Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

vertoanalytics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#21

Post by boyce »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #15
boyce wrote: post #7

Here in Britain there's a Microsoft advert at the moment (maybe elsewhere too, no idea) that says at the end of it "You don't expect to be able to draw on a screen" That's literally the only feature they mention. Touchscreen compatibility. It makes them look like they're from the stone age and completely unaware of the competition

It is not simply touch screen they are mentioning. It is "inking capabilities", stylus based drawing on the screen. The ad is not a good one as for example it was not clear for you. On the other hand people already know basic windows features, this is their intended direction of developing the system: more natural human interface, including handwriting and voice recognition.

Oh I can see what they want to say but my barometer of consumer tech (well, wife) doesn't see any feature her ancient ipad 2 doesn't have

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#22

Post by digi_owl »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #4
dialupmodem wrote: post #3

After being a windows jerk for 20 years I fully switched over about a year ago. My only remaining attachment to Microsoft is an old version of office I have running in CrossOver. I think what did it for me was the hardware, but the forced updates and telemetry completely sabotaged trust and closed the deal. It was a tough move, but my new found hatred for Microsoft fueled the whole journey adequately. Just what are t…

yeah, interesting that the survey doesn't report the numbers of dissatisfied Mac users who plan on switching to GNU/Linux. I suspect they were never given this as an option. Anecdata would suggest that the desire to move to something else is more prevalent amongst devs and techies. The MacBook is becoming a consumer device.

> The MacBook is becoming a consumer device.

I think it always has been. The "pro" has been aimed more at artists than techies, and even there thing have been sagging as of late.

That Macbooks ran unix was a legacy of Next, and there in turn i was a convenient choice for rapidly bringing up a usable OS.

The BSD side of OSX/MacOS have been largely stagnant since the first release, afaik.

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#23

Post by k__ »

I'm using Linux PCs for development for 10 years now, but when I started mobile development, had to buy a MacBook.

And I have to say, it is kinda nice. I don't think the gains for developer are so big that they justify a double price, but they are certainly nice.

The alu body is very sturdy and the touchpad disabling when typing is really good.

I also started doing educational videos and QuickTime + iMovie are pre-installed so I could start without any hesitation.

On the other hand, macOS has bad UX, often I can't find how to do things right away, because they aren't correctly named or hiding is some strange sub-menus somewhere. I don't think it's much worse than on Linux, but everyone was praising macOS UX and I just can't see it. Also the keyboard has a different layout than on PC and it feels like shortcuts are randomly spread between Ctrl and Cmd. The first week I had to Google some keys, because the keyboard didn't have labels for them ([, ], ~ and | for example).

I also read that many people are switching from Apple MacBooks to MS Surface Pro since the latest iteration of MacBooks came out.

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#24

Post by actsasbuffoon »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #14
boyce wrote: post #7

Here in Britain there's a Microsoft advert at the moment (maybe elsewhere too, no idea) that says at the end of it "You don't expect to be able to draw on a screen" That's literally the only feature they mention. Touchscreen compatibility. It makes them look like they're from the stone age and completely unaware of the competition

It's true, to an extent: only the more expensive iPad Pro supports Apple's native "Pencil" tool - the non-Pro iPad can only use third-party Bluetooth styluses that have a sub-par user-experience. But yeah - Microsoft just won't let the "Pen computing" vision die - they've been at it since their first "Windows for Pen Computing" release in 1992. Serious question: does anyone use the handwriting note-taking abilities t…

As an owner of both a Surface and an iPad Pro, I can confidently state that the stylus experience is much better on the iPad.

The stylus is a neat gimmick on the Surface, but usability suffered after they stopped licensing their stylus tech from Wacom. Sometimes it tracks the stylus when you’re not quite touching the screen, so you get messy little lines before and after your strokes. The pressure sensitivity isn’t very good either. It doesn’t track well enough to take hand-written notes at the scale you’d write on paper, so you have to write in huge letters. Microsoft should go back to Wacom.

As for Apple’s Pencil, it’s fantastic. It’s actually better than my Wacom Cintiq (admittedly, it’s a previous gen Cintiq. The new version may be better). The accuracy and latency are great, pressure sensitivity is excellent, and tilt sensitivity works well. The only bad thing is that you have to charge the stylus, but a full charge takes about 20 minutes.

So if I were Microsoft, I wouldn’t be using the stylus as a selling point, considering their stylus is way behind the competition. And seriously Microsoft, you have no business trying to develop your own stylus tech just to save a few bucks. Wacom has this stuff figured out, so just pony up the dough and be done with it.

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#25

Post by hungerstrike »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #24
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, to an extent: only the more expensive iPad Pro supports Apple's native "Pencil" tool - the non-Pro iPad can only use third-party Bluetooth styluses that have a sub-par user-experience. But yeah - Microsoft just won't let the "Pen computing" vision die - they've been at it since their first "Windows for Pen Computing" release in 1992. Serious question: does anyone use the handwriting note-taking abilities t…

As an owner of both a Surface and an iPad Pro, I can confidently state that the stylus experience is much better on the iPad. The stylus is a neat gimmick on the Surface, but usability suffered after they stopped licensing their stylus tech from Wacom. Sometimes it tracks the stylus when you’re not quite touching the screen, so you get messy little lines before and after your strokes. The pressure sensitivity isn’t v…

I agree with your opinion that the Apple Pencil offers the best experience (and I also own a Surface Pro 1 and 3 and a couple of iPad Pros).

Even the first Wacom stylus that Microsoft had for the first Surface Pro wasn't as good as the Pencil. When I got my first iPad Pro, I was angry at Microsoft for not doing as good a job as Apple did with the Pencil despite having many years head start. Honestly, wtf Microsoft?

Luckily for them I like just about everything else in Windows better than iOS. The only thing Windows has been missing for tablet mode IMO has been a dictation key on their virtual keyboard. That's why I treat my Surface Pro as a laptop. (I gave away the Surface Pro 1 and kept the 3.)

Microsoft is finally giving us a dictation key this fall though, so I will most likely switch away from iPad altogether if that works well. At that point the only thing the iPad will offer for me is the tight integration with Facetime/iMessage. I can't wait to have a full OS and real Chrome on a Windows tablet again!

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#26

Post by hungerstrike »

dialupmodem wrote: post #3

After being a windows jerk for 20 years I fully switched over about a year ago. My only remaining attachment to Microsoft is an old version of office I have running in CrossOver. I think what did it for me was the hardware, but the forced updates and telemetry completely sabotaged trust and closed the deal. It was a tough move, but my new found hatred for Microsoft fueled the whole journey adequately. Just what are t…

So in the past you were a "windows jerk" but now you dropped Windows?

Seems like things haven't changed much.

Re: Who Is Most Likely to Switch From Windows to a Mac?

#27

Post by timrichard »

dialupmodem wrote: post #3

After being a windows jerk for 20 years I fully switched over about a year ago. My only remaining attachment to Microsoft is an old version of office I have running in CrossOver. I think what did it for me was the hardware, but the forced updates and telemetry completely sabotaged trust and closed the deal. It was a tough move, but my new found hatred for Microsoft fueled the whole journey adequately. Just what are t…

I see it said quite often that the Windows virus situation should be blamed on the sheer size of their userbase. I'm not convinced - I think a lot of it is down to Windows users traditionally running with Administrator/root privs the whole time. Historically due to Microsoft's fanaticism with backwards compatibility - nothing but root in MSDOS. It certainly isn't that way with my Macbook or Linux machines, although I am sometimes a little tempted to go passwordless in sudoers before sense prevails.
Post reply on HN