So…how did THAT work out?
Let me begin by saying that I am well aware of the two armed camps in the world of computers. There are those who adore Apple, and there are those who are married to Microsoft. It is neither my intent nor my desire to stoke the fires of this ongoing flame war between the two. I am only relating my experience for the way I use a computer. YMMV, especially if you don’t use your computer to do the same things I do.
I’ve used various Microsoft operating systems going back as far as MS-DOS when it came on big 5¼ inch floppy discs way back in the 80s. Needless to say, I’m well versed in how Windows operates (and sometimes doesn’t) and was quite comfortable using it, despite my daughter’s constant prodding that I should get a Mac.
Last year, my Dell Windows 10 desktop finally got so sluggish that it needed to be replaced.
It was a long, slow death.
It began when San Antonio’s not-so-reliable power company turned the juice off and on several times in rapid succession. I didn’t know the battery in my backup power supply was nearly dead, so the uninterruptible power supply didn’t kick in like it should have. Something got flummoxed up, and the computer was never the same. It still worked for a couple of years after that, but it was cranky. Finally, it didn’t work at all.
IMPORTANT LESSON
Mark your calendar to replace the battery in your UPS every 3-4 years so you don’t go down the road of grief and pain that I did. Your sanity is worth far more than the $60 or so it costs to get a new battery. And if you don’t have a battery backup with a built-in surge protector for your computer, get one!
TRYING TO RESURRECT THE DEAD
I worked with Dell tech support to see if they could fix the problem. All my files were backed up in the cloud, so I wasn’t worried about losing data. I just wanted the computer to work. To make a very, very long story short, they eventually had me install a new spinning hard drive and a new internal SSD drive. We then loaded a fresh copy of Windows 10 onto the SSD.
The computer still wouldn’t boot up. And it wouldn’t boot up when Win 10 was installed on the spinning hard drive, either.
Since they couldn’t fix it remotely, Dell refunded my service fee and told me I could ship the computer back to them for repair. Since Microsoft had announced the end of support for Windows 10, I figured a 5-year-old computer probably wasn’t worth repairing, and elected to get a new Windows 11 computer.
I was going to get another Dell, of course. I’d been using that brand since Windows 95.
A helpful Dell representative found me a desktop with the exact features I wanted and shipped it out.
I was at the gym when my doorbell camera told me it had arrived, so I rushed home immediately to get it off the porch before the big box marked DELL was purloined by some porch pirate. I carefully unpacked it, connected the keyboard, monitor, and mouse, plugged it in, turned it on, and…
I got the blue screen of death on a brand-new computer.
I restarted the computer per the screen instructions, and got the blue screen of death again.
At this point, I uttered a few choice words that I won’t repeat here, boxed it up, and returned it the same day for a full refund. (Dell made the return hassle-free.)
At this point you’re probably wondering what I was using for a computer while mine was dead. I’m in the voiceover business, and I must record daily, so I had to be using something, right?
Fortunately, my wife has an HP Windows 11 laptop she let me use. I didn’t lose any business, and I met all my clients’ deliverables. Thank you, Karin!
While using her computer, I discovered how awful Windows 11 is. I really liked Windows 10, but Win 11 is one giant advertising machine with unwanted pop-up windows invading your screen like dandelions in your summer lawn, and a clunky browser that can’t be uninstalled because it’s part of the operating system.
Adding insult to injury, Windows 11 practically forces you to use One Drive, their online cloud service, to store your files. (Well, using One Drive isn’t mandatory, but Windows will pester you to death if you don’t.)
On top of all that, there are weird security messages on her computer that pop up when using PowerPoint that don’t make any sense.
Because of my bad experiences with two Windows 11 computers, the frequent reminders from my daughter to get a Mac, an ongoing recommendation from VO audio gurus Dan Lenard and George the Tech Whittam to “Just get a Mac,” and because most of my voiceover cohorts absolutely LOVE their Apple computers, it was time to pull the trigger and buy a Mac.
So I did.
I ordered an M2 Mac Mini upgraded with 16GB of memory and a 500 GB SSD.
Note-As of today, the Mini comes in a smaller, 5 x 5 inch box with more USB ports and an M4 chip. It’s better than what I bought, and less money to boot. But not better enough to justify upgrading.
HOW WAS THE TRANSITION FROM WINDOWS TO APPLE?
A bit rough at first, but no worse than switching from one brand of car to another. Not everything works the same way or is in the same place.
The biggest adjustment is that the Windows keyboard and the Apple keyboards are not interchangeable.
Both have a Control key. But the functions you get using the Control key on a Windows computer (the one you use with your little finger) require use of the Command key on an Apple keyboard.
HOWEVER…
The Command key is inconveniently located for former Windows users right next to the space bar. It’s not in the far left or far right corner.
To make matters even more confusing, there IS a Control key on an Apple keyboard, and it’s in the same place as the Control key on a Windows keyboard. But it does NOT do what the Control key on a Windows computer does.
There’s also an Option key between the two of them. I still don’t know what it does. I’ve never used it.
With 30+ years of muscle memory behind me, there was no way I was going to adapt to the Command key approach. The darn thing was in the wrong place!
Fortunately, Apple lets you use Settings to reprogram the keyboard so the keys will do what you want them to. So I ordered a Cherry brand Apple-compatible keyboard (much cheaper and just as good as the Apple keyboard) and reprogrammed it to make it do what my pinkie finger tells it to do.
Problem solved. Now I can fly through stuff just like I did on Windows.
The next biggest adjustment is training your eyes where to look.
In Windows, the X to close a program and the horizontal bar to minimize it are in the upper right-hand corner.
On an Mac, those functions are in the upper left-hand corner, and are in colored circles, not boxes.
It takes a while to learn to look in the right place, but you’ll eventually get the hang of it.
