Why Not Just Move to Windows? One Perspective

Thanks. It's not the end of the world, it's just a bit distracting. So only have a look if you are rummaging around that sort of thing anyway. I am running Windows 11 so it's possible the setting has moved. I haven't really put a huge amount of effort into figuring it out other than doing a few laps of those settings. I don't remember it doing this other voice before I upgraded to the latest version of Windows and added in the natural voices. But it is possible it's always done it and I'm just using it more now.

I hope your experience upgrading your Mac is less painful than mine.

look around fo formatting or style changes, or change voice for formatting. stuff like that.

Well, as far as I know anyway.

I tried looking for a setting for you but can't find anything to change voices when headings are announced.

Those natural voices are quite nice though. Oh and get this, they can actually announce exclomation marks, it's suttle but it's there.

Thanks very much for having a look. I feel a little less like I'm going crazy now. Those voices are amazing. The second voice isn't so bad, it's just a bit jarring and distracting but I'll get used to it if I use it long enough probably. I had no idea that the voices could add emphasis for exclamation marks but I'll definitely be trying that out next time I'm in Windows land.

I wish we could use those voices in NVDA too. Microsoft Hazel sounds so harsh in comparison.

I read this on a support page for Microsoft. Apparently one of the more common causes of this is faulty audio drivers. I think Brad mentioned something before about the issues with Windows and audio drivers?

Anyways, I will provide the link below for the support page. It gives pretty straight forward instructions on how to resolve.
Also, I know you have already gone through Narrator's settings, but I would encourage you to check one more time for anything relating to "Dialect". This is another culprit for having multiple voices at once.

Support page link:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/hearing-2-voices-in-narrator-in-windows-10/315c53cf-54d0-495d-822b-71082a941570

Excellent article.I started dabbling in the Mac in 2009 with a Mac mini, then running Leopard and shortly after snow leopard which brought tons of accessibility improvements. I was using NVDA on the windows side at the time, having moved from JAWs, and a powerful custom PC that would run circles around the bottom of the line 2007 core2duo Mac mini I was using. I installed snow leopard on the day of release and remember thinking "wow, the accessibility of this thing is so good, I could switch to the Mac". And so I did - for a week. I then found some things that at the time I just couldn't handle, like basic audio editing, websites with adobe flash (it was still a thing) and poor word processing support, for example the inability to interact with a table in a document.

So I went back to Windows, and the Mac became a curiosity. I had a MacBook for school which ran Windows 7 in bootcamp to give me the best of both worlds, and I still had my Mac mini which was really just for playing around with by that point. I did everything that meant something on Windows, until the Windows 8 and 8.1 era. Tiles and apps on my desktop? No thank you. Force me to switch to an OS I don't want? Well, if you insist.

So I bought a MacBook Pro with similar specs to my PC of the time, and didn't look back. Voiceover was improving massively at the time. Apple engineers were responsive to feedback, and it seemed that, though they were making some daft decisions, Apple had my best interests at heart. Even Logic was becoming accessible, and is now one of my most used apps.

But in recent years things have declined. Apple has always done their own thing, but they used to care a great deal more about their customer than they seem too now. Accessibility is going backwards, lagging far behind open source solutions like NVDA under windows. There are bugs a plenty, no response to beta feedback submissions, and though Apple's accessibility team are generally very responsive and a pleasure to work with, things just don't seem to be getting fixed. Especially the critical bugs on the web.

The situation is getting to the point where I have windows 11 installed in UTM, just to run certain tasks in Chrome with NVDA. There is still no good alternative to Gold Wave for single-track audio editing that I've been able to find. The introduction of iOS and iPad OS apps on the Mac has caused a lot of fragmentation in the Mac app space, and the accessibility of native, ported, and iOS apps on the Mac is suffering as a result. Updates seem to break more than they resolve where accessibility is concerned, and the argument form many that accessibility is just a marketing buzzword for Apple is getting harder to ignore.

I wish Apple would come out with an OS release that was solely about fixing bugs, like Snow Leopard was to Leopard. For us, that would mean fixing bugs in Voiceover that have existed for years. Fix the HTML rendering, and put an end to "safari not responding" - which is nothing more than "busy" with more syllables. Fix the PDF rendering which gets incrementally better but is way behind where it should be, given that PDF rendering is a core component in Mac OS. Integrated VOCR into VoiceOver, and use some of that machine learning power in Apple Silicon to automate OCR, image recognition and screen recognition to give a more seamless experience. Tune Swift's SDKs, especially Swift UI to be as clean, logical and accessible as Coco was.

