21% of Windows users plan to switch to Mac, says survey, vs. 2% Mac to Windows | Hacker News Reader

21% of Windows users plan to switch to Mac, says survey, vs. 2% Mac to Windows

9to5mac.com

43 pointsartsandsci110 comments

(What follows is entirely personal and in no way an attack or attempt to demean anyone else's personal choices.)

I'm a longtime Mac user currently considering switching away from the Mac. I'm a little sad about it and I don't feel entirely like it's by choice, but it is what it is.

This switch is partly in response to the direction Mac OS is heading, but mostly due to hardware cost.

I genuinely dislike Apple's emphasis on thinness in their laptops. I genuinely can't afford to spend a minimum of £1,200 on a 13" laptop that's essentially glued shut and has no upgrade path at all.

Previous Macs have given me ~10 years of use each because I've been able to buy a configuration I could afford then gradually upgrade the RAM and replace the hard-disk as I needed.

Add to that the fact that the cheapest 15" laptop (the size I prefer) is £1,900 which is totally galling and puts it way, way out of my price bracket.

As a result, I'm actively looking for where to move when my current MacBook, a 15" from 2009, eventually dies. So far the best options seem to be a modern-ish ThinkPad, which I can get relatively cheaply second-hand and upgrade as I see fit. The ThinkPads are definitely not in Apple's league in terms of fit and finish but they're pretty hardy and give me options within my price range.

I'll be sad when I finally leave the Mac, but not heartbroken. There are lots of things I'll miss, but getting to know a new OS -- and hopefully switching platform for the last time -- will be an adventure.

Why don't you buy a used mid 2012 MBP instead? For 5-600 pound you can get one with a still good quad core i7 cpu and you can upgrade/replace everything, removing the ODD gives you extra space for additional HDD/SSD, can handle 16GB ram, easy to replace the battery (I just did, it was about 30 quid from amazon), it's perfect. I'm still using mine and not planning to replace it until it dies.

That's an option I've considered, but it's only really a temporary solution and might not be a viable one when I come to need a new laptop.

My 2009 machine probably has another year or two in it, meaning that a 2012 machine will likely be a minimum of six years old when I get it, which means it may only have a usable life of three or four years from that point on. Even being optimistic and assuming the hardware lasts 10 years from when I buy it, Mac OS support certainly won't.

The real kicker is that those are the last machines that I'll really be able to buy that meet my needs and preferences. Come 2022 or whenever it's time to upgrade again, I don't know where I go from that 2012 machine. I certainly don't expect Apple to have backtracked on their sealed-box design.

There's no easy answer really, and all of them involve compromise somehow. I'm now treating it as a matter of 'when' I switch, rather than 'if'. Maybe it's best to get it over with sooner rather than later?

Apple's market share in computers is under 10%. If 20+% of Windows users switched in the next two years, Apple's Mac sales would have to grow by an enormous factor in that period, far more than doubling what they sell now. This seems unlikely.

I assume that either the survey results are nonsense, or planning to switch has little correlation with actually switching.

Apple's target market in general is only a small subset of Windows' in general. A lot of what contributes to Windows' market share are computers that enterprise, government, and internet cafes purchase for their employees/users because they get more choice in hardware and because MS caters to their needs better than Apple. Apple's target market are people who are buying everyday devices for themselves, boutique creatives, and small businesses/startups.

Because of this, it makes sense that people would want to move away from their boring business beige-box computer to something more exciting, and I think thats mostly what is driving this sentiment. Don't forget also that a lot of these computers are using a very old version of Windows and not products like the new Surface.

Yeah these numbers definitely seem fake to me. I would bet my house that at no point in the future will 21% of Windows users switch to Mac.

I mean, if 21% of Windows users became Mac users that would usher in a very real revolution in the Mac platform because suddenly Apple would, for one thing, most likely actually invest seriously in developing Mac!

But that's not happening because there's no way 21% of Windows users are going to switch to Mac, because Americans would sell their mother for a lower sticker price. People are only willing to pay money for things you can show off, like cars and clothes and phones. A laptop or desktop computer is possible to show off, but it's not something you drive around in, wear, or hold in your hand all the time.

I suspect a lot of people want to switch to a Mac when they're at home idly thinking about it, but give up the idea instantaneously when their money is on the line.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly re: these alleged 21%.

I don't know many people, so my sample size is extremely small, but I don't know anyone who's on Windows and wants to switch to Apple. All Windows people I know resent Apple and think it's stupid. I only know people who want to switch away from Apple, as is the majority of the comments on this thread.

I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware." With the new Windows Ubuntu subsystem, I've been really tempted to get a Surface.

Also, I'd be interested to see how this changes when we look at businesses. Windows has thrived historically by being the default for the enterprise, and I doubt that Mac has the same level of penetration there.

I won a Surface Pro 3 a few years ago and used it as a lightweight dev machine/school laptop. It was really nice for those tasks, but I had plenty of issues with it that I solved by buying a used Macbook Air. Most of the issues were just personal preference (I didn't like the stand, the keyboard was annoying compared to a builtin keyboard, weird screen aspect ratio, Windows).

I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware."

