Should I Switch to a MacBook After 10 Years of Using Windows?

If Microsoft Office is important, then I’d stay away sadly. It’s very finicky with VoiceOver on Mac.
Dave

I went from windows to a Mac because I was slightly in the same boat as you are. I had an old laptop, I couldn't find anything that met my needs, so I just jumped in the deep end. The mac isn't perfect, you have to interact with tables, combo boxes aren't always easy, check boxes aren't always easy, radio buttons aren't labeled well. I would go try one at an Apple store. The sound isn't as great as you think it is, these are laptop speakers to be honest, you'll get better results hooking up a set of Harmon Cardin or something. Whatever you decide, I'd be grateful if the Mac was more represented not only here, but in the mainstream society. Yes, windows is in every POS, point of sale, system in your restaurants, store, coffee shops. However if you really look at the Mac side of this site, it's pretty slim. The game category has some well done entries, but windows is more represented because it's the mainstream way of doing things. I'm not knocking Windows, or anyone who uses it. I'm and will probably always be, disappointed the Mac is just shunned to the tiniest corner of the site. I've heard Steam works but I've not gotten it to work as i can't see it's accessibility on the Mac platform. If you can find some way of doing that, or create an OCR program kind of like VOCR, which I still have issues installing, then by all means, try a Mac. This comes down to what you will get out of it. Note that I picked games as an example, but so many applications exist both in and out of the Mac app store that we should be getting access too in any category. Also if your laptop is old as you say, Windows i know has changed quite a bit. I don't even know my way around it anymore. Good luck.

I'd get a new arm based windows laptop. The mac is a bit of a pain to use by comparison and there are very few games for it that we can play, should that be a thing. The sound, for a laptop, is some of the best in the business, especially the pro, but it's not worth the rest of the issues.

I'd say this one of the best year to get a mac. I switched from windows too (you can view my history here) and even after 1 year I'm learning how to use it. I'm a college student so I have to do word processing regularly. Excel actually does work wel on the mac but word doesn't. Depending on what you wanna do, pages conversion to word and vice versa might suit your needs. With iPhone mirroring slowly becoming accessible, there hasn't been a better year than this one to get a mac. Vscode on the mac work well enough although you'll have to learn voiceover way of rendering web. Monako editor on safari (and little bit chrome) is broken currently but the app vscode itself has no major problem. If you like terminal then I'd say you'll find at ease with the mac. Generally speaking, I'd say the learning curve is pretty violent :) even after 1 year and 3 months I'm still learning things each day. When you get use to how option left right arrow manage symbol pronunciation (which is not a bug as I thought for an year) and learn how to use terminal, as a developer if you like unix-like system you'll love your mac. Warnings though, voiceover isn't as smooth as nvda which I also use on windows, you'll be frustated many many times for the next year. If you think you're dev/geek and then switching to mac will be easy as you might have tried other os with orca on linux or chromevox... Don't make my mistake. Ask questions to the right people here. There are great people with real world job who only use the mac, so as difficult as it might soune when you'll be wanting it to throw away, it's definitely doable. Not very smooth, not as intuitive, it'll very honestly be quite painful sometimes, but if you stick around long enough you will manage it. *It's not easy though*. At the end the decision is yours. My personal opinion is the more blind people with real use cases get macs and send polite yet concize bug report to apple the better it will be for everyone in the community. Don't buy mac for the sake of just a laptop. As a developer I can say it took me 1 year and 2 months to get used to code on the mac, and that year was painful, stressful, in and outside college for all sorts of reasons. Voiceover indeed has bugs, more inherently apparent than windows screen readers. Ventura and Sonoma were the probably the most hated updates for voiceover users and I got my mac during the end of ventura and I suffered with the chaotic beginning of Sonoma. I can say however that in contrast, and as a first user experiencing this, sequoia 15.0 is one of the most stable release I've ever had, with all the benefits that come with it. Read my posts, you'll see how erratic I was with the mac, loving, hating, hating, loving... it. The more you will be able to do the more tolerant you'll be to the real major bugs. Mac isn't for all blind users though even if you're a developer (the dev stack doesn't matter at all in this). At the end of the day, it's your call! ,

Teams works quite well on the mac once you learn how to use it, I almost prefer it to windows *almost*.

I think if you are happy with NVDA then it would make more sense to me to carry on with Windows. As Ollie says above, if you get one of the new ARM Windows laptops then you should have a similar experience in terms of battery life, power, AI etc. And it shouldn't sound like a jet plane every time you turn it on. As long as the apps you need work with ARM, that is.

