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The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

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Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#121

Post by ksaj »

tambourine_man wrote: post #113

>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 t…

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.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#122

Post by School-Cotton »

devonkim wrote: post #19
user00012-ab wrote: post #2

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

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 MacBook…

> 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.)

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#124

Post by hollerith »

rayiner wrote: post #61
pbreit wrote: post #9

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, arrangin…

Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP. Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Se…

>Much more notifications and intrusiveness.

I right clicked the rightmost icon in the task bar, then chose {Focus Assist > Alarms Only}. After I did that, the only times I have been notified on Windows is because I set a timer in the {Alarms & Clocks} app.

(I would probably have noticed any other notifications because I am sensitive enough to being notified that I completely disabled Notification Center on my Mac.)

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#125

Post by captainredbeard »

tambourine_man wrote: post #113

>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 t…

FWIW, I don’t think the author intends to sully anyone’s screens, he’s just accustomed to ubiquitous touch interaction.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#126

Post by rayiner »

tbrock wrote: post #110
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP. Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Se…

Well you made one huge mistake... you must run Linux on the x1 Carbon for it to be amazing.

Yeah, no: https://medium.com/@hkdb/ubuntu-18-04-on-lenovo-x1-carbon-6g.... I did my time already. Compiled my own kernel back in the 2.2 days. Futzed with X11 mode settings. I’m too old for that now. I’ve come to the conclusion that, especially for mobile devices, developing the OS separately from the hardware is a disastrous idea. It makes no sense. The people best suited to do things like tweak the throttling profile or USB power management settings are the folks who built the machine.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#127

Post by hermitdev »

sarim wrote: post #66

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…

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.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#128

Post by S_A_P »

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.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#129

Post by Groxx »

pbreit wrote: post #9

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, arrangin…

Just to +1 the experiences here:

I have a surface pro 4. I enjoy the touchscreen for some things, but otherwise I roundly hate it, almost entirely due to Windows. Some things work in touchpad mode, some don't, sometimes a feature is crippled in one mode, the gestures are finicky and weird and the only reason I know how to use them is because I read a few blog posts, notifications that are undismissable for no reason, and sometimes the touchscreen keyboard doesn't come up for 30 seconds.

The very best thing I've done has been to mark every network as "metered" so it stops auto-installing (non-critical) updates and forcing lengthy shutdowns. The only downside (if you can call it that) is that now it seems update is half-broken most of the time, and it won't find updates for a month or two even if I say "check now". Sometimes it works for like a week or two and I can pull updates about every day like I'd expect, and on the day of their release, so it's pretty clear when it's broken. It's usually broken.

---

I have Elementary OS installed on it too. It's a much better experience, except for needing a custom kernel for touchscreen (a simple google + apt-get away, thankfully, which is about my limit to put up with), and I don't know how to get the on-screen keyboard to be available at login. There's just so much less nonsense though.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#130

Post by notafraudster »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #42

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, encoura…

I wouldn't care about the frequent and annoying rebooting if Windows had implemented a feature that MacOS has had for literally 5 years: automatically restoring the logged-in user's session after a reboot. I lose so many Notepad notes to self because they're unsaved and Microsoft decides to reboot. Screw that.
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