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In what practical ways is OS X better than Windows?

For me, the best thing is that I have all of the UNIX tools I want on a very stable platform with a nice user interface. Of course, I could use the Apple applications and forget that I'm on a UNIX box.... but I usually prefer to treat my Mac as a UNIX system, which allows me to get into serious programming mode.

So the versatility is great for me.

I can make my Mac do whatever is needed for my research, and the platform doesn't get in the way. With Windows, I constantly run into roadblocks, viruses, spyware, etc., that get in the way of using my machine for its intended purpose: computing.
 
I would say since Apple has gone with Intel processors, it has made them more versatile. I personally use bootcamp and Parallels to get the best out of both OS's in one computer.
 
kainjow said:
Please don't confuse popups with spyware/viruses. They are completely different. Yes, some spyware does generate popups, but that is different. Popups in general are controlled through the browser, not the operating system.
Click to expand...
Wrong. By defualt Windows Defender is configured to issue numerous dialogue boxes every chance it gets. And that's just PART of the OS.
 
I use both platforms on a daily basis. There are some business applications in the Windows for which there is no Mac equivalent. For me, using Windows is just frustrating. It's not one especific thing that bugs me its a lot of little things. Like the reminder balloon that says I need to reboot following a security update. *Click* Thanks, but not now I have work to do, 10 minutes later same balloon. Same response. This goes on for hours, and if you forget to click it, the computer just shuts down and reboots. SMS (Screw My System) Hey corporate, thanks for the patch now this mission critical app doesn't work thanks. Identical machines, identical software with identical patch levels and it doesn't work on one of them. Another weekend at work talking to a Microsoft drone who also can't figure out why it doesn't work.

How many times have you reinstalled the entire Windows system because it has gotten unstable. It's amazing to me how many people think that that is just normal. During that rebuild it takes how many patches, reboots, reinstalls and how many hours have you sacrificed to keep that thing running. You probably call it tweaking or tuning.

The last major install I did on my Mac mini I went from Panther to Tiger. A major OS upgrade. Total time ~1hr with 1 reboot all program settings and everything was there and worked. Once I answered the initial prompts, I just walked away. No prompting an hour into it, reboot so it could start the real install, none of that nonsense.

This last weekend I had to disconnect all of the computers so carpet could be installed. When it came to hooking it all back up. Power cables, printer cables, speakers, monitor, mouse, keyboard, ethernet, wireless print server and Treo dock. The iMac I literally sat it on the desk and plugged in. The keyboard, and mouse are wireless the Treo uses bluetooth.

No one can convince you of anything. Buy yourself a mini and use some of those spare PC parts you got hanging around. Test it out for awhile. I did and I'm hooked. I own two Macs now and I'm getting ready to purchase a third.

"In what practical ways is OS X better than Windows?" For me its time and convenience. I spend all week coding on PC's and back office systems. That is one nightmare I don't want to bring in my house. If Intuit's QUICKEN were on par with the Windows version then all of the PC's in my house would have been out of here ages ago.
 
You can do what you want, when you want, in a reasonable amount of time. In other words, your computer waits for you; you don't wait for the computer.
 
RabidBear said:
I use both platforms on a daily basis. There are some business applications in the Windows for which there is no Mac equivalent. For me, using Windows is just frustrating. It's not one especific thing that bugs me its a lot of little things. Like the reminder balloon that says I need to reboot following a security update. *Click* Thanks, but not now I have work to do, 10 minutes later same balloon. Same response. This goes on for hours, and if you forget to click it, the computer just shuts down and reboots. SMS (Screw My System) Hey corporate, thanks for the patch now this mission critical app doesn't work thanks. Identical machines, identical software with identical patch levels and it doesn't work on one of them. Another weekend at work talking to a Microsoft drone who also can't figure out why it doesn't work.

How many times have you reinstalled the entire Windows system because it has gotten unstable. It's amazing to me how many people think that that is just normal. During that rebuild it takes how many patches, reboots, reinstalls and how many hours have you sacrificed to keep that thing running. You probably call it tweaking or tuning.

The last major install I did on my Mac mini I went from Panther to Tiger. A major OS upgrade. Total time ~1hr with 1 reboot all program settings and everything was there and worked. Once I answered the initial prompts, I just walked away. No prompting an hour into it, reboot so it could start the real install, none of that nonsense.

