What would I miss going from Mac back to pc?

[bchan009]

Absolutely incorrect, because that Documents folder contained a couple dozen documents when I took that photo of the Save dialog.

The rest of your response is invalid. My IT department has no say in how Windows's UI is designed.

Kthxbye.

Please read my response to you. Did you have OUTLOOK files in that folder? If not, that folder will show up as empty. My post explains this -- I think you might have misunderstood what Steve meant.

He was just trying to be helpful...no need to be snarky about it.

EDIT: And just to be clear, you SHOULD talk to IT because the networking/VPN software/outlook are probably on your comp because your IT dept. installed them. None of those things come stock with Windows.

If any of it is not configured correctly or you can't figure out how to turn the notifications off, you should talk to them. They will help you.

I feel like you're maybe bashing an OS that you clearly aren't very well-versed in, and due to some issues that aren't even related to the OS.

 

[SteveJUAE]

Please read my response to you. Did you have OUTLOOK files in that folder? If not, that folder will show up as empty. My post explains this -- I think might have misunderstood what Steve meant.

He was just trying to be helpful...no need to be snarky about it.

Thanks

I was trying to avoid filling the thread up with off topic help

Although I agree having to use the back arrow to revert back from MS Office file menu is odd but you only do it wrong a couple of times LOL

 

[Freyqq]

I recently bought a windows hybrid device. I miss the following:

1. No Facetime
2. No iMessage
3. OSX mail and calendar are better than Outlook and sync with gmail/google calendar much better. It's so bad that I actually just use the webmail and calendar in Chrome now. MS Exchange servers seem a lot better though.
4. Less bugs, it took a couple days to get the settings right so I would bypass some of them.

PC has the following going for it:

1. MS Office is much better on PC than OSX
2. Touchscreen on a desktop OS
3. Wider application selection

 

[vddobrev]

I use Windows all day for work, and when I get off it and log into my Mac it's like stepping through a portal to paradise.

100%

 

[FatherJack1980]

I LOVE using is multiple desktops when I'm working on projects, I don't know if any windows PC's can do this I haven't used one in awhile.

Yepp, Windows has multiple desktops.

(if you've gotten an answer, sorry)

 

[BarracksSi]

Please read my response to you. Did you have OUTLOOK files in that folder? If not, that folder will show up as empty.

What? How does this make any sense?

The folder isn't empty. Why would it show up empty anywhere?

[adding on]
So you say Outlook doesn't see any non-Outlook files? Still doesn't make any sense, but whatever…

Here's doing the same thing in macOS Mail when I want to save an email (and yes, I was choosing Save in Outlook). Being able to see all the other files helps me be sure that I'm (a) using the correct destination and (b) avoid naming the new file the same as an older file.

 

[raqball]

What I would miss the most is continuity and handoff between my iPhone and the MacBook. I use this a lot and would definitely miss it...

 

[BarracksSi]

Back to the OP's question:

What would I miss going from Mac back to PC?

You'll miss having an OS that makes sense.

 

[Micky Do]

Windows is an atrocity and MacOS is beautiful. So there's that.

It's not as simple as that anymore

It still is as far as I'm concerned.

As a teacher, outside of contact hours in class I do most of my work at home mainly using Pages and Numbers. They are easy to use, and more than adequate for my needs. On occasion I have to use the computers in the office on campus, which have Windows OS, Word and Excel installed. They are often slow to start up, as system updates are installed, and a hassle to use. They frequently require the attention of the office geek or the ID department to repair hardware, or sort software issues.

I have never owned a PC, and have not regretted going Mac when I bought my first computer, the original Mac Mini in 2005. I have only bought one since then, an early 2009 Mac Mini, which continues to serve me well. However, possibly heading into a more itinerant phase of my life, I could soon be looking to buy at a laptop. It will be a Mac for sure.

 

[xtenglong]

It still is as far as I'm concerned.

As a teacher, outside of contact hours in class I do most of my work at home mainly using Pages and Numbers. They are easy to use, and more than adequate for my needs. On occasion I have to use the computers in the office on campus, which have Windows OS, Word and Excel installed. They are often slow to start up, as system updates are installed, and a hassle to use. They frequently require the attention of the office geek or the ID department to repair hardware, or sort software issues.

I have never owned a PC, and have not regretted going Mac when I bought my first computer, the original Mac Mini in 2005. I have only bought one since then, an early 2009 Mac Mini, which continues to serve me well. However, possibly heading into a more itinerant phase of my life, I could soon be looking to buy at a laptop. It will be a Mac for sure.

Pretty unfair to compare it to campus office computers that have complicated set ups to run on servers. Not to mention, they are low spec'ed.

I own and use both OS and I find Windows plenty capable of doing tasks at extremely fast speeds. Only thing it lacks is support for iMessages and other Mac products. It's one of the reasons I disliked switching to an iPhone when I broke my last phone. Android has plenty of options for syncing messages and notifications between itself and a PC. Now that I have a MBP, it doesn't bother me as much.

