After greater than a decade of Mac-centric computing, I made a giant change final month, setting apart my MacBook Professional and shifting to an Alienware Aurora R13 desktop as my major day-to-day laptop. Whereas the proliferation of cloud-based providers and cross-platform utilities has made switching simpler than it’s ever been, it’s nonetheless a major change to the best way we reside and work. Alongside the best way, I hit a number of snags and annoyances, however I additionally unlocked some superior Home windows capabilities that have been out of attain on my Mac.
Why the change from Mac to PC?
In a world the place the majority of my every day interactions occur by a digital interface, switching computing platforms modified nearly every thing not directly. Reflexive menu navigation and hotkey patterns ingrained in muscle reminiscence over a few years all of a sudden meant nothing, and I would wish to study new ones of their place. So, given the effort of disrupting every day life in methods starting from refined to important, making the leap to Home windows had higher yield some worthwhile advantages. What I’d hoped to realize within the course of have been:
- Extra choices in computing expertise and producers
- Extra flexibility in software program ecosystems
- Extra customization potentialities
- Extra improve choices for {hardware} and software program
- Much more gaming choices
One month in, I’ve not been dissatisfied.
I ought to pause a second to acknowledge that I’m not a “Mac guy” or a “Windows guy.” I’ve been in tech for the reason that internet first grew to become a factor, and I’ve run every thing from Unix and Linux to Home windows and macOS. I used to be a Linux blogger for Most PC, an editor of Home windows Journal, and a contributor to MacAddict and Macworld. My company-issued work computer systems have been MacBook Professionals for the previous decade, and I’ve consolidated a lot of my every day life onto Apple’s messaging and media ecosystem extra out of comfort than anything.
In order that’s me. Now, listed here are the 5 large benefits I’ve discovered within the change to Home windows.
This 15-inch MacBook Professional has served me properly for a number of years, but it surely’s time handy it right down to the youngsters
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
1. The PC has extra {hardware} choices
There’s no getting round it: The PC ecosystem is simply massively huge. Whereas the Mac vary presents a wholesome number of kind elements and efficiency ranges, it doesn’t even come near the breadth of PC programs out there for buy off the shelf. And when you’re into desktops and don’t like what you see within the mind-bogglingly huge vary of prebuilt machines, you’ll be able to hand-select each single part your self and construct one thing customized from the chassis up.
Since Apple moved its Mac traces to the corporate’s personal CPUs, shopping for a MacBook means deciding on an M1 chip or an M2. That’s it, except you need a Mac Mini with an Intel Core i5 or i7, or a $6,000 Mac Professional with a Xeon.
Against this, the mainstream Home windows PC vary presents an abundance of CPU selections. Intel Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 CPU traces every supply a number of choices, as does the copious AMD Ryzen household. In the event you’re not simply thwarted by decision-paralysis, the Home windows world provides you much more room to customise.
Extra {hardware} selections additionally means extra pricing choices. The bottom finish MacBook, the 2020 MacBook Air, runs $999. A comparably spec’d Home windows laptop computer might be had for $350. It received’t be Apples to “apples,” in fact, as a result of Mac {hardware} is proprietary, however the efficiency can be related. In the meantime, high-end PCs supply unimaginable specs in an enormous array of kind elements for each specialised want, from gaming to intense Intel Xeon-powered graphics workstations. At just about each worth level, you get extra {hardware} for the greenback with a PC than with a Mac.
I chosen this Alienware x15 because the drop-in substitute for my Macbook Professional for cell use.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
In my case, I went for 2 completely different PCs, each from Alienware. My daily-use desktop is the Alienware Aurora R13 with a twelfth Gen Intel Core i7 3.61GHz CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. For mobility, I selected an Alienware x15 R1 with a Core i7 and an RTX 3070. What can I say? I’ve all the time appreciated the peculiar styling of Alienware machines, and these had the specs I wished in designs I dig. These are severely succesful programs, however not extravagantly high-end, and but they each price about as a lot as a midrange MacBook Professional.
2. The PC has a much bigger, extra versatile software program ecosystem
As a result of Home windows constitutes roughly 76 % of the worldwide computing market share, and builders world wide who’ve by no means even seen a Mac in particular person are cranking out apps always, the numbers sport right here is apparent. I don’t wish to overblow this, as a result of a lot of the actually main productiveness suites on the market work on each platforms simply tremendous. However if you would like seemingly limitless choices for software program in nearly each class, Home windows wins hands-down.
