7 ms·

As someone who'd been in the Mac ecosystem and paid the price in time and expense of leaving for a PC a few years back, I'm starting to lean back toward the Mac

As someone who'd been in the Mac ecosystem and paid the price in time and expense of leaving for a PC a few years back, I'm starting to lean back toward the Mac side. The amount of fiddling and headaches I'm dealing with on Windows is just a huge waste of time. Had to reinstall all my programs after a recent Windows update ruined the OS.

stefanfisk 8y ago
this is what's keeping me from switching. every time I try spending a day on Windows I remember just how much macOS "just works", even if it has warts all over the place.
- BinaryIdiot 8y ago
  See, I've always used both and I just don't understand this whole "I have to spend a day on Windows making X work". I haven't experienced this in at least a decade. Windows 10 "just works" with every device and software I've thrown at it.
  - geomark 8y ago
    That's the thing about anecdotes, one person's experience is completely opposite of anothers. I got a laptop with Windows 10 on it and immediately experienced the "100% disk utilization problem", which makes it basically unusable. I Googled around and found hundreds of posts about the problem and many dozens of suggested fixes of which zero worked (for me). So it's sitting on a shelf until I get around to installing Ubuntu on it, which has always just worked for me (which is the opposite of some other people's experiences).
    - stefanfisk 8y ago
      it's also very dependent on what you want to use your computer for. as a frontend dev I want a mix of Adobe CS and a bunch of primarily posix compatible tools, and then Windows is seriously suboptimal. but even beyond that the sheer number of popups and shit I need to close when starting from a clean install on Windows makes me want to punch the computer, and naturally that is a very subjective experience. and stuff like apps stealing focus in general. if a mac app makes itself the key window in a non-standard way I immediately consider uninstalling it, on win that just seems to be what all apps do when opening new windows.
      - BinaryIdiot 8y ago
        > as a frontend dev I want a mix of Adobe CS and a bunch of primarily posix compatible tools, and then Windows is seriously suboptimal. Not sure why it's suboptimal, WSL is amazing. I am primary a frontend dev as well and do most of my building / start-up / testing of my work inside of a terminal. It's great and Adobe works great as well with the added bonus of the better Windows dropdowns (Mac OS dropdowns drive me nuts but for Windows you can give one focus and scroll through all the options with the keyboard). > but even beyond that the sheer number of popups and shit I need to close when starting from a clean install on Windows makes me want to punch the computer, and naturally that is a very subjective experience. When I first started up I had like 2 notifications to use Edge and something else and that was it. When I enrolled in the Windows beta I received a few more for requests for feedback, which it warned me about ahead of time. Not sure why you had so many pop-ups and I've had basically none. It's always so weird to me how my experience with Windows machines differs from those who prefer Macs. I own and use both and they both seem pretty great to me. The only big thing is I make sure to only buy Windows hardware from Microsoft to get their "genuine experience" because HP and everyone else likes to ruin it with their bullshit.
        stefanfisk 8y ago
        Not to retort, but Mac also has keyboard navigation for the menus, but the default setting for focusing the menu is ^F2 which is quite bad.
  - tushartyagi 8y ago
    Not to counter your point, but I had that new remarkably stupid ":( Oops something went wrong" error popping up the morning I had to give a presentation. I have Windows 10 Home and it forced the updates, failed after an hour, and fucked up the boot partition, removing grub. So just before the presentation, I had to setup grub again and boot into Linux because windows was still stuck with updates. Thankfully my slides were on google drive. On my office laptop though, Win 10 Pro has been pretty stable. To get back to the main point, I usually have to spend a day with both Windows and Linux to install everything right from VLC to compilers. IMO setting up needs to be done on every machine, independently of the OS.