 

[tubeexperience]

Yeah, and banging my head against the wall stops hurting after a while, too.

The UI is absolutely an "issue" because it's how I interact with the computer. If I used only the command line to do everything, maybe I wouldn't care, but it's just not the case.

So if you learn a language that's not English, do you also complain that things are done like in English?

No, it doesn't. It shows me the other folders inside the destination folder, but it doesn't show any of the other files. I'll attach a pic below.

What's this?

"ding" Cisco VPN disconnected
"popup" Enter your ActiveClient credentials
"ding" Cisco VPN connected
"popup, labeled" Microsoft Outlook - Enter your ActiveClient credentials
"popup in the bottom right corner" Your software is being updated. Click here to see. [and this is legit, too]
etc. (and these are the ones common enough that I remember what they are)

How about turning off some notifications?

My beef with these is related to several aspects:
They're sometimes labeled, like the Outlook password box, but sometimes they're not. They also don't have a "physical connection" to their application, or document window, like OS X's dialog sheets. Remember way back when Jobs introduced the virtual sheets in 10.0 that drop down from a document's title bar, making it clear which document the action was attached to? Nothing like that happens in Windows. Sometimes I'll get that password box and it's not labeled and it's not visually tied to anything.

I said, "I can now see how phishing works," because I can imagine a malicious website or email popping up a lookalike box, similarly not tied to any particular window, and snagging a user's password, or gaining permissions to install more software. The normal way of doing things has enough inconsistency that nothing seems abnormal.

I don't use Outlook so I don't know what you mean.

Why doesn't the overall system volume decrease when I press the buttons next to the keyboard? When I press them, a little indicator window appears in the top left corner of the screen, and it goes all the way down to "0" -- but the volume coming out of my headphones hasn't changed at all. And that's even though it worked YESTERDAY. WHY? WTF?

I don't have this problem. I press the volume up/volume down button on the keyboard and it works just fine.

In my case, no, because I don't have admin permissions to change color, which is under "Advanced Settings". The real questions then become:
1. Why is color management an "advanced" setting? What's so "advanced" about making a display not look like sh*t?
2. Why isn't the nVidia graphics card control panel blocked to non-admin users?
3. Can't I just adjust the color temperature instead of trying to move sliders for RGB values? You know, like how we can do on the Mac? No?

So you are complaining because you don't have administrator privilege?

I didn't really notice it for a while, either. But, I started wondering why I always felt a little unsure about clicking any menu item (whether from the menu bar, right-clicking, etc). I watched my Mac again and noticed the brief single blink it always has when you click a menu item command (in the old days, you could set it to blink once, twice, or even three times). I went back to the Windows laptop and, nope, it doesn't blink.

As I write about it, it seems like a petty little thing, but every time I don't get a visual confirmation about an action I wanted, I wonder if the computer really knows what it's doing. It's like if I asked someone, "Did you get my email?" and they don't say anything. Sheesh, at least say yes or no.

Would you post an image of this?

The Mac's Save As PDF feature has been around a long time, too -- and the Mac's Print button prints to a sheet of paper, not an electronic PDF file, because printing ink onto paper is what "Print" means and has meant since at least the days of Gutenberg.

The "Adobe PDF" printer (in your image) is installed by Adobe Acrobat. That is not part of Windows.

I did (and it took a while), and it still puts "Print to PDF" at the top of the printer list... and a PDF isn't even a PRINTER.

For Christ's sakes, I shouldn't need to go down a checklist of settings just to make sure that, when I click the big button that says "PRINT", I can remain confident that I'll get some pressed tree pulp with blackened chemicals baked into it instead of yet another electronic file.

And it saves as a PDF file even though the little "Print to file" checkbox is UNchecked. See pic.

This doesn't make much sense. Are you saying that pressing Cmd-C can be done accidentally because the keys are too close together? How sloppy do you have to be as a typist to make this happen?

In my high school typing class, we were taught that moving the hands reduces accuracy. This is like, say, picking up your hand from the palm rest so you can reach a key outside the normal letter keys. I have to pick up my hand to reach the Ctrl key with my pinky finger, which changes the motion I need to make to press either the C or V keys (and changes which finger I need to use for the A key). No, it makes more sense to use the Cmd key, because it's easily reached by the thumb, which is already living in the spacebar row like it should be.

Just use the pinky and index finger.

No big deal.

Then here's Dell's control panel for its touchpad.
1. Why aren't these controls built into the Windows settings instead?
2. Why is this interface completely inconsistent with everything else in Windows?
3. Why is there no way to reprogram the other three buttons above the touchpad?
4. There's a setting in here (not pictured) for "middle click" for the trackpad. WTF is a "middle click"? Oh, is that when you click a mouse's scroll wheel? But this is a trackpad, not a mouse.

That looks like really old version of Dell touchpad settings.

