For a simple example, no app remembers the last directory you were working in. The keys each app uses are completely inconsistent from app to app. And it was only in Windows 11 that Windows started remembering my window configuration when I plugged and unplugged a monitor. Then there’s the Windows 95-style dialog boxes mixed in with the Windows 11-style dialog boxes; what a UI mess. I spoke with one vendor the other day who was actually proud they’d adopted a ribbon interface in their UI “just like Office” and I verbally laughed.
From a hardware perspective, I still don’t understand why Windows and laptop manufacturers can’t get sleep working right. My Intel MacBook Pro with an old battery still sleeps and wakes and lasts for several hours, while my new Windows laptop lasts about an hour and won’t wake from hibernate half the time without a hard reboot.
I think Windows is the “good enough” for most people.
While overall I may say MacOS is better, I would not say it's better in every way.
Believe it or not, I had a better experience with 3rd party window managers in Windows than on MacOS.
I don't think the automation options in MacOS are better than AutoHotKey (even Linux doesn't have something as good).
And for corporate work, the integration with Windows is much better than anything I've seen on MacOS.
Mac HW is great. The OS is in that uncanny valley where it's UNIX, but not as good as Linux.
Did you try Keyboard Maestro https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/ (I've never used AutoHotKey and I'd be super curious if there are deficiencies in KM relative to it, but Keyboard Maestro is, from my perspective, a masterpiece, it's hard to imagine it being any better.)
Also I think this statement needs a stronger defense given macOS includes Shortcuts, Automator, and AppleScript, I don't know much about Windows automation but I've never heard of them having something like AppleScript (that can say, migrate data between applications without using GUI scripting [e.g., iterate through open browser tabs and create todos from each of them operating directly on the application data rather than scripting the UI]).
So, Windows' saving grace is being able to run a different operating system inside it? Damning with faint praise if I ever heard it...
You can't, really. Almost everyone resorts to buying an HDMI dongle to fake a display. Apple solved the problem at such a low level, the flexibility to run something in clamshell mode is broken, even when using caffeine/amphetamine/etc etc etc.
So, tradeoffs. They made their laptops go to sleep very well, but broke functionality in the process. You can argue it's a good tradeoff, just acknowledge that there WAS a tradeoff made.
If I’m wrong, someone tell me how to do it! On an M4 MacBook Air running latest OSX release.
Oh god, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and switch to 11, huh?
The one thing that has been saving me from throwing my PC out the window in rage has been the monitor I have that supports a "keep alive" mode where switching inputs is transparent to the computers connected to it. So when switching inputs between my PC and laptop neither one thinks the monitor is being disconnected/reconnected. If it wasn't for that, I'd be screaming "WHY ARE YOU MOVING ALL MY WINDOWS?" on a regular basis. (Seriously, why are you moving all my windows? Sure, if they're on the display that was just disconnected, I get you. But when I connect a new display, Windows 10 seems to throw a dart at the display space for every window and shuffle them to new locations. Windows that live in a specific place on a specific display 100% of the time just fly around for no reason. Please god just stop.)
A friend of mine lost a ton of messages when upgrading the OS (and therefore Mail). A number of others were affected by the same issue. There have been show-stopper bugs in the core functionality of Photos as well. I don't get the impression that the basics are Apple's focus with respect to software.
But I’ve certainly never struggled with getting WiFi to work on a Mac, or struggled with getting it to sleep/wake, or a host of other problems you routinely have on both Windows and Linux.
It’s not even close.
To compare Apples to apples, you'd have to look at a Framework computer and agree that wifi is going to work out of the box... but here I'm meeting you on a much weaker argument: "Apple's software basics are /not/ rock solid, but other platforms have issues too"
I don't find your original anecdote convincing:
> A friend of mine lost a ton of messages when upgrading the OS (and therefore Mail).
E.g., what does this mean? They lost mail messages? How did they verify they had those messages before and after? E.g., file-system operations? GUI search? How much do they know about how Mail app stores message (e.g., I used to try understand this decades ago, but I expect today messages aren't even necessarily always stored locally)? How are you syncing mail messages, e.g., using native IMAP, or whatever Gmail uses, or Exchange? What's the email backend?
