As I have mentioned before I have been a Macintosh person for pretty much my entire adult life. If you know me then you know that about me. The reasons for this are pretty far afield, but I think I can summarize. The Apple Macintosh has always represented a superior experience. The hardware and software have always made much more sense to me as a user. I still think that the combination of these ideas make it far superior to the competitors.
Still the direction the company seems to be going has given me some serious concerns. Apple seems to be stifling innovation and requiring larger and larger financial commitments from users. I don’t like the lack of control as OS X seems to become iOS. I like open sources tools, being able to use any email, and buying my media wherever I want.
After almost 25 years of being a Mac person I voluntarily and without the use of guilt or shame bought something else. I bought a Samsung Chromebook. It was the cheapest piece of technology I’ve bought in ages and it does everything I need in a computer. However it feels crappy doing it.
This article is written with a few caveats. This does everything that I need it to do. I don’t edit video, I don’t use Photoshop, I don’t make things. I make ideas. For me the computer is about consuming the news, watching movies, social media, and making and expressing ideas. Remember kids, I’m ostensibly a writer.
The machine itself is laughably small when compared to other laptops, but the size and the display work fantastically well in practice. My favorite computer I’ve ever owned was the twelve inch powerbook G4 because the size was awesome. That machine was largely ridiculed and had significant hardware issues especially if you were a media creator. Since I wasn’t creating media that machine worked really well for me. This one does too.
The Samsung Chromebook has a good display and feels reasonably fast. However the keyboard and the touchpad are awful. The touchpad doesn’t seem to react uniformly to input. It feels like sometimes you are pushing much harder than others for the same result. The action of the keys seems insignificant. A good keyboard is very important today, and this keyboard sucks. The shell of the machine feels entirely too flexible, almost like it could snap at any minute. Added to this are the seams. They aren’t uniform on my unit, and that’s an issue.
I will not be replacing my MacBook with a Chromebook yet, but if there was a machine between this $250 machine and the $1500 Pixel I might just abandon the Mac altogether.
