30 ms·

The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

129 points by _o-O-o_ 7y ago

user00012-ab 7y ago
I need the state of the art hardware so I can .... open a terminal.
- JBiserkov 7y ago
  Run Slack.
  - ancorevard 7y ago
    Run Chrome. (ignoring the extra battery back that I really should have attached to my MacBook Pro compared to just running Safari)
- devonkim 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    > 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 7y ago
      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.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  What does using a terminal as your UI have to do with the demands you are placing on your hardware?
deleted 7y ago
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jaden 7y ago
> 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.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - crispinb 7y ago
    > The best OS is the one you enjoy and are most productive on. What if like me you dislike them all? Actually I'm not kidding - I find the desktop OS in 2019 pretty miserable. I'm using Windows right now, but not because I like it. Current Apple hardware is of no interest to me, so macOS is ruled out. Linux and Windows are kind of neck and neck - I dislike each roughly equally, but find Windows wastes less of my time fiddling to get & keep things working.
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      I have a 95, two 98, and two windows xp machines at home. They are SO MUCH EASIER to use than modern linux, mac, or android. And my goodness are they fast. I've booted my p75 98 machine faster than web pages can load on my i7 mac. Really makes you wonder what kind of hell the ignorance of "right tool for the job" will lead us to in the next few years. (no, they are not plugged into a network, I'm lazy, not stupid.)
      - maccard 7y ago
        > I've booted my p75 98 machine faster than web pages can load on my i7 mac. I have an i7 windows desktop at home with an SSD, and if I turn on my monitor before I hit the power button on the desktop, the PC is logged in before my monitor powers on. Things can still be fast, if you're careful. Just because your PC from the 90s is still fast, doesn't mean everyone elses were, this screenshot is famous for a reason [0] [0] https://i.imgur.com/Ko5QcQl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Ko5QcQl.jpg
banachtarski 7y ago
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.
jakear 7y ago
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.
thefounder 7y ago
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)
pbreit 7y ago
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.
- diminoten 7y ago
  If you're changing the scroll direction, you're not moving, you're trying to recreate your MacOS experience on Windows, and it isn't surprising that didn't go well.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    It's cheap to change a configuration setting. It's expensive to rewire habit.
    - diminoten 7y ago
      It's cheap but crippling.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I used to have a Surface Pro and it had the option for changing the scroll direction. From a quick google, Microsoft has supported this since at least 2013: https://tablets.gadgethacks.com/how-to/reverse-scrolling-direction-your-microsoft-surfaces-trackpad-windows-8-1-0149145/ https://tablets.gadgethacks.com/how-to/reverse-scrolling-dir... But it was a feature limited to their own devices, and was set via a special Trackpad Settings app that you had to download from the Windows Store, not a standard part of the OS. Which is a pretty good example of why I don't use Windows much anymore.
    - 7y ago
neilv 7y ago
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.
- crispinb 7y ago
  I was waiting for a linux enthusiast to chime in with an option the article never even mentioned. It happens every single article, much like vegans on every mention of food.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  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?
  - Skunkleton 7y ago
    In my experience, you don't.
  - dsego 7y ago
    4-5 hours on T480s, I have TLP installed and I tried tinkering with it, but that's the best I've managed. People claim more, but I think it's just wishful thinking.
  - freddref 7y ago
    I get at least 8 hours with Debian/Openbox on a Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13.3" - NP940X3N
  - KingMachiavelli 7y ago
    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_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro#Power_manage...
epistasis 7y ago
> 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.
- sgjohnson 7y ago
  Microsoft and “for free” With Microsoft, “for free” actually means that you’re the product. And since Windows isn’t free, you have to pay for the privilege too.
- autoexec 7y ago
  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.
umanwizard 7y ago
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.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I often say that I like using macOS, but what I really mean is that I like macOS itself along with its apps and ecosystem. Perhaps the same thing was meant here.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    I see your point, but I think it’s a slightly inaccurate analogy. There is no “bash ecosystem”; if you switch your login shell to zsh or fish or tcsh, nearly everything works identically. I suspect if this guy were forced to use zsh, he’d be fine; he just doesn’t because it’s not the default. Whereas when you say you “like using macOS” I assume you don’t just mean that you like using computers in general and you would have absolutely no preference for macOS over Linux or Windows.
    - jhbadger 7y ago
      Expect zsh to stop being niche in a few months when apparently the next version of MacOS will use it by default
- da_chicken 7y ago
  > 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
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
everyone 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Well to be fair, pirates are far more honest and helpful than corporations.
    - everyone 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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?
  - everyone 7y ago
    How can you possibly trust open source software in 2019? Do you pore over all the code checking it? I'm gonna assume in most cases no, and that you trust the community who do actually do that. Same with pirated software. I'll trust a known group, because they have a history of clean releases, as opposed to a corp, who often have a history of shenanigans and spyware and whatnot.
