Apple users love to tell you it just works. But we found that if you look a
bit closer, that's not quite true, and there's all kinds of excuses for why,
but switching to macOS, at least for us, has been tough to say the least. We
both found the desktop kind of unintuitive, found that it lacked
obvious features, and there was a ton of software that we needed that just plain
doesn't just work. We could not wait until the 30 days was up so we could
ditch these turds. Why are you still using them then? It's been two months
because if we're being honest, it's not really
any worse than Windows and some aspects are clearly better. But with that said,
I do believe that there's a lot that Apple could do to make the experience
better. Not just for people like us that are relatively new to macOS, but also
for the rest of their users. So, here is how our 30-day Apple challenge went and
why 60 days later, we're both still on macOS, just like I'm still doing
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We want to kick things off with some aspects of our Mac journey that were
just a breath of fresh air. Apple really does make a great first impression. The
packaging was fantastic, both pretty and with no plastic to be seen, and macOS
itself is well, by just about any measure, a great looking OS. The
animations are nice and the design language is consistent. makes Windows
feel like honestly kind of a mess in comparison. Yeah, and even as an Android
user, I found a lot of value in AirDrop. I've never really had trouble sending
files to myself. There are 100 different ways to do it. But being able to really
quickly share stuff across Apple devices, like the prompter that we're
reading this off of, has been amazing. I
know you're already typing up a manifesto about how quick share on
Android is just as good. But the sharing
feature is only good as the user base and under 20% of our nerds in this
office have even used it versus near universal awareness and usage of
AirDrop. Touch ID setup was also super easy and because I grabbed an Apple
Watch for the challenge, I was able to unlock my devices simply by wearing it
near them. Even accounting for the nannying around altering system
settings. Are you sure you want to do that? Are you really sure? I found that
I needed my system PIN far less often to wake my system compared to my Windows
devices. Not owning an Apple Watch, I definitely missed Face ID on Mac and
like they have the space here in the freaking notch. But a cool workaround I
found is the caffeinate command. You can go into the terminal, type caffeinate-d,
and it will prevent the display from sleeping until the terminal window is
closed. This was huge for reviewing videos, following recipes, and referring
to instruction manuals where I might need to refer to torque specs for a
bunch of bolts, but not want to touch my laptop with transmission oil on my
hands. With the buttering up out of the way, I'm not going to lie, the initial
few days was really difficult. And the first thing that made me want to huck my
Mac at the wall was screenshot management. Compared to snipping tool on
Windows, the macOS solution is just plain not as userfriendly. First, to get
to it, you have to hit command shift 3,
4, or 5, which is not as easy to
remember as print screen. And then once you're in there, the tool itself is okay
at best. It is okay, though. The thing that really bothered me though was that
the share button gives you a whole bunch of great options. As long as you only
want Apple options, when in practice, I
nearly always want to share via Teams or Gmail, probably to a colleague. Also, by
default, all of the screenshots just out onto your desktop, which is a nightmare
for clutter. And that integrated markup tool is so bad. Tell me about it. Window
management initially was a huge problem for me. Thankfully, the fix for the
unnecessary borders is simple, but I still found the builting snapping to be
lacking. After downloading tiles though and setting it up, this is fantastic. I
do not miss fancy zones at all. And one thing that I just learned after over a
month is that you can enable app expose on the trackpad, which can make things
way easier than seeing literally everything in Mission Control. One thing
that wasn't as easy to fix was getting this thing to output to my monitor
correctly. I took your advice, by the way, and I ended up using my MacBook Air
in docked mode rather than using my Mac Mini as a separate desktop. But what I
found was that once I connected it, there was no obvious way to increase my
refresh rate or to independently adjust scaling and resolution. Also, it would
only scale correctly on my monitor if HDR was enabled. How does HDR change the
output resolution? Now, Better Display Pro is there to give Mac users back the
control that they need, but this is one of those classic cases on Mac of why do
I need a third party tool for this. I thought it's supposed to just work. I do
think we agree though that software quibbles aside, these laptops are
fantastic. Oh, they really are. Even coming from Snapdragon on Windows,
right, the battery life was incredible.
