS features in the past years, not getting any new features would actually be a good thing.
Focus on stability, performance and users which need a professional device, not a toy.
Feature-wise, desktop operating systems have been good enough since around the early 2000s - and if anything, have mostly regressed since then (some more than others).
If iOS development requires a Mac, then it’s relevant. If that’s not the case, then it’s basically a vanity project that could be discarded if a downturn appears. It’s harder to develop Unix-y software on a Mac, so that’ll not keep it alive without iOS. It’s entirely up to Apple re survival.
It matters to us, but it may not matter to Apple as much. The iPhone revolution meant Apple's primary stock in trade is now to be a bling brand; selling computer workstations to professionals is more of a side business.
Considering depending on your work you don't have much of a choice, uh, yeah. But MSI for years has put out some really powerful, albeit ugly Windows machines. I've recently been trying to get away from Macs and just use WSL over Windows 11, and luckily I haven't been missing too much.
Unfortunately, I do need to occasionally use Sketch for design work, or various small utilities for observing UI metrics in AppKit apps, like Digital Color Meter, or Accessibility Inspector, since the software I write targets Macs.
Not trying to start a flame war, but Mac laptops are pretty much best in class across screen, keyboard (now, no comment on previous gen), battery, and weight. There are PC laptops that compete with individual parts of the lineup (the Dell XPS was competitive with the MacBook Pros for a while), but overall Macs are generally a great choice.
If you're an iOS user, the integration with the OS across devices can be pretty great (Messages on desktop, Airdrop, Tethering).
If you're an iOS dev, you have nowhere else to do your work.
Agree on the hardware side.
When it comes to the software, well, I honestly fail to remember when was the last update of macOS with a single interesting thing for me.
Like Windows, every update doesn’t bring anything useful (to me) and just makes things worse.
And I said that as an old tech enthusiast who used to be really excited by OS updates. I’m really far from the usual "I don’t like change" guy, I actually like new things. But all I got in the last 5-10 years was just more walls, less freedom, and not even a single cool thing to help swallow the pill.
So, after 15 years, I’m not buying a Mac anymore, neither an iPhone as my next smartphone (but in the smartphone space it’s worse because you can’t escape the shit).
I can think of one kind of cool thing for me in that period in that it can kind of maintain iPhone tethering that stays even if you close the lid. Although it's still a bit clunky. The rest I'd be quite happy going back 5 or 10 years. In fact I still miss being able to run 32 bit stuff.
Another macOS user’s perspective here.
The value I get from macOS is that it avoids the increasing enshittification of Windows and that it mostly preserves a higher level of ergonomics and consistency than any other os I’ve experienced.
It’s secure, does not spy on me, and integrates beautifully with iOS.
I will agree with you that Windows enshitification is waaay faster. But it’s not like macOS is going in an interesting direction anyway.
In fact most macOS improvements are only for the users who are 100% working within the Apple ecosystem (using Apple apps everyday). But those users are better served with an iPad anyway.
I use clipboard handoff maybe 30 times a day, and that's just cuz, not because any particular repeating task requires it.
Once you go clipboard handoff + "Paste.app infinite memory" you never go back.
Also, having a real UNIX command line with native productivity apps like MS Office and the Adobe Suite on the same OS is incredible. WSL2 on Windows is okay, but not nearly as cleanly integrated as macOS is in this regard.
What is "real UNIX" these days? I'm not sure it's that big a pro anymore. Outside MacOS who is using "real UNIX" and not Linux? It's just different enough to cause problems if you're not careful.
A platform does not need to have revolutionary changes year-on-year to still matter or be important to its users. That does not mean it "doesn't matter" — macOS works just fine for a lot of people.
Incremental quality-of-life improvements are nice from time to time, and bug fixes are always welcome, but otherwise I would be quite happy for them to leave good alone.
How many products have been ruined by people insisting that nothing can ever be finished and it’s critical to keep adding and changing major stuff every year because god forbid sending email work the same today as it did yesterday?
I would go further to say it's the changes (additions or otherwise) that have made macOS less relevant and will likely not be the OS on my next computer(s). They have actively not left good alone.
What more do you want an OS to do? What do you expect Apple to add to MacOS? Just don't break stuff. Fix bugs. Once in a while some new kind of hardware or network protocol might need to be added. That's it.
macOS is mature and has been for a long time. There's plenty of evidence Apple still cares about it - pooh pooh the new features all you like, but they're adding them! They keep improving security with every release in meaningful ways. And the recent acquisition of Pixelmator indicates that maybe the iLife suite (which is effectively a part of macOS) will soon come with a really great image editor for everyone who doesn't want to pay for a Photoshop subscription, something the Mac was historically quite weak at out of the box.
Doesn't mean prosumer level computing is done, though. Computers are such general and flexible devices, we'll probably return to innovating them at some point. Mobile and tablet were a chance to reset and fix the biggest problems computers had for regular people: horrific manageability and security issues stemming from the need for backwards compatibility. That was the Big Win of the past 15 years.
Adding something to excite computer geeks would require something much more paradigm shifting. My guess is that the next big feature to land will be a really slick integrated AI agent experience. "Siri, research dolphin speech and write me an app to decode it". Apple's in a good position to integrate AI agents directly with the OS instead of having them be hacked onto remote VMs or running in a terminal, and it'd finally yield ROI for all the effort they put into stuff like Shortcuts and AppleScript.
Be careful what you wish for anyway. Going further would require them to get serious about competing with the web. Air supply to OS innovators has been choked off by browser devs for decades; you can add cool APIs all day and nothing will use them because the browsers don't expose them. It'd mean extending Safari so people can write Mac specific web pages, applet style. You might not want that.
Looking at new macOS features in the past years, not getting any new features would actually be a good thing.
Focus on stability, performance and users which need a professional device, not a toy.
Feature-wise, desktop operating systems have been good enough since around the early 2000s - and if anything, have mostly regressed since then (some more than others).
Well “does MacOS even matter anymore” would’ve been a better title. The Mac silicon hardware is top notch.
If iOS development requires a Mac, then it’s relevant. If that’s not the case, then it’s basically a vanity project that could be discarded if a downturn appears. It’s harder to develop Unix-y software on a Mac, so that’ll not keep it alive without iOS. It’s entirely up to Apple re survival.
I can't run Homebrew or Zed on my iPad, so yes.
It matters to us, but it may not matter to Apple as much. The iPhone revolution meant Apple's primary stock in trade is now to be a bling brand; selling computer workstations to professionals is more of a side business.
Considering depending on your work you don't have much of a choice, uh, yeah. But MSI for years has put out some really powerful, albeit ugly Windows machines. I've recently been trying to get away from Macs and just use WSL over Windows 11, and luckily I haven't been missing too much.
Unfortunately, I do need to occasionally use Sketch for design work, or various small utilities for observing UI metrics in AppKit apps, like Digital Color Meter, or Accessibility Inspector, since the software I write targets Macs.