[luka-birsa]

This is untrue. As somebody that just defected from OSX to Windows I can tell you that you're missing out. Windows became a more stable and usable PC where everything just works. My 2 year old top of the line MBP was replaced by a 3 year old Dell XPS 13 after 10 years of OSX and I hate to break it to you, but Windows changed.

I replaced the MBP since the I had to replace the thinnest keyboard in the world, but I had problems with BT, WiFi, crashes, random external monitor glitches, no support for two external monitors via TB 3.0 (look it up, same hardware works under windows!!). Ask my diehard OSX fan coworker that just had to upgrade OSX just to get wifi working at home. I stayed for Windows since my MBP stopped working a week after I got the keyboard replaced and to be honest I really can't bother to move back. Everything just works here.

OSX has left the domain of the power user and has been relegated to into the domain of the consumer user that likes the Apple marketing.

I am monitoring the situation with ARM CPUS closely and that would be a motivation to switch back, but right now it feels my next computer upgrade will be windows based high end laptop. Better OS and better price performance are hard to argue with.

PS: If you're a developer and you're still clinging to OSX, try it - the whole experience is next level (compared to the whole brew ecosystem). Download WSL for windows, get Ubuntu from windows store and use the Windows Terminal to experience native Ubuntu. Hell if you're using VS Code, all you need to do is type "code ." from Ubuntu to open VS Code in Windows and develop in native Linux.

[pyr0hu]

Tried WSL2 for webdev, had high expectations for it, but I got disappointed. Docker support is bad and the whole subsystem feels sluggish. All on latest windows build, on a Samsung 970 ssd. I get it, Windows got better i agree, but it's miles away from a Unix experience

[1_player]

My Docker setup isn't slower than when it was running Arch Linux. The downside is that I have to start Docker Desktop compared to having the docker daemon start at boot. The upside is that VSCode and the browser is 10x smoother on Windows than it was on the same hardware on GNOME, so the whole dev experience feels much better.

RAM usage due to the Linux VMs might be the issue in your case, I have loads of it.

[garethrowlands]

Was there anything in particular that was bad about Docker? Was it network access? What was sluggish - disk access across the Windows/Linux divide? I've just tried WSL2 out for a few minutes on a new Dell XPS and it seemed kinda neat. Clearly I've not had time to run into problems.

[hackshack]

This. Mac user since 1991. In 2016, I needed a VR development box with a fast GPU, so I supplemented the 27” iMac on my desk with a homebuilt PC and 27” 4K monitor. That little PC has earned its keep! I use the PC about 95% of the time. The iMac is now my Pixelmator and OmniOutliner appliance, and backup OBS video capture device.

Win10’s last 2 years of “builds” are very good. It still rots like regular Windows, but I got 3.5 years of heavy use before reinstalling it. Main apps are Unity, Visual Studio 2017, and some hardware design stuff (SOLIDWORKS, KiCad, SEGGER). It feels so liberating to have all my niche apps on the PC without having to virtualize.

User experience on Windows is a little jankier, but the utility of the niche apps makes up for it. I miss AirDrop. If I were to advise Microsoft on one thing: fix the Control Panel situation in Win10. It’s like layers of bad makeup.

Windows also restores much worse than macOS. I miss Time Machine. I purchased a tool called Macrium Reflect which gets me close enough, and actually can restore a bootable system.

[ag56]

Like another poster below with Linux, every two years I purchase a Windows laptop (most recently an XPS 2 years ago) and try it out. And so far every time I’ve been so disappointed, from hardware quality, through coil whine, through WiFi that won’t connect, etc etc. The experience has been horrible.

I truly want what you say to match my personal experience... but sadly not. Mac has just been superior in every way.

And now with the move to Arm and seeing the benchmarks starting to come out, it seems yet another huge reason to stick with Apple.

[spronkey]

I've been on record here for as long as I can remember saying something similar in defense of Apple's laptops, and I've done something similar to you in buying (usually cheap ex-lease) Windows machines every year or two to try them out, but I wouldn't go so far as to say Macs are superior in "every way".

Typically with an Apple device, except for the butterfly keyboards, you could be reasonably sure that all the interaction points were at least mostly decent - display, inputs, speakers microphone, charger, system noise (fan and electrical). You could also be sure that the inbuilt feature set such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt, USB (USB3 was a clusterf... on PCs in the early days), even charging would work reasonably reliably.

The other nice thing about Apple's laptops for a long time has been longevity of batteries - Apple were the first manufacturer to move to 500 cycle batteries with the 2008 Unibodies, and then 1000 cycle batteries later on. Additionally, they have pretty good charging algorithms to preserve battery life over the long term - not something that is the case with many other brands.

However, I think Apple have regressed on some of these fronts since 2015 (maybe they'll redeem themselves with the M1). The touchbar and T2 have been notorious for strange issues. The USB-C only setup has been both obnoxious for anyone who ever needs to use a Type A device, and notorious for strange issues such as heat generation when charging from the "wrong" side - a clear step backwards from MagSafe. The quality of their machines has suffered with the butterfly keyboard, flexgate, less robust internals (see Louis Rossmann for more details!), and anaemic cooling (one of the most impressive things about the original retina MBP was the improvement in the cooling system for sustained performance vs the thicker unibody). MacOS itself also declined in quality somewhat obviously since somewhere around Snow Leopard, with mere flashes of brilliance inbetween since then.

At the same time, Windows 10 has improved dramatically and is now solidly Microsoft's best OS since Windows 7, beating even that OS out in many ways. And, while I don't think the PC laptops have caught up, many of them are now within firing range of Apple devices - certainly close enough that in many cases, for the few that actually get all the touchpoints right, they offer an experience that isn't too far away from the best Mac experience I've had.

[rswail]

homebrew sucks compared to macports in terms of working well inside the OSX ecosystem. It installs itself out of the way of OSX and /System, works with Xcode and system frameworks and has all of the stuff I've ever needed.

I've been running big sur on a 2020 iMac during the public beta. I had 4 issues that I raised that were solved:

* SMB wasn't loaded at login, so an SMB volume mapping failed

* Inbuilt VPNs (L2TP over IPSec) didn't work until the last but one before the public release, but wireguard worked

* Minor bug loading a JPG as the avatar for a Contact through Maps for my Home card. I got requests for additional info on this one.

In terms of apps and utilities:

* Bartender needed to be redone and has been

* Karabiner needed changes to replace a kext

* Utilities that add keyboard shortcuts etc needed some permission finangling

* Things like OneDrive and Google Backup and Sync needed disk permissions

* iTerm2 needed to be given full disk access

So all in all, Big Sur as an upgrade over Catalina, was pretty smooth. That was from a move from a laptop running Catalina as a Mojave upgrade via Migration Assistant.

YMMV.