I love my Mac (as I said in my reply to OP), but I agree that Mac OS takes some getting used to. Luckily I had some Linux experience before switching so I felt right at home at the terminal. But some things still feel odd to me, even after several years.

- The unified menu bar makes sense and saves space, but it's still somewhat disconcerting to someone who is used to their menus having some spatial context with what they are controlling.

- I've always hated the "three gumballs". I much prefer Windows' minimize, maximize, and quit windows controls. Again, the "maximum useful size" feature makes sense, but it's almost never what I want. I really miss Aero snap. There are some programs that will help you out for this stuff. I'm pretty partial to Moom myself. UPDATE: Moom JUST got updated with a "snap to corners" feature. I like it!

- The Finder is still pretty brain-dead. Windows explorer is much better for a power-user.

- And then there's XCode. Oh how I miss Visual Studio. Yes, XCode is getting nicer by the year, but I also do Windows development on my Parallels VM so I'm constantly reminded of how much nicer it is to code C# in Visual Studio than Objective-C in XCode (and I don't even mind Objective-C as a language).

power-users don't use the finder. They use something like quicksilver or alfred.

I'm thinking regular users don't use the finder either. My wife uses spotlight to find her stuff and apps.

I consider myself a power user and I find nothing wrong with the finder. The fact that I can drag/drop just about any and everything is a huge plus.

It always shocks me tha Finder doesn't have cmd-X cut... cutting is by far the most frequent operation I do in other non-dual-pane file managers. But what do you like better about windows explorer? Finder's "view as columns" makes it feel a little bit more powerful to me.

it doesn't have Cut, but it now (as of Lion, I think), Move Here as an alternative to Paste, use it with Cmd-Opt-V.

Thank you!

I've been using Forklift for a while now instead of Finder. Much less braindead, reminds me of Directory Opus on the Amiga. Probably need to spend more time customising it so it's as good as Midnight Commander but it's getting there.

  > The Finder is still pretty brain-dead. Windows explorer
  > is much better for a power-user

I thought that power-users used PathFinder? (Though I don't know if that's even still in active development. Last time I seriously used OSX was 10.3 ~ 10.4).

Its funny I had the same issue but can say after 5 years on a Mac it goes away. That and I sometimes have to work on a Windows 7 machine for certain SDK's and now I'm lost over there. Mostly I miss the large multi-touch track pad (I have to use a mouse on the windows laptop) and Expose, which I seem to use a lot.

The new Windows 8 Metro UI will create an ever bigger gap between the two it seems.

All that being said, w/r/t an OS it seems like the one you're most comfortable on is the one you should use. Its really hard to say any one that is objectively better at this point.

Have you considered using Parallels or VMware Fusion? Both are good options. I use Parallels daily for all my Windows development.

It took some time to relearn my windows modifier keys (CMD = Windows Key; ALT is where the Windows key normally is), but after that expense I run Mac and Windows app in the same session, and more importantly, without switching hardware.

As someone using the 2011 Macbook (bought about a month ago) I have to say some things really annoy me in OSX, some things less so. I'm slowly getting used to the Mac way of doing things, but still occasionally cmd-L to lock my screen only to find I have to go to a hot corner instead.

You can use Ctrl + Shift + Eject to lock your screen, also if you open up Keychain Access, then in options (Apple + ,) select "Show keychain status in menu bar", now you have a lock that shows up next to the rest of the menu bar icons, clicking on it provides an option named "Lock screen".

It's annoying that I have to do some sort of three finger claw salute. This is just me being lazy but is there any way to reconfigure the shortcut?

I don't know. I've never had an issue with running three fingers up one side of my keyboard!

Try Ctrl+Shift+Eject as a shortcut key to lock your screen without needing extra software.

Try Lock Me Now [1], which lets you lock your screen from the menu bar or configure a keyboard shortcut.

[1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lock-me-now/id464265594?mt=12

Why a separate app when Keychain Access already supports this out of the box?

I've been using a Mac for a while but have yet to find a way to remap Command-Q to something else. I've accidentally exited more than my share of apps instead of closing a window. IMO those are just too close together. I would rather have a Cmd-Shift-Q or something similar.

On Win7 now, have been on the Mac and would get back if I had the means. One thing I will never get used to on Macs: no Ctrl-C.

What do you mean, "No ctrl-C?" As in no keyboard shortcut to copy? That's "command-c", just like pasting is "command-v" and cutting is "command-x". And if you mean ctrl-c, to kill tasks on the command line, that works just fine. And delightfully doesn't create confusion when you wanted to copy something out of the terminal instead of killing the program that was running.

Sorry I mean't no "Ctrl-X" (is there Cut on OSX?)

[edit: I've only used Snow Leopard]

This has been added in 10.7 (albeit by a slightly different means):

"Command-C" then "Command-Option-V" will remove the originating file.

I actually like it better; you get to decide how to treat the files when the operation is actually executed, not when you initiate it. This negates the need to go back and remove the files when you realize you meant to Ctrl-X instead of Ctrl-C.

A source: http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/29/cut-and-paste-mac-os-x-lion/

(And to the other replies: he means in Finder. Cutting files hasn't been possible prior to 10.7)

Yes, "Command-X" handles that case. Pretty much every editing shortcut from Windows converts over by using command in place of ctrl. Though I couldn't state that that's always been true, it has been as long as I have used Macs (late '06).

Yes, there is a cut/copy/paste (CMD+X, CMD+C, CMD+V).

There was a time (don't recall which iterations) in which the MAC OS finder didn't support those three for _files_ - but I think they've always worked for images/text/etc...