Here's the controls in the Windows settings that you are looking for:

It's giving me all kinds of stuff right up front that I'll probably never need, and layers the commonly-used stuff into other Ribbons. And, if Win10 wants to be touch-friendly, it doesn't make any sense to make all those controls and buttons in the Ribbon so damned small.

If I can customize it and remove all the junk I never use, I will. I don't expect that it can be made as simple as Mac's Mail toolbar while retaining as much usability, though.

This is the Ribbon.

It is customizable.

 

[BarracksSi]

It's like the joke:

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

None. They just make Dark the new standard.

 

[tubeexperience]

It's like the joke:

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

None. They just make Dark the new standard.

Most of the "issues" you have are either caused by being unfamiliar with the operating system or by third party software that don't follow guidelines.

 

[Altis]

Back to the OP's question:



You'll miss having an OS that makes sense.

I'm pretty indifferent to the various operating systems because they all have pros and cons.

OSX doesn't always make sense. Not being able to put directories first in Finder was always frustrating (finally added it this year).

Window management in MacOS is pretty fruity, too. I'd probably leave it altogether if it weren't for BetterSnapTool. I don't like having a bunch of randomly-sized Windows floating around... Such poor use of space. That's one thing Windows and most Linux DEs have well sorted out.

Not crazy about the Windows 10 forced updates, though. It's like they're taking a page from iOS.

Bottom-line: there's always things you'll miss when changing OS... But they all have good and bad. Ultimately it's just a platform upon which to use software, and it should help you do that and otherwise mostly stay out of your way.

 

[bchan009]

What? How does this make any sense?

The folder isn't empty. Why would it show up empty anywhere?

[adding on]
So you say Outlook doesn't see any non-Outlook files? Still doesn't make any sense, but whatever…

For the THIRD time, please READ my post. I clearly show you exactly how you can get the file save window to show every file JUST like macOS does. Just choose "all files" from the dropdown and you will see files of all types.

Numerous people are pointing out that many of your issues aren't Windows related and the ones that are are easily solvable.

You're so eager to demonize Windows, but don't even bother to read posts properly.

Op is asking what they will miss from a switch, but it's clear you don't even know your way around non Mac OS systems...how can you possibly be qualified to give them solid advice?

It's like telling someone that oil paints are better than watercolors when you don't even know how to use watercolors...

If anything, you're reinforcing the stereotype that Macs are for Apple cultists who don't know how to use a computer.

Years ago when I asked why OSX had no cut feature to move files in Finder, Apple users were horrified. "why would you want something so stupid?! If you cut a file and then copy some text somewhere else, you will lose your file!!!!"

Ppl didn't even know how the function actually worked in other oses and yet ridiculed it.

Here's one thing you WON'T miss op: the ignorance and superiority complex of other Mac users.

 

[leman]

Here are the reasons why I can't consider Windows as a suitable OS for my purpose.

General convenience (from the top of my head):

- Quick Look: can't really beat it if your are looking for something or need to skim a lot of documents quickly
- Compact and well thought-out system settings: Windows 10 is still an unholy abomination mix of Windows 95/Vista/8 for its settings, and its all over the place
- Great stock apps and incredible synergy between them (e.g. appointments in Mail are automatically recognised etc. — but MS might also have some of these features by now). Need to install ton of applications in Win10 to get feature parity
- Great messaging/audio/video communication services, seamlessly integrates with the phone. Built-in screen sharing.
- Better file management IMO (Finder >>> Windows explorer, tags easier to use, smart folders, better filesystem organisation)
- A built-in incremental backup system that works incredibly well
- Excellent diagnostic tools (Activity Monitor + Console)
- Conceptually, connecting to network data shares in OS X is much easier and handled better. Similarly, external device support is handled better, but this has also something to do with the god awful letter drive system of DOS
- Keychain: system wide password, secure notes and certificate manager, syncs across devices, incredible piece of tech!
- Consistent UI across apps (Windows software still has problems supporting HiDPI for example)
- Standard extension feature (third-party apps enhance certain functionality through the OS), this one is still underused. Apple should put more focus on this incredible feature.
- Standard system-wide spellchecker
- Sane, consistent conventions for hotkeys (CMD+key for menu commands, OPTION for advanced/alternative action)
- Spotlight used to be another massive advantage, but modern Windows can do basically all of the things Spotlight had (tagging, comments, searches etc.)

