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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

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!
- bluedino 7y ago
  The double control panels is such a Microsoft-ism. The network control panel has become so convulted...
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > 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! Mostly due to backward compatibility, as there were a fair amount of Windows applications that loaded DLLs to add a custom panel to Control Panel. Well, many people on HN hate that Apple has a poor record on managing backward compatibility (like deprecating 32-bit apps or Carbon), but if they do to the scale of Microsoft, this is what happens.
- pix64 7y ago
  Control Panel has been around for 24+ years and on top of that some (older) driver packages and apps install third party control panel applets as well. It's going to be a long rough road deprecating Control Panel and replacing it with Settings.
  - alecmg 7y ago
    Why deprecate and replace something that a) works b) doesn't have any immediate problems c) is familiar to everyone and their granny with something with less functionality and even less logic on where to look for a particular setting?
- hnick 7y ago
  Yes it's becoming a bit of a mess. I wanted to associate a file type with a program in Windows 10 recently, and I found at least 4 different menu items that lead to the same unhelpful modern screen. Unhelpful because it only let me pick 'App Store' Apps, not anything else I have installed. Some answers online suggested these very item as ways to go to the old screen but it looks like they closed that escape hatch. I was having trouble because it was a 'special' file type (CMD) so the context menu didn't offer the Open With option, I suppose to save this clueless user from himself. So instead I dove into the registry and did a manual hack which will hopefully stick around between updates.
bluedino 7y ago
Windows is doing a good job of ruining file management/Explorer in Window 10 I've never had Explorer crash so damn much. Another of my least-favorite features is how they group your files by recently used now. Ugh. Then you have Quick Access, Recently Used, 'Places'....
- xzel 7y ago
  Explorer crashing you say? You must not have had the incredible experience of using Windows ME :D I agree on all of the quick access, recent etc garbage. I disabled at installs after I finally upgraded to Win 10.
- pix64 7y ago
  This might be a third party shell extension crashing. You can try disabling unneeded extensions and seeing if that helps. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
- hnick 7y ago
  Yeah I hate that file grouping feature in my Downloads folder. Windows 10 overall is very stable but just a few days ago I did have Explorer crash in a new and interesting way like you say. It went away and didn't come back as it usually does, so I started a new instance from the task manager. This instance seemed to be missing some kind of callback hook so when files in the directory changed it wouldn't update the display. So I would delete or paste a file, or make a new folder, and have to hit F5 to see it. If I didn't refresh then it also seemed to forget what folder it was in and paste into the wrong one, sometimes multiple times with one keypress. It was very weird, but luckily Windows knows best and rebooted itself for an update when I went to sleep.
bluedino 7y ago
Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. I'm not sure why Apple hasn't added this as a native feature. Hyperdock has had it for years. I even wrote my own little proof-of-concept version of it: https://github.com/robilic/DockHand https://github.com/robilic/DockHand
- tekknik 7y ago
  Press Ctrl-^ ? it doesn’t give you a single pop up but chances are when you do this you’re looking for a specific window and having them all visible saves time.
robertoandred 7y ago
3D Touch on a dock icon to open app expose.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
> I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac. Have you tried Magnet? It’s a macOS app that supplies the window snap/tile features that Windows has. It’s one of the first things I install on a new system (along with Display Menu and f.lux).
_coveredInBees 7y ago
I feel exactly the same way as you. It boggles my mind that Finder is the best OSX has to offer for file management after all these decades. I find windows explorer to be far superior and more intuitive in almost all cases. What really boggles my mind is how difficult it is to simply get a text string for the current path in Finder - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-getting-the-path-of-a-directory-or-file-as-as-string https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-... I absolutely love that in Windows Explorer, you can simply click the navbar in the top to transform it into a selected/highlighted text-string path representation (Pro-tip, type cmd in this navbar and hit enter and a DOS prompt opens in the specific folder you are in). Windows explorer also provides a "Copy Path" button in the navbar (that can also be accessed via keyboard shortcuts rather than some gymnastics of right-clicking and holding option keys down). There are definitely things that OSX does better than Windows, but Finder absolutely infuriates me. I much prefer Files in Ubuntu over Finder.
- contextfree 7y ago
  I always add the copy-path button to the quick access toolbar (right-click on the button in the ribbon's Home tab) for faster mouse access when the ribbon is minimized. You can even select multiple items and copy-path to get a list of paths, to paste into a text file for command-line processing, or into Excel.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  > (Pro-tip, type cmd in this navbar and hit enter and a DOS prompt opens in the specific folder you are in) Your system default shell (shared with Win+X menu, defaults to PowerShell for the last few Windows releases but you can switch it back to CMD) is also directly on the File menu in the modern ribbon and opens in the current path. (Alt+F,R is the keyboard shortcut I see, with PowerShell as my system default.) It's a little bit faster than the use the path box as a launcher trick (though use the path box as a launcher is an older trick that predates the modern ribbon).
  - _coveredInBees 7y ago
    Ha! Nice. Not sure why it's hidden away under the File tab, but that is pretty handy. Thanks. edit - Apparently you can add it to your quick-access toolbar as well, in which case it saves you one key-press with keyboard shortcuts :-) Alt + <quick access number>
weugek 7y ago
Try to figure out how to go to the parent directory (not back) in Finder without resorting to google. SPOILER: rightclickwindow'stitle

