Mac vs Windows - Who Wins in 2024?

so last week my teammate Joseph decided he wanted to become an editor I wanted to get him the best computer to be able to handle it but it was a bit of a dilemma yeah we couldn't decide whether to go with Mac or Windows turns out that in 2023 there are now vast differences between what the two can do so I've ended up buying both kinds of machines so that we can test them and figure out which is actually better oh yeah and this video is being edited by Joseph using the computer we choose so you'll be experiencing the results starting now so our total budget was 1600 pounds here in the UK which if you go for Mac allows you to get the absolute highest end new 15-inch MacBook Air that currently exists and with this same budget you can also afford to go for one of the very best on the Windows end so this is the 2023 Dell XPS 15. and I gotta say I've unboxed a lot of Windows laptops in my time this is one of the best presentations I've ever seen as always the Apple unboxing experience is not generous but quality love the braided magnetic cable which is also now color matched to whichever laptop you pick and then a couple of manuals and stickers and the wall adapter the Dells power cable is a little less pretty but you do get a free little USB hub that gives you an HDMI and one full-size USB and the other side of the cable this is a brick all right so anyways it's peel time always my favorite moment I'm sure that the quality of the presentation of Apple products is a big part of why so many people give them as gifts but in this particular case I think it's been bested in the unboxing experience very slightly by the Dell XPS 15. now as far as build quality goes my preconception was that the MacBook would be a noticeable step up every MacBook I've used in the last 10 years has felt structurally unbreakable with their 100 aluminum enclosures and very few individual Parts whereas I've used a lot of even expensive Windows laptops made of cheap plastic that literally starts creaking the moment you take them out the box but that's not really the case here the XPS 15 is machined aluminum paired with a carbon fiber Palm rest it's got these really snazzy glossy accents on the sides the hinges are both very firm and can be opened most importantly with a minimal fingering and while both laptops will make a little bit of noise if you apply a lot of pressure because the material is so thin neither feels like they're about to fall apart anytime soon so we'll give them a draw the Dell does have more ports though and you'll tend to find this on when Windows versus math in general considering it's such a slim laptop it's really cool to see them fit in not just three ultra-fast USBC ports but also an SD card slot and a security lock port to chain it to a desk compared to just the two usbcs and no card slots that you get on the Mac as a general rule Apple goes for Ultra minimalism in everything they do so you'll tend to get exactly what they think you'll need and nothing extra so in a very surface level way Windows takes the ports category too but it's not a whitewash there's a couple of redeeming factors for this near portless Mac one that instead of using a USBC charger it uses magsafe which I way prefer it snaps into place it feels satisfying but most importantly if you accidentally walk into it it's less likely to pull your laptop off the table with it and shatter it into Oblivion this is what happens if you walk into the Dell's cable yeah I've covered the floor in Bedding because I do not trust this it's a pretty snazzy pull it's a little twirl at the end two that the Apple charger is this nice slick tidy thing that you can fit in a pocket which is only possible because of our Apple's engineered their laptops to have lower power requirements compared to the Dell brick which is literally like lugging a whole second Gadget around with you at all times and then three the fact that when you do plug your Dell in because the charger is USBC you are losing one of the three USB ports that you could have used for something else but then you turn them on and you're faced with the components that you're going to spend the vast majority of your time looking at the screens and for this the Mac is quite a bit sharper Windows laptops tend to stick to Industry standard resolutions which in most cases is 1920x1080 or in this case 1920 by 1200 but apple pays very little attention to what the number itself is and instead just focuses on making what they call a retina display a resolution such that from the distance you'll be viewing any screen from you shouldn't