As with most programmers so isolated in the web bubble, you have no idea that you're describing light use. Yes, your usually-fully-idle virtual machine is light use. Yes, your marginal text processing is light use.
Sometimes, I need to render video. At one point, MBPs were more than sufficient for state-of-the-art video work on the fly. But time has marched on, and Apple has not. That's why people are pissed, and it's a reasonable state of pissedness given that these are professional machines. It's gotten to the point where I have ditched Final Cut entirely for Premiere just so I can run it on Windows on a machine that is adequately specced for professional work. I hate Premiere. Apple does not offer a product that isn't priced dumb-as-dirt that can actually run Final Cut adequately, though, so that's the only choice I have.
But, hell. The current lines of Mac spin up to near-screaming, even despite those special, so-quiet fans, when one watches a video, so I guess asking for performance when you make one is downright unprofessional.
I have seen a lot of creatives switch to Premiere from Final Cut Pro for reasons other than platform support, many still use a Mac. But they claim it is a more powerful video editing system. What is it about Premiere that you don't like? I'm curious because I'm considering both platforms.
I just really don't like Adobe's UI conventions across the board. They don't feel natural on either Windows or OS X and often stuff like dragging and dropping between applications doesn't do what I expect for completely random reasons. It's powerful stuff, but I wish it wasn't so obtuse.
> The current lines of Mac spin up to near-screaming, even despite those special, so-quiet fans, when one watches a video
Ugh, no they don't.
Video decoding is CPU intensive in Chrome and VLC. Video decoding in Safari and QuickTime uses negligible CPU resources. This difference is so striking that I abandoned Chrome. I use Safari, which I don't like, but 100% vs. 2% CPU usage it's so worth it.
Mpv has pretty good performance too, sometimes approaching QuickTime.
You yourself say that Safari is a worse experience.
Having to choose between "using a worse experience" and "having my laptop try to self-immolate" is not, historically, a choice Apple foists on its users.
(Yes, Chrome is third-party. Doesn't matter. Linux rightly gets flak when devices don't work because of third-party manufacturers, OS X can get flak when videos make Apple hardware conflagrant.)
Yeah, it's a strange situation. No idea why you're downmodded, but indeed YouTube serves nice content to Safari that can be decoded efficiently (hardware accelerated).
Sometimes, I need to render video. At one point, MBPs were more than sufficient for state-of-the-art video work on the fly. But time has marched on, and Apple has not. That's why people are pissed, and it's a reasonable state of pissedness given that these are professional machines. It's gotten to the point where I have ditched Final Cut entirely for Premiere just so I can run it on Windows on a machine that is adequately specced for professional work. I hate Premiere. Apple does not offer a product that isn't priced dumb-as-dirt that can actually run Final Cut adequately, though, so that's the only choice I have.
But, hell. The current lines of Mac spin up to near-screaming, even despite those special, so-quiet fans, when one watches a video, so I guess asking for performance when you make one is downright unprofessional.