8 ms·

I grew up using Windows and after 20 years switched to Mac and could not believe I had waited for so long. What parts of Windows do you prefer over MacOS?

lostmsu 7y ago
Mostly hardware support. I need my NVidia GPUs until AMD is on par in TensorFlow performance.
mattigames 7y ago
I remember the few times I had to interact with MacOs to be really frustrating but I don't remember all the specifics, I remember actionable buttons being too small (so easier to miss), and the top bar changing options depending on what app is focused to bother me as well, because thats and extra click (to make the top bar appear) for every interaction there when you have 2 apps side to side. In general from what I know the key functional advantages Windows has are: Software from 15 years ago still works fine without issues, real Linux inside by default (Ubuntu on WLS), videogames.
- gwd 7y ago
  > I remember the few times I had to interact with MacOs to be really frustrating but I don't remember all the specifics Then you just need to spend a bit more time on it. Seriously, my wife had exactly the same attitude, until her company was bought by Apple and she was issued a MacBook Pro. Within a week she thought it was the best OS she'd ever used.
mschaef 7y ago
> What parts of Windows do you prefer over MacOS? I grew up using Windows (since Windows/386) and switched to OSX about ten years ago. For whatever it's worth, I still can't get used to window management or keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. (The Windows key turned into a really nice addition to an already well thought out set of Windows/CUA bindings, while OSX is still caught between its MacOS <10 and NeXTStep heritages.)
- spiralx 7y ago
  The one time I had to use MacOS I managed to get something tolerable after spending a lot of time in Karabiner, but the keyboard controls were just incomplete and inconsistent and there wasn't any way around it. Let's not even get into Finder and how awful it is in so many ways.
  - tekknik 7y ago
    ”Let's not even get into Finder and how awful it is in so many ways.“ Yea, let’s. Given that you’re talking about Karabiner to swap cmd keys you’re talking about an old version of macOS. So what specifically is bad about Finder? It may not be an issue anymore
zajd 7y ago
Being able to reliably run it on hardware that isn't marked up to an absurd degree.
puranjay 7y ago
I use both Windows and Mac. I find Windows file management and window management to be much better. Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. Also love how windows don't automatically take up the entire screen. I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac. I also prefer Windows' taskbar instead of Mac's dock. The negative is changing preferences and the general ugliness of Windows. Mac is just prettier. The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking. I do most of my writing and creative work on Mac. But when I have to do some heavy duty productivity work with multiple apps/windows, I switch to my Windows desktop.
- kec 7y ago
  > The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking Well, Mac has multiple desktops to manage multitasking, and in Catalina the zoom button does have an option to tile windows left or right. There are also apps you can get (I like divvy) which really open up advanced window management options.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Windows 10 has had multiple desktop support since it launched. It's at the top of the Expose-like "Task View" screen, which further doubles as the Windows Timeline screen in more recent versions of Windows 10 (with the keyboard shortcut Win+Tab, and an icon by default on the Taskbar). The "Aero Snap" window management tools built in to Windows (for horizontal halves since Vista, and quartiles since 10) are pretty powerful. The recently rebooted Microsoft PowerToys includes an app directly similar to divvy called Fancy Zones: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modules/fancyzones https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...
- newscracker 7y ago
  > The negative is changing preferences... Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around!
Mindwipe 7y ago
Window management has really stagnated in MacOS. All the focus has been on full screen apps rather than useful tools like dragging to the side to splitscreen as Windows has. Apple should have long since sherlocked BetterSnapTool.
- bluedino 7y ago
  Oddly enought they are doing it 'right' with iPad multitasking.
  - FPGAhacker 7y ago
    It's a bit screwy with iOS 13. Safari in particular.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
A much better selection of apps, Explorer is vastly better than Finder, a vastly larger variety of hardware choices, and WSL/WSL2 is actual Linux, which means that many command line Linux apps work out of the box.
newscracker 7y ago
