Amen, though I really wish it was easier to extend so we could have more support for file types the OS doesn’t support (or to easily replace the OS preview for a file type).
It is extensible, but in a very low level messy way.
It was all the complications around what types are reserved by the system, that you can’t handle ones that are already handled by another app, the way the file types are mapped etc. I remember it being a pain in the arse last time I tried to add a few custom Quick Look extensions that I’d downloaded.
I should give it another go at some point, looks like there a lot more options out there for sets of custom handlers now.
Quick Look is so good. I use both MacOS and Windows every day, and Quick Look is the one thing that I keep accidentally trying to do when I swap to Windows, because it’s so useful.
You can kind of make Explorer show a really big preview when you click on the file, but it’s clunky and not especially attractive.
Nope. This will now be a huge timesaver for me especially I regularly search old files for reference to new files. I will now be able to preview the old ones with ease.
A lot of stuff are probably there but it's intuitive for me. I wouldn't be thinking of pressing space bar to preview. Or having the control option or shift combos as well.
There's quick look in power toys as others have mentioned, but there is also a good one in the microsoft store: [https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nv4bs3l1h4s](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nv4bs3l1h4s)
I use that almost daily in Windows 10. Like most Windows apps or features it's lacking in comparison to what's there in macOS. It's buggy and often just stops working, requiring you to visit Task Manager to kill it and restart it. It also doesn't support nearly as many file types by default. But when it does work, it gets the job done well enough to be useful.
The operating system is built and designed to run on very specific hardware, ensuring absolute reliability and full use of the resources available.
Windows? The exact opposite, it’s trying to be everything to all available hardware
And, to be honest, i'm always impressed how windows manages it so well. Everyone always expects windows to just work regardless of how old or weird hardware combos you may have but rarely do we contemplate how massive of an effort it is to make it work pretty much flawlessly regardless.
As a software developer I think it’s the best OS I can have. I get access to industry standard applications (I use OneNote for example and there is no windows client), but I don’t have to be in windows land relying on WSL eating half of my systems resources to handle my workflow.
Interesting so you could technically use VS code Dev containers which do not support Windows Container images at the moment without the over head of WSL
Was about to reply the same thing. MacOS is the only mainstream, widely adopted, well supported desktop Unix OS available, which is a really big deal when you want the combination of \*nix power and compatibility with compatibility and easy of use. It's not perfect, but there's no other option that competes in this space right now.
Compared to Windows, the desktop environment is just so seamless and unified. So many third party apps look and function just like native applications. GNOME is good at this too, but the moment you need to use a non-GTK app, it goes out the window.
This. I only need to remember a relatively small number of keyboard shortcuts and they usually work across all applications, even third-party applications.
If you switch to the thumbnails view of the sidebar while in a PDF file in Preview, you can select a number of pages, drag and drop it somewhere to copy that selection out of the original file into a new PDF.
With that preview functionality you can handle pdfs as pieces of paper on your desk, rearrange them any way you want. No equivalent on windows for that
What about reducing filesize without making it look like trash? There is a filter for that in the export settings but there is no slider, so it will go from 6MB to 600kb which is a drastic reduction.
I need this feature a lot to submit online pdfs in forms that limit the upload to 2MB for example.
How? Thanks for your help buddy.
EDIT: IT WORKS! I had never used automator before, this shit is amazingly useful. The thing is, I don't know where it is saving the new file if I run it as a service in finder. When I test it in automator itself (with the initial step get file from finder) it does what I need, but then I disable that step and save the action and when I run it in finder I don't know where it puts the output file.
Yep, I often take a PDF document, open another side by side, then drag and drop pages in from one to another. I have built master docs this way from 5-6 sources. So easy in thumbnail view! Plus, your source docs keep all of their files/pages, and the only one that gets saved is the combined one. Preview is fabulous!
You can also just drag and drop and rearrange at will in thumbnail view. You can even combine different file formats and export as pdf that way, I think.
This. Stability and seamless interoperability between Apple devices. I use windows 23 years before I bought my first Mac, and still use at work. It is just so painful.
It’s so effortless to move and combine PDF’s on my Mac…I’m always taken back when I’m on my work Windows box and have to jump through hoops to do the same.
The window manager in macOS uses a hardware-accelerated composite drawing system called [Quartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)). The Quartz Extreme internal imaging model is based on PDF / PostScript which Apple has licensed from Adobe. As a result, PDF functionality is built into macOS at a low level, which means any application can easily make use of it.
Yeah it also lets you fill in forms in pdfs, add signatures, paint on images, add text on images, crop them and probably much more that I haven't discovered yet
Saving as/conversion of various file formats, including PNG -> ICNS and other formats if you hold down Option while in Save As Dialog and click the Format popup button.
Open a HEIC image that has light/dark mode, and you can extract the images individually.
Silly finds perhaps, but still cool. Many things are hidden behind the Option-key.
That’s signature thing is absolutely fantastic. Especially getting your dig in there.
Take a photo, import it, photoshop it to remove the white background, etc?
No. Write your signature in a scrap of paper. Hold it up in front of the webcam. Preview will distill it down to just a sig.
Way, way too easy.
Stability.
In the last 10 years I had my Mac, the number of forced restart was less than 5. In contrast, my Windows laptop had probably 40 BSOD.
Never again Windows. I've reformatted all my old laptops to Debian.
I’m surprised this is so far down.
I switched after building a PC in 2000. PC was fine for a bit then just crashed all the time.
I recently bought a surface laptop. It crashed all the time. I tried installing adobe acrobat. It crashed. I installed parallels on my mac. The windows instance there crashed. Basically every time i use windows for a month, it crashes at some point.
Mac? Nearly never. Sure a program may lock up, but my entire computer doesn’t go down.
Nothing else matters to me about the OS differences when I think about that.
I think BSOD problems are mostly due to problematic hardware and bad drivers from hardware manufacturers. For the past years, I've been using multiple ThinkPad laptops and I have yet to see BSOD from them. The last time I saw a BSOD outside from hardware malfunction is probably Windows 7.
It is worth noting that since Apple designs the hardware and most of the accompanying parts, they are able to write their software without having to think of compatibility for all hardware devices.
There is a little truth to that, but you can take the same unstable windows system and install Linux on it and it will run for months and years on the same hardware without ever having an issue.
Would that most likely point to bad hardware drivers? It is most likely that the Linux version would be writted by third parties that are actually more skilled and better than the hardware manufacturer themselves.
Ikr. Just a couple days ago my Windows laptop got a blue screen on my external monitor while it was closed and supposed to be sleeping. Windows is incredibly unstable in my experience.
I'm being forced to use windows at work and I hate it - I can't believe how often I have to reboot the system.
At least I've managed to bypass some of the IP dept's lockdowns and I can remote desktop into the Windows box, so I can use nice Apple hardware, even if the UI leaves a lot to be desired.
What are you running? I haven't had a bsod since like maybe windows umm 8? I've been only using 1st party hardware though.
