In this post I want to share my first impressions of going back to working on a Mac after several years.
First, let me spend a few lines quickly telling you about my past as an Apple user: during my university years (I graduated in 2009, so quite a few years ago) I became a big fan of the Apple world. Faced with the choice between buying a PC and installing Linux on it (back then, Windows wasn’t very “welcome” in the academic world) or buying a Mac and trying MacOSX (as the Mac operating system was called at the time, since renamed macOS), I let myself be won over by the beauty of Apple products and perhaps also by the uncertainty over whether Linux would actually detect the hardware of the notebooks I wanted to buy (the newest models were obviously the ones most likely to be poorly supported). In those years Linux still had limited support for notebook hardware, especially for networking components (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc…) and graphics cards (and of course I was also less “savvy” than I am now).
In the end, both the usability and the stability of Apple machines helped make me a happy user, so much so that over the following years I bought quite a few of them: MacBook (the first glossy white, Intel-based model), MacBook Pro (various models), iMac, MacPro and MacMini.
After university, one of the first jobs I ended up doing was working as an Apple technician for a few authorized resellers in my area, and so for a few years I had fun working with their products.
Later on, though, something happened that made me switch “worlds”…I was offered a position as a Citrix systems engineer at HP, in the HP Italy Citrix Support team…and from then on the Mac dropped off my radar for a while, replaced over the years by Windows 7, 10, 11…and Windows Server like there was no tomorrow…
My experience in the Windows world has certainly allowed me to take my career to a different level; the Mac is indeed a business product, but it is confined exclusively to client roles. So I have also come to really appreciate the Windows world, which will certainly remain the foundation of my work.
But now, several years after my last Mac, I’ve decided to go back to using one! From today on I’ll be working on my new 14″ MacBook Pro with Apple M2 Pro and macOS Ventura (currently version 13.5.1).
And as I mentioned, I’d like to write down a few impressions after the first hours of using my new Apple notebook.
Unboxing a Mac is, as you’d expect, always visually striking. Apple never disappoints…even the box is part of the user experience 😀
Once I turned the Mac on, I was guided through setting up my user account, and within a few minutes I was looking at the desktop.
I immediately dove into installing the applications I need for work: the Office suite, a few browsers, Citrix Workspace App (that certainly couldn’t be missing) and a few other minor applications.
Apart from a few minutes of awkwardness at first (it had really been a long time since I’d last laid hands on a Mac), I have to say I immediately felt at home with the system; its look and feel has stayed very similar over the years…no big upheavals, except perhaps a redesign of the “System Settings” app (compared to the versions I worked with in the past) and a few other little things here and there.
The MacBook Pro with the Apple M2 Pro processor is really very responsive and smooth. The Office applications (not exactly known for being lightweight) open in less than half a second…definitely a huge step forward compared to my previous notebook, an HP Elitebook x360 G4 with Windows 11, which I worked on for the last 3 years. After a few hours of fairly heavy use (on a day that wasn’t exactly cool), the laptop strangely stayed cool and silent the whole time, to the point that it seems almost impossible; the applications were always responsive and smooth…simply amazing!
Over the next few days I’ll update this post with some more complete impressions…starting Monday the Mac will be my primary work system, so I’ll have the chance to put it through its paces and add a few more impressions here.