For one, Mac OS does multiple displays and DPIs right. The trackpad is also solid. Plus the unix stuff that's always been there and isn't some subsystem only available with certain versions of windows. Also, the boot up and sign in process sucks in Windows vs Mac. Once I'm given a mouse cursor post-signon I'm ready to go in Mac OS. With Windows, I've got to wait for the AV to load up and do it's "routine". Then there's the probability of Windows Updates working the first time.

And then there's the Windows telemetry stuff. Apple's actually talking about ways to incorporate identity anonymization (sp?) into its browser. They've stayed out of trying to reap side income off device usage in multiple ways.

I've recently started using Windows again on a gaming computer. Here are the problems I found, that felt "ugh, Windows":

- I'm now used to the "inverse mouse scrolling". To enable this for my mouse (logitech something?) I needed to edit the registry. Every time I plug it into a new USB port it's now a new device with a new registry entry to hack.

- I installed the various device drivers that came with my hardware. The Realtek on-motherboard network card had some driver, which actually stopped the hardware from working - Microsoft's own standard driver was better. But every time I rebooted, Windows would helpfully install the "updated" driver from it's local cache. I ended up fixing this by setting the permissions on some c:\windows\system32 file to such that the system itself could not update it

I'm also not yet familiar with the changes to the Start menu and Windows Explorer, so those also feel confusing. But it's a gaming computer, I turn it on, play games, then turn it off. Presumably if it was a development workstation I'd have more opinions on the rest of it.

I don't think OSX is superior, just the touchpad. It seems that most touchpads are insensitive to high precision touches (small movements), while the Apple touchpad is in a class of its own.

The macbook trackpad it is so wonderful. I'm watching something on youtube, I'll just flick it over to the apple tv by pressing airplay - it's magical. My backups go to a time capsule - install time a couple of minutes, it just works, it sits there in the cupboard and I never have to think about backups. When my phone rings and its across the room, I can answer on my Mac.

I seldom (never?) have to worry about reinstalling device drivers. Everything works, all the time, on my windows laptop somethings don't work and I have to do convoluted things to make them work - e.g. pdf's no longer open in adobe reader, I keep saying yes make adobe reader the default but it never works, I've never looked into it cause who cares. With my mac I seldom have to fiddle with something because it's not working - it is a lot smoother experience, with windows bits are broken everywhere and I just work around them.

Edit: oh also the 2d graphics are so much nicer and crisper - core graphics makes gdi/gdi+/direct2D a joke (I spend a lot of time writing graphics code), cocoa is superior.

For me personally, 90% of it boils down to "unix baseline". I do most of my development work remotely on linux servers of varying flavors, but OSX + homebrew means that I can pretty easily use the tools I write for one machine on my local systems as well.

Beyond that, I've just got a lot of random applications for streamlining my workflow and day-to-day usage that would take a long time to find equivalent tools for, and I'm long past the days when "spending a weekend fucking with settings" was something I want to do. OSX, I just back up my machines and if/when I need to replace them, it's just "plug the new one into the backup drive, restore from backup".

Maybe someday the year of the linux desktop will actually happen, but I'm not holding my breath either.

Windows has a lot of minor issues that really get in the way

Not to mention that since it's more popular every device manufacturer wants to "customize" your experience with some BS app, the amount of bad practices in app development is abundant (remember when Windows 2000/XP came out how long did it take developers to make their products run without being Administrator? And then with Vista?)

MS helps developers, shames them sometimes (IIRC Vista had a "Windows is not shutting down because of this app ) and sometimes "virtualizes" things so developers can still not clean up after themselves, but it gets old.

I only rarely have to use Windows but every time I'm just so annoyed at how terrible the file browser (Explorer) is. Why the heck are folders sorted on top of files? It makes no sense and means you can't just jump to filenames with the keyboard. No QuickLook (this is a huge one. browsing through files is made 10x faster with QuickLook). No column browser.

Like another user mentioned: the trackpad. Particularly the software aspect of it.

I have a personal 2012 macbook air and a lenovo thinkpad whatever from work. If I have to use the trackpad on windows I'm miserable. It's just so bad, the OS itself isn't made with it in mind: things like dragging and click-holding don't work anywhere near as well as it does on the macbook, the multi finger gestures are a miserable experience; I spend most of my time frustrated that I don't have a mouse. Compare it to the macbook: I do have a magic mouse somewhere but I haven't used in years; it offers me no better experience than that amazing trackpad support does.

This isn't even related to trackpad hardware because the experience was equally bad when I ran windows on the macbook using bootcamp. The Windows trackpad experience is just years behind OSX.

edit: as a related sidenote, I'm planning on dumping the macbook next year becase it's aging (4gb ram doesn't cut anymore). I'm planning on replacing it with a MS Surface; I found that touchscreen+pen are a suitable replacement for the macbook trackpad when you're on the go for my type of usage.

I'm also a user of both Windows 10 and Mac OS X. In no particular order, here's why I prefer OS X:

No advertising built into OS X on a fresh install. No default collection of usage. Faster boot times, faster wake up from sleep and faster shut down (ever been stuck on shutdown?). Forced updates, with a count down to save my work before a forced reboot (seriously, what decade is this?!). Windows Trackpads suck compared to Mac (even with the Precision Touchpad enabled laptops... and so much more.

UX on both platforms are pretty horrendous. But windows, especially the newer versions, is even worse imo. It's way too "in your face" and has extra nonsense that adds no purpose. Changing settings is unnecessarily complicated unless you have already done it in the past. Tiles in the start menu. Shortcuts are less efficient than macOS (switching tabs, closing apps, etc). And more. Ofc you can customize these, but I'd rather not. And it takes me a good amount of time to research if 3rd party apps are safe and secure especially on windows

Well, for starters:

- That it has Unix and its tools underneath

- That app guis look consistently good on it (although I will admit that Windows has caught up to Mac OS X in this regard)

- That I don't have to worry about catching viruses as easily when browsing the Internet. Yes, I know there are viruses for Mac, but I've not come across them. Not the same with Windows. In fact, I made the switch after catching a nasty one using Windows Vista and losing more than half of my stuff.

- A corollary is not having to use Antivirus on a Mac

- That even though Macs have little in terms of specs, that the OS doesn't fucking lag something fierce. Last Windows I used, Windows 8, was still a memory hog for a machine having twice the RAM as my Mac. It was a work machine, not a personal machine.

And Most importantly, that I don't have to worry about maintaining the machine for all the aforementioned reasons and that I just get stuff done.