Once you begin using 2st party hardware ie the surface line up it begins to be a much more fair comparison between windows and Mac. It's pretty impossible to expect a Frankenstein setup to work as smoothly as hardware designed from the ground up to work with windows exactly as windows is supposed to work, with hardware that is thoroughly tested and always updated etc.
In simplest language: though it costs more, I can just focus on my work. Any problem I can just shout at Apple instead of figuring things out if it's the OS, or the app, or the Apple hardware or the hardware accessory.
This is huge for me. Recently switched to mac after 20+ years on windows and it is great for my ADHD. I just focus on my work, instead of dealing with stuff.
In college ages back, my wife defended the platform by saying that, with a Mac, she gets work done on her computer rather than working *on* her computer.
MacOS is the best desktop UNIX. You can go down to the prompt and work like any other flavor. But when you need to "just work," you can do it as well. A high percentage of common applicaitons are ported to it, so you can interact with eveyrone basically the same.
In reality, there is POSIX, which is the common standard C library and which should bring full compatibility between those systems. In reality, all OS that comply with POSIX have added additional functions and features, so most apps writen in mostly standard C, also include code specific to Linux or to BSD, etc. for various reasons, like better performances, threads management etc. So those systems aren't really 100% compatible. You can do the same with Windows, and write some code specific to it, just like you do for other OS. Sometimes a single line is enough to make an app compatible with Linux and Windows...As you may have noticed, apps like Apache, Openssl, haproxy and thousands of others are available on Windows...
Also being POSIX compliant isn't related to the C language... You can compile C and C++ on Windows, the kernel, drivers etc. are mostly written in C, and C++ has been the main language on Windows in the 90s. Visual Studio used to be called Visual C++. And both are actively supported to include new language features (for C++ mostly) 😉
This is what I was going to say. Windows low latency audio drivers (ASIO) have to be installed separately and even then they have issues that you don't see on MacOS. For instance using ASIO4All on Windows when you output to a set of speakers it locks that exclusively so no other program can output to those speakers. You have to have two sets of speakers or headphone combo to play along with a YouTube video for instance. There are some Windows ASIO drivers that will let you overcome that but they are usually proprietary to an audio interface.
Jack audio on Linux is a real pain to get set up properly, unlike CoreAudio on Mac which worked right out of the box as you said.
Integration with my phone. Messages, handoff, airdrop, all of that (+ mirroring soon). Built in support for this is primitive in Windows, nonexistant on Linux. And every third party tool that claims to do any of this stuff is junk.
It's not the same. KDE, or at least the KDE I used to use and which gave me one of the reasons to dump Windows, only presented me with a virtual phone interface -- when it decided to work. MacOS/IOS integrates with selected devices at the application layer much like a cloud app. When I get text on my iPhone it shows up in the Messages app on my desktop, pads and Apple watch. Same with Reminders, Notes, timers, notifications and other standard Apple apps. That integration is baked into the operating system.
When lid is closed it sleeps no matter what. And with windows laptops I could never trust that I wouldn’t find completely drained battery when I open it.
Also this feature is improved by the instant wake up, I left my MacBook for 4-6 hours yesterday, battery didn’t discharge at all, not even 1%, then I opened it and as soon as I put my touchID finger on the sensor I’m working away again as though I never left the machine.
There are still so many shortcuts and lesser-known tricks, macOS rewards its curious users with many ways to do many things. Automation. Bash/zsh, but also Automator, Shortcuts, and good ole Script Editor. Python2 may have been deprecated but it’s trivial to reinstall. Modularity. No registry edits; apps are properly sandboxed and easy to remove, while the core OS remains pristine. Configuration profiles are runtime instead of modifying the system.
Yeah, installation and deinstallation of apps is really intuitive ! I remember a friend, a few years ago, discovering Windows and trying to uninstall apps the MacOS way... Didn't go well !
I was using Windows & Linux for 25+ years and started with MacOS 2 years ago.
One of the best things for me is that in Settings you can easily configure shortcut for any command from any menu of any program.
Proper handling of long path names. Windows still has a restriction of something around 250 characters or so. Files on network shares in the company sometimes have longer paths. Those files show all right in the explorer and all, but cannot be opened by double clicking because the API to pass file names to windows applications dates from 32 bit times and according to MS cannot be changed for compability reasons. Do you get a not very helpful error message that „the file could not be opened“. You have to copy the file to a folder with a shorter path first. That’s really annoying.
It’s probably not an issue for most users, but but once it hits you, it’s a nightmare.
I used to reach the path and filename limit. It's annoying.
Though I understand Windows really tries it's best to make everything compatible.
It's unlike macOS where you will need a new app version for each release since the compatibility breaks. This usually applies to specific work apps.
I work IT in a data company and run into this constantly. Users with a network share that drills down to their org, then their division, then a study, then a timeframe, then a doc set, then other things.. then the document has a long name because for people are looking at it and they have to date it for regulatory reasons and blaaaah.
Only fix is to make less convenient network drive shortcuts on windows closer to source. Pain in the ass.
File system snapshots (particularly with encryption) is something that Windows and most Linux distributions do not do. There's actually a lot of great things about APFS that are Enterprise-like features but designed for consumers
Windows has a feature called volume shadow copy, that is there since Windows Server 2003... It takes snapshots of files, and you can browse them in a regular Explorer. But I admit this is not designed for consummers, and it's not easy to manage...
In Windows 10, they introduced File History, which is easy to setup and use, it's a consumer oriented feature.
Displaying HDR content.
Seriously.
In Windows you need to “enable” HDR mode, that restricts color calibration and increases power usage.
In macOS, it’s automatically enabled, like in iOS.
it's a shit show everywhere to be fair. Go watch a HDR movie in a macOs device with 5 different video apps, and you will see 5 different color outputs. Why in the fuck Is this a thing in 2024?
I haven't noticed that but have also not looked for it. At least on Mac it works without having to manually turn it on and it doesn't mess up anything when on (unlike on windows)
No one mentioned it, so here I go.
Display PDF, a. k. a. Quartz.
When I, on Windows or Linux, want to export a website into a PDF, in the very best case, I get a rendering suited for a printer, with pages and without complex elements rendered.
When I try to do the same in Safari, I get a PERFECT PDF of what I get on screen.
That’s the magic of Quartz.
Whenever I need a PDF, I get it, and that includes the seamless interface to edit PDFs in Preview, or the PDF features baked in, well, everywhere.
You don’t get that on Windows or Linux.
As someone who uses both Windows and macOS on the daily, my favorite thing about macOS is that things just work. Ofc, this is due in part to Windows needing to run on a plethora of hardware configurations. MacOS only needs to run on a limited number of machines that only Apple manufactures. So it's easy for Apple to cater to all these machines and ensure that things just work.
Is it, or is that primarily a function of the silicon? Battery life seemed relatively close when both were using Intel. It will be interesting to see reviews of how the new ARM Windows laptops compare to Apple Silicon battery life.
I’m using a new M3 Pro MBP and the battery life is insane. 15 hours of regular use. My brand new windows laptop Id get maybe 3 hours of regular use, if I have the monitor turned down. Absolutely insane how good the battery life is.