Dell XPS DE? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/dells-latest-xps-13-...

Or Purism? https://puri.sm/products/

Yes XPS 13 + Solus for an easy to use UNIX GUI. I kid you not, I got compliments by hardcore Mac users, for how nice my setup feels.

Those look great! I'll have to check them out.

Be warned Dell skimped out on the $20 Iris GPU upgrade so this generation has half the performance of the previous generation.

I feel a little like you, but the thing that keeps me away from Windows is the insane privacy nightmare it's become. Every single MS product is now studded with telemetry that spews data about everything you do and probably leaks a lot of unintentional information and meta-data. Using a Windows box feels like having a shadow VNC server installed where MS can just watch you.

MacOS has telemetry too but it's much more limited and honestly I trust Apple's security more than Microsoft's. Mac telemetry can also be disabled relatively easily and as near as I can tell without much consequence outside iCloud stuff. On Windows as near as I can tell turning this stuff off is pulling teeth.

For those who follow the "but I have nothing to hide" line -- just replace privacy with security. Leaking that much data is also a security nightmare. My company is pretty high on the paranoia scale due to what we do, so we worry about that. So that adds a pragmatic professional reason along with the personal ones. No I do not want to spray fragments of secret keys, passwords, network I/O info, and confidential company info into the Microsoft cloud.

Of course I hear rumors out of Apple that they're experimenting with ARM Macs that are app store only. I could care less if they swap X64 for ARM as long as it's an ARM64 core that performs well enough, but if they also turn MacOS into iOS with a big screen I will be forced to switch. Note that these rumors are unsubstantiated and refer to test hardware. It's entirely possible that internal test hardware and test OS images are locked to an internal app store but that the final product will be different. They might do this just for trade secret security-- every app could have embedded stuff to try to catch leakers etc.

I know the telemetry!! thing is a bit overplayed nowadays, hence the greyness of your comment, but it's still spot on. The fact that Microsoft won't give people an off setting (not reduced, not minimal, OFF - stop talking to the mothership entirely) speaks volumes.

Given the fact that it's all a black box, you're taking on pure faith that it only collects what Microsoft says it collects (and that those assurances remain valid after every single update).

I'm not sure I trust Microsoft that much. And I mean that in the general sense of not giving ultimate trust to any amoral corporate entity with a poor history.

How is being concerned about one's personal info and security critical info something that can be "overplayed?"

"Seatbelts are getting overplayed. I'm not going to bother anymore. Everyone's dying in car wrecks."

"Hey bro this STD thing is getting overplayed. Why do people keep telling me to wear a condom? This is getting old."

Security is always a concern-- any time you update software on any platform (Linux included) you're putting a certain amount of faith in developers that they're being honest and haven't borked things badly. But there is a difference between the risk of something breaking and the knowledge that the vendor is almost "grey hat" and wants to spy on you as much as they can get away with.

Now imagine if Facebook made an OS. That would be downright comical.

> With the new Windows Ubuntu subsystem, I've been really tempted to get a Surface.

In my experience, it is far, far away from substituting the UNIX experience you get from macOS/Linux/*BSD

Because it doesn't come with an Xserver and getting one on is just evil. I find Ubuntu and windows much easier to use than Mac...

Err, xquartz is an install away for OS X? Not sure what you're referring to with X on OS X here.

How is running a package install evil?

I work on WSL, so I'd love to hear what some of the limitations are that are holding it back from being as good as the experience elsewhere.

I use WSL all day every day. There are two things holding it back from being a better *nix experience than OSX:

1) the terminal sucks.

2) WSL should be a service. Or at least we should be able to choose to have it always-on regardless of a terminal being open. We need to be able to have WSL start at boot.

(Now wondering if anyone has made some sort of WSL System Tray app)

Mac user here, but in Windows all day on Parallels and servers.

For #1, this is a tremendous help: https://conemu.github.io It's the first thing I install on Windows. Comes with build-in profiles for bash/WSL, powershell, cmd, and Admin sessions of the latter two. Still not as good as iTerm or stock Terminal, but a massive improvement over cmd.exe.

#2: Totally agree, but I think things are moving this direction.

The terminal does suck. I use hyper instead of the default wsl bash. I find it to be a much better experience.

I use WSL a bunch on my Surface at home, but I've found GCC build times to be very lacking, with a huge perf hit compared to native Linux. You take a 2x hit when accessing /mnt/c/, and even when building within Linux filesystem, the build times are significantly slower (couple minutes vs 10s of seconds). Benchmarks put WSL on-par or better than native Ubuntu, so it's likely just a file i/o issue that can hopefully be fixed.

Yep, fair. We haven't gotten the file system performance to where it needs to be yet. You may notice some improvements in the latest insider builds, but there is still much more work to do.

> I'd love to hear what some of the limitations are that are holding it back from being as good as the experience elsewhere.

Sadly she didn't expand that much on her actual pain points but Bodil Stokke was not impressed a few weeks back: https://twitter.com/bodil/status/868925787038208001

> I guess if you're happy using plain bash and think Windows is already pretty performant, it must seem acceptable.

