
The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019 - _o-O-o_
https://char.gd/blog/2019/the-state-of-switching-to-windows-from-mac-in-2019
======
pbreit
I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how
miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much
is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing
is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll
direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear,
finding a wifi password, arranging windows, remembering window positions after
disconnects, saving screen shots, etc, etc, etc.

Not having a Unix shell is of course ludicrous.

Pretty fair article, though.

~~~
rayiner
Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a
year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP.

Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for
some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide
doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing
is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Settings
app does a fraction of what Control Center used to do.) OneNote is a great
example: the UWP version lost so much functionality compared to ON 2016, but
the latter has been abandoned.

Weirdly enough, I never found a good PDF viewer. Acrobat DC is a slow and a
battery hog. Edge/Chrome are non-functional (don't handle search properly on
many PDFs). Many alternatives are .NET based on battery hogs. Moreover, since
Edge/Chrome won't let you use a PDF plugin anymore, the workflow is completely
broken. (Download the PDF then open it in a separate app.) I never thought
that _Preview_ would be the "must have" Mac app.

Oh, and the trackpad! RDP from a Mac into a Windows terminal server is a
better mousing/scrolling experience than native windows on the X1 (which has
an MS Precision touchpad).

Oh, and power management was real hit-and-miss. Sometimes I'd get a full 10
hours, and sometimes, under the same workload, it'd be like 6. The synaptics
touchpad comes with a driver (even though it's supposed to be an MS Precision
touchpad) that had some helper utility that would randomly go crazy. (If you
killed it, it would restart automatically. Deleting the binary fixed that, and
had no discernable affect on mouse behavior.)

~~~
spookybones
I’m happy to see someone els lament a good alternative to Preview on windows.

~~~
freewilly1040
I remember this being a pain when I switched off of windows 10 years ago,
can’t believe they haven’t figured it out yet

------
nextos
I have used all 3 major OS (Windows, Mac & Linux) for at least a decade each,
and I review my current choice every few months.

I have regained a lot of sanity by realizing computing happens within
platforms, and regarding the OS as just plumbing. My platforms of choice are
the web (for hypertext), elisp text applications (for interactive development,
task management, email), and Unix.

I only need a browser (Firefox), a text editor (Emacs) and a terminal. I
prefer to use a tiling window manager (StumpWM), but it's not a big deal to
use the WM provided by my current OS.

These 3 platforms (web, elisp and Unix) will be long-lived. Whereas native
Windows, Mac and Linux applications tend to have much shorter lifecycles.
Furthermore, they don't tend to talk well to each other. They are little
silos.

Also, since the lifecycles are so short, by the time I work out all
inconveniences and learn all tricks, the platform is beyond its prime time.
This has already happened to me several times. I was really happy with Gnome 2
circa 2005, but the whole ecosystem collapsed with the transition to Gnome 3.
Same thing, to some extent, in OS X Tiger-Snow Leopard. A really nice
ecosystem of indie applications that has slowly lost a lot of momentum to iOS.

That said, I prefer to use Linux because it's so component-ized I can always
replace frustrating things, and nothing gets pushed into me by a corporation.
Plus code is open, and some userland things like Nix are so unique. And first-
class centralized package management is great.

~~~
tracker1
I'm kind of with you... next desktop will move from hackintosh to linux
proper. I've used enough linux in remote shells, vms and via docker. I really
like OSX and the Windows taskbar, but it's at a point where the hardware
decisions of Apple leave me unsupportive of their hardware, and similarly
their OS.

Likely to use Pop_OS! (weird spelling, hope they change it), as I do like
Ubuntu/Debian, but want a faster pace on parts of it. I'll probably continue
to work more against containers rather than on the desktop itself. But at
least I'll get real volume mounts.

~~~
Zardoz84
use KDE and enable global menu. You would feel more similar to OSX

------
pier25
I tried switching to Windows in late 2016 for my every-day machine and I went
back to macOS.

It wasn't really a matter of familiarity. I've been using Windows since 3.1
and while I've been using mostly macOS since the Vista days, I've always had a
Windows machine for gaming.

I was really surprised the problem for me was the Windows ecosystem.

Outside of the major players (Microsoft, Adobe, etc) most of the stuff you
find are ugly Win32 apps that look straight from Windows 95, do not support
scaling, etc. At the time even the Creative Cloud app from Adobe didn't
support scaling and looked super small on a 4K display. Heck, even Photoshop
didn't support Windows scaling, you only had a setting to change the UI size
from 100% to 150% or something like that.

The other problem is that I couldn't find good replacements for my most used
productivity/utility apps. For example Alfred, Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, or
iStatMenus. There are some alternatives that solve some of the problems these
apps solve, but none that are even half as good. A colleague which is 100%
Windows told me that much like Android, Windows users are less likely to pay
for quality software.

I also had a ton of hardware problems with the Surface Book 1 I bought and
returned to Amazon.

The Mac hardware situation is a real problem though, that is certain.
Hopefully Apple has already realized this and is slowly correcting course.

