(Six Colors is also a good Apple site. I adore the way they do tooltips. I know it’s an incredibly odd thing to focus on, but they just look and feel right, sort of like a well-designed Apple product. I want to know how they do them and steal them and use them here.)
As an experiment, I decided to try going Mac-only for work, to see what the experience would be like.
Ho ho.
In the end, it worked…surprisingly well!
Here’s the hardware I am using for this:
MacBook Air M1 (16GB ram, 512GB SSD)
CalDigit 3 Thunderbolt dock
CTRL mechanical keyboard
Logitech G203 mouse
Blue (now owned by Logitech) Yeti microphone
Asus VG27A 27” monitor
You may have noticed something about some of the hardware listed, particularly the keyboard and mouse.
Both are wired.
The CTRL keyboard being wired is in a way more convenient than if it was wired. It has two USB-C ports, so to switch from PC to Mac, all I have to do is unplug one cable and plug in the other. Easy.
The G203 mouse I bought on sale—it’s Logitech’s cheapest gaming mouse and doesn’t look freakishly weird like some of their other gaming mice. It uses G HUB software to control its settings and the software works decently, though I had to use the macro function to get the side buttons to work as forward/back in Firefox. The real key here, though, is the mouse is wired and therefore is perfectly stable, working just as I’d expect. It still doesn’t feel quite as good as it would on Windows, but it’s fine. My experience with wireless mice on Macs has been chronicled here before, but suffice to say that even on the M1 chip, wireless mice are garbage—at least every one I have tried. Wireless receivers are incredibly janky and Bluetooth, while better, still feels far from smooth, it just doesn’t have the cursor actively skip and judder across the screen. This was probably the biggest usability fix for the Mac setup.
The next was adding a cheap Dlink switch that let me connect the MacBook to the Ethernet port on the CalDigit dock. The Wi-Fi is not bad, but a wired network connection is far faster and stable. This was big fix #2.
The third was the dock itself—it provides easy access to a bunch of connection types that the MacBook Air lacks, allowing it to act as a desktop, with access to audio, USB-A, DisplayPort for external monitors, and more.
The MacBook Air itself performs like a champ, always humming along efficiently and quietly. It does get warm at times, but I don’t try to minimize the number of apps I’m running, I just run whatever I need. I suspect I could probably push it to throttle if I really tried, but so far that hasn’t been the case.
The only downside right now is a glitch that forces me to keep the lid up while using it with the external monitor. If I close it, the monitor immediately turns the display off—even though the Mac still thinks it’s working. I thought the last update might fix it but no. On the other hand, it does let me use the Air’s display as a second monitor—handy, as the Air doesn’t actually support more than one external monitor.
In terms of software, everything has run without issue. Some apps, like the non-native Signal, are a bit slow to load and don’t look great, but the same can be said of the Windows version here. Almost everything else works great and has been very stable. For work I really only need Firefox and Teams, as almost all the tools I use are web-based, and Firefox is native and runs quite nicely.
The smoothness of this setup has led me to using the Mac more often, even ion the evening, but there are limits.
It still sucks for gaming. Even with Apple Arcade.
As mentioned above, the mouse is fine but still feels better in Windows. The G203 itself is a bit smaller than I’d like and the surface of it is a bit too smooth. On the PC I use the G703 and it has a grippier texture and fits my hand better.
The other issues are endemic to MacOS itself. The window management is shockingly poor for a mature OS. The ubiquitous menu bar feels like a relic on large screen displays. The dock is inferior to the more versatile taskbar in Windows.
But the dynamic desktop backgrounds are snazzy. And I’m writing this on the MacBook Air right now, using Ulysses, so it can’t be that bad.
I probably don’t need a laptop anymore, though. I’m keeping my eye on future Mac minis and the still-rumored larger iMac.
This week I’ve been using the M1 MacBook Air exclusively for work (I’ll post more on the experience soon) and as I’ve grown accustomed to using it for days at a time instead of hours, I’ve come to see how it does some things better than Windows.
