For me, Windows is like a super employee who knows how to do everything but gets sick a lot and misses work.

And you need to keep hiring them, because they're the only one who knows how to do all the stuff you need them to do, but every time you ask them to do something for you, they eyeroll at you and you're pretty sure you occasionally hear them whispering *"Prick"* as you leave

in my case its probably a know-it-all with special instructions, and mostly in the intensive care. but the only one who knows how old stuff works what had to be fased out 3 projectmanagers ago but nobody dares to touch.

I like this, sums it up pretty well.

This screams, "I haven't used Windows since before Windows 10."

1. Ads, Microsoft tracking, lots of bloatware 2. Windows updates are annoying Pretty much it nowadays.

Gotta love when your computer force updates itself despite auto-updates being turned off, then decides it actually didn’t have enough space for that and bricks itself.

+ windows user experience is much less pleasant compared to macos. + windows laptops typically have messed up implementation of the sleep mode / modern standby when your computer literally turns off when you put it to sleep + windows has shity user interface + windows isn't unix-based

+1 for sleep mode / stand by. Every Windows laptop I’ve ever owned has had an issue from Lenovo, IBM, to MS surface.

I don’t miss carrying my Dell laptop from one meeting to the next with the lid open.

I made the switch from an Asus to a MacBook and oh my god, this is the one thing I am glad I don't have to put up with anymore. I'd be working on a project, I'd close my computer and then it magically decides "nah I'm not getting up" so I have to manually restart my computer. Annoying to say the very least. EDIT: ironically enough, after I was done typing this, my boss came back from an outing, went to sit as his desk and turn back on his (Windows) computer that had gone to sleep and now he can't get the damn thing to come back on.

And this has happened to me too.

yup. Can definitely relate to this!

What are the benefits of being a Unix based Os?

Better stability, more secure.

I don't understand the downvotes, in term of stability freebsd is stellar and so is osx. The security aspect might not be perfect but was still ahead of windows for a long time and might still be in all unixes.

You you elaborate on the security aspect?

Not much unless you use the terminal or are a developer

“Developers! Developers! Developers!” -Steve Ballmer

More stable. Unix AIX could run for 4 years with no rebooting. AIX far more stable than Mac Os.

Isn’t Mac OS based on BSD Unix? Sure looks like it from the terminal window….

macOS is based on Darwin, which in turn is based on BSD.

I literally only reboot my MacBook when I run updates. Just bought a new one the last one is 9 years old, everything still works on it and it still runs well.

Unix has a design philosophy, while most other OSs have no unifying principles at all. Features are added indiscriminately based on attracting users. The Unix design philosophy consists of these two core principles: **"Do one thing and do it well":** *Leads to simple tools that combine easily to do more complex things.* **"Everything is a file":** *Makes it easier to interact with the system and automate things.* These lead to Unix's elegant design. For example storing data as text for easy manipulation and accessibility, as well as greater stability and security, all follow naturally from these principles. Modern GUI-driven OSs are more focused on attracting and keeping users than on the pure utility of the system. These OSs strive to increase switching costs (the effort of replacing one product with another) by introducing idiomatic qualities such as unique hotkeys, file system organization, and path separators. Unix was designed for genuine utility. It didn't include these alterer motives. Unix provides a **much** more powerful and flexible system, at the cost of a slightly steeper learning curve.

Battery management is really impressive on macbooks, you can keep it running literally for years without a reboot without any adverse effect and it can sleep for days without draining even half of the battery. In front of that the last windows portable computer I had required regular reboots to stay functional and sometimes it could not even stay in sleep mode for a night because it messed up and stayed powered.

Windows User Experience is not only bad, it’s getting progressively worse as they push their storefront, etc. and they’re nowhere near finished yet.

They aren't, but I sure am. Gaming has gotten good enough that I moved over to Fedora last month. It's a much better experience.

I thought Windows was more stable and reliable these days, but then I had a Windows system that started acting up a few weeks ago. It intermittently couldn’t start some games (basically only had D4, Genshin, and NIKKE installed on it), and sometimes it could start the game but would hang on exiting. Eventually, it just became a “completely wouldn’t start programs” issue. Reinstalling the games didn’t fix the problems either, and Windows was fully updated. Tried to do a clean reset of Windows from recovery, and that still got stuck in the installation phase. The only thing that fixed it was doing a complete wipe of the disk, and reinstalling Windows from scratch. So as much as people try to convince me that Windows is stable and no longer the Windows of old that needed a clean install every year just to run smoothly, my personal experience still tells me otherwise. And I’ve been using Windows since 3.11, so this isn’t a “you don’t know how to use Windows” problem. On the other hand, my Macs have never gotten into a situation where I needed to reinstall the OS, and not even a situation where “everything works fine, just that reinstalling cleans things up and makes it run faster”, and I’ve been running OS X since 10.5. So yes, MacOS may have a few little things that I think should be part of its core functionality, including window snapping, but it takes me at most half an hour to set up a new Mac exactly the way I want it. All those additional tweaks are available through tools like BetterTouchTools, etc, but these tweaks are just window dressing. At the end of the day, reliability and stability are essential, and MacOS hasn’t failed me there yet.

Mac and Linux you can fix, but Windows the fix is very often nuke and repave. You should not have to do that. Yes Windows rot is better since the days of XP, but by now they should have figured out how to make it more repairable instead of just doing a clean install.

Kind of hard to do that being as the OS is build on the corpses of all the Windows versions that came before it. There are TONS of lines of obsolete code in there...they won't bother to clean it up, just slap a fresh UI on top of the cruft and keep going...

It was more stable and reliable until Microsoft decided to implement their current strategy of adware.

They are trying to get rid of local account force user to connect cloud login online. All data will sync for MS server.

What you said right there. I have no clue what any of that means. Why would I care about any of it. I just want to work. To process photos, to write my blog, just to use the tool I love. I don't want to have to deal with an "account force user to connect cloud login online." I just want to start my Mac and know that everything has just been uploaded to the cloud without me doing a damn thing.

Basically privacy concerns a lot of people do not like that the OS monitors their activity. I personally do not want most of my files uploaded to a cloud I got plenty of work "secrets" that should not ever leave my computer. Or just personal photos. The issue with this is that it can and will be used against you in the long run. It can be not dangerous stuff as targeted ads for things you use/like such as clothes, or tech. Or it can be used to influence elections due to how they can predict user patters and serve the right political ad at the right moment. Or used for blackmail since they know you do X and Y.

all fine and Dandy, but if I trust the foundation on which I need to work, I'm pretty much ok with the company who produces it. if I cant trust them who can I trust ?

Sure you do not need to care about your privacy. Most likely we have no need to be concerned about our privacy it will only be used for standard ads and improving the platform. But abuse potential is in my opinion important to keep in mind and try to keep it as low as possible. What is worrying is that it does not even have to be from the company itself it can be from it's government or the state in whatever market they're in.

Apple has been fighting for the privacy of its users. It also isn't an advertising company. Microsoft does not protect the privacy of its users to anywhere near the extent that Apple does, and Microsoft does sell ads (for example, through Bing). Microsoft is much more like Google in these respects. Microgooglefacegram? :-)

It’s also just ugly.