~~~
h1d
You're so me.

Mac's culture of 'I made something decent and I ask you only $15.' was a great
start for OSX and had gotten better by App Store's presence to provide people
the spot on experience of quality third party apps.

Windows, having only either of free but never too good or commercial offering
that is bloated and expensive is getting old.

------
throw0101a
Meta:

I really wish that people would stick with writings things as "from SOURCE to
DESTINATION" or "from INITIAL to FINAL".

Perhaps it's just me, but I find it reduces mental drag if you describe things
in temporal progression instead of having to go 'in reverse'.† It's not a big
deal, but I find it irksome.

† I am reminded of the bomb defusing joke: _Cut the blue wire_ [snip]
_...after cutting the red one._

* [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma) * [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CueCardPause](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CueCardPause)

~~~
glenneroo
I absolutely agree - I wonder if the author uses good ol' functions such as
strcpy(dest, src)?

~~~
banachtarski
Intel assembly notation users unite!

------
banachtarski
Loving WSL and the windows of today. Many years ago I switched to Mac (away
from MSFT/Linux) to streamline my development of both client and server code.
I continued to use MSFT at work (console and game development) while using Mac
at home. About a year and a half ago, I switched to Linux and Windows fulltime
both at work and at home after my second macbook keyboard failed and continued
frustration with the state of graphics drivers on Mac and poorly documented
APIs. Another huge issue was that both macbooks I tried (even with the latest
updates) failed to support multi-monitors seamlessly (lots of glitching on
plug-in and swapping). Needless to say, I feel "in control" of my workstation
again and my productivity is up as a result.

------
tambourine_man
>I keep touching other people's screens out of instinct.

Please, don’t do this. I get palpitations simply when people start getting
their fingers, or worse, a pen, too close to my screen. I warn them. I try to
be cute: “there’s this thing called cursor, you know? You can use many devices
to control it”.

When they do, eventually and inevitably, accidentally touch it, I get visibly
upset and make no effort to lighten the mood. High paying clients, I don’t
care. I’ll get up, get a cleaning cloth and take my time until it is,
hopefully, pristine again.

For all the amazing things that touchscreens brought to the world, it also
made people who already loved smudging monitors suddenly feel even more
authorized to do so.

It’s not the same with my phone, you could even drop it, I often do.

But do not touch my computer’s work screen.

~~~
dublin
It's reasonable to expect any modern computer screen to support touch. By far
the most annoying feature of my 4K desktop monitor is that it lacks touch. I
will never buy another non-touch monitor. While you are clearly anchored to
the quaint ways of the past, the rest of us have progressed two decades into
the 21st century. Come join us in the modern world - and loosen up a bit on
the OCD!

~~~
tambourine_man
A touch screen is not inherently better.

A finger obstructs the view, is laughably imprecise and leaves oil and water
behind, which blurs and distorts the image.

A finger is, however, the most natural interface and readily available.

Which is why it is amazing for the phone we carry with us and terrible for a
27” 5k display, viewed at almost arms length distance.

------
dijit
I really don't like Windows. There are justifiable reasons that I don't like
it but that doesn't get to the root of it for me.

I just _don't_ like it. Not only does it not evoke any kind of pleasant
feeling in use, it's so heavy and fumbly that I just cannot use it for any
meaningful period of time without getting frustrated, lack of terminal not
withstanding.

For context: I use a mac at work, I used a windows machine for 2 years before
this, my personal machines are linux/bsd based (i3/sway)

The Mac experience hasn't improved a lot, granted I'm using a 2013 Trashcan
mac and that's quite dated, but mac, like windows, is suffering from just
kinda feeling bad these days, I'm not sure if it's mojave or that I'm becoming
old and getting grumpy about my display manager not being able to be operated
without a mouse... but I don't like it.

