Sticking with Mac: What Keeps You Loyal?

macOS is just a nice platform, when you come right down to it. Perfect? No. But as good as it gets for general computing? I think so. You can always use a VM when you really need Windows and the accessibility requirement outstrips every other consideration, including privacy, comfort, consistency, app selection, etc etc etc. On macOS I have most of what I want, most of the time, including its UNIX underpinnings, system-wide spellcheck and dictionary, scriptability, and a good selection of available apps that, somewhat ironically, remind me of the halcyon days of the PC era, circa 2005. Nobody cares about desktop anymore, but on Windows they couldn't care less!

For me, it is the fact that Mac just works. As an example, when it comes to audio editing, and sound designing, most plug-ins I would say 90% of them are fully accessible. No need for ocr, extra addons, installing drivers because you need to install this driver just for the computer to recognize your interface...things just, work. Also, the battery life, the mac is just well made, of solid material. The integration with all the other Apple devices, is great as well. While the os isn’t perfect and has bugs, it is not a showstopper, and, having tried a physical windows PC, I couldn’t deal with it. I do have a VM, but a physical PC that I tried for work... Just no, I couldn't handle it, switched to mac for work. And for accessibility... You don't have to deal with, x doesn't work with my screenreader, but it does with this other one so I'll switch or, oh yeah but this addon makes it accessible soooo... You get the point. And things are consistent on the mac. Either something is accessible or it’s not. But in windows its the mess of, one screenreader reads the buttons, the other one just says, button button button... Navigating on the mac is, to me, way easier than it is on windows and so on. Not to say windows is bad but, its... smoother. and easier on mac.
Aso the bios, if you will. On mac, this is fully accessible, on arm macs at least. On windows the bios isn't accessible on most laptops.

Ah, a sensitive question for me.
If you guys remember my earlier posts here I almost could be accused of generating negativity on this site cause the transition for me was very difficult. My only defence and I think you can understand and agree with I got the mac on ventura at a time where snr and other bugs were at their peak and I'd get them multiple times a day and they'd completely prevent me from doing x or y action, the very reason I had bought my very expensive mbp m2pro base model with my own cash for.
I was that close to put it on sale until a guy Mohamed here learned me how to use the terminal, and the wave of bug patches we got in Sequoia. What made me stick to it? I'll start by the negatives.
Compared to windows screen readers, voiceover on mac as somebody so elegantly put it, is more sensitive on html structure error, which makes the navigation on the web less enjoyable (generally speaking) on most websites and especially web apps relying heavily on aria, and most of the google suite is degraded in terms of accessibility experience. Selection of text in adjacent elements is nearly impossible natively yet in web outside safari and literally all pdf in preview, safari or even chrome. Voiceover is unoptimized in terms of code, read my thread about vim bug in terminal to have an idea. It lacks many feature its own ios cousin is known and appreciated for, such as ocr. Text scrolling is a mess by default. Why am I sticking to it even if my memory of my last 12 years or so on windows have been much smoother in general?
First reason? Very simple. Apple has saturated the market with each release of apple silicon since 2020 and I'd be selling my m2 pro base model at a big loss. The next reason is battery life, which is self explanatory especially since 2020. Then we have the ecosystem integration, which is... not something I'd known to want but I know I'd miss if I go back to windows. After that, voiceover and apple accessibility in general have a philosophy I like, it's everything or nothing. All apple devices are 101% general purpose device for regular consumers yet now we blind can go to a regular shop, pay the regular premium and go away with any apple device and be independent from day one. This doesn't exist 100% on windows yet because of the bios among other reasons. Voiceover has many flaws, but it's the complete package. The box may have some scratches here and there, the product be ripped in some corners, but when we have it we have everything. As much as I love nvda without its addon ecosystem I'd never called it complete, and jaws aside the price tag is just not my thing anymore since like 2015 or so. With voiceover math content (to a certain extent), pdf, web, braille, work out of the box with minimum configuration with bluetooth braille display and literally plug and play when wired.
Voiceover have so many bugs and design flaws that I literally could write a book on it, and a lengthy one. Apple has a lot to be responsible with, and the VO vibe is day and night between ios (where I thought apple were perfect) and macos, but you can generally, maybe sometimes differently, do 99% of the same computer tasks on macos that you'd do on windows. Plus VO on mac has a built-in tutorial and user guide to the point that hadn't I had an internet connection I could have learned to use all the os myself, while on windows frankly I only know how to use it because I know how to use it, and for once jaws is better for newbies discovering both windows and the sr because its doc covers both while with nvda it's the open source spirit of rtfm and beyond.

