why i switched from mack to windows

If you're in school then punctuation matters.

Yes I'm old lol and no; I don't remember how I learnt to punctuate but it's important.

I'm glad you're using an OS that works for you.

However, in the academic world, at least here in Europe, it would be considered foolish to use a Mac. Despite the fact that its Braille support is barely functional and its PDF support is often inaccurate, the Mac is a powerful machine with an outdated and cumbersome screen reader. It's a shame because I used to love the Mac and it had so much potential. But when it comes to choosing between mental stability and insanity, I prefer the former. Even today, I am puzzled as to why some blind individuals still use it, but I have stopped worrying about it. If someone has that much free time on their hands, then good for them. I just hope that the Mac improves over time. For now, it's not even possible to compare it to Windows because the difference is so great, and it would be unfair to criticize Apple for it.

I'm techy but to a certain point. I've read the guihub or however it is and I'm lost. wonder if anyone can walk me through it. I'm not scared of using terminal just would love that functionality. Wish apple might think of that sometime down the road.

I made the switch in 2021 from MacOS to Windows. It was like a breath of fresh air. I used MacOS from 2010-2019 when I was more low vision. I tried sticking it out with all the VoiceOver bugs - not being able to search in Mail or navigate through spreadsheets in Numbers, for example. I started off and self-taught myself NVDA after a year and a half of frustrations with VoiceOver and was finally able to complete my university work with much less frustration, and learnt JAWS so I can hopefully succeed in the workplace. I swap between the two - JAWS for Microsoft Office/Google Suite, NVDA for practically everything else. Things like.

It makes me sad I have to give up my Mac. MacBooks are beautiful pieces of hardware and I love how it integrates with my iPhone and Apple Watch. In regards to hardware, I'd like to get a Microsoft Surface laptop, but my Lenovo ThinkBook gets the job done (I received it through a bursary). I do feel a bit of FOMO because my friends love their Macs but it just isn't for me, and I'm not in the mood to virtual machine Windows. It's a similar experience between me and my iPad - I'm sad I have to give that up, but it just doesn't seem to work in the way I want or need it to.

There's some things I do prefer about the Mac, though. It is much easier to back up the computer using Time Machine, while I have yet to figure out how to back up my Windows computer. Backing up and syncing my iPhone is significantly easier, while iTunes is a laggy, horrendous mess on Windows. I also prefer the Mail app, while I haven't been able to find a comparable client on Windows beyond Outlook and can't get Thunderbird to work with Gmail. I think things like the bios and updating Windows aren't accessible from what I've read, too, which is disappointing. You don't need to worry about that on the Mac, but how often are you recovering your computer anyway?

But ultimately, I find the other side so much easier - Discord and Microsoft Teams, for example, work much better, I can use keyboard commands in Microsoft Office products, even little things like headings for YouTube videos actually show up when searching. Accessing PDFs is much better using Bookworm and Acrobat. I can actually access spreadsheets, whereas they hardly work using Numbers and Microsoft Excel is an absolute nightmare on the Mac.

Hi everyone,
For those of you who talk about liking the look and feel of the mac, you should definitely check out the Chuwi brand. It's a Chinese brand, but I got mine on Amazon, and super fast, for less than $300. They have several models, but mine is the Gemibook Pro. It's not a powerhouse, but it does what I need, and has a metal body. Not quite macbook level, but still pretty nice for the price. Only a Celeron processor, 8 gb ram, 256 gb ssd, but works for web browsing, basic audio editting, radio broadcasting, so everything I need, and I have yet to see it become unresponsive, other than in Thunderbird, which I have no idea why but right after all the new messages load, it gets bogged down. Other than that, it's fantastic. But then I'm not one of these people who have a million things open at once.

Sorry for hijacking the thread.
Siobhan, you don't need to touch terminal to use VOCR anymore. The latest VOCR is just a standalone app.
You just need to grant few permissions. Everything explained on the README.
https://github.com/chigkim/VOCR

Hello. I have some "me" time at least for right now, so thought I'd pop in and respond to this. I'm not currently a full-time student, but even if I were I'd be happy to use my Mac or probably my iPhone. I cannot yet comment on Apple's Braille support as I haven't been able to connect my NLS eReader to either device more or less. But that's a whole topic inandof itself. As most of you know I've been a Mac user since the end of 2013. This is my second Mac and I've been very impressed. I got my first iPhone in 2018 and am still using it. Just today I got the newly-released Mac version of ACB Link. This appears to be the first "catalyst" app for me, as I have the app on my phone too. The Mac version works very well. Do I miss Windows? Well...yes and no. I don't want to clutter up the forums with talk about the other side, but it'd be cool if Apple could include some of the Windows voices in future releases. I totally get that this may not be possible now or at all. Apple's plate is overflowing, and as stated previously I for one think they're doing a very commendable job.