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UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

kentnguyen.com

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Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#21

Post by falcolas »

dristic wrote: post #5

I agree with needing more data but I will give my testimonial. I switched from Windows 7 to Mac Lion several months go and have not looked back. Simple things like responsiveness of the touch pad, gestures, and a better terminal are definitely what got me. Overall I would say the UX is just simply better.

I would have to say that my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; the window management experience in Mac Lion is significantly worse than Windows 7. I have to give one caveat, however, I use a non-Apple external keyboard and mouse.

The change in responsiveness in the UI when you're no longer using the trackpad is astonishing. It takes me longer to perform tasks on my Mac than it does on my Windows 7 platform - particularly if that task involves switching between windows in the same application. The loss of my extra mouse buttons to move backwards & forwards on web pages has been especially painful (though oddly, they work to bring up Mission Control & the Application window controls)

And frankly, after using Mintty from Cygwin, the default terminal on the Mac was pretty terrible to use. Fortunately, that was easily remedied with the use of iTerm.

I'm looking forward to the time I no longer have to use a Mac for work development.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#23

Post by haddr »

blinkingled wrote: post #13

Speaking of anecdotes, I have always found Windows more responsive than OS X to the point where I have completely switched to Win 7 - mouse handling and screen drawing is definitely superior on Windows. However it is easier on Windows to mess up the experience - install some crappy antivirus or other messy program and it is a piece of cake to make Windows feel laggy.

i true that. as a relatively new mac user i felt response time better on windows. also this blog post is missing any numbers... so it's just author's subjective feelings?

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#24

Post by freehunter »

Schlaefer wrote: post #4

I never thought I would say this: but I miss the OS X spinning-wheel-o-death … on my non-current generation iOS device. Sometimes the software just does nothing for a noticeable amount of time and you don't know if it didn't got the input or just hangs.

I find myself holding my phone against my ear occasionally to see if I can hear the drive spinning. I feel like a fool every time when I remember there are no moving parts, but if my Zune would hang, or my iPod before that, I could tell if it was hung or if it was just crunching away.

That's one thing I really miss since I went to using an Ubuntu HP Touchpad instead of a laptop, there's no flashing hard drive indicator to let me know if it's still working or if it's just hung.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#25

Post by brudgers »

blinkingled wrote: post #13

Speaking of anecdotes, I have always found Windows more responsive than OS X to the point where I have completely switched to Win 7 - mouse handling and screen drawing is definitely superior on Windows. However it is easier on Windows to mess up the experience - install some crappy antivirus or other messy program and it is a piece of cake to make Windows feel laggy.

That and considering that shrink wrapped consumer anti-virus has become paid malware (reports your browsing history, slows down your machine, and renews on your credit card automatically), it is unsurprising that Microsoft provides no-cost anti-virus which is both fast and unobtrusive.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#26

Post by aresant »

My favorite explanation of this phenomenon, beyond the visual demonstration, is that lag time reminds the human mind that it is interfacing with a machine.

Because that feels unnatural, it creates fatigue and builds separation between the user and his work.

UI guru Jakob Nielsen has an excellent description of this here:

http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#27

Post by zyb09 »

Well there's no denying iOS is the king of responsiveness in the mobile sector, but to be honest, I can't really say the same thing on OS X vs Windows 7. I use both on a daily basis and Win7 is definitely the most rock solid OS Microsoft ever put out. For example, when an application crashes Windows just kills it and everything is fine. On OS X when something crashes, you can usually Force Close, but sometimes the process just can't be killed. Also it feels OS X memory management almost requires an SSD nowadays.

There are other things, which makes me like OS X more, but being faster or more stable is not one of them.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#28

Post by brudgers »

dristic wrote: post #5

I agree with needing more data but I will give my testimonial. I switched from Windows 7 to Mac Lion several months go and have not looked back. Simple things like responsiveness of the touch pad, gestures, and a better terminal are definitely what got me. Overall I would say the UX is just simply better.

>a better terminal are definitely what got me. Overall I would say the UX is just simply better."

In my opinion, "a better Terminal" is not a strong premise when it comes to making a general case for one OS's user interface being superior to another's.

[edit] If the comparison was between bash (et al.) and Powershell, then terminal preference would seemingly be based on familiarity rather than the degree to which one can access the OS via the command line.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#29

Post by emehrkay »

neebz wrote: post #11
ben_straub wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSX has definite advantages here. 1. The trackpad hardware is great. It's so good that when we were making the Bamboo Touch at Wacom, the Macbook Pro trackpad was the standard we measured ourselves against. 2. True pixel-level scrolling from HID devices. Windows has the concept of "wheel scrolling", but it's only vertical, and lots of apps won't scroll in less than a wheel increment (which is oddly 120 units), so you…

regarding #2.. I used Mac for a week and went back to Windows. The jerky scrolling in Windows was driving me crazy. The fact was that before Mac I never realized that (maybe I'm numb to perfection) but it was only using Mac that it occurred how much crap scrolling is in Windows.

I currently have a vm of windows 7 open on my mac with the host file open in notepad. Two lines are selected (as I needed to copy them from time to time). If that window loses focus, the selection stays, but if I click the titlebar to that window, giving it focus again, those two lines are unselected.

There are many many quirks like this in Windows that you only notice once you use a different window manager.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#30

Post by emehrkay »

falcolas wrote: post #21
dristic wrote: post #5

I agree with needing more data but I will give my testimonial. I switched from Windows 7 to Mac Lion several months go and have not looked back. Simple things like responsiveness of the touch pad, gestures, and a better terminal are definitely what got me. Overall I would say the UX is just simply better.

I would have to say that my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; the window management experience in Mac Lion is significantly worse than Windows 7. I have to give one caveat, however, I use a non-Apple external keyboard and mouse. The change in responsiveness in the UI when you're no longer using the trackpad is astonishing. It takes me longer to perform tasks on my Mac than it does on my Windows 7 platform…

I find the window management better in OS X (kde, gnome with compiz) simply because it gives you a way to see an instant snapshot of all windows or all application windows with either a hot corner or key press. In Windows you have to mouse over the icon to get a preview that doesnt work all the time (I feel that it breaks if the window's content changes. it then shows the application's icon instead of the preview).
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