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> * ships with quality applications that don't try to eat the entire screen to display 2 lines of text (pretty much all "modern" built-in apps are a disaster in

> * ships with quality applications that don't try to eat the entire screen to display 2 lines of text (pretty much all "modern" built-in apps are a disaster in that regard) Windows never has shipped with a lot of built-in apps. Calc used to start slow, not an issue anymore. It is also open source now and seeing more and more features being added to it. > * has an App Store with decent, curated apps. The app store has a much better selection, heck I installed Inkscape from it the other day! Part of the problem is the Windows 3rd party consumer app scene died off when Mobile came around, and on top of that a lot of small utilities that are commercial on Mac have always been free on Windows, so the expectation of paying for smaller apps never was there. The amount of creative apps available though, wow. Having a lot of pen first devices means there is a flood of apps using ink. The ecosystem there really impresses me. But honestly? The number of 3rd party paid apps I am running that would be "app store appropriate" is number at 1 right now, and I have a fair number of third party apps running in the background to customize my machine. The top Windows software consists of either large productivity apps (Adobe), free as in beer apps (Spotify) or free as in speech apps (Notepad++) > * doesn't force a stupid phone-style lockscreen on non-touchscreen machines I actually had a chat with the developers in charge of the lock screen. I honestly forget what it is doing, but I remember that the initial screen being shown is actually there for some good technical reason. Also you can just hit any key on the keyboard to dismiss it. By the time my monitor has turned on it is gone. > * has a start-menu search that actually works and doesn't surface irrelevant crap from their failed attempt at a search engine. I've ranted about the start menu for years. Often times on this very site. It, honestly, doesn't suck anymore. Except for on my ~8 year old Desktop that was upgraded from 7->8->10, with a number of insider/beta builds along the way. That machine has distinct issues with its video drivers and explorer loves crashing every few minutes making the start menu a no go. Having But hey, dev machine, console is all I need anyway. > * proper QA - since Windows 10 the quality has gone down the drain and it feels more like a half-assed Linux distribution except that it has ads and you still pay for it Agree. Except, outside of candy crush (wtf MS), I haven't seen any ads. My Mac keeps asking me to sign me up for a bunch of paid cloud services though. That is annoying. I can come up with a list of complaints about MacOS just as long as your list of complaints about Windows. And I've had Linux package managers run update and leave me with an unbootable system. (Hasn't happened for quite a few years now though, so fingers crossed and all that!). I guess that is one more thing Windows and Linux have in common now days. :| As for MacBooks vs Windows, well, lots of Windows laptops have a superior keyboard, better specs, and the advantage of not paying an arm and a leg for proper RAM or a good sized SSD. Mac's do have those nice trackpads. tl;dr everything is garbage quality has gone downhill, get off my lawn, someone please re-hire all the testers that got laid off years ago from apparently every tech company in the world.

