My reliable six-year-old Dell XP 15 started to slow down due to its 7th Gen i7 Intel processors being unable to withstand modern app demands. The keyboard slowly deteriorated as some keys were not responding when pressed. Considering I am an Adobe Creative Suite user with a laptop that slows down when using applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom means that creating assets can take longer. I decided to search for my next laptop.

Why Did I Choose a MacBook Pro?

When researching the market, I had certain criteria that my next laptop had to fulfil. My next laptop will have to:

• Be able to withstand Adobe Creative Suite demands

• Be light and portable

• Good display for editing images

• Good battery life

• Future proof

Upon researching laptops that were on the market I narrowed my selection to two laptops.

The one factor that pushed me towards the MacBook Pro 14 is the development of the M1 processor. When looking at the performance stats of the M1 and reading glowing reviews of the MacBook Pro 14, I decided to take the plunge of entering the Mac ecosystem.

Switching From Windows to Mac OS

I had previous experience using Mac OS in my university digital media course. I already knew the basic navigation of Mac OS such as using the dock and Finder. I also researched productive applications to install on the MacBook Pro to streamline workflows or bring back features that I would miss on the Mac ecosystem such as the windows snapping feature.  

When I started using the MacBook Pro, the first thing I realised is how quickly the laptop boots up and the use of Touch ID allows you to log in quickly. Apple has built an ecosystem between their products which I benefit from as I use an iPhone and AirPods. The Mac OS enables me to text and take video calls on my laptop and transfer browsing sessions on my iPhone to the MacBook Pro. Using Adobe Creative Suite is a breath of fresh air due to the processing power of the M1 Pro processor. Images render quickly and Adobe applications do not lag one bit, especially since they are primarily built for Mac OS.

A major change is the keyboard layout as Macs use CMD instead of Ctrl and the location of certain characters are in different positions when compared to a Windows keyboard layout, so adjusting to a Mac keyboard may take some time. I found it difficult to install apps and had to manually enable applications to amend certain settings to proceed with the installation. Another small thing I have found is that it's hard to locate a certain window especially if you have more than one window open in the same application. Luckily, I found an application that lets me view all my active windows similar to Windows OS. The Mac OS allows its users to customise their Mac to fit their workflow with the availability of a variety of applications you can install. It's great that you can customise your Mac to suit your needs through apps, however, installation of apps takes up storage space especially if you are installing applications for small functions.

Summary

As I have previous experience using Mac OS, switching from Windows to Mac was easy. Even though there were some aspects of Mac OS I wasn’t sure of, a quick Google helped me answer my questions. Finding applications that can add certain functionality that I have missed from Windows certainly helped with the transition from one operating system to another. I can see the benefit of the ecosystem that Apple has built as their devices connect and enables you to transition from one device to another with ease. The M1 Pro processor is certainly a powerful processor which I haven’t fully tested yet and time will tell if the processor will drop performance drastically as time goes on. I see Apple made a great move to start building its processors which gives them greater control to develop a streamlined experience for its users. Looking forward to continuing to use the MacBook Pro and pushing it to its limits.