I use MacBook for a few months I have to respond to questions “Why do you like MacBook” quite often. But to be honest, there are some things I really hate!
Note: I am using Macbook Air 2019, 13″, i5 1.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD
1. Everybody claims how perfect it is
But it is not. I have plenty of GUI/system/HW bugs caught on video and this can happen. But “the community” is always saying how Windows is buggy, on Linux you have to debug wifi for 5 days before using it – but macOS is perfect! … except that’s not true.
- https://youtu.be/Q6aOJzAYTRY
- https://youtu.be/4lueBjQPaWs
- https://youtu.be/JrGEtyS-f6o
- https://youtu.be/kEB6WUhSUQ8
- https://youtu.be/ihyHj5gNg1I
2. Price
Yes, I have to complain about the pricing strategy of Apple, because it is ridiculous. Everybody knows the famous $999 monitor stand, but how about other products? Aren’t they overpriced a bit? In addition, you cannot change RAM or SSD because they are soldered to the motherboard (unless you are Louis Rossmann).
3. Upgrades
It is nearly impossible to perform HW upgrade of you Macbook (because of components are soldered) which is unfortunate.
4. Performance
I am working as a DevOps consultant. I use my IDE, Terminal and Google but the power of my Air is not enough. RAM is constantly fine, SWAP is described in point 5., CPU is around 70 %, but Mac is freezing, lagging and not working smoothly (being on the charger all the time) so I need to close browser windows and IDEA Projects often…
5. SWAP
I have 16 GB of RAM and only 128 GB of SSD. This cause a lot of troubles with SWAP. This mighty feature somehow eats my free space during 50 % of my RAM is free. So I constantly run out of space (128 GB is just not enough for nothing) and Mac is screaming “Running out of space” and push me to delete some apps…
6. Fullscreen bugs
Well, you might say “this is the issue of the application” but I would say it is poor design instead. When I am using some application on fullscreen and popup appears (for example is Merge window in IntelliJ IDEA), my current space is changed to the first one with all ‘none full screen’ windows and there this popup opens. Okay, so I scroll horizontally to this space, but MacOS would like to keep me in the fullscreen one where IDEA is living. So I am rollback there automatically. So I scroll again and again. And this does not happen only with IDEA, but with other products too. I am moved across spaces whenever some application wants attention and opens some new window! This is super annoying.
Another fullscreen bug occurs when I am in the “fullscreen apps space” and I open up some app using Spotlight. If this app is in window mode, it sometimes opens up on the top of the current fullscreen app. There is no way how to move this app to another space or anywhere. So it just lurks on the top of my fullscreen app and I cannot ged rid of it.
6.1 Browser tabs to Windows
Imagine 2 open tabs, you would like to keep them in one fullscreen window. You want to change the order of tabs and move this tab a bit off the top bar and suddenly macOS recognizes, you would like to have another fullscreen window…
So instead of changing the order of tabs, you have two fullscreen windows with your browser and to merge them, you have to exit fullscreen on one of them and then mooooove across all spaces and pray not to lift finger and lose this window.
6.2 Topbar issues and bugs
I like the topbar. I used it on Linux, like it on Mac but… Those small icons on the left side are fine unless you have an application with more available settings so they override those icons. Icons cannot be closed or hidden because they represent running application so… shame.
7. Finder
This app is god and evil together. It is very simple and nice, however, I do not understand why I cannot see the full path of files and use this path in some search or address bar… When I need to work with more than 1 file, I am usually switching to mucommander.com
8. Trackpad zoom bugs
This one happens usually when I need it the most (e.g. while using Figma). The pinch zoom feature stops working suddenly and I have to go to Settings -> Trackpad -> Disable -> Scroll & Zoom -> Disable “Zoom in or out” was a few seconds and enable it back. Sometimes this works, sometime it does not.
9. Notifications
Every time I login (wake up/start whatever) or Do Not Disturb period is over, my Mac, it shows some annoying notifications suggesting that I should update my system. I do not want to (cuz e.g. some tools I use not yet supports it). And there is not way how to remove them other than turning Focus mode one).
UPDATE: MacOS decided to bully me with update about not properly ejected USB drive. There is no way how to cancel this notification. The bonus is, I have connected the flash drive, used eject and disconnected the drive. But the notification is still there.
