I'm a reluctant Windows user now

Have you had a look into

and

?

I know this is a post about Windows, but I have to point out that there is the M1 chip. Luckily at work we get to choose between Wintel or MacBook. Of course I chose a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro. I can literally work the entire day on battery power. My Wintel colleagues are lucky to get 3 or 4 hours. The other day I spent 10 hours working only on battery, this included several Zoom meetings which tax the battery the most.

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Fit and Finish. Polish. Attention to Detail. This is what differentiates macOS and Windows for me. Both have their annoyances.

I’ve used Windows for pretty much my entire working life. A bit of OS/2 mixed in early on. As noted throughout this thread, Windows is fine. I can do what I need to do.

I’m looking for the right analogy here … perhaps the difference is as that between Budweiser and actual beer.

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On the world wide view, we have to take here at the MPU, the big question:
You, as an American, what are you referring to, as “actual beer”!?

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@JohnAtl Similar idea but with perhaps a better UI is to be found in the GoToFile app.

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I should add, on the plus side for Windows, the two apps I love and wish I had on the Mac.

Notepad++ (already mentioned) does a lot of things. No, BBEdit is not as functional out of the box, in my case.

Greenshot is a nearly perfect screen capture utility. In fact, its only weakness is down to Windows and other app developers — it goes back to my “deciding what a window looks like and sticking to it” as some windows make it impossible to capture them in one go without a manual rectangle.

Actually Greenshot has a macOS version (MAS link).

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What is the advantage of Greenshot vs. the build in Screenshot feature of the macOS, and the Preview-App?

Wonderful discussion! I’m glad to see it taking off.

All valid reasons for a Mac user to stay on the Mac–but not for a Windows user to switch. I would not tell a Windows user to switch to get access to DevonThink, Hazel, or Alfred.

Unless they just want the new experience. That was a big part of why I switched from Windows to Mac in 2007–although those were different times. I was making the jump from Windows XP to Vista and people HATED Vista. I figured if I have to switch operating systems anyway, I might as well go with one people actually like.

How bad was Vista? I had a friend at that time who was a staunch Windows enthusiast and who HATED Macs. The best thing he could say for Vista was, “After you’ve been using it for a while, it’s not as bad as people say it is.”

I think the frustration comes from having to learn new UI conventions, keyboard shortcuts, etc. And that frustration is valid.

Good advice for folks like me who are coming in near the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Somebody coming into the company as a star can make their own rules.

And even non-stars like me can get around the rules. I’ve known people who took the corporate-issue Windows laptop, put it on a shelf, and kept using Macs. I’ve been that guy in other jobs.

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My big problem, supporting faculty who used Windows, Mac and Linux, was convincing my non-technical, not user-friendly, boss to let me purchase a keyboard switcher. I kept trying to use the wrong mouse or keyboard, since I had all three OSs running on three CPUs and displays.

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Ha! When work from home started I set up my work laptop on the same desk as my personal Mac. Figuring it would just be a few months I did not give much thought to the workspace, I just pretty much plopped it down. And as a result I was always using the wrong keyboard!

As I’m now in the third year of WFH, with no end in sight, I’ve spent the time and money to reconfigure my home office. I still have both machines on the same desk, but I rarely reach for the wrong device these days. PC space and Mac space are clearly delimitated.

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I’m sharing a monitor between the WIndows and Mac machines. It’s the same Windows Cinema Display I’ve been using 12 years.

To switch from Windows, the work machine, to the Mac, my personal machine, I have to unplug the display, plug it in again, switch places between the Magic Mouse I use for the Mac and the Logitech trackball I use for Windows. Then I need to press the appropriate button a switch on the multi-device Logitech keyboard.

It’s inconvenient–and that’s a feature. Because none of my personal accounts are logged in to the work machine, the inconvenience keeps me away from Facebook when I should be working!

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I too share a monitor between the machines, an Apple Cinema Display. I use a HDMI switch with a Switch Bot as the switch is in a rather inconvenient location.

The plugging - unplugging got old real fast. :slight_smile:

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Do you happen to have links to the products?

My Mac is a 2019 MacBook Pro, requiring not one, but TWO dongles to run the Cinema Display through its USB-C ports. I also use the USB-C connector to connect the display to the Lenovo laptop. Would love to have a switch instead.

MS Word can highlight text. MS Publisher cannot. It’s infuriating. Also, autohotkey is trash tier compared to keyboard maestro. Happy to hear any tips from anybody who has used autohotkey a lot. How do I learn a specific syntax while I’m trying to actually complete my work?

Or is there just a better alternative?

I use keyboard maestro every few minutes in my day for things like “have a hotkey in an app that does a specific thing”, or “have a palette with a button that does a bunch of stuff in this app, and only this app, but only when this window title is present”. Oh, and Keyboard Maestro supports emoji like the unicode that they are, whereas Windows … struggles…

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I’ve settled with CotEditor for now, but for it to retain unsaved documents (and not bug you to save them) you have to remember to actually quit the app instead of closing the windows.

So, yes, that makes it two apps I miss from Windows: Everything and Notepad++. Oh, and Citavi was a big loss, but I think I’m fine with Zotero now. Maybe I even think Zotero is better.

Another thing I noticed the other day when fixing something on the family windows machine was that I got so used to open apps via spotlight/Alfred, that I started using the windows key and the windows menu and found it works fine. I never used that when Windows was my daily driver…

SwtichBot:

HDMI Switch:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1123522-REG/kanexpro_sw_hd3x14k_3x1_hdmi_slim_switcher.html

Have fun!

Not as bad as Windows ME.

The one thing I don’t miss the most about Windows is the registry. Ugh!

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At work I was Windows and UNIX, at home Mac. I love Keyboard Maestro but in the Windows world, AutoHotkey was the best I could find. They have a pretty good website, if I remember correctly. Use their examples to start. Build up your system a little at a time.

EDIT TO ADD: Things seem less like trash the more you understand them. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I love all 3.

at home my server is Linux
for productivity I use macOS
for games and cartography I use Windows. (boot camp).

It is quite satisfying to play Madden 2019 on a 2019 Macbook Pro 16 with an Xbox Controller.

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