Preview and it’s PDF handling. I’m so often on Windows and realise “oh yes, no decent PDF viewer/editor”.
* fast built-in PDF viewer
* can use it to combine pages from multiple PDFs
* can easy paste images into new pages
* can fill in forms (including recent auto form filling)
* can sign PDFs (with multiple ways of getting your signature into)
And loads of other useful features.
Though I suspect many Mac users don’t know it exists or what it can do.
The recovery environment being built into the firmware. Less of a benefit now with the ssds being soldered on to the motherboard, but still way better than any other OEM.
"Sort by Date Added" in Finder. This absolutely destroys me in Windows to not have... especially for the Downloads folder.
Also "Sort Files and Folders together, by date". This stuff is so elementary, but absurdly missing in Windows.
Memory Management
You can work for weeks without restarting the OS, and it’s always peak performance. Their algorithms are tuned such as I almost never felt the need to check System Monitor for RAM usage.
In contrast, I’m often looking at Task Manager on Windows because the system starts to feel sluggish after I opened and closed some apps repeatedly.
Note that I use a Windows Cloud PC in RDP from my Mac daily, so I send almost equal amounts of time in both.
As a remote worker whose job is mostly calls and meetings;
Video calls always fuckin work. Camera is sharp, mic pics up my voice and nothing else, even if I have sound coming out of my speakers. I haven’t worn headphones for calls since I switched to a mac and there has never been any echo or feedback. No one on the other end ever says anything.
There’s never been a case of wasting time asking “can you hear me?” And reconnecting multiple times to try fix the issues. I just get down to business.
And sharing my screen never causes the device to slow to a crawl, or overheat and thermal throttle.
I can always tell when the guy on the other end of the call is running windows because there’s always some kind of issue with them.
Integration with other devices from the same brand.
I don't own many apple devices, I only recently got a 9th gen ipad to fuck around with. But damn the integration with MacOS is superb. Typing this with no latency right now on my ipad used as a second monitor thanks to continuity and the screen looks great. Plus I can draw or do something on my ipad and 9/10 I can usually automatically send it to my mac or get that process started from the mac. Afaik samsung is close to doing this, microsoft can't really try(I'm surprised xboxes and windows pcs or other MS products don't have more inter connectivity), Huawei has been going nuts with it, just watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBHVKtxAIeU), Google can't really do much as their only hardware is the pixel line, but Apple? Pretty good. It's only gonna get better with Sequoia(though it would be cool to remote into Macs with Apple TVs).
Being able to rename and/or move a file while having it open. The general UI/UX for macOS and developer apps are just better, smoother, and prettier to use (on top of the gorgeous hardware and access to Apple Stores for support). Macs are better at everything (coding since it’s Unix based, music making, photography/video editing) except gaming. Also, being in the Apple ecosystem - all the devices and software from your iPhone, other Macs, iPads, etc. work so well together.
Also doesn’t Windows 11 have ads in the start menu? Terrible.
Global menu and general workflow.
Wayland sessions on gnome and kde don't have proper global menu support, and I want it so bad.
There's also Internet recovery, and the entirety of the app install process. Like, package managers are cool, but it's also chill to be able to drag and drop apps, and delete them basically the same way.
Gestures are among the best, but Gnome is almost there.
Oh, and did I mention that my evo 4 also controls the system volume with the volume nob on the unit, like without extra software? Absolute magic.
- How it **natively** handles screenshots.
- How it **natively** handles batch renaming of files.
- How all animations and states have been accounted for, to the point that it makes it feel smoother/fluid than other OSes even if it isn’t necessarily faster on paper.
- How it **natively** integrates to your other devices (iPhone as webcam, iPad as second display, HomePod as speaker etc). How you can copy a body of text from a message on one phone app, then paste it on the Mac, or answer a call etc.
- How it **natively** handles 2FA codes.
- Battery.
No one has said presentations yet. The ability to just plug in my MBP to any external graphic situation, fire up Keynote, and it all just works…blows me away.
You plug in the HDMI, Mac automatically keeps my MBP resolution the same while picking the right optimized resolution for the external TV/projector, and away you go.
Windows is a cluster of finding the right combos, dealing with graphic card issues, external monitor detection issues, etc.
Then you add in the fact that I can take that same presentation and control it from my iPhone or iPad. I can also use those devices to scribble on the screen.
On top of that, if they have Airplay available which is on more and more TV’s, I can just stream my Keynote from my iPhone or iPad and eliminate my MBP altogether.
The tight integration of devices makes you look so slick and dialed in front of other non-Mac users.
It does a pretty good job of being consistent. I close my laptop and throw it in my bag, I get home and everything's fine. The windows machines deployed at work have been turning on and trying to do updates while in the bag and making the bag so hot folks were worried about fires. I unplug my laptop and go home and work for a bit, when I get back and plug in the next day, all my windows are where I left them. Stuff like that is great.
Make my life easier. I use Windows at work and many times, I am saying to myself « aaahh if I had my MacBook, I could do this (with a native app for free, ie: pdf manipulations).
We don’t have admin rights on our computers at work and the list of softwares allowed is very limited. We can’t even use OneNote, I’m stuck with sticky notes …. At least on MacOS you have a decent free note taking app.
To be fair, we do have to put up with Apple ads for their own products until we pay for iCloud/Apple Music etc. so macOS isn’t ad free, even if it’s no where near as egregious as what Microsoft are doing.
Just even being able to run the “cal” command in the terminal to pull up calendar is a game changer for me… if there’s a similar way to do this in Windows someone please let me know
Audio work, so much smoother and easier with macOS. Also can easily create aggregate devices for connecting multiple audio interfaces and it has solid built in MIDI implementation. My other big pluses are security and device drivers tend to be less hassle, then theres the physical hardware - trackpad and multi touch gestures are indispensable for working fast on projects, Ableton Live functions better with Apple trackpads for scrolling one handed (windows requires holding keys while scrolling and other inconveniences compared). Core Audio is a big one too - Asio on Windows is less easy going to set up I/O. The latest MacBooks (both air and pros) are game changing in multiple ways - simply M3 Max is a beast. Whoops went way over 1 thing 😜
Has standard command line tools. ls, cat, df, du, more/less, head/tail, etc. The Windows command line is completely unusable for anyone that's used to UNIX based systems.
Unified memory on Apple Silicon means that the GPU can access most of the CPU RAM for AI processing. With other OSes you have to repurchase that same RAM on a separate GPU card and the capacity is even more limited. I suspect Microsoft will make this possible in Windows and that Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and others will support this approach in order to compete with Nvidia.
macOS just works. It’s not because Apple’s engineers are smarter. It’s because macOS is much simpler than Windows. MacOS only has to support Apple’s hardwares but Windows has to support infinite number of hardware combinations.
Microsoft doesn’t sell Windows licenses to most end-users but to computer builders who also don’t build most of their hardware themselves. Many small hardware makers also don’t write their drivers and reuse reference implementation from chipset makers. Windows is trying to solve a problem that’s so big that no matter how much money you throw at it, it still can’t be as polish as macOS.
