I moved away from Windows 11, but I didn't go to Linux

In recent months, I've talked a whole lot about moving away from Windows 11 and how much I prefer Linux. And yes, I've used Linux quite a bit on a few laptops, but the truth is I work on a desktop computer 95% of the time, and that's not a Linux PC. Indeed, I work on the M4 Mac Mini I reviewed last year, and while I initially complained about a lot of macOS behaviors, things have changed.

macOS has since become my absolute favorite operating system to be on. It doesn't have all the customization I love about Linux, but when it comes to getting work done, I have slightly different priorities, and macOS has proven to be so much better than Windows for my needs, while avoiding some of the drawbacks of Linux.

Significantly less nagging

I don't need to deal with annoying pop-ups

One of the most frustrating aspects of Windows is how it constantly needs some kind of attention from the user and constantly tries to interrupt their flow. You have to sign in with a Microsoft account, then right during setup, you're bombarded with a bunch of upsells for Microsoft 365 and PC Game Pass, plus multiple ways to collect your data in order to advertise to you or provide "tailored experiences".

It's not like Apple doesn't have its own things to sell, but after the initial setup almost a year ago, I can remember exactly one time when a feature I don't care about tried to make its way onto my PC, when generative AI features were starting to be implemented. It happened once, I disabled it, and it never bothered me again.

I've never been asked to set up backups, sign up for one of Apple's subscriptions, or been shown any fake warnings about how I need more cloud storage for some reason. My searches have never been redirected to Safari when I used Spotlight — they just use my default browser (they do use Google instead of my search engine, though). I've never had screens after an update telling me to "update my browser settings" or reminding me to enable backups with iCloud. Life on macOS is a peaceful one, and I can't say that about Windows 11.

All my apps are still here

The big problem with Linux

Linux as a platform has grown a lot, and a ton of apps are available there at this point. But the fact remains that many of the most popular ones aren't. macOS may not have the market share of Windows 11, but it's a much bigger platform than Linux desktops in terms of popularity, and it's got pretty much every major app I need.

When I first switched and I was still using Microsoft 365, macOS supported those apps. Linux doesn't. And now that I mostly use WPS Office, while those apps are also on Linux, they get much more active support on Windows and macOS, so I have a better time here.

Then there are the Adobe apps. I use Photoshop and Lightroom daily, and these apps are only on Windows and macOS. Yes, there are alternatives on Linux, but they're nowhere near as intuitive and easy to use. I need these tools for my work, and I simply can't do said work as efficiently if I work on a Linux machine because I have to adjust to whole new apps that are often much more complex than they need to be.

macOS is a big enough platform that there aren't really major hurdles in the transition. It's only some of the smaller things I rely on that required a bit of extra searching, but overall, I've been able to replicate all the features I liked on Windows with my Mac, and in some cases, I've found better experiences on macOS than I ever had on Windows.

Customization... exists

It's kind of better than Windows, in some ways

Something that I love about Linux is how customizable it is, with different desktop environments offering very different approaches to customization that let you do a ton. Windows 11 is far more locked down, and I figured macOS would be even more so. To some extent, that is true, but honestly, I find the customization options in macOS are still quite nice.

One thing it does that Windows doesn't is customize the app icons, including dark and light modes, and starting with macOS 26 Tahoe, you even get two translucent icon options: clear and tinted. I can make icons any color I want, which is quite cool, even if I think they could look slightly better. That's something Windows just doesn't offer natively.

I also have a dark theme that generally works a bit better than on Windows since it's applied in a more uniform and consistent way. One thing I really like about macOS is the default wallpapers, and Apple makes new ones every year. A cool feature of macOS is that many wallpapers are dynamic, so the colors will change to match the time of day or your system theme, and that applies to some more abstract wallpapers, but also to real-life locations. It's really cool to see how places look throughout the day.

Raycast is possibly the best app ever

It's so useful

macOS is great and all, but I would be remiss not to mention the best part about this entire thing: Raycast is (for now) a Mac-exclusive app, and it's simply amazing. It's a launcher, not unlike Flow Launcher on Windows, but it takes everything to the next level. It's like Spotlight on steroids, except the steroids took steroids, too.

Most of the time, I use Raycast for extremely simple things. When I take a break from work, I launch Raycast with a keyboard shortcut, type in "Sle", and it immediately shows the option to put the computer to sleep. In fact, I don't even need to type anything anymore. This is my most used Raycast command, so it's automatically suggested at the top when I launch the search bar. I can also use Raycast to launch any app on my PC, which even includes Windows apps available through Parallels. When I'm done with work for the day, I can also quit all my apps with a simple command and then shut down the computer, all within Raycast.

But that's just the beginning. Raycast provides a clipboard history feature, and it's the best clipboard history I've used. It's fast, searchable, it works with images, and it keeps a history of my copied items for a long enough time that I never notice anything missing. It's also got an emoji panel, which is also easily searchable, and again, even better than the one on Windows. It's significantly faster and more intuitive. Raycast also integrates with the Calendar app, which has my online work meetings. When I launch Raycast a couple of minutes before a meeting starts, that meeting is the top result suggested automatically. All I need to is press Enter, and it opens the Google Meet link in my browser instantly.

But that's still not all. Raycast also has a huge extensibility platform, and it's so powerful. I have a pair of extensions that I use to search and download YouTube videos. One extension lets me search YouTube for videos or channels, and when I select a video, I can either open it or just copy its link. Then, I use the YouTube download extension, paste in that link, and I'm able to choose the target quality and download the video. I do this sometimes when I need footage of something I don't have for my own YouTube videos, and it makes my life so much easier. I have an extension that lets me convert images to a different format, too. I can select files in Finder (or another file manager), launch Raycast, and it recognizes those images and lets me convert them. I even have a Pokédex extension that can show me plenty of information about a Pokémon without ever leaving Raycast. And all that is just scratching the surface of what's available.

And all of this is available by regular search terms, but you can also set shortcuts in two ways. One is an alias, where you can type a shortened command to instantly launch a specific extension within Raycast, but you can also set keyboard shortcuts to launch an extension without even going through the search bar. It's so configurable.

I know this section turned unexpectedly long, but Raycast is probably the best thing about using macOS, so I needed to explain why.

What don't I like?

It's not perfect, but...

macOS is certainly not a perfect platform, but most of the problems I had with it were overcome very shortly after my initial experience, and they don't really become a problem again. I don't like that I always had to choose whether to keep my open apps after shutting down the computer, but with Raycast's commands, I've worked around that. I didn't like the default storage location for screenshots, but that was also easily changed.

Window management on macOS is also not great out of the box, but I already used FancyZones on Windows, too, and with MacsyZones, I get the same exact functionality on my Mac. I also missed smooth scrolling in my browser, but I used an app called Mos to fix that.

Having these little fixes in place has made for a macOS experience that's generally been pretty perfect for me, to the point where I've seriously considered getting a MacBook as my primary laptop, too. While I love Linux and will keep using it on my current laptops, macOS provides the experience I want at almost every level, so I think it'll be hard to fully convert me away from it.

Linux is still amazing

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm still a big fan of Linux and I'm rooting for it to become a much more mainstream operating system. Not everyone can afford (or wants) to buy a Mac, and Linux is certainly a step up from Windows at its core. No matter which way you swing, you can probably do better than Windows, and that's the main takeaway here. For now, though, macOS has my heart.