- winrid 8y ago
  It has been the opposite for me since about Windows 7. Work MacBook - have to restart it to get USB ports to work, screen flickers when you plug in an external monitor like X windows on an Unix terminal from '99 with a bad conf file... Comeon.
  - stefanfisk 8y ago
    sound like you've got one of the super common duds, apple will probably replace it if you ask them.
    - winrid 8y ago
      They're all software issues. I think all the MBP's in our office do this stuff. For instance, the external monitor and such works fine. It's just it is very un-elegant how it does the switch over.
vincnetas 8y ago
Have mac book air from 2013. Went through all OS upgrades with no reinstalls. Even upgraded SSD from 128 to 512 with flawless backup from timecapsule. Can't even image this happening on windows...
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Time Capsule is interesting, it's been consistent since its release in 2008 and has worked flawlessly for me. Compare that to Windows backup which changes to a new incompatible product with every new version of Windows and is so riddled with flaws its unusable.
  - dagw 8y ago
    I'm on the whole pretty happy with Windows, but I've never understood how they can consistently fail to deliver a working easy to use backup solution out of the box for decades. Mere incompetence shouldn't be able to deliver such terrible implementations, it's almost like they're actively trying to fuck it up.
- invalidusernam3 8y ago
  I recently had a hard drive failure on my primary HD in my mac pro (desktop, the old shape). The machine wouldn't boot into the OS at all. I bought a new HD and ran the recovery tool which gave me an option to clone from another drive. I figured I might as well give it a try even though the old HD seemed completely dead. After a couple of hours the machine rebooted using the new HD. The amazing part is not only were are my files perfectly intact, but the exact same applications I had open when the old HD died opened up automatically on the new HD.
strls 8y ago
Windows is truly a pain like never before. Going Linux can be very easy these days, depending what you do on the machine.
- eecc 8y ago
  Hopefully Systemd won’t mount your firmware on a rw partition and brick the laptop in an unfortunate update? (Sarcasm aside... I’d flip in a heartbeat but despite macOS’s lapses, every single time I had to deal with a Linux desktop I regretted it.)
  - pritambaral 8y ago
    > Hopefully Systemd won’t mount your firmware on a rw partition and brick the laptop in an unfortunate update? That's the hardware's fault.
    - dTal 8y ago
      Mounting a seldom-modified and highly sensitive and critical filesystem r/w by default, when the existence of buggy implementations is known, is a deeply irresponsible decision. Blaming the rest of the world for the fallout from their crappy design decisions is a pattern of behaviour among some systemd developers. Fortunately you don't have to use systemd. I'm happily running Void Linux.
      - JdeBP 8y ago
        On the subject of what is known: It displays some ignorance of this subject to blame it on systemd, when Matthew Garrett told people that it was really his fault. * https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448 The people who relate the tale as if it were a systemd thing or something that the systemd people did are ill-informed. It was entirely a kernel thing. This was even stated outright at the time by the creator of that particular kernel mechanism. To learn the real story, go and read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152880 where Matthew Garrett xyrself can be found participating in the discussion.
deleted 8y ago
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stefanfisk 8y ago

