I can understand that perspective.

Things might be slightly different in the eurozone, but it’s almost impossible to have an incompatibility problem in the us. Macs are extremely popular in higher education and a lot of the software that is used in the academy differs from the stuff used in industry specifically because cross platform is a priority in education.

I have some macs and some apple phones and tablets and some android phones and tablets and a bunch of linux machines and some virtualized windows environments. They’re all just tools.

Getting acquainted with macos will cause you to develop a whole new set of psychoses unrelated to “I’m a Mac/im a pc”. Think “I hate systemd/wayland” for Linux or “I hate settings app/centered start button” for windows.

If you can get past the initial hump of learning it, as a university student you’ll probably never be in a better place to use a mac.

If nothing else, you’re unlikely to lose money if you hate it because they retain value like crazy.

Usually I would be one of the indistinguishable voices saying thinkpad or dell.

But:

You might actually be able to get an m1 macbook air at that price and have better experience.

It would be faster than anything in the price range and I don’t think you listed any software that is a problem for macos.

Problems:

they all have ssds and all ssds fuck up over time. You gotta read each block into memory and rewrite it to solve the problem. There’s a piece of software called spinrite that will do this on x86 but the m series aren’t x86. The solution is to boot asahi or some such Linux and use either badblocks or dd (lol!) to do the same thing. Often rather than fix the ssd people will just replace it, but the m1 macbooks have their storage soldered in. This problem is why I suggested the m1 series because you can get them insanely cheap when they inexplicably get slow and the owner can’t figure it out.

They all have ssds and ssds fuck up over time. For your large storage workloads you will want to use an external drive and have backups. This is true for all laptops with ssds. This is true for all computers.

You can’t upgrade the ram. Is this a problem? You decide. Buy with the amount of ram you believe you will need. 8gb should be fine for cad and other similar workloads (source: I used a mac with 8gb for kicad last year and it didn’t have any problems. Used one with 4gb for the same but mfs aren’t ready to have that conversation). If you’re worried about the future, pick one with 16.

Apple fucked up and made a really good computer. You can call this a problem because it’s not clear if they’re gonna go the 2012 12” mbp route and support that thing for a decade or the 2011 15” route and drop it after the minimum support window. You could also say it doesn’t matter because they’re still being sold new in Walmart even though they’re technically discontinued earlier this year and that would make the minimum support window at least the time period you’re looking to have it for. It truly doesn’t matter because no software balks at last years (or often several years old) macos and they’re gonna be on the hook for security updates for a while now.

Yes.

Made in good ol’ Winston Salem.

Unfortunately a hot sauce factory smells like last nights pepper sprayed clothes so there’s still no reason to go to Winston.

For real: Texas Pete

It’s basically Alex Pattersons baby.

get rid of votes.

they’re dumb and only exist to transform a forum into content.

if lemmy isn’t for profit or doing ads, there’s no reason to transform a forum into content.

so get rid of the votes.

Don’t drink and drive.

Always keep a first aid kit with you.

Actually know how to use your first aid kit.

It should be in a drawer or bag with a conspicuous Red Cross on it. If a stranger can’t figure out where the first aid kit is, you fucked up.

Car stereos.

They used to have buttons and tape decks and cd players in em. From the factory.

I don’t want to do a complex install of some aftermarket thing. I want a car stereo with buttons, knobs, a tape deck, cd player, am/fm and aux input that looks like it belongs in my cars interior and is designed with the same ideas as the rest of the cars controls.

There’s also a cost to transitioning to the new technology.

Normalizing arbitrary size removable media makes physical exfiltration much easier because no one is asking why you’re using an illegal technology in the government building.

Floppy disks are not able to identify themselves as a keyboard and release a payload of keystrokes on command, or hide entire soc computers complete with network adapters.

There is also the matter of retraining on an institutional scale, and if you think it’s as simple as “put this into the computer, not that” you’re woefully underinformed.

Just as an aside, it’s pretty fraught to compare a language transition caused by centuries of forced resettlement to switching the kind of computer thingy government employees use over the course of two years.

Well that’s dumb.

The government can use whatever system it wants, and if there aren’t components on the market it can justify a make work program to domestically produce them.

Governments were able to run perfectly well without high density removable storage, why is it necessary now?

Why would it want to get rid of floppy disks?

I mean yes you’re right but also most microorganisms that cause disease die quickly without their little droplets and particles to cling to.

On the other hand, procedure masks rely on those droplets to be the microorganism carriers that they can more easily stop instead of falling back on electrostatic attraction as the lil guys float through em.

In conclusion, infectious disease is a land of contrasts and while hospitals can rely on technologically advanced hvac systems to maintain a narrow range of temperature and humidity that represents a trade off between reduced micro environments, reduced airborne transmission and safely storing all their poultices and potions, normal people need to just do our best and maybe should accept the reduced mold and microorganisms over all in exchange for more chance of airborne transmission when cleaning our homes and workplaces (which are all fucked if there’s airborne transmission anyway because no one has appropriate air cleaners in their home or workplace).

If you’re able to hold it long enough and you’re truly worried, folding a wet paper towel over a couple of times and using the hand soap to clean the seat and then folding it over again to get a “rinse” before you sit down is a better way to go about it.

“I’m worried about germs on the toilet seat”

“Well, they gave you paper towels, soap and running water, why not clean the motherfucker?”

“Nah, imma just put the thinnest material known to man in between my butt and the seat”

~Things people don’t want to know~

Putting a layer of tissue between your butt and the toilet seat doesnt provide enough of a barrier against microorganisms over the time it takes to shit or piss to prevent transmission.

Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.

The n95 (and other) rating(s) are over time in free, circulating, open air. Derate safe exposure time sharply for use inside or in spaces with stagnant or unmoving air.

Places where you only order highballs due to health concerns ftw.

idk about the process in montenegro, but it’s pretty normal in america for bars to use a three compartment sink with a christmas tree scrub brush stuck to the bottom of the first sink, which is filled about half full with soapy water, a rinse water mixture in the next one and a sanitizer water mixture in the last one.

it’s a fast and safe way to do dishes by hand, especially glassware if you always inspect for chips afterward (which you should be doing anyway!).

Because they keep having experiences they can’t or have no interest in explaining.

Heck of a bluff. I don’t see how the us government can expect to sell the threat of expanding an unpopular foreign war in an election year.

Wait, is that 9/11s music I hear?

I think you replied to the wrong comment.

It’s worth noting that gold plated connectors are not snake oil. Gold is a good conductor and doesn’t form a nonconductive oxide layer. That means it’s going to be more durable and won’t corrode together or apart like those old ass sheet metal tube sockets that all need to be cleaned.