I prefer macOS over Windows, having used both for a long time. But one area where Windows has beaten macOS is keyboard shortcut support. I can use a Windows system and applications without a mouse and get many things done (including using a program like Paint.Net for image editing/manipulation). But macOS is inferior on this front, and it's quite difficult to use it if a trackpad or mouse isn't available. I know that macOS, unlike Windows, allows custom keyboard shortcuts to be setup for all applications for menu options, but it's still not the same as the built-in experience on Windows.
- mikestew 7y ago
  While at Microsoft, I did a stint as an accessibility lead. No better way to find some accessibility bugs than to hide the mouse in a drawer for a few days. And you can do it, because if you can't, then you need file a bug. So I got pretty darned good at Windows keyboard shortcuts. As an aside, if you do public presentations, people will comment on the fact that you rarely touch the mouse. :-) When I flipped to Mac, I tried the same thing: get those shortcuts down until the mouse isn't necessary. I've since given up, but IIRC, it can be done but it is a lot harder. For starters, it's broken out of the box because you have to set $SETTING to be able to Tab to some controls. The menu is accessed on Windows with the Alt key. On Mac, Cmd-Opt-F2. Screenshot? PrtScn versus Cmd-Opt-Shift...something, I never can remember.
  - e_proxus 7y ago
    It probably doesn't solve the problems completely, but I’ve found the Shortcat app indispensable when navigating macOS by keyboard. It uses the underlying accessibility features to create link hints like the Vim plug-ins for browsers do. https://shortcatapp.com/ https://shortcatapp.com/
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  I don't follow. MacOS has very extensive keyboard shortcuts and they dynamically show in the menu bar of every application. Is there a specific thing that's missing? It actually drives me nuts on Windows that apps don't consistently have to show you the keyboard shortcuts. Moving to Office on the PC from the Mac was infuriating because some of the shortcuts are different but there's not even any way to see what they are easily. If there is, it must be right in front of my eyes because I just don't believe that it could be that hidden.
wayneftw 7y ago
The taskbar. Explorer. Keyboard acceleration. Window management. Speed. Apps. Freedom. I like the taskbar configured the classic way, not the new way that tries to copy the macOS Dock. Unfortunately, to get all the features that I want out of the taskbar, I have to install a utility called 7+ taskbar tweaker. With that, you can arrange items however you want and middle clicking a taskbar item becomes useful, to close a window. If you like middle-clicking to close tabs in Chrome, it's the same thing... I wish there was a similar utility for macOS because I like to use the taskbar to track what I'm working on. In macOS the easy path is basically to put everything in full screen and use the touchpad to swipe between them which I find very inefficient. Or, you can use Mission Control/Spaces but I would rather have something on the screen at all times rather than something I have to bring up with a gesture or key combo. I love the Windows Explorer because it's very extendable. For instance, you won't find anything like Tortoise Git on any other platform that can match its quality. I also like using the keyboard to do things and the keyboard commands for Explorer make sense compared to Finder. Like pressing ENTER to open a file or Delete to delete a file. Keyboard acceleration on Windows and other platforms that emulate Windows (like XFCE) are generally much better than on macOS in my opinion as well because its a simpler system. Instead of memorizing 1,000 unique Mac keyboard shortcuts, I basically have to memorize 1 or 2: Alt + any underlined letter in a menu. Alt + Space to do window commands (move, minimize, etc). From there, I can do anything. Furthermore, I find the notation for Mac keyboard shortcuts to be inscrutable. They display symbols on the menus that are not printed on the keyboard keys and it always takes me a second to figure out which key to press. For Window Management - I won't list every function that Windows lets you perform on application windows, but suffice it to say that snapping built-in is great because it's on every workstation/server and I find Apple's insistence that you shouldn't maximize windows to be very weird and annoying. Finally, I find many things to just work faster and more efficiently on Windows. In my experience, on the same exact hardware, common apps like web browsers, code editors and so forth are just snappier under Windows. I also like having a choice and there is a plethora of apps and hardware for Windows in any category. However, in today's world - I have to run all three to get by. For Linux, I love Manjaro XFCE or Xubuntu very much and Manjaro is on my main workstations at work and home. I mainly use Windows now only for Windows-specific stuff. Same for Mac - I keep one 2015 Macbook Pro around to compile React-Native stuff for iOS and I actually have one old Mac Pro from 2012 in my basement because it's such a nice looking piece of hardware that I hate to get rid of it! I might re-purpose it as a Linux box one day.