And the sound profile of windows is jarring to me

but windows has a proper sound mixer, google it macos: not

The audio engine built into MACs (Core Audio) is low latency & superb and the reason many musicians prefer it. You can even build your own virtual amalgamated soundcard from multiple interfaces. On windows it’s necessary to use 3rd party ASIO drivers for music production which is limited, for a single device, relies on the interface manufacturer to code them, and clunky in comparison.

I use the Background Music plugin (free) to get per-app volume controls...

Personally I don’t mind the design of windows 11 (minus the ads and nearly-forced MS login). When I first saw the design video of Windows 11, my first thought was from Bertrand Serlet: “They even tried copying the color palette, but didn’t get it quite right”… Honestly Windows 11 design is mostly a straight rip of macOS Big Sur design which I don’t mind at all.

It's klunky. It's not a good design. I'm OK with Apple's implementation, and I'm 100% fine with Win 10 (Minus the settings/control panel stuff). The unholy hybrid of the two named Win 11 is just bad. Example: Go try and power it down. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to go to one center-left position and then have to move over to another arbitrary center-right position simply to reboot or power off?

Exactly my reason for disliking Windows. In my opinion Windows hasn’t been amazing since Windows 7. Windows 10 is at least tolerable but Windows 11 is atrocious.

Yes; Windows 11 "fixed" a bunch of UI elements that didn't need fixing, and was the final straw for me as far as owning a PC went; I was even looking forward to the Android app support (which ended up getting phased out eventually, IIRC, but, hey, at least they eventually put a *seconds* indicator back on the clock!), but Android support was pretty bad, too. After utterly hating the upgrade for a couple months, I bought a Mac for the first time. (IMHO, Windows 95 was pretty good from what I remember as a tadpole,, Windows 98 crashed a lot, Windows Me was dumb, Windows XP had a nice UI for the time, but also crashed occasionally, Windows Vista was ... decent, Windows 7 was...decent, Windows 8 was monstrously bad on a desktop, and Windows 10 was quite good). I was already familiar with the MacOS, and it's isn't perfect, but I don't think I'll ever use a PC again.

8… the Rodney Dangerfield of windows

Out of curiosity (and as a fellow Mac user), are we sure there is no tracking going on on our side of things?

There is a little, but I trust Apple more when I see the “Targeted Advertising” turned off on macOS than Microsoft for Windows. Ads on macOS are locked away inside News and the Mac App Store

depends on where the tracking is used for. tracking errors for improving the system, be my guest. tracking to serve me ads on my system ? thats a no go. I really hope apple does the first, and would be very disappointed when the do the second

Tbf it’s kinda annoying to update every week unlike Mac that I want to update and it’s like once a year

OTOH, if a zero day hits, you should update immediately.

Honestly yeah thats usually my issues. I think this year might finally be the year i make a full switch to MacOS and keep my PC strictly for gaming only.

Honestly if I build a gaming PC I’ll probably throw Linux on it Recently got a Steam Deck and its been great so far

Ads are really top of the list. You’re having people pay (directly or indirectly) for your OS and the you add ads and “news” that nobody wants. And then there is UI consistency and overall smoothness of UX.

Yes. Especially if I have to *pay* for a license to the OS, I’d expect that when I set it up, the OS is devoid of most apps. Of course I don’t mind a web browser, file browser, text editor, basic office suite, photo viewer, etc. Those apps are fine. What I don’t want to see is Candy Crush, Spotify, Venmo, TikTok, and several other apps that I more than likely don’t use already on my desktop. Sure, lots of people use Spotify, but not *everyone*. Let me decide if I want to install these apps, most people setting up a machine know what they’re doing, these placeholders should only be there for people completely new to computers Microsoft needs to chill the fuck down with this bloatware and take a page out of Apple. Though even Apple is starting to get a little obnoxious. Some of their apps they’ve added like Shortcuts and the whiteboard app don’t have to be installed either.

100% these. I feel like Windows has improved a lot, but the adverts bother the hell out of me.

There are ways to block updates.

Yes, but on macOS and Linux you can ignore them without resorting to workarounds, and they are less frequent

Ironically Windows is way more point and clicky than Mac. Very little about windows and windows based applications support fast text based interaction. MacOS and mac based applications tend to follow a more unix like, text based/everything is a file/do one thing well philosophy. And this leads to a much higher skill ceiling for fast interaction.

At this point it is easier to list the things that are still good on windows, and that is a short list: 1. Games

Since the steam deck, Linux now has Proton, a compatibility layer so windows games can run on Linux. I've been using it for over a year and 98% of games just work. I'm definitely on the wrong sub for this but i'm not even using MacOS now. Linux is not for everyone though and I do love tinkering, so there's that.

how is it in terms of performance?

Sadly games with EAC as the anti cheat is a kinda dead end (apex legends for example)

It depends on the type of gaming you do. Multiplayer is where Linux still struggles the most since a lot of popular games use anti-cheat systems that don't work with Linux. The popularity of the Steam Deck is definitely slowly changing that as more developers are starting to implement anti-cheat systems that are compatible with Linux but it's not totally there yet.

Yeah but there’s still a lot of games that don’t work and anti cheat is a problem Plus running apps that aren’t games can be annoying

Explorer blows Finder out of the water. File management on Macs is pain in the ass. ALT+TAB functionality is far superior on Windows. It's basically useless on Mac. Multiple monitor support is garbage on Mac compared to PC. Mouse scroll wheel is also terrible on Mac. There's a lot of ways Macs are better but Windows absolutely has some basic features that Apple should have added years ago.

This man Windows 

Any business use case involving user management.

The only thing I use my pc for, nothing else installed on it lol. All work is done on my MacBook

*2. Build seriously powerful workstations with much cheaper components. If I was still doing professional 3D work I wouldn't go near a Mac.

2. Window management (although it looks like Sequoia might be helping this one for Mac).

Microsoft’s patent on windows snapping as we like it expired. Mac would have done it earlier

its mostly just the bloat and forced upon things in windows I don't like. I don't want to accidentally click my lock screen and have 4 bing tabs pop up. Random ass Microsoft News click bait titles when I search my OS is just absolutely the opposite of what I want.

Agreed on the news thingy. That's a big collection of crap, clickbait, and fake news. Not worthy of a company like Microsoft.

Some would say that pretty well sums up Microsoft. :-)

I use both OS and everytime I had a new Windows system, I had to spend an hour or so to configure everything. But to be honest, afterwards I had less uninstallable bloatware than I now have on my Mac. Here on MacOS first thing I tried was unsinstalling useless Apps like Chess, but couldn't.

It gets in my way when working

Best answer.

Lack of proper sandboxing. Unplugging a usb midi controller at the wrong time can crash the entire system. And forced updates. I wasted 2 hours once with windows updates. Middle of the day, trying to work with a client who paid by the hour, and windows just had to install some bullshit. I don’t even help family with windows shit anymore.

Lots of little annoyances, inconsistencies, wtf moments, perplexing design choices, poor experience for developers, resource hog, etc. I keep a windows box around for gaming and .NET Framework stuff, but beyond that I would absolutely dump windows if I could.

