It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Linux (and open source software in general). One doesn’t have to look at this blog for very long to figure that out. With that said, I’m also an avid photographer. I’ve previously talked about how much I’ve wanted to move my photography workflow to Linux and even tried forcing myself to figure out how to make it work for about 6 months. After that time, however, I came to the conclusion that the open source photography software just is not up to the task of a professional photography workflow (and don’t even get me started on the state of video editing applications on Linux). For me, Linux just is not currently a viable option for these sorts of workflows (though I do truly hope that changes in the future).
Having made this realization, I was left with a choice: either I could go back to using Windows for my creative work or I could give Mac a try. I had been hearing about how great Apple’s M-series of chips are, so I was pretty keen to give it a go. So, I finally broke down and bought a 16-inch Macbook Pro with an M5 Pro chip and 48 gigs of ram. I’ve now been using the machine for a couple of months, so I figured I’d share some of my thoughts.
The Laptop Itself
It was absolutely no surprise to me that the build quality of the laptop itself is absolutely top-notch. Say what you will about Apple, but their hardware is excellent. The construction is rock solid, the screen is absolutely beautiful, and the keyboard feels about as good as I could hope for a laptop keyboard. There’s really not a whole lot to say about the build quality other than it’s great.
The Hardware
The more important question is how do I feel about the M5 Pro? Well, simply put, I’m very impressed with it! This laptop is by far the best computer I’ve ever used. The M5 Pro is able to handle absolutely everything I throw at it without a second thought. Everything from editing photos in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to editing 4K video in Premiere Pro and After Effects is effortless. And it does all of this while sipping battery life and barely every spinning up a fan. I honestly struggle to find a negative thing to say about the hardware of this laptop.
If I was going to complain about anything, it would be how un-upgradeable and un-repairable these machines are. You’re forced to stick with whatever amount of RAM or SSD you chose when you bought the machine and God forbid you ever want to repair the machine yourself! I really do lament these aspects of the machine, but I’m impressed enough by all of the other aspects of it to just grit my teeth and deal with it.
MacOS
So, clearly I’m enjoying the Mac hardware experience, but what about MacOS? Well, it’s fine.
The Mac operating system is by far the weakest part of the Mac experience. Let me be clear, the way the software integrates with the hardware is absolutely fantastic and is a big part of why the overall Mac experience is so great. With that said, however, MacOS has some limitations that are just down right frustrating.
By far, the biggest frustration on MacOS for me is window management. I’m not sure who designed the window management paradigm on Mac or why it’s still the way it is, but it’s pretty terrible. Granted, you can use third party applications to make the experience better, but it really boggles my mind that a modern OS like MacOS has such a terrible window management experience.
On a similar note, it’s ridiculous how many third party apps you need to do things that should just be built in to the OS. I shouldn’t need third party applications to manage external monitors, improve the experience with non-apple mice, manage the insanity of the bar, or make window management tolerable. Seriously, Apple, MacOS could really stand for a bit of refresh in this regard.
Despite all of this, MacOS is certainly workable and, after you spend some time getting used to it and finding the appropriate third party apps to work around the annoyances, can be pretty enjoyable to use. While I certainly have plenty of gripes about MacOS, I’m still very much enjoying using this machine.
The Verdict
If you’ve made it this far, it’s probably no surprise that I am very happy with my Macbook Pro purchase. It has become my primary machine that I use for a great deal of my work. With that said, I’ve certainly not given up on my Linux machines and still use them extensively for development and security research tasks. The conclusion that I’ve ultimately come to is that for the breadth of the types of work I do, I need different tools for the different jobs. For my creative work (and even quite a bit of my technical work), the Mac is the right tool for the job.