macOS isn't exactly perfect, but I don't know any other desktop operating system that comes even close to macOS in terms of polish and user experience.

I understand that Microsoft can't just redesign Windows over night, but I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better. Better as in more consistent and more responsive.

As much as I like to consider other operating systems, the reality is that I don't want the hassle and macOS just works.

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

I head up our IT department and I use both; Windows for business apps, MacOS for creative apps. 10 is mindbogglingly inconsistent from the way the UI changes between old and new control panels to the way graphic scaling is horribly broken. The cloud side is getting better and works great for users. We've slowly peeled away 3rd party (Dropbox, Slack, Webex) services.

Everything in Windows 10 feels like it's in beta. There is no polish, that final 1%, to any of it.

This is likely a huge part of it.

I'm primarily macOS but have a LOT of experience with Windows.

I still feel like I'm fighting against Windows to do anything. I just think different people are suited to different workflows & macOS and Windows are very very different to each other.

Having done dev on OSX you are going to be constantly fighting the machine. Apple is worse about walled gardens than MS is. With Apple, you need to do exactly what they want or you will have pain.

My experience is the exact opposite - but we're probably looking for different things.

That walled garden approach is why, in my opinion, the OS feels as good as it does. MacOS feels like a mature operating system that Apple have created with restraint and control - where to me Windows feels like a piece of legacy enterprise software with a shiny UI.

If I wanted out of a walled garden, there's no way it'd be to a non *nix based OS - especially not to one that uses it's start menu to pump ads at me.

A definition courtesy of wikipedia

> A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content.

By this definition Mac OS isn't a walled garden, save for kernel modules, although it could become so in the future thus its cohesive design is to be pedantic a product of itself rather than a closed ecosystem. A product of actually having a mental picture of how the whole thing works and a cohesive set of applications to go with it.

Historically windows has without third party applications been a pretty garbage experience even its image and text editors were so bad that you could randomly generate urls until you hit an alternative and most likely get a better choice. Its not shockingly that a platform that doesn't even know what good look likes doesn't have an ecosystem full of anything that represents this.

> MacOS feels like a mature operating system that Apple have created with restraint and control - where to me Windows feels like a piece of legacy enterprise software with a shiny UI.

Quibble, I don't think this has to do with being a walled garden—or at least, I think you may be using the term in a different way than I generally think of it. Apple could have much better legacy support and an equally well designed OS.

Some older applications might look out of place, but that's preferable to not letting them run at all—you can still choose to stick with newer software and have the same experience. Alternately, Apple could stop overhauling the OS's visual design for no reason every seven years...

Where exactly do you feel like you’re fighting with macOS?

My entire C/C++ development cycle. I haven't touched it in years because of this. If what you want to do is bang out a GUI in Xcode you'll have a pretty good time, if instead you want to interact with your hardware or other software in ways Apple didn't predict then you're probably just not going to be able to do it.

I can accept that this works for most people. They don't want to mess with the UI and want to "solve problems." But for me the two were linked, and I had to ditch OSX. I had similar problems on Windows but Windows lets you work around the OS if you really need to.

Have you looked into Macports (or Homebrew) at all? At the command-line level macOS is really quite like other Unix systems, once you install a bit of standard tooling.

The semi-exception where I occasionally run into problems is TCC. It's usually not a bother on the command line, but starting with Mojave it can occasionally interfere. But, since Mojave came out in late 2018, if you haven't touched macOS in years you didn't run into that. :)

(I really really really hate modern TCC...)

Yes, I used homebrew extensively. It helps but does not solve every problem. There's still things Apple does not want you to do and you will not do them.

Okay, I'm still quite curious what specific development tasks you're able to do in Linux but feel restricted from doing on macOS. If you turn off SIP (takes five minutes), you can rewrite kernel memory if you want to. Which is of course a different thing than ease-of-use, but I'm not sure what would be so different.

I'll echo this, I develop C/C++ on OS X every day. Have no issues with it at all.

I've upgrading a Macbook early 2011 to Mojave using the dosdude1 patches and the uploaded app keeps crashing when the reviewer tries to open it. It worked fine with no issues locally and with the High Sierra XCode 10.1. I can't figure out a solution. I would not recommend a hackintosh for iOS development with regards to provisioning issues.