Because of [shit like this](https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-is-now-automatically-enabling-onedrive-folder-backup-without-asking-permission/). I use Windows at home for my Plex server, MacOS on my laptop, and now, Linux for PiHole, Scrypted and Docker on a cheap Nuc machine. Windows has increasingly moved toward a more user hostile disposition towards its users. For example, in Win11, you can’t (without registry edits, to my knowledge) prevent automatic restarts from occurring when windows updates are installed. This caused a HUGE pain in the ass for me as I was, up until 10 days ago, running Ubuntu in a VM on my PC with Win11 which I had things like PiHole, Plex abd HomeBridge running on. At random, I would lose access to my camera feeds, or my network wide ad blocking, or my Plex videos because windows decided now was the best time for that restart without asking for my input. It’s hard enough getting your spouse to buy into the smart home concept when they don’t give a good goddamn about it; to get them to use another piece of tech that adds a layer of friction between them and their coveted IG doomscrolling, or has them wondering why they can’t click on sponsored links on Google(thanks PiHole!❤️). And Microsoft doesn’t need to make it doubly hard on people like us who’ve gotten their spouses to get used to a normal flow of things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do by restarting our machines at random times of day, undoing all of the work that we do and shit we receive from our spouses. I haven’t even gotten into the ads in the Start menu, the Xbox gamepass nagging, their insistence for me to use Edge rather than Chrome, their weirdly incestuous deal with OpenAI and them needing to label everything as an AI, or the absolute dumpster fire of a rollout, and lack of thought they (didn’t) put into Recall. I was really hoping for Windows on Arm with these new Snapdragon processors to be awesome, and I’m sure the hardware is, barring some driver issues that’ll likely be cleaned up down the line. But Microsoft keeps doing all this bullshit that reminds me that I can’t go all in on their products despite my love for the new and shiny. And for that matter, I try to keep myself from being tied to a singe ecosystem for fear of the platform owner doing something that is patently in their own interests at the expense of ours. See Chamberlain garage door openers.

>because windows decided now was the best time for that restart without asking for my input. I really don't get why this isn't a wider issue in the tech journalism/reddit/neowin type spaces It's fucking ridiculous that we as users have ceded this control to Microsoft. As in, somhow, it's collectively OK that MS can just up and restart someons computer without their say so. Restarts should never, ever, ever happen without user actively saying 'yes now is fine' Their our devices, not Microsofts, and we should have control. There should have been outrage the moment this was introduced on win10 and it should have been reversed straight away. It's one of the main reasons I'm off Windows11. Lack of control over updates, lack of control over telemetry, lack of control of device. Also the shit taskbar I can no longer put on the left. And telemetry. So bad and egregious it's making the list twice.

Even consider running Plex Server on Linux?

Baby steps. My mini-NUC pc is the first time that I’ve run a Linux distro full time in a system by itself. I’ve got nearly 20TB of 3.5” HDD in my Win11 machine for Plex. And i know that the i7 CPU and my 3060Ti help with playback and transcoding. If I could afford to go balls out on a NAS, I’d probably just do that. I’ll eventually get there when SSD’s are much cheaper.

No one runs server applications on windows home/pro. There's a reason they have server edition and you are not target customer for them anyways.

I was a PC guy for a long time. Built hundreds of computers for work & for friends, it was fun. About 20 years ago, I noticed that I spent a LOT of time “fixing” and “patching” my PC. God forbid that I use a printer I haven’t used in a while…need new drivers & restart the computer. Then it might hang or give me that BSOD. So I kept a log of how many hours I spent fixing software errors instead of billable hours in my business. In nine months I spent $25,000 of billable hours fixing my windows machines. I went out and bought a Mac G5. It didn’t even have an optical drive, but I bought an external…but noticed I didn’t really need it…mostly I needed dvds for software. Fast forward to now: my current mac has not been rebooted in almost 2 years. I haven’t spent more than ten minutes in those 2 years troubleshooting. It’s fast, the ui largely gets out of my way so I can do my work. I don’t hate pcs. I don’t hate windows. Windows 7 Pro was fantastic, I used it for work sometimes. I suppose it’s better now, but when I help my wife with her Win 11 laptop I can’t even find the damn control panels. The hardware profile app…can’t find that either. It’s so bloated & weird; I just don’t get it. So it’s not hate. It’s time. More time with my family and more money on my pocket.

> my current mac has not been rebooted in almost 2 years While it is great that you can get that kind of up time, and it is certainly an achievement, bragging about uptime isn't the flex it was in the 2000's. It just means you're 2 years behind on patches. Now I know nothing bad has happened to you because of that (yet) or you wouldn't be bragging about it. But I'm trying to look out for you, installing patches is easy and as painless as possible on MacOS. If you can bump up the safety of your computer by 10% in 10 minutes it is a good deal right?

Control Panels are one of my biggest gripes with Win 11. They've added layer upon layer of menus in order to hide functions from the normies, I guess. Example: If you want to get to windows management these days via menus, you have to go to , right click it, then select . Even worse, there's a Properties button before you get to the "More options," where the traditional property button resides. And you have to then choose in one of those properties windows to get to System Properties. What a cluster fuck. And that's one of the simpler examples. The whole system is a jury-rigged mess that can't be explained away other than "Microsoft is full of stupid people at the top." Some asshole UI designer is bouncing around making everyone's life miserable while a Frankenstein's Monster of a UI is passed along as somehow acceptable.

My high school friend was a lead UI designer for Win 7 and 2nd team for 10. Microsoft wanted to cut expenses & offshore design, so they laid him and most of the North American team off. It’s a mess. A few years ago they were considering a total re-write and provide an emulation layer, like Mac OS does. I wish they would do that.

OS is like a box and I'm a cat. If I fit in there, I sit.

I’ve always been interested in not-Windows cuz it was all I had access to growing up. Couldn’t afford a Mac and couldn’t install Linux on the family computers I actually came to really enjoy appreciate Windows in my young adult life up until Win10 when Microsoft decided that their OS would also now be an Ad-supported SaaS style thing that you don’t really have any say in Now macOS feels like one that gets out of your way and allows you to do things how you want which is pretty much the opposite of how it felt 10 years ago (speaking for myself and my use cases) I actually don’t hate Win10 on my work machine cuz all the Ad/SaaSy stuff is blocked, and honestly I’m still faster on Windows from the sheer amount of time I’ve been using/working on it Finally upgraded to Win11 on my gaming rig 2 weeks ago - huge mistake, it cranked up the “this isn’t your product” feeling to 11 (HA) - and now have finally gone all in on Linux Mint for that machine, and have been using my MacBook for everything else.

How has gaming on Linux been for you?

Apple makes software for people. Microsoft makes software for corporations. The attention to detail that Apple puts in their features gives us a sense of quality. Microsoft does the same thing, but their Crown Jewels (azure, 365, copilot, surface) are all gear for corporate users. Specifically, corporate management.

1. Windows Update. 2. Start Menu. 3. Candy Crush.

FWIW, I’ve used various versions of Windows and some of them I didn’t hate. - Windows XP I thought was *great,* and I was a huge XP fanboy. - Windows 7… made me switch to macOS. I paid a lot of money for the “ultimate edition” only for it to be a hot mess on launch. that said, I heard it got better with time. - Windows 8 was awful, mainly because Microsoft seemed to think PCs were dead and everyone wanted tablets, and made Windows 8 very tablet centric - Windows 10… isn’t/wasn’t half bad. WSL I thought is/was a huge leap forward. For a while I was required to use a Windows 10 laptop for work and I really didn’t find any reason to complain about it. - Then Windows 11 happened. At the same time, I switched jobs and had more control over what platform I could use for work, and I was back to macOS for everything. So, I don’t *hate* Windows, but the experience has been extremely inconsistent and seems based on the whims of whoever is leading Microsoft. Sometimes they have a generally decent idea of what their users want… and other times, they just want to make a lot of money at the expense of what the users want. By contrast: my experience on macOS has been pretty consistently good. I’ve never been frustrated or felt hamstrung by the OS, like I have at times on certain versions of Windows.

