After three years of using the same windows laptop, it was time for a refresh. The old HP Spectre x360 served me very well. With a stylish look, a super-slim build, a gorgeous 4K display, and serious speed, it was definitely my all-time favorite computer. But, it was showing it’s age and wasn’t keeping up with modern development environments like Docker.
As luck would have it, Apple was planning to release their new Macbook Pro M1 computers about this time. I took the plunge and bought one. It’s be a love hate releationship so far.
I went nuts on the specifications. I got it all… The 14″ Macbook Pro with M1 Max and 64GB with 10 CPUs and 24 GPUs.
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There are a tons of things to love about this laptop. The design is crisp and smooth. Although the screen is nearly square, it’s bright and sharp. The performance is outstanding. Changes made in VS Code are deployed through Docker faster than I can switch screens.
Some of the things I really love:
- Using a real Linux Kernel is way better than Windows. It’s just so powerful. Brew is a great solution for package management.
- Integrated Texting and Pictures between my phone and computer are awsome.
- Smooth transition (App Start, Task switching) between applications is cool.
- The way it switches between virtual desktops and full screen apps is impressive.
But there are some things that need work by Apple.
- The App Launcher is silly. It feels like they took t straight from the iPad and iOS and slapped it on Mac OS.
- Some of my favorite applications won’t run on Mac OS. One of the key ones is Visual Studio (even in Parallels).
- A real pieve is that the menu bar is stuck to the top of the screen. In Windows, the menu moves with each screen. I have a very large screen and to access the menu is a long trip to to menu and back.
It’s been 90 days now and I’m getting more comfortable each day. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone but for me, it’s been a positive adventure.