Have any longtime OSX users tried Windows 10?

[cynics]

I was a long time Windows user that switched to Mac when Win7 was out however I was still using WinXP.

Recently I tried to put Win10 on a laptop I use for Linux. And while the laptop is capable of using software like Gimp and Resolve in Linux without issue just running Win10 was a chore for it. Constant HDD activity, bunches of pop ups reminding me of security features, anti virus, etc. I immediately remembered why I switched.

Since then I bought an SSD for the laptop and I'm going to give it another shot. However I can say with great confidence I'll just be using Win10 only when I need it and to mess around to just see what it has to offer.

I usually buy hardware to meet and exceed the specs of the software I use, not the OS itself.

EDIT: Just got an SSD in. Couldn't help from install Linux Mint on it since it will be more useful for me. However I ordered another SSD for a DVD drive caddy and I plan on installing Windows 10 on that. Might get an msata for OS X after exploring the difficulties in making my ThinkPad a hackintosh.

 

[Gazember]

After Windows 10 rendered 2 of my laptops and my desktop computer useless I made the switch to OS X. And I was a Windows user for 20 years prior...
I do realize Microsoft eventually fixed 10, but for me not being able to use my computers for 20 minutes after start was the last straw at that time.

 

[BoneDaddy]

I've tried it. It'd despicable. In fact, I have yet to enjoy any other windows, AFTER XP. Windows 7 was decent...

 

[cynics]

Finally got around to installing it... my experience is mostly dealing with OS X/MacOS and Linux. I tried Windows 10 before but performance was abysmal to the point I didn't use it for more than enough time to download and make a bootable Linux installer. However on an SSD performance seems pretty good. My last real experience with Windows was XP so my thoughts so far....

1. I don't trust it. I've unchecked multitudes of toggles about sharing information and ads. I guess I appreciate their up front nature and I know this exist with Apple products but it feels like they are prepping me for a bombardment of targeted advertising.

2. I was hoping the limitations imposed by Linux that required tinkering wouldn't exist. However I can already see that is not the case. My external display resolution is limited to 1080p, maybe an easy fix maybe not.

3. Updates and even worse....restart required updates! Apple isn't innocent of this either however not to this extent. I downloaded a fresh version of the Windows Creator Edition from Microsoft.com, installed it and notice I have 3 notifications suggesting restarts. I restart, then I'm familiarizing myself with the setting menu and click check for updates. It finds more updates and needs a restart again. I may have become ignorant by using Linux but short of a Kernel update I never needed to restart....ever!

4. Malware or at least the reminder of it. One of the updates above was "Malicious Software Remover"..... thanks I guess...?

5. Now this is probably just my inexperience but Windows seems very rooted to the drive and not very flexible. For example if I wanted to unmount it resize partitions and such. Also seems like it wants to be the only OS on a drive without great effort to avoid it. Even using the bios to boot it installed "Windows Boot Manager"...wtf....Again probably just my inexperience.

6. No repositories. I know thats a stupid gripe and I shouldn't compare what isn't there, but sudo apt install xxxx is so much easier for me then browsing ad laden web pages and probably downloading malware.

7. CPU usage from bloat. Just watching "Processes" things like "Antimalware Service Executable", "wsappx" (some Microsoft service that looks at the apps I have or something) and "Store" are topping the chart. I'll get spikes in usage and fan revs up when I'm not doing anything.

ONLY things I have running are Resource Monitor and Task Manager.


Excuse the image quality.

8. The need to tweak to make it less worse vs the need to tweak to make an OS better. What I mean is I can tell I'll be disabling a ton of stuff for battery life and less spying compared to Linux where I'm tweaking things to make them better. I feel MacOS is a good compromise between both currently.

EDIT: 9. Odd, preprogrammed (?) behavior. After my laptop fell asleep and I woke it up the CPU issue from above appears gone...at least for the time being.


However its not all bad...

1. I really like its design. It feels and looks like what I would expect of a modern OS. This might be because its new to me personally but I don't see myself changing anything.

2. The level of hardware detail natively available is great! Performance tab in task manager is awesome. Resource Monitor is awesome. The graph and speed of file transfers is awesome. I'm loving all that. I've installed quite a few tools in Linux and this natively better by far.

3. Seems like its battery power management tools are better. Caveat of that is its CPU usage noted above but I guess tweaking needs to be done.

4. Driver support! Apple spoiled me with not worrying about. Linux aggravated me with not having it. At least with Windows I know I'm leveraging the hardware the best it can be ATM. Even the Intel integrated graphics control panel is really good (Intel does good work with the Linux community too).

