Photo credit to Oliver Pecker

I bought myself my first MacBook a few months ago and now that I've had more time to think about the transition experience, I would like to put my thoughts into words and express them here, along with some tips for people who might be transitioning from their Windows environment to a macOS environment.

Background

What do I use my machine for

Before going on to talk about my experience transitioning from a Windows desktop to a MacBook Pro as my daily driver for almost all of my work, I want to talk about what I actually do on a daily basis.

I use my computer for almost everything:

• My school textbooks are on my laptop
• Design software so I can do freelance work in my downtime
• Communication via email and chats
• Writing documents
• Spreadsheets
• Coding
• Personal organization with Todoist etc
• Presentations (lots of them in different places in February!)
• Video editing

There are obviously more things that I do every day, but these are the main things. My schedule changed around a year ago after I joined the IB diploma programme, which is an international education programme.

The need for a laptop.

After I joined the IB diploma programme, my schedule suddenly had holes in it, during which I couldn't really do much as I didn't have access to my desktop at home, which had everything set up the way I needed it.

My life went from 0 to 100 really quickly.

To add to this hecticness, I also joined AIESEC, which meant that my days got longer and my schedule became even more hectic. I regularly start my days at 6:30 am and end them at midnight, getting home at 7-11pm at night.

Clearly, I could not sustain this schedule with a desktop, so my need for a laptop quickly became much more serious if I was to succeed in AIESEC and finish the IB diploma programme.

Illustrative gif of me when I realised that I could no longer hold on to only having a desktop by a tiny thread

Buying a MacBook

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I didn't want to pay the premium for my laptop, but I thankfully was in the position in which I could do so. Keeping in mind that I'll likely use this machine for years, it was not a totally bad decision.

The transition

Overall the transition went fairly well and I didn't run into too many problems. The change was a bit confusing at first though.

Part 1: Confusion

Like all good beginnings, this started with a dive straight into the somewhat unknown. More specifically, I had never used a macOS device before as my daily driver and now I had to learn everything and quickly. Switching to a completely different ecosystem was definitely an interesting situation to be in while trying to keep up with the workload.

Why would you use Command instead of Ctrl for shortcuts? Argh! 😠

Having to get used to window buttons being on the left was weird at first, but it wasn't unexpected of course. Creating new keyboard layouts (I need some extra symbols on the Estonian layout) was an interesting process to figure out for sure.

One thing I still haven't gotten over yet is that OBS can't record desktop audio by default. This sounds insane to me, coming from Windows.

Part 2: Acceptance & discovery

Whatever, I'll use it like they want me to use it.

I read somewhere that it's harder to switch the combinations around than to just get used to the new combinations, so I decided that I wouldn't try to keep using Ctrl for main shortcuts. I'm happy to say that it was the right decision.

Part 3: Understanding

Yeah, it turns out Apple actually does know a thing or two about user experience.

What a shocker, I know.

The things one might hear about macOS being more stable and simple to use has been entirely true for me so far. I don't know how the underlying parts of macOS really work and I don't need to know, because that's not what I, as a user, should need to know.

It's a wonderful feeling not wrestling with your OS every day. The mantra "it just works" has been extremely true for me. Once I got hang of the basics, it was smooth sailing from there.

Using Command instead of Ctrl makes a lot of sense! 🎉

Using Command instead of Ctrl has become so natural that I keep thinking about how I was able to use Ctrl for everything before.

I now get why people fall in love with Apple products.

Conclusion

This was a quick overview of my journey switching from a windows machine as my daily driver to a macOS device as my daily driver. I hope you enjoyed the post!

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