Don't get me wrong MacOS is still _miles_ ahead of Windows in my opinion, but
their hardware these days is appalling, and really the hardware alone makes me
want to move to a nice XPS13 with Linux for work.

My i3/sway machines are /nearly/ perfect, I can think of two things that make
them kinda suck:

1) Hotswapping monitors on Sway is.. hit or miss.. I could hack my way to make
this work better most likely but I shouldn't have to.

2) I work in a Microsoft based company and tools like teams (which has a linux
varient.. kinda), skype and outlook aren't going to work, not to mention the
UUNC SMB paths that get tossed around and the burning desire to use email as a
version control system for Excel spreadsheets...

What I mean is that #2 is served by MacOS, but not linux. :\

------
NeedMoreTea
I'm debating switching to Windows when my 2015 Macbook gives up unless Apple
really have learned their lessons from the 2016 model.

I have two remaining major issues with Windows, which is down from the
remarkably sizeable list that had me switch to Mac and OSX, which makes it
easy to keep the Windows box as games only:

\+ Extreme monochrome flatness. It's obtuse and hides information, like the
edges of icons, encouraging misclicks, and is quite frankly pig ugly. I quite
liked aero glass and the UI as Windows 7 had it. The first Windows that
"looked right". If only they'd modernised and flattened that _a little..._

\+ Abusive view of the users: Tracking and telemetry you can't easily disable.
Knowing better than me when to reboot, to install, when to display ads.

There's lots of minor issues, like 3 to 5 different incarnations of every
feature from menus, to dialogues, to preferences. Or Explorer usability. Or
how discoverable some things are. Or the whole mess of registry and
installing. Or the 40GB of ever-growing Windows sub folders. All I can live
with, but ugly and tracking? Much harder to tolerate.

So as ever I'll end up with a mix, rebalanced a little. One day I'll have a
lovely seamless all-something world, but it hasn't happened since the 80s when
it was Amigas everywhere. :)

~~~
username444
This telemetry thing is surprisingly overlooked in these discussions. I've
disabled tracking and reporting on at least 4 separate occasions since windows
auto updated my laptop from Windows 7 to windows 10 without user permission.
They just keep adding auto-enabled features that override the previously
disabled features doing the same thing.

"We heard you when you said you didn't want cameras automatically monitoring
you. So we added this new feature where you can disable cameras based on DAY
OF THE WEEK and turned every day on for your convenience"

Microsoft knows it lost the online tracking game, so it's playing dumb and
putting in privacy-invading features and overriding user selections yearly.
Why rely on a browser when you control the OS?

The paranoid part of me thinks windows is giving away windows 10 for free
because it's making money selling the user data and access to intelligence
agencies.

I know apple has received some flak for updates slowing their computers, but
windows is no better. My 4 year old laptop is basically unusable at this point
because every action takes 10-15s.

------
neilv
The writer is a journalist. For techies using Mac, there's a bigger question
of whether you want to just move from Mac to GNU/Linux.

~~~
chrisseaton
Whenever I try to use Linux I find it's essentially impossible due to terrible
power management support for any hardware I can find. I'm used to 10 hours on
my MacBook - how do I get that on Linux?

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Their are a variety of ways to manage all of the power management settings on
Linux.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management)

It can be a pain; enabeling sleep for every USB devices will likely result in
the keyboard or touchpad becoming broken, increase the latency it takes to
respond, etc. But once it's configured it just works very well. I'm getting
10+ hours on a Dell XPS 13" under light web browsing + youtube.

Any Apple laptop will likely need some unique customizations for everything to
work and for maximum battery life. It could be argued that instead its
popularity drives up the number of discovered errata. Case in point, the
Archlinux page contains not only an extensive "Mac" page but it also has
dozens of pages for specific Apple computers documenting pretty much
everything you would need to know to get every feature working and get
comparable battery life (could be a little better or worse).