gjmacd 7y ago
"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 7y ago
  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.
- yarg 7y ago
  I don't know the stature of Bash on Windows, but Git Bash does all that I need it to.
hising 7y ago
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#/
samdixon 7y ago
An operating system with advertisements will never be my first choice.
- cgio 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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!
- jammygit 7y ago
  It’s like Microsoft noticed all the spyware and adware people kept accidentally installing, and thought: I want in on that.
- glenneroo 7y ago
  Maybe it's how they are funding/justifying their recent open source contributions?
nextos 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    use KDE and enable global menu. You would feel more similar to OSX
- 7y ago
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
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. :)
- wtallis 7y ago
  I'm in a similar situation, but I'm pretty sure that when my 2015 MacBook Pro dies, I will still be unable to find a Windows notebook with a comparable touchpad. Running Windows on my gaming desktop is tolerable, subject to the caveats you've outlined. But even with great software, Windows notebooks are still handicapped by poor hardware interfaces. I realized recently when I got a new Windows notebook for work that touchscreens exist and are popular on Windows notebooks because they partially compensate for the horrible touchpads. On my MacBook Pro, I still feel no need to augment the touchpad with a touchscreen.
- com2kid 7y ago
  In regards to the flatness, MS is moving over to Fluent Design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_Design_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_Design_System) which has more depth and colors, and is a return to Aero in some ways. FWIW Metro was originally super bright and cheerful, even if it was flat.
- 7y ago
drevil-v2 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Ironically, I feel like it's a result of designers trying to copy Apple's minimalism.
  - h1d 7y ago
    I don't call it minimalism. They cut off unnecessary parts and left what mattered, like unblaoted it.
cycop 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Saving $2k a desktop doesn't sound right.
dijit 7y ago
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. :\
pier25 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
thom 7y ago
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.
Enchinagaard 7y ago
Havnt used my computer sence The april 2001 big crash..Windows then, redhat was to complicated to instal on a Window, i tested other to.. But neee
dstaley 7y ago
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.
jakub_g 7y ago
~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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    I have been using ThinkPads (T, W and P models) with Windows since 2006 and seldom had anything to complain about.
    - maccard 7y ago
      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.
antaviana 7y ago
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.
Enchinagaard 7y ago
I have not used my computer sence The april 2001 big crash, i tested to instal on Windows differrent Linux but it swollow to mutch memory and that ended The story as a Great User
sarim 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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).
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Have you set your active hours for updates (to not be applied during)? Mine are pretty broad, like 7am to 9pm M-F and I think a bit later on the weekends. Also, I dont leave unsaved work outside of active hours. I'm on Pro at home, and I think Pro allows you to set longer active hours than Home.
jmull 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
throw0101a 7y ago
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 7y ago
  I absolutely agree - I wonder if the author uses good ol' functions such as strcpy(dest, src)?
  - banachtarski 7y ago
    Intel assembly notation users unite!
mung 7y ago
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.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
galkk 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
- ohm 7y ago
  Looks like the tmux integration is in the works https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605 https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605
vbezhenar 7y ago
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.
sys_64738 7y ago
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.
tomc1985 7y ago
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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tambourine_man 7y ago
>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.
- xeromal 7y ago
  Sounds like autism
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, or snark. And especially please don't post personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ksaj 7y ago
  When I was a kid, my aunt pranked me by licking my glasses when I sat in her chair. Yea weird, but I think she was onto something. Next time someone smudges your screen, you could try something like that in retaliation.
- captainredbeard 7y ago
  FWIW, I don’t think the author intends to sully anyone’s screens, he’s just accustomed to ubiquitous touch interaction.
- dublin 7y ago
  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!
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xster 7y ago
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'.
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S_A_P 7y ago
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.
charliebrownau 7y ago
Instead of going from Mac Hardware with Mac OSX to Wintel Hardware with Windows 10 . Has the person considered using ELEMENTRY OS on a real wintel system , as its running Linux on proper hardware but has the MacOSX style UI https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/
Henk0 7y ago
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
systemtest 7y ago
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.
kup0 7y ago
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".
jasoneckert 7y ago
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.

129 points by _o-O-o_ 7y ago

user00012-ab 7y ago

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

JBiserkov 7y ago
Run Slack.
- ancorevard 7y ago
  Run Chrome. (ignoring the extra battery back that I really should have attached to my MacBook Pro compared to just running Safari)
devonkim 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    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.
Skunkleton 7y ago
What does using a terminal as your UI have to do with the demands you are placing on your hardware?

deleted 7y ago

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jaden 7y ago

> 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.

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- crispinb 7y ago
  > The best OS is the one you enjoy and are most productive on. What if like me you dislike them all? Actually I'm not kidding - I find the desktop OS in 2019 pretty miserable. I'm using Windows right now, but not because I like it. Current Apple hardware is of no interest to me, so macOS is ruled out. Linux and Windows are kind of neck and neck - I dislike each roughly equally, but find Windows wastes less of my time fiddling to get & keep things working.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    I have a 95, two 98, and two windows xp machines at home. They are SO MUCH EASIER to use than modern linux, mac, or android. And my goodness are they fast. I've booted my p75 98 machine faster than web pages can load on my i7 mac. Really makes you wonder what kind of hell the ignorance of "right tool for the job" will lead us to in the next few years. (no, they are not plugged into a network, I'm lazy, not stupid.)
    - maccard 7y ago
      > I've booted my p75 98 machine faster than web pages can load on my i7 mac. I have an i7 windows desktop at home with an SSD, and if I turn on my monitor before I hit the power button on the desktop, the PC is logged in before my monitor powers on. Things can still be fast, if you're careful. Just because your PC from the 90s is still fast, doesn't mean everyone elses were, this screenshot is famous for a reason [0] [0] https://i.imgur.com/Ko5QcQl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Ko5QcQl.jpg

banachtarski 7y ago

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.

jakear 7y ago

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.

thefounder 7y ago

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)

pbreit 7y ago

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.

diminoten 7y ago
If you're changing the scroll direction, you're not moving, you're trying to recreate your MacOS experience on Windows, and it isn't surprising that didn't go well.
- klodolph 7y ago
  It's cheap to change a configuration setting. It's expensive to rewire habit.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    It's cheap but crippling.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I used to have a Surface Pro and it had the option for changing the scroll direction. From a quick google, Microsoft has supported this since at least 2013: https://tablets.gadgethacks.com/how-to/reverse-scrolling-direction-your-microsoft-surfaces-trackpad-windows-8-1-0149145/ https://tablets.gadgethacks.com/how-to/reverse-scrolling-dir... But it was a feature limited to their own devices, and was set via a special Trackpad Settings app that you had to download from the Windows Store, not a standard part of the OS. Which is a pretty good example of why I don't use Windows much anymore.
  - 7y ago

neilv 7y ago

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.

crispinb 7y ago
I was waiting for a linux enthusiast to chime in with an option the article never even mentioned. It happens every single article, much like vegans on every mention of food.
chrisseaton 7y ago
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?
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  In my experience, you don't.
- dsego 7y ago
  4-5 hours on T480s, I have TLP installed and I tried tinkering with it, but that's the best I've managed. People claim more, but I think it's just wishful thinking.
- freddref 7y ago
  I get at least 8 hours with Debian/Openbox on a Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 13.3" - NP940X3N
- KingMachiavelli 7y ago
  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_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro#Power_manage...

epistasis 7y ago

> 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.

sgjohnson 7y ago
Microsoft and “for free” With Microsoft, “for free” actually means that you’re the product. And since Windows isn’t free, you have to pay for the privilege too.
autoexec 7y ago
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.

umanwizard 7y ago

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.

saagarjha 7y ago
I often say that I like using macOS, but what I really mean is that I like macOS itself along with its apps and ecosystem. Perhaps the same thing was meant here.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I see your point, but I think it’s a slightly inaccurate analogy. There is no “bash ecosystem”; if you switch your login shell to zsh or fish or tcsh, nearly everything works identically. I suspect if this guy were forced to use zsh, he’d be fine; he just doesn’t because it’s not the default. Whereas when you say you “like using macOS” I assume you don’t just mean that you like using computers in general and you would have absolutely no preference for macOS over Linux or Windows.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    Expect zsh to stop being niche in a few months when apparently the next version of MacOS will use it by default
da_chicken 7y ago
> 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

