10 Drawbacks to Keep in Mind Before Diving into the MacBook Experience
A side view of a Mac Book Pro's keyboard and screen. InstCaner —— iStock
The MacBook is a beautiful piece of technology that is light weight and lasts for long stretches of time on battery: there’s no way to upgrade the components without getting your hands dirty. Regardless, we still go out of our way to buy them because the first two factors mentioned earlier matters so much to us. In this article, I will discuss ten drawbacks of the MacBook and its operating system.
1. Forced Formatting Woes
NTFS drives are a no-go: the OS can read from it, but it cannot write to it. The two solutions are to use a third-party application by Paragon software i.e, NTFS for Mac that only gives a ten-day trial and costs twenty dollars or reformat your drive—losing your precious files—to an exFAT filesystem if your files are too large to fit on a measly micro-SD card, flash drive, or any cloud storage service. Also, who would want to use the latter when their upload speeds these days are falling behind what was agreed upon with their internet service provider.
2. Creating an Empty File Requires the Terminal
You can’t figure out how to make an empty text file? Well, that’s a feature not a bug: welcome to the era of having to use
the terminal to create a blank text file. I miss those days where I could just right click on Windows and create an empty
txt file. The method that I rely on the most to overcome this oversight is to enter this command in the terminal:
your text > filename.ext. The > output operator will transfer the text into the new file you’re creating–it’s not
really a blank file since we populated it with text. Path Finder lets you do this quite
easily; you’ll need deep pockets for that. While researching for this article, I found a free application
that adds that feature into finder, New File Menu Lite.
3. Copying and Pasting Files isn’t a Feature
Finder doesn’t have the feature to copy and paste files. The alternative is to duplicate the file by pressing CMD D
and then dragging it to its destination folder which is clunky and takes a few extra steps compared to just doing CTRL C
and then CTRL V on Windows. Moreover, Finder’s search is horrendous, searching up a filename for a file that the user
knows exists takes forever for the algorithm to find—sometimes it doesn’t find it even though it’s right there in front of your eyes.
The only solution is to search for it on your own which is much faster than relying on Finder.
4. Web Browsers aren’t Optimized for Efficient Memory Usage
Safari is excellent at handling its memory: the developers exclusively optimize their default browser on every update to be as memory efficient as possible to the point where other browsers are aggressive consumers of RAM. However, that’s the only thing the browser has going for it—most essential extensions or plugins cost a fee. If you’re tight on money like me, using an alternative browser is the way to go. I normally use Vivaldi as my daily driver web browser, but do try FireFox, OperaGX, and Google Chrome. The only caveat is that these alternative browsers I mentioned tend to take up more memory than Safari, depending on how many tabs are open this can become a nightmare. I would recommend going for a browser that has a function which hibernates tabs: the ones I’ve seen that have this feature are Vivaldi and Edge. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to install Tab Wrangler which auto-closes tabs after a period of inactivity.
5. Window Management Constraints
Aero features are so good in Windows that they have spoiled us, moving around windows as fluidly as we were able to on Windows OS is not possible. The default Mac OS method is to hold onto the green full screen circle until a drop-down option shows up which is only limited to left and right tiling: this is painfully slow. Thankfully, a free third-party application like Rectangle steps in that allows using the keyboard to move around windows from left, right, up, down, and into the classic quadrants. There’s a couple of other apps that do the same thing, none of them are special.
6. Cleaning your Keyboard is a Technique that Requires Mastery
There’s a plethora of dirt on your keys after spending so much time typing, or you’re eating a bag of chips and the crumbs just spill over the keys. Now, when you go to clean the keys, there’s an issue: the sleep mode doesn’t exactly put the computer to sleep. A black screen shows up and then it tosses the user back to the lock screen. Cleaning the keyboard on the lock screen causes different functions to fire off e.g., the keyboard language changing menu or the password security lock telling the user to wait a few minutes before entering in their password again. A solution for this issue doesn’t exist, we just live with this frustration.
7. Buggy Updates
Updates come with bugs—we’re generally the guinea pigs for every new release of the operating system. If you happen to enjoy the version you are on, and it’s working great for you: I suggest you stick with it for a while. Updating to the latest and greatest OS version may break your favorite app or make finder worse than it already is. I updated to Ventura 13.4.1, and the application I use to set a timer on time-consuming software broke. When I want the screen time pop-up to disappear, pressing the button doesn’t do anything. Security vulnerabilities on older operating systems are something to be afraid of, so the best bet to make is to upgrade when the new operating system is matured in its lifecycle and check r/macOS to see if what users are complaining about would impact your workflow and quality of life.
8. Cheap Charging Cable
Cable yellowing is a prominent issue among Apple devices because their cables have inadequate strain relief and become frayed inside the insulation; consequently, increasing resistance and heat which results in the cable changing its color to yellow. However, in the future, Apple may choose to entirely switch to braided cables: they have these cables on sale—currently they do not come with their devices except for a select few new MacBooks and watches. If you do purchase an older model, do not bend your cable in any shape or form which is difficult to do—but you shouldn’t worry buying another USB-C to USB-C cable isn’t expensive and Anker is one of the best when it comes to cables. Psssst, Apple also cheaped out on the adapters: they don’t maximize the amount of wattage your Macbook can use—M1’s default adapter does 30w while the computer can go up to 65w.
9. Using a Third-Party Mouse with Macbook is Complicated
Auto-scroll doesn’t work—well it does work if you have an Apple mouse, so your middle mouse wheel is completely useless until you realize there’s a third-party application that brings it back—what would this platform be without these money grubby applications. That’s where Smart Scroll comes in, handing you back the functionality that any normal person would expect when they’ve switched to an apple computer; sadly, it comes with with a price: $14. There’s no free application for it: you’ll have to do without it. The second-best solution—suffice to say the only free solution—is to use both fingers on your touchpad to fast scroll. If you thought that was the only mouse feature you were missing, you’re dead wrong: smooth scrolling won’t work either. Thankfully, there’s a free application for it called Mos which makes scrolling smooth again.
10. File Transfer Between Android Phones and Macbook Requires Finesse
File transfer on phones that run on Android OS work only if you’re lucky. Connecting a USB-C cable from the phone to the MacBook’s USB-C adapter won’t make the drive pop-up on the desktop. Rudimentary suggestions on the web recommend using the Android File Transfer third-party application. The only catch is that it doesn’t work for everyone. If there was a chance that the user installed another brand proprietary application to do file transfer from their PC to their device, it will prevent the Android File Transfer application from functioning properly. Let’s assume a user installs a Samsung File Transfer application and the application doesn’t work, the drivers for the application interrupt Android File Transfer’s ability to function forcing the user to hunt down those pesky drivers and delete them even though the chances of this fixing things is a hit or miss.
One could try transferring files through Wi-Fi using other applications such as the shareware ForkLift or the freeware Cyberduck. This method would require an app on the mobile device to broadcast the phone over the network. There’s also the option to use Finder: the only issue is that its read-only, so practically impractical. FileZilla is an entirely free solution that comes packaged with malware. If the trial period is over for ForkLift or Cyberduck doesn’t work which it didn’t for me, a possible consideration is to upload or download pertinent files using Google Drive. The method has its flaws such as hanging on uploading screen, but it gets the job done when it wants to work.
Disclaimer: My experience is solely based around the M1 MacBook Air; the other OS pertinent information will still apply to a swath of devices. At some point anyone would tell me that if you have the money to buy a MacBook then you have the money to spend it on all the third-party applications—it’s never that straight forward. Sometimes you’re gifted a MacBook like me and at times you’re on a tight budget.