[dristic]

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.

[ben_straub]

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're stuck with jerky 3-lines-at-a-time scrolling. Oh, and it's vertical-only; there's no system standard for horizontal scrolling.

3. It's never had a software-based rendering and compositing engine for the windowing system. The Windows team is fully committed to backward-compatibility, which means allowing all sorts of wonky GDI-based pixel pushers to work they same way they did in Win95. OSX has been OpenGL-based from the start.

[tjoff]

1. Might be an advantage on a mobile device but a mouse is vastly superior for anyone wanting precision and/or performance. Too bad we can't combine gestures and a real mouse well (have been tried but in my opinion all attempts have failed).

2. Wheel scrolling is a feature. Yes, horizontal scrolling sucks but vertical scrolling is working as intended and something I really prefer. Yes, I'd like a good horizontal scroll but the use cases where you need it are extremely rare and often stem from bad UI design in the application - not saying that as an excuse but just that it isn't a big issue. Microsoft have tried scrolling wheels that can go horizontal as well but they were mindbogglingly bad (my opinion).

3. I don't see how that is an issue (in practice) for anything that isn't done for Win95. And if it was made for Win95 I'd rather be able to run it than not. Backwards compatibility at its best. Doesn't bother you when you don't need it but can still handle corner cases as well as can be expected.

[neebz]

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.

[emehrkay]

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.

[tjoff]

Sigh... this is an issue with your VM and not Windows.

[emehrkay]

You're right. The deselection doesnt happen if I click the titlebar, but it does if I click the content area (that doesnt happen in OS X, I havent checked any Linux window managers).

[tjoff]

Of course it does, when you click the content area you reposition the cursor and thus deselects the text. The alternative would be to not be able to reposition the cursor when you bring focus to the window which presents other "quirks" if you look at it from other angles (and it of course needs to be consistent, if you can't reposition the cursor why would you be able to press a button if the window isn't active? etc.).

OS X is quite unique in this and probably stems from the use of common menus for different windows, which also makes it uniquely inadequate for handling multiple monitors. I just can't take a WM that doesn't handle multiple monitors well seriously.

[dristic]

I completely agree with this. I was a dedicated Windows user but I never realized all its shortcomings, scrolling being a big one.

[krevis]

How soon people forget! OS X had a software-based compositor until 10.2 -- that's when "Quartz Extreme" was introduced. Pretty sure the OpenGL path was planned the whole time, but the GL drivers were not nearly stable enough to use for such a crucial piece of the system.

[falcolas]

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.

[underwater]

I totally agree about the window management aspect. I switched from Windows to OS X as my primary development machine a year ago and still find it frustrating when I'm working with many windows.

I've tried using Expose and multi desktop setups but they just add complexity to my flow. Expose looks pretty but I avoid it because it randomly lays out the thumbs in some way that has nothing to do with how I've actually arranged them. Command + tab is application based, so I can't switch between windows easily. Command + tilde does that but it works completely differently by switching windows on keydown and keypress instead of showing an overlay. I'm sure next version of the OS X will introduce a new window management tools and obscure short cuts that just adds complexity to the system. The whole thing feels like random band aid solutions built up over the last 10 years.

[emehrkay]

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).

[falcolas]

Mission control is somewhat nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to the very simple and time-tested method of using alt-tab. Alt-tab is ridiculously fast, works on windows instead of applications, and doesn't require you to switch to the mouse and visually search for the proper window.

Also, a new feature of Windows 7 (actually I think it first appeared in Vista) is Win-Tab. It is like alt-tab, but gives you a preview of the windows instead of their icons. If you really need to see what a window looks like while switching through your windows, that's the way to go. I don't care for it, as it's a bit laggy, but then so is Mission Control on my Macbook.

[WayneDB]

I don't find Expose or Mission Control nearly as useful as the Windows Taskbar.

Unlike OS X where a really good Taskbar implementation cannot exist, I can add something just like Expose to Windows. It's called Switcher and it does pretty much everything Expose does.

The Taskbar is still better though because it's always there and at a glance I can see what's running.

[emehrkay]

Windows' taskbar today === OS X's dock

[falcolas]

Not really; you have the option of changing how it's presented: the new style where you can hover for windows, and the old style where each window is separate, but grouped by application. Also, an active application is more visible on the taskbar than it is on the dock; it's the difference between a visually highlighted icon versus a small light a not-insignificant distance below the icon.

And, perhaps most telling, the taskbar icons don't bounce around like a 2 year-old on sugar to announce that they need your attention.

[WayneDB]

If the OS X dock were as good as the taskbar, it'd have one item per window instead of one item per app. I'd be able to put the finder icon where I want it. I'd be able to have launcher icons (quick launch) separated from items that represent running apps or windows. I'd also be able to put it at the top of the screen if I want to.

OS X is basically rigid where Windows is flexible.

[brudgers]

>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.