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krause734

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2010
592
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What can Windows do that MacOS can't and vice versa? I've heard that Windows is more capable, MacOS is more enjoyable and simple similarly to iOS and Android. MacOS and iOS is more contained and less vulnerable but not as customizable and as many programs/apps.

For example a pro to Windows is that is much easier to find a specific program to rip a DVD. However a con is that you have to run anti-virus regularly.
 
Honestly it comes down to the user and their needs. Most programs are available for both. It's how well they function or what limits those functions have that vary.

I've never had a Mac but I've had Windows for years. For me this sums up how I feel about them:

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Keep in mind I own an iPhone. I do want to try a Mac someday but it'll likely be a Hackintosh or an older model. This whole moving to nothing being replaceable and costing a small fortune to fix, it's a no.
 
I use both I prefer mac os since it seems to be far more stable than windows, however windows ten pro isn't too bad compared to previous versions of windows. that being said, if the programming software for my digital ham radios and the main weather radar was available on mac i would strictly use mac. mac has a radar program out that has my interest called radar scope.... been using it for a while on my iPhone and iPad and it seems to be almost as good as the one i use on windows..... hoping to be able to be using both during a severe storm event to see how accurite radarscope is.... still will have the issues for programming my digital ham radios though.
 
Windows is so far ahead in terms of stability and performance it isn't even funny anymore.

I work as a programmer, and my work PC running Windows 7 hasn't been shut down in over half a year. It's constantly running a handful of server clients, 2 or 3 IDEs at the same time (all Eclipse-based, which is quite hungry), several windows of Chrome, each with over 50 tabs, and like 20 different side-applications like Skype, Outlook, SnagIt, PuTTY, etc.

I can't run macOS on my laptop for 2 weeks straight without some OS-breaking bug requiring a restart to fix. I've re-installed macOS several times and this behaviour has been recurring for the past few versions of macOS, including things like:
- Pointer being stuck at a "resize" cursor permanently
- System completely freezing up for no reason, with "kernel task" hogging all the CPU
- PDFs start strobing and displaying graphical artifacts in Preview
- Finder becomes completely non-responsive, and "force quit" does not work
- Bluetooth (through A2DP) starts stuttering every few seconds
- Preview stops wanting to go full-screen; glitches out when switching to full screen
- Preview sidebar thumbnails stop being generated and go blank instead
- So many more that I can't remember currently

And that's with just doing casual Internet browsing or the occasional AV or Keynote project.

So a copy of Windows that was released over 7 years ago is running better than a version of macOS that was released 10 days ago. Pretty sad, to be honest.
 
I prefer MacOS on desktops, while Windows (and Linux) on desktops.

MacOS feels like it's getting slower and bloated. Windows 10 seems to run very well, even on minimal/old hardware.

Windows 10 seems to be getting a little too involved, what with the aggressive updates and antivirus scanning, and some amount of spyware.

Definitely seems to be far more specialty software that is only for Windows -- at least, in most fields I've come across. I think this came to be as a result of most companies going with Windows for decades.

At the end of the day, they're operating systems... most of what you do with them is run software to do things (some of which can be built-in). The OS should be stable, secure, and helpful at keeping you working in your applications (and otherwise be out of the way).
 
Windows is so far ahead in terms of stability and performance it isn't even funny anymore.

I work as a programmer, and my work PC running Windows 7 hasn't been shut down in over half a year. It's constantly running a handful of server clients, 2 or 3 IDEs at the same time (all Eclipse-based, which is quite hungry), several windows of Chrome, each with over 50 tabs, and like 20 different side-applications like Skype, Outlook, SnagIt, PuTTY, etc.

I can't run macOS on my laptop for 2 weeks straight without some OS-breaking bug requiring a restart to fix. I've re-installed macOS several times and this behaviour has been recurring for the past few versions of macOS, including things like:
- Pointer being stuck at a "resize" cursor permanently
- System completely freezing up for no reason, with "kernel task" hogging all the CPU
- PDFs start strobing and displaying graphical artifacts in Preview
- Finder becomes completely non-responsive, and "force quit" does not work
- Bluetooth (through A2DP) starts stuttering every few seconds
- Preview stops wanting to go full-screen; glitches out when switching to full screen
- Preview sidebar thumbnails stop being generated and go blank instead
- So many more that I can't remember currently

And that's with just doing casual Internet browsing or the occasional AV or Keynote project.

So a copy of Windows that was released over 7 years ago is running better than a version of macOS that was released 10 days ago. Pretty sad, to be honest.

