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The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

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Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#151

Post by dang »

xeromal wrote: post #114
tambourine_man wrote: post #113

>I keep touching other people's screens out of instinct. Please, don’t do this. I get palpitations simply when people start getting their fingers, or worse, a pen, too close to my screen. I warn them. I try to be cute: “there’s this thing called cursor, you know? You can use many devices to control it”. When they do, eventually and inevitably, accidentally touch it, I get visibly upset and make no effort to lighten t…

Sounds like autism

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, or snark. And especially please don't post personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#152

Post by bschwindHN »

Alas1 wrote: post #150
pier25 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF rendering is baked directly into Quartz which it's why it's so great on macOS and iOS. IIRC the quartz team was involved with Adobe when they were developing the PDF format.

It is no longer great (it used to be so around Mavericks). Current pdfkit is broken, and renders PDFs blurry, with the effect enhanced on low PPI screens. This holds for iOS as well since the same pdfkit is used, but since the devices running those are extremely high PPI this bug goes unnoticed by all but those looking for it or those with sensitivity to such imperfections. I think the state of PDF rendering on macOS…

Do you have screenshots that can demonstrate this? I'm surprised to hear it, I'm fairly picky about visual quality but I've never noticed an issue with PDFs on MacOS or iOS. Never used a low PPI screen with them though.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#153

Post by darkteflon »

jmull wrote: post #67

I'm not sure it makes sense to point to certain hardware flaws as a reason to avoid Macs. These are bad things (especially the keyboard switch issue, which is greatly compounded by the issue of the keyboard being a very heavy-weight repair) but... where's the manufacturer without problems? I think what you're looking for is a manufacturer with a relatively decent reliability record and a record of "making things righ…

This. After-sales service and support have kept me on Apple hardware for years and will do for years to come - butterfly keyboard or no. When there’s a problem, in my experience they own it.

Shudder to think what it’s like to get through on phone support and/or file a warranty claim with Dell, Microsoft, what have you. No thanks.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#154

Post by pjmlp »

munchbunny wrote: post #135
jakub_g wrote: post #62

~20yrs Windows user and die-hard anti-fanboy of Apple, I'm almost considering switching to a Mac as the next corpo laptop (if not for unergonomic Mac keyboard layout and different shortcuts for everything, I'd have done it already). While I'm happy with my personal Thinkpad, being nearly the only front-end guy on Windows sucks (missing out on various tools, and regularly having to fix slightly broken scripts etc.). B…

For better or for worse, Windows these days seems increasingly designed for two main form factors. Surface products, and desktops. The hardware quality on a lot of other OEM laptops has really fallen behind. I use both OSes, and the only Windows laptop I've found compelling over the last four years is the Surface Book line.

I have been using ThinkPads (T, W and P models) with Windows since 2006 and seldom had anything to complain about.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#155

Post by maccard »

spookybones wrote: post #84
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP. Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Se…

I’m happy to see someone els lament a good alternative to Preview on windows.

Sumatra - it's fast, super lightweight, and renders perfectly.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#156

Post by thiht »

pbreit wrote: post #9

I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear, finding a wifi password, arrangin…

Keep in mind you might be heavily biased because you're used to macOS. When I had to switch from Windows 10 to macOS last year for work, I was flabbergasted at how the general UX sucked compared to what I expected:

- it's not possible to switch between multiple windows of the same application with Cmd+Tab

- it's not possible to display two windows side by side without switching to fullscreen mode

- it's hard to make some applications take the whole screen without using the weird fullscreen mode

- the apps don't close when you click the close button. I get that there used to be a reason for this, nowadays it's just bad design

- it's not possible at all to split the screen horizontally

- multi-monitor sucks hard

- there's no mini calendar on the clock

- the contextual top bar is awful

- the Finder is a monstrosity

- Cmd+shift+4 for a screen capture? come on...

- the difference between cmd, option and control is still not clear

There are a lot of good things on macOS but come on, a lot of things suck really bad

> finding a wifi password

what?

> arranging windows

No. Just no.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#157

Post by Henk0 »

My workflow (ios native & unity development) is based on extensive use of multiple desktops

(using a plugin to get grid style desktop layout) with apps designated to open in their own

desktop, or to be available in all (finder, notes, mail, etc). I only use trackpad (with swipes to move between desktops) and no external monitors

I was interested to try windows 10 when they'd finally got to allowing multiple desktops a few years ago. That turned out to be a

disappointment though. Windows switches between desktops without any clear visual

indication of their relative positioning. You can't designate apps to be available on any desktop, so I'd get a bunch of different instances of explorer on different desktops.

Swiping to move between the desktops was not nearly customisable enough either When (if) Microsoft gets multiple desktops to par with the implementation on Mac OS, and they or some other laptop producer manages to make a trackpad that at least comes close to the

macbook pro ones, I'll consider giving it another go. For now, my feeling is that microsoft still can't really get UX right

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#158

Post by dasKrokodil »

thiht wrote: post #156
pbreit wrote: post #9

I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear, finding a wifi password, arrangin…

Keep in mind you might be heavily biased because you're used to macOS. When I had to switch from Windows 10 to macOS last year for work, I was flabbergasted at how the general UX sucked compared to what I expected: - it's not possible to switch between multiple windows of the same application with Cmd+Tab - it's not possible to display two windows side by side without switching to fullscreen mode - it's hard to make…

I agree with all of this and would like to add that Windows is much better than OS X if you have a keyboard-centric workflow. For example, if you want to navigate dialog windows with the keyboard, you can just press Alt + one of the underscored letters to directly press a button in Windows. In OS X, you have to press tab a million times until you have reached your desired button and then press space...

The window management via keyboard is also much better in Windows.

Also I hate that the Home/End keys are broken in OS X. I get that you can use command+right/left instead, but that doesn't work in the terminal for some reason :(

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#159

Post by jvzr »

thiht wrote: post #156
pbreit wrote: post #9

I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear, finding a wifi password, arrangin…

Keep in mind you might be heavily biased because you're used to macOS. When I had to switch from Windows 10 to macOS last year for work, I was flabbergasted at how the general UX sucked compared to what I expected: - it's not possible to switch between multiple windows of the same application with Cmd+Tab - it's not possible to display two windows side by side without switching to fullscreen mode - it's hard to make…

Which also applies in reverse (but I know you are aware of that)

- Key combo to switch between apps, another to switch between windows of the current app. Makes sense to me

- It is possible, although not easily as Windows 10

- Double-click on title bar and/or cmd-click on green traffic light

- You mean vertically? I'm pretty sure macOS only allows horizontal splitting, which feels limited I agree

- Agree to disagree. Windows losing their position when connecting/disconnecting displays on Win 10 infuriates me

- Agreed. Though there are a lot of apps that can replace the clock with a clock + calendar combo, some are free. On Win 10, I can't believe the calendar doesn't display week numbers, and I cannot replace that

- I love it. To each their own

- you mean UX or bugs? I much prefer the Finder to Explorer, which always looks so bloated to me

- the beauty is in having full screen / box capture as file / to clipboard in 4 easy shortcuts, system wide. Compare to Win 10 Snipping Tool, it's night & day

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#160

Post by vetinari »

bschwindHN wrote: post #152
Alas1 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is no longer great (it used to be so around Mavericks). Current pdfkit is broken, and renders PDFs blurry, with the effect enhanced on low PPI screens. This holds for iOS as well since the same pdfkit is used, but since the devices running those are extremely high PPI this bug goes unnoticed by all but those looking for it or those with sensitivity to such imperfections. I think the state of PDF rendering on macOS…

Do you have screenshots that can demonstrate this? I'm surprised to hear it, I'm fairly picky about visual quality but I've never noticed an issue with PDFs on MacOS or iOS. Never used a low PPI screen with them though.

Many windows users consider macOS font rendering at low dpi blurry, and windows font rendering crispy.

It's just what they are used to.

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