Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.
An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.
Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.
If you own more than one computer, the microsoft account syncs your desktop contents and other parts of the environment.. desktop background is one I've noticed. That can be nice
You certainly can log into a Windows machine without a microsoft account. It's actually still quite common in businesses that you log in with an account managed by your organization, although this is changing as more and more businesses migrate to MS Entra ID. This still isn't exactly a "microsoft account" but its similar.
You can also still log in with a completely local account as well. It takes a few extra minutes to set up but once configured it works fine.
The system is full of dark patterns and roadblocks that steer users towards an MS account, but you don't have to use one.
Yeah, the sheer joy I've gotten from being part of a few collaborative teams in my career was amazing. It was like we all got smarter by working together.
That kind of full-bore magic has only happened for me once. But it was fun while it lasted!
This seems like a good time to point out something an early mentor shared with me: you can rate all jobs on 3 scales.
1. Do you enjoy the actual work?
2. Do you enjoy the people you're working with?
3. How's the pay?
If you get all 3 of those metrics over a "C", you're incredibly far ahead of most people. My golden-team job was a AAA job. My current job (where I get a taste of great teamwork, though since I'm leadership now it's different) is an B, and A, and a C+/B-. I've been here 18 years as a result.
I have both a fancy smartwatch (first-gen Ultra, which is still a great piece of kit) and a severalness of old-school mechanicals from both fancy makers (Rolex, Omega) and decidedly more approachable makers (most recently Traska).
Having a watch on that's just a watch is a lovely thing. Having a watch that tells time with springs and gears is super fucking cool to me. And in 2026, it's nice to have zero notifications if that's what you want. But they all have their place.
Working at home, at my desk all day? I'm almost certainly wearing an old-school watch.
Riding my motorcycle, I'm 100% wearing the Ultra for a host of reasons (easier phone unlocking, fall detection, etc).
It's nice to think about a FOSS-first world, but what people want is turnkey computing. That's why Apple does well -- the happy path on the Mac, or in iOS, is very very smooth for both technical people and octogenarians.
The fun thing about the Mac is that technical people can do more or less whatever they want, while the out of the box experience is still super simple and easy for people who do not have a comfortable relationship with computing. This is a good thing.
Consider the easy integration you get with Apple headphones and Apple devices. Regular Bluetooth pairing is far more fiddly and annoying.
Consider how you'd set up easy use of a password manager across devices. This is "it just works" territory with the Apple ecosystem. It's awkward and weird on Windows. It's a giant DIY project on Linux.
This is why Apple succeeds. They think about end user experience far more than Microsoft does. Linux, as a non-product (this is not a ding), doesn't "think" about this at all, for the most part.
I DO think it's pretty obvious that desktop Linux would be much farther along had Apple not pivoted to a FreeBSD based OS a quarter century ago. That brought a lot of very technical people onto the platfor that would've otherwise gone to Linux. There was a time when any given tech conf was a sea of illuminated Apples on the backs of laptop screens, because getting your average LAMP stack running was trivial on a Mac and painful on Windows. It was an opportunity for Microsoft, but Ballmer couldn't see it, and so here we are.
OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.
I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.
OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.
i thought Sinners was so overhyped. mediocre performances (great music!) and a terrible plot (why were the vampires forced to ask for permission to enter, and then able to storm the building a few scenes later? was there no better way to resolve that then just forget about it)
loved OBAA (incredible pacing!) but had its flaws too
People who complain about aspects about movies they didn't like should all be as forthright as GP in explaining why exactly they didn't like that aspect, so I can decide whether to entirely disregard the opinion.
I have a nontrivial listening rig in my house. I've spent thousands in headphones over the years (which happens quickly at $300-500 a pop). The finest ones I've owned MIGHT edge the Max out in certain conditions, but
- The Max add ANC
- The Max are wireless
- The Max are seamlessly integrated with the rest of my Apple gear
so to me that makes them the go-to -- so much so that I actually sold off the other headphones when we moved last year. I just wasn't using them.
The tl;dr is that the Max -- even the first gen -- do indeed perform very, very well.
They're priced vs. peer closed-ear headphones, not the rest of the Mac line. They perform accordingly, at least once you factor in a mild Apple premium (say, 15-20%).
I say this because I was able to compare them to my own $400 Sennheisers (which are somewhat awkward because they're wired, and really require a headphone amp to shine), and found the Max to be just as good.
There are also a number of online reviewers who've said the same thing, among them developer, Tumblr millionaire, and headphone addict Marco Arment. He famously described the Max as his favorite closed-back headphone.
Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.
My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
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