MacBook Pro. Or how I became a victim of marketing
When colleagues came to me in the office asking for help in choosing a laptop for 30-50 thousand, I heroically tried to dissuade them from this idea. Several dozen laptops of not the most expensive models passed through my hands, and they all had the same story. The first year they work more or less, during the next two years they degrade and require some repair work, and after two more – it is just a noisy slow machine that works only from constant power and is only able to slowly digest office documents. Of course, there are exceptions, but everything that was bought for the office or for remote work turned into a pumpkin in 2-3 years, no matter how many cores were in the processor and how much RAM.
And the only exception was the MacBook Air 2017, which I bought on New Year's Eve 2020. It's hard to call it a budget device, but it was the cheapest one you could buy. At that time, it cost 54 thousand, which was about $860.
Before buying it, I always chose laptops based on technical specifications, spent a long time looking at what processor this model had, what RAM, what graphics. I scrupulously looked for information on comparing mobile processors to each other in order to get the most out of the purchase. Of course, I bought a laptop without a pre-installed system so as not to overpay for a license and not to drag out tons of software supplied by vendors along with Windows. Ergonomics, matrix quality, case materials, ease of use? Leave it to marketers, but I need a working tool and a 15-inch screen, no less. And immediately after buying the laptop, I bought a mouse for it, because I find it more convenient with a mouse, I simply could not imagine working without it, and after using the touchpad on different devices several times, I realized that we are not on the same path.
Everything changed dramatically when I got my hands on that very Mac. With it, we went through all the stages from denial to acceptance. It turned out that you don’t have to clean the laptop for years and it works just as well as when you bought it. And that you can use the keyboard and touchpad and do without a mouse at all. And that your eyes get tired less from such a small screen than from a cheap TN matrix. And that after four and a half years, the laptop guarantees an autonomy of 5-8 hours on its native battery. And that swipes and gestures on a laptop are very convenient for everyday work, and with a normal application design, they are more convenient to use than a mouse. In general, I realized that technical characteristics do not always decide everything, it is much more important how the device behaves in real various tasks, and also that there are really high-quality laptops. Not in the sense that it's only Apple and their MacBooks, I'm sure there are other worthy devices, but I had the chance to get acquainted with quality and change my attitude towards laptops in general, and their use in everyday tasks, in particular.
And here it is, 2024, I have a well-appointed workspace with a large monitor and a comfortable chair, and the deferred bonus whispers in my ear, “Let's do it again? Let's buy a new Mac, productive, quiet, you'll be able to work from anywhere.” After such thoughts, I had to part with it. And now I have a new MacBook, and what a one it is – a pro version, with the latest M3 Pro processor, 2K HDR screen with a frequency of 120Hz. In general, it was expected that my joy would have no end, that I would again use the Mac as the main device for work scenarios and reduce to nothing the work on my old PC.
But, as you probably guessed from the title of the article, the miracle did not happen. The euphoria from the new device did not last long, and after a few weeks, I returned to my usual chair to my usual computer with a large monitor, mouse and keyboard. And I would like to tell you why this happened, how I was sold something that I did not really need, and at the same time warn those who decide to buy this device. Not that I am directly discouraging, just my experience with my conclusions to understand how your next few weeks will pass after the purchase.
Week one. Delight.
I admit honestly, the emotions from such a device are incredibly positive and bright. You are pleased with absolutely everything in it, every little thing seems like some kind of incredibly cool feature, and you are very happy that you decided to buy such an expensive device. At first, you will search for videos with the 4K HDR prefix on YouTube. If you have a family, then you are guaranteed to show them all these videos, saying, “This is quality, this is a picture, these are colors.” You will get all possible devices that can display images in order to run videos simultaneously on the Mac and on them, so that you can see even more clearly what you paid so much money for.
Now you want to make sure that you really have a powerful device. Since 95% of your work tasks are quite trivial, you need to somehow measure the performance. You copy heavy files back and forth, compare the archiving and unarchiving speed with your PC, and for clarity, download GeekBench. The numbers are pleasing to the eye, you are infinitely pleased.
You connect your iPhone to your laptop. Now you can answer calls to your phone through it. The next incoming calls, even if the phone is at hand, you will receive through the laptop. If friends call, you will definitely ask how they can hear you, and casually say that you are asking because you are communicating with them through the laptop. And now you have a common clipboard from the phone, so the first thing you do is log into your bank accounts through the browser, despite the fact that the phone has an application. Your goal is to make sure that you can log in from the laptop by copying the code from the phone and pasting it from the clipboard in the laptop. You came up with a clever idea, no doubt.
For complete happiness, while you install the necessary programs and tools in the background, it remains to make sure that the laptop has amazing speakers. You start to go to VK, Yandex music, or Spotify. Again you are happy that the code can be copied directly from the mobile phone, again you smile and rejoice. Finally, having reached your collection, you turn on your favorite tracks and enjoy. People did not deceive, the sound is really pleasant, rich, there is even bass. In laptops, you most likely have not heard such before, so you are confident once again in your purchase that it was worth it.
Week two. Strange taste.
