Return Of The (Big) Mac
After 8 years of using ever decreasing in size, non Apple laptops I've now returned to a big Mac! From a tiny, 10 inch Windows laptop to a massive 16inch slab of Apple silicon.
Getting back into the Mac eco system was pretty smooth - a week or two of retraining the muscle memory and then back to working as smoothly as ever. In fact even smoother - for all my success with non Mac's it's been quite a joy to come back: everything just works. The camera is good, the microphone is good, it looks good and above all - the battery life is amazing.
It's a huge slab of a laptop compared to my teeny one but doesn't need all the extras I needed to lug around to last a full day.
Teeny tiny windows laptops
Previously I've written about my teeny tiny powerful computer. A 10 inch laptop that was super portable. However most days I'd pack up a spare screen, keyboard, battery pack, charger etc.. Hey - it was super portable if needed it to be - but most of the time I didn't need its teeny tininess.
In my dreams I'd imagined hiking across hills and pausing to update a PR, running down a remote beach and stopping to add a blog post, swimming across a lake and then drying off to fix a bug. In reality I was based at home or a short trip from a well equiped co working space.
Return of the Mac
I didn't go full in on the 16incher - that would have been too much - I eased in slowly with a delightful 14 inch Mac. On joining a growing startup in April 2025 and they gave everyone a super souped up Apple laptop. This was my first shift from 8 years of Linux, Windows and WSL. But in that time I've kept updating my working setup, learning new shortcuts, trying new software so another update wasn't a big shock. Switching to a Mac was pretty smooth - and to be fair, in almost every situation the Mac hardware or software just worked slightly smoother and more professionally.
Size
A second job in 2025 heralded a new piece of kit. A smaller tech company so I inherited the laptop of the person I was taking over from. This was the biggest laptop I've ever used professionally. Like getting a new TV it felt huge to start - but after a short period you get used to it and anything else smaller becomes almost unusable. I'm not hiking great distances - a few times a week I walk the 20mins to london fields. The bigger laptop means no extra screen, no extra camera. I do take an extra keyboard as I put the laptop on a stand. The best thing of all has been the amazing battery life: A day of calls I still need a charger but for most days I can get by with just the overnight charge
Summary
The shift back to Apple has been great - learnt a huge amount from being on Windows and Linux but it's just happy making being back with a Mac.
Size? well - the 16 inch took a little while to get used to. I think ~14 inch would be my ideal. My setup and workflow means I'm happy without too much screen real estate. I do have an eye on an even smaller 8inch PC and a VR headset but that's a post for another day. For now - the Mac is back - and it's big!