My home is firmly rooted in the cozy Apple orchard, but I keep sneaking away from my Windows PC when no one is looking. There is no way you can give up Windows.
Don’t get me wrong: MacOS is nifty software. It is smooth and easy to navigate. The animations are top notch. MacOS still has a built-in assistant (I’ll never forget you, Cortana). But none of that is enough to keep you from coming back to Windows every day.
Cross-platform compatibility
The Apple ecosystem is amazing. I love the ease with which I can share anything between Apple devices. My wife has everything in Apple (and it’s the only reason I have Apple-anything). My children share a iPad. We have an Apple TV and a Home Capsule Mini. We all sync photos and reminders and playlists to music and TV shows without having to think about it.
But as a techie, I also dabble in Android. I have an Xbox and even an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. I have several alexa devices scattered around the house, along with a few non-HomeKit smart plugs. Apple refuses to play fair with these things. On the other hand, Microsoft is everyone’s friend.
I also use Outlook and OneDrive and OneNote and ToDo on my iPhone. They sync with my iCloud account, so I can still share things with my wife. Alexa can even turn on my Xbox.
Apple tends to be a one-way street, and the iCloud.com website is about as basic as it gets. There is no other way I can use Reminders or Notes on my PC. The truth is, if I lost my Apple devices tomorrow, I would still have an entire unified ecosystem of Microsoft compatible devices.
Gaming
Gaming is the Achilles’ heel of the Mac. No matter how useful the operating system becomes, it’s dead for gamers. The next Mac OS Ventura promise to attract game developers to the Mac, but I’m not holding my breath. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Metal 3, Apple’s new framework that allows game developers to take full advantage of the processes on the M2 chip. Cook also announced MetalFX Upscaling, which renders complex graphics scenes with less computational power on the GPU.
But even if the M2 is more gaming-friendly, game developers and gamers focus solely on PC. Attracting big game studios to create for the Mac will take time. From what I can tell, it still feels like many years to go before the Mac reaches the same gaming ecosystem that Microsoft has created.
Cloud gaming is an area I closely follow. I love having the ability to play so many of my favorites. Game Pass Titles on my Mac, although I admit I use the Edge browser and not Safari. I also have access to most of my Steam library through GeForce Now.
But not all the games I enjoy are available in the cloud. Age of Empires IV Y Crusader Kings III they are nowhere to be found. And forget it with PC VR games. I often use my Quest 2 with Steam VR and my dedicated RTX card manages to keep up. That’s not something you can do on a Mac right now.
window management
If, by some miracle, game developers were to suddenly flock to MacOS, I’d still stick with Windows, and the reason is because I hate Mac’s Windows management. When I click the X button, I expect the window to pop up. closing. If you wanted to just minimize the window, you would click the minimize button.
Multitasking on a Mac remains a frustrating experience to this day. I can have a total of two windows open side by side. If I want more, I have to pay for a third party extension.
In the meantime, windows 11 it lets me choose from six ready-to-use multi-window setups. Let’s not forget the ability to simply snap windows to different corners of the screen in Windows 11, an extremely useful trick when working.
Windows 11 also has Adjustment groups, which has quickly become a tool I can’t live without. Snap Groups allow me to group a bunch of windows together, for example when I’m working on a project that requires writing, research, and note taking. Once I adjusted some programs to multi-window layout, Windows 11 remembers this. I can minimize the whole pool and work on something else, and then just open the pool again when I’m ready to go back to it. Nothing on Mac comes close — especially not stage manager.
look and feel
At the end of the day, both MacOS and Windows 11 achieve the same thing: a useful interface for people to get things done. But I like the look and feel of Windows 11 UX much better.
The Windows 11 start menu looks more mature and professional than the Mac launch pad. Of course, many people prefer the Unix environment of a Mac, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I also prefer the frosted glass backgrounds of Windows menus compared to Apple’s. And the widget menu in Windows contains much more information than in MacOS.
It is true that Microsoft took a lot of inspiration from Apple when redesigning Windows. From the rounded edges to the frosted glass look of the menus, Windows 11 has a Mac OS feel. However, Microsoft did a better job of this. Aesthetics are completely subjective, of course. My wife would disagree, for example, but I think Windows 11 gives you the best of both worlds.
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