Why Apple Eventually Lost Me and I’m Switching Back to Windows

Just another run off the mill &quot;I&#x27;m not getting another mac&quot; complaint article.<p>1) Introduce myself by explaining how emotionally attached I was to the first Macs I bought<p>2) Complain about price<p>3) Complain about price some more<p>4) Did I mention price?<p>5) Windows has caught up to MacOS (which assumes Mac was ever ahead of Windows to begin with)<p>6) I&#x27;m an &quot;x&quot;, and I do &quot;y&quot;. I can do &quot;y&quot; just as well on Windows<p>7) Since I can &quot;y&quot; on Windows, let me bring up again how Macs are expensive and how I shouldn&#x27;t have to drop that kinda of money for one

I&#x27;ve done it since this summer, going from a 2012 rMBP to a near-maxed out Thinkpad 480s (1 TB SSD, 24GB RAM for USD 2300? hell yeah..).<p>Let me tell you though that as a mac user going to windows 10 you give up much more than a bit of polish - it&#x27;s really cutting into your productivity. Just one tiny (but anger inducing) example: You can have either Windows Defender <i>or</i> a hangup-free Windows Explorer, but not both (and I&#x27;m talking hangups that sometimes can leave you waiting for minutes until you see your files).<p>To sum it all up, Windows is (a) way way less responsive to UI inputs and (b) way way less consistent how to get things done, but you <i>can</i> certainly get things done. (a) means a constant but small tax on productivity, (b) means that you waste a lot of time initially until you&#x27;ve figured out all the edge cases.<p>Whether or not this all justifies the Apple tax, everyone (or their organisation) has to decide, but let me just give this warning as a power user &#x2F; software dev who did the transition.

I&#x27;ve been on a linux desktop for several years now. I use a VM for any windows dev I have to do. I should have made the switch sooner. Consider that instead of windows.

&quot;Look at the iMac line in 2018 and the specs, tell me if the value is there.&quot;<p>Every time I see one of these posts complaining about the value of Apple machines I want to scream. They are <i>very</i> competitively priced. (one could argue that is a matter of fact, by their success alone)<p>You can compare common &quot;hard specs&quot; about the processor, ram, video card-- and within that narrow field of vision I bet you <i>can</i> find yourself a &quot;better&quot; PC for the price. But try putting a value on these things and see where that lands you:<p>- (decent) Webcam - High-End 5k display (for iMac, or comparable quality display on the laptops) - High-end wireless keyboard&#x2F;mouse or trackpad - Decent speakers - Metal construction in a (subjectively) attractive and minimalist package - Well designed (e.g. folding, portable, detachable extension) power brick<p>These things more than seal the deal for me, and I am convinced there is no better value out there. Maybe for the photo&#x2F;video editor one would <i>need</i> to make concessions to afford the extra CPU&#x2F;GPU&#x2F;Memory in lieu of some other niceties.

Louis Rossmann, a well known advocate for right-to-repair and a repair shop owner has a lot to say about Apple&#x27;s build quality.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8</a><p>His videos are a great rabbit hole to go down, if you are interested in laptop repair methods. He knows his stuff.

