Mac vs Windows: The Ultimate Comparison

[00:02] File Explorer, Window buttons on the top left versus the top right. All of these are part of a bigger debate between Windows and Mac. Many people have only ever used Windows and would never even consider a Mac or they're diehard Mac

[00:15] users who haven't tried Windows in a decade. Well, a lot has changed. Windows owns nearly 70% of the market, but that number is changing as Mac OS has doubled its share in just the past decade. So, which is actually the better operating

[00:29] deeper. So, in this video, I'm breaking this down into eight different first category, which of course is the hardware. Now, Windows has the advantage here, having a larger selection because although Microsoft does make Surface

[00:44] although Microsoft does make Surface laptops, anyone can make a PC. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, the list goes on and on. Tons of manufacturers means a lot of competition and a lot of variety. where Mac devices on the other hand are only

[00:57] made by Apple. You could name all of the Mac models in about a minute. So that means Windows could be either cheaper or more expensive. They can be built and maintained and upgrade if you want to do it yourself. And the flexibility with

[01:09] Windows allows you to find different laptops with different keyboards. You refresh rate. You could choose a laptop with the ports that you want on the side There's different strengths and weaknesses and different brands, like I

[01:24] said, that are competing on price, giving you a pretty good value on something that Apple still hasn't introduced, which is touchscreens on laptops. Sometimes they can double as a tablet if you fold it back. Other times,

[01:37] it's just an extra touch input. Some also allow pens so you could draw or sign documents. And with a Mac, I need to use an iPad for that. But Mac hardware is pretty solid. They typically last a really long time. And because

[01:50] it's a small skew, like Apple just makes a couple laptops, they have to make sure they're really good laptops. They have good displays, good speakers, excellent webcams, and they're triedand-true devices that work reliably and last a

[02:02] really long time. So, still, I need to give the win in this category to Windows. Options, pricing, and competition make Windows hardware Although I still think the MacBook hardware is the superior laptop format

[02:15] for me personally and I do see many other competitors copying MacBooks and number two, this is the user experience, which is a little bit of a rough start biggest complaints with Windows in general is related to the user

[02:30] experience. And this depends on which brand you buy from, but no matter what Windows laptop I've ever used, I always see popups on the corner that are always trying to upsell you on Norton Anti Virus or Xbox or One Drive or Microsoft

[02:44] 365. Like all these different things are always popping up and trying to get you to subscribe. And I know that each brand is going to have their own bloatware. It doesn't feel like a very premium experience unless you go in and

[02:57] notifications. Now, there's a lot of bloatware on Windows laptops, but Apple's not without it bloatware either. They'll come with things like GarageBand and all this other stuff that you may never use, but at the same time, you

[03:11] And if you are getting notifications, they're far less intrusive than the that Windows always gives you. With Apple, kind of the main one is just design goes on both of them, this one's going to be a personal preference. I

[03:25] think these are both really quite clean now. I like the way Windows is set up. I just going to be a personal preference. Personally, I find that I like I can move the taskbar anywhere I want on Mac. So I put it on the left side, it

[03:37] disappears when I'm not using it. And that way I can focus on an entire window the very top that tells me the time and some settings related to that software. Another thing to consider is Siri versus Copilot.

[03:50] Just kidding. But what we do have on Mac versus Windows is going to be a screenshots, screen recordings, audio recordings. In Windows, you've got the snipping tool and a lot of it is in specific applications. Whereas on Mac,

[04:04] it's just kind of a a quick hotkey shortcut of command shift 4 to open a your screen. And it does take some learning to get used to what those Mac. And a little complaint with Mac is that it can be pretty inconsistent with

[04:19] some things. Specifically, I noticed zooming in and out between different applications. Sometimes it's option and scroll. Sometimes it's control and scroll. Sometimes scrolling doesn't do anything and it's just command plus or

[04:31] command minus. I'm sure there are plenty of inconsistencies in Windows as well. But that's one that I've noticed particularly with Mac. But at least in the most recent several versions of Mac, we have window snapping. So you can snap

[04:43] notice when this came out. I think it was with Seoia, but I mean I use Magnet software that can do that for me. Still, it's nice that we finally have that on Mac. But there is a way to fix that inconsistency. And honestly, also just

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[06:14] learn more about this, check out the link in the description down below. Now, getting back to the next category, Windows. This is almost ironic. Windows has face unlock while Mac has either fingerprint or no biometrics at all.

