https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973925
A few suggestions:
* Use QuickTime and avoid VLC if possible. QuickTime on mac is awesome. VLC is often worse and seldom better.
* Command+Shift+4 is the only screenshot shortcut you need (toss in ctrl if you want it clipboarded, not in a file). Waaay faster than printscr+paint+paste+crop.
* OSX respects a subset of emacs keyboard movement and editing shortcuts. Ctrl+ae replace home/end. I usually remap capslock to ctrl to make them ergonomic. I like them better (no need to move hands), any way to get them on windows?
* On OSX, the universal installer app lets you list the files installed and view a textual install log. Install scripts are bash scripts. Console.app helps with both system problems and application problems (that's where stdout goes by default). Go there to start your debug journey. Haven't found the equivalent in windows.
* You can debug hangs with a time profile from Activity Monitor (yep, time profile built into the gui) or spindump. Any way to do this on Windows?
* I'm in the opposite situation wrt HFS+ and NTFS but I've had great luck with the commercial solution "Paragon" ($20, worth it). WTF is up with the whole thing where NTFS wants to spend 8 hours checking the disk every time the computer crashes? Apple figured this shit out 16 years ago.
* Command-Shift-T puts TextEdit.app in plain text mode. Hey, it's better than Notepad. What's the killer text editor that's windows only?
How 'bout you list some of those little nitpicky features you like so much from Windows. I've already written my list of things I miss from the mac side (see link, Small Gripes and More Minor Gripes sections). While I'm stuck here I might as well enjoy what it has to offer. Ditto for you, of course.
* Explorer is better than Finder.
* Right click that works
* Start menu + Win7 taskbar is better than OSX Dock/Launchpad (can't comment on Win8 metro but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it)
* Maximize
* clicking the clock gives you a calendar
I'm not exactly pro-windows but I believe the GP's point is that OSX is not flawless (neither is windows by far) but there's a lot of dumb things in OSX that should've been fixed but weren't because MS did it therefore it is not elegant by definition.
I've been able to make OSX work for me only because I get my real work done on the command line. Finder is nothing but a source of frustration. Also I ought to be able to right-click the volume icon on the menu bar and get the same menu as option-click but I don't...probably because that would be too windows-like.
Neat about the calendar. I have to disagree about the dock because it can force quit things, the Windows taskbar won't auto-hide, and some of the ugliest UI hacks in Windows all live in the tray (2 finger scroll, task manager, etc).
I disagree about explorer, mostly because I can't figure out how to get it to sort in alphabetical order (instead of folders and files sorted separately), a feature that's crucial for keyboard navigation and extracting files after download without scrolling through the entire downloads folder.
Yeah I think that sorta sums up lots of the issues I see. Over a few OS X revision you'll see Apple circling around the solution, which was solved in Windows decades ago, but refusing to do it because it's solved in Windows. The result is a hodgepodge of conflicting half-ideas that doesn't create an elegant or productive computing experience.
For evidence look at the grueling 20 year battle Apple has had with Maximizing/minimizing a window/app.
Nitpicky issues from Windows:
* Registry is an abortion of a bad idea. I remember in Windows 3.x how much better life was dealing with .ini files (if that can be believed). It corrupts all the time, fails in weird ways, has duplicate and triplicate entries for everything and is almost impossible to play around in without risking the entire system.
* CMD.exe needs a complete overhaul. I don't need a very powerful shell, but I'd like to use one that wasn't a fixed width dos prompt from 1983.
* I don't ever want to see a defrag utility again. I'm a firm believer that the more OS utilities there are for something the bigger a problem it is and there are hundreds of defrag utilities for Windows.
* I wish the default apps that shipped with Windows were a hair more powerful.
* Searching for stuff is molasses slow compared to spotlight. I actually install a utility called "everything" on all my machines that solves 80%-90% of my issues with finding things, but it seems stupid that something of equivalent power and speed isn't a built-in app.
