Switching from macOS to Windows 11 | Mark Ellis Reviews

thinking about switching from mac os to windows are you just curious about what it's like on the other side well i've been having a play with windows 11 and i've got some thoughts hello and welcome back to marcos reviews and thank you for subscribing if you have and if you haven't subscribed the button is just down there or there i still don't know which side back in august this year i bought this the microsoft surface laptop 4. it's great and if you're a mac kind of person and you need a windows laptop for whatever reason it's actually quite a good alternative to the m1 macbook air now i have made a video where i compare the macbook air against this surface laptop 4. i'll link to that above but using this surface laptop 4 has been fascinating particularly when it comes to windows 11. so if you either need to move to windows for work purposes or you're just curious to see what it's like going from mac os to windows this is what i've discovered when it comes to setting windows up it's really easy just like mac os you turn the computer on and you just go through a guided setup process i think the likes of apple and microsoft have really worked hard to refine the setup process for their devices so basically nothing to worry about if you're going from mac os to windows and you're a little bit worried about the setup process it's really straightforward however what made it even more straightforward for me was one password and i'm delighted to say that one password are sponsoring this video now a couple of months ago i transferred from apple keychain to one password and it's just been a fantastic move and one of the biggest benefits is that one password is cross-platform which means i can get all of my login details passwords etc on this windows laptop and one of the main things i love about one password is that it isn't just for passwords you can put notes in there your passport details software licenses basically anything you want to keep secure stick it in one password and what's been really cool with one password eight on windows which was released fairly recently is that they've introduced something which makes this feel like a mac and that's something is called quick access and with quick access you press control shift and space and it gives you a very familiar looking search bar in the middle of the screen in fact it's spookily like spotlight on mac os and it just made me feel a little bit more at home along with enabling me to find things much quicker so thanks again to onepassword for sponsoring this video very much appreciated i've put a link in the description if you want to go and check it out for yourself so what's it like using windows when you're so used to mac os now there's no doubting that they're very different operating systems but they do share a lot of the same heritage and a lot of the same approaches to computing so they both feature windows for apps and folders they both offer multitasking capabilities and they both have a taskbar sort of but it's usually the route that you have to take to achieve a certain task or do a certain thing that separates these two operating systems and it can catch you out and it catches me out quite regularly take alt tabbing for instance now if you don't know alt tab is where you hold down your alt key and press the tab key to cycle through the different programs that you have open on the computer i think don't quote me on this that windows got there first the alt tabbing on windows can catch you out if you have the edge browser opened with several tabs open so let's say you have three or four apps open and one of those is edge and you've got three websites open in tabs if you alt tab in that instance windows actually alt tabs through the tabs within edge as well which is a little bit confusing at first working with split screen apps is very different in mac os and windows as well for instance on windows 11 there's this fantastic thing where you can snap an app to the left or right hand side of the screen you just click it drag it and it will snap in place and that then enables you obviously to snap another app to the right hand side or left hand side i find that really intuitive whereas on mac os you have to long press on the little green maximize thing and then choose which side of the screen you want the app to be on and then you get to choose the second one it's just a bit long-winded and like a lot of things multitasking wise the ipad is the same it just feels like apple makes a bit of a ham-fisted effort of this and then there's tiny things which catch me out for instance on windows you can maximize any window any folder by double clicking on the bar at the top i remember doing that when i was a proper windows user many many years ago whereas on mac os it seems to be a little bit inconsistent so on certain apps it will behave in the same way as windows you double click the top bar and it will maximize that window button finder for instance if you do the same thing it just kind of makes it taller it's really strange but those little niggles aside everything else is very similar so finding what you need is pretty easy on both windows or mac os although spotlight on mac os is a bit of a highlight you can search for things inside the start menu on windows 11 but i do think the start menu appears to be playing much less of a role these days the windows 11 start menu is much tidier than that cluttered mess that was windows 10 but i still never really find myself needing to go into it and i think the fact there's no equivalent on mac os reveals that the start menu is a bit of a relic really when it comes to windows indeed on windows 11 you'll notice that the icons on the start bar have moved to the center of the screen which looks spookily like mac os's dock you can move them to the left if you want to but i've left them where they are because it just looks a little bit familiar for me but apart from that as i say using mac os using windows it's very similar however if you're coming from mac os there will be a few things you'll miss out on so what will you miss from mac os if you start using windows 11 one of the biggest things is the mac os ecosystem and if you own devices like this like the iphone or an ipad and you use them regularly throughout the day and more importantly you use them in a way that connects with your mac you're going to miss those features if you start using a windows laptop there's a few reasons for this but one of the main things from my perspective was handoff and handoff is this brilliant thing where you can very