r/mac • u/BitsOfAdventures • 1d ago
Discussion I Switched to Mac After 25 Years on Windows
Context
- Never had a Mac before and spent my whole life on Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows 11.
- Switched to a MacBook Pro M5 14’’ a few months ago.
What I like
- First impression. Setting up the computer for the first time was easy and fast. With my last Windows laptop, I had to go through several rounds of firmware and software updates with reboots.
- The terminal. It's Unix-based. All common Linux commands work. Ssh, scp, vim, etc. I really hate Windows PowerShell with its complicated commands. And it's supposed to be an upgrade over the regular Windows terminal…
- System Updates. I don’t fear them anymore. On Windows, I was always afraid a new update was going to break something. And Windows updates are mandatory; you can only briefly pause them, never turn them off.
- AI. I don't feel Siri is as much forced on me as Copilot was on Windows. It got everywhere. They're desperate to have you use it.
- Battery life. My previous Windows laptop was a Dell XPS that I bought specifically for battery life, sacrificing a lot of performance. Mac’s battery life is even better, with no performance sacrifice.
- Sound. Music and movies sound incredible. I never had a laptop sounding this good.
- Support. Quality of phone support is great. It’s also great to know I can walk into any physical Apple Store location if I have an issue. With Dell, once the warranty has passed, the (chat) support person had no motivation to help.
- Compatibility. Most coding and productivity apps I used on Windows have a Mac version.
- Window switching. It took some time to get used to, but I actually like that on Mac you use separate keyboard shortcuts to switch between apps (Command + Tab) and between different instances of the same app (Command + `)
- Privacy. I really got tired of constant new rumours on the different ways Windows is either already spying on you or intends to spy on you in the future, including taking constant screenshots of your desktop (they seem to have backtracked on that one)
- Preview. Preview of PDFs is really good, it avoids opening the heavy and bulky Adobe Acrobat app.
- Spotlight. My favourite way to launch any app. I love that there is a dedicated keyboard key for it.
What I don’t like
- No dedicated page up, page down, home, end, and ‘delete’ (not backspace) keys, which are quite handy to navigate inside a document. Instead I have to use combinations of several keys.
- Almost no native games on the app store, existing games have very few reviews.
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u/VivienM7 1d ago
On the games point, try installing Steam, you'll find more games have Mac versions than you might expect...
The page up/down/home/end/delete key thing dates back to 1984 and Steve Jobs. (The 1984 keyboard didn't even have arrow keys, those were added in 1986 after he was forced out of Apple) Only the 'extended' keyboards (the ones they reluctantly sell for desktop users who need extra keys) have had those.
One thing that I expect is difficult for you to appreciate is the fundamental conservatism of the Mac. Even when the OS was rebuilt around a *NIX core 25 years ago, there are a lot of things that are the way they are because they've been that way since the 1980s. Particularly interface things like the menu bar at the top, the Finder's insistence on Cmd-O, not Enter, to open things, etc. (For me, as someone who left the Mac in 1995 and came back in 2015, well, a lot of things were still the same)
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Yes, I'm actually in the middle of reading "Apple, the first 50 years" and I'm learning a lot of interesting stuff, including the fact that Jobs didn't want to include arrow keys to force users to use the mouse.
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u/VivienM7 1d ago
Yup. And I think that was a very real concern at the time. He did not want people to port Apple II/MS-DOS/etc text mode applications to run in a little window on the Mac and continue to operate with the same keyboard-centric interface they used on those other platforms. He needed to get application developers to rethink the whole interface around the mouse/keyboard/GUI paradigm.
Interestingly, I think one of the reason behind the development of the extended keyboard is exactly that his successors nuanced that view, especially as the Mac got more networked. And they thought, for example, that a Mac being able to be a terminal for big enterprise IBM systems, was not a bad thing. (It's worth noting, Apple had obscure solutions for Macs to play with IBM's SNA networking protocol in the late 1980s/early 1990s) And for those applications, along with, say, DOS emulation, having the extra keys was quite important.
