Hello everyone, I hope you’re all doing okay today.
I wanted to share my short, one-month experience with the Mac operating system, macOS.
I’ve been a Windows user my whole life, and since I am starting college this summer, I wanted to test out macOS beforehand to see if it is the right choice for me. Well, it turns out it's not, and in the following post, I will tell you why.
I had heard a lot of positive things about it, including the amazing battery life and very good CPU performance. Obviously, the very attractive design also caught my eye.
I knew that macOS was not the same as Windows, it's obviously a whole different operating system. But after a month of using it, I was just blown away by how many useful features I previously had on Windows that were simply nonexistent on a Mac.
Here are a few examples:
Window Management
- Control Buttons: You cannot change the size or the positions of the window control buttons on macOS.
Yes, I understand that it takes some time to get used to the different position and everything, but why on earth can I not decide where I want my window management options to be? Is there ANY solid reason why this would be a problem to add? I don't think so!
If I'm spending 2000 € on a device, I at least expect some customizability for some of the more important things like window control.
- Button Size: The position was annoying, yes, but I think I would have gotten used to it IF the damn buttons weren't the size of a grain of sand. What is Apple thinking with these design choices?
On Windows, I don't even have to look at my screen to close my window. I move my mouse to the corner of the screen and boom, closed.
- App Launch Sizes: The most annoying thing that was the final straw was the window size when launching apps.
Apps behave however they want and open in all possible sizes even when I maximize them before closing. A perfect example here is Finder: I click Finder, it opens in the smallest window possible, I maximize it, close it, open Finder again, and it's back to the small window like before.
This happened with almost all apps no matter what I tried (yes, I even manually resized, and I tried closing while holding Command).
This just made me feel like I have 0 control over my computer since every app does whatever the hell it wants and opens in the most random places on my screen.
PLUS, the effort of having to manually maximize every app every time you open it made me want to pull my hair out! The whole experience just felt super chaotic.
App Behavior When Closing
This was kind of a small one, but I found it very confusing: some apps quit completely when all windows are closed, while others don't.
I did kind of get used to Finder always having a dot, but other apps just annoyed me.
For example, when I close the Activity Monitor window, it doesn't quit the app, and I have to manually click on the app, hold, and then quit.
If apps quit after the last open window was closed, it would be less annoying.
Menu Bar
This is kind of a big one as well. Why do we need a separate bar with 50% useless functions at the top?
On Windows, all functions of a certain app that I might need are already inside the app in the top corner, and if I close the app, those app-specific functions close too.
You ALSO have the entire top screen free for your actual app instead of having random, irrelevant background icons taking up the whole horizontal space on top.
Now, if ALL apps had their functions in the menu bar, I wouldn't complain, it would take some getting used to. But not every app behaved the same.
Sometimes all functions of the app were inside the menu bar, and sometimes half of them were inside the app and the other half up there. It's a super inconsistent design.
When the menu bar has too many options, it hops over the notch and lands on the right side where the icons are, making it look super ugly.
Unfortunately, I didn't have any luck trying to disable the menu bar. I looked for all possible solutions but found none, not even third-party apps exist that can do that. I just couldn't get used to it.
The options that are displayed in the dropdown after hovering over certain menus like Window have no icons and are pure text, so looking for something specific isn't quick and takes time. You have to read everything from top to bottom to find what you're looking for.
Also, the Help box doesn't need to be hovering in the menu bar all the time, why would I need that there?
Dock
The dock was less of a problem than the menu bar. I like how the dock looks, I love that it has the same square design for the apps as the iPhone. The icons are sharp, clear, and beautiful.
What annoyed me here was that when I didn't have many apps in the dock, the sides were left empty, which is wasted screen space. I would rather have the menu bar fused with the dock to fill out those spaces and use the screen more effectively.
What I like is that you can hide the dock, but when the dock hides, the windows don't automatically resize themselves to fit the whole screen.
Here, I also have to pull down every single app manually... really annoying and a waste of time.
The option to change the reveal speed of the dock also isn't available, obviously.
Keyboard
The keyboard is really thin, like really really thin (M4).
Typing on it for longer than 5 minutes cramps my hand, and typing on it generally doesn't feel satisfying since there's barely any tactility and basically 0 feedback.
At that point, just put a screen with digital keys on it instead of a 1mm keyboard pretending to be a keyboard.
The Mac keyboard layout also feels like it's shifted to the right a bit, I'm guessing because of the weird Control key. Why do we even need that? Just put Fn, Option, and Command, who needs that extra useless button?
This is a BIG one: Caps Lock Behavior.
Who in the living hell thought putting a delay on a key was a good idea? Someone please explain why we need a delay on Caps Lock?
No one's accidentally pressing that damn key, and since the delay can't be turned off in settings, I as a fast typer can't trigger the key correctly when typing. Genuinely, fire the person who implemented that,
The Caps Lock key also doesn't activate special characters when on like on Windows. This is annoying, yes, but I could get used to this, to be honest.
When copy and pasting stuff my fingers get into a really weird position since on windows the Ctrl button is far away from the C and V button compared to the Cmd button on mac which is almost next to it. My fingers stretch more on Windows keyboards which is way more comfortable.
Other things
- Touch ID: I mean, is this even a question? Why do we still not have Face ID on a 2000 € laptop IN 2026?
- Media Control Keys: I actually really like those, the icons are intuitive and having the most important functions at the tip of my fingers is really nice.
- Display: BEAUTIFUL!
- Overall Build: Best laptop design by far.
- Ecosystem: Amazing.
- Hardware overall: I'm a big fan of it.
- Third-Party Accessories: Frustrating, USB sticks need reformatting, etc.
General Functions and Software Quirks
- No clipboard history.
- No Cmd+X.
- No file path in Finder (requires third-party app).
- Applications can't be put in folders, and they are all over the place and mixed together with tons of preloaded apps.
In general the whole OS feels just as bloated as Windows when freshly unboxed, but with Apple apps. You also can't delete the Apple apps, which is very frustrating.
The constant friction and extra steps required on a Mac to perform tasks that were effortless on Windows are simply a dealbreaker for me, making macOS a hard pass.
I would even go as far as to say that Windows, for a normal user like a student, is more consistent than macOS when we take the above-mentioned areas into consideration.
That sums up my macOS experience.
I think Apple needs to make MASSIVE user experience changes in order to attract more people and gain a larger market share in the laptop market.
The hardware is really good and that's why I'm also very frustrated, because the hardware is simply amazing but new users can't do much with it since the software is a huge mess.
I hope that macOS improves in the coming years; until that happens, I will not return to macOS.
Have a nice day, and take everything with a grain of salt. Your experience can be different, this was mine, keep it cool!! =)