be able to see any individual pixels so you'll end up with some strange sounding resolution numbers like in this case 2880 by 1864 but hey I mean in the end that is two and a half times the number of pixels versus the Dell plus you can probably tell this even through the camera the fact that it's a glossy screen also helps with the way that it represents color is it a two and a half times better screen no there are definitely diminishing returns to having more pixels both screens are just as bright as each other and I obviously prefer the bezel-less look that the Dell XPS 15 has going on as opposed to Apple's dreaded Notch but the Mac is still a little better here and I suppose if you are going to have a notch then at least you benefit from it on the MacBook with apple having more room to slide in a better webcam so this is the Dell's webcam it's uh 720p have a look at this it's uh pretty bad yeah like the way it's representing the skin tones I look ill you look pretty ill and this is the Mac which is 1080P and that's one factor that definitely makes it look better but it's not just a resolution thing like the skin tones look better the exposure is more consistent the background behind us actually looks like the background behind us oh yeah and then there's an icing on the cake you're also going to sound better on the map the audio has a level of richness to it which the Dell lacks this one very much sounds like you are using an inbuilt microphone one thing that very few people seem to consider when they buy a new laptop but that they really should is the keyboard I actually managed to give myself a pretty severe repetitive strain injury last year from using a keyboard that had a high level of impact I don't think this will be an issue for everyone but if you feel like you are susceptible to this then I would slightly Veer away from the map I'd say that Apple generally just doesn't like their keyboards to be in any way at all squishy so they make it quite a sharp clicky key press with minimal cushioning that makes it nicer to use it's more satisfying than the noticeable springiness that you get in the Dell's keyboard but it is also conducive to more hands screen if you're going to spend a long time typing to be honest either way if you use your laptop at home then you're better off just going for a proper ergonomic mouse and keyboard like this stuff is from the Logitech Ergo range because clawing your hand around a trackpad all day is also not the best for you but if you had to then between these two just like the keyboards Apple's trackpad is the nicer one to use now don't get me wrong it's great that Windows has caught up a lot when it comes to how you can use your trackpad to fluidly interact with your machine but this is something that feels really satisfying and intentional about the Mac click which the Dell just doesn't have it feels like a dull Holo press with a hint of something loose inside so it's pretty neck and neck so far a couple more Hardware comparisons before we get into the juicy software comparisons okay one thing that you can be sure of on any current MAC system is that the speakers will not be bad I mean the ones on my 16-inch MacBook Pro are easily some of the best laptop speakers on the market and the ones on this air they're not as good but they're also not far off it doesn't have any massive speaker drills like the Dell does and all the sound comes out of this Gap here so it's actually being bounced off the screen towards you as opposed to coming directly at you but it is a six speaker sound system compared to the Dell's quad speaker and listen to the difference 2021 has been an unbelievable ride for the Mrwho's the boss Channel I'm still in physical shock at what we've managed to do this year it sounds pretty good and it feels like the audio has space because of the fact that you have larger speaker grilles but the first thing I noticed when I listen to that is that my voice doesn't sound how it should sound so this is the Mac 2021 has been an unbelievable ride for the mysteries of Boss Channel I'm still in physical shock uh what we've managed to do this year okay so you might have been able to hear here that the audio feels a little more cramped but the tuning of my voice feels spot on and also it's just a little cleaner now whether that's the fact that this whole laptop is made of aluminum and therefore there's less micro vibrations to disrupt the intended sound or just an audio algorithm on Apple's end I gotta hand it to them in that the result speaks for itself Okay so we've just looked it up and Microsoft YouTube channel is on 1.