This last weekend I had to disconnect all of the computers so carpet could be installed. When it came to hooking it all back up. Power cables, printer cables, speakers, monitor, mouse, keyboard, ethernet, wireless print server and Treo dock. The iMac I literally sat it on the desk and plugged in. The keyboard, and mouse are wireless the Treo uses bluetooth.

No one can convince you of anything. Buy yourself a mini and use some of those spare PC parts you got hanging around. Test it out for awhile. I did and I'm hooked. I own two Macs now and I'm getting ready to purchase a third.

"In what practical ways is OS X better than Windows?" For me its time and convenience. I spend all week coding on PC's and back office systems. That is one nightmare I don't want to bring in my house. If Intuit's QUICKEN were on par with the Windows version then all of the PC's in my house would have been out of here ages ago.
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It's like I wrote that! That has been my exact experience. In fact, my favorite part was, "It's not one especific thing that bugs me its a lot of little things. Like the reminder balloon that says I need to reboot following a security update. *Click* Thanks, but not now I have work to do, 10 minutes later same balloon. Same response. This goes on for hours, and if you forget to click it, the computer just shuts down and reboots. " I can't tell you how perfect that statement is. This is one reason why I refuse to use Windows at home (I'm forced to at work).

Another one would be the "safely remove hardware" dialog. How many clicks is it just to dismount a thumb drive? In OS X it's just a right click on the icon and eject or if finder is open just one click on the eject button.
 
You cant compare work computers to home computers, home computers arent run dependent on a network and dont have an assload of nanny software installed. Its easy to tell those are work computers on a network because a network administrator needs to be able to restart and update all computers on the network at the same time without relying on someone actually at the computer to manually restart, hence the sudden forced restart. There is no forced restart on a home computer.

If I compared the macs at college to my home PC then I would stereotype them as extremely buggy and slow machines with a 30% failure rate. Plus I would assume that at every single website I visit I would get 2 keychain popups asking me to enter a password that doesnt exist. Then G5's are so slow that my old Athlon XP 2200+ must have been twice as fast.

To sum it up, computers that are dependent on a network get seriously jacked in terms of reliability and performance so its not fair to judge them based on that.

Another one would be the "safely remove hardware" dialog. How many clicks is it just to dismount a thumb drive? In OS X it's just a right click on the icon and eject or if finder is open just one click on the eject button.
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The reason its not easy to do this is because... well... you dont have to. Windows is not like OS X when it comes to external drives, you dont have to eject them first. They default to a "safe eject" mode (forgot the exact name, its in the properties for the drive), which means you can just pull the drive safely as long as its currently not writing any data. It has another mode that is what OS X uses, its more suited to large firewire HDD's that are connected all the time, it performs slightly better but if you dont eject it first then you can damage the drive (I think it keeps a buffer active or something). So ya, when you attach a thumbdrive or an ipod to Windows you dont even have to eject, you just pull the cord and its fine, I wish OS X did this (I tried before, thought I broke my ipod since it jacked it up so bad that I had to force it into disk mode to restore it)
 
Lewis Hollow said:
Hi, I'm new here and investigating a move to the Apple side of the fence. I've used PC's for many years, and don't particularly dislike Windows, but I am intrigued by the Mac world.

So, one of the things most often referenced is obviously OS X, but I rarely see anyone explain exactly what practical user advantages this OS gives you over using Windows. I figure once you're inside any particular application (like Word or Photoshop), your experience will be reasonably similar on either system, so that leaves me wondering exactly what I will find more enjoyable about OS X. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I only request that when you're sharing them that you think of concrete examples, not things like it just 'feels' better. If I'm going to have to relearn things like keyboard shortcuts, I want to know it's worth it in the end.

Thanks for any feedback!
Click to expand...

expose + hot corners = really efficient multitasking

that is one of the biggest reasons I use OSX

the other big reason is that viruses are not an issue, not like i got any viruses when I used windows..but it is a nice comfort
 
clevin said:
practically way is
safer, relatively
prettier

nothing else.
Click to expand...

