OSX and Win 7: a thread of mutual respect

After three years with my MBP and a couple months with my Vaio F, I've really come to respect both OSX and Win 7 (and respective hardware)I thought I'd make this thread. So many of the threads involving Win 7 and OSX are fanboy flamewars, I thought I'd try to lay out this comparison of what I like about both. If nothing else, I thought it might be a resource for people who were waffling between OSes (or Apple versus PC hardware) in the What Notebook Should I Buy forum.

Of course, all of this is "just my opinion."

HARDWARE

What I love about PC machines:

If you want a machine that excels at one thing, you can get it for a lot cheaper than an Apple with that same virtue. For example, if you love great screens, the Vaio F offers comparable screen quality to the MacBook Pro 17, which costs more than twice as much. If you want gaming performance, a Sager NP8130 ($1200) blows away any Apple laptop. If you want long battery life, i think there are Thinkpad variants that last over 24 hours.

There's incredible variety out there. Want dual hard drives plus Blu-Ray? There's a machine for you. Love or hate keyboards with num pads? There are plenty of both. Want 1080p resolution in a 13" screen? There's one out there. Want an unadorned black box, or something that looks like it came from Battlestar Galactica, or something in between? There's a laptop out there that fits your aesthetic.

What I love about Apple machines:

Compared to PC consumer laptops, the build quality is consistently excellent. I have yet to find a PC consumer laptop with a case as solid as Apple's unibody. There's not a single Apple laptop with a mushy keyboard, a dingy screen, or a flexible palm-rest. PC machines can be hit-and-miss in these respects; you need to know the exact model to know if the screen is nice, the keyboard is nice, the case is solid, etc.

It's hard to find as well-rounded a machine from anyone else. There are thin PC machines, there are solid PC machines, there are PC machines with good battery life, and there are high-performing PC machines. But I still don't think there's a single laptop on the market that's as thin AND solid AND long-lasting AND high-performing as the MBP 17 or the MBP 15.

The Apple trackpad is the best on the market. Period. This is not open for discussion.

Everything works straight out of the box. Even with Sony's "fresh start" option to minimize bloatware, to get my Vaio to work well, I had to remove troublesome webcam software and change audio software settings. Most PC machines require some degree of bloatware removal. The screen/speakers/webcam/etc just work fine from the initial setup with an Apple, and bloatware just isn't an issue.

THE OPERATING SYSTEM

What I love about PC machines:

They're masters of multiple-window work. Slap the taskbar on the left or right side, and you can open any one of twenty open windows with a single click. Hold the Windows key and tap left, right, or up to shape to exactly 50% of the left of the screen, 50% of the right, or maximize (great for side-by-side document use). Windows 7 is heads and shoulders above any other OS I've ever used (previous versions of Windows, or competing OSes) in terms of managing dozens of open windows.

It's still the only way to go for gaming. Many, many popular new releases are not available for OSX, and those that are are often poorly-executed ports that have framerate problems.

For many industries, it's the only way to go for work programs. It's certainly true in the legal field. There are many frequently-used programs we use that just don't run in OSX.

What I love about Apple machines:

The integration of the multi-touch features into OS functions is just excellent. There are multitouch functions on some PC machines, but I have yet to see any that have comparable versatility, integration, and execution.

It's more intuitive. My wife, who is not technologically literate, has used (and struggled with) PCs for years. Then she used my MacBook Pro. After briefly trying my Vaio, she adopted the MacBook Pro as "her computer" becuase it's easier for her to use, even though she learned how to use computers with Windows. Hell, my five-year-old can navigate OSX pretty well.

I personally find OSX to be more stable. It's not that Win 7 is really "bad" in this respect, but I find that OSX is still "better." With every PC machine I've had, it needs a daily reboot to run well, and sometimes it just seems to struggle a little for no apparent reason (which is always solved with a reboot). If a program freezes, I need to reboot immediately or else everything else starts to struggle as well. To contrast, I reboot my MBP about once a week or so, and a frozen program rarely requires a system reboot for other programs to continue to run smoothly.

For industries that use them, my understanding is that Aperture and Final Cut do not have any PC software equivalent that's as good as they are. For more casual photographers or even minor professionals, iPhoto is really, really good, and it's bundled with OSX for free.

Say what you will about the monopolistic nature of a closed ecosystem, the App store is really darned convenient (particularly if you own an optical-drive-free ultraportable) and very well-executed. Yes, Steam did it first, but Steam is only for games...you can't buy an office-software suite through Steam, or a next-generation OS through Steam.

