A New Macbook Pro

I used to like Macs. I still do, but I used to too. I was a PC guy for a long time (it was just what I was used to) but I finally took the plunge and have loved Macs ever since.

My first was a 2015 Macbook Pro 13. That was the one that hooked me with its sublime trackpad. Oh the trackpad … it was so smooth. Then I traded up to a 2017 Macbook Pro 15, the first with the Touch Bar. That was a gimmick that never really seemed that useful to me. In fact I think it was a huge mistake that Apple got rid of the physical function keys and especially the escape (Esc) key at the same time. Plus the keyboard wasn’t that good. The keys just weren’t tactile enough.

Keyboards are important because they are an essential part of the interface between the user and the computer, along with the mouse, trackpad, nub or whatever. If you type a lot, and we developer/admins do type a lot, then you care about the quality and feel of your primary typing tool and will want the best. People, myself included, pay good money for custom external keyboards that feel (and sound) just right.

I didn’t love that Macbook Pro but it was still way better than any PC laptop that I saw around. It was still serving me well but then I started seeing the new Apple Silicon products and I was intrigued. I got a new M1 Macbook Air for my son, who had been happily using the old 2015 13” Macbook Pro for school for some time, and I saw that it was good. When they launched the 14” and 16” Macbook Pros with M1 chips I was about ready to consider an upgrade. And here I am typing this post on my new Space Grey 16” M1 Macbook Pro.

It’s nice.

The keyboard is so much better. It’s tactile and feels good. There’s no more Touch Bar and we have real function/Esc keys again. Power users want function keys! The trackpad is still sublime, the battery life is good and the overall performance of the computer is just great. This is the best laptop that you can buy. I can see myself using this as my primary personal computer for some time.

Now, this isn’t the only computer that I will use. I will continue to use a Windows desktop as my main work computer and I will also continue to use many remote servers, both Windows and Linux. And this brings me to another point about the human computer interface and keyboards, namely that they are all subtly different. A Mac keyboard is not the same as a PC keyboard and also the OS keyboard conventions are different too, as are conventions in the Linux shell and cmd/PowerShell. We power users use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through all sorts of environments: the shell, a text editor, apps (e.g. Excel), etc. Moving from one environment to another requires challenging muscle memory gymnastics. I try to set things up so that the keyboard environments are as similar as possible. It’s impossible to get things to work the same everywhere but we can come up with a good compromise that I can live with.

How to get there is something that deserves its own post.