Opinions are a funny thing, I find MacOs vastly inferior to Windows, but I grew up with Windows so I'm biased that way; I'm betting you and people claiming 'the good old days of mac' are biased too.
What parts of Windows do you prefer over MacOS?
Then you just need to spend a bit more time on it.
Seriously, my wife had exactly the same attitude, until her company was bought by Apple and she was issued a MacBook Pro. Within a week she thought it was the best OS she'd ever used.
I grew up using Windows (since Windows/386) and switched to OSX about ten years ago. For whatever it's worth, I still can't get used to window management or keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. (The Windows key turned into a really nice addition to an already well thought out set of Windows/CUA bindings, while OSX is still caught between its MacOS <10 and NeXTStep heritages.)
Let's not even get into Finder and how awful it is in so many ways.
Yea, let’s. Given that you’re talking about Karabiner to swap cmd keys you’re talking about an old version of macOS. So what specifically is bad about Finder? It may not be an issue anymore
I also prefer Windows' taskbar instead of Mac's dock.
The negative is changing preferences and the general ugliness of Windows. Mac is just prettier.
The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking.
I do most of my writing and creative work on Mac. But when I have to do some heavy duty productivity work with multiple apps/windows, I switch to my Windows desktop.
Well, Mac has multiple desktops to manage multitasking, and in Catalina the zoom button does have an option to tile windows left or right.
There are also apps you can get (I like divvy) which really open up advanced window management options.
The "Aero Snap" window management tools built in to Windows (for horizontal halves since Vista, and quartiles since 10) are pretty powerful. The recently rebooted Microsoft PowerToys includes an app directly similar to divvy called Fancy Zones: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...
Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around!
Mostly due to backward compatibility, as there were a fair amount of Windows applications that loaded DLLs to add a custom panel to Control Panel.
Well, many people on HN hate that Apple has a poor record on managing backward compatibility (like deprecating 32-bit apps or Carbon), but if they do to the scale of Microsoft, this is what happens.
with something with less functionality and even less logic on where to look for a particular setting?
I wanted to associate a file type with a program in Windows 10 recently, and I found at least 4 different menu items that lead to the same unhelpful modern screen. Unhelpful because it only let me pick 'App Store' Apps, not anything else I have installed. Some answers online suggested these very item as ways to go to the old screen but it looks like they closed that escape hatch.
I was having trouble because it was a 'special' file type (CMD) so the context menu didn't offer the Open With option, I suppose to save this clueless user from himself. So instead I dove into the registry and did a manual hack which will hopefully stick around between updates.
I've never had Explorer crash so damn much. Another of my least-favorite features is how they group your files by recently used now. Ugh.
Then you have Quick Access, Recently Used, 'Places'....
I agree on all of the quick access, recent etc garbage. I disabled at installs after I finally upgraded to Win 10.
Windows 10 overall is very stable but just a few days ago I did have Explorer crash in a new and interesting way like you say.
It went away and didn't come back as it usually does, so I started a new instance from the task manager. This instance seemed to be missing some kind of callback hook so when files in the directory changed it wouldn't update the display. So I would delete or paste a file, or make a new folder, and have to hit F5 to see it. If I didn't refresh then it also seemed to forget what folder it was in and paste into the wrong one, sometimes multiple times with one keypress.
It was very weird, but luckily Windows knows best and rebooted itself for an update when I went to sleep.
I'm not sure why Apple hasn't added this as a native feature. Hyperdock has had it for years.
I even wrote my own little proof-of-concept version of it:
Have you tried Magnet? It’s a macOS app that supplies the window snap/tile features that Windows has. It’s one of the first things I install on a new system (along with Display Menu and f.lux).
What really boggles my mind is how difficult it is to simply get a text string for the current path in Finder - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-...
I absolutely love that in Windows Explorer, you can simply click the navbar in the top to transform it into a selected/highlighted text-string path representation (Pro-tip, type cmd in this navbar and hit enter and a DOS prompt opens in the specific folder you are in). Windows explorer also provides a "Copy Path" button in the navbar (that can also be accessed via keyboard shortcuts rather than some gymnastics of right-clicking and holding option keys down).
There are definitely things that OSX does better than Windows, but Finder absolutely infuriates me. I much prefer Files in Ubuntu over Finder.
You can even select multiple items and copy-path to get a list of paths, to paste into a text file for command-line processing, or into Excel.
Your system default shell (shared with Win+X menu, defaults to PowerShell for the last few Windows releases but you can switch it back to CMD) is also directly on the File menu in the modern ribbon and opens in the current path. (Alt+F,R is the keyboard shortcut I see, with PowerShell as my system default.) It's a little bit faster than the use the path box as a launcher trick (though use the path box as a launcher is an older trick that predates the modern ribbon).
edit - Apparently you can add it to your quick-access toolbar as well, in which case it saves you one key-press with keyboard shortcuts :-) Alt + <quick access number>
Also Finder absolutely does support showing the path, and right clicking on any node gives you the option to copy the path as a string.