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro#Power_manage...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro#Power_management)

~~~
neilv
In case anyone reading doesn't know, the Arch Linux distro's wiki is great,
and you don't need to use Arch to benefit from the wiki.

(The Arch wiki might be my single most useful source of technical info when
tweaking things on Debian lately. I haven't tweaked laptop power management
lately, but I used to do it aggressively, including building my own kernel,
making sure CPU power management was working, tracking down every process that
used CPU cycles or spun up the disk for no reason, turning off devices I
didn't need, dimming CCFL backlight, etc.)

------
vbezhenar
I used macOS for a 5 years, but switched to Windows, because Apple did not
produce any Macs that I wanted to buy. While I would still prefer macOS
because of better iPhone integration, I did not find any problems with Windows
10 and I'm using it every day without problems, it just works. And the fact
that I don't have to pay those 500% Apple margins makes me quite happy. I
waited for Mac Pro announce to make a final decision what platform I would
use, but now it's a no-brainer, as Apple obviously does not consider me its
target audiency, I'll just stay on Windows.

Funny thing is, as I'm no longer attached to macOS, I'm considering switching
from iPhone to Android. I'll have much better synchronization for Google
Chrome and newer iPhones are really weird (similar to Macs, LoL). And, again,
no need to pay their crazy prices.

------
epistasis
> The list of major changes to Windows in just two years, for free, is
> impressive:

The idea that upgrades could even be qualified with "for free" is such a
foreign idea that it gives me pause.

~~~
autoexec
They were right to use the word "changes" vs "upgrades" which implies
improvement. Microsoft seems intent on filling their OS with user-hostile
features and turning the OS into an ad-delivery/data collection platform.

------
thefounder
The first issue I found trying to switch from Apple/Mac to Linux is the lack
of a laptop with good touchpad. Second was the battery, 3rd was the lack of a
nice mail app. I'm still on MBA 2018 (and a mini)

------
umanwizard
When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t
quite know what to make of it. Interpreted uncharitably, it would seem to
imply that they think all those nice tools like grep, awk, etc. are all shell
builtins, which would be a huge red flag as it would mean they have very
little idea of how a typical Unix-like OS works. Interpreted charitably, maybe
they do know that those are all separate programs and know what a shell does,
but they think the whole experience is called “bash” and not just the shell?
Which I guess wouldn’t be as serious. Or maybe they know exactly what’s going
on and are just using it as shorthand, sort of like how people use “the White
House” to mean the entire US Federal Executive.

I honestly am not sure which it is.

~~~
da_chicken
> When people refer to the entire suite of Unix-like tools as “bash” I don’t
> quite know what to make of it.

Because nobody installs bash without coreutils and the 30 or so other common
utility programs (grep, sed, awk, et al). Pointing out that bash doesn't
include coreutils+standard is just being pedantic. Nobody runs a system
without those utilities present. Everybody already knows what is meant. You're
not adding to the meaning by requiring a comprehensive listing of core and
standard utility programs.

You might as well be saying, "Actually, it's not Linux. It's GNU/Linux." Only
Richard Stallman cares, but even Stallman recognizes that because "a long name
such as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd, at some
point you will have to set a threshold and omit the names of the many other
secondary contributions." [0]

Nobody is going to say, "OMG, how can you say you have a proper environment if
you don't mention that you have the very important yes utility." Nobody is
really interested in a required-only install of Debian or a base-only install
of Red Hat or whatever because the use case for that is so rare and narrow
that it's not worth contextualizing. Anybody who _is_ doing that knows that
it's a weird setup.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-
faq.html#many](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many)

~~~
umanwizard
You seem to be responding to points that I’m not making.

I’m aware that very few people install bash outside the context of a typical
Unix OS. It would indeed be pedantic and useless to point out that that’s
theoretically possible, and that’s not what I’m doing.

It’s also very rare to install, say, grep outside of a typical Unix OS. But
you wouldn’t say “the grep workflow on WSL is great” to mean the entire WSL
experience, unless you were specifically talking about actual grep. So why do
people do it with bash?

~~~
lonelappde
Because bash is the name of the Unix shell, differentiated from the
traditional Windows shell.

~~~
umanwizard
Would you say “I’m using Chrome and Visual Studio” or “I’m using a Windows
workflow and tools” or “I’m using explorer.exe” ?

The first two make much more sense to me than the third.

(As an aside, it’s not true that Bash is “the Unix shell” and it is in fact
not the default on several Unix-like systems. But in fairness to your point,
it _is_ the default on most GNU/Linux distros).