Wrong. There are lots of other things, some big and some not so big: Designed more around people and not programmers, more consistency, less rebooting, stuff "just works" when you plug it in a lot more often, less maintenance, no registry, it's Unix, and importantly *no built-in spyware AKA WGA* (Apple won't suddenly decide your OS is "invalid" and deactivate functionality for no reason except their lousy server died, unlike Microsoft).

--Eric
 
I like the interface much better, and I feel a lot safer on it. I took precautions on Windows with antivirus/firewall, but still.

It is more responsive and faster too, but my Mac Pro is faster than my PC was.
 
I use windows XP at work and I am constantly frustrated by the system. I do a lot of training so when I develop new programs I will usually have a couple of web pages open, need access to photos and short movies and some pdf documents. Its a nightmare trying to quickly move from application to application and grab data and move it where I need it. I've given up on using powerpoint. Keynote is so much easier to use. Steps like importing photos or formating text take fewer mouse clicks or I can drag and drop and not have to use the menu bar at all.

Even when I'm not developing training programs I will have 15 or more windows open. Email, web pages, meeting maker, word, excel and filemaker documents are normally open. Its a nightmare moving from application to application. Which I have to do dozens of times an hour. This is frustrating and causes a loss of productivity. On a mac its not a problem. Even with my 12 inch powerbook managing 20 windows is easy. Expose really works.

Open dialog boxes. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but windows XP always opens in some non alphabetized list view. I normally change it to a listed sorted by date or an alphabetical list. I have to do this EACH TIME I do an open file. AHHH. Never-mind that I just changed the view 2 minutes ago windows does't or can't remember. On a mac window views can be set and are remembered. Aliases actually work. Icons are readable (am I the only one that thinks the desktop icon in windows looks like the MS explorer icon) and spotlight is a dream to use. I have more than 20 gigs of datafiles in my staff folder on the server (no apps just files) just finding documents in my staff folder using windows can consume 20 minutes of my time.

And there is lots more....
 
I have a house full of computers. There are 6 people in my family, and we have had at least three computers in the house going back 9 years or so. We now have 7 ranging from a PowerMac G4 Gigabit Ethernet to a new MacBook.

When running Windows, it seemed like I was constantly doing maintenance, uninstalling some crap one of my kids or my wife installed, cleaning stuff out, and the semi-annual rebuild because the registry was just hosed beyond salvage.

Since I switch in early 2001, I haven't had to do a rebuild once. We have a flat panel iMac G4 that is over 6 years old that has been touched by everyone, on the Internet for 6 years, and lots of stuff installed/uninstalled, etc. It is running 10.4.10 from the original 10.2 (I think, might have been 10.1.X though). All OS X upgrades have been upgrades, no reformat and install. All have worked.

All I have to do now is use Remote Desktop to remotely install packages and run disk utility now and again to fix permissions, and everything is good.

On the issue of package management, although it is technically true, most users will never be affected by it. Just drag the programs to the Trash and they will be deleted. You typically do not need to worry about deleting the preference files and anything else that might be in your library. If you are worried about that, you can download AppCleaner or similar to clean all the files up when you uninstall.
 
Lewis Hollow said:
Hi, I'm new here and investigating a move to the Apple side of the fence. I've used PC's for many years, and don't particularly dislike Windows, but I am intrigued by the Mac world.

So, one of the things most often referenced is obviously OS X, but I rarely see anyone explain exactly what practical user advantages this OS gives you over using Windows. I figure once you're inside any particular application (like Word or Photoshop), your experience will be reasonably similar on either system, so that leaves me wondering exactly what I will find more enjoyable about OS X. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I only request that when you're sharing them that you think of concrete examples, not things like it just 'feels' better. If I'm going to have to relearn things like keyboard shortcuts, I want to know it's worth it in the end.

Thanks for any feedback!
Click to expand...

I just switched via the new 24" Imac. All I can say is WOW. I have always been a windows user as long as I can remember. My wife didnt like the idea of a new OS as she didnt know windows that well as it is, but after she loves it, as it is much easier for her to use. For me it is perfect (besides no right click copy paste, but got used to the command c, v). This is the best OS in terms of things you need without the "junk". Its a different world other here for the good. Just switch, you will be amazed.
 
