Gmail isn't exactly an OS in itself. If we were to answer the poll according to the OS that the web pages we visit use, we would see a poll dominated by FreeBSD and Linux. Somehow I don't think that is what the OP intended.
of course Gmail isn't an OS, that's not what I meant, but when we use Gmail we're really making more use of the server operating system than the clients, so my point is that it very hard to really say what operating system we're using.
It would be interesting to measure the usage of say posting this comment, how many machine instructions were used at the OSX end, and how many by the various routers (running their own operating systems), servers etc used in the full life cycle of what I am doing.
Gmail stays the same; the external set-up changes. I saw no advantage to using Outlook over Gmail, whereas Mail.app offers substantially more than the Gmail webapp does, even when used with Fluid.
Does it not make a bit more sense to indicate why you're conducting the poll? I don't mind polls, but usually they're only interesting if the poster sets it up and comments on his/her own choice and the reason for the poll in the first place. Polls like this seem to serve no more of a purpose than "What's your favorite color?".
Could you indicate the reason for the poll? That will get the conversation going in the direction you want it to and will give everybody some context when replying.
I am just curious about how HN readers are different from the general computer users when it comes to OS preference, this is interesting because HN community is a special group of people who are interested in technology startup, usually tech savvy and practical.
This poll is different from the favorite color poll because it's technology related, I guess it's not only me who is curious about this question, as people are actually upmodding the poll.
If you wanted to know our preferences, you should have asked what we wish we used. However, I think the question as you stated it is more interesting, since people are quite vocal about their preferences anyway.
All my contact management, todos, calendar, etc are on the web on a Linux platform, SO, you could technically say I'm on Linux all day, however, I access everything from Windows and code in Windows so...
hello dpcan. what software do you use on linux for the tasks you mention - contact mgt, cal, todos, etc. Do you sync with other devices like an ipod or cell phone? Thanks.
Yup. I voted three times. My microscope & downstream processing tools use Windows Server 2003, XP Pro x64, XP Pro, Ubuntu, and OS X. MacGyver hacker, here.... and yes, I use them all every day.
When you do a cost-benefit analysis, do you find that it's worth your time to tinker with all that and switch between systems?
That's why companies standardize on a toolchain. By the way, we standardized on Ubuntu at my company. And while the the home computer is my girlfriends Macbook I hardly ever really use it, so I voted once.
In my context, we are building something new, that has never existed before, and we don't know the design we are going to converge on. Of course we have some reasonable ideas that we want to try out. But for us, slapping components together to achieve a desired behavior is way more productive than building that behavior cleanly de novo, because we don't know if the behavior we have in mind will work. The immediate goal is to try out a broad gamut of possibilities, quickly; find something that works; and then to push ahead to the next stage of the workflow. The medium term goal is to assemble a workflow that takes us from sample to analyzed data. The longer term goal is to iterate this workflow, so we go faster and faster from sample to analysis, on bigger and bigger data sets.
As we complete a single iteration, we get a chance to clean up our toolchain. But we only to clean it up enough that it will support the amount of scaling up we want to do in the next iteration, since the next level of scale will introduce new, unexpected problems.
Once we have a system that runs fast enough, and big enough to be worth deploying on an ongoing basis (say for a five year lifespan) it starts to pay to build a clean toolchain, reducing our ridiculous, MacGyver'ed, Rube Goldberg monstrosity into something clean, maintainable, and extensible. But if we tried to do this from the beginning, by now we would have gotten exactly.... nowhere.
Of course there's a balance. One perpetually runs the risk of creating an intractable hairball. That's another sign it's time to clean up the toolchain...
Starcraft works almost perfectly in wine. Th only thing that doesn't work are the background on battle.net when you are in the lobby. Game play works 100%.
My desktop and all servers run Linux (Ubuntu) the notebook is Mac OS/X and the home PC is Windows (the wife can't get her head around Ubuntu nor OS/X). All the applications I write run on all three platforms and I spend more time in a browser (FireFox/Chrome/Chromium/Safari) than any other program. Oh yes, I use both OpenOffice and iWorks. Write complex documents using Latex / Lyx which in turn run on all three OS.
Does the OS really matter that much these days? I use OS/X on the notebook because everything works! Could only get 90% of stuff to work reliably on a HP notebook (C700) with Ubuntu. The Mac Book Pro cost three times the HP, but it's worth every dollar in saved time. Don't get me started on how much Vista kept getting in the way as originally shipped on the HP.
Our team develops on two MacBooks and a Linux box. We virtualize Windows via VirtualBox (which is just amazing). Our production server runs Ubuntu on EC2.
I use vmware fusion, and I keep hearing great things about virtualbox. But when I tested the new 3.0 version a couple of days ago I still got multi-second freezes, increased CPU usage and a lot of general slowness. And yes, I have the virtualbox tools installed.
I find the comments in this thread really show the potential in virtual machines.
Personally, I develop on a macbook and virtualize Windows XP and Linux (Arch Linux). I tend to just use which ever is the native environment for what I'm working with (eg: C on linux, ruby on mac).
I work with my Windows laptop and my Linux workstation side-by-side. I use my laptop for Outlook, company IM, Office documents, and web surfing. I use my workstation for everything else. That gives me a strict division between productivity sucks on the Windows laptop and productive work on the Linux box. When I want to focus, I can sit with the laptop outside my field of view, so I don't see new emails and IMs. If I need to consult html docs while I'm coding, I use Conkeror on my Linux box so I'm not tempted into random surfing. Using Conkeror and Awesome WM on my Linux box makes it very no-nonsense and very conducive to concentration.
Ummm, so, I already voted for Linux since that's where all the work gets done. Should I vote for Windows, too?
I was wondering if we were supposed to choose only one option. And I'm flattered by your assumption that I enjoy doing my job more than surfing the web -- it isn't always true, even though I try to work as if it were ;-)
I've two laptops, one with Mac OS X and one with Linux. I use both for development but as a client I prefer Mac OS X that Just Works. It was fun years ago to hack on config files and even to write my own device drivers when it was needed, it was a game with the benefit of learning a lot of stuff, but seriously, I expected Linux to be mature enough after a few years... instead it's the same problems again and again. All my wishes for Linux are instead incarnated by Mac OS X, so after more than 10 years of only linux one year ago I switched to mac os x, and I'm very happy so far.
I didn't see any value in making biased, preference-based complaints about how Leopard does things vs. what I like to do (i.e., The Right Way. :) ). But I know that most discussions about UIs tend to be full of such subjective assertions, so my little aside was my meta-comment. Or something like that.
For me (as others have pointed out as well), the ease of apt-get, and the wealth of OSS tools that seem to play better on Linux than on OSX, is the real win.
(Perhaps my biggest complaint about the OSX UI is how much I have to use the mouse to manipulate GUI items. Maybe that's just lack of experience on OSX, but Kubuntu Just Works for me. )
Speaking particularly about hacking on my OS of choice, I've got to hand it to the MacPorts crew for making that kind of thing possible without serious headaches. I've got a custom build of Apache, PHP (yes, I know...) and MySQL alongside my desktop OS tools that I love to use. It's a best of both worlds. Mac OS X from the developer's perspective is basically Linux done right.
Mac OS X from the developer's perspective is basically Linux done right.
That's an often-cited overgeneralization.
I'm a developer and OSX is not Linux done right for me. In my book the OSX window management is ridiculously clumsy and gives me nowhere near the speed/control that I have under ion3. For example: The latter gives me tabs on every frame, that means I can rapidly tab through any windows I have attached there, without moving my eyes. It also lets me setup multiple parallel mini-IDEs without thinking, because everything stays in place and never overlaps - unless I explicitly move it or make it so. People often get dizzy watching me because my workflow involves a lot of muscle memory; I know which sequence of keystrokes gets me where, hence my edit/compile/test roundtrips are quite a bit faster than what I've seen on eclipse or OSX jockeys - who commonly have to fall back to the cable-rat for any sequence that deviates from what their IDE anticipates (e.g. to juggle a few config files along the line).