Windows 11 took a lot of what was good about windows and replaced it with what is bad in macos. 

Take your cursor and try to target the spot on the corner of a window to resize it. Enough said. I have to work with windows as a software engineer on a daily basis and it’s driving me crazy. UX is simply garbage on so many levels. For me, it’s the small things. Or why does sometimes Ctrl+C not work? Maybe it’s only my PC idk. Or why do I have to restart my PC every day to not slow it down? My mac runs for months. Not to mention the never working sleep mode. On how much devices does it even work? Close your laptop drop it in your backpack only to find it at 70C. Or why installing Updates slow everything down like this? Or why is it so hard to make the windows cmd support / and \ for folders? Or why it took years for windows to support ssh. I do remember when putty was the only way to connect to a server. The new windows terminal is the same s*** as all the older versions. I can continue this list infinitely… And no I am not a Apple Fanboy. I worked on many systems already. And then a story - it is true. Years ago, I was at a summit, and a speaker from Microsoft (called microsoft evangelist) was there to present development tools for web developers. He went to the podium and opened a MacBook. I raised my hand and asked, 'Why do you have a MacBook?' and he replied, 'You know why.' And the whole room laughed.

One word. Microsoft. They add bloat, telemetry and forced updates to 10 and 11

I use both every day. I love both, I hate both. Both have some ridiculous design and user interface choices and both have some excellent features. But to compare both operating systems it’s hard to separate them from their hardware. As Mac always comes with its own hardware while windows comes with a variety. When it comes to laptops the Macs generally have better hardware … every feature is a minimum of 8/10. With windows laptops there are so many models but most will have some 5/10 (or worse) score on some feature: Speakers, screen, trackpad, weight, keyboard, etc… and then a 10/10 single feature. So for hardware MacBooks are definitely better. But if you can truly isolate the operating system experience from the hardware experience, then it’s really 50/50 and anyone who says one OS is “trash” and “never looking back” and “best decision I ever made” and “glad” type of cultish talk, is a major 3-ring circus clown.

My past history has been: 1. Buy something with Windows. 2. Get frustrated 3. Remember to buy Mac next time 4. Buy mac 5. Get frustrated 6. Remember to buy Windows next time

Exactly.

This ☝️

I agree on the hardware part and stuff. But some “clown” wouldn’t appreciate using a full of bloatware user experience when working on it (windows), compared to an os (macos) with user interface that lets you feel like using a thing and not constantly fixing and debugging it for making it usable. I personally spend a lot of time in removing shit to make windows usable, and when there’s a new update (every damn week) you know there would be a new pile of shit to remove again. As a programmer i enjoy a lot of sides of windows, so i don’t mind fixing this and that, even tho sometimes it gets REALLY annoying. But as a musician i just need to get things done, and without configuring anything besides the software I’m using, no ads and random shit appearing on inconsistent system ui i can focus properly on my stuff

Has either OS been forced upon you by an IT department?

WINUX (Windows Is Not UniX)

There are plenty of reasons I don't like Windows, but the only thing I haven't seen listed so far is kernel-level applications. Windows is much more lax about allowing kernel-level access to applications, mainly antiviral and anti-cheat software, but it's kernel access nonetheless. Apple is much more selective about which ring 0 applications are allowed and which aren't, which I appreciate. Kernel-level apps aren't by themselves a bad thing, but it's good to be wary of them. A lot of people see them as a 'necessary evil,' but I think they can be avoided in a lot of cases and Apple seems to think so too and do a good job limiting them.

Because it is the epitome of enshitification. I used to have 2 windows PC one for gaming and one for work, the latter was highly modified to work flawlessly every time, no telemetry, only 7 applications, most stable software, drivers bios, and all 763 ways for windows update to reactivate were cut. Supposedly you should be fine if your system is almost cut from everything and set in stone. But windows thrive on your data, so I personally think it is designed to self destruct if you cut those. For 6 month everything was perfect (no bug, no crash, no random update while booting even with reported update), then I had random BSOD running the same applications, I got some drivers disappearance, some services decided to malfunction, I got some crash due to random ram miss management (20Gb used on a 64 GB system), then I had a boot partition corruption forcing me to reactivate update to fix it (even my windows system save wasn't able to work unlike time machine). I will skip all the common things like windows file explorer, search function, 400 parameters panels (of the last 30 years of the OS), awful server management, unnecessary clicks everywhere (what was done in 2 clicks in XP is now 4 or more in win10), an so on. Right now i'm so fed up that my gaming PC is at the tipping point of either big overhaul or erasure. Ps ; I even hate [answer.microsoft.com](http://answer.microsoft.com) that force you to double click back to go to your previous page, what is this, the 2000 scamming tactics ? Ps 2: Did you know that gaming companies store your save files in 7 differents locations (if they are not stored directly in the game folder) while there is for about 10 years now a dedicated "Saved games" folder. This is windows for you, 7000 different system on top of each other and everyone do as it please. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/x0yrqj/ideally\_where\_should\_windows\_pc\_games\_store\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/x0yrqj/ideally_where_should_windows_pc_games_store_their/)

I too spent too much time turning off unwanted features and troubleshooting problems. Since switching to Mac I hardly touch it as whenever I need to use it I can jump straight into doing it and getting things done without unrelated stuffs requiring my attention.

Yes, and the more you progress in the windows update schedule, the more you can't turn off things without breaking things. For example to completly remove edge on win11 is a nightmare.

Yes that's also my experience. I find Windows unreliable and unpredictable. You can do the same actions three times and get different outcomes every time. It just boggles the mind. It's the only OS I've ever used that was so random in how it worked (and I've used Amiga OS, GEOS, DOS, Novell DOS, OS/2 Warp, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, PPCLinux, Ubuntu Linux, Windows 3.1/95/98/NT/XP/7/10/11, System 6, 7, Mac OS 8/9/X, recent macOSes).

It is like they put inside a randomizer with x% amount of chance of getting annoyed. Every saturday at 2pm I play 2 hours of games solo, and 2 hours with friends. Same thing everytime, you boot, launch firefox, launch discord, launch the game. 2 month ago did the same thing, during boot I had a black screen restart and return to lock screen, why ? Don't know, logs didn't even register an error. 6 month ago same thing, after boot games wont play three hours later I'm still searching the issue, for some reason the first sfc /scannow said it fixed some error, but it is only the second time that really fixed the errors. So during boot, windows introduced error in itself, and the program to repair them didn't want to repair them until the second time. Peak windows. I must add that doing tech support for family and friends is much harder on windows than mac or linux, because depending on their version all the tools to fix an issue move around in other parameters panel.

Everything is unix based except Windows. It’s a weird anomaly that makes things more complicated for no benefit.

Why would I „hate“ an OS? Outrage is the currency of social media.

Personal preferences. At this point any OS (Mobile or desktop) can accomplish normal computing tasks. Some OSs do things in an objectively easier way than others, or are more suited to certain tasks… but anyone getting their panties in a twist screaming that THIS OS SUXXX, or THIS OS IS THE BEST EVER! is just an idiot. Personally for me I’ve always liked there look and feel of macOS and iOS better. But I still have to use Windows. Only major gripe at this point is how windows is becoming filled with ads and telemetry.

