I’m a long-long-time Windows user but I have recently decided to use a MacBook as my main (home) PC. I’ve considered the idea before and have always rejected it, but a few things seem to have come together to push me in this direction. It’s easy to stay with Windows, it’s comfortable and known, and the flip-side is that the MacOS interface appears confusing and unknown. However, I’ve realised that to properly assess a MacBook I need to do the hard work and use MacOS for a few months and learn my way around. It’s potentially a very expensive experiment, but I’m techy, have done my homework, and believe it will work long-term.
What’s changed for me?
First the Windows 11 release. Let’s call it what it is. Basically Windows 10 with some (mildly) enforced hardware requirements and a ridiculously redesigned start menu. I rarely use the start menu as I pin my frequent apps to the taskbar, so a poorly designed start menu does not really seem to be a strong enough reason to drop Windows. However, in my view, Microsoft treats its Windows customer base very poorly and I’m just tired of being continually disappointed. Perhaps the lousy start menu was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t think this attitude from Microsoft will change in the near term. These days Windows is largely built and maintained for business users that need to run their Win32 applications. Microsoft could produce a Windows 12 start menu with invisible grey-on-grey buttons that you need to triple-click with your elbow to launch an app, and businesses would dutifully upgrade as soon as Windows 11 reached EOL! They have no choice. This monopoly situation does not lead to innovation or good design. Or customer care.
Further, home-user needs have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. An example from my own life is my wife’s computing needs. She used to enjoy surfing the web on a Windows laptop. About a year ago she switched to just using her cell phone. Now the only time her Windows laptop gets used is when I turn it on once a month to patch it!
Which leads to my second point, the rise of the cell phone. I too use my phone increasingly in everyday life, but I’m a power user and so I also need a PC. Ideally I need a PC which links naturally to my phone, and as an iPhone user that leads me to a MacBook. If I used an Android phone then perhaps my choice would be different, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, how the phone is driving my requirements?
Finally, my experience with Apple over the years has been very good. I’ve found their different products to be reliable. Sure, they do sometimes break things with patches and its often not good to be a first adopter of an OS upgrade, but their track record seems better than Microsoft’s. Apple does have the advantage of controlling both hardware and software, which I believe reduces issues.
I’m not completely abandoning Microsoft, on my MacBook I’ll still use the Microsoft Office suite (MacOS version) and probably a VM with Windows 11 to run the few applications I would like to keep that require Windows. Also I still have other Windows machines in the house. So I’m hardly going cold-turkey!
To be honest, I’m kind of looking forward to the adventure! I’m certainly not advocating a mass switch away from Windows as my decision is personal and would not suit everyone. I can, however, report back in 3 to 6 months on my experiment if people are interested.
P.S. To be clear, I have no association with Apple except that I own an iPhone!
P.P.S. I drafted this note prior to the recent 2021-11-08 AskWoody Newsletter (and the small article on the new MacBooks), but must confess that Apple’s new hardware line-up is another attraction that I did not mention above.