IMO, the above things benefit all kinds of users, no matter of what they do. The things below are much more niche and more power-user. But for me, its the decisive difference and the reason why I simply can't work with Windows anymore:

- Unix based
- a set of standard, well documented and well understood tools, which can be wired together to easily perform some incredible workflows. Need to extract a set of specific lines from thousands of files, sort them, do counts, and output into a nice table? One line using standard command line tools.
- compatible with most open-source unix/linux tools out there. Seamless installs. Want to install the lasest Python3? Type brew install python3, you are done. Windows10 does improve on that with OneGet, but its still in its infancy.
- incredible integration of UI and command line. You cave a rich sets of commands and tools that let you switch seamlessly between your command line and the GUI. I regularly use the terminal to navigate the file tree (much faster then a GUI ever could), and then use the open command to fire up the Finder to have a more convenient look at the file structure etc.
- Easy scriptability: script the OS and any App with Apple-Script and JavaScript. Incredible possibilities for automation. Windows is far less convenient in this area
- Launchd — set up action-based agents and background services with great ease. Need something run regularly? Or want to fire an automation script every time a contents of a fonder changes? OS X makes it incredibly easy and is insanely flexible in this regard
- Tons of little things that make my life easier, such as great diagnostic tools for WiFi (see the network speed, ip, signal strength etc. via a single click), local network host names (Bonjour, great if you need to spontaneously share a repository or fire up a server for a coworker to access), built-in apache functionality, great PDF support out of box, amazing fonts, Airdrop and so on
[doublepost=1482052318][/doublepost]

Years ago when I asked why OSX had no cut feature to move files in Finder, Apple users were horrified. "why would you want something so stupid?! If you cut a file and then copy some text somewhere else, you will lose your file!!!!"

OS X Finder has had cut since basically forever... its simply part of the paste functionality (triggered at destination_ and not the copy one (triggered at the source).

 

[kis]

It's like the joke:

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

None. They just make Dark the new standard.

It's scary how much that joke now fits Apple rather than Microsoft, wouldn't you agree?
[doublepost=1482068616][/doublepost]

I recently bought a windows hybrid device. I miss the following:

1. No Facetime
2. No iMessage
3. OSX mail and calendar are better than Outlook and sync with gmail/google calendar much better. It's so bad that I actually just use the webmail and calendar in Chrome now. MS Exchange servers seem a lot better though.
4. Less bugs, it took a couple days to get the settings right so I would bypass some of them.

The Windows 10 stock mail app and calendar work perfectly well with Google accounts now. I slightly prefer Apple's Mail App, but that one is rather buggy (wouldn't let me send through my own SMTP server for example until I did reboot - has happened twice during the last week, wouldn't close because it's stuck trying to send something, craps out while copying larger numbers of emails from one account to another, creating a huge mess in the process etc. - those are just a few things I've encountered recently). The Mail app on Windows 10 has been rock stable and the calendar works extremely well. I don't use Outlook because it is and has always been an extreme mess.

My new MacBook Pros (I currently have both a Touchbar 13" and a Touchbar 15" at home, in the process of selling the former) are both rather buggy. The 15" has a lot of touchpad issues (can't properly drag and drop most of the time, palm rejection sucks), while the 13" has to be rebooted about once a day because of the GPU problem so many people have experienced.

 

[Queen6]

It's scary how much that joke now fits Apple rather than Microsoft, wouldn't you agree?

Sadly can only agree, with productivity long since traded for a sea of emoji`s...

Q-6

 

[kis]

Here are the reasons why I can't consider Windows as a suitable OS for my purpose.

General convenience (from the top of my head):

- Quick Look: can't really beat it if your are looking for something or need to skim a lot of documents quickly
- Compact and well thought-out system settings: Windows 10 is still an unholy abomination mix of Windows 95/Vista/8 for its settings, and its all over the place
- Great stock apps and incredible synergy between them (e.g. appointments in Mail are automatically recognised etc. — but MS might also have some of these features by now). Need to install ton of applications in Win10 to get feature parity
- Great messaging/audio/video communication services, seamlessly integrates with the phone. Built-in screen sharing.
- Better file management IMO (Finder >>> Windows explorer, tags easier to use, smart folders, better filesystem organisation)
- A built-in incremental backup system that works incredibly well
- Excellent diagnostic tools (Activity Monitor + Console)
- Conceptually, connecting to network data shares in OS X is much easier and handled better. Similarly, external device support is handled better, but this has also something to do with the god awful letter drive system of DOS
- Keychain: system wide password, secure notes and certificate manager, syncs across devices, incredible piece of tech!
- Consistent UI across apps (Windows software still has problems supporting HiDPI for example)
- Standard extension feature (third-party apps enhance certain functionality through the OS), this one is still underused. Apple should put more focus on this incredible feature.
- Standard system-wide spellchecker
- Sane, consistent conventions for hotkeys (CMD+key for menu commands, OPTION for advanced/alternative action)
- Spotlight used to be another massive advantage, but modern Windows can do basically all of the things Spotlight had (tagging, comments, searches etc.)

