Windows FanBoy seeks reason to change

[balamw]

OS X Dock
I actually loathe the OS X dock (I'm sure I'll get down votes on this) but here are some reasons why:
1) The Dock does not show thumbnails/previews of the windows.

That's because in OS X 10.6 and earlier, Expose+Spaces was a better solution, unfortunately Lion's version isn't always as nice.

2) App icons in the Dock shift in location, depending on the apps that are currently open/running.

This doesn't happen to me with "Options->Keep In Dock" selected. (equivalent to pinning). All my new opened apps go on the right.

Finder
I much prefer the Windows Explorer to OS X's Finder. Win7 had some nice advances to the header of the Explorer. For example, for any path that is displayed in the Explorer header, you can select on any folder and access a drop-down to jump to a different folder. That's really convenient (and not possible in Finder). You also can't copy a path in Finder (I do this often because I'll create a new folder in some location, and then I'll want to copy that new folder's path because I have several other apps open and I want to save their data to the newly created path)

Finder and Explorer are just different. Column view gets some things done more easily than multiple Explorer windows IMO, and smart folders work better under OS X.

I'm not sure what you are after here with regards to copying filenames and paths. For the command line junkie in me, the ability to drop a file from Finder onto a Terminal Window is sheer awesomeness, but this works in W7 as well. If you turn on the path bar in Finder you get something close to the box in Windows I think you are referring to. Absolute paths can be had from Get Info and easily copied over to Go To Folder.

What am I missing?

B

 

[MacVibe]

I have made the switch but still use win 7 regularly for certain programs. I prefer OSX but since you mention multi-monitor my opinion is that win 7 does that feature much better. The secondbar app that a previous poster mentioned helps but I still find win 7 much better. Aside from secondbar, a couple of comments

1) the single menu at the top of the screen works great for my laptop (13") but I am not really fond of that way of doing things when things get big, like the 27" Imac. I usually have a lot of windows open and it would be more convenient at times to have a menu for each different program and not simply one for the active program

2) I went from a 24" Imac with second monitor (same size and resolution as Imac) to the 27" and it just didn't work anymore. The 27" monitor is beautiful and I love all the pixels but the second monitor just didn't work with my work flow- the pixel size on the 24" is larger and moving my eyes back and forth is just not very smooth. So, I am usually using just the 27" unless there is a certain program (like vmware) I open and leave at full screen in the second monitor. A second 27" monitor to match pixel size and resolution would be great but isn't in the budget.

 

[ixodes]

I use both Macs & PC's.

They each have distinct advantages and are near equals.

So as usual, it's all personal preference.

I happen to prefer Mac. You may not.

 

[Canaan]

This doesn't happen to me with "Options->Keep In Dock" selected. (equivalent to pinning). All my new opened apps go on the right.


B

It still squishes the others that are locked to the left, which is I think what the person was referring to. So if you open a bunch of apps that aren't locked to the dock, safari which may have been locked to the middle-ish on a "clean" dock, is now further left.

 

[balamw]

So if you open a bunch of apps that aren't locked to the dock, safari which may have been locked to the middle-ish on a "clean" dock is now further left.

Ah, OK. I don't see that as any different from
The pre-7 start bar or what happens if you get more than a full row of icons in 7, but I get it now. Thanks.

B

 

[g4 powerbookboy]

I have both, a apple g4 powerbook, the 15 inch aluminum model and a windows 7 laptop. I for one perfer the mac way of doing things, os x just seems to be better designed than windows, although i have to give windows 7 some credit... windows 7 is far improved over windows xp and vista, the two operating systems that made me change to mac

 

[Jack97]

I was pleasantly surprised when I began to use my Mac as opposed to a PC for the first time. Just pleasantly surprised.

But it was only when I used a PC again when I realised just how many leagues ahead Macs are. They're just beautiful machines to use, whichever aspect you're talking about. And I suppose, being only "pleasantly surprised" goes to show how easily a Mac incorporates itself into your life. It doesn't distract you from what you're trying to do, and that's the beauty of it.

In my opinion, the extra money you pay is completely justifiable.

 

[jdiamond]

My experience switching...