* OS X exclusive apps. Most of them are forgettable fixes for brokenness in OS X or similar, but there are a few that are simply awesome and don't have a good (enough) equivalent in Windows. I was just thinking about this subject the other day with the release of OpenEmu.
* System slowdown. Eventually every windows system will slow down to a constant disk grind. There's no real explanation for it, you can tend the system as carefully as you want but it will happen. You can defrag as much as you want etc. But before long you'll have 10 minute boot times and it sucks. I'm trying a new approach this go around doing my day-to-day in a virtualized Windows VM and trying to keep my host system "pure" or for only things that require lots of system resources like games or music production. That way when the VM starts to slow down and piss me off I can just jettison it out an airlock.
* Multiple workspaces/desktop. I mean common! It's so well done in OS X I can't believe there isn't even a basic version of this in Windows by now.
* I hate the libraries, my documents "here's how to organize your shit into folder" noise. I've avoided it since XP and haven't ever been disappointed I did so.
* I hate how various programs will just create folders in my documents
* The installation stuff it messed up and I hate how uninstalling software leaves bits of it all over the system. I can't believe that this isn't better sandboxed by now. For a while I used to use sandboxie to solve this, but it got annoying enough that I've just solved it with VMs now.
* hiding file extension, in favor of just showing them in another column is an abortion of an idea and I turn on file extension as the first thing I do when I setup a new machine.
* windows update loves to restart my machine when I'm in the middle of doing things. There's a fix for it, but I've made a rule not to edit the registry for annoyances.
* sticky keys, until I turn it off.
* UAC still gets annoying. Especially during startup. Some apps, like Everything, still trigger it when I startup, and it's stupid and I want to have an option to stop prompting me about it. There is a resolution, but it's so involved that I can't be bothered.
* right-click context menus either don't populate or they get cluttered. I've never been "happy" with what's in them and there's not a clean way to edit it.
A few of the utilities from the SysInternals team (particularly Process Monitor and Process Explorer) make life a bit better.
Also, WinDbg might be the best debugging suite ever. These are things I will miss leaving Windows but not enough to keep using Windows.
Perhaps you already know this, but I found it really hard to use Finder until I stumbled upon the hotkeys, which seem nonsensical when coming from Windows:
Cmd-Down/Cmd-O - open
Cmd-Up - go up
Cmd-C - place item on clipboard
Cmd-V - copy item on clipboard
Cmd-Opt-V - move item on clipboard
Return/Enter - rename
I also use an app called Moom to mimic some basic tiling window functions. I have hotkeys bound to move a window to a quarter, third, half, or full screen. This is nice for setting up MacVim and iTerm side-by-side, or two or four Finder windows. Alfred (application launcher) includes some functionality to make working with files easier. Mine is set so Cmd-Opt-\ will pull the currently selected file(s) in the frontmost Finder window, and then you can perform an “Open With…”, or Copy/Move the file (you can just start typing the letters of the destination without browsing to it). Shortcat, Witch, Little Snitch, KeyRemap4MacBook are also fantastic.
As for Page-Up and Page-Down, I tried to remember that Fn-Up is bound to Page-Up, and Fn-Down is bound to Page-Down, and therefore Home/End are bound to Fn-Left/Right. It becomes second nature after enough use.
I agree that some of these things should be built in, but I think any operating system is going to have these kinds of issues. There’s no way to cater to everyone. I just wish some of these modifications to OS X felt a little less… hacky…
(edit: formatting issues)
1. capture a portion of the screen with: CMD + Shift + 4
2. i'm gonna guess you've tried sublime text, but mention it here anyway.
3. f*ing finder, how does it work!??!
You know what, I keep thinking I've tried it and now looking at it I realize I haven't. And there's both Windows and Mac ports.
edit license: $70. Nope. Not for a text editor. Sorry. I don't care if it's made out of the shavings of a unicorn horn mixed with fairy blood. I've bought high-end audio production software for around that much.
