Out of the Windows 10 Frying Pan, Into the Mac OS X Fire

Opinions on operating systems are very subjective. Some people love Windows 10. Some people hate it. Many users who resisted upgrading to Windows 7 in the first place now swear by the OS and stubbornly refuse to upgrade. If the reason you don’t want to join the Windows 10 party, however, is because you’re mad at Microsoft for dropping support of your hardware, or  your favorite features and technologies, Mac OS X may not be the way to go.

Windows 10 is humming along at a decent clip, but still has a long way to go before it steals the title of de facto desktop operating system. Many Windows users object to Windows 10 for various reasons, and a fair percentage have threatened to just abandon Windows entirely and switch to Mac OS X. I know the grass is greener—blah, blah, blah—but if your reason for avoiding Windows 10 is that you don’t approve of Microsoft’s strong arm tactics you might want to think twice.

At just under 10 percent of the desktop market, Windows 10 still lags slightly behind both Windows XP and Windows 8.1, and needs to grow by more than 500 percent to surpass Windows 7. However, Windows 10 still has about 50 percent more market share than all versions of Mac OS X combined. Clearly this is not a huge threat to Microsoft.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Mac OS X. I used a MacBook Air as my primary PC for a couple years before the Surface Pro 2 came out. I’ve gone from Surface Pro 2, to Surface Pro 3, to Surface Pro 4 as my primary PC for personal use. I had a choice between a Dell laptop and a MacBook Pro for work, though, and I chose the MacBook Pro. Nothing against Dell or Windows. I just already have a Windows 10 PC and want to have access to both operating systems.

But, I digress.

I do love Mac OS X, and I’m a fan of Apple. I also understand, though, that Apple is Apple. Apple dumbs things down in the interest of simplicity and an intuitive user interface. Apple locks users into its ecosystem for their own safety and protection. And, when Apple decides to make a wholesale change in technology, it just does it. Customers be damned.

In 2009 when Apple launched Mac OS X 10.6—a.k.a. “Snow Leopard”—it drew a hardcore line in the sand that made most existing Mac hardware obsolete. Apple was transitioning from the PowerPC to Intel x86 architecture, and it had no interest in playing nice or holding anyone’s hand. It was a very simple choice: Customers could continue using Mac OS X 10.5 on their PowerPC machines or they could go buy new hardware if they wanted to use the latest version of the OS.

Read the complete article on Forbes: Windows 10 Objectors Should Think Twice About Jumping To Mac.