First week experience of switching to macOS from Windows.

[nerwin]

I just recently purchased a Macbook Pro and I wanted to share my first week experience of using macOS. The last time I really used an PC operating system from Apple was back in the 90s with their PowerPC. The start up sound is still the same and brings me back to my childhood hearing that beast of a PowerPC start up.

Anyways since then I've always used Windows and went through IT school primarily using Windows. So it's what I am most familiar with. I switched to macOS because well I kind of got bored with Windows and I was in the market for a new laptop and after testing many laptops at the store, I settled on the 14" MBP M3 Pro because it was nearly perfect in every way, the build quality, the amazing screen, amazing touch pad and the keyboard was outstanding to type on.

I was excited to learn a new operating system and I knew there would be challenges but I can't believe how quickly I was able to adapt to macOS. Its only been a week and I already learned majority of the keyboard commands so much show that when I do use a Windows machine, I am accidentally using the macOS commands haha. I'm sure many of you will relate to that.

I find the operating system to be quite intuitive for the most part, it really is user friendly and I can see why many people like macOS. It usually "just works" and I like that. As someone who has worked in IT for a while, its nice to not have to hack windows all the time or constantly have to fix errors. The biggest thing I saw when first booting up the Macbook was how minimalistic it was. No Cortona/Copilot BS, no advertisements in the menus and 800 updates. Within a few minutes I had a fully working update laptop ready to go to work. I did like that. It was refreshing. Usually for me after installing Windows I run a Powershell script to load some software to debloat windows and make modifications to the OS whereas on the Mac, I don't need to do any of that.

But not all is perfect. There are things that Windows does do better, there is no perfect operating system. I do find the installation of applications on the Mac a little unusual to me where you need to drag and drop the app into the app folder or sometimes the app install has its own window where you need to drag the icon to the app folder thats right next to each other. It seems kinda weird to me. Uninstalling apps feels like you are not uninstalling it because it makes me feel like you are just deleting the icon haha where as Windows usually has a whole uninstall procedure with progress bar and all that so you get the visible recognition that you are uninstalling an app.

There are some things that I've ALWAYS had issues on Windows that I don't with the Mac. For instance, my laser printer is such a PITA on Windows. Sometimes it works, sometimes you have to reinstall the drivers for some reason for Windows to recognize it. Oh want to print double sided? Well you have to install software directly from the manufacture. But on the Mac it immediately recognized my printer. It even shows me how much toner I have left and I can natively print double side and everything is in one print dialog. Its like a relief.

I often print out label stickers and the template for Microsoft Word the company of the labels gave me doesn't line up at all on my Windows machine. I have to add the next part way out of the "printable area" for it to centered on the label. But for whatever reason on Mac, the labels print out exactly how they are shown on the screen. Gosh this makes my life so much easier and I didn't have to change any settings, it just WORKED.

Little things like that, maybe minor to others, but are a blessing to me. Nothing worse than working on computers all day and then coming home to fix your own lol. Its just nice to open the laptop and do whatever I want with no fuss.

Its been an overwhelming positive experience. For those who are considering switching to Mac, I say give it a try. It doesn't hurt to try. You never know, you might fall in love with it like I did or you might hate it and that's perfectly fine too. I still like Windows