What do you Do on a Mac?

[sgtaylor5]

Run my micro-business with my M2 Air 16/256: MailMaven for email (Zoho mail and Gmail), Corona for accounting, Numbers for finance, Nisus Writer Express (RTF word processor) for documents, Safari for the web, Jump Desktop for clients’ remote access. Nothing on the cloud if possible; that’s mostly because RTF isn’t really supported on phones and I don’t need to see my photos on my phone.

Edit 2025-08-02: switched WP tool from NWE to Pages, 'cause I don't know the viability of Nisus Software, and the Document Manager was just too different to use.

 

[Mrbobb]

Surfing, the occasional word document, spreadsheet, basically to access the Internet. Too boring?

What kind of full answer are you expecting? Computers including the Mac are modern day necessity tools. I am aware youngsters spend lots of time on their mobiles and less time on their desktops/laptops, but there are also many of us who prefer a larger screen.

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

I do still have my antique i5 9400f RX 580 PC I used to use for gaming, but I rarely ever even plug it in any more. In the past year and a half, it's been plugged in for about two months. I barely have a use for it any more!

Most of the games I play (when I have the time and energy for them) work better on my M3 Pro (Civ VI and Farm Sim 25). One day I might have the time and energy to dust off my old PC, run Windows Update for the afternoon, and play Euro Truck Sim 2 (until they update the Mac version properly), Age of Empires IV, Company of Heroes 3 (if I don't just play CoH 2 on my Mac), Train Sim World, or Forza 7.

 

[maflynn]

I like what others stated, what can you do on the Mac that you cannot on windows? 90% of the time, there really the answer is nothing. Most anything youj can do on a Mac, windows can also do that , and vice versa.

For me, being someone who's been part of the apple ecosystem and the wintel ecosystem since the 1980s I can provide why I use the Mac over my PC.

I largely migrated to windows mostly full time a few years back as I wanted to get more into gaming and I couldn't do that with the mac. Even with Crossover it was not viable 5 years ago.

Now a lot has changed since then, and between the performance increases in Apple Silicon and improvements with crossover 90 percent of the games I want to play can be done so with my M4 Max Studio. With that said, I had to buy a higher end Mac to make this happen - the M4 Mini and M4 Pro Mini were not suited to the task

What I like with Macs

• Consistency with the UI and UX.
• Quick look
• Install/uninstall apps are generally just drag and drop
• Quiet operation (no fan noise)
• simple/automated backups - time machine is so much simpler to use then any other backup application
• No Ads
• Little to no telemetry
• No recall (windows recording every single action you do on your pc)
• Better resistance and hardening to malware
• Memory usage/architecture is superior to windows
• Ecosystem integration
• Love, absolutely love the the fact I can use iMessage on my Mac - this is a game changer.
• Low power, 600 to 700 watts (and that being a mid-range pc) vs. 200 on my Mac.
• Spotlight is better faster and more potent then windows search.

What I like with Windows

• More customizable
• cmd shell/powershell. Yes the terminal app on Macs is potent, but I've been using dos/windows cmd shell since day 1, and I prefer it.
• Display scaling and font rendering. I don't need to change the resolution, I can just scale it by 125%.
• Fonts look better. In apps like Excel I have to scale up the spreadsheet to 150% on a Mac
• Shortcut keys - you need to do finger gymnastics for the most simplest of actions - minimize all windows shown on the desktop? win+d keys, on the mac cmd+option+h+m
• File Explorer better the Finder
• Upgradeable hardware
• Better GPUs

What I use my Mac for (in no particular order)

• 3d Printing
• Gaming (via cross over)
• Office Apps, excel, etc
• Online surfing stuff
• Content consumption
• Content creation (fusion 360) <- soon to be, I've yet to fully learn how to do this.

 

[walterwhite]

I perform support for mostly Mac's and Apple products but also PC's in my own small business that I do part-time. I have been running that business for more than 25 years now. I also support Macs for the Governor's office in PA. I certainly also use Mac's for my personal use. The only PC I use personally is one on my internal network that I remotely access from my mac.

 

[imanidiot]

What does anyone do on any computer?

 

[vkd]

What does anyone do on any computer?

Exactly. Many things, but I don't do creation (music in Logic etc., video in FCP etc.)

Here's my list:
Journaling, memory database (Numbers)
Internet (Brave)
Mail (Mail)
Music & video consumption (VLC Player)
Personal accounting (Calculator, Brave & Numbers)
Reading (PDFs in Preview)
Gaming (native, emulators, Crossover, VMs (Parallels, VMWare Fusion))
Data collection (Bills, documents, images, music collection, videos, photos)

I agree mostly with all the great points Maflynn wrote above, Macs are better hardware and software but as he says, there's some plus points to PCs too. Only a few though and preference always goes to my mid-2011 iMac. I built a PC with 27" 4K, Ryzen 5, Radeon 5600 XT 16GB/2TB a few years ago for newer games that insist on a more powerful GPU, but avoid it whenever possible. With macOS 26 Tahoe coming soon, I hope to get another 3-5 years out of this old iMac before upgrading to a discounted Mac Mini M4; thats the present plan, anyway. If my investments suddenly surge or something maybe I'll get an up-to-date Mac Mini or even a Studio, who knows?

