A Lifetime Windows User Trying to use MacOS for Everyday Work

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Last year I purchased a Macbook Pro to take advantage of the new M1 Pro chips in my video editing workflows. It's been stellar as far as performance in these ways.

The Macbook hardware is easily the best I've ever used in a laptop:

But, what about everything else? Let's take a look.

Keep 'Er Going

I'm the type of guy who likes to make things work as long as possible, repairing and updating to keep computers, tools, cars - whatever, working way past their warranties expire. I don't buy the latest and greatest computer very often at all, and I expect many years out of what I do buy (so I don't buy the cheap stuff). My collection of PCs goes back 25 years - and still work! I even have a first-gen iPod on my desk right now running Remote for iTunes running on my Windows PC, plugged into my nice office speakers :)

Far and away the biggest bang for the buck has been replacing old magnetic disc drives with solid-state drives. I've used this to eke many more years out of old Macbooks and PCs alike, before other components start to flake out. Often, the devices get so old that they won't upgrade and become obsolete simply because their SSL certificates become outdated and pretty much all connection is lost.

Anyway, back to Mac vs Windows. I've used Macs off and on for years, supporting them at our local school, and learning my way around them just fine. I even have a perfectly fine 2009-era Macbook (the white plastic ones with the wonderful keyboards) that I've just replaced with a 2022 Macbook Pro. Guess what? Even though the old Macbook is a couple version of MacOS old, it takes care of web browsing, watching movies, and such perfectly fine. Even app support is still better than the horrible situation on iOS devices where all sorts of my favorite apps don't work any more because the developers didn't update them to work in the latest OSes (or the reverse where the iOS has gotten too old to run newer apps).

So, the day-to-day experience of a 13-year old Mac vs brand new is remarkably similar. Likewise with my PCs. Windows 10 runs great on surprisingly old hardware, like a 2009-vintage Dell Precision and early 2010s Thinkpads. Again, swapping to SSDs on these old machines makes a world of difference, and makes them very responsive and pleasant to use in practically everything.

Making the Switch

Even though I've run a mixed environment for years, Windows was still my primary environment. I've talked about how the basics work just fine no matter what hardware. What doesn't? Here's what I had trouble with:

 

Other than the keyboard issues still ingrained in my fingers, the rest of these issues are learnable - eventually. It's been fun to learn something new. Good luck if you try it yourself!

0 Comments

Comment on this article

Name:
Email:
Web:
Turing: Just to be sure you're a person, please enter our family last name.
Comments without an email address, or with any kind of HTML tags will not be accepted.