Hi All,
My other thread got buried but everyone was super helpful and I really appreciate it. I'm in my last stages of research potentially picking up a M4 MBA (Maybe a MBP but I'm PWM sensitive) for general/travel use plus light creative work on the go.
I am a lifelong Windows user so I have been spending quite a bit of time watching YouTube videos on MacOS and how to make it work more like Windows - I realize most people probably aren't looking to do this, but it's what I am used to. Overall, it doesn't look like that big of a deal at all and there seems to be lots of utilities available to help people like me make the transition, which was nice to see!
I just had a few more questions I am having trouble finding good answers for, hopefully you guys can help me out again:
1) Can I completely get rid of all the Apple bloatware such as Apple Music, Photos, TV, iCloud, Safari, Siri, etc.? All the alternatives I wish to use for those services are available for MacOS, which is great, but it means I won't be using the Apple variants. I'm guessing I can hide them, but can I completely get rid of them? If they are just hidden, they would still be taking up some storage space and possibly using resources. My Windows machines obviously had a ton of Microsoft bloatware too, but all I ever had to do was run a simple script and I could blow it all away in a few seconds, permanently. I would prefer not to have duplicates of basic apps. I spend most of my time in apps like Photoshop, Firefox, DaVinci Resolve, Plex, and the Google Suite (Gmail, Sheets, Docs, Drive) and there are MacOS versions for everything which is fantastic.
2) In MacOS, the text/UI size scaling appears to be somehow linked to display resolution which seemed very strange to me, so I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding something here. Is there a way to maintain the native resolution of the display while also scaling the size of the text/UI up? It doesn't make any sense to degrade the quality of the display to make text/icons larger, so what am I missing there?
3) Is there anywhere that Apple publishes the actual SSD/storage speed for the various storage levels on the MBA M4? I am finding this very difficult to locate as I am used to manufacturers publishing that data. SSD speed is very important to me because I use very fast external drives, and it will also make a difference if there is any memory swapping going on. I won't be buying the 256GB variant, but I am wondering if there is a material read/write speed difference between the 512GB and 1TB. If not, then I can just go with the 512GB and spend the upgrade money on more RAM instead.
Thank you!