Tell me about it - I work a support desk for an MSP; all Windows. I can't tell you how many times I've struggled with file permissions or partitions that I know would be very easy to fix in a *sh shell... Imagine being told "access denied" when you're running the command prompt as "administrator"!

> Imagine being told "access denied" when you're running the command prompt as "administrator".

Coincidentally, I run into this on macOS due to System Integrity Protection.

But what I like about SIP is it's easy to turn off and never be bothered by it again...

I find the opposite, every time I find myself using Mac OS I find myself fighting to try and do things that should be easy but are instead convoluted.

Can you give some examples? There are exactly two things that I wish macOS would copy from Windows: full paths visible and interactive in Finder, and the ability to create new files within Finder (how is that not a thing?!)

Finder has been able to show interactive, full paths since Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard; it’s just not enabled by default.

To enable it, make Finder the active application, then click View → Show Path Bar (or use the keyboard shortcut ⌥⌘P).

I'm in the same boat as you. I was primarily Windows for many years, but reluctantly made the switch to MacOS for my daily driver a few years ago and I'm glad I did.

Still have a Windows 10 machine, and although I do have some love for a few Windows-only applications, it just feels like an uphill battle whenever something isn't working.

I agree that UI between the two is largely just a personal preference thing. But the POSIX underpinnings of MacOS is objectively useful for a great many developers. I appreciate what MS is doing with WSL but it’ll always be a poor substitute.

I agree with it being familiarity. I grew up with Macs in school, and have been using them since OS 8 and 9, some experience with System 7 (uncommon for how young I am). There's lot and lots of little details that have carried on throughout all the years that just seem "normal" to me.

I find myself facing inconsistent and surprising behaviors with Windows despite it being my primary OS at work.

Growing up with Mac and Linux makes Windows seem quite strange :)

Familiarity is a huge part of it. Windows is getting better very slowly but consistently. Really the only major pain points where I say MacOS is objectively better are:

- Window flickering on resizing, both have it but MacOS has a lot less of it.

- Being able to customize any shortcut menu item in any app

- Finder, Document proxy icons and open/save dialogs are just leagues ahead of Explorer.

Another anecdote: I was a Linux user and had to use a Mac for apps development, and the transition was smooth. I imagine transitioning from windows to unix system would be pretty jarring because not only the ui is different, but the underlying system is different too.

Counter: I grew up with Windows, using Macs only occasionally in stores and such. Never really liked Windows. Tried Linux for a year when I was 12 or so, ended up coming back to Windows.

When I was 16 I decided to Hackintosh my Dell and absolutely fell in love with Snow Leopard. I've used OS X in some form ever since.

If hackintoshes becomes popular enough to threaten their bottom line the very next version of OS X and those thereafter will include countermeasures designed to make your life difficult. This doesn't seem to be a sustainable love affair with a counterparty that will never share your affection because you represent a potential loss not a customer.

I have bought real Macs since, it just so happened Hackintosh was my introduction, because I didn't have money when I was a teenager. It worked out very well for Apple, actually.

Apparently consistency isn't a part of the majority's vocabulary and they can ignore 5 different styles of typography and dialogs, among many other issues. It's a disaster and officially not a priority for MS. Nothing comes close to macOS indeed.

I understand being thrown off by inconsistencies in typography and it’s exactly the kind of thing that bugs me too... but it’s also an objectively tiny thing to worry about in the broader context of which computing platform you’re going to use.

The bigger argument for macOS is the ergonomics of the hardware. Precious few Windows laptops hold a candle to a MacBook.

The majority is on Windows not because they don’t care about the inconsistencies but because Apple is too expensive and Windows too entrenched at lower price points.

Windows went down a six year long dead end with 8.x trying to be both a desktop and a phone/tablet OS at the same time, while also doing it twice as fast as was actually feasible and without taking the time to think it through, in an attempt to catch up with iOS.

Windows 10 actually doesn't seem too bad, except for the vestigial Metro crap. Power Shell looks interesting. They seem to have worked out what to do with .NET at last. WSL2 seems decent too so they finally seem to be back on a productive track.

Not all of Apple's features are hits either.. for example, when's the last time you used Dashboard or Launchpad?

Completely true, but there are way more hits than misses on macOS. Dashboard no longer ships with the OS. Launchpad is useless to me but I can completely forget it exists & never use it.

