Command line zip/unzip is available in PowerShell:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...

Markdown rendering is also available:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...

I agree with a bunch of your criticism, but modern PowerShell is pretty decent and has a lot of tools.

Markdown should have a UI viewer

IIRC You can use the Explorer Preview pane to render basic markdown

Adding to this If you're willing to go third party

Everything can give you instant search, and with a PowerToys plugin you can integrate it into PowerToys Run, which gives you an Alfred Style search bar

WizTree works for visual inspection of Storage

Screenshots apps, Markdown Viewers, are common enough, won't comment further on those

On the printer disconnections: I've had some weird experiences, recently, a technician showed to me that, using the default windows update driver, my work printer regularly disconnected, but using the manufacturers driver, the setup has so far worked without a problem

I don't really agree with half the list as those are just apps you can get but...

> Does a crappy job of reopening windows on reboot. Miserable copy of macOS.

Please! Can windows figure this out and can Macs figure out how to restore window to monitor configuration as well as Windows.

But besides those things, it's great!

Seriously though I think Microsoft has mostly given up on the B2C market. They have good capture of B2B with hardware and software. Why make great products when you can make mediocre products that people have no choice but to use?

And that's just the user experience! For developers:

- multiple heap allocators

- have to install runtimes, even for C

- all useful permissions are off by default

- entire GUI is permeated by "Not Invented Here" mistakes

- msi is opaque and crusty

My main gripe for work laptop is that Windows 11 is dog slow. I think they have rewritten Explorer but not for the better. Word is also driving me nuts. The formatting does a ton of weird stuff that's totally unpredictable. Outlook has this weird flat UI where it's hard to tell what is a button and what isn't. Search has been broken for a long time.

Both Windows 11 and modern macOS are slow as shit now. The other day I clicked the Notifications settings in the outhouse they call a Settings app on my Mac and it took a solid 3 seconds to render the UI.

And behind me, was a G4 Cube that could open the System Preferences app off of a spinning hard drive in less time.

What happened to us?

> No command-line zip / unzip

Yes it does. It's just called Compress-Archive/Expand-Archive.

So much easier to use tar -z

I laugh when I see responses like this. tar is so discoverable and easy, you can install WSLv2 if you want to use it.

I laughed at your response too, because tar is part of Windows 11. See C:\Windows\System32\tar.exe

Wooosh.

> I laughed at your response too, because tar is part of Windows 11. See C:\Windows\System32\tar.exe

We don't usually browse System32 to see what programs Microsoft decided it should be part of the OS. Especially when Microsoft is not sure which Paint is the best.

> - Fan spinning on my laptop with no easy way to figure out what process is consuming CPU

Huh? Ctrl+Shift+Escape will bring up task manager. Is that not enough?

That's not enough. Sometimes it is system tasks that don't show up in the task manager.

I agree with these. Here are some third party tools that can help with some of the gripes though:

> - No instant search (macOS has had it for how many years now?) Everything search somehow does instant search across the entire file system. It is the first thing I install when I get a new computer, cannot stress enough how much time this has saved me: https://www.voidtools.com/

> - No tool to graphically show where my diskspace went; allowing me to find and delete large files

This one takes a while to scan but produces an excellent visualization: http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ (Scanner)

I use WizTree to see what's taking space. On NTFS volumes it uses the same method as Everything does to quickly read all the file info straight from the filesystem.

> Runs Windows update and reboots without my permission

This might be an unpopular opinion but I'm actually glad they do this by default now (you can turn it off). My understanding is that MS was continually getting blamed for users getting viruses because they would never update their system, so in the best interest of the users they decided to force it.

I know a lot of people will still disagree with me, but I think if you were in their situation and you were getting tired of not only end-users but also world governments blaming you for things your users did (or did not do)... you'd probably want to control that a little more too, for both your sakes.

In the end it will hurt MS's reputation for being a broken mess even if it's 100% the users' fault for not updating, so I absolutely get it. And yes I know there's plenty of other things you can blame them for, I'm not saying this is their only issue.

You can still give users a 24-hour warning at a minimum, and only force a reboot for really critical issues.

It does... "Your PC will restart in 2 days to finish installing important updates". I believe it has been doing it since Windows 8. Of course you can always restart manually any time before then to apply the updates immediately. I think it's a good compromise.

I don't get that warning on my Windows 11 laptop. Instead it updates and reboots while the laptop lid is closed.

> - No screenshot tool that allows you to type text (in addition to circling and highlighting and arrows)

Snipping tool works for all of this

It doesn't let you type text on the image. That's so important! The main thing I want to do when I take a screenshot is to circle something, or draw an arrow, then type some text about the item I am pointing to.