As I investigate some alternatives from the Mac in Windows, which, to be honest is a crazy enough idea... I was picturing how Linux could be made to work for me.
I'm in Marketing so here's the use case:
- Advanced editing and finishing off layouts of Office Documents
- Playing nicely with SharePoint (our company uses it and I'm a 365 Admin)
- Editing photos (just started using Affinity Photo, so need similar feature set)
- Making graphics (for use on our company marketing platforms such as website etc) with control over file formats, sizes etc.
- Browsing of the web extensively and editing Wordpress.com sites to a high level
- Remembering a TONNE of random passwords (currently use macOS built in keychain)
- A powerful mail handler (currently use Mac Mail / probably should use Outlook)
- A powerful calendar app for personal use
- A nice way of organising personal photos, ideally in the cloud (or locally if...)
- Alternative to Time Machine backup (maybe on the cloud?)
- Alternative cloud service to iCloud to store all my personal files and keep them in sync ideally
- The ability to rapidly edit movies like iMovie can do for the most part and export them
- The ability to work with PDFs at least to Preview standards, but I am currently looking for a more professional thing on the Mac in general (Edit, create etc would be handy)
- The ability to open a range of file formats to convert em
- An alternative way to work with SketchUp (optional at this point, I just have a backlog of models that took hours of my life lol)
- Good alternatives to contacts / notes / reminders to keep my professional tasks on track
- eBook Reader
It's a big deal to go from the Mac. I currently work at lightning speed vs my non tech Windows colleagues. I love Office 365 and take a great deal of pride in how I produce our company presentations and deliver them etc. The Mac apps I use are beautiful, not perfect, but make every day a pleasure. I love my Mac physically too (no out of context jokes!) but the screen wear, keyboard wear and hassle of taking it to Apple every other month when it needs a repair is taxing me financially and the limited time I have with my girlfriend on weekends.
I don't really wish to keep my iPhone (though it's a month old XR) if I leave the Apple ecosystem. It'll only tempt me constantly to get back into it and suck without full iCloud syncing. Same with Microsoft, I either want to be fully in it or fully out (apart from work) if possible.
If I can do those things, I'm sure I can ditch Mac and maybe Windows. Please tell me anything I'm over looking, or unrealistic expectations I have here. If this can be done, then I can consider hardware. I don't want to give up this £2,200 MacBook Pro and regret it, because it'll cost time and a lot of money if I do. hence the long planning.
Can you guys help?
I'm in Marketing so here's the use case:
- Advanced editing and finishing off layouts of Office Documents
- Playing nicely with SharePoint (our company uses it and I'm a 365 Admin)
- Editing photos (just started using Affinity Photo, so need similar feature set)
- Making graphics (for use on our company marketing platforms such as website etc) with control over file formats, sizes etc.
- Browsing of the web extensively and editing Wordpress.com sites to a high level
- Remembering a TONNE of random passwords (currently use macOS built in keychain)
- A powerful mail handler (currently use Mac Mail / probably should use Outlook)
- A powerful calendar app for personal use
- A nice way of organising personal photos, ideally in the cloud (or locally if...)
- Alternative to Time Machine backup (maybe on the cloud?)
- Alternative cloud service to iCloud to store all my personal files and keep them in sync ideally
- The ability to rapidly edit movies like iMovie can do for the most part and export them
- The ability to work with PDFs at least to Preview standards, but I am currently looking for a more professional thing on the Mac in general (Edit, create etc would be handy)
- The ability to open a range of file formats to convert em
- An alternative way to work with SketchUp (optional at this point, I just have a backlog of models that took hours of my life lol)
- Good alternatives to contacts / notes / reminders to keep my professional tasks on track
- eBook Reader
It's a big deal to go from the Mac. I currently work at lightning speed vs my non tech Windows colleagues. I love Office 365 and take a great deal of pride in how I produce our company presentations and deliver them etc. The Mac apps I use are beautiful, not perfect, but make every day a pleasure. I love my Mac physically too (no out of context jokes!) but the screen wear, keyboard wear and hassle of taking it to Apple every other month when it needs a repair is taxing me financially and the limited time I have with my girlfriend on weekends.
I don't really wish to keep my iPhone (though it's a month old XR) if I leave the Apple ecosystem. It'll only tempt me constantly to get back into it and suck without full iCloud syncing. Same with Microsoft, I either want to be fully in it or fully out (apart from work) if possible.
If I can do those things, I'm sure I can ditch Mac and maybe Windows. Please tell me anything I'm over looking, or unrealistic expectations I have here. If this can be done, then I can consider hardware. I don't want to give up this £2,200 MacBook Pro and regret it, because it'll cost time and a lot of money if I do. hence the long planning.
Can you guys help?