I actually switched from XP to Mac, but I still have to use Windows 7 and Linux, and would consider myself a power user. People have covered a lot from this discussion, so I'll just briefly give the facts in my case:

Pros:

-> I noticed IMMEDIATELY that the Mac came with so much software - most of it as good or better than the literally hundred or so applications I needed to be productive in Windows. Initially, I didn't have to buy much software at all - just Office and Photoshop. Of course, now, I've purchased a bunch of stuff.

-> Not to start a war, but stability was significantly better. Not only didn't my Mac ever crash, but the only applications that ever crashed on it were Microsoft. (Sorry - but it's true.) To this very day, I am absolutely amazed that the Mac's Force Quit command ALWAYS works!

-> I was calmer and less frustrated using the Mac, even if I couldn't always say why. There was certainly less fiddling with settings and the OS. To give a sense of this, for about a year after my switch, I would continually reinstall Windows XP in VMWare, just for the fun of it. Seriously - as a power user, reinstalling windows had been my life. And again, not to start a war, but I have never had driver issues with a Mac, and I still have them again and again with Windows. It's not that Windows always has these issues, but for me, it is truly a noticeable (non trivial) difference.

Cons: You have to do things a little differently in the Mac. In most cases, these are reasonable ways to do things, once you know how. But a lot of the methods are invisible to a user. Much of the MacOS becomes better with "secret" key presses. I would say that for the first 2-3 months, I was a little depressed, wondering if I'd made the right choice, because I was trying to do things the Windows way, which was actually harder to do on the Mac. It was REALLY important to know someone who knows how to use a Mac. I also bought a lot of little add ons to make things more friendly to Windows users. The Mac still needs a first class application to be able to right click on a file list and select "create new file here." One odd thing - even though the Mac has awesome features like multiple desktops and Expose to deal with finding windows, somehow, I always needed these features more on a Mac - the Windows idea of having "child windows" locked in the parent window seems to be a bit better at using screen space.

Also, while I found the Mac built in software to in general outperform all the Windows software I was used to, programming took the longest to convert, because you have to learn everything from scratch again.

My Family: Less than 2 years after I switched, I was so happy I switched my family. They were not power users, so they had much less trouble. (They also had me to help.) In fact, I was amazed, because while I just bought Microsoft Office again, my wife dove in and used all the Mac iWok stuff, and she still does to this day - professionally, personally, etc. I'm not so brave yet, but certainly Keynote seems awesome!

Hope this helps. I actually switched at the same time as a LOT of my friends and colleagues, and so we set up an email list of Mac Tips. They were mainly things of the nature of "did you know this key does this?" or "you cna change this setting here", but they were occasionally cooler like "you can seamlessly mount an external filesystem this way." Bottom line is that using a Mac for a power user becomes an order of magnitude cooler once you know the right keys to press.

 

[Keldmik]

My reason for change was to get away from spending time working with the os and instead getting the work done. I did the first change in 2008, and have given my last win computer away.

Having 4 different macs, 2 iPads and 2 iPhones in the family we save a lot of money on software upgrades.

I also am running a win 7 on one the macs. But every time i launch it it needs a lot of patches, and i allways end up spending more time upgrading win, than i do getting the work done.

I have an it background starting with mainframes 37 years ago, and are currently earning my money working on unix, mainframes, win servers and still using a xp desktop ... :-(

 

[balamw]

I also am running a win 7 on one the macs. But every time i launch it it needs a lot of patches, and i allways end up spending more time upgrading win, than i do getting the work done.

I had a day much like this today.

B

 

[JozBaz]

Another switching experience...

I had been using Windows versions for 10+ years before switching from XP to OS X in 2008.

Most noticeable for me was the amount of troubleshooting & maintenance (crashes, driver updates, printers not working, slow, etc) going down by probably 90%.
Driver issues were all of a sudden a thing of the past, no more crashes or blue screens, no more general PC slowness, no more registry cleaners, re-installs etc. etc.
4 years later my 24" iMac is just as quick and easy to use as it was when I bought it. Apart from the (flawless) upgrades to the current 10.7.4, I never ever had to reinstall the OS X or anything like that. Same for my MBP which I bought within 2 months after I had the iMac.