I mean, part of that was my new habit of plugging my laptop in every time I sat
down at my desk, giving it a little bit of juice every time I did that. And the
way that that worked out for me is that over the last 2 months, I've done
whatever I want on my laptop for however long I want, and I have never once
worried about finding a wall outlet. That was honestly a pretty life-changing
experience for me, and I can understand why, all other issues aside, people
could be attracted to this. Also, in
general, it's just a great machine. The screen, the keyboard, the trackpad, the
speakers, even the performance, they've all been fantastic. And like, we can
dunk on Apple all day for their overpriced upgrades to these machines.
But the base model ones, like the one that I bought, even the value is
compelling. Now, I missed the return window on this. You probably saw the
comments about that, guys. Our videos don't, you know, come out on exactly the
days that things happen. But when they announced the new models, I wasn't even
that mad. I still feel great about this
machine for a,000 bucks. I do kind of
wish that you got to use this MacBook Pro, though, because man is this thing
ever good. It's everything that you just mentioned, but better in every way. The
screen and speakers are among the best I have ever experienced on a laptop. Like
1600 nits in HDR. That's crazy. Yeah, it
is insane. I was able to work in direct sunlight with no problems at all. The
battery hasn't been quite as good as the Snapdragon laptop that I had before.
Like I arrived with 15% battery on set
and I now have to have it plugged in. But as long as I don't Yeah, as long as
I don't completely disregard it, it has been totally fine. We didn't put this in
here, but can I complain about Mag Safe for a second? I freaking hate this thing, dude. It falls out all the time.
Hey, Reese, can you throw those to me? Check this out.
Uh, note how these are still white. You know how Apple ships their products in
white, so the second you use them, they look like crap. They still look great,
don't they? That's cuz I haven't touched them. They're so USBC, all the things.
And also, if you use an angle grinder, all of the metal gets stuck in here and
it's so hard to get out. I thought you
were going to propose an angle grinder fix to your Mag Safe issues. I was going
to be like, really, Alex? No. Coming back to the software, one thing that I
thought was really cool was on top of continuity where you can copy paste
between your machines and pick up where you left off in your browser. I was
using an iPhone during the challenge and it was pretty great. You can even screen
share your phone to your laptop now, which I loved, but also felt like was a
bit of a missed opportunity. Like, can you imagine how awesome this feature
would be if Apple finally made a MacBook
with a touchcreen? Like I know they're
not going to do it because
reasons, but it would add yet another
to machines that are already freaking great until you plug them into a
monitor. Yeah, macOS on a laptop,
fantastic. macOS on the desktop.
Apple has clearly put so much thought and so much effort into delivering the
best trackpad experience on the market. But then none of that translates to a
traditional keyboard and mouse. Not only has Apple defied any and all feedback
and designed what is possibly the worst mouse on the market, but they've taken
it a step further and they've refused to support basic functions on the third
party mice that users will obviously prefer. Actions like zooming in, quickly
scrolling, and finding your open Windows. super easy on a trackpad and in
Windows and on Linux and on Android, but
on macOS, these crucial functions require you to use the keyboard or
third-p partyy software. I even needed a silly third party application in order
to get the back button on the side of my mouse to work in Safari. Like, guys,
those back buttons have been standard on mice for as long as I've been eligible
to vote. So, the 30s.
And not every problem that we had could be fixed with a quick app download like
the back button. My Wi-Fi was comparable to like earlier mobile Ryzen machines.
And I mean that in the worst possible media tech kind of way. I'm talking slow
handshakes, random disconnections, uh
just general slowness for no good reason. Now, I do have the M2 MacBook
Air because I bought it the wrong time, which does have an older Wi-Fi 6 card.
