You need a Mac...

I'm sure you'll have seen someone say it on social media, or heard it in conversation at some point. Someone with a Windows-based computer is having problems of some sort and the (rather infuriating) answer given is: "You need a Mac..." The implication is that if only you based your life on Apple products, you wouldn't have these problems.

Some of my readers probably don't know that before ministry, I worked in Computer Science, specifically AI. So I like tech! I've also been a Mac user for quite a lot of my life. Our first home computer was the Mac Classic and I still have my clamshell iBook which I think is something of a design classic. However, I am also pretty happy using Windows and Linux machines.

So should you buy a Mac? Well it depends on a whole number of factors. I'm primarily thinking here of pastors and Christian workers, as that's a large proportion of who will read my blog. Let me try and help you think through those factors.

Finance

The truth is that most Christian workers don't earn very much money (at least in the UK). Buying at the bottom in the Mac range will cost you around £1000 new. The contrast to buying a Windows machine or a Chromebook is startling. Where you can buy something for £200-£400. This problem gets worse if you follow through with Apple products (iPads and iPhones instead of Android equivalents for example). If you go the whole hog with Apple, it will cost you...a lot.

The truth is, that for a lot of us, going for Apple products will be too expensive whatever we do. It would be good if those evangelistic Mac owners remembered that! But for others it will be possible, if painful. Is it worth it?

The argument gets tricky here around value for money. A Mac owner will argue that their product will last them longer. This may or may not be true. Broadly speaking Mac hardware has a good reputation for lasting and the development of the operating system (based on the old Unix system) has tended towards being more backward compatible (although I'm still bitter they obsoleted my clamshell laptop when they went to Intel processors and the system X operating system, although it still runs on Linux!).

Windows users will know the frustration of computers grinding to a halt after Windows updates and even just not being supported. So if my Windows laptop only lasts me 5 years and my Mac one lasts me 10 years, it's looking a bit closer financially.

There are some options beyond this though. On the one hand you could save money and buy a secondhand Mac. You save money and lose a bit of the longevity because of its age. On the other, most Windows laptops will keep going a lot longer if you're willing, either to update them or move to using Linux (a free alternative operating system to Windows).

For example, I have an ~6 year old Windows laptop which is running pretty slow on Windows 10. It came with Windows 8 originally and I upgraded for free to Windows 10. It's kept one of the children going doing home school over lockdown, but it is pretty slow and is suffering from some of the Windows 10 problems around memory and disk use. In the relatively short term, (i.e. after they have definitely gone back to school!) I have 3 options:

1. Ditch the laptop.
2. Update the hardware. At a minimum I need to update the memory (RAM) from 4Gb to 8Gb (about £40), but I could also change the hard drive to a faster solid state drive (SSD) (maybe another £50). I would hope for another few years out of it as a Windows 10 machine, easily getting me to the 10 years.
3. I could remove Windows and install Linux (free). This would probably get me over 10 years and might get me much further still if I was willing to update the hardware as well.

I'll talk more about these options in some other posts, because I think most people think 2 and 3 are too difficult to do, but actually they are both much easier than people think and if they save you the equivalent of about £500, even if it was a whole day's work, that's probably better than you are paid most of the time!

To give some other examples, I have just ditched two Sony laptops that came with Windows Vista. I don't know exactly how old they are, but I'm guessing well over 10 years. I got them free as someone passed them on to me and they have given us about 7 years service, mostly using Linux (although I did get Windows 10 running on one of them for a while). One of them served as the church laptop for 4 or 5 years and another has just been retired having been used for lockdown school work. I also still have quite a powerful Linux desktop (again a free hand-me-down) that was never very happy with Windows 10, but runs beautifully with Linux and is probably 6 or 7 years old. That would probably keep me going for over 10 years.

In general, if you are willing to move in the Linux direction you are moving in the direction of free computing - all your software can be free and if like me you are able to find hand-me-down computers you may find that your hardware is free!

So on the cost front alone, it seems to me that for most pastors a Mac is not a necessary investment.

This doesn't make it wrong to buy a Mac. There are other reasons for having one, which we will mention and if you have the money and like them, then it's much more a question of how you choose to use your money. I just want to try and open the door to other (much cheaper!) options.