If you thought that Microsoft was done with Recall after its catastrophic reveal as the main feature of Copilot+ PCs, you are mistaken.
Microsoft wants to bring it back this October 2024. Good news is that the company plans to introduce it in test builds of the Windows 11 operating system in October. In other words: do not expect the feature to hit stable Windows 11 PCs before 2025 at the earliest.
While Recall may have sounded great on paper and on work-related PCs, users and experts alike expressed concern. Users expressed fears that malware could steal Recall data to know exactly what they did in the past couple of months.
Others did not trust Microsoft to keep the data secure. We suggested to make Recall opt-in, instead of opt-out, to make sure that users knew what they were getting into when enabling it.
Microsoft pulled the Recall feature shortly after its announcement and published information about its future in June. There, Microsoft said that it would make Recall opt-in by default. It also wanted to improve security by enrolling in Windows Hello and other features.
What do you recommend? What is the most Apple-like+MacBook like?
Framework
Which OS to go with it?
If you want “Apple-like” look and feel, KDE Neon, Ubuntu, or Pop_OS! are good first Linux distros to start with.
I am running Kubuntu on mine
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I think Fedora is pretty great. It offers a lot of packages and ships updates quickly, has good performance, doesn’t include much crap, is pretty good security-wise and lets you choose between many desktop environments. There are even more stable and secure immutable versions like Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite and others, along with forks of it like Universal Blue and the distros that are based on it like Bazzite, Aurora, Bluefin or Secureblue.
Linux distro of your choice
You can fix it instead of buying a new one, it’s not like Apple
Elementary is a very polished and user friendly linux distribution designed to familiar to MacOS users.
With the slightly massive caveat that you can’t upgrade to newer versions without a nuke and pave.
Any decent laptop for hardware. ElementaryOS for the OS, if you really want the look/feel of macos.
Roger
Edit: its beautiful, is it well-maintained? Do you use it?
I did for a bit, but I’m not a fan of the macos ui, so it wasn’t for me.
Zorin is a Ubuntu-derived distro that has multiple desktop managers built in, including one that mimics macOS.
Ubuntu or Pop OS use GNOME by default which is similar to macOS
Pop!_OS won’t use GNOME for much longer. They’re currently developing their own desktop called COSMIC.
COSMIC itself has a similar design to macOS
A lot of the laptops made by Huawei and Xiaomi are MacBook-like in design at least. Framework is much more repairable though as are business laptops from HP or Dell. Dell in particular has made some quite long battery life laptops in the past like the Latitude 7410 and 7400, though those aren’t particularly new they are at least cheap when bought second hand.
In terms of OS you got to go with some Linux flavor as they offer various DEs some of which are mac like. Obviously macOS and Linux terminals are somewhat similar anyway. PopOS is a great option.
I would not, in good conscience, ever recommend a Dell machine to anyone anymore. Not only the design and build quality have gone down catastrophically, but Dell would take literally every opportunity they have to fuck you over.
XPS machines in particular have a solid history of being good on paper, but a nightmare, once you ever need to contact them about issues
XPS aren’t business machines, just premium consumer machines. They aren’t built to the same standard, as would honestly be expected given they cost less. I’ve had my own bad experiences with an XPS laptop and wouldn’t buy one again. Too many compromises in the name of being thin and lightweight.
To be honest I was more suggesting second hand machines where warranty from the OEM isn’t really a consideration.
I think you will find most OEMs don’t really care about customer support unless you are a business. HP, Asus, and friends all have their own horror stories. There are only a few companies like Framework I actually trust.
We’re about to buy a few new laptops at work. My boss is hardcore Dell fan, I need to prove him it’s no better than anything else on the market.
I’m suggesting either Thinkbook (cheap option, comparable specs cost 2/3 of Dell) or Probook/Elitebook which are still considerably cheaper than Dell in my country.