It's an apple product, it fits in with other devices, it has great support, they feel good, look good, are pleasurable to physically use.

I think a big selling point for me, is simply the brand. An apple mac is an apple mac, and though it comes in several form factors, from the base mac mini to the highest end mac pro, they are basically the same computer even if one is more powerful for specific tasks. The windows world, on the other hand, is confusing, convoluted, with variations across manufacturers, models and chip sets.

Saying that, it's the great frustration that voiceover is inferior to windows alternatives. The fact there are no alternatives on mac is not great either.

I'm a writer, I use ulysses because microsoft word doesn't work with voiceover. Terminal is great to have, but it's a pig to use. If I were in another field, business or science, for example, I don't think I'd use a mac machine. They are great for blind musicians, certainly, soft use blind users, possibly writers though the issues with the industry standard of word is a big downside but, that's about it. It's terrible for games, bad for business applications, not much good for STEM... These are all with the blind in mind.

In some ways, i think having a mac has pushed me in a certain direction with what I do. It does limit us to certain tasks or, more accurately, certain tasks are easier than others. Maybe that's just always the case when it comes to accessibility, the accessibility defines our choices rather than the other way around.

The utilitarianism and polish of NVDA is simply excellent and nowhere is that clearer than in web and web-based apps, which unfortunately are on the rise. Yes, I accept that this is a real weakness of macOS, as is, fundamentally, using a screen reader that is quite obviously not designed with us in mind—co-designed, at best.

But, it's pretty clear why IT people (dunno if that's STEM) like macOS, and that includes we blind folk. Whether you're in work or not, having an accessible platform to run your server software or VMs on is simply awesome! Run a mail server stack, atomically snapshot and back up the VM filesystem. No downsides, no limitations, minimal power draw ...

Yeah, there is a lot to be said for using a base mac mini as a server. Get a few external drives and you're off to the races and, if you use something like Jump Desktop, you can drop into it from another computer or from your IOS device. A mac in the cloud is quite a cool thing with a keyboard and an iPhone.

It's a question I ask myself a lot. I think in my case, the reason is simple - it's what I know.

It seems that most people start on Windows with NVDA and Jaws, then come over to the Mac and struggle with the differences. I am the other way round - I know VoiceOver on the Mac and struggle transitioning to Windows.

Possibly because of this, but I like the general approach of VoiceOver. I like having a dedicated controller for VoiceOver in the numpad. I don't really like in Windows that all the keys are multi-purpose - ie you press h and it might jump to a heading or it might type h in a box. Similarly with tab which may jump to the next control or it might put a tab char in. It just feels a bit unnecessary. I like how in the Mac I can jump to headings, tables, buttons or whatever in any app - whereas in Windows it's only going to work on the web. Using aarrows and tabs in Windows just feels a bit crude. I also like how almost every Mac app has a menu bar. Whereas Windows may be overall more accessible, I think there is a general lack of UI consistency that I don't care for - whether it be ribbons, or whether it be app specific menu buttons like in Edge or whatever.

I think it's (in theory) a nice, quick, easy interface and I've never quite clicked with Windows.

Also, the main software I use at work - PyCharm - works a lot better on the Mac than in Windows.

And let's not forget copy and paste with the phone - that is amazing.

