Why I Switched to macOS After Using Windows for Nearly Two Decades Hallie Frederick | usagoldmines.com

After roughly utilizing Home windows completely for almost 20 years, I switched to macOS. My present work-from-home machine is a tiny M4 Mac Mini, and I adore it. Here is why I will by no means work on Home windows once more.

I Obtained Fed Up With Home windows Bugs and Glitches

As a long-time Home windows consumer, I received used to bugs, glitches, and fixed Windows shenanigans. To be trustworthy, they did not trouble me that a lot again after I used my PC principally for gaming. However ever since I began utilizing it for work, I’ve progressively grown uninterested in the random crashes, new bugs that seem in each different replace, updates failing, and apps that labored nice for years all of the sudden turning into unusable.

The 2 incidents that broke the camel’s again occurred this yr and made me lastly determine sufficient is sufficient; it is time for a change. The primary one occurred after I tried to put in Adobe Creative Cloud, which triggered the notorious Error 206.

I had tried every little thing to put in the app. Cleaned my registry and the entire PC of each hint of Adobe, modified router settings, deleted apps I suspected would possibly set off the error, however no cube.

Ultimately, I needed to create a new local account on my PC, on which I managed to put in Adobe Inventive Cloud, Photoshop, and Lightroom Basic with none points. A irritating predicament that ended as a slight nuisance since switching to another Windows account and again solely takes a few seconds.

However the second incident was way more extreme and stays one of many weirdest points I’ve ever had with Home windows. After turning on my PC within the morning, I opened Firefox and performed a YouTube video, solely to see that none of my sound outputs labored. The issue was that, in some way, Home windows Audio Service had stopped working. Merely re-enabling it did not work. Go determine.

Okay, not an enormous deal, I will discover a answer, proper? After a fast search, I had managed to launch the service in a roundabout means, and I believed that was it. However it was removed from over. Regardless that Home windows Audio Service was now working, my audio output units had been nonetheless silent. Then, I observed that AIMP refused to play MP3 information. Even Spotify refused to play music, which was tremendous bizarre. And VLC merely crashed upon launch.

After about eight hours of troubleshooting, putting in and deleting apps, media codecs, and drivers, pulling my hair out, and shouting a worrying quantity of obscenities at my monitor, the perfect I might do was handle to play movies and music by way of Media Participant Basic. However I nonetheless did not have any sound output.

So, I backed up vital information and reinstalled Windows. And shock, shock, every little thing returned to regular, besides I simply wasted two workdays doing virtually nothing. Thanks, Microsoft.

That did it; it was time to change to a different OS, not less than for work functions. For higher or worse, Home windows continues to be the perfect platform for PC gaming, however I hope Valve and SteamOS will dethrone it eventually.

I Wished to Get a Separate, Work-Solely Machine

The second cause for the change was that I would been considering getting a work-only machine for an extended whereas. Being a power procrastinator who’s additionally a full-time freelancer is not the best mixture.

I typically get distracted watching YouTube, enjoying only one spherical of Balatro earlier than work, or watching one episode of It is All the time Sunny throughout lunch break, solely to finish up binging a complete season for the twenty ninth time.

When your solely PC is used each for work and enjoyable, there shall be points. For certain, I can keep targeted and within the work ingredient for weeks at a time, however eventually, I will break, and begin falling behind with my assignments but once more.

So, I believed, why not get a second laptop and use it only for work? Let’s examine if having a machine I take advantage of solely throughout work hours would enhance my habits. If I think about it a business-only, zero-fun-allowed laptop, would that make me extra productive?

And what have you learnt, the M4 Mac Mini was launched just some days after the good Home windows reinstalling incident, and I knew I needed to get one and begin this experiment.

I Wished to Strive Out macOS

The third cause is much extra easy: I wished to completely road-test macOS. I’ve used Home windows for many years and now I am additionally a long-term Linux consumer. I personal a Steam Deck and spend rather more time in Desktop mode with a keyboard and a mouse hooked up than in Recreation mode.

Apple’s poor gaming popularity is a bonus—it’s getting better, however nonetheless. The cherry on the cake was the release of the M4 Mac Mini, which coincided with Apple lastly deciding to place 16GB of RAM into the bottom mannequin. I had wished to get a Mac for years however did not need to lay our a fortune on a beefed-up Mac Mini or a MacBook solely to bounce off macOS after a month or two.

The $599 machine was the right candidate, so I needed to get one.

My Mac Mini has a beefy CPU, however the GPU is not nice for gaming, which is ok when you ask me. Then again, the machine is ideal for my workflow, which incorporates typing in Google Docs and modifying images in Lightroom (and infrequently Photoshop).

Solely 256GB of storage is sufficient for me since I don’t use many apps and the one native information I carry on my Mac Mini are images. Apart from, if I ever want extra storage, external SSDs are extra inexpensive than ever. Final however not least, the Mac Mini’s tiny footprint is ideal since I have already got a large desktop subsequent to my desk.

A few month has handed since I made the change, and I am very proud of the way it all turned out. I am extra targeted now as a result of my mind goes “Okay, time to get productive,” after I see the macOS desktop within the morning as a substitute of “Hey, take a look at this new sport you put in simply final night time!”

The Mac Mini is a beast of a machine and greater than highly effective sufficient for the duties I put it via. Whereas there are nonetheless issues I miss from Home windows, macOS is a good alternative. Positive, it is received quirks of its personal, however they’re UI and UX-related, not random crashes, weird points, and post-update shenanigans.

The machine can also be tremendous steady. I’ve had zero crashes or restarts; I do not even flip it off; I simply change to my Home windows PC as soon as I need to sport or mess about. The one Home windows app I really miss, and nonetheless use often, is Paint 3D. It is an ideal software for light-weight picture modifying however, sadly, I have not discovered a macOS alternative but (Preview and Photos are nice, however their image-resizing instruments aren’t as much as snuff).

Considering of creating the leap from Home windows to macOS? It pays to know the differences between Finder and Windows Explorer. You also needs to take a look at our round-ups of the best apps to install on a new Mac.