Having played with your new laptop to your heart's content, you remember that you bought it for work tasks. So, over the past week, you installed all the necessary software, installed all the necessary plugins, transferred all the secrets and accesses, hooked up corporate accounts, pulled work projects from the repository. It's high time to evaluate this power in practice. But the situation hasn't changed, there's nothing to load the laptop with. You download the heaviest application from the repository and run debugging in Docker. Yes, all this took 15-20% less time than on a PC, a gain of 10-30 seconds. You are happy, but it seems like you expected more. Well, that's not the most important thing.
The display continues to please you, and you do not understand how you lived without it and firmly decide to watch movies now on a Mac. You will search for HDR movies in online cinemas and quickly find that there are none. They are not available in the web version, which means that you will not watch them from a laptop. The same Kinopoisk is sure that you are not entitled to 4K and will only show videos for 1080 rubles in the web version, the same with Okkoso you rewatch your own iPhone HDR videos because there's nothing else to watch. Oh well, that's not the most important thing.
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The sound is, of course, great, but you understand that you spend most of your time in headphones. You most likely do not live alone, so you will disturb others. And household noise, daily repairs of neighbors, sounds from the street – all this is distracting and when you work in headphones, you are more concentrated. Or, which is also quite likely, through the amazing sound of the speakers you will hear the voice artifacts of colleagues, the hiss of microphones and other delights of calls. But the sound is not the main thing, this is clear.
Week three. Sobering up.
You still have nothing to test the performance on, this power is excessive for you. Or, even more likely, nothing in your life has changed because the project began to build 10-20% faster. You most likely have already downloaded Steam to at least somehow load the laptop, but the list of available games there for Mac is not that big, Epic Store is the same.. Several indie games, and a couple of games from Valve that will run on the calculator, Civilization.
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The majority will only run in 32-bit format, and of those that can run in 64, the vast majority will not run natively under MacOS.
You will spend most of your working time in some development environment and browser, reading articles and documentation. Is it worth mentioning how unimportant the display saturation and the presence of HDR are for this? In the third week, you will understand this yourself. And you will also understand that the convenience of a large monitor is much more important. Yes, there is a concept of virtual desktops, it is very convenient, just switching with gestures. But sometimes you need to fit everything on one screen so as not to lose context, and in 14 inches this is extremely inconvenient to do. Somewhere this week, you will understand that you heard the sound from the laptop speakers twice a week, and only because the wireless headphones connected with a slight delay. The idea of watching movies in HDR has been completely forgotten.
A month later. Acceptance
And now you are not such a happy owner of a new MacBook Pro. There is little left of the first emotions. Working on a new Mac has become a routine, as it should be. You absolutely do not care about the HDR screen, since 99% of the content does not support it. You quickly get used to the performance, but you cannot evaluate the battery life, so if you have firmly and clearly decided to work only on a Mac, then most likely you have already ordered a USB hub on Ozon to hook up your usual keyboard and mouse, hook up several monitors, your headset and microphone. As a result, you sit exactly at the same workstation next to the outlet, where you sat without a Mac. And if, nevertheless, you decide to go the way of the samurai and work exclusively on a Mac without additional peripherals, then get ready for hours of pain until your fingers develop the habit of using other combinations, switching, until your brain can switch to the concept of swipes. And get ready to suffer if you suddenly need to open 2-3 applications in one window and watch what's going on carefully. And a special fiery greeting to the lucky ones who are forced to connect remotely to some virtual machine on Windows in order to go somewhere on Linux via SSH from there. Until you get used to the peculiarities of hotkeys, your brain will explode.
Personally, I went exactly this way. Still, when there is an opportunity, it is more pleasant to work from a familiar place, where everything is clear, there is a keyboard and mouse, a large monitor and the ability to hook up another one. Without urgent need, I still work with a PC, and if I need autonomy, I switch to a Mac, understanding that the overall performance will drop a little. Yes, the keyboard and trackpad are super convenient, everything flies on it, but my fingers are still reaching for Ctrl from time to time, which now switches the language (Fn), and I also keep trying to use Insert, which is also not here. As a second monitor, I use an old iPad 9 by 10 inches. Not 27 inches, of course, but still a second monitor allows me to be more efficient, and you can always take it with you and use it at any time without an outlet.
In fact, I offset the gain in hardware performance by the sag of my own. The biggest disappointment is that I can't taste most of its “goodies”. Any Windows laptop could cover all my needs, but they have only just started releasing something on the ARM architecture, so the Mac is still beyond competition in terms of efficiency and autonomy. The only thing that really pleases me and is some kind of minimum standard for me is a screen refresh rate of 120Hz and higher. After several years of 144Hz AOC, 60Hz is simply painful for the eyes even at the level of Googling something for work and scrolling a page.
To sum it up, the laptop is really cool. If you can quickly relearn from Windows combinations, or you work on a Mac all the time, then you will be pleased with the device. If your employer gives it to you, then you will probably be pleased too. Is it worth the money? If you are engaged in graphics, then definitely yes. If, like me, you are developing, then it depends on how much you earn =). As a working / productive / reliable solution, there are no complaints or questions about it, but because of the cost, you just need to think carefully whether you need such a laptop and for what specific tasks, otherwise you may be disappointed.
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