Dear Windows,
It should come as no surprise to you that I'm leaving you.  Yes, there really is another, someone else that was willing to take up all the pieces that you broke or left untouched and do the absolute best to fix, even if the fixes were slightly awkward.  You were jealous about not being as popular as iOS and Android, while OSX was not, because OSX was wise to the fact that we were talking about completely different things.  You sought more than my company, while OSX waited patiently for me to see things logically.  You made moves against me; I tried to bring you back to your glory, to your beauty, to the things about you that made us an item in the beginning, the qualities about you that I loved, cherished and admired.
But you didn't listen.  You weren't satisfied with me.  You wanted smartphone users who didn't want anything to do with you.  You didn't listen to me when I told you the way you were heading would disturb me immensely and be at the very least a slap in my face.  You punished me for wanting to live peacefully and blissfully with the things I had already come to expect from you.  I didn't change; you did.  It's not me; it's you.
And not only did you change, which we all know can sometimes be good and productive, but you changed for all the wrong reasons, making yourself more of a nuisance than you had to be.  You became seemingly faster on the surface, while in fact hiding from me what you were really doing.  You became seemingly more intuitive at a price.  It all came to head, however, when your jealousy dominated every ounce of you and you began making demands.  I can't keep going on like this.  I'll explain further, hoping all the while you'll listen, but fully aware that what we had has been long gone for quite some time and, no matter how hard I try, I can't recapture it with you as it once was without you putting in the effort.
You remember 98?  I loved you back then.  You were simplistic in nature, but you housed so much potential underneath, and all I had to do was talk to you a bit.  You would show me endless secrets about yourself, both scaring and exciting my young mind.  You told me to relax, that it would be alright, that I didn't know enough about you to break you, but even if I had, more than likely you could easily be fixed with a bit of patience.  My screen reader, JAWS, the shark with his little shark logo, you remember him?  He kind of liked you; the two of you got along well enough and didn't really seem to argue much back then.  You tried to introduce me to your friend, Narrator.  I told you I didn't care much for him but hoped you would fix things up between us.  I left you alone after that regarding this particular issue because, well, you were so cool!
You released more along the way, but what you really gave me after that which I truly enjoyed was the Xp experience.  Ah!  Bliss!  Things didn't quite go as planned; I remember hardware had to catch up to deal with you properly, because you ran rather fast, rather hard, rather solidly, no matter what I threw at you.  For nearly 7 years we lived on in this bliss together, from o3 to o9 or there abouts, and I think it really could have gone on this way forever.  You never failed me, even if the hardware you ran on did.  System 32 delighted me!  So what if I didn't know what every exe in there did; you didn't care. You patiently waited while I tested them one by one.  You gave me MSn Explorer; what a concept!  I had everything I wanted all in one window!  As if that weren't enough, you and JAWS worked seamlessly together.  I introduced you to NVDA in o8, and you worked even faster!  NVDA wasn't quite ready for me at the time, though, and I guess the truth is that I wasn't ready for NVDA, either.
But strange things began happening while I was still enjoying what you soon began calling mediocrity.  You wanted me to change with you.  You wanted me to see the vision that was Vista, and I, being the fool that I was, kind of bought into it.  I told people that you were still running properly if they got the right hardware, but I should have seen the warning signs then.  You were becoming slow and cumbersome, full of undesirable material that left you open to the possibility of bluescreening on me more often than not.  As if that weren't bad enough, you dropped another bombshell on me called RE, an environment of sorts under which I could recover pretty much anything that broke on you.  The problem was, that because of the way you do things, neither JAWS nor NVDA could help me deal with you in this state.  Batteries would die, and you would harp at me.  Power would go out, and you would harp at me.  You would crash unexpectedly during an update, and you would harp at me, always throwing me back to RE, keeping me from doing things with you the way we once did, having me bring other people into our relationship.
And then there was 7.  I breathed deeply and sighed heavily, but I plowed onward with what we had, hoping for a better future.  You didn't take up as much of my resources, but     by this point I couldn't help noticing that you were taking up more than OSX required at bare minimum to function twice as well as you.  I still made excuses for you though: you were consumer friendly, you and I had been tight for so long, you offered more choice, you were good to game with, the list went on.  But I felt so alone when I was with you, so out of touch with the rest of the world who had something else that I didn't have, because for all the freedom you gave me, you didn't give me flexibility, and you weren't giving me the care I desperately required and desired from you anymore.
And so it went, 8, 9, 10, except there was no 9, and you confused me there, but I guess you had your reasons.  by this time you decided that XP experience I had once loved so much was supposedly not worth it.  You stopped supporting it.  You introduced this metro thing; I guess it was your way of telling me you were still cool?  It wasn't cool.  it was a bridge between smartphone and tablet users and myself, your faithful partner, the one who appreciated you immensely as you were and didn't ask you for much in the way of change.  You began denying me access to files and telling me you knew what was best.  You said I didn't have the proper permissions to edit this and that thing here and there.  You forced me to become creative just to deal with you and approach you on things I wanted done, so I stepped back to being 7ish for a time; four years of my time, in fact.
But the end I feared is at hand.  I can't advocate for you anymore.  I must tell you that this is hard For me.  I denied the fact that when you were sluggish you crashed my screen readers, no matter what application I happened to be using, but usually when browsing the net.  I skirted around the fact that your wide hardware acceptance and the way your dealers tended to load you up with bloatware made you unreliable and quirky at best, completely and utterly useless at worst.  The idea that I would have to buy yet another PC, uninstall you just to make sure I had gotten rid of everything, reinstall you and hope there was no hiccup in the process just didn't appeal to me anymore.  it's taxing on a totally blind user, you know?
So, I'd like us to be friends.  OSX is patiently waiting for me, teaching me things like you once kind of did, except on a higher level.  I sit by my Mac Mini, still waiting patiently for me to hit that power button I have yet to even so much as find, and I'm thinking of you, missing you ever so much, appreciating you for what you once were while I prepare on my wife's Macbook Air.  I'm a dad now, and while I wish you could come with me and my family on this journey, I realize now that you just, can't.  You want me to constantly appease you, to monitor you for threats, to consistently do things your way or the highway, AND I DON'T HAVE THE TIME!  You push 10 on me repeatedly, making me feel guilty with a flashing icon on my system tray because I haven't given in this time.  if I turn my back just long enough, you turn that icon into a window I have to alt f4 out of or at least tab away from to get NVDA working properly again.  You never did this before.  I don't know what I did wrong in your eyes, but I promise I won't be hurting you anymore, anymore than I'll be trying to help you, for that matter.
I do see one small glimmer of hope; you have at least listened to my ever so slight complaints concerning narrator and accessibility.  I think though, that you've done too little, too late.  I can't wait any longer.  I know OSX isn't everything, and I know that's what all of your fans will tell me, as if I'm some idiotic loser who doesn't realize just how much I've lost over the years, but I do realize it, and it hurts me ever so much, and because it hurts me ever so much, I promise you I'll never treat any of your users as some of the more elitist Apple fanboys have treated me.  I'll never be one of them.  What it comes down to however, is this; I'll keep hoping you'll eventually listen to my concerns... Who knows, perhaps you can convince Nadella that it would be ideal for you to form a closer relationship with Apple that'll benefit us all somehow.  Until something better comes of you, however, I'll keep on waiting and hoping.
I am, yours sincerely
A Once Faithful Windows User