> But, seriously, even running lunix in a VM on a Windows host is a million times better than this. Back to my VirtualBox…

> I didn't even get as far as X this time, just trying to get my fish/tmux running in WSL on ConEmu had me feeling like I was being pranked.

[responding to a commenter]

> It runs just fine, but gl finding a terminal emulator that can keep up with my fish config... (well, tbf maybe Putty can, but I hate Putty.)

So the main limitation seems to be that the available terminal emulators are essentially unusable. Unixers live most of their life in or around term, not having a good one is a straight killer.

I played around with a coworker's Win10 machine a while back. Plugged my smartcard into it (a Yubikey 4), ran 'gpg2 --card-status'... nothing.

Given that I use it for both commit signing and SSH auth, the lack of GPG smartcard support would make WSL a pain to use at best compared to the Linux systems I typically use.

The WSL experience feels segregated, pretty much like a VM (which I know it's not). It's a bit like using Docker for Mac vs docker on Linux: you can strive to make things as transparent as possible with mappings and mounts, but lots of things are segregated (e.g user accounts, or the very fact that what lxrun creates is some sort of instance/image within your user's home dir, not something integral to the OS itself).

MacOS leaks unix through its pores: by separating cmd and ctrl is able to have emacs movements (^A, ^E, ^K, ^W, ^Y) in every Cocoa input field. Composability is also very possible from the get go thanks to tools like Automator and Services. Its terminal is top-tier†. This is the kind of little things that makes MacOS feel unix-y throughout. There are also lots of command line tools and documentation as man pages for purely darwin/MacOS stuff: it's not always perfect but the platform reaches out to plain being unix.

If you can make it so that running bash deeply feels like you're interacting with the currently running OS and that I can do everything from there using unix conventions (no calling an exe, no slash switch args, man pages... see this talk[0]) and not some segregated image below which there is an underlying OS, then you've won.

I mean, this needs to deeply feel native, embedded, not translating, layered. Hard to explain, but currently it feels like I'm talking through some Babelfish.

PS: crazy thought, but if MS can roll - no scratch that - if Windows can be its own "distro", kind of like FreeBSD base system, which changes with each major version and naturally updates, instead of (or in addition to) providing images of third party userlands that happen to run on a sort of segregated loopback mounted image, then you've won.

PPS: Oh, and ngrep doesn't work :D

PPPS: And please have a decent terminal from the get go.

† Damn, I love jumping back to those auto-marked prompt lines, being able to toggle mouse reporting, hiding/viewing the alternate screen, or showing the currently opened pwd or vim buffer in the titlebar through those escape sequences.

[0]: dotRB '13 - "It's a UNIX system, I know this!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qucn0QuXFhc&index=13&list=PL...

Here is one of the first things that I encountered in WSL. I tried because lisp in Windows, while not terrible, is far from the most pleasant experience. I haven't had time to dig into it, but it turned me off of WSL exploration:

    greg@gregcomp:~$ sbcl
    WARNING:
    Couldn't re-execute SBCL with proper personality flags (/proc isn't mounted? setuid?)
    Trying to continue anyway.
    This is SBCL 1.1.14.debian, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
    More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
    
    SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
    It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
    BSD-style licenses.  See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
    distribution for more information.

Edit: In case it's not clear, that's the entire output of launching an SBCL REPL. There is no actual REPL.

I'll try this out locally and see if we can identify the problem.

How so?

Just curious. I'm a Mac user, so I haven't gotten the chance to try it yet. But I've got some coworkers on Windows, so I'm hopeful the subsystem will help relieve some frustration setting up developer environments.

It has improved a lot over the past few months.

There are some minor annoyances, but that is true with OSX too. In some ways, WSL is a more native unix experience, or at least a more native Linux experience.

I made the jump in November and never pick up my MBP anymore.

> that is true with OSX too. In some ways, WSL is a more native unix experience

In what way is WSL a more native unix experience than a literal unix system?

> or at least a more native Linux experience.

Well that's rather obvious given OSX is not any more a linux system than Illumos or DragonflyBSD.

It is a more-native experience in the sense that for the open source developer, you are using the same binaries as are typically deployed in production.

Pretty much no one hosts web applications on OSX, and you still run into the odd library that you have to fiddle with to get running right on OSX. Brew always felt a little hacky to me, or at least not fully part of the OSX ecosystem.

So, in that way, WSL has a leg up.

I've gone the Lenovo X + OpenBSD route.

>> I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware.

Perhaps you should explain why you want to switch away from Mac, since MacOS is probably that best platform that satisfies both of your criteria.

It sounds like there are some deeper reasons for switching.

Speaking for myself, I switched away from Macs to Windows a few years ago because I saw a very expensive "soldered-on-everything" future with the Macbook Pros (damn, I loved the expandability of the old Unibodies) and a very bad customer service experience with a product (early 2011 15" MBP) that should have been recalled before mine turned into a brick (they didn't publicly address the issue until months after I was forced to get a new laptop).

If I didn't have the well-known problem with 2011 MBPs, I probably would have sucked up the price premium and bought a new MBP in spite of how expensive it is to max out an MBP.