If you jump to Mac, then it might work out well for you, or it might not, but it will be a risk. So I would only bother if there are specific reasons for doing it.

Personally, the Mac drives me absolutely crazy all the time, but I also can't get on with Windows/NVDa. I am currently much more productive on the Mac than Windows. But then if I'd been using screen readers on Windows for as long as I have been on the Mac then I would probably feel differently.

Personally I think there are issues with both platforms, and because of this we always feel that the grass is going to be greener on the other side. But really some things end up being better and some worse, but there is still a big learning curve from going from one to the other.

The main thing that lets the Mac down is the number of bugs VoiceOver has. But if you can look past that, there is a lot to like once you get used to it. However, why bother if Windows is working well for you.

Regarding some of the specific things you mention - I use Outlook on the Mac and it is fine for the things I use it for (nothing very advanced). I code, but use PyCharm/IntelliJ. A lot of people use VS Code, though, so I don't think you would have problems with that if you are already used to it. I don't know about the rest of MS Office though.

If you want to learn a new operating system and have the flexibility to do so without impacting your academic/professional work, I would say go for it. There is a lot I really like about the Mac. The integration with the Apple ecosystem is awesome; take, for example, being able to send and receive messages right from your computer. Being able to use iOS apps on the Mac is cool too, though not every developer allows their iOS app to run on macOS.

With all that said, I still use Windows as my primary machine. And this leads me to something I mentioned at the start of my post: Switching to Mac if you can do so without impacting your academic/professional work. When I got my M1 MacBook Air in late 2020, I was in a season of life where I had the flexibility to learn the Mac without any pressure of having to use it for anything mission-critical until I was ready to do so. And the result was that I enjoyed the experience far more and came away with a much more favorable impression of macOS than I had in the past.

Happy to help!

I don't have experience with the software you mentioned, nor do I have experience with NVDA, but here is my personal experience.

I was a JAWS user for over 20 years. My mom kept telling me to get a macbook, but I was really nervous about converting because the only screen reader I knew was JAWS and I was worried the conversion would be a huge leap. Turns out it wasn't and I use my mac all the time. I love it so much.

I think every screen reader will have its bugs and glitches. I'm not sure what specific ones you're referring to, maybe it depends on what you're using it for, but I haven't noticed anything significant. In fact, I've noticed that VoiceOver is a lot faster and much more intuitive. There are extra keystrokes involved sometimes, but a lot of it is pretty easy to learn. I used tutorial videos. The best one is from the YouTube channel Unsightly Opinions and it's only 17 minutes, but very detailed. She even gives a keyboard layout.

All this to say, it's a bit of a learning curve, but it's not as daunting as you might expect. The battery life is fantastic, too.

I hope this helps! Good luck!

I've thought very strongly of a mac.

If I were you, I'd try one first, and if you do decide to go for it, as others have said in this thread, timing is probably key. Don't get it and expect to be doing all your projects on it in a week, maybe even a month. Depends on how well you adapt to a new OS and all that comes with it.
I'm more of a casual user, doing things like safari, mail, some audio editting, but know nothing about development. I also have to use Windows on the daily for my online radio station, so do a decent amount of jumping back and forth. One thing I would recommend is to go for the more expensive model with 16 gb ram, if you can afford it. I have the m1 macbook air with 8 gb of ram, and while I can run Windows in VMWare Fusion, it isn't always the best experience. Not very fast, will sometimes crash. But with more ram, you should be good, so aside from some odd key mappings, if there are some programs you just can't get used to or just find to be to much to deal with on the Mac side, you can have Windows on a VM. Hope this helps.

Disclaimer: I do not judge anyone who prefers a Mac over a Windows PC. The following are simply my thoughts and experiences regarding Mac, Windows, and Software Development.

Hi Kyrylo,

Many moons ago, I was a college student. During my academic career, I learned several programming languages including Python, Java, C++, Scala, and Assembly. I also learned web coding such as HTML, PHP, CSS, SQL, and Apache.

At the time I was, "new", to both blindness and macOS. Of course I felt that macOS was the no-holds barred way to go for writing code.

Let me tell you, I was so very wrong. Luckily for me, the Mac I used was an Intel-based MacBook Pro, and thus I was able to BootCamp into Windows 10.

