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by duxup 493 days ago
I loved using windows for a long time.

I could strip it down and it performed and stayed out of my way. It wasn't ever pretty, I didn't like a lot of it, but I could just get what I needed out of it.

Then it started to change, UI / UX had about 20 different flavors. I couldn't find settings anymore. Updates would change settings / undo my explicit settings. Eventually it felt like I was using an ADWARE OS.

I fled to macOS and haven't looked back. I'm even ok with less local gaming to avoid the windows hassle.

It's a bit of a sad thing for me. I do think fondly of my "old days windows" experiences in the sense that I was excited about updates and "Start Me Up" always reminds me of a special time in computing that I loved:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRdl1BjTG7c

5 comments

In the last couple years I've used quite a bit of Windows and macOS (after many years using Linux exclusively), and I've found macOS to be my least favourite of the three. On the surface it looks similar to Linux, but it's all lies. My biggest grip is that very often I'll ask for a setting or solution to an issue and I kid you not, 80% of the time the response I get from mac users is you can't do that, but there's an app (and often it's a subscription based app). mac needs apps for things like mouse scrolling, placing windows, cleaning the keyboard without turning the laptop on, switching between windows, copying things to the clipboard, installing software... and the list goes on longer than I could possibly remember.
For me it's 100% of the linux I need so it's great there.

I do agree the "there's an app for that" is heavily ingrained in the online user suggestions. The mac power users giving suggestions are often VERY much not knowledgeable. Oddly I do find there often is a command line solution that is better than an app ... but it's NEVER the first suggestion and a pain to find out sometimes. That is a pain, I need to turn a thing off, not an app with 20 features surrounding it ;)

For OSX, it either works (or can with an app, covering many things) or doesn't work at all (some things). I rarely find things in the middle.

For Linux, it either works (some things), works with effort and time (many things) or wont work (some things) weighted heavily towards the middle in varying degrees.

For windows, it either works (many things), or works in a weird not fully functional way that you can't fix or change and ends up being as frustrating as not having it at all, or as having to fix it in linux (seemingly more and more things), or doesn't work at all (a few things).

I can't stand using Windows anymore. Yes when it works its OK, except the UI gets worse every update, it gets more bloated with ad-ware, keeps trying to force you to online accounts and subscription models, and when it doesn't work the way you want, its a nightmare that typically can't be fixed (more so than any windows OS before)

Same. Windows used to be pretty good from my perspective. Then, Microsoft started stuffing it to the gills with spy- and bloatware, so I moved on. Windows 10 was ok, but 11 is unacceptable.
After upgrading my W10 laptop to 11, I decided I'm never buying another windows computer again.

I'll be shopping for linux pre-installed and natively supported laptops, or Apple/OSX going forward (and I hate apple and refuse to use most of their services, but their hardware is solid and OS is now far better than windows)

Macos has introduced many breaking changes in the past couple years. I'm getting pretty tired of Apple silently breaking services and adding new permissions.

For me, they've been way more nefarious than the all too frequent annoyance of the Windows update into the Edge upsell screen.

New boss, same as the old boss, I suppose.

I looked up a Windows "Server with Desktop Experience" license the other day and we're talking $1k+ here....I can't help but hover over the buy button.

Quote from the article: "Windows: 96.55% Mac: 1.40% Linux: 2.06%". End of quote.