Troy Busot

I am a long time Windows use who has looked at the various Mac OSs from time to time over the years. I owned an original “flavored” iMac (blueberry) and I currently run Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro. I decided on this because of the reported battery life in the Apple hardware (which doesn’t even come close to living up to the reports) and we are doing more and more on the iPhone and iPad - I wanted to be able to test and do some development as well.

Much has been written over the years about Apple’s devotion to user experience, UI design, Industrial design, etc. To be fair - I love my iPhone and honestly don’t think that I could make more than a passing suggestion on increasing its usability. Simply put - they nailed the UI in iOS (formerly iPhone OS).

OS X on the other hand is a different story. Coming from Windows, I must say, I don’t get all the fuss. It’s not the big things that I think Microsoft does so much better (although the Windows Taskbar is far and away more efficient than the Apple Doc for my money), it’s the little things like making every file dialog a live explorer window where you can move, copy, rename files on the fly as you need to (and I more often than not need to). 

Another huge advantage that Windows has over OS X is with keyboard shortcuts.

Take Photoshop - the flagship of Apple bliss. Well over half of the keyboard shortcuts that I use over and over on the Windows version are simply missing in the Mac version. Perplexed, I started looking at other software and comparing. Sure enough - the Mac version hates keyboards!

I could go on and on - and maybe I will in other posts - but it amazes me how dogmatic most of us are about computing platforms. I think that you’ll find - if you really look - that over half of what you think you know about Windows and Mac is based on a perception that is at least ten years old and several versions removed from the truth.