Back to the Mac
This is a post that some of you might be surprised to read. But I’m writing this to declare my intention to shift my daily tech usage away from Windows PCs and back to the Mac.
Most of my readers might not know this, but shortly before I started this blog back back in 2012, there was a period of several years where I used an Apple Mac exclusively for my day-to-day use. And yes, that included gaming.
How was I able to effectively game on a Mac, you might wonder? Well, back then it was actually quite easy. For starters, a number of games were available natively on the Mac. But for the ones that weren’t, I could simply boot my Mac into Windows. You see, during the era of Intel Macs, it was quite simple to dual boot the machine between Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. These days, however, it’s not quite so simple.
In recent years, Apple has shifted away from Intel CPUs and now manufacture their own silicon. And for those of you that don’t know, Apple silicon is INSANELY fast. In worst case scenarios, it’s typically 20% faster than x86 chips. But on average, and especially with multi-core tasks, it can be a staggering 150%-170% faster.
This is fantastic from a performance perspective. But, it does limit the ability to dual boot. At least for the foreseeable future, the days of running Windows on a Mac are essentially over.
So, with this in mind, it would be logical to ask why someone who runs a blog largely dedicated to gaming would want to shift away from the PC and embrace the Mac? The answer is complicated.
For starters, I only left the Apple platform simply due to cost restrictions. At the time I dumped my Mac for a Windows PC, Intel Macs were still a thing. But, I wanted to play Final Fantasy XIV and my old Mac just wasn’t going to cut it. To purchase a Mac that was beefy enough to handle the game, I would have had to shell out almost $3,000. On the other hand, I could build the same PC for less than $1,300. Of course, this meant I would have to give up Mac OS. At the time, my financial situation helped make the choice an easy one. These days, money is not so much of an issue.
For awhile, every thing was great. Windows 7 and Windows 10 were a solid operating systems. Then Windows 11 appeared and everything changed. Windows 11 ushered in a number of puzzling decisions from Microsoft. Over time, the OS slowly became littered with advertisements and nagging screens. On top of that, the performance and quality control of the OS seemed to get worse with each update. But the last straw for me, was Microsoft’s incessant desire to inject AI into every aspect of the operating system. A while back, I was trying to do some creative writing, when all of a sudden Microsoft Word started using AI to write the story for me! I took me nearly five minutes to figure out how to completely disable this Co-Pilot nonsense.
Still, for the sake of gaming, I stuck through it. My daily combination of using a Windows PC and an Android phone had just enough perks to make it worth suffering through the all of garbage.
Then recently, something else changed.
A recent Windows 11 update mysteriously seemed to cause problems for some SSD controllers. This problem potentially resulted in entire SSD drives being rendered unusable. Now, Microsoft has stated that their internal research shows no correlation between these failures and the recent update. However, independent testing shows otherwise. It’s just another example of Microsoft’s recent trend to ignore quality control issues.
But that’s not all. Independent from that, Google has revealed several plans that have soured the Android experience in my eyes. To start, they’ve recently announced that future versions of Android will no longer allow sideloading of unsigned applications. Also, like Microsoft, their new focus on AI has virtually ruined almost all of the Android experiences that I once enjoyed.
These new directions from both Microsoft and Google have left me feeling frustrated in recent years. So, I’ve decided that enough is enough and I’m going to shift my daily usage back home to Apple.
Considering that I’ve reached an era in my gaming backlog that is quickly becoming console focused, and the fact that most AAA games titles are now also playable on Mac. This change shouldn’t affect my ability to game much at all. But for those few PC games that are not available on consoles or natively on Mac, my solution is going to be…. the Steam Deck.
Plus, I don’t actually plan to give up my current PC completely. Instead of jumping straight into an iMac, I think I’m going to pick up one of the new M4 Mac Mini’s and run it alongside my existing PC (which will now be repurposed exclusively for gaming).
This transition will rollout gradually over time. I’m going to start next month when the new iPhones are released. My first change will be switching from Android back to iPhone. Then, around the holidays, I plan to snap up a Steam Deck and a Mac Mini and run it concurrently with my Windows PC as described above. If all goes well, and I find that between my Mac and the Steam Deck, I am able to cover all of my gaming bases. The Mac Mini will eventually give way to a full fledged iMac, and the PC will be laid to rest.
We’ve finally reached a period where, thanks to things technologies like Vulkan and Proton, alternative OS’s have finally become viable gaming solutions. This combined with the boneheaded philosophy recently adopted by Microsoft, could very well spell the end of the monopoly Windows has seemed to have on PC gaming. Time will tell. But at least for me, I’m looking forward to getting back into the Apple ecosystem that I have missed all these years.
My future tech picks posts should be rather interesting.
