I'm probably odd in that I actually liked Windows Vista...but let's roll back in time. The first computer I used was an Apple II, probably about 1979 or 1980. The first version of Windows I used was actually 3.0, way back in 1990 when I got my first PC in college (I'm old). I liked it, it but 3.1 and then 3.11 were way better. In 1993 I was exposed to Macs in grad school; some of the genetics programs I used then were only available on the Mac. I also got to dabble with a NeXT computer in 1993 that belonged to a lab mate, and by 1994 I had dumped Windows the first time and was using OS/2 Warp for my personal computer and Macs in the grad school labs. 1994 was also when I set up my first web server and built my first website. I dabbled in UNIX at that time as well. By 1996 I was doing so much technology work as part of my grad work that I ended up doing consulting on the side...which turned into an IT business and I left grad school as an ABD.
The business was all Windows-based, and we were all in on Windows NT 3.51 and NT 4.0. I actually had NT running on a MIPS machine, a couple of Power PC's (including the amazing IBM Power 820 laptop) and several Digital Alphas. The Alphas were ridiculously fast at some tasks; in the early days of the SETI@Home project I had a score in the top 100 or so globally because of one DEC Alpha box I had that just cranked through those data sets. I dabbled in operating systems, trying out and loving the short-lived BeOS (I still have the original box, install media and manuals somewhere). The business though was all Windows, and those were dark days in the Mac world anyway.
I merged my consulting business (which had grown to a nice regional business) into a large national business in the early 2000's and within short order ended up as CIO responsible for several thousand PC's spread around the US. Those were the days of XP and it was quite frankly abominable for so many reasons. Enter Vista. We were an early adopter and I and my IT team mostly loved it when compared to XP, at least for our mobile workforce. At that time we had switched most of the business to Citrix, so the PC's in the offices were essentially all dumb terminals anyway. I actually spoke at one of the big Microsoft annual conferences, as a guest of Microsoft, on Vista migration.
Vista had warts, but Windows 7 addressed most of them and I and my team loved it. I moved on to another business, a multinational at that point but in between there I had been wooed back to Apple. I hated the garish iMacs, but the change to Intel processors and the beautiful 2006 aluminum MacBook Pro's lured me in. I bought one just to run Windows...but I let OS X on it just to fiddle around and have fun. Over a few months I found that when I wasn't at work, I really preferred using OS X just for something different.
It was more hardware that pulled me fully over. After the Mac Book Pro, it was the aluminum Cinema Displays, and then the original Intel Mac Pro. By the time 2007 rolled around, I was now using OS X almost exclusively at home, even though my career was all Windows. With the iPhone release and then iPad, integration got tighter across the devices and OS X, and OS X really matured. I started using it even at work in 2008 and by 2010 we had changed corporate policy to allow Macs. It started because a number of my IT were using them for the UNIX base, and we ultimately found that the power users who had Mac Book Pros required less support than most of the Windows users.
I still used Windows 7 for the things I had that didn't work on the Mac OS but by 2012 that list was getting very short as most vendors released OS X versions of apps and OS X drivers for any of the add-on hardware I was interested in. We stayed on Windows 7 for corporate use because frankly Windows 8 and 8.1 were just terrible, and not corporate products at all. I found them nearly unusable.
Fast forward to today. I ditched the corporate world in late 2012 after a lost decade and a half, and I started another business. I am able to use my Macs for business and personal use, with the exception of one application I use in a VM, and one CAD app one of my employees has to use on Windows. Windows 10 is definitely better than Windows 8, but oddly it feels more half-baked than Windows 7 did. The mix of old and new UI for elements is jarring and discontinuous and I don't like the way they've organized apps, etc. in the start menu. I end up hacking it back to a more usable form closer to the Windows 7 UI. Drivers are an issue...still...just like way back 30 years ago. The CAD app regularly has issues with the Nvidia driver settings, so a Windows update or an Nvidia update will frequently crap up the app. I'd get a better one but it's an industry specific add-on layer to Rhino that doesn't have a real competitor, so we're stuck.
The fact that the UI is still so disjointed at this point is a testament to the lack of focus on usability at Microsoft, and the driver problems are a function of trying to make an OS that can work with anything. I can't fault MS for that per se, but it's a trade off that has repercussions that I frankly find annoying and I'm happy to pay more for a closed ecosystem that avoids the bulk of those issues.
I'm not wedded to Apple, but so far no one has come along and tried to make life as simple and integrated as they do. At year end I got myself a new Mac Pro 7,1 and a new HP Z workstation for my one employee. The difference in the experience setting both up was like night and day. At the end of the day, both work to get work done, but the Mac Pro side has been so much more seamless and smooth. Those are the reasons I won't switch to Windows any time soon.