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

everyone 7y ago

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 7y ago
Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Well to be fair, pirates are far more honest and helpful than corporations.
  - everyone 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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?
- everyone 7y ago
  How can you possibly trust open source software in 2019? Do you pore over all the code checking it? I'm gonna assume in most cases no, and that you trust the community who do actually do that. Same with pirated software. I'll trust a known group, because they have a history of clean releases, as opposed to a corp, who often have a history of shenanigans and spyware and whatnot.

gjmacd 7y ago

"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 7y ago
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.
yarg 7y ago
I don't know the stature of Bash on Windows, but Git Bash does all that I need it to.

hising 7y ago

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#/

samdixon 7y ago

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

cgio 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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!
jammygit 7y ago
It’s like Microsoft noticed all the spyware and adware people kept accidentally installing, and thought: I want in on that.
glenneroo 7y ago
Maybe it's how they are funding/justifying their recent open source contributions?

nextos 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  use KDE and enable global menu. You would feel more similar to OSX
7y ago

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

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. :)

wtallis 7y ago
I'm in a similar situation, but I'm pretty sure that when my 2015 MacBook Pro dies, I will still be unable to find a Windows notebook with a comparable touchpad. Running Windows on my gaming desktop is tolerable, subject to the caveats you've outlined. But even with great software, Windows notebooks are still handicapped by poor hardware interfaces. I realized recently when I got a new Windows notebook for work that touchscreens exist and are popular on Windows notebooks because they partially compensate for the horrible touchpads. On my MacBook Pro, I still feel no need to augment the touchpad with a touchscreen.
com2kid 7y ago
In regards to the flatness, MS is moving over to Fluent Design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_Design_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_Design_System) which has more depth and colors, and is a return to Aero in some ways. FWIW Metro was originally super bright and cheerful, even if it was flat.
7y ago

drevil-v2 7y ago

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 7y ago
Ironically, I feel like it's a result of designers trying to copy Apple's minimalism.
- h1d 7y ago
  I don't call it minimalism. They cut off unnecessary parts and left what mattered, like unblaoted it.

cycop 7y ago

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 7y ago
Saving $2k a desktop doesn't sound right.

dijit 7y ago

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. :\

pier25 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

thom 7y ago

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.

Enchinagaard 7y ago

Havnt used my computer sence The april 2001 big crash..Windows then, redhat was to complicated to instal on a Window, i tested other to.. But neee

dstaley 7y ago

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.

jakub_g 7y ago

~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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  I have been using ThinkPads (T, W and P models) with Windows since 2006 and seldom had anything to complain about.
  - maccard 7y ago
    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.

antaviana 7y ago

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.

Enchinagaard 7y ago

I have not used my computer sence The april 2001 big crash, i tested to instal on Windows differrent Linux but it swollow to mutch memory and that ended The story as a Great User

sarim 7y ago

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 7y ago
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).
hermitdev 7y ago
Have you set your active hours for updates (to not be applied during)? Mine are pretty broad, like 7am to 9pm M-F and I think a bit later on the weekends. Also, I dont leave unsaved work outside of active hours. I'm on Pro at home, and I think Pro allows you to set longer active hours than Home.

jmull 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

throw0101a 7y ago

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 7y ago
I absolutely agree - I wonder if the author uses good ol' functions such as strcpy(dest, src)?
- banachtarski 7y ago
  Intel assembly notation users unite!

mung 7y ago

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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galkk 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
ohm 7y ago
Looks like the tmux integration is in the works https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605 https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605

vbezhenar 7y ago

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.

sys_64738 7y ago

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.

tomc1985 7y ago

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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tambourine_man 7y ago

>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.

xeromal 7y ago
Sounds like autism
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, or snark. And especially please don't post personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ksaj 7y ago
When I was a kid, my aunt pranked me by licking my glasses when I sat in her chair. Yea weird, but I think she was onto something. Next time someone smudges your screen, you could try something like that in retaliation.
captainredbeard 7y ago
FWIW, I don’t think the author intends to sully anyone’s screens, he’s just accustomed to ubiquitous touch interaction.
dublin 7y ago
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!

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xster 7y ago

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'.

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S_A_P 7y ago

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.

charliebrownau 7y ago

Instead of going from Mac Hardware with Mac OSX to Wintel Hardware with Windows 10 . Has the person considered using ELEMENTRY OS on a real wintel system , as its running Linux on proper hardware but has the MacOSX style UI https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/

Henk0 7y ago

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

systemtest 7y ago

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.

kup0 7y ago

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".

jasoneckert 7y ago

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.