Fair point, but also, the M4 Mac mini is $500 for a pretty competitive chip, 16GB RAM, and 256GB on-chip SSD. You can beat that with a PC (and probably get a bit bigger drive, like 500GB, and you’d be able to upgrade), but you wouldn’t save that much money. The Windows license puts it over; of course, the idea is you get someone to sell you one without a Windows license and install Linux. But if they aren’t including Windows, they aren’t selling in enough bulk to get the price down. There are a bunch of little computers from China that are competitive, but do you trust them? Up to you, I guess.
The other option, I went over in my top-level comment, is to find a gently used office PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11, like a 7th gen i5. It’s not gonna be competitive, performance wise, against that M4 Mac mini, though, but you might get it for like $100 from eBay or something, so maybe it’s fine.
To add to your point, not only does it run on “generic” hardware, it runs on “whatever” hardware.
The mac mini and mac studio give the user a lot of bang for their buck. Those who say “Apple tax,” I’m convinced, haven’t looked into the Apple settings or used the ecosystem for what it’s typically used for… I actually think Apple is worth the money for a lot of people, it just depends on how you typically use the computer and what you need from it
I’m more asking about why a typical Mac user would switch to Linux mint, wondering this in response to something I heard someone say to me. I think maybe, that person just really likes Linux Mint, and wants everybody to use it.
Fair point, but also, the M4 Mac mini is $500 for a pretty competitive chip, 16GB RAM, and 256GB on-chip SSD. You can beat that with a PC (and probably get a bit bigger drive, like 500GB, and you’d be able to upgrade), but you wouldn’t save that much money. The Windows license puts it over; of course, the idea is you get someone to sell you one without a Windows license and install Linux. But if they aren’t including Windows, they aren’t selling in enough bulk to get the price down. There are a bunch of little computers from China that are competitive, but do you trust them? Up to you, I guess.
The other option, I went over in my top-level comment, is to find a gently used office PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11, like a 7th gen i5. It’s not gonna be competitive, performance wise, against that M4 Mac mini, though, but you might get it for like $100 from eBay or something, so maybe it’s fine.
To add to your point, not only does it run on “generic” hardware, it runs on “whatever” hardware.
The mac mini and mac studio give the user a lot of bang for their buck. Those who say “Apple tax,” I’m convinced, haven’t looked into the Apple settings or used the ecosystem for what it’s typically used for… I actually think Apple is worth the money for a lot of people, it just depends on how you typically use the computer and what you need from it
I’m more asking about why a typical Mac user would switch to Linux mint, wondering this in response to something I heard someone say to me. I think maybe, that person just really likes Linux Mint, and wants everybody to use it.