My First Macbook

It's been more than two months since I got a Macbook Air M2. I am in love with the laptop itself.

I have been a Windows laptop user since I got my own laptop in my teenage years. But over the years, I really wanted an Apple laptop. I just postponed it again and again for various reasons (usually financial ones). Previously this year, I saved up for one and decided to wait for the M3 Air to come out. After the release of the M3 Macbook Pro, I realized Apple still has a weird love for 8 GB base RAM in 2024. I decided to buy the M2 Air in December because I didn't think they would actually put more than 8 GB and 256 GB on the M3 Air base model.

8 GB RAM can be acceptable by the way - but not at the price point of a Macbook Pro. And also for a Macbook Pro.

Why I wanted a Macbook

One of the main reasons I always wanted a Macbook was simply the software. There's a deeper integration between Apple's devices and given that I prefer that ecosystem, I liked it more than I did.

Also, a lot of the apps I liked using were Apple-only. GoodLinks, Things 3, and NetNewsWire were all Apple-only (sadly) so I found myself a bit frustrated with my workflow.

However, many reasons stopped me from getting one:

1. Financial reasons. There are many cheaper Windows laptops. While they won't perform as well as the Macbook, these cheaper laptops are good enough for most of my stuff.
2. Gaming. Gaming is horrible on the Mac. Even now. It's horrendous. Steam runs horribly and Apple is NOT at all serious about gaming. News like these one make me a bit hopeful but a bit of reality check shows they really aren't.
3. Software. There are certain software - especially engineering software - that either don't work or work horribly compared to the Windows counterpart. Given that my work gives me a Windows machine, this wasn't much of an issue. But when I was still studying engineering, this was definitely a big issue.

But overall, I really wanted one. The build quality of Apple is very good and because I'm a programmer in my free time, it was much easier for me to do my hobby given the UNIX-based operating system. Furthermore, it was easier for me to continue most of my work since a lot of my prferred apps are Apple native.

Experiences over the two months

Overall, it was decent and whelm - basically what I expected it to be. It's absolutely amazing.

There are a few things that I found to be a bit better.

1. It was much lighter than expected. I didn't realize how heavy my Windows laptop was until I got the Macbook.
2. Gaming sucks. I know I said it before but it bears repeating: It's horrible. I had an Ubuntu laptop before because I experimented with it back in 2016. While this was during a time that Steam was pushing Linux gaming to be viable, it wasn’t THAT great. But I found it much better than the gaming experience I had now. It didn’t support a lot of AAA games but Wine helped a lot. Over the years, Linux gaming got much better while Mac got worse (32-bit support being dropped is one example). It’s just weird to think that an OS that most people haven’t heard of is better than the Mac in terms of gaming.
3. USB-C only ports are a bigger problem than I thought it would be. While it's 2024 as I write this, most of my peripherals are still USB A. So having only a USB C port laptop is really bad. I know it's the future but I can still foresee USB A being used for the next 3 years as of writing this. My laptop was released in 2022 which means that it wasn't a bad idea for Apple at all to simply add even a single USB A port to the laptop. I could buy a dock - and I will - but for now, it’s really frustrating.
4. ⌘+Tab can be frustrating. In Windows, ALT+Tab moves you from window to window. ⌘+Tab moves you from app to app. To move to a different window on the same app, you need to use ⌘+`. This was a learning curve and I still get frustrated even today.
5. Battery life and MagSafe is much better than I anticipated. My Windows laptop had to be charged every 4 hours - this boi can go for three days before charging. And MagSafe is indeed much better than the traditional charging cables. I was thinking before if I had made the right choice buying the M2 instead of the M1 (since it’s still in many ways a great laptop). However, MagSafe for me was enough of a reason to choose the M2.
6. Finder can be awful coming from Windows Explorer. I know Mac is different so I wasn’t really too concerned with Enter being "rename file" rather than "open app". However, going to a specific directory was more difficult than I expected. I was used to Windows having a "This PC" section where you can kind of go to the "base" folder where everything lives. Mac doesn’t really have this. A little annoyance as well: Finder doesn’t automatically "grid" the files. You have to press any of these to make sure it grids - which wasn't really intuitive.
7. Screenshots are a bit more of a pain. This is more of a lack of experience - I was used to ⊞+⇧+S and ⊞+G for everything. I know Mac has ⌘-⇧-5 but my problem is more of that taking a screenshot doesn’t put it in my clipboard. When I take screenshots, I usually need to paste it somewhere - so the extra work of having to upload it in my app is a bit jarring.
8. I miss Home, PgUp, PgDown, and End keys. I didn’t really realize how much I used these keys until I used the MacBook keyboard. ⌘+← and ⌘+→ can work as good replacements most of the time but sometimes it doesn’t work. Plus, I still haven’t found a good replacement for Page Up and Down Keys that works across many apps.

Overall, I do enjoy the laptop - but if I had to use a Windows laptop again, I wouldn’t be mad. I’ll never let the Mac go but it wasn’t magical and the lack of gaming options is really frustrating. While some of my favorite games are available for the Mac (Stardew Valley and Minecraft), the lack of a fan makes me worried.

Also, storage space is not really an issue for me since most of my files live in the cloud. I also have an external hard drive so even if I ran out of space, I have options. I do recommend just getting an external hard drive rather than upgrading the base storage since the upgrade cost is too much.

Furthermore, I do agree a lot with this guy’s points. However, I am usually a single tasker so I didn’t find the snapping issue to be too much of an issue. I do realize why it can be annoying because I use it a lot on my work PC where the screen is huge.

I enjoy the Mac - but I still feel very indifferent right now since contrary to what some people will think, it’s not better or worse than a Windows laptop. It’s just different.