5. Very fast start up and ultra fast shut down times. Its faster then equally loaded distros of Linux in start up and definitely shut down on the same system. Destroys Mac OS here, even side by side on MUCH more powerful machines. (EDIT there could be a problem with my Mac)

While Windows is clearly much better then when I left I'm still not considering it as my daily driver OS. Especially when MacOS and so many good (and FREE) distros of Linux exist. Maybe if I was a PC gamer I would feel differently but I doubt anyone could come up with a convincing argument for me personally to switch from MacOS or Linux.

I am very happy to have a fully functional version of the latest version of Windows though. Its support alone makes it a very powerful OS that I know I'll find useful in the future.

 

[JMacHack]

5. Very fast start up and ultra fast shut down times. Its faster then equally loaded distros of Linux in start up and definitely shut down on the same system. Destroys Mac OS here, even side by side on MUCH more powerful machines.

I'm not calling you a liar, but on my 2010 Mac Pro the boot time is ~5 seconds or less (and 3 or so on my MBP), same with shutdown, on Windows 10 machines that my relatives have it's much more than that.

Is there anything else that might cause the shutdown/startup on MacOS to be slow?

 

[cynics]

I'm not calling you a liar, but on my 2010 Mac Pro the boot time is ~5 seconds or less (and 3 or so on my MBP), same with shutdown, on Windows 10 machines that my relatives have it's much more than that.

Is there anything else that might cause the shutdown/startup on MacOS to be slow?

Probably should have chosen my words more carefully and said in my experience with my equipment.

I'm comparing a 2011 ThinkPad with i7 2640m to a maxed out 2015 iMac. Everything in the iMac is multiple times faster.

I'm sure there are faster Macs.

I plan on making the thinkpad a Hackintosh but that's not a good comparison since it's a hack.

 

[JMacHack]

I'm comparing a 2011 ThinkPad with i7 2640m to a maxed out 2015 iMac. Everything in the iMac is multiple times faster.
I'm sure there are faster Macs.

A 2015 iMac should be a lot faster than my 2010 Mac Pro, but I've never used a 2015 iMac at any spec so I guess you might be right.

 

[cynics]

A 2015 iMac should be a lot faster than my 2010 Mac Pro, but I've never used a 2015 iMac at any spec so I guess you might be right.

Well you got me thinking. So before I left work I timed my iMac and it was 22 seconds. Which from reading online seems on the high side. Not sure if that is due to the LAN or what I'll need to mess with it.

My personal 2013 iMac has a HDD so I can't compare that.

I'll edit my above post.

 

[dumastudetto]

In my experience, Macs with an SSD boot up within seconds. But if you have one of the slower HDD's they still insist on putting in iMacs, boot times can be painfully slow measuring closer to a minute than less than a handful of seconds.

If you have a Mac with an SSD and it is booting much slower than Windows, something must be wrong.

 

[curtvaughan]

Windows 10 post anniversary update is pretty nice. I would stay with the Surface book line though. I had the XPS13/15 last year and coil whine eventually showed up on all the machines, and it was annoying. The new XPS13 looks terrible as Dell decided to neuter the processor.

MacOS is still the better of the two, its much more elegant and I've been much happier with the 2016 13" non-TB, with the Surface Book right behind it (which had it's own issues, however), and the Dells further behind that.

I'm curious what his argumentis, as I've owned the XPS13 and found the non-TB 13" to be much better..

I'm running 3 flavors of Linux on a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition which I bought in January (the Kaby Lane 360). I've had absolutely no coil whine. This machine has been a dream. As the 360 was released in late October and all of the complaints are from previous releases (350 and earlier), I'm thinking that the 360 release has some sort of updated motherboard or the like which fixed the issue. It might also have something to do with its being "developer" edition (non-windows). I really love this little machine, and now have it triple booted with Ubuntu (which it came with), Antergos, and Kali.

As to a "neutered" processor, mine has Kaby Lane I7. It also has 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB SSD. Ubuntu boots up in less than 10 seconds, Antergos in 7, and Kali in 5. Not shabby at all, and I'm slowly getting things to speed up by tinkering with swap and grub defaults over time. The tinkering in Linux is kind of fun if you like that sort of thing.

 

[dazzer21-2]

Well you got me thinking. So before I left work I timed my iMac and it was 22 seconds.

Is that just the time it takes to start up? My '15 5K iMac takes 6-7 max! My 2008 iMac running 10.6 and a 5200rpm HD takes around 25.

 

[cynics]

Is that just the time it takes to start up? My '15 5K iMac takes 6-7 max! My 2008 iMac running 10.6 and a 5200rpm HD takes around 25.

I think its related to the NAS and the devices it uses. I said that in the post I'm not exactly sure why you edited it out of the quote?