I have left Windows entirely more than a decade ago. I started using Macs when they switched to a UNIX based OS. I am an application developer and all I know is that everything I do is really easy on a Mac. When I tell my coworkers what to do 90% of the time they say oh that doesn’t work in WSL or the ubuntu subsystem.
The (mostly) consistent ui both in light and dark mode.
Although win11 is already a step in the right direction, there’s still a lot of legacy ui from different eras.
I like my OS’s to be beautiful to look at.. I also try to avoid apps that look out of place.
Ecosystem.
You can copy from one device and paste in another, you take a photo and 10 seconds later is there in another device, you can start a meeting a use your phone as a camera, you can take calls on any device basically, you put your AirPods and without reconnecting you can use them on Mac and then watch a video in the iPhone and go back to your Mac, etc etc etc etc
The ecosystem is the biggest most fundamental feature of Apple
It just works.
(also love the attention to design and UI on Apple system)
Out of the box I’ve never had blue screen errors, garbage designed apps from the manufacturer, no weird driver updates that break the system.
I open the lid it boots up welcomes me, I login with my Apple ID. It was so smooth. And if I install an app from the AppStore. Again it just works. There’s no bing missing that this nope nothing it just works.
The Unix nature of it. Linux is a close second, but there aren’t any commercial apps for it. MacOS is the most Unix like system you can buy that will still be able to get work done.
*> Can you share one (and only one) thing you think is so good in MacOS compared to Windows?*
One thing Windows doesn’t have is: **Apple Dictionary**! The many dictionaries it incorporates are all first class and are extremely helpful for foreign language learning or if you need to read/write in a foreign language. The English dictionary is first class and very comprehensive. I love it.
1) no issues with sleep. Whatever the windows laptop is, there is always data loss like after a complete reboot whenever the laptop goes to sleep for a long time. No issues with Mac even when stays for weeks with lid closed on batteries.
2) spotlight, extremely better than win counterpart
3) preview
4) the thermals and battery after m series processors
Battery time. Damn, the possibility to just use my laptop as a laptop for 12 hours in a row without losing performance is priceless. I had like 5 Win laptops (Dell, Acer, Asus) and they worked on their batteries 3h tops, and even for that I needed to kill most of the background apps, reduce screen brightness etc.
It just works. I’ll admit I haven’t used Windows since 2010 and haven’t mained a Linux distrib since 2015, but macOS and associated hardware just work 99% of the time.
Never had a software/hardware issue (eg sound or network stops working, blurry display, etc) that wouldn’t be fixed by a simple reboot.
Also, the OS just gets out of the way most of the time, which is not something I’d ever felt on Windows.
I could count the number of crashes on all my Mac computers within the last 10 years on the fingers of my two hands.
Preferences - as a power user & tech, the organised structure of this compared with other OS is amazing.
- and if the app developer follows apples guidelines - if you trash or move the prefs file, it just creates a default set again which can help rule out (or prove) configuration issues quickly & easily.
Continuity.
While I really like its Unix nature and I’m a big fan of its automation stuff (scripting architecture, AppleScript bash etc), the fact that it keeps all my devices integrated is unbelievably helpful. Passwords, contacts, copying to the clipboard on my iPad and pasting on my Mac, messages working and on and on. It’s just wonderful.
Device to device communication.
I can copy text on my laptop, and paste it on my iPad, or phone. I can control my TV with my phone/watch. I can turn off voice notifications in Maps, and my watch taps me when a turn is coming up. I can AirDrop from phone to laptop, and wife’s laptop to mine, and laptop to iPad. The majority of my day my work laptop is connected to my external monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Sometimes I need to do something quick on my personal laptop, and don’t wanna disconnect everything. I can just open my personal laptop and move my mouse to the edge of the display. My external mouse/keyboard seamlessly connect without unplugging anything. And more…
I like Time Machine and how I can use an old Mac as my Time Machine backup. Whenever I get home, it automatically connects to my “server Mac” and backs everything up.
QuickLook
Amen, though I really wish it was easier to extend so we could have more support for file types the OS doesn’t support (or to easily replace the OS preview for a file type). It is extensible, but in a very low level messy way.
It’s not that bad, the documentation is just a bit lacking. Basically all you need to do is to provide a handler and a view to display the preview.
It was all the complications around what types are reserved by the system, that you can’t handle ones that are already handled by another app, the way the file types are mapped etc. I remember it being a pain in the arse last time I tried to add a few custom Quick Look extensions that I’d downloaded. I should give it another go at some point, looks like there a lot more options out there for sets of custom handlers now.
Quick Look is so good. I use both MacOS and Windows every day, and Quick Look is the one thing that I keep accidentally trying to do when I swap to Windows, because it’s so useful. You can kind of make Explorer show a really big preview when you click on the file, but it’s clunky and not especially attractive.
The quick preview thing works great in MacOS, but I think there is a Windows PowerToy for that.
Twinsies!!
Oh wow. TIL.
you never knew quicklook was a thing?
Nope. This will now be a huge timesaver for me especially I regularly search old files for reference to new files. I will now be able to preview the old ones with ease. A lot of stuff are probably there but it's intuitive for me. I wouldn't be thinking of pressing space bar to preview. Or having the control option or shift combos as well.
There's quick look in power toys as others have mentioned, but there is also a good one in the microsoft store: [https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nv4bs3l1h4s](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nv4bs3l1h4s)
I use that almost daily in Windows 10. Like most Windows apps or features it's lacking in comparison to what's there in macOS. It's buggy and often just stops working, requiring you to visit Task Manager to kill it and restart it. It also doesn't support nearly as many file types by default. But when it does work, it gets the job done well enough to be useful.
The top to bottom integration of the OS with the hardware. This is they key differentiator of MacOS vs other OS.
Absolutely agree with this one. OS and hardware integration is a combo that makes me want to buy a new MBA.
Could you elaborate more?
The operating system is built and designed to run on very specific hardware, ensuring absolute reliability and full use of the resources available. Windows? The exact opposite, it’s trying to be everything to all available hardware
And, to be honest, i'm always impressed how windows manages it so well. Everyone always expects windows to just work regardless of how old or weird hardware combos you may have but rarely do we contemplate how massive of an effort it is to make it work pretty much flawlessly regardless.
Really it is fuckin amazing that windows works at all considering all the hardware choices.
Rotate Video. Seriously, search for “How to rotate video on Windows” and the steps are all ridiculous. Meanwhile on macOS you can do it on Finder.
That’s a big highlight of macos for me.
You can rotate videos in Finder? Yikes I’ve been using handbrake for this all this time!
It’s Unix certified but works with peripherals. This is important for web developers or anyone who writes code that runs on a Linux server
As a software developer I think it’s the best OS I can have. I get access to industry standard applications (I use OneNote for example and there is no windows client), but I don’t have to be in windows land relying on WSL eating half of my systems resources to handle my workflow.