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!

bluedino 7y ago
The double control panels is such a Microsoft-ism. The network control panel has become so convulted...
pcr910303 7y ago
> 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! Mostly due to backward compatibility, as there were a fair amount of Windows applications that loaded DLLs to add a custom panel to Control Panel. Well, many people on HN hate that Apple has a poor record on managing backward compatibility (like deprecating 32-bit apps or Carbon), but if they do to the scale of Microsoft, this is what happens.
pix64 7y ago
Control Panel has been around for 24+ years and on top of that some (older) driver packages and apps install third party control panel applets as well. It's going to be a long rough road deprecating Control Panel and replacing it with Settings.
- alecmg 7y ago
  Why deprecate and replace something that a) works b) doesn't have any immediate problems c) is familiar to everyone and their granny with something with less functionality and even less logic on where to look for a particular setting?
hnick 7y ago
Yes it's becoming a bit of a mess. I wanted to associate a file type with a program in Windows 10 recently, and I found at least 4 different menu items that lead to the same unhelpful modern screen. Unhelpful because it only let me pick 'App Store' Apps, not anything else I have installed. Some answers online suggested these very item as ways to go to the old screen but it looks like they closed that escape hatch. I was having trouble because it was a 'special' file type (CMD) so the context menu didn't offer the Open With option, I suppose to save this clueless user from himself. So instead I dove into the registry and did a manual hack which will hopefully stick around between updates.

bluedino 7y ago

Windows is doing a good job of ruining file management/Explorer in Window 10 I've never had Explorer crash so damn much. Another of my least-favorite features is how they group your files by recently used now. Ugh. Then you have Quick Access, Recently Used, 'Places'....

xzel 7y ago
Explorer crashing you say? You must not have had the incredible experience of using Windows ME :D I agree on all of the quick access, recent etc garbage. I disabled at installs after I finally upgraded to Win 10.
pix64 7y ago
This might be a third party shell extension crashing. You can try disabling unneeded extensions and seeing if that helps. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
hnick 7y ago
Yeah I hate that file grouping feature in my Downloads folder. Windows 10 overall is very stable but just a few days ago I did have Explorer crash in a new and interesting way like you say. It went away and didn't come back as it usually does, so I started a new instance from the task manager. This instance seemed to be missing some kind of callback hook so when files in the directory changed it wouldn't update the display. So I would delete or paste a file, or make a new folder, and have to hit F5 to see it. If I didn't refresh then it also seemed to forget what folder it was in and paste into the wrong one, sometimes multiple times with one keypress. It was very weird, but luckily Windows knows best and rebooted itself for an update when I went to sleep.

bluedino 7y ago

Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. I'm not sure why Apple hasn't added this as a native feature. Hyperdock has had it for years. I even wrote my own little proof-of-concept version of it: https://github.com/robilic/DockHand https://github.com/robilic/DockHand

tekknik 7y ago
Press Ctrl-^ ? it doesn’t give you a single pop up but chances are when you do this you’re looking for a specific window and having them all visible saves time.

robertoandred 7y ago

3D Touch on a dock icon to open app expose.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

> I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac. Have you tried Magnet? It’s a macOS app that supplies the window snap/tile features that Windows has. It’s one of the first things I install on a new system (along with Display Menu and f.lux).

_coveredInBees 7y ago

I feel exactly the same way as you. It boggles my mind that Finder is the best OSX has to offer for file management after all these decades. I find windows explorer to be far superior and more intuitive in almost all cases. What really boggles my mind is how difficult it is to simply get a text string for the current path in Finder - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-getting-the-path-of-a-directory-or-file-as-as-string https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-... I absolutely love that in Windows Explorer, you can simply click the navbar in the top to transform it into a selected/highlighted text-string path representation (Pro-tip, type cmd in this navbar and hit enter and a DOS prompt opens in the specific folder you are in). Windows explorer also provides a "Copy Path" button in the navbar (that can also be accessed via keyboard shortcuts rather than some gymnastics of right-clicking and holding option keys down). There are definitely things that OSX does better than Windows, but Finder absolutely infuriates me. I much prefer Files in Ubuntu over Finder.

contextfree 7y ago
I always add the copy-path button to the quick access toolbar (right-click on the button in the ribbon's Home tab) for faster mouse access when the ribbon is minimized. You can even select multiple items and copy-path to get a list of paths, to paste into a text file for command-line processing, or into Excel.
WorldMaker 7y ago
> (Pro-tip, type cmd in this navbar and hit enter and a DOS prompt opens in the specific folder you are in) Your system default shell (shared with Win+X menu, defaults to PowerShell for the last few Windows releases but you can switch it back to CMD) is also directly on the File menu in the modern ribbon and opens in the current path. (Alt+F,R is the keyboard shortcut I see, with PowerShell as my system default.) It's a little bit faster than the use the path box as a launcher trick (though use the path box as a launcher is an older trick that predates the modern ribbon).
- _coveredInBees 7y ago
  Ha! Nice. Not sure why it's hidden away under the File tab, but that is pretty handy. Thanks. edit - Apparently you can add it to your quick-access toolbar as well, in which case it saves you one key-press with keyboard shortcuts :-) Alt + <quick access number>

weugek 7y ago

Try to figure out how to go to the parent directory (not back) in Finder without resorting to google. SPOILER: rightclickwindow'stitle