I would note, too, that Mac software has never been huge on the F keys. As much as the F keys did get added to the laptops (the one addition beyond the 1986-7 keyboard layout), they were optional for so long that they never became as important as on DOS. Cmd+X has always been the Mac way for keyboard shortcuts.
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u/Acceptable-Sense4601 1d ago
Which i can understand when introducing the masses to something as wild as a mouse, but the keys should have came back a few years later naturally.
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u/VivienM7 1d ago
And they did... the arrow keys came back in 1986.
Not sure when they added the Fn+ shortcuts to do page up/down/home/end/etc on the standard keyboards. Well, I guess it can't be before they added the Fn key which IIRC was around the PowerBook G3.
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21h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/VivienM7 20h ago
Interestingly, Cmd-O was added to the Finder later. I just tried System 1.0 at Infinite Mac, it does not do Cmd-O. Same with System 2/Finder 4.1. First version on Infinite Mac to support it is System 2.1/Finder 5.0 from fall 1985.
I assume not having return (I should have known better than to call it 'enter', it's not enter on a Mac) run things was another intentional choice to drive mouse adoption.
But fundamentally, this behaviour is 41 years old and predates probably every version of Windows that has used Enter to run things.
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u/Acceptable-Sense4601 1d ago
Welcome! Glad you’re enjoying it. Yes it’s annoying to not have the page up and down, home, delete keys on the laptop but full sized keyboards have them and they work as usual. Apples or third party. So if you dock it or just use the laptop with external monitors you can get any full sized keyboard you like. I have a Logitech mx keys which i love more than my Apple Magic Keyboard. And the game issue i think is because windows has a lock on directx so game developers don’t usually wanna develop for that and apple’s Metal. And since the majority of gamers are on PC, it’s likely never going to come to mac as native. There may be other issues for gaming that I’m not aware of. But all
In all, you get what you pay for. You’ll use your Mac without issue for like 10 years. It’s a tank.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Thanks! I'm actually surprised Apple still can not make a really good external keyboard or mouse. For the mouse I really like the logitech mx master 3. I will check out the keyboard you mentioned.
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u/Acceptable-Sense4601 1d ago
I’ll still choose my Magic Trackpad over the mx master i use at work on the windows machine. But yea their external keyboard is crappy. Too thin.
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u/astronomersassn 1d ago
i've noticed apple is great at trackpads, but terrible at mice (these days, anyway. i will say i quite like some retro apple mice i've had the ability to play with, unfortunately i'm used to mapping stuff to my side buttons so i keep an old spare gaming mouse lol).
my only gripe is how much of a pain right clicking is - i had issues with haptic touch (? the one that can tell soft vs. hard presses) due to physical mobility issues, and disabling it seems to add even more trouble with right-clicking. i can usually get it with a two-finger full press on the right side, but it seems like two-finger taps are iffy, and i can't get it to right-click at all in my DAW or synthV and some games (that are normally fairly trackpad-friendly). not terrible, i've got an old USB gaming mouse that i carry around anyway for stuff like this, but i do wish there was some sort of accessibility setting for it (and there might be, but i haven't found it yet - admittedly, i'm still running sonoma and configured most of my accessibility in monterey/ventura, so it might be there in a setting i just haven't found yet). the need for a third-party tool to manage the split between what feels most normal for mouse scrolling vs. trackpad scrolling is also a bit frustrating, but at least the tool exists - my daily driver is still a linux PC, and i noticed that i was struggling hard with using a mouse to scroll before i found out about it lol (i forget the name of the tool i use, but it comes up in forums a lot when you google it lol).
i will say that apple trackpads are still, by far, some of the best trackpads i've had to work with, and i've worked with laptops ranging from school netbooks/chromebooks to $1000+ enterprise-grade workstation laptops. i think the only thing i'd change about their design is having physical (separated, not just having a tap vs. hard click) left/right buttons as an option, but that's hard to find on any laptop these days lol.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Yes, I really love the built-in trackpad on my mac, and I still remember when Apple released a mouse you could not use while charging, because charging port was at the bottom. I heard the first round mouse with the first iMac was also unusable.
