I got a Macbook. I mean, I’ve used a Mac for work for years. But this is my own Macbook. This feels like something you need to announce, especially when you were planning on writing a post that you have been using Linux for 20 years. I feel like I lost something by ordering one, but I have the following reasons.

  • I’m preparing for interviews, and I want to focus on studying what I need to study.
  • I could have gotten a Thinkpad P14s Gen 6, there’s a model that has 96GB RAM, but I primarily wanted a machine for the go. That laptop has the Ryzen AI 350 chip, but I assumed that the M5 would have better performance vis-a-vis local LLMs.
  • I wanted a machine that lowers friction towards studying, this means I don’t want to close my terminal sessions until I’m done, or until rebooting is inevitable.
  • My previous laptop, the Asus X13 Flow is a lovely machine. I really like it, but its thermals suck on Linux, and the battery performance is abysmal. I tried to vibe-code an app to monitor the power performance, but I realized that task is keeping me away from the actual task at hand: studying for interviews.
  • I want to also record video, perhaps return to streaming.
  • I want a lighter go-bag. With the Linux machine, I’d carry a charger, a powerbank and several accessories. I want to just carry a small GaN charger, a USB-C wire, my OnePlus Open, my Boox Palma and the laptop. I couldn’t do that with the X13 Flow.

At the end of the day, my reasons are really irrelevant. I am just giving myself reasons for this, but I did this because I need to focus. Any source of friction is not good. I wanted to get the 13" Macbook Air, but they only sell the M4 version. I wish they’d released the M5 Macbook Air already. My friends also told me that the memory bandwidth is lesser.

Oh, and I got the 15" M5 Macbook Pro with 32GB RAM and 512 GB Storage. I wish I could afford the 2TB model, but I have to make do with this. I have enough storage on my home servers, and I can also carry a portable SSD, I have a 2TB one lying around.

I’m still using Linux though. My desktop, MiniPc, storage server, steam deck and the X13 Flow will continue to run Linux. I am going to write that post, but for now, my priorities are directed towards what I need to study, especially given the job market.

Damn
In the process of writing this post, I copied text from this Macbook and pasted it into my workplace’s macbook. I’ve heard that this was possible, but never got the chance to try it out. Damn.

Also, What Gives, Apple?

The list of things I’m having to install to make this machine’s GUI usable is insane.

I’ve installed the following:

I thankfully had Claude update my Ansible playbooks to support OSX. I pushed some updates to it, and it’s working like a charm. I need to update it to install the above applications as well, I think.