But as we all know, it's not without issues - in particular browsing the web is more painful than it should be, there are loads of focus issues, text editing is still very poor. And there are a number of Apple apps that I've never been able to get my head around - podcasts, home, shortcuts, app store etc. It's always easier to reach for the phone in those cases which seems backwards.

I think using Windows in a VM on the Mac is a poor experience and requires too many compromises. But maybe I am just too lazy to learn it properly.

I'd like to break free of the Mac one day, but I can get things done even if it is a constant test of patience.

what I like:
- battery durability
- noiseless fan
- integration with iPhone

what I dislike:
- insuficient high contrast dark mode feature

As a low vision user I don't rely yet on screen readers but on high contrast dark mode. This feature on Windows works spetacularly - one button switches it everywhere, and the available dark themes are really simple as I need - with very little colors - black and white is just fine for me. Mac doesn't support this yet. Apple expects all app/site devellopers to add dark mode in their apps/sites. The dark mode won't darken webpages automatically. Color inversion on the other side could be an alternative but the appearanve will be horrible when there are many colors like in icons and images. Also, color inversion will invert dark colors into bright light colors which is horrible for my condition.
Just because of this issue, I tried to resell my Mac but I deterred after I realized how much money I would lose. Lastly, a few months of a depressing experience with this Mac I finally found an extension for my browser with many stylesheets which I can try and see which one fits better on each website. Not ideal as in Windows but better than my early experience.

Is a numpad a real upgrade for voiceover on the mac? I've never used one as only really ever had macbooks

When I could see, dark mode was invaluable. I really liked the dark mode on the Mac. But for apps that didn't support it, I had a shortcut that just inverted colours and that tended to be good enough for me. On the iphone there is a way to turn accessibility features on and off per app - not sure if this is also on the Mac but it might be an option if so?

Regarding dark web sites - I used Dark Reader for many years on both Windows and the Mac, and it was excellent. It was free for all browsers except Safari, then it cost a few quid I think.

Things might have changed since then.

Yes, I'd say they were the other major weak spot, alongside web apps, albeit that in principle they can be accessible, and actually Podcasts is very good in this regard. That the Mac App Store still has critical focus issues is a great deal less excusable. :(

And "Loop" is right! :)

I think using Windows in a VM works well enough to be useful, especially on Silicon Macs with more RAM. And I think most of your observations about macOS would hold true regardless of past Windows experience; I've been using macOS long enough now that the thought of going back to Doze full-time makes me a bit faint. That having been said, there's always a danger that unwillingness to embrace change—however obviously unnecessary—could keep you from adapting to an alternative way of doing things that could in principle ultimately be a net benefit. I am not convinced that this applies to Windows, however, and I think it's clear that Windows accessibility has taken a lot of punishment in recent times owing essentially to a complete disregard by Microsoft to accessibility considerations that were perhaps a better fit when they had a much longer development cycle. Or maybe it's just the fevered rantings of an increasingly peevish and truculent old man (of 42). At any rate, there's really no competition to macOS, so far.

I think with all these things it depends on you. For example, some people swear by using the trackpad on the Mac and I've never seen the point. I was using quick nav primarily until I heard them talking about the num pad on Double Tap.

I like it for a few reason. Firstly, when it is enabled, I know that the numpad will always control VoiceOver. It's not dependent on where I am on the screen, it will just do the command which makes it about as predictable as you can be on the Mac. And secondly, I can do almost everything I need with VoiceOver one-handed, and without moving my fingers much, so it's quite quick and convenient. So I can jump headings/links/buttons/tables/search boxes, or jump to the top and bottom, or bring up item list and rotor, or move around, interact, activate things etc all with one hand. I have a Macbook Pro but just connect an external keyboard to it, although you can buy bluetooth numpads which I've been tempted to try out.

I thought quick nav was nearly quite good - it's impressive what you can do with just four buttons. But it would quietly change the active rotor item depending on what was on-screen. So it might be set to headings, then I'd go somewhere without a heading, and now I've got to fiddle about with the rotor some more. Not a big deal but was just annoying.