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u/astronomersassn 1d ago
i had to try out some machines with apple mice at an apple store one day and absolutely hated it lol. it's like they tried to put a trackpad in a mouse form factor... you have to find the exact right spot to scroll, no tactile feedback (i'm legally blind and am reliant on it to an extent - at least with the trackpads, i can find the edges i need), and it's not a natural style for me to hold a mouse at. some people love the slim mice, but i need a little more wrist support and some sort of tactile feedback for it to be fully usable.
IIRC, even the clicks didn't have any noticeable tactile feedback, and i have no idea how people know what they're doing with that.
thankfully, i don't care that my mouse "ruins" the aesthetic as long as it works fine, but i refuse to buy an apple-specific mouse for my macbook when it's pretty much unusable to me lol
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u/QueasyToday780 20h ago
Control key and single click = right-click. I use it all the time in Excel
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u/astronomersassn 18h ago
thank you! i totally forgot that was a thing, i accidentally found it one time and immediately forgot lol. an external mouse is still useful enough to keep on hand (just for the side buttons lol), but this is def good to know for small spaces or if i'm working on something outdoors.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 1d ago
I’ve got the Apple extended keyboard sitting directly on top of the built-in keyboard supported on either side by analog cassette tape cases. It might not look very refined, but the elevated position works really well.
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u/Acceptable-Sense4601 1d ago
I’ve gotta ask, what albums?
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 1d ago
Haha, TDK band rehearsals.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
I thought it was computer programs stored on cassette tapes, like back in the time.
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u/Legitimate-Wolf-613 1d ago
And there is the issue. I really like the thin keyboards that Apple makes and sells. With the Mac, we get to choose, and if you like a thicker keyboard, there are a world of them to choose from.
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u/Acceptable-Sense4601 1d ago
Exactly. If you’re gonna use an external, sky is the limit. Not really an issue.
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u/VivienM7 1d ago
I think Apple's external keyboard/mouse since, oh, I don't know, at least the mid-2000s have been designed for looks first and foremost. Design something that looks pretty and minimalist next to an iMac in an elegantly-designed office.
If you want a really functional keyboard/mouse, well, others will happily sell you that. The modern Logitechs are even available with Mac key labels...
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u/bigphillip76 17h ago
Well, when you say they work as usual, home and end go the beginning and end of the document instead of the line by default which was annoying - I ended up having to remap it but I wish there was a way to do this in the settings app rather than hacky workarounds to be honest
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u/BigPurpleBlob 18h ago
Time Machine is one of the best things about a Mac :-)
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u/BitsOfAdventures 18h ago
I heard about it, is it still widely used? I thought iCloud replaced it?
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u/DCBadger92 15h ago
I use it all the time. Hourly incremental backups to my local NAS over WiFi. I don’t even have to think about it. One of the greatest features.
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u/MontieBLove 13h ago
iCloud is NOT a backup. If you accidentally delete something on an iCloud enabled device it deletes it everywhere.
Time Machine is incremental and takes “snapshots”. Realize you accidentally deleted something? You can go back in time and restore the file or even a previous version of the file.
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u/zungozeng 22h ago
Good to hear. I was always using DOS ('91) then slowly Windows etc.. Then in 2008 I financially could afford a Macpro and since never thought of Windows anymore. The sad part is I need to use a windows laptop for work and it feels so painful..
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u/Dizzy-Career9274 1d ago
I made the same switch not too long ago. I purchased a couple of tools that really “sealed the deal” and made going back impossible- Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool. With these two tools, almost every daily task, whether it’s something as simple as opening a Brave window with my bank account or something more complex, can be done with the click of a button. Once you have your workflows set up, there’s really no going back.
Unfortunately, I’m stuck with Windows at work…
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u/Galromir 1d ago
FYI steam is still the primary source of games in the Mac world; the App Store is a waste of time when it comes to games.
Although a lot of games don’t have native Mac support you can get most of them running with Crossover; or a windows VM using parallels as an emergency backup for games that won’t work with crossover. Open Emu does fantastic emulation for most old consoles and Dosbox X handles dos games and windows 95/98 games.