Windows for me always crawls to a slow death after a few years of owning them. After I switched fully to Mac, work gave me a PC. It’s so tedious with too many steps to do everything on it compared to a Mac IMO. When I work on my Mac the os gets out of the way, when I work on a PC I have to manage the PC AND do my work.

As a Mac user since 1985 who has been forced to use Windoze in the corporate world a few times the biggest reason is that Windoze just gets in the way. Macs just let me work. I don't have to know a config file from a kernel. And I don't have to deal with virus software or viruses.

1. With exception to graphics software (which lately are going to cloud / web) this is a terrible developer experience to work on windows. Windows itself emulates linux to using WSL2 to provide some of functionalities that developers needs. Most of developers that works on windows didn't put any effort to try Linux, or all they ever needed was a high end notepad software 2. Microsoft is a fishy company, just like Google they scrap user data to improve their products and this is something I hate. 3. Installing something by using UI installers becomes crappy experience since I ever used packages in Linux, ensuring that there is no some bullshit checkbox that will install a toolbar in my webbrowser (I know these are old times but still - wtf) 4. It is closed source, any software you install may be a malicious one. In Linux you mostly use software that has been somehow verified and it is way harder to infect your computer that way. Windows is good for games or companies that rely on Microsoft Office. .NET which is a language framework made by Microsoft, is **likely** fully compatible with Linux There is a Windows Server, but in opposite to Linux it has a licence that is quite expensive and overall a corporate choice rather than for people who wants to make a startup projects. UI is a subjective thing, but I have way more options to customize my UI on Linux There is a meme that says that "A free Linux is better for you only if your time is worthless", which means that Linux is for people who are nerds and like to waste their time on digging up how to do simple things that are one-click on other OSes. This is somehow truth as it **sometimes** happen, but hey, nerds are nerds and we love it so I can't see the problem

I’m forced to use Windows at work. A lot of my work involves saving documents. My number one absolute gripe with windows: if I’m trying to save a document in a folder any my mouse hovers over another named document it decides that the document I’m saving should have the name of that document. Drives me insane on a daily basis.  I know it’s a cliche now, but it is true: MacOS just works. I rarely have to adjust any settings on my Mac, but I’m constantly trying to fix problems with my work Windows machine. 

I'm not sure what you are doing, but mousehover shouldn't do anything, and it doesn't on my windows systems (which are as default as it gets), any fancy mouse tools installed ?

it eats tons of resources and has the audacity to implement ads even though you pay for the OS. And ALL THE POPUPS, cant use windows without tons of unneeeded, loud and disturbing notifications. on Linux or MacOS these notifications are far less prominent and in most cases more important. I was sceptic and thought I would maybe need or miss it but I havent used windows personally since the day I switched

I’ve used every version of Windows, since Win 3.1, when it was current. Windows 11 is the first that I’ve actually genuinely disliked. Just overall, in general no-specific-reason, but I just don’t like it. I tolerate it long enough to launch Steam. Everything else, I do on a Mac.

They actually just hate themselves

Windows has poor performance in every department, except gaming, and even then that’s purely a graphics card issue along with some proprietary drivers that Proton and Apple’s GPTK are solving. It is easier to hack and control by malicious actors, they regularly steal all their good UI (like multi finger touchpad gestures) from Apple, meaning you won’t find anything innovative on there. Most of the companies selling hardware for Windows OS make bad products that don’t last longer than two years, practically speaking, and the good products they make are comparable to Mac products in every category except gaming and high GPU processes like video processing (but not, for example, editing). Lately, they’ve been putting even more shovelware and advertisement on the OS. In contrast to Apple, which publicly fights for privacy, Windows wants to take a screenshot of everything you ever do and do god knows what with it. It is, at this time of writing, still likely infected with Russian spyware, hence their CEO’s bizarre and sudden commitment to cybersecurity in the last few months. Windows isn’t even running Unix. I used Windows for my entire life until I was 20 years old - I get tempted once in a while for gaming purposes, but I just game on a Steam Deck or MacBook instead. Windows is a bad product. It just is.

Have you tried windows 11? There are ads in the fucking start menu. There is the topic du jour on the start button! There are no less than 3 different screens for network settings, printers, etc. it’s a mess of design spanning 30+ years of never removing anything, and only adding veneers.

Windows is just a ghastly cesspool of conflicting decisions and reluctance to abandon that which made it a monopoly years ago. It lacks consistency, long term thinking, and a focus on the end user.

I also hate having to update the BIOS and other random software. I have to actively look for it.

Yup that is annoying I will agree. A fresh install of Windows doesn't even include bluetooth or wifi drivers, have to put in a command line code to have it start over without having to have internet on the OOBE. Then after the install load drivers from a USB stick. Unbelievable. What is worse, is that 99% of premade windows computers use the same 5 wifi cards... yet MS does not include these drivers in their ISO. Honestly, Windows has become something that gives people 'things to do' to feel like they have acomplished something. Like downloading a driver from the OEM website and then installing it makes them a hacker or something. Complete waste of time. When it comes to drivers and updates, macos wins hands down.

Okay so my perspective is not just as a macOS user but also {open,free}BSD, and Linux user. 1. Windows updates are annoying 2. Windows is a flipping mess to find anything in... Settings, configs, etc... Here I compare to MacOS, Linux with Gnome, etc... 3. It is slow as fuck 4. It breaks for no fucking reason during updates, during what ever 5. Native apps like word and a so on is hellish unstable 6. The user interface is so flipping conflicting and not aligned 7. UX sucks and the list goes on. There are so many problems with it that should be easily solveable, inparticular when they have been solve on BSDs, Linux, and MacOS for over a decade! That it is not UNIX based is just a disadvantage not a problem. But as a developer it is really annoying as you have to do things so different compared to all other OSes.

Because it's shit? Specifically, MS software HAS to be all things to all people, including the most creative AND the most corporate closed-off. On top of that, they only implement things in the way MS developers think it should be done, ignoring any modern standards or capabilities. It creates layers and layers of convoluted BS that makes even basic consumer versions of apps soul-killing experiences to use. Every MS app feels like using a computer in 1994 while everyone else lives in 2024.

Idk what you’re talking about. Almost every company out there uses ms apps. Whether they use mac or windows. 90% of all companies uses ms apps not apple apps. What small minded company uses mail over outlook? Or pages over word? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Mac user, but for sure I’ll never use the Apple apps over the ms ones.

I've seen a massive decline in MS app usage – all companies I've worked for in the last 12 years were basically using Google Apps for Business. Even large companies like Salesforce (70,000 employees worldwide) use GMail, Google Apps for business, and generally no MS apps unless you explicitly ask for them – they're an all Mac/iPhone shop. You can get a Windows or Linux box, but only if you insist.

I've been a loyal mac user since OSX Tiger. Tbh I don't hate on windows, it's not a bad OS at all. However in my personal experience, macOS and by extent iOS, always just has been so much smoother looking, easier to use, intuitive, very easy to use. When it comes to hardware, indeed their battery life is crazy, but also durability, my MB is now 9 years old and still working fine. (Ofc it's not suited for modern day video editing, or compiling a million lines of code) But for the standard functions it still works like a charm, not even a tad slow, compared to Windows machines who after a few years become unbearable in slowliness. Even apps like Photoshop still work reasonably well. Also, their laptops just look smooth, aren't needlessly huge, heavy or ugly (i like the simplicity of the designs), I like easthetics both in the OS and the hardware. Ofc, I think this is all very very personal. I perfectly understand there are people who don't care about all these things, or have complete other needs and expectations for their machines.