That is one other nice thing about the Mac - is that you have a number of different options - whether it be the normal VO controls, single key nav, quick nav, keyboard commander, the track pad or num pad. It felt quite easy to just setup my own way of working whilst preserving all the default behaviour. I don't really like how it has all been smooshed together in Sequoia - I preferred each thing being separate so I could ring-fence what I considered to be mine. I think now it's more like NVDA, but it makes me more nervous about fiddling with it.

Oo, I might look into getting a stand alone numpad then. I do like the idea of a one handed means of bopping about my mac. I've never been able to get on with the trackpad, (flabby thumbs), and keep catching it mid flow.

If I find a good bluetooth one, I'll let you know. Would be nice if there was one you could also use on other devices. Hmm. Off I go!

The hardware is excellent (see all the reviews by professional reviewers - they're remarkably consistent).

The operating system is UNIX-based, reliable, well designed and has a good security reputation.

Every application I care about has either a Mac version or a Mac alternative - mostly the former.

There's a wealth of command line tools and applications available from HomeBrew, which makes installation trivial.

Free/open-source and proprietary applications are available - everything from your preferred UNIX tools to Apple's iWorks or Microsoft 365.

VoiceOver mostly functions as intended. There are bugs, as with all screen readers, and some of them are really problematic, but I can often work around the limitations without great inconvenience. That's worth doing to be able to use a better operating system and quality applications. VoiceOver is included in the operating system, as it should be. Only Windows users depend heavily on third-party screen readers.

I like Apple's approach to operating system evolution: less emphasis on backward-compatibility than Microsoft, and consequently a greater willingness to discard the mistakes of the past and to fix problems. As in Linux (but unlike Windows) all of the drivers are included in the operating system, contributing to the experience of hardware's "just working" in the Mac environment.

Integration with other Apple devices is useful and operates reliably.

My background as a reviewer: I use Linux, Windows and iOS regularly. I've also used Android and ChromeOS to some extent in the past. Other operating systems that I've used aren't relevant anymore, but they include Apple II DOS/ProDOS in the early days, MS-DOS, Solaris, etc.

I used to have a USB numeric keypad for my MacBook Pro, back when I was in college. Those things are amazing. Also, because it was USB, I could use it on a Windows machine as well ... or in my case, on Boot Camp windows. 😇

I was a Windows user four months back slowly. I started migrating to MacBook initially I felt really excited, but when I am diving deep I found bit of complicated in few things, screen recording and PDF reading and copying text from PDF few things I like is battery durability, the compact size of MacBook

This is a question I sometimes ask myself. For the past few days, when I would ask SIRI on iOS for the wether, I'd get the wait tones, then, "I'm having trouble with the connection. Please try again later." After digging through countless forum topics where others encountered the same issue, some of which were years old, I had to ask myself how Apple could botch this and let it go unfixed for so long.

Back to topic.

As I said in a blog post once, moving from your familiar computing environment is painful. That's one reason my Mac is still my home computer, despite its flaws. That, and Scrivener, which is not accessible on Windows or Linux.

Speaking of Windows or Linux, I do not despise them. They have their place. I have a Linux box and use it as a web host. If I ever needed to use MS Word again, I'd buy a Windows laptop with NVDA. Just don't make me move my home desktop to either Linux or Windows, please.

I asked Steven from Double Tap for advice recently as I was thinking about buying one but didn't get round to it. He has a bit of a thing about keyboards. He suggested the cheap ones on Amazon aren't much good. He also said "the one I ordered was a Keychron numpad but it never showed up. Microsoft do a decent one as do Satechi but I wasn't so keen as they were so low profile. I wanted something a bit bigger so went for the Keychron."

Not sure if that is any help. If you do give it a go, please let us know how you get on.""

Forgot an important plus point of the Mac - it's built on top of Linux. Sure, Windows has WSL and it is impressive, but it does complicate things and honestly I really appreciate not having to do that sort of thing on the Mac. My work colleague is always having issues with WSL.