And in fairness, most of the issues that I had were while I was traveling and
using like rando hotspots. But from looking online, I am far from the only
person having these issues with the M2. Meanwhile, on the updated M4 MacBook
Pro, this has been possibly the best Wi-Fi experience I've ever had. and
Bluetooth as well has been great. All of my internet problems have happened on
the $10,000 Mac Pro that I use at my
desk plugged in. What? Yeah. See, the
Mac Pro, which again is 10 grand, uses a
budget Aqua chipset for their 10 gig networking, which we have had loads of
issues in this office for just on our Windows machine. And turns out it's just
as bad on Mac. two to three times a day,
my internet will just completely drop out. I'll go on to Wi-Fi and I can't be
reviewing footage or even watching YouTube videos over that on that
computer. Also, since I'm grossing, there seems to be a bug with
multimonitor setups that causes waking from sleep to take forever. Like,
actually, get up, fill my water bottle. Oh, back. Oh, wait. It's woken from
sleep. Great. which is especially bizarre because the cold boot up time
for these machines is like miraculously fast. It's way faster. Now, one thing
that made me furious is that the first time you click on an application, you
ever noticed this? Oh, and it doesn't seem to happen every time. No, every
time. Is it every time? Okay, cuz I think I gaslit myself into thinking that
it wasn't real. But the first time you click on an application, it just focuses
on that application instead of actually
putting the cursor into the field that you clicked on or actuating the button
that you wanted to press. This has led to numerous times where I'll click a
search bar or a message field and I'll start typing only to realize that I
needed to click it again for the field to actually work. And look, I know this
might not sound like a big deal, and for a lot of Apple users, it might not be,
but I am not a fan of random extra clicks, and I believe that it is
objectively bad design. One thing I did during this month that I wasn't planning
on doing was switching over to Apple Music. Previously, I was using Tidal,
but their Android Auto just completely stopped working. They did a bunch of
layoffs and seems to be affecting them. But Apple Music might be the best
example of everything that is good and bad with Apple allinone. First of all,
the streaming, it's high quality and it is flawless. It works no matter where I
am and I don't have random dropouts like I was having with Tidal and it even
sounds better in my car. Really? That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense at all. But I guess something to
do with recompression or Well, who
knows? I mean, AirPods sound better on Apple. So, if you're allowed to use
their proprietary nonsense, maybe yeah,
I don't know. Some sort of resampling. The problem that I've had with the app,
though, is that it has design that is clearly dated back to iTunes and the
original iPods. Like, it is super dated
and there are so many confusing menus that can do totally different things
depending on where you decide to click. And you can feel that in the whole OS. I
found the security situation on Mac really interesting. Like on the one
hand, even the thousand MacBook Air has
security features that you would typically only get on way more expensive
business Windows machines and they do a
lot of really good things. They make you create a secure password for the device
and they generally enforce good practices. But then on the other hand,
it feels like Apple actively encourages users to throw their personal iCloud
data and passwords onto that same laptop
without much regard for whether it's for personal use or for work use. Yeah, on
Windows it's super easy to have a work Chrome and a personal Chrome so that I
can keep my professional algorithm and my personal algorithm separate. on the
subject of gaming. Yes. Which I assume is, you know, well, maybe part of both
of them, but any I didn't. I just didn't. I know that you
can game on a Mac. And in fairness to Apple, the library of games that you can
play natively is growing all the time, and you aren't even limited to that. You
can run games that are Windows exclusive by using software like Parallels. It's
just that a I've been really busy and b
I just didn't feel like dealing with the compatibility issues. I don't game on my
laptop much anyway. How nice for you.
