Point 1.: True. Accented letters on Windows are needlessly difficult.
Point 2: I actually prefer switching between all windows: on Mac I always have to Alt-Tab to the application and then use Expose to get the window I need. Furthermore, the possibility of closing windows from the Win10 Task View is sorely missing from Mission Control.
Sorry, but Windows 10 is clearly superior in the window management category. "Magnetic borders" are only activated when you move quite slowly, while Snap Assist exploits Fitt's Law in an intuitive and powerful way.
3. Column view is really a great feature... The other stuff is rather niche. I can live without Quickview or tabs in Explorer (maybe they would be a nice addition to the Command Prompt/Powershell)
4-5-6. This sounds like nitpicking. "Oh there's no Duplicate in the context menu? No multiple "Open with"? Then Mac for life"
7. True.
8-9. More nitpicking while ignoring Snap Assist, which is built into Windows 10... as opposed to Spectacle/Divvy/etc., which you buy since MacOS is utterly lacking in that field. Somehow that becomes a plus for MacOS.
10-11. True and true, but just proves my point above. Windows is penalized for lacking built-in stuff, while MacOS is not.
12. True. Of course the installer stuff is rooted depply in the past. I hope all the "Creators" buzz brings good typography to Windows someday!
As an experienced user on both Windows (at work) and Mac (at home), this article really nails the pain points of using Windows. Same can be said of Mac, as there are features I wish Mac had, such as windows snaps (via Windows key + arrow key), and built-in paint/drawing app.
One thing I really wished I had on WIndows is better Alt-Tab (as well as Alt-backtick). Third party app such as VistaSwitcher is not satisfactory for this, and doesn't quite work right. Another is that I really love using command key for copy,paste,cut, etc. I have remapped all of my Windows 10 machine with Autohotkey to mimic some of the Mac keyboard shortcuts.
I must admit, the front end to Windows nowadays is awful.
But a useful awful. The Mac is a useless lovely. Im on a macbook pro running Windows due to feeling like I am getting more and more smothered with every iOS, erm I mean Mac OS they push. This is happening in Windows, but slower, and Windows has the burden (but advantage for the consumer), of having to be backwards compatible, so Apple is not so tied down as Microsoft and is free to mess, erm innovate.
Regarding window groupings and tabs: there was a mockup that made the rounds of Windows rumor sites from somewhere in the Windows team exploring tabs like Edge's at the window management level (ie, that it would be Windows itself managing tabs of windows consistently instead of each application having to implement it, though applications could enhance it), giving essentially every application free tabs. I'm very curious if this mockup gets picked up and pushed beyond just a toy prototype.
Regarding installers, I very much hope that Windows 10 S will push more developers onto AppX. It is very much a nicer installation model than everything that precedes it. It's also very quickly catching up with even the weird advanced things that some old installers needed, thanks to the Project Centennial Desktop Bridge work.
But for pretty much all these things are, well, apps. Ever since I started using Visual Studio Code (also true for Atom etc) I don't care that much about the OS any more. Except for gaming, where there is really only Windows. The only OS-related problem that I currently have is, that I can't work on my VR side project on my Linux box at work. Oh and iOS development ...
Another one that always gets me on Windows is the "Open File ..." dialog.
On macOS you're able to drag a file from any other app into the dialog and it will navigate to that file. On Windows it just moves the file to whatever folder is open in the dialog.
Windows also has 3 or 4 variants of the "Open File ..." dialog, which isn't a great experience.
Ah, this reminds me of a lovely Mac-only thing that isn't featured in this article: you can drag and drop the little icon in the title bar! For instance, you have a PDF opened in Preview and want to send it? Just grab the icon and drop it onto Mail's icon.
I think one of the problems with the font rendering on windows is that most fonts are primarily made on Macs and tweaked until they look all right on using that particular renderer.
But doesn't it feel like it's time for "retinal" resolution on all devices now.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadPoint 2: I actually prefer switching between all windows: on Mac I always have to Alt-Tab to the application and then use Expose to get the window I need. Furthermore, the possibility of closing windows from the Win10 Task View is sorely missing from Mission Control.
Sorry, but Windows 10 is clearly superior in the window management category. "Magnetic borders" are only activated when you move quite slowly, while Snap Assist exploits Fitt's Law in an intuitive and powerful way.
3. Column view is really a great feature... The other stuff is rather niche. I can live without Quickview or tabs in Explorer (maybe they would be a nice addition to the Command Prompt/Powershell)
4-5-6. This sounds like nitpicking. "Oh there's no Duplicate in the context menu? No multiple "Open with"? Then Mac for life"
7. True.
8-9. More nitpicking while ignoring Snap Assist, which is built into Windows 10... as opposed to Spectacle/Divvy/etc., which you buy since MacOS is utterly lacking in that field. Somehow that becomes a plus for MacOS.
10-11. True and true, but just proves my point above. Windows is penalized for lacking built-in stuff, while MacOS is not.
12. True. Of course the installer stuff is rooted depply in the past. I hope all the "Creators" buzz brings good typography to Windows someday!
One thing I really wished I had on WIndows is better Alt-Tab (as well as Alt-backtick). Third party app such as VistaSwitcher is not satisfactory for this, and doesn't quite work right. Another is that I really love using command key for copy,paste,cut, etc. I have remapped all of my Windows 10 machine with Autohotkey to mimic some of the Mac keyboard shortcuts.
Regarding installers, I very much hope that Windows 10 S will push more developers onto AppX. It is very much a nicer installation model than everything that precedes it. It's also very quickly catching up with even the weird advanced things that some old installers needed, thanks to the Project Centennial Desktop Bridge work.
On macOS you're able to drag a file from any other app into the dialog and it will navigate to that file. On Windows it just moves the file to whatever folder is open in the dialog.
Windows also has 3 or 4 variants of the "Open File ..." dialog, which isn't a great experience.
But doesn't it feel like it's time for "retinal" resolution on all devices now.