Reasons:

1) Difficult to get NVIDIA GPUs running on Mac (you can use an eGPU, but it sucks). 2) Expandability & performance. It sucks getting gouged for storage. 3) Cost. Macs have always been more expensive, but they seem to have got way more expensive.

1 is most of it. I do machine learning as part of my job, and it's frustrating not being able to run anything locally.

I went the desktop route. I feel that, for many people, laptops simply encourage bad work habits. It's like the idea that you shouldn't read in bed, because doing so habituates you to not sleeping there. Sure, some people genuinely need a portable. But... for many people desktops do some nice things:

- Great price / performance

- Great Linux/BSD compatibility

- Improved ergonomics

- A station at which one can habituate him/herself to working :-)

- Greatly improved attention at meetings if in-person meetings are a thing (modulo note-taking, which I prefer to do sparsely and on paper anyway).

I know a few people who have re-desktopped. Their new stack seems to be Linux desktop + Android phone, which is getting perilously close to Linux everywhere.

The main reasons seem to be your first three. If you haven't looked recently take a look at what you can get for your $$$ in the desktop world. You can build insane performance beasts for the cost of a good laptop. I mean ludicrously fast and huge-- things like stripe+mirror RAID SSDs right on the PCI bus, 16+ 3ghz+ cores, a GPU-based parallel supercomputer, and loads of RAM. It's tempting and would be doubly so if I were doing deep learning or anything similarly demanding.

The Galaxy S8 also has a dock that snaps Android into desktop mode. I've seen it and it's definitely a usable base desktop, but in the above scenario it works great as a full screen remote access terminal for your big beefy desktop. The gear (sans monitor) will fit into a backpack.

I feel like we're on the verge of something.

Considering the used a 'smart poll' or internet poll I think would be the correct term, there might be a very high bias toward the 'already wanting to use osx' group by selection bias (educated, more heavily internet using).

Also, the summary says nothing about numbers (I don't think they got a lot of 150k+ responders considering the exact 20%, e.g. 1/5) so basically this is a 'look at us, we have new "data" ' poll for marketing purposes without statistical significance.

Opinion wise: As a forced osx user (other machine uses debian and xmonad so you can guess the type of user) I would rather switch to Windows than the other way around. But my sample size is just one.

Have you tried kwm? It's been a while since I used a Mac, but I think that would be preferable to using Windows :)

I can never go back to Mac. Our last MacBook was a giant turd and huge money hole. Bought a cheap windows laptop and I couldn't be happier

If you're used to Windows you'll find OSX very limiting. Everything is dumbed down and hard to customize (which some see as a benefit). Simple things like not being able to copy/edit the current folder path from Finder or missing basic file operations like say, cutting and pasting a file are very frustrating. Compared to Explorer, Finder just lacks so much, you can install Double Commander which helps, but the UI is ugly and doesn't match OSX. Spaces is much less intuitive than the Windows flavor, I had to install a 3rd-party app for tiling windows (Snap in Windows). I'm not sure there's any way to sync OS settings across machines, like Windows.

This is all on top of the lack of choices in hardware, the same reason I'm on Android instead of iOS.

You've clearly done zero research into your complaints before writing them up and posting them here.

I use OSX daily in my current development job? In that way I was forced to switch from Windows. These are all personal shortcomings I've experienced. I think OSX is great for people that want to open the box, turn on the machine and use it as is. I'm a tinkerer and consider myself a power user, compared to Windows it falls short of my preferences. I like the Unix base but with Windows' WSL that edge is fading.

Strange my ignorance is so "clear" but you've provided 0 reasons why.

Because I don't want to start a point by point reply chain to try to convince you. I don't really care that you prefer Windows, only that you're evangelizing ignorance.

I get it, you want macOS to be a Windows clone and it not being the same frustrates you. You could actually tinker, poke around, explore, Google it, ask for help, whatever, and be that power user you profess to be, or you can choose to complain.

> Strange my ignorance is so "clear" but you've provided 0 reasons why.

Here:

"copy/edit the current folder path from Finder" Completely doable through the UI with just a mouse. You can literally get the answer to this with Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" on the bit I quoted from you. Also achievable in a more than a few "power user" ways too.

"missing basic file operations like say, cutting and pasting a file" Drag and drop does exactly this. Also available as a keyboard shortcut or through the UI with a modifier key, but under the unixy name of "move". Also doable in other "power user" ways.

>You could actually tinker

I have. I've installed the kernel extensions. Installed Spectacle for tiling windows. I installed Karabiner, it worked, then I updated the OS and it didn't. I think it does again now?

>Completely doable through the UI with just a mouse.

I know the dance you have to do to do this, because I have googled it. Here's the suggested solution:

>To do this open a new Finder window by pressing Command-N, and then press Shift-Command-G to reveal the Go to Folder panel for the new window. Then drag a target file from another window to the Go to Folder text field, where it will be converted to a full text path that you can select and copy.

The same thing on Windows? ctrl+L

>Also available as a keyboard shortcut or through the UI with a modifier key

Which is counter-intuitive when ctrl+X does nothing, and the UI entry for Cut is greyed out. This wasn't even an option until 10.7!

These things are frustrating when moving from Windows, that was my point.