Did I mention I reboot my MBP only once every two or three weeks? Immediately ready for use after 'Sleep', while on Windows it was not very different from a normal boot (<-- I admit, 4 years ago and on a corporate machine with an IT provided image which was probably not representative).

Windows 7 is better than XP, but not a week goes by without at least one of my colleagues complaining that his/her Win7 PC is 'acting up'. Glad I'm using my MBP.

Cons?
- MS Office for Mac is not perfect and also not 100% compatible with MS Office for Windows. Not ideal in the average corporate environment.
- Yes, it takes a bit of time to get used to OS X, but my God, is it worth it.

 

[Crmass100511]

OSX lion

I switched to the Apple Universe I mean the works with the whole family and the cousins and pets included
Boy what a fantastic feeling after years of hellish windows and WIn machines...
I have spent many hours watching Apple WWDC, special events and the various demos and learned a lot with other Mac experts on you tube.
The multi touch gestures and multi tasking desktops with the full page views and Reader, snap back features of Safari and the seamless AirPlay integration with other Apple devices........I cringe when Thinking about the endless man-hours wasted battling the crashes, navigating through Command window displays and gobbly gook of . Dll and registry and start buttons to trouble shoot idiotic error messages..."..."...".. but not any more.........THANKS STEVE FOR A MAGICAL EXPERIENCE



QUOTE=NorEaster;14897539]kudos ro r0k for a fairly decent post on some differences between Windows and OS X. I switched recently (Nov 2011) and to be honest, there are things in OS X that are great and somethings that drive me crazy (features available in Win7 but missing in OS X).

Here are some of my thoughts:
QuickView
Like a previous poster mentioned, this is possible in Win 7 with Outlook.

Speed and Stability
While Win7 made strides in stability and performance, I do think OS X is more stable. I can run many many applications at once and while sometimes one app may freeze, I find that it doesn't take down the entire OS. In the past 6 months, I've only had OS X hang on me once (to the point where I had to shut the machine down completely via the power button). I can't say the same for my previous Win7 machine.

OS X Dock
I actually loathe the OS X dock (I'm sure I'll get down votes on this) but here are some reasons why:
1) The Dock does not show thumbnails/previews of the windows. For example: If you have 3 different Firefox sessions running (or rather, 3 different FF windows), you can't hover over your Firefox icon in the Dock to see a thumbnail of each window. This makes switching between multiple running sessions of a given app (or across apps) extremely frustrating. I couldn't believe, with all of the claims that OS X is easier-to-use than Windows, that this is not a standard feature in OS X. I had to buy a 3rd party app (Dockview) in order to emulate this in OS X.

2) App icons in the Dock shift in location, depending on the apps that are currently open/running. For example, the following could happen: You could launch Firefox (which could be pinned to the Dock) and then you could launch another app (such as Preview) which may not be pinned to the Dock. When Preview is launched, it will appear in the Dock but all app icons to the left of it will shift farther left. I know this may sound trivial, but this means my Firefox icon is now no longer in the same location as it was prior to the Preview launch. Pinning an app in Win7 would always keep it there and launching new apps meant the new apps would always get added to the right of pinned apps without affecting the pinned apps' locations.

OS X's "Document" paradigm
In Windows, each window is it's own self-contained app. The menus of a given app are accessible in that app's window (Example: The file menu for an app in Windows is always found in the window's title/header bar). In OS X, each window is a "document" for the given app. This means certain menus (like the FIle menu) for an app are always found at the top of the desktop (not at the top of the window). So who cares, you might say? Well, try using this in a multi-monitor setup. Launch Safari for example, move one Safari window to your left monitor and then try to access the File menu. You'll find that you need to move your mouse back to your right monitor (assuming it's the main monitor that you use) to access the File menu. This is really annoying.