Even in Ubuntu, you can use Ctrl + L to get a selected file-path for your current folder in the Files application which is a lot faster than having to deal with the way Finder exposes file paths.
either way, to each their own.
Lastly, it is absolutely absurd to excuse a poor file manager by saying that you should just use a terminal anyways. There are plenty of reasons to still use a file manager over the terminal, even if you are an "elite" unix God.
Listen to yourself, you're complaining about a keystroke + mouse combo, it seems petty especially in a world with macros.
"Firstly, I never said that I wrote off the entire OS because of this... you are just putting words in my mouth. I did state that Finder feels like a very subpar file manager compared to Windows Explorer and I completely stand behind that."
You're correct, my apologies.
"Lastly, it is absolutely absurd to excuse a poor file manager by saying that you should just use a terminal anyways. There are plenty of reasons to still use a file manager over the terminal, even if you are an "elite" unix God."
Please name some? Things like viewing docs and photos, sure. However `cd ~/Pictures && open .`. When navigating via the terminal a copy of the working directory is one command away "pwd | pbcopy". You are complaining about having to have your hand on the mouse and keyboard at the same time, and seem to take more offense at the mouse side of it so perhaps I wrongly assumed you were a keyboard power user. As far as productivity for finding and managing files I very much doubt the GUI is more productive, but maybe that's just me (it's not).
SPOILER: rightclickwindow'stitle
Apple should have long since sherlocked BetterSnapTool.
When I flipped to Mac, I tried the same thing: get those shortcuts down until the mouse isn't necessary. I've since given up, but IIRC, it can be done but it is a lot harder. For starters, it's broken out of the box because you have to set $SETTING to be able to Tab to some controls. The menu is accessed on Windows with the Alt key. On Mac, Cmd-Opt-F2. Screenshot? PrtScn versus Cmd-Opt-Shift...something, I never can remember.
I like the taskbar configured the classic way, not the new way that tries to copy the macOS Dock. Unfortunately, to get all the features that I want out of the taskbar, I have to install a utility called 7+ taskbar tweaker. With that, you can arrange items however you want and middle clicking a taskbar item becomes useful, to close a window. If you like middle-clicking to close tabs in Chrome, it's the same thing... I wish there was a similar utility for macOS because I like to use the taskbar to track what I'm working on. In macOS the easy path is basically to put everything in full screen and use the touchpad to swipe between them which I find very inefficient. Or, you can use Mission Control/Spaces but I would rather have something on the screen at all times rather than something I have to bring up with a gesture or key combo.
I love the Windows Explorer because it's very extendable. For instance, you won't find anything like Tortoise Git on any other platform that can match its quality. I also like using the keyboard to do things and the keyboard commands for Explorer make sense compared to Finder. Like pressing ENTER to open a file or Delete to delete a file.
Keyboard acceleration on Windows and other platforms that emulate Windows (like XFCE) are generally much better than on macOS in my opinion as well because its a simpler system. Instead of memorizing 1,000 unique Mac keyboard shortcuts, I basically have to memorize 1 or 2: Alt + any underlined letter in a menu. Alt + Space to do window commands (move, minimize, etc). From there, I can do anything. Furthermore, I find the notation for Mac keyboard shortcuts to be inscrutable. They display symbols on the menus that are not printed on the keyboard keys and it always takes me a second to figure out which key to press.
For Window Management - I won't list every function that Windows lets you perform on application windows, but suffice it to say that snapping built-in is great because it's on every workstation/server and I find Apple's insistence that you shouldn't maximize windows to be very weird and annoying.
Finally, I find many things to just work faster and more efficiently on Windows. In my experience, on the same exact hardware, common apps like web browsers, code editors and so forth are just snappier under Windows. I also like having a choice and there is a plethora of apps and hardware for Windows in any category.
However, in today's world - I have to run all three to get by. For Linux, I love Manjaro XFCE or Xubuntu very much and Manjaro is on my main workstations at work and home. I mainly use Windows now only for Windows-specific stuff. Same for Mac - I keep one 2015 Macbook Pro around to compile React-Native stuff for iOS and I actually have one old Mac Pro from 2012 in my basement because it's such a nice looking piece of hardware that I hate to get rid of it! I might re-purpose it as a Linux box one day.
Right now is not anywhere near as bad as it’s been a few times in the past (pre-OS X, early OS X days especially)... but if someone doesn’t turn around the ship things are headed that way currently.
Two decades later, and I still can't find as performant or useable a system as that.