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Ask HN: Will you switch back if Windows on Arm becomes as snappy as macOS?

6 points by ricc ↗ HN
Title field is limited, but the full question is: If you were a former Windows user who switched to macOS for its snappiness, will you consider switching back to Windows if a future Arm processor finally makes Windows as snappy as macOS?

27 comments

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mikequinlan
I didn't switch from Windows to Mac because the Mac was somehow "snappier". I switched because I did plenty of tech support at work and at home I wanted something that 'just worked'. Apple is far from perfect in that way and if Windows could beat Apple I would consider switching back. However at this point Windows has a LONG way to go to be better than Apple, even with the issues I sometimes have with them.
dannyz
There’s a lot more to it than just snappiness. But where I think Microsoft is going to have a tough time is ensuring x86 compatibility as well as Rosetta does.
rbanffy
It's hard to think about going back to the Windows ecosystem after spending time on a Mac. I would love to hear the justifications, because I can't think of any.
notesinthefield
I recently switched from windows to mac os for both work and personal use. Once I discovered I can have the same level of window and vm management and on mac os I was pretty satisfied. I have no reason to fire up windows save for a couple work tasks. Everything is bette
pwinkeler
Based on my experience providing IT support to family members Windows would be the death of me. At work I get paid to fix stupid shit and I am fortunate enough to mostly only deal with servers. But even there, we would be switching to Linux everywhere if it was up to me.
b20000
windows is still much more snappy than mac osx if you turn off all animations

has nothing to do with the CPU btw

runjake
I started off using UNIX and Linux as a daily driver long before I started using Windows, but here’s my take.

Windows 11 on my i5-12600K already feels snappier than macOS on my M3 Max on a day to day basis. The M3 Max only really shines when I’m doing local LLM stuff or engaging in long-term processor intensive tasks.

I favor macOS because it’s a UNIX-like OS and I find it less user-hostile.

mikerg87
Until Windows stops treating its users as the product it’s hard to imagine going back. I understand they are going to testing ads in the system menu and with the invasiveness of clippy 2.0 aka copilot I’m too old to put up with bullshit. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to a different kind of abuse from Apple and don’t need any more crap.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128640/microsoft-window...

KomoD
ARM itself won't magically make windows "snappy" or good
moooo99
I don’t think macOS feels snappy to be honest. It is fast, but it is not snappy.

Mac OS always feels a bit sluggish to me, especially with the slow animations, but so does windows nowadays.

There are lots of problems with windows nowadays and personally speaking, snappiness/OS resource usage isn’t at the top of my list of concerns.

MacOS isn’t superior in every technical aspect, but it is in many.

Also, I highly doubt high performance ARM would magically make windows faster and more efficient. I also have a relatively high end desktop workstation and windows doesn’t feel noticeably faster there and it’s also not meaningfully more resource efficient. Fedora KDE on the same machine feels significantly snappier than windows, or my modern MacBook with Apple silicon

LUmBULtERA
I wanted a laptop that was silent almost always, had a beautiful display, great keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, and a long and consistent battery life. Landed on a M1 MBP. If there is a Windows laptop that fits those characteristics, I'd try it after this one dies.
ricc
> after this one dies

Assuming you take good care of your equipment and don't need to upgrade often, I'm guessing this could take many years, probably a decade.

vunderba
This is precisely the reason I switched over. The QA control for 99% of Windows laptops is completely hit or miss.

My last decent Windows machine was a Lenovo T530. That thing was a workstation and didn't pretend to be anything else. Modular, easy to replace components, that thing got out of my way and just worked. That was over a decade ago.

After that I had nothing but irritating issues. Everything from poor wifi (looking at you Killer), poor battery life (2 hours max), ventilation issues and overheating, etc. Example: My Dell XPS with InfinityEdge screen looked amazing. What was less amazing was the constant BSODs on a brand new machine within a few months of light usage.

I switched to a MBP Max M1 and haven't looked back.

moomoo11
Why would I want to use windows?

I am not a gamer and I don’t find .net or anything adjacent interesting. I don’t run anything on windows.

So no I wouldn’t ever use windows because I don’t care for it.

I’ve also never worked somewhere where we didn’t use Macs.

neonsunset
A lot of .NET teams now prefer to use macOS + Rider/VSC or similar as their setup.
ActorNightly
Architecture doesn't matter for general speed across all tasks. People have been saying this for a while, and you now see this play out in real life, where single core performance is pretty much equivalent across top of the line processors.

The benefit of going to ARM is reduced power use for tasks that are predictable. Apple silicon is basically chips optimized for general use case of Macbooks (typing text, web browsing, video content). For things like gaming or other intensive tasks that require a lot more branching, the efficiency drops. It still edges out a little bit because the compilers do end up optimizing parts of the programs a bit, but then again, because of Rices theorem, this is never a guarantee across all things and compatibility can be an issue.

As far as OS go, Windows is the best all in one if you have a good desktop. You get WSL2 which works well for all dev stuff, you get better monitor support, and you get access to software that is only available for Windows.

For laptop, its hard to beat a lightweight linux distro with i3wm once you get used to it.

nicbou
I have blacklisted Microsoft after all the shady, user-hostile tricks they've pulled in the last 5-10 years. They'll have to work extremely hard just to leave that blacklist.
cantrevealname
Same here. Windows was my daily driver until Windows 7, but I stopped using any Windows platform as of Windows 10 because of the telemetry and spyware. I don't care how snappy Windows is, I'm not returning until they provably cut out all the spyware by default. I don't care if you can turn off a lot of the telemetry using a hundred little commands, registry settings, and menus. It should be off by default. Really, how is anyone OK with Windows sending every keystroke you type to Microsoft (for spell checking apparently) under the standard install of Windows?

I feel that macOS is unfortunately getting out of hand with telemetry as well.

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kazinator
Making Windows fast would require a from the ground rewrite. The only reason to use Windows is for legacy software titles which won't be ported to ARM. Even if the OS manages to be snappy, emulated X86 programs won't be so much.

Plus there are going to be drive letter names and problem with using "prn" as a file name, and other Windows nonsense that should have died a flaming death decades ago.

swah
If a bunch of high resolution laptops were in the market, and I worked on tech not related to MacOS or iOS, I'd reevaluate both Linux and Windows. In my experience a decade ago, Linux was great for coding and Windows great for gaming and media consumption, day to day use too.
999900000999
Both are good for different things.

Mac's are much better for media creation, nothing compared to Final Cut Pro and Logic.

Windows is better for gaming, plus I can dual boot Linux. Windows would be the better OS if Microsoft could stop trying to inject adds. Mac's don't feed you tabloid news.

I'm skeptical ARM Windows will be good. I think the laptops will be overpriced to the point you might as well buy a MacBook

ricc
But I think it was the inexpensiveness of Arm chips that made M* Macs cheaper than previous Intel models, right?
al_borland
What I like most about the Mac is macOS and a lot of the 3rd party software. The hardware is a bonus.

I switched when Apple was still using PPC. I’ve been through 3 architectures and the transitions have been largely seamless for me. Microsoft seems to make much more trivial things seem like a pain. I’m not sure why I’d ever want to go back to that. Microsoft requires 1-2 decades of trust building with me.