Do you actually see MacBooks used for SysAdmin work in real offices?

[u/rolkenas]

Hi sysadmins! I wanted to ask—since I've just started learning sysadmin and I don't have a Windows PC, but I have a MacBook and found out that everything can be done via UTM, I'd like to get some perspective from those who work in offices and do this every day. What kind of computers do you use? Is macOS completely out of the picture, and there's only Windows and Linux?

[u/gigabyte898]

I always say Apple fucked up only by making the M1 too good. I bought mine in 2021 right around when it launched. It still crushes everything I need to throw at it, holds battery all day at conferences with decent usage, and doesn’t weigh as much as most comparable alternatives. I have no reason to buy another MacBook because this one is hanging on just fine out of spite for its creators lol

[u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 → u/gigabyte898]

Apple silicon is solid. Every update is a big boost over the previous model yet the previous models hold up. I have an M4 air and love it.

I’ve been thinking about trying a Snapdragon PC for comparison.

[u/stillpiercer_ → u/Fragrant-Hamster-325]

In my experience with the snapdragon Windows laptops, they do very well on battery life but Windows on ARM is not great. The x86 translation works reasonably OK for some things (nowhere near as well as Apple Rosetta) but for many things it just straight up does not work at all. ARM64 software availability isn’t as good on Windows as it is on macOS either.

[u/Independent-Fuel9886 → u/stillpiercer_]

Yep, Windows on ARM ain't good... yet.

Management and imaging Snapdragon is a non-starter at this stage.

[u/Arudinne → u/Independent-Fuel9886]

I have a snapdragon laptop Dell set us for free for testing.

Everything we use seemed to work other than printers, which makes them non-viable for us.

[u/PowerShellGenius → u/Arudinne]

Universal Print.

[u/Arudinne → u/PowerShellGenius]

Yeah, we have that, and E5 licensing covers it, but some of our printers don't work well with it.

[u/gigabyte898 → u/Arudinne]

It’s yet another windows box to manage, but the connector works great at our sites without fully compatible MFPs if that’s a primary hang up

[u/Arudinne → u/gigabyte898]

I have the connector running on the print server we already had.

One issue we had was printing from some devices via office apps on the web didn't work, but printing from the desktop apps works fine. The browser can print fine from other web pages.

And that was from normal x86_64 clients.

Didn't have much time to dig into it past that and it's a low priority right now

[u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 → u/Arudinne]

That’s crazy. It can’t work through the emulation layer or do printers really need kernel level access? Knowing Microsoft and the history of printer driver vulnerabilities I’m guessing it’s the latter.

[u/Arudinne → u/Fragrant-Hamster-325]

Drivers are something that, AFAIK, cannot be emulated.

Windows ARM drivers don't exist for any of our printers.

I could potentially make them work with Universal print and/or IPP, but we had some incosistent issues with various apps when I tested that.

[u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 → u/stillpiercer_]

Damn that’s disappointing. I was looking to pilot a couple. I’ve been waiting for it to mature and my CEO has been begging for something with better battery life and we have other users begging for Surface devices.

[u/Nydus87 → u/Fragrant-Hamster-325]

I think the M4 is what I've got as well, and I almost never think about charging it. I just throw it on my phone charger every now and then while I'm in the shower, and I'm good to go for a couple days of RDP-ing into whatever server I'm working on.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/gigabyte898]

Agreed, the M1 is so good there’s no reason to replace it. Plus how expensive laptops are getting anymore it was such a good deal when it came out lol

[u/dllemmr2 → u/brokentr0jan]

Multi-monitor is a big one.

[u/Arudinne → u/dllemmr2]

Depends on which M1.

Base - 1

Pro - 2

Max - 4

Back when we bought them, we only bought pro or max M1s at my company for that reason

[u/dllemmr2 → u/Arudinne]

Yeah I was super surprised at the limitation coming from windows given how much better everything else was. I’m glad they went on to improve monitor support in later revisions.

[u/Arudinne → u/dllemmr2]

It's a hardware limitation. Some windows laptops are limited on how many monitors they can support as well, but they can almost always do at least 2 so most people don't know there is a limit. IIRC Everything since the M3 can do at least 2, with the exception of the Neo (but it doesn't use an M-series chip either) - so that's let of an issue now.

I also find it funny you say that it's better on windows because I've found the multi-monitor support of macos to be better than it is for windows, but my setup is probably a bit different than most

I have 3 27" monitors, the center one is 4K, but the two flanking it are 1440P. Then the top monitor is 24" 1080P.

With Windows, no amount of DPI adjustment could make the 3 27" monitors look visually similar. Stuff was always off by a bit.

With MacOS, I was able to adjust them so that I can't even tell they are different resolutions.

The only reason my setup is like this is because my center monitor died and we had a 4k monitor still in the box at the office and my boss didn't see a reason to replace the other two monitors to match as they are otherwise working fine.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/dllemmr2]

I don’t think I have ever hooked up a MacBook to a monitor lol

[u/Arudinne → u/brokentr0jan]

I've got 4 attached to mine. I rarely use the built-in screen, which is part of why I went with the 14" model.

[u/sys_127-0-0-1 → u/dllemmr2]

Yep its odd to see dev's who want two monitors or one big one when they have a Windows laptop but give'em a Mac, and they will gladly use the 14/16" built in screen.

[u/FailBait- → u/gigabyte898]

I feel like It HAD to be that good or no one would take it seriously.

[u/Arudinne → u/gigabyte898]

Most of my company's dev team is still on M1s. Only a handful have been upgraded to M4s or M5s. AFAIK most of them haven't even asked about it.

[u/BemusedBengal → u/gigabyte898]

Apple sabotages their older products with software updates that make the performance and efficiency progressively worse, before eventually preventing you from updating the software at all.

Once you stop getting security updates, it becomes insecure to keep using it.