For those of you who selected Whenever my current machine breaks (@Marcus @muelthe @cmo @sodapopcan) I am guessing you are not using Macs?

I’m asking because in my experience Macs rarely seem to ‘break’ (at least when used mostly on-site/without the wear and tear of travelling) and that it’s usually the software/OS that makes these machines less useful over time - either because of throttling (either purposely or complicity by the OS vendor) or because older versions of tools (such as languages) are no longer compatible with newer OS versions. This was actually part of the reason why I posted as I was curious whether some of these issues might be raised.

I have voted 5-6 years for partially the same reason you cited: after this period I feel that the vendors have mostly abandoned the machines, especially Apple.

They have a generous policy to support devices for a long time but my Intel Mac has visibly slowed down at places and I know for a fact its thermals are fine. Apple just doesn’t bother as much with devices they internally (and secretly) consider obsolete. I have also noticed my iPhone 12 Pro Max getting detectably slower in the last 3-6 months (and the battery is still shown as Peak Performance) which really started making me weary, if not angry. Planned obsolescence is alive and well, sadly. The corporations understood it’s a bad PR to announce it openly so the next order of business is to do it surreptitiously…

This is why I’ll gradually make a comeback to Linux. The laptop I have is actually fairly powerful and I know that for as long as the hardware is working well, Linux will keep it fast and reliable. Linux also doesn’t have (not by default) all the scanners and telemetry that Apple and Microsoft employ – in the case of Apple they literally scan every program after you start it which is resulting in a periodic lag when you work in the terminal for longer periods of time.

Macs have served their role in my career. I might buy a refurbished M1 or M2 on a low-mid configuration (i.e. with 16GB RAM so the OS does not trash the SSD and reduce its lifetime) because they are champions in battery life and are lightweight – I’ll need that when I start traveling and working on my own business(es). But outside of that I’m going full Linux (and I’ll be remoting into my home Linux machines with the Mac laptop as well; it’ll be a beautiful and lightweight thin client).

So if you make the same poll next year I am definitely voting “Until it breaks”.

I’m not using Mac, but I guess I could break every OS.

Somehow taking 100% of PC resources makes me satisfied - I’m so sadistic.

@dimitarvp Oh, I heard rumors about intentional aging of the product, but I’m not really in topic to prove that. I remember my first time with Linux, because the PC cannot handle even Windows XP. Maybe I have lost a week on compiling entire OS twice, but with a help of Gentoo I was able to use said PC with latest (at that time) KDE 4 and Compiz Fusion for a long, long time. I think you would like Gentoo too:

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I do use Macs, actually, it was sorta just the most technically correct answer. For the first 8 years of my career, I just used my work laptop as my personal dev as well. Before that I had been writing my spaghetti PHP on a desktop running WinXP for yeeears. I finally bought myself a laptop around 2018. It was from the year they introduced the touchbar. I didn’t get the touchbar version but it still had that awful keyboard. In any event, that one physically broke in a couple of different ways. I was still able to use it with a monitor and external keyboard for a bit but then I bought myself a M1 Air which is what I have now and I don’t see myself replacing it any time soon.

I almost chose “whenever my current machine breaks”, but I chose “9-10 years”. However, I would have chosen “until it stops receiving OS upgrades” if it was an option. In my experience, I have replaced my machines (Macs) every 8-10 years and the reason is always that I can’t update and/or upgrade anymore.

I used to buy ThinkPad laptops because their keyboard is so nice and they’re pretty. I need Windows to do the control systems part of my job and occasionally travel to sites for work. The screen is cracked, the battery only ever really lasted a few hours under load and it will burn you if you put it on your bare legs. I bought an M3 MacBook Pro in December after checking that I could get away with running Citect and RSLogix on Windows ARM in a VM. The battery life is phenomenal and the performance is great. Keyboard is total rubbish compared to the ThinkPad and where the hell is my delete key. Stop pretending that your backspace key is a delete key, Apple.

My desktop is a stupidly overspecced 24core Threadripper with128GB RAM tower that I built in 2020 to run all manner of VMs at once. Hopefully lasts a long time cause it cost me and arm and a leg.

Nope, not using a Mac. My current laptop (a Dell latitude 5480), I’ve recently rebuilt with Linux has been going reasonably well for the last 6 six years (maybe 7). My projects are small enough that I dont experience any noticeable performance issues, either.

Technically I’m using a Mac since I have a macbook m2, but I use Asahi Linux on it since I can’t stand Mac OS.

From my experience I can’t say that macs rarely break, at least mine broke (the keyboard broke) in 9 months of usage. Also I do know some friends that had similar problems with their macs, but that is ofc, a small sample, so maybe it is not significant.

For real work I use my desktop which is a Ryzen 2700x with 64gb of ram and a bunch of ssds that I leave there hanging like christmas tree decorations. Not planning on replacing it any time soon. Probably I will just keep it and do small upgrades if some component breaks.

I think I’d still use my HP Zbook, but winter of 22/23 was hard in terms of electricity in Ukraine. I had to buy a new laptop with good battery and USB type C charger, so I could use power bank during power outages.

Deploy a k8s cluster and start renting it to companies.

Personally I got the cheapest M1 air and I am very impressed with the performance, how light and small it is and the battery life. I used a thinkpad for the past 5 years with linux, the only thing I never liked about linux is how bad the UI systems are, especially when it comes to external monitors that are more exotic.

I never used it for anything besides elixir development, the real challenge will be running android studio, if it can survive that, then it will serve me well in the future.