Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You alluded to this but I wanted to emphasize that a lot of this is just legacy baggage in terms of reputation that windows will have to carry for a long time

I think that when people talk about how shitty windows is compared to Mac/apple they are talking about stuff that was probably true at some point

For many, memories of using windows include blue screens of death, programs crashing often and windows itself crashing often. On top of that, windows was a cesspool for a hot minute while Microsoft got its act together and put better security in place to address malware as the internet got popular.

These are obviously not the same, not nearly as bad as they were back then

I mostly enjoyed windows, and to a lesser degree Linux until a few years ago when an employer made me switch to Mac - which for the sake of my brain’s plasticity I readily embraced

The main differences I noticed at the time were: a much better window manager, a much saner way of installing applications, an overall hard to explain smoothness along with the ability to bring over some of my favorite little Linux tools

Fast forward to today and it’s really just a matter of preference. Mac helped Linux a ton, but nowadays they are all so customizable that you can more or less achieve what you’re trying to do most of the time on any of them

Today, I use all three out of necessity - Mac and Linux for work, windows for gaming, but I can surely tell you that overall my best decision was to just not get involved in holy wars lol




What did it for me was a period of: “I see you are delivering an important presentation. Let me force install an update and reboot three times. Right now.” I’ve spent too long watching reboots to have Windows in my life for my limited time on the planet.


Yeah one wart about Windows is that you always have to lookup these weird registry hacks after getting a fresh install. Disabling this automatic reboot was one of them. Otherwise that would make your computer completely useless for things like

- gaming - watching movies - presentations - anything where you want to let some calculation run unattended for a few hours - anything where you really don't want your PC to shut down unexpectedly while you’re working…

Well that covers pretty much everything I guess.

And to add insult to injury, Windows 10 for a while took away the ability to Update & shut down. It’d go into some sort of hybrid sleep so you’d keep getting a reboot prompt right after starting up again.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: