I recently bought a Macbook Air 13" 2016 model, running Yosemite. I have been using it extensively for the past 30days or so. Here's a short review on the Laptop and the OS:

My Macbook is the 13 inch, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM version. I am going to be doing a lot of compare and contrast between Windows and Mac OS X (which has since been renamed to macOS) in this post. Being a Windows user for more than 10 years, the Apple ecosystem was completely new to me.

Macbook Air

Things I liked about the Macbook:

  1. The Awesome Battery life - OMG, isn't the battery a wonder? It lasts me a solid 9-10hrs depending on usage, with WiFi ON all the time. Windows laptops never gave me more than 4hrs of Battery backup even on Powersave mode.
  2. Keyboard - As a developer, the keyboard is the most used piece of Hardware. The keyboard was a breeze to type in, and the key travel was almost perfect. My typing speed has improved considerably on the Mac. It is a backlit beauty, which doesn't have many competitors vying for it's place as the best keyboard (apparently better than the Macbook PRO).
  3. Trackpad - I used to have a Wireless mouse for doing more important stuff on my previous Acer Laptop, as it was faster and easier to use the mouse, than the trackpad. But, with all the touch gestures like Mission Control, two-fingered scrolling, easy workspace switching etc. I never once had to take my mouse out.
  4. Performance - Though the Macbook is one of the lighter models, with lower clock speed, I felt it adequate for my usage. I mostly do Go Programming, Rails Development and Java Dev. I use IntelliJ and text editors like Sublime or Atom. If you do Hadoop or other data heavy processing it might stutter here and there.
  5. Portability - The laptop is featherlight and with it's incredible battery life, it can be taken anywhere and you can work on it without worrying about running out of juice. I carry it around in my backpack and don't feel a thing.
  6. TERMINAL, the love of my life - Something about doing things on the terminal, always appealed to me. No GUI can ever come close to the ease of use and the power of the terminal. It was one of the main reasons I switched to OS X (It's UNIX underneath).
  7. Spotlight - The Cmd+Space shortcut opens up anything you want. Applications, Weather, Files, you name it. I never had to remember any of the filenames or wait for the painful process of Windows indexing to complete to search my files. I haven't tried Alred yet, it's supposed to be Spotlight on Steroids.
  8. Not many Viruses - Mac OS X is not as virus or malware prone as the Windows Operating System. There aren't a lot of them currently due to its low user base compared to Windows, but they have started to emerge.

Things I didn't like:

  1. Better Installation support - In Windows, you have .msi installer that will guide you throught the whole installation process. Even in OS X, there are installers but most of them are DMGs(Disk Image files) which have to be mounted to install stuff.
  2. Copying files to/from Android mobiles - Windows is much friendly in this scenario, treating your phone like a regular extra drive. In OS X, I had to install the Android Manager app to copy files, which was very okayish at best.
  3. Hard Disk Space - Yes, I do miss the 1TB HDD on my Windows Laptop. But I manage with the omnipresent iCloud Drive, Dropbox and Google Drive.
  4. The app ecosystem is good but still lacks in variety compared to the Windows Ecosystem. Most Applications I need have some OS X alternative, but OS X has a long way to go in terms of matching Windows in this arena.

Love/Hate:

  1. Inbuilt applications - Pre-installed applications like the Notes, iTunes, Reminders and the Apple Mail are some which I use all the time. I dont want any heavy app like Evernote to manage my notes (which is what I used on Windows). But the iWork Suite, with Apps like Keynote, Numbers, Pages though very simple and easy to use, aren't compatible on Windows machines. I found myself constantly converting them to PDFs, so I dont encounter any compatibility issues.

As a Programmer, I have been truly pleased with the Macbook and I don't see myself switching back to Windows anytime soon. Hope this review helps you make the choice between Windows laptops and Macbooks.

Cheers!