I Bought a MacBook Pro

This changes everything. This is actually the first Apple product I have ever owned. Never owned an iPod (never owned a Zune either unfortunately). My first three phones were feature phones and then my first smartphone was a Windows Phone. I’ve used Windows as a desktop OS for almost 20 years. I really like Apple hardware, it looks good and I have used OS X while repairing computers at ResNet, but I’ve never actually owned any of their products. Now is the time…for two weeks anyway.

So what happened? Sunday I spent my day installing the latest build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview (build 10130) onto my Surface and my desktop. I had to do a fresh install onto my Surface because Visual Studio 2015 was not working correctly. The desktop install went smoothly. The last time I did a fresh install onto my Surface was February and the last time I did a fresh install onto my desktop was probably late April. It kind of gets annoying to have to download and reinstall an OS when you have 950 Kbps internet at home so yesterday, like usual, I was complaining about Windows. One of my friends suggested I try OS X for a month. I would be great if somebody let me use their MacBook for a month but I did the next best thing and bought a MacBook to use for two weeks.

I bought a 13 inch base model MacBook Pro with Retina display. I don't understand why they sell a non Retina version still.^[1] The last time I did something like this I bought a Surface RT (the original) for two weeks. I got a pretty good feel for how terrible that thing was so hopefully this time I can get a good feel on how terrible umm not as good as Windows cough amazing and great OS X is. To try to get the best experience possible I’ve set some ground rules for myself.

1. If I can avoid it I will not use Windows
   I’m still on co-op and I have to use Windows at work. No getting around that. I also own a Windows Phone. I’m still going to use that. But besides that no Windows. I will not turn on my desktop for two weeks. I will not touch my Surface. When I need to do personal computer things I will do them on the MacBook.

2. Try to use Apple alternatives
   Since I’ve used Microsoft stuff for so long I’ve fully embraced their ecosystem. All my files are on OneDrive, I have an Xbox Music subscription (lol), and I use Office. I’m going to keep using OneDrive, no point in switching over to iCloud, I’m going to try using Apple Music and iTunes shudder once Apple Music launches and I’ll use iWork (Apple Productivity Apps?) for a little bit. I’m probably going to install the Office 2016 preview for OS X though because I want to check it out. I will also probably use Safari instead of Chrome. Battery life and all that jazz.

3. Try and build cool shit
   A good way to grapple with an OS is to develop stuff on it. I could just read reddit for two weeks straight but that is probably going to get boring after a while. Instead I’m going to make shit. Or try to at least. Learn some Swift? Try out OS X/iOS development? Work on Attention Passengers? Play around with C# on OS X? On the last one I kind of want to check it out but I’ve been using C# for a really long time and I want to try to stick to new stuff.

4. Force touch everything

I’m pretty excited for the next two weeks. I’m going to try to keep a daily log of my reactions to OS X. Things I like, things I hate, things I miss from Windows, things I wish Windows had. I’m guessing most of the notes will be how great the trackpad is and how much I wish I could touch my screen. If anybody has any tips on using OS X feel free to reach out and tell me.

PS: Unfortunately I’m not going to install El Capitan on it. There are many cool things in El Capitan that I would like to try out but public beta starts sometime in July which will probably be after I part ways with my precious MacBook.

Bonus: Microsoft and Apple silliness