But Windows still bests it in certain ways.
Here’s one way each is better than the other, in my opinion, WHICH IS OBJECTIVELY CORRECT.
macOS: Better font rendering. Fonts do not look bad in windows, but they look better on Macs. This is especially noticeable when you get into smaller font sizes or where color contrast is higher. Everything looks a little smoother on a Mac’s screen.
Windows: Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its name, but window management is better on Windows. It has easy to use options for snapping windows in place and resizing them, and has other handy features like window previews on the taskbar and more logical behavior on the taskbar vs. Apple’s dock.
I’ll expand more on which OS does things better in a future post, but I can confidently say that people who tout one being obviously superior to the other (without having some weird edge case or niche use) are big fat liars. For common tasks like browsing the web, listening to music, writing or doodling, they are both fine.
What is the 99% rule, you may ask? I will tell you! Right now!
I have two devices which are affected by the 99% rule:
Fitbit Inspire HR
Logitech G703 gaming mouse
Both of these devices run on rechargeable batteries, so I periodically recharge them, as logic would dictate.
Regardless of how much charge is left in the Inspire HR when I begin to charge it, if I leave it charging for awhile and then check its current charge, it will always report:
99%
When I charge the G703 mouse, the same thing occurs. I can start charing it at 30% battery or 12% or whatever, when I check the status it will say:
99%
The charging for the Inspire HR seems to work something like this:
0—10—20—30—40-50—60—70—80—90—99——————————————100
I have not scientifically measured this, but it feels about right.
I am not sure why these devices seem to take a very long time to go from a 99% charge to a 100% charge. I suspect it may be related to the same technology behind the now deprecated Windows progress bar:
You may have seen this devil-in-disguise. The bar will move along at a steady pace, then abruptly or randomly slow down. Or stop. Or suddenly take off like it is sliding down a steep hill. It is, in a word, unpredictable. There are probably a multitude of technical reasons for this, ranging from variable drive transfer speed to phases of the moon, but in the end Microsoft changed to a more ambiguous way of showing progress so that people wouldn’t be afflicted by the 99% rule.
But it lingers on in devices that do not have progress bars. I’m not sure why, but I think it speaks to the persistence of the universe, so maybe in some perverse way it’s a good thing.
This concludes my desperate attempt to put a positive spin on some weird behavior for today.
I use Firefox because Google sucks and I have a soft spot for the underdog, which Firefox very much is in this era of Chromium-or-bust browsers. Also, Apple doesn’t make Safari for Windows (anymore) and I’m sorry, Apple, I don’t use your devices all the time! So Firefox it is.
These are the extensions I use regularly and that I find useful. The list is a lot shorter than it used to be, as browsers began integrating a lot of features that previously required extensions.
Pocket. Save web stories to read later. Also converts text to a reader view, which makes the layout look nicer (and kills ads as a bonus side effect). Mozilla (makers of Firefox) owns Pocket, so it is integrated into Firefox, though it’s available for other browsers, too.
Font Finder (revived). I am always on the lookout for good fonts because a) I am always thinking about what will look good on my blog b) I have a fascination with fonts and typefaces and c) I’m just kind of weird in that I want to know the name of the font I’m looking at. Font Finder lets you reveal a font on a site with a simple click. You can even select a section of text and get it to render in whatever font you want, which is even more of a niche case usage that I’m looking for.
Dark Reader. Does its best to intelligently switch any site over to a dark mode. Handy for glaringly bright websites that don’t offer alternative views for those late night sessions. You can customize the color choices it makes, too, if you don’t like what it comes up with.
uBlock Origin. Yes, I block ads. Considering how they have become a vector for malware, tracking, slowing down page loading and breaking up page layout into nonsense, I feel no guilt in blocking ads. I pay for a lot of the sites I read regularly–when the option is present. It usually isn’t.
