Umm, no. See below.
Want to add my 2 cents on this topic after just 10 days with OSX. It's quite clear the OSX trackpad gestures and keyboard commands are well thought out and superior to Windows offerings (Thinkpad trackpoint fans may reasonably disagree and that's fine for them), however IMHO a 5-button mouse offers better control and faster ability to complete many (not all) tasks. In particular, the mouse ability to precisely and quickly select text, then right-click for a myriad of options cannot be replicated with a trackpad. As someone who uses a mouse whenever possible OSX has been inferior to Windows.
Well, it seems you are simply not using your devices to their full abilities. A mouse is not an efficient device. Sure, its very good for pointing, but it has two core issues: a) to use a mouse you need to move/rotate your elbow and b) you need to move your hand away from the keyboard. When I am working with text, I have my both hands over the keyboard. If you don't - then we shouldn't be discussing these things at all, because you are not typing efficiently. To use the mouse, I need to remove one hand, grab the mouse, move the mouse, click the mouse and return the hand back to the keyboard. This is inefficient, both time wise and ergonomic-wise. You cannot even compare the speed of text selection with the mouse and a proper key-assisted editor; e.g. vim or emacs are extreme examples that let you select ranges of text with surgical precision with few keystrokes, but any good text editor allows you to select ranges of words and lines much quicker with the keyboard than with the mouse. In addition, Apple trackpad allows you to do text selection as precise as a mouse (and probably faster) . You just need to know how. I use my thumb to press down the trackpad and perform the selection with the pointing finger. Only minimal wrist motion is required - its more efficient than a mouse. Right click? Why would you need right click if there are keyboard shortcuts?
However, as someone who uses a five button mouse because it is superior to a trackpad for many important tasks and is used to a mouse being a highly productive tool, OSX has disappointed.
Well, here is your problem. If you refer to a mouse as a highly productive tool, then you are limiting yourself. When working with text, mouse (trackpad as well of course) is a workflow interruption. I prefer the trackpad just because its closer to the keyboard - for rare occasions that I need my mouse pointer, its faster to go down with my thumb than actually move my whole arm to the muse.
IMHO the Windows taskbar is superior to the Dock. I have yet to see anything in the Dock that can't be incorporated in a taskbar, while the taskbar offers a level of access, precision and productivity not found in the Dock. If you work with a mouse, the Dock is simply inferior. (I'll be happy to be proven wrong with more than 10-days of experience.)
That might be correct (no opinion), still, I find both of them borderline useless. Why would anyone need to use something like Dock or task bar if any application can be launched by a quick keystroke combination from Spotlight/Windows Search? Pressing CMD+Space, S, Enter is
much quicker than navigating the moue pointer to the dock and clicking on the icon.
The other thing that annoys me about OSX is the lack of customization on the simplest of things. For example, you get a black pointer and you're going to like it. Period. Apple thinks you're an idiot who won't know if you're pointing at a link, so they've given you the (pointing) finger and you're going to like it. Period.
Whats wrong with having a consistent user experience? IMO, its a great strength of Apple's system - they have a very good user interface guidelines and a library of UI elements which makes implementing these guidelines a breeze. That said, you can customise lots of things in OS X - the whole OS is based on plug-in architecture after all. Windows customisation is also usually provided by third-party programs that implement custom rendering options etc. There are such programs for OS X as well.
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CMD+Tab with multiple windows open is not nearly as efficient as direct immediate access to all of them -- including instant access to the one you want -- in a taskbar. Why do multi-step processes like tab cycling thru open programs/windows or using Mission Control when a single taskbar point and click gets you exactly where you want to be?
First: how is this different from what the dock provides? Second - you don't need to tab cycle. Use CMD+Tab (hold the CMD) and click the icon. The mouse pointer is usually closer to the middle of the screen - this way its faster than moving it down to the taskbar/dock. Try it out
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For something that's supposed to be simple, straight forward and easy, I've seen more references to using Terminal to accomplish things in ten days here than I've seen the Windows equivalent suggested in years. Text-based command computing was the last thing I expected to encounter or have to learn in the Mac world.
This is indeed surprising. What kind of things were you trying to do? Of course, you should learn how to use the Terminal if you want to get the most out of your system (simply because its more powerful than a GUI could ever be), but a 'normal' user doesn't need it at all. Unless you want to access some specific settings, in which case the command-line defaults is the most convenient tool.
I've seen the spinning pinwheel more times in ten days on my i7/8gb/SSD Macbook than I saw the equivalent in two years on my W7 i5/4gb/320gbHDD-24gbSSD Thinkpad ultrabook. In fact, I don't remember the last time I saw a Windows hourglass or any indication of processing delay on the TP.
This is also quite surprising. I don't get it often on my rMBP. Then again, OS X is much more eager to show the spinning wheel. On Mac, the wait cursor animation is used automatically by the windowing system under specific circumstances (e.g. if event processing takes long time). Under Windows, for the most case the application is responsible for setting the wait cursor. Most application simply don't bother.
P.S. Just to be clear, I do not consider OS X to be any more stable than modern Windows. Windows XP and before were crap in that regard. Since Vista (and even more so with 7), Windows is a very stable and fast OS. I firmly believe that any specialised professional that has to deal with one-two specialised applications only (like Photoshop) is better served with Windows.