 

I like them both. I just like OSX a tad more, windows just needs a better file handling system, and multi desktops like lion! that Would be nice. Also a nice trackpad with a great keyboard with a great screen....

 

Nice trackpads are on the way, or at least that is what ultrabook manufacturers are claiming these days.

PS What counts as a great screen? I hope you are not gaga over the glassy reflective screen of the MBPs, as I hated that aspect of MBPs.

 

Claiming and delivering are two different things. I have yet to read an article that suggests that any PC laptop is really on par with the MBP/MBA trackpads, including the Apple's multitouch functionality.

Not a fan of the high gloss, and that's certainly not why I liked it. But glossy versus matte aside, my father's MBP 17 has truly amazing, vibrant colors that just pop. When he's not working, he's a pretty dedicated nature photographer, which obviously gives an opportunity to see the vibrancy of colors on a screen, and his work just looks FANTASTIC on his MBP's screen. I don't know all the fancy terminology of screens (gamut, etc), but I know a really-good-looking screen from a simply-adequate screen, and the MBP 17's is really, really nice.

But I also think that my Vaio's screen is really, really nice, with really fantastic colors (for all the love out there for the Z, I think the F has the best screen of any Vaio), and it's matte.

 

Macbook screens still don't compares to RGB LED's or IPS. I like my anti-glare for long durations and I've always been a fan of the matte. And I wanted something different from the collection of Alienwares I have

 

I think we're getting into the jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none thing I was trying to touch on. Yes, there are laptops with a better battery life than a MBP 17. There are thinner laptops. There are laptops with a better GPU. There are laptops with a more durable case. But I can't think of another laptop out there that scores at least a B+ in each and every one of those categories like the MBP 17 does.

And as for the whole glassy-versus-matte thing, since both are available for the MBP (at least with the 15 and 17, you can choose glossy versus matte), it's kind of a red herring.

 

The Colors though they're drastically different. The MBP is a much better balanced laptop and has a higher resell value though then any other PC laptop you can get. I personally don't foresee myself ever getting rid of my Macbook anytime soon though.

 

I disagree with your comment that OS X is more stable than Win7, at least in my experience. I've had no issues with either OS, and I use my Win7 machines quite frequently. Of course, I clean install Windows on my laptop and desktop, so that may play a part in my user experience.

 

I've basically been a Windows user my entire life. Even so, there are times when I wished I had certain features of OS X with the most prominent being the trackpad and App Store. I'm 22 years old and computing has evolved so much over the past decade or so. This upcoming generation is going to experience all the pluses of improvements in technology. We've come up to a point where OSes have evolved so much in terms of performance and interface that I couldn't have imagined 10 years ago, or longer. I'll bet that the people older than me, on here, will say the same thing, especially since they've actually been a part of the evolution of OSes and technology.

With that said, I've never understood the debate over OS X and Windows, or more recently iOS and Android. Pick what you use based on what you want to get out of it. I own products from across the three "major" software companies: a MS Windows laptop, an Apple iOS iPod Touch, and a Google Android cellphone. There are definitely times when I wished I had a complete ecosystem (in which I would pick Apple over MS or MS/Android) but I find Windows suitable for the work I do and more standard especially when it comes with Office software. Even so, I wouldn't hesitate to consider OS X for my laptop in 2-3 years.

 

I was just reporting my personal experience (and I prefaced it as such); others may have different experiences.

My experiences are based upon my past five laptops and my two desktop work machines:

Dell Inspiron running XP,
Powerbook G4 running Tiger,
Lenovo IdeaPad Y710 running Vista (returned within a month),
MBP 15 running Leopard then Snow Leopard, and running Win XP via Boot Camp,
Sony Vaio F2 running Win 7,
Dell Optiplex running Win XP, and
a newer Optiplex running Win 7.

I haven't ever done a fresh install of either OS for purposes of clearing bloatware, though the Sony doesn't have nearly as much bloatware to begin with as many PC consumer laptops (thanks to Sony's Fresh Start option).

 

Yep, I understood what you were saying, and reported my personal experience to compare Sony's Fresh Start is a good option - I bought a Vaio CW for my wife last year (she wanted a cute pink laptop and that fit the bill) and there was TONS of crap on it.

 

windows 7 is a nice OS, there is nothing wrong with it.