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I have been a faithful Apple/macOS since 2002. Always very happy and proud. I have now switched to Windows on my Macbook Pro and I'm liking it. It's not as pol

I have been a faithful Apple/macOS since 2002. Always very happy and proud. I have now switched to Windows on my Macbook Pro and I'm liking it. It's not as polished as macOS still, but I think (and hope) it's getting there. I don't think I'll ever buy another Apple machine. Windows has turned around since those times, I recommend you give it a try if you're thinking about it or you're unhappy with how Apple has become nowadays. I almost feel free to choose whatever machine I want next and not pay a hefty price for it. Or pay it, if I want to, but it will be my choice, not imposed.

VonGuard 6y ago
I did this 4 years ago, with a move to Linux after well over 20 years of being a diehard Mac Fanboy. What did it for me was the fact that Apple hardware cannot be fixed except by Apple. I used to take apart Powerbook Duos, which were a huge pain and not made to be easy to take apart, but at least, Apple didn't actively work against you taking it apart.... LIke the Power Mac 8500, it was a really tight, difficult to get into design, but you could still do it.... Now, you open an Imac and it's broken by opening it. Permanently. On the motherboard.
- yryan 6y ago
  Which model iMac breaks the motherboard by opening?
  - VonGuard 6y ago
    mine was a 2013. You pull the monitor forward and it breaks the cable mount that connects it to the motherboard . The tollerance diference between opening it and breaking it is like 1 millimeter, i swear. It is unopenable without a special tool.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Sure, if you don’t avail yourself of freely available disassembly guides before opening your iMac, you’ll probably break it. Bad Apple.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> It's not as polished as macOS still But isn't this the most important thing? Yes this RAM is expensive... but it's just a few hundred dollars for something I use every day for all my income and most of my hobbies and the alternative is something hobbled.
- usui 6y ago
  This is exactly it. My 2015 MacBook Pro with an upgraded 2TB SSD has the best balanced software engineer setup I can ask for between customizability and bells & whistles. Every time I have tried to use Linux, I could never find a way to find the very smooth, easy, performant way to clear Terminal buffer with no scrollback (CMD+K). The best I have seen is some kind of reset command bound to a key. Windows is pure garbage and the only time I ever touch it is in a VM running on my MacBook, and even then I strictly require it to be Enterprise version so that I never have to deal with the adware bloat or forced updates. On regular Windows 10, you can disable updates, but never permanently. It always comes back like a specter. My MacBook has never forced me to restart or install an update. The UI for updates can get a little annoying, but there are Terminal tricks to disable it, and I still have choice. The shell library is not as good on Windows. I cannot muster the motivation to learn PowerShell. I never feel safe installing anything on Windows. What I mean is I never understand what is actually changing on my computer if something installs on Windows. On a MacBook, I can drag and drop to Applications. If I need to uninstall it, I delete it. It's that simple. For anything that forces me to install via pkg file, I am happy that most of the time, homebrew cask has a formula for it, so uninstallation is handled for me cleanly. The only good thing I can think of for Windows is that GUI automation is much better due to AutoHotKey. MacOS GUI automation is basically deprecated at this point (AppleScript) on most apps, so you are forced to find third-party options. AirDrop between my iPad Pro and MacBook is so fast, it allows me to copy my iPad's handwritten notes into a pdf in an instant. One good thing I can say for Windows is backwards compatibility for compiled apps. Most open source projects I see with a MacOS binary have a high chance of not working relative to Windows. On Windows, if I see a compiled binary, I already know it will probably work. The OS is what keeps me to my MacBook, and if no other competitor can produce the equivalent experience, I can't move away. Look at all the software engineers in the Bay Area, and you will see waves upon waves of MacBooks. This "standardization" of hardware has also somewhat reduced the instances of coworkers using the excuse of "Oh it works on my computer, must be a hardware issue." If both of us are using MacBooks, I know it's a software issue, and so it's something we can probably figure out and fix. I'm desperate to move away from the dark, abuse direction Apple is taking macOS, and I love the software so-much-so that I made a desktop Hackintosh, but getting it to run was more work than getting hardware to work on Linux (still was worth it). I only wonder when the final time will come where Hackintosh doesn't work and my 2015 MacBook Pro stops working. 2015 MBP was the last year for selling MBPs with removable storage. 2015 MBP will be remembered as the best laptop for its replaceable SSD and laptop keyboard.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Had to move some of my workflow to windows too just because Apple's GPUs are so weak. Honestly been a less bumpy transition than I expected as someone who hasn't run windows since Win 2000. It's not perfect but here's the thing, Microsoft are iterating on it with two major versions a year and they're fixing the old bad parts of it bit by bit while Apple ignores Mac OS in favor of pushing iPads as the future.
ChrisRR 6y ago
And yet arguably it's not even more polished, it's just got more visual effects. For a software developer like me, who has to jump through so many hoops in order to do any work, or just flat out can't run some compilers that are windows only, this is different. And as far as usability is concerned, I think Apple lost their, "it just works" values years back. Nowadays it's just a case of whichever OS you use first is the one you're used to
- pedrogpimenta 6y ago
  I do think it is more polished in many ways, but Windows is improving with each release, macOS is not.