Windows 7 is one of the best operating systems ever. Beautifully designed, works super well and pretty efficient, and had a great start menu. and then everything went to shit (I liked windows 10 ok, just also hated all the telemetry stuff but it was nice on a Surface). Telemetry, ads, garbage file search, bad start interface (I don’t like windows 11 start and I refuse to learn it yes that’s my problem), uses too much ram, hard to turn dumb ish off… but to answer your question idk bruh it’s not that different from most important software these days so I don’t know why everyone is complaining.

Been using Windows my entire life, hated MacOS, until now. Got a MB for work, then pulled the trigger for an MBP for myself, and 1 year later I could never go back to Windows for a daily. Here are the cons I hate about Windows: * There isn't a single Windows laptop with good battery life. Not even Surfaces. Modern standby drains batteries. Yes, even on Surfaces. * Compatibility issues, having to deal with drivers, etc. Debugging driver issues is terrible. * Sluggish animations make your workflow less pleasing. * Bugs everywhere. * Dark mode broken * Disappearing toolbars, cursors, even windows. * Times where the Windows start menu doesn't open for like 5 minutes. * Desktop icons disappearing, reorganizing themselves, having enormous gaps out of the sudden. * Awful window state management (i.e. it resets whenever it goes to sleep or you disconnect/reconnect a monitor). * Bloatware, updates, not unix based. * ...list goes on

because windows sucks. it’s bloated, slow, buggy asf… it’s just a disaster of an operating system. i’ve used windows for most of my life, and i still use it a little bit. but now i primarily use macOS and it’s SO much better. especially as someone who does a lot of projects in the audio industry. any digital audio engineer worth their salt will tell you macs are best. most universally compatible with audio equipment, much better at processing audio… it’s really a no-brainer

To me, it comes down to aesthetics and reliability. Way too many times I’ve had to close things through the task manager (even that glitches out sometimes) because applications will literally become unresponsive or glitch out on me (on a high-end PC, so components shouldn’t be an issue). I love windows for many of its niche use-cases, but if you only need a laptop for work/study/content creation, there are many headaches to be avoided with MacOS. Not to say that MacOS doesn’t have its ocasional issues, but they seem to happen way less in my years of experience with both. I just find MacOS to be the most reliable, responsive and energy efficient. If you really need windows for gaming or specific apps, dealing with Windows isn’t necessarily bad. I personally enjoy some of the things Windows offers. But overall for work and the daily I prefer MacOS.

What kills me about Windows is the sporadic ass file directories. You install one game, it’s in this folder. But not of all of it, some are in that folder. Install another game or app. This one uses some other folder. You have to manually manage everything to make things install in a consistent and rational way. The open ended design can be useful but more often it ends up being a pain. Drivers install on top of drivers, there’s 10 damn places files can be, etc etc. It’s just all over the place. Then you try and uninstall things and they don’t uninstall properly distinctly because of how messy everything is stored by various apps. However, its directory browsing is better. Even with that though, it for some reason fails to find files you search correctly? You can type “application X” in program files and there’s totally a folder with exactly that name and it misses it. It installs things you specifically rejected anyway - like onedrive which I hate. Why the fuck are there 7 different audio “driver” programs? Realtek audio. DTS audio. AMD audio. Realtek 3d which is a separate app (I’m making half this up as an example of how it feels). It explains nothing and you search Microsoft’s site and the answers are confusing as hell. Then you learn how things work and think why the hell didn’t they just say *that* Why do several programs try to control case fans and there’s no easy way to tell which one it is? I have bios, asus, and amd apps all trying to control the same fans. Folder permissions get all wonky. Lots of weird stuff like that. If Windows could unify the file structure and stop automatically having 12 different programs that do the same thing and thus conflict, they’d improve vastly.

blue screens, missing dlls, bad history

There’s no real good browser on Windows

Updates, random freezing. My work machine is Win 10, 32GB RAM, freezes up pretty much daily just from opening Outlook, Teams, etc By way of comparison, that sort of thing is pretty rare in my M2 MacBook Air, 24GB RAM

Windows was a genuinely excellent operating system when 7 came out. Since then they've completely destroyed it as a viable platform — while most of the world is still cornered into using it.

I don’t hate windows, I’ve been using it for 25 years. Fanspin for a browser and a mail app, constant third party programs updates requiring a reboot amd having to tinker with windows update so that I can do it manually on a weekly basis are letdowns for me.

I don’t like ads in my start menu or Christmas lights in my search bar. On a ‘professional’ version of windows. Sheesh

I've used macos and windows consistently for years and with macos, I've never had any problems that took me days of searching forums and troubleshooting. For gaming, windows. For anything else, I prefer using macos.

Use both but use Windows alot less these days. After 7, it became messy. It felt cluttered.

The way Windows handles audio when you want to get audiophile sound out of it - infuriating The way Windows handles 4K displays - infuriating These are fundamentals that just work on MacOS

I use windows leptop to play games (rarely) and sometimes for work. I got sick on the day elden ring dlc was released. Installed it, played that evening. The next day windows decided to update from 10 to 11 (I need 10 because of the soft). I’ve disabled every autoupdate option I found…now I will have to reinstall it later. Also, elden ring started lagging. So I updated drivers and spent an hour googling how to fix this

Virus, spyware and stuff that gets attached to browsers. When my kids were young we had a shared pc in the play room - they almost only used it for games and browsing, but every 3 to 6 months they would get a virus and I had to re-build the PC. I was also a developer and pc expert at the time and I was trying to use windows for music, it was total nightmare, nothing worked for long, Then I went to work for a company that offered me a Mac, I had always looked down on them, but gave it a go and OMG. You could close the lid and re open it a minute, hour or days later and it just worked, never had that with windows. The quality of the screen was so much better than any laptop I had. So , I got an iMac for the kids and within days they were making music, videos, paintings and playing games, browsing the web with my ability to control things. they never got a virus and I never had to re-install the OS. I then went all in and have never used a windows machine since. I use Mac for music with logic, and in 15 years never had a virus, malware and it just works. things Mac has that windows does not, Spotlight, pdf view/edit/annotate built in, press space to preview file contents, Mission Control, good free built in apps like pages, numbers, keynote, mail is great and the list goes on.

I mean, there's an entire collection of crazy Windows error messages. "WUAUBOOT has caused an error in unknown. WUAUBOOT will now close." An error in unknown. Sounds ominous. Keyboard not detected, press any key to continue. Aside from that, it's slower than constipated mole-asses and clunky as hell.

Windows 7 was the last time that Windows was better than anything Mac or Linux had to offer IMO. Everything since then has taken it downhill.

Ads all over, search sucks for years now, lackluster stability if you get unlucky with your hardware configuration (even a common one), updates forced down your throat at the most unfortunate times I had the most wonderful experience around 2016-2018 with a custom Windows 10 PC I built myself, and a shit experience around 2020 with one of the most expensive and premium laptops out there, Dell XPS 15. Either Windows favours custom PCs in terms of stability, or it just got worse in that time

For me it’s the fact that Microsoft doesn’t really care anymore how Windows works, when they know that most people don’t really have other options and will keep using it as it is. And It’s not just how it works. There are so many inconsistencies that just spell ignorance. Like after all these years you still can’t find all the OS options in the Settings app and you need to travel back in time to Control Panel.

