I gave up on Windows and Linux for an OS that gives me the best of both worlds

Published Sep 24, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Sydney Butler is a technology writer with over 20 years of experience as a freelance PC technician and system builder and over a decade as a professional writer. He's worked for more than a decade in user education. On How-To Geek, he writes commerce content, guides, opinions, and specializes in editing hardware and cutting edge technology articles. Sydney started working as a freelance computer technician around the age of 13, before which he was in charge of running the computer center for his school. (He also ran LAN gaming tournaments when the teachers weren't looking!) His interests include VR, PC, Mac, gaming, 3D printing, consumer electronics, the web, and privacy. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Research Psychology with a minor in media and technology studies. His masters dissertation examined the potential for social media to spread misinformation. Outside of How-To Geek, he hosts the Online Tech Tips YouTube Channel, and writes for Online Tech Tips, Switching to Mac, and Helpdesk Geek. Sydney also writes for Expert Reviews UK. He also has bylines at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Tom's Hardware, MakeTechEasier, and Laptop Mag. I've used Windows as my primary operating system since the release of Windows 3.1, but in 2019 I got a gig writing for 9to5Mac, which meant I actually needed a Mac to do the job! So I bought a MacBook Air, the cheapest I could find, and intended to use it mainly for my work writing about Macs and creating macOS tutorials. But I quickly found myself using macOS more than my Windows desktop, and eventually I moved all my professional computer work to the Mac. Today I'm on my third MacBook (an M4 Pro), and I don't see myself using Windows or Linux as my daily-driver OS for the foreseeable future. Windows gave me software compatibility, but I was tired of fighting Windows itself This is not an OS that cares about its users The reasons I ditched Windows are numerous, but also pretty easy to articulate. I was using Windows 10 in 2019, and constantly ran into issues where my computer was perfectly fine when I went to bed, but broken and unable to boot the next morning. Costing me hours of lost work and income. It wasn't just my computer; the Windows 10 systems at my day job had our IT department in fits. And my wife's Windows 10 system was also highly unreliable, as Microsoft kept pushing updates that broke things. Today, while the company has pledged to do better, it feels like Windows 11 isn't faring much better in this regard. It feels like every week there's another headline detailing how a Windows 11 update has broken something else yet again. The other major thing that's put me off Windows completely is the telemetry and advertising. It’s an issue I’ve covered before — and one that continues to affect Windows 11 today. To be clear, I still use Windows a lot, both for work and as a PC gamer, but I limit my time with the OS to what's necessary, whereas with macOS I actually want to use my computer. Any worries I had about software compatibility (besides video games) turned out to be a nothingburger. Any app worth using either runs in a browser or has a native macOS version. So it never actually came up. MacBook Pro (M5) Operating System macOS CPU Apple Silicon M5 The 2025 MacBook comes with the powerful M5 chip, plus everything else you've come to know and love from Apple. RAM 16 or 24GB Storage 512GB or 1TB Display (Size, Resolution) 14 or 16 inches Colors Space Black, Silver Display type Liquid Retina XDR Display Starting Price $1,599 Linux gave me reliability, but eventually I got tired of being my own IT department A computer is a tool, not a job Let me preface this with the fact that I love Linux. The whole thing. It's an amazing project, and the world is 1000% better for Linux existing than not existing. When I was at university, I daily-drove Linux for years. Unlike Windows, it was rock-solid in the reliability department. That is, if you could get it set up correctly in the first place. To this day, hardware compatibility remains a sticking point for various Linux distros, and it's one reason we need something like a Linux-certified laptop. But, that aside, Linux desktop distros in general still require a level of tech-savviness to get some things done that don't apply to Windows or macOS systems. To be fair, distros like Mint and Zorin have come a long way in minimizing the time you spend in the terminal. It's not that I didn't have fun learning how to do stuff on my Linux computers over the years, but when I got to the point where I now had to work for a living, my priorities changed dramatically. Now my time with Linux is limited to virtual machines that let me keep up to date and try the latest distros, and project systems or self-hosting servers. Linux runs my retro TV Raspberry Pi like a champ, but I'm not using it as my main OS. Mac vertical hardware integration is unmatched More than the sum of its parts The final major part of the puzzle is that macOS isn't actually just a standalone software product. It's tightly integrated with Apple's hardware. Unlike Windows and Linux, there's a tiny, fixed set of hardware this OS is designed for. This is one of the biggest reasons reliability and performance are so good. A driver update is unlikely to break your computer when the same people make the OS, driver, and hardware. The proof of this is in the "Hackintosh" community. When you load macOS on a random third-party machine, it has the same hardware support issues Linux does, but a hundred times worse. macOS isn't literally the best of Windows and Linux — but it's the compromise I wanted I don't think macOS is perfect, or that it does everything the best. However, it doesn't have ads everywhere, I feel way better about Apple's privacy practices than Microsoft, and in the seven years I've been a macOS user, I have not lost a single minute of productive time because something went wrong with my computer. This shouldn't be a tall order, and yet of the three options on offer, only macOS has managed to reach the low bar I have set. So until Apple decides to follow market trends and turn me into a product rather than a customer, I guess it's going to be Macs all the way down.