From macOS to Windows 10
Posted on August 7, 2019 • 3 minutes • 445 words
I’m an Apple fan no doubt but recently, I’ve been using Windows 10 exclusively at work and to be honest, I’ve grown to quite fond of Windows 10. For the first time since 2008, I’m seriously thinking about buying a Windows laptop.
With the recent introduction of Ryzen 3000 series, I was so tempted to build a PC again for the first time since 2006 (my last build was 13 years ago!!!) and install Windows 10 on it. Everything has been amazing experience since the switch. I don’t have any regret at all.
Lots of cool productivity apps
Everything (voidtools) - FREE
Amazing Spotlight replacement. I don’t even understand how can it be that fast. Just pure magic!
Ditto - FREE
For clipboard management, Windows 10 has built-in feature as well but it’s quite limited in term of feature set. Ditto is a free replacement that does the job very well.
You can set max items in history, how long you want Ditto to keep the history. Type of things you want to keep in clipboard. Changing global hotkey, etc…
Accessing clipboard history is just one shortcut away (I use Ctrl+Shift+V).
ShareX - FREE
Very good screenshot annotation app. I use Monosnap on macOS but ShareX is a hell lot better. I prefer Monosnap UI a bit more but ShareX trumps Monosnap in term of features.
Monosnap’s upload destination is quite limited and the app is not free.
With ShareX, I can simply press Ctrl+Shift+3, draw the screenshot rectangle, add some annotations and click upload (Imgur). Just like what I’m used to on macOS.
Microsoft Terminal
Open-source terminal application from Microsoft. It’s already quite good in preview build but what’s more is the app development velocity is insane. You can see for yourself on GitHub.
Very nice development experience
macOS is a Unix-like operating system, which make it very developer-friendly. You get the nice GUI apps from macOS and you get the best of all the CLI tools from Linux.
Now, all that stuff do-able on Windows 10 as well with the introduction of Windows SubSystem Linux (WSL).
With WSL, developers get the best of all worlds.
- You can use all the latest drivers for your hardware (Because Windows support is still first class)
- You get to use Microsoft Office - which still is the best office suite out there.
- You get to develop just like you’re on an Unix machine (VSCode integration with WSL is also very good)
- You can play games without rebooting into Windows.
- etc…
Conclusion
I still use macOS occasionally but I’m ok with the idea of moving to Windows entirely. I’ve yet to find anything that I miss from macOS.