So, after 1.5 years with the MAC, I need to be fair and list the pros and cons without a buyer’s bias and also some recent probing I did to solve some of the cons.
Pros
- The build quality is top notch and has not shown any signs of wear and tear. The full metallic finish and the clickety keyboards are just as much fun as the first day
- The fanless build and a brilliant battery life are still a great plus and unlike say a Dell which by now would have started reducing in battery life, this one is almost as good as then
- The weight (or rather lack of it), the open to start working and just close to put it to a good power saving mode (no monkey business of sleep, hibernate etc) and no annoying antivirus or constant update nags
- Some of the software are just too good like the Mac Family Tree for example.
Cons
- Well, I knew what I was getting into but everyone else like my wife, daughter are still on Windows and sometimes we end up using the other’s laptop and then it is a mess with the key combination, where to find My PC and so on and so worth
- The MS word though available on both Windows and Mac ended up with different format/alignment when moving the file between them for editing and ending up almost a painful process that we avoided this cross editing
- One of my favorite games “Age of Empires” ended up having a definite edition but being from Microsoft was not available for Mac
- Other minor gripes like Switch homebrew and other bizzare tools are not in Mac which I guess is understandable and not really a gripe
Windows on Mac
All this ended up with a thought I should probably sell it off and get a Windows laptop (preferably a gaming laptop). But that involves extra cost and so I went looking for some alternate options.
Parallels for Mac caught my attention. It is a Virtual OS tool like VMware for example and can be used to run a different OS side by on the Mac. I downloaded the 14 day trial version and was awed by the speed and ease with which I was able to intall it and the Windows 11 also from within in. Beautiful. Then I was able to use Windows 11 without much difficulty or slag. I installed steam and played AoE on Mac – again for some random pauses the game ran well – even on 4k resolution. MS Word also installed and worked as intended
The catch as usual with Mac is that both parallels and Windows 11 on it need to be bought (Win 11 can be used non-activated if you are ok with the constant nag). Parallels is 8000/year normally but student’s copy can be got for around 4000/year or use it with something like a PD runner at your own risk. Win 11 can be used non activated or again at your own risk methods.
While we are at it I might add that the exact model I have which I bought for 92k-10k discount is now selling at 1L. The new M2 which has issues on the base 256GB model is selling for 1.2L. So my Mac might be worth more than what I paid for it 🙂