>I know, because I have googled it. Here's the suggested solution:

Sigh. You just copied the in-line Google result page summary to me. Did you even click that link and read the other three ways to do this? One of which is just two right-clicks. It's not a single keyboard shortcut or menu option like Windows/Explorer out of the box, but a power user could also make that happen and could even map it to Cmd-L if they wanted. Probably takes 5 minutes to solve once and forever. But nope, the OS is dumbed down and not customizable at all, right?

This is exactly why these point-by-point reply chains between operating system differences are a waste of time. If it's not exactly the same as what you already know, you're not interested.

>It's not a single keyboard shortcut or menu option like Windows/Explorer out of the box

That was my point?

>a power user could also make that happen and could even map it to Cmd-L if they wanted

I've even seen Applescripts for it! They took longer than 5 minutes to develop. I want to spend my time tweaking in-depth parts of the UI, not very basic features that exist already in another.

OSX being dumbed down is a feature, if you want to sync your podcasts it's a great system for it.

https://imgur.com/a/7ZO2O

There. That's the Automator script that adds it to Finder's right-click menu. That's it. Add another 20 seconds to go configure your Keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences and someone who's actually a power user can make this happen in about 40 seconds. 5 minutes was being generous to a novice.

Edit: For funsies, here's the fresh out out of the box, mouse only macOS way too: https://imgur.com/a/Wce61

Edit2: "OSX being dumbed down is a feature, if you want to sync your podcasts it's a great system for it." Sure, just like "Windows is a great system for playing games, but if you want to do real work, you use a Mac". See how stupid that sort of ignorance sounds?

Much of the configuration in OSX is hidden, compared to Windows; some of this being a result of Window's dominance at the Enterprise level. That's why you need Terminal to Show Hidden Files.

OSX has a different strength: simplicity. It's why I told my dad to buy one. What you paint here is a false equivalence.

We can all cherry pick complaints. Try remapping your capslock as another control key on both systems and use that as a gauge for which OS hides settings.

In Windows Explorer I can just copy the address bar and paste it into another window.

My biggest complaint about the Mac OS is that the UI design is garbage compared to Windows IMO. You can read all about why right here - http://archive.aaronhildebrandt.com/archive/osx-an-exercise-...

Beyond that, just about everything Apple makes is not made for people who like to be in control. They are way too simple for my taste and they regularly ignore features that people actually need.

Completely agree. If someone would make something like Windows Explorer for Mac, I would totally buy it.

As a note, for Mac OS X Sierra, if you press Option while copying, the pathname is copied.

Well, I disagree, as someone who has used Linux, Windows, and mac pretty extensively.

Any of the interfaces anywhere approaching "easy to use" all have pretty severe limitations at some point. At that point, you rely on the application ecosystem to fix it up.

macOS has a good application ecosystem. Where the base system doesn't fit your needs, where you prioritize spending your time, you bring in the 3rd party applications. Just like you don't write code in Notepad, if you love window management to death, you go and install something like slate.

So in my opinion your real day-to-day experience depends on your priorities and application ecosystem, regardless of platform. macOS seems to have a healthy application ecosystem, perhaps because mac users tend to buy apps. You have a smaller system overall, but in a hand-wavy sense, the median mac application feels more polished than the median windows application.

After 15y with only Macs I've bought a very expensive Dell (maxed out XPS13) last year.

The quality is unbelievable terrible I'll never buy another Dell, so my next computer will be again a MBP/iMac.

You should try a surface book, I've been extremely happy with the quality.

I've decided against a Surfacebook b/c the version last year had that gap when folded. Today I'd buy a Surfacebook if it wasn't for a MBP b/c there I also have issues with Windows 10, e.g. the dock that sometime just doesn't hide.

Help me understand what you believe the problem is with the gap that exists when the notebook is closed.

It's just me, I don't like it.

I'm not going to make excuses for Dell, but FWIW, I found their Precision Mobile Workstation laptops to be pretty high quality.

The ones I had still used plastic for the cases rather than aluminum, but aside from that the build quality is probably much closer to what you're looking for.

Oh, that was my plan for a Macbook replacement.

What is it about it that is terrible? Just the general look and feel, or anything specific?

Fan broken after 6 months.

Keyboard broken.

When in sleep-mode, powers up, does bios self check, if something is wrong (e.g. fan), does a beeping noise on the same level as our smoke detection (!) alarm. But doesn't find the defect when booted with the Dell self test support app in Windows 10.

Very low battery time after 1 year.

Display is flapping up and down when opened.

Rubber bands at bottom fall of b/c glue doesn't hold.

Very load and strange noises when under moderate load - no clue where they come from (not the fan) - they depend e.g. on what is displayed (white, black, video, ...).

My mistake: I thought the GPU (most expensive available in the XPS13 back then) was more powerful.

The display is really nice though when working with Lightroom.

I would argue that 21% of Windows users are saying they'll consider getting a Mac, not necessarily plan on switching. Apple might be able to get 10% of those considering to switch (a SWAG) which means they might capture 2% of the Windows market. That seems much more reasonable.

I made the decision to move away from Mac at the start of this year.

