I was a hardcore windows boy for many many year. Thinking that mac are overpriced fischer price devices for sectarian people. Basically I was perfectly in line with this opinion :

At one point I had a girlfriend that had a similar config on mac, and it just blasted my windows.
Gave mac a try, never looked back since.
Would'nt go back to a Windows under any circumstance, it just beats windows in every way.
And now that windows has become a spyware from hell I guess that bridges are burnt anyway.

 

I can say this: I have had Apple music producers come to me more than once, praising Apple's glory (and the Apple sequencer they're using). To me it seems proactive-defensive.

 

Yeah I should have added Sonoma to the list of OS versions that are forever broken. I'm on it as well and it's just terrible. Very different experience from Ventura which matured and turned out to be a great OS. Not sure how better Sequoia is now... Leave it to Tim and the heads of design to break something that worked great.

 

You can also click on the Recycle Bin properties to delete files immediately.
"Delete files immediately (don't move them to the Recycle Bin)"

When I delete something, the following happens:
"Are you sure you want to permanently delete this file?"

 

I dont have much of a problem with the file explorer. Just takes a sec or two to set it up right. I do use a window manager to keep things tidy and repeatable because they removed that mechanism from the desktop explorer since XP. Even with win7 I had to employ a third party window manager. Without it you have stuff popping up all over the dam place and in the wrong size, etc...

I use CC all the time for the secure erase (the older piriform versions only). The win native search as well is only really good for finding local system specific stuff. If you're looking for something non-system specific (like a file you stored somewhere for instance) the search tool is useless - completely slow and cumbersome. It's been that way since XP. Also the win native search will attempt (unless you make sure it doesn't) to hit the internet which makes no sense since the thing is slow enough on local searches. I have been plopping ultrasearch on all my win builds for doing searches for most stuff. It does what win search should be doing and does it in 1/1000th the time it takes the native search to do almost anything.

To answer the OP's original question;
Short and sweet - to be honest, it's a matter of preference anymore. In reality, there is NOTHING that a PC can do that a MAC cannot, and vice versa. Anyone who says otherwise is smoking crack. The rest is pure semantics, personal tastes and preferences.

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2026 at 11:35 PM

This program is helpful for customizing Windows to your needs: Windows Tweaker

The ultimate all-in-one app for tuning Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.

Winaero Tweaker is a freeware app created by myself, Sergey Tkachenko. It is an all-in-one application that comes with dozens of options for fine-grained tuning of various Windows settings and features.

https://winaerotweaker.com

 

Wow, I expected some OS war, but this thread is growing fast, it's mostly off topic now, and not a single comment by our pro expert OP.

 

Come on man, relax. Have a beer, it's on me. This isn't reasoning. I don't agree with some of his points but he's explaining them.

PS. Didn't read the rest of the thread yet

 

I never really considered this but Directory Opus looks interesting. Cheers!

 

There have been some incremental improvements in driver tech since XP and 7, that's true. I've never heard someone saying 8.1 was a stability improvement, but if it worked for you, can't argue with that. The main thing is XP didn't have any of the Fisher Price UI nonsense that started creeping in with 7 and got much worse with 10. In fact, I think Aero is generally the best they've done so far.

 

When musicians buy or download plugins, they read the system requirements, and newer plugins almost always require Windows 10....! If you buy a new printer, you'll find that some manufacturers no longer support Windows 7.

Since many creative programmers feel similarly about the Windows system, they create numerous tools to customize Windows so that users can be happy with Windows 10 or 11.
Windhawk - The customization marketplace for Windows and programs --> https://windhawk.net

Even Team R2R released software to reset the graphical user interface, but I can't find it again.
If anyone knows the name of the R2R tool, please share it?

Make Windows 11 look EXACTLY like Windows 7 (Guide 2025)

Despite all the criticism of Microsoft, it's still a miracle to me that such an operating system even works and what you can do with it...!

 

Last edited: Feb 21, 2026 at 8:21 AM

Well, this is a long standing debate but there are facts that lead to pragmatic views and there are fanboy views. Those who adhere to what they think is real vs what is actually real are missing the point and they better stop writing, as any kind of thread like this becomes too "distorted" to be able to navigate through most people's misconceptions from one side or another. Everything i will write, concerns music creation and production. I might throw an example of video montage and editing only because these programs do mix audio too and many of us are using some of these too. But i will not stray further away from that. I recently had the chance to sit and produce and fiddle with a couple of really high end Macs for the duration of a week. A Mac Studio M4 Max with 256gb ram/4tb ssd and a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 512gb ram/8tb ssd.
Daws were Logic, Cubase Pro, Studio One, Ableton Live, Pro Tools. Instruments were Kontakt, EW Opus, Omnisphere with Keyscape and Trilian, Diva, Serum, Nexus 5, Superior 3x, Swam full, Pianoteq full, selection of AmpleSound instruments.
Fx were Waves, FabFilter, Neural DSP, Brainworks, IK Amplitube/ToneX, Baby Audio, Lexicon and Eventide suites and a selection of others including VSL and Altiverb convolution reverbs.
The results, while sort of expected in some areas, in some others were kinda unexpected.