Meh, I'll still check it out the problem is bad enough in OS X that I hate editing text files.
Every few years I'll have a go at going Mac (this is try #3) and they'll all sort of peter out and I'll end up back in Windows.
I think this current go around has been the most successful, I love my rMBP hardware. And the work that Apple has put into making touchpads actually useful (both with hardware and software) is miraculous. The keyboards are nice typing experiences (I'm more mixed on the magic mouse). It's also an awesome portable virtualization platform that I've had 4 or 5 Linux VMs all up and running like a champ on it. Multiple workspaces are usually awesome, I keep several workspaces for different semantic parts of my day and the flow is really nice. Airdrop is magic.
For the most part things just work.
To try and make it really stick, I went cold turkey for the better part of 9 months and didn't touch a Windows machine.
But then, small frustrations and irritations finally built up and I recently just built myself a new Windows 7 computer and pretty much use it for all of my day-to-day with my Mac sitting in a travel bag for when I need to go on the road. What is it that keeps pushing me back? I've spent a lot of time thinking about why this is and sorta have it narrowed down to a few user scenarios: Here's 1 line of reasoning:
1. When I'm using my Mac, I find I try and avoid actually interacting with OS X as much as possible. I spend all of my time in Office, a web browser, a console window or a virtualized linux machine and that gets me through 95% of my day.
2. Digging in deeper and I find that OS X, while having some nice bits here and there (as discussed above), is so full of so many clumsy frustrations that I've never really been able to get over the feeling of reduced productivity when I'm dealing with it. I've realized that I deal with this by simply avoiding doing the things that frustrate or irritate me. Some of this probably stems from me not wanting to do things the prescribed "Apple way" and wanting to do it my own way. But it's irritating enough that I want to get away from the entire system after any extended interaction with the OS bits.
3. By and large this is focused on Finder (there's other issues, but Finder is the biggest problem I have), which is probably the single worst file manager I've used in 30 years of computing, and no amount of "getting used to it" seems to alleviate the simple fact that it sucks. I've tried a couple replacements, but they all seem to scratch some small itch and nothing really comes close to the magical file management wonderland that is the Windows 7 Explorer. It's so bad that even after a solid year with my Mac I still can't reliably predict where a new folder is going to be created. I know this makes me sound impossibly dumb, but these kinds of simple file management interface problems have been solved everywhere else. Even the various Linux file managers work better and more reliably. I would be so much more interested in staying on my Mac if I knew I could manage files without feeling like I was poking around a dark damp hole trying to sort through and pick up grains of rice with my elbows. I could go on for pages ranting about the abortion of ideas that is Finder, but let's just conclude that I hate it.
4. I realized that one of the reasons I spend so much time in a terminal then is because managing files form the command line is better! (the other reason I'm in the command line is so I can ssh into my linux VMs)
5. so if most of what I'm doing is Chrome, Office, ssh and Linux via VirtualBox, which are essentially equivalent experiences in OS X or Windows, and then doing OS things like moving files around works better in Windows, why should I still use my Mac?
I've come up with other lines of reasoning:
- all of the media production tools I personally work with have emphasized Windows development over Mac development for a while or no Mac equivalent exists at all.
- retrocomputing and retrogaming, which I have a deep personal interest in, has a far richer ecosystem under Windows and the tools that have version for both OSs tend to work better in Windows. Also moving around and organizing tens of thousands of files related to this hobby is much better under Windows
- another hobby, photography, I shoot thousands upon thousands of photos and haven't met an photo organizing tool I like, so I manage everything on the filesystem, which again means I'm avoiding finder
- Until Mavericks, multi-monitor support with full-screen apps was broken, and there's no excuse for it. None. Maximize was solved in Windows 3.0. 23 years ago
- OS X seems to keep growing interface hair, meaning what started as simple elegant design slowly accumulated feature cruft until the design is no longer simple or elegant and the design wasn't really flexible enough to accommodate this growing interface hair. Witness the madness around the resizing window buttons in OS X. But all the various crap that shows up in my menubar vs. sometimes in my dock vs. sometimes nowhere but ps, etc. Or the haphazard combinations of modifier hotkey combinations that don't really carryover between apps, a legacy of the one-button mouse movement which is now just vestigial, but now means I have to keep track of which combination of shift, fn, control, option and command to use in some combination before I even think about what button I need to push to modify some other key to do some menial task that's standard and two buttons in Windows.
