A Chromebook User with his First MacBook Pro

Originally shared by John Blossom

A Chromebook User with his First MacBook Pro

It's not that I absolutely hate Apple products. I give them credit for being the first mass-market Unix-based personal computer that caught on with the public. True, they had to wrap it in a lot of "it just works" consumer ooh-ahh, but at its heart it's a good machine. But now that my new vocation requires me to use a Macbook Pro, it's a strange experience to be having to live with it after years of 99 percent of my desktop and laptop computing life taking place on Chrome OS.

First off, the looks. OK, we know that the Chromebook Pixel was designed in part so that Google engineers wouldn't feel punkish when others on their campus were booting up on MacBooks. So it's a bit odd to think, "Wow, this looks almost like a Chromebook." Of course, it was Google's intent to get us to think the opposite - and, overall, I think that the Chromebook Pixel has a more premium feel to it. Honestly. This MacBook Pro, now a fee years old, feels very dated, though quite solid.

You can see where Google self-consciously emulated many of the MacBook's best qualities for the Chromebook, but also surpassed them greatly. Chromebook bootups are super-fast. This MacBook, with hardly any special software installed, and near-zero local files, chugs to the starting gate.

Once booted up, there's a separate login for iCloud services. That seems to be kind of an old-fashioned way of doing things. But then, cloud services are not really Apple's specialty, so I suppose that's understandable.

Then there are updates. And more updates. And more updates. And...you get the picture. They are painfully slow, and such a waste of time. You never experience this on a Chromebook - you cough, look out the window for a moment, and your Chrome OS machine is ready to fly again after a quick restart.

The user interface on MacOS Sierra is nice enough, but, just different enough to be annoying. Why do the window controls have to be on the left? It's a style thing, Apple thinks left-handedly, or whatever. I am left-handed, but nevertheless I find that to be annoying, more for the sake of culture than function.

Instead of three buttons to control MacBook functions, there are four. To get a presentation in to full-screen mode, you have to press Fn-F5. For some very basic functions like keystroke-driven cut and paste, you have to use the command key instead of the control key. No need to do it that way, but they do.

On the other hand, the MacBook Pro on Sierra MacOS does share some Chrome OS gestures (or vice versa), like a two-finger tap to get a right=click function, so it's one step removed from Windows annoying-ness on that front.

Other than the annoying left-hand window buttons, navigation on the MacBook is natural enough, and largely not annoying, though there are vestiges from legacy versions of MacOS that are annoying ot a first-time user. When you install software, for example, there are little icons that pop up on your desktop that look like little floppy or CD drives. I had no idea why these existed, and they were removed after my next reboot. Seems like a vestige, but if you have to try reinstalling software, I suppose that it's handy.

Because I use Faithlife​​'s Proclaim presentation software, I am wedded to this machine for some of my work, now, but if FaithLife were to publish a Chrome OS-compatible version of their presentation editing software, I wouldn't have a need for this machine at all. Our church office has a new secretary, and we're trying to do everything possible in Google Drive-driven apps.

So, overall, MacOS Sierra is in many ways a relic from a bygone era, but just competent enough to be a far better choice than my nine year-old Dell Latitude laptop for editing and presenting Proclaim slides. Other than that, I'll be on my Chromebooks, and Chromebox. Thankfully.