{"id":31359,"date":"2021-01-18T15:48:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T20:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31359"},"modified":"2021-02-05T14:55:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T19:55:01","slug":"switching-to-windows-and-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/18\/switching-to-windows-and-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"Switching to Windows and Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/donmelton.com\/2021\/01\/17\/my-traitorous-move-to-windows\/\">Don Melton<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/donmelton\/status\/1350886920700583937\">tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/donmelton.com\/2021\/01\/17\/my-traitorous-move-to-windows\/\">\n<p>Most of you probably don&rsquo;t know this but a little over five years ago I built my own gaming PC.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>While I certainly gamed my ass off with that homemade machine for awhile, it didn&rsquo;t really become an essential device for me until I started using it to experiment with hardware video encoders.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, it became a pain in the ass to keep switching back and forth between my iMac and the Windows PC. So I started browsing the Web, reading and writing email, collaborating in Slack, Discord and Skype, all within Windows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/orta.io\/on\/migrating\/from\/apple\">Orta Therox<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/orta\/status\/1350812522413236226\">tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/orta.io\/on\/migrating\/from\/apple\"><p>It&rsquo;s somewhat nebulous, but during the announcements of Apple&rsquo;s new macOS 11 this year, I felt like a line had been crossed in my mind: The Mac isn&rsquo;t really the right OS for me anymore.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The bit that&rsquo;s tricky for me is that I don&rsquo;t use a phone, and I want my computer to be more like a truck than a car.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The move towards a more app-store focused, sandboxed OS means that whole genres of apps aren&rsquo;t possible anymore. I&rsquo;m particularly sad about what happened to Safari extensions over the last few years. I don&rsquo;t want to put my time into a platform where the people starting today have a smaller domain than I did when I started.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The Mac software ecosystem was like a street of local shops run by people in the community, and then post-iPhone all the big shops moved in because they just wanted to make sure they were represented in the area. Modern desktop environments now feel quite same-y, but this also trivialized OS switching costs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/15\/the-best-mac-rumors-in-a-long-time\/\">The Best Mac Rumors in a Long Time<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/15\/where-are-the-safari-web-extensions\/\">Where Are the Safari Web Extensions?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/27\/sketch-on-native-mac-apps\/\">Sketch on Native Mac Apps<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/06\/a-year-away-from-macos\/\">A Year Away From macOS<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/finding-an-alternative-to-mac-os-x\/\">Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"switching-to-windows-and-linux-update-2021-01-19\">Update (2021-01-19): <a href=\"https:\/\/themagnet.substack.com\/p\/did-i-really-just-switch-back-to\">Mark Frauenfelder<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chuanp\/status\/1351295693126729728\">Chuan<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/themagnet.substack.com\/p\/did-i-really-just-switch-back-to\"><p>I&rsquo;ve been happily using Macs ever since. But a little over a month ago, a representative for Gateway computers asked me if I&rsquo;d like to try one of its new laptops. I was planning to say no thank you, but my 17-year-old daughter convinced me to give it a try. She&rsquo;s a gamer and programmer and switched from a Mac to a Windows machine when she was 14 or 15. She insisted I was giving Windows short shrift. So I emailed the representative and said OK. A few days later, I received a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gatewayusa.com\/GWTN156-2.html\">Creator Series 15.6\" Notebook (Model: GWTN156-2)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing I noticed was the full-size keyboard with a numerical keypad. Mac laptops don&rsquo;t come with them.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I <em>think <\/em>I&rsquo;m going to keep using Windows from now on. I do feel weird about it; it feels like switching political parties. I&rsquo;ve been a loyal Mac user for almost 20 years. But in that time span, Windows has evolved into an excellent operating system. This, and the fact that Windows computers are much less expensive than Apple computers, is enough to put me in the Windows camp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"switching-to-windows-and-linux-update-2021-02-05\">Update (2021-02-05): <a href=\"http:\/\/ignorethecode.net\/blog\/2021\/02\/02\/switching_to_windows\/\">Lukas Mathis<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/ignorethecode.net\/blog\/2021\/02\/02\/switching_to_windows\/\">\n<p>Around 2015, I started to realize that I was no longer part of Apple&rsquo;s target audience. I&rsquo;ve since found that Windows, and the devices available on the Windows side, from gaming laptops to convertibles to custom-built PCs, are just a better match for my requirements.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I have only one piece of Apple hardware still in active use: a 17-inch MacBook Pro that runs Coda and EagleFiler.<\/p>\n<p>Since a lot of people seem to be making the switch now, maybe it&rsquo;s helpful to talk about some things I&rsquo;m doing to make Windows more amenable to my Mac habits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don Melton (tweet): Most of you probably don&rsquo;t know this but a little over five years ago I built my own gaming PC. [&#8230;] While I certainly gamed my ass off with that homemade machine for awhile, it didn&rsquo;t really become an essential device for me until I started using it to experiment with hardware [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-01-18T20:49:00Z","apple_news_api_id":"1a873502-f551-44a9-92a3-36f9e2835168","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-02-05T19:55:04Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAw==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AGoc1AvVRRKmSozb54oNRaA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[448,30,1891,219],"class_list":["post-31359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-linux","tag-mac","tag-macos-11-0","tag-windows"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31359"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31568,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31359\/revisions\/31568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}