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Flip Flopping between macOS and Windows


I don't think that I'll ever need the M* Pro chip in the future. The base chip is so insanely good already.

Things of note: the M5 can use about 10% more power than the M4 in heavy workloads and is subject to thermal throttling. You could argue for a heavier cooling system for the base M5 MacBook Pros. I don't think that I'd ever get to those levels of power though. I think that what I really want is a MacBook Air with fans.
 
Part of me does miss windows but only for specific games. But it has been years since I have used Windows. I used Windows 11 a few years ago and it has changed for the worse from the looks of it.
 
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So, I’ve used both Windows and macOS/Mac OS fairly regularly decades with some Linux usage tossed in at times. Suffice it to say, I always come back to the Apple bubble err garden.

Anyway… My most recent Microsoft Windows grievance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1o8fkon/anyone_else_having_crashing_issues_after_latest

What in the ****!?!? (Now I need to attempt a recovery to a restore point — an unlikely success in my experience.)

Is this “big picture” related to the other recent fumbles (e.g., SSD unreliability/instability)?.. Which had people referencing:

https://www.tomshardware.com/softwa...ys-recent-update-didnt-cause-storage-failures

And coincidentally, the following popped up in my YouTube suggestions:


I do agree and have experienced most of these problems/gripes.

Nevertheless, I’ll address the other elephant in the room. Apple isn’t entirely above these approaches/tactics either. I think, they’re still generally on the higher road, but plenty of valid ‘corporate’ (i.e., appease shareholders) crap complaints. Just one example:

www.macrumors.com

iPhone Users Upset About Apple Promoting F1 Movie With Wallet App Notification

Apple today sent out an ad to some iPhone users in the form of a Wallet app push notification, and not everyone is happy about it. An unknown...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com

As for bugs… One of my latest strikes against Apple is Mac to (first generation) HomePod Airplay. Connection error displays immediately, I’ve restarted all devices. iOS/iPadOS don’t exhibit the same (AirPlay) trouble — similar to:

Mac with OS 26 not connecting to HomePods - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com discussions.apple.com
 
I have 2025H2 sitting in Vantage waiting to download and update and also have Tahoe and I'm not updating to either. There's a bad bug in Tahoe and it has a bad interaction with one of my main programs so I'll look at it in 2026. I'm going to wait until 2026 for 2025 H2 as well unless Microsoft forces it.
 
JanetTheGreat said:
Part of me does miss windows but only for specific games. But it has been years since I have used Windows. I used Windows 11 a few years ago and it has changed for the worse from the looks of it.
Click to expand...
I still use windows for work - but that's my work laptop, and its generally not current windows 11. My M4 Studio, has been everything I need, on the games that won't run on macos, I have crossover, and then there's also Geforce Now.

For games like Starfield, I need Geforce Now, but its a minor inconvenience compared to the hassles that comes with windows.
 
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maflynn said:
I still use windows for work - but that's my work laptop, and its generally not current windows 11. My M4 Studio, has been everything I need, on the games that won't run on macos, I have crossover, and then there's also Geforce Now.

For games like Starfield, I need Geforce Now, but its a minor inconvenience compared to the hassles that comes with windows.
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Yeah I tried going back to just windows with that new laptop purchase, but I had some overheating issues and decided to return it while in the return window.

I am leaning towards keeping my m4 Mac mini, getting a low end 13" MacBook Air for when I am at the office (as my second machine there--our work windows 11 laptops are really locked down so I bring my own for web searches, etc.,) and building a windows/linux desktop for around a $1000. That will be my new gaming machine and both together will be cheaper than $1600 for the 18" RTX 4080 gaming laptop...

Windows just is on the wrong path. It isn't getting any better and eventually I'll probably just have to move my wife over to Mac as well. I don't have to like the Apple RAM and SSD upgrade prices though...

Edited to add: and why is there just so many more devs that seem to care about software on the Apple side? RSS readers? There is like one on the windows side and like 50 on this side. (I just use Reeder Classic, but also like News Explorer.) It's like that with EVERYTHING.
 
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eltoslightfoot said:
Yeah I tried going back to just windows with that new laptop purchase, but I had some overheating issues and decided to return it while in the return window.

