Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows

[leemkule]

I've personally had enough of Apple. I have used MacBooks since 2008 and iPhone since 2007. I'm quite used to OSX but don't really love it, just preferred the build quality of the products, but I'm just so fed up of the poor reliability lately. I really am pretty careful with my computers but in the past few years I've had:

M1 iMac - overheated and laggy so I sold it.
M1 MacBook Pro - screen broken despite no damage
Prodisplay XDR - doesn't connect to any laptop anymore, only works with desktop computers
M2 MacBook Pro - screen broken despite no damage - battery failure and screen broke within the first year, and now a year later the screen broke again. Physical case is completely flawless yet they say I somehow broke the screen despite it happening when it was stationary on the desk. £830 for a screen replacement.

There's a 12 page thread on the apple forums about displays just breaking without any damage to the case; can't help but think it's to force you into buying AppleCare, planned obsolescence or just extremely bad design. Either way I'm done with Apple products they aren't getting another penny from me. I had a PC monitor for 15 years that I threw in and out of a car during uni and it never broke.

Going forward I'll probably replace my iPhone with a pixel and get a surface laptop 7 for laptop and build a desktop pc.

 

[maflynn]

I boot into Monterey again, just to confirm how much I am uneased with macOS bizarreries.

So what exactly caused your distaste for macos?

No OS is perfect, and there are things that drive me up a wall on windows and macos. I'm not knocking your decision, but I'd like know what's the issues you're dealing with regarding macOS

 

[leemkule]

I know you didn’t ask me but have a few:

1. Text scaling is basically non-existant
2. Normal third party monitors resolutions result in blurry text
3. Third party mouse and keyboard support is crap, it’s better than it used to be but you still not great. The whole ui is clearly designed around a touchpad so mouse scrolling is janky.
4. They seem to change the system preferences layout constantly and not for the better
5. Annoying nannying preferences that default to not opening files from third party developers
6. Finder search is really poor
7. Apple try to default your already expensive storage to iCloud desktop/downloads
8. Photos app is syncing is really slow
9. I find that external drives rarely connect first time

There’s lots of good things about macOS but those are the things I personally think are lacking.

Edit: Also not defaulting to ****ing external speakers, oh my god. Every time I turned on my computer I had to do this annoying dance of selecting and deselecting my speakers over and over again before it would just use my plugged in speakers, as if I want to default to the laptop / Mac studio speaker when I have studio monitors plugged in.

 

[maflynn]

Text scaling is basically non-existant

Yep, this and display scaling are my two biggest complaints with macOS. I run my 3440x1440p monitor at its native resolution on my work laptop but at 125% scaling - its perfect everything is viewable, fonts crisp, nothing is too small.

My Mac Studio, has no such facility, I either run it at the native resolution and deal with everything being too tiny for my old eyes or run it at 2560x1080, which is not ideal in of itself. Even at 1080P, I need to scale up zooming on many apps like excel because of text rendering is much more inferior on the Mac. I may try Better Display Pro, and see if that improves things.

As for the other things, yeah there's items I fully agree with and others, not so much. Overall my biggest gripe is display/font scaling/rendering.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I have been riding with just my gaming laptop for a few weeks now and I have to say…it has been really good.

But then I read about how Apple is doing their AI and it is SO GOOD compared to Microsoft. I am rethinking my approach…

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Yep, this and display scaling are my two biggest complaints with macOS. I run my 3440x1440p monitor at its native resolution on my work laptop but at 125% scaling.

My Mac Studio, has no such facility, I either run it at the native resolution and deal with everything being too tiny for my old eyes or run it at 2560x1080, which is not ideal in of itself. Even at 1080P, I need to scale up zooming on many apps like excel because of text rendering is much more inferior on the Mac. I may try Better Display Pro, and see if that improves things.

As for the other things, yeah there's items I fully agree with and others, not so much. Overall my biggest gripe is display/font scaling/rendering.

Yeah I went with a standard 4k gaming monitor for this reason. Mac looks really good on it. And I can lower the resolution for gaming on Windows.

 

[maflynn]

It's only four years (hopefully).

Yeah me too, hopefully and prayfully

 

[Cape Dave]

I know you didn’t ask me but have a few:

1. Text scaling is basically non-existant
2. Normal third party monitors resolutions result in blurry text
3. Third party mouse and keyboard support is crap, it’s better than it used to be but you still not great. The whole ui is clearly designed around a touchpad so mouse scrolling is janky.
4. They seem to change the system preferences layout constantly and not for the better
5. Annoying nannying preferences that default to not opening files from third party developers
6. Finder search is really poor
7. Apple try to default your already expensive storage to iCloud desktop/downloads
8. Photos app is syncing is really slow
9. I find that external drives rarely connect first time

There’s lots of good things about macOS but those are the things I personally think are lacking.

AND LET'S MAKE SURE WE MENTION THOSE HORRID MICROSCOPICALLY SMALL effing colored dots! That UX is from 1992!They are the devil!

 

[rin67630]

So what exactly caused your distaste for macos?

Basically it's the Finder and the general way it does most things intuitively exactly the opposite way than all other OSes.
I am used to get open/save dialogs that provides the functionalities of a file manger, where i can easily create/delete another file or folder on the fly just while in the process of loading/saving.
The disk utility is just a pure crap compared to what you get on windows/linux and the support for eXFAT is very likely to end up with a messed disk.
The primitive way to handle windows can be compensated using third party app like tiles, but other OS just deliver a better comfort Oob.
And all the grieves that my predecessors explained.

 

[rin67630]

Annoying nannying preferences that default to not opening files from third party developers

And just the stupid defaults to have mices without right click and touch-pads without tap to click enabled by default,
-and still not enabled before login- has really a stench from the 90ies...

 

[jido]

And just the stupid defaults to have mices without right click and touch-pads without tap to click enabled by default,
-and still not enabled before login- has really a stench from the 90ies...

Third-party mice have right click by default.

For the coloured dots, you mean the window controls right? lol I will grant you that, they’re not great.
I use double click to resize the window to the screen and Command-M to minimise.

 

[pshufd]

One thing about Windows is the amount of anti-privacy stuff and bloatware to remove. I used to do it in my sleep but the lists are so long that I use AI guides to do so these days. I also ran into a sleep issue - the laptop loses battery during sleep. I'll have to monitor this.

I will say that good Windows hardware is more available today. You have to pay for it of course but the variety of designs and these little features here and there are convenient. The ability to upgrade after purchase is nice too though it's a mixed bag. Lunar Lake is like Apple Silicon when it comes to RAM.

Something I've noticed is a couple of Redditors reported that Lenovo Vantage bricked their laptops. I'm starting to think about uninstalling it. It's the program that downloads BIOS updates for you and installs them. Gamers Nexus did a thing on how bad Armoury Crate is on Asus and I wonder if the two programs are similar.

The stuff where Windows records everything that you do on the laptop and allows you to replay it was off by default on my system. I have a hard time wonder who would want this feature. I also checked encryption of the drive and I'm still unsure if it's turned on.

 

[maflynn]

One thing about Windows is the amount of anti-privacy stuff and bloatware to remove

Yep that's one of the factors that makes Macs a convincing alternative. I know Apple isn't pure as the driven snow, but I think its not as prevalent on the mac side. I hate how MS is bending over backwards to prevent users from installing windows and using a local account.

Something I've noticed is a couple of Redditors reported that Lenovo Vantage bricked their laptops.

Wow, I've not heard that, but then I have uninstalled/disabled. My opinion is that I felt it was more bloat then useful, especially given the amount of ads that it produced.

The stuff where Windows records everything that you do on the laptop and allows you to replay it was off by default on my system. I have a hard time wonder who would want this feature. I also checked encryption of the drive and I'm still unsure if it's turned on.

Yeah, its active, is your laptop a "Copilot+ PC"? If its going to be active, it will be on those machines.

They tightened up the implementation of recall, including encrypting the data, but I don't trust microsoft whatsoever. I can see a stealth update causing your recall data to be uploaded to MS servers.

 

[Cape Dave]

Third-party mice have right click by default.

For the coloured dots, you mean the window controls right? lol I will grant you that, they’re not great.
I use double click to resize the window to the screen and Command-M to minimise.

I like the way Windows buttons work like 10,000% better in every way. This low hanging fruit has been low too damn long. Just increase the active area and the effing PROBLEM IS SOLVED! Are they stupid???

 

[rin67630]

One thing about Windows is the amount of anti-privacy stuff and bloatware to remove.

...usually installed by third-party manufacturers. When I install Windows from scratch on a Mac using Rufus, I have no bloatware installed by default and I start directly with a local account, skipping all the nasty solicitations during an initial run.