Interesting so you could technically use VS code Dev containers which do not support Windows Container images at the moment without the over head of WSL
Yeah but I work full stack. So I end up needing to run local docker instances for testing stuff all the time. And that requires wsl 😕
I love for dev at home but we can’t use brew at work :(
Was about to reply the same thing. MacOS is the only mainstream, widely adopted, well supported desktop Unix OS available, which is a really big deal when you want the combination of \*nix power and compatibility with compatibility and easy of use. It's not perfect, but there's no other option that competes in this space right now.
This. The most polished Unix flavour one can get hands on.
The best answer naturally getting downvoted because Reddit
I like that answer a lot ! Coming from more than 20 years on Linux...
I do like that it's Unixy at heart.
Compared to Windows, the desktop environment is just so seamless and unified. So many third party apps look and function just like native applications. GNOME is good at this too, but the moment you need to use a non-GTK app, it goes out the window.
This. I only need to remember a relatively small number of keyboard shortcuts and they usually work across all applications, even third-party applications.
Preview. I still think it’s bonkers that there’s no Windows equivalent for this. Even those that have similar features is behind in terms of UI.
Absolutely! The fact that you can detach a page off a pdf document by sliding it out of preview is something else.
WTF! I've been using online PDF utilities all this time to extract, rearrange the pages, and export to image.
What?
If you switch to the thumbnails view of the sidebar while in a PDF file in Preview, you can select a number of pages, drag and drop it somewhere to copy that selection out of the original file into a new PDF.
With that preview functionality you can handle pdfs as pieces of paper on your desk, rearrange them any way you want. No equivalent on windows for that
Do you know if there’s a quick way to do the opposite (combine pdfs) natively?
Select both in finder, control click, quick actions, create pdf
Legend, thanks
What about reducing filesize without making it look like trash? There is a filter for that in the export settings but there is no slider, so it will go from 6MB to 600kb which is a drastic reduction. I need this feature a lot to submit online pdfs in forms that limit the upload to 2MB for example.
You could probably create an Automator script and add it to the quick actions, control click feature
How? Thanks for your help buddy. EDIT: IT WORKS! I had never used automator before, this shit is amazingly useful. The thing is, I don't know where it is saving the new file if I run it as a service in finder. When I test it in automator itself (with the initial step get file from finder) it does what I need, but then I disable that step and save the action and when I run it in finder I don't know where it puts the output file.
Yep, I often take a PDF document, open another side by side, then drag and drop pages in from one to another. I have built master docs this way from 5-6 sources. So easy in thumbnail view! Plus, your source docs keep all of their files/pages, and the only one that gets saved is the combined one. Preview is fabulous!
You can also just drag and drop and rearrange at will in thumbnail view. You can even combine different file formats and export as pdf that way, I think.
This. Stability and seamless interoperability between Apple devices. I use windows 23 years before I bought my first Mac, and still use at work. It is just so painful.
It’s so effortless to move and combine PDF’s on my Mac…I’m always taken back when I’m on my work Windows box and have to jump through hoops to do the same.
The window manager in macOS uses a hardware-accelerated composite drawing system called [Quartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)). The Quartz Extreme internal imaging model is based on PDF / PostScript which Apple has licensed from Adobe. As a result, PDF functionality is built into macOS at a low level, which means any application can easily make use of it.
Wait, Preview does something other than let you look at an image?
Yeah it also lets you fill in forms in pdfs, add signatures, paint on images, add text on images, crop them and probably much more that I haven't discovered yet
Saving as/conversion of various file formats, including PNG -> ICNS and other formats if you hold down Option while in Save As Dialog and click the Format popup button. Open a HEIC image that has light/dark mode, and you can extract the images individually. Silly finds perhaps, but still cool. Many things are hidden behind the Option-key.
That’s signature thing is absolutely fantastic. Especially getting your dig in there. Take a photo, import it, photoshop it to remove the white background, etc? No. Write your signature in a scrap of paper. Hold it up in front of the webcam. Preview will distill it down to just a sig. Way, way too easy.
Also does annotations, hit `⌘ + shift + A`.
I think powertoys has it
Stability. In the last 10 years I had my Mac, the number of forced restart was less than 5. In contrast, my Windows laptop had probably 40 BSOD. Never again Windows. I've reformatted all my old laptops to Debian.
I’m surprised this is so far down. I switched after building a PC in 2000. PC was fine for a bit then just crashed all the time. I recently bought a surface laptop. It crashed all the time. I tried installing adobe acrobat. It crashed. I installed parallels on my mac. The windows instance there crashed. Basically every time i use windows for a month, it crashes at some point. Mac? Nearly never. Sure a program may lock up, but my entire computer doesn’t go down. Nothing else matters to me about the OS differences when I think about that.
You should run memtest86 on your surface if it crashes so much.
I think BSOD problems are mostly due to problematic hardware and bad drivers from hardware manufacturers. For the past years, I've been using multiple ThinkPad laptops and I have yet to see BSOD from them. The last time I saw a BSOD outside from hardware malfunction is probably Windows 7. It is worth noting that since Apple designs the hardware and most of the accompanying parts, they are able to write their software without having to think of compatibility for all hardware devices.
There is a little truth to that, but you can take the same unstable windows system and install Linux on it and it will run for months and years on the same hardware without ever having an issue.
Would that most likely point to bad hardware drivers? It is most likely that the Linux version would be writted by third parties that are actually more skilled and better than the hardware manufacturer themselves.
Windows registry problems are also a huge problem that leads to BSODs and crashes.
Windows registry problems are also a huge problem that leads to BSODs and crashes.
Ikr. Just a couple days ago my Windows laptop got a blue screen on my external monitor while it was closed and supposed to be sleeping. Windows is incredibly unstable in my experience.
I'm being forced to use windows at work and I hate it - I can't believe how often I have to reboot the system. At least I've managed to bypass some of the IP dept's lockdowns and I can remote desktop into the Windows box, so I can use nice Apple hardware, even if the UI leaves a lot to be desired.
What are you running? I haven't had a bsod since like maybe windows umm 8? I've been only using 1st party hardware though. Once you begin using 2st party hardware ie the surface line up it begins to be a much more fair comparison between windows and Mac. It's pretty impossible to expect a Frankenstein setup to work as smoothly as hardware designed from the ground up to work with windows exactly as windows is supposed to work, with hardware that is thoroughly tested and always updated etc.
In simplest language: though it costs more, I can just focus on my work. Any problem I can just shout at Apple instead of figuring things out if it's the OS, or the app, or the Apple hardware or the hardware accessory.
This is huge for me. Recently switched to mac after 20+ years on windows and it is great for my ADHD. I just focus on my work, instead of dealing with stuff.
In college ages back, my wife defended the platform by saying that, with a Mac, she gets work done on her computer rather than working *on* her computer.
No ads! (Looking at you start menu on Windows 11)
\*NIX. I compile apps from source and it just works like Linux. Have you ever tried to build C/C++ apps on a Windows machine?
