So, you may recall that I posted in the basement region of AppleVis about purchasing a PC. Sick of how pants voiceover is with Microsoft Word, the industry standard, I decided to give Windows a punt.
Whilst making my choice, I flip-flopped through many machines. I assume this is the curse of PC selection. I wanted something built like a MacBook Air but that ran Windows well. I would have liked to play games but, I'll come on to that. I also wanted a killer battery, a great keyboard for typing, etc., and so on. In short, I wanted it all or, I wanted a MacBook, but that was a PC... (Take note of that.)
I ordered an Asus Zenbook 14 with an Intel i9 Ultra chip. Satisfied with my choice, I sat back to wait... Then I did a little Googling whilst I did so... Oh dear. The build wasn't as good as a Mac. For ÂŁ1200, I'd hoped for better. So, without receiving the Asus that, I cancelled and ordered its posher sister, you know, the one that doesn't drop her H's and poops with the bathroom door closed. (I have low standards of posh.)
The Zenbook S14, note the S, was thinner, better built with better speakers. Game on, job done... I sat back to wait... In the meantime, I hopped on YouTube and... Oh dear. The slimness of the device, it seemed, meant that doing anything above simple tasks got the processor cooking. A lot of money for something so restrictive.
Thing was, I was looking at pretty premium PCs thinking that, if I'm going to do this, I need to give it the best possible shot. No skimping as I had when I dipped my toe in with the Surface Go 3 Laptop.
But yes, here... The New Surface Laptop 7 13 inch, note the 13 is the smallest and newest iteration of this line. Arm-based, I know, but killer battery and, from all accounts, good speakers, great keyboard, brilliant build. I ordered, satisfied that it was significantly cheaper than the Asuseseseses... And sat back to wait.
This time I waited long enough to have it delivered. Game on!!! Well, maybe not local game on, but I'll come to that.
It's a lovely little laptop. Slightly thicker than a MacBook Air, slightly heavier, but with a smaller footprint. Build-wise, it's better than the MacBook Air for one simple reason: the keyboard is better. I'm not a fan of the keyboard on my M2 Mac. It feels plasticky, and the keycaps are slightly unstable.
I set up the Microsoft Surface Laptop, which I'll just call the laptop from here on out (naming conventions in the PC world are whack), and started to play.
It's lovely, responsive, and the fact that there is a touch screen is even better. It's not VoiceOver and, as a consequence, the controls are intuitive, make sense, and, when I install NVDA, the responsiveness is mind-blowing... At least, coming from VoiceOver.
Windows itself, from a blind perspective, is a joy. Just a couple of button presses to bring things up. No confusion of different folders for apps, the Dock, Launchpad, etc. Just one button, and you can either search or you have all your apps just there. Golden.
The narrator voice is a dream. Clear, light, without being over-human. I even find an add-on for NVDA to use narrator's natural voices.
Then, I start thinking... yes, this is good. It's great, in fact... And yet... It's ÂŁ800. A solid chunk of cash. What if... What if...
I fire up my MacBook, install Parallels again, and start mucking about. I install Sharp Keys, map everything as it is on my new laptop. I turn off all Mac shortcuts, set the keyboard to passthrough always, and install Carabiner Elements to remap my Caps Lock.
Now, I have a PC built into my Mac. Every keyboard shortcut is as it is on my new laptop. I'm on a MacBook with just 16 GB, meaning the VM has only 8 gb ram, but it's fine.
So why keep the Microsoft laptop? I've got the best of both worlds here. My Mac for tinkering, coding, 3D printing, and all the tasty Apple special sauce that links my devices together, and I have Windows running natively in a sandboxed window that, once in, I can command/alt tab through everything, use all the shortcuts and learn Microsoft Word whilst being able to use Safari, the browser I'm used to, to look up NVDA tutorials.
As for gaming... Well, I have an Xbox. I have a PS5. I install PS Remote and OneCast (a 3rd party version of the Xbox app for Mac). I can play Forza Motorsport, Diablo IV, The Last of Us remotely. I can play MistWorld natively in my VM. I have it all... Well, almost.
Considering I was going to dump all this money on a new PC, I start thinking... Well, what about if my Mac was upgraded, if I had more RAM pulling my PC experience up?
Hence... Ordering an M4 MacBook Air with 32 GB RAM, also reasoning that local LLMs might be fun to play with.
And so, I'm back where I started... ON Mac. But I needed to explore the real PC to understand that Parallels is a very viable alternative to owning a separate machine. It's limited, yes. It's running ARM which, though it's a pride of British engineering (Arm is British, boom!), it's limited on the Windows side. That will change though. The fact that Microsoft is going all in on its own devices with ARM is a good sign.
For me, for now, MacBook Air M4 is the best machine I can get. I believe Windows is moving toward a more ephemeral status, in the cloud, in VMs, which Mac OS is very unlikely to do. I feel I have the best of both worlds… Or all three if you include the remote gaming.
Sorry for the long post. I thought it might be useful for any who were in the same boat.
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Comments
Gosh this is a copy of me
Oliver, to be completely honest, I had to switch to my braille display to read this instead of trusting Eloquence—I really wanted to catch any update you might have about the Asus purchase.
Man, Apple has this devilish way of keeping us hooked. I went out and bought a Windows laptop with top-of-the-line specs, and yet, I keep coming back to my MacBook. Why on earth is that?
The machine I bought is a Lenovo Slim 7i: 32GB RAM, 1TB storage, Lunar Lake 258V processor, excellent battery—on paper, it’s a beast. The keyboard even mimics that classic ThinkPad feel, and most reviews rave about it. But in real life, compared to my MacBook, it just doesn’t feel as “premium.”
On the Lenovo, I can feel sharp edges along the sides; on the Mac, the design is seamless. The Lenovo screen literally slams against the base when I close it—I keep thinking the glass will crack. On the MacBook, there’s that soft rubber gasket that cushions the screen and gives a satisfying, subtle “thud.” The Mac keyboard also feels far superior; I honestly don’t understand why people swear by ThinkPads.
Even on the audio side, my AirPods Pro 2 have almost no latency with the Mac. But on the Lenovo—with Bluetooth 5.4 and Samsung’s top earbuds—I notice a lag. It’s frustrating.
Part of me wishes I could just erase every memory of using a Mac so I could enjoy this Lenovo in peace. I bought it Saturday, and here we are Wednesday—I already regret spending that horrific amount of money. My MacBook is back on my lap, and the Lenovo… well, I don’t even know what to do with it.
Ideal
My ideal is a laptop made by Apple that runs windows with the option of having Mac OS as a VM.
The windows operating system is superior for accessibility, at least I think it is, but Apple have it nailed with hardware and, to be fair, interoperability with its other devices.