aways987

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.

After being an exclusively Windows user since WIndows 98 and big Windows Phone fan I have decided to move over to the Mac for my main machines.

After years of WIndows 10 updates who can seriously say that Windows is getting better? RIght now Windows is so inconsistent and my opinion unloved. I am so sick and tired of Microsoft having a go at something and then just abondong it. Let's take the Creators update for Windows, that big push to make Windows great for creatives and add new UWP apps like 3D paint and adding built in 3D apps. SInce then nothing has been done with it, just left to rot away in the MS wasteland, same as the Surface Studio with its ancient Intel processor.

The lack of polish and care in Windows is appalling - how hard is it to update the icons from Windows 95, XP and Vista eras? Applying the fluent design language across all apps and parts of Windows would be a nice start. Why does MS allow the store to be filled with dodgy copy cat garbage, con merchants charging people for free open source apps? Let's be honest Apple would never do such a thing.

I just look at what Apple is doing with the Mac, the new Apple silicon but also the direction MacOS is being taken in and I see a company that is at least trying to make a better product. How can Apple in one update refresh the entire UI consistently where as Microsoft slowly sprinkle new design elements over Windows across several updates?

I will still continue to rely heavily on MS services, but now I'm done with WIndows.

I was just posting this in case anyone wasn't already aware.

One of the better pieces of software in the now discontinued Expression Studio suite was Expression Design. Even in 2018 I find this is a great vector based design tool.

Anyway Microsoft has made it free for download https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36180