If I want to get a mac just to see what it is like what would you recommend?

Are you just wanting to try out the operating system? Spin up an AWS macOS instance and play around with it. Go to a local store that carries Macs and play around with it. Etc.

I'm very much a fan of Macs but I let my job pay for them. :)

Your cheapest entry into the Mac ecosystem, if you want to buy something, would be a refurbished or discounted M1 machine, either desktop or laptop. I'd stay away from the Intel-based Mac fire sales as Apple is slowly but surely deprecating OS support for them.
 
I would recommend you don't. :p

Have you ever wanted to close all the windows of a program, but leave the program running? If so, I guess give mac os a try.

I used one for work between 2011 and 2019, and ugh what a pain. A lot of people were very happy, but if you don't like how something works, good luck. If something breaks, good luck; chances are you'll find a small but persistent group of people asking how to fix it with no answers (and mostly people chiming in how it works for them), or answers that worked two OS versions ago but don't anymore; on the plus side, sometimes just like an OS upgrade broke something without notice, the next one may fix it without notice, so you might just have to wait a year. Something about keyboard shortcuts being familiar but wrong makes it a pain to switch back and forth.

Also, like Microsoft, Apple is currently in a negative trend of making the desktop OS more and more user hostile every release. And it's hard to not upgrade on macOS, because they make big changes under the hood where developers can't easily release one build to support many versions, so they don't; if you use any software from other people, expect to stop getting updates on the old OS no later than 6 months after release; but, expect that some 1-2% of your software won't ever get updated for the new version either, so you may have to make choices.
 
toast0 said:
I would recommend you don't. :p

Have you ever wanted to close all the windows of a program, but leave the program running? If so, I guess give mac os a try.

I used one for work between 2011 and 2019, and ugh what a pain. A lot of people were very happy, but if you don't like how something works, good luck. If something breaks, good luck; chances are you'll find a small but persistent group of people asking how to fix it with no answers (and mostly people chiming in how it works for them), or answers that worked two OS versions ago but don't anymore; on the plus side, sometimes just like an OS upgrade broke something without notice, the next one may fix it without notice, so you might just have to wait a year. Something about keyboard shortcuts being familiar but wrong makes it a pain to switch back and forth.

Also, like Microsoft, Apple is currently in a negative trend of making the desktop OS more and more user hostile every release. And it's hard to not upgrade on macOS, because they make big changes under the hood where developers can't easily release one build to support many versions, so they don't; if you use any software from other people, expect to stop getting updates on the old OS no later than 6 months after release; but, expect that some 1-2% of your software won't ever get updated for the new version either, so you may have to make choices.
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I mean, you're largely describing issues that Windows has had basically since Windows 8+ now anyways. Although unlike Windows, if you actually understand unix/linux, you have some hope of fixing the problem via CLI on MacOS. I suppose problems can be solved with Windows as well if you fully understand it under the hood.. But my god. Windows is a rats nest compared to MacOS at this point.

Everyone has their preference. Personally, I had been Windows only for my daily since the late 90's. Switching back to OSX/Mac a few years back was a revelation for what I use my computers for. Windows got tossed to the dustbin outside of needing it on my gaming desktop.
 
Algrim said:
Are you just wanting to try out the operating system? Spin up an AWS macOS instance and play around with it. Go to a local store that carries Macs and play around with it. Etc.

I'm very much a fan of Macs but I let my job pay for them. :)

Your cheapest entry into the Mac ecosystem, if you want to buy something, would be a refurbished or discounted M1 machine, either desktop or laptop. I'd stay away from the Intel-based Mac fire sales as Apple is slowly but surely deprecating OS support for them.
Click to expand...
OP could always just buy any machine he wants from an Apple Store. Drive it for a few weeks - And then return it. The Apple return policy on hardware is pretty forgiving.
 
Mchart said:
you actually understand unix/linux, you have some hope of fixing the problem via CLI on MacOS.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I mean, who doesn't like sitting down and saying "It's Unix(tm), I know this." But that gets real old when iTunes decides to play (loud) static instead of music 25% of the time, because it's 2014. Pretty sure there wasn't a plist deep down in the bowels of the system that said 'fuck up toast0's ears: yes' Who knows wtf the problem was, but it cleared up with the major update at the end of the year. Didn't have problems with audio from Chrome, but I dunno, would be nice to listen to music with the app for listening to music.

