* HiDPI support in all apps, whethere they are aware of it or not.
* Built-in PDF editing and creation from all printable content.
* POSIX scripting and CLI.
* Very clean and consistent configuration system (defaults). Reset an app to factory? Delete one plist file and potentially an app support folder. Got a new Mac? You could even boot it up from the old harddisk. Good luck doing that with windows registry.
* Touchpad support.
* Systemwide fulltext search with indexing and complex search terms. Somehow MS still hasn't caught up with 10.4 Tiger it seems to me.
* Superb discoverability of power user features with in-app help system and hotkeys displayed in the menu.
* A consistent menu system.
* Powerful and system wide screenshots.
* Very good screen calibration out of the box
* Cmd-C / V work everywhere, including the Terminal.
* Very good terminal with good color schemes, tabs, unicode and even emoji support.
On the other hand Windows has:
* The best keyboard-only UI (although ribbons were a big step backwards in that regard - very hard to discover now)
* The best graphics drivers
* The best Office version (although Google Docs has mostly replaced the need for me)
* Windows-P, I really like that menu
* The Windows 10 task manager, pretty neat.
* Pen and Touchscreen support.
Overall MacOS beats it hands down for me when it comes to productivity.
I think most people who haven't used an Apple laptop extensively are not aware that the touchpad actually works, and you do not need to carry an external mouse to use the device comfortably.
The power of gestures is incredible. Managing macOS windows without a touchpad is awful. With a touchpad it is the best.
We have those at my work, and we also have an iMac with a magic trackpad, and several of us have macbook pros.
It's a huge improvement, but it's maybe 75% of the way there. And the points at which it's NOT there are very noticeable and annoying. There's still regularly times where the trackpad just gets totally confused and you can't move the cursor for 1-2 seconds. Mehhhhhh
* Drag-and-drop automation, scripting and workflow tools. I love folder actions.
* Built-in screen recording in QuickTime Player, which also works with attached iOS devices
* Time Machine backups. So easy to use and has saved my bacon over and over
* iMovie and Photos. I don't use the rest of the bundled apps, both those two are essentials for me.
Use the Alt key.
For example, open Word and press Alt to show the keyboard commands. If you want the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press H as shown.
Alternatively, to open the Ribbon and show the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press Alt-H.
So, if you want to center some selected text in Word, press Alt, H, then AC
If you want to insert an image, press Alt, N, P and so on.
The Ribbon makes Office programs much easier to use, so you probably won't want to learn many of these key sequences. However, the ones you already know will almost certainly work.
For the record, I much prefer Windows 10. However, the fact is that Apple doesn't sell any of the hardware I use. It doesn't make a proper tower desktop and it doesn't make a small rotating-screen laptop that doubles as a touch tablet.
Even if I was willing to compromise on hardware, less-functional Apple products would cost 2x to 4x more.
Please note that I still do consider Windows Office the best version nevertheless, but for different reasons.
Of course, there's also personal taste, and you are perfectly entitled to prefer whichever menu system you like. However, the Ribbon won a decade ago, so at this stage, it would probably be more useful to learn how to make better use of it. My Alt tip is just one example.
[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/13/table-of...
[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/12/the-stor...
Windows has WSL which gets better in the new Creator's update.
>* Touchpad support.
I don't use laptops, but I've heard good things about the touchpad in the Surface line, and Dell XPS.
>* Superb discoverability of power user features with in-app help system and hotkeys displayed in the menu.
Windows has had hotkeys in menus as long as I can remember. I know they where there in 3.1. If you press Alt in Explorer you'll get overlays with hotkeys over the buttons and menus.
>* A consistent menu system.
I'm guessing you mean that the ribbon is inconsistent. Most programs use the regular menus, and the ribbon is just a glorified toolbar with tabs. I don't see the big deal.
>* Powerful and system wide screenshots.
Windows 10 has Win+Print screen to save fullscreen screenshots as a file. For more control, there's the snipping tool that's been included for years now.
>* Cmd-C / V work everywhere, including the Terminal.
Ctrl+C/V works in Windows terminal too.
>* Very good terminal with good color schemes, tabs, unicode and even emoji support.
I usually use ConEmu. I just tested, it does support emoji, but I don't see the point. I just tried "mkdir " (edit: seems like HN eats my emoji, but that's supposed to be a directory with an emoji in the name), and it worked as expected. If I use the built in terminal in VSCode it even looks nice, with colors, but it's just two blank rectangles in both cmd and powershell.
