I’ve been on MacOS since 2003. It’s a great platform to use and develop on. I’ve had three Macbook Pros (2006, 2009, 2011). The 2006 still runs but runs very slow and is no longer supported. I gave the 13″ 2009 to my wife. My 2011 died late 2015. Now I’m without a Mac to work on.
I ended up selling the 2006 and 2011 and got a little over $400 for it. This was not even close to a brand new or even used Macbook Pro that’s newer than 2014. I decided to get a Dell Inspiron 7568. Surprisingly, I was able to replicate my workflow from MacOS to Windows 10. It’s still a little different but I’ve managed for the last couple of months. I get the usual crashing and weird hardware glitches (network related). I just restart the machine. I also get incompatibilities due to the environment – related to some node packages and Linux packages. I end up running Virtualbox and Ubuntu. I know you can run bash on Windows, but my workflow is a bit odd. Even with the struggles, I still pushed on. What can I do? At the moment, I’m unable to afford the apple tax.
Christmas and my birthday rolls around. My wife surprises me with a new 2016 Macbook Pro MLH42LL. Here’s a list of the specs.
- 2.7GHz quad-core Intel i7-6820HQ Skylake CPU
- 16GB ram LPDDR3 2133MHz
- Intel HD Graphics 530 / AMD Radeon Pro 455 2GB GDDR5 ram
- 512GB PCIe 3.0 drive
- 4x USB3.1 type c ports / Thunderbolt 3
- Touchbar
- Touch ID
Everything is soldered so no upgrading. The hardware design is really nice. I’ve never really appreciated it until I spent a few months on a Windows PC. It’s solid and well built. The weight isn’t too bad. I hated the keyboard (butterfly switches) but surprisingly I got used to it within the first hour of setting it up. The touchbar is impractical. I’ve only used it for emojis and even that’s limited to the Safari browser when I’m typing on a web page. Maybe it’ll be more useful when developers implement it on other apps.
Touch ID is useful to log in to the laptop. There isn’t really a power button anymore. Even when you shutdown, when you open the lid again, it gives an illusion that it was only sleeping. I have yet to use Apple Pay on the laptop. I’ve configured it to use my Apple Watch (first version) but it’s slower to respond than using Touch ID. Also, the vibration on the watch has become annoying.
I was disappointed with the announcement of the 2016 Macbook Pros. I talked myself out of even getting one, even if I could afford it. But after the first 10 minutes during my configuring of the new laptop, I knew I was fooling myself. If your current workflow is on MacOS and you’re considering the switch to Windows, go ahead and do the switch so won’t be curious. Many of you will probably come back to MacOS. I feel very fortunate to have my wife get me one. Maybe she was tired of hearing my frustrations and annoyance the past couple of months.
This is just a first thoughts post. I’ve only had it for about a week. I may post some other things as they come up.
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