Another challenge for me, but not for everyone, was the external hard drive. I keep all my voiceover recordings on a 2 TB SSD. It was first used on a Windows computer, so it is formatted for Windows.
The fly in the ointment is that an Apple can read a Windows formatted hard drive, but it cannot write to it. Normally, this would mean I couldn’t save any of my new voiceover recordings to that SSD and I’d have to buy a new one.
Fortunately, there is a program called NTFS for Mac that will let your new Mac write to your old Windows external drive. It only costs $29.95 and works seamlessly. You don’t have to do anything after you set it up. It runs all the time in the background, and you never know it’s there.
There are some caveats about buying an Apple.
If you are the type who likes to putz around inside your computer and upgrade the hardware (hey, I’ve done it, too) don’t get an Apple.
They are not upgradeable like Windows computers are.
The memory is built into the processor, so you can’t add more later. Be sure to buy more than you think you’ll need.
Also, you can’t add another internal drive, and there is no place to install additional ports. You can, however, get a dock for your Mini that will get you more ports and additional storage.
If you’re a serious gamer, Windows is your best bet. There’s no way to water cool a Mac Mini.
Also, be aware that Apple, unlike Windows, revises its operating system every year. Imagine having Windows 2023, Windows 2024, Windows 2025, Windows 2026, etc.
These aren’t mid-cycle security updates and feature improvements, although Apple has those, too. They are entirely new operating systems. The more recent ones are named for locations in California, so good luck remembering which one is the newest one.
Fortunately, these upgrades are optional. There are lots of people who are using computers with an older macOS. The computers work just fine, and the owners are happy.
And if you do jump to a new OS and don’t like it, Apple, unlike Microsoft, allows you to go back to the old one.
It is best to turn off the automatic updates and wait several months until all your software and hardware vendors have verified that their products will work on the new macOS. This is especially true for mission critical computers like mine that must be up and running every day.
WINDOWS DOES SOME THINGS BETTER
I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but the Windows filing system makes more sense to my brain than the filing system Apple uses. It didn’t take long to get used to the Apple way of filing things, but it still doesn’t feel as much like a filing cabinet system as Windows does.
Another plus for Windows is how it handles icons in the tray.
With Windows, you click on the tray icon once to open a program. If you accidentally open the wrong program, you just click on the icon again to minimize it. No big deal.
On a Mac, you click on the icon once to open the program. But when you click on it again…
…it doesn’t do anything.
You have to right click on the icon and then select Hide. This will get it off of your desktop. But why the unnecessary step?
THE THING THAT WOULDN’T DIE
There is no X button at the top of the screen to close out a program. Instead, there is a red circle. And remember, it’s on the upper left, not the upper right.
With some programs, when you click the red circle, the program is closed. Easy peasy.
But with other programs, it just gets minimized to the tray and continues to run in the background. You can tell a program is still running if there is a little dot right below the icon, but you have to use COMMAND+Q if you want to totally quit the program.
(In the picture above, Word is running in the background, but Excel is closed.)
And no, I can’t figure out the logic or reason for some programs behaving this way and others not.
GET YOUR HAND OFF MY MOUSE!
One of the benefits of the Apple ecosystem is that everything talks to everything else. I can cast my iPad or my Mac Mini to my Apple TV box. I can take a screen on my computer and put it on my iPad. (I don’t have an iPhone, so I don’t know what it can do.)
This benefit can also cause maddening problems.
When I first got my Mac Mini, the cursor for my Bluetooth mouse would just disappear right in the middle of editing audio. It wasn’t on the screen anywhere. I even tried shaking the mouse to make the cursor bigger and I still couldn’t find it.
My workaround was to turn the wireless mouse off and turn it back on. This would put the cursor back on the screen where it belonged. But later on, it would disappear again, and I couldn’t figure out why. Needless to say, this was maddening.
It turns out that the culprit was my iPad, which sits on my desk to the left of my keyboard. I use it to read scripts in my recording booth and to check my audio for errors on playback. The iPad was recognizing the mouse and taking control of it away from the computer. I solved the problem by going into Settings on the iPad and telling it to ignore the mouse.
AND THE VERDICT IS:
After a year of living with an Apple computer, am I happy with my decision or do I regret it?
I have no plans and no desire whatsoever to go ever back to Windows.
Why?
MY MAC JUST WORKS!
No drama, no error messages, no weird workarounds, no installing drivers, no frustrations.
And no noisy fan. My Mac Mini is dead quiet.
The Apple versions of Microsoft 365 and QuickBooks Desktop run perfectly on my Mac, as do Adobe Audition and Izotope RX.
In case you don’t know, Windows does some weird things with audio drivers that can make studio quality recording challenging. Apple computers appear to be designed BY creative people FOR creative people, and everything runs smoothly.
AND NO BLOATWARE!
Unbeknownst to me, my last Dell desktop computer came loaded with bloatware. So did my wife’s HP laptop. Bloatware is programs you didn’t ask for that the manufacturer thinks you need anyway.
When I first got my Dell Windows 10 computer, my Adobe Audition recording program would just stop recording in the middle of a recording session for no apparent reason. Needless to say, this was a major problem for a voice actor.
This gremlin drove me and the reps from both Dell and Adobe absolutely nuts for about a month until someone in one of the online forums mentioned uninstalling all the Dell bloatware programs.
That fixed the problem. Except for the all the hair I pulled out while trying to get my Windows 10 computer to record properly.
Compared to my Windows computers, recording and editing audio on my Apple computer is a breeze. The computer is very reliable; it hasn’t crashed even once in the year that I’ve owned it. To me, those are the most important things a computer can do.
(TL;DR)
I should have done this years ago. Now I know why so many Apple users are fanatical about their computers.