For bragging rights, my sequence to setup a new "mini-IDE" with a 50/50 horizontal split (browser window full width on top) and a 50/50 vertical split in the bottom frame (two terminal windows each in left/right):
* F9, Enter (new desktop)
* Alt+s (split horizontal)
* Alt+Down (move to bottom frame)
* Alt+d (split vertical)
* F1, F1 (launch two xterms, left)
* Alt+right (move to right frame)
* F1, F1 (launch two xterms, right)
* Alt+up (move to top frame)
* F5 (launch browser)
That sequence takes me under 5 seconds, zero thinking and ofcourse I have the freedom to create any layout appropiate for the task at hand, with just a few keystrokes.
These sequences are my bread & butter (have 7 virtual desktops open for various tasks right now). I can not imagine going back to an old-fashioned mouse-driven window manager ever again.
So, show me functionality like that on OSX, then we can start talking about the other areas where OSX falls short for me.
+1 on using virtual desktops to position things in 'space'. That is how i work and it is mighty helpful, especially when you have many different simultaneous servers/environments open. also, for what it is worth, i love being able to run the same os and basic configuration on my laptop as on my servers.
What rubbish, a Mac doesnt 'just work'. Dont't get me wrong - Macs are good but this high ground is BS.
@antirez what device driver did you have to write for linux, can you point me to your source code? And seriously, linux has matured significantly, what distribution have you tried? And how about quoting specific stuff instead of the some general gyaan.
Fact of the matter is OSX 'just works' better than anything else _I_ have personally used. Less hassles, less issues, less crashes than linux or windows. And when you have lots of people saying the same thing, its not 'high ground' its a result of having a unix based OS that you don't have to waste your time to have it work.
I switched to OSX after using linux as my primary OS for about 5 or 6 years, and the big difference for me was that I didn't have to spend valuable time actually getting osx to work. Linux is amazingly customizable which can be great, but when it comes to getting work done all I care about is having a terminal, vim, and being able to run a local server to test my work. Anything else that I have to configure is just getting in my way.
Edit: As much as I like OSX, there is only only app that I actually require that is OSX specific, and that is quicksilver, which for me completely changes my workflow and allows me to productively use a 13" laptop as my primary development machine without the need for an external monitor. I think also goes to show my point, that OSX doesn't necessarily have any spectacular features or applications that draw me too it, but really its the fact that it is a unix based OS that I can use without hassle.
Question for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on any platform, but one thing I miss is fast window management. Specifically:
* Focus follows mouse
* Alt+LMB drag to move whole window
* Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize)
The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just one tiny resize tab in one corner. Is there anything that can help me here? Or do you do things differently?
I'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.
Put your windows where you want them at the size you want them and don't ever touch them again... that's what I do, anyway. Expose to get at things that are hidden. I also use hiding apps in general a lot, cmd+h to hide and then either click the dock, use opt+tab or use a launcher like quicksilver or launchbar to get those apps back.
Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, and I don't move windows and instead use the methods described above to move between them.
Also, note that you can use Spotlight to do fast app switching, just like Launchbar or Quicksilver: just type your Spotlight search shortcut (mine is control-space), type the first few letters of the app name, and hit return.
It's good enough I gave up on Quicksilver. I never used the fancier features.
On the Mac, the trick is to figure out what size you want for your apps and keep them there. Safari's always big for me, iTunes I almost always keep shrunk down, Mail shows a few messages at a time and has a large window for message display. Then I control everything via keyboard so focus never really bothers me.
There's also a Mac application that lets you resize your window from any side, but I don't recall what it's called.
I'm not so sure about Vista/Win7 but Windows XP's tweakui allows a primitive form of "focus follows mouse." It doesn't work exactly like I'm used to with other managers, but it also doesn't require loading additional software (well, beyond going to MS' site and downloading tweakui).
