So it’s now been a few days since I got my new MacBook Air.
In fact, I’m writing this post on it now…
And I can already tell that it’s going to take some getting used to, but I love how ridiculously thin and lightweight it is and I love how much faster and more reliable that it’s been than my desktop already, and overall things have been going fairly smooth as I’ve tried to acclimate myself to the new OS. I loaded new copies of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite on within about an hour of turning it on and everything was very quick.
…and admittedly it’s a little weird actually paying for software after a lifetime of, well, not doing that… 😛
I’ve already had plenty of unexpected stumbling blocks along the way, like how to right click and how certain keyboard shortcuts work when keys are mapped differently for Mac. Plugging in my new keyboard and mouse helped a ton because at least the desktop keyboard I bought has Page Up and Page Down keys! Right now I’ve also got it using one of my two widescreen monitors (old Windows machine is still using the other until I’m ready to cut the cord), so really it’s pretty much like using a desktop machine again – just everything is in a different place and some things don’t work the way that I would expect after using Windows for … what? … over two decades?!
I think my biggest frustrations right now are:
- Shortcuts like copy & paste use the Command key instead of Control, which is in a different place and awkward to reach. Admittedly I just now realized that maybe I should see if I can just remap this…
- I can’t Command+Tab between windows in an open application – namely Chrome for starters, which is annoying because I usually have several open at a time to spread out my tabs. This is going to be a pain if it carries over to Word, too.
- I wish that Finder was a little more flexible for browsing the file system, mainly because I still need to migrate most of my files over and I’m trying to figure out the best place to put them. Granted, part of this is also a OneDrive issue because ultimately I need them to sync via it, too.
- My desk is too messy and I don’t have any room to setup my new docking station. Not really a Mac problem, per se, but still an issue that eventually I’m going to have to tackle!
Honestly I think that just about any new computer would’ve been a leg up for me at this point because my old one hangs on Chrome pretty regularly, making it impossible to use with as many tabs open as I tend to have, but I’m looking forward to getting back into my regular workflow to see how this thing goes – already I’ve written a few things (mostly via web browser) and I’ve done some simple photo edits in Photoshop, and everything so far has been really nice.
I’m also looking forward to all of that being portable so that whether I’m out on the couch with the baby or we go on vacation, I’m not limited to whatever apps are on the laptop I have access to at the time – essentially I should basically have my entire working desktop wherever I have my laptop, which is very cool. Granted, some apps will be trickier to use without a mouse – especially because I’m still learning to use this bizarre, Mac trackpad – but I shouldn’t find myself looking for online apps to resize photos at 1am in a hotel room at Disney for a blog post like I did the last time we were there! 🙂
So the verdict to date – so far so good, and although I’m kind of still surrounded by Windows machines at my desk at the moment, I’m trying to force myself to do more and more on the new machine just to start getting more used to it after they all eventually go away. Maybe I’ll write up another post in a month or so when I’m actually ready to cut the final cord and kiss Windows goodbye out of my life for good… 😉