Obviously not everything's perfect, but I thought I'd take time out to list some of the pros and cons I've found over the last year since I switched. As always, this is a personal view - your mileage may vary!
Battery life
Depending on whether I'm using it solidly or not, I can get just under a working day out of the 13". What about the 15"? Well, I've been running Windows under VMWare too much to make a realistic comparison and I've also been sitting at a desk with it so it's usually plugged in.
I'm not sure if it was because my particular Thinkpad was a 'workstation'/desktop replacement, or because the battery was getting old, but I was down to easily less than one hour of battery life.
It seems to be a 'thing' that Mac users don't immediately search for power on entering a meeting . .this is strangely liberating.
So how much of this is the hardware? Well, let's just say that if I'm running VMWare with Windows on it, my battery life drops considerably: this may well be down to 'constant updating' or 'corporate cruft' though - see below.
Size, weight and Retina screen.
Just being able to work on the train/plane etc with a decent screen has been great. I appreciate that I have a 'big n clunky' PC laptop, but for example on a Southwest Trains 'airline' seat, I couldn't even open the screen fully.
Weight: Add the weight of the thinkpad and the power 'housebrick' together and it's a lot to lug in a backpack. With the 13" Mac, I kept thinking 'did I remember to pack my computer?'
Startup time, rebooting and 'resume from closed'(suspend or hibernate)
I have a startup time of easily less than 20 seconds, often a lot less - but how often am I inconvenienced by startup time anyway? On Windows, quite often: the 'you must now reboot' seemed to be a constant thing. I'm convinced this is due to badly written software more than anything Microsoft actually did to Windows. I hardly ever seem to reboot my Mac; and because of the battery life, I don't every turn it off/shut it down.
The most useful thing is the 'resume from closed' time i.e. instant! You can tell people with Macs - they walk from meeting to meeting with their computers closed'. The majority of Windows users do the 'balancing my laptop with the screen open in one hand and my coffee in the other' walk. This is because resuming from suspend can be time consuming but also because of the danger of the dreaded 'hibernate'. With mine and a large number of others, once Windows hibernates it can take a good number of minutes (easily over 5 - sometimes 10) for it to 'come back'. It's usually quicker to force the power off and then reboot.
From a Windows point of view, changing to an SSD in my Thinkpad really made a huge difference to the startup time, but still getting to actually being able to open eMail or a web-browser definitely took a long time.
'Corporate Cruft' and 'bloatware'
By the time I abandoned Windows as the 'main' o/s on my corporate machine, the amount of 'hassle' things like virus-checkers, auto-updaters, firewalls, software-scanners, asset checkers, push-updaters etc was really getting to me.
I actually wiped the 'corporate image' shipped with my Thinkpad and installed Windows 7 from the Microsoft DVD. The boot time of this was really quick. And guess what? 'Base' Windows can do things like have a firewall, connect to the network - or just run.
But why do manufacturers think they need to add more? Nearly every Windows PC I see seems to have an additional 'manage networking' software install, or a method of managing the screen resolution or something. Why? Windows seems to do it fine?
It's also that the 'corporate cruft' seems less intrusive on the Mac - I don't know why. I have to run a virus checker, a 'corporate app store', a 'register my mac', a non-Apple VPN client etc, but they 'just work' in the background. There is never that 'lock up' of the CPU spinning up to 100% and locking out the desktop. Whether this is the Unix-Like nature of MacOS having better control of background processes or they way the software is written, I don't know.
Constant Updating
Every piece of software on Windows seems (to me) to have its own way of updating. Also, every piece seems (to me) to be constantly looking for updates, or scanning for updates, or something like that. The disk light never seems to stop (typing this I've noticed my Mac doesn't have a disk light . .).
OK, not everything in the Mac garden is lovely - Firefox is a 'constant updater' and MS Office has its own update scheme, but things in the App Store update when I ask them to. And there doesn't seem to be 'patch Tuesday' - although from a security point of view, I'm not sure if this is good or bad.
Also, most updates don't seem to end with the tiresome 'to complete this installation, please reboot your computer'. Well, when I say 'most' there are still the usual outliers.
Bits and Pieces / Accessories - and 'standard' ports.
'Can I borrow your VGA adapter?' 'Any chance of buddy-breathing your power?'
