As an old user of Microsoft and Google products, I never imagined I’d reach this point with Apple’s. I’ve been using MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Apple TV for a while now… I haven’t looked back yet.
I’m just adding few extra points here to my previous post (MacBook Pro – I never imagined I’d do it!).
In general…
Yet I still prefer Android phones over iPhones, iPhone is an excellent companion with Mac.
I still prefer OneDrive over iCloud:
- Can’t share folders.
- Synchronizing often requires being on charge and WiFi.
- Shared photo (public album) has no details presented; only the photo.
- Shared photos are of low resolution (compressed). They are actually replicates, that’s, changes on the original photo won’t be reflected on the shared one & vice versa. However, they don’t count against the storage quota. The limitations are 200 albums and 5000 photos per each.
- No ability to embed photos, e.g., into blog.
P.S., I faced some critical issues with pics synchronized over OneDrive on my Mac, but Microsoft solved the issue immediately.
My MacBook is supposed to be a high end one. However, like Windows’, some tweaks make things better in term of performance and battery life. Mainly, reduce animation and transparency:
- Preferences-Accessibility: Tick Reduce motion and Reduce transparency.
- Preferences-Dock: Untick animate opening applications and minimize windows using scale.
Apple Watch is a smart watch. From fitness prospective, it is far behind Garmin’s (see my other post: Fitness Watches).
With Apple Mac and iPhone, Chromecast wasn’t needed! Apple TV is doing well. Though, screen mirroring from Android to chromecast is better than from iPhone to Apple TV. I don’t know if comparing both here is right as each has different purpose and use.
More about applications…
Country specifications’ on Apple store is painful. Yet buying from store is safest with smoother updates, I prefer buying form the developer directly if they are trusted enough.
The default mail, calendar, contacts, and reminders applications can be used alone though iCloud or through connecting third party services such as Outlook or Gmail. As I use Outlook.com, I found that Outlook 2016/2109 on Mac is more stable and provides the same services of mail, calendars, contacts, and tasks. However, the default apps are more integrated into the system and have better performance. Until Microsoft releases its tasks app (To-Do) on Mac, I’ll stick with the default iCloud reminder app as it has more options. Noting that the limit of events in iCloud calendar and reminders is 50,000 only.
iWork apps can be compared with MS Office! Pages and Keynote replace MS Word and Powerpoint. Numbers, on the other hand, is enough for personal use. Personally, I have MS Excel installed for advanced work needs.
I never liked OneNote from Microsoft. I prefer Evernote. Right now, I’m testing Apple Notes to replace Evernote mainly due to their high subscription prices. Apple Notes is almost perfect and smoothly synchronize with all my apple devices:
- It should be connected to iCloud
- Sharing is for individual notes. That’s, you can’t share folder.
- Share is with edit option only. You can’t share with view option only.
- You can’t change the date of a note (creation date). There is a work around method though.
- Arabic and tables on web version isn’t supported.
- Only the first page of attached PDFs are shown in a note.
- There is no ability to export notes as in Evernote.
iBooks can’t compete with Amazon Kindle or Google Books when we talk about verity & number of titles. Thanks to Epuber Ultimate app, I was able to move all my epub books to iBooks to enjoy its wonderful display and features.
I prefer Davinci Resolve for editing videos but Final Cut Pro has seamless experience on Mac and provides almost the same results. Logic is new for me but it is a real plus. Final Cut and Logic integrate well with iMovie and Garageband on iPhone.
The default Preview application is handy for viewing and editing PDFs. Filling forms is even better than other competitors. Unfortunately, I bought Foxit thinking it’d better but there is no need for it on MacOS and iOS. Relatively, I never had a love relationship with Adobe products.
Firefox is the fastest browser on Mac. But there are some issues that make Safari better despite being slower than Firefox. I never liked Chrome! However, it performs well on MacOS.
Google maps still the best option for navigation using mobile. Sygic or Openstreetmaps applications can do the job too. Apple maps has potential but it doesn’t support all countries.
Moreover, having Microsoft Visual Studio and Azure Data Studio available on Mac, there is no need to switch to Windows anymore.
Do you prefer the default apps from Apple (Apple ecosystem) when available over alternatives?