I am leaning towards keeping my m4 Mac mini, getting a low end 13" MacBook Air for when I am at the office (as my second machine there--our work windows 11 laptops are really locked down so I bring my own for web searches, etc.,) and building a windows/linux desktop for around a $1000. That will be my new gaming machine and both together will be cheaper than $1600 for the 18" RTX 4080 gaming laptop...

Windows just is on the wrong path. It isn't getting any better and eventually I'll probably just have to move my wife over to Mac as well. I don't have to like the Apple RAM and SSD upgrade prices though...

Edited to add: and why is there just so many more devs that seem to care about software on the Apple side? RSS readers? There is like one on the windows side and like 50 on this side. (I just use Reeder Classic, but also like News Explorer.) It's like that with EVERYTHING.
Click to expand...
I feel like apps are easier to find for macOS.
 
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MacCheetah3 said:
So, I’ve used both Windows and macOS/Mac OS fairly regularly decades with some Linux usage tossed in at times. Suffice it to say, I always come back to the Apple bubble err garden.

Anyway… My most recent Microsoft Windows grievance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1o8fkon/anyone_else_having_crashing_issues_after_latest

What in the ****!?!? (Now I need to attempt a recovery to a restore point — an unlikely success in my experience.)

Is this “big picture” related to the other recent fumbles (e.g., SSD unreliability/instability)?.. Which had people referencing:

https://www.tomshardware.com/softwa...ys-recent-update-didnt-cause-storage-failures

And coincidentally, the following popped up in my YouTube suggestions:


I do agree and have experienced most of these problems/gripes.

Nevertheless, I’ll address the other elephant in the room. Apple isn’t entirely above these approaches/tactics either. I think, they’re still generally on the higher road, but plenty of valid ‘corporate’ (i.e., appease shareholders) crap complaints. Just one example:

www.macrumors.com

iPhone Users Upset About Apple Promoting F1 Movie With Wallet App Notification

Apple today sent out an ad to some iPhone users in the form of a Wallet app push notification, and not everyone is happy about it. An unknown...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com

As for bugs… One of my latest strikes against Apple is Mac to (first generation) HomePod Airplay. Connection error displays immediately, I’ve restarted all devices. iOS/iPadOS don’t exhibit the same (AirPlay) trouble — similar to:

Mac with OS 26 not connecting to HomePods - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com discussions.apple.com
Click to expand...
Microsoft: we've investigated ourselves and found that we committed no wrongdoing.

Mine started crashing after the update as well.
 
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diamond.g said:
I feel like apps are easier to find for macOS.
Click to expand...
Not just find, but how macOS handles apps, dragging to install, trashing to uninstall (yes there are exceptions). I also just hit cmd+space, type in the first few letters to start the app.

So much better then Windows, though with power toys, that cmd+space functionality is somewhat there
 
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maflynn said:
Not just find, but how macOS handles apps, dragging to install, trashing to uninstall (yes there are exceptions). I also just hit cmd+space, type in the first few letters to start the app.

So much better then Windows, though with power toys, that cmd+space functionality is somewhat there
Click to expand...
Totally agree. Without powertoys, windows wouldn't be usable. As it is, it comes close. I just don't like the way they dictate everything.

So, it's either use the Apple ecosystem, where they dictate everything on the hardware (but at least they deliver what they say they will deliver), or use Microsoft Windows, where they dictate nothing on the hardware, but dictate everything in the software. I end up using nothing Microsoft anyway so what is the point? I can't stand how they have Onedrived everything, so I uninstall. But wait! Make sure you specify no backups of anything first otherwise you will break your symlinks to your desktop and documents. It's like that with everything. I am to the point now where I even use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for my outside of work stuff as I just like the simplicity. They don't ask me 50 questions just to SAVE TO MY SAME LOCATION ON MY LOCAL C DRIVE!!!

Anyway, I have to compromise by locking down something, so better to just accept the hardware lockdown of Mac and move on with my life.
 
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eltoslightfoot said:
I can't stand how they have Onedrived everything, so I uninstall.
Click to expand...
Yep, same, and tbh, I feel OneDrive is 10 times worse on the Mac then on Windows - at least with my PC, Onedrive was functional. On my mac, It wasn't. I see the cloud files/folders in Finder, but trying to open or save them, was problematic, in fact I had to keep saving my spreadsheets as a copy as it wouldn't let me save it as the current name.

