[wlesieutre]

IMO this is what Microsoft is trying to fix with their recent open source efforts. Developers (outside of enterprise) aren't on their platform and even tend to hate the company. It turns out that's not great for their consumer software market.

I can name exactly one company known for making well polished Windows utilities (Stardock), and everything else tends to look like it was developed on Windows 95.

Compare to Mac where you have those companies like Panic, The Omni Group, Rogue Amoeba, Delicious Monster, Ambrosia SW, The Icon Factory, and others.

I know a lot of stuff has moved online and desktop software isn't as critical as it was a decade ago, but native developers still power a big chunk of the ecosystem. Apple is clearly uninterested in supporting their professional userbase, and MS would love to have them.

Personally I'm holding out for new MBPs to replace a 2011 Macbook Air (no audio, but it still runs), but I can't blame those who aren't. It'll be a bottom-of-the-line model and I can do my serious work on a Windows machine that costs half of a Mac Pro and has 3 years newer hardware.

[wlesieutre]

I should add to this, it's not that I like Windows 10 particularly much. It's got an annoying habit of repeatedly uninstalling working graphics drivers and replacing them with versions that are "updates" but known to be broken. And the user experience in general just isn't where OS X is.

But for hobbyist sorts of work in photography, 3d modeling, and texturing, Apple's product lineup is kind of a joke. I've been using Macs since System 7 and I'd like to have one to do these things on, but Apple doesn't want to make it.

For me, this is just a question of higher price and lower speed for hobbies where I could deal with that if I really wanted to. But looking at entertainment industry professionals, Apple isn't even in the market. VR and 360° video (like the Surround 360 post from earlier today[1]) just aren't going to happen on Macs. Nobody's going to spend $6000 on a machine with 3 year old GPUs that can't handle a modern workload. Historically that was a market that kept Apple afloat. Now I guess it's too small for them to care?

If Substance Designer ever gets released on Linux, I'm jumping ship to elementaryOS.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12167056

[WayneBro]

What kind of software do you need specifically? I'll bet you have more and better options om Windows.

[wlesieutre]

I don't disagree about more, but my experience is that they're rarely better.

For a couple of examples, there are a million IRC clients on Windows, and they're all worse than Colloquy and Textual. Another million FTP clients, but the Mac version of Cyberduck is nicer than any I've tried. Ditto for bittorrent clients, I'd rather use Transmission. No launcher on Windows comes anywhere near Quicksilver. Mac firewalls are nice (Little Snitch and Hands Off), system utilities are nice (iStat Menus, Bartender, iTerm). Even tiny things like package tracking with JuneCloud's Deliveries are better than anything you'll find on Windows.

Decent user interface is a high priority to me though. Others who don't share that opinion will probably be happier with the state of 3rd party software on Windows.

[WayneBro]

Every single package that you listed has a vastly superior option available on Windows or it's not even necessary. There are very few genres of software where the Mac options actually exceed what is available on Windows. Utilities is not one of them though.

To me, Cyberduck is meh. I don't know why you'd want to when you have mIRC available, which has a ton more features than Cyberduck. However, what exactly do you think makes "the Mac version" of Cyberduck a better app?

Windows has a launcher that works so I don't need to replace that, Windows has a firewall that works too so I don't need to replace that. Why would I need iStat when I have the Task Manager? Don't need Bartender at all. I don't need to replace the Windows terminal at all since I hardly use it, but if I did there are plenty of high quality options that pretty much kill iTerm and WinSCP is absolutely more robust and useful than anything available on OS X.

Meanwhile tons of OS X users have to install things like HyperSwitch, HyperDock, BetterSnap/TouchTool, things to replace the terrible and broken Finder that hardly anybody seems to enjoy using, etc. etc. etc. the list goes on and on since there are so many features missing or poorly implemented in OS X. (Like being able to turn off an external monitor without physically powering it down....which you need a 3rd party utility for on a Mac.)

I add one utility to fix Windows and one to add a missing feature. Those are: 7+ taskbar tweaker and AutoHotkey.

Let's talk about common end-user software though, like Outlook. Every OS X mail client sucks compared to it, including Outlook for Mac. Visio vs OmniGraffle? Xcode vs Visual Studio? There's simply no comparison here. Even when the software has a Mac version (such as in the case of AutoCad/Excel/etc), the Mac version is severely limited.

> Decent user interface is a high priority to me though.

Me too. That's why I prefer Windows software. OS X is just plain ugly to me. It looks like it was inspired by an 8-track player from the 70's.

Decent to me also means having features are easily discoverable. Windows software has that in spades compared to OS X where all the features are hidden behind label-less icons and secret handshakes.

[wlesieutre]

I think we just have different tastes then. The screenshot on mIRC's website is still showing Windows XP, but from what I can find on Google the more recent versions look like this: http://images.snapfiles.com/screenfiles/mirc.gif

IMO not better than Textual: https://www.codeux.com/textual/private/images/v500media/Yose... (which I assume is what you meant to compare it against, instead of an FTP client?)

Re: Cyberduck, it's a nice FTP client. The Windows version is more or less the same thing, but has a distinct "this is a Windows port of a Mac app" feel to it. It's OK, just not great: http://cdn.lo4d.com/t/screenshot/800/cyberduck-3.png

The more widely used FTP client on Windows is FileZilla, but I kind of hate it: http://cdn.portableapps.com/FileZillaPortable.png

OS X has a built in search/launcher. I just like Quicksilver better. Could I do without it? Sure. But I've been using it since ~2003 and I'm happy with its speed and feature set. Compare to Windows's search which regularly hangs on me, then works fine after I cancel out and reenter the exact same search term.

I do admittedly use a tool to adjust window management. In my case, it's Divvy, though there are a lot of free alternatives now if I hadn't bought that years ago. It's more flexible than the native window snapping in Windows, and I'm perfectly happy with it. OS X has native fullscreen/splitscreen now, so it's less needed, but I still like the fast keyboard shortcuts for things like 1/3 split.

Can't say I have a desktop mail client on my own computers (gmail.com does the trick), so I can't weigh in there. Nor do I need Visio or OmniGraffle. But I'll give you Visual Studio over Xcode for sure.

> Me too. That's why I prefer Windows software. OS X is just plain ugly to me. It looks like it was inspired by an 8-track player from the 70's.

Yep, different tastes.

I was pretty happy with Windows 7, but I think Windows 8/10 takes the excessive whitespace too far, and then it buries all of the features it "cleaned" out in legacy control panels. Plus half of the 3rd party software still looks like Windows 95, which might be nice and nostalgic if you grew up with Windows 95, but I didn't

> Decent to me also means having features are easily discoverable

Nearly all functionality is accessible from the menubar, so that's always a good place to look for things. It's even searchable. Next time you're on a Mac, hit up the help menu (or cmd-?). Much more useful than F1.

[nextos]

I agree with this. Mac application ecosystem is fantastic.

But I hate seeing the whole thing heading South because Apple doesn't understand its power users. Ultimately, I think Linux is superior and makes me happier if I stick to minimal text-mode applications like emacs or mutt [1]. Not being at the mercy of a big corporation is a huge plus.

[1] http://suckless.org/rocks