LanguageTool. This is the dullest name for a decent grammar and spell-checking extension ever. Similar to Grammarly, it offers to spell-check on the fly and has a nice single-click UI that please me. Like Grammarly and others, it gates some features behind a subscription, but the free version works well for me. My one complaint is it wants to insert commas everywhere.
OneNote Web Clipper. I don’t use OneNote that much anymore, but when I did, this extension worked well in letting you easily clip stuff for later use. Think of it as a more interactive version of Pocket.
NelliTab. Replacement for the New Tab page. After I found FVD speed dial started bogging down Firefox (it could take 30 seconds to start up) I sought out alternatives and the nice thing about NelliTab is it uses your bookmarks, so if you later decide to stop using NelliTab you still have your bookmarks all neatly organized into folders. The icons it uses look nice, too, and there’s a host of options for layout to help customize it just so. I may find I eventually bog this down, too, but for now it’s fine.
Apparently I copy and paste a lot of random things, so the Clipboard history feature in Windows 10 (accessed by the Win + V combo) is surprisingly handy. I’m not sure if using it makes me a power user, but I’m going to pretend it does.
Here’s a few other random small utilities I use with Windows (I may make a Mac list if I’m not feeling lazy–and the Mac actually has a more dire need for these sorts of things, so take that, Tim Cook!):
Greenshot. The included Snip & Sketch actually works pretty decently now, but I’ve gotten used to Greenshot. It works great for grabbing screenshots and has a nice assortment of editing features that turn it into a mini image editor. And it’s completely free. Sadly, the not-free Mac version is not nearly as good.
Sizer. This program lets you assign keyboard shortcuts to predefined window sizes. I currently use a horrible piece of software at work that opens windows to something like 80% of your screen size, which may have made sense back in 2003 when everyone had 15 inch monitors, but is super-obnoxious when your monitor is a widescreen 27 inch model. I can only imagine what these windows would look like on a 34 inch ultrawide. Anyway, with one swift key combo I can resize the window to something sane and move it to exactly where I want it on screen. Also free!
EarTrumpet. Goofy name, but it acts as a replacement for the standard Windows volume control, making it a lot easier to control audio from multiple devices.
PowerToys. Yes, they’re back. It’s the 90s all over again! This is a nice collection of small utilities that let you do things like remap keys, quickly resize images, includes a color picker and more.
I wrote “Hello world!” in C#. I’m adding C# to my resume now.
(This is part of a bigger plan that will hopefully come to fruition this year. More details soon, possibly in the next post if I’m not lazy or distracted.)
Let’s see if I can remember the code:
Console.Writeline("Hello world");
Fake edit: I checked and forgot to capitalize the L in Line, which would have produced an error, since C# is case-sensitive. But I remembered that it’s case-sensitive!
Also, this is the most coding I’ve done in like ten years.
Macrumors posted this YouTube link for their review of the M1 iMac just released.
Yes, the computer is facing away. It is backwards. It was explained by noting that the orange on the back of the iMac is much more saturated and vivid than the pastel orange found on the front-facing chin, so they wanted to show that.
I’d like to think no one would ever actually set up their iMac this way but…you just never know.
Seriously, this should be a solved problem, but the only way to get consistent performance on a mouse when I’m using any Mac (I have owned three in the past four years) is to use one that plugs in using old-fashioned cables.
Tonight I have been using my MacBook Air with the Logitech Marathon mouse and it started out fine, but over time the mouse cursor starts to become slow and then erratic, glitching across the screen. It improves for a bit, then starts glitching again. If I dig out one of my old wired mice it works just fine, so it seems like there’s something up with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity on Macs.
This never happens in Windows. In fact, I can take this exact same mouse and use it in Windows right now and it will operate perfectly fine. My regular Windows mouse is a Logitech G703 wireless gaming mouse. It works perfectly when untethered.
