I have been a Mac guy from 1985. Remember the famous ad with the athlete throwing the hammer into the apocalyptic PC screen? Not long after I was into a Mac. First it was overnight sessions keying in records manually with FileMaker 1 on a friend’s Mac Plus in the back room of the convenience store he worked in. Later I bought a used a Mac 512 that I upgraded to a Plus with a new board and an Exacto knife. Since then I have had dozens of Macs, from PowerBooks to MacBook Pros, Classic Macs to Mac Pro’s and everything in between. In the last 4 decades I have grown to appreciate the simplicity and elegance of the Mac operating system. I have also had many Windows computers over the years for work stuff and specialized radio programs that there were no Mac applications. Before either I dabbled with Commodore 64 and TRS-80’s but never really got into them.
Being able to experience both sides of the computer coin made me really appreciate the Mac and avoid using Windows when I had the choice. I happily paid the “Apple Tax” in order to do so. I know Macs are more expensive for the same horsepower than Windows and they really gouge you on RAM and storage capacity, but the MacOS was worth it to me. This started to change with Windows 10 and then finally Windows 11 convinced me that Windows would work for me.
Windows 3.x thru Windows 98 was basically a shell on top of DOS, XP was better as far as I was concerned, 7 and 8 (well 8.1 anyway) were not too bad. I actually had no real issues with Vista for the short time I used it but when Windows 10 came out I found it to be stable, fairly intuitive and easy to deal with, almost Mac-like in operation. Windows 11 was more of the same, pretty much Windows 10 with a few twists.
For the last decade or so I usually had a Mac for my day-to-day use and a Windows machine for my radio programming and control stuff sitting side by side. For 8 years I worked from home in a customer support and sales job for radio receivers. I was using a couple different Macs doing this, but since our phone system required me to use Windows for it, I used Parallels to run that, all the rest of the stuff I did within the MacOS. Using Parallels allowed me to run just the Mac at work, but I kept the Windows machine for my personal radios as it was more convenient to do so. I could do much of this stuff within Parallels if I wanted but it was easier for me to keep that Windows machine for that. Usually I used an Intel NUC for the radio stuff, it was plenty powerful enough to handle my needs. Sometimes I used Synergy to share a keyboard and mouse, but then I got a Logitech MX-Keys and just used its 3-device switching if I wanted to share a keyboard. Same thing with the MX-Master mouse.
After Apple Silicon took over from the Intel processer I had been using on my Macs it got a little more complicated. I bought an early M1 Mac Mini to see if I could get things to work on it. While the MacOS stuff transitioned flawlessly getting Windows was much less so. I still had to keep the Windows machine for the radio stuff. It seems that many of the drivers I needed just were not available for the ARM-based hardware.
Eventually I settled on a maxed-out MacBook Pro 14" with the (then) new M1Max CPU, 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. By then Parallels had caught up to the Apple Silicon processers and it became seamless again. I was able to get our phone system going so it was great for my work stuff. Paired with a CalDigit TS4 dock and a desk stand it made for an awesome and powerful desktop computer that I could take with me on vacation.
A year or so later I retired from that gig and then the kids moved in with us for a while as they searched for their next home. My stepson, who is a professional Windows and Linux programmer, convinced me to try running Windows as my daily driver. He was not a fan of the MacOS but respected my choices. He did apply logic to the equation, by pointing out that I could reduce the clutter by going to Windows for everything. Since I was pretty happy (and comfortable) with Windows 11 by then I agreed and we spec'd out a powerful computer with a Ryzen processor, great GPR, tons of RAM and a gorgeous Fractal Design "North" case.
The wife and I drove out to L. A. from our home in Phoenix (a 5-hour drive plus a couple extra hours to get thru the horrendous L.A. traffic) to get the various parts we wanted at MicroCenter. We could have ordered all the components, but they were in stock and we were looking forward to a little road trip.