Related question for Mac users: Don't you ever view windows in fullscreen? It seems there's no easy way to get windows to fullscreen, except for laboriously resizing and dragging to make it fit with the screen. This is one of the things that threw me off Mac (I bought one that I used as my main OS for about half a year, but I just never really liked it)
So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all have some utility that does this, or am I just missing something? To me it seems like an extreme shortcoming, but I'm sure there's a reason for the limitation.
Although it does me little good at the moment since HN's text area is a mere 6 lines, I'm posting this from Opera's fullscreen mode which I use quite frequently.
While few applications on any platform seem to support this kind of true fullscreen mode, I use "almost fullscreen" windows all the time: on OSX the green orb in the upper left corner of every window acts as a toggle which maximizes the window or returns it to its original size. I say "almost fullscreen" because the omnipresent menu bar and window decorations remain visible when you work this way.
The reason: Apple designed OS X to focus on using multiple windows at once, and they didn't want developers making single-window apps that ate at the screen. It's why, of their own applications, the only ones that allow full-screen are their video players, the iWork suite, and the pro apps. Those are the only applications Apple thinks ought to be maximized.
There's an application called Mega Zoomer that gives all Cocoa apps a sexy fullscreen view. But mostly, the answer's that Mac users don't like fullscreen.
But they do have a choice, thanks to the aforementioned app. I have it, yet I'm still using only half my screen for Safari, despite no other apps being open. I like not being forced into this maxed-or-not mentality; on Windows, it was too easy to make every app take up the whole screen, and tab over. On the Mac, I've never gotten into that mindset, which I love.
Actually this kind of reasoning was the primary reason I turned away from Mac.
It's pretty obvious that you don't have a choice and that Apple, right or wrong, has mandated that you don't need to have your windows in fullscreen mode. Instead of openly discussing the shortcomings of the OS you come up with this sort of reasoning: I really don't like being forced into maxing my windows, much better not to have the choice. You don't need it. Besides if you really want it it's easy - you just go to site xyz and download the app that makes it possible. To me that just a semi-circular argument, and not a very good solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of people have.
There are many examples like this, and the reasoning is always the same: You don't need that, it's much better to do it the Mac way. We know much better than you what you want....
Sorry to be harsh, and it's not picking at you Zimbabwe, it's picking at the Mac cult.
Don't apologize for harshness: Your view's completely valid. I prefer a system that's that locked in, because it means I can figure out the computer's philosophy once and then everything gets easier. (The Mac's incredible dragging and spring-loading systems are the best instance of lack of choice making things supereasy.) But that's a personal choice, and one that definitely turns some people away.
If I may say so, you fail to see the forest for the trees. Windows and Mac are both in the same boat. They decide what is good for the user, they are closed source, and then you have to write software to do trivial stuff.
I prefer GNU/Linux, it allows me to change what I need to.
You have to write software to do anything, anywhere. Strictly speaking, with Linux you need to write software just to have a GUI. All of the "trivial things" you can do with your computer are things people wrote software to allow you to do.
OS X is completely Unix-based. All the things you can tweak are things I can tweak, too. I can also treat OS X like Linux if I want to: Getting Gnome or KDE to run on a Mac is really easy. I tried it out by downloading Amarok, which was a huge mistake because the lack of polish in KDE shines through when it's next to Mac stuff.
(I can make an argument about why closed source is a bad thing, but it would be rather lengthy. I'm assuming you'd rather me not derail this thread by providing it?)
You can definitely get some windows in full screen. There is a program called megazoomer which will allow you get fullscreen for a lot of OSX apps. I use it all the time to have a full screen terminal. I also use full screen in Mac Vim which I believe is a built in feature, not added in by megazoomer.
In 1986, I used QNX with primitive window managers -- I still miss a scroll button with a large usable trackball to scroll through code, and the focus followed pointer. I started using Macs about 1987, and the interface felt awkward at first, but I liked it's overlapping windows as opposed to apps that filled the screen, or only ran at a specific resolutions.
