What Happened When I Switched From Macs to Windows

Well, I am here to tell you about all the good things, the bad things, and the ugly things you can expect if you’re switching to Windows after many years in Apple’s walled garden.Getting up and running was pretty simple. It took my MacBook Pro 44 hours to duplicate 1.5 terabytes, and that was just one drive.There is no way of getting around it: Windows just doesn’t have the same level of polish as macOS, the new name Apple has given to the operating system formerly known as OS X. Some Windows applications look like they haven’t been updated since the late '90s. Even within Windows itself, you’ll find screens that look modern and fabulous (like the Start menu and the excellent multitasking interface) alongside things like the Disk Management application, which looks like it teleported here from decades ago.In my writing and video editing, I’ve come to rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts—those magical keystroke combinations that save tons of mousing—but shortcuts in Windows are virtually never the same as their Mac counterparts. Not only do most companies make and update their macOS software first (hello, GoPro), but the Mac versions by and large work better than their Windows counterparts. The Adobe Creative Cloud suite is 10 times more screwed up on Windows than it is on macOS. Of all the ideas Microsoft has lifted from Apple over the years, ditching drive letters should have been among the first.For those who have never used a Windows computer, your internal hard drive is typically the “C drive.” When you plug in external drives, or even SD cards, they are each assigned a drive letter as well. If you’re the type who tends to juggle multiple external hard drives and a lot of SD cards, you will find that Windows does not retain any consistency with the letters it assigns to the drives each time you attach one.You could plug in the same drive multiple times, and Windows could decide it’s the D drive, or F drive, or G or P or Q drive on any given day. With a Windows machine, like my Spectre x360, different components are made by different companies, and each has its own update schedule. It would be great if Microsoft could wrangle all of these loose parts into one unified update app, because right now it feels very haphazard.I’ve mostly loved this HP laptop I selected that day at Best Buy, but it does this weird thing. If the little fingerprint scanner on my Pixel 3 XL nails this nearly every time, I don’t understand why this can’t too.This all sounds like I’ve just been waiting to unload on Windows, but that’s not the case. I remember plenty of frustrating bugs in Apple-land too—especially with the Adobe suite—but the problems in Windows are simply more numerous and more frequent.These college-ready computers will help you excelRecently, with the launch of the 16-inch MacBook Pro (and now the updated 13-inch as well), Apple addressed some of the issues I’d had before I made my switch. Of course, there’s still no 4K screen or touchscreen, and it has only USB-C ports, and I know I will constantly lose the various adapters I’d need just to do basic things like plug in my USB microphone or attach my computer to a TV. Hell, how much do I miss Finder, which works a million times better than Windows’ dreaded File Explorer? But if Apple really has begun to right the ship with the MacBook Pro line, then it’s probably only a matter of time before it figures out which body part I can mortgage so I can afford to switch back.WIRED is where tomorrow is realized.