30 days ago, I first opened a Mac. My Mac from work. I asked for it. And by that, I mean I both asked for a Mac and this completely new and challenging experience.
I’ve been using Windows all my life. I expected to hate the Mac. I did hate it the first day. On the second day, I hated it a bit less.
On the third day, I hated it even a bit less. The trend continued until I hit a plateau. I don’t hate the Mac anymore, but I don’t like it either. When I’m working from the office I take it with me. When I watch a movie in bed, or when I’m doing a Teams call on the living room sofa, the Mac is the device of choice.
For any other task, I prefer to use my Windows PC or my gaming laptop. I still prefer Windows for productivity tasks. The Mac window and app management still feel rudimentary to me. Keyboard shortcuts are a joke.
MacOS works best with a touchpad, not a mouse, so every time I connect my 4K monitor and Logitech gaming mouse I still need to keep my Mac open, so I can do the gestures for App Expose and Mission Control. Gestures are so much faster, and you know I like shortcuts.
The only thing that no Windows machine can do is last as long on a battery charge. No, really. The Apple Silicon Mac battery life is ridiculous. Not only that, but a Mac will work just as fast when plugged in, or on battery. It makes no difference whatsoever.
My Windows gaming laptop runs circles around my Mac when plugged in. The story changes on battery. Here my Windows laptop behaves like a sprinter carrying a backpack, or two. It’s ridiculous in the worse way possible.
I wrote a difference piece, where I express a few ideas about Apple laptop design philosophy vs the Windows world. You may want to give it a read sometime.
And talking about performance, the Mac is not that fast. It doesn’t feel as snappy as my ROG gaming laptop with the 14-core i9 CPU. I didn’t expect that, especially since most reviewers praise Apple Silicon, but I guess you can’t trust YouTube influencers. You have to test everything yourself.
Oh, with one exception: resume from Sleep is instantaneous on Mac OS. You can’t open the lid fast enough and the screen is on, waiting for you to log in.
I haven’t tried gaming, but is there anything to say about gaming on a Mac? I don’t think so. Note: by gaming I mean AAA titles with Ray Tracing, not the likes of Asphalt and Tetris.
Yes, my Windows laptop is big, noisy (or ridiculously noisy, if you’re on Turbo), “features” a terrible touchpad, and has lousy battery life, but it’s so much more powerful that I can’t ignore that. And for the same price, it has double the RAM and four times the storage. This is also ridiculous, but not in a good way.
Will I change my mind about the Mac? Probably not. Will I still use the Mac? Yes!
I honestly don’t know what would make me love a Mac. The software is what drives me away the most. I’m already used to the most important Mac differences, and being nosy, I’m sure I already know more tricks than the average Mac used (not the experienced user, of course).
Mac OS is just so slow compared to Windows when it comes to productivity and how I work that it’s really a problem when I want to get things done faster.
Not only that, but I was surprised to find quite a few bugs in Mac OS. It’s nothing too annoying but the “it just works” expression I keep hearing from Mac veterans doesn’t quite really apply, at least not in my case. I would say Windows is a bit more buggy still, but it’s very close to what I experience in Mac OS.
Will I change my mind about the Mac? Probably not. Will I still use the Mac? Yes! I want to keep an open mind and wish to learn the ins and outs of Apple computers.
I like to learn new things, even if it means using products from a company that’s not aligned with my own principles. At every step, you can see Apple is trying to get you to use its other products. It also tries so hard to be different, for no other reason than to be different that it’s ridiculous.
I’m not saying that Microsoft is some sort of saint, but at least it helps me do my work faster, so I can go read a book, spend time with the family or play a cool game all by myself.
I this article feels like a list of random thoughts then you’re right. But I thought about these things to say for a long time. If you think 30 days is a long time that is.
Feel free to join the conversation… and count how many times I used the word ridiculous (including this one time).
Aaaand, if you want to know who you’re reading check out the about page.
