My wife asked me tonight what I was doing after the kids go to bed and I told her relaxing on the couch while playing on my MacBook and enjoying it till bed. She said “you spend all day on the computer, why would you get on it more?”. 18 years working in a windows environment and I still enjoy playing on the Mac when I get home from work. The apps, the design, the M2 chip, battery life, the 15" Air, the touchpad, the keyboard…what’s not to like? I’m super efficient and productive on a windows machine but just something about the Mac that makes me dream of the day I can use it at my work. Anyone else spend all day on Windows but come home to a Mac and enjoy it?
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I used to, and then for a few years I was the sole Mac guy at our office. Now we’re 100% Mac.
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My company is embarking on a new ERP system next year and I’ve been told that once we do that we can have a Mac and maybe even a BYOD program. My CTO told me I would have the first Mac with the new system. Just have to wait a few years!
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Yes! Though it’s more aspirational than actual. I don’t have much time to play with the computer before I crash for the night.
I recently had the option to get a Mac as part of a pilot program for work but feedback from others in the firm who were using them was that it was constantly painful and requiring calls to the helpdesk because the internal VPN keeps failing requiring admin privileges to restart it. I made the decision that being productive with the Dell was more worth it than a clearly afterthought mac. That, and I wouldn’t be able to get/install the tools that make the Mac such a joy to work with.
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I know what you’re talking about.
I work on Windows on a cheap HP, I play on macOS on a svelte MacBook Pro.
It’s the same as when someone asks me why I would eat an icecream on a winter day. Errr… for the same reason you drink tea/coffee on a summer day. It tastes good.
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This. My Mac is set up to my way of doing things. My company would never let me install any automation tools.
My wife doesn’t understand why after sitting at my home office desk working all day I’d want to spend even more time on the computer.
Glad I am not alone. I work for a large Government department and often think about how much productivity could be improved if I could use a Mac at work.
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Windows pays the bills; macOS is my shelter in the storm when I get really busy.
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I would have to be hard pressed (or receive an absolutely amazing offer) to work someplace that wouldn’t let me use a Mac.
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I became what we call a “power user” using Linux in the late nineties. I became a “switcher” in 2004, and between that I used Windows for my personal computer mainly for music production. I joined the “shell modding” trend and even in Windows XP or 2000 you could transform the desktop and adapt it to your workflow quite a lot with the adequate tools. Of course switching to Leopard put and end to all that customization and fiddling, but two decades later I feel like the issue with Windows is not Windows per se, but the fact that power users are exposed to Windows on “platformed” work computers that do not allow their users to install what they need. If my work mac was subjected to “endpoint management” restrictions it would probably be as fun as a plain Windows install.
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In essence a computer is mostly a tool. Surely I prefer a Mac over Windows. But I can get my work also done on a Windows or Linux machine. And most of the time I don’t have a choice when it comes to my professional life. So far, 100% of my clients in the past 25+ years have been on Windows. More recently I see some Macbooks and iPads around. But these are mostly handed out to manager type of people. Let’s call it the people for whom email is their main tool. 
I’m not that religious when it comes to the OS that I have to use at work. Don’t like it. Don’t hate it. Basically I barely notice what I’m using.
What bothers me more is that I don’t have the tools available to make my working life easier. But that’s a different story and has very little to do with the OS.
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Loved this post!
I luckily can use my MacBook Pro for most things at work (in the office and home) despite having a company-issued Windows laptop (never taken it from my office desk, since it was upgraded, recurring challenges I can’t find the time to chase IT over).
However, they are making it more difficult to use my own Mac, and I just hope it never reaches the point of being unable to interact with work systems via my Macs. That would be the day of serious decisions (not about my Mac use, but whether I find another job)!
Interesting how most of us in leadership use Macs in a Windows environment!
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I was just thinking about this… I work in a government lab as a subject matter expert, and during the pandemic I had three years of telework to lean hard into Mac knowledge and productivity tools. Now I’m in the office full-time, and while I could get a government Mac, they’d never buy me DevonThing, Hookmark, Bookends, and all the other stuff I use for planning and managing projects.
I do most of my heavy work on linux servers, so I’m already a huge outlier in the government, but I need a Windows computer for accessing government resources including my email.
I’m trying to figure out how to be as productive and organized as I was while working on a Mac full-time (using ssh to connect to the servers). I don’t think it’s possible. I could use my personal Mac (and do for some things, which is frowned upon but oh well), but that’s not really a feasible solution.
tl;dr Totally spoiled by the amazing Mac tools.
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Lol I first read that as better to be productive with the Devil lol. But I guess it’s pretty much the same. 
I was “born” in Mac OS since Mac OS 8.6, when I started working I got a Windows laptop and it opened my eyes on the gaming world (CD-ROMs at the time, and later Steam). On Mac I was somewhat “stuck” on Myst series and AAA games (always with release delays of course).
Apart for gaming, I agree, there’s some sort of natural familiarity with macOS. I immediately feel at home even in a fresh update. When I expect something to happen, it usually does. On Windows I would regularly need to change the Registry or run a command to get something specific to work.
Gaming availability is still superior on Windows, but Macs are gaining territory on this insanely fast.
I’m lucky enough to work in an environment where Macs are fully supported, albeit a minority of devices. I live on Windows for a customer machine and it’s fine but not my preference. The only thing I miss on the Mac is NotePad++ and its column editor.
Although it’s getting better, it does make me sad that Mac doesn’t have parity with Windows for gaming.
I was in a Windows office environment for years and used to get annoyed about how much better life would be if work would embrace the Mac Life (plus at the time the office wasn’t even running the latest version of Windows, so life was even more frustrating than it needed to be). I’d spend my evenings on my Mac for fun and imagine how cool it would be to work on one.
Now I’m in a BOYD situation so of course I am in Apple land all day. I love it. I actually do some tasks on an iPad now just because I can. However part of my love is because it’s BOYD and I therefore install whatever I want whenever I want, make random shortcuts, switch Apple devices, use my favourite keyboard, etc. I do think I’d probably enjoy my Mac a little less if I had an employer regulating what I downloaded on to my devices and what hardware I plugged in. On balance it would still be better than Windows, but the freedom of setting my devices up exactly how I like them can’t be underestimated. (I appreciate the logistics of why IT depts can’t let staff do this, but equally I think it is a trade-off in productivity given that the staff who would exercise a right to alter their devices would likely be doing so for productivity and ease.)
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I am fortunate to be able to use a Mac for work. However, I’m still happy to get back to my own Macs.
My work Mac is a 16GB 2019 16" MacBook pro that I was given in mid 2021. 16GB is not enough ram to deal with the corporate bloat. The fans also spin up sometimes, and Chrome gets slow. (We’re a Google suite shop, so lots of Google apps).
Fortunately, I work from home, so my 2019 27" iMac is always just to my left, and I can also grab my 14" M1 Max MBP if I feel the need for speed.
It certainly makes me happy to use my Macs and my iPhone all the time now that I’m retired. But I don’t regret having been able to work on machines running operating systems and software by Control Data, Vax, IBM, Microsoft, and the many UNIX-like vendors. It has given me an appreciation of the possibilities and limitations that all computing systems have. And been a lot of fun into the bargain.
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