For me, this was a lot much less of a difficulty with mainstream apps than with area of interest apps. Area of interest pursuits, like beginner radio and astronomy, for instance, are typically dominated by Home windows-only apps constructed by impartial builders. So, earlier than switching to Home windows as my every day driver, I usually needed to both run a digital machine on my Mac, connect with a Raspberry Pi field working the apps I wanted, or preserve an inexpensive, spare Home windows laptop computer round for infrequent use. However since switching to a PC full-time, these complications have disappeared. (And I haven’t as soon as wanted to get my previous MacBook to run something.)
Switching from Apple’s built-in apps was a combined expertise. It was once that when you had all of your footage in iPhoto, it was troublesome to maneuver all that stuff to Home windows. In years previous, I had seen important degradation of my picture library on importing it into Home windows. However Apple has made it surprisingly straightforward to drag your iCloud pictures into Home windows, edit them in Home windows Photographs, and even see the modifications again in your iCloud library on a Mac.
One of the crucial commonly-touted benefits of the Mac ecosystem is its assist for artistic apps, however I’ve discovered Adobe Artistic Suite and related apps run nice on Home windows.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
For different media duties, I discovered that Apple’s most difficult built-in app to exchange is GarageBand, which is wildly higher than any free equal I’ve discovered for Home windows. Microsoft ClipChamp, nonetheless, is now a fairly stable substitute for iMovie.
Whereas there is no such thing as a Home windows equal for iMessage relating to connecting your iPhone to the PC, Home windows helps connectivity to any Android cellphone, supplying you with far more flexibility in what manufacturers of gadgets you should use together with your PC. I’ll talk about extra about coping with Apple’s remoted ecosystem of apps and gadgets later on this article.
3. The PC presents higher customization
It feels bizarre to name Home windows an “open” working system, however in comparison with macOS, Home windows is a giant ol’ open playground of customization potentialities, each for {hardware} and software program.
The Home windows OS can be usually extra customizable than macOS, though a terrific many utilities exist for each platforms. That stated, Apple has a transparent bias in opposition to encouraging customers to tweak the appear and feel of their OS, whereas Microsoft has lengthy fostered a neighborhood of theme builders to assist customers personalize Home windows to their tastes.
Apple’s system-on-a-chip strategy to {hardware}, tightly built-in with macOS, has its personal benefits: Apple has targeted on constructing a unified {hardware}/software program product that works extremely properly and yields nice efficiency. Evaluating that efficiency to a Home windows PC is difficult, as a result of the CPU and GPU benchmarks we use at PCWorld received’t run on a Mac. However the PCs’ large efficiency benefit throughout the board is the power to tweak {hardware} efficiency.
Even off-the-shelf PCs embrace instruments for overclocking and tweaking your {hardware} efficiency.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
A educated PC consumer can overclock CPUs and GPUs, shut down system processes, and tweak each factor of the software program and {hardware} to optimize efficiency. Most gaming PCs come preloaded with efficiency administration software program only for this function, making it straightforward even for relative novices to overclock.
4. The PC is filled with improve potential
The vary of {hardware} improve choices for Home windows PCs is a minimum of as huge because the array of off-the-shelf PCs out there on the market. CPUs, GPUs, RAM, storage drives, USB controllers, seize playing cards, absolutely anything that may be put inside a pc is on the market as a reasonably straightforward improve for a desktop PC.
Whereas laptops are usually proprietary and rather more troublesome to to improve past swapping out RAM and storage, a number of permit for CPU and GPU module upgrades that may be executed by anybody with a screwdriver. One significantly fascinating choice: The Framework is designed for DIYers and tinkerers, letting you construct your individual laptop computer and customise it to your wishes.
When the time comes, my Alienware desktop machine can be prepared for straightforward GPU upgrades. The case pops open in seconds, and all parts are inside straightforward attain.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
I’ve upgraded Mac {hardware} infrequently, in fact: Older MacBooks was once pretty straightforward to open up and add/substitute RAM and storage. Newer fashions, nonetheless, are constructed as system-on-a-chip, and whereas improve modules exist from some third events, they’re extraordinarily costly relative to PC upgrades, and mainly quantity to changing all the inside logic parts without delay.