lostmsu 7y ago

Mostly hardware support. I need my NVidia GPUs until AMD is on par in TensorFlow performance.

mattigames 7y ago

I remember the few times I had to interact with MacOs to be really frustrating but I don't remember all the specifics, I remember actionable buttons being too small (so easier to miss), and the top bar changing options depending on what app is focused to bother me as well, because thats and extra click (to make the top bar appear) for every interaction there when you have 2 apps side to side. In general from what I know the key functional advantages Windows has are: Software from 15 years ago still works fine without issues, real Linux inside by default (Ubuntu on WLS), videogames.

gwd 7y ago
> I remember the few times I had to interact with MacOs to be really frustrating but I don't remember all the specifics Then you just need to spend a bit more time on it. Seriously, my wife had exactly the same attitude, until her company was bought by Apple and she was issued a MacBook Pro. Within a week she thought it was the best OS she'd ever used.

mschaef 7y ago

> What parts of Windows do you prefer over MacOS? I grew up using Windows (since Windows/386) and switched to OSX about ten years ago. For whatever it's worth, I still can't get used to window management or keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. (The Windows key turned into a really nice addition to an already well thought out set of Windows/CUA bindings, while OSX is still caught between its MacOS <10 and NeXTStep heritages.)

spiralx 7y ago
The one time I had to use MacOS I managed to get something tolerable after spending a lot of time in Karabiner, but the keyboard controls were just incomplete and inconsistent and there wasn't any way around it. Let's not even get into Finder and how awful it is in so many ways.
- tekknik 7y ago
  ”Let's not even get into Finder and how awful it is in so many ways.“ Yea, let’s. Given that you’re talking about Karabiner to swap cmd keys you’re talking about an old version of macOS. So what specifically is bad about Finder? It may not be an issue anymore

zajd 7y ago

Being able to reliably run it on hardware that isn't marked up to an absurd degree.

puranjay 7y ago

I use both Windows and Mac. I find Windows file management and window management to be much better. Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. Also love how windows don't automatically take up the entire screen. I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac. I also prefer Windows' taskbar instead of Mac's dock. The negative is changing preferences and the general ugliness of Windows. Mac is just prettier. The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking. I do most of my writing and creative work on Mac. But when I have to do some heavy duty productivity work with multiple apps/windows, I switch to my Windows desktop.

kec 7y ago
> The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking Well, Mac has multiple desktops to manage multitasking, and in Catalina the zoom button does have an option to tile windows left or right. There are also apps you can get (I like divvy) which really open up advanced window management options.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Windows 10 has had multiple desktop support since it launched. It's at the top of the Expose-like "Task View" screen, which further doubles as the Windows Timeline screen in more recent versions of Windows 10 (with the keyboard shortcut Win+Tab, and an icon by default on the Taskbar). The "Aero Snap" window management tools built in to Windows (for horizontal halves since Vista, and quartiles since 10) are pretty powerful. The recently rebooted Microsoft PowerToys includes an app directly similar to divvy called Fancy Zones: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modules/fancyzones https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...
newscracker 7y ago
> The negative is changing preferences... Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around!

Mindwipe 7y ago

Window management has really stagnated in MacOS. All the focus has been on full screen apps rather than useful tools like dragging to the side to splitscreen as Windows has. Apple should have long since sherlocked BetterSnapTool.

bluedino 7y ago
Oddly enought they are doing it 'right' with iPad multitasking.
- FPGAhacker 7y ago
  It's a bit screwy with iOS 13. Safari in particular.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

A much better selection of apps, Explorer is vastly better than Finder, a vastly larger variety of hardware choices, and WSL/WSL2 is actual Linux, which means that many command line Linux apps work out of the box.

newscracker 7y ago

I prefer macOS over Windows, having used both for a long time. But one area where Windows has beaten macOS is keyboard shortcut support. I can use a Windows system and applications without a mouse and get many things done (including using a program like Paint.Net for image editing/manipulation). But macOS is inferior on this front, and it's quite difficult to use it if a trackpad or mouse isn't available. I know that macOS, unlike Windows, allows custom keyboard shortcuts to be setup for all applications for menu options, but it's still not the same as the built-in experience on Windows.