The UNIX components of macOS are based on BSD. Thus, the utilities have subtly different command line options from what you'll find in Linux, but they're nevertheless usable and familiar. Add HomeBrew or another package manager and you can have all the open-source, UNIX tools you desire.

Unix bsd was what ultimately convinced me to buy a mac because I was already familiar with most dev tools and other utilities. Curl, gcc, make, grep, ls, bash! :) to name a few, and sudo of course. Plus you can actually choose which linux flavour you want, real unix, gnome, or apple own twist. There's a real freedom and dear homebrew I love you for making that seamless.
PS: applevis definitely needed this kind of topic.

I let the purists correct each word I've said 😂

Ask me this question 2 years ago and I'd be staunchly Team Mac; ask me now and I'll tell you I'd rather stick to Windows. Why? The VoiceOver bugs in Sonoma and sequoia are inexcusable IMO and really hamper my work and faith for the accessibility. Problem is, the apps and scripting on Mac are top-notch and workflow on Macos generally suits me more. It's also better for creatives in any audio-related industry; generally more choices of accessibility software to use and CoreAudio is still better than anything Windows has (excluding ASIO). So right now I think it's really bittersweet. I hate it, but unless Apple actually take some time to address more VO bugs I can't recommend using MacOS as a blind person for more than work right now.

I love everything about my Mac. It was literally my lifesaver. I was a Windows user before and I struggled so much with JAWS and NVDA. I needed to start using the computer in high school but I often refused because Windows was so horrible. Then I got a Mac and learned it quite quickly. I immediately fell in love with it. I love how well it integrates with Apple’s ecosystem. I enjoy using the trackpad. Navigating also makes more sense, especially interacting with items.

Now I am studying Salesforce with my Mac and it works perfectly. At the Blind Institute of Technology we have some demo videos in the introduction course which are done by JAWS and NVDA users. I just pity them because they need to jump between JAWS and NVDA and sometimes even change browsers to get things done. However, my VoiceOver experience is seamless and I don’t need to change browsers either. I just use Safari and it works perfectly.

Salesforce and similar is the exact thing I'd be scared on mac especially at work because of snr (which was horrible on ventura and most part of sonoma) and web in general. I completely respect your opinion and the fact that users actually enjoy the mac always seems so surreal to me that I am genuinely happy for them like it's a big miracle, but, cool, and wow! Like, look, this bug got its own acronym and everyone here knows what I'm talking about, this is just not normal :)

Further to my earlier comments, I think Apple's macOS development strategy has been progressing in the right direction in recent years. This also helps to ensure I continue to be a Mac user.

They switched from x86 to the Arm architecture so smoothly. The hardware is better (performance, energy efficiency, etc.), and the operating system runs better than ever.

They improved security with system integrity protection, isolating the operating system partition and verifying it using digital signatures. Valuable hardware-based security measures were also introduced. Furthermore, Apple changed to a modern copy-on-write file system. Most users wouldn't even notice, except perhaps for the greater performance or reliability.

Third-party kernel extensions were deprecated, with user-space alternatives provided - again, ultimately a positive measure for security.

I'm sure there are more examples.

To be frank, what is highly amusing is that... Windows users are in the same boat of windows beeing buggy, and the screenreader just... having inexcusable bugs. I'm talking about narrator. Hense why users use any third party screenreader you can think of; because just as someone mentioned the inexcusable bugs for mac, from their point of view... Its the same exact story for windows; if not worse where narrator is concerned. I.e, if say, third party screenreaders stopped beeing supported? Or if microsoft said ok, only narrator will be the only screenreader? That would be interesting for sure. Although that's part of the problem. That microsoft, given that third party screenreaders are a thing; have the, why should we bother? Mentality; hense narrator beeing where it is; not advancing much, and the little it is... its at a snails pace because, from microsoft's stance... Oh we'll let others handle it. But yeah. In windows its the same exact story, if not worse given microsoft's... apparent stance on accessibility. Its just highly amusing to me at least.