This sounds exactly like my old Mac woth faulty hardware... Time to get a new one buddy. I develop on Mac and Windows and have no problem with either. In terms of performance certain Apple technologies are just faster than Microsofts. Apples network stack for example.. The reason Windows has been dogged with issues is probably related to politics and legacy support.
 
This sounds exactly like my old Mac woth faulty hardware... Time to get a new one buddy. I develop on Mac and Windows and have no problem with either. In terms of performance certain Apple technologies are just faster than Microsofts. Apples network stack for example.. The reason Windows has been dogged with issues is probably related to politics and legacy support.
Lol ok yeah let me just upgrade from my top of the line 2015 MacBook Pro because of "faulty hardware."

The hardware's just fine. These same exact symptoms occur on like 3 different machines around the house. It's just mediocre programming and a whole lot of "fixing bugs" by covering them up rather than getting to the root issue.

"Apple technologies are just faster than Microsofts"

Never mind, I won't bother; they already have you

In other news, just now, I got a new entry for the list:
- Annotating text in preview in a large-ish document is ridiculously slow and most of the time highlights the whole page instead of creating a new text box. Also getting weird flashes across the PDF
 
You totally misquoted me and left out "certain." Good luck with your borked machinez.
hurr


I prefer MacOS on desktops, while Windows (and Linux) on desktops.

MacOS feels like it's getting slower and bloated. Windows 10 seems to run very well, even on minimal/old hardware.

Windows 10 seems to be getting a little too involved, what with the aggressive updates and antivirus scanning, and some amount of spyware.

Exactly. macOS has turned into a bloated turd, while Windows has just been getting slimmer and slimmer in terms of requirements. The fact that it is capable of booting in 10-15 seconds on a hard drive is quite commendable.

Too bad about the spyware and forced updates thing, but at least those things can be turned off via services.msc. You can't turn off the suck in macOS though.
 
Windows is so far ahead in terms of stability and performance it isn't even funny anymore.

I work as a programmer, and my work PC running Windows 7 hasn't been shut down in over half a year. It's constantly running a handful of server clients, 2 or 3 IDEs at the same time (all Eclipse-based, which is quite hungry), several windows of Chrome, each with over 50 tabs, and like 20 different side-applications like Skype, Outlook, SnagIt, PuTTY, etc.

I can't run macOS on my laptop for 2 weeks straight without some OS-breaking bug requiring a restart to fix. I've re-installed macOS several times and this behaviour has been recurring for the past few versions of macOS, including things like:
- Pointer being stuck at a "resize" cursor permanently
- System completely freezing up for no reason, with "kernel task" hogging all the CPU
- PDFs start strobing and displaying graphical artifacts in Preview
- Finder becomes completely non-responsive, and "force quit" does not work
- Bluetooth (through A2DP) starts stuttering every few seconds
- Preview stops wanting to go full-screen; glitches out when switching to full screen
- Preview sidebar thumbnails stop being generated and go blank instead
- So many more that I can't remember currently

And that's with just doing casual Internet browsing or the occasional AV or Keynote project.

So a copy of Windows that was released over 7 years ago is running better than a version of macOS that was released 10 days ago. Pretty sad, to be honest.
So Windows is far ahead because you personally have all those issues which I've never had in my whole life on macOS? Like, not any of them. OK.

Oh and Windows 10? Really? A new and shiny bling-bling UI with the same crap under the hood? The same registry. The same terrible update chaos. If you dig deeper into System Control you'll even find popup windows or menus which look the same like 15 years ago only in higher resolution LOL. And the system will, as every predecessor before, become slower and slower the more you mess with it. It's only not as recognisable because powerful CPUs and SSDs kind of compensate for the trainwreck that is Windows. 15 seconds to boot from an HDD with 7200 rpm? In which world?

I just got rid of my last PC ever and I won't miss it. The only terrible thing is that I have to work with Windows in the office. Unfortunately not every software from the Windows world is reproducable or available on a Mac.

The workflow, stability, reliability is, IMHO, so much better on macOS. It also comes with a whole package of great software, while on Windows you need 3rd party support for every single task. But anyways, to each his own. Like I said, the only reason for me to work with Windows is my company. If I needed specific software which is only available for it then I'd have to bite the bullet.
 
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I don't know why people get so personally, and emotionally invested in an operating system.

Windows has a lot of advantages, and some disadvantages.

OS X has a lot of advantages and some disadvantages.

As a consumer, you pick the platform that best fits your working style and requirements.