[06:27] It's kind of like the opposite of, you know, iPhones have only face unlock and fingerprint unlock. So, it's interesting how they have their own philosophies on that. But, nonetheless, I do think face unlock is a little bit quicker. It's

[06:41] you can log in. So, obviously, Windows versus Mac, one of the main differences is going to be the processors. Apple, of course, has their M series. The M4 is quite a bit ahead of Intel chips if you care about battery and performance. Like

[06:55] if you want that combo, but I have to say Snapdragon is definitely making some quick progress. They announced their Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2, which is coming in early 2026. And when that comes out, we'll see how that actually

[07:07] competes with the M series laptops. But if you're looking for a laptop or you need a silent machine, the M4 Max MacBook Pro not only beats a lot of what else is on the market, but also does so while having incredible battery

[07:20] efficiency. On the other hand, if you need maximum performance no matter what, technically you could still achieve better performance with a Windows desktop if you install something like a 96 core AMD Thread Ripper. like there's

[07:34] just options you have that can get, you know, 96 cores is not something you're going to see in a MacBook Air, for example. So, for processor, I think Apple wins unless you're building a custom PC. This is kind of an experience

[07:46] to have its own category, and this is file explorer versus finder. This is something that's so central to your experience on either of these devices, the way the whole thing really sets up. So in Mac, you can preview audio in

[08:01] play button without actually opening the file, which is kind of nice if you're trying to figure out like what is that audio file that I have. Also, searching with Mac has improved, but Windows is still better in my opinion. In Mac, you

[08:15] also need to change a bunch of settings just to get it to show you what Windows much storage is in certain folders or what the file path is. Windows very clearly uses a tree and shows you the file path as you go through. You can

[08:29] copy and paste the file path to easily get where you need to go. Whereas Finder sort of hides the file path from you. It's more so like tag and search. You bottom with settings, you can like click and drag that over, but you can never

[08:44] copy and paste the file path. But Macfinder does allow you to color code things. I almost never do that, but it's there if you want it. The winner in this category, in my opinion, without a doubt, is Windows. But the next one

[08:57] probably won't be the same case. This is longevity. Windows inevitably runs into issues and you end up spending 30 minutes watching a YouTube video with a PowerShell or command line. And that experience is far more rare in Mac from

[09:11] my experience. Windows also does update. I mean, technically, it's a similar frequency to Mac, but it seems to be absolutely all the time. I swear it's every time I log into my Windows laptop, it'll just have two updates available

[09:23] long, it forces a restart on you. Whereas with Mac, you can kind of just mute the notifications and update it every few months. Some people update once a year and you don't really notice the same number of update related issues

[09:37] versus with Windows. Obviously, you should stay up to date, but I mean, not everyone has time to just when you log on sit there and wait 15 minutes for it to get some heat for that in the comments, but let me know if anyone else

[09:50] has a similar feeling or experience. Also, I have a 2020 Intel iMac. We're talking about longevity here. This thing still runs beautifully. It doesn't even like I said, and I've never actually had a Windows machine for more than 4 years.

[10:05] No matter how well I take care of them, they always seem to break or they die or Yes, absolutely. Some people have Windows machines that last a very long common story. For example, all my roommates in college all bought Windows

[10:20] laptops the same time. And all of our Windows laptops died senior year of college. Our one roommate freshman year, so this was like 2014, bought a MacBook It's incredibly slow and I don't know why he's still using it, but technically

[10:36] it still functions and he's able to use it. So the winner for longevity really has to be Mac, especially in the realm of laptops. But stability, this is an interesting one. How stable are these two things? Obviously, you're not going

[10:49] you would have like a decade ago. But Mac has fewer models which make it easier to program for. Windows, on the other hand, has thousands of permutations, tons of options with displays, GPUs, CPUs, everything else

[11:03] involved. And so with that, you just have more variables and a higher risk of something going wrong there. So, this was actually the reason I bought my first iMac back in 2020. I had an HP Spectre. It was like a $1,400 laptop. It

[11:18] videos well, and then Adobe just pushed out an update that suddenly made it completely incompatible with my one-year-old laptop. So, stability is a big win for Mac. But let's talk about other software and compatibility because

[11:31] I mean, maybe it's easier to make something for a Mac, but Windows has a huge share of the market. So, it's no surprise that they do get preferential treatment on a lot of software. For example, niche software for businesses

[11:43] or education sometimes are only available on Windows, which is why a lot of college students are told you should buy a Windows laptop because the software you need may not be available on Mac. Now, I've never had issues with

[11:55] that personally, but it definitely is a very real thing. So, before deciding on either one of these, be sure to look up what software you really need and see if it's available. So software availability is a win for Windows. But tying in with

[12:07] that, the next category is gaming, which is obviously just a different type of software here. But despite the impressive power of the M3 and M4 chips on Mac, gaming is still considered significantly inferior to Windows.

