Why Macs are Still Better Than PCs

From Simson Garfinkel
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Advantages of MacOS

Key features that are in MacOS but not in Windows:

Quickview

Quickview is a feature in the Apple Finder that lets you see the first page of any document or photo by selecting the file's icon and then pressing the space bar. You can then quickly view many documents by using the arrow keys or the mouse to select different icons.

EMACS keybindings in all text fields

EMACS is a popular text editor. In practically any text field, you can type ^a to go to the beginning of the field, ^e to go to the end, ^b to go back a letter, ^f to go forward a letter. This is *much* faster than going to the arrow keys.

Migration Assistant

It is easy to move (or copy) accounts and applications from one Mac to another. It is easy to restore from backups. Microsoft has nothing like this.

Consistent user interface

Yeah, most of the Mac apps work the same way. They also implement things consistently, like fonts, high-resolution screens, copy-and-paste, etc. This is still not the case on Windows, largely because of the legacy of roll-your-own in the Windows developer community.

Startup options, including

Problems that remain in Windows

NTFS is a lousy file system

NTFS is one of the core components of the Windows operation systems, and it's got many problems, such as:

  • Unbelievably slow.
  • Locks name changes of open files and directories containing open files. In a multi-user environment, this means you can't clean up a file sever if other people are using it.
  • NTFS alternate data streams are great for computer hackers.