I Made The Switch From Windows To Mac In 2024: Was It Worth It?

I have been utilizing Home windows for so long as I can keep in mind. It was my baseline — a no brainer for affordability, customization, energy, and gaming. Macintosh was merely by no means a consideration; I used the iMac just a few occasions in class, however solely out of obligation. I used to be very a lot within the camp of people who thought Apple merchandise had been for sheeple who take pleasure in paying five-star costs for five-year-old software program and {hardware} options. Quick-forward to the current, and I am writing this text on a MacBook.

How did that occur?

Quick model of a protracted story: a buddy slowly nudged me to attempt their previous, unused iPhone so they may iMessage and AirDrop me, and finally I “noticed the sunshine.” Quick-forward just a few months, and all of a sudden, I used to be shopping for a MacBook on the Apple Retailer. My “Wintendo” PC stays just for taking part in video games, since gaming on the Mac is not as much as snuff. For such a big shift, do I remorse my choice to spend oodles of cash and lock myself right into a notoriously restrictive ecosystem, retrospectively talking? Let’s talk about.

Listed below are a few of my causes for switching to Mac, plus the issues I miss from Microsoft — and whether or not I really feel it was the suitable alternative.

If there may be one factor Microsoft Home windows does nicely, it is elevating my cortisol to harmful ranges with technical difficulties. I am unable to maintain observe of how typically my PC bugs out, crashes, freezes, or provides a black or blue display. Process Supervisor is virtually my most-used program with how typically I must terminate misbehaving apps — and even that does not work on a regular basis, forcing me to do a tough shutdown. I’ve wasted many a superb Saturday troubleshooting technical issues. If nothing goes improper, then Home windows is begging me to replace for the umpteenth time this month. You get the concept.

“Apple simply works,” folks typically say. It is cliché, however I discover it to be usually true. Macintosh is a reasonably low-maintenance system that’s virtually all the time prepared after I want it. System-breaking bugs, crashes, and freezes are exceedingly uncommon. I am unable to ever keep in mind having a crucial error so unhealthy I needed to drive shutdown or restore the system from a backup. Updates come at most as soon as a month. If I put my Mac to sleep, it’s going to get up after I want it once more. Home windows’ sleep mode is a particular breed of headache — extra on that later. This is not to say that there are not any bugs on Mac, however most are small annoyances that may be fastened with minimal troubleshooting.

Lately, I’ve stumbled upon a bug the place my Home windows PC refuses to wake after being put to sleep for longer than about 24 hours. Intensive troubleshooting solved nothing. Asking round, I discovered a number of different buddies had the identical drawback. Apparently, it is Home windows refusing to play good with something however built-in graphics. Supposing this weren’t a problem, I would nonetheless need to restart my laptop at the least as soon as per week to clear the RAM and treatment rising sluggishness. Mac’s sleep mode, by comparability, is on one other stage.

Apart from simply working, most Mac customers solely shut down or restart their units when there’s an replace. I personally depart my Mac on for months and see no slowdown, no degradation in efficiency. Energy Nap makes certain I obtain notifications and sync iCloud within the background so I am able to get to work after I open it.

Battery life is one other space the place Mac completely trounces Home windows. My MacBook Air is rated for 18 hours max battery life, though it realistically will get about 8-to-12, relying on my workload. A full day’s value, briefly, and over per week in sleep mode give or take. I’ve by no means seen a comparable Home windows ultrabook reliably get greater than six. Plus, Fashionable Standby (Home windows’ trademark sleep mode) is hilariously unhealthy. I’ve by no means been capable of put Home windows laptops to sleep for greater than a day or two earlier than they die. The outlook for the brand new Home windows ARM PCs is not nice both, as I’ve seen exams suggesting the battery life is only some hours further.

It feels generally like Microsoft’s technique with Home windows is to be as obnoxiously distracting as humanly doable. There’s all the time some new factor bugging you, some new characteristic that is been shoehorned in whether or not you prefer it or not. After a recent set up of Home windows, I often spend an hour simply eradicating all of the crud from the taskbar, mass-uninstalling bloatware, and disabling all of the privacy-unfriendly settings and nags — and once more after a significant replace, too.

Microsoft places Bing search leads to the beginning menu and, just lately, ads for random apps you may in all probability by no means use. Microsoft retains refreshing the UI and altering across the location of issues, so with every main characteristic replace I discover myself relearning and decluttering the working system. I might go on, however you get the purpose. Mac is, once more, in a league of its personal on this regard.

It is exhausting to level to just one motive why Mac feels so clear and streamlined. The UI could be very minimalistic; few home windows pop up in your face with out good motive; there are not any advertisements, and it is uncommon for a specific characteristic to be foisted upon you. In the meantime, macOS simply will get out of the way in which, so you are able to do what you want. Apps have a tendency to stick to Yosemite design language, so there is a uniform look throughout packages slightly than a patchwork quilt. Fullscreen utterly eliminates distractions, and it is easy to interrupt up your work into a number of areas. Mixed with highly effective keyboard shortcuts and trackpad gestures, all the pieces is constructed to get work completed faster with out pointless annoyances. I can solely communicate subjectively (and as a author), however I have been extra productive since making the change.