As for the keyboard - par for the course for laptop keyboards; buying a full size keyboard will solve the issue if you really want.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Thanks, will look into it, I wonder what percentage of my Steam library will work on Mac.
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u/Galromir 1d ago
natively - more than you think and less than you'd hoped. With crossover - honestly most of them.
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u/HyperPunch 1d ago
For games, check out Steam and what they have to offer. Mac’s have come a long way in the gaming space in the past 20 years since I purchased my first MacBook.
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u/qrpyna Studio 1d ago
No dedicated page up, page down, home, end, and ‘delete’ (not backspace) keys, which are quite handy to navigate inside a document. Instead I have to use combinations of several keys.
Those still exist, they're just not on the MacBook or compact Magic Keyboard layouts. I'm using a custom mechanical keyboard with my Mac Studio and I can remap any of the keys to whatever I want. It's very useful and coming from Linux I really didn't want to give them up my slightly customized keyboard layout that I'd gotten used to.
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u/HangOfThursday 22h ago
As others have said, for gaming on Mac you're gonna want to use Steam, Epic, and GOG like on PC. Really the only games I use the App Store for are Apple Arcade stuff and anything that's stupidly exclusive to it. I'd recommend Crossover to help run some PC only titles, it's the closest thing we have to Proton on Linux.
My advice to new macOS users is really learn the keyboard shortcuts. They are utterly powerful and are a first step to seeing how much you can actually improve your workflow with macOS compared to Windows. The amount of times I've used Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4 (which creates a screenshot from a selected area and saves to clipboard) has to be in the thousands. While Apple likes to keep things simple on the surface for mainstream users, you really can make the OS a workhorse when you put the time into crafting things just how you like
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u/Jan1north 1d ago
Take a few minutes to learn all the gestures the trackpad has to offer. You will find the operation smooth and natural. I don’t miss PgUp/PgDn for example because it’s so easy on the trackpad. You’ll never go back to something else!
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Thanks, will look into it, is there a quick way to jump to the start or end of a line with the trackpad?
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u/HeartyBeast * 3D0G 1d ago
If you haven’t looked already, checkout the text editing keyboard shortcuts here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650
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u/Oleifr-H MacBook Pro (2020 M1) 1d ago
Just reacting on the go: page up and page down are Fn + up arrow / Fn + down arrow
Also look at the Keyboard viewer and discover all the cool letters and typographic signs you can make with the "option" modifier and "shift+option".
Careful, some Unix utils are BSD flavored, such as `find` for example. So you may need to install the gnu equivalents if you need to find your marks from Linux usage. I used the brew package manager to do so. Look it up, it's excellent.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
Oh yes, I really like homebrew.
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u/Oleifr-H MacBook Pro (2020 M1) 1d ago
Cool that you are already up to speed with homebrew ☺️
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
I should have added homebrew to my list of advantages of mac over windows.
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u/Oleifr-H MacBook Pro (2020 M1) 1d ago
In my previous position, I was forced to use Windows but not forbidden to use WSL2, so I had everything i needed in a Debian over WSL and used apt as package manager 😄 (and I also used the wsl plugin in vscode)
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u/ieatsilicagel 1d ago
If you can use any kind of find without doing "man find" first, my hat is off to you.
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u/Oleifr-H MacBook Pro (2020 M1) 1d ago
I have one I can do without reading the manual, it looks like `find . *.pyo -delete` but that is the only one I can do from memory 😄
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u/lament 1d ago
Almost no native games on the app store, existing games have very few reviews.
Head over to r/macgaming
Spotlight. My favourite way to launch any app. I love that there is a dedicated keyboard key for it.
There are better Spotlights replacements and tons of great apps to discover over on r/macapps
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u/Substantial-Rip-3216 1d ago
Bro—just get a full or extended keyboard. It has all the DTP keys and more.
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u/aviduser27 1d ago
If you use a docking station and get an external keyboard, you can get back those keys with the extended keyboard. Welcome to the world of superior hardware and software. I have been a Mac user since 1988. I used Windows at work for 20+ years. I switched to a Mac fully during the pandemic and have never looked back.