VonGuard 6y ago

I did this 4 years ago, with a move to Linux after well over 20 years of being a diehard Mac Fanboy. What did it for me was the fact that Apple hardware cannot be fixed except by Apple. I used to take apart Powerbook Duos, which were a huge pain and not made to be easy to take apart, but at least, Apple didn't actively work against you taking it apart.... LIke the Power Mac 8500, it was a really tight, difficult to get into design, but you could still do it.... Now, you open an Imac and it's broken by opening it. Permanently. On the motherboard.

yryan 6y ago
Which model iMac breaks the motherboard by opening?
- VonGuard 6y ago
  mine was a 2013. You pull the monitor forward and it breaks the cable mount that connects it to the motherboard . The tollerance diference between opening it and breaking it is like 1 millimeter, i swear. It is unopenable without a special tool.
sjwright 6y ago
Sure, if you don’t avail yourself of freely available disassembly guides before opening your iMac, you’ll probably break it. Bad Apple.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> It's not as polished as macOS still But isn't this the most important thing? Yes this RAM is expensive... but it's just a few hundred dollars for something I use every day for all my income and most of my hobbies and the alternative is something hobbled.

usui 6y ago
This is exactly it. My 2015 MacBook Pro with an upgraded 2TB SSD has the best balanced software engineer setup I can ask for between customizability and bells & whistles. Every time I have tried to use Linux, I could never find a way to find the very smooth, easy, performant way to clear Terminal buffer with no scrollback (CMD+K). The best I have seen is some kind of reset command bound to a key. Windows is pure garbage and the only time I ever touch it is in a VM running on my MacBook, and even then I strictly require it to be Enterprise version so that I never have to deal with the adware bloat or forced updates. On regular Windows 10, you can disable updates, but never permanently. It always comes back like a specter. My MacBook has never forced me to restart or install an update. The UI for updates can get a little annoying, but there are Terminal tricks to disable it, and I still have choice. The shell library is not as good on Windows. I cannot muster the motivation to learn PowerShell. I never feel safe installing anything on Windows. What I mean is I never understand what is actually changing on my computer if something installs on Windows. On a MacBook, I can drag and drop to Applications. If I need to uninstall it, I delete it. It's that simple. For anything that forces me to install via pkg file, I am happy that most of the time, homebrew cask has a formula for it, so uninstallation is handled for me cleanly. The only good thing I can think of for Windows is that GUI automation is much better due to AutoHotKey. MacOS GUI automation is basically deprecated at this point (AppleScript) on most apps, so you are forced to find third-party options. AirDrop between my iPad Pro and MacBook is so fast, it allows me to copy my iPad's handwritten notes into a pdf in an instant. One good thing I can say for Windows is backwards compatibility for compiled apps. Most open source projects I see with a MacOS binary have a high chance of not working relative to Windows. On Windows, if I see a compiled binary, I already know it will probably work. The OS is what keeps me to my MacBook, and if no other competitor can produce the equivalent experience, I can't move away. Look at all the software engineers in the Bay Area, and you will see waves upon waves of MacBooks. This "standardization" of hardware has also somewhat reduced the instances of coworkers using the excuse of "Oh it works on my computer, must be a hardware issue." If both of us are using MacBooks, I know it's a software issue, and so it's something we can probably figure out and fix. I'm desperate to move away from the dark, abuse direction Apple is taking macOS, and I love the software so-much-so that I made a desktop Hackintosh, but getting it to run was more work than getting hardware to work on Linux (still was worth it). I only wonder when the final time will come where Hackintosh doesn't work and my 2015 MacBook Pro stops working. 2015 MBP was the last year for selling MBPs with removable storage. 2015 MBP will be remembered as the best laptop for its replaceable SSD and laptop keyboard.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Had to move some of my workflow to windows too just because Apple's GPUs are so weak. Honestly been a less bumpy transition than I expected as someone who hasn't run windows since Win 2000. It's not perfect but here's the thing, Microsoft are iterating on it with two major versions a year and they're fixing the old bad parts of it bit by bit while Apple ignores Mac OS in favor of pushing iPads as the future.

ChrisRR 6y ago

And yet arguably it's not even more polished, it's just got more visual effects. For a software developer like me, who has to jump through so many hoops in order to do any work, or just flat out can't run some compilers that are windows only, this is different. And as far as usability is concerned, I think Apple lost their, "it just works" values years back. Nowadays it's just a case of whichever OS you use first is the one you're used to

pedrogpimenta 6y ago
I do think it is more polished in many ways, but Windows is improving with each release, macOS is not.