The built in terminal supports 24-bit color now though: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/09/22/24-b...
If you mean Command Prompt by "Windows Terminal", this is not the case (if not, I'd really like to know what "Windows Terminal" is - I use Command Prompt for DOS/Windows things and Kitty for *nix related things). At least I have had to turn it on explicitly in the Command Prompt options (quick edit mode), and it's one of the first things I do on a Windows machine after setup.
alt key in windows does nowhere near what the help on macs does. you're looking for a command or forgot where it was in the menu or want some documentation -> open up help, type a query in the unified search and you're presented with docs as well as commands. Highlighting a command shows you the full path in the menu by opening it up and now you can even sed the hotkey. That's what I mean with discoverability. Every provrammer who uses GUIs should have a look at how that works, I consider that mandatory homework.
> screenshots
Obviously windows has screenshots, but you overlooked the word powerful. MacOS has all the features of the snipping tool right there on system wide hotkeys, no need to open up an app first - including delayed shots and area selections. It's not a big deal, but it saves enough time that it's a total no brainer for me to provide screenshots fo whatever question someone has (even when it's just a distraction from my actual task) while on Windows it takes a crucial 10-15 secs longer to do the same per shot and would disrupt my workflow.
> WSL / Terminal
I do acknowledge that things are getting better there and this is a great development - if/when it gets there I'll consider windows among my primary PC choices again.
Btw. it's telling that Windows-only users always overlook my point about the registry in these discussions. I use all three desktops and I can tell you, not having a central registry in an OS is a huge productivity win. With windows I spend days every 2 years getting a fresh state again while on Mac I can just copy over the file system (using automated tools that support thunderbolt cables, copy half a TB in 30min and are again built in) and start working after a coffee break. Yes there's imaging in Windows, but then you have to regularly keep those up to date and in the end you spend even more time if you only manage a handful of PCs.
And I say this as Mac user.
Btw. in what way is NTFS ahead of APFS?
The MFT is very helpful in that it is on the disk itself, as opposed to Apple's solution of getting a separate utility to index the disk (Spotlight) and generating a giant database file on the filesystem in your hidden Spotlight-V100 directory. Spotlight is on the filesystem, not IN the filesystem.
The NTFS page on Wikipedia lists all of the wonderful features of NTFS. Also Windows Internals 6 details some in wonderous detail.
In any case, APFS is far better than HFS+ (which has to flip all metadata's endianness as it is stored in big-endian format). It also has single-threaded access to this metadata, from what I recall. John Siracusa's review 6 years ago of OSX 10.7 Lion detailed the poor state of HFS+: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/12/
Makes for sad reading.
To be fair, the built in Terminal.app sucks, you have to get iTerm2, which is a 3rd-party app, but at least it's not another $40 replacement app that shouldn't suck by default, (the same cannot be said for Finder and its replacements).
That said, almost identical behaviour can be had in fullscreen with two Terminal windows sharing a full screen desktop space.
I also enjoy having my terminal be a slightly-transparent black rectangular slate, with no title bars, corner curving, etc., but that's purely preference and has no impact on functionality.
> Specifically? People typically point to the telemetry and forced updates, but I've managed to disable both, using what were admittedly much-too-difficult procedures or third-party software. It's annoying, but not that annoying.
Before I switched to macOS about 8 years ago I was used to the mindset of "oh this doesn't work the way I want but I'm smart enough to figure out how to fix it" and I took great pride in being able to fix my PC no matter what happened. I'd dig into the registry, I'd futz with inf files, and drivers. I didn't mind it too much, it wasn't "that annoying". And then I switched to a MBP my freshman year of college mainly because it meant I could use Windows/Linux/macOS and I loved how solid they felt and had people around me rave about the hardware and longevity of the machines themselves. I played with macOS and found that after getting used to it it was a joy to work with. It took a little longer for me to realize that I wasn't spending all my time making sure my computer kept working, it just worked on it's own. The OS that I had belittled and mocked for years for being "a toy" or "dumbed down" actually was insanely powerful under the hood, extremely intuitive, and looked beautiful. That last point may sound stupid, I know I used to think it was, but it's a big deal. You are going to be staring at this for 8 hours+ a day. Trust me it is way more enjoyable to look at something pretty than something not. When it comes down to it for me macOS is built on a rock solid core and makes switching between it and the linux servers I work on a breeze with beautiful apps and a beautiful UI all of which JustWorks (tm). For that I am more than willing to pay the MacTax (tm).