If things continue as they are, I'm not sure whether the future of accessibility on MacOS is bright or not. I support and commend apple as much as anyone, and I am grateful for the work they have done. But I am also a paying customer, who buys high-end devices at significant expense and I have a reasonable expectation that the solutions promised by MacOS will work to a high standard, and that there is a commitment from Apple to maintain them as well as they do the rest of the operating system. That is not the case at the moment, and there is only so much neglect a customer will stand before they say "you know what, maybe the grass is greener".

That was very well said. I too came from Snow Leopard, and honestly, sometimes I still miss that build of OS X/macOS.
In regards to NVDA, I completely agree, though I may be a little biased. 😇

As much as I love the Apple eco system, I find myself on my Windows 10 bootcamp more often than I am actually on macOS.

The really, really sad thing is, Windows 10 runs so much better on my old Apple hardware, then Apple's own proprietary OS.

Go figure....

I switched from Windows to Mac during Corona, when we were forced to work from home. Windows and Jaws, nor Windows and NVDA plus the VPN, could manage the big Excel files I had to deal with. Speech just stopped speaking and quickly scrolling through sheets was hopeless, inspite of my ultra fast broadband connection. First I used both Windows and Mac side by side, but that was not a very good idea. So, I just put the Windows laptop aside and only used the Mac and after two weeks I was used to the Mac. But I used a full sized key board, put a lot of terrible VO key commands behind the numpad and key commander keys, because I wanted to be able to navigate one handed and read braille with the other hand. And the Microsoft accessibility helpdesk was a great help. Their Mac support is so much better, than Apples own support... Now I Am used to the Mac and don't need constant reassurance from my braille display, I did not bother with full sized key boards and commander keys anymore (When they replaced my I5 for a M1, I just did not set up the one-handed VO navigation anymore). Office for Mac works a lot better for me, than Windows ever did. But yes, also for me, Word is an exception... I write my texts in Text Edit, and then make a Word document of it... And Perhaps the lay outing of Power Points is a bit less difficult in Windows than with the Mac. Teams is terrible in both Windows and Mac and a lot easier to navigate in IOS..., but with the Mac it is smoother, when you have multiple applications running while in a Teams meeting. And Teams is a great app, if you want support with your Mac / need someone to take over the thing; so I will not complain too much. But Microsoft is aware of the problems with Word, so I have high hopes that will improve one day. I Am completely blind, and for me, the web navigation with Jaws and NVDA seemed a lot more straight forward than the VoiceOver method. Especially if you have to work with web applications, that only talk with Edge and that application is not really accessible. But luckily I discovered, that I can use the "item chooser", for reading web content as well. And with that thing, you can scroll through websites with your arrow keys, like back in the good old DOS days. After Corona, I checked Windows from time to time, to see if things had improved with Jaws and NVDA, but it did not. Especially not ffor Excel. So, a couple of months ago, I said goodbye to my Windows laptop / Windows 11 did not improve the situation (although I have great hopes for the Narrator <that thing improved a lot). The only thing I hate with the Mac is, that it does not support Power Pivot in the Excel app, only in Office online. And I miss the OCR feature in Jaws. VOCR is a good Mac alternative, but only if you are free to install things on your Mac yourself. I have to work around this, by pasting images into Word, export that Word to PDF and the PDF back to Word / and no VO+shift+l is no alternative...

I think the problem is it is usually a lot easier to add a new feature than it is to fix a potentially complicated bug. All the focus, text entry and Safari problems are likely very ingrained in the depths of a code base that no one understands any more. Whereas an option to adjust the timbre of my current voice probably takes all of a couple of minutes for a junior developer to add in. It keeps them busy and it means that Apple can try to sell us on the improved accessibility of the platform.

And I do think there is more of a chance that a bug that has been recently introduced being fixed than a new one, because the developer responsible is more likely to be around to sort out their own mess. Understanding existing code is always much harder than writing something new. Particularly when you don't know the consequences.

I've not worked on a user interface or an operating system, but I would imagine that a test suite that covers every single permutation of VoiceOver and accessibility settings and that can handle all the different competing processes going on and all the different things we might be doing is quite a daunting task.