I absolutely love my Mac, particularly because of VoiceOver, which offers a consistent and intuitive user experience. However, what really makes the Mac indispensable for me is the suite of audio software from Rogue Amoeba, like Audio Hijack and Loopback.

These tools eliminate the need for a physical mixing console when routing audio. With just an audio interface to connect multiple microphones—or even a simple USB microphone—I can seamlessly manage audio for radio broadcasts, remote podcasts, or virtually any other audio project. This level of flexibility is unmatched.

Audio production on the Mac is as straightforward as it is on Windows with Reaper. That said, I honestly don’t understand why a podcaster or anyone working with audio wouldn't choose the Mac. On Windows, setting up audio routing involves virtual cables, which are a nightmare to install and configure. You often have to manually redirect applications or use tools like SAR, which requires ASIO drivers and thus a dedicated audio interface to avoid latency issues.

In contrast, Rogue Amoeba's software is fully accessible and takes full advantage of macOS's Core Audio framework, ensuring zero latency and making everything incredibly easy to use. For anyone who works in audio, the Mac is a game-changer.

The thing about narrator is, there are 3rd party solutions. When voiceover fails, we're stuck. On windows, if narrator fails, NVDA, at the very least, is there to try it a different way. Often it's important to try going into something from several directions. Not sure if it's a blind thing but I think we get quite good at trying something, it failing, us backing up, having a think, and trying it from a different direction. This is harder on mac, and generally apple devices, due to their philosophy of creating one good route for all, which certainly has its advantages but, when you're a fringe user, for example, blind and using a mac for a niche project, 3D printing, for example, there are more hurdles. Basically, don't think different, and you'll be fine.

I did have a quick look, but don't really fancy getting anything full size, rather I'd just like to get the numpad. I did have a look to see if there was a way of having a virtual numpad on macbook, but it seems not.

Steve is great, I love his keyboard addiction. Double tap is an excellent podcast for any looking to hear about tech and, generally, feel less alone with the struggles we face every day, even beyond tech. They don't always get it correct regarding tech advice, but the things they don't know, are very fringe and won't matter to most.

Sorry, this is all off topic.

Mac's are pretty. That's probably the answer for me in a nut shell. I like to be surrounded by pretty things in the hope that, through osmosis, I too shall become pretty/hansom/buff/wake up with an apple tattooed on my forehead.

This is exactly why I've stayed on the "dark side" and probably will for the foreseeable future. VoiceOver is built right in, and deeply integrated into the operating system. I'd write more, but the alarm went off telling me I've gotta get ready for my workout. But despite its issues, VoiceOver works great for me. Same with the iPhone, but I'll save that for later.

I'm sure both Apple and Microsoft love the fact that this debate has continued now since the introduction of the Macintosh 41 years ago in 1984. I wouldn't be surprised if both companies have paid staff to act as trolls and resurrect the argument if it ever goes quiet.

JAWS and NVDA don't buy you a thing if you're trying to use any FOSS app built using Qt. Despite Qt's best efforts to add accessibility, as far as I know, any Qt app is impossible to use on Windows with any screen reader.

As for Mac, I just spent the morning documenting two VoiceOver bugs, one with keyboard focus not synchronized to VoiceOver, another with VoiceOver failing to read next paragraph. Both bugs are entirely reproduceable with Apple-created core apps. And yet here we are.

I think the saddest thing is that the flaws we see in 21st-century technology aren't limited to accessibility. I know many fully sighted users who use their computer, smartphones, and TVs - from any and every manufacturer - only in the most limited ways because the user interface is too complex or flaky. My fully sighted spouse and I sit down to watch a show on our streaming TV, for example, and she spends literally 15 minutes trying to find the show.

So, why do we stick with Mac? And by "we" I include the sighties too, not just the blindies. The answer is we use what's familiar.

My two US cents, reduced in copper content as they are. Happy computing, all.

OMG! A bug has its own acronym and *everybody* knows what I'm talking about!

So true, that doesn't happen with *any* other oS, Oh hang on, what's this BSOD thingy in my head I remember?