I just can't justify spending the amount of money it costs for essentially a shiny linux box. I spend the vast amount of my time in iTerm/browser/IDE anyway, and having dumped iPhones a few years ago I no longer need the single ecosystem. (I do need to look into running OSX as a VM for the /very/ occasional use of XCode)

My 10 year old 13" Macbook is still chugging along, but it's basically becoming useless for development work nowadays, it just gets far too hot now trying to compile things - that will most likely be replaced with a Dell XPS 13 (When I can afford to)

My 8 year old iMac was on it's last legs a couple of months ago, so I spent ~£800 on building a new PC that should see me through another 10+ years of use easily. Running Mint on it, and it's handling everything I need and more.

I was /very/ tempted to just jump over to Windows 10, but the licence cost was 1/4 the cost of the build, and that just didn't sit right. Shame, as I've been setting them up for as a trial for rolling out 'proper' desktop/AD setup at work and it works just great - with the linux subsystem as well.

I'd be interested to hear more about how that switch went and what obstacles you faced whilst carrying it out. I've posted elsewhere in this discussion that my intention is to do the same, for similar reasons.

A lot better than I had anticipated. I'd expected there to be teething issues, but it was nowhere near as bad :)

One thing that did (does) annoy me is that I couldn't get the Apple Bluetooth keyboard to work properly, it would just randomly disconnect and not work until I rebooted. This is the most annoying thing I've found, as I still use a Mac at work (and obviously still use the Macbook), so I'm trying to add onto existing muscle memory and it gets frustrating at times. I do need to look at making it work, or swapping to a new keyboard at work so that keys are in the same places!

Software wise, pretty much everything I use on the Mac I've found suitable replacements for on Mint. There are things that aren't quite as /nice/, but functionally they work: - Transmit - Alfred

However, I still haven't found an email client that 'clicks' for me. I've used Outlook for many many years now, and it works just fine for what I need, so Evolution seemed to be the nearest thing, but it just ... well, sucks. I've opted for just using the online version (I have office365 for my email) so that isn't /that/ major.

But then being able to install tooling for work from just the standard package manager is nice, yes I have homebrew on the Mac, but that's an addon to make things work, and I have to remember to do brew update && brew upgrade every now and then.

Oh, and as an added bonus, because I built the PC I got to spec it as I wanted it - so for the first time in 33 years I own a graphics card! I figured I might as well, add to the lifespan of the machine, got a GeForce GTX 1050 2GB so now I can play games on there as well - in high def.

So basically I've ended up with a much better spec machine, added the ability to do decent gaming, saved a small fortune, can put whatever OS I want on it, all for the downside of not being able to use the keyboard I want. (But I /will. be revisiting that!)

> My 10 year old 13" Macbook

> My 8 year old iMac

There's no PC manufacturer that comes close to Apple build quality. My dad is on a 2009 MBP that runs great. Well worth the extra dollars up front. Swapped out the HD for an SSD and that thing is so fast. I'm still on a late 2010 MBA. It could be faster, but I use the cloud for compiling software (a preemptible 1CPU/7.5GB instance on GCE is $0.01/hr, for an extra cent you can get another core).

So I don't really understand why people (a) serious people keep buying new computers when old Macs are great and (b) say that Apple products are expensive.

True, the build quality is great - thats what attracted me in the first place - but upgradeability is not really a thing with Macs. Sure, I upgraded the HDD, swapped out the SuperDrive for another SSD, but the motherboards only support so much RAM, so once you hit that limit there is not a lot else you can do.

Sure, for some people building things in the cloud is fine, but others (like me) I like to have things running where I am.

Laptops are obviously a different beast - nobody expects to be able to upgrade every little thing on them, and the Macbook will be staying until such time I can no longer bear to work on it, or it gives up the ghost completely. And I can get a better spec laptop for the same (if not less) price as a new Macbook - and have ports that I can actually use :p

The problem from me switching to Windows from Mac is iOS development tools.

Ubuntu on Windows is really great.

+1 for Ubuntu on Windows.

Really solved my main issue with Windows, the horrible console prompt.

https://conemu.github.io/ + bash worked pretty well

I've always had the issue of WSL taking a long time to start up (5+ seconds) and had assumed that it was WSL taking up that time. Doesn't seem to be the case, as after switching to conemu, everything is much more speedy and tolerable. Thanks for the suggestion.

or better, gnome terminal with https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv

It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications. My company recently started using Xamarin, and to our surprise we can't run automated builds for iOS on our Linux servers. It's really weird. We don't have any macs anywhere, so it looks like we're going to have to get an overpriced mac just for this single build.

We used second hand Mac minis for this. For around $150 we could compile the iOS apps that we developed on Windows.

Via something like TeamViewer we could see the result on the mac and automated builds were done via TeamCity.

>> It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications.

It also allows them to control the development environment which makes for a much better experience than say, Android dev.

I just want some command line tools that perform a build. They exist for Mac. There ought to be a Linux port. I don't care about development experience.

Since iOS is still essentially macOS, albeit a heavily customized version, making iOS tools work on Macs ought to be wayyyyy easier than releasing them for an ecosystem as different as Windows. They may benefit from developers buying machines but the Mac market is still much bigger than developer purchases. Many iOS technologies are either identical or similar to Mac SDKs, enticing developers familiar with their machines to create Mac versions. Mac versions are useful for development too: even if you are targeting iOS for example, it is often possible to create a "Mac game" of your iOS game and test it way more efficiently by running directly on the Mac without a simulator.

