Did I move to MacOS: Part 2
A couple of stories ago, I wrote a fanboy review about Windows 11 and not longer after that I wrote another story about whether I moved to MacOS like I had threatened. The short answer to that question was no. I decided to stick out Windows 11 and see if things improved over the next few months so this will be a follow up on Windows 11 and whether it’s made me move to MacOS.
Spoiler. I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro.
I’m not going to go over everything I had written before about Windows 11 but instead tell you where I am with it now. Ultimately, Windows 11 is, for me, set to carry on the good OS, bad OS, good OS, bad OS see-saw. I was excited for Windows 11 and I had hoped they would actually bring a new OS and not bring all the crap from previous versions. I still hold the view in that Windows 11 could have been a feature update to Windows 10. Yes, on the front it does appear new. Taskbar is centred *cough, Mac, cough* and there are subtle animations but on the whole it doesn’t blow you away but lets get into the main reasons why I’ve had it with Windows.
Firstly, Bluetooth. WTF Microsoft? I was due on a Teams webinar last week at work and do you think I could get my Bluetooth headphones to work? I thought maybe it was a setup issue but I went into device settings within Teams and everything was fine. But nothing. I closed Teams completely from Task Manager, re-opened it and tried to join but this time Teams itself crashed and would not re-open. So, I rebooted (crazy that I had to do this in 2022 on a none beta version of an OS but hey, it’s Windows). Still wouldn’t work. I gave my apologies and didn’t attend the webinar. Later in the day I gave the headphones another go, turned them on and in my ears I heard Cortana say “connected to…”. I went to play some music and yes I did get noise but that’s exactly what it was. A jittery noise. I turned off my headphones and threw them down in frustration. Other frustrations include a laggy mouse experience and keyboard drop outs. Bluetooth in 2022 should not be an issue but Microsoft still can’t seem to get this right.
Secondly, multi monitors. In their keynote announcing Windows 11 they actually spoke about multiple monitors and how they have reimagined it and this would fix complaints. To be blunt, did it fuck. I have my Surface Laptop hooked up to a Surface Dock with two 4K monitors. The dock handles two 4K monitors at 60Hz and with Windows 11, it is supposed to remember where apps were so that when you un-dock and re-dock, your apps move back to where they were. Well, this works whenever it wants to and even then, that’s dependant on whether the monitors even come back on! My setup is to extend my display across the monitors but sometimes when I would dock, either one wouldn’t come on at all, the other would mirror the laptop and not extend it or both would come on but one would randomly drop to 30Hz and be juddery.
Lastly, I turned on my laptop after the weekend and within a minute the fans were going mental. All I had done is login, no programs open, so what was causing it? At this point I didn’t care. I wasn’t enjoying the experience anymore.
So at the end of last week I finally lost my patience and purchased a new Macbook Pro 14". This is the new M1 Pro chip and off the bat, wow. I hate to say this as everyone seems to say it, but, IT JUST WORKS! Bluetooth, works. Multiple monitors, bitch please. I’ve not had a single solid issue.
Yes, there are some weird things that just seem outdated such as having to setup a local account rather than using your cloud account like Windows has done for years now but whatever. I don’t care about that stuff. I just want to login, do my work, no hassle, no fuss and after 1week of using my Mac I can hand on heart say, goodbye Windows! It’s been fun and frustrating, you will never hear a bad word from me when it comes to Windows Phone (still hurts) but stuff that should just work simply does not on a modern OS.
Did I move to MacOS? You betchya!