 

[Jackkmann]

I bought my first Mac ever (M2 MacBook Air) to replace an ancient Win10 laptop, which was too slow to do anything productive, about a year ago. I bought a Mac Mini M4 to replace a Win 10 desktop that was not upgradeable to Win11, and don't get me started on Microsofts "targeted advertising" in Win11. Adios Microsoft. Both of my Macs do everything I need for them to do. It's been several months now and I don"t miss windows at all. I use mostly public domain apps, with the exception of my photo editing software, for which I had to by a license for Mac. No big deal....

Kinda same I had a Year old acer aspire 5 (Terrible choice) that I replaced with a m2 MBA

 

[neutrino17]

I was asking this same question a few months ago when I wanted to use my Mac, I just didn't know what for. Now I found out a ok-ish answer to that question. I installed crossover and Downloaded a few games via steam, I was actually surprised with the mac's performance on hefty graphical games, I have a base m2 and it honestly runs better than anything my ps5 could do. I also lightly use YouTube to watch things, and scroll through threads like these. I also don't use it for school or work. But this still doesn't really answer the full question, What do you do on a Mac?

Just guessing but you sound like you are looking for entertainment or stimulation.

I would suggest instead that you try creating things.

Use Pages or Journal and start writing a daily journal. Get a book from the library about this topic. Even if you just write a paragraph every day this will be interesting for you years later as you try to understand yourself. It can also be very helpful if you have documented when various things happen in your life. Use the computer to amplify your memory. In addition to writing keep monthly folders with scans of receipts, letters and cards you receive and such.

Collect photos from your life and make PDF books (use Pages or Keynote) with annotations to give to your extended family who might be curious about your life.

If you have an interest in music use GarageBand to make some music. It doesn’t have to be publishable. If you try something every week after a year or two you will surprise yourself.

If you are interested in science start measuring things and keep track of them with Pages/Numbers. Not all science involves quantum mechanics. Get a precise digital scale (cheap these days on eBay) and filter paper and a small pump and measure how much dust is floating in the air outside your house every day. Maybe get a simple microscope and categorize them. There are lots of similar ideas. We think everything is ordinary till we start to count things and measure them.

Write a book in Pages and publish it on Apple Books. No charge. The reward is concentrating long enough and hard enough to distill your thoughts into a book length document. Any topic will do. Fiction or nonfiction.

Write and illustrate a children’s book. Maybe after you do a dozen of them you will be inspired to publish one on Apple Books.

If you can get photographs from extended family scan them in and make calendar. Each month would be a collage of these pictures. Family homes, gardens and events. I’ve done that for my mom. She really liked that.

Best wishes for a great journey.

 

[theladyboo]

I do all of my business stuff, code, web development, videos, audio, browsing, some games on my M4 Mini. I write Kindle books on my very old 2015 MacBook Air. I'm not sure what to do with my M1 Mini now because I didn't trade it in. Maybe move the business communications to it so I'm not interrupted while creating on the M4. I know, I use focus for that but sometimes I forget then get interrupted and things fly. just kidding.

 

[Jackkmann]

Just guessing but you sound like you are looking for entertainment or stimulation.

I would suggest instead that you try creating things.

Use Pages or Journal and start writing a daily journal. Get a book from the library about this topic. Even if you just write a paragraph every day this will be interesting for you years later as you try to understand yourself. It can also be very helpful if you have documented when various things happen in your life. Use the computer to amplify your memory. In addition to writing keep monthly folders with scans of receipts, letters and cards you receive and such.

Collect photos from your life and make PDF books (use Pages or Keynote) with annotations to give to your extended family who might be curious about your life.

If you have an interest in music use GarageBand to make some music. It doesn’t have to be publishable. If you try something every week after a year or two you will surprise yourself.

If you are interested in science start measuring things and keep track of them with Pages/Numbers. Not all science involves quantum mechanics. Get a precise digital scale (cheap these days on eBay) and filter paper and a small pump and measure how much dust is floating in the air outside your house every day. Maybe get a simple microscope and categorize them. There are lots of similar ideas. We think everything is ordinary till we start to count things and measure them.

Write a book in Pages and publish it on Apple Books. No charge. The reward is concentrating long enough and hard enough to distill your thoughts into a book length document. Any topic will do. Fiction or nonfiction.

Write and illustrate a children’s book. Maybe after you do a dozen of them you will be inspired to publish one on Apple Books.

If you can get photographs from extended family scan them in and make calendar. Each month would be a collage of these pictures. Family homes, gardens and events. I’ve done that for my mom. She really liked that.

Best wishes for a great journey.

This actually helped me a lot Thx.