IMO, the above things benefit all kinds of users, no matter of what they do. The things below are much more niche and more power-user. But for me, its the decisive difference and the reason why I simply can't work with Windows anymore:

- Unix based
- a set of standard, well documented and well understood tools, which can be wired together to easily perform some incredible workflows. Need to extract a set of specific lines from thousands of files, sort them, do counts, and output into a nice table? One line using standard command line tools.
- compatible with most open-source unix/linux tools out there. Seamless installs. Want to install the lasest Python3? Type brew install python3, you are done. Windows10 does improve on that with OneGet, but its still in its infancy.
- incredible integration of UI and command line. You cave a rich sets of commands and tools that let you switch seamlessly between your command line and the GUI. I regularly use the terminal to navigate the file tree (much faster then a GUI ever could), and then use the open command to fire up the Finder to have a more convenient look at the file structure etc.
- Easy scriptability: script the OS and any App with Apple-Script and JavaScript. Incredible possibilities for automation. Windows is far less convenient in this area
- Launchd — set up action-based agents and background services with great ease. Need something run regularly? Or want to fire an automation script every time a contents of a fonder changes? OS X makes it incredibly easy and is insanely flexible in this regard
- Tons of little things that make my life easier, such as great diagnostic tools for WiFi (see the network speed, ip, signal strength etc. via a single click), local network host names (Bonjour, great if you need to spontaneously share a repository or fire up a server for a coworker to access), built-in apache functionality, great PDF support out of box, amazing fonts, Airdrop and so on
[doublepost=1482052318][/doublepost]

OS X Finder has had cut since basically forever... its simply part of the paste functionality (triggered at destination_ and not the copy one (triggered at the source).

When was the last time you used a Windows PC?

- Quicklook, not implemented natively, but the functionality can be added in 5 minutes using a small tool called "Seer" (http://www.howtogeek.com/249557/how-to-add-os-xs-quick-look-feature-to-windows/)

- Settings: that's in the eye of the beholder. I find the new Windows 10 anniversary update settings menu rather well organised. By now, however, I have to use "search" for finding system settings both on Mac OS and on Windows on a regular basis. They're both not as clean and straightforward as they should be

- Appointments from E-Mails and Calendar monitoring: works eerily well through Cortana. Apple has some great stock apps, that's for sure, e.g. Preview. There are also many that I don't care for (the superfluous contacts app, Notes, Reminders - stuff that I had to replace with 3rd party apps on macOS as well). On the other hand, Onenote on Windows + Windows Inking makes for a fantastic productivity powerhouse, something that you simply can't have on macOS at the moment. Neither OS comes with a full set of perfect apps. They're about the same overall in this respect.

- Incremental backup: not built-in, that's correct. File History works very well otherwise, however, is simple to set up and to use. There's a ton of third-party software available for that. Apple's Time Machine has just taken a major hit, unfortunately, because Apple has discontinued the Time Capsule products. Backing up to external hard drives that are hooked up directly to the computer isn't very safe. Power surges at etc. can wipe out the computer and the backup drives at the same time this way and if the computer gets infected with malware, this might also attach the hard drives that are hooked up to the Mac. For backup, I'd recommend Synology or the like, both for Mac OS and for Windows.

- Messaging, Audio + Video: heard of Skype? Works well and is used by literally billions of people. Facetime, iMessage etc. only work if your friends, co-workers, family members etc. use Macs and / or iOS devices as well. I have to say that this is becoming more and more rare. If that's true, however, Apple does indeed offer very powerful apps here.

- Diagnostics Tools: equally good on Windows

- Finder vs. Windows explorer: the former is far less powerful, but far easier and more pleasant to use. You'd have to use third-party apps, once more, to achieve a similarly seamless solution on Windows.

- I've never had any issues with external drives on Windows. I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you here until Apple decided to deliberately cripple the Disk Utility. Used to be a great product, now it's for dummies only.

- Keychain: very convenient, but a security nightmare. Nobody knows how Apple really stores that information in the cloud. Nobody knows how many people have access to the information.

- Consistent UI: true, Apple has very quickly forced the developers to support HiDPI, something Microsoft, for whatever reason, hasn't done. Most modern apps work great, but yeah, sometimes you're forced to work with sucky ones. Fortunately, the selection of Windows apps is gigantic, allowing you to find alternatives if some devs are incapable of writing decent software.

- spell checker: I hate both the Windows and the Mac OS versions


In terms of the power user features you're mentioning: here macOS is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, they do still offer the raw power of the underlying Unix framework, on the other hand they've been crippling software and tools for years. Airport Utility? now crap. Disk Utility? now crap. Aperture? gone. Final Cut Pro X? Photos? Come on, Apple.

- Scriptability: check out Windows Script Host. An incredibly powerful tools that goes far beyond what you can do on a Mac.


as a side-note: Safari just force-closed on me after having completed about 2/3 of the text here. I'm deducting another point from Apple's side for that alone

 

[BarracksSi]

Here's the bases of my annoyances --

Inconsistent Open/Save dialogs: Why are different apps even allowed to do these differently? Why does one app use the full-screen Metro style and another app doesn't? Why is Windows even giving an option to these apps?

Lack of color calibration permissions to non-admin users: I make changes in the Windows control panel, but I can't save the changes because it's treated as some highly important system-level modification. Whatever, it's just color. Like I also said earlier, the bigger questions are: 1. Why is color management reserved for admin-only users? It's hardly a path for potential security breaches. I could change the color profile on my Mac if I weren't an admin user, even though I can only change it for my profile and not all user profiles. Why doesn't Windows allow this? 2. If color management is so important to Windows to block from me, why isn't the nVidia controller similarly blocked from me?