 

[bigpoppamac31]

I haven't tried Win10 but I wouldn't mind putting it on my Mac using Boot Camp. Anyone here who has done that please let me know how it has gone?

 

[maflynn]

I haven't tried Win10 but I wouldn't mind putting it on my Mac using Boot Camp. Anyone here who has done that please let me know how it has gone?

My iMac runs windows 10 and its fine.

 

[bigpoppamac31]

My iMac runs windows 10 and its fine.

Hmm okay. Too bad it's $189 Canadian for 64bit Windows Home. That's a lot.

 

[maflynn]

Hmm okay. Too bad it's $189 Canadian for 64bit Windows Home. That's a lot.

I already had a windows 7 license, and upgrade to win10 for free.

 

[bbrks]

Damn......my I remind the public.....this thread is not about Samsung vs iPhone.
I am using both OSX and W10 and I like both. And both have their advantages and disadvantages.
It's just the matter of choice and getting used to it. Nothing else.
I so hate the haters by default, blahhhhh

 

[curtvaughan]

It amuses me how people say Windows is faster than macOS. I did some tests, running Geekbench and Cinebench on both OSes on the exact same hardware and every time macOS did better in CPU tests.

That's not a very fair test unless you were running MacOS on some hackintosh. There is little doubt that MacOS/OSX runs more efficiently on Mac hardware - it's finely engineered for that. There's no doubt in my mind that Windows can't compete for speed on Macs. Windows and Linux both run amazingly fast on hardware like the XPS 13.

 

[cynics]

Damn......my I remind the public.....this thread is not about Samsung vs iPhone.
I am using both OSX and W10 and I like both. And both have their advantages and disadvantages.
It's just the matter of choice and getting used to it. Nothing else.
I so hate the haters by default, blahhhhh

Actually its a thread on opinions of longterm OS X users with Win10.....

I tend to agree with you though. Since my previous review above I would say once you are past the learning curve....it's fine. Its just a different method of accomplishing the same thing.

The two main differences I keep running into are which are probably non issues for most people:

1. Windows vs malware. You'll be utilizing more resources for Windows Defender or other processes. The threat is more real. Its like when you live in a nice rural area where everyone knows everyone else then move to the big city. You'll probably be fine but you'll need to keep your wits about you.

2. MacOS and lack of 3rd party hardware support. Since getting Win10 I've updated the firmware in 2 SSDs (that weren't running Windows BTW), an older GPS, and some equipment I use for work (no MacOS software for updating).

There are plenty of other things (like gaming with DX and Vulkcan support) but those 2 things are the only things that impact me.

 

[JoelTheSuperior]

That's not a very fair test unless you were running MacOS on some hackintosh. There is little doubt that MacOS/OSX runs more efficiently on Mac hardware - it's finely engineered for that. There's no doubt in my mind that Windows can't compete for speed on Macs. Windows and Linux both run amazingly fast on hardware like the XPS 13.

I was indeed testing on a hackintosh. I use macOS as my primary OS on a PC I built.

 

[576316]

I recently replaced my MacBook Pro from way back in 2012 with a custom built PC - because I need Windows based IDEs and graphics power, without paying through the arse for it from Apple.

I've got to say, having been away from Windows for a long time, Windows 10 is relatively kind to people familiar with macOS. It's super sleek and clean nowadays, whereas I seem to remember the clunky, dated look of Windows Vista and 7. The Windows Store still sucks, but so does the MAS.

The only issues I'm having is that there's no iMessage for Windows so I'm having to talk to a much more limited contact list through Facebook Messenger - I'm really hoping Apple see the light and expand iMessage to cross-platform.

The second issue I'm having is that iCloud email doesn't play too nicely with Mail for Windows 10. There's no option to have Mail check for new iCloud mail continuously, the quickest it will do is every 15 minutes - which is annoying. Something to do with the way Apple's email servers are set up and compatibility or something. Not found a fix for that and it's annoying when I get an email on my Apple Watch but have to manually refresh Mail to see it cause Mail hasn't checked the server recently.

Overall, Windows 10 is better than people allow it credit for. The new Creator's update was pretty nice too, and I hear there's more good stuff coming with Project Neon. Yes, I miss the touch gestures and some stuff is easier on Mac. But the transition isn't terrible. I think I miss Pixelmator most of all, but I'm not getting rid of my MacBook so it'll always be there if I start missing macOS too much!! Also so I can always test out all the new macOS features.

It's worth noting that I had considered making the build a hackintosh, but I've heard all sorts of horror stories about hardware compatibility and updating. Also I don't want to be restricting in gaming, and I need IDEs only available on Windows.

