Last week I purchased my first Mac. Since I've had several iPads over the past few years and recently switched to an iPhone, getting a Mac made sense. Essentially, the plan is to use this in place of the Chromebook. While I like the Chromebook, the real reason I switched is small time video editing. Right now, I am recording and editing my wife's veterinary videos with my iPhone and iMovie. Now I want to do that on a bigger screen. The Mac's version of iMovie apparently has more tools than the iOs app. Plus, I also have an insanely difficult time uploading videos to her YouTube account on my iPhone. I hope to AirDrop raw video to the Mac, edit them, then upload them from it. I hope it goes smoother.
Anyway, on to the "on the fly" first impression review. Note that I have been a Microsoft user since some ancient version of DOS back in 1989 and last used an Apple computer in the IIE era in Junior High school.
PRODUCT
I chose the MacBook Air 13 with the lowest end specs possible. I purchased it at MicroCenter for $759.
KEYBOARD
It almost feels as though the keys are already half pressed down. Not sure if that's a negative or positive but I do find myself missing keystrokes from time to time. The feel on the keys is fantastic, vs the grainy feeling of the Chromebook which I am still not used to. The 'delete' key is a backspace. I haven't found the forward delete key(s) yet.
BATTERY LIFE
Watching Netflix makes the battery life dip faster than I would have thought, but other than that, it's great. It's Sunday and having the thing sleeping since Friday afternoon led to a 0% decrease in battery.
UI
This is a tricky one. It's completely subjective since I am brand new at Macs. The user interface seems a little "play school-ish" to me. Autocorrecting text is infuriating when typing the non-words I typically type on any given day so I turned it off.
USER EXPERIENCE
So far I would rate it an OK. However, I've done almost nothing to customize the experience except for putting a picture of my dog as the wallpaper. Although the iPad and iPhone were intuitive iTunes and iPods were never intuitive to me and the Mac is falling under the latter category. I had hoped for the former. Of course, time and usage will fix this.
LITTLE THINGS
Like I mentioned, this is my first Mac. The maximize/minimize/close buttons being on the "wrong" side came as a surprise but it took only a couple of hours to get used to it.
I can't have the top menu bar available in Safari when in full screen mode? Seems stupid, yet I understand "FULL SCREEN MODE", thanks.
The track pad is great. Not quite as good as the Chromebook, but head and shoulders over any other Windows based laptop I've ever had.
I am so used to CTRL-C and CTRL-V from both Windows and the Chromebook.
The cheap iHome bluetooth mouse too way too long to initially connect, but after it did, it is solid.
Let's face it, the MacBook Air is cool looking, at least I think so, so I have that going for me which is nice.
I'll add more as I discover things.
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