But surely this is where something like AI should prove helpful. We don't need it to generate the code that allows the timbre to be changed. We need something that can get a fundamental understanding of a big complicated, probably fairly badly maintained codebase and can figure out what the hell is going on. Becaus the bugs that have existed for a long time are probably in some part of the system that no one currently at Apple has ever been anywhere near.

I've been using Windows a bit and it just makes me sad that we are having these conversations. The Mac with Voiceover should be running laps around what's on Windows. And that's one reason I struggle to move on. I just have this hope that one day Apple will see sense and fix it, then all this extra effort is wasted.

Still, my hand is being forced and I'm having to try to get to grips with Windows. I wrote my first bit of code on it with NVDA and it was incredibly painful but at least it worked. Eventually.

I would rather be spending my energy learning the kinds of new things that sighted people would be learning to improve their jobs. When I could see I was always learning new things or improving my existing skills. Now it's just battling endlessly with crappy screen readers.

I don't know how I feel about the comment re blind users having to work so much harder. I am certainly finding that right now. And if I am trying to solve a complex problem at work but actually 75% of my brain power is going into trying to figure out what the text I'm editing is actually saying and where my cursor is and only a small amount is being devoted to what I'm actually trying to achieve.

But on the other hand, using a screen reader has some similarities with coding. You need good problem solving skills to be efficient. You are constantly trying things, finding yourself at a dead end and then having to be inventive and find another way. So I wonder if those sorts of skills actually do transfer. I think if you can get really good at using a screen reader then you can probably master anything on a computer.
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To be honest, I’m already in windows, and I am really not a fan of MacBooks, I can use Google Docs, Google slides, Microsoft Word, Excel, and can do all my browsing on my windows, so I really don’t see the point to switching to MacBook. also, I am not really a major fan of learning a whole set of keyboard commands.

I've often thought about learning Mac - that is until I read David Goodwin's post about Safari not responding. Given how much time I spend using a web browser (Chrome, Firefox or even Edge), I can only see myself losing my mind over Safari not responding. Sounds like a case of - better to stick with the devil you know than the devil you don't. :) Windows with JAWS works great, and my iPhone does the rest.
Your team provides a lot of excellent and very helpful information.
Thanks much for all your work. :)

I don't know if you felt, when writing this piece so logically targetting the pain areas of switching OS and adapting to the new keyboard shortcuts. The bigger picture is something else; I resisted my change from Windows XP to 7 and then to 10 but once I got to 10 I said that this is it but wait, I will be soon be asked to move to 11!

The bigger picture is to have the latest gadget with the latest OS; apple has done it, Microsoft is doing it and so will every other tech company on the planet.

If it weren't about making digital devices obsolete tech companies would not have the space to innovate and get fresh consumers in their system. Devices yes, their OS another story. I think you know what I am trying to say as I type this I remember wanting to be burried with my iPhone 5S and then that changed to being wanted to be burried with my SE and now I am wanting to be burried with my 12. Moral of the story, you will be burried but with which last gadget, the cat is still in the bag!

So I took the "why don't you move to windows" question seriously and have been trying to do just that because I'm fed up with how bad my Mac is.

And slowly I'm finding that things really aren't so much better on the Windows side.

I might not get Safari is not responding, but NVDA does just go quiet a lot for seemingly no reason, and it does this all over the place. Narrator does it a bit too.

Most worryingly is that I am finding a lot of issues I was getting editing code on the Mac are also occurring in NVDA.

For example, if I control+right to move through code I get the same thing read multiple times, or it will jump over important details like function names. And, like the Mac, I find that sometimes if I take one step forwards then one step backwards, I am not where I started.

In my case, maybe part of the problem is actually PyCharm, even though I didn't notice these problems so much on the Mac pre-Sonoma. Or maybe this is all normal and everyone else just accepts all this kind of thing as being absolutely fine and I just have to get used to it.

All of which makes me think how unhelpful the suggestion to just move to Windows actually is. We all have such wildly different experiences and expectations. Our systems are all configured differently and we're using different apps to do different tasks. So although you may not have a particular problem on Windows, it doesn't mean you would on the Mac either.

So unless someone can say that they have used, say, PyCharm on the Mac and experienced all my issues, then moved to Windows and are now living the life of luxury, the suggestion doesn't really have much value to me.

