Here’s why I will never switch to Windows as my primary operating system

It’s not just Apple’s ecosystem.

Credit: Windows

I grew up to a father who did not feel the Apple “buzz.” My first media player was not an iPod, but a digital Sony Walkman. My first phone was an LG Chocolate and then was a smartphone by Motorola. My first laptop was built by Lenovo. I hadn’t used a product made by Apple — even as my friends were all using the iPod Touch in middle school — until my very first iPhone in 2016, an iPhone 6S.

My friends had finally convinced me to move beyond the green bubble sphere and buy an iPhone. Naturally, it was a girl I liked that broke the final straw. Several years later, I convinced my then-girlfriend and now-wife to switch from a Samsung Galaxy to an iPhone.

Since my first iPhone in 2016, I’ve added a 16-inch M2 MacBook Pro, M1 iPad Air and even the $1,500 Apple Studio Display (which, yes, is overpriced) to my list of devices. I’m all in. However, I do also own a custom-built PC with an Intel i5 CPU (12th generation), 16 gigabytes of memory, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050.

I use my PC to play video games such as Grand Theft Auto V (which somehow it handles), The Sims 4, and at some point the new college football game. My MacBook handles all of my work and school. I still use Windows 11 beyond just playing GTA for YouTube tutorials, cheats, and if I’m too lazy to pull out my laptop.

Growing up, I was exclusively tied to the Windows operating system. For nearly a decade, since I bought my first MacBook Pro in 2017, I’ve used macOS with very little use of Windows. After buying this PC 14 months ago, I continue to wonder how this operating system has gotten so much worse since the days of Windows 7, and how I think Windows can change for the better.

So much software that comes preinstalled

My definition of “bloatware” is any third-party software that comes preinstalled with a device and isn’t necessary to the function of the device. A pet-peeve of mine is when others refer to Apple’s phones or computers having bloatware when it’s all just first-party software. Sure, hardly anyone uses Apple’s Stocks app (which I’d argue could go away and no one would notice) but the app is actually…