Type looks terrible on a PC. That's reason alone to buy a Mac.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I heard a rumor that Mac doesn't have a Task Manager like windows, because it won't hang.

This isn't true, go to an Apple store and search for Activity Monitor in Spotlight. Apps crash in OSX all the time.

Without going into preference/opinions, I can tell you that the best upside is actually saving money. I got my first Mac (iMac) in 2007 when I was sick of going buying a new PC every couple years. Sure, it was 2-3x as much as the PCs, but it still runs to this day. Whenever I go visit my parents I use it for work, and though it's a little slow, it still runs like a champ. There's no way in hell I could still be using a PC from 2007. I would have gone through at least 3 or 4 since then.

Macs are an investment, and as long as you treat them like an investment, they can last a decade. With that said, you don't need to drop $2k on a Mac to get a good one. You can easily buy a 2010-2012 Mac for a really good deal, and it will still have another 5-8 years in it's life.

Short answer, No.

I've been a Mac user for 11 years and love it. I have to use Windows in my part time job and it frustrates the heck out of me.

I can give you plenty of biased, unscientific, anecdotal statements about how Mac is more productive... I have always found using a Mac more enjoyable, more stimulating and more productive. But that's just my experience.

The one thing that surprises me is I do struggle to find software on Windows that is as good as that I use on Mac. e.g. Pixelmator, Affinity Designer, Sketch, Transmit, Dash, Tower,And the software that is on both platforms, often I find the Mac version is superior. e.g. 1Password, SnagIt.

Maybe that is because there seems to be more and more developers and designers using Macs, so maybe there's a brain drain from PC to Mac.

I don't have any software on my Windows PC I wish I could get for my Mac, but plenty on my Mac I wish was on Windows.

All that said, if you are happy with the quality of your work, and your productivity, you don't need to change.

Therefore, for you, it's more likely an aesthetic and philosophical decision, rather than a practical one.

I don't think you need to change; however, if you do and once you get past the small learning curve and reinvestment in new software, I think you will be very happy.

BTW Mac does indeed have a Task Manager. It's called Activity Monitor and is very good.

I'm a moderate PC user. For design and development purposes I use mac and win side by side for about 2 months. Here are some observations I made:

Win > Mac

• I don't like programming on mac os at all. For example, if you need a local server, mac is a pain. I've installed mamp and it had loads of issues plus you have to pay for a full version. However, you have opportunities like wamp, easyphp which works out of the box.

• Window management makes me stressed on mac. The full screen button on the top bar doesn't work like on windows. When you press it, the windows zooms and goes to right side, hides dock. Also it takes like 3 seconds which is like a year for me. One more example: cmd+tab switches windows. Ok that's what I get used to but why doesn't it switches to the windows I minimized? I hate when this happens.

• Mouse. Mouse speed increases exponentially when you move it on mac which drove me mad so I find a hacky way to disable it. Let me explain exponential speed: if you move your mouse one inch but slowly, you will see cursor moves 2 inches but if you move your mouse one inch fast you will see cursor moves 10 inches. Same applies to mouse wheel speed.

• I find some usability issues on file management/finder. For example, cmd+c to copy, cmd+v to paste files but cmd+X doesn't cut the files oh my god why? The file path isn't shown by default so sometimes you confuse which folder you are in. Apple should make file path visible by default.

• less free apps

Mac > Win

• The UI itself. Deeply thought, carefully designed. I love the blueness of action buttons, love all transitional interfaces and specifically sucking effect when an app is being minimized.

• The UX. You will find yourself smiling when discovering all the little details. You will see, when you click help button on top, the search text is already focused, waiting for you to search. As you type, it will show you where the button you're looking for.

• Performance, less crashes. I open sketch + xcode + illustrator + photoshop and see ram is around 1GB. On a pc, opening a single photoshop app will raise it to 2GB :)

• Design apps. Sketch, affinity, FramerJS and more. As I see you are a UX developer, this is a big plus for you.

• Display of course :)

• Opens faster and you see all the previous apps before shutting down are open again.

• less viruses, ad-wares etc.

Anything I forgot?

Yep, switch. I was using PC's from the early 90's up until 2005 when I was an IT Sys Admin. My boss at the time didn't want anything to do with Macs and neither did I but since I was Jr, I was forced to learn the Mac to support all of our employees who used Macs. 1 month after getting the Mac, I sold every PC I owned (3 custom built PC's) and I've never looked back.

Off the top of my head: - Sketch App is the best tool for interface design currently and it runs only on Mac - Framer is the best tool for serious interactive prototyping and it runs only on Mac - Plenty of other wonderful design tools are Mac-only - Adobe's Creative Suite works much faster and smoother on Mac, at least it did three years ago, when I switched; almost similar in terms of price and hardware Mac notebook was lightning fast with big Photoshop files compared to my PC - Overall UX on Mac is usually more pleasant

I still use a PC for gaming, web browsing and other leisure tasks, but for the work I won't ever use a PC again.

Funny. A lot of them say how their productivity got a super-mega-ultra boost after they moved to mac. Productivity depends on the person and how the OS is used and not the OS alone.

I was in the same position as you are. I currently use both Mac and PC but I tend to remain on the PC more mainly because I have the knowledge to break a particular something and fix it. With mac, I don't have that level of freedom. Work wise, most of my clients use PC so my workflow is automatically on it. I design/code my experimental apps and stuff on the Mac. If you want to build ios apps. Mac is a must. (I find Virtual machine / iATKOS quite 'meh'.) The other reason is gaming, I prefer to game on PC. I don't have data to show you why, but gaming on mac doesn't feel right as the PC.

What made me buy one? - Getting a mac was an "ooh-aah" those days, so I wanted to show off. - I didn't want to be inexperienced with Mac. (I didn't want to search for butterflies when my friends go gaga about their new yosemite update.) - Its MUCH better looking than windows 8. The UI and UX is inspiring, intuitive and beautiful. (AND Retina Display.) - There are a lot of niceties and "better working" apps which the PC doesn't have. - iOS app building

Taboos: - Mac has a decent task manager - Activity monitor. - Macs crash too. - I haven't seen a BSOD on my PC for ages - Windows 8.1 may not look good, but when you get used to it, its quite good. - PCs last long too. My old PC is 14 years and it still works. (It has all my DOS games. Mortal Kombat 3 anyone? :D)

I would recommend a macbook air as a good to have. You can do decent amount of code and design. It has good battery life and its a good travel companion.

The End

TL;DR Answer: Buy it. Experience the best of both worlds. Switch if you are comfortable. I prefer the PC.

If you want access to the best apps, then yes.

If you want to install Windows and Linux alongside Mac OS X, then yes.

If you want better sync between your iPhone and iPad, then yes.

If you want a stable work machine you only need to reboot about once per quarter because the 40 year-old Darwin kernel is so solid as to be mostly impervious to malware and hijacking, then yes.

If you want a machine whose resale value in 5 years will be 65% what you paid for it and serves as a great down payment on your next machine -- making every other Mac you ever buy substantially cheaper than any equivalent machine for initial 20% or so premium -- then yes.

If you're a maker and care about your tools, why wouldn't you want the best tools you can afford?

I used Mac for about 7 years (by choice), but recently switched back to Windows (by choice). Macs and PCs are different, but neither is inherently better.

An optimized and efficient workflow can be achieved on both operating systems.

I planned to buy a mac, but I didn't find any good reasons to buy.

At the end of the day, it's down to what you are comfortable with. If you can't find reasons to switch to a Mac, then why bother? What is compelling you to get a Mac? Fancy marketing?

Also I heard a rumor that Mac doesn't have a Task Manager like windows, because it won't hang.

All computers are suitable to software entropy. Macs are known to be slower (only because the specs are usually a few years outdated), but Windows PCs suffer the same issues. Maintain your computer (OSX or Windows) and you can avoid this problem.

I was strictly a PC guy who was curious about the Mac platform ever since Steve Jobs introduced OS X Leopard while I was in high school. I was given a MacBook by my current job and I love it! I was one of those weird PC guys who modded Windows to look like a Mac-hybrid, what with the taskbar at the top of the screen and RocketDock on the bottom.

Once you make the switch, I recommend uBar for your taskbar replacement (if you still want one), and Bartender (hides icons in the Finder bar).

After reading this very false notion, I stopped reading: You can run Mac OS X on a PC but not vice-versa although OS X on a PC wouldn’t work as well as on a Mac.

OF COURS you can run Windows on a Mac!!!! Also, with some work you can get macOS to run on a PC...with great results.

I do a lot of work in Photoshop, all on a PC. It is spec'd out to handle much more intensive programs. And I have a nice screen. I happen to be asked how to do something in Ps on an iMac, low end version, and it is amazing the difference you'll see in the smoothness of the application and how much easier it is to get the effect you were going for versus on a PC.

To be honest, you won't know until you try yourself. If you can play around with one for an hour I think you'll be sold. I bought a new iMac retina for personal use and love it. I'll probably end up doing a great deal of (work) creative work at home for that reason.

Replace all the "mac" with "pc" and vice versa in your question. Try it, maybe the answer is somewhere there.

I have been working with macs for the past 5 years and PC for the past 15 years. there's good stuff with both OS and really crappy stuff with both. if you don't need to buy a mac, don't.

Your productivity will not go off the roof, especially if you are already familiar and good with PC.

A nice advice about cameras that I like to apply to other stuff : when you choose a camera, it has to please you because you will work with it everyday.

GO WHERE YOUR HEART TELLS YOU

One last thing, If your system specs are up for it and if you want to try out MacOS... Before buying of course, how about trying out setting up MacOS on your local PC eg. Hackintosh.