I remember Microsoft Excel for DOS which was ported from Macintosh. Since it was DOS, they built an entire Window Manager for Excel. I think that this is why Windows inherited the application windows within windows (Multiple Document Interface) that some applications still have, and some people still love MDI in apps like Opera. I think that because of this Excel port, Windows inherited function names from the original Mac API. I don't like the gymnastics of using my pinky finger to hold down the Control key in Windows, I'd prefer using my thumb on the Command key in Mac OS, but thankfully Microsoft put out a little hack to reverse those keys.
To me, Linux inherits X Windows, features from older Unix window managers, and a bias from Windows because that's what a lot of people have used. But Linux brings lots of choices and possibilities, and lots of configuring if that's what your into.
Since the advent of USB mice, the Mac now has more than one mouse button. I remember seeing a mouse at a CAD/CAM show that probably had about nine buttons on the mouse.
I've been using Mac OS on and off for the last six years, but in the last year it has replaced Linux as my dominant workstation OS. I still have a few Linux and Windows build machines around the office.
Windows/Windows/Windows/Windows/OSX side-by-side, shared keyboard through Synergy (w/ synergy server as a Vista+Vaio).
With 4 perpetual ssh connections to different flavors of Linuxy servers (CentOS/CentOS/Fedora/SuSE). With 2 perpetual RDP sessions open to 2 more Windows boxen.
Mac OS X is what I use at home on my iMac and MacBook. At work I use Linux on compute servers for development and data analysis, and connect to the machines via (cough) Windows.
130 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadThey feel sort of Reddit-ish. :)
I'm thinking my first poll should be, "Should James make a poll?"
:)
It would be interesting to measure the usage of say posting this comment, how many machine instructions were used at the OSX end, and how many by the various routers (running their own operating systems), servers etc used in the full life cycle of what I am doing.
From my own experience, using Gmail is a different experience in each OS. I can't stand to use it on OS X, whereas on Windows it was always open.
(practically)
Could you indicate the reason for the poll? That will get the conversation going in the direction you want it to and will give everybody some context when replying.
This poll is different from the favorite color poll because it's technology related, I guess it's not only me who is curious about this question, as people are actually upmodding the poll.
That's why companies standardize on a toolchain. By the way, we standardized on Ubuntu at my company. And while the the home computer is my girlfriends Macbook I hardly ever really use it, so I voted once.
In my context, we are building something new, that has never existed before, and we don't know the design we are going to converge on. Of course we have some reasonable ideas that we want to try out. But for us, slapping components together to achieve a desired behavior is way more productive than building that behavior cleanly de novo, because we don't know if the behavior we have in mind will work. The immediate goal is to try out a broad gamut of possibilities, quickly; find something that works; and then to push ahead to the next stage of the workflow. The medium term goal is to assemble a workflow that takes us from sample to analyzed data. The longer term goal is to iterate this workflow, so we go faster and faster from sample to analysis, on bigger and bigger data sets.
As we complete a single iteration, we get a chance to clean up our toolchain. But we only to clean it up enough that it will support the amount of scaling up we want to do in the next iteration, since the next level of scale will introduce new, unexpected problems.
Once we have a system that runs fast enough, and big enough to be worth deploying on an ongoing basis (say for a five year lifespan) it starts to pay to build a clean toolchain, reducing our ridiculous, MacGyver'ed, Rube Goldberg monstrosity into something clean, maintainable, and extensible. But if we tried to do this from the beginning, by now we would have gotten exactly.... nowhere.
Of course there's a balance. One perpetually runs the risk of creating an intractable hairball. That's another sign it's time to clean up the toolchain...
I use Windows to play Quake Live.
Does the OS really matter that much these days? I use OS/X on the notebook because everything works! Could only get 90% of stuff to work reliably on a HP notebook (C700) with Ubuntu. The Mac Book Pro cost three times the HP, but it's worth every dollar in saved time. Don't get me started on how much Vista kept getting in the way as originally shipped on the HP.
