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Jackkmann

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 13, 2025
1
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I was asking this same question a few months ago when I wanted to use my Mac, I just didn't know what for. Now I found out a ok-ish answer to that question. I installed crossover and Downloaded a few games via steam, I was actually surprised with the mac's performance on hefty graphical games, I have a base m2 and it honestly runs better than anything my ps5 could do. I also lightly use YouTube to watch things, and scroll through threads like these. I also don't use it for school or work. But this still doesn't really answer the full question, What do you do on a Mac?
 
A better question for me would be “what do you do on a Mac that you couldn’t do on your Windows laptops?”, because I’ve been a Windows user for 30+ years and always steered away from Mac due to price.

Today, I’m a Mac user and hardly ever touch my Windows machine(s) - even when I do need to nip into Windows, I’ll do it as a VM on my Mac.

I initially went for a MBP because I wasn’t doing the heavy IT stuff I did before, and I just wanted something modern and fast for casual use that “just worked”. And I’d always wanted to try out Mac. There was nothing I did on the MBP that I couldn’t have done on Windows (my last one being a Surface Pro 6).

I could have bought an MBA or Mac Mini, but I had the finances to go better so I went for the MBP and spec’d it to 24GB. That’s when I started looking into LLMs. Once I started on that path, I knew I wanted to learn more. When the new Studio came out, I spec’d it with 128GB RAM (the max I could get within my budget window).

I don’t know that I’d be able to buy a similarly priced Windows machine with similar RAM for LLM use but, given the videos I’ve watched regarding nVidia GPUs, I very much doubt it.

That’s what I “do on a Mac”.
 
I was asking this same question a few months ago when I wanted to use my Mac...
I think most people use their Mac as a means of doing something specific they want to do, like "I want to check my email/play a game/browse the web/write a letter/edit some photos, therefore I'll use my Mac to do it", not use their Mac (or any other computer) just for the sake of it. A computer is just a tool like a hammer; you use it when you need to drive some nails, you don't go looking for things to hit just so you can use it.
 
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I write, I occasionally stream some tv, I keep my photos library up to date, I do my taxes, I sometimes watch a movie from my iTunes collection.
 
I use my Mac to do lots of things, such as:
  • Receive and write emails in Mail (personal) and Outlook (work)
  • Write board papers, reports and my slowly progressing novel in Pages or Word
  • Put together presentations in Keynote or PowerPoint
  • Undertake data analysis in Numbers or Excel
  • Participate in meetings via Teams
  • Take notes in Notes
  • Keep on top of the stuff I need to do with Reminders
  • Browse websites and access various online services in Safari
  • Download media that’s served to the Apple TVs in the living and bedrooms via Jellyfin media server
  • Upload photos from my Nikons SD card to Photos and do light photo editing in various apps
  • Play around with basic video editing in Final Cut Pro
  • Scan documents to create digital records of various paperwork
  • Organise my files in Finder so that documents are stored in logical places, sometimes tagged to improve searching
  • Play music using Apple Music by AirPlay to HomePod mini stereo pair while I’m doing things on my Mac
 
Mostly software development (iOS and video games), some 3D modeling/animation, some office app stuff, and some video/photo editing on occasion.
 
I was asking this same question a few months ago when I wanted to use my Mac, I just didn't know what for. Now I found out a ok-ish answer to that question. I installed crossover and Downloaded a few games via steam, I was actually surprised with the mac's performance on hefty graphical games, I have a base m2 and it honestly runs better than anything my ps5 could do. I also lightly use YouTube to watch things, and scroll through threads like these. I also don't use it for school or work. But this still doesn't really answer the full question, What do you do on a Mac?
Most people, if they answered honestly, would say, "I use my Mac for surfing the web and buying stuff on Amazon. Sometimes I read emails." Very few people do stuff like create content (photo, video or music)

I have a robotics hobby so I will run 3D CAD software (Autodesk Fusion360) 3D printing software, and an IDE for writing Python. I also have a Virtual machine running on the Mac to host a Linux system so I can test the software. I do photography at the hobby level and I am just now waiting while about 100GB of data downloads off an SD card. The M2-Pro with 16GB works well for this.

I used to be more into music and would hack MIDI files in Logic.
 
What do I use my Mac for? For work I do 2D drafting in AutoCAD, and thermal efficiency assessments in HERO. I play Farming Simulator and Civ VI. I dabble with running LLMs in Ollama and Chatbox, and LM Studio, and Flux.1 in Draw Things, to see if they can be made to anything remotely useful. I watch TV shows and movies, I listen to music, I surf the internet. I pitch bend songs into the right key to play bass to in order to learn them to play at church.

Once I get my accreditation for thermal assessments, I want to refresh my coding skills, and learn Swift, as there's a simple app I want to write for my business, for scheduling and coordinating with my clients (we have small but specific requirements I won't get into here). The only things I can find that even gets close to what we want are small parts of larger packages that cost absurd amounts of money a month.
 
Music creation and production with Logic Pro and a host of plugins that do not support mobile (guitarist), stay on top of things with Reminders, Calendar, and Notes in a larger interface, manage my finances (Numbers & MoneyWell), Music (old iTunes) music library management, Photos and videos organization and management, find the latter 2 less clunky on a Mac, a more enjoyable web browsing experience for me personally, faster and more efficient OS for multitasking with the help of multitouch on the trackpad/mouse, a more productive and organized feel that only macOS offers me personally.

Can these all be done on other platforms or other ways, sure. Do I want to use anything other than a Mac and macOS? Nope. The cost and value equation is more than worth it for me. I have always been the type that would choose the Mac over anything else  makes if I could only have or afford one.
 
That’s an interesting question. It seems like you're trying to figure out how to make the most of your Mac, so I'm curious why you decided to buy it in the first place.

I have two Macs, a M4 Pro mini and an M3 Pro MacBook Pro, which I use for both work and hobbies. In my case, they’re pretty much the same thing since I’m into coding and hacking. As a web software architect, I handle a lot of the technical stuff at work, like coding, DevOps, project management, and the usual tasks like checking emails, managing calendars, and keeping track of to-dos. On top of that, I also work as an ethical hacker on bug bounty programs, which means I get paid to legally and ethically hack web platforms. For that, I use a bunch of different tools to help me out.
 
I use my Macs (desktop & laptop) for basically everything except gaming. I installed WoW just to see how well it runs on Mac, but I have a PlayStation 5 and Windows desktop for gaming.
 
3D modeling in Blender. I love that its free. Its a tough learn but very rewarding once you finally get it. The stuff people make with it is mind boggling.

I was playing Civilization VI, but am back to Civ5 now.

M1 Mac Studio
 
What do you do on a Mac?
What do you (want to) do in life? Not because you're paid to do it, but because you enjoy it?

Anything creative -- writing, graphic design, photography, audio, sheet music, video, software coding, font design, 3D model and printing...?

Or simply use it to organize your real-world hobbies and pastimes.
 
I also don't use it for school or work. But this still doesn't really answer the full question, What do you do on a Mac?

Work, running the local development environment of an enterprise CMS. Also the Adobe Creative Cloud products. That CMS runs really fast on the 7,1 compared to some of our other devs with newer Macbook Pro laptops, the start up time (from the command line) is much faster.

One of my 7,1 Mac Pros does have MS Flight Sim 2020 in windows but I don't use Flight Sim that often due to lack of time.
 
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