Gee, I wonder if it's that fact that every time grandma and grandpa go to Best Buy to get a new computer to video chat with the grandkids it's a cheap $500 Windows laptop that Dell/Lenovo/Etc had to purchase an OEM license for? Or maybe its the fact that corporations that run Windows have to buy 1000+ seats at a time to cover all their employees workstations, in house servers, etc, etc. My company alone probably has a couple thousand on file..

Did you pull that from AI like all the rest of your responses too? Do you want to pretend Linux is unpopular too since technically Windows blows that the hell away too as far as 'user adoption' and 'retail sales volume' goes?

 

Many assumptions being made by you about users and their backgrounds that you have absolutely no clue about. For a self-appointed smart person it would seem you should know that. Personally, I have used both *NIX and macos. I do not claim to be of expert class at either one. I basically know enough to be "dangerous", but even at that it does not take a brain-trust to figure out if something is useful to a person or not. Myself and the many others here that are win based use that OS because it is useful, it works and is supported by the industry. As a plus, given a users personal tastes the winOS is capable of being rendered impervious to the prying eyes of the corporate OEM which is a big plus for most win users. I'm not "defending" windows or any other OS. I use it because it suits me.

AppleOS can be considered a *NIX, but how many apple users, to use your vernacular, "actually know the *NIX underside of appleOS"? I'm not taking your tac in proclaiming wide assumptions about apple users, but my guess would be not very many apple folks are expertly familiar with the *NIX underpinning of appleOS. To be quite honest, who really gives a shit in the first place? If it works for the majority of users, who gives a dam whether they use a commodore 64 as long as their workflow demands and system requirements are met.

 

Speaking of older OS's , i have the 2018 mac pro w touchbar and I tried staying on Mojave 10.14.6 for as long as possible but it ended up coming to the point that some of my software wouldnt work and i reallty didnt wanna update it but i ended up going to sonoma...Mojjave was my favorite most definitely.. ...rip..sucks now that they put out like 2 new OS's a year n just add more BS n nothing very useful
definitely use my mac for art / creattivity purposes
I also have a dell precision 5570 i bought refurbished that i havte to use for work programs involving robotics // PLC software ... runs windows 11 but came installed with it....would preefer windows 10 tho but thats on the vm.... i kinda like this dell and i use a script from github that deletes most windows bloatware ... hardest part w this one is trying to stop the automatic windows updates...ive also used a script for that and disabled lots of settings but seems like its nearly impossible to compleely disable it altogether idk lol
i would say .. i like both for what i use them for but i prefer the apple OS because to me its just all around smoother... have always thought that.. but windows is better for i guess office type work or writing documents i think idk...both have their pros and cons like anything out there

 

That is SO awesome! I would ask which games, but I know we like our anonymity round here, so maybe: Isle or main land? Britain had such a great coding scene, but I learned a lot of games came from germany as well. I tried to do a little coding in Amiga Basic, but it was so painfully slow I got frustrated early... If I knew about GFA Basic back then, maybe I would have chosen a different carreer. Tried to learn C, but I was really young at that time. In the end Amigas Paula started my path. With OctaMED and Octalyzer. After some time I wanted to pro up a little and tried to get Steinbergs 24 running with a midi interface on the parallel port. But I just couldn't make it work although OctaMED had no problems with that interface. At that point I was quite sad it was no Atari ST with Cubase or Notator. I always liked the STs 60hz and high res B/W mode, but when it was time to switch it was obvious that the Falcon will not be the machine that saves Atari. And neither did Escom save Commodore... Oh my.. Ancient history.

 

What most non-users of MacOS never understand is that you cannot just look at some numbers on paper and make a real comparison.

Pulsewave posted earlier that Macs were always faster. That's actually wrong, even though people agreed with it. All you had to do was be using a G3 beige era Mac and look at any of the PC specs on paper at the time. PCs were being advertised as 1+ ghz processors while super-low latency Mac Protools (or Digital Performer) setups were clocking under 250mhz. Conversely, now that benchmarking sites are all over and clearly show that ARM macs are fast as hell, no-one seems to be so dependent on those scores anymore. Now you have to "defeat your own OS" by debloating it, remove all its security protections, not run any anti-malware software on the most frequently targeted OS in the world, or just never connect it to the internet. Yeah, sign me up for that. The point is, specs are relative.

A regular user is not going to know how to use a Mac in 3-6 months, never mind being at "power user" skill level, even though I dislike that term. Not even close. Most PC users are not writing stuff for Powershell or even creating VBA macros in 6 months either. They are still adding macros to their mouse buttons so they can one-click open their email.

The PC users are definitely not going to be able to make any comparisons to Macs about uptime, frequency of OS reinstallation, fighting with "bad plugins" that don't show up in their DAW, or their DAW crashing because of their graphics drivers. They aren't going to be able to compare how frequently they have to replace internal parts or reopen machines to correct build errors. They will not even be able to tell you any individual component in the machine is even covered by a warranty or who the manufacturer of a failed part even is. They can always tell you about all the newest video games and malware they have gotten on their systems. Or they will never say how much time they spend shuttling files back and forth from an internet connected machine to an air-gapped production computer (or factor that into the price of their setup).

This is how we end up with conspiracy theories about why most actual studios using Macs like "gatekeeping" and OS tribalism. It's not immediately obvious if you just look at numbers. You have to know what you are even looking at. A little more money to not deal with any of Windows users problems is cheap.