Unfortunately for me, one program that I need for my job is exclusively available
on Windows. That is Solid Works. So, I needed a VM. At first, I tried UTM,
which is super easy to use and great for anyone that just needs to run something
simple in Windows, but it does not support GPU pass through yet. So, Solid
Works and the games that I wanted to run, well, they didn't run after that
failure. Thanks for the Parallels license. It was $100, but that entry fee
was well worth it. Parallels is the best
VM solution that I have ever seen. The setup is super simple. The GPU pass
through just worked and although there is a bit of lag that I found, it was
totally fine for Solid Works, but not
quite good enough for gaming in my opinion. During my time on Mac, I only
really tested two games. Boltro worked
perfectly. I mean, I would expect it would, keeping me entertained on a
flight. But other games that you would expect to work, like UFO50, a game that
is literally designed to run on 30-year-old hardware, would not even
launch. I attempted to run it over Steam Link, but lag spikes would make that
unpleasant. And the lack of responsiveness in Parallels, maybe just
decide not to play that game until I get a Windows laptop again. I know there
will probably be a bunch of people in the comments saying, "Oh, I run games
fine on Parallels and it's great." I am a professional electronics nitpicker and
I have found the latency just a bit immersionbreaking. Now, to be clear,
just because he's fussy doesn't mean that it should be a deal breakaker for
everyone by any means, but we just want people to know that if you're planning
to pick up a MacBook for long-term use and gaming is a priority. We just
recommend making sure that your must plays are macOS native or that you are
not that fussy about input latency.
Bottom line then, I can't say enough good things about my MacBook. I just
can't say quite the same about MacOSS. I
mean, it's not that my frustrations are any worse than the frustrations that I
have for Windows or Android or iOS or
anything else. It's just that the argument that it's a smooth just works
experience is objectively false because
it requires just as much faffing about
and tinkering with third party applications and digging into settings
as anything else. When I changed natural scrolling to disabled for my mouse, it
turned it off for my trackpad. Can you not have different settings for natural
scrolling for a trackpad and a mouse? How is that even possible? And what
really makes me mad about it is it's the kind of thing that if Apple could just
budget a couple of shots of espresso to one of their many talented developers,
it could be probably fixed in an afternoon. And it highlights a major
issue for me. I just think it's very clear where Apple's priorities have been
over the last 15 years. And macOS isn't
very high up there, which could explain some of this rod. Now, Apple could
change this. They have an entire product stack that now uses Apple silicon.
There's very little hardware reasons that the iPad could not just flip
between iPad OS and macOS mode, making
it an incredible do all machine. But
after spending the last couple of months on macOS, it is very clear to me that
that is a pipe dream. Me too. And right after this video, Apple did just that,
making it even more clear that macOS is
the past and iPad OS is the future. It
doesn't have to be that way, but that uh
30% commission on every app means that Apple has decided it will be that way.
So, with that in mind, are you going
back to Windows? Well, for the entire 30 days that we had this, I swore that on
March 6th, I would be getting rid of this the first second that I could. It
is now April the 9th. Yep. I have not bothered yet at all. And yeah, that is
kind of the thing these days. The operating system plays such a small role
in the computing experience. Like I don't use my operating system. I use my
applications, many of which are just a web browser. And as long as the OS is
able to just get out of my way for the most part, it doesn't even matter which
one I'm using. It's just like, man, it would be so easy for Apple to make Mac
OS amazing. And it sucks that they don't
seem to care enough to do it. There's an
update for our switching to Apple video. Oh, for one thing,
this is still in my backpack still. Still, but Okay, I switched by now.
Wait, what about second MacBook Pro? I
bought this with my own money.
I have not purchased a laptop in like eight years.
I opened this piece of crap up, this Windows garbage. The driver update
literally failed. Bricked it. It took me like 2 hours to get it. And I was just
like, "Fuck this." And ordered a MacBook.
I can't think of many people on staff who in the past were more adamantly
anti-Mac than this man. parallels
Windows on ARM. They have fixed so much stuff. I can run Solid Works on this
better than I can run it on this
or this. And the screen
is like nothing else. Have you seen the Labs results for the HDR on this? No, I
haven't yet. It's insane. Well, I've seen what it looks like. Yeah.
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guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out part one where we went through the
process of choosing our Max. It ended up being a really interesting experience
that as an Apple outsider was more
complicated and nuanced than I expected. Yeah.