Giving up on Windows

Written by

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

But now, other than for test systems and virtual machines, I carry out my day-to-day work on a variety of OS X, iOS and Android systems. I barely giving my Windows PC systems a second glance. My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I’ve had it it’s flawlessly done everything I’ve asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I’ve lost count of the number of notebooks I’ve owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I’ve owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn’t run Windows.

I don’t think Adrian is alone. Apple is continuously making its products easier to use, while Microsoft is going the other way. People have choices and they are exercising that freedom.



23 thoughts on “Giving up on Windows”

  1. I wish that there was a Mac OCR package to match FineReader Pro or OmniPage Pro though. One of the few areas where the Mac lags. Particularly if you need to train it with an unusual font.

  4. Hi Steven, I use VMware Fusion which works perfectly. Unfortunately it means I need Windows. Still, every time I try Windows 8.1 it reminds me why I switched to the Mac!

  5. I was very concerned when Apple seemed to start adopting mobile OS traits into Mac, starting with Lion I believe. And now, voilà, Windows is diving into mobile half mobile half desktop OS that will unlikely to work on its own. Seriously, do they really believe Surface will dictate the market and take over desktops some day?

  7. I’ve been using and programming computers since 1984, and never once wished I owned a Windows PC.

  8. Unfortunately it is as old as the hills. It may not even run on modern versions of OS X. I keep hoping that Nuance or ABBYY will do a full up-to-date Mac version. FineReader Express is the only other alternative – it does well but doesn’t have all the functionality of the Professional version. Or ReadIris – which has a 50 page PDF limit unless you buy the very expensive version.

  11. Most of these “why I dropped my iPhone for Android” and similar articles are self-important drama queen nonsense.

    Never been a huge (no pun intended) fan of AKH, but this is a well-reasoned and sensible article. Even the comments he received are mainly civilized… quite astonishing.

  12. IIRC, Kingsley-Hughes is one of those tech columnists who used to berate Apple for not closely mimicking the Microsoft business model. I’ll guess ZDNet’s regular readers will take him to task for his candor in the comments.

  14. Steve Jobs famously stood on stage and declared most people needed cars and some people needed trucks.

    Apple went on to produce cars for car people and trucks for truck people.

    Microsoft went on to produce the Pontiac Aztek.

  15. We have a mixture of Mac, Windows XP, and Windows 7 machines where I work. We just got a machine with Windows 8 and it’s astounding to me how much of a wrong turn Microsoft made with regard to user experience. It’s like they couldn’t break through in the tablet market so they decided to bring the limitations of tablets to the desktop.

  17. Before getting into this, I realise this is an Apple oriented blog and I’ve been a reader for years, I’ve been a loyal Mac user since 2006. And yes, this is entirely in my opinion, but I would love to see if anyone shares my opinion and isn’t having their reality distorted anymore by Apple post-Jobs.

    Honestly, since the passing of Steve Jobs I feel as if the company has become the failing company it once was before Steve Jobs returned to it; the share price shows the reality regardless of all the “we’ve sold out” and “oh isn’t this hard to find?” manufactured scarcity with their products on launch. It is the lack of attention and seeming lack of testing in Apple products that has made me give up entirely on them.

    The build quality of the recent MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs has been trash; using anodisation on a sharp corner? Just leads to it rubbing off eventually, that’s basic engineering 101 stuff. The battery in my MacBook Air needs servicing after owning it for just seven months (And yes, I’ve tried zapping et cetera), I’ve had two flash storage module failures, I’ve had a 13″ MacBook Pro logic board failure (Basic engineering failure where two of the chipsets have a heatsink across them yet they don’t go anywhere so actually get hotter, and one of the chips were buttered with thermal paste, that actually makes it hotter because it affects heat transfer).

    Now don’t get me started on iOS 7, Mavericks and the iPhone 5s. Not only did the upgrade to Mavericks Server lose all our device profiles, settings and user settings for Profile Manager, it’s also crashed plenty of times. iOS 7 is a mess, it is an ugly eyesore, it crashes regularly, it freezes regularly, I get weird graphical bugs, the 5s needs a restart sometimes before it will even show more than just black on the Camera app.

    Mavericks has frozen on me countless times

    And you know what gets me the most? The problems I’m having aren’t just isolated to me, there are plenty of people within the company having the same issues, it is stupid. If it means anything, I live in the UK, maybe we don’t get the same batches of stuff or attention to detail as you over there in the USA? Apple for me isn’t for serious business use anymore and the professional demographic doesn’t seem to be who Apple cater for anymore, we’re a minority and the consumers have become the main priority. It is a pity considering that the niche professional demographic is what makes Apple such a popular platform because of the apps and content we make available.