Of course, under the hood they've rewritten everything like DNS and actually using the hosts file etc. but from a usability perspective you are right that you end up fighting with the OS less (so I have found).
I dunno, I've done all kinds of stuff to my windows 10 machine to keep Candy Crush Soda from reinstalling itself. Yet every few weeks/months that King garbage ends up on my start menu.
I use windows 10 because I'm a .NET developer and a gamer. If I could use OSX on my desktop instead, and have access to the same steam games - I can't think of a reason I would stay.
> Less cluttering--I can uninstall apps on windows
On OSX you typically don't need to 'uninstall' just drag to the trash. Yeah, some apps leave some garbage behind - but the same happens on windows when you 'uninstall'
> Native package manager-- I guess Windows has Chocolatey and I use npm for dev work.
I think the biggest detriment on this point for windows is that the command line interface on windows is not friendly. I recently worked on a project where half the team didn't know powershell, and the other half really loved powershell. We also used some stuff from the node ecosystem. We had scripts that would only run in cmd.exe, powershell scripts, and scripts that only worked in bash. In the end http://cmder.net/ saved my butt, since I could have all three shells open.
Another anecdote, I right clicked and clicked "unpin from start" and never saw it again.
It bothers me. It doesn't bother you. That's fine.
Microsoft lost points with me, doesn't mean it has to affect you in any way.
Besides, I thought only the Anniversary Update had CC? How would it get reinstalled?
Most of these things take up a trivial amount of disk space -- some of them are just placeholders -- so they're not worth the time taken to worry about them.
You never explicitly asked for it to be added there, did you?
What about the pernicious inclusion of Edie Brickell's Good Times in Windows 95? ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc
Candy Crush Saga was actually one of the benefits of Windows 10 that Microsoft promoted, for two reasons: (1) Candy Crush was enormously popular, and (2) it provides practice in touch operations, just as Solitaire got people used to using a mouse.
The Good Times video in Windows 95 also sold Edie a lot of CDs, but it would be equally stupid to criticize that. In both cases, Microsoft is providing something entertaining that demonstrates some benefit of the operating system.
If you don't see this as part of a bigger trend I don't think I can help you do so.
"Solitaire. Hearts. Minesweeper. These are games that have been played millions of times over the years in Windows. And they are coming back in Windows 10. If you’re a Windows Insider, you can check out a preview of the new Microsoft Solitaire Collection that’s included in the latest build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 10074). In addition to these games, we’re also working with partners to bring some of their great games to Windows 10 too. And we’re excited to be able to announce today that King will bring their game, Candy Crush Saga, to Windows 10. Candy Crush Saga will be automatically installed for customers that upgrade to or download Windows 10 during the launch! Over time, other popular and awesome King game titles will be available for Windows 10. Ever since Candy Crush Saga arrived for Windows Phone, I’ve spent countless hours of fun matching candies. I’m really looking to playing Candy Crush Saga and King’s other game titles on Windows 10."
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/05/14/candy...
For you, maybe. For me, I have zero intention of going through the hassle when I can just use Linux instead. Any hassles here are easily learned and generally don't _require_ the use of third party stuff doing black magic under the hood.
Chocolatey is nowhere near as good as e.g. pacman.
You mentioned disabling telemetry, but the fact that the OS you paid for spies on you and shows ads is a big turn off.
Your concerns sound like they come from many years ago and that maybe you haven't taken a look lately.
Need to SSH/SFTP? Download. Need to edit code? Download. Python? Download. Perl? Download. A reasonable terminal? Download.
Yes, I might have to go to the Mac App Store and get command line tools for C, C++, Objective-C, etc. It is unfortunate that XQuartz is no longer installed by default, granted. (PowerShell is very nice to work with though, I give MS full credit for that.)
I could live with having to download python, perl, etc., but someone please explain why having an absolutely fundamental ability to edit text and securely connect to work and transfer data to/from remote machines is something that any OS should be shipping without?
While that is true, it's a bit of a moot point imo. I have yet to see an OS which had everything I needed for any actual work installed out of the box. As such, the way to deal with this is have a script download/install everything for you (and eventually copy or link all configuration files). Using Powershell getting any of the examples you mention is basically a one-liner just like for other package management tools, something like `openssh, miniconda, strawberryperl, conemu | Install-Package`. Or you can go more of a DSC way with Powershell Dsc.
And starting with Windows 10 a metro app called 'Code Writer' seems to be installed by default for coding. (At least it's there in my installation.) I didn't try it though.
