It’s no secret that I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy but I like to think I give credit where it’s due to other tech manufacturers. I have a Retina MacBook Pro and recently I’ve been getting into gaming a bit more. Instead of buying a new PS4 or Xbox One, which quite frankly, already have outdated hardware, I thought I’d attempt to use my high-end Mac laptop to play some of the latest games.

As a Mac user, I’m pretty used to having an extremely narrow choice of games to choose from. It has gotten better in recent years, but Windows based systems get priority when it comes to desktop game development.

So I had to do something I never thought I’d do. I installed Windows 8 on my Mac. OS X makes it easy to install Windows on a separate partition, although it’s not always as easy as it should be.

I ordered Windows 8 from Amazon which cost about £80 – another culture shock as I’m used to having my OS given to me for free. My previous experience of Windows 8 comes from two things:

1) Hearing everybody moan about it.
2) Setting up a new laptop for my mother.

Let’s be honest, neither of these two things are conducive to a positive technological experience. So installing Windows 8 was done rather begrudgingly at the time. However, having been using it on and off for the last week, I can honestly say it isn’t that back.

The tiled view is actually quite a good idea. It’s far more visually pleasing than the bog standard desktop and is at times quite useful. It’s not a million miles away from LaunchPad on OSX.

True, there are a view bizarre design choices such as having to go through several menus to change some basic computer settings. Apple have this one right. Just stick a bloody big ‘settings’ icon on the home screen.

It’s been said before that Macs run Windows better than most PCs do and that’s pretty accurate. It does look great on a retina screen too. Perhaps the biggest problem Windows has is not the software, but the hardware it’s frequently forced to run on. I doubt we’ll ever see Microsoft produce their own range of laptops and desktops, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Take a look at the Android OS for mobiles. Android runs great on Google’s own Nexus phones but seems to suck on nearly every other phone.

Apple take the time to ensure that their hardware and software work as one. This is perhaps an area Microsoft could learn from. If they do, they could be great once more.