I&#x27;ve never been a Windows user.<p>I mean I&#x27;ve used windows at work for close to 2 decades, and i still hate it every bit as much as the first time i started up Windows 3.1.<p>I&#x27;ve been using all sorts of operating systems, from OS&#x2F;2 in the 90s, to BeOS 4 and 5 (on x86), and Linux (Gnome).<p>Finally i make the switch to Mac around 2005. I&#x27;ve been a Unix user since 1991 (First Linux was Yggdrasil Plug &amp; Play Linux Fall &#x27;93). I wanted the beautiful and functional desktop experience of OS X, coupled with the Unix subsystem.<p>Later on i noticed that Mac applications (official and 3rd party) usually have a much more &quot;finished&quot; feeling to them. Even shareware (is that even a thing anymore ?) felt much more complete on OS X. Linux applications had the technical groundwork in place, but as soon as it became graphical, things started to fall apart.<p>And here we are, 13 years later, and i&#x27;m thinking about buying a ThinkPad instead as a replacement for my MacBook Pro 13&quot; Retina. My wife recently got one from work, and I&#x27;d forgotten how great a decent keyboard is to type on. It&#x27;s been a few years since i last had that on any laptop. Apple appears to be stuck in a loop where everything must become slimmer, functionality be damned.<p>On the software side OS X is still king. I know evil voices say that eventually OS X will devolve into a an advanced iOS clone, but for now it&#x27;s very functional, and miles ahead of Gnome on Linux.<p>As for Windows 10... I&#x27;ll pass. An operating system that pushes out &quot;free&quot; apps along with reporting everything back to Microsoft, and by default shares my WLAN password with &quot;friends of friends&quot;, allowing me to opt out by renaming my WLAN. Whoever thought that was a great idea ?

Personal opinion. I&#x27;ve never used MACs before and just two months ago I&#x27;ve been given a brand new 2018 MACBook pro to do work on. Long story short, after giving time to work out differences to Windows and XCFE, I still don&#x27;t understand what people see in them other than looks:<p>- It <i>crashed</i> Virtualbox while a 200GB VM copied files close to max capacity (10 GB free on host). No RAM problems there<p>- It stuttered the Settings window for close to 10 seconds while doing some sound configs<p>- It does not like and does not show some &quot;nonameish&quot; USB2 flash drives<p>- (My) Safari does not like me setting home page other than apple.com<p>- The keyboard is crazy flat. I don&#x27;t feel it at all, and can&#x27;t touch type on it. There is no HOME or END buttons for command line editing. I&#x27;ve attached a UNICOMP for a change<p>- Apple doesn&#x27;t like non-LLVM compilers and I&#x27;m stuck with what homebrew provides.<p>- Virtualbox with Linux has <i>unusable</i> mouse&#x2F;keyboard <i>after</i> installing the drivers. Ubuntu 14 is the only one that works as it should.<p>- It has only four USB-C and I have a bunch of converters to connect stuff like headphones, keyboard, mouse and eth adapter. Yes, they take up table space.<p>- It is above Windows 10 in terms of interface, and looks nice and pleasant to touch (except keyboard)

I use MacOS and Windows at home. I want to switch to Windows exclusively just so I can have more control over the hardware but using my windows machine for the occasional gaming gives me enough reasons not to want to switch completely. No standout problems, it&#x27;s death by a thousand cuts.

&gt; Over the years I upgraded to a MacBook Pro, then the MacBook Pro touchbar and in the middle of that I bought a 27inch iMac.<p>Frankly, the sudden price sensitivity seems odd. Is there something else going on?<p>&gt; With the work I do on photo&#x2F;video editing and my love for flight simulators...<p>Aye, there’s the rub.<p>&gt; Another reason to bail is the expense in repairs, particularly living in a country where there is no official Apple store. Apple has these machines made so that if something breaks you are basically fucked and the only choice is to take it to get repaired.<p>Probably the strongest objective statement in the whole post. Until…<p>&gt; If things break on the custom build I am working on then I can easily fix without it costing me a fortune.<p>Except the total cost (price+time) of replacements in a custom build can go UP after just 2–4 years if you didn’t buy into the latest spec for a given component, undercutting the value argument.<p>&gt; Apple once catered to creatives and when I first used a Mac I was amazed by the creative tool suite they had.<p>Additionally, the rest of that paragraph is, contextually, a strawman. ———- I’ve worked on both OSes for 20+ years (graphic design, photo editing, video editing, web development.) Microsoft has closed the gap. So, unfortunately, has Apple. But the view that Windows 10 has changed the game is myopic. Bottom line, the whole Mac vs. PC thing has been tired for well over a decade.<p>The way I think of it is <i>similar</i> to the idea in photography that a great photographer doesn’t require expensive equipment to produce great photographs.<p>Choose the best tools for your craft that you can afford and be deliberate in making the best possible use of them.

