Over the years, Apple has made a name for itself as a premium brand – always innovating to bring something new to the table – slowly evolving from a merely making personal computers to a wider range of consumer electronics. Now, they have an entire ecosystem built around Mac OS – allowing all their devices to work in synergy and making them extremely user-friendly.
This is one of the primary reasons why people consider getting an apple product despite their high-ish retail prices. For example, you can use your iPad as a secondary display for your Mac without the need for any additional software, boosting productivity.
This hype regarding the top-notch quality of Apple’s software does bring with it its own share of rumours, so here are 2 things you should be clear about:
- macOS is the best option for productivity tasks:
This is not something definitive and it largely depends on what software you mostly rely on. For CPU-based rendering applications such as Blender, the latest 2021 M1-based Macbook Pros are better than any Windows-based laptops even equipped with the latest Intel or AMD x86 based processors. Chromium Code compilation and 7-Zip file compression are areas where a Mac will offer you superior results. On the other hand, Macs suffer at 7-Zip Decompression and Handbrake video encoding as these favor the x86 architecture more. FL Studio is another app with poor performance in Macs.
Speaking of Blender, while the CPU-based rendering is exceptional, MacOs does not support GPU-based rendering – which is where it loses out to devices with the latest low to mid-range laptop GPUs such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050. The desktop equivalent would be the GTX 1650. A dedicated GPU offers more effective hardware acceleration.
Do take note that not all productivity software is available natively for Apple devices and therefore requires an emulator to work – such as Rosetta 2. This affects relative performance to Windows-based PCs with varying results. Adobe acrobat export times are quite admirable even with Rosetta, while Matlab performance is just about average.
Adobe Premiere Pro performance is quite decent overall. Mac lags behind while exporting videos but makes up with a brilliant, smooth timeline playback experience. Adobe after effects requires emulation software to run but performance doesn’t suffer much.
As mentioned earlier, Apple offers an excellent synergy between devices with macOS. This creates a more favorable environment for productivity as it is simply more convenient to work by incorporating multiple devices for a single project. Macs also come with excellent displays – The Retina XDR display on the MacBook offers outstanding color accuracy which makes it a joy for tasks such as video editing. The downside is a poor pixel response time which makes it a poor choice for gaming as ghosting/blurring is quite apparent at times.
- macOS is immune to malware:
To be very honest, even for windows-based PCs, the chances of ending up with malware on your device are fairly low if the user is sensible enough. Most malware infections are due to carelessness – these include accessing questionable websites, opening spam emails, and using USB devices that aren’t “clean”. This is the same with macOS.
Unfortunately, targeted attacks are more difficult to avoid as cybercriminals are always looking to exploit security vulnerabilities. We are well aware of how the iCloud hack affected so many celebrities. Mobile devices contain valuable personal information and it is always a safer bet to have mobile security for iOS installed on your phone as well. This ensures a decent level of protection for your banking and social media credentials.
It is true to an extent that macOSis less susceptible to malware infection. This is seemingly true because:
- In the larger scheme of things, the ratio of Mac to Windows devices is low. Therefore statistically the chances of a Mac getting affected by malware is also low.
- Since most users are using Windows-based PCs, cybercriminals have a larger incentive to develop malware for Windows.
Buta mere lower infection ratedoesn’t necessarily indicate a superior immunity to malware.
Cybersecurity giants such as Bitdefender prioritize quick identification of the latest malware signatures and frequently update your antivirus software – providing the best Mac antivirus experience money can buy. In addition to basic antivirus features, Bitdefender aims to make your computing experience safer by monitoring and notifying you of system security vulnerabilities and providing additional utilities such as VPN, parental control, file-shredder, and secure pay:
- VPN masks your digital footprint from your Internet Service Provider and therefore keeps your web-browsing specifics completely private. This also reduces the chance of being spammed by targeted ads and eliminates selective throttling of internet speeds. You can also access local-restricted content.
- Parental control enables selective restricted access of your pc allowing your children to browse the internet safely and keeping your work files safe from being tampered with.
- File Shredder permanently deletes your files in a way so that no traces remain anywhere on your drive. This makes it impossible to recover using any file recovery software.
- Secure pay automatically opens a new high encryption window on your browser when a financial transaction is detected.
macOS is extremely user-friendly and its integration across all Apple devices is very polished and definitely is a fair reason to opt into the Apple ecosystem. Just bear these two important things in mind before doing so.
