I switched to Mac at about the same time as you. I can't see myself ever going back to Windows but if Adobe ever ports their application suite to Linux, I'd switch immediately.
Windows 7 was the pinnacle windows experience for me and it has gotten worse ever since.
> Windows 10 has a 5 second boot up time
Man, I wish. My 10 system never boots up that fast. Meanwhile my Windows 7 desktop takes 15 seconds to boot up on SSD. Those 10 seconds just aren't that much of a feature for me-especially since my laptop/desktop are typically in sleep mode anyway.
> most all annoyances anyone has online can be configured away,
Yes, because we should have to do work to eliminate baked in ads and processes that share my information with who knows who.
Also, you can't even intuitively FIND settings. The Control Panel has some settings the Settings app doesn't have and vice versa. It's a mess. Why can't they all be in one place? Mac? one place.
I can't even get Windows 10 to update. Instead I have to constantly kill a rogue update process that decimates resources because I can't get a basic update to download and install properly.
http://i.imgur.com/nJhqlvX.jpg
I am far more productive now than I was on OSX. Switched over when the Windows Subsystem for Linux came out (you can see my ZSH shell running in the corner there)
Jelly yet?
I also have this theme installed on Windows 10, which is why everything is dark including the ConEmu's titlebar: http://www.cleodesktop.com/2016/08/after-dark-cc-theme-for-w...
I spend long hours staring at the screen, I need a dark theme for eyesight preserving reasons. I had a dark theme on OSX until Apple decided to give a massive middle finger to the theming scene when they released El Capitain. The built-in dark mode just doesn't cut it. Yet another reason I'm glad im on Windows now.
Really? In what ways?
This is interesting to me, because the main reason I'm a mac zealot (for all but le screengames) is because it's mostly indistinguishable from working on a linux box, without any of the negative aspects of running linux on a workstation. Any time I try to do work on my Windows machine it feels very handicapped. WSL helps, but it's still one more layer of abstraction.
SSH keys/git always feel like a hassle on Windows, rsync was slow as fuck for me on WSL (but works fine in Cygwin), any kind of scripted behavior is a hassle. Package management outside of WSL is pretty annoying, choco is okay, but nothing compared to brew/apt.
At best I could see myself being equally productive on Windows, but not without significant effort.
Granted there were a few of annoyances I had to find workarounds for, but nothing unsurmountable, we are devs after all. There was a lot I had to relearn the-windows-way, old habits I had to drop, new ones I had to adopt. But with experience comes expertise, and you get used to the new way. I now have that handicapped feeling when I use OSX, death by a thousand restrictions. Funny thing, I never noticed them before, I assumed that's just how things were.
You don't know how far you can push and customize an OS until you make it your main environment and force yourself to stick to it until you overcome and find your new workflow. Pussyfooting around with Windows while you use OSX on your main machine is not how you test the OS for fitness, nor how you change old habits. You have to go in it with an open mind, you're not going to find OSX in Windows, you WILL have to relearn new ways of doing things, then you have to dive into the deep end of the pool head-first and attempt to hit your stride.
Until I wanted Emacs.
Until I wanted to uninstall software.
Until I wanted to setup a VM in VirtualBox (set up a Win2k12 Server VM tonight, and it simply failed to boot 3 consecutive times, then booted up in a "repair" mode, and then failed to boot again, just to boot up again after the 5-6th try. Wonderful).
Until I wanted a damned clock that keeps time (always have to manually stop/start automatic time in the options).
I really want to like Windows but I can't. It feels like it's going out of its way to annoy me. Booting up a fresh Debian install feels so much better... I just feel like I have to understand how things work much more. Linux is a sharp tool, and Windows feels like a clunky bicycle.
Can't use Emacs on Windows? Use any other editor. Can't setup VM in VirtualBox? A VirtualBox (maybe) problem
If you go on Windows expecting the same environment as OSX or whatever OS you're on, you're going to have a bad time. Booting up a fresh Debian install feels better because you know what to do already.
Booting up a fresh Debian install for anyone else is likely to be an almost impossible undertaking without reading some kind of guide, if you're wanting to setup a proper dev environment.
There are problems in any platform you chose, you're probably just subconsciously sidestepping those in your process of setting up, while the Windows ones stick out to you.
Example problems I notice on Mac that are fine on Windows; Docker is extremely slow, I need to run it inside a Linux VM for any kind of proper developing Window management is horrible Installing software
Now, I'm no advocate for any OS, I love running Arch Linux with i3wm, I love OSX and I love Windows. I don't see any reason at all to hate any OS, I can setup my dev environment on practically any platform I could want with little or no difference. The only things that change are the things around my environment, the simplicity of i3wm, the task bar on OSX etc.
In my opinion Linux is the outlier here, which provides the greatest change in environment, not a bad one mind you, just a difference. Mac and Windows are mostly interchangable, I can switch betweem them with little overhead.
But... to Emacs users, there is no "any other" editor :)
// That being said, it's possible to run a native Windows build of Emacs, I remember doing that at some point. It wasn't overly nice though, and you have to delve into the whole msys/mingw/cygwin thing.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39182483/how-to-use-x-win...
It's like they don't even try. After a lifetime of looking down at Windows users, most Mac users go into Windows looking for reasons to validate the way they already feel towards it (irrational hatred) and don't allow themselves to like anything about it. They hit a couple of bumps in the road and quit in frustration and use those as excuses for their decision to retreat back into their comfort zone.
Don't be that guy.
I am proud to say that I can fully configure a dev environment and work on any major OS out there. Linux (Debian and Redhat based), OSX, and Windows.
Currently, I'm glad I'm no longer bound to OSX (deprecated OS, overpriced hardware) or limited to Linux (no gaming and no adobe suite). I'm on a constantly evolving OS ran by a forward thinking company on hardware upgradable through the next decade. It can only get better from here. I got no worries.
I dont understand what you are trying to say there.
Not being able to run Emacs as a reason not to use Windows is like saying; Damn! PulseAudio doesn't work on Windows, guess I'm back to Ubuntu.
There is no alternative for emacs if gimp does not count as alternative for photoshop.
I don't prefer OS X over OpenBSD or Debian. What I like is that I can mostly just hop from one to the other without doing a context-switch. Things (mostly) work as I expect them to from one box to the other. That's not true for me on Windows (but that is to be expected).
I learned about computers on Windows, from 95 to Vista (briefly touched it and then left for Unix). I used to memorize countless contextual menus and options and paths between each, so that I would see how to solve a problem when it arose and could diagnose it without access to a computer. I still do not have the same ease with Unix.
What I have gained by using Unix is real knowledge about how computers actually work, not only how the OS itself is built. And in my anecdotal experience, typical users of Windows (at work, college and friends) unequivocally understand and know less about computers than typical users of Linux do. That is true of Mac users in general but the effect is less pronounced than with Windows - most Mac users that I know have a basic understanding of the command line.
But take this for what it is: personal experience.