Third-party/vendor hardware controllers: In my case, this relates to how the touchpad, audio, and video are controlled. The fact that Windows doesn't have proper control of these things just reinforces how the system is cobbled together. The problem of my laptop randomly forgetting that it has a wide display is absolutely inexcusable; "It's installing an update, so the driver is unavailable", even though it's surely true and an accurate explanation, is a BS way for the computer to handle itself. For my headphones to change volume on one day but not the next is also BS. If I had bought this machine with my own money, I'd already have returned it (or at least zeroed out the drive and installed Linux just for kicks).

Menu items on a Mac blink when you click them, but they don't blink on Windows, losing visual feedback: I don't need to upload a video for this. If you've used a Mac, you've seen it.

"Print to PDF": This is why it doesn't make sense -- Why is Acrobat given permission by Windows to install itself as a pseudo-printer? IT'S NOT A PRINTER. The HP something-something sitting on my shelf at home is a printer and the HP at the end of my cubicle row at work is a printer because they use paper and ink. But an Adobe PDF is NOT a printer. The explanation that "Acrobat installs 'Adobe PDF' as a printer" is an excuse, not a fix. This is like saying to the doctor, "I think my leg is broken," and he says, "That's because the bone is broken," and he sends me home.

***
You guys have given me plenty of explanations, and even a few fixes, but the principles of how the OS manages itself -- or fails to manage itself -- haven't changed. If my Windows laptop were an employee, it would be at risk of getting fired right now.

[edit] Added bold highlights in case anyone missed my major points.

 

[SteveJUAE]

For the THIRD time, please READ my post. I clearly show you exactly how you can get the file save window to show every file JUST like macOS does. Just choose "all files" from the dropdown and you will see files of all types.

Numerous people are pointing out that many of your issues aren't Windows related and the ones that are are easily solvable.

You're so eager to demonize Windows, but don't even bother to read posts properly.

Op is asking what they will miss from a switch, but it's clear you don't even know your way around non Mac OS systems...how can you possibly be qualified to give them solid advice?

It's like telling someone that oil paints are better than watercolors when you don't even know how to use watercolors...

If anything, you're reinforcing the stereotype that Macs are for Apple cultists who don't know how to use a computer.

Years ago when I asked why OSX had no cut feature to move files in Finder, Apple users were horrified. "why would you want something so stupid?! If you cut a file and then copy some text somewhere else, you will lose your file!!!!"

Ppl didn't even know how the function actually worked in other oses and yet ridiculed it.

Here's one thing you WON'T miss op: the ignorance and superiority complex of other Mac users.

Now now settle down

I think he/she has already shown their true colours simply by not accepting or even retracting previous comments and it's exactly what I predicted.

In offering any level of help or assistance is futile with this mind-set that is simply childish we need to raise above this for both MacOS or Win10 users not least of all the OP
[doublepost=1482077827][/doublepost]

Here are the reasons why I can't consider Windows as a suitable OS for my purpose.

General convenience (from the top of my head):

- Quick Look: can't really beat it if your are looking for something or need to skim a lot of documents quickly
- Compact and well thought-out system settings: Windows 10 is still an unholy abomination mix of Windows 95/Vista/8 for its settings, and its all over the place
- Great stock apps and incredible synergy between them (e.g. appointments in Mail are automatically recognised etc. — but MS might also have some of these features by now). Need to install ton of applications in Win10 to get feature parity
- Great messaging/audio/video communication services, seamlessly integrates with the phone. Built-in screen sharing.
- Better file management IMO (Finder >>> Windows explorer, tags easier to use, smart folders, better filesystem organisation)
- A built-in incremental backup system that works incredibly well
- Excellent diagnostic tools (Activity Monitor + Console)
- Conceptually, connecting to network data shares in OS X is much easier and handled better. Similarly, external device support is handled better, but this has also something to do with the god awful letter drive system of DOS
- Keychain: system wide password, secure notes and certificate manager, syncs across devices, incredible piece of tech!
- Consistent UI across apps (Windows software still has problems supporting HiDPI for example)
- Standard extension feature (third-party apps enhance certain functionality through the OS), this one is still underused. Apple should put more focus on this incredible feature.
- Standard system-wide spellchecker
- Sane, consistent conventions for hotkeys (CMD+key for menu commands, OPTION for advanced/alternative action)
- Spotlight used to be another massive advantage, but modern Windows can do basically all of the things Spotlight had (tagging, comments, searches etc.)

