index

From Windows to MacOS

I've been using Microsoft operating systems and MS compatible machine for a very long time. I can clearly remember MS-DOS 6.0 coming out and getting it and monkeying with doublespace and thinking it was ridiculous. I was using DOS before that. I was 11, so that dates the beginning of my DOS use at 10 or so. I was using GemOS before that. And C64 before that, but that's an aside.

While I worked for 4+ months at for Absolutely Quality Inc ( effectively Apple tech support ) in 2003, and hence was trained to support OSX right when it had come out, I was never a fan of Apple computers. I didn't own one before or during working as support for their systems.

I didn't begin using Macs in any meaningful capacity until 2019, so I used Microsoft OSes primarily from 1992 till 2019. Over 25 years.

I knew about MacOS and what it could do and how to use it, because I learned Unix very young, and Linux a short bit after that, and MacOS works similarly...

What I didn't like about MacOS is:

• It hides most power features
• It locks down many options so you can't change them
• The UI/UX of it is kind of toy like instead of serious
• It doesn't support generic hardware
• It doesn't support a significant number of devices ( including USB devices )
• Most games aren't developed for it and don't work on it

In more modern era I added more disliked things:

• It doesn't have LXC support ; so Docker is VMs not real
• You can't run your own kernel drivers ( they used to allow that... )
• It monitors every process you start
• It checks what you run against something online when it can ( ewww )

Despite all of this ( and many more reasons I don't like it ), I've largely switched over to using MacOS 99% of the time within the last 3 years.

I switched because of the following:

• MacOS is closer to standard Unix/Linux methodology than Windows, so it has less lock-in imo
• It doesn't fucking reboot on me when I'm fucking using it; no forced reboots ever
• I hacked the shit out of it and can make it do most things I want, need, or care about
• No damned ads woven into the OS ( not yet at least... )
• They have real containers now ( very new though... ). Microsoft doesn't...
• No damned auto updating bullshit. It updates when I update it. The end.
• Apps are meant to be self contained instead of tying themselves into the whole system
• Most apps can run from any folder, including an external disc
• Apple isn't fucking screenshotting what I'm doing ( wtf MS )
• Apple isn't scanning my files for who knows what ( at least once you disable icloud )
• Notes app saves immediately always unlikely Notepad which sucks
• Under the hood, it's unixish; although I dislike the lack of /sys
• XCode is actually better than Visual Studio imo, and free completely. Not "free for the shitty base version". Just free.
• Code written for MacOS can be easily ported to iPhones and iPads, because it's the same dev system and languages.
• I completely reverse engineered brew and created my own better thing, and so I have a flexibile package management thing
• I trust Apple more these days than MS to actually not be government agents
• Less concern about viruses
• MacOS is "free"

I think the biggest thing is that the OS never shuts off unless I shut it down myself. This is huge and is nearly sufficient to switch by itself. I spent 15+ years trying to figure out how to stop Windows from restarting on its own and losing my unsaved open data and could never manage to shut it off completely. Yes I used all the various corporate registry keys and this that and the other thing. Some things worked for a while. Nothing permanently.

The next biggest thing is the way apps are meant to be standalone and not interfere with each other. It sucks up more space because dependencies are installed over and over for each app needing them, but, well, so what. It's cleaner and leads to me breaking the system less.

The third thing is XCode being free and cleaner than Visual Studio. Visual Studio is an absolute disaster of confusion. My point about being able to easily port from/to MacOS and iOS ties into this.

If I worked at it I could explain more reasons I prefer MacOS and primarily use it now, but I think I've done a decent job explaining already so I'll leave it at this.

In a nutshell, I use MacOS despite disliking so many things about it because Microsoft has made Windows so annoying and terrible that it is now worse than MacOS. Good job MS.