(And before someone says "why not just move to vs code?" then that's another story altogether...)

I've actually suggested that people not move to Linux when these "moving to another OS" topics come up. You have to rewire your expectations of an OS to be much less based on a specific app, and more toward achieving the steps of a general task with what ever happens to work.
I think Windows and Mac users have just learned to think differently about commands for their screen readers, and iOS might be a mush of the two points of view. I hope you reach that point where everything clicks together in a smoother experience with one or the other.
And why does my browser's spell checker for this site's edit fields, and only this site, only work some of the time.
🐻

NVDA does hang sometimes which can be annoying but perhaps it's your hardware or something? I'm assuming you have the latest version of NVDA?

I had it crash quite a lot a couple years ago when I had a lenovo all in one pc but now I have a laptop with 8 gigs of ram, I don't think i've had it crash once.

I think people just need to stick to what they're comfortable with and leave the move to OS x argument alone. I've not had many crashes but unlike mac; with windows there are tonnes more builds which actually makes it worse in the long run.

Also if NVDA is crashing/hanging that badly for you, you can report it on github, do you know what that is?

I don't think it's crashing for me. I think it's the NVDA equivalent of app is not responding. I had one occurrence where I managed to get it to say it was Waiting in that case. But because it's quiet you don't really know what's going on. At least the Mac does tell you. Over and over and over again, but at least you know it's still there.

I think you need a certain level of experience with a screen reader to want to get into submitting bug reports. It needs an element of confidence that firstly it's not user error and secondly when they inevitably come back with a ton of technical questions that you can answer them.

I've had Narrator go quiet too so think it's a system thing in this case.

I posted this in another thread, in regards to an issue you were having with double speech. From what you have described, it sounds like you have faulty sound drivers, or a faulty sound card.

I would love to tell you that I don't ever experience NVDA crashing, or Narrator for that matter. However, I am running Windows 10 on Mac hardware via Bootcamp. Truth is, Windows runs "amazing" on a Mac.

Also, NVDA should be making a "loading" sound effect for you, whenever something is going on that "makes NVDA go silent", in other words, NVDA should not be going silent, unless you take your fingers off your keyboard, of course.

Regarding Py Charm, have you tried using NVDA's built-in Python console? Alternatively there is also an add-on for Visual Studio if I recall correctly.

Finally, I would encourage you to check out this page. I think this will work out better for your needs. It is what I use.

Sorry I didn't reply to your previous suggestion.

I thought you wer were talking about the Narrator quirk where it uses a second voice to speak the headings. I tried updating the driver but didn't want to fix the problem so much that I was prepared to uninstall my audio driver. That is a scary thought!

The problem I'm finding - with both Mac and NVDA in different ways - isn't that I'm getting 2 voices appearing at once. It's that I will press option+right or control+right and it will read something, then I press it again and it reads out the same thing again even though it's only there once. If I didn't use this keyboard shortcut I might not have a problem but I don't know how else to navigate code properly.

I don't think an audio driver should make any difference to this.

I can't use the NVDA python console to develop large-scale applications. I can use the Visual Studio Code extension and a lot of people like it. They also put a lot of thought into accessibility it seems.

However, I've never had any luck getting it set up in a way that suits me. This was sighted and I'm not sure I can cope going in blind.

Also, I am not convinced that the problems I'm having are PyCharm's fault. I've been using it for years. The last couple of years it has improved with VoiceOver almost beyond recognition. Which makes it doubly upsetting that a Macos update suddenly changes everything.

But it is a similar question to "why don't you just change OS?" Sure I don't know any of the keyboard shortcuts in the Windows version of PyCharm but at least I understand it all pretty well and it does what I want, mostly anyway.

I actually suspect the problem is that I need to re-learn how to navigate code regardless of what editor I am using. I just have no idea what else to do at the moment, other than try to bulldoze my way through it.

I think the problem with NVDA pausing a lot is probably to do with my laptop. Jaws is even worse for doing it. It's not NVDA crashing, and often I can tab away and it will speak something else. Although not with Jaws. It is a 2018 Dell laptop but it should be good enough I reckon.

I'm trying to avoid NVDA addons at the moment just to try to keep my problems simple. The more things you add to the mix, the more suspects there are if something goes wrong. But I'll install something if it looks like it will fix a specific problem. I might refer back to that page you sent a little later when I get more confident, so thank you.