this is what's keeping me from switching. every time I try spending a day on Windows I remember just how much macOS "just works", even if it has warts all over the place.

BinaryIdiot 8y ago
See, I've always used both and I just don't understand this whole "I have to spend a day on Windows making X work". I haven't experienced this in at least a decade. Windows 10 "just works" with every device and software I've thrown at it.
- geomark 8y ago
  That's the thing about anecdotes, one person's experience is completely opposite of anothers. I got a laptop with Windows 10 on it and immediately experienced the "100% disk utilization problem", which makes it basically unusable. I Googled around and found hundreds of posts about the problem and many dozens of suggested fixes of which zero worked (for me). So it's sitting on a shelf until I get around to installing Ubuntu on it, which has always just worked for me (which is the opposite of some other people's experiences).
  - stefanfisk 8y ago
    it's also very dependent on what you want to use your computer for. as a frontend dev I want a mix of Adobe CS and a bunch of primarily posix compatible tools, and then Windows is seriously suboptimal. but even beyond that the sheer number of popups and shit I need to close when starting from a clean install on Windows makes me want to punch the computer, and naturally that is a very subjective experience. and stuff like apps stealing focus in general. if a mac app makes itself the key window in a non-standard way I immediately consider uninstalling it, on win that just seems to be what all apps do when opening new windows.
    - BinaryIdiot 8y ago
      > as a frontend dev I want a mix of Adobe CS and a bunch of primarily posix compatible tools, and then Windows is seriously suboptimal. Not sure why it's suboptimal, WSL is amazing. I am primary a frontend dev as well and do most of my building / start-up / testing of my work inside of a terminal. It's great and Adobe works great as well with the added bonus of the better Windows dropdowns (Mac OS dropdowns drive me nuts but for Windows you can give one focus and scroll through all the options with the keyboard). > but even beyond that the sheer number of popups and shit I need to close when starting from a clean install on Windows makes me want to punch the computer, and naturally that is a very subjective experience. When I first started up I had like 2 notifications to use Edge and something else and that was it. When I enrolled in the Windows beta I received a few more for requests for feedback, which it warned me about ahead of time. Not sure why you had so many pop-ups and I've had basically none. It's always so weird to me how my experience with Windows machines differs from those who prefer Macs. I own and use both and they both seem pretty great to me. The only big thing is I make sure to only buy Windows hardware from Microsoft to get their "genuine experience" because HP and everyone else likes to ruin it with their bullshit.
      - stefanfisk 8y ago
        Not to retort, but Mac also has keyboard navigation for the menus, but the default setting for focusing the menu is ^F2 which is quite bad.
- tushartyagi 8y ago
  Not to counter your point, but I had that new remarkably stupid ":( Oops something went wrong" error popping up the morning I had to give a presentation. I have Windows 10 Home and it forced the updates, failed after an hour, and fucked up the boot partition, removing grub. So just before the presentation, I had to setup grub again and boot into Linux because windows was still stuck with updates. Thankfully my slides were on google drive. On my office laptop though, Win 10 Pro has been pretty stable. To get back to the main point, I usually have to spend a day with both Windows and Linux to install everything right from VLC to compilers. IMO setting up needs to be done on every machine, independently of the OS.
winrid 8y ago
It has been the opposite for me since about Windows 7. Work MacBook - have to restart it to get USB ports to work, screen flickers when you plug in an external monitor like X windows on an Unix terminal from '99 with a bad conf file... Comeon.
- stefanfisk 8y ago
  sound like you've got one of the super common duds, apple will probably replace it if you ask them.
  - winrid 8y ago
    They're all software issues. I think all the MBP's in our office do this stuff. For instance, the external monitor and such works fine. It's just it is very un-elegant how it does the switch over.

vincnetas 8y ago

Have mac book air from 2013. Went through all OS upgrades with no reinstalls. Even upgraded SSD from 128 to 512 with flawless backup from timecapsule. Can't even image this happening on windows...

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Time Capsule is interesting, it's been consistent since its release in 2008 and has worked flawlessly for me. Compare that to Windows backup which changes to a new incompatible product with every new version of Windows and is so riddled with flaws its unusable.
- dagw 8y ago
  I'm on the whole pretty happy with Windows, but I've never understood how they can consistently fail to deliver a working easy to use backup solution out of the box for decades. Mere incompetence shouldn't be able to deliver such terrible implementations, it's almost like they're actively trying to fuck it up.
invalidusernam3 8y ago
I recently had a hard drive failure on my primary HD in my mac pro (desktop, the old shape). The machine wouldn't boot into the OS at all. I bought a new HD and ran the recovery tool which gave me an option to clone from another drive. I figured I might as well give it a try even though the old HD seemed completely dead. After a couple of hours the machine rebooted using the new HD. The amazing part is not only were are my files perfectly intact, but the exact same applications I had open when the old HD died opened up automatically on the new HD.

strls 8y ago

Windows is truly a pain like never before. Going Linux can be very easy these days, depending what you do on the machine.

eecc 8y ago
Hopefully Systemd won’t mount your firmware on a rw partition and brick the laptop in an unfortunate update? (Sarcasm aside... I’d flip in a heartbeat but despite macOS’s lapses, every single time I had to deal with a Linux desktop I regretted it.)
- pritambaral 8y ago
  > Hopefully Systemd won’t mount your firmware on a rw partition and brick the laptop in an unfortunate update? That's the hardware's fault.
  - dTal 8y ago
    Mounting a seldom-modified and highly sensitive and critical filesystem r/w by default, when the existence of buggy implementations is known, is a deeply irresponsible decision. Blaming the rest of the world for the fallout from their crappy design decisions is a pattern of behaviour among some systemd developers. Fortunately you don't have to use systemd. I'm happily running Void Linux.
    - JdeBP 8y ago
      On the subject of what is known: It displays some ignorance of this subject to blame it on systemd, when Matthew Garrett told people that it was really his fault. * https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448 The people who relate the tale as if it were a systemd thing or something that the systemd people did are ill-informed. It was entirely a kernel thing. This was even stated outright at the time by the creator of that particular kernel mechanism. To learn the real story, go and read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152880 where Matthew Garrett xyrself can be found participating in the discussion.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]