Mac vs PC

I have an Obsidian document that I’ve been working on for some time that chronicles my current take on the whole Mac vs. PC debate. I’ve added to it, tinkered with it, but it’s occurred to me that I may never actually finish it in a way that I’ll be satisfied with.

So today I’m presenting a more off the cuff take on this decades-old debate.

Short answer: They both suck! And they are both pretty good!

Longer answer:

First, a tiny bit of background:

My first PC was acquired in 1994. It came with a floppy drive and no CD-ROM drive. I added the former later, at a cost of $200, so I could play Myst.

My first Mac nearly came four years earlier, when I considered a Macintosh Plus for around $1,000 while attending university. I dropped out of school and abandoned the plan to get a Macintosh. My first actual Mac was a MacBook Air I got in 2013, with stock specs. I ended up not really taking a shine to what was then OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and sold the Air a year later, getting a Surface Pro 3 at a now-defunct Microsoft Store. It would be seven more years before I’d get my next Mac.

Currently, I have:

• A custom-built PC I put together in April 2019, with 32 GB of ram, a pair of 1 TB SSDs and a GeForce 2070 video card
• A base Mac Studio with the M1 Max: 32 GB of ram and a 512 GB SSD, with a 2 TB external SSD attached
• A 2020 MacBook Air with M1, upgraded at purchase to 16 GB of ram and a 512 GB SSD

The Air is kind of vestigial at this point, since I currently have no need for a laptop. I will either sell or trade it in eventually.

So! What is my take on Mac vs. PC in 2022?

It depends, but it’s mostly down to preference for very specific things.

If you are doing most of your work in a web browser, and at a desk, there is almost no functional difference between the two. I use Firefox on both and the experience is so similar they could be the same machine. The only difference I’ve noticed is that Google Maps seems to load faster and scroll more smoothly on the Mac, for reasons unclear to me. Firefox is happy to crash in either OS, though thankfully this is fairly rare.

The one exception to the browser experience is if you use Safari, as it’s only available on Apple devices.

Obsidian is pretty much the same.

Discord and Signal are the same.

These similarities are less surprising when you consider that the above are Electron apps, so they’re basically web apps in a wrapper, modified just enough to run on specific platforms. None of these feel especially Mac or Windows-like.

If you use Apple for your music, the Mac experience is better because Windows is still saddled with the decrepit iTunes. But Apple has already confirmed their Apple Music app is coming in 2023, so that won’t be an issue much longer.

The choices come down to a few things and again, this is specific to desktop-only.

Where Macs win out:

• Interoperability between Apple devices. If you have an iPhone and/or an iPad, Apple makes it easy to share data, messages and photos among all three. You can still do this to some degree on a Windows PC, but it’s not as seamless or effortless. But this is where the Mac has a clear (and obvious) advantage. It’s probably the best reason to get a Mac desktop, so if you also have a Pixel 7 and a Samsung Galaxy 8 tablet, this may not be so compelling.
• Mac-only apps. A lot of smaller companies and developers make apps that are only available on Mac. A few examples are Ulysses (a writing app) and Pixelmator Pro (photo editing). If you rely on these apps, you can find approximate equivalents on Windows, but nothing quite the same.
• The menu bar. Apple has had a menu bar along the top of the screen since the first Macintosh in 1984. It’s home to tons of little utilities that some Mac users absolutely love having. The closest equivalent on Windows is the System Tray, which is not as accessible or flexible.
• Font rendering. While Macs have issues with resolution scaling, the approach to font rendering looks nicer to my eyes than Windows. It’s easy to see (ho ho) why so many writers use Macs.

Where Windows wins out:

• Gaming. The Windows gaming scene is decades-old and is both deep and wide. Many people will buy PCs exclusively for gaming. Apple has improved the state of gaming on Macs with its own silicon, but it trails far, far behind the PC.
• Windows-only apps. Macs usually get a version of most popular software out there, but not always. The situation here is probably better for Mac users overall (which is to say, there are more Mac-only apps than there are Windows-only).
• Cost. Do you have a small budget? Windows PCs run the gamut from dirt cheap to ultra high-end. The same variety simply doesn’t exist on the Mac, which start with “premium” pricing and go up from there.
• Variety of form factors. Do you desire a particular form factor? Speaking of variety, on the desktop, Apple gives you the Mac Mini, the Studio (which is basically a tall, souped-up Mini) or the pretty much obsolete and outrageously overpriced Mac Pro. And that’s it. Meanwhile, on the PC side, you can get everything from adorably tiny NUCs to monster gaming rigs and everything in-between.
• Window management. The ability to easily and flexibly snap windows is built-in and can be easily expanded further with the officially supported PowerToys app. Apple’s options are crude and insufficient by comparison, forcing you to go the third party route.
• Multi-monitor support. Both systems can work with multiple monitors, but on Windows it’s effortless and largely glitch-free. On the Mac, it’s more fiddly if you use third-party monitors, and there are bizarre decisions like only having the dock show on the active monitor (and needing a weird mouse gesture to get it to appear on another monitor).

Where neither wins out:

• GUI and overall user experience. While some may prefer the aesthetic of macOS over Windows 11 or vice-versa, the reality is they are much more alike than they have ever been. They both have light and dark modes, they both have rounded corners on the windows, they both have a bar/dock at the bottom of the screen (though only Apple now lets you move theirs). For me, neither OS really looks better than the other, it’s just a matter of personal preference.
• File management. Both have notable flaws or quirks. Windows has File Explorer, which is actually pretty good (and even better now that they added tabs) but it often seems slow, as if it’s indexing a folder every time you open it. On Macs, Finder is solid but has weird design choices, like not showing all folders in certain views, requiring an extra click to “Show All.” Maddening busywork for no benefit!
• Bugs. Apple and Microsoft have both proven equally capable of shipping bug-riddled software. Enjoy!

In the end I spend most of my time on Windows because I’ve used it longer and am just more comfortable with it, plus I game and as I said above, Macs are not great gaming rigs, though they are improving. I mainly use my Mac for writing and when I want a more distraction-free environment (ie. my vast Windows gaming library is unavailable).

Obligatory GIF: