Things you like from the "opposite" OS

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I know. The question of OS love is a dirty, dirty one prone to silly arguments. Use what you like, don't expect everyone to like it. Fine.

That being disclaimed, is there anything you like from the "other" OS that you don't have in your current OS?

I'm a Mac user, so here goes.

From Windows: A lot of office stuff. Microsoft is still superior to Apple in the office world: a fact noted in Apple's own Mac v. PC ads.

• OneNote, OneNote, OneNote, and OneNote. Did I mention OneNote? WHY don't you make a Mac version Microsoft?!? The rest of the office suite is there. Please give us what is probably the greatest thing Microsoft ever produced. Hell, in an uncharacteristic move, it's even aesthetically pleasing. I know, there's evernote, but it's a pale comparison. Plus, 25 GB vs. 40 MB storage is actually a joke. No, scratch that. 40 MB bandwidth, not storage. Even worse. I can access the web version, and the iOS app is actually awesome. But it's not the same.
• Outlook and Exchange. Okay, as of Leopard, some of this was incorporated into Mac OS, and there is an Outlook in Office 2011, but it's only a ghost of the MS Outlook. Contrary to OneNote, Outlook is ugly as hell, but very functional. Handling contacts, scheduling, and mail through the same server is logical, and there's a reason why it has such heavy corporate use. Plus the integration with OneNote makes it a great GTD system.
• Also, OneNote is pretty good, I hear.

From Linux:

• Package management (i.e. installed software installation and management through the web). Linux has been doing this for more than a decade. Apple is finally catching on with the App Store. Which amusingly is getting a lot of "walled garden" complaints from the same people who go home and make out with their linux boxes. There is one forthcoming in Windows 8 as well. The App Store is not nearly as polished as yum or apt or emerge yet.
• Freedom. Yes. Apple users do give some of this up, as do MS users. Apple is a bit beyond MS in this case, since their dev tools are free, compared to the what, thousands of dollars for Visual Studio? This is why you see so many 3rd party small Apple developers. Apple got greedy for a bit, charging 5 dollars for Xcode 4, but they quickly retracted that, making it free again. And they do charge for iOS development. (Honestly, though I don't think Apple deserves credit for this--XCode is built on gcc and I think that Xcode is only free because it is a derivative work).

 

[Covar]

Xcode is no longer based on gcc, they've been moving towards a new compiler for a while now. Visual Studio express is just as good for casual/consumer use as the main VS which while awesome is not really necessary unless you're a pro/company/on a large team.

My List (I use everything so I'm just going to post what I love about each)

Windows:

• Visual Studio - Everyone that rags on Microsoft has clearly never had to develop. I put the Visual Studio Suite right up there with Office in "best things Microsoft makes" category.
• C# - yes there's mono, but it's Microsoft's baby. Coming from a Java background this is insanely easy to learn and the .NET library makes building applications wonderfully pain free.
• That edge thing in Windows 7 - you know, the one that lets you snap windows side by side and quickly maximize and minimize windows? It's awesome.

OS X:

• "It just works" - Not having to fiddle with the low-levels of the system just to do some simple task. Apple's been moving more and more towards this idea that your computer stays out of the way, and it looks like Lion has moved even closer towards that.
• iTunes - Yes it's on windows. Yes the OS X version is 50 times better. Why? "It just works." you can claim whatever conspiracy you want, but the fact of the matter is iTunes is less prone to crashing, locking up, and doesn't need to be constantly visible to be running.
• System Libraries - Apple did a great job of seperating their programs backends from the UI, making key functionality a system library instead. What this means is if you want to write a program that can say, quickly add an item into iCal, you can, and the process is painless. Need a movie to play in your app? Many of the same libraries Quicktime uses are available too you. It has it's downsides (if you wanted to play a video type not supported by quicktime for example. you're on your own).

Linux:

• CLI - I can not sing the praises of the *nix command line interface enough. BASH is wonderful, and commands are powerful, logical, and fast (I hate using cmd.exe and having to type 'dir' and use backslashes). I could go on about all the reasons this is wonderful (many commands being separate programs, allowing for even greater functionality while cutting down on the maintenance required), but I won't. Needless to say it is amazing.
• Networking tools - There's a reason Linux thrives in the server world aside from it's cost. The sheer number of tools and flexibility offered make it excellent at adapting towards a specific need. Did I mention you can do it all from the Command Line too? Don't forget SSH runs on every major distribution making remote access to your server quick and fast.
• Vim - Emac fans can feel free to boo here, but fuck you guys. I don't want to have a text editor capable of controlling the entire world; I want a command line based text editor that allows me to quickly edit text files with my keyboard. In that regard Vi excels. While it has it's limitations (commands can be rather ... made up) it's fast, flexible and gets the job done. Yes it's available on other platforms, but Linux is it's primary home.

That's it for me, for now. I love all three of these OSs and while none of them are perfect, they all have their strengths, I'm sure I'll think of more later.

 

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well... it's based on Clang, with some gcc libraries. And it includes the gcc package as part of the developer tools. Clang's license I believe still has derivative restrictions. I do agree that coding Windows API can be much simpler than Mac by virtue of the fact that you can use C++ out of the box, instead of resorting to Objective C. Also, bash and vim are both installed out of the box on Mac. I came to mac through Linux. I had a huge linux code base as part of my grad work. I saw a mac, compiled my code with one change to the makefile, and fell in love.

 

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Whoops, didn't see the typo in the thread title. Sorry.

Also, that sounded more argumentative than I meant it Covar. I'm just a huge vim fan, too, if it helps. Fortunately it's available on like every OS ever. And my painstakingly constructed vimrc I've be babying for 20 years seems to work on all of them. I try other editors, but I always come back to vim. I'm not a crusader, though. Emacs has some things that vim usually does, but does awkwardly, but I don't miss 'em enough to change. Completion is nicer in guis out of the box, and I like the way they remind you of arguments that you need, but again, not enough to give up the sheer editing power of vim.

 

[Covar]

It's all good. I put vim under Linux for the same reason I put iTunes under OS X. Sure it's available on other OSes but IMO it's a *nix program first. I'll use Notepad++ on Windows and a more Mac-like text editor for OS X (come to think of it I use xcode or textEdit on the mac, need to get something else), but when I'm on a linux box I fire up vi. Helps that I use linux more from a PuTTY terminal then anything else (PuTTY with X11 forwarding is awesome, until the connection craps out at least and you wish you had used VNC instead, but I digress.).

 

[Chibibar]

I'm generally a PC user

Mac
iTunes - Agree with Covar- It works. My wife has an iMac and her iTunes have NO issue. I have mine on Window 7 and sometimes it doesn't detect the iPad2 often
iMovie - it is better than Free PC version (sure there are other paid version)

 

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I forgot the Consolas font from Microsoft. Although it does install on Mac if buy MS Office, and there is Inconsolata as an open source alternative. It is probably one of the nicest programming fonts. Even nicer to look at than Bitstream Vera or DejaVu monos.