I Used A Computer For Two Weeks

I Used A Computer For Two Weeks

Two weeks ago I walked into an Apple store and bought a MacBook Pro. Today I walked into that same store and returned a MacBook Pro. My life hasn't really changed over the past two weeks. I tried to keep a log over the last two weeks of my experiences with a MacBook but after a week I kind of gave up. I realized that it's just another computer. It's good at some stuff and shit at other stuff. The hardware is great. If you want a laptop with great hardware definitely consider a MacBook. On the other hand the OS is pretty good. It has its perks and flaws just like Windows. I don't think I can put one over the other, mainly because I really hate Finder.

So let's recap. Two weeks ago I set some ground rules for myself.

  1. If I can avoid it I will not use Windows
  2. Try to use Apple alternatives
  3. Try and build cool shit

I pretty much failed on rule 1. I used my Surface when I was my MacBook up on the first day. On day two I used my Surface to ssh into my MacBook to take a screenshot of the lock screen (which is a cool thing to be able to do) and then on day six I booted up my desktop to work on Attention Passengers. So what did I do on my MacBook? Used Safari. It's actually a pretty nice browser. I downloaded Chrome but I didn't use it at all because Safari is comparable to Chrome. The only thing I really missed from Chrome was a powerful Omnibox (hit tab to search websites). But besides Safari I didn't really use any other Apple alternatives.

One of the first things I downloaded was the Office 2016 preview for OS X. Office now isn't shit on OS X. It's basically the same as Office on Windows. I didn't touch any of the iWork products. iTunes was OK as a music player. It did play music. That's about all it did right. Most of my albums that I synced down from OneDrive were split up and some album art did not show up correctly. I feel like this is because iTunes expects music to be set up a certain way. Unfortunately I didn't use Apple Music at all. It probably would have been very similar to Xbox Music. Just with iTunes.

I didn't really build any cool shit. I did however improve on some cool shit that a couple people and I built. Attention Passengers got some love over the last two weeks and now you can send in a from and to station (for example Kendall to Ruggles) and now you get an itinerary back. It still only relies on schedules (so if trains are delayed you will get incorrect times) but I added in support for all lines (except for a couple stops because I need to deal with duplicate names). There are also a couple of improvements and bugs I need to work out. When transferring to the Green line it doesn't tell you which Green line train you need to get on. Also when going past JFK/UMass (or probably Copley) it doesn't report times correctly because the line splits. Besides Attention Passengers I looked at Swift a little bit. I don't know Objective-C at all but Swift looks like a nice language (compared to Objective-C).

Overall I realized a MacBook is just a computer. The hardware is really nice. I force touched a lot of things but force touch was never useful. The software is pretty good. No native window snapping is horrible. Spectacle or something like it is a must. iTerm2 is a nice console replacement. ConEmu is a very nice Windows console replacement as well however. Homebrew is just like Chocolatey. I never turned off my MacBook during the two weeks I used it and didn't lose that much battery while in sleep. Finder however is shit. I can't cut paste files? Why can't I snap items into a grid. Tabs are nice though.

MacBook devil edge

The trackpad is really really really nice. No trackpad I have used compares to how accurate the MacBook touchpad is. However that corner thing under the trackpad is really annoying because it kept poking my palm while I was using it.

tl;dr: A++ 10/10 would Apple hype train for two weeks again.