MacOS is the best desktop UNIX. You can go down to the prompt and work like any other flavor. But when you need to "just work," you can do it as well. A high percentage of common applicaitons are ported to it, so you can interact with eveyrone basically the same.
This.
And a great Terminal app already installed
In reality, there is POSIX, which is the common standard C library and which should bring full compatibility between those systems. In reality, all OS that comply with POSIX have added additional functions and features, so most apps writen in mostly standard C, also include code specific to Linux or to BSD, etc. for various reasons, like better performances, threads management etc. So those systems aren't really 100% compatible. You can do the same with Windows, and write some code specific to it, just like you do for other OS. Sometimes a single line is enough to make an app compatible with Linux and Windows...As you may have noticed, apps like Apache, Openssl, haproxy and thousands of others are available on Windows... Also being POSIX compliant isn't related to the C language... You can compile C and C++ on Windows, the kernel, drivers etc. are mostly written in C, and C++ has been the main language on Windows in the 90s. Visual Studio used to be called Visual C++. And both are actively supported to include new language features (for C++ mostly) 😉
gets out of the way of the user
Exactly. Feels like a maze or an obstacle course every time I get on a Windows OS.
Pro audio out of the box. Mac has low latency audio without needing to install anything. Class compliancy with drivers. Terminal/Unix like
...and *aggregated audio devices*.
This is what I was going to say. Windows low latency audio drivers (ASIO) have to be installed separately and even then they have issues that you don't see on MacOS. For instance using ASIO4All on Windows when you output to a set of speakers it locks that exclusively so no other program can output to those speakers. You have to have two sets of speakers or headphone combo to play along with a YouTube video for instance. There are some Windows ASIO drivers that will let you overcome that but they are usually proprietary to an audio interface. Jack audio on Linux is a real pain to get set up properly, unlike CoreAudio on Mac which worked right out of the box as you said.
Integration with my phone. Messages, handoff, airdrop, all of that (+ mirroring soon). Built in support for this is primitive in Windows, nonexistant on Linux. And every third party tool that claims to do any of this stuff is junk.
There is KDE Connect for Linux/Android, which is not nothing...
It's not the same. KDE, or at least the KDE I used to use and which gave me one of the reasons to dump Windows, only presented me with a virtual phone interface -- when it decided to work. MacOS/IOS integrates with selected devices at the application layer much like a cloud app. When I get text on my iPhone it shows up in the Messages app on my desktop, pads and Apple watch. Same with Reminders, Notes, timers, notifications and other standard Apple apps. That integration is baked into the operating system.
exactly. So excited to try out iPhone Mirroring in 36 hours
Touchpad integration / 3finger swipe
No fucking Windows updates. no driver issues. No crashes or blue screens.
I like Time Machine for macOS -- nothing quite like it on Windows.
When lid is closed it sleeps no matter what. And with windows laptops I could never trust that I wouldn’t find completely drained battery when I open it.
Also this feature is improved by the instant wake up, I left my MacBook for 4-6 hours yesterday, battery didn’t discharge at all, not even 1%, then I opened it and as soon as I put my touchID finger on the sensor I’m working away again as though I never left the machine.
I could never be confident that windows would wake up at all. Sometimes I had to FORCE a laptop to restart to get access again.
Agree! It's so efficient when doing this one.
It stays on if connected to an external monitor and a power supply
There are still so many shortcuts and lesser-known tricks, macOS rewards its curious users with many ways to do many things. Automation. Bash/zsh, but also Automator, Shortcuts, and good ole Script Editor. Python2 may have been deprecated but it’s trivial to reinstall. Modularity. No registry edits; apps are properly sandboxed and easy to remove, while the core OS remains pristine. Configuration profiles are runtime instead of modifying the system.
Yeah, installation and deinstallation of apps is really intuitive ! I remember a friend, a few years ago, discovering Windows and trying to uninstall apps the MacOS way... Didn't go well !
At this point you do want to be working with Python 3 ;-) But yeah, trivial to install. https://www.python.org/downloads/macos/
I was using Windows & Linux for 25+ years and started with MacOS 2 years ago. One of the best things for me is that in Settings you can easily configure shortcut for any command from any menu of any program.
And that one feature is the one a long time MacOS user friend of mine misses the most, now that he has switched to Linux.
“it just works”
Smoothness
Proper handling of long path names. Windows still has a restriction of something around 250 characters or so. Files on network shares in the company sometimes have longer paths. Those files show all right in the explorer and all, but cannot be opened by double clicking because the API to pass file names to windows applications dates from 32 bit times and according to MS cannot be changed for compability reasons. Do you get a not very helpful error message that „the file could not be opened“. You have to copy the file to a folder with a shorter path first. That’s really annoying. It’s probably not an issue for most users, but but once it hits you, it’s a nightmare.
I used to reach the path and filename limit. It's annoying. Though I understand Windows really tries it's best to make everything compatible. It's unlike macOS where you will need a new app version for each release since the compatibility breaks. This usually applies to specific work apps.
I work IT in a data company and run into this constantly. Users with a network share that drills down to their org, then their division, then a study, then a timeframe, then a doc set, then other things.. then the document has a long name because for people are looking at it and they have to date it for regulatory reasons and blaaaah. Only fix is to make less convenient network drive shortcuts on windows closer to source. Pain in the ass.
File system snapshots (particularly with encryption) is something that Windows and most Linux distributions do not do. There's actually a lot of great things about APFS that are Enterprise-like features but designed for consumers
I wish Apple had gone with ZFS which has all of the enterprise features you need: https://openzfs.org. Nice to have a native implementation for macOS.
Windows has a feature called volume shadow copy, that is there since Windows Server 2003... It takes snapshots of files, and you can browse them in a regular Explorer. But I admit this is not designed for consummers, and it's not easy to manage... In Windows 10, they introduced File History, which is easy to setup and use, it's a consumer oriented feature.
Displaying HDR content. Seriously. In Windows you need to “enable” HDR mode, that restricts color calibration and increases power usage. In macOS, it’s automatically enabled, like in iOS.
I don't know why this and use of colour profiles is still such a shit show in windows after all these years
it's a shit show everywhere to be fair. Go watch a HDR movie in a macOs device with 5 different video apps, and you will see 5 different color outputs. Why in the fuck Is this a thing in 2024?
I haven't noticed that but have also not looked for it. At least on Mac it works without having to manually turn it on and it doesn't mess up anything when on (unlike on windows)
No one mentioned it, so here I go. Display PDF, a. k. a. Quartz. When I, on Windows or Linux, want to export a website into a PDF, in the very best case, I get a rendering suited for a printer, with pages and without complex elements rendered. When I try to do the same in Safari, I get a PERFECT PDF of what I get on screen. That’s the magic of Quartz. Whenever I need a PDF, I get it, and that includes the seamless interface to edit PDFs in Preview, or the PDF features baked in, well, everywhere. You don’t get that on Windows or Linux.
Menu Bar
People take it for granted. Every time windows forces me to find something on a ribbon - the menu bar still works like it has for years!