------
jakub_g
~20yrs Windows user and die-hard anti-fanboy of Apple, I'm almost considering
switching to a Mac as the next corpo laptop (if not for unergonomic Mac
keyboard layout and different shortcuts for everything, I'd have done it
already).

While I'm happy with my personal Thinkpad, being nearly the only front-end guy
on Windows sucks (missing out on various tools, and regularly having to fix
slightly broken scripts etc.).

But above all, my corpo Dell is a misery (current status: malfunctioning audio
drivers hence all audio sounds like 32 kbps crap; issues with external
monitors when replugging laptop to the docking station; cherry on a cake is
laptop going berserk while presenting at a conference, due to loose RAM;
there's an issue like this every few weeks lately).

Current Dells have much better battery and are half as heavy as the previous
generation, but I still wouldn't buy a Dell for myself, and sadly those are
still the default Windows corpo laptops.

~~~
munchbunny
For better or for worse, Windows these days seems increasingly designed for
two main form factors. Surface products, and desktops. The hardware quality on
a lot of other OEM laptops has really fallen behind.

I use both OSes, and the only Windows laptop I've found compelling over the
last four years is the Surface Book line.

~~~
pjmlp
I have been using ThinkPads (T, W and P models) with Windows since 2006 and
seldom had anything to complain about.

~~~
maccard
My single biggest gripe with Windows laptops (I have a T470 now, previously a
Razer Blade, and I have had various classes of Dell/HP laptops over the years)
is the trackpad. The trackpad experience on a mac is leaps and bounds ahead of
any of the windows machines I've used. The Mac trackpad via bootcamp is a
downgrade, but still better than the trackpad on my T470.

------
drevil-v2
I had to use a Windows laptop for about a week as my MacBook was getting the
keyboard replaced.

I hated it. It is hard to articulate exactly why I disliked it so much but I
would guess it is almost entirely a visual thing. The font rendering is so
much better on MacOS. This was Surface Book 2 laptop so the display resolution
was not a factor.

And I hate the amount of whitespace in Windows 10 user interface. There is a
dropdown panel in start bar that shows common settings icons. God I hated that
entire minimal design. It felt like something high school student might mockup
for the Year 12 computer science project. Two colours, thin drawing that
vaguely resembles a visual representation of the task and HUGE whitespace.

I was contemplating buying a Lenovo X1 Extreme Thinkpad because everyone raves
about their keyboards but after using Windows 10 for a week.. nah.. nope...
nyet... na-uh

~~~
BitwiseFool
Ironically, I feel like it's a result of designers trying to copy Apple's
minimalism.

~~~
h1d
I don't call it minimalism. They cut off unnecessary parts and left what
mattered, like unblaoted it.

------
samdixon
An operating system with advertisements will never be my first choice.

~~~
cgio
That. I loved windows, was probably at some time one of the last people using
windows phone, but the moment I started getting a candy crash or something
icon in my start menu and could not remove it unless I did some powershell
tricks and even then I had it coming back was the end for me. I still believe
there’s more innovation going into windows than other os but just cannot work
on a system where every time I press start I am worried I will be annoyed. On
Mac currently but working mostly on a Linux vm with i3 to get used to it. A
touch, gesture enabled i3 is my dream and I am working on it.

~~~
dublin
That's funny, I _never_ see any Microsoft-pushed advertising (other than in
the Windows Store, which is kinda its point). I right-clicked on CandyCrush,
removed it, and have NEVER seen anything I didn't put in my start menu since.
I'm on record as having a well-justified hatred/distrust of Microsoft for
their stance on things decades back. But that was long ago, and they've
changed. I've been using Win10 for five years now, and it's without question
the best operating system I've ever used. Both MacOS and any Linux are a huge
step backwards, especially when it comes to running 21st century pen/touch
apps on 21st century hardware!

------
sarim
I use Mac for work (MacBook Pro 2017) and windows for personal projects (HP
Envy 2018) and posts like these makes me wonder: are we both using the same
Windows? Because the windows that I am exposed to finds the most inconvenient
time to install updates, slows down for no apparent reason and, as of late,
turns on two keyboard cursors at the same time causing me to type in two
different locations of a document at once. Why Windows?! WHY?!?!?