E.g. without deeper evidence this sounds more like a mail message indexing issue rather than a mail-messages-stored-on-disk-issue (in 2025, I'd personally have zero expectations about how Mail manages messages on disk, e.g., I'd expect local storage of message to be dynamically managed like most applications that aren't document-based use a combination of cloud functionality and local caching, e.g., found this in a quick search https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/471801/ensure-maco...), but if you have stronger evidence I'd love to hear it. But as presented your extrapolating much stronger conclusions than are warranted by the anecdote in my opinion.
I want to be able to set different networking options (manual DNS, etc) for different wifi networks, but as far as I can tell, I can only set them per network interface.
There's something like "locations" but last time I tried using that, the entire System Settings.app slowed to a crawl / beachballed until I managed to turn it back off.
> or struggled with getting it to sleep/wake
My m1 MBP uses something like 3-5% of its battery per hour while sleeping, because something keeps waking it up. I tried some app that is designed to help you diagnose the issue but came up empty-handed.
... but yes on both counts, it's light years better than my last experience with Linux, even on hardware that's supposed to have fantastic support (thinkpads).
In my case it works roughly ~50% of the time. Probably because of the Thunderbolt monitor connected to power it, idk.
> the basics are still rock solid
The basics like the OS flat out refusing to provide you any debugging information on anything going wrong? It's rock solid allright. I had an issue where occasionally I would get an error "a USB device is using too much power, try unplugging it and replugging it." Which device? Why the hell would Apple tell you that, where is the fun in that?
Key remapping requires installing a keylogger, nor can you have a different scroll direction between mouse and touchpad. There still isn't window management which for the sizes of modern monitors is quite constraining.
> still has UNIX underneath
A very constrained UNIX. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to test something (pkcs11-tool signing with a software HSM), and turns out that Apple has decided that libraries can only be loaded from a number of authorised locations which can only be accessed while installing an application. You can't just use a dynamic library you're linking to, it has to be part of a wider install.
You can remap with config files: https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app
Long story short, I was very happy with the "it just works" of ChromeOS, and only let down by the lack of support for some installed apps I truly needed in my personal life. I tried a Mac back in 2015 but couldn't get used to how different it was, and it felt very bulky compared to ChromeOS and much slower than the Linux machine I'd had, so I switched to a Pixelbook as was pretty content.
Fast forward to 2023 when I needed to purchase a new personal laptop. I'd bought my daughter a Pixelbook Go in 2021 and my son a Lenovo x1 Carbon at the same time. Windows was such a dumpster fire I absolutely ruled it out, and since I could run all the apps I needed on ChromeOS it was between Linux & Mac. I decided to try a Mac again, for both work & personal, and I've been a very happy convert ever since.
My M2 Pro has been rock solid, and although I regret choosing to upgrade to Sequoia recently, it still makes me feel better than using Windows. M4 Pro for work is amazingly performant and I still can't get over the battery efficiency. The nicest thing, imho, is that the platform has been around long enough for a mature & vibrant ecosystem of quality-of-life utilities to exist at this point, so even little niggles (like why do I need the Scroll Reverser app at all?) are easy to deal with, and all my media editing apps are natively available.
Edit: Hard to call intentionally preventing support for web apis a power user thing. This creates more friction for basic users trying to use any web app.
Edit2: lol Apple PR must be all over this, went from +5 to -1 in a single refresh. Flagged for even criticizing what they intentionally break.
I understand that this post is about MacOS, but yes, we are forced to support Safari for iOS. Many of these corporate decisions to prevent web apps from functioning properly spill over from MacOS Safari to iOS Safari.
On iOS you cannot even keep a web app running in the background. The second they mutlitask, even with an audio/microphone active, Apple kills it. Are they truly adding battery life or are they cheating by creating restrictions that prevent apps from working?
Being able to conduct a voice call through the browser seems like a pretty basic use case to me.