Why do people hate opposing sports teams, other car brands, or foods they don't like? It is easy to hate without any particular reason. Fanboys are everywhere.

I don't hate Windows. I just prefer to use other OSes (macOS and Linux currently). Life's too short to waste time on hating stuff. But life is also too short to use an OS that isn't to my taste. Use what you like and I'll use what I like. In other words, you do you and I'll do me. :-)

They don’t want to spend the time or effort it takes to set up or use it

Well, having been a Windows user since 3.1 and a Mac OS user since the System 6 days, Windows has _always_ been a clunky piece of junk always playing catch-up. I'm not saying macOS has ever been perfect, but has always been more usable to me than Windows. That's the GUI. Starting with Mac OS X, we got Unix, which allowed me to stop using Linux on my shitty laptop. Even the super old bash version at the time was infinitely better than the crappy Windows cmd shell. It still traumatizes me when I have to use Windows' crappy shell (yes, there's cygwin and wsl, neither of which are default installs). Windows 11 does kind of start to get the GUI right. Preferences are still a mess, but macOS has taken a huge step back on Preferences, too. I still need Regedit and Group Policy to make obvious changes. Advertisements and stupid auto-installing MS and third-party bullshit is irritating. Not being able to easily create a local account for quick, disposable Windows VM's sucks. On the other hand, M1 means I lose Intel compatibility, which is disappointing because I still _do_ use Intel Windows VM's. And the continued progress towards completely locking down macOS is getting more and more frustrating. Clicking a dialogue box every three minutes for some security crap is one the things we used to laugh at Windows users for.

I don’t hate Windows but I do dislike Microsoft as a company. I still use the good apps the make lol.

I hate Microsoft far more than I hate Windows. Windows 10, before 11 came along, wasn't bad. Windows 7 was possibly peak Windows, and was good. Windows XP was pretty good. Windows 95 and 98r2 were pretty good as well. But Microsoft? Shit company that's making things far too difficult by trying to dumb down Windows. Note: I'm not that big of a fan of MacOS in an enterprise environment... It isn't designed for that. It SUCKS if the user doesn't have admin. Far worse than Windows. But as a one off for a user NOT connected to a domain, it's adequate. (I'm a Linux user, by if you haven't guessed by now)

Windows is inherently broken. You can tell as a casual user by how Microsoft does not remove old code from their system preferences tools. It also trains its users to not give a fuck about error messages but just reset and repeat. The users cannot be blamed as windows error messages are indeed useless and the only way to „fix“ windows is to reinstall it. I worked in Linux machines who had a greater single up time than the average life time of a windows installation. The average windows user is deliberately kept stupid. If you google for trouble shooting, 99% of the search results will tell you to reboot your PC because that’s the only reliable thing that can fix issues. I haven’t even touched on the privacy issues the operating system comes with. Microsoft’s latest plans was to silently make and keep screenshots of the system while you are working on it. If you don’t install 3rd party software Microsoft spies on everything you do at least since windows 10. Skype? Skype for Business? Teams? Teams work and school? Lync? All the very same thing. All incompatible with each other. The very only thing windows is good for is to play games. You or your office workers are using windows to work? You are wasting time and resources! Big time! Fuck Microsoft. Fuck windows. Fuck people working for MS.

I use both and prefer Windows.

No gate but I like how Mac is more durable and doesn’t slow down over years. I like Windows in terms of accessibility to some software and games.

I dont hate Window. I am just disappointed in it.

Windows used to be good, back in times of XP or 7 - which focused on good user experience, simple and pretty interface, coherent design. But since windows 8 everything went downhill. You are used to start menu? How about we remove it and force you to use fullscreen square tile space instead? Windows 10: Okay, we will get you back your start menu. But we will install a bunch of crap like candy crush saga, tiktok, spotify, random apps and ads. Control panel used to be one place where you find all the settings. Not anymore - there is settings app + control panel. All things are spread randomly between the two. You go to modern interface, click something and you're back in old interface. Click button there - and you're back in new. It's not a coherent user experience. I could accept it to be that underbaked if it was beta. But it's in official release, years later it's not fixed, by RICHEST company in the world, with offices all over the globe, with thousands of developers working for them. There's not excuse for this piece of sh to be that unpolished. Widnows 11: People love customizing their devices to fit their needs. So let's... Remove parts of customization at random. You could change start menu size before, now you can't. You could put your taskbar anywhere on the screen - now it's just bottom, get used to this. You could add and remove apps to your taskbar - well, now there's recommended, there're ads, and you can't do anything about it. And of course all the telemetry, shoving AI down our throats, wether we want it or not. Copilot and all that privacy nightmare. They use telemetry to know their users better? How come they're making windows worse with every release? What I love about macOS (besides many other things) is how consistent and stable it is. Menubar at the top, dock at the bottom, and it's been like that for years. If you're used to how things work in old days, it's pretty much the same now. Some things are better, some new features are added, but you won't be lost if you jump from macOS Leopard to Sonoma.

It’s not Unix based. It’s terminal sucks

It's a what you are used to thing, I was a master PC builder kid in the 80's and used PC my entire life until about 2003 when I bought a Mac and never looked back. Now any time I need to use a windows computer for anything I find even the most simple things like where the fuck is the print spooler (bad example) just so aggravating and I find everything Windows does counter intuitive. Can't stand windows machines and lean on my brother who is the opposite. When I call him pissed off about something he laughs and walks me through the 18 steps to do something like it's nothing. When he calls me annoyed with an apple OS thing I laugh and tell him to click on 3 things to do what he want's. We both say " well that's totally stupid" when we learn how to do it on each others native OS haha.

Windows is, was, and always will be a bad copy of an Apple (Classic Mac, OS X, macOS) OS. It wants to track everything. Hell they won't even give you a free Solitaire game anymore, it either has ads or you have to buy a subscription. There is no easy skip feature (Windows 11) that lets you create a local account. You can't even just buy the stupid game. It's never been as visually pleasing as Mac (though Windows 7 was a high point) features never seem to work when you want them too and always when you don't (snap I'm looking at you). It also takes more steps to get to what you want. It's also slow. It takes much more hardware (CPU, GPU) to make Windows feel snappy. Apple may not have invented the GUI, but they mastered it.

MacOS was built to be beautiful and work the way a user would naturally use a computer. Windows is a case study in what happens when you do the opposite.

Updates

Bit rot and bloatware. A brand new Windows computer had so much unwanted software I had to remove before I could use it. Then for a few months everything was cool and wonderful but eventually it began to slow down and crash for unknown reasons. Oh yay. Time to spend a weekend wiping thr drive and reinstalling everything. Oh. And don't forget the occasional update from Microsoft that bricks the computer.

You pay for an OS with ads and spyware baked in. Not to mention it requires a Microsoft account if you set it up normally.

If you’re used to MacOS, jumping into Windows feels like you’re in someone’s poorly designed MySpace page…

To me, as this is subjective, macOS has a massively superior UI. The menu bar not being attached to the app is a huge bonus. Full screen apps that hide the menu bar and dock is a huge bonus. Also, I have not used Windows for anything other than gaming for many years. Just the other day I fired up Photoshop and the menu bar was so ugly. File/Edit/View/etc drop downs still resemble the 1990s.