IMO, the above things benefit all kinds of users, no matter of what they do. The things below are much more niche and more power-user. But for me, its the decisive difference and the reason why I simply can't work with Windows anymore:

- Unix based
- a set of standard, well documented and well understood tools, which can be wired together to easily perform some incredible workflows. Need to extract a set of specific lines from thousands of files, sort them, do counts, and output into a nice table? One line using standard command line tools.
- compatible with most open-source unix/linux tools out there. Seamless installs. Want to install the lasest Python3? Type brew install python3, you are done. Windows10 does improve on that with OneGet, but its still in its infancy.
- incredible integration of UI and command line. You cave a rich sets of commands and tools that let you switch seamlessly between your command line and the GUI. I regularly use the terminal to navigate the file tree (much faster then a GUI ever could), and then use the open command to fire up the Finder to have a more convenient look at the file structure etc.
- Easy scriptability: script the OS and any App with Apple-Script and JavaScript. Incredible possibilities for automation. Windows is far less convenient in this area
- Launchd — set up action-based agents and background services with great ease. Need something run regularly? Or want to fire an automation script every time a contents of a fonder changes? OS X makes it incredibly easy and is insanely flexible in this regard
- Tons of little things that make my life easier, such as great diagnostic tools for WiFi (see the network speed, ip, signal strength etc. via a single click), local network host names (Bonjour, great if you need to spontaneously share a repository or fire up a server for a coworker to access), built-in apache functionality, great PDF support out of box, amazing fonts, Airdrop and so on
[doublepost=1482052318][/doublepost]

OS X Finder has had cut since basically forever... its simply part of the paste functionality (triggered at destination_ and not the copy one (triggered at the source).

This is a nice list of preferences but not really a list of things missing bar 1 or 2 further more there is a natural biases because of your job function which does not represent the more average user. I'm sure if we got someone in a similar counter position we could have numerous arguments and given MS dominance in corporate environment there would be almost endless pro's, however lets try and remain within reason the boundaries of the OP and not the fringe extremities of IT professionals in some institutions however insightful it maybe

 

[leman]

When was the last time you used a Windows PC?

I use Windows fairly often because some of the software I write needs to run on all the platforms. I do admit that I don't use it for my basic productivity though (Mail/Browsing etc.), so I might now know all the features of the modern windows.

- Quicklook, not implemented natively, but the functionality can be added in 5 minutes using a small tool called "Seer" (http://www.howtogeek.com/249557/how-to-add-os-xs-quick-look-feature-to-windows/)

Sure, there are a lot of third party app to implement all kinds of functionality, but I was concentrating on the stock system-default stuff. A third-party app is simply not the same. QuickLook is natively present on any OS X installation, integrates with Spotlight and can be easily extended via third-party plugins (this is btw another are where OS X is better — file associations)

- Appointments from E-Mails and Calendar monitoring: works eerily well through Cortana.

Cool, thats great to know!

Apple's Time Machine has just taken a major hit, unfortunately, because Apple has discontinued the Time Capsule products.

I don't see it as a major hit. They have opened up network TM protocol to third party meaning that companies like Synology or others can finally implement high-quality, native support for TM instead of relying on unstable reverse-engineered backends. Support for this is already present in Synology's DSM 6.1 beta as well as in the open-source samba server implementation. By summer, we will see a range of third-party product that will trump Time Capsule in features.

- Messaging, Audio + Video: heard of Skype? Works well and is used by literally billions of people.

Yes, I use Skype for work, but sorry, it doesn't even compare to messages+facetime. It regularly forgets my credentials and locks my account on basis of it 'being used for spam', but doesn't tell me how and when (yes id o use secure passwords that i change regularly). The UI of its is a nightmare and it does weird stuff sometimes. I'd be happy to drop it, but I do ned to video chat with people who are not on OS X occasionally.

- Finder vs. Windows explorer: the former is far less powerful, but far easier and more pleasant to use. You'd have to use third-party apps, once more, to achieve a similarly seamless solution on Windows.

Well, that again is a question of perspective. Having lean apps that do exactly what they are supposed to do is kind of the basic idea of OS X. Windows Explorer is totally bloated and personally, I don't really see how its more superior. Not to mention that IMO the ribbon interface is one of the most abominable UI inventions of the last century.

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you here until Apple decided to deliberately cripple the Disk Utility. Used to be a great product, now it's for dummies only.

Yeah, people say that but I still don't understand how its crippled. Does everything it used to do and is better organised (yes, I deliberately ignore RAID and burning, because they are not relevant to modern Macs that much. And burning is still available via Finder).

Keychain: very convenient, but a security nightmare. Nobody knows how Apple really stores that information in the cloud. Nobody knows how many people have access to the information.

Nobody does, its encrypted with your iCloud password and also uses double-factor authentication as of recent. Frankly, I consider Win10 with its EULA of "we reserve the right to look at your data any time we want" a much bigger security nightmare.

Consistent UI: true, Apple has very quickly forced the developers to support HiDPI, something Microsoft, for whatever reason, hasn't done.