- Linux for all things technical - coding, sysadmin<p>- Windows for the office: Mail, documents<p>- OS X for a good, imperfect, compromise between the two.<p>Can’t see this changing any time soon. Windows bash etc are an add-on.<p>Linux sure as hell is better than a Mac for geek stuff, but for simple things like email it completely sucks.<p>I’ve spent months recently using a Linux machine for non-work dev. I have tried every email client I could find. I am buying a MacBook Air as soon as apple announce.<p>I’ve been helping someone who works on Windows with tech issues. Not going near it.

There are many reasons to chose Mac or Windows. I would expect an article about why someone switched to be more nuanced than price.<p>I mean price is a valid reason too, but not very insightful.

What’s driving me away from the Mac ecosystem:<p>Loss of iOS sync from iTunes with no replacement. I used to sync two phones and two iPads through iTunes in order to reduce bandwidth use (Australian internet sucks). I can now use Internet Sharing options, maybe, but I have to plug the iOS device in to the Mac rather than sync over WiFi while the device is charging on my nightstand.<p>Forcing me to use iCloud for iBooks sync, so my 12GB collections of books (E O Wilson’s life on Earth plus dozens of PDFs for things like programming, hardware manuals, standards documents, data sheets) filled the free drive and I get persistent nags about running out of space. Apple basically wants me to rent my library from them.<p>Removal of MagSafe from laptops. It has only saved my laptop a few dozen times over 8 years but it effectively saved me replacing the laptop a few dozen times.<p>Switch to USB-C with no USB-A port. Between removal of ports and removal of MagSafe, there is little incentive for me to upgrade from a 2010 11” MBA to the MacBook. The 13” MBA doesn’t fit in my camera bags. Copying 16GB of photos to USB disks over USB 2 is painful but at least I can do it without extra dongles.<p>iBooks randomly deleting books from my devices. Sure, I can redownload from iCloud or the Apple Bookstore, but only if I have internet connectivity (there’s a reason the books are on the iPad in the first place rather than using a web browser to read stuff).<p>The cost is not a barrier for me. Jony Ives’ fascination with thinness and lack of holes in the chassis is a barrier for me.

People have written this article for 25 years. I think it’s surprising they keep doing it.

The price, to save you a click

The motivation for me to switch in 2007 was living the virus nightmare on Windows, time machine backups and access to really great photo management and video editing software preinstalled given I’d just had kids.<p>My most recent Mac was a 27” 5k when 4K monitors were on the cusp of being a thing, given the whole Mac was the same price as a high end 4K monitor - just the monitor - at the time. Love fusion drives as well.<p>Those were contingent on the times though. Nowadays there are decent software options on Windows, backups are still a pain but there are decent cloud options, I don’t know. Up to now the Mac has given me things you couldn’t really get on Windows. If that’s not the case when my current max expires I might consider Windows again but it would be a wrench to go back.

For me it&#x27;s been the opposite, actually. I use Mac, Windows 10 and Ubuntu for different use cases, and I keep finding Mac more appealing. I have to work around Ubuntu to make some stuff work sometimes. I really like Windows 10, but I have issues occasionally as well. With OS X, most of the stuff I try to do just work.<p>A few years back, I&#x27;d prefer to buy my own hardware, build my own PC and run Windows to save some cash and have a powerful PC. I would need to work a bit to make it work, sure, but I&#x27;d save some money. Now, I&#x27;d rather get an Mac, which is more expensive, but for which I have to worry about much fewer hardware and software issues.<p>I wonder if getting one of those Microsoft Surface Laptops would give me a similar experience with Windows 10, though.

As far as price, I was looking into getting a 5K iMac in a year specifically because of the price.<p>It doesn’t seem like anyone sells a 5K monitor anymore except for LG and those go for $1300.<p>$2300 for a decently equipped iMac 5K (16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD) is not bad.

