I’ve been with out my 2016 MBP for about 48 hours now, I had to take it in for repair on Saturday for a swollen main battery in the chassis. The repair is a mail out repair, and since I have perfectly good computer sitting next to my Mac, I thought no big deal I’ll just use the Win10 machine for a while. I’m fluent in Windows and use Windows primarily for my day job but going back to Windows at home after 12 years of Mac at home has me noticing lots of little things.
First you don’t realize how attached to iMessage you are until you don’t have it on your main computer, having to look at your phone for a conversation rather then it being just another chat app is remarkable when you no longer have it after having it for so many years. Yes WhatsApp, GChat (until it’s sun setted next year), and Skype all provide a desktop client…. But none work quite as seamlessly between devices or the OS as iMessage does.
On my Mac I have a little automation script set up to monitor my “~\Downloads” folder and it moves files based upon file type… PDF to a folder on my OneDrive, JPG to a dedicated folder away from the desktop for memes from social media, and larger media files (over 2MB) to a network share attached to a 12TB DAS. The file automation has been built into MacOS for as long as I’ve used it (since 2007) and it’s been one of those things that has always just made life a little bit easier. Windows does not have a built-in equivalent; you can download the equivalent service but there is no native equivalent baked into the OS. Which really gets to the larger issue of there is no Windows equivalent of Automator for taking care of bunches of little tasks that we all do during our day and never thing twice about. Also, for the record yes, I still download media… I’m internet ancient, and sometimes I like to miserly with my bandwidth. I still act like I have a 56k connection when I’m paying for gigabit on one line and unlimited data on my cell phone.
Finally, I don’t think I would have noticed this if I hadn’t been working on a presentation for a conference. There is no recent documents in the “Start Menu” like there was in Windows 7/8/8.1 I literally just noticed this yesterday. In MacOS it’s still up in the apple menu where it’s been for almost 20 years. It’s not a big deal, 99% of the time I open recent files via the app I’m using them in anyway. Sometimes it’s things like the recent documents that are force of habit that you don’t notice until it’s in your face.
It’s not all weird on Windows, the Office365 experience is markedly better then on MacOS IMO (and vastly superior to iOS). Which should surprise no one as Office has always been a flagship for Windows capabilities. I didn’t appreciate how good it was until working on my conference slide deck and writing this post (which I’m writing a draft of in Word, because I like my software to work against me actively). Little things like word definitions and thesaurus suggestions when I click on words is nice, and the kind of thing I would expect from a modern fully featured office suite on a modern platform.
Most of the mechanical differences I’ve observed between Windows and MacOS are more directly related to the hardware I’m running each OS on…. The Mac is using new NVME SSD and USB 3.1 across the board, while the Windows machine is using a mix of older NAND SSD and spinning disk. The Windows machine still runs fine from a CPU perspective for web browsing and office work so no real difference in the experience. The biggest differentiator has to be the monitors! The LG 5k is a great monitor that I don’t appreciate enough… I’m really missing it using 2 Samsung 1080p monitors right now… they are getting the job done, but damn I need to do something about this monitor situation on my Windows machine.
So those are my differences I found it a bit odd and thought I would document them here since you know I’m writing on here so much…. Why doesn’t a sarcasm font exist yet?
you could try to revive the sarcmark.