1. OS : MacOs wins. It's faster and much less bloated, Apple apps do what they promise. Updates are distributed in a much more professional (and for the most times predictable) manner making it more reliable overtime. Out of the box compatibility with pro audio and video gear is second to none. APFS specially tailored for SSDs wins by a long shot over NTFS with Instant Cloning, Snapshots and Space Sharing to name a few feats. And while Windows can be config'd to be lean too, it takes a ton of tweaking and still misses key technologies for audio production that are present on MacOS, like native low latency audio, integrated ssd handling, native Dante, native audio drivers/interfaces aggregation and more. Win users will have to make do for these on their own and find workarounds that do exist but are not as efficient solutions as the built in MacOS features.
2. Hardware: This is where things get more blurry and interesting at the same time. You just can't directly compare pcs and macs. Not anymore. Apple Silicon architecture is much different and in many ways more advanced. At the same time this comes at an added cost with minimal expandability being the main caveat of Mac machines. For pros that work with sample libraries buying a Mac will probably mean adding at least a second external fast ssd right away.
Modern Mac hardware is all about integration and this is being executed too well to be neglected. Cpu, gpu, npu, ssd controller, media engine, image signal processor,i/o controller and unified memory are all part of one Apple Silicon SoC. And while this may very well sound like a laptop architecture, which in many ways actually is, it is also what led Apple to become a major player in personal computers in recent times, as these machines are way too fast for their own right.
A major key feature is Unified memory. Although current macs use ddr5 same as current pcs, the high end Macs (Max models) come with ~4 times the bandwidth of a standard pc. The Ultra M3 comes with ~8 times the bandwidth. This, along with the integrated ssd controller and snappy ultra low latency cpu, gives a significant edge to the "expensive" Mac vs a similarly expensive pc. And while Mac's integrated gpu is nothing close to an rtx 4090 or higher, similarly spec'd Mac vs pc will render a DaVinci Resolve project in about half or at least two thirds of the time. But Resolve is not what we 're here for, is it?
What about effin Kontakt. Well, this gets even more interesting, because once you spec'd a pc with 256gb DDR5 ram you 'd think you won but errr nope, you didn't. Given that your pc is high end and allows for it, if you still don't know how to tweak the pc for low latency, a 256gb ram Mac will outrun the 256gb Windows pc hands down. Not only because of the extra memory bandwidth but also because of the high integration of cpu/gpu and memory and ssd controller, giving the Mac ultimate performance with buffers of 64 and 128 samples even when loading huge projects.
So what about 9950X3D cpus. Well, these will give an M4 Max cpu a really hard time as by cpu raw power they can be 15% or even faster in multi-threaded scenarios and when loading sampled instruments per se. But again the Mac has a better chance of performing better because the 9950x3d pc has to have all other components high end too, whereas the M4 Max and M3 Ultra are already out of the box high end machines, no need for any tinkering. The tight integration of key components and much higher memory bandwidth makes for an ultimate performance pro machine.
And what about a 7K M4 Max vs 7K pc. Well here, Pc stands a chance because at this budget you can go Threadripper Pro with more cores and ram and try to reach mac's bandwidth with 8 ch ddr5 memory. More ram means you can load Kontakt instruments directly into ram without using disk streaming, just like a hardware sampler. Still, this machine will be a behemoth of a build, consuming way more energy than any Mac will ever do. And Threadripper Pro with 8 ch DDr5 6000mt/s will match only M4 Max's 410gb/s bandwidth. Again the king of bandwidth will be the M3 Ultra with that whopping ~819gb/s and with mac's integrated SoC and 32cpu cores, this will feel snappier loading 200+gb heavy orchestral Kontakt projects straight into ram with a 64 samples buffer. Fucking ridiculous in the best way possible. There is no M4 Ultra released yet. But the idea that a pro can buy a ~12k M3 Ultra with 512gb of ram, 8tb of ssd storage (there is also a 16tb option) and TB 5, makes it a truly compelling offer for a studio environment. And when working with it, it quickly becomes pretty obvious why the Mac's usage percentage has gone sky high the last 3-4 years. ~15% Globally and ~30% in the US. Also watching how carefully Apple scale their machines spec wise, makes those machines even more VFM over time. Because at the verge of M5 's release we still have the most powerful iteration being the M3 Ultra and this goes to say a lot to those who are into computing.
Now i don't like how Apple has become a sort of leisure/luxury company. But the Apple mentality i used to swear by in the 80s and 90s still exists somewhere in there. Pros come first and this is a lesson that Apple knows well and executes better than anyone with these machines and OS.
Also, i don't like fanboys of any kind, i 'm in computing and building comps because i like tinkering and exploring and don't expect anyone to be on the same page or as enthusiastic. Lastly i speak and write from my mind (and heart sometimes), unlike some prick "influencer" that will use AI to correct your every word or possible misstep because they hate your guts. Fuck you, you know who you are, and are still ignored.