It still befuddles me why some of this basic functionality cannot be a standard part of Windows. Not every Mac user uses emacs, or even knows how to open the Terminal app, but the fact that basic tools are supported means that there is just a baseline level of infrastructure to work with.
The ability to edit text _does_ ship on windows - notepad. (not that I'd recommend it but it does exist). Also, OSX doesn't ship with anything better.
FTP isn't a fundamental requirement for everyone, I don't have an FTP client installed on my machine, and don't have any intention of installing one.
You are correct, I would never suggest anyone have an FTP client; I have that service turned off on every machine I administer. SSH / SFTP are fundamental tools however.
They are provided out of the box (and newer versions than OSX ships with) by WSL. As is vim, emacs, apt, etc.
Done. Pro-tip. Pin PowerShell to your taskbar and drag all the way left. Now you can open it with win+1.
Edit: now with no mouse required!
Edit: for reference, home also doesn't come with bitlocker (!?), Domain join, Group Policy, client hyper-v, and others. Don't buy home to do work.
> I would never suggest anyone have an FTP client; I have that service turned off on every machine I administer. SSH / SFTP are fundamental tools however.
Pedantry at its finest.
I have neither ssh nor sftp on my workstation and I have no need for either.
Windows also ships with WordPad, which is a simple word processor.
I'm pretty sure you didn't try PowerShell. It is at least as good as bash, if not better.
> you need to use the mouse too much
I find this more problematic on macOS. I was forced to use a mouse much more on macOS. It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard. On Windows nearly every item has a shortcut, sometimes even better than GNOME (but worse than KDE, IMO).
Who needs ls when you have Get-ChildItem?
Who needs grep -r 'pattern' when you have Select-String -Path c:\ -Pattern pattern?
Now that I think about it, Powershell has a conceptual similarity to Applescript. A proprietary, verbose, and hard-to-discover English-like syntax belying a great amount of power over the target platform.
cmd+first letter of the dialog option.
I actually find OS X far superior with shortcuts than Windows: More discoverable, actually configurable and more consistent.
One of the only things I miss now I've switched to Win.
In Windows the shortcuts have always seemed less logical to me, though the newer Windows key ones are an improvement.
After some googling just now, it seems like there's now an Invoke-WebRequest command, but that too looks like a hell of a lot of typing compared to Linux shells.
There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off, as that's only available through the GUI.
I blame the documentation. Not the official documentation (they're not excellent, but OK), but various outdated resources residing in many blogs and sites, including Stack Overflow. I mean, what's wrong with
iwr REMOTE_URL -o LOCAL_FILENAME
> There's also the fact that lots of stuff in windows wasn't designed to be accessible through the cli. You can't, for example, make a powershell script to toggle an audio output device on and off
This is just one example. On the other hand, I found nearly every thing I had done using GUI could be replaced by a few lines of PowerShell code. Actually automating my day-to-day GUI operations was my way to learn PowerShell, and mostly it worked great. Microsoft is adding tons of commands each release to expose more system functionalities. There are exceptions of course, but "lots of stuff" is a bit exaggerated.
Toggles on highlighting for all UI elements so you can Tab / Shift-Tab through them. It's usually the first thing I do when I touch a new Mac.
Even if you don't, learning it is a fun experience. It's like learning Haskell just to feel another way to program, even though you're not using it in practice.
The biggest annoyance was configuring the system to not get in my way: Never ever put something in the front of the app I'm working in, forcing a change of context. Don't use up all of the bandwidth when downloading updates in the background, etc. This was much less of a hassle the last time I used OSX. Apple might give you less options for configuration, but at least out of the box it is/was much less disruptive.
Overall I like the look and feel of windows 10, and some of the problems were caused by third party software. I do think a lot of the defaults actually make sense for the mass market, but they should be much more transparent and easier to change. For example, I expected disabling Cortana during installation would, well, actually disable it.
Just the fact that I can download some new software and still see a 2001 era file dialog or such (because it was made with an older, but still supported ancient UI lib), is enough to put me off windows for life...
Specifically? People typically point to the telemetry and forced updates, but I've managed to disable both, using what were admittedly much-too-difficult procedures or third-party software. It's annoying, but not that annoying.
I really like Finder and Spotlight, but not enough to be tied, via licensing, to any specific hardware.
Less cluttering--I can uninstall apps on windows
Native package manager-- I guess Windows has Chocolatey and I use npm for dev work.