7 ms·

> Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but Windows and everything around Windows is woefully inferior to macOS and the Mac software ecosystem. Ev

• efvxcgci 10y ago
  Unix
  • hartator 10y ago
    Windows 10 has Linux subsystem now, which is Ubuntu 14.04. I would say it's at least on par now with MacOS.
    • geff82 10y ago
      Windows also has an annoyment-subsystem now, reminding you to use Edge once a day when you start Chrome. That is why I am switching my last desktop to Linux in the minutes I write this post. I will not accept an OS that tells me what I should use.
      • aq3cn 10y ago
        I am also a Windows 10 user but I have not been asked this way to use Edge or IE. Are you sure it happens even after setting your default browser to something X?
        • geff82 10y ago
          Can't tell you, Edge has been my default because it is ok, but I use Chrome sometimes.
      • grahamburger 10y ago
        I saw this while using Firefox on my wife's Windows laptop yesterday. "Firefox is using 75% of your battery. Switch to Edge." Notification pop up from the battery indicator. Really obnoxious dark pattern.
        • Godel_unicode 10y ago
          Edge uses less power than Firefox for similar browsing patterns. Why is the OS monitoring your battery life and making suggestions to improve it (this is not the only suggestion it will make) a "dark pattern"? It does similar things with boot times (measure and report about slow startup apps) and IE add-ons. I want my OS to make suggestions about changes I could make to improve my experience.
          • grahamburger 10y ago
            Because it wasn't measuring and making suggestions, it was a scare tactic. I should have screenshotted the notification - I've seen notifications before like what you're talking about, 'X program is causing Y system issue, consider Z.' That's not what this was. It was more along the lines of those bouncy 'Your Computer Has A Virus! Click here to Scan!' banner ads of yesteryear.
      • smitherfield 10y ago
        Of course Google also throws up annoy-popups every time you go to their site from a non-Chrome browser.
        • geff82 10y ago
          That is annoying, too. But it is not "in my system".
    • ditados 10y ago
      Believe me, it's not. Even when the userland gets updated to 16.04, it's still heavily dependent on the Windows kernel, and the networking stack (for example) will not be the same. The WSL will never replace a native Linux OS. Period. But it will be pretty useful for some lighter use cases. As a dev, I'm still not convinced it's good enough, given the recent issues with Ruby and Node.
      • throw_away 10y ago
        I'm fine with Unix support not being as good as native Linux, but is it as good as MacOS?
        • ditados 10y ago
          macOS runs a BSD-like userland atop a Mach kernel. It's not Linux, but it is a damn sight more field-tested and reliable than the Windows kernel... I'm actually surprised at the question, considering the number of devs who work on macOS (and I'm not talking about front-end folk).
      • hartator 10y ago
        What issues are you talking about? I was about able to run a full Rails installation with MongoDB, Redis and Sidekiq without issues. But, I kind of agree actually, the only true issue was advanced socket issue with PhantomJS. Like for some reasons, Capybara/Poltergeist can't connect to it. It's the only reasons I am back to MacOS. But, I think I will switch as soon as it fixes. It should be soon.
        • rcarmo 10y ago
          Probably this, which has since been fixed: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 I'm running current stable (full disclosure: MS FTE here), and there are still a few hang-ups that I know are being addressed (and some already fixed) in the Insider Previews. I had to leave the Previews because I needed to pin down a few things, and mostly use Docker for Windows instead of WSL for work. WSL will not run Docker containers directly (for instance), but I managed to get the CLI to run in WSL to control them inside the Docker VM. Well, until the last Docker upgrade reset the configs... :)
• m_mueller 10y ago
  * The windows registry vs the OSX defaults system * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa * HiDPI that always works or has good fallbacks * Touchpad / gesture support that is actually pleasant and precise to use * Battery life * Multidesktop * POSIX scripting (that one is slowly coming to windows now) * Can be restored from another computer in a matter of minutes (see also the first point) * PDF support baked into OS
  • CJefferson 10y ago
    * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa Really? I can run Windows apps I bought 10 years ago easily, whereas many Mac apps seem to break with every OS update. It's also extremely hard to build apps for older versions of Mac OS X, as Apple hide the older versions of the SDK.
    • protomyth 10y ago
      I think m_mueller's comment is more from a developer's perspective than a users. Microsoft has done an amazing job of preserving compatibility. Its not that Microsoft gets rid of APIs (they don't), but that they haven't stuck with a "one true" API to program Windows in[1]. Their switching of what tech you should use to build your apps is problematic. Cocoa has been a long path, but my Windows friends have had a constant churn of the latest API to use. 1) I am talking about the stuff we are supposed to use above the base Win32.
      • TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
        I suspect this will change under Nadella. Things just feel like they have a better vision to them.
      • mhenr18 10y ago
        A key difference with the Microsoft approach vs the Apple approach is that on Windows the API that exposes every single feature is such a beast that developers are expected to work at a level above that API. Whether it's WPF, WinForms, WinRT, or whatever the new flavour of the day is, it's always a layer on top. And that layer is never perfect, because you still have to do the occasional [DllImport("Kernel32.dll")] interop reference. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on Windows: * HWND * System.Windows.Window * Windows.UI.Xaml.Window On OSX, you use Cocoa. When Apple introduced Swift, they didn't have to layer on top of the API accessed by ObjC. When you write Swift code, you call the exact same APIs as you would have done with your ObjC code. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on the Mac: * NSWindow
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• alyandon 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't really get that either. I have been using Windows, OS X (I mean macOS) and various Linux distributions for years. Each one of them comes with their own particular set of quirks/warts and I can't objectively say one is so superior that I'd rather use it to the exclusion of the others.
• morganvachon 10y ago
  That's what bothers me about the article. I can't think of a single piece of professional production software that is Mac only, apart from Apple's own apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic. Those are great apps but they have equivalents on Windows, and some of the Linux pro audio and video apps are getting really good. As for web development, there is nothing you can do on a Mac that can't be done on Linux or BSD apart from testing in Safari, and Safari has a smaller user base than IE/Edge. Hell, even Windows is improving in this space. I guess one could argue that macOS is a more aesthetically pleasing environment to work in, to which I counter that I'd rather work in BeOS/Haiku as I find it more aesthetically appealing than any other OS. In other words, that's purely subjective.
  • greenhatman 10y ago
    The only one I knew of was Sequel Pro. But JetBrains' DataGrip now fills that void.
• mhenr18 10y ago
  * Free OS updates. * Better touchpad support throughout the entire OS. * Vastly superior HiDPI support (especially if you're using a multi-screen, multi-DPI setup). I cannot stress how poorly Windows 10 performs in this regard. This has been a solved problem on the Mac for years. * Better colour management through the whole UI stack. * Better tablet support (OSX has had integrated support for tablet events since 10.4, on the Windows side there were still apps that broke when the Surface 3 launched almost a decade later due to using a third-party API for tablet events that needed custom drivers) * Core Audio. OS X has had the same set of audio APIs since 10.3, and they've been well regarded for years and years. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could argue Microsoft had finally caught up, and there's still people with ASIO driver compatibility issues. That's literally 12 years it took for Microsoft to catch up. * OS X had scrolling of inactive windows for over a decade before Windows caught up. I actually think it's something that was there in 10.0 but I only started using Macs at 10.3 so I can't be sure. * Spotlight. Spotlight is almost the perfect analogy of the difference between OS X and Windows, and I'm just going to look at one tiny feature of it. If you want to do some math on Windows at a single keypress, you need to turn on Cortana which only became availble in Windows 10. Cortana isn't even available in every country. Meanwhile OSX has had that built into Spotlight since 10.4 and it works on every Mac ever shipped since then, no matter what country you're in. * File tagging. OSX has had this for over a decade, and you still can't do it in Windows. * An integrated C/C++ runtime library, like every other Unix ever. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could ship C/C++ code without worrying about whether your end user had the right msvcr/msvcp DLL installed on their machine. I'll stop here, because there's so many things that OSX has had for a decade or more that Windows still hasn't caught up with that I wouldn't be surprised if Windows doesn't catch up after another decade.
  • addicted 10y ago
    * Windows has free OS updates * Precision Touchpads are equally well supported in Windows. * HiDPI is better on the Mac * I don't know much about this. * Are you referring to Wacom style tablets? Not sure about that, but if tablets in general, OSX tablets don't even exist, so it's irrelevant. * Windows Audio APIs are as good as Core Audio now. * This really isn't that big a deal. In Windows it leads to different benefits, where my mouse could be anywhere, ubt I could still scroll the page I was reading. * Cortana is better than Spotlight now. I didn't know that Cortana would be completely disabled in countries that aren't supported. That sucks. * Windows has had file tagging since Win 7. There really isn't that much of a difference. There are places where Mac OS is better, and there are places where Windows is better.