See more info here; http://www.hackintosh.com/

Legalities be legalities but for the sack of a trial purpose, I don't see an issue here.

When I was at Uni I also had this question which I ended up choosing Mac and yes I'd admit being a PC person all my life leading up was hard on me to get use to the small differences. In the end I have concluded that the switch was the best thing I could have done. I feel more productive on a mac. Heck, I still have a PC and that's been switch to just a gaming rig. So I have my work system which is a Mac and my play system which is a PC. Heck, I have Raspberry Pi running Linux in that mix.

If I had the choice today regarding the 2 camps of OS's its going to be Apple's MacOS. PC still has it's place. For me that place is pure entertainment. I'll leave the work up to my Mac.

Because Alfred.app & Sketch.app

Thank you all for your insights. Now I have plenty of reasons.

My switch to Mac was seven years ago. No regrets. I recently had a discussion with a coworker about this, so here are some reasons I gave him for choosing a mac. One disclaimer, I was a big XP user before Mac, so some performance issues I had with Windows might be better in newer versions (or maybe it was just the XP computers I was using).

1. The overall quality is great. Especially the glass trackpad (I use a Macbook Pro)
2. Multi-touch and hot corners make it easy to see Every app window or every window of a particular app. (ironic that this is harder to do in an OS called Windows)
3. When an app freezes it doesn’t freeze all the other apps too.
4. When I need to force an app to quit, it does. On Windows I had lots of times where I would “end task” over and over but the app wouldn’t quit.
5. Can go for weeks or months without needing to restart.
6. Aside from not being targeted by viruses as much, Macs do have a more secure operating system. I think it was 1Password that recently had a post about the difference between making an app safe from keyloggers in Mac vs Windows.
7. Installing/uninstalling is super easy (usually). For most apps “installing” means dragging the app into your Applications folder. Uninstalling is as easy as dragging your app into the trash.
8. System updates are pretty infrequent compared to how many updates Windows seems to have.
9. Not having anti-virus means no performance hit to the system. (of course you can have anti-virus running if you want. I just run a scan once in a blue moon)

I think using a Mac is one of those things... once you're comfortable with it (which could take a couple months) you'll have a hard time switching back to Windows. But if you never leave Windows, you'll stay in an environment you're familiar with and continue to do excellent work.

Sorry that was a bit long. Hope it was helpful.

Test a Mac first. Maybe you can buy a cheap used one on eBay ($400~).

I was a PC user for 10 years before switching to Mac. I waited so long for the same reason, why fixing something that's not broken, especially when fixing it requires $2500. Now I wish I would have switched earlier. Here are a few reasons:

• There are a few really useful applications that don't run on Windows: Sketch, FramerJS, Frame, xCode w/ QuartzComposer, CodeKit, Homebrew, MailBox, iaWriter. It's really hard to find Windows alternatives for most of these apps.

• It's the industry standard meaning not only that you have all these amazing apps available only on Mac and probably new ones coming but also a lot of documentation and help material written for Mac users. You'll find amazing what Terminal alone can do.

• The hardware is beautiful. The 2014 Retina is really beautiful. It's an obvious state of design. Is what it is and what it is is what it is supposed to be. It doesn't distract you, it comes as a support and now with Yosemite the software is beautiful as well. It's not fancy beautiful, it's practical beautiful, smart beautiful, thoughtful beautiful. RSPCT!

• If you have an iPhone as well or an iPad you'll have apps that sync (like MailBox), the handoff, iCloud...

• Finally Macs are safe and reliable, PCs not so much. You won't have to reinstall the OS every season to enjoy just a couple of weeks of smooth performance. Actually you won't be reinstalling the OS at all.

So my advice is yes, you should switch. You'll be able to learn more, work more efficiently and for the first time you'll respect and trust your machine.

edit: I'm tireeed

I was a big Windows user. I switched to Mac a couple of months ago.

Here are the reasons why I made the switch:

• Designers us mac (silly, right?)

• I noticed most design softwares are going to be mac only. For example Sketch and Affinity Designer.

• It is much more reliable. I kept having problems on all my windows machines. Even only after a few months after usage it started giving me problems.

• I like the fresh look on iMacs ;)

First few weeks were a nightmare on my new mac. But after I got used to it, it all came together and I fell in love with this thing.

I would say go for it, you won't have any regrets.

I grew up in a country where most people never use Mac. I got my fist Mac when I was 20. Spend about 3 months to learn and master it, and never wanna go back to PC again. (This was before I decided to become a designer)

I would just say it this say: If you've been eating bad fries for all of your life, you'd never know how a good fries tastes.

At least try. You don't have to buy it now. I'm sure one of your friends have it. Or you can buy a second-hand one. Since you spend a long time with PC you won't be comfortable with it at the first place, and that's normal. Spend some time digging into it and experience it. You'll know the difference after a while.

Mac only software like Sketch and Affinity Designer are big reasons.

I love OS X and hate Windows. That's my main reason to go Mac instead of PC.