Returning to Windows

Born in the early 1980s, I grew up during the same period when the microprocessor was experiencing an unprecedented surge. Before the 1970s, a computer was a room-sized machine, consisting of multiple cabinets filled with electronics; it wasn’t something that could be easily had at home. This all changed in 1971 with the introduction of the Intel 4004; now it was a box that could sit on a desk. By the time the 1980s rolled around, the microprocessor had become the new hotness, with hundreds of machines being launched that incorporated this new technology.

The first machines that I used were these primitive computers, with my first real experience being on a BBC Micro from Acorn. I am from the UK, and the Beeb, as it was affectionately known, was the de facto school computer, in no small part because it was sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation's Computer Literacy program. I also used other micros of the time, including the Commodore 64 and the Spectrum, as well as early incarnations of the IBM PC.

Due to the high cost of computer ownership, even though microcomputers had driven the price down, it was still a significant expenditure; a family would tend to have only one, which was shared, and we were much the same. We acquired an IBM-compatible PC relatively early, but it was a 386, and from then on, we had a PC. This meant that I grew up using the Microsoft family of operating systems, starting with MS-DOS and moving through Windows 3.11, 95, 98, NT 4.0, Me, 2000, and eventually XP.

However, in 2006, when deciding on my next upgrade, I began to consider a Mac. My interaction with the Apple world had been limited up until that point, as mentioned, in the UK, Apple wasn’t the default in schools, and at home, I was using a PC. I had used a Mac for one term in college, but that was about it. The thing was, I am a music lover, and during this time, a massive shift was happening in the music industry. Music was going digital, and the Apple iPod was leading the way. A few years earlier, I had joined the revolution, getting a fourth-generation iPod. This means Apple was now on my radar. My computing needs at this time weren’t complex. I was dabbling in coding, making music, and surfing the internet - all things I could continue to do on the Mac. In 2006, I purchased a white MacBook.

This started a 19-year love affair with the Mac platform. One of the most significant contributors to this was the recent career change. I had been building software as a hobbyist since my early teens, but in 2008, I took that passion and transitioned to working full-time as a professional Web Developer. My early career involved working with the LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP) stack, which meant that OS X was an ideal platform for professional web development.

To understand why the Mac was well-suited for web development, it's helpful to have a little background on operating systems. By 2008, there were essentially two major families of operating systems used in desktop and laptop computing. These were Windows and Nix (a catch-all term for Unix and Linux). MacOS (as of version 10) falls into the Nix family, being based on Apple’s XNU Unix kernel, which incorporates large parts of the Freebsd kernel. As many open-source projects target the Linux ecosystem, and Unix been a close cousin of Linux, this means that much of this tooling also works on Macos. This close compatibility between Linux and Unix also means that my development environment closely matches the production environment, which, of course, is the LAMP stack, which is Linux. However, unlike Linux, MacOs was a commercially supported operating system, which meant that you had access to a lot of commercial software packages, such as the Adobe suite. These tools were heavily utilised in the world of web development, particularly in the mid-2000s, before the emergence of Sketch and Figma.

From 2006 onwards, I invested in the Mac Ecosystem, purchasing several MacBook Pros and also acquiring the iPhone and Apple TV. I was an Apple fanboy, often defending the ecosystem, and recommended it to others where it made sense. In 2025, it became clear that my 2019 MacBook Pro was nearing the end of its useful life as a primary machine, and it was time to update. Initially I was in two minds about which Mac to replace it with, I didn’t tend to use it as a laptop, most of the time it stayed docked to my desk, that along with the fact it suffered from over heating in summer meant that my thinking was between another MacBook Pro or a Mac Studio.

I visited the Apple website to configure a Mac Studio and a MacBook Pro. I always acknowledged that you pay a premium for Mac hardware. I was okay with that because I felt I was getting a premium product. This time, however, it was different. The multipliers of the cost of just getting a decent amount of RAM and storage seem so overpriced. This prompted me to explore alternatives, such as Linux or possibly Windows. If I could switch to standard hardware, it would reduce the cost and make it easier to customise my experience to best fit my needs, and it wouldn’t cost body parts to obtain.

This wouldn’t have even been a consideration back in 2008, but the world has undergone significant changes in the last 17 years. You don’t need your development machine to match production; Docker runs everywhere; you can spin up a Docker container and get the exact same environment that you are using in production. The most significant design tool in modern web and UI design is Figma, a browser-based tool that natively supports Windows, allowing it to run on almost any platform.

So, I'm not going to beat around the bush; you know from the title that I went with Windows, and more specifically, a custom-built PC running Windows 11 Pro. So, why Windows? Well, Windows and Microsoft are very different beasts from what they were in the past. Microsoft has invested heavily in being more open-source, with tooling such as Visual Studio Code being open-source and languages like TypeScript, as well as their primary .net platform, all being open-sourced. Windows also now features the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which allows you to interact with your computer for the most part as if it were running Linux. When that isn’t possible, PowerShell presents a much more powerful command-line interface than the old DOS prompt, with aliases for standard Linux commands. You can even install some of the tools I use every day in PowerShell, such as EZA and BAT. Windows can also run games, pretty much any PC game in the universe can run on Windows, whether you like it or not, Windows is the de facto standard when it comes to PC games.

There was also another reason that I decided to go with Windows, since about 2015, I have been a full-time JavaScript developer. Since about 2018, this has meant primarily writing TypeScript. I love working with TypeScript so much that I even created a template for building new TypeScript projects. I use TypeScript almost exclusively, both at work and on my side projects. Every so often, though, typically when I am pretty advanced in a language, I like to learn a new one; this keeps life interesting and also shows me new ways of doing things, new ideas, and patterns that I can apply to my primary language. This year, I started learning C#. I chose C# because it is a general-purpose language that can be used to develop a wide range of software. It was also designed by Anders Hejlsberg, the primary designer and developer of TypeScript.

The final reason for going with Windows was for Music production. I create music as a hobby, mostly using software these days, and my key tool in this is Steinberg Cubase. I know some alternatives run on Linux-based operating systems, but this is just a hobby, and I am not interested in learning new software so that I don’t have to use Windows. I have also invested in Cubase, as well as instruments, effects, and other plugins that work with it.

The great thing about custom-building my machine is that I can decide what I put on it. If I wanna try Linux, then that is possible. Gaming on Linux is continually improving. Steam and the Steam Deck have made Linux a pretty good platform for gaming. I may try daily driving Linux in the future, though I opted for an Nvidia video card, which may make it harder to do so. For now, I am a happy Windows user.