I've been using a Mac for about four months now, so here's my totally newb perspective. Get ready for somethingshocking, you won't believe No. 5!

It works.

I don't mean it works better than Windows. I haven't been propelled into a wonderland of awesomeness. As an example, one of the big things touted to me as a reason to switch is something a *lot* of people are bringing up here, audio, because it just works and it's awesome, and bunches and bunches of plugins are just like, accessible duuuuude!

I bought an Akai Mini Play. It came with some software instruments. One of them is accessible, more or less, the other one loads and makes a noise, but there seems to be no way to change presets on it.

That's great that rogue Amoeba's apps are accessible, but let's keep some things in perspective. You're still using third party apps to do what you want, you just think they're better on Mac. That's not nothing, but people do this OMG on Windows I need this app and that app and that app, and on Mac I just need to drop about a hundred bucks on these two apps from this one company, and then it just works! I mean, sure. Great. But you're still pulling in third party stuff in both cases, you just think one is easier to use.

So what *do* I mean when I say it works? Just that. Outside of dealing with text, e.g. selecting and copying from websites, and still not having a decent book reading experience, when I switched, I could do all the stuff I did on Windows, oh and barring games naturally. Mail works, web pretty much works, audio works. In short, I'm getting stuff done with it that I need to be doing. I switched to get access to Logic. Oh and I do get games, just not the same ones, since I'm running an M2, I get some games from iOS.

I don't suddenly think Windows is the devil. I'm not having "a delightful experience", every time I hear somebody seriously use the word delightful it makes me want to slap somebody, because seriously, come out of your Apple-based marketing trance. The one big handoff thing I might use, calls, I haven't bothered to get working yet, because I don't get a lot of calls. It is cool though to be able to pop Airpods in on Skype, have it switch to them mid-call, and go back to the connected headphones and microphone when I take them out. But to be fair, Windows might be able to do that with a Bluetooth headset.

But yeah, basically I wanted access to Logic, so I bought a Mac to see if I could use it for all of the rest of the stuff I'm doing, so I could just switch to one, or mostly anyway, when I upgrade I will set up a Windows VM for games. The only times I've touched the Windows computer since I've had it is to transfer files from one machine to the other. So I'd say it's working well enough, if I can use it every day for about four months straight.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Windows from at least 10 on has been really stable, at least for me. SO I just don't understand the Windows hate going on here. Of course, I don't understand the Mac hate either. It's like DAWs. I'm not abandoning Reaper when I switch to Logic. To my mind, they're different tools for different things, there are things one can do more easily than the other.

OK, maybe I will just stick with Logic, I dunno, we'll see what it's like once I start using it. But the point is, I'm not planning on it, and if I *do* end up using Logic exclusively, it will just be because it clicks with me and I can do all of the stuff I need to do, it won't be because Reaper totally sucks and OMG why would anybody subject themselves to that?

About the only thing I've found so far that absolutely makes my life easier on Mac, and this is restricted to Garage Band (A.K.A. baby Logic) and Logic, is that I can plug in/turn on a midi keyboard while the software is running, and it will just detect it. But that might not matter much, e.g. if Logic detects it but Komplete Kontrol won't, then I still need to restart Logic or reload Komplete Kontrol at least.

I think the difference is that I checked out Mac because if it worked, I'd be gaining something. I'm not fleeing Windows like it's some kind of war zone to the beautiful peaceful fields of Apple. The Mac just has a music thingy I wanted to try because it did something way easier than anything on Windows. It's a really dumb thing too born out of my laziness, you can absolutely do it on Windows. It just so happens to be more straightforward on Mac because of how GB and Logic work. But they don't have to work that way at all. So it's really just dumb luck.

In fact most qt apps I use now on windows have leveled up a lot their accessibility while on mac from parallel to musescore to raspberrypi imager it's a downward curve, but this is totally qt fault.
Snr vs bsod: I meant accessibility bug, but great point bro! :)
PS: this is a genuinely interestingtopic I am surprised having found nothing similar to this before.