Nextgrid 8y ago
> Windows never has shipped with a lot of built-in apps. But the ones it did ship with were pleasant to look at and were actually designed to get work done, not waste space (see Vista’s Windows Mail, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Media Player, or even the legacy Control Panel). Now it feels like the developers were given the task to fill up the entire screen, but no budget remained when it was time to actually develop features, so they increased font size & padding on the very little they had developed and called it a day. > Calc used to start slow, not an issue anymore. It is also open source now and seeing more and more features being added to it. It’s still the “new” calc which has the overhead of their awful UWP platform. I mean UWP makes sense for some stuff but a calculator? What was wrong with the legacy calc.exe? Not to mention the new calc has telemetry (yes, in a calculator, you heard me right) and they rejected the PR which removed it. > free as in beer apps (Spotify) or free as in speech apps (Notepad++) Seems like a perfect fit for the Store? They could have a team that reaches out to freeware/open source developers and packages their apps for the Store. If anything, that would help offset the amount of garbage that’s currently in there. > I remember that the initial screen being shown is actually there for some good technical reason. Mac and Linux (using LightDM) don’t seem to have that reason, so whatever it is, it’s more about laziness (not wanting to work around the supposed limitation)... oh and the fact they can use the lock screen to shill their sad search engine and/or ads. > It, honestly, doesn't suck anymore. Is the start menu fast? That’s another thing I noticed compared to Windows 7, the start menu on 10 has a slight delay while it was instant on Windows 7. That’s another issue when you’re used to pressing the Windows key and then typing whatever app you wanted. > My Mac keeps asking me to sign me up for a bunch of paid cloud services though. That is annoying. Haven’t noticed them myself (I am logged into my - free on the 5GB tier - iCloud account so maybe that’s why) but I heard Windows 10 trying to push OneDrive & Office 365... oh and I think they also try to push their browser if you attempted to install a third-party one. > I've had Linux package managers run update and leave me with an unbootable system Not surprising, but then again I’m not bitching about Linux (and nobody should) because it is free. However, when a paid, commercial OS like Windows 10 falls down to the same standard as Linux distributions (built by enthusiasts in their free time) you’ve gotta start asking questions. Agreed about the hardware choices, but personally I’ve never felt the need for top of the line hardware anymore - my 12” MacBook (with dual core CPU and 8GB of RAM) is sufficient for my development work. In the rare cases I need to do CPU-intensive stuff (like compiling OpenWrt the other day) I get a beefy machine off a cloud provider and build it there - still more pleasant than dealing with Windows or Linux full-time.

Nextgrid 8y ago

> Windows never has shipped with a lot of built-in apps. But the ones it did ship with were pleasant to look at and were actually designed to get work done, not waste space (see Vista’s Windows Mail, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Media Player, or even the legacy Control Panel). Now it feels like the developers were given the task to fill up the entire screen, but no budget remained when it was time to actually develop features, so they increased font size & padding on the very little they had developed and called it a day. > Calc used to start slow, not an issue anymore. It is also open source now and seeing more and more features being added to it. It’s still the “new” calc which has the overhead of their awful UWP platform. I mean UWP makes sense for some stuff but a calculator? What was wrong with the legacy calc.exe? Not to mention the new calc has telemetry (yes, in a calculator, you heard me right) and they rejected the PR which removed it. > free as in beer apps (Spotify) or free as in speech apps (Notepad++) Seems like a perfect fit for the Store? They could have a team that reaches out to freeware/open source developers and packages their apps for the Store. If anything, that would help offset the amount of garbage that’s currently in there. > I remember that the initial screen being shown is actually there for some good technical reason. Mac and Linux (using LightDM) don’t seem to have that reason, so whatever it is, it’s more about laziness (not wanting to work around the supposed limitation)... oh and the fact they can use the lock screen to shill their sad search engine and/or ads. > It, honestly, doesn't suck anymore. Is the start menu fast? That’s another thing I noticed compared to Windows 7, the start menu on 10 has a slight delay while it was instant on Windows 7. That’s another issue when you’re used to pressing the Windows key and then typing whatever app you wanted. > My Mac keeps asking me to sign me up for a bunch of paid cloud services though. That is annoying. Haven’t noticed them myself (I am logged into my - free on the 5GB tier - iCloud account so maybe that’s why) but I heard Windows 10 trying to push OneDrive & Office 365... oh and I think they also try to push their browser if you attempted to install a third-party one. > I've had Linux package managers run update and leave me with an unbootable system Not surprising, but then again I’m not bitching about Linux (and nobody should) because it is free. However, when a paid, commercial OS like Windows 10 falls down to the same standard as Linux distributions (built by enthusiasts in their free time) you’ve gotta start asking questions. Agreed about the hardware choices, but personally I’ve never felt the need for top of the line hardware anymore - my 12” MacBook (with dual core CPU and 8GB of RAM) is sufficient for my development work. In the rare cases I need to do CPU-intensive stuff (like compiling OpenWrt the other day) I get a beefy machine off a cloud provider and build it there - still more pleasant than dealing with Windows or Linux full-time.