When we got home the kid and I put it all together and then installed Windows. I then installed all my radio stuff, and it all worked fine. I already had all my files on OneDrive so that was not a problem.
For the first couple of weeks it was all good. I was too busy installing various programs to worry about what I was missing with the Mac. I still had my MacBook Pro available as needed. I eventually found that I missed having some of my Apple Ecosystem niceties. Some I could mitigate somewhat, like being able to access my text messages and phone calls on the computer by using PhoneLink and using a beta version of the AppleTV app for Windows. PhoneLink turned out to be too buggy and convoluted for my tastes and the AppleTV app was also buggy and suffered from poor video playback.
For 18 months I used my Windows machine as my every-day computer. Since I was no longer working I no longer needed to worry about the phone system or other stuff. The new machine was plenty powerful enough to run multiple instances of my radio software while also running multiple browser windows. MS Word, FileMaker and more. I never had any real issues other than an SSD failure on my main drive. I replaced the SSD and reinstalled Windows and my applications and a few hours later I was back to normal. Pretty much the only thing I lost was my bookmarks, so no real harm done. Being retired it gave me something interesting to do that day.
So all-in-all, running Windows has been fine. I got used to having my phone at my desk with me so I was able to get rid of that pesky PhoneLink. I had no problems with streaming services like NetFlix or Hulu so used them if I wanted to watch TV in the office. There was really only one big problem over the period; I could not seem to get video calls to work properly much of the time. As I was doing a couple a month between projects and doctors, it was important. One week the video wouldn't work, the next time the audio was messed up. It was always an adventure. I found myself keeping my MacBook on the desk more and more often.
There was nothing wrong with Windows, and it was convenient to have my radio stuff on the same computer. It was less cluttered with just one computer. Windows ran almost everything just as good as the Mac but it just wasn't the same. Imagine divorcing your wife to marry your girlfriend; it seems great for a while but pretty soon you miss the first wife. Maybe I felt guilty for "cheating" on my beloved MacOS with the PC.
I kept my MacBook Pro the whole time, using it when I traveled, for video conferences (it always worked great!) and for sitting out on the patio or in the living room. I decided to dig out the CalDigit dock and go back to the Mac as my daily driver for a while to see if I really wanted to convert back to the MacOS or stick with Windows.
So I set things up on the desk. Since I had 3 identical monitors I kept one connected to the Windows machine to continue the radio control and programming it was so good at. The other two were connected to the MacBook Pro via the dock. After having been using Windows for a year and a half I had to relearn some of the keyboard shortcuts but that didn't take long. I ran this way for the last month or so and really started to enjoy things again. Getting my text messages, answering FaceTime calls or watching my AppleTV content was a joy. The little things just made my life easier. I didn't realize how much I had missed having the Mac on my desk until it was back.
Now I was starting to dream about making YouTube content again. I have a few videos up but they are all “One Shots” with no editing as I have never learned to use video editing software. I have Final Cut Pro but have never sat down and learned it.
I decided to go all in. A couple days ago I ordered a new Mac Studio, pretty much the maxed out M4Max version that was announced recently. It arrived here last week. I will keep the MacBook Pro for travelling and use elsewhere around the house. The Studio is now my main office computer for daily use. I will try Parallels again and see if I can get the radio stuff to work on it reliably. For the Uniden scanners I can use ARC-xx and ProScan but only by using the front USB ports as the older USB-1 cables do not seem to work. If I can fine newer serial cables that do work with Parallels on the rear ports I might be golden.
While I could have saved some money by getting a Mac Mini instead of the Studio, the price difference for the configurations I selected was only about $400. For that I get the M4Max instead of the M4Pro chip, the same RAM (64GB) and SSD capacity (4TB), twice the GPU cores, more CPU cores, more Thunderbolt ports and better cooling. If I actually start doing some video creation the extra power of the Studio should be worth it.
