[rfoo]

> you can scroll a window without having to click on it to make it active

This works on Windows, and most sane Linux DEs are either default to that or can be configured to do that.

> applications don't refer to files using paths but file ids instead so you can generally move files around a disk while they are open without things breaking.

Do you mean they hold an opening fd of the file, which is also not special at all? Otherwise it is pretty interesting, please elaborate.

[hehetrthrthrjn]

I only really use macOS these days, so they've clearly improved or borrowed features since I last looked, but I guess the point is that those features were implemented long ago.

The ability to implement file access the way is obviously possible on any OS, but on the Mac it's consistently implemented that way in applications, except for a couple of bad actors. On other OSes it's much more mixed. The same can be said for many other small features. There's a just a lot better consistency overall on macOS.

[e_proxus]

> Do you mean they hold an opening fd of the file, which is also not special at all? Otherwise it is pretty interesting, please elaborate.

Exactly. Special notwithstanding, it’s still a nice feature and not something Windows has to my knowledge, at least not common (i.e. “File is in use” errors). On macOS you can e.g. move a file to trash while it’s being used still by some running program.

[gsich]

Somewhat not consistent though. But I don't know if that is the fault of the application or Windows.