My biggest argument in switching to a Mac 15 years ago was that I would rather be hardware-constrained by Apple than software-constrained by Microsoft. A lot has changed with Macs, starting with the T2 chip post-2015, to on-device scanning of images in 2021. Plus forced obsolescence of software, and with Apple Silicon, missing macOS features on Intel hardware. I am now both hardware and software constrained by Apple.
The last straw was when, as per my previous post on this subject —
I would be dependent on Apple to release parts to me at their discretion and have to needlessly suffer downtime
Mac vs PC
Apple in its high-handedness, refused to replace my Watch battery since they require that the watch battery be down to 79% of its charging capacity to authorize a battery replacement.
The cost of Apple hardware apart, macOS holds not much appeal.
Ownership
I would literally rather run Windows 11 on a Mac than macOS on a PC, considering how much slack Microsoft has recently allowed in activating Windows, thereby ensuring a user’s data isn’t held ransom if one is offline. In contrast, many essential third-party macOS apps have adopted subscription and online authentication to login to local apps, preventing or limiting their offline use.
Usability
macOS Messages and Mail show no contact names without native CardDAV support, but at least with Windows it can be hacked in to perform relatively flawlessly. Mail app activity never ceases when one or more non-Exchange Microsoft accounts are added, and it’s been that way since Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Since then, Windows OS has evolved more into what Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard used to be; “it just works”.
Reliability
The infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) or STOP error seems rarer on Windows, than a kernel panic on macOS since Catalina, and the odds of the latter seem to go up with additional processor cores. Sleep mode that Windows 98 never woke from is a thing of the past, whereas its the Mac Pro with macOS Big Sur that doesn’t automatically sleep when ‘Power Nap’ is disabled.
Performance
Mac Pro hardware feels underpowered or not as optimized, from how slow Finder is at file operations over the network (NFS and especially SMB) compared to Windows Explorer. Add to that, both 3 x 3 MIMO 802.11ac on the Intel Mac Pro and 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax on the Apple M1 Pro MacBook Pro far underperform my Dell PC “Killer WiFi” 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax. Apple Remote Desktop or Screen Sharing too refreshes slower and has poorer graphics quality over 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet versus Microsoft Remote Desktop over 5 GHz WiFi 6, each accessed over 5 GHz WiFi 6 using their respective clients.
Recovery
I no longer find my previous issue of having to reinstall and reconfigure the operating system, updates and applications from scratch a deal breaker in choosing Windows OS. All considered, disk imaging is the least painful and bulletproof [backup and] restore strategy for any modern OS.