Finder
I much prefer the Windows Explorer to OS X's Finder. Win7 had some nice advances to the header of the Explorer. For example, for any path that is displayed in the Explorer header, you can select on any folder and access a drop-down to jump to a different folder. That's really convenient (and not possible in Finder). You also can't copy a path in Finder (I do this often because I'll create a new folder in some location, and then I'll want to copy that new folder's path because I have several other apps open and I want to save their data to the newly created path)

Printers
I have a networked Epson printer at home and various network printers at work. Finding them and setting them up in OS X was a breeze (in fact, there was no setup). Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Win7.

If anyone is reading this and feels there are ways to alleviate the issues I mentioned above, feel free to comment. I am by no means an OS X expert (and some of my gripes above could potentially be a result of my "noob"-ness).[/QUOTE]

 

[hyperipod]

That's because in OS X 10.6 and earlier, Expose+Spaces was a better solution, unfortunately Lion's version isn't always as nice.

Well, in Lion, put your mouse over the icon you wish to see a preview of the windows running, and do 3 fingers down.

 

[throAU]

reason to change: Windows 8
Second reason to change: working trackpad.


enjoy



edit:
and yeah, most of what most people do with a computer can be done with OS X, iLife and free applications. I have zero copied software on my mac, and it isn't because I don't use it or have bought a heap.

All i've purchased is a couple of games, iWork, Ableton live, Pixelmator... not a lot else.

 

[r0k]

see reply below in red...

I switched a few years ago from XP to OSX. I love OSX. I'm going to sound like a Mac fanboy but it's not so much because of opinion but rather because of the miserable experience I have using Windows at work (which is the only place I am still forced to use it). The numbskulls that set up our machines make it almost unbearable. I can vaguely imagine Win 7 could be usable but that's simply not my experience.

So rather than pretend I could be objective about this when my Win 7 experience is ruined by bad IT, I'll give a few examples of things I like better about OSX with the disclaimer that some of the stuff I put up with on Windows may not be a MS issue but rather an IT admin issue.

Quick View. This alone is worth the price of a Mac. Have an email with an attached ppt file? Want to see what it looks like? On Win 7 that means launching Office 2010. You have time to plant the coffee beans, wait for them to grow, send Juan Valdez to pick them, roast them slowly, brew them slowly, and sip an entire 16oz mug before that stupid animation finishes and you can see what's inside that PPT file. The same is true for pdf files. PDF is the native format for passing data around in OSX. This means no Adobe software is required and QuickView opens PDFs instantly. And when I say instantly, I mean before your ear can register the click.Have an email with attached ppt? if you looking in outlook or windows live mail then it loads inside the program so you dont need to open office

Network setup. Ever try to join a wireless network on Windows? You have to decide whether it's WPA, WPA2, PSK, 802.11x, etc, etc, etc. Then you have to type the key twice and it takes an extra click to turn off hidden characters. On a Mac, you see a network, the OS figures out what it is and offers you a dialog to type in the key. No muss. No fuss. Done. you do the exact same thing in windows 7, see the list of networks, click it and type the key once, tick and box to show the characters

App install and uninstall. Install: Drag to applications. Uninstall: Drag to trash. There are a few exceptions but the vast majority of applications can be handled this way.

Email. No need to purchase Outlook or Entourage. Mail.app comes with OSX and it works very well. Of course you can get Thunderbird if you like but the bottom line is your computer comes with useful software and no bloatware. windows live mail comes as a free download from microsoft, its not as good as mail, but its there

System Preferences. It's what control panel wishes it could be. Fully searchable. Well organized. Streamlined. Settings apply as soon as you change them. No OK. Are you sure? Are you really, really sure?control panel in windows 7 is searchable, and there is no are you sure for most things.

Security. OSX doesn't get viruses. Yes it has vulnerabilities but there are few to no viruses in the wild for OSX. Part of this is small market share. Part of this is the way OS X is organized. 'viruses' are very rare for both, malware and spyware is just as common on both. You could say that there are less viruses because they is no software to detect them built in, windows has this and as a fact is more secure.

Finder. I've got mixed feelings about the finder. At first, I used pathfinder so I'd have some of the "features" of Windows but gradually I weaned myself off of all that stuff. The only addon I still use is totalfinder which gives me a single tabbed finder window and an easy to find "cut" option. There is no refresh button. OSX updates finder windows in real time. OSX updates finder windows in real time. I know this sounds like much ado about nothing, but after having to hit refresh on my Win 7 box at work to get it to update almost a dozen times a day, I can't help but wonder what Win 7 is doing that it can't make time to update explorer windows in real time? work need to fix your pc, it updates in real time.

