And then comes the wonderful realm of the BSDs and the OpenSolaris derivatives

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Windows isn't afraid of tech, but MacOS is? Give me a break, the Unix style terminal is the reason for using MacOS professionally.
- Honestly, most windows users I know at least know where their files are stored and stuff like that. Average Mac users don't know if something is synced with the cloud or not and can't unpack a rar archive without calling support because they are deliberately kept dumb by that restrictive, overly oppinionated, lock-in OS and unrepairable, un-upgradable hardware ecosystem. I'm using linux as daily driver on laptop and desktop for almost a decade now and I hate windows with a passion, but mac manages to be even worse. Although windows is also getting worse with every version since win7, so they might be on par soon...
- Depends on the person. Most of the people I know who use MacOS, use it as a glorified Facebook machine. Outside of perhaps Word, they only use the web browser.
  
  In my circles it's used exclusively for software engineering. Mostly by people who like Linux but don't wanna deal with any instability brought by customizing your install.
  
  What kinds of customization create instability on Linux but are still possible on Mac?
  
  Computers are a tool and people use it for the needs that benefit them.
- Yeah this used to be the case up until the early 2000s. Then Microsoft started making Windows much less technical (e.g. instead of showing Error: HRESULT 0x80070002 it just showed Sorry, something went wrong :(). Conversely, Apple started exposing more tooling for MacOS, e.g. tracing, terminal, etc. instead of just showing <bomb picture> if something went wrong.
- To quote a designer friend of mine 'Apple is the king of average'. :-P Most people I see using apple don't even understand how shitty the UI is if your workflow is keyboard driven (snap windows w/o 3rd party programs for example.)
  
  I’m not sure if my experience is any kind interesting or not, but here goes. This is coming from the perspective of a software engineer.
  After using Windows for a few years, I switched to macOS for several years before needing to use some Windows-only software and switching back.
  I always hated using iPadOS, and for a long time, I assumed this was primarily due to the lack of windowed applications (as well as the lack of software that was truly competitive with Windows/macOS offerings, at least at the time).
  On the other hand, my experience with macOS is just the opposite. As soon as the feature was introduced, I started using applications exclusively in fullscreen whenever possible. This is partially the fault of macOS’s vanilla window system being unhelpful in several regards, but that doesn’t explain why I now miss it on Windows.
  Yes, I know Windows now implements comparable multitouch gestures, but in my experience, it is terrible to use. The scroll speed is far too fast and cannot be changed independently, AFAIK. And maximized applications still have to choose between a persistent window border and a borderless mode that comes with its own pitfalls. I really don’t like it, but I still use alt+tab 99% of the time, just like I did on XP and 7.
  I think the root of the problem is that you can only physically look at one thing at a time, but fullscreen applications work best in multitasking when the time spent switching windows (including the time spent consciously thinking about it) is minimized. iPadOS sometimes takes longer and the gesture is uncomfortable to perform on a tablet. Windows gets it wrong in how much you have to keep an eye on it. macOS, in my opinion, gets it just right.

216 comments