~~~
vbezhenar
Comments like yours make me wonder the same thing. I almost never notice
Windows updates. May be once a month when I shutting down my PC, I'll notice
that label changed from "power off" to "install updates and power off" and
that's the only difference for me. I never experienced forced reboot or
something like this. I don't have any slow downs and I never saw two keyboard
cursors (apart from Intellij Idea multiple cursors feature).

------
jmull
I'm not sure it makes sense to point to certain hardware flaws as a reason to
avoid Macs.

These are bad things (especially the keyboard switch issue, which is greatly
compounded by the issue of the keyboard being a very heavy-weight repair)
but... where's the manufacturer without problems?

I think what you're looking for is a manufacturer with a relatively decent
reliability record and a record of "making things right" when they do go
wrong. I'm really not sure of the best way to measure that, though Apple seems
to consistently do well on various user satisfaction and reliability surveys.

~~~
darkteflon
This. After-sales service and support have kept me on Apple hardware for years
and will do for years to come - butterfly keyboard or no. When there’s a
problem, in my experience they own it.

Shudder to think what it’s like to get through on phone support and/or file a
warranty claim with Dell, Microsoft, what have you. No thanks.

------
jakear
Everything on the “free updates I’ve gotten” and nearly everything on the
“updates coming soon” lists are on MacOS (also free), and most have been for a
while.

Not bashing Windows, I’ve had a pleasant history with msft, but when almost
everything “new and exciting” listed here is old news for MacOS, it kinda
dulls the argument.

------
gjmacd
"Bash on Windows is maturing quickly." \-- Hold my beer. Sorry, maturing
quickly isn't going to cut it if you're a hardcore developer that works off
the bash command line.

~~~
SpaceManiac
MSYS2 has been distributing a native Windows port of bash for years; it's
completely stable and works great (it's the one used in Git Bash). "Maturing
quickly" refers to the reverse-Wine/integrated VM situation that MS is
developing in WSL.

------
jaden
> I'll be honest: it wasn't an easy switch at first, but as time went by it's
> become clear it was the right choice.

Let's stop pretending there's a correct OS. We all have different needs and it
depends on what you're optimizing for.

I have a Macbook for work and run Windows 7 on my home desktop with Ubuntu on
my home laptop. They all have their benefits and drawbacks.

