I don’t remember when I first started using computers, but I know from my family it was before I could read.  I eventually had “my” computer, which was the hand-me-down from the family computer.  Out of these desktops, there was a WIndows 95, 98, and an XP.  I had total reign over them, which usually involved figuring out how to run games on them.  Anything that wasn’t working I had to fix myself for the most part.  When I was 13, I got my first laptop, a Compaq Presario which ran Vista.  It was a nice laptop, but eventually it died and I replaced it with some terrible HP laptop that ran Windows 7.  When I graduated High School I used that graduation money to buy a gaming PC, an ASUS G75VX running Windows 8.  That computer still runs, but it does so slowly even after a hard drive replacement, so it almost exclusively gets used for the occasion I want to play a game on it.

I was like a lot of PC users, turning up my nose at the Mac platform.  The year I replaced the hard drive in my last PC, I began to see how much work Mac users around me at the University of Iowa were able to do more effectively.  When that PC was in the shop I was using the nearest computer lab to where I was living, which was exclusively a Mac lab.  It was…nice.  I began to look more and more into it and eventually I bought the 2015 13” Macbook Pro.  As I mentioned in my tech set-up post, it’s the best computer I’ve ever used.

There’s a lot that goes into that evaluation.  For one, the computer is super ergonomic.  Because I have massive hands, I can reach the bottom of the trackpad with my thumbs and the top of the keyboard with the rest of my fingers.  My Compaq Presario was the same way, but its trackpad wasn’t as nice.  The trackpad on my Mac can be clicked at the top of the trackpad for a normal left click, and not one of those awkward double-tap clicks either.  Even the right-click region seems to be 1/4 of the trackpad’s area.  While I don’t use the “look-up” hard press a lot, the Force Touch features of the trackpad make it a much more natural experience in my opinion.  

While I’m not one of these people in love with making everything lighter and thinner at the loss of functionality, my MBP doesn’t lack any functionality, and its lightness is very nice.  I can sit at the most awkward of angles and still balance my laptop very well.  Its port set-up is nice, though I don’t use the thunderbolt ports often (they’re a versatile port for adapters for, say, ethernet).

There’s something nice about the keyboard too.  Using ⌘ doesn’t seem like it would be that different from CTRL on a PC, but being able to use the same modifier key to ⌘↹ into a program and then paste or quit it is very nice.  While some programs provide exceptions, the use of the modifier keys usually follows a pretty logical progression.  

What makes this computer a real dream though is definitely macOS.  From the exclusive software to the flexibility of the OS, it’s wonderful.  I spent a little bit of time on Linux Mint on my last PC and it really hit home how an operating system should work without getting in your way.  Windows gets in your way.  I see posts all the time complaining about Windows’s awful default settings getting restored by new updates.  I currently run Windows 10 on that old PC of mine and it is a nightmare.  

I don’t know why there is such an urge among Windows users to cast scorn upon Macs.  I was one of them.  I’ve only experienced macOS since Yosemite, so maybe it was actually less pleasant before.  There’s the stigma that Mac users don’t know how to use their computers as well.  As someone who considers themselves a power user, I’m doing less digging around with a registry editor or manually loading up dll libraries for certain software, and instead finding better app synergy and scripts other people have written for Alfred that make my life easier.  

I write all of this not just to gush about my Mac, but because I want to lay out how committed I am to Mac as a platform for the purpose of discussing synergy between Apple devices and my journey with phones in a future post.  On Mac Power Users, they sometimes talk about the “delight” of using an iOS device when they contrast it with their work on a Mac.  I don’t get that, but I do feel the “delight” they describe when I’m working on my Mac after a life of Windows use.