This approach is not "absolutely laughable", it's actually just about the smartest thing they could do.

We use Xamarin. For most code changes the iOS testing is absolutely trivial, since it uses the exact same code running against other platforms. All I want is to compile, it's understandable that they want to keep their IDEs mac-only.

Well, fair enough. But it's really the last holdout of the Ballmer-era platform lock in going. Even MS makes a load of dev tools for Mac and Linux now.

I'm not saying they need to port XCode to Windows. What I am saying they could and probably should do is make it easier to CI iOS apps on Linux (some of the build tooling, as a start) and maybe even allow OS X to be bought & installed trivially on VMWare etc - even as a "developer edition". It would make so many Devs lives easier rather than all these ridiculous and unstable Mac mini hacks everyone ends up doing for iOS dev. I genuinely don't think a OS X for VMWare would tarnish the brand or margins. It's just a EULA change!

Would you explaining in more details what you mean with Ubuntu on Windows? VirtualBox or some other setup?

Windows Subsystem Linux. Initially it was only Ubuntu, but has expanded to other sisters as well.

It is not virtualization. It is native Linux in Windows.

Agree, use it often too and a good alternative I also use often is: https://git-for-windows.github.io/

It gives you a Bash shell with hundreds of useful utilities you used to get only in Cygwin.

Though the most complete is the new Windows Ubuntu system.

I am surprised that 2% is not higher. There are very few alternative to Mac if you want a GUI and a UNIX like system. I really hope Apple invests in Mac. It used to be that Mac hardware was very innovative compared to Software but now, I like their Software (uniform experience on multiple devices) but the Hardware is lacking. Especially the drop of MagSafe and limited Memory and processor support on their New Macbook pros. But I haven't given up on Macs yet. Remember, 'An Apple a day keeps Windows away'.

Ubuntu on Windows really works nicely for me.

I really like Ubuntu, but I don't think it is ready for everyday regular users.

I know plenty of "everyday regular users" that would disagree with you, considering that they spend 99% of their time in a browser.

Seems like most people use Linux because they value their privacy. Using it through windows kind of defeats the purpose of using Linux. Also, to me it seems that by implementing a Linux sub-system, Microsoft is basically admitting that their OS isn't good enough for developers on its own.

Personally, I don't know anyone who chooses to use windows, just people who need it for some reason. It's a privacy nightmare and anyone who considers themselves a "hacker" and still chooses Windows when all they need is Linux, isn't really a "hacker" imo (or at least, they haven't given much thought as to why they should value privacy and freedom).

Seems like most people use Linux because they want to develop software like NodeJS in a shell.

What everyone seems to be missing is that a large cohort of Windows users is on crappy $500 plasticy Windows laptops with 1366x768 screens, 5200RPM HDDs and 2-4h batteries. Of course the Macbook looks like absolute bliss when compared against that. If people were on, say, a Dell XPS 13, the number would be much lower.

On a personal level, I love my Macbook mainly for macOS. It's the perfect intersection of stable, beautiful GUI/UX, UNIX and corporate (= 3rd parties like Adobe) support. Add to that the fact that Apple goes the extra mile when engineering Macbooks (terraced batteries, the hinge is perfectly balanced so you can open it with one hand but its still stiff, fans that have a different pitch per blade to distribute fan noise across the audible spectrum, MagSafe, Force Touchpad, etc.) and you have a winning combo.

Interesting timing on this article.

Just last night I was doing more research regarding what OS my wife's photography business should use after Windows 7.

As mentioned in earlier discussions, a few of my primary sticking points with Windows 10 are:

- Forced updates (because of potential downtime)

- Telemetry (although this is more of a preference, because I doubt it represents a genuine risk to her business).

When I looked at the mechanisms people are using to control those aspects of Windows 10's behavior (WSUS, etc.), I kept thinking how I really don't have the time or interest needed to set up that infrastructure and stay on top of that.

From limited time-is-money perspective, a modern iMac is looking more and more like the right choice, despite the higher hardware cost, and despite the fact that I likely can't fix it onsite myself.

Forced updates: select Defer Feature Updates

Telemetry: install Spybot Anti-beacon or run a PS script like Debloat Windows, takes about 2 minutes. The same telemetry is in your current install of Windows 7, btw.

Thanks for the tips!

> Forced updates: select Defer Feature Updates

My understanding is that unless I'm running WSUS, I can only defer updates for a while (maybe 35 days max?).

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think that means ever 35 days or so, we have to accept all update that Microsoft wants to force-feed non-enterprise users. Even those updates which are much younger than 35 days old.

If I'm correct about that, then I'm not sure it reduces the risk enough for our business needs.

> Telemetry: install Spybot Anti-beacon or run a PS script like Debloat Windows, takes about 2 minutes.

My understanding is that (a) Microsoft treats this as an arms race, and/or (b) it's hard to be certain that these are catching all of the telemetry. Am I mistaken?