    Apple is losing marketshare and mindshare, Microsoft is finally getting their business together again after years with the joke that was Vista, 7 and the original Windows 8, and I never thought that I would say that. The Surface Pro 2 looks fantastic and at least the cover for it is actually “smart” unlike the Apple Smart Cover; mechanical keyboard and an extra five hours of battery life? That’s innovating. Even the Windows Phone looks great, it is a good use of on-screen space and the Live Tiles concept is great with everything from numbers to graphs to CCTV images. The iOS user interface paradigm just seems so dated and lacklustre; what is the point of having a high-res screen only to not use it with a bland UI that lacks any form of ‘design’? What made iOS appealing was how much effort clearly went into the high-res textures.

    The iPad Air doesn’t have the latest ac WiFi standard (MIMO instead), doesn’t have Touch ID yet it is thinner and lighter, but to what end? Why can’t we have the same size yet with a better battery and the same features as my iPhone does when it works properly? Since Steve Jobs passed away, I would go as far as to say that Apple hasn’t done anything innovative whatsoever. Touch ID is fairly worthless too as the API isn’t available to us developers yet either.

    And don’t get me started on the practise of packaging last year’s product in a different chassis like with the iPod Nano, original iPad Mini and iPhone 5c. The iPhone 5c is Apple’s Burberry cap; they’ve cheapened the brand with their “unashamedly plastic” nonsense.

    I took my MacBook Air in for servicing to get a new battery yesterday and it’s going to be a week until they can sort it out, that’s disgraceful for a £1500 computer that has caused me nothing but issues since buying it, and same goes for other people within the company with MacBook Airs, it isn’t just isolated to me, and yes, we look after our things and always put them inside a cover in a well-padded bag or briefcase. The condescending “Apple Genius” in the store made it seem as if it was a privilege to own an Apple computer whilst I don’t recall any “privilege” that was a complete money pit like this is.

    As for the whole new iWork, that’s a complete pisstake stripping out core functionality for people who actually want to get stuff done in an enterprise scenario and it’s already years late to the collaboration party; Google took that crown an age ago in tech time. Apple just doesn’t seem to be about business anymore and getting stuff done, whereas it seems Microsoft actually have their heads screwed on, even Google looks more appealing. Logic Pro sucks now and is more or less Garageband Pro, and Aperture and Final Cut Pro are also lacklustre compared to Adobe’s Lightroom and Premiere Pro, so why should I stick with Apple other than the supposedly stable UNIX kernel when anything else I would use is available on both platforms? Furthermore, why doesn’t the iPad have a better digitiser already? The Surface Pro 2 is absolutely killer for Cinema 4D and Illustrator.

    I wholly expect Apple’s market share to continue shrinking as more stable competitors finally get it together, and I don’t expect them to “bounce back at Christmas” like analysts expect. There’s no innovation anymore, and their lack of thorough testing and absent features is ridiculous for the prices they’re asking. Granted, a Surface Pro 2 with 8GB of RAM is twice the price of an iPad Air, but you can do so much more with one of those, and even then, it’s competing with the MacBook Air and ultra book market more than the iPad. I just don’t see how people can lavish Apple with praise at this point.

  21. I’m sorry to hear that you feel this way. What’s the year on your MBA?

    Being a long time Mac user, you should know that Apple only puts stuff onto their devices when they deem it appropriate, and sometimes, you get the odd release of stuff that’s not fully ready but they really want to get it out there, like the original iPad, Siri, Apple Maps, and I would also say, iOS 7. (Unless this wasn’t the case before; I only became a Mac user and tech enthusiast in 2010, when I had 3 WinXP machines die on me December 2009, and had to decide between Vista or Snow Leopard.)

    A majority of the things you pointed out were only released within the last 3 months. So, give it more time. I think it’s going to follow a similar pattern as the iPad: people not impressed at the start, but it proves itself successful.

    One can argue that a “Touch ID API” will never be released, since it’s a security/convenience login feature for the device, not something developers should try to incorporate into their apps.

  22. And good on you if you find the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 fits you better, by all means, go for it. You are probably part of their target market.

    While the average consumer, the more tech-phobic, tech-illiterate, and tech-novices, are Apple’s target market.

    iPads are for people moving up the tech chain from smartphones, while the Surface Pro is for people wanting to incorporate a new form-factor into their tech family.

    Maybe your honeymoon phase with Apple products is over. Time to take a break.

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