Drivers. There are no drivers. The guy who wrote the OS also designed the hardware and wrote the drivers and they just work.


Printer setup. Most printers are included with the OS. Those that aren't are a quick download from Apple not a fishing expedition to some poorly designed, flash-laden web site with a link to the world's slowest ftp server for the actual file you need.same on windows 7

Industrial design. Unless you consider some of Lenovo's high end notebooks, pretty much all computer manufacturers other than Apple are making junk. Cheap. Plastic. Junk.

I know this is a bit of a long post, but I wanted to give some specific examples of how Apple/OSX has worked better for me than HP/Dell/Windows.
dont spread misinformation
hope this helps..

QuickView works in Finder, not just in mail. I don't use Outlook so I'm not familiar with its features. There is no equivalent of QuickView on Windows no matter how much wishful thinking you invest so what I said about quickview was not misinformation. I suggest you not refer to my opinion as misinformation or present your own opinion as if it were fact. And any claim that Windows and OSX are on equal footing when it comes to malware is misinformation. Yes control panel is searchable on windows. From inside control panel. I didn't even bother mentioning Spotlight in my previous post but in my experience Spotlight outclasses windows search tools.

There was another poster in this thread who talked about switching their entire family to OSX. I did the same thing. Before switching, my evenings often consisted of "Dad I can't print", "Dad I can't get on the internet", "Dad, something's wrong with my computer." I haven't had to deal with that sort of BS since flipping the switch to move all our machines to OSX. Yes, I know it's possible to get Windows 7 working flawlessly. OSX works flawlessly out of the box. You mentioned you can go download some sort of mail app on Windows but mail.app comes with OSX.

I've been using OSX for a long time now and I've been very impressed with the way dot mac worked and then the way mobile me worked and more recently I've been very impressed with the way iCloud works. Apple has stumbled a bit when it comes to the cloud by canceling and offering new services willy nilly but the basic sync feature getting my calendar and contacts the same across all my iThings and Macs works quickly and flawlessly. The photostream feature works very well for me and I no longer think about making sure my photos are copied and backed up.

 

[Sammi :)]

I made the switch in January. It was a big risk for me because I'd hardly used OS X so I had much to learn. I only made the switch because my PC desktop was really old and needed replacing. I wanted something more portable but laptops never seemed to last my friends very long before they ran into problems so I decided to bite the bullet and buy a MacBook Pro.

I've used Windows all of my life up until now and Windows 7 is a pretty good OS but I much prefer OS X. I honestly thought it would be a big learning curve but OS X is so simple and easy to pick up. I get a certain joy from using my MBP that I've never experienced before just because it's so smooth and nothing ever goes wrong.

I watched loads of videos on YouTubes before I ordered mine. Watch some 'walkthrough' videos on OS X and learn about all of the features. It won't seem as daunting when you get your iMac.

 

[Demigod Mac]

It's all about which OS environment you are the most productive in. In my case, it's OS X. Some people may prefer Windows, or they're used to Windows and thus are more productive in that. I use both Windows and OS X on a regular basis and have become quite used to them both, but OS X is my go-to OS for most tasks.

I could explain it best this way: with Windows, it often feels like I'm fighting against the OS to get my work done. In OS X I don't even notice the OS; it just glides right along with my workflow. The key commands, shortcuts, organization, UI design - everything just makes more sense to me in OS X. Windows has a lot more awkward stumbling blocks, UI design decisions that don't make sense, and general clunkiness.

Additionally, I find that Macs self-maintain very well, whereas Windows loves to corrupt itself and become bloated/slow/buggy over time. The Registry is the worst offender in this case. Though I run a very tight ship on my Bootcamp drive and PC at work, they inevitably will need a clean install at some point to iron out odd kinks that all my troubleshooting can't seem to fix. To be fair, I've had to do this in OS X before, just far, far less.

