Living in Two Ecosystems

“it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” — Abraham Maslow or possibly Abraham Kaplan

As mentioned in Am I a PC or a Mac?, as a Windows user, I have been enticed to use Macs recently. I personally think that the advantages of being able to use each different machine/platform for what it shines at doing outweigh the issues that come with having your life and environment spread across two different ecosystems. But I’ll also say that this is not a slam dunk. It takes some time and effort to become fluent in each ecosystem, and to discover and learn the techniques that minimize cross-platform headaches.

I tend to be somewhat forgiving when it comes to interacting with computers and software. I generally don’t spend hours or days tweaking and customizing settings to beat the computer into looking and acting exactly how I might want them to. I find that, in most cases, it is just easier to adapt my ways to the computer than to adapt the computer to my ways.

That being said, some differences bother me. My brain and muscle memory have been trained over decades to ’the Windows Way’. I’ve only recently started using Macs as ‘real’ computers. My solutions to these differences usually go in the direction of solving the ‘problem’ on the Mac to accommodate my muscle memory for Windows. I fully acknowledge that the ‘problem’ would be on the other side if I had started in the Mac world and only recently moved to Windows.

But… Why??

What makes it worth the effort to split your life between two ecosystems? Why didn’t I just stick with Windows for my compute needs?

1. Apple excels at catering to my hobby: home studio music production. My music production software of choice is Cubase, which is available on both Windows and Mac.

   Although you will find plenty of debate on this, I personally think Macs run it better. But I do use both.

   I have a studio room powered by a Mac M4 Mini where I practice, play and record my instruments. But that accounts for only part of the total time that I spend on my hobby - the rest is spent on editing, post-processing, mixing, and mastering what I have recorded. (This is all in an attempt to fool listeners and myself into thinking that I have more musical talent than I do. It is pretty amazing to me how many musical sins can be atoned for by a bit of work in Cubase.)

   I sometimes do this ‘offline’ work in a different room, usually on my multi-monitor Windows machine.

2. I already had a toe in both worlds via my use of iPhones and iPads, I was “gateway drugged” into Macs.

   The Apple ecosystem seems better to me at, well, being an ecosystem. I think that the devices from Apple that I own do a very good job of interoperating with each other, with minimal effort.

   It is handy that I can see and respond to text messages, which I previously thought of as being associated exclusively to my phone, on my iPads and Macs.

   Sharing files between Macs is stupid-easy, and only slightly less convenient between Macs and iPads and iPhones via AirDrop. I can easily use an iPad as a wireless second monitor for my Macs, and Apple’s Screen Sharing works better for me than Window’s remote desktop.

   Websites that I’ve visited recently on one Apple device show up on the Safari home screen on all devices, which is quite handy to pick up where I left off on a different device. Though I don’t use it much, my Macs can even display whatever is showing on my iPhone screen inside a window.

   I realize that most of these interoperability features are also possible within the Windows and Android worlds, but somehow they only entered into my everyday usage patterns when I started using Macs.

3. Not being locked into an ecosystem opens up options for harnessing whatever new hardware is one-up on the competition at the moment. When Apple came out with devices based on the M4 chip and priced them aggressively (at least for the base models), to me that represented a shift in the landscape and I went with Apple. But the next time I’m in the market for hardware, maybe the Windows world (Snapdragon, maybe?) will have the offering that has the best bang for the buck for me.

And, while this is hard to explain and could be just me, sometimes changing your computing environment changes your thought patterns. Because I have been doing technical work on Windows for so long, I am more comfortable and perhaps more productive doing highly technical software things under Windows. And since I entered the MacOS world via my music hobby, I perhaps am more creative and free-thinking when using MacOS, even when working on non-musical things. Maybe it is a left-brain right-brain thing, although that is not really a thing scientifically.

This excellent video from 3BlueOneBrown comes close to what I am trying to say; it illustrates two different approaches to solving problems. Perhaps when I am on Windows I’m more likely to take the Bob character’s approach from the video and just grind it out analytically. When I’m on a Mac I might favor Alice’s approach, which is step back, try to see the big picture, find an angle that makes the problem simpler. Like in the video, I make no value judgements as to which approach is better and posit that maybe employing both approaches is ideal.

On to some tips.

Same Apps

Perhaps the most important and obvious tip for happily getting things done on both Windows and Mac is to use the same software packages on both when possible. Nowadays, at least among the software packages that I have need for, supporting both Windows and MacOS is very common. A partial list of software packages that I use frequently that are available on both OSes include: OneNote and the other major Microsoft 365 apps, Cubase, VSCode, Warp, Github, ChatGPT, Spotify, Discord. None of these apps cost me more to install on my Macs - some are free on either platform, those that aren’t free will let you install on either platform as part of the subscription, with each install on any platform costing you one seat from the subscription.

Basically the only software that I use on Windows that doesn’t have a counterpart on MacOS are:

• Video games: I’m not a big gamer, but I occasionally play some graphics-intensive PC games. I have a great deal of respect for what Apple hardware and MacOS can do, but a modern PC with an Nvidia graphics card is on top for gaming right now (Cue the zealots…).
• Some ancient financial software that I use. I’m sure there are cross-platform packages out there that could serve this function for me, but I don’t really want to change horses here. Plus I don’t think I’d want my financial details spread across platforms or put online for privacy and security reasons.
• I do some C++ development for Windows-only apps using Microsoft Visual Studio. But I see no reason to try to use Visual Studio on my Macs.

