7 Fantastic Features of the MacBook Pro
There are so many excellent features in my favorite laptop. Here are a few of them in “7 Fantastic Features of the MacBook Pro.”
Who is using the MacBook Pro?
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – OS Market Share
According to the statistics above, Mac users are about 17% of the population using computers. Coding on a MacBook Pro is popular. Programmers spend a lot of time on our computers. It is an experience that we want to be pleasurable and efficient. Below are “The 7 Fantastic Features of the MacBook Pro”.
Coding
You’ve made the decision to learn to code. It’s time to get busy coding; on a MacBook Pro. The actual task of sitting down at a computer to code is intimidating. It is less intimidating when you have the right hardware. A MacBook Pro laptop is the definition of “the right hardware”. It is sleek and performs tasks more efficiently than most computers. The experience of using an Apple machine cuts the intimidation in half. There are also many applications that work well on the Mac and are suitable for coding. Xcode is a great environment and we will discuss that. There are six other environments to code comfortably in on the MacBook Pro.
Let’s Talk About The Mac’s Xcode
In Xcode, you can program in C++. You can also build iOS apps. I have done both. There are other languages that you can code in as well. It is Apple’s offer for coding with an IDE. Also, this Apple machine is the only way that you can build iOS apps.
“Xcode makes it easy to get a huge head start on turning your existing iPad app into a native Mac app. Your Mac and iPad apps share the same project and source code, so any changes you make translates to both platforms. And your newly created Mac app runs natively, utilizing the same frameworks, resources, and even runtime environment as apps built just for Mac. Deliver your new Mac app to an engaged audience of over 100,000,000 active Mac users.”- Apple.com
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a Microsoft product but translates really well to the MacBook. Just learning to code, Visual Studio Code for Mac made coding easier for me to understand. I downloaded it to my Mac and have been using it for projects since that time. It is my favorite of the “7 Fantastic Features of the MacBook Pro”.
“VS Code helps you be instantly productive with syntax highlighting, bracket-matching, auto-indentation, box-selection, snippets, and more. Intuitive keyboard shortcuts, easy customization and community-contributed keyboard shortcut mappings let you navigate your code with ease. Visual Studio Code includes an interactive debugger, so you can step through source code, inspect variables, view call stacks, and execute commands in the console.” – code.visualstudio.com
The MacOS Terminal
The MacOS Terminal is practical and is mostly free of clutter. Therefore a programmer can get the job done faster and more efficiently.
“Terminal is a Mac command line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example.” –Igor Degtiarenko, MacPaw
The MacBook Features
The TechLead, an ex-Google, Ex-Facebook Software Engineer lead gives a solid explanation on the subject. He states that “Everyone knows what the MacBooks are. They are very reliable. The screen color is well tuned….[it’s high resolution] the build quality is nice; the trackpad works well and Macs are used by all industry engineers (in Silicon Valley at least)”.
Screen
What do we need to know about MacBook screens? Retina Display. This is the term that was coined by Apple and sums up the quality of its screens on its products. Macworld states, “The first and most important criterion is pixel density: the statistic that generally gives the best idea of a screen’s sharpness. When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4, and with it the first Retina display, he described it as having a screen with so many pixels packed so closely together (it was rated as 326ppi – pixels per inch) that they were imperceptible to the human eye at a distance of 12 inches. You wouldn’t see individual pixels: you’d just see the image those pixels created.” -Macworld.co.uk (link above).
The Mac following is a following is because of this. You simply cannot see the pixels on the computer screen and pixel density is major when you are coding. I am sure all programmers want whatever code they have executed to be displayed on the best screen possible. Macs do not get it wrong.
Durability
“The MacBook’s unibody enclosure is made from a single block of aluminum, making the new MacBook fundamentally thinner, stronger and more robust with a fit and finish that we’ve never even dreamed of before.”-Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of Industrial Design.
This is also the favorite of the 7 Fantastic Features of the MacBook Pro according to most Youtube videos that feature it.
The manufacturing process , linked here with pictures, is amazing. The unibody design explains why the Macbook is so sleek in comparison to other computers. My Chromebook is rough and rigid. My Lenovo seems to be made of the same material and put together from multiple parts. They both remind me of having a cheese grater on my lap in the summer when I’m trying to code. Not good. The MacBook is smooth and cool. It is pleasurable to sit on my lap if I have that skirt or shorts on. Other manufacturers may not have considered that women who code don’t want a cheese graters on their laps. Apple did. Thank you.
Keyboard
It seems Apple thought of everything. The keyboard is also a part of the joyous experience while coding. I can see at night when I code because a light shines from beneath the letters I’m typing.
“A portion of the front edge is milled thin enough that a laser can be used to micro-perforate the metal to allow light from the sleep indicator LED to pass through the metal. When the sleep indicator is off, the metal appears to be solid. The environmentally-friendly LED backlit display also offers other advantages; it turns on instantly when the display is opened as there is no warm up time required by a conventional cold cathode fluorescent lamp backlight.” – Apple Insider
This light is a programmer’s friend. The makers of Macintosh knew this because they were computer programmers and were up all hours of the night programming…just like us.
Trackpad
The MacBook Pro’s Trackpad, also called the magic trackpad, is so responsive that it is like magic. The glass on metal trackpad earned a patent designed by Steve Jobs and Jony Ive in 2008.
“The Force Touch trackpad…When you press on the trackpad, the Taptic Engine fires up and shakes the surface of the trackpad. Your brain interprets the vibration and the pressure as a downward click, even though that’s not what’s actually happening. (The vibration from the Taptic Engine is from side to side, not up and down.) But what Apple has implemented—a series of force sensors underneath the trackpad surface and a Taptic Engine that can vibrate the surface on demand—is a remarkable simulation of the real thing.” – Jason Snell, Macworld
And now, after learning all of this, you know that an investment in a Macbook is the right choice if you are coding. Programmers around the world enjoy the experience of coding more because of Apple. It is not a fluke that most programmers use this hardware. It is a choice.
At the time of this writing, this MacBook Pro is almost half price, which is insane! You should now have an idea of the enormous value that you’re getting. But if not, I do and you’ll still be thanking me years from now. You’re welcome.
Buy Your MacBook Pro
Or if you need something in between:
Credits:
TechLead: YouTube video (linked)
Mac screens Image by Nick_H from Pixabay
Mac keyboard Durability Image by Tobias Heine from Pixabay
Lit Mac keyboard Image by Rogerio Rogeriomda from Pixabay
Trackpad of a MacBook Image by Free stock photos from www.rupixen.com from Pixabay