In follow, it makes extra sense simply to purchase a brand new Mac than to improve the parts in an M1 or M2 machine. And since somebody will convey it up: Sure, the $6,000+ Mac Professional is rather more upgradeable, in fact, but it surely’s in a very completely different class of machine than something even fanatic Mac or Home windows customers are possible to purchase. We’re actually not speaking about workstations right here.
5. The PC is a real gaming machine
In the event you’re in any respect interested by gaming, there’s no denying Home windows is the platform with probably the most selections. The most important sport studios develop for Home windows first, then consoles or cell. The most important gaming titles have a tendency to not be out there for Mac in any respect.
Wanna play Name of Responsibility: Warzone II, Fortnite, Disaster Core: Closing Fantasy 7, or simply about any of the highest 20 video games of 2022? You will get all of them on Home windows, most of them on Xbox or Ps, and even the Nintendo Swap has fairly a number of. A pair run on Macs, however you’ll run out of choices quick.
You’ll be able to definitely attempt working an emulator or digital machine in your Mac, and there are methods to stream your video games from a PC, however these are all kludges and hacks, and yield poor outcomes. If gaming is your factor, Home windows is a should.
Come on, have a look at it. The Alienware is all gaming machine, and the Mac doesn’t come shut.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
One large draw back: Messaging
The most important trouble I encountered switching from Mac to PC was untangling my textual content messaging from Apple Messages’ walled backyard. A minimum of for now, I’ve no real interest in buying and selling in my iPhone for an Android cellphone. If I did, in fact, I’d be up and texting fortunately by way of Home windows Telephone Hyperlink, and will make calls from a linked cellphone as properly, roughly the identical manner I may between my iPhone and my Mac. Sadly, no such connection exists between Apple Messages and Home windows.
There may be, nonetheless, a workaround to allow texting and calls between the iPhone and Home windows, and that’s to change over to a third-party SMS/calling app that works throughout platforms. The caveat, although, is that whereas these apps can ship messages to and out of your iPhone, all of them get their very own cellphone quantity. Some, like Google Voice, make it pretty straightforward to take care of this forwarding course of, however none are as seamless as simply having your native cell quantity immediately linked throughout gadgets. For that have, a full change to Home windows means switching out your cellphone, too.
Home windows Telephone Hyperlink makes it straightforward to attach Android telephones and get calls and texts proper in your PC, however alas, it doesn’t assist iPhones in any respect.
Robert Strohmeyer/Foundry
One of the best ways to keep away from this lure can be to keep away from getting locked right into a proprietary messaging platform within the first place. However, time machines nonetheless being a significant engineering problem, my best choice could also be emigrate my textual content messaging to Google Voice, and use forwarding to bridge the hole. I’d wish to hope Apple will supply Messages on Home windows the identical manner it has enabled the remainder of iCloud. In spite of everything, Photographs, Passwords, Contacts, and even iCloud Drive sync simply tremendous. Pending that, although, I could also be available in the market for a brand new cellphone quickly.
Don’t concern the change!
In the end, it’s by no means been simpler to change forwards and backwards between PCs and Macs. Having virtually all our work and private knowledge within the cloud means you might be up and working on a brand new platform in minutes, and all of your pictures, information, and knowledge will make their manner onto the brand new machine inside a number of hours after that. So when you’re considering a change, the largest hurdle you would possibly encounter is deciding on a brand new laptop to purchase, and there are many guides to assist with that call.
Whereas some people could fear about studying a brand new consumer interface, my expertise is that macOS and Home windows have grow to be related sufficient over time that every thing from looking the drive to putting in apps from an app retailer to managing a number of desktops has achieved pretty constant workflow parity between the 2 programs. I did discover that I’d misplaced the muscle reminiscence for Home windows hotkeys and needed to spend a while googling those I wished to make use of. This comes with time, although, and it’s solely an issue when you’re an influence consumer within the earlier OS.
Against this, switching cell platforms stays a far greater trouble. Apple and Google stay locked in a battle for dominance, and Apple specifically appears to always sabotage switchers with pointless limitations and lock-ins to discourage customers from straying to competing platforms.
For my cash, the Home windows world continues to supply the best breadth of choices in each {hardware} and software program, and the appear and feel of the OS has superior properly up to now decade. So whereas the leap has not been fully annoyance-free, the advantages definitely outweigh the issues.
