January 15, 2021

Over the last 20 years I have used both Windows and Mac personal computers in parallel. I switched to using Macs in 2001 when I was finding Windows at that time intolerable and my beloved BeOS was clearly in the departure lounge. In that time the gap in stability and user experience has narrowed as Windows has improved and Mac OS has become less stable and more complex — at least that’s how it seems to me.

Even so, I find the experience of using a Windows 10 PC less ‘polished’ than a Mac. I frequently encounter little details where I think “that could have been done so much better”. Keyboard input as an example.

On my MacBook Pro I switch between the built-in keyboard and my beloved Happy Hacking Keyboard without even having to think about it, even though they have different layouts. On my Windows 10 laptop I have to manually switch layouts, annoyingly between two fields called ‘ENG’ and ‘ENG’!

So two small issues even in this one area…

1. Why is it even needed?

2. Surely there must be a better way to select the inputs. Using flags would mean switching between 🇬🇧 and 🇺🇸 flags rather than ‘ENG’ or ‘ENG’.

It feels like there’s grit in this delicate machine, slowly destroying it.

Software


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