Apple's notebooks are excellent, no argument there.
Unfortunately Windows 8 and 10 are just not great OSs, in my opinion. A major theme on these threads is "Apple is trying to force mobile onto desktop computers." yet I see Windows doing it just as much, and not nearly as smooth, as Apple. Cortana, weird metro UI layout, terrible settings, confusing maintenance, updates never work, slow response times, etc.
I gave up on Windows 10 when I got my father a new laptop and had to troubleshoot my sister's. The OS is a mess. Finding basic things is so difficult. Just give me a control panel. Now we have "Settings" too, which is just a mess. Windows Update never works properly. It constantly needs a troubleshooter to run and start and stop the services again.
My dad didn't want to log in with an email to his laptop. So I disabled it (which was difficult to find, so I had to google it.) Now it's suddenly back, and he's complaining about it. There's no way he manually did it purposefully.
Trying to disable things like Cortana never works right. The huge debacle of info being sent to microsoft and needing heavy workarounds to actually prevent it from occurring. And then being force fed apps with advertisements built into the OS...come on.
Apple simply needs to improve their hardware at their price point and 90% of these threads wouldn't be made. The OS needs some additional features and improvements, but the experience is just so much better than Win10 and 8 for me.
My current build uses Windows 7 and whenever it is officially unsupported I will move on from Windows completely.
The old Control Panel is still there.
> Trying to disable things like Cortana never works right.
Cortana is a settable option. There's no reason to try to disable it.
*> Now we have "Settings" too, which is just a mess.
Settings is a clean, well-organized and simple app that does what most people want. It saves ordinary users from having to grapple with the Control Panel.
You'd probably do better if you spent more time in learn mode instead of in angry mode.
And you'd probably do better if you weren't condescending towards other people's experiences and preferences.
You say the Settings app is great, yet it's not great enough to replace the control panel? Redundant settings abound between the two?
There are many reasons to want to disable Cortana-not just turn it off, because it doesn't actually turn it off.
As far as search goes, my Windows 7 machine finds most settings too.
The Control Panel remains because a lot of hardcore Windows users would have bitched if Microsoft had removed it.
As usual, Microsoft would have been criticized for whichever decision it made. That's life when who have more than 400 million Windows 10 users.
It was simply intended as good advice.
If you think about it, there are good reasons for moving settings to a simpler, touch-sensitive, sandboxed app.
If you think about it, there are good reasons for moving settings from the Control Panel in stages, and for keeping the mouse-oriented Control Panel program around for people who have grown used to it.
If you've read the book, the anger is a System 1 rant and should be modified by System 2 thinking.