What am I missing?
I'm not sure about CPU performance differences between VB and anything else, but it's never been a problem for me.
Just wondering what would make VirtualBox "fantastic", VMWare et al are already pretty good...
Synergy rules.
Personally, I develop on a macbook and virtualize Windows XP and Linux (Arch Linux). I tend to just use which ever is the native environment for what I'm working with (eg: C on linux, ruby on mac).
Ummm, so, I already voted for Linux since that's where all the work gets done. Should I vote for Windows, too?
1. Mac OS X - for "normal people" stuff. Web browsing, IM, Twitter, music, movies, foo.
2. Linux (Ubuntu) - so that I can build (3).
3. Haiku (http://haiku-os.org) - because I can.
<snarky comments about quirky Leopard UI elided>
Not sure what your specific issues are, but I've been finding development on Linux to be much more accommodating for me.
On the mac getting libraries can be painful with MacPorts (I don't use Fink, does anyone know if it's better?)
The specific issues the OP mentioned were installing drivers and tweaking system preferences.
My typed, then deleted, comments were snarky.
I didn't see any value in making biased, preference-based complaints about how Leopard does things vs. what I like to do (i.e., The Right Way. :) ). But I know that most discussions about UIs tend to be full of such subjective assertions, so my little aside was my meta-comment. Or something like that.
For me (as others have pointed out as well), the ease of apt-get, and the wealth of OSS tools that seem to play better on Linux than on OSX, is the real win.
(Perhaps my biggest complaint about the OSX UI is how much I have to use the mouse to manipulate GUI items. Maybe that's just lack of experience on OSX, but Kubuntu Just Works for me. )
That's an often-cited overgeneralization.
I'm a developer and OSX is not Linux done right for me. In my book the OSX window management is ridiculously clumsy and gives me nowhere near the speed/control that I have under ion3. For example: The latter gives me tabs on every frame, that means I can rapidly tab through any windows I have attached there, without moving my eyes. It also lets me setup multiple parallel mini-IDEs without thinking, because everything stays in place and never overlaps - unless I explicitly move it or make it so. People often get dizzy watching me because my workflow involves a lot of muscle memory; I know which sequence of keystrokes gets me where, hence my edit/compile/test roundtrips are quite a bit faster than what I've seen on eclipse or OSX jockeys - who commonly have to fall back to the cable-rat for any sequence that deviates from what their IDE anticipates (e.g. to juggle a few config files along the line).
For bragging rights, my sequence to setup a new "mini-IDE" with a 50/50 horizontal split (browser window full width on top) and a 50/50 vertical split in the bottom frame (two terminal windows each in left/right):
That sequence takes me under 5 seconds, zero thinking and ofcourse I have the freedom to create any layout appropiate for the task at hand, with just a few keystrokes.These sequences are my bread & butter (have 7 virtual desktops open for various tasks right now). I can not imagine going back to an old-fashioned mouse-driven window manager ever again.
So, show me functionality like that on OSX, then we can start talking about the other areas where OSX falls short for me.
@antirez what device driver did you have to write for linux, can you point me to your source code? And seriously, linux has matured significantly, what distribution have you tried? And how about quoting specific stuff instead of the some general gyaan.
I switched to OSX after using linux as my primary OS for about 5 or 6 years, and the big difference for me was that I didn't have to spend valuable time actually getting osx to work. Linux is amazingly customizable which can be great, but when it comes to getting work done all I care about is having a terminal, vim, and being able to run a local server to test my work. Anything else that I have to configure is just getting in my way.
Edit: As much as I like OSX, there is only only app that I actually require that is OSX specific, and that is quicksilver, which for me completely changes my workflow and allows me to productively use a 13" laptop as my primary development machine without the need for an external monitor. I think also goes to show my point, that OSX doesn't necessarily have any spectacular features or applications that draw me too it, but really its the fact that it is a unix based OS that I can use without hassle.