There's a lot I like about OS X, but I will say Windows has come a long way and I find windows 10 to be a solid operating system. OS X has seen less major updates these past few years but I am looking forward to the new file system that is purportedly coming out in next release.

There is no right or wrong answer, only what works best for you.
 
I just got my first mac and I would say macos is much simpler but I do miss the start button. Lol

How I felt going from an Android to an iPhone. I still do miss the back button but I like the way they've sorta implemented a way to go back and forth.

When using MacOS in a store or on a friends computer, I really struggle with finding things. Perhaps its simplicity is entirely too simple from what I'm used to. I know the iPhone took me time as I realized I had no file manager! Haha.
 
They're becoming more similar every year. I like how applications on a Mac seem to be less entangled in the OS than on Windows.
I worked on a lot of manual writing back in the early days. Apple at the time was superior in font management and structure. Applications on the Apple side were much more sophisticated in text management capabilities.
Mac was also the first to allow you to open a document by clicking on it. Windows you still had to open the program first, then open the document. Being able to work directly with the document first was really neat at that time - you thought more about what you were working on instead of thinking about which program you had to use.
 
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They're becoming more similar every year. I like how applications on a Mac seem to be less entangled in the OS than on Windows.
I worked on a lot of manual writing back in the early days. Apple at the time was superior in font management and structure. Applications on the Apple side were much more sophisticated in text management capabilities.
Mac was also the first to allow you to open a document by clicking on it. Windows you still had to open the program first, then open the document. Being able to work directly with the document first was really neat at that time - you thought more about what you were working on instead of thinking about which program you had to use.

Wow Windows flashbacks!
 
I haven't found where windows is so far advanced from MacOS. in fact although windows has improved with their latest release, MacOS still is far easier to use and blows windows away in performance. i have a white unibody MacBook running MacOS sierra with 3gb of ram.... an upgrade is soon coming but it runs circles around my windows laptop running windows latest version whatever it is called....redstone or something like that. windows is much improved, macOS is far better and just works.
 
I like both.

I buy mac laptops because it's the only way you can officially support both.


OS X El Capitan is still excellent.

Windows 10 is also excellent.

Both fantastic operating systems with their own pros and cons.


But I like using both. Boot camp is awesome.
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I haven't found where windows is so far advanced from MacOS. in fact although windows has improved with their latest release, MacOS still is far easier to use and blows windows away in performance. i have a white unibody MacBook running MacOS sierra with 3gb of ram.... an upgrade is soon coming but it runs circles around my windows laptop running windows latest version whatever it is called....redstone or something like that. windows is much improved, macOS is far better and just works.

Agree with user friendliness and longevity but disagree with performance all around, though this is specific to windows 10. It does hold true for older versions of windows I agree.

But Windows 10 boots up way faster on MacBooks that support it vs MacOS.

This is related to windows 10 being designed for lower specced machines. It boots up almost instantly on macs that support it and that support ssds, it is quite impressive.

That said macOS can shut down faster than windows can which has to sometimes "get ready" to turn off - which I do find comical when it happens.
 
I don't know why people get so personally, and emotionally invested in an operating system.
These operating system comparison threads seem to come most frequently from people who don't understand the fundamental concept of what an operating system is.

In a nutshell, an operating system is a big complicated program that lets other big complicated programs co-exist peacefully on the same system.

Nobody sits down in front of their computer and says "I'm going to run [macOS/Windows/Linux] today." They say stuff like "I want to surf the Internet/check e-mail/organize photos/work on sales forecasts/check inventory/enter an order/invoice a client/video conference with a business associate/etc."

Similar threads are the often inane inquiries about "what computer should I buy" without the original poster specifying what his/her needs are. You need to think about what you want to accomplish and use the appropriate tool. You can't drive nails with a skilsaw and you can't saw boards with a screwdriver.

At work, many of us don't really have a choice of what computer we use: our employers provide those tools without asking our preference because they expect us to do certain tasks. They have a set of tools (a database, a spreadsheet application, a word processor, a sales tool) and systems (e-mail server, database server, etc.) that is deployed to employees and they decide acceptable systems on which to run these based on cost/system administration effort/interoperability/etc.

This very basic concept of understanding that tasks often dictate the tools and hence the system is completely lost of some people.

At home or if you're self-employed you often have a choice.

Ultimately, discussions like "Windows vs. macOS" are often meaningless anyhow even when discussing a certain set of tasks because modern operating systems are often very close in their ability to support applications that do the wide variety of tasks desired by the individual.

In the photography world, they have a similar inane discussion: "Canon vs. Nikon."
 
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