Also on my gripe list, soldered storage --- I'm understanding that stuff breaks, so I'm not disappointed that my macbook refused to accept ac power, but it would have been nice to pull the storage and put it in something else rather than banking on getting lucky and having enough time to transfer the data. Glad that happened before I had to run Outlook which had a nasty habit of eating my battery down to 10% during sleep mode.

Anyway, I would also recommend people not switch to windows 10 or 11 or gnome >= 3 at this point if they've been out of the loop. No sense in moving to something that's user hostile if you're already familiar with where you are (even if that's also user hostile). Myself, I'm planning to cling to windows 10 until it's unusable, then switch to FreeBSD + fvwm95 or MATE (although I hear KDE isn't bad right now, so maybe I'll give that a try).
 
I got a pre-owned M1 MBA for less than $650 a few months ago and I enjoy it very much. Cheaper option might be a Mac Mini with your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
 
I picked up this mid 2014 13" MacBook Pro a few years ago for $100 to play with. it's an i5 with 8GB of Ram and had a 128GB SSD which I upgraded to 512GB last year. Member here had the 512GB for a good price so I grabbed it.
I don't use it much, mainly use it as a midi interface for my Alesis keyboard to play a virtual piano in Kontakt

In the below pic I bought one of those Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 dongles to see if I could capture DV footage from my old DV Camcorder.
Surprisingly, it was just plug and play and worked perfectly.
IMG_0489.JPEG
 
You can upgrade neither RAM nor internal SSD. But you can use external SSDs, which in turn is annoying on portable machines. You presumably have keyboard, mouse and monitor.

I recommend a M1 or M2 Mac mini with 16 GB of RAM and small SSD, and then using an external SSD if you outgrow it. Resell value is also much better with 16 GB as most used and refurb machines only have 8 GB.

Good luck.
 
Check out Woot.com, they have sales on Apple stuff all the time. Get something last gen. I picked up a Mac Mini for like, $500, after my BIL gave me his old big-ass proprietary Mac display.
 
Either buy the cheapest base model Mac mini and return it within 15 days (make sure all the original packaging and accessories are in pristine condition), or buy a refurb cheapest base model Mac mini (if you don't like it, sell it). Back in 2009, I bought a refurb iMac just to play around with it to see how the operating system worked and decide whether I liked it. After a few months of using it, I sold it.
 
Another vote for the M1 Air. They're a terrific travel computer when you need something punchier than a tablet/phone but don't feel like lugging around a larger laptop.
Personally, I like the aesthetics of Mac OS. There are some annoying quirks, but Windows and Linux have plenty of those, too. The main difference is that to me it looks like someone with an eye for design had a hand in making the OS. With most other OS's, it looks like a programmer half-heartedly did what a designer suggested without knowing why.
 
ng4ever said:
What kind of mac system ? Laptop or desktop ?
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Buy a used Mac Mini 2012. Prefer i7 over i5, but the i5 is cheap. SSD swap in is straight forward, as is memory upgrade. Get no less than 8gb. You'll need opencore legacy patcher to get it to a fully up to date OS, but it's pretty simple. Mac has great recovery software built into the board. Later mac minis are not upgrade able.
 
Randall Stephens said:
Buy a used Mac Mini 2012. Prefer i7 over i5, but the i5 is cheap. SSD swap in is straight forward, as is memory upgrade. Get no less than 8gb. You'll need opencore legacy patcher to get it to a fully up to date OS, but it's pretty simple. Mac has great recovery software built into the board. Later mac minis are not upgrade able.
Click to expand...
I would say one of the major "features" of macOS is not having to manage anything. If your first experience with Mac is essentially management, I don't think you're getting the core experience out of it. For "power users" that want to keep aging 5,1 Mac Pro's operating (dual CPU Westmere ending in 2012), it might be worth doing something like this with. But I personally don't see a point in trying to keep any other piece of hardware going. To me, would be a better use of time to go through a very specific parts list (ones that are verified to perfectly operate/golden builds) and build a hackintosh instead. Hackintosh management is terrible, which again is one of the reasons why you buy an actual Mac vs going that route, but if you're going to do management anyway, that seems the better route.