In a few cases even though the software package is available for both OSes, I haven’t bothered to install it on my Macs because I haven’t felt the need. This includes:

• Email and Calendar: on Windows I think Outlook is indispensable, but the native Apple Mail and Calendar apps on MacOS seem sufficient for my needs. Of course they can be set up so that the mail and calendar items synch between devices.
• The other Microsoft 365 Apps besides OneNote (e.g. Word, Excel): I will probably need these on my MacBook at some point, but not yet.
• Browsers: I use Chrome on Windows, and I have also installed Chrome on my MacBook, but I tend to use Apple’s Safari browser more often when on Macs.

Getting Stuff Between Ecosystems

To me, the way that OneNote does cross platform is nearly ideal. If I’m writing or researching a post or some other pursuit, I do it in OneNote. Perhaps I started writing it in OneNote on my MacBook. If I then decide to go sit at my Windows machine, every word I have written on my MacBook is just there in OneNote on my Windows machine. I don’t have to worry about saving the last work I did and transferring it over, and I don’t have to worry about work that I did on one machine getting lost or trampled because I switched to a different machine.

A step down from that in convenience is GitHub. I put all my personal software projects into Github (private) repositories. If I switch machines, I just check in the changes I made on one machine and update from GitHub to get the latest code on the other machine. This works fine, the only reason it is a step down is that sometimes I haven’t checked in the changes from the first machine when I sit down at the other machine. I then either go back to the first machine and push the changes, or if I don’t need to work in the same areas of the code, I just continue working on the slightly-stale code on the second machine and use git’s functionality to merge my changes together later.

A further step down from that is using cloud storage to copy files between platforms. I currently resort to this to copy Cubase projects between my studio Mac and my Windows machines. I could either use Microsoft’s OneDrive or Apple’s iCloud for this, both are supported on both platforms. I suppose I also could use Google Drive, but I haven’t explored that. I find Apple’s iCloud to be the most convenient for this. If my needs in this area increase, I imagine I could go to some kind of NAS or similar solution that mounts drives on both platforms, but I haven’t felt a need for that yet.

Overcoming Muscle Memory

The biggest annoyance I face when working in two ecosystems is when my Windows-trained muscle memory unconsciously performs keystrokes or mouse actions that don’t work in MacOS.

When I want to close a window, I automatically mouse over to the upper right corner to click the close button. But that button lives in the upper left in MacOS. I couldn’t solve this via customization on MacOS or relearning the mouse movement, so I just learned to use Cmd-Q on MacOS to close windows from the keyboard instead. It’s probably quicker anyway. I may end up trying to transfer this hotkey-to-close habit back to Windows.

I instinctively use Alt-Tab to switch between applications on Windows. Cmd-Tab on MacOS brings up a very similar app switcher that usually works OK. And the Cmd key on my MacBook keyboard is located at the same position as my fingers expect to find the Alt key on my Windows keyboard, so I touch type the Cmd-Tab on Macs with no problem. However, there is a subtlety: Alt-Tab on Windows will allow me to switch through every instance of the running apps. I often have several instances of browsers or VS Code open, and Alt-Tab will show them all and allow me to switch to any one of them. But Cmd-Tab on MacOS will only show one icon per app, no matter how many main windows that app is showing. I can’t control which of those main windows I select. Because of this, I have mostly trained myself to use a 3-fingers swipe-up trackpad gesture to switch between apps on my MacBook, which shows and allows switching to the individual main windows.

The modifier keys on the left side of most PC keyboards are

Ctrl,  Windows key,  Alt 

from left to right. But on Mac keyboards they are

Ctrl,  Options key,  Cmd

(there is a Fn key there too at the far left, but I seldom use that so I am omitting it.)

A difference that really bothered me is that I instinctively touch-type Ctrl-X Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for cut-copy-pasting, and Ctrl-Z for undoing, Ctrl-S for saving. This is Cmd-X, Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-Z and Cmd-S on MacOS. So my pinky would press Ctrl on MacOS instead of Cmd, and those Ctrl- key combinations on MacOS do nothing by default. This I solved with a heavy hammer that will probably make MacOS users cringe - I remapped the MacOS Ctrl key to the Cmd key. So I have two Cmd keys on the left side of my Mac keyboard, one that is the original Cmd key to accommodate my Alt-Tab habit, and one that is the Mac Ctrl key to accommodate my cut-copy-paste and undo habits. Because the Ctrl key is still useful on the Mac (Ctrl-C is often used to interrupt things), I then remapped the Mac Options key to be Ctrl on the Mac. My left side modifier keys on my MacBook look like

Cmd,    Ctrl,  Cmd

So I do not have an Options key on the left side of the keyboard - I have to use the Options key on the right side of the keyboard.

Oh, and I remapped the &*!&@! Caps-Lock key to do nothing, as I have done for years on all my machines. Why that relic still lives on in modern keyboards is a mystery to me.

For my Mac Mini and when I ‘dock’ my MacBook into a desktop multi-monitor setup, I do not use Apple Magic Keyboards or Magic Mice, as they are too expensive to pass my Cheapskating bar. Instead I use cheap bluetooth keyboard/mouse combos. I also had to remap keys on those bluetooth keyboards as described above, but MacOS is nice enough to remember separate key re-mappings for each different keyboard.

Another well-known issue is that if you use a standard mouse with a mousewheel on your Mac, scrolling with the mousewheel will seem backwards to you. There are several utilities available on MacOS to fix this issue, I use one called Linear Mouse.

Summary

It did take a while for me to get past some frustrations that bothered me when I started seriously using Macs. But, anymore, I seldom hit things that are annoying enough to break me out of my train of thought and interrupt what I was doing. Now that I’ve gotten past these annoyances, I think that the ability to work in two different ecosystems has actually boosted my productivity and enjoyment.