Yes, it’s been 27 years since I last used a Windows machine on a regular basis. For 27 years I have been ham-holded and tongue-fisted deep in the bowels of the Apple universe. Alas, that regimented siloing of intention, and desire, is no more and the reason for the switch is simple: You just can’t stream live as well on a Mac machine as you can on a Windows machine. Here’s why:

 

  • Macs don’t handle playing a live stream video in a window very well. The experience for the viewer is choppy and unregarded, while Windows will flawlessly play a video.
  • Doing a live interview on a Mac while streaming is nigh impossible. There is stuttering and choppiness and tearing. You can easily do a real time remote interview using a Windows machine while live streaming.
  • While live streaming, a Mac CPU will max out at 60%, while a Windows 11 machine will peak at 2%.
  • There’s only one way to crop a window in a live scene on a Mac, in Windows, there’s two — and that makes all the difference between legibility and commerce!

Those reasons alone are worth the price, effort, and sorrow to move back to the Windows world from the safety and comfort of the Mac universe.

I say price because getting a whole new Windows setup was not inexpensive. I decided to go all in — Dell XPS laptop and Dell XPS desktop with a monitor. Everything was backordered due to the CPU shortage, so It was a wait of about a month to finally get everything together as one. I picked the wrong monitor, thinking that every monitor would be as beautiful as my 5K iMac OLED display. What I have is fine, but it is large, clunky, washed-out, and serviceable, and there is no joy in ugly.

I say effort because, while The Dells appear to be performing well, Windows 11 is entirely another beast. A beast from the beyond from which nightmares erupted 27 years ago as a Windows winger. With an Apple machine — where one company controls both software and hardware — everything just works. You uninstall, you install, nothing breaks. It just works. However, on a Windows machine, every file appears to be competing with itself. Versions are wrong. Files can’t be found. Restarts are inevitable and messy. You can’t just uninstall anything and not expect something not to break, which brings me to my final point of sorrow.

Yes, I say sorrow, because it didn’t take long for everything to explode, Windows 11-wise, in my face. In trying to resolve a microphone sound problem that didn’t exist on my Mac set up, I tried various and different bits of software to see if I could resolve the odd echo and distortion, and the short answer was, I could not. Still cannot! For all that trying, though, I messed things up and was stuck. What do I do?

At the time, I decided to do what the Dell troubleshooter was telling me to do. Go back to a “restore point” and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, that restore point was three days after I first set up the Dell desktop, and I’d already installed everything else over the last week or so, and so, the restore broke everything. Nothing existed, but everything was installed. I was repeatedly scolded by Windows 11 that I couldn’t uninstall what was not installed, even though it was installed. Nobody appreciates an uncouth operating system!

After sitting there and stewing for about an hour over what to do with a machine that no longer worked, all the bad memories from 27 years ago came flooding in — and the answer was revealed to me by the living ghosts of the Evil Empire: Wipe the machine and start all over again. That’s what I did. It took me 5.5 hours of reinstalling everything to be given a fresh start — in comparison with previously wasting 18 hours trying to track down exactly why my restore point didn’t work. A hard lesson won again in the relearning.

It was only later, in undoing my undue diligence in figuring out what was wrong with my machine that I discovered many Windows users hate Windows 11 and are sticking with Windows 10! I had no idea. One Dell machine came with Windows 11 preinstalled and the other machine told me I had a free upgrade to Windows 11 so, why not?

I actually do prefer the look and feel of Windows 11 to Windows 10 — it’s more Mac-like and friendly — but what I do not like is how many software companies have yet to force their own complicity in owning a Windows 11 world.

I also learned that running a program “as an Admin” is important, though nobody can explain why. If running in Admin mode is the only way to get the software to run right, then why isn’t that the default? Are we all not always the Admin of our own machines? I was never asked about any role I wanted when I installed Windows on either machine.

That’s my Windows 11 story — one of weeping, holding thumbs, and continuously licking my finger and holding it up to the sky to figure out which way the Windows wind is blowing today.

2 Comments

  1. Good information! If I ever get a Mac, I’ll understand it’s limitations: not something you hear about often.

    1. After 27 years of being in the Mac universe — MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, many iPhones, Apple Watches — the only thing Macs don’t do well, I have learned over the last four months, is live streaming. Who knew? It’s disappointing and rather incredible!

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