I've uninstalled it, and I'm trying OnlyOffice and LibraOffice. I'm leaning towards Only Office, feels somewhat "office like" where as the UI on LibraOffice is a bit different, and my spreadsheets are looking too different
 
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maflynn said:
Yep, same, and tbh, I feel OneDrive is 10 times worse on the Mac then on Windows - at least with my PC, Onedrive was functional. On my mac, It wasn't. I see the cloud files/folders in Finder, but trying to open or save them, was problematic, in fact I had to keep saving my spreadsheets as a copy as it wouldn't let me save it as the current name.

I've uninstalled it, and I'm trying OnlyOffice and LibraOffice. I'm leaning towards Only Office, feels somewhat "office like" where as the UI on LibraOffice is a bit different, and my spreadsheets are looking too different
Click to expand...
Agreed, when I am stuck in that side of things, I use OnlyOffice. It has the plus of supposedly being able to open Apple Office files, but I haven't tried yet.
 
Three-finger drag program on Windows works great. It was a bit of effort getting it set up and running with the trackpad speed that I like but I can at least use the same gestures between operating systems now.
 
LiE_ said:
Thanks for reading. Mostly a brain dump to help order my thoughts. Still undecided. I did toy with the idea of having both systems, but I don't have space.
Click to expand...
The past years have been kind, space-wise, and now having two systems is very doable. A stack of NUC PC, mac mini, and monitor (plus KVM if monitor does not have one built-in) makes for a tight setup.
 
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Firefox apparently broke iCloud Notes web app. I've seen this happen before. It basically freezes and becomes unresponsive. Sometimes it's a runaway memory leak. So I switched to running macOS. At least I didn't lose any data.
 
pshufd said:
Firefox apparently broke iCloud Notes web app.
Click to expand...
FireFox has a number of incompatibilities where chromium based browsers do not. I have to keep Chrome installed for that site or two I need that refuses to work with FireFox.
 
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maflynn said:
FireFox has a number of incompatibilities where chromium based browsers do not. I have to keep Chrome installed for that site or two I need that refuses to work with FireFox.
Click to expand...

Both Chromium-based browsers and Firefox have broken iCloud Notes for me in the past. There was one time when Safari, Chrome and Brave were broken but Microsoft Edge worked. I use Firefox because it fully supports Ublock Origin. Brave is my secondary browser and I might try that. Lately I've just been using the Ventura virtual machine. But I don't always have that up and running. Fortunately it is very quick to boot it up.

I need to solve the scaling problem with the macOS Virtual Machines. There are directions somewhere to do this and I need to dig them out. The scaling issue is why I'm not running Sequoia as it messes with wallpapers. So the virtual machine runs at the native resolution of the display, not the scaled resolution of Windows. I think that you mentioned a similar issue with a remote tool that you use.

One thing that's improved quality of life is getting a tomtoc case for it. I can put the Yoga in the case and the case in my gym bag in case I need to do some stuff at the gym. I used the iPad mini in the past but it's not really great outside of media consumption. I would never bring the 16 to the gym. The nice thing about the tomtoc case is that it fits the MacBook Pro 14 nicely.
 
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I did some digging and WSL uses Windows scaling but it's ignored for 125%, 150% and 175%. So I can scale at 100% or 200% of native. I'll just keep using 100% for now. Two other options that could use investigation are two other Github packages for running macOS on QEMU and I'll get around to checking them out. I have used both in the past around 2018. One of them hasn't been updated in 6 years while the other one is maintained and supports Sequoia. Most of these packages do not support audio but that's not an issue for me.
 
There's a story here where Microsoft raised the price of Office 365. When you go to cancel it, it offers the version without CoPilot for the old price. So it appears that they added Co-Pilot functionality, raised the price but you can cancel and get the old price. The ACCC (consumer watchdog) has sued Microsoft over this.

 
maflynn said:
FireFox has a number of incompatibilities where chromium based browsers do not. I have to keep Chrome installed for that site or two I need that refuses to work with FireFox.
Click to expand...
Have you tried Vilvadi? I am liking it so far, it's the only Chrome based browser that doesn't let a single youtube ad through.
 
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Cuesca said:
Have you tried Vilvadi? I am liking it so far, it's the only Chrome based browser that doesn't let a single youtube ad through.
Click to expand...
Not recently, but the last time I did, I wasn't overly impressed or overly disappointed - mostly meh
 
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