Four score and seven years ago... a laptop origin story 📖‌

Seven years... thats how long since I have bought a laptop! Since then a variety of employers have provided laptop but finally after being left with a tightly locked down SOE, my creativity frustrated, I decided to take the plunge and find a new device. This is my laptop'sorigin story.

Which brand❓ Which one ❓ Which OS❓

The first question was surprisingly. the easiest. I grew up on Windows all my life however 15 years ago, all the engineers I work with were switching to Mac. I was curious so dipped my toe by getting an iMac for the wife just to see what this was all about. After three months of effortless OS management and even an drop dead simple OS upgrade I was sold. At the time I bought myself a fully specced Intel MacBook Pro 15".

The goal was to give me more time to focus on what matters and not have to waste it trying to get things to work. I used youtube videos guides for the Windows to Mac transition. There were some quirks but for the most part I had completely eliminatied any operating system irritation from my daily work routine. It took a few months to get used to the Apple approach but by then I was just having too much fun exploring what I can do.  Being based on a unix immediately gave me access to a huge open source fraternity and the possibilities were endless. I had achieved my goal. It was everything I imagined and much much more becoming the swiss army knife of the consulting toolset.

Since that time Microsoft Office became available and these days onedrive cloud sync actually works. Don't get me wrong iCloud rocks if you have an Apple One subscription. If you don't, MS Office is a far better offering as you get 1TB of onedrive cloud storage for free. Why all this cloud talk you wonder?? Well the benefit of keeping a copy in the cloud is redundancy. If your device is stolen/trashed you don't lose any of your work and this is important in my line of business. Just load your OS, resync your cloud and your back in business. Teams is still slow but I have some good news on that front.

These days my ten year old daughter uses that first Macbook Pro for her daily use. Since then I have been closely watching the developments of the new Apple silicon, impressed by their technology and especially the new fanless Macbook Air M1 series I advised the greater family this is eaily a ten year laptop of you take care of it. In fact the adoption of Mac means I no longer have to give relatives technical support. Other than assisting them with initial configuration they dont need it. Now when they ask me whch laptop, I always recommend Macbooks.

With no moving parts and a blazing fast NVMe SSD there isnt much that can fail. Processing wise it's about four years ahead of its time. So if your looking, this is the one. The base M1 is just under $1k USD and thats without any discount. I bought my son a base M1 Air for school. It has been flawless and everytime I get on it to help him with something its blazing fast. Coming from the Windows world only having 8GB memory would be considered a bottleneck. Not so on these M1's. The system is so fast it never slows down.

So that brings me to today. I had to return a work supplied laptop on change of employer. Hence the search for something new. I've watched all the keynotes, the development of the new arm architecture by Apple. I don't consider myself a fanboy although some would argue, I am just a fan of good technology. I had to laugh when I did a survey for them once and it asked which Apple devices do you own... I ticked every box, including other! 😂 

So brand is covered, which one? Well the M2 Pro is the new range but I prefer the light weight of the Air. I am also not a fan of buying previous tech for future proofing. The moment you hit the pro processor though the price point jumps. Significantly for the max and Apple is expensive enough already. I also want a machine I can use anywhere, like the bed and the couch. So it looked like an M2 Air. Now what configuration? I could not get away from getting 16GB memory, my Windows brain just would not let me! Also a small upgrade to the 512GB SSD. Surprised they even sell them with 256GB but there are valid use cases for light users I suppose.

So now I am the proud owner of a Midnight Black M2 Air with 16GB memory and 512GB storage. It shows every single goddamn fingerprint and you can scratch the coating as I have found out. But it looks like a sexy beast with that jet black shiny Apple logo. Runs like a dream and Teams actually performs well under this kind of raw power. The M2 sports the triumphant return of Magsafe power and the new edge to edge screen make it a significant upgrade over the M1. Absolutely loving this beast as I type this on the new device. So for all you Windows lovers.... see you on the dark side.

Speaking of dark side the Merakai MDM profile would not deploy. Didn't know why until later I had to install some software which required me to disable system integrity protection for a moment. When I went to do this, recovery mode would not come up! First time I have ever seen this. After an hour on the phone wiith Apple on a Sunday in the end I had to erase the Mac completely to fix the recovery mode. Thank god I only had it for two days. Strangly enough, the Meraki profile deployed perfectly fine after all that. Go figure! So its been flawless except for that one issue with initial software.

If you made it this far, congratulations! You have earned yourself a cup of coffee/tea!  🍵 May the force be with you all