I just don’t get it. It’s like Apple optimizes the OS to only work with their mice and nothing else. It’s incredibly annoying and reminds me why I never manage to make it long whenever I try using the Mac. For an OS that gets lauded for its stability and design, it has some pretty deep flaws.
At least the keyboard works properly. Oh wait, it’s plugged in. Bleah.
Steven Levy’s book chronicling the development of the Macintosh is not just a historical record of the development of that seminal personal computer, it’s a historical record in itself. Originally published in 1994, with an afterword for the revised edition added in 2000, it captures Apple at three distinct periods in its history, all of them coming before the development of the iPhone and Apple’s eventual rise as the world’s most successful consumer electronics company:
The early 1980s when the company went through its first growth spurt, buoyed by the success of the Apple II. This is where the bulk of the book takes place, as it covers the genesis of the Macintosh through to its debut in 1984.
The early 1990s. The Mac is established and successful, albeit not the world-changing device many of its developers had hoped for. Apple itself is in a precarious position, embroiled in boardroom drama, a bloated product line and the existential threat of the growing PC market.
The late 1990s. In which the story comes full circle, in a way, with Steve Jobs returning to Apple and unveiling the iMac, the first major release that would help guide Apple back to profitability and long term success.
The first third of the book lays out the history leading up to the development of the Macintosh, centering largely on Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). One of the scientists working there was Alan Kay, whose hypothetical “Dynabook” would embody many of the design elements we take for granted in modern personal computers. The scientists at PARC would go on to create machines that used mice and windows, but the company was never able or particularly interested in turning their research into commercial products, frustrating many of them who wanted to push forward the boundaries of computers.
From here, Levy–who actually visited with these scientists during this time in the early 1970s–moves on to the newly-minted Apple Computer, which was expanding to dozens of employees on the success of the Apple II. The Apple II was a capable but primitive machine and most acknowledged it would not be the future of Apple. A serendipitous trip to PARC by a team from Apple to take a look at what the scientists there were working on would lay the groundwork for what ultimately became the Macintosh.
It’s here that Levy moves onto a two-pronged approach, covering the development of the technology, along with the personality clashes along the way, many of which were due to Jobs’ combination of perfectionism and antagonistic management style.
Apple actually developed the Lisa first, a Mac-like computer doomed to fail mainly due to its exorbitant price (some things never change). Another team worked on a more accessible computer and while Jef Raskin led the Macintosh project initially, Jobs imposed himself and eventually took over.
Levy does a good job in letting the principal characters tell the story through their own words, fleshing out detail when needed, without imposing his authorial voice (though he is an unabashed Mac fan). Oddly, Levy’s tone stands out most when he is simply talking, often in a condescending way, about the technology itself. He is clearly interested more in what the technology can do and not the nerd factor.
The fun here is in seeing how the Macintosh team struggled and (mostly) overcame so many obstacles as they put together the original 128K Mac. Levy does a very good job in dispelling the notion that Apple simply copied what they saw at PARC. The Apple engineers actually expanded the PARC research in significant ways and put all the technology into a device that could be used by anyone. The Macintosh was not the first computer with windows, a mouse and a graphical interface, but it was the first available to the masses and the first to do many things we take for granted now.
It’s especially illuminating now, some 36 years after the debut of the Macintosh, to see how it all came together and how the original device really shaped the personal computer industry–and still does, as witnessed by the introduction of Apple’s in-house M1 chips that will power all Macs going forward.
One minor complaint about the book–it is filled with numerous grammatical glitches, possibly due to a bad scan (it effectively predates the e-book era). There’s also some sloppy, if amusing typos, such as a note on how “Hypercard was included for free with every Macintosh starting in 1977” (impressive as the Macintosh did not debut until 1984).
Overall, this is an informative and at times fascinating look back at the birth and clumsy adolescence of the personal computer, and how one, the Macintosh, dared to push forward, thanks to an incredibly dedicated and talented team of designers and engineers. Recommended–and not just for nerds!