So far, I am very happy with the Mac Studio. The only issue I had was a bad HDMI cable that caused the main monitor to lose picture on and off, I replaced that cable and all is well with the world again!
For now at least I have relocated the Windows PC to the radio desk on my right. I use a single monitor with it and the PC itself resides under the desk. It works fine the way it is but if I do find decent serial cables that work with Parallels politely, I might switch the radio stuff to Parallels on the Mac.
Being able to experience both sides of the computer coin made me really appreciate the Mac and avoid using Windows when I had the choice. I happily paid the “Apple Tax” in order to do so. I know Macs are more expensive for the same horsepower than Windows and they really gouge you on RAM and storage capacity, but the MacOS was worth it to me. This started to change with Windows 10 and then finally Windows 11 convinced me that Windows would work for me.
Windows 3.x thru Windows 98 was basically a shell on top of DOS, XP was better as far as I was concerned, 7 and 8 (well 8.1 anyway) were not too bad. I actually had no real issues with Vista for the short time I used it but when Windows 10 came out I found it to be stable, fairly intuitive and easy to deal with, almost Mac-like in operation. Windows 11 was more of the same, pretty much Windows 10 with a few twists.
For the last decade or so I usually had a Mac for my day-to-day use and a Windows machine for my radio programming and control stuff sitting side by side. For 8 years I worked from home in a customer support and sales job for radio receivers. I was using a couple different Macs doing this, but since our phone system required me to use Windows for it, I used Parallels to run that, all the rest of the stuff I did within the MacOS. Using Parallels allowed me to run just the Mac at work, but I kept the Windows machine for my personal radios as it was more convenient to do so. I could do much of this stuff within Parallels if I wanted but it was easier for me to keep that Windows machine for that. Usually I used an Intel NUC for the radio stuff, it was plenty powerful enough to handle my needs. Sometimes I used Synergy to share a keyboard and mouse, but then I got a Logitech MX-Keys and just used its 3-device switching if I wanted to share a keyboard. Same thing with the MX-Master mouse.
After Apple Silicon took over from the Intel processer I had been using on my Macs it got a little more complicated. I bought an early M1 Mac Mini to see if I could get things to work on it. While the MacOS stuff transitioned flawlessly getting Windows was much less so. I still had to keep the Windows machine for the radio stuff. It seems that many of the drivers I needed just were not available for the ARM-based hardware.
Eventually I settled on a maxed-out MacBook Pro 14" with the (then) new M1Max CPU, 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. By then Parallels had caught up to the Apple Silicon processers and it became seamless again. I was able to get our phone system going so it was great for my work stuff. Paired with a CalDigit TS4 dock and a desk stand it made for an awesome and powerful desktop computer that I could take with me on vacation.
A year or so later I retired from that gig and then the kids moved in with us for a while as they searched for their next home. My stepson, who is a professional Windows and Linux programmer, convinced me to try running Windows as my daily driver. He was not a fan of the MacOS but respected my choices. He did apply logic to the equation, by pointing out that I could reduce the clutter by going to Windows for everything. Since I was pretty happy (and comfortable) with Windows 11 by then I agreed and we spec'd out a powerful computer with a Ryzen processor, great GPR, tons of RAM and a gorgeous Fractal Design "North" case.
The wife and I drove out to L. A. from our home in Phoenix (a 5-hour drive plus a couple extra hours to get thru the horrendous L.A. traffic) to get the various parts we wanted at MicroCenter. We could have ordered all the components, but they were in stock and we were looking forward to a little road trip.
When we got home the kid and I put it all together and then installed Windows. I then installed all my radio stuff, and it all worked fine. I already had all my files on OneDrive so that was not a problem.
For the first couple of weeks it was all good. I was too busy installing various programs to worry about what I was missing with the Mac. I still had my MacBook Pro available as needed. I eventually found that I missed having some of my Apple Ecosystem niceties. Some I could mitigate somewhat, like being able to access my text messages and phone calls on the computer by using PhoneLink and using a beta version of the AppleTV app for Windows. PhoneLink turned out to be too buggy and convoluted for my tastes and the AppleTV app was also buggy and suffered from poor video playback.
