Not a thread I thought I'd find myself posting in, but I picked up a 12" MacBook a couple weeks back and thought I'd share my thoughts. I have a custom built Windows PC, so this will be a secondary PC for me. I really just wanted to get a feel for OSX and see what the experience was like, while also having a decent laptop to carry around with me. I picked up the m3/256GB model on sale at Best Buy. When the Pros went on sale, I could have had a Pro for only $50 more, but that was for only 128GB storage, which seemed a bit tight. Since I already have a powerful PC and am already way above the price I would normally have spent on a laptop, I went with this. Hopefully the m3 performance will hold up for at least a couple years.
I am very impressed with the build quality. It's unbelievably thin, but yet feels solid. I was concerned about the feel of the keyboard based on reports, but the tactile feedback is actually pretty good. I was very surprised by how good the speakers sounded, too. The screen looks great, though I didn't know what to expect with scaling. While the resolution itself is high, its default scaling acts like a 1280x800 screen, which is a bit tight. I've changed the scaling to what I'm told is the equivalent to a 900p resolution, which seems good. Some text is small, but it's more usable. The trackpad is godlike compared to any trackpad I've ever used on a windows PC. However, I still struggle from time to time with the two-finger right-click equivalent.
As far as the experience itself, OSX is definitely a different beast for a lifelong windows user (and I'm talking since Windows 3.1 lifelong). I'm starting to get a hang of it. Keyboard shortcuts are definitely helping, but my muscle memory sometimes keeps trying to use Windows keyboard shortcuts. It gets real interesting when I remote desktop to my Windows PC. I'm also not used to how Apple tries to simplify things for average users. I had to look up how to make Finder show the user's root folder (not just downloads/recents/etc) and also show the full path I was navigated to.
I'm going to play with doing a little light development on this. Since my main thing is Salesforce development, I really don't need a lot of power. That's why the effective resolution of the screen was a big deal to me, though, as I'll be jumping between windows. I'm getting a feel for the multiple desktops which helps. Obviously, if it was going to be my main development PC, I wouldn't go with a 12" MacBook, but it would be nice to use it as a side device for my own development self-study.
I'm also still debating on whether to install Windows with Bootcamp. Would be very convenient to have a Windows install available, but not sure if I'll be splitting my storage too much between the two OSs.