M$ didn't start from scrath because they don't need to, apple did so was because OS classic already hit rock bottom. and There was nothing to lose. By the way, copy 80% of code from a unix system isn't exactly "from scratch
Click to expand...

They don't need to from a commercial perspective because they have a monopoly. They need to in order to stop the mounting criticism with every release that it's just the same with a few new additions. Remember Win ME?

OS X is an OS from scratch, not code wise, but from a usability standpoint. Saying OS X is 80% UNIX is like saying we act 80% like chimpanzees.

ctually, Windows NT (the basis of Windows 2000 and Windows XP) was a complete redo of Windows. Windows 95->Me is a completely different code set.
Click to expand...
See above. The code might be different, but Vista is still basically the same as 95 in its approach.
 
I prefer os x because:

1. Expose
2. Spotlight
3. It looks prettier
4. No viruses, spyware
5. There's a great community feeling with macs and mac users.
 
I will make it quick since the OP and many other posters don't seem to take this thread to seriously.

I would use OS X over Windows any day because of three simple facts that can't be done in Windows out of the box, or without using some plugin that Windows users love:

(1) Every Application in my $1300 FCP Studio 2 package syncs with my $250 Aperture App and my $79 iWork App, they all sync with .Mac and iLife as well. If Adobe got that idea I would buy more Adobe products.

(2) Everyone copies features from some other company but the one that makes them useful, practical, and user wide gets the credit. Apple does that. Windows and Apple copy off of Linux and other OSes all the time, but those two get it to bigger audiences first, and Apple makes them work better. Expose was a nuisance at first, but once I got the hang of it I couldn't live without it. Vista's gadgets were better than dashboard since you could use them at the same time you did regular work, but a widget called DashIt solved that problem for me (I know.... I'm a hypocrite) and Mac OSX has more useful and integrated widgets.

(3) I have no problems with it... it's that simple. Windows wasn't bad either, but it couldn't do the first two things easily, and when there was a problem it persisted in Windows, while in Mac OS X I could force quit and be fine. For those that can't uninstall apps... I am sorry but you need to read the instructions. I have never had a problem with that. Running out of space and not knowing how to use the OS isn't a fault of the OS... that's a PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.) On the same note I have never had any virii or spyware with Windows. OS X just worked better, faster, smarter, as soon as I turned it on and installed my Pro Apps, Windows would need to configure things and I would have to install OH so many plugins.

I can access my work from any Pro App and any Consumer App on my system. I take a photo, stick it in Aperture, export it to Final Cut Pro as a sequence, open Pages and my Aperture library is there. Open iDVD and my Aperture images are there, open iWeb and look... there are my 5000 Aperture images all in the same order and hierarchy as my Aperture Library. It works the same with iPhoto and the consumer apps as well. I push a button and my iWeb work goes to .Mac, then computer automatically syncs my iCal, Address Book, and .Mac info with the other computers in my life with never a problem.

The only thing I don't like about Mac OS X is that I can't get it on anything but a relatively expensive and often times behind the curve Macintosh computer. If I could get an Alienware laptop with OS X then I would be in heaven... since I am spoiled by the integration with everything that OS X does... I will pay the price for it.
 
I absolutely do take this topic seriously...not sure why you felt the need to say that. I don't take the re-learning and expenditure of switching over lightly, and I appreciate everyone's insights thus far.
 
Lewis Hollow said:
I absolutely do take this topic seriously...not sure why you felt the need to say that. I don't take the re-learning and expenditure of switching over lightly, and I appreciate everyone's insights thus far.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to insult anyone. Sorry if I did. I never wanted to make it seem that your question wasn't important to you. It has however been asked before, and many times been hurled into the realm of Windows vs. Mac OS X; Chevy vs. Ford; Nikon vs Canon; Product A vs. Product B, so I didn't want to get my own serious feelings involved.

And on a very personal note, I read threads and monitor how many times the OP responds to replies and how much time they took to write the initial post. If the number of replies is small I tend not to take the thread to seriously, if the initial post/question is too simple I do the same thing. If the other members don't seem to be posting any real content... I tend to stay away, those thread are brewing ground for a fight or hurt feelings. I have been banned before for falling into a troll trap... not trying to let that happen again.

p.s. I know the OP is no troll.
 
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