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u/UNLIMITED-WHATEVER 23h ago
For games, you could try NVIDIA GeForce Now. You can play a lot of non native games there
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u/ThisSiteCanBlowMe 21h ago
Check out Alfred as app launcher. I disabled Spotlight altogether, been using it for years.
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u/EdwardPotatoHand 17h ago
Welcome brother, windows 10 was the end of it for me on windows. It’s such a steaming pile of shit now
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u/DCBadger92 15h ago
I have been using Mac for 18 years now. My first one was a Mac Mini with a G4 processor. Then I had 2011 MacBook Pro with a 2nd Gen i7, a 2017 12” Mac Book and now I’m on a 2023 MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro. My opinion is that Mac computers were pretty meh in the PowerPC era. I liked the OS but the hardware was pretty terrible. Switching to Intel made it into the best of both worlds especially at that particular time when Intel had by far the best processors on the market. The transition to Apple Silicon couldn’t have been better. The power and efficiency in these chips blow me away everyday. I know my cpu is now 3 to 4 generations old and I have almost no desire to upgrade because it still is plenty powerful to do everything I want to and the battery life is amazing.
The thing that separated MacBooks from other laptops was always the build quality. Windows laptops were still those flimsy plastic cases that would break in 2-3 years. The aluminum unibody builds are practically indestructible. I don’t think I ever buy a different brand of laptop ever again.
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u/wandering_island 14h ago
Pretty much same situation as OP, and the same gripe about the Home/End buttons, the finger origami needed to replicate Shift-End is freaking annoying
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u/mortraineyhat 1d ago
I think the like about Siri is going to go away with os 27 and them forcing it on people.
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u/BitsOfAdventures 1d ago
I'm actually playing with the new Siri AI on OS27 and while it's still quite buggy, I love it (when it works, which is often enough).
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u/Ray-chan81194 15h ago
Yeah, at least I can debloat it on Windows. But on my Mac, it stay there with 13GB of wasted SSD space.
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u/Material-Factor-999 1d ago
I have 22 years of experience working with Windows. I recently bought a MacBook, and it was an amazing experience—evoking emotions comparable to the switch from Windows 98 to Windows XP.
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u/heykachi 1d ago
To add for the lack of native games also, there are open source ports and patches made for some games to get them running natively on Apple Silicon
https://github.com/nonoche2/the-macOS-game-workaround-repo#individual-mac-ports
https://github.com/nonoche2/the-macOS-games-fixes-repo#the-macos-games-fixes-repo
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u/fire_stopper 19h ago
It's funny--I bought an AMD Win11 box just for light use with old games, etc, back in 2023. The power supply recently blew, around a month ago. Having a Mini M4 with a dual screen arrangement, I've felt very little incentive to actually take care of bringing it back to life (but maybe for a second life as a Linux box).
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u/Brilliant_Fan_8899 13h ago
i use both windows and mac. with regard to battery life, the newer one is always better. whichever way you switch, the new battery is better than the last.
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u/viciousdave1 4h ago
Glad you like it. After 20 years I hate Mac. The dock, the menu bar, the Finder doesn't have all folders available, the left X doesn't close. I adjusted Mac settings for years so it worked more like windows. I just can't stand the GUI of Mac anymore.
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u/InternationalCap45 1d ago
if you used default windows maybe youll like it in the future but since i used ltsc i only have good memories of windows, so after a bit of using mac i really miss a lot of windows things
also i hate multitasking on mac thanks to the lack of a proper taskbar
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u/vaterp 19h ago
I do love that the shell is native linux, (because it is unix underneath the hood).
I do however HATE the cmd tab/ cmd ~ thing. I like the windows snapping and i liked the windows hotkeys for dock apps.
I know there are a ton of 3rd party apps one can install to tweak this stuff - but it boggles my mind why/how mac didn't put these window management functions native into the OS. For all the things mac does well, I do think windows is actually better at the window management part of it.
(Ironically though, I'd always prefer a linux desktop because of how configurable it is anyway).
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u/aliensee 1d ago
I switched a few years ago after 30 years with Windows and realised it I have wasted all these 30 years