easily transfer stuff from your iphone for instance to your mac i talked about this recently in a video that i did about safari which i'll link to above but in essence if for instance you've got a web page open on your iphone with a couple of clicks you can just send that web page to your mac same thing with copying and pasting text you can copy text on here and paste it onto your mac vice versa completely wirelessly i quite often transfer files from things on my ipads and my iphones to the mac and then there's the apple watch which you can set up to unlock your mac if you don't have a mac with touch id you just switch the feature on and then as long as you've got your apple watch on walk up to your mac it will unlock magically not magically but yeah now there is an icloud app for windows but all it does is give you a folder or a shortcut to your icloud drive and another folder for your icloud photos so in theory you can still transfer files and photos from your phone to your windows laptop it's just a bit more long-winded so if you're a heavy apple ecosystem user or trapped prisoner as it's known then you will miss that stuff if you start using windows more regularly it's also worth doing a bit of research on the apps that you use on a daily basis whether it be for personal reasons or for your business now i found one app that is not compatible or not available even on windows which is ulysses ulysses is this fantastic writing app that i run all of my blogging from it's just such an important part of this business but it's not available on windows now that's not this laptop's fault at all it's not microsoft's fault for whatever reason the people behind ulysses have decided not to develop at the moment for windows i can't find anything that comes close because i'm quite annoying and have a very long list of reasons that it needs to be exactly like ulysses so just do a bit of research on that the other two examples for me are final cut pro and logic pro i use both of those to run this channel in terms of audio and video production and yet of course there's loads of alternatives on windows for those but i'd have to learn completely new workflows and then there's some of the smaller stuff and one of the biggest small things for me that i miss from mac os when using windows is the ability to preview pretty much any type of file by hitting the space bar so if you're not aware on mac os if you just click once on a pdf file for example and press your space bar mac os will give you a preview of that file and you can do it with pretty much any type of file now i've never counted how many times i do that throughout the day because i have friends but i guarantee it's a lot and i still find myself when i'm using this windows laptop hitting space to try and preview files and it's always annoying when it doesn't do it the other thing i miss to a degree is the mac os dock and the dock isn't anything special it's just a list of the apps you want quick access to but that's kind of why it's so useful and on windows even though in windows 11 they've made it look a little bit more like the dock it just behaves in a different way so i'm always getting lost as to what apps are open at the moment which ones are pinned which ones aren't pinned i would get used to it if i was using this constantly but just switching between the two platforms the dock just feels a little bit simpler and a little bit easier to use but if i analyze this the only reason i miss those things is because i've been a heavy mac os user for many years but there's no massive deal breakers in there which means if i had to use this windows laptop now for the rest of my life i'd get over those things now some people seem to enjoy poking fun at certain web browsers i've never quite understood that because they're web browsers for instance i use safari i love it no problem with whatsoever i occasionally use chrome but only for very specific reasons but i'd never used microsoft edge and it's fantastic it's worth noting that you can get it on the mac as well now if you know me you know i don't do any kind of tests so i haven't tested the speed of safari versus chrome versus edge but edge does seem to be pretty quick i think it's just the approach to design that microsoft has taken with edge that makes it such a pleasing browser to use and this is particularly the case with the way that safari has developed on mac os monterey the tab view is quite a good example of this when you start using a browser like microsoft edge and previously you were using mac os monterey and safari you realize how much of a mess apple is making of tabs i can get by with it on safari but there's no doubting that edge just does a much better job of user interface design i mentioned earlier that you can alt tab between tabs in edge which is actually quite useful you can pin tabs like you can in safari there's a feature called collections which is a little bit like tab groups you can basically create a list of specific websites but you can do things like add notes to them which is quite nice edge just feels uncluttered well designed fast and more importantly incredibly easy to use which is what a web browser should be i think safari really could and should take some cues from microsoft edge i've really been enjoying my time with this surface laptop 4 and windows 11. i don't use it all the time i use it occasionally but i do find it quite refreshing to go from mac os to windows and i think as i've hopefully demonstrated today if you are in that position where you need to move to windows or you just want to move to windows for a bit it's not that different to mac os but i'm curious have you done this and did you find the transition from mac os to windows easy hard frustrating enjoyable let me know in the comments now if you've still got some time and you fancy getting back into the world of mac os then keep watching for my recent review of the 16-inch macbook pro but until next time guys thank you for watching as always and i'll catch you next time

Channel: Mark Ellis Reviews

Views: 51,948

Keywords: Mark Ellis Reviews, Mark Ellis, macos vs windows 11, windows 11, macos monterey, windows 10, macos vs windows, windows 11 features, macos, windows vs mac, windows 11 review, mac vs pc, microsoft windows 11, windows 11 vs macos monterey, mac vs windows, windows 11 vs macos, mac os, windows 11 vs windows 10, windows 11 update, macbook air m1, windows 11 new features, microsoft surface laptop 4, surface laptop 4, microsoft surface laptop 4 specs, surface laptop

Id: TyopXm3Q1nk

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021