[12:20] Mainly, Windows has better anti-che, which is why many games are simply not available on Mac. And since like 95% of the gaming market uses Windows to play games, developers have almost no incentive to build for Mac. Again,

[12:34] leading to fewer game options on Mac. And Windows also has a better price toerformance ratio, making it a better option for anyone who's specifically gaming, it's not even like the winner's Windows. It's kind of the only option

[12:48] for most people. But let's get into the ecosystem. This is something that Apple really spends a lot of time focusing on. AirDrop is far superior to Quick Share Quick Share technically can be faster, it just never really shows up. Like

[13:02] devices aren't discoverable as much as they should be. It's a lot buggier. expect because it's just not that convenient. Same thing with connecting Bluetooth devices. It's just easier to do on Mac. If you open up your AirPods,

[13:15] it pops up. You connect. I know Windows has a way to quick connect a lot of earbuds, but it's kind of a weird clunky popup in the corner. You can sign into Mac with an Apple Watch. Mac has continuity camera, meaning your iPhone

[13:27] can act as your webcam. You have sidecar and extended display options with an iPad. And all of these have some counter version on Windows. But the continuity cross devices for Mac is really just a lot better. We also have iMessage, Find

[13:42] My, and FaceTime very well connected on them. But Windows and Android if you're interesting things that are actually just available on browser. So Google browser. Google maps you can find your friends on there. Find my device on

[13:58] browser. Google meet also on browser. Everything you need you can access on a browser which means if you have an Android phone as I do, you can still use a MacBook and easily get all of that stuff there. Similarly, I also have an

[14:11] iPhone and using an iPhone with a Windows laptop is significantly harder than using Android with Mac. Not because Mac is friendly, but because Android is But I have to say this app called Local Send, again, not sponsored, totally free

[14:26] to use. This is a total game changer for me. Uh I think yeah, Local Send is what it's called. You can download it for like a Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, kind of act like AirDrop between different devices. So, I use that all

[14:40] the time. I recommend checking it out if you have cross ecosystem devices. But in general, wrapping that ecosystem idea up, Mac has a tight ecosystem that acts as a a walled garden for sure, but Windows plays nicely with everyone. The

[14:54] winner here, I mean, I have to say Mac because it does execute things really well. Airdrop works well, Find My works well, FaceTime works much better, but I like Windows. So, you could use an iPhone and a Windows laptop as many

[15:08] people do. Now, before I get into the conclusion, I want to mention, should I Linux? I know there's going to be a lot in the comments. People are like, "Oh, Chromebooks or what about Linux?" You know, I've used them and I would love to

[15:22] comment down below. Uh let me know exactly which Linux I should compare to. But overall with these Mac is reliable, hands-off approach that has very little that could go wrong. They require minimal maintenance and they don't

[15:36] disappoint. They don't frustrate often. And the M4 chips also offer maximum efficiency. The machines are well-b built and very welldesigned in my opinion. On the other hand, Windows does a lot of things right, and it's the main

[15:49] option, if not the only option for many people out there. But personally, I have a strong preference for Mac. Not because I'm an Apple fanboy, trust me, my bubbles are green as I just showed you, but because Mac for me is more reliable,

[16:02] it lasts longer, it runs better on laptops, and that's a huge one, and has a very wellexecuted ecosystem while having far fewer pop-up ads. My looking for specific different hardware, my preference with laptops is a MacBook.

[16:16] I think iMac is probably better for anyone who wants a no frills machine and just wants to focus on work or is not technically inclined whereas Windows is the superior option for businesses who need niche software or if you play games

[16:30] obviously or if you want to build and periodically upgrade a custom PC. All of sure to head down to the comments. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of debating down there. Let the flame wars begin.