I am a Mac guy 100%. However In my 9-5 position I am in charge of maintaining an infrastructure filled with VM’s most of which are running some version of Windows or Linux. Ironically we do not actually have much of a Mac deployment at all, I believe there are maybe 10 in the whole company (as opposed to thousands of windows laptops.
I am fortunate enough where i can actually choose how i want to work, and i prefer to do it on my Macbook Pro for several reasons. Not the least of them being:
- Performance – In my experience, my 2021 MBP blows the work offered windows laptops (Dell’s) out of the water, I can work on several different tasks with almost no hit to resources and without fear of one program or another locking the system.
- Stability – I don’t believe i have ever had my laptop crash, ever. if a program does crash its always just that application, and i can force kill it every time without interruption to any other tasks.
- Quality of Life – Being used to Mac OS, and then going back to a windows environment is a chore. I am not talking servers (though thats also annoying) but just general computer usage. IMO Windows 11 is a dumpster fire, and even if it wasn’t, Microsoft’s insistence on constantly changing what works, without cause or proper notification, through their cumulative updates every month, is enough to send me elsewhere. When i need to work, I need to work on projects, servers, etc. .. not maintaining my own workstation.
Having said that, the below is a list of Software i depend on to do my job.
1. Productivity and Office Tools
People will say that Libre Office is the alternate Choice, or even Apples own offerings. However in the corporate environment it’s really difficult to justify using anything other than MS. Just for Excel alone, it becomes an necessity.
Thankfully i don’t work in a field which requires me to deal with Adobe’s Cloud. The good old Reader for PDFs is something i use on a daily basis in coordination with our document management solution.
2. Creative Software
It isn’t often, but it isn’t never either that i have use for image editing of this caliber (usually to spice up dashboards). Gimp does it all, and it’s Free!
3. Communication and collaboration
IMO, this falls under necessary evil. It’s what my organisation uses, and it works fine on Mac. Although this is one of the apps, which goes through so many changes so quickly, its hard to recommend.
4. Admin and System Tools
A feature rich alternative to the embedded Mac Terminal. It’s also open source.
This is a wonderful little Database tool to manage virtually any kind of DB out there. I am not a Database engineer per se. But i do maintain several SQL, Postgres, and Maria Databases all of which i can do from this single app.
Sometimes you just need to scan a subnet. This takes care of that nicely. and you can’t beat the price (Free!)
Packet sniffer, and traffic analyzer, a must for anyone managing networks of any size.
This is a great remote session manager, and while i use it strictly for RDP and the occasional SSH, it supports just about any connection you can think of. There is also an open source version whose limits i have yet to reach.
If you are deploying, troubleshooting or just managing wifi, this tool is a must. It Has three modes, inspector, survey and planning, which, if you are willing to put the work into it. Planning mode allows you use existing blueprints to accurately place specific access points for best coverage. In Survey mode you can create heatmaps. While the Inspector mode provides the necessary information to troubleshoot any issues.
7. Scripting, Coding, and Development
Regardless if your working in PowerShell, Python, Jupyter, or anything else, this tool is where to do it. It his heavily maintained, open source and has a slew of extensions for just about any scripting language ever made. I spend a lot of time in here, and would be lost without it.