The more people have Macs, the more you can borrow 'bits' off them when you've forgotten yours. It's not like the 'which one do you have? Oh no - this is the different-sized power adapter' conversation, even amongst PCs from the same manufacturer.
And did I mention the relative size of the power supplies? My Lenovo one is huge and very heavy. OK, I have a 'light' travel one but then I get the 'the processor will not run in full power mode' message .
It's not all good though:
VGA and Ethernet - you need to carry separate 'dongles' - and they're £25 each! OK, we have HDMI but conference projectors and meeting rooms don't 'do' HDMI all that often. Also, I can't remember that last time I needed a wired ethernet connection - although 1GB is quicker.
15" (85W) vs 13" (60W) Power supplies. I forgot my 13" Power supply on one trip, so I bought another (see 'Apple Store' below). I now have one in my backpack and one at my desk at home - great! Now I get a new 15" Mac. I can use the 85W with the 13" but not the 60W with the 15"! Arghh! When I bought a spare, why didn't the guy say 'you know what - get the 85W one - then that will power any Macbook pro"
Kensington locks - there is no slot for that, so you need a 'special one'.
The Apple Store
Two things here. The first is the 'oops, I forgot to bring my aaaaaa' or 'my bbbbb just died'. If you need an Apple accessory, there's usually an Apple Store / Apple reseller / Store that sells Apple 'bits' near to you that can sell you one when you need it i.e. right this minute.
I was in Woking, UK. I hadn't charged my Mac the night before. It was 10:00am and I had 10% battery left. I looked it my backpack and I'd left my power supply on my desk at home! Panic?
I walked into the shopping centre, bought a 'spare' power supply from the reseller and I'm back up and running at 10:30am. I can't do that with most PC laptops.
I walked into the shopping centre, bought a 'spare' power supply from the reseller and I'm back up and running at 10:30am. I can't do that with most PC laptops.
Secondly, I've got a presentation at 12:00 and it's 10:10 in Edinburgh. My Mac won't power up. Paaaniiicccc!
Run the full length of Princes Street to the Apple store and throw myself on their (and Applecare's) mercy. In and out in 30 minutes with Mac debugged (reset the PRAM and run the disk diagnostics if you want to know - I didn't know how to do that!) and ready to go. They even offered to call me a taxi back to the office. Again, I couldn't do that with a PC. I'm not sure about walk-in physical repairs but I've had good experiences getting iPhones fixed on a 'walk in'.
Run the full length of Princes Street to the Apple store and throw myself on their (and Applecare's) mercy. In and out in 30 minutes with Mac debugged (reset the PRAM and run the disk diagnostics if you want to know - I didn't know how to do that!) and ready to go. They even offered to call me a taxi back to the office. Again, I couldn't do that with a PC. I'm not sure about walk-in physical repairs but I've had good experiences getting iPhones fixed on a 'walk in'.
Software Compatibility
The main 'downside' to Mac ownership. Want to run MS Visio or MS Project? Good luck with that! There is a lot of software which just plain won't run as there is no Mac version. VMWare or Parallels is your friend here, but you will also need to buy a Windows license and full-retail is expensive!
The other 'compatibility issue' is when someone gives you an NTFS formatted USB drive and says ' can you put the file on there?'. Macs seem to read NTFS OK, but writing is a no-no unless you have additional software to enable it.
Built-in functionality
People often praise the Mac and MacOs for the built-in functionality of the operating system, but similarly others curse things like iTunes and Photos for the way they work and 'take over' your files. Things I really like are:
- Time Machine: Fit it and forget it - saved me LOTS of times. Not only does it back up, it keeps multiple versions. If the backup disk/NAS is not available it 'queues the data up' until it is.
- Spotlight search: I just use this all the time - I don't use finder all that much. Interestingly, I could never get on with the Windows search - don't know why
Windows 10, newer PC hardware
So, not all of this is 'Mac vs Windows' or even 'PC hardware vs Apple'. It's more 'Corporate Mac vs Corporate PC and Windows'. The following may mitigate some of this:
- Windows 10 - I've not used this, but I've heard good things about it
- SSDs - these make a HUGE difference, and I mean HUGE. If your PC has 'spinning rust' then this could be the best present you give yourself
- Newer hardware with better battery life, size and weight - Again, I've only ever used 'workstation class' Laptops - having said that my 15" Macbook pro is very portable and very powerful at the same time.
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