Returning to macOS After 20+ Years on Windows

Lock-in claims another victim (via iMessage/text forwarding).

But no, this was a great read. Developers are users too.

I'm fairly locked into the Apple ecosystem but I have been eager to leave. I tried a Windows laptop recently and was mortified. They have actively made the process of using Windows SO atrocious. I was completely stunned. I'm happy to use Linux so it's not like I'm complaining about minor inconveniences that are a normal part of any OS. Windows as a whole feels malicious and controlling, even compared to a walled-garden approach. Sure, it's annoying that macOS doesn't have as much customizability as I'd like (without lots of workarounds). But unremovable ADS baked into the OS? Forcing me to create a Microsoft account to use a LAPTOP? And dear god the forced updates. Seriously and sincerely, what the hell are they thinking?

@Sounds about right Absolutely. I am reminded, painfully, why I moved to macOS in the first place every time I boot my Windows VM. It's really not pleasant any more. If it were not for Windows-specific accessibility tools, I would have no use for it.

But it does chafe. Using macOS feels unpleasantly like being in a controlling relationship of some sort sometimes; you get what you want only in exchange for surrendering agency over your computer, and you're expected to accept this radical power imbalance with alacrity. And honestly, it's easy to do that for most everyday purposes, when you can reach for a Linux or Doze VM for those other times. I just wish Apple didn't have quite such an interest in possessing me, somewhat like the good old pre-iOS days, which were never perfect (think iTunes DRM) but did show more general respect for user empowerment.

Oh, well. Linux can only get better. And for many typical uses, it's already adequate.

Like of telling that as a mbp using Android owner I don't have the "Can't send text messages from my computer" issue.

I use Macs primarily, but I also have several machines running various versions of Windows, from Win2000 Professional to Windows 8.1, and more recent laptops running Windows 10 Pro and 11 Home, and I've never seen "unremovable ads baked into the OS".

Also I don't get what the fuss is about in having to create a Microsoft account. Likewise, to use Apple's services one *has* to create an Apple account. Of course it would be ideal not having to create accounts in the first place, but at this point, of all the things annoying me in the current tech landscape, this is pretty low on the list.

Yes I've yet to see major annoyances in Windows that can't be dealt with or removed, including ads. The saving grace for Windows is that, if you get clever enough, you can remove all the bad stuff and tweak it to work how you want. This is one of the big things that sets it apart from macOS, where Apple pointedly prevents users from tweaking things. But each year Microsoft makes it harder and harder. I haven't tried using Windows 11 yet, and I don't think I'd care to.

@Riccardo Mori The issue with creating a Microsoft account is both privacy and that Microsoft now requires your system to be connected to the internet if you try to log in with a user that's tied to a Microsoft account. Just in a few minutes I found several people online complaining that their Windows systems suddenly became useless because their internet dropped out and they couldn't log in! That's such a stupid decision on Microsoft's part. But I guess they're insistent about wanting to track their users.

@Riccardo Mori — the issue with the Microsoft account is that it's not an account to use services. You have to have a connected internet connection and create a Microsoft account to use the computer. If you don't know the magic incantation (which is being removed, although apparently there's another one that people have discovered) you cannot set up the computer until you connect it to the internet and give Microsoft information. This also then ties the computer to your Microsoft account, which may or may not have issues (if you're setting it up for someone else, for instance, this is not great...).

However bad and awful it seems like MacOS is doing these days, ten minutes on a Windows 11 is just the motivational attitude improvement you'll need.

It's down to the foundations now - we still have AppKit and Objective-C, we can still use these technologies and it's totally valid. What's the equivalent on Windows? Win32? WinForms? WPF? MAUI? Avalonia? We have the SwiftUI abomination, but XAML was almost killed inside of Microsoft, which would have nuked WPF and MAUI.

I couldn't imagine NOT having MacOS, even as it is today. I really couldn't. If I had to leave MacOS, I think my only option would be to try and customize FreeBSD into a passable desktop OS.

Also, another passing thought about the Microsoft accounts and why they're annoying -

The MS set up assistant will force you to log in using your microsoft account, and then it'll take a chunk of your account's email address and use that as the home folder's name. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a way to override this and let you pick your own homefolder/username. This makes it incredibly annoying navigating the CLI, or even working with file permissions (cough IIS Manager). Most users probably don't know, or care, but please don't assume that I'm one of those "most users" because you'll drive me nuts.

I mean yeah, sure, if I could have Windows 2000 Pro, modernised, I'd take it. Win32, but consistently, and the OS would be functional first. But that's clearly not what Windows is now. You have to **fight** it to get it into a halfway usable condition, and Microsoft is against you (and everyone else) at every turn. Sadly, they, like Apple, have realised that choice is bad for business.

No matter how badly Microsoft wants you to sign in to a Microsoft account, unless they block you from launching a command line prompt in OOBE [Out Of Box Experience as they call it], they can't block you from creating a local account, via the commands "net user [username] [password] /add" and "net localgroup administrators [username] /add". They can't because they can't ever get rid of those commands as too many system admins need to do these things in command line. Those commands will never go away, even if they take away every other secret method.

(In OOBE, after you do those commands, you have to reset the OOBE program and reboot Windows with this command "oobe\msoobe && shutdown /r")

> Also I don't get what the fuss is about in having to create a Microsoft account. Likewise, to use Apple's services one *has* to create an Apple account.

Bit too late to the party; still: I'm pretty sure I've never created any kind of Apple account when setting up my Macs. They remained useable and useful enough.

I DGAF about Apple services and similarly DGAF about Microsoft services. I just want my PC to do what I want it to do.

Apple tries to downplay the option to not use an Apple account when installing macOS by making the button to skip that step subtle and tucked away in the corner. But the option is there and easily used.

Microsoft removed that option altogether, and you have to resort to undocumented hackery to get around the requirement. So in this case the situations are not equal. Though I wonder how long it'll be until Apple follows suit and actually does require an Apple account.

@Bri, I don't even recall that there was one. Had to perform a Ventura clean install from USB in early 2023. Definitely better experience overall than fumbling with Win10/11.