VoiceOver has always had problems with punctuation, but there are definitely big new issues in Sonoma for me. If I try back on my Intel running Ventura then it's usable, albeit a little annoying at times.

You might be right that it is just a matter of training yourself to get used to it. I do wonder how everyone else is managing to code with a screen reader. Either they are doing things differently to me, or they have just evolved to cope. And I guess editing is pretty similar.

I still think we shouldn't need to be constantly having to relearn fundamental things like this. But maybe it is about expectations as well. I believe that the act of just reading something on screen shouldn't take effort. The effort should come in understanding what it means not just what the words are. It is a colossal waste of brain power, a resource I feel is increasingly in short supply! But maybe if I am doing this for another couple of years, I'll either be in my grave or I'll no longer be concerned about it.

But from my limited experience, it's not just VoiceOver. You get different but similar problems on Windows too it seems. And this goes back, I think, to the whole point of your blog post. It's not just about learning different keyboard shortcuts, it's about learning a whole new array of of workarounds and how to decipher what you are being told. So if I do put all that energy into VoiceOver, then I have to learn a whole load of new little quirks and mental gymnastics when it comes to NVDA, and then more again if I was to swap to Jaws.

But it upsets me more in VoiceOver because I've spent so long getting to grips with it, then Apple changes it again for seemingly no reason other than they don't have a proper test suite. Maybe this is a similar experience to Windows, I don't know.

Apple should be in a better position because they have full control over everything, so we should be able to expect a slicker more consistent experience. Sure third parties complicate things, but that's where documenting best practices comes along and then companies should abide by them. Whereas I guess NVDA and Jaws are always going to be playing catch-up to whatever Microsoft churns up next. And then I think this then makes the point of responsibility a little harder to understand. Certainly reporting bugs is easier if an Apple first party app has broken because then it's Apple's fault and they should fix it. If I'm using a third party screen reader on Windows to use a third party application and I have a load of third party admins running, then that makes it a lot harder when you want to report a bug to someone who is going to care.

Anyway, apologies I do seem to be totally hijacking this thread.

@Joshua,

I too used Notepad++ for some of my programming classes, including Java/Scala, C++, and Python. It is, or at least was, really beneficial for a blind coder since it readout line numbers, etc.

@Mr Grieves,

Definitely consider that link. You do not have to even install anything. Just consider using the portable version. You can run it from a thumb drive, or just put it on your desktop and run it like any other application. It just might give you more audio feedback than stock NVDA. Also, audio drivers and audio cards have everything to do with audio processing. Think of your computer's CPU, only the audio card only processes any and all audio input and output.

I still feel like your Dell's sound card/drivers are attributing to at least some of the issues you are experiencing within the Windows environment. While I understand the hesitancy to uninstall/reinstall drivers related to audio, it might be worth it to visit a computer store when you have time. If nothing else they can run a diagnostic on your machine to determine if there is a hardware/software conflict.

Just a suggestion, of course.

So I don't even own a Mac, but I have a MacBook here on loan and as a Windows tech, I wanted to be conversant with a Mac so I could assist others.
I immediately discovered one huge advantage the Mac has over all Windows screen readers. Ever since Windows 7, Microsoft has limited the ability for applications to move the mouse. So with JAWS and NVDA, and even narrator, you cannot always get to some piece of text you want to read, or focus on a graphic. And applications need to have hundreds of keyboard shortcuts to move the Windows keyboard focus to a place where you can read, because you cannot always review an area. Though NVDA's object nav is excellent, and Narrator's scan mode will also let you review areas that don't get focus, and even JAWS has a technical mode that will teleport the touch cursor anywhere, it's debatable whether you can actually access everything onscreen all the time.
It seems with VO that is just not true. You are much less limited.
I'm really considering continuing to have my employer supply Windows machines for my job while I buy myself a Mac for home use. It will be a great way to keep my home and work lives separate as well!!!

I think JAWS can do it to or at least the latest version should be able to.

I've heard they're bad these days, you'd probably be better off switching to realTech, you should be able to do this by going to device manager, then tabbing once, arrow down to audio inputs and outputs, right arrrow if you have to open the treeview, then arrow down until you here, speaker, name of driver, and presss your aplocations key on it.