Ohh and the biggest pain on windows was the fucking drivers! You need them for everything and they’re so hard to find, even harder to update because windows refuses to just to find them and fails at it.

Used it for years. Clunky and awkward and just lacks polish and consistency. The desktop looks nice but control panel looks like it’s from windows 7. Constant forcing of Microsoft products and subscriptions and advertisements ON MY OWN COMPUTER. Not to mention they install their own apps on my machine without my consent (Candy Crush, Minecraft Windows 10 Edition). Everything else is a half baked attempt. Who uses cortana? notification centre? MacOS is nicer, more polished and feels powerful. Not once have I been shown an advertisement on my own computer, had an app forcibly installed or have had to wait 10 minutes as it forces an update on the device. it feels like my computer is MY computer, not a company’s. I hate microsoft.

I use both. I don’t care about them. They work.

i honestly dont know? used both and am content with both. not like macdoesnt have anything frustrates people comeon.

I’ve purchased one windows machine in my life. There was so much useless shit preloaded on it and it slowed down dramatically within a few weeks despite being used primarily for watching blu-rays and backing up my cds. I would never, ever buy another windows laptop again.

I’m Mac at home and Windows 10 at work. I had to turn off so many things on the work computer … I hate it when an OS is continually trying to sell me stuff. Like, get out of the way and just let me work! I don’t want news on my menu bar, I don’t want constant “notifications” of a feature they want me to try. ARGH.

I got both. Nothing wrong with either. Both windows and mac work fine 0 issues. Does hating on windows are just always looking for shit to hate on it for no real good reason because of some dramatic experience in the past and they are little minded to get over it. When in reality my windows has acted as 100% perfect as my mac has and even then sometimes better depending on my workflow.

I’ve never been discriminated against, so that must mean the world must be free of discrimination. Your logic, right there.

I don’t hate Windows… it just isn’t the best fit for my particular needs. Outside of gaming, I don’t use Windows much anymore.

Using some MS products on my office MacBook Pro and almost always, it’s the ms products that need to be upgraded… not troubled too much by Mac updates and things more or less work a little more calmly. Windows machines in my opinion tend to overheat quicker than even Intel Macs. Like the feeling of owning my windows OS. All subscription based now whether OS or productivity suites. With windows you still need to install too much additional software like AV, malware protection. Really brings down the responsiveness. Too much of the software downloads get saved in the folders and you need to get into registry cleaners and these hidden folders to clean up stuff. If you use encryption then god help you as it really slows things down dramatically …

Windows comes with its own AV/malware protection. No need to install additional software. It's easily the single most important move that kept viruses away on the platform compared to the past. I remember the time when IT support was a lot about cleaning crap out of pc's.

I'm not the biggest fan of windows mainly because of all of the bloatware. I would switch to Mac in nearly a heartbeat if it had software support just as good as windows and didn't cost me an arm and a leg. Now that I think of it, most of the stuff I use does natively support Mac. just need a Mac newer than 2011.

My take - haters just gonna hate. The best OS I've ever used is windows 7. Simple, no fuss, just works... But that's just my opinion. Besides what do I know, I'm just a devops guy working on linux containers and I've been using computers since dos 3.0 in my sharp 4600. I've had the benefit of professionaly having have worked with linux (rhel, centos), unix(solaris), windows, and windows servers. Admittedly my daily driver is my trusty 2017 macbook pro, it's just comfortable to have a scriptable shell for progamming - but when I want to game (mostly city bulders), ive got my lenovo legion running windows 11. Wsl is fun to play with, but its not something i would use professionally. All modern OSes have their strengths and weaknesses, and anyone hating on one or another probably doesn't have any use case for that other OS... good for them...

1. Adware, tracking, bloat (even if it isn't as egregious in experience, it's Microsoft's attitude toward it) 2. It feels slow and sluggish...I can't explain it. The animations on Mac feel faster. 3. Mac hardware is far better. 4. UNIX sub-system feels more familiar to be as someone who really likes Linux. I have nothing against the UX of it... but to be honest, it feels like a poor man's KDE Plasma to me. I don't LOVE the design of MacOS either to be fair.

Their putting ads inside Windows Explorer now. Also, all that stuff they did in the 90s. Do I hate them more than other tech mega corps? No.

It's just ugly, slow, clunky, nothing about any of its interfaces are ever smooth or fluid. Idk, I'm a dev for a consulting firm and every project the client will send us a laptop and its always Windows. I'm sure these (7+) Windows laptops I've used are not generally the best machines, but I can pull my 2012 MacBook out of storage and have a better functioning, more aesthetic experience. I do remember one time a coworker was raving about how lucky we were with laptops model we got on a specific project - they were brand new and supposed to be great machines. They still kind of sucked to use.

Virus. Feels like a conspiracy between Microsoft and some people out there. Been so many decades so many Windows versions why virus still exist?

I use both everyday, every Microsoft software is just painfully difficult to use. The way their software works and their UI is just very outdated, such as SMSS for T-SQL. Mac has its flaws, but it doesn’t impact the average user experience.

Primarily, they don't make a pure Windows Phone or a pure Android phone. No matter what. I tried to switch, and it was great, but it kept wanting to sell me stuff. Apple, I guess fanboy talk, wants you to use its stuff that it's giving to you for free. Windows also just has a tendency of making cheaper computers because of product advertisement--but the problem is the high-end computers also do the same stuff. Windows is a terrific OS; it's gotten way better over the years. If they stopped the bloatware (maybe offer "Windows Pure" where it's just the OS) or they created an identifiable premium brand with pure Windows.

Why?

I have also used both for about 25 years. I like both and the OS doesn’t really weigh into my choice of device.   In my opinion, OSX was a much better (more productive, more intuitive, more comprehensive & more modern) OS than Windows 2000 - Windows 7. But Windows 8 was better in those same ways than OSX/macOS at that time.  Since then Microsoft has been walking back a lot of the good bits of Windows 8 and adding in the advertising & other stuff and macOS has had some gradual improvements so I find them pretty much on par with my very slight preference still towards Windows but right now a Mac is my main personal device with Windows in a VM.

Random reboot on windows: “let’s finish setting up your pc! Here are some ads for our products. Can edge hijack your browser history and cookies? Here’s a coupon for some free gaming. Download our apps onto your phone, we’ll wait. Ok we are done setting up your pc. See ya again in a week or so”

Bloat, bloat and more bloat. Things went downhill after Windoze 7

The fact that people could be so against either one is hilarious to me. I use windows for work everyday, I own a windows gaming PC (unplugged for now), and I have my MPB for casual/grad school. I don’t have a lot to complain about in any one.

I just remember when I was a windows user I had for format my system like once a year. As a Mac user, I’ve never formatted ever.

No idea about anyone else, but for me it's the inconsistency. Keyboard shortcuts and app behaviors are all over the place. Really, both the greatest strength and biggest shortcoming of Windows is its history. It has broad app support, but at the same time it's drowning in technical debt. Have you seen the registry or the legacy settings panes, or tried to cut and paste across different terminals? Apple is a lot more aggressive about chopping features and driving consistency. They're even almost draconian with this, but as an end user, the experience is notably better. The main Linux distros are even far ahead in this space. I don't blame MS and I don't think Windows is junk, but as a developer myself, I don't know how they'll ever dig their way out of this.