So, who is the pc for. Alan Kay said in 1982, " Those who are really serious about software should build their own hardware". Steve Jobs quoted that, in 2007 if i recall. But this also, even if only partially, stands true for pc enthusiasts. While we don't have the means to build our hardware from scratch, we can select from a wide variety of components and spec a machine that can provide pro performance in the areas needed. Something that Mac users don't have the luxury to do, but the question here is do they need to? Because building your own machine can be a blessing and a curse because it takes time and as we all know time is money. For a pro who wants to go in the studio, get work done and go about their lives, there is no time for tinkering. Downtime would mean no work gets done and bills don't get paid.
And, at the end of the day, the modern Mac outperforms a similarly priced pc when it comes to creative workloads and energy efficiency and all in all, it is a pro machine out of the box. While there is a chance for a pc to outperform a similar in price Mac in some creative scenarios, it makes all the difference in the world what components you will select, who will put them together and how the software will be config'd to just try and reach the same level of compute power and optimization the Mac will offer out of the box. With a Mac the speculation and tinkering puzzle is out of the equation, you estimate your needs and buy the mac that fits 'em, end of story. To most professionals including myself, the software is the end game not the hardware. The hardware should only do what it's there for, execute the commands. If you have to stop making music and start fiddling with faulty or wrongly config'd hardware, that is not a pro build, no matter whatever one may say or think.
So, i have had clients with Dell and HP workstations come to me for upgrades and most of the times i am appalled at how cheaply they build those machines. Just recently i upgraded a 5k euros Dell Precision 3680. Came with 64gb of DDR5 4400mt/s. And this exact machine gets a 5 star review in Pc Mag. How on earth does it make any sense to build a machine with a 2.5k Pro Nvidia GPU and then go and downgrade it with the cheapest ram possible. And that i9 14900K that comes with this machine was idling at 65-68 Celcius! Then i opened the machine and had what Dell calls a "high end" tower cooler with just one fan. The Dell "high end" cooler was beat by a ~45 euros Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120SE that i had lying around and it's not even a recommended cooler for the 14900k lol. And i did try at first adding a second fan (Noctua) on the Dell cooler. And then gave up and changed the whole fkn thing. And i was like really Dell? FU to both Dell and PC Mag. Get your sht straight fools. Well, this isn't the case with the Mac. It is all well thought out in every iteration. Some high end MAc laptops slightly overheat but that's it. Desktop models are extremely well built and dead quiet most of the times.
Lastly, one of the best Macs money can buy, the 32core cpu M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512gb ram and 8tb ssd, does not exceed 270W power consumption and idles at 9W. The M4 Max model sits around 230W (Cpu torture benchmark) and idling at ~6W.
The 9950X3D machine i built recently for a client (with 64gb ddr 6400mt/s, RTX 3060ti and 1000W platinum PSU) at full load synthetic cpu and gpu benchmark consumed 500-550W easily with PBO and EXPO enabled, all else in stock settings. And idled at about 75-85W.
So it all boils down to two things. If you are serious about getting the job done, that is music done and have no interest in tinkering with hardware then you should go Mac. It takes the guesswork out of the equation and just works as it is supposed to. Also most- if not all- of the times it outperforms similarly spec'd ready made, brand name pcs.
If you like building your own comp and upgrading over time when new components are released, then the pc is the way to go, you 'll have plenty of hands on experience and quite the adventures hehe. Custom and "boutique" builds can often exceed expectations and their own specs for what its worth.
If i wanted a machine that just works (yeah i know how it sounds hehe) then Mac would be my first choice since i am a music/audio professional. But because i like building my own machines to preference down to the tiniest detail, it's been almost 3 decades that i switched to pcs. Still, considering the headaches that a custom build consists of for inexperienced enthusiasts vs the caveats of having to pay a lot to customize a Mac with external peripherals, i would still go Mac, if i hadn't spent countless hrs tinkering with pc components that gives me a know how that few people might have. There, you can go and hate, love whatever. I spoke my truth and this truth was revealed with real world apps and metrics. Not speculation.
I will understand any TLDR, this was a way too long message and blimey i didn't cover everything i wanted to but wth. Till next time. Y'all be well.
Cheers all.

 

Last edited: Feb 21, 2026 at 9:19 PM

I have always ran PC, feels more comfortable for me. I do use iPad also and have used MacOS and used to have iMac, but I always felt like writing with wrong hand. Nothing wrong with the iMac´s performance though..