* Focus follows mouse
* Alt+LMB drag to move whole window
* Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize)
The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just one tiny resize tab in one corner. Is there anything that can help me here? Or do you do things differently?
Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, and I don't move windows and instead use the methods described above to move between them.
It's good enough I gave up on Quicksilver. I never used the fancier features.
MercuryMover - lets you move windows and resize them to preset positions with hotkeys (left half of screen, top half of screen, etc.)
MondoMouse - adds hotkeys that allow you to drag or resize a window from any position
There's also a Mac application that lets you resize your window from any side, but I don't recall what it's called.
(I really use it because it lets me use the scrollwheel on any window, without bringing the window to the foreground or giving focus to it).
So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all have some utility that does this, or am I just missing something? To me it seems like an extreme shortcoming, but I'm sure there's a reason for the limitation.
While few applications on any platform seem to support this kind of true fullscreen mode, I use "almost fullscreen" windows all the time: on OSX the green orb in the upper left corner of every window acts as a toggle which maximizes the window or returns it to its original size. I say "almost fullscreen" because the omnipresent menu bar and window decorations remain visible when you work this way.
There's an application called Mega Zoomer that gives all Cocoa apps a sexy fullscreen view. But mostly, the answer's that Mac users don't like fullscreen.
It's pretty obvious that you don't have a choice and that Apple, right or wrong, has mandated that you don't need to have your windows in fullscreen mode. Instead of openly discussing the shortcomings of the OS you come up with this sort of reasoning: I really don't like being forced into maxing my windows, much better not to have the choice. You don't need it. Besides if you really want it it's easy - you just go to site xyz and download the app that makes it possible. To me that just a semi-circular argument, and not a very good solution to a problem that I'm sure a lot of people have.
There are many examples like this, and the reasoning is always the same: You don't need that, it's much better to do it the Mac way. We know much better than you what you want....
Sorry to be harsh, and it's not picking at you Zimbabwe, it's picking at the Mac cult.
I prefer GNU/Linux, it allows me to change what I need to.
OS X is completely Unix-based. All the things you can tweak are things I can tweak, too. I can also treat OS X like Linux if I want to: Getting Gnome or KDE to run on a Mac is really easy. I tried it out by downloading Amarok, which was a huge mistake because the lack of polish in KDE shines through when it's next to Mac stuff.
(I can make an argument about why closed source is a bad thing, but it would be rather lengthy. I'm assuming you'd rather me not derail this thread by providing it?)
Edit: typo
In 1986, I used QNX with primitive window managers -- I still miss a scroll button with a large usable trackball to scroll through code, and the focus followed pointer. I started using Macs about 1987, and the interface felt awkward at first, but I liked it's overlapping windows as opposed to apps that filled the screen, or only ran at a specific resolutions.
I remember Microsoft Excel for DOS which was ported from Macintosh. Since it was DOS, they built an entire Window Manager for Excel. I think that this is why Windows inherited the application windows within windows (Multiple Document Interface) that some applications still have, and some people still love MDI in apps like Opera. I think that because of this Excel port, Windows inherited function names from the original Mac API. I don't like the gymnastics of using my pinky finger to hold down the Control key in Windows, I'd prefer using my thumb on the Command key in Mac OS, but thankfully Microsoft put out a little hack to reverse those keys.
To me, Linux inherits X Windows, features from older Unix window managers, and a bias from Windows because that's what a lot of people have used. But Linux brings lots of choices and possibilities, and lots of configuring if that's what your into.
Since the advent of USB mice, the Mac now has more than one mouse button. I remember seeing a mouse at a CAD/CAM show that probably had about nine buttons on the mouse.
Don't flip the bozo bit.
Windows/Windows/Windows/Windows/OSX side-by-side, shared keyboard through Synergy (w/ synergy server as a Vista+Vaio).
With 4 perpetual ssh connections to different flavors of Linuxy servers (CentOS/CentOS/Fedora/SuSE). With 2 perpetual RDP sessions open to 2 more Windows boxen.
For developing it's great though.