Switching from Mac to Windows 10

December 30, 2018

I have been a Mac user since 1989 through my workplace, and I bought my first Mac computer in 1993. The computer I bought was a Macintosh 840AV, the then top of the line Mac computer in 1993.

I have since owned multiple Mac computers, from every iMac model ever made, to all the top end MacBook Pros and their top of line workstations…so many I have lost count. I had become a Mac fan boy to the max as it was simply a far superior experience that never got in the way of me trying to do whatever it was that I was trying to do, be it photo editing, video editing or audio editing.

In the time since that first purchase I had to use Windows computers at work as well, and I truly hated every minute of it. I found the experience of using Windows to be un-intuitive to say the least and absolutely frustrating as the operating system seemed to get in the way of me trying to do my work. Everything I tried to do something would popup warning me of some impending peril.

During my time with Apple they introduced their amazing eco-system that allowed you to have a phone and a desktop computer and even a laptop and everything would sync. iTunes was great for music, iPhoto was great for your photos and iMovie was great for your video editing. Soon, Apple released pro versions of some apps for those of us who wanted more than the basic apps, so along came Capture for RAW photo editing and Final Cut Pro for video.

However, over the last five years or so,  Apple has focused more and more on their iPhone products leaving the Mac as a second class citizen in the product line up. For reasons known only to Apple, they proceeded to make iTunesiPhoto and iMovie useless apps, with any features they had previously hidden in the depths of their menu systems. Why? Capture was killed off totally, iPhoto changed to Photos and once again features were hidden, making it more difficult to use beyond basic functions.

“It was then that it occurred to me that I was pretty much out of the Apple eco-system.”

Disillusioned with the apps that were a core part of the Apple eco-system, I started to move to other products. Firstly I moved to DXO for my RAW images, and then Roon for my music library. It was then that it occurred to me that I was pretty much out of the Apple eco-system. As I was still using an iPhone at that time, getting my music onto that iPhone was now more difficult as I had to make copies of my increasingly FLAC library to put into iTunes so that I could get my music onto the iPhone. Doubling up of files was not a good solution, a new phone was.

So, I ditched the iPhone and went to an Android phone that could play ALL of my high res files including FLAC files and even DSD files. Not only that transferring files did not require an eco-system, simple file transfer via USB was all that was required. I could also copy music to it from ANY of my computers, not just the one I had my music library and iTunes on. Being out of the Apple eco-system was a sense of great freedom and opened a world of opportunity.

“Being out of the Apple eco-system was a sense of great freedom and opened a world of opportunity.”

This was the beginning of the end of Apple for me. Given that they offered little in the way of an upgrade from my 5K iMac at that time, I looked at what was available in the Windows world and was spoiled for choice. But of course, that would mean using Windows. I had read a number of positive reviews on Windows 10, and decided to buy it and install it on my MacBook Pro to see if I liked Windows 10 better than all the other previous versions I had used. To my surprise, I really liked it and all of the things I hated about Windows previously were absent.

I then weighed up my options and decided I ‘might’ make the switch after all these years! I sat down and worked out what it would cost me, in terms of apps I would have to buy for Windows. To my surprise I had to buy very little as most of my licenses were for either Mac or Windows and all that was required was for me to download the Windows versions of each app, brilliant!

“I had to buy very little as most of my licenses were for either Mac or Windows and all that was required was for me to download the Windows versions.”

As I had moved away from Adobe products the previous year the only apps I had to buy again, were Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer as they were platform specific licenses. At $79 each it was a small price to pay for the switch to Windows. The real problem I had was video editing as Final Cut Pro was Mac only. So after trying a number of options I have settled on Davinci Resolve Studio (not the FREE version) which set me back about $300. That was it, that was all I had to buy, everything else, including Digital Performer multi-track audio editing and the thousands of dollars’ worth of audio plugins I owned for the Mac, only required me to download Windows versions at no cost.

I then purchased a high end HP Workstation with XEON processor and a 4K Screen which I used for the first two years, but recently sold and built a new PC using the very latest Intel Core i9 9900K CPU and have ended up with a brilliantly fast computer that does everything I need, and does it fast. I have loved the move to Windows 10 which is getting better and better with every update, and at this time I do not see myself ever going back.

“I have loved the move to Windows 10 which is getting better and better with every update, and at this time I do not see myself ever going back.”

Is Windows 10 perfect? No, I would be lying to say otherwise as there are somethings which have always been better on a Mac, and networking is the big one. It is simply better on a Mac, because it is simpler to setup and use, and that goes along with file sharing and hard drive sharing etc, the Mac does it better. Most of the other issues I had were simply down to my lack of knowledge of how things worked on Windows compared to Mac, but Google searches provided the answers I needed in most cases. And that is the thing to remember if you are going to make the switch; there is a learning curve, not a steep one, but don’t let the fact you do not know how something is done on Windows get you frustrated, simply look up how to do it, the answers are out there.

One final thing, is the fear that Mac Fan Boy’s perpetuate far too often (myself included back then), and that is the fear of viruses on Windows. I too was very concerned about that and immediately purchased a third party program called Bit Defender because of that fear. In time I came to realise that the inbuilt Windows 10 protection is all that is needed, so long as you do not visit sites that you should not be visiting! In nearly three years I have never had a virus on any of my Windows machines.

Today I run my custom built PC as my desktop system that out performs anything you can buy off the shelf from Apple, and a Dell XPS 15 for my laptop, which has a 4K 15 inch touch enabled display and could not be happier. I love the touch interface and the performance from the Dell XPS15 is brilliant. At over $1000 less than the equivalent MacBook Pro, and without the thermal issues of the MacBook Pro, I can honestly say I feel I made the right decision to switch and could not be happier.

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