I’ve tried all the major cloud storage services on Home windows: Dropbox, Google Drive, Sync, pCloud, and so forth. OneDrive is the most effective, and I would advocate it to any Home windows/Android customers. Nonetheless, it does not maintain a candle to iCloud when utilizing macOS and an iPhone.

One among many things you learn as first-timer in macOS is that iCloud is invisible. There is not any app to open it. You merely place recordsdata in iCloud folders on Finder, look forward to the little pie-chart icon to replenish, and the file is within the cloud and able to go. Hearth-and-forget. There is not any must examine your OneDrive pop-up window for progress bars or syncing errors, and no want to determine why your recordsdata aren’t displaying up on different units. It simply works. Native Apple apps sync by means of iCloud flawlessly, too.

My favourite half although is how seamlessly it integrates with third-party apps. Usually, apps like Obsidian and Joplin (which use your cloud storage service to sync your knowledge) need to be manually arrange. Not with iCloud. You give permission to sync with iCloud, and also you’re completed. It is quick and allows you to maintain all of your knowledge personal and in a single place slightly than trusting a bunch of third events. That is large, since Superior Information Safety could make your iCloud end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) so that you just and solely you may entry your knowledge. Only a few cloud storage providers help E2EE.

Putting in a program on Home windows is completely different each time. When opening an executable, you are handled to an set up wizard that inundates you with choices to click on by means of. You need to settle for the TOS; select the set up location (Program Information for 64-bit, Program Information x86 for 32-bit); select further set up options like language packs, and permit this system to create a begin menu icon and desktop shortcut. Then, sit by means of a progress bar till you get one other web page asking if you wish to begin this system instantly and/or go to the corporate’s web site. You may’t click on by means of the pages rapidly since each program has completely different choices. You could possibly miss one thing vital, and a few installers will attempt to sneak opt-out crapware previous you.

You put in most packages on Mac by means of the App Retailer (a one-click answer), however third-party apps downloaded off the Web are shockingly simple to put in, too. Merely open the .dmg file and drag the app icon into your purposes folder with the supplied pop-up window. That is it. Then, summon the app both from Highlight or the Launchpad, after which you’ll be able to pin it to the Dock. If you wish to uninstall the app, you drag it from the purposes folder to the trash can. No uninstallers, no junk in your registry, no drawback. It is a small factor, however this genuinely blew my thoughts. It is emblematic of many small, albeit impactful enhancements that got here with my Mac change.

One good factor that may be mentioned for Home windows is that very, little or no is restricted to the Microsoft ecosystem. Apple, conversely, has constructed a restrictive walled backyard round its merchandise and fought tooth and nail to maintain folks inside it. Apple units usually do not play nicely with opponents, nor enable their greatest options on them. One factor I believe most individuals can agree on, although, is that the ecosystem can generally be fairly wonderful — supplied you’ve gotten at the least a few Apple units.

A few of these ecosystem advantages have turn into important for me. I really like with the ability to seamlessly, routinely change AirPods from my Mac to a different gadget slightly than manually switching or draining my battery with multipoint; sending recordsdata from my Mac to my iPhone is stupidly simple with AirDrop; my Apple Watch routinely unlocks my Mac for me; Handoff lets me begin one thing on one gadget and end it on one other; Common Clipboard means I can copy one thing on my iPhone and paste it virtually immediately on my Mac.

Comparable options often require third-party software program on Home windows (I would slightly not put any extra belief in third events than I’ve to) and sometimes aren’t as seamless, anyway. Some options merely aren’t doable elsewhere. Apple’s ecosystem perks often work by default on all platforms. I’ve typically discovered the Apple model is best. Take the upcoming iPhone mirroring feature which lets Mac customers not solely management their locked iPhone and look at its notifications natively, however drag and drop recordsdata seamlessly, too.

Nothing else compares as soon as you’ve got tasted the forbidden fruit that’s the Mac trackpad. It is spacious, clean, and correct. It makes use of a simulated click on through haptic suggestions so you may click on anyplace on the floor, not simply on the underside half the place the bodily click on is most pronounced. Urgent down a bit tougher with a drive click on permits a bevy of helpful options — take issues like on the spot dictionary look-up, or Fast Look preview of a file.

The multitouch gestures make utilizing the trackpad so pleasant and that you just may choose it over a mouse. I really like the two-finger faucet to zoom or the two-finger swipe to navigate backwards and forwards in net pages. It feels so pure to increase 4 fingers to indicate the desktop, or shut them in a claw form to get to the launchpad. With one thing like BetterTouchTool, you may create your personal gestures to stage up your productiveness. Apple sells the Magic Trackpad, a wi-fi, standalone model for desktop Macs that — supplied you do not undergo from carpal tunnel — brings all these gestures to the iMac or Mac Mini.