And Windows 10 has been having plenty of problems of its own with recent
vulnerabilities and a bug that could break VPN connections.

~~~
katttrrr
I couldn't agree more. Personally, I've found dual booting is the best option,
but since most hardware isn't optimized for this it does sometimes lead to
driver problems. I really wish all computers we're optimized for multiple
OS... I mean it's great on a desktop where you can have many drives, but
that's not practical for laptops and partitioning really isn't the most stable
option in my experience.

------
hising
Off-topic(ish): I didn't know about Microsoft UI Fabric until I read this, but
found it to be really interesting, huge collection of components, well
documented and for Web, iOS and Android. Anyone tried it out?

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
us/fabric#/](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric#/)

------
dstaley
I'm planning on switching from macOS to Windows 10 in the fall, and could not
be more excited. I specced out a pretty powerful workstation: 16 core/32
thread AMD Ryzen CPU, 32 GB RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and AMD's newest
graphics card. For the same price, the best MacBook I could get would be the
13in MacBook Pro with a quad-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and integrated
graphics. I'm really excited about the power switching away from macOS gives
me. I initially thought about switching to Linux, but I didn't want to give up
nice things like biometric authentication and real desktop apps (I use
Affinity Photo pretty often). Plus, with Samsung Flow, I get some pretty nice
integration with my phone. The improvements Microsoft is making to Windows 10
give me a lot of confidence, way more so than Apple, who seems to be entirely
focused on the iPad Pro.

------
xster
I only bootcamp back in once in a while to play games but can't help but
notice that font rendering still doesn't seem to have improved since the early
2000s. Anti-aliasing is all over the place and UWP, websites, installers,
Java-anything, winforms all render at seemingly different 'native
resolutions'.

------
S_A_P
I work as a developer/consultant/system integrator and I consistently get a
hard time for using macs. It’s antiquated thinking that began in the 90s.
Usually the folks that are the most tribal about windows have little to no
experience with Mac OS. Here’s the kicker- I use macOS and windows about
equally. Each has its strong and weak points. I can’t hang who I am as a
person on a bunch of bits. Prior to the butterfly keyboard debacle I found Mac
hardware to be the best platform to run Windows, after getting my i9 MacBook
Pro I am ready to sell it because of that garbage keyboard. Right now I’m
looking for a decent cherry mx keyboard that will have the Mac layout and
backlit keys. Anyone who knows of such a device please let me know. I would
gladly pay 300 bucks for such a keyboard.

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mung
I was surprised by "The list of major changes to Windows in just two years,
for free", - impressive. Although er, every single one of them is also on OSX
and also has been for the last couple of years.

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thom
At a certain point I gave up trying to fix various battery, keyboard and
screen issues with my MacBook Pro and just started coding on a cheap netbook
with Linux and realised I didn’t really experience much pain (spent a fair
amount of time SSH’d into beefy servers, admittedly).

When I finally bought a fancy new machine I ended up getting a gaming laptop
with a GPU I knew I could do CUDA stuff on. I’ve got one disk with Ubuntu and
one with Windows and ultimately spend most of my time in Windows. I still use
Cygwin because WSL annoyed me in various ways (mostly I just want Emacs to be
able to call command line tools and work).

There is nothing to love about Windows, and plenty of aggravations (I’ve been
logged into my son’s Microsoft account for months and Microsoft regularly send
me screen time reports about myself, because I once tried to set up a network
game of Minecraft). But honestly, I work in Emacs and Firefox and actually
quite like having access to games. I can’t really imagine ever going back to a
Mac. If battery life was better on Linux and GNOME would stop lobotomising
itself with every release I imagine I’d drop Windows too, but it’s been so
long since I felt genuinely thrilled by an OS.

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Henk0
My workflow (ios native & unity development) is based on extensive use of
multiple desktops

(using a plugin to get grid style desktop layout) with apps designated to open
in their own

desktop, or to be available in all (finder, notes, mail, etc). I only use
trackpad (with swipes to move between desktops) and no external monitors

I was interested to try windows 10 when they'd finally got to allowing
multiple desktops a few years ago. That turned out to be a

disappointment though. Windows switches between desktops without any clear
visual

indication of their relative positioning. You can't designate apps to be
available on any desktop, so I'd get a bunch of different instances of
explorer on different desktops.

Swiping to move between the desktops was not nearly customisable enough either
When (if) Microsoft gets multiple desktops to par with the implementation on
Mac OS, and they or some other laptop producer manages to make a trackpad that
at least comes close to the

macbook pro ones, I'll consider giving it another go. For now, my feeling is
that microsoft still can't really get UX right

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systemtest
I was tempted in switching from my 2011 MacBook Pro 13" to a Lenovo T490/x390
with Windows. I got a used x230 for the Thinkpad/Windows experience but didn't
like it. Having a double Program Files directory. The messy user directory
that is spammed with directories from all kinds of applications. Not knowing
where to find a setting in the three options you have. Typing "Update" in the
search bar and not seeing a result, only to find out that I need to search for
it and then go to the "Apps" tab of the search result. And the popup that my
battery was dying every time I booted. Yes I know that already. It all looked
messy and overcomplicated.

Ended up getting a Mid-2015 MacBook Pro 15" Retina manufactured in 2017 with
14 battery cycles. Paid €900 for it two weeks ago, refurbished. The hardware
is still very fast and the Retina screen is more than adequate for backend
software development.

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jasoneckert
I'm a long time Windows, Linux, and macOS user (I use all 3). However, for
productivity, I'm faster on Windows & Linux than I am on macOS for most tasks
- the reason for this is that macOS first-and-foremost treats you like a user,
whereas Windows/Linux treat you as a power user.

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kup0
It's just a personal preference, I guess, but I use an iMac + a gaming Windows
10 PC daily, and then a Linux laptop occasionally, and to me there is no
comparison. The Mac and Linux systems are much preferable to Windows 10. I'm
no fanboy, and generally dislike fanboyism in general. I have qualms with both
Apple and Microsoft, and frustrations with Linux sometimes. But when the dust
settles, I strongly prefer MacOS and Linux

I also think that Windows has worsened over time. Both 7 and 10 have their own
pros and cons, but I feel 10 is just worse overall as an experience. There's
so much unnecessary extra bloat (apps, UI, settings in two different places,
annoying notifications) and weird UI mismatches. At least 7 felt mostly
internally "consistent".

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galkk
I prefer to use Ubuntu for development and Windows+WSL for home/gaming.
Somehow I don't have the need for Mac in my life. If ever there will be iTerm2
style integration with tmux, I will be able to say that there's nothing at all
that holds me to Mac.

