I Gave In. I'm in the Apple Ecosystem After Windows Defender Failed.

After a very rough week with Microsoft Windows 11, and especially disappointed with Windows Defender, I jumped ship.

I grew up using Microsoft Windows and eventually taught myself to use Linux in my 30's. Mind you, this is way before the boom of the Apple or Android ecosystem, smartphones and wifi, and when apps (then called programs) were installed and a part of your offline experience until you shared something using dial up internet.

Today, you simply can't even sneeze without the rest of the world knowing it. Being that today's computing experience represents the complete opposite of what a connected online experience used to be, we all need to disable wifi instead of dialing up over a 56k modem.

Since we are now always connected to online activity, no matter what device we are using, we have become dependent on subscriptions and preinstalled native services to keep our personal and business information safe. In my case, and being that I am extremely careful with what I open, I depended on Microsoft Defender in Windows 11 to be my safeguard in case I click something by accident - and it happens to all of us at one point or another no matter how cautious we are.

On Monday, I noticed that my laptop was running a bit slow and really didn't think anything of it. I thought that because I had my trusty Microsoft Defender always protecting me, it must be an app or program updating in the background.

But then it got worse.

I opened my system monitor and sure enough, my processor was running at almost full capacity and random access memory was being sucked up by what? I checked all of my activity. I was barely doing anything on my laptop. I ran Windows Defender Antivirus (Full Scan). Everything came back clean. No issues found. So I decided to shut my laptop down completely as I grabbed another cup of coffee.

I came back and booted up my laptop. The Windows start button could be clicked but nothing happened. I couldn't shut down my machine. I couldn't open any apps.

This is when I knew something was really wrong. So I decided to run another Microsoft Defender full scan, but in offline mode. The difference between the offline mode and a regular full scan is Windows 11 will disable wifi and any other internet access as it scans your system before Windows even boots (the computer will restart and boot into what looks like the Windows .cmd or command mode). When it's done scanning, Windows will reboot on its own and share with you the results from the offline scan.

To my surprise, there was a Trojan installed on my system almost a month to the day that I started having profound issues with my laptop. It was called Trojan:Win32/Yomal!rfn and the only thing that I had downloaded within this time frame was my Microsoft Office Copilot (or whatever Microsoft Office is called these days) subscription which included the offline apps from the Microsoft Store - I normally use Google Workspace (business paid subscription) and was thinking about moving to Microsoft Office (business subscription) when my contract expired with Google, but I wanted to indulge myself in my Personal Family plan of Microsoft Office before doing so.

I was shocked and felt that Microsoft in every way, shape, and form had allowed my personal and business security to become violated. Literally.

I performed a new install of Windows 11 from the Microsoft Cloud server and erased everything on my laptop. I couldn't afford to keep anything, nor could I risk the Trojan being attached to one of my files either. I got to the point where I even created a new Microsoft ID when I reinstalled Windows 11.

Then I ran Windows Defender in offline mode after the installation. My laptop did its thing and restarted......but there was no notification or pop up about the scan that Microsoft Defender just completed. As a person who has dealt with ID theft and compromised data records a few times, due to companies not securing your personal information as they say they are and no fault of my own, I became very paranoid and simply shut down my laptop and walked away.

I have been holding onto a gift card from Best Buy for this very reason. In case something physically or digitally happened to my laptop, I could use this gift card and my Best Buy rewards towards a new purchase. After researching multiple Microsoft Windows 11 laptops online, and almost purchasing a new Surface Laptop a couple months ago, I decided that I did not like the way Microsoft was headed as a company, as an operating system, and as castrophic security failure in my eyes from my experience.

I bought a Mac Mini M4.

I am installing Linux on my gaming PC and my infected laptop and deleting Microsoft Windows 11, reformatting and deleting every partition of the SSD on both machines. You may ask, "Why didn't you just install Linux and skip buying the Mac mini?". Let me explain.

• Linux isn't compatible with software that I have been using on Windows 11, but it is compatible with MacOS.

• I do not want to learn new open source Linux programs, which can take hours if not, days or weeks.

• MacOS and Linux are very similar. They share a common Unix kernel birth, but have different kernel sources which they operate from (open source versus closed environment).

• Since I use Google Workspace, and it is universally available, I won't have compatibility issues no matter what I am using to access the service.

• I currently use an iPhone

• I would trust Apple and Google over Microsoft at this point.

• Microsoft is focusing on AI (Qualcomm X processors) as its future, and is baked into the OS and the hardware. I know that I can disable it, but is it truly disabled?

So, as I have discredited Apple in the past, apparently that's all changed. I will no longer put my trust into Microsoft. Between my business and personal information, and the lack of performance and trust of Windows Defender, I simply cannot argue.