 

Why do all these businesses worldwide have Microsoft installed and not Apple's macOS? Yes, a license fee is required for every single computer; that's why Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. What are companies doing about it? Some are now using the free LibreOffice suite instead of Microsoft Office. Some cities have switched to Linux, primarily to save costs and end their dependence on American software.

If they only have a limited amount of cash, they can't afford Apple products. No, this wasn't generated by AI. Look at the user statistics for operating systems: Microsoft is number 1, macOS is number 2, Linux is number 3, and musicians tend to use macOS and Windows. I'm a big Linux fan and a long time ago I installed and tried OpenLinux Lite 1.2; I also bought a manual for it: "Installing, Configuring, and Using Linux" from OPS Verlag. I started with Windows 95 (1998), then Windows XP, then Windows 7, then Windows 10, and then Windows 11.

Of course, you could install Linux (Mint) and use it to access the internet, watch videos, and listen to music, and then have a second, offline PC just for music – that would actually be the best solution.

 

Your first sentence begins with an accusation and an insult. I find your argument that I shouldn't play the know-it-all quite inappropriate and off-base. I write, just like you, about my opinions, experiences, and views on Windows and macOS.

You then proceed to accuse me of belittling you, distorting everything, and not understanding. You're impossible to discuss things with, and you only know one way: your own ego, which can't tolerate criticism!

 

The Mac OS is very good, but I use a desktop computer running Windows 10, offline and optimized solely for music. It's never had a problem, has large SSD storage, and I'm very happy with it.

My OS for networking is Linux, which suits me very well.

 

Not so. Tho why anyone would prefer a snapdragon cpu over an recent gen i7 is beyond me.

 

Threadripper 1920X.
12/24 4Ghz OC.

 

I use a Raspberry Pi to produce my music.

 

Tbh i think it's worth learning how to use both platforms, Mac as well as Windows. If nothing else, it'll strengthen your skill set and allow you to collaborate or work with more people. These days it's more of a coke vs pepsi thing outside of the device aggregation thing. Both are valid, both will do the exact same job the exact same way. Just depends on which taste you like better.

 

You'll have to explain that to me in more detail; you're the first person I know who recommends learning two different systems. I think it's unreasonable to subject your brain to that kind of stress. Surely you can give me some practical examples, or in other words, convince me to learn your theory about using two platforms.

 

I recommend it because expanding your operating knowledge is always valuable whether that be as a hobbyist or especially as a professional. Most Mastering houses (Hacienda Mastering is a great such example) have workstation systems on both OSes, and doing so gives you the maximum level of flexibility and compatibility for any project that walks through the door. And when you really dig into it, most of the hotkeys are extremely similar (Control = Command, etc), and once you know the layout of both it becomes really apparent that MacOS is a "left-handed" approach to a lot of Windows functions albeit the identical same functions. All this is to say that both OSes have undergone a lot of convergent evolution, becoming more and more like each other over the years, and that's a great thing. That said, having the money to purchase two systems is difficult these days so that's going to be the biggest limiting factor, in my mind anyway.

 

Well, that's just the thing. I don't seem to have "problems" with the win platform. I think that there are many others here as well that will attest to this fact. There are many things one has to know about windows going in - it's not all popsicles and unicorns. But for me at this point, and I am betting others here can agree, it's not that hard to whip a windows build into shape especially when jumping off with a nice debloated image. And once that build has been properly "motivated", let's say, by the end user, it's generally a steel tank at that point. Simply image it off and you're good to go.

From what I have read of reports on this forum and others is that the modern macos has its own set of issues and baggage. Maybe not the same issues that one encounters with the windows platform, but still issues nevertheless. My experience with macos was with power pc's. That was back a ways, but the experience didn't leave me with a warm and fuzzy about anything apple based. Mainly the extreme proprietary properties that came with all apple products was not appealing at all. Couple this with the relatively proprietary free PC platform made many teetering on the fence about which platform was right for them a much easier decision.

I also played around with SunOS, HPUX, and IRIX. When we installed application programs on the *NIX machines shit just went everywhere. Pieces of programs buried in paths so deep you needed diving bell to get to. This made troubleshooting them way tougher than it should have been and made the uninstallation process even worse.

These days the way I work is with a few highly tweaked and fortified internet facing machines on their own gigabit vlan which are dual homed to a gigabit backend VLAN running a win based domain that all the rest of my machines are connected to. There are various os's in use on the backend LAN ranging from winXP to win10. Everything easily dovetails and works. I did try over the years to incorporate a few *NIX based builds into the win based domain which proved to be way more work that I wanted to spend getting the *NIX's to talk correctly to the rest of the win based machines on the LAN. I have had most of the machines up for years doing their jobs and happily chugging away on the same build. A few I have done upgrades on - not because they were malfunctioning, but to upgrade the OS version. I do regular backup imaging on all the boxen and store offline. I rarely ever rebuild a machine unless it's a test box that I have purposely, thru beating on it while testing something, blew it up. Hence the need for TEST boxes.

If there are folks out there who are on the win platform who are constantly having to rebuild machines it's news to me - I do not have those problems, and haven't had those problems in the whole time running the platform. I find it hard to believe that nothing ever goes wrong with appleOS. And if/when something with appleOS does go wrong, that it's any easier to fix than something gone very astray with a windows build . The systems are too dam complex anymore to figure exactly where something is fubar. I also find it hard to believe that no one has ever twisted a build of appleOS up so bad that it had to be reimaged in order to fix it There are many problems that with a little backtracking (and perhaps a bit of web searching) can be fixed, but short of that the complexity will get the better of one and it's just not worth the effort.

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2026 at 2:44 AM