After I Sold My Windows PC

I still have a cold today, I'm still taking medicine, I'm still sleepy, and I'm still just writing whatever comes to mind.

Last November I sold my Windows PC. I'd bought a 9070 XT graphics card only a few days before, played about a dozen hours of Monster Hunter Wilds, and then sold it.

Before selling it, I bought a MacBook Pro, and I've been using that Mac ever since. I did it because my Windows setup felt too powerful. I really didn't need that much performance.

I did say at the start that I was going to switch to Monster Hunter Wilds. For that game, with my 4K monitor, my specs weren't actually that high. But the truth is I'm not that into games. I only played because I'd just gotten the new card and had to try it. My previous card, the GTX 2080S with 8 GB of VRAM, couldn't even run the game.

After a few days, I lost interest. And none of my friends had a computer that could run Monster Hunter Wilds, so most of the time I was still playing Monster Hunter World online with them.

If you compare how I use a Mac and a Windows PC, the biggest difference is games. In the three months since I sold the PC and switched to just the Mac, I haven't played a single game on my computer (I couldn't have), and I haven't felt bored. That's proof enough that I'm not really passionate about games.

That said, there are games I love. I'm partial to city builders like Cities: Skylines, Manor Lords, and Anno 1800. They're incredibly addictive and satisfying. But once I start, I lose track of everything, and a day vanishes in front of the screen. Sometimes I'm a contradictory person. A game really pulls me in, yet I still want to carve out time for other things.

Another thing is that when I'm gaming, I can't make myself stand up every so often to move around or drink water. That means I can't sit for long stretches and I often forget to drink. Of course, I don't play much. The game I've spent the most time on in Steam is under a hundred hours, and the scenes above don't happen often. But when they do, that's how it goes.

So I listed my core needs. What do I do most on a computer?

1. Writing.

2. Watching TV.

3. Handling documents.

4. Browsing the web.

That's it. Basically, those are the only things I do on a computer. After thinking it over, I felt the Mac is a computer tailor-made for me, because it does all of these very well. A Windows PC can do all of them too, and it can also play games when I want to.

But I thought, why not take this chance to stop playing games altogether? That turned out to be much easier than I expected. For now I play League of Legends: Wild Rift and Wuthering Waves on my phone, which covers my tiny bit of gaming need. What the computer does for games doesn't matter. It just has to let me do what I really need to do.

So across those four basic needs, how does the Mac compare with a Windows PC?

1. Writing

When I used Windows, one writing app I often used was Chunchun Xiezuo. A few years ago it was Windows-only and didn't support Mac. It does now, but I've moved over to Obsidian completely and don't use other writing apps. Obsidian has a clean interface and runs on almost every platform. On a Mac, I can pair it with my iPhone using free iCloud sync, which is free and very convenient.

So for writing, the Mac's iCloud gives Obsidian the edge and saves me from hunting for a free, stable sync method.

2. Watching TV

There's really no difference here. But since I use a MacBook, I can now take the laptop off the monitor and watch TV in bed. The MacBook Pro's speakers and screen are both good, which makes things a lot more convenient and gives me more places to use it. And the Mac looks great on a 4K monitor too.

3. Handling documents

I use WPS Office for simple documents, so there's no real difference between Mac and Windows on this point. But I always vaguely feel the Mac isn't as quick and handy as Windows, and I can't say why. It's odd.

I thought about it, and maybe it has something to do with Mac file management. On a Mac, I don't put icons on the desktop the way I did on Windows. All my files are managed in Finder. That difference in habit may be why I'm still not used to how the Mac handles files, and why I sometimes can't find the file I want.

4. Browsing the web

Honestly, I think the Mac has one unique advantage in every use case: the design language of macOS is unified and elegant, and many apps follow it. That gives me a feeling of highly consistent design when I use it, and browsers are no exception.

Unified design is one thing. The other is Apple's iCloud ecosystem. Using Safari on the Mac, I can sync my iPhone's browsing state seamlessly and work across multiple devices.

You can't use Safari on Windows, but you can use Chrome on a Mac.

Besides the core needs above, there was another big reason I sold the Windows PC and switched to the Mac: a minimalist lifestyle.

It's not that I can't own a Mac and a Windows PC at the same time. The question is whether I need to. When I sold the PC, I was just starting danshari (the Japanese practice of decluttering and letting go), and the computer tower on my desk became the first thing I went after.

I should say that I'd only just moved into my new place then. For this PC, I'd specially chosen a 1.8 m computer desk when I moved, to hold it. But however big the desk, I always find a way to fill it up. Before I sold the PC, my desk already had so many things on it that it looked a little messy.

Now that I've sold it and switched to the Mac, my desk feels simple and comfortable.

After that, I did wonder whether to upgrade my M1 MacBook to an M4 Pro. After a bit of back and forth, I decided not to, because this 16 GB + 512 GB M1 MacBook Pro was a 3,000-yuan find on Xianyu, which is great value. Apart from the screen not having a high refresh rate, it's good in every other way.

Upgrading to the M4 Pro would cost me 5,000 yuan more, just for a better screen. That would really be losing sight of what matters.