May 1st was New Laptop Day, which is always a big deal. For the last couple of these, I have bought Windows / Intel laptops. They are cheaper, and more compatible with work and school. When we relied on a single laptop to be all things to all of us, a Windows / Intel laptop made sense.
Now there are more computers in my house. We have a Lenovo IdeaCentre in the Study, a Mac Mini in the log cabin, and a bunch of Raspberry Pi in the workshop.
Son has his own laptop, an HP bought during lockdown, that is a horrible build quality, but a high specification for the money. He runs it on an external monitor, mechanical keyboard and mouse for gaming, so the build quality doesn’t matter. It handles his homework and Minecraft well enough.
Son’s old laptop – an HP Spectre from 2015 – has now moved into the workshop to run the slicer for the 3D printer instead of one of the Raspberry Pi.
This New Laptop Day I bought an Apple MacBook Pro. My first since 2009.
The Mac Mini in the cabin is an Apple Silicon M1. This MacBook Pro is a newer M1 Pro. The Mac Mini is so fast that I can’t see that this is any faster, but I’ll take their word for it. This thing is a beast.
Running a Mac instead of a Windows laptop is very different. I have a lot of Apple devices, and where the Windows computers feel like stand alone devices connected to the network or internet, this Mac feels like an extension of my personal area network – my iPhone, iPad, watch all working together to feed me media, information and log my activities. When I logged into this MacBook, it knew who I was. My photos were all there, my music, my magazines, web bookmarks, preferences, iMessages – everything.
I opened it at work today, and it was already logged into all of the WiFi hotspots because my personal devices know the credentials.
My AirPods connected when I put them in my ears. When I moved the mouse across the edge of the screen towards my iPad, the iPad picked up the cursor and started using it, taking any keypresses on the laptop. Impressive.
Granted, I could have bought three HP laptops for the cost of this one, but after a few minutes use, this one feels like it’s really mine. It knows me.