 

[pshufd]

...usually installed by third-party manufacturers. When I install Windows from scratch on a Mac using Rufus, I have no bloatware installed by default and I start directly with a local account, skipping all the nasty solicitations during an initial run.

I usually install Windows virtual machines on my macOS installations so there is less stuff but the Windows Recall thing is particularly offensive to me. The most recent thing that bothered me was the Windows Store ads that you couldn't get rid of without clicking through a bunch of windows. I had to uninstall the Windows App Store to get rid of them.

My Lenovo has Office 365 and Microsoft Teams installed and I removed both of these as I have no interest in them. I'll go through add or remove from time to time to clean stuff up.

 

[rin67630]

The most recent thing that bothered me was the Windows Store ads that you couldn't get rid of without clicking through a bunch of windows.

That's indeed an ugly path that Microsoft is taking, I hate it too...
But they learned that from Apple. Try to run macOS without an iCloud and active iMessage account, you get aggressively nagged too.
And it become the standard everyone is now following: nagging you to their cloud subscriptions.

 

[LiE_]

I just installed macOS Tahoe public beta and I’m not liking it. It feels way off in its design. Things are larger, like iPad apps. All the overly fussy design elements make it appear like “my first photoshop UI tutorial”. It doesn’t feel like an os that means business.

I was on the fence whether to switch to windows, this may have knocked me firm off said fence.

I’m am concerned for iOS.

 

[pshufd]

I just installed macOS Tahoe public beta and I’m not liking it. It feels way off in its design. Things are larger, like iPad apps. All the overly fussy design elements make it appear like “my first photoshop UI tutorial”. It doesn’t feel like an os that means business.

I was on the fence whether to switch to windows, this may have knocked me firm off said fence.

I’m am concerned for iOS.

It's a work in progress.

I do not plan to upgrade to Tahoe and one of my Mac can't anyways.

 

[maflynn]

I’m not liking it. It feels way off in its design

In what way? Is it something obscure/ambiguous where its the sum of the parts that don't feel right, lack of consistency, performance or snappiness?

 

[LiE_]

In what way? Is it something obscure/ambiguous where its the sum of the parts that don't feel right, lack of consistency, performance or snappiness?

It’s not performance, just generally I don’t like the aesthetics of the changes. Feels very temu theme pack.

 

[maflynn]

I don’t like the aesthetics of the changes. Feels very temu theme pack

I'm not using it, but from the presentation, I like it. Tbh, I don't know it will be in actual usage. I did like the aqua motif back in OSX 1.0 so that's my bias.

 

[LeeW]

Not liked the look of Tahoe at all, but, I will leave others to test, complain and consider it this time next year. I will never be a tester for a new version of macOS.

 

[keithop]

It’s not performance, just generally I don’t like the aesthetics of the changes. Feels very temu theme pack.

Ive installed it on my test devices and it's.... interesting. I need to remind myself it's a work in progress and they are definitely making changes in response to feedback which is good.

If I was to be a huge cynic, I'd say that Apple wanted something to distract from apple AI and they found some team working on this liquid glass idea though hmmmm that would distract everyone, it's a huge visual change on every platform.

Dropping that cynical attitude for a sec ;-) and just looking at the new stuff.

I don't hate the liquid glass look. In many places it actually looks really modern and swish (even if everyone does say its just windows Aero). I keep scrolling things up and down just to see the effect... hopefully that's just because it's new.

Of course sometimes, it makes readability awful but I have faith it could be tweaked. Little less transparency here and there.

The very large rounded corners bug me. A window at the bottom of the screen has a huge gap between the corner of the screen and the rounded corner, it looks weird. It feels like it takes more space too.

Then there's the EVERYTHING in a bubble idea. toolbar icons, search bars, even whole sidebars in their own bubble when it serves no functional purpose. I get it, consistency, but it makes the sidebar feel like it's a hovering separate bar that's just been docked.

History says that by the time it's released, it'll look nicer, work better, feel new and I'll grow to love it but right now, I'm not seeing how it's going to help make my life easier/better.

Frankly I'd much rather they had spent the effort on scaling fonts so we can use 3rd party monitors since let's face it, Apple just doesn't have enough display options to take care of every use case. OR hey, make the finder faster, more functional and less apple-quirky.

Still, I expect to stay with mac. flicking back over to windows and getting an immediate popup advertising games helped make me remember why I like mac.

 

[LiE_]

I think I just prefer a flatter / utilitarian OS, than this fussy, overly stylised liquid glass we are getting.