It was kind of split down the middle, most of my school work was done on the macOS side, and a good portion of IT stuff was done on BootCamp Windows.

Outside of IT, you will also find, "issues", with Apple's iWork Suite, which is Apple's answer to Microsoft Office. While Apple prides itself on being able to read and write Microsoft Office extensions, the issue is in the formatting. You will especially notice this if you end up doing a lot of spreadsheet work or write a lot of essays or research papers. So do keep this in mind.

Also there are more OCR tools on Windows, including Be My Eyes for PC as well as a number of NVDA add-ons. If you find yourself needing to give a PowerPoint presentation (I had to *shudder*), having accurate and detailed image description is a must.

I find Windows and NVDA to be far more flexible in terms of accessibility and availability. For example, there are more available alternative programs, or apps (if you will), if you prefer to use a GUI for writing code/developing software. There are also a ton of Command Line Interface (CLI) apps, a number of which are screen reader friendly.

Ask anyone on here who uses macOS, and they will tell you that, prior to Sequoia, Mac Terminal was a headache to use.

Furthermore, outside of XCode, you will struggle to find a VoiceOver compatible GUI for Software Development/Engineering, so that is just another thing to consider.

If you absolutely have your heart set on a Mac, take Justin's advice, and get nothing less than 16gb of ram, and VM that into Windows 11. It will be worth your sanity. Trust me.

One last thing to consider, do not let anyone entice you into purchasing a Mac just because of the ability to share information, swap tasks between an iPhone and Mac, or answer calls or texts on your Mac. You can do all of these things well enough on Windows 11.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

I've been a professional software developer for 15 years and used Windows that entire time. I own a mac, and have attempted to switch to it but I don't find it as productive as Windows. The main thing a Mac had going for it was a Unix environment to make programming easier. In the last several years Microsoft has come out with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) This allows you to do anything from the command-line you can do in the Mac in Windows with NVDA since the Windows Terminal integrates tightly with a light weight VM running Linux. This tool has allowed me to work in multiple teams where I've been the only developer using a Windows machine and everyone else uses a Mac. IN the last five years the only compatibility I ran into was a single command-line switch for the base64 command. Unfortinately you can't run the latest version of WSL in a Windows VM on a Mac. This is because running WSL in a virtual machine requires nested virtualization which Apple does not support.

I was a hard-core Windows user. I used to do YouTube videos in live streams, but now I am very happy with the MacBook. Initial usage. Voice is very responsive and I’m very happy with the product, but keep in mind. Bugs are everywhere. I mean in every platform, there would be a bugs, but in Mac, we find a lot of work around.

Whilst I agree that the Mac doesn't have many great text editors that are VoiceOver friendly, I'm not sure I agree that xcode is the only accessible development gui. I use PyCharm and is works better on the Mac than it does on Windows. I always complain about moving around word by word on the Mac, but I wasn't prepared for how bad it worked using NVDA and PyCharm on Windows. There is a bugfix possibly coming but even so. And PyCharm is based on IntelliJ so there will be a flavour of it available for whatever language you use.

I believe plenty of people are happy with VS Code on the Mac as well as Windows.

I have very mixed feelings about WSL. Although it's a great achievement that you can run it on Windows it does seem to add a lot of extra complexity if you are using it as a main environment to work in. Whereas on the Mac I just open a terminal and go. I'm on Sonoma still and the terminal is usable for my needs.

You will note that I did not say Xcode was the only accessible GUI for coding on Mac, just that Mac users will struggle to find accessible GUI applications for coding. I am pleased to hear that PyCharm is accessible and usable on Mac. It was not when I needed it. Secondly, Windows users too, can simply open up terminal, “and just go”. Since you mentioned text editors, Notepad++ is boss. Hands down.

Just adding clarification to the confusion. 🙂✌️

OK maybe I didn't phrase that particularly well. What I meant was that if you want to run terminal on Windows against a linux file system you first need to setup WSL. Which, admittedly, isn't hard, and you do have a choice of Linux flavours if that is important to you.

But I think WSL just adds an extra layer of complexity that you otherwise don't need to worry about. My colleagues have had a worse time of it than me, but recently I've had files seemingly corrupting etc.

When using PyCharm on Windows, if I want to use WSL I have a number of different options to do with where I store the code, where I run my virtual environment from and so on. And recently they've added a way to set a remote development environment up which, I think, is basically installing PyCharm inside WSL and running it there. It all just seems a bit unnecessary. I've not managed to get anything setup that I feel is actually productive.