The reason for that is how the APIs are designed. Apple made a series of choices for its HiDPI implementation which basically made virtually ever application compatible, except few odd ones which implemented custom-drawn views (and even those would degrade gracefully, simply appearing more blurry on the display, but the size would be in-tact). For most OS X apps, adding HiDPI support simply meant copying a series of higher-resolution image assets into their catalog and rebuilding the app. Even more, if an OS X was coded with attention to Apple programming guides, it would most of the time work correctly with HiDPI. But they way HiDPI works in GDI+ under Windows, substantial developer effort is required in most cases to support it properly.

In terms of the power user features you're mentioning: here macOS is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, they do still offer the raw power of the underlying Unix framework, on the other hand they've been crippling software and tools for years.

Again, this is the matter of perspective. Because they have been improving diagnostics and terminal. For more complex workflows, you are almost always better using distil directly rather then going via DiskUtility. The principle is: command lien for power users, GUI for casual user. And sorry, Photos is so much better than iPhoto ever used to be.

- Scriptability: check out Windows Script Host. An incredibly powerful tools that goes far beyond what you can do on a Mac.

I know it and I worked with it. Don't understand how you an call it superior to Mac. Personally, I was put off by its cumbersome syntax. Apple's automation facilities are extremely simple and natively hook into well-understood unix. E.g. learning how to use launchtctl to do all kinds of cool stuff is literally a question of 5 minutes that you need to read through its man file. The same with WSH — well, I am a developer with over two decades of experience on multiple platforms and a half PhD in computer science, and I gave up without even starting properly.
[doublepost=1482079069][/doublepost]

This is a nice list of preferences but not really a list of things missing bar 1 or 2 further more there is a natural biases because of your job function which does not represent the more average user. I'm sure if we got someone in a similar counter position we could have numerous arguments and given MS dominance in corporate environment there would be almost endless pro's, however lets try and remain within reason the boundaries of the OP and not the fringe extremities of IT professionals in some institutions however insightful it maybe

Thats why I have split it into two blocks and said that the second block is specific to my situation

 

[tubeexperience]

Here's the bases of my annoyances --

Inconsistent Open/Save dialogs: Why are different apps even allowed to do these differently? Why does one app use the full-screen Metro style and another app doesn't? Why is Windows even giving an option to these apps?

Lack of color calibration permissions to non-admin users: I make changes in the Windows control panel, but I can't save the changes because it's treated as some highly important system-level modification. Whatever, it's just color. Like I also said earlier, the bigger questions are: 1. Why is color management reserved for admin-only users? It's hardly a path for potential security breaches. I could change the color profile on my Mac if I weren't an admin user, even though I can only change it for my profile and not all user profiles. Why doesn't Windows allow this? 2. If color management is so important to Windows to block from me, why isn't the nVidia controller similarly blocked from me?

Third-party/vendor hardware controllers: In my case, this relates to how the touchpad, audio, and video are controlled. The fact that Windows doesn't have proper control of these things just reinforces how the system is cobbled together. The problem of my laptop randomly forgetting that it has a wide display is absolutely inexcusable; "It's installing an update, so the driver is unavailable", even though it's surely true and an accurate explanation, is a BS way for the computer to handle itself. For my headphones to change volume on one day but not the next is also BS. If I had bought this machine with my own money, I'd already have returned it (or at least zeroed out the drive and installed Linux just for kicks).

Menu items on a Mac blink when you click them, but they don't blink on Windows, losing visual feedback: I don't need to upload a video for this. If you've used a Mac, you've seen it.

"Print to PDF": This is why it doesn't make sense -- Why is Acrobat given permission by Windows to install itself as a pseudo-printer? IT'S NOT A PRINTER. The HP something-something sitting on my shelf at home is a printer and the HP at the end of my cubicle row at work is a printer because they use paper and ink. But an Adobe PDF is NOT a printer. The explanation that "Acrobat installs 'Adobe PDF' as a printer" is an excuse, not a fix. This is like saying to the doctor, "I think my leg is broken," and he says, "That's because the bone is broken," and he sends me home.

***
You guys have given me plenty of explanations, and even a few fixes, but the principles of how the OS manages itself -- or fails to manage itself -- haven't changed. If my Windows laptop were an employee, it would be at risk of getting fired right now.

It's like learning a different language.

Different languages have different rules.

I am learning Spanish right now.

Can you imagine if I keep complaining about how Spanish does things differently than English?

I would never get anything done.

 

[therealseebs]

I just feel I should point out, I have had issues with "different open/save dialogs" on Macs, too. Not quite as often, maybe, but it's a thing that happens sometimes. So why does Microsoft offer the choice? Same reason Apple does: You can't offer programmers the ability to make things without them being able to make new dialogs if they want to.

 

[Queen6]

Now now settle down

I think he/she has already shown their true colours simply by not accepting or even retracting previous comments and it's exactly what I predicted.

In offering any level of help or assistance is futile with this mind-set that is simply childish we need to raise above this for both MacOS or Win10 users not least of all the OP

Preconceptions are never a good basis for discussion, both Windows & macOS have significantly advancing over the years. Windows is indeed more complex, equally PEBCAK still clearly remains to be the source of many`s computing woes.

Q-6