mikestew 7y ago
While at Microsoft, I did a stint as an accessibility lead. No better way to find some accessibility bugs than to hide the mouse in a drawer for a few days. And you can do it, because if you can't, then you need file a bug. So I got pretty darned good at Windows keyboard shortcuts. As an aside, if you do public presentations, people will comment on the fact that you rarely touch the mouse. :-) When I flipped to Mac, I tried the same thing: get those shortcuts down until the mouse isn't necessary. I've since given up, but IIRC, it can be done but it is a lot harder. For starters, it's broken out of the box because you have to set $SETTING to be able to Tab to some controls. The menu is accessed on Windows with the Alt key. On Mac, Cmd-Opt-F2. Screenshot? PrtScn versus Cmd-Opt-Shift...something, I never can remember.
- e_proxus 7y ago
  It probably doesn't solve the problems completely, but I’ve found the Shortcat app indispensable when navigating macOS by keyboard. It uses the underlying accessibility features to create link hints like the Vim plug-ins for browsers do. https://shortcatapp.com/ https://shortcatapp.com/
dkonofalski 7y ago
I don't follow. MacOS has very extensive keyboard shortcuts and they dynamically show in the menu bar of every application. Is there a specific thing that's missing? It actually drives me nuts on Windows that apps don't consistently have to show you the keyboard shortcuts. Moving to Office on the PC from the Mac was infuriating because some of the shortcuts are different but there's not even any way to see what they are easily. If there is, it must be right in front of my eyes because I just don't believe that it could be that hidden.

wayneftw 7y ago

The taskbar. Explorer. Keyboard acceleration. Window management. Speed. Apps. Freedom. I like the taskbar configured the classic way, not the new way that tries to copy the macOS Dock. Unfortunately, to get all the features that I want out of the taskbar, I have to install a utility called 7+ taskbar tweaker. With that, you can arrange items however you want and middle clicking a taskbar item becomes useful, to close a window. If you like middle-clicking to close tabs in Chrome, it's the same thing... I wish there was a similar utility for macOS because I like to use the taskbar to track what I'm working on. In macOS the easy path is basically to put everything in full screen and use the touchpad to swipe between them which I find very inefficient. Or, you can use Mission Control/Spaces but I would rather have something on the screen at all times rather than something I have to bring up with a gesture or key combo. I love the Windows Explorer because it's very extendable. For instance, you won't find anything like Tortoise Git on any other platform that can match its quality. I also like using the keyboard to do things and the keyboard commands for Explorer make sense compared to Finder. Like pressing ENTER to open a file or Delete to delete a file. Keyboard acceleration on Windows and other platforms that emulate Windows (like XFCE) are generally much better than on macOS in my opinion as well because its a simpler system. Instead of memorizing 1,000 unique Mac keyboard shortcuts, I basically have to memorize 1 or 2: Alt + any underlined letter in a menu. Alt + Space to do window commands (move, minimize, etc). From there, I can do anything. Furthermore, I find the notation for Mac keyboard shortcuts to be inscrutable. They display symbols on the menus that are not printed on the keyboard keys and it always takes me a second to figure out which key to press. For Window Management - I won't list every function that Windows lets you perform on application windows, but suffice it to say that snapping built-in is great because it's on every workstation/server and I find Apple's insistence that you shouldn't maximize windows to be very weird and annoying. Finally, I find many things to just work faster and more efficiently on Windows. In my experience, on the same exact hardware, common apps like web browsers, code editors and so forth are just snappier under Windows. I also like having a choice and there is a plethora of apps and hardware for Windows in any category. However, in today's world - I have to run all three to get by. For Linux, I love Manjaro XFCE or Xubuntu very much and Manjaro is on my main workstations at work and home. I mainly use Windows now only for Windows-specific stuff. Same for Mac - I keep one 2015 Macbook Pro around to compile React-Native stuff for iOS and I actually have one old Mac Pro from 2012 in my basement because it's such a nice looking piece of hardware that I hate to get rid of it! I might re-purpose it as a Linux box one day.