Anyway, as mentioned there are definite pros and cons of both. For me I would say I wish I had really started with Windows as I think it is more likely to be what you would use in work and I see not being able to use it properly as being a big hole in my skillset. However if you have the time, money and enthusiasm than learning both is likely to be a good advantage in the future.

I'm not a programmer so have never coded a thing in my life. But as someone who has used a Mac fulltime since 2010, I figured I'd throw my perspective in.
I've been able to write many documents in Pages on the Mac quite successfully. I can't speak to things like inserting tables and it messing with the formatting when you export to a Word document, but for basic text stuff, Pages works just fine.
For me, Mac is simple to use. I love the security of it(no fear of viruses, etc. Not saying it can't happen, but it's way less likely).
When you factor in Apple Silicon's speed, insane battery life, and ability to run Windows in Vmware Fusion(although it is ARM, so that might not work for you), I think it gives the best of both worlds. I recently switched to an M3 Pro MacBook pro from a 2020 Intel-based Mac, and the difference is night and day. No fan noise, no lag in Windows...well, no lag anywhere, really. The Safari not responding bug thankfully almost never happens anymore.
Again, I'm not a developer, so maybe none of this will really factor into your decision, but I just thought I'd throw it out there, especially if anyone thinking about switching reads these comments.

How has VoiceOver support for the terminal improved in Sequoia?

There's not much I can say that's already been said. I was a Mac user for 7-8 years until my Mac was left behind with the release of Monterey. There are lots of things to like about the experience, but it's definitely different, so don't go into it expecting everything to work like Windows. IN fact, the best way to learn is to fully immerse yourself if you have the time and dedication to do so. Don't reach for the familiarity of your Windows system when you can't do something or perceive it to be too difficult.

I'm going to jump back into Mac land with an M4 Mac mini. Perhaps this isn't wise, but only time will tell. The hardware sounds fantastic, and it seems like Apple may be at the very least trying to prioritize VoiceOver once again if the improvements made since Ventura are anything to go by. We can only hope these improvements will continue in subsequent years. It'll also be interesting to run Asahi Linux once M4 support is available, and I'm genuinely curious to find out just how good these new machines really are. I want to learn something new, and the experience with the Apple silicon platform may prove to be invaluable if I can ever find employment in Information Technology or need to help someone with one of these computers.

I'm also wondering if the terminal in Sequoia is actually better or if it's just that workarounds have been found for some of the problems. There does seem to be a new issue with accessing history by using up and down arrows, but otherwise I'm a bit unclear if any issues have actually been resolved.

I tried it and went back to vs code, don’t remember why I didn’t like pycharm, I might try it again

I hadn't heard about this previously, and it... might actually encourage me to update from Windows 10. Can anyone explain how it works?

Phone Link is probably what you're thinking about. I have no idea how well the iOS integration works. I recommend starting a new topic if you want to discuss it in detail, as this isn't the place for that.

Using the Windows Terminal built into Windows 11 it's easy to configure the default to be WSL when ever you open a terminal session. If Because of that it's as few steps as it is on the mac once you take the initial two minutes to set it up. I can't speak to any of the IntelliJ products such as PiCharm because I use VSCode as my ide for everything. The WSL integration with VsCode is quite good and I've had no issues. It just works if you launch VsCode from a terminal session running in WSL.

I have things more or less working in WSL. The terminal starts there, and I have projects open in PyCharm from WSL with virtual environments in WSL too. It mostly works except it's very very slow, although my Dell laptop is about 5 years old. I was also finding files that seemed to corrupt in the Linux file system.

A couple of work colleagues also had a lot of trouble with WSL for various reasons. One of them uses the remote development option in PyCharm which I believe installs the IDE itself in WSL. It's beta so might get better, but it does feel crazy to open one IDE only to then open another. And the list box didn't seem to be accessible. But I was thinking if I'm having screen reader issues, how on earth is it going to cope with the mix of operating systems? But it does work better for him.

Anyway it's not that I can't get WSL to work, it's just adding an extra layer of complexity that feels unnecessary to me. I like things to be as simple as possible - maybe it's just because I'm lazy and don't quite have the enthusiasm for this that maybe I had when I could see what I was doing.

Anyway, I'm not saying WSL isn't a good thing - it absolutely is. I just prefer that the Mac doesn't have this big huge layer of abstraction between me and my work.