I only bought a Mac because I like the experience and unix utilities for programming. I still use Windows when I want to game on PC. Presumably this is the case for a lot of developers?

Serious question- is this a famous photographer or otherwise celebrity? I have no idea. I fully support anyone using the computer that works best for them. I even concede that Apple is not making their best stuff right now. I don’t understand why people write these types of essays. Are they trying to convince others to make the same decision? Are they looking for validation? I can see how this comes across as snark but I really don’t understand the motivation.

I like both types of PC I think apple decided performance was good enough at some point and judging by how well my wife&#x27;s mac book air works with imovie they were right.. Meanwhile PCs carried on getting faster.. But only the expensive ones. Windows 10 is OK, it has a nice crash screen I see about once a week. Save work often. And enjoy the adds.

I have frustrations with Mac and really what I want is a good Unix laptop for my work stuff. Any games that can run are a bonus.<p>I’ve tried Linux for 20 years and still have hope.<p>Windows 10 is my org’s basic workstation deployment so I have something that sits on my desk for email and hr forms and stuff. It’s a horrible experience as it’s slow, needs admin rights for basic user functions (install apps, change screen saver, set notifications, etc).<p>Using windows vms for a few projects showed me that most of these annoyances are actually my org’s configuration, not really flaws of Windows.<p>So now I try windows for my main laptop every year or so and give up because Microsoft’s consumer distributors is too much of a pain to pare down. And some of the configurations I want, I can only get through a business account (office365 planner, excel forms- stuff I use macOS and google forms for).<p>It’s possible to set up what I want, but I have to be a Microsoft admin for myself (time to renew my MCSE cert).<p>Comically, I can get a pirate iso that’s pretty nice, but it’s a hobby to keep it cracked.<p>I hope Microsoft makes their own “pro” line that have a stripped down distro targeted to developers or local root users with their own hardware.<p>Until then, I just bought a Mac book pro this Jan because it’s the best available for me (sadly with only 16GB memory).

Windows 10 on the same hardware as Mac OS X is a revelation. Windows 10 on a Core 2 Duo system is really speedy but Mac OS is very sluggish. In particular, OS X on 2GB is almost grinds to a halt but Win 10 flies. Mac OS X seems to require 2-4x the memory for the same application. E.g. running Firefox.

Add to the fact that Microsoft now has a hardware line which can keep up with Apple on design, but running circles around its product line regarding features&#x2F;price.<p>Don&#x27;t believe me? Go try a Surface Pro, Surface Book and&#x2F;or Surface Studio. They&#x27;ll blow your mind.

I believe Mac is around 9% of revenue for Apple now. And maybe at lower margins than other products. I wouldn&#x27;t be terribly surprised if they tweaked iOS into providing a mediocre desktop&#x2F;laptop variant and dropped MacOS altogether.

I think the other critiques of is article are on point, but there was one quote that did resonate with me (as an Apple user and developer since the ][ ):<p>“Seriously Apple, what is going on with the QA department there?”

If you have a powerful desktop you can run osx in vmware with some less than legal patches. It&#x27;s not as responsive as a native setup but for ios development, it&#x27;s enough.

I&#x27;ll wait for the next piece in the series where the author trashes Windows and switches back to Mac. Because Windows 10 is absolutely broken.

My problem with Windows is that Emacs runs too sluggishly on it.

2 comments:<p>* Only a mug buys Apple kit new. Same as only a mug buys cars or motorbikes new. (Did you know that the word &quot;gullible&quot; isn&#x27;t in the dictionary?)<p>* Wait &#x27;til he gets a cryptolocker infection. Then we&#x27;ll see how much he loves Windows.

Why I Stopped Caring About Desktop OSes - Me, circa 2006

I have some oldschool hardcore Apple fanboys that did the same in the past couple of years. Who could imagine, 5 to 10 years ago, that such trend would exist today?