 

[cynics]

I recently replaced my MacBook Pro from way back in 2012 with a custom built PC - because I need Windows based IDEs and graphics power, without paying through the arse for it from Apple.

I've got to say, having been away from Windows for a long time, Windows 10 is relatively kind to people familiar with macOS. It's super sleek and clean nowadays, whereas I seem to remember the clunky, dated look of Windows Vista and 7. The Windows Store still sucks, but so does the MAS.

The only issues I'm having is that there's no iMessage for Windows so I'm having to talk to a much more limited contact list through Facebook Messenger - I'm really hoping Apple see the light and expand iMessage to cross-platform.

The second issue I'm having is that iCloud email doesn't play too nicely with Mail for Windows 10. There's no option to have Mail check for new iCloud mail continuously, the quickest it will do is every 15 minutes - which is annoying. Something to do with the way Apple's email servers are set up and compatibility or something. Not found a fix for that and it's annoying when I get an email on my Apple Watch but have to manually refresh Mail to see it cause Mail hasn't checked the server recently.

Overall, Windows 10 is better than people allow it credit for. The new Creator's update was pretty nice too, and I hear there's more good stuff coming with Project Neon. Yes, I miss the touch gestures and some stuff is easier on Mac. But the transition isn't terrible. I think I miss Pixelmator most of all, but I'm not getting rid of my MacBook so it'll always be there if I start missing macOS too much!! Also so I can always test out all the new macOS features.

It's worth noting that I had considered making the build a hackintosh, but I've heard all sorts of horror stories about hardware compatibility and updating. Also I don't want to be restricting in gaming, and I need IDEs only available on Windows.

I doubt Apple will "see the light" with iMessage. Its operating through their cloud services which is inherently running with all Apple devices you are signed into. Not so much on Windows. Plus its part of their ecosystem which keeps people wanting to use Apple products in conjunction with each other. If you could use Apple services on non Apple hardware why a lot of people would jump ship.

Many push email systems are restricted to their own ecosystems due to server cost nowadays. Google did the same thing with Gmail for iOS devices users a couple years ago. The system sends a notification telling the device to check its email (versus fetching/polling/pulling it automatically at preset time intervals) which cost the service server usage only for the convenience. Apple likely feels the same way, why would they want to pay for you to use hardware from a competitor?

 

[576316]

Many push email systems are restricted to their own ecosystems due to server cost nowadays. Google did the same thing with Gmail for iOS devices users a couple years ago. The system sends a notification telling the device to check its email (versus fetching/polling/pulling it automatically at preset time intervals) which cost the service server usage only for the convenience. Apple likely feels the same way, why would they want to pay for you to use hardware from a competitor?

Thank you for the detailed response, that's what I was looking for - just an explanation as to why it isn't possible to have instant push.

 

[lowendlinux]

I recently replaced my MacBook Pro from way back in 2012 with a custom built PC - because I need Windows based IDEs and graphics power, without paying through the arse for it from Apple.

I've got to say, having been away from Windows for a long time, Windows 10 is relatively kind to people familiar with macOS. It's super sleek and clean nowadays, whereas I seem to remember the clunky, dated look of Windows Vista and 7. The Windows Store still sucks, but so does the MAS.

The only issues I'm having is that there's no iMessage for Windows so I'm having to talk to a much more limited contact list through Facebook Messenger - I'm really hoping Apple see the light and expand iMessage to cross-platform.

The second issue I'm having is that iCloud email doesn't play too nicely with Mail for Windows 10. There's no option to have Mail check for new iCloud mail continuously, the quickest it will do is every 15 minutes - which is annoying. Something to do with the way Apple's email servers are set up and compatibility or something. Not found a fix for that and it's annoying when I get an email on my Apple Watch but have to manually refresh Mail to see it cause Mail hasn't checked the server recently.

Overall, Windows 10 is better than people allow it credit for. The new Creator's update was pretty nice too, and I hear there's more good stuff coming with Project Neon. Yes, I miss the touch gestures and some stuff is easier on Mac. But the transition isn't terrible. I think I miss Pixelmator most of all, but I'm not getting rid of my MacBook so it'll always be there if I start missing macOS too much!! Also so I can always test out all the new macOS features.

It's worth noting that I had considered making the build a hackintosh, but I've heard all sorts of horror stories about hardware compatibility and updating. Also I don't want to be restricting in gaming, and I need IDEs only available on Windows.

The hackintosh problems are getting fewer and fewer but the day..

I can have a hackintosh up and running faster than a Windows box

 

[576316]

The hackintosh problems are getting fewer and fewer but the day..

I can have a hackintosh up and running faster than a Windows box

Only useful if all the software you need is compatible with macOS. That's my biggest issue right now.