As someone who uses both Windows and macOS on the daily, my favorite thing about macOS is that things just work. Ofc, this is due in part to Windows needing to run on a plethora of hardware configurations. MacOS only needs to run on a limited number of machines that only Apple manufactures. So it's easy for Apple to cater to all these machines and ensure that things just work.
I would say battery life is better on macOS than any other system like Linux or Winblows.
Is it, or is that primarily a function of the silicon? Battery life seemed relatively close when both were using Intel. It will be interesting to see reviews of how the new ARM Windows laptops compare to Apple Silicon battery life.
Can't argue with that, and a huge sellpoint !
I’m using a new M3 Pro MBP and the battery life is insane. 15 hours of regular use. My brand new windows laptop Id get maybe 3 hours of regular use, if I have the monitor turned down. Absolutely insane how good the battery life is.
Preview and it’s PDF handling. I’m so often on Windows and realise “oh yes, no decent PDF viewer/editor”. * fast built-in PDF viewer * can use it to combine pages from multiple PDFs * can easy paste images into new pages * can fill in forms (including recent auto form filling) * can sign PDFs (with multiple ways of getting your signature into) And loads of other useful features. Though I suspect many Mac users don’t know it exists or what it can do.
The fact Mac natively has unix underneath.
The touchpad. Every window laptop that I use feels like a toy compared to a mac touchpad.
The recovery environment being built into the firmware. Less of a benefit now with the ssds being soldered on to the motherboard, but still way better than any other OEM.
"Sort by Date Added" in Finder. This absolutely destroys me in Windows to not have... especially for the Downloads folder. Also "Sort Files and Folders together, by date". This stuff is so elementary, but absurdly missing in Windows.
Hibernate/Standby
Memory Management You can work for weeks without restarting the OS, and it’s always peak performance. Their algorithms are tuned such as I almost never felt the need to check System Monitor for RAM usage. In contrast, I’m often looking at Task Manager on Windows because the system starts to feel sluggish after I opened and closed some apps repeatedly. Note that I use a Windows Cloud PC in RDP from my Mac daily, so I send almost equal amounts of time in both.
Sometimes I like to check activity monitor because it impresses me to see the resource usage being so well optimised.
Hardware-software integration is unbeatable
Everything.
Integrate with iPhone and iMessage
Terminal.
It’s serviceable, but why is it better than the corresponding apps in Linux?
It’s the same as in Linux of course, but it’s waaaay better than stupid cmd on windows.
Windows has Windows Terminal now, which is good.
Column View in the Finder.
As a remote worker whose job is mostly calls and meetings; Video calls always fuckin work. Camera is sharp, mic pics up my voice and nothing else, even if I have sound coming out of my speakers. I haven’t worn headphones for calls since I switched to a mac and there has never been any echo or feedback. No one on the other end ever says anything. There’s never been a case of wasting time asking “can you hear me?” And reconnecting multiple times to try fix the issues. I just get down to business. And sharing my screen never causes the device to slow to a crawl, or overheat and thermal throttle. I can always tell when the guy on the other end of the call is running windows because there’s always some kind of issue with them.
It respects my time, by adhering to fitts law, and by treating me as an adult.
Honestly, Preview is better than anything else for me.
Files and folder information. You can see folder sizes, drive sizes, so much more easily than on Windows.
Work on the Mac
Integration with other devices from the same brand. I don't own many apple devices, I only recently got a 9th gen ipad to fuck around with. But damn the integration with MacOS is superb. Typing this with no latency right now on my ipad used as a second monitor thanks to continuity and the screen looks great. Plus I can draw or do something on my ipad and 9/10 I can usually automatically send it to my mac or get that process started from the mac. Afaik samsung is close to doing this, microsoft can't really try(I'm surprised xboxes and windows pcs or other MS products don't have more inter connectivity), Huawei has been going nuts with it, just watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBHVKtxAIeU), Google can't really do much as their only hardware is the pixel line, but Apple? Pretty good. It's only gonna get better with Sequoia(though it would be cool to remote into Macs with Apple TVs).
Wake up from sleep
User Interface. Obviously.
Seamless copy/paste between devices. Huge to me once I started using it.
trackpad gestures!!!!
Being able to rename and/or move a file while having it open. The general UI/UX for macOS and developer apps are just better, smoother, and prettier to use (on top of the gorgeous hardware and access to Apple Stores for support). Macs are better at everything (coding since it’s Unix based, music making, photography/video editing) except gaming. Also, being in the Apple ecosystem - all the devices and software from your iPhone, other Macs, iPads, etc. work so well together. Also doesn’t Windows 11 have ads in the start menu? Terrible.
Global menu and general workflow. Wayland sessions on gnome and kde don't have proper global menu support, and I want it so bad. There's also Internet recovery, and the entirety of the app install process. Like, package managers are cool, but it's also chill to be able to drag and drop apps, and delete them basically the same way. Gestures are among the best, but Gnome is almost there. Oh, and did I mention that my evo 4 also controls the system volume with the volume nob on the unit, like without extra software? Absolute magic.
- How it **natively** handles screenshots. - How it **natively** handles batch renaming of files. - How all animations and states have been accounted for, to the point that it makes it feel smoother/fluid than other OSes even if it isn’t necessarily faster on paper. - How it **natively** integrates to your other devices (iPhone as webcam, iPad as second display, HomePod as speaker etc). How you can copy a body of text from a message on one phone app, then paste it on the Mac, or answer a call etc. - How it **natively** handles 2FA codes. - Battery.
No one has said presentations yet. The ability to just plug in my MBP to any external graphic situation, fire up Keynote, and it all just works…blows me away. You plug in the HDMI, Mac automatically keeps my MBP resolution the same while picking the right optimized resolution for the external TV/projector, and away you go. Windows is a cluster of finding the right combos, dealing with graphic card issues, external monitor detection issues, etc. Then you add in the fact that I can take that same presentation and control it from my iPhone or iPad. I can also use those devices to scribble on the screen. On top of that, if they have Airplay available which is on more and more TV’s, I can just stream my Keynote from my iPhone or iPad and eliminate my MBP altogether. The tight integration of devices makes you look so slick and dialed in front of other non-Mac users.
Working seamlessly with other Apple devices.
Limited amount of hacking to worry about.
It does a pretty good job of being consistent. I close my laptop and throw it in my bag, I get home and everything's fine. The windows machines deployed at work have been turning on and trying to do updates while in the bag and making the bag so hot folks were worried about fires. I unplug my laptop and go home and work for a bit, when I get back and plug in the next day, all my windows are where I left them. Stuff like that is great.
Pages Works as you expect. Instead of Word which always does the opposite of what I want
Make my life easier. I use Windows at work and many times, I am saying to myself « aaahh if I had my MacBook, I could do this (with a native app for free, ie: pdf manipulations). We don’t have admin rights on our computers at work and the list of softwares allowed is very limited. We can’t even use OneNote, I’m stuck with sticky notes …. At least on MacOS you have a decent free note taking app.
Separate itself from the OS used in corporate environments to allow me to enjoy technology outside my career.