Arrow down to Update driver, then tab once to brows my computer and press space/enter.

Tab to let me pick from a list of availible drivers and press space, then tab once, arrow down until you hear realtech and press enter or press tab to next and press enter, you should then have to wait for a couple of seconds and then once it's all done, you'll get speach back.

It might ask you to restart your computer, don't worry about this, do it and then you will be able to login to windows with no issues.

I hope this helps.

This was about 5 or so years ago, I'm quite sure it would either skip over words or that it was clunky when editing text.

It could have been me as I'm used to windows though so don't take my word for it.

That is a fair point, and it does seem that as soon as you add punctuation in, then all bets are off. What I would say is that if I am at the start of a line and I move by word to the right I would expect to hear everything on the line and only once. And it should stop at the end of the line, not near the end of the line like VO does if you tell it to speak to the right of the cursor.

I think for me a word is alphanumeric characters and ends with punctuation, a speak or the end of the line. I don't mind too much if punctuation chars are skipped over when I move by word but I do want them spoken out if I have told VO to do so.

Python does add some unnecessary quirks to the equation. For example, the variable name convention is to put underscores between letters which makes reading them quite tedious. (I'm still getting used to "line" instead of "underline" in NVDA but it will be better when my brain starts to cope with it. I wish I could properly edit punctuation in VO. Custom punctuation sets with custom activities has never worked for me.). But worse is its tendency to stick words together all lowercase with nothing between them.

It also relies on indentation rather than brackets to scope blocks, but I think all screen readers have ways to manage this. (Well not sure about Narrator but it won't go anywhere near PyCharm anyway)

Regarding coding errors, I think most code editors style errors different - probably green wobbly lines underneath. In VO you can have text attributes or spelling errors indicated. So I don't know why a code editor could not indicate syntax errors in a similar way and then you could control how you want to hear them.

PyCharm has a nice Problems pane which lets me find errors easily which I spend far more time going through than I care to admit. It also has keyboard shortcuts to jump to errors although it doesn't speak what the error is when you do that, even though it used to in some distant version.

I couldn't get the VO options to do anything in PyCharm. I did think maybe I could change the style of errors in some other way that might help but I couldn't figure out the UI. Not sure if it was inaccessible or just me not being clever enough.

For my part, though, I just want to be able to figure out what the text is saying. If the text movement can be fixed then I'd happily go to Jetbrains and try to start the discussion. Sometimes they can be quite responsive.

And re using Notepad++, I like the creature comforts of PyCharm too much, but fair play to you if you don't need any assistance. I can't even imagine jumping around code only by characters. I guess maybe if your brain can cope with hearing each line of code properly then maybe jumping by word is a little less important. But as soon as an underscore or bracket is mentioned my brain goes ping and I am left behind by the screen reader as it sprints on to the finish line.

Actually, I'm not sure about the definition of a word being important.

It's not the job of the screen reader to know really what a word is or to have any influence on where the text cursor goes. This is handled by the application or OS or whatever and it actually works fine.

The problem is that the screen reader should, in my opinion, be speaking what text it is jumping over in the case of moving by word and that way I always know what text is there and where I am.

In VO if I tell it to speak text to the right of the cursor it actually seems to change how the text cursor moves which seems crazy to me.