I think the issues windows has had over the years come down to the fact that the 'misses' they've had are core parts of the OS that you can't avoid using.

I do genuinely think Windows 10 is the best version of windows though, and with WSL they're definitely headed in the right direction.

I use Launchpad frequently. I rearranged my most common apps to be on one screen. I four finger swipe down on my MBP, and there's my apps. I still use Spotlight search too so I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard.

Cmd-tab allows to switch to an app, but the Dashboard view lets me get to a specific window within an app directly from whatever view I'm currently in. 4 finger swipe up, and clickity click, I'm in the document I'm wanting

> Cmd-tab allows to switch to an app, but the Dashboard view lets me get to a specific window within an app directly from whatever view I'm currently in. 4 finger swipe up, and clickity click, I'm in the document I'm wanting

That sounds like Mission Control.

You may be right. I don't really pay attention to BrandName(TM) of a simple feature. All I know is I never browse the /Applications folder to find an app. I also know that these features are NOT available on Windows. That with the missing spacebar press in Explorer for Quicklook access to a file in Windows makes not using macOS frustrating

The most annoying thing for me on MacOS is no 'New' menu on right-click to create a new file, only a folder. I'm just so used to doing that in Windows that it really annoys me in the Finder. There are ways to hack that in yourself though.

Sure they are: hit win+tab for a Mission Control/Expose-like view, and you can get a Spotlight-style search by just hitting Start and beginning to type.

Dashboard was the name for a widgets system in mac OS.

Apple ran experimental features that failed and we're easy to remove.

Microsoft trashed the core UX twice (Vista and 8)

I'd quit my job if they forced me to use Mac OS over my Linux desktop, so it really depends on what you're looking for and how much you are willing/able to customize your interface.

Absolutely true, and I’d probably feel the same about using Windows. For some reason interacting with the Windows UI causes my hand to cramp up.

I have, and do use Linux semi regulary, but I customize NOTHING. I don’t want to manage my computer. The defaults in macOS is sane enough.

I've never used mac os, but definitely get you on sane defaults. From what I could tell, the few linux desktops that were actually meant to be used with their defaults and not customized immediately were the ones on elementary OS and Gnome, and they've actually gotten pretty nice and consistent in their design, and pretty good about spacing.

I bought a gaming pc a few years back with the intention of using it for gaming only, and continuing to use my aging macbook for literally everything else.

The macbook hard drive died and so I decided to try to use the PC as the daily driver.

There are many reasons for it, but it boils down to the fact that I enjoy using macOS and I don't enjoy using Windows.

If I'm not enjoying using a piece of tech, it's not worth the investment - regardless of price.

Yes, Macs are expensive, but I don't mind paying more money to get an experience I actually enjoy. That to me is value, and why mac / pc benchmarks and price / performance comparisons are irrelevant to me as a person.

> I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better

It's simple: Microsoft doesn't prioritize making it better. They prioritize funneling people into more Microsoft products like One Drive. They are following the general trend of IT: Fuck users.

Having moved from Ubuntu/Unity to Mac, it feels like in my day to day use, the Mac and Unity have similar levels of polish and consistency (neither is perfect) but somehow Unity is way more usable, both out of the box (small things like the number of open App windows indicator) and with minor tweaks (5% less brightness for unfocused windows).

I do use Firefox/Thunderbird on both, so perhaps I’m missing some special apple sauce.

I would say the problem is exactly that they redesign Windows overnight, repeatedly. If they left the UI roughly where Win2k was I think there would be much fewer complaints. Instead you have successive generations of some team trying to make their mark. It's all additive, too, with vestiges of each wave left in place.

By the way there are other operating systems besides macOS and Windows. Seems to be lost in a lot of these discussions.

IMO it's more optimal to buy a separate gaming computer with Windows and use some reasonably priced Macintosh for other tasks.

> reasonably priced Macintosh

What models would you consider "reasonably priced" ?

All of them except Mac Pro. At least their base configurations. As you configure more disk or RAM, sometimes they become unreasonably priced.

If you're blowing that kind of money on gaming I would hope you take it more seriously than "just now and then". Even so, with that kind of expenditure you can easily justify just having a dedicated gaming rig.

Just buy two computers then, one for gaming and one Mac. An eGPU box costs as much as one anyway.