> The same telemetry is in your current install of Windows 7, btw.

Actually, it's not. I've done what's necessary to avoid having that patch installed. Which unfortunately puts me in a more precarious position, security-wise.

Max deferral is 365 days. If you're running a business, switch to the business branch. If you don't like a feature, uninstall it.

>it's hard to be certain that these are catching all of the telemetry. Am I mistaken?

Not with Wireshark. Anti-beacon updates itself, and updates what it's blocking. It's a very nice piece of software. Besides, if we are to believe Msoft is only collecting the data they have told us they are collecting in 10, it isn't that scary. (They haven't released any such statement for 7.)

>Actually, it's not. I've done what's necessary to avoid having that patch installed.

I thought you didn't have time or interest for that? Blocking telemetry in 7 was much harder for me, it involved memorizing a list of KBXXXXXX numbers and making sure I didn't accidentally click one every time I updated.

> Not with Wireshark.

I was under the impression that wireshark is unable to verify what Microsoft is sending via telemetry, due to end-to-end encryption.

Am I mistaken?

> I thought you didn't have time or interest for that? Blocking telemetry in 7 was much harder for me, it involved memorizing a list of KBXXXXXX numbers and making sure I didn't accidentally click one every time I updated.

I had that time back when the issue first arose. And my final solution is effective, but significantly suboptimal.

You can tell where it's attempting to phone home, and if the attempt was blocked.

If you're that concerned with telemetry, you might take a glance at Apple's privacy policy. Unlike MS with Windows 10, to my knowledge they have not released a statement of the user info they send home.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/10/20...

> Max deferral is 365 days. If you're running a business, switch to the business branch.

Thanks for the tip about the "business" branch - I hadn't encountered that concept before.

Assuming that [1] is talking about the same thing you are, it sounds like the "365 days" number you quoted applies to what Microsoft calls "upgrades".

"Another thing to keep in mind is that when you enable “Defer upgrades” in the Settings app, Windows 10 will automatically defer upgrades up to 4 months, and if you configure Windows Update for Business, you can further delay upgrades up to an additional 8 months. As such, you can postpone Windows 10 upgrades up to 12 months (4 + 8)."

But I'm just as concerned with the patches that Microsoft doesn't call "upgrades".

According to [2], "quality updates" can only be deferred up to 30 days, and I have no control over "non-deferrable updates".

I'm still evaluating whether or not the liability of those forced updates justifies the cost of moving her post-processing systems to Apple.

P.S. I should mention that we don't have access to Windows 10 Enterprise, and even if we did, I could never justify the time investment in becoming competent to use it just to defend her workstation from Microsoft.

[1] http://pureinfotech.com/defer-windows-10-upgrades-updates/

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...

The vast majority of Wannacry victims were running unpatched Windows 7, I'm not sure why you'd want to avoid security updates. If 1 year isn't long enough to defer feature updates maybe the business cost of switching your entire workflow to a new OS is justified.

I'm one of unlucky macbook user. I bought macbook pro 13" 2013 and have display problem after 2.5 years. I only used my macbook 2 or 3 hours daily at HOME. It's my first mac and feels a bit sad of its quality.

Actutally, I always hear from my designers' friends about their Mac is down and send back to Apple to fix. However, I've seldom seen such of comments on the web. No idea why...

If you follow the links, there's 0 details about the poll... only that's a "Smart Poll"... "Uhhh... smart. It must be true then."

If Microsoft ever makes the OS that doesn't hang NO ONE will move out of Microsoft!

I had lots of hanging and bluescreens on 7, 10 has been incredibly stable for me, granted I'm pretty judicious about uninstalling packages I don't use. End Task actually ends a task now!

I've been a happy Windows user since forever and I've never really understood all the complaints.

The crashes and issues are usually years apart.

I've recently installed xubuntu on a netbook that had Win10 on it (Win10's size is ridiculous) and get constant prompts and errors. Before this I tried Lubuntu and was prompted for restarts twice a week (that thing you don't have to do on Linux)

I'll continue to be a happy Windows user on my main machine. For me it's been awesome all the way. *nix systems seem either buggy or expensive.

I was very unhappy with the traditional windows notebook experience (terrible hw quality, somehow questionable software quality).

I own various Macbooks (old macbook pro, macbook pro 15 and macbook pro 13) and I absolutely love the build quality and the software. However in my current job I have to deal with a lot of MS technologies (.NET and the rest) and I am also using some thinkpad with Windows and it's a solid experience. Working with W10.1 is a joy and something tells me that Surface book is comparable in build quality to mbp. With MBP becoming ever more expensive I see myself trying out the new Surface pretty soon.

Too bad, many recent Apple decisions proved their disinterest in the PC market. IOS 11 on iPad, wich is an amazing multitask experience is the last nail to the coffin of OSX.

Power-user machines will become expensive niche products again, and this is really bad news for HN people.

Did we watch the same WWDC? They had speed improvements for the 3 MacBook lines and the iMac, and previewed a new higher-spec iMac. They also introduced a macOS upgrade focusing on speed and refinement, a la Snow Leopard. Not to mention the behind-closed-doors Mac Pro conversation with the media several months ago.

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