- Even after taking hundreds of screen shots over the last year, I still have to lookup the madness of screen capture in OS X every single time I sit down to take more screen shots. Here's a 3 page article on it. http://osxdaily.com/2010/05/13/print-screen-mac/ Sure I don't get a "prt scr" key on the keyboard, but I get half a dozen key modifier keys and an eject key. I'll sometimes just put off the task till I get home and just do it in Windows it's so irritating.
- There's no paint program that ships with OS X. Boggles the mind.
- Having to buy and install tons of little apps to "fix" some broken or poorly designed behavior in the default apps that ship with the OS. This isn't like buying photoshop because it fixed paint. Photoshop is a different level entirely to paint. This is like iTerm2 which is almost exactly like, but just fixes a few things and adds a couple things to iTerm. And this kind of drop-in replacement cancer permeates the entire Mac experience. There's entire ecosystems of slightly different replacements for the default apps, and it's entirely expected that setting up a new mac will involve hunting these down and installing them to replace the broken stuff that the OS ships with. I'm really just exhausted of both this process and the attitude that this is a perfectly normal and sane thing to do. It's not, the OS is shipped broken and Apple needs to fix this stuff.
- Video performance is noticeably better in Windows. I'm not sure what it is, but I find my Mac has lots of little screen-tearing issues, and watching full-screen video on it just isn't as snappy (using VLC on both) as it was on my 6 year old Windows box (before I built my current one).
- Things usually just work in OS X. But when they don't you enter a world of mystery that goes as deep as a computer science degree can take you. In Windows, these days things also more or less just work, but when they don't, there's a kind of expectation in the design that you're likely to have an issue so there's all sorts of good error reporting and resolution paths to try and exhaust before even having to start searching forums for advice.
- I need to read NTFS volumes frequently and OS X's default NTFS compatibility sucks and the fixes are out of date and don't work very well either. In contrast, I've never had to read an HFS (or whatever Apple journaled blah blah file system) volume.
- no dedicated page up/down home or end keys. I use those keys all the time. Why are they gone? It's irritating having to hunt down a modifier key and an arrow and hope that you figured out the magic combination that's "home".
- I can't multi-tab drag in Chrome. I drag groups of tabs around in Windows all the time. Doesn't work in OS X.
- minimized windows are a pain to bring up. Therefore I don't minimize in OS X. The dock (especially when auto-hid) is flaky and won't show up half the time. The delay for when it does feel like popping up when my mouse is down at the bottom of the screen feels entirely random.
- I don't like any of the text editors I've tried. I just end up in vi in iterm. But I really want a good text editor.
- VNC is not a suitable remote desktop solution compared to RDP. It's just not. I Remote into half a dozen machines over the course of a day and wish I had a decent way to remote into my Mac that wasn't VNC.
- and more and more and more
I'm sure there are built in solutions I'm overlooking, or some app I can install that fixes this or modifies that, or some setting that makes something behave better than the default. But the point is that outside of applications that exist on both platforms equally, I'm avoiding or annoyed with everything else on the platform. I'm committed to sticking it out and have even resolved to spend more time on my mac - especially post-Mavericks. But it's just not a better computing experience for me. It's interesting and it's different, and it makes me yearn for certain things that windows doesn't have (multiple workspaces), but when the equivalent functions work better in Windows I'm forced to choose the easier and less frustrating environment to spend time in.