I’ve made the opposite switch this year, completely abandoning windows for my personal use. I still use it professionally, being in the European public sector you’re married to MS and it’s quite honestly a healthy relationship for a lot of reasons, but boy have I never grown used to Windows 10.<p>I really love unix, I probably should be using Linux instead of a Mac, and I did earlier in my life. But with age I’m growing fonder and fonder to things just working, like when my wife sends me an iMessage and I pops up on my Mac. We could probably get something similar working with some other setup, but as long as we stay working the Apple ecosystem, well, it just happens automatically. Just like popping a thunderbolt cable in hooks me up to my 4K monitor with no setup required and no problems when I swhixh between different modes. Something that took ages to get working in Linux and didn’t really work for all the apps that didn’t support the change of resolution.<p>It wasn’t always like this, I actually really liked windows especially 2000, XP and 7, but since then it’s been a struggle to stay with it. So my story is almost the polar opposite.<p>Like hardware, where do you find a decent high quality windows laptop with a trackpad that works for the price tag of a 13” MacBook Pro? Sure the surface book is a sexy machine, but it’s almost twice as expensive and it can’t connect to my 4K monitor or an external egpu? Sure the xps13 would make Linux easier, but it’s trackpad is worse and it’s build quality is risky (coil whine).<p>I’m not really a Apple fanboy. I hate the walled garden, as much as I love what it does, but everything else is just so much worse. What I really can’t imagine though, living within a windows 10 environment, even with git bash.
Author switched in 2009, then switched back in 2018.<p>Author believes Apple is becoming evil because they intentionally slow their devices to force upgrades—not true, or, at the very least, not that simple.<p>The only thing “evil” about Apple is the pricing. No way around it, it’s getting expensive. But you also get a transparency and simplicity for your money (no telemetry, no ads, just dongles :) ).
> <i>Linux basically sucks the most. Most difficult to use. You spend several hours per week to get things to work. And linux is always some years behind in supporting any bleeding edge tech, Such as any hand writing recognization, speech recognization, voice to speech, addon devices, display port 2 monitors, USB 3.1 (or whatever latest), etc. You always have to spend few hours to research everything. Lots problems. But hey its free. What can you say.</i><p>Except for handwriting and speech recognition, I can't recall having problems with any mainline Linux DE in some time.<p>Have a workstation with two monitors on an Nvidia 1050Ti both via displayport, a Logitech wireless keyboard through Synergy to both a MacBook Pro and Linux, and the Mac is mostly there for MS Office (which could be the web versions).<p>Have not had to seek out drivers or do anything onerous config wise, except for when I went with i3 and wanted a specific look and feel. This is all on CentOS 7.5. Ubuntu and derivatives make it even easier, and even Arch is straightforward with Manjaro.<p>This does not mean that a Linux DE is as convenient to set up as Mac or Windows, but the author's description of desktop Linux is a bit dated.
I guess people really plug this much stuff into a computer, but I must be a low-end exception. Things that gets plugged into my Mac:<p>1) USB-C to lightning cable to charge headphones and backup phone
2) USB-C to Displaylink at work for screen and networking
3) TB3 -> TB2 (dongle) to Thunderbolt display at home
4) USB-C power cable<p>That’s a total of one dongle for my entire work and home life. Everything else is wireless by now.
These days windows + Ubuntu 18 on a virtual box are a great substitute.<p>Some might consider it better if you need to use excel (one of the greatest pieces of software ever)
This is more relevant for people like me that use Linux as their main desktop, but you don't have to choose just one. Both Mac Minis(and Apple Laptops) and NUCs have good resale value. Get a monitor that can take multiple inputs and then get keyboard and mouse sharing software.
These days consumer Win10 seems to be a data harvesting tool and ongoing beta test.<p>This might be controversial but for me personally I switch off updates (and all the other telemetry), and make sure to have comprehensive backups; so far so good. Preventing Win10 from installing updates isn't always easy.<p>I guess these days exploits could come via from 0 day browser vulnerabilities delivered via '3rd party frames', uBlock origin is your friend here...