Even on that note though, I have seen 2010 Mac Pro dual CPU machines go for around $400 in LA on FB marketplace. They finally have dropped so low in price because literally a new base model Mini is faster than them regardless of task in every way shape and form. Even if you go to the trouble of installing a Radeon VII, an m.2 NVME drive, a Thunderbolt PCI-E card, etc, they can't keep up with modern machines. I always wanted to build one up for fun, and also because I always wanted one of these machines in their heyday.

However it just doesn't make sense to invest $1200 to get a reasonably modern machine that gets destroyed in every benchmark by the M2 Mini 16GB. For reference, you'd want at least to move to 2x 3.46 GHz X5690 Xeon Processors, an NVME drive + PCI-E card, upgraded Wi-fi/Bluetooth (so that handoff and airdrop work in newer OS'), some kind of supported graphics card (I own a Radeon VII that I could use immediately with the power supply mod. But most people would want to put in at least a Vega 56 if not 64 or VII to maximize GPU performance out of this thing and GPU's also aren't cheap) and for me I'd want Thunderbolt. Even skipping Thunderbolt, at least getting in USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 for better I/O would be critically important. OR 10GB/e Ethernet to be able to access external drives. Some of this matters more or less dependent on the user. For me to use the machine it needs I/O to access fast external storage. If that isn't necessary it can be skipped. USB 2 and Firewire 800 are really limiting for a "modern" machine though.

To the OP (ng4ever): Personally I wouldn't buy a Mac just to buy a Mac, and I say this as a daily Mac user for 15+ years. You should have a very explicit reason for doing so. It doesn't make sense to audition any more than it does to audition Linux if you don't have a reason for hoping onto the system. IE: workflow, software, something. Even if the reason is you just want an Office machine that doesn't do anything else, you should go in with some understanding of what you're trying to accomplish with the system. And of course macOS/Mac's are better at doing certain things rather than others.

If I was just trying to buy a machine to test today, the most obvious would be either an M2 Mini with 16GB of RAM or an M1 Mini with 16GB of RAM. Depending on sales etc, could be $700-$1000. Either will get your foot in the proverbial door to test. They are more than fast enough to understand, this is what ARM Mac's are all about. And with 16GB of RAM won't have performance stuck behind constant buffering. The Mini will be able to demonstrate a lot of things like instant on/instant wake, apps that open near instantly, really smooth in general desk top performance, plenty of I/O, takes up an incredibly small footprint, and dead silent. A side feature if you're an emulator nerd, ETA Prime showed that the M2 Mini can basically emulate every console up to the PS3, upscaled, at faster than original console frame rates. It does this while again, being completely silent and taking up the space of a small NUC. Unfortunately the rest you more or less have to pay to play.

The new Mac Mini with M2 Pro chip and 64GB of RAM is now good enough to do every video editing function you can think of. It also costs $2200. If you're a PC user (which you are), that gets you a pretty fast machine that's also upgradable for the same price whereas the Mini won't be upgradable at all. The Mini M2 Pro though will be faster specifically at video editing overall. Though if we assume the PC has a 4080 in it, the GPU performance will be faster still in the PC, which would matter if you were trying to do a lot of work in Fusion/Maya/After Effects. But everything else the M2 Pro would come out on top due to all of the specialized accelerators (decode [especially in formats like h.265, ProRes, REDcode RAW, etc], reincode, decompression, I/O speed, timeline performance, exporting performance, etc).

Anyway, just a few thoughts. ng4ever hasn't responded in a sec so I don't even know if this is relevant.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
I would say one of the major "features" of macOS is not having to manage anything. If your first experience with Mac is essentially management, I don't think you're getting the core experience out of it. For "power users" that want to keep aging 5,1 Mac Pro's operating (dual CPU Westmere ending in 2012), it might be worth doing something like this with. But I personally don't see a point in trying to keep any other piece of hardware going. To me, would be a better use of time to go through a very specific parts list (ones that are verified to perfectly operate/golden builds) and build a hackintosh instead. Hackintosh management is terrible, which again is one of the reasons why you buy an actual Mac vs going that route, but if you're going to do management anyway, that seems the better route.

