A while back I made a post on these forums titled “I’m done with Windows”. In that forum post I discussed some of my frustrations with Windows and why I had ordered a Mac.
After five days of use I am returning it. Here are my thoughts/experiences and my hopes for the future of the PC.
Why I am returning the Mac:
– macOS Window Management is awful and despite spending money on apps to try and fix this I still didn’t like the Mac way of doing this
– Apps I use like Adobe Dimension aren’t yet available for M1, not even when using Rosetta
– The Mac app store is almost as bad as the Windows Store in terms of useful available apps. At least the Windows store has Spotify.
– The lack of configurability of the OS
– I’m not invested enough in the Apple ecosystem enough to benefit from many Mac features.
– Not Apple’s fault but OneDrive was the single biggest consumer of system resources.
– The lack of Autodesk product support on Mac.
– The inability to run legacy apps like Fireworks CS6 (not possible through Creative Cloud even with Rosetta)
– The amount of time I had to spend configuring the system to get it the way I liked
– I felt notifications were poorly implemented and more annoying than on Windows
– The app installation process was worse.
– I prefer fluent UI setting app on Windows to system control on Mac
Things I liked about macOS and Mac mini:
– Spotlight search is infinitely better than Windows search
– The lack of ads and preloaded junk
– The silence and low power consumption of Mac mini
– The fit and finish of the mini
– Previewing files with spacebar
– The god awful speaker in the Mac mini that just shouldn’t be there.
– The fact I can take it to my local Apple store if there is an issue
My hopes for Windows
– AMD and Intel start to make ARM chips for the PC. x86 is not the future, the writing is on the wall and it’s time to start making the transition
– Microsoft continues to polish the system and invest in it. Windows is still a multi-billion dollar business, Panos show it some love!
– Windows search needs to be fixed and more like Spotlight.
– Microsoft needs to make basic tasks like light photo editing better in Windows. A new Movie Maker for 2020, sometimes you just need to combine two clips together and Premier Pro is overkill.
– Improve the store, the app count doesn’t matter so please remove the spam.
– Remove the tracking, adds and junk. At some point we’ve all paid for Windows whether that is indirectly or directly. Microsoft please treat us like users not the product. Take a leaf out of Apple’s book on privacy.
My future PC plans:
I am going to soldier on with my Asus machine until the end of 2021. I will then build a new desktop (DDR5, new AMD socket and USb4 should be available by then) and buy some kind of Windows laptop. I hope in 2021 AMD continue to improve their mobile products.