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JOURNAL FOR SUNDAY 30TH AUGUST, 2026
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SUBJECT: A Linux user in macOS land — a year late
DATE: Sun 30 Aug 22:02:37 BST 2026
It’s been a year since I had to get a MacBook for work. I ordered it from
Apple’s website end of July 2025 and it arrived early August. I went with the
silver 14" MacBook Pro M4, 32Gb unified memory, 1Tb SSD, 96W charger. I even
splurged out for the nano texture display — I hate shiny screens. With VAT
£2,369. For comparison, a MacBook Pro M5, otherwise same specs is £2,628.
Now I am not an Apple or Microsoft fan. I started using Linux in 1993 with
Yggdrasil. At the same time I was using Coherent Unix but switched to RedHat
Linux full time in 1997. I switched again to Debian in 2000 and have stayed
ever since. In total that’s nearly 30 years of Linux usage. Does that make me
a Linux fanboy? Maybe, but my systems are setup in a very specific way for me
and the way I work. How would I get on with macOS?
Before I discuss the software let’s get the hardware out of the way. There is
only one thing I don’t like about the hardware — the damn sharp edges. Sharp
pointy corners below the trackpad right near you wrists. Sharp edges all
around the air vents around the bottom of the laptop. Both have drawn blood.
The keyboard is nice enough. I can use it for a day’s work — although I find
it has little feedback. Hitting escape is a stretch, it’s up on the function
key row and I’m used to having it on the number key row. Easily fixed by
mapping caps lock to escape. The backlight is nice and works well, I usually
work in a very dimly lit study.
The display is simply gorgeous. I’m really glad I spent the extra for the nano
texture. Although for a laptop associated with artists and graphic designers
the colour and display management is a real pain. I tried using the MacBook to
verify some website design work and compared to my desktop the colours were
totally different. macOS has so many settings and tweaks for the display and
colours I never know if what I am looking at is what someone else will see.
The display is simply gorgeous. I’m really glad I spent the extra for the nano
texture. But for a laptop associated with creatives, display colour management
is crazy. Between True Tone dynamically shifting the white balance, a wide P3
gamut and auto-switching colour profiles, macOS is constantly interfering with
what your eyes see. When I tried using the MacBook to verify website design
work against my desktop, the colours were completely different. With layers of
hidden display tweaks, ambient light adjustments, and colour spaces buried
across the system settings, you spend half your time turning off “smart”
features just to get a flat, honest baseline. In the end, I never really knew
if what I was looking at was accurate — let alone what a user on a standard
sRGB screen would see.
Battery life is good. After working eight hours or more I usually have 40-50%
charge left. That’s running on low power mode all the time. Interestingly low
power mode does not seem to affect performance much. However, with low power
off the fan kicks in, the keyboard gets warm and you can watch the battery
percentage drop very quickly. In low power mode the fan never turns on.
As for macOS, it too is nice enough. macOS is actually Unix certified so I
find myself quite at home. I still work mostly in the terminal, on the command
line. I have all my usual tools: Vim, git, tig, SSH, lowdown, Go, make, k9s,
docker and Postgresql. They are either provided with macOS or available via
homebrew.
I use the Amethyst[1] tiling window manager which works well — I still prefer
dwm on my desktop machine though.
For virtual machines and local Kubernetes clusters UTM[2] works well. I had no
issues with 3 or 4 virtual machines running in a cluster.
I did decide not to fight macOS in the terminal and switched from Bash to zsh
for my shell. macos ships with a very old Bash. For scripts that need it I
have the latest Bash available via homebrew. The biggest issue I have in the
terminal are home, end, page up/down keys. Depending on the program I’m using
page up/down is either Fn+up/down or Fn+shift+up/down.
The weirdest issue I’ve had is Go compile times. Initially they were terrible.
After doing some research it turns out the linker is really slow on macOS. For
most of my compiles I omit Dwarf debugging symbols by passing `-ldflags="-w"`.
Performance wise the M4 processor is fast, even in low power mode. For some
things faster than my Intel i9-12900T.
My final verdict? Would I buy another MacBook Pro? Probably yes. The MacBook
is expensive for a 14" laptop, but it’s a solid machine suitable for even a
Linux developer. I especially like it because it’s one of the few mainstream
ARM based machines available.
My final verdict? Would I buy another MacBook Pro? Probably yes, with some
caveats. The MacBook is expensive for a 14" laptop, but it’s a solid machine
suitable for even a Linux developer. I especially like it because it’s one of
the few mainstream ARM based machines available. However, I don’t really need
the portability of a laptop and a Mac mini might make more financial sense
than paying the laptop tax. But there are huge, quiet benefits to the MacBook
that I’ve come to appreciate: it’s a complete, turnkey work package. No
fiddling, it just works well.
It also forces a hard boundary. Company policy means this machine is strictly
for work — no personal use allowed. Initially annoying, but I’ve come to
appreciate the strict separation. When the workday is done, the MacBook gets
closed. Work stays work. Keeping work strictly separated — backed by hardware
that never fights you — might be worth the laptop tax after all.
Except for Ampere, I think Apple is ahead of the game when it comes to ARM
systems for the consumer market that just work. Microsoft is trying but lacks
performance. Other companies mostly don’t bother.
--
Diddymus
[1] Amethyst tiling window manager for macOS: https://ianyh.com/amethyst/
[2] UTM virtual machines for macOS: https://mac.getutm.app/
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