Even on that note though, I have seen 2010 Mac Pro dual CPU machines go for around $400 in LA on FB marketplace. They finally have dropped so low in price because literally a new base model Mini is faster than them regardless of task in every way shape and form. Even if you go to the trouble of installing a Radeon VII, an m.2 NVME drive, a Thunderbolt PCI-E card, etc, they can't keep up with modern machines. I always wanted to build one up for fun, and also because I always wanted one of these machines in their heyday.

However it just doesn't make sense to invest $1200 to get a reasonably modern machine that gets destroyed in every benchmark by the M2 Mini 16GB. For reference, you'd want at least to move to 2x 3.46 GHz X5690 Xeon Processors, an NVME drive + PCI-E card, upgraded Wi-fi/Bluetooth (so that handoff and airdrop work in newer OS'), some kind of supported graphics card (I own a Radeon VII that I could use immediately with the power supply mod. But most people would want to put in at least a Vega 56 if not 64 or VII to maximize GPU performance out of this thing and GPU's also aren't cheap) and for me I'd want Thunderbolt. Even skipping Thunderbolt, at least getting in USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 for better I/O would be critically important. OR 10GB/e Ethernet to be able to access external drives. Some of this matters more or less dependent on the user. For me to use the machine it needs I/O to access fast external storage. If that isn't necessary it can be skipped. USB 2 and Firewire 800 are really limiting for a "modern" machine though.

To the OP (ng4ever): Personally I wouldn't buy a Mac just to buy a Mac, and I say this as a daily Mac user for 15+ years. You should have a very explicit reason for doing so. It doesn't make sense to audition any more than it does to audition Linux if you don't have a reason for hoping onto the system. IE: workflow, software, something. Even if the reason is you just want an Office machine that doesn't do anything else, you should go in with some understanding of what you're trying to accomplish with the system. And of course macOS/Mac's are better at doing certain things rather than others.

If I was just trying to buy a machine to test today, the most obvious would be either an M2 Mini with 16GB of RAM or an M1 Mini with 16GB of RAM. Depending on sales etc, could be $700-$1000. Either will get your foot in the proverbial door to test. They are more than fast enough to understand, this is what ARM Mac's are all about. And with 16GB of RAM won't have performance stuck behind constant buffering. The Mini will be able to demonstrate a lot of things like instant on/instant wake, apps that open near instantly, really smooth in general desk top performance, plenty of I/O, takes up an incredibly small footprint, and dead silent. A side feature if you're an emulator nerd, ETA Prime showed that the M2 Mini can basically emulate every console up to the PS3, upscaled, at faster than original console frame rates. It does this while again, being completely silent and taking up the space of a small NUC. Unfortunately the rest you more or less have to pay to play.

The new Mac Mini with M2 Pro chip and 64GB of RAM is now good enough to do every video editing function you can think of. It also costs $2200. If you're a PC user (which you are), that gets you a pretty fast machine that's also upgradable for the same price whereas the Mini won't be upgradable at all. The Mini M2 Pro though will be faster specifically at video editing overall. Though if we assume the PC has a 4080 in it, the GPU performance will be faster still in the PC, which would matter if you were trying to do a lot of work in Fusion/Maya/After Effects. But everything else the M2 Pro would come out on top due to all of the specialized accelerators (decode [especially in formats like h.265, ProRes, REDcode RAW, etc], reincode, decompression, I/O speed, timeline performance, exporting performance, etc).

Anyway, just a few thoughts. ng4ever hasn't responded in a sec so I don't even know if this is relevant.
Click to expand...
I got a hack up and running, but even with a "recommended" config, a SFF 9020, I could never get it 100% stable. Opencore legacy patcher, boom, 100% baby. Is it a powerhouse? Nope. Does it play weekend update just fine in youtube? Yep. :)
 
Zepher said:
I picked up this mid 2014 13" MacBook Pro a few years ago for $100 to play with. it's an i5 with 8GB of Ram and had a 128GB SSD which I upgraded to 512GB last year. Member here had the 512GB for a good price so I grabbed it.
I don't use it much, mainly use it as a midi interface for my Alesis keyboard to play a virtual piano in Kontakt

In the below pic I bought one of those Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 dongles to see if I could capture DV footage from my old DV Camcorder.
Surprisingly, it was just plug and play and worked perfectly.
View attachment 545891
Click to expand...
remember that when the time comes you can still upgrade the OS with opencore legacy patcher, if you're so inclined
 
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