Still running my 2017 MacBook Pro with Monterey, but sadly my 2012 Mac Mini died on me this past February. Which was my main desktop for work. But it was getting long in the tooth anyway and I need to replace it. For years I've been thinking about just building another PC. I used to build them from 1998-2010 before switching all my personal machines to Mac. My work machine at the office was still Windows until 2018. But I haven't really used a Window machine since leaving that position. I've been on mac for work and pleasure. But my girlfriend is a PC gamer and I've helped her upgrade her machine a couple years ago and have had the itch to build one myself. Mostly because I'm tired of Apple baking everything in. Not allowing any user hardware upgrades anymore.
My girlfriend's old PC parts were up in the attic and I realized I only needed a power supply and SSD to get it up and running. It's also a 2012 i7 just like my old Mac Mini. Except you can upgrade more parts on it, which I plan to do. Swapping out the motherboard, ram, and CPU. But for the time being I installed Windows 10 on it and have been using it for the past few days, getting everything situated. Hoping to make it my new work PC.
But man is it rough. I feel like I went from a modern car to an old 80s clunker. I mean the switch from MacOS to Windows 10. The hardware performance feels fine. It's the OS that is the problem. It's all the niceties about MacOS that you immediately notice are gone. Even something as simple as just right clicking on a highlighted word to get the definition.
The Finder alone is worth the entry price of the Apple hardware. Spring loaded folders, column view, multiple file renaming at once, Quicklook, Automator, remembering the last folder you were just in, a clean left panel, the ability to see both and image preview and details in the right panel at once. Windows 10 only lets you do one or the other. Let's not even mention Mission Control, hot corners, the dock, Screenshot. Things that really make usability nice on MacOS.
Windows feels very claustrophobic to me now. I was able to set my middle mouse button on my Logitech mouse to pop up Task View, but it's a poor excuse for Mission Control since it doesn't show you all your open windows. So I switched that button to launch alt-tab instead, and while it shows all open windows, you have to be really quick to select one before it disappears. Very annoying.
I wanted cheap hardware I could upgrade myself. I didn't want to have to pay $200 more for an extra 8GB of ram on a new Mac Mini and be stuck with only that amount for the rest of the machines life. Not when I can pay $80 for 32GB on a PC, which I can swap out and upgrade at any time.
I hate being stuck in this dilemma of either cheap easily upgradable hardware with an inferior OS or expensive non-upgradable hardware with a superior OS. I really wish there was a middle ground solution were we could get the best of both. Apple used to at least offer the ability to upgrade certain components to an extent. My 2012 Mac Mini was a perfect example of that. I think I paid $800 for that machine in 2013 and I upgraded the ram myself to 16GBs (the max). Upgraded the HDD to an SSD, and there was even room in there for a second HDD or SSD. That machine even had a built in SD card reader, firewire 800 port, HDMI, ethernet, four USB 3 ports, a headphone and a mic jack, and a display port. Not the anemic port selection modern Minis have.
I miss those days.
My girlfriend's old PC parts were up in the attic and I realized I only needed a power supply and SSD to get it up and running. It's also a 2012 i7 just like my old Mac Mini. Except you can upgrade more parts on it, which I plan to do. Swapping out the motherboard, ram, and CPU. But for the time being I installed Windows 10 on it and have been using it for the past few days, getting everything situated. Hoping to make it my new work PC.
But man is it rough. I feel like I went from a modern car to an old 80s clunker. I mean the switch from MacOS to Windows 10. The hardware performance feels fine. It's the OS that is the problem. It's all the niceties about MacOS that you immediately notice are gone. Even something as simple as just right clicking on a highlighted word to get the definition.
The Finder alone is worth the entry price of the Apple hardware. Spring loaded folders, column view, multiple file renaming at once, Quicklook, Automator, remembering the last folder you were just in, a clean left panel, the ability to see both and image preview and details in the right panel at once. Windows 10 only lets you do one or the other. Let's not even mention Mission Control, hot corners, the dock, Screenshot. Things that really make usability nice on MacOS.
Windows feels very claustrophobic to me now. I was able to set my middle mouse button on my Logitech mouse to pop up Task View, but it's a poor excuse for Mission Control since it doesn't show you all your open windows. So I switched that button to launch alt-tab instead, and while it shows all open windows, you have to be really quick to select one before it disappears. Very annoying.
I wanted cheap hardware I could upgrade myself. I didn't want to have to pay $200 more for an extra 8GB of ram on a new Mac Mini and be stuck with only that amount for the rest of the machines life. Not when I can pay $80 for 32GB on a PC, which I can swap out and upgrade at any time.
I hate being stuck in this dilemma of either cheap easily upgradable hardware with an inferior OS or expensive non-upgradable hardware with a superior OS. I really wish there was a middle ground solution were we could get the best of both. Apple used to at least offer the ability to upgrade certain components to an extent. My 2012 Mac Mini was a perfect example of that. I think I paid $800 for that machine in 2013 and I upgraded the ram myself to 16GBs (the max). Upgraded the HDD to an SSD, and there was even room in there for a second HDD or SSD. That machine even had a built in SD card reader, firewire 800 port, HDMI, ethernet, four USB 3 ports, a headphone and a mic jack, and a display port. Not the anemic port selection modern Minis have.
I miss those days.
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