12 million subscribers which means they're getting absolutely smashed by Apple just like we are but we're actually gaining on them so if you want to help us get there then a sub to the channel would be delightful but maybe the biggest Hardware question of them all is performance if you spend the same amount of money on Mac or Windows which one actually gets you the faster machine and it's a more confusing question than it's ever been before because Apple doesn't use off-the-shelf parts anymore there used to be a day where Macs and windows would both have the same Intel processors and the same in video or AMD graphics and life was easy but almost everything Apple uses now is custom that said I don't think it's a stretch to say that on the spec front windows feels like a clear winner I mean you have a 13th gen Intel Core i7 which has 14 cores and can go all the way up to 5 gigahertz compared to just eight CPU cores that can go up to 3. 5 if you get 16 gigabytes of RAM compared to eight plus one terabyte of solid state storage which is again double what you're getting on the air for the same price and providing that you're in the applications that can take advantage of that power you'll see the difference like open up a CPU benchmarking app like geekbench and you can very clearly see a 35 higher multi-core score dive into a storage speed test and the s in the Dell will come out on top only slightly though and running a game even though this Dell is using Intel's own Graphics which are not the best you'll get like 20 higher frames per second so that should be it right Windows takes it away well the numbers aren't the full story for the vast majority of your day-to-day tasks we are long past the point where the limiting factor is your Hardware it's all about the software and the perk of Apple making their own chips is that they can build software around that Hardware so if you do your work or you can do your work with Apple apps like pages and keynote and Safari some coding platforms and editing ones like final cut those Apple apps will perform extremely well on the M2 Apple chip that this thing has actually better than any Windows counterpart because like I mean Dell doesn't have any say at all about how programs are specifically optimized for the selection of Hardware that it chooses and the biggest part of this Which flies so far under the radar is that because the power requirements of Apple's Hardware are so much lower it stays fast when you take the cable out Windows laptops not so much as a matter of fact just unplugging this cable without changing any of the power management settings turns a 35 performance win into a 40 loss and on a laptop whose entire purpose is to be part of all that's a big deal so I'll call this overall very broad performance category a draw and that's a good segue to the overall efficiency of this thing this Mac is silent it doesn't have a fan because these Apple made chips the M2 in this case are based on phone chips which have had even less room for calling than laptops they allow the MacBook to boot up almost instantly and battery battery life is the single biggest advantage that Max in 2023 have over windows I mean to give you an idea an average high-end Windows laptop might get you five hours of browsing the internet this Dell will actually be above average it'll get you seven or so the 15 inch MacBook Air can pump out 10 to 12. and because the Windows laptops also have to have so much larger batteries to even try and keep up they're bulkier and it takes longer to charge them so we talked about this apple brick this is a 30 watt charger which is not quite any stretch of the imagination generous from Apple I mean I've got phone chargers with three times the wattage but still this thing can fully charge the MacBook in 140 minutes there's an optional 70 watt brick that can do it in 80 but the Dell even with all of this which is like bigger than Milo's face takes about 150 which puts it very behind overall in the efficiency category but okay it's time to shift gears to the software so the Mac is running Mac OS Venture uh dell is on Windows 11 both will do the same core computer things but just with each having a a couple of their own clear perks if you're used to Mac it never really feels lacking but Windows is the one if you're someone who really wants to get into the guts of your system to make it yours if you want themes easy you want a Legend of Zelda wallpaper that reacts depending on where you hover your mouse sure you want to make it look like a Mac you can do that too on windows so Windows takes the customization point just with a slight caveat that I think out the box without any customization Mac OS is the prettier one I guess the one upside of a lack of customization is order like the file explorer feels less cluttered apps have more design consistency because Apple forces them to all work in a certain way if they want to be on Mac and there's a very clear priority on animations which makes the Mac feel less like a tool more like an experience the other upside to this control stability the fact that Windows is made for everyone from the extreme gamer with their colossal twenty thousand dollar rig to the person who just wants to make their TV smart with a literal stick the size of a finger means that there's just a lot of rooms to encounter unexpected problems not to mention that apple offers a lot more of the experience whereas on Windows you have to rely on third-party developers making their own drivers which tell your computer how the hardware should interact with the software and they get it wrong and then the cherry on top for all this control is that Max are harder to penetrate with viruses they're not invulnerable like I've heard a lot of people say but there is less malware out there for them because I mean if you're a hacker you're going to want to build your hacking tools to Target the operating system that has the most number of users so windows and because Windows is so widespread across countries and versions and devices it naturally has more vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit speed is a bit of a weird one in that on one hand this is where you really feel the benefit of an operating system that lets you do whatever you want like with Windows the fact that you can snap Windows into full screen and half screen is so much quicker than on Mac where Apple's basically just said no and instead you're left there fiddling with your windows manually until they're exactly 50 50.