Yes, I am still around. :)
Been a hectic few weeks. A lot of work. My eyes hurt, my right hand hurts. Too much screen time and typing.
In non-work news though, I am now a Mac user. Yay yippee yay! It was a sudden and unexpected shift, but one long overdue I guess. I have been a Mac wannabe ever since I saw a Mac at some computer exhibition back when I was a school kid. Could never afford a Mac ever although one time I was quite close to buying a Mac Mini but I backed out in the last minute. Anyways, a few months ago (August I think) I finally bought a MacBook Air (no, not the newly released finally updated one, but its older outdated brother). It was the cheapest Mac-anything I could find, and my wife saw it on a deal online and that got me thinking and I finally jumped in and bought it. I could have gone for the MacBook Pro but that was too pricey. I could have gone for the MacBook but I was aware of Apple’s 2nd gen butterfly keyboard problems and didn’t want to risk ending up with a faulty keyboard. I wasn’t super pumped about the MacBook Air as I knew there was the possibility of a new one coming out in October (as it finally did!) but eventually I figured there’s no point overthinking something and it’s best to just go ahead and get it.
That was a good decision! Loved the MacBook Air and the Mac way of doing things. I had to go traveling soon after that so couldn’t play much with it, but while traveling I saw one of colleagues had a MacBook Pro (not the latest model). While on travel I had been thinking of changing laptops as my current personal laptop was about 5 or 6 years old. I wanted something with at least 32GB RAM in it and oddly none of the Windows laptops I saw in shops or online had that. (Not saying there aren’t Windows laptops with that config; just that they are custom built and not easily available where I am). Anyways, I came to know that I could connect to work too via Mac (as my colleague was doing) and so all that got me thinking about MacBook Pro’s and on a hugely on-the-spur thinking I went ahead and purchased a MacBook Pro. Yup, that was one crazy leap of faith!
The MacBook Pro arrived by the time I returned from my first set of work related travels so I took it along for the second set. Was a pleasant experience working with the macOS. I love the gestures – swiping between screens, apps, etc. So convenient and I sorely miss them when I am back on Windows. The Mac’s keyboard shortcuts aren’t that great – too many keys, I barely know any of them (just screen lock and screenshots). The keyboard shortcuts are a whole level of crazy! It’s good there are so many modifiers and all that but it’s too much for me to keep track of at least after this brief period of working with them.
Anyways, flash forward a few weeks to last week when the new MacBook Air and Mac Mini were announced on Oct 30th. I pre-ordered the Mac Mini right after the announcement and it arrived today! Yay double yippee yay! :) The MacBook Pro replaced my personal Windows laptop and the Mac Mini will replace my personal Windows desktop (which I don’t use for much except media sharing and stuff). Oh, nearly forgot, during this period I also switched to iCloud Photos (I was already on Apple Music so nothing to do there) and slowly started moving some of my stuff from Dropbox to iCloud. Yup, I am on a one-way train out of Windows world to Mac world finally! I am not a fan of one-way trains so I hope this doesn’t backfire, but let’s see … got to go with the moment for now!
I am an Apple fanboy. Have been from my first iPad Mini and all the way through my increasing Apple gadgets. I don’t think I am blindly in love or anything, but I do think Apple products have some magic about them. They make things “easy” or somehow appeal to some part of your self that makes you innately love them. That’s my stand on them at least. I have tried Android phones and Windows & Linux phones and computers; but none of them evoke a feeling of love like an Apple product does. And I have discovered that feeling again with the macOS. Not saying Apple of macOS are perfect, but I tend to love them in-spite of the imperfections.
So that’s it. Once I move the data out of my personal desktop to the Mac Mini I think it’s safe to say I don’t have any more personal devices with Windows on them. I use Windows for work, and I have Windows VMs which I use to play with; but all my primary devices are now Macs.
Happy Diwali again! :)