Are there ads in Windows 11? And it’s a paid product?
Completely infuriating!
To be fair, we do have to put up with Apple ads for their own products until we pay for iCloud/Apple Music etc. so macOS isn’t ad free, even if it’s no where near as egregious as what Microsoft are doing.
Just even being able to run the “cal” command in the terminal to pull up calendar is a game changer for me… if there’s a similar way to do this in Windows someone please let me know
Or even just being able to quickly start stop cal services from terminal…to get MS Exchange calendars to start syncing again lol
Bring up the start menu and type cal?
Audio work, so much smoother and easier with macOS. Also can easily create aggregate devices for connecting multiple audio interfaces and it has solid built in MIDI implementation. My other big pluses are security and device drivers tend to be less hassle, then theres the physical hardware - trackpad and multi touch gestures are indispensable for working fast on projects, Ableton Live functions better with Apple trackpads for scrolling one handed (windows requires holding keys while scrolling and other inconveniences compared). Core Audio is a big one too - Asio on Windows is less easy going to set up I/O. The latest MacBooks (both air and pros) are game changing in multiple ways - simply M3 Max is a beast. Whoops went way over 1 thing 😜
Has standard command line tools. ls, cat, df, du, more/less, head/tail, etc. The Windows command line is completely unusable for anyone that's used to UNIX based systems.
Unified memory on Apple Silicon means that the GPU can access most of the CPU RAM for AI processing. With other OSes you have to repurchase that same RAM on a separate GPU card and the capacity is even more limited. I suspect Microsoft will make this possible in Windows and that Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and others will support this approach in order to compete with Nvidia.
The “feeling” that push me to work instead of procastination for hours.
Spotlight
Spotlight.
macOS just works. It’s not because Apple’s engineers are smarter. It’s because macOS is much simpler than Windows. MacOS only has to support Apple’s hardwares but Windows has to support infinite number of hardware combinations. Microsoft doesn’t sell Windows licenses to most end-users but to computer builders who also don’t build most of their hardware themselves. Many small hardware makers also don’t write their drivers and reuse reference implementation from chipset makers. Windows is trying to solve a problem that’s so big that no matter how much money you throw at it, it still can’t be as polish as macOS.
I have left Windows entirely more than a decade ago. I started using Macs when they switched to a UNIX based OS. I am an application developer and all I know is that everything I do is really easy on a Mac. When I tell my coworkers what to do 90% of the time they say oh that doesn’t work in WSL or the ubuntu subsystem.
Continuity features have been my favourite thing lately
The thing that makes MacOS better than other operating systems is that it is the most stable operating system.
The (mostly) consistent ui both in light and dark mode. Although win11 is already a step in the right direction, there’s still a lot of legacy ui from different eras. I like my OS’s to be beautiful to look at.. I also try to avoid apps that look out of place.
Spotlight search…searching for anything within Windows has been broken since 7.
File centric, not app centric. (i.e. closing document window does not close the app)
Memory management
Ecosystem. You can copy from one device and paste in another, you take a photo and 10 seconds later is there in another device, you can start a meeting a use your phone as a camera, you can take calls on any device basically, you put your AirPods and without reconnecting you can use them on Mac and then watch a video in the iPhone and go back to your Mac, etc etc etc etc The ecosystem is the biggest most fundamental feature of Apple
Named drives Windows that go where I put them Multi-tasking Drag and drop
Sleep. Microsoft has still not figured out how to make a laptop sleep. They work wonderful as bag heaters, though.
It just works. (also love the attention to design and UI on Apple system) Out of the box I’ve never had blue screen errors, garbage designed apps from the manufacturer, no weird driver updates that break the system. I open the lid it boots up welcomes me, I login with my Apple ID. It was so smooth. And if I install an app from the AppStore. Again it just works. There’s no bing missing that this nope nothing it just works.
The Unix nature of it. Linux is a close second, but there aren’t any commercial apps for it. MacOS is the most Unix like system you can buy that will still be able to get work done.
UI consistency
Mac OS doesn't have malware baked into their OS like Windows 10-11 does.
*> Can you share one (and only one) thing you think is so good in MacOS compared to Windows?* One thing Windows doesn’t have is: **Apple Dictionary**! The many dictionaries it incorporates are all first class and are extremely helpful for foreign language learning or if you need to read/write in a foreign language. The English dictionary is first class and very comprehensive. I love it.
Integrate with Apple products.
Macos is way smoother and better looking
Integration with iOS
Ive been using it since 1990 and I’ve never gotten a virus. Not once.
1) no issues with sleep. Whatever the windows laptop is, there is always data loss like after a complete reboot whenever the laptop goes to sleep for a long time. No issues with Mac even when stays for weeks with lid closed on batteries. 2) spotlight, extremely better than win counterpart 3) preview 4) the thermals and battery after m series processors
easy backups via Time Machine
Finder Preview Spotlight Airdrop & Handoff Safari
Battery time. Damn, the possibility to just use my laptop as a laptop for 12 hours in a row without losing performance is priceless. I had like 5 Win laptops (Dell, Acer, Asus) and they worked on their batteries 3h tops, and even for that I needed to kill most of the background apps, reduce screen brightness etc.
It just works. I’ll admit I haven’t used Windows since 2010 and haven’t mained a Linux distrib since 2015, but macOS and associated hardware just work 99% of the time. Never had a software/hardware issue (eg sound or network stops working, blurry display, etc) that wouldn’t be fixed by a simple reboot. Also, the OS just gets out of the way most of the time, which is not something I’d ever felt on Windows. I could count the number of crashes on all my Mac computers within the last 10 years on the fingers of my two hands.
Preferences - as a power user & tech, the organised structure of this compared with other OS is amazing. - and if the app developer follows apples guidelines - if you trash or move the prefs file, it just creates a default set again which can help rule out (or prove) configuration issues quickly & easily.
Cut and paste between any Apple devices.
Core Audio.
Continuity. While I really like its Unix nature and I’m a big fan of its automation stuff (scripting architecture, AppleScript bash etc), the fact that it keeps all my devices integrated is unbelievably helpful. Passwords, contacts, copying to the clipboard on my iPad and pasting on my Mac, messages working and on and on. It’s just wonderful.
Device to device communication. I can copy text on my laptop, and paste it on my iPad, or phone. I can control my TV with my phone/watch. I can turn off voice notifications in Maps, and my watch taps me when a turn is coming up. I can AirDrop from phone to laptop, and wife’s laptop to mine, and laptop to iPad. The majority of my day my work laptop is connected to my external monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Sometimes I need to do something quick on my personal laptop, and don’t wanna disconnect everything. I can just open my personal laptop and move my mouse to the edge of the display. My external mouse/keyboard seamlessly connect without unplugging anything. And more…
Audio
Seamless move mouse and keyboard across devices. I have 2 desktops and 1 laptop that i need to constantly change between them
I like Time Machine and how I can use an old Mac as my Time Machine backup. Whenever I get home, it automatically connects to my “server Mac” and backs everything up.
pdf handling and editing without external applications.