For 18 months I used my Windows machine as my every-day computer. Since I was no longer working I no longer needed to worry about the phone system or other stuff. The new machine was plenty powerful enough to run multiple instances of my radio software while also running multiple browser windows. MS Word, FileMaker and more. I never had any real issues other than an SSD failure on my main drive. I replaced the SSD and reinstalled Windows and my applications and a few hours later I was back to normal. Pretty much the only thing I lost was my bookmarks, so no real harm done. Being retired it gave me something interesting to do that day.
So all-in-all, running Windows has been fine. I got used to having my phone at my desk with me so I was able to get rid of that pesky PhoneLink. I had no problems with streaming services like NetFlix or Hulu so used them if I wanted to watch TV in the office. There was really only one big problem over the period; I could not seem to get video calls to work properly much of the time. As I was doing a couple a month between projects and doctors, it was important. One week the video wouldn't work, the next time the audio was messed up. It was always an adventure. I found myself keeping my MacBook on the desk more and more often.
There was nothing wrong with Windows, and it was convenient to have my radio stuff on the same computer. It was less cluttered with just one computer. Windows ran almost everything just as good as the Mac but it just wasn't the same. Imagine divorcing your wife to marry your girlfriend; it seems great for a while but pretty soon you miss the first wife. Maybe I felt guilty for "cheating" on my beloved MacOS with the PC.
I kept my MacBook Pro the whole time, using it when I traveled, for video conferences (it always worked great!) and for sitting out on the patio or in the living room. I decided to dig out the CalDigit dock and go back to the Mac as my daily driver for a while to see if I really wanted to convert back to the MacOS or stick with Windows.
So I set things up on the desk. Since I had 3 identical monitors I kept one connected to the Windows machine to continue the radio control and programming it was so good at. The other two were connected to the MacBook Pro via the dock. After having been using Windows for a year and a half I had to relearn some of the keyboard shortcuts but that didn't take long. I ran this way for the last month or so and really started to enjoy things again. Getting my text messages, answering FaceTime calls or watching my AppleTV content was a joy. The little things just made my life easier. I didn't realize how much I had missed having the Mac on my desk until it was back.
Now I was starting to dream about making YouTube content again. I have a few videos up but they are all “One Shots” with no editing as I have never learned to use video editing software. I have Final Cut Pro but have never sat down and learned it.
I decided to go all in. A couple days ago I ordered a new Mac Studio, pretty much the maxed out M4Max version that was announced recently. It arrived here last week. I will keep the MacBook Pro for travelling and use elsewhere around the house. The Studio is now my main office computer for daily use. I will try Parallels again and see if I can get the radio stuff to work on it reliably. For the Uniden scanners I can use ARC-xx and ProScan but only by using the front USB ports as the older USB-1 cables do not seem to work. If I can fine newer serial cables that do work with Parallels on the rear ports I might be golden.
While I could have saved some money by getting a Mac Mini instead of the Studio, the price difference for the configurations I selected was only about $400. For that I get the M4Max instead of the M4Pro chip, the same RAM (64GB) and SSD capacity (4TB), twice the GPU cores, more CPU cores, more Thunderbolt ports and better cooling. If I actually start doing some video creation the extra power of the Studio should be worth it.
So far, I am very happy with the Mac Studio. The only issue I had was a bad HDMI cable that caused the main monitor to lose picture on and off, I replaced that cable and all is well with the world again!
For now at least I have relocated the Windows PC to the radio desk on my right. I use a single monitor with it and the PC itself resides under the desk. It works fine the way it is but if I do find decent serial cables that work with Parallels politely, I might switch the radio stuff to Parallels on the Mac.
