r/mac

The expectation is that the MBP Ultra is coming with OLED and a touchscreen. The OLED I understand, but why would Apple put a touchscreen in a MacBook, and even more, who is really waiting for that?
I would not see a real use case for it. I mean, it would be different if you can detach the screen and use it as an ipad (so when you detach the screen macOS switcht to like a IpadOS), but as a MacBook? The angle is terrible to touch the screen, the screen gets full of fingerprints, and MacOS is not a touchscreen OS.

So, why is it coming? And why do you want it?

I use macOS Tahoe. How about you?

Context

• Never had a Mac before and spent my whole life on Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows 11. 
• Switched to a MacBook Pro M5 14’’ a few months ago.

What I like

• First impression. Setting up the computer for the first time was easy and fast. With my last Windows laptop, I had to go through several rounds of firmware and software updates with reboots.
• The terminal. It's Unix-based. All common Linux commands work. Ssh, scp, vim, etc. I really hate Windows PowerShell with its complicated commands. And it's supposed to be an upgrade over the regular Windows terminal…
• System Updates. I don’t fear them anymore. On Windows, I was always afraid a new update was going to break something. And Windows updates are mandatory; you can only briefly pause them, never turn them off.
• AI. I don't feel Siri is as much forced on me as Copilot was on Windows. It got everywhere. They're desperate to have you use it.
• Battery life. My previous Windows laptop was a Dell XPS that I bought specifically for battery life, sacrificing a lot of performance. Mac’s battery life is even better, with no performance sacrifice.
• Sound. Music and movies sound incredible. I never had a laptop sounding this good.
• Support. Quality of phone support is great. It’s also great to know I can walk into any physical Apple Store location if I have an issue. With Dell, once the warranty has passed, the (chat) support person had no motivation to help.
• Compatibility. Most coding and productivity apps I used on Windows have a Mac version.
• Window switching. It took some time to get used to, but I actually like that on Mac you use separate keyboard shortcuts to switch between apps (Command + Tab) and between different instances of the same app (Command + `)
• Privacy. I really got tired of constant new rumours on the different ways Windows is either already spying on you or intends to spy on you in the future, including taking constant screenshots of your desktop (they seem to have backtracked on that one)
• Preview. Preview of PDFs is really good, it avoids opening the heavy and bulky Adobe Acrobat app.
• Spotlight. My favourite way to launch any app. I love that there is a dedicated keyboard key for it.

What I don’t like

• No dedicated page up, page down, home, end, and ‘delete’ (not backspace) keys, which are quite handy to navigate inside a document. Instead I have to use combinations of several keys.
• Almost no native games on the app store, existing games have very few reviews.

I thought this was interesting. The beginning of this video is him saying “we created a new OS from the ground up to redesign the desktop experience.” But all of these features are already on Macs. TL;DR they’ve just introduced continuity features and more to use your computer as an extension of your phone.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s smart marketing. If you have an Android phone, having a computer that plays nice is a major bonus. But none of this redesigns a desktop in an interesting way.

I think there should be more experimentation and innovation with desktops. Apple and Microsoft haven’t done that for a long time on the software side. But these don’t appear to be doing that.

I have this MBP 2019 with a stonk of storage and RAM. Originally purchased for music composition with Logic Pro and sound library. That hobby had faded away for couple of years.

Any recommendation on what I can use it's second life considering I don't have other heavy use, other than a family photo album of 1.5TB sitting on an external SSD and occasion Claude / GPT use (co-work, project etc).

I do have 3 others M-chips Mac, so please keep the ditch-it-buy-Apple-silicon remarks to yourself.