 

[marcusj0015]

I have used Windows all my life, viewing Macs as an overpriced and less flexible alternative. However, my views are changing somewhat. They have an excellent piece of software called OmniFocus that I really want to use. That alone is almost enough to persuade me to switch.

In addition, I am feeling my life is a bit overloaded with things to do. The whole nature of the Mac seems to be simplicity. For example, the iMac has few cables, the keyboard has a small footprint, no virus software to slow your machine down and no doubt more. Less clutter, more focus.

My intention is to get a new iMac next month when they come out and to use that together with my PC dual monitor setup. Essentially I will have 3 monitors with an auto KVM switch that kicks in when I move the mouse off the left of my iMac screen.

Now to the point of this post. I've already decided to switch. But can someone here who has made the switch in the past tell me how they found the change in reality? I am currently using Windows 7 which is pretty slick. How did you feel after switching across and was it what you expected? Is OS X as good as Windows 7?

Thanks,

Jon

If you're a Windows fanboy, nothing can help you, and you're only wasting our time, and possibly trying to troll. (But failing)

 

[martychang]

I switched in late 2007, but as a heavy gamer I've had to make considerable use of Windows via bootcamp since. Especially due to the fact that Mac ports of PC games perform horribly compared to bootcamp, which I believe is mostly due to the fact that GPU drivers are less optimized and essentially never updated. Perhaps partially also due to game developers unfamiliarity with Mac development, and this is all disregarding the awful trend of Ciderization. WINE is free game devs...

That being as it is, I've spent a disproportionate amount of time using Windows on my mac since Windows 7 entered public beta, and I found Windows 7 to be much greater from a usability perspective than previous versions, not to mention being much better with drivers than any previous version of Windows, and it's no news that Explorer blows the Finder out of the water. As of Snow Leopard I would still say I prefrer OS X considerably outside of gaming, but Windows 8 Consumer preview is honestly shaking my faith. I have installed this on my iMac and two PCs, a desktop built about 3 years ago and a 4 year old laptop, Win8 recognized EVERYTHING during install on all machines, even the awful USB Wifi dongle the desktop had to use a terrible 3rd party software for on Win7. I did not require bootcamp drivers for anything on my iMac, it all just worked, it even retrieved the latest Win8 AMD drivers for the GPU.

I am a bit concerned about the Metro setup, it is highly usable and slick but I would not be interested in a pure Metro walled Garden anymore than Apple's App Store, and it looks like Microsoft might even beat Apple to no sideloading on traditional computer systems. If Microsoft continues to respect the technical crowd and allow sideloading or at least a way to unlock it like w/ Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper, I think they have a serious winner on their hands. I am eager to see how Mountain Lion stacks up.

 

[hvfsl]

Security. OSX doesn't get viruses. Yes it has vulnerabilities but there are few to no viruses in the wild for OSX. Part of this is small market share. Part of this is the way OS X is organized. 'viruses' are very rare for both, malware and spyware is just as common on both. You could say that there are less viruses because they is no software to detect them built in, windows has this and as a fact is more secure.

Finder. I've got mixed feelings about the finder. At first, I used pathfinder so I'd have some of the "features" of Windows but gradually I weaned myself off of all that stuff. The only addon I still use is totalfinder which gives me a single tabbed finder window and an easy to find "cut" option. There is no refresh button. OSX updates finder windows in real time. OSX updates finder windows in real time. I know this sounds like much ado about nothing, but after having to hit refresh on my Win 7 box at work to get it to update almost a dozen times a day, I can't help but wonder what Win 7 is doing that it can't make time to update explorer windows in real time? work need to fix your pc, it updates in real time.

hope this helps..

I had 2 Windows PCs at work recently get auto infected from visiting a website, the website wasn't anything dodgy ether, it just had ads which contained malware. While one of them didn't actually have any AV, the other one did. In fact if you don't have some pretty heavy duty AV that inspects every webpage you visit (and also slows down your PC) you are pretty much guaranteed to be infected. Macs don't have it anywhere near as bad as that.

I have also noticed the same thing on my Windows 7 PC at work, I think you are not understanding what the OP means. Although TBH it doesn't really bother me too much.