The more I think about this the more I realize how personality influences the decisions you make.
First, there's the personality of the learner. Do you like exploring and reading documentation and learning new things? Then if you use a Mac you'll want to try switching to Windows or Linux for the heck of it. Or if you use Windows, same thing: it's Mac or Linux for you.
But do you shudder at the idea of having to learn a ton of new keystrokes and a completely new paradigm? Then you are going to stick with what you know. And you may be open to hearing about all the problems with the operating systems and screen readers you do not know! You will minimize the bugs in your own setup, just like you don't mind your squeaky front steps because it's your home.
Your choice is also the result of the personality of the trainer. And this could be a trainer you met with in person, online trainings you purchased or sucked up for free. Or maybe just a user guide you read.
The JAWS free training for example intermingles Windows and Office concepts with the JAWS keystrokes. But the NVDA manual teaches you NVDA, not Windows.
On the Mac, the VoiceOver user guide teaches you VoiceOver and to learn the Mac you have to explore other documentation and websites.
If you got training from a human, did they teach you the screen reader separately from the operating system and the applications you wanted to master?
I think if you learned the screen reader separately from the operating system, you have a bigger struggle. This is going to make it easier for some to master one operating system while finding the other complex.
But I believe if you got training that intermingled the screen reader concepts with operating system and application usage, you would become attached to that training, because you mastered it as a whole. Braille I believe is similar: many rapid Braille readers report learning grade two along with learning to read in general while slower readers report learning grade 1 first and then grade 2. And of course, adults who learned Braille have more trouble with it because it wasn't learned at the same time they were learning the concept of reading in general.
If you learned Windows from a competent trainer who intermingled the screen reader and applications concepts, you're likely to prefer Windows, and the same goes for macOS.
My personality is such that when I'm at work, I want to get the work accomplished, not try to learn a new screen reader or master new keystrokes.
But when I'm home it's playtime! I love tackling a whole new thing. I'm learning Python. I'm playing with a Mac I borrowed. I could ultimately prefer the Mac over Windows and Python over any other language I've learned in my three decades as a coder.
But if you asked me to try to write Python or use a Mac on the job, I'd scream. But it could have been the reverse. I could have used a Mac and Python in my job and been trying to learn Windows and Perl at home!
Personality I believe is everything, not whether the Mac is better or worse than Windows!

I think in my day to day life I just want things to work so that's why I go with IOS over android , even though I've tried both, and windows over mac, I've not spent enough time on the mac to say if I'd like it or not. I'd not say no to trying it again, it now has eloquence, my prefered synth, but for now it's windows all the way.

Personality is a big factor, as is circumstance. Learning is relatively easy if you are enjoying it and the total opposite if not. I've been coding since the 80s and it's been a hobby and career for many years. I was forever reading books and learning new things and loved it. I think one thing I've found with moving to a screen reader is that it also changes the way you learn. So you are not only learning a new thing but you are having to re-learn how to learn in the first place. Maybe that's just me. But before I could quite happily sit quietly and read a book and read through lines of code and pick up new things. Now reading is a different beast - having a voice that's not yours trying to impart knowledge is very different.

I remember in a past job my boss telling me that if you need to communicate something important you need to do it in two ways - one through written text and one either face to face or on a call. This was because some people take information in different ways. I am finding that it is a bit of an adaptation going from one way to the other.

For me personally working from home also doesn't help because I can no longer separate work from home so cleanly.

You can have a personality that loves to learn but struggle with some things. For example, my Mum teaches and is constantly learning new things and sharing experiences with people. She hates her computer and grudgingly uses it for email and simple word processing but gets no pleasure out of it. You often find very intelligent people struggling with what seems like quite a basic thing and I think a lot of it is because they just don't really have any interest in the particular thing they are trying to do.

I hope one day I can rekindle my love of using the computer and then it wouldn't be such a chore. Patience is a big factor. When you are very used to performing a simple task without thinking about tit and suddenly you find it is taking hours of research and effort then you need probably more of it than I have!

But yes it is definitely my personality that is making me come up with so many excuses for it. I am slowly getting there with Windows, but it certainly doesn't really solve very many problems for me so far. I think there is always a grass is always greener feeling about these things. Windows definitely isn't as loose and random as the Mac but it's also not perfect and won't just instantly solve all problems. I think this post comes from the off-hand "just use Windows" is thrown about like it will be the magic bullet and is just easy to switch. That's certainly not the case in the short term unless you are only doing very basic things - in which case the Mac is probably still fine.

And, hang on... training... what is this thing you speak of??! I've felt since going blind you tend to just be left to get on with it, and maybe that's a big part of the problem. Learning is certainly easier if you have someone else going on the same journey.

We should all go back to the Abacus. Thank you.

That is all.

I was trained in the use of an abacus at the blind school, back in the old days, and I still have one. However, it is an abacus modified for blind people, with a soft backing that makes the beads less likely to move when touched. Also, there are beads counting as five at the top of each column, and four one-count beads below, separated by a bar of sorts with dots at each column and a raised, vertical line where a comma would be in a number such as 1,000. It's all plastic, except for metal rods that the beads slide on.
I don't think I could use this device to post on the Web. It is handy for recording phone and other numbers, and even calculations from time to time.

I'm just barely old enough to have been around in the last days of the blind-friendly abacus in school. Never got the hang of it; the geometry set was way more fun for me.