I’m curious about the Scrivener experience on a Mac as opposed to Windows, which I’ve been running for so long I don’t ever open my word processor now, and so I’m thinking of dipping my toe. I do, however, have a couple of questions:
What is it that the Mac can do or which the Mac can do better that Windows users are missing out on? This would be for novel and short story writing purposes.
What spec of Mac would I need? I’m not looking for top of the line, just something good enough to run Scrivener, connect to my DropBox, and plug into an external keyboard (I’ve several, I’m a nerd) and my ultrawide monitor.
If you are doing nothing more strenuous than Scrivener a MacBook Air 13 or 15" would work a treat.
Suggest you specify at least 16GB RAM and 512 GB Storage (I’d go 1TB, but that’s just me). While you don’t currently need 16GB RAM, the reality of OSs and Apps is each new one seems to need a bit more of everything, plus the 16GB (and certainly 1TB storage) increases your resale value and the number of potential buyers when time comes to get your next one.
I’ve written books on using Scrivener for both Mac and Win and just find the Mac version a slightly better experience. Also I find macOS a better OS overall, especially compared to Win 11 which I almost loath. (not as much as Win 8) My favorite Win was 7, but it’s long out of support.
For me, the one thing that immediately stands out where the Mac has a big advantage over Windows is Scrivenings mode. On the Mac you can select, edit etc. across document boundaries as a more-or-less seamless text, where in Windows you have a set of separate documents presented.
Apart from that, look into whether your keyboards are Mac compatible.
When I bought my Mac Mini, I thought about RAM and storage, and went for 16GB/1TB. Now, I wish I’d gone for 32GB/512GB. Apple really charges for extra in both areas, and you can’t upgrade the RAM later, but external storage is much cheaper and connections are very fast. Resale value is not a consideration for me, as in general I have been using my machines for about 10 years, at which point I feel they owe me nothing.
I’ve a monster gaming PC for everything else, so all I’d need to Mac to so would be run Scrivener, be able to research sudden items of the internet mid-sentence, and play background music from YouTube. I guess that means a basic MacBook, and probably an external keybaord and storage. Or maybe a MacMini?
Guess it’s time to start hitting the better websites to see what that might cost me.
I’m using an 8GB M1 Mac book Air and Scrivener runs great on it. You don’t need 32GB ram for Scrivener.
It also runs Chrome, Ulysses, Aeon Timeline, Vellum, Bear and Word. Again all run great in 8GB
Agree they do, but 8GB is rapidly becoming the 4GB of old (and still some cheap Win machines). Runs fine, but it doesn’t take long to get into RAM swap territory. A handful of Safari tabs, couple of apps open at once and the Ram swap kicks in. Not so much an issue in the days of ‘spinners’ (apart from speed), but now the world is all SSD that is using write cycles which are a finite resource.
I know it’s theoretically a very high number, but I don’t think we’ve yet explored the longer term impact. How many years before we have to junk a laptop because the soldered on SSD has used a majority of its cycles. What I do know is that limit will approach faster on 4gb (Win) and 8Gb memory machines.
I have seen memory swap active even on my 32gb system.
That’s a valid concern. On the other hand, SSDs in combination with ungenerous amounts of RAM are the baseline for many years now. So we should see a lot of prematurely departing drives by now. But we don’t. Or I’m not aware of it.
Cheers.
Seems I need a hub for connecting external keyboards, mouse, storage, and even to my widescreen monitor. Wow, the stories of Apple removing all the useful ports are not just jokes.
Here I go I guess.
The ‘useful’ ports are the ones on the MacBook. The hub (suggest you pay extra and get a Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 hub) is there to allow you to connect to ‘obsolete’, older ports for older equipment and manufacturers too cheap to get with the current technology…
Over the next few years, expect to see those old ports go the way of the Dodo.
When Apple killed the floppy disc, RS232 and Parallel ports everyone kicked and screamed. 4-5 years later the rest of industry caught on.
I recently acquired an M2 MacBook Air because I thought I’d like to try a laptop again after years on desktops and I also had a great deal offered on the price. I had a lot of inconvenience learning the way Mac does things things compared to Windows and Linux but that’s life and you get used to it eventually.
Using Scrivener on the Mac, I hardly noticed the difference from Windows as far as my usage goes. I had no problem at all continuing my writing on the Mac sharing the files via Dropbox. If there are some subtle differences, I don’t notice them.
I am disappointed in several respects with the MacBook considering that I’ve spent years hearing from Mac users how great Apple products are.
There is a serious inconsistency on the keyboard. Like all keyboards, the numbers row keys carry additional symbols and the general rule is that the symbol inscribed above the number requires the shift key to be used. On my MacBook, that works for all the number keys EXCEPT the 3 key. The 3 key also carries the # sign inscribed alongside the digit 3. Using shift + 3 prints the # sign instead of the £ sign (which is above the 3). Since the American English language refers to # as ‘the pound sign’, I guess some US designer mixed up the £ and the #. To print the £ sign, I need Option+3.
I find that the MacBook’s use of virtual desktops is poor compared with what I am used to on Linux but Windows 10 isn’t great either.
Your MBA has come with an International or US keyboard rather than a British keyboard. Simple solution: go to System Settings > Keyboard > Text Input, click the Edit button:
Hi Mark: thanks for that clear set of instructions. It worked fine once I deleted the original language setting.
I expect there is a way to select which input you want to use if you have several keyboard inputs selected but I couldn’t find it. The dialog box which opens when you click Edit text input, has a selector at the top which says “show input menu in menu bar” but I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I deleted the original input to leave only the British and that worked fine.
Now there is a coherent behavior on all the numbers. But black mark (or at least dark gray) to Apple’s fulfilment system. The MacBook was ordered as a British English model.
