So I think I'm returning to Mac OS and the Apple ecosystem after a period of time away that is hard to measure. At the most it has been 6 months (mentally), at the least it's been two weeks (in reality).
In a nutshell, I recently purchased a cheap second hand PC with the intention of moving over to Windows to better replicate what I use in work (education). However, I've since done a U-Turn on this decision and instead decided to stick with Mac OS since I'm already in the Apple ecosystem with my iPhone and I'd essentially be replacing an expensive and powerful piece of kit for something a lot cheaper and basic just for the OS.
I think I'm posting here because I need some advice of how to get better use out of my MacBook Pro Early 2013. The hardware specs are still meeting my needs - 16GB RAM, retina display, i7 processor, 256 SSD. I just feel that software wise I'm not utilising it well, have never felt fully comfortable using it, and that this needs addressing so that I can love and enjoy the system and remain happy sticking with Mac OS.
Some of my thoughts / plans / questions moving forward..
In a nutshell, I recently purchased a cheap second hand PC with the intention of moving over to Windows to better replicate what I use in work (education). However, I've since done a U-Turn on this decision and instead decided to stick with Mac OS since I'm already in the Apple ecosystem with my iPhone and I'd essentially be replacing an expensive and powerful piece of kit for something a lot cheaper and basic just for the OS.
I think I'm posting here because I need some advice of how to get better use out of my MacBook Pro Early 2013. The hardware specs are still meeting my needs - 16GB RAM, retina display, i7 processor, 256 SSD. I just feel that software wise I'm not utilising it well, have never felt fully comfortable using it, and that this needs addressing so that I can love and enjoy the system and remain happy sticking with Mac OS.
Some of my thoughts / plans / questions moving forward..
- Tidy the thing up. My files are scattering everywhere and I need to take more ownership over them. are there any suggestions for better organisation or any worthwhile apps to help with this? My photos have always lived in the photos apps and Ive never bothered organising that either. Is the default Apple software best for this?
- Download some worthwhile IDEs. I used to enjoy using Coderunner but if I remember rightly I didn't renew for the newer version when it was necessary on one of the changes to the Mac OS versions. Is this still good or are there are other suggestions? I should look into this again. I will also look to get PyCharm as this is what we're encouraging students to use in school.
- Finally fix my problems with my Logitech mouse and keyboard bluetooth connection. This is one of my biggest issues. I was happy the day I discovered I could use my MacBook in clamshell mode hooked up to a monitor at the desk. However, to wake up the mac is required to touch a key on the keyboard which hasn't always been waking it up and then I'd have to open up the clamshell and restart that way - very inconvenient and annoying when then having to go to bluetooth settings and reconnect the mouse and keyboard. Will possibly look into it being a driver issue and then may have to just purchase Apple peripherals if it still doesn't work. Does anybody have any experience of this?
- When moving from being hooked up to a monitor to then taking away as a laptop, I find that all my desktop icons are misaligned and all over the place (difference in resolution I'm guessing). Is there any way I can be better using the different desktop modes to accommodate for this?
- Applications - I will continue to use Microsoft Office applications and their newer things like Teams and One Note actually seem quite good on Mac which is good news since we're starting to use them a lot more at work now. For other things on Mac, I really don't know if what I'm using is the 'best' of what's available - notes, safari, calendar, mail, maps,(thinking not - I discovered on a recent holiday how shocking Apple maps is compared to Google). What should I be using?
- Similarly linked to the point above - I like my iPhone but really feel as though I'm not fully utilising the link between that and my Mac. I must consider my phone when thinking about the sorts of apps mentioned above. Are there any other suggestions for achieving this?
- I really do also need to be using Windows for some work relating things (using SQL server and possibly coding Visual Basic) and I may also look to use it for some Steam games. I've previously used Parallels until a newer Mac OS version made the one I'd paid for useless and then more recently Bootcamp but have found it imposing on available space on the Mac partition with only 256GB. So I'm not thinking I could utilise the expense I made on my silly decision to buy a PC by taking out the 1TB SSD I bought, buying an adapter to make it an external SSD and then installing and running Windows off that. Does anybody know it that's possible? As Bootcamp or with something like Parallels?