~~~
h1d
I would miss GUI DB apps, image editors, decent trackpad utility, QR code
generator to copy text data to my phone, MS office to open files being passed,
Quick Look and other little useful ones.

And I mean they're better than DBeaver, GIMP and LibreOffice.

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antaviana
My environment requires mostly access to several Windows Remote Desktop
Servers and VDIs.

Curiously I use a Mac to access them because the Microsoft Remote Desktop for
Mac has some niceties such as opening each RDP session in a new Mac Desktop
and best of all I can very conveniently navigate from RDP session to RDP
session with a Mac hotkey.

With Windows Microsoft Remote Desktop the whole RDP session switching
experience is pretty cumbersome.

So I do all programming and LOB apps use on Windows RDP sessions.

On Mac only Internet browsing and RDP session management via Microsoft Remote
Desktop.

So my iMacs are mostly thin clients.

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user00012-ab
I need the state of the art hardware so I can .... open a terminal.

~~~
devonkim
More like I need hardware that Just Works (a lot of Windows laptops that are
of similar quality to MacBooks were nearly the same price, go figure) a native
POSIX-like environment that works mostly with my Linux-centric tools and don’t
like dealing with any more differences from my server than I have to but would
rather not fight for hardware compatibility constantly.

But what definitely is bothersome with the MacBooks is that I can’t use CUDA
worth a damn without an nVidia GPU so if I work with most machine learning
toolkits I have to ship the code off to some expensive cloud just to see a
quick run for prototyping or port all my code to support Apple APIs
specifically instead of the open source ones primarily centered around nVidia
tooling.

~~~
umanwizard
> a lot of Windows laptops that are of similar quality to MacBooks were nearly
> the same price, go figure

Those exist? I’m not being facetious. Are there really examples of non-Apple
laptops that are as nice of hardware? (I primarily care about screen and
trackpad.)

~~~
devonkim
Trackpad no, but the IBM / Lenovo X1 Carbon series were pretty solid laptops
for a while and also quite expensive for years. And more recently the Surface
Book models have been really nice to work with if it weren’t for pesky power
management issues. If the Surface Book 2 ran macOS and had the same suspend /
resume experience as Macs all do I’d have been quite happy with Microsoft.
Before the Surface line most OEMs have been primarily about driving costs down
in the face of commoditization and races to the bottom rather than trying to
compete head on with Apple from the hardware and consumer experience side and
it appears that Microsoft is still going at the gargantuan task of making PC
laptops sexy alone.

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tomc1985
Windows-as-a-Service is a terrible idea and it makes me sad to see people
embracing one of the largest-scale thefts of control ever. We are so
pathetically spoiled by convenience that all companies have to do is wave that
around and they can do anything

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sys_64738
I just run a Ubuntu in Virtual Box to make Windows 10 go away. It's pretty
seemless and I can also use tools like Vivaldi native to Win10. There's no
general need to use Windows specific tools nowadays, IMO.

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cycop
Been an Apple user for 20 years and the switch came down to the absurd
hardware cost of Apple. We have 5 desktops in the house (Large family), we do
gaming, graphic design, video and audio production. Easily save $10K on
upgrading all of our systems to modern hardware running Windows. The stability
and experience of using Apple for graphics, audio and video use to be a big
advantage 10 to 15 years ago. Now it's the same if not better on Windows.

~~~
h1d
Saving $2k a desktop doesn't sound right.

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everyone
Just letting ya'll know the best version of Windows 10 by miles is called
'LTSB'. It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, xboxlive, cortana
etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change
its functionality but _will_ receive security updates, for 10 years. You can
only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering
MS are intentionally _not_ selling by far the most user-respecting version of
their OS to regular folks, it behooves us to pirate it.

~~~
lph
Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do
you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?

~~~
silversconfused
Well to be fair, pirates are far more honest and helpful than corporations.

~~~
everyone
Agreed, pirated anything from a known trusted group or uploader is what I
consider a clean copy of something. If I buy the official version of anything
I usually use the pirated version anyway.

~~~
h1d
That is dangerous. They can plant whatever the hell they want as soon as it
looks financially attractive. What repercussion do they have against
corporations doing the same?

