After two years away from Apple devices (aside from occasionally using the household iPad), I’m now back in full force. Last December, the CEO at my previous company decided to upgrade his iPhone and I took his old one off his hands: a 6s Plus 128 GB Space Gray that I consider to be grade B (impeccable screen with a few scuffs in the frame and a small knock on the back). And now my current company supplied me with a 2015 13” MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i7-5557U, 16 GB of LPDDR3 1866 MHz and 512 GB of PCIe SSD. I’m also on a family plan that includes Apple Music and iCloud Storage.
Up until I got the MacBook Pro, I was using Antergos at work and Windows 10 at home. I thought about dual booting Windows and Linux on my Surface Pro, but never got around to it due to the increasing frustration with its lack of horsepower. My first few days back to macOS (currently on High Sierra) have been a mixed bag:
- Slowly fired up some of my old muscle memory for shortcuts to manage desktops, windows, and tabs, but it’s still frustrating having to look at the keyboard to remember certain key combinations
- The Apple key. It changes everything, especially when I’m using a Microsoft keyboard. I keep telling myself “the Windows key is the Apple key”. And they’re in different locations in Microsoft and Apple keyboards. Sigh…
- Homebrew-Cask was a welcome addition to managing apps in a much more Linux-y way
- Multiple desktops do wonders for my productivity. I missed it dearly on Windows and use it extensively on Linux.
I’m definitely more productive, as the MacBook Pro is miles ahead of the Surface Pro in terms of overall performance (thermal throttling alone drove me nuts on countless occasions). I’ll be using the Surface Pro as a tablet for the next month before I make a decision on its future. I’ll mainly use it for browsing the Interwebs and video streaming. Maybe a bit of e-mail on the side.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
- Michael Corleone