Now to the limitations of Macs, and the most important one proper out of the gate is what you had been considering of this complete time: the worth. Macs price a lot they in all probability require a mortgage in an alternate universe. The most cost effective brand-new macOS laptop you should buy is the MacBook Air M2 on the low, low worth of $1,000. So as to add insult to harm, that is solely eight gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of SSD storage. That is the slower, single NAND chip, by the way in which. You’d need to pay $200 for the five hundred gigabytes to get the sooner two-chip NAND choice. Eight gigabytes of RAM in all probability will not reduce it if you need a future-proofed machine that may final so long as doable, so 16 gigabytes will price one other $200. That is $400 further simply to get mid-range specs, and we’ve not even mentioned AppleCare safety plans, peripherals, and screens.

A Home windows PC for half the worth might crush the M2 in benchmarks and have double the storage and RAM. Constructing your personal gadget with a $1,600 funds (the price of the baseline MacBook Professional) would provide you with a strong PC able to operating any recreation at Extremely settings and boasting a number of terabytes of storage and 32 gigabytes of RAM.

That entry-level MacBook Professional, in the meantime, would get you a 512 gigabytes SSD and eight gigabytes of RAM. The one silver lining I can consider is that Macs (anecdotally) are likely to have larger construct high quality and last more. I actually can not fault anybody for locating it unconscionable that anybody would purchase Apple merchandise with costs like these.

One Statista study confirmed that Apple customers are extra prepared to pay for apps than others. Cue my shock after I came upon a not-insignificant portion of Mac apps will price you. On Home windows, the overwhelming majority use a free, open-source, or third-party freemium mannequin. Builders need to watch out with how they worth issues, as customers merely will not pay if they do not really feel it is value it. On Mac, many apps require a single-license buy or a subscription. Most of the apps I advisable in this article don’t have any free choice, despite the fact that they’re wonderful.

An ideal instance of that is considered one of my go-to browser extensions, Dark Reader. Darkish Reader is completely free on Chrome and Firefox, however on Safari, it prices $4.99. If it is not a Mac app costing cash when the Home windows model is free, then it is an equal app on Mac that has no free model. This is not to say the typical app prices as a lot as Photoshop (most sit within the $5-15 vary), nevertheless it provides up rapidly.

To be clear, I’ve nothing in opposition to supporting builders to maintain their great tasks alive. I do get the sensation generally, although, that devs prey upon Apple customers’ willingness to pay. This in all probability encourages their opponents to do the identical, and thus an countless cycle begins.

Apple does not prefer it whenever you restore its units with out its blessing. They do some downright unethical issues to cow unbiased restore retailers into submission, they usually rigorously management which elements may be put in to cease unsanctioned repairs. This lets them promote costly AppleCare plans and cost a premium. They declare to do that for safety causes, however everyone knows a grasping, money-grubbing company after we see one. Particularly seeing as Apple digs within the spurs to keep away from masking producer defects just like the butterfly keyboard and the current “Dustgate.”

It is also infuriating which you could’t improve your Mac. You need to determine at buy how a lot CPU, GPU, RAM and storage you may maintain for the remainder of the gadget’s lifespan. In equity, Apple Silicon is an SoC that is soldered onto the motherboard, so maybe a CPU, GPU, or unified reminiscence swap could be impractical. Then again, being unable to improve the SSD is totally unacceptable, particularly now with compression-mounted RAM being a factor.

Apple’s enterprise technique, many argue, is to attend and see which new options its opponents incorporate. If a factor works and is well-received, Apple makes its personal (hopefully) higher model. Sadly, the remainder of the time it seems like Apple resides in its personal separate actuality from that of its customers. Apparent options do not come for years, if ever.

Living proof: macOS Sequoia will convey window snapping and tiling in 2024, a desktop administration important for PC customers that is been round since Home windows 7. That such a primary perform is barely simply arriving virtually twenty years after it first appeared makes you marvel what you are paying all that Apple tax for.

Because of this, I’ve to make use of a ton of third-party software program to get performance that non-Mac customers often have by default. Which means having to belief extra builders with my knowledge, and leaving extra packages operating within the background to eat sources. Not nice.

Contemporary off the heels of some fairly heavy downsides, it might come as a shock that I do not remorse my choice to change for a second. issues in mixture, it principally comes right down to desire. I choose the way in which Mac does issues in a really basic sense, and the ecosystem makes it so my Apple units combine in a means no different firms do. There are a number of options that I am unable to dwell with out now that I am used to them. I can tolerate the disadvantages due to these causes.

A number of issues have not but talked about additionally consider. I really like Apple’s stance on privateness, the main target given to on-device processing, and its extra considerate implementation of AI options (Apple Intelligence). The corporate appears to be much less capricious in comparison with Microsoft, and has a extra outlined trajectory.

To be clear, I am not right here to throw shade on Home windows or Linux customers or the platforms themselves. There is not any motive to change to Mac for the overwhelming majority of individuals, and the downsides of the platform kill off what little incentive there may need been. For many who just like the issues I’ve talked about, nonetheless, the change is perhaps value it, supplied you may dwell with the problems I’ve talked about.