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Odds & Ends
Overview
This section acts as a "grab bag" of features that were too small to devote their own sections to, and/or didn't really fit into any existing sections. We list good and bad points for both Mac OS X and Windows XP. Because of the obscurity of these features and the difficulty in assessing their value, this will remain a non-scoring section.
Cheers
Mac OS X
Translucent terminal windows (below) are beautiful and functional. Read background windows through your Terminal window! You can set background pictures to Terminal windows too.
Stickie Notes (below) are invaluable. Available as a Dashboard widget as well.
System-wide spell checking (almost). Spell check forum posts, iPhoto comments, iMovie titles, etc. as you type them! No spell checking in a few (Carbon) applications, such as iTunes. Carbon application developers must add additional code to hook into the spell-checking functionality.
Easy text entry of special characters. Type option-e, for example, and you'll be presented with a forwards accent, highlighted in yellow. Type another letter, and that letter will be placed underneath the accent. Thus, typing option-e followed by "a" will create "á." Option key shortcuts are also logical — for example, shift-4 creates $, so option-4 creates ¢, etc. These key combinations make it extremely easy to type many common special characters without the need to open up a character palette or type in an obscure character code.
Distributed computing is available on the desktop today with Xgrid.
Dashboard widgets are gorgeous and useful. Appear and disappear at the touch of a key, so when you don't need them, they don't take up any screen space.
-click on background windows to work with them without bringing them to the front (i.e., move the window, scroll, etc.).Beautiful interface effects. Windows minimize into the dock with a "genie" effect; Dashboard widgets zoom into view from "behind" and create a ripple when dropped on the desktop; buddies in iChat slide into the appropriate area as their status changes; desktop pictures can rotate with a smooth crossfade; etc. Fades, slides, and other smooth visual effects abound.
Ignore trackpad input on your laptop while typing on the keyboard:
OS X's drop-shadows are more effective at visually separating foreground from background:
Supplied X11 means Mac users can run tons of Unix applications natively.
OS X has a healthy dead zone around its close/minimize/zoom buttons to help prevent accidentally clicking the wrong one.
OS X includes an additional state for the close button, called a "dirty flag." The pitted red circle denotes that the file has changed since the last time it was saved. In addition, the icons on the buttons (other than the flag) only appear when you move your mouse over them, reducing visual clutter.
Use Quartz Composer to create sophisticated screensavers and other visual effects by "connect the dots":
OS X's menu shadows
XP's menu shadows
Here are some beautiful examples (requires QuickTime 7)
Windows XP
Grouping in Windows Explorer lets you sort and visualize files in groups based on criteria you define. For instance, a folder storing files for a website can be grouped by type so that all HTML files appear in one group, JPEGs in another, etc.
Internet Explorer supports uploading to FTP. Furthermore, it displays FTP directories in the exact same fashion that Windows Explorer displays the contents of local folders, so there is no "learning curve."
Microsoft often releases free updates and software in between major Windows revisions. Windows Desktop Search and Windows Media Player 10 come to mind, for instance. In contrast, OS X users could not download Spotlight for free, but had to purchase Tiger to use such a tool.
Vastly customizable. User interface look, fonts, sound sets, cursor sets, etc. can all be changed quite easily. A built-in framework for visual styles lets Microsoft (and third-parties, with workarounds) release new interface themes for free.
The Start Menu takes nearly all common computer functions and puts them in one place. It obeys Fitt's Law with regard to screen corners, and is always accessible no matter what you're doing in the system.
"Wizards" help people who are unfamiliar with the computer perform common tasks:
Newly installed programs are highlighted in the Start Menu.
XP's taskbar will notify you if your network becomes physically disconnected.
XP Media Center Edition offers Tivo-like recording of TV shows and live pausing of TV.
Jeers
Mac OS X
Column view has virtually no configurable options. Everything is always sorted alphabetically, which impedes navigation when you have many files and subfolders in one folder. An option to list all folders at the top first would help greatly.
Within a Finder window, audio and video files can only be previewed inline with Column view. Icon and List view require opening up a separate Get Info window. (Group view can preview audio and video files inline, but it's only available for smart folders).
Random interface inconsistencies. Dashboard widgets, for instance, look nothing like the rest of OS X; Mail's toolbar features "pill"-style buttons found nowhere else in the operating system; iTunes uses a "unified metal" look that no other included applications use, etc.
The iLife suite, with the exception of iTunes, is not actually part of OS X. If you ever do a clean install, you'll have to install the iLife applications separately.
Lack of interface customization (without using third-party products). There are two choices for UI appearance (Aqua or Graphite), and no customizable sound sets or themes.
QuickTime Player, included with OS X, does not support full screen video; users who want full screen playback will have to purchase QuickTime Pro. However, full screen video playback is supported in iTunes 4.8 and up. How come Apple's audio player supports full screen video for free, but their video player requires a $30 upgrade?!
Spotlight cannot preview many common filetypes, such as emails, HTML files, etc.
Searches initiated in the Finder inexplicably do not display email messages, even though searches from the Spotlight menu or window will return matching email messages in their results. While this issue seems to be an anomaly, it is still poor design that different search results are returned for the same term based on where you are performing the search from. This also means that you can't include email messages in a smart folder, or search for email messages from an open/save dialog.
The Finder can connect to FTPs, but doesn't support uploading to them, making this ability largely useless.
The Terminal supports themes, but OS X doesn't ship with any preset themes.
With the exception of Finder windows, minimized windows cannot be closed from the dock. Instead, the only option in the context menu of minimized windows is "Open," which is also the default behavior when you simply click on the minimized window. Why is this behavior duplicated in the context menu, when an arguably more useful option would be "close"? To close a minimized window, you must restore it first. Windows users can simply right-click on a minimized window in the taskbar and choose "Close."
Apple has a tendency to drop support for older versions of OS X rather quickly — far more quickly than Microsoft drops suppport for earlier versions of Windows. For example, Apple's Safari browser was only supported on OS X 10.3 (Panther) up to version 1.3. The current version, 2.0, is only available to users of OS X 10.4 (Tiger). While it's understandable that Apple may want to limit new Safari features to Tiger users as an incentive to upgrade, those who are still using Panther will also be unable to receive critical updates, such as those that address security flaws or rendering bugs.
Windows XP
Viruses, trojan horses, worms, and spyware. Granted, the proliferation of malware on Windows is more likely due to it being a huge target (about 95% marketshare) rather than any flaws in its security model. However, regardless of the reason, Mac users never need to deal with these issues in real world use — there are zero known viruses for Mac OS X!
Clicking Internet shortcuts on the desktop opens them in Internet Explorer's primary window, even if it's in the background. Who can remember which window is primary?
Reader input: "Uncheck 'Reuse windows for launching shortcuts' in Tools > Internet Options > Advanced to always open shortcuts in new windows." IE still lacks an option to launch shortcuts in the front-most window.
XP Home Edition doesn't support multiple processors.
In both XP and OS X, you can simulate the action of a mouse click-hold-and-drag by doing a tap-tap-drag. However, what happens when your finger makes it to the edge of the trackpad but you haven't finished dragging yet? When this happens on a mousepad with a mouse, you just pick up your mouse, place it back in the middle of the mousepad, and continue dragging. Apple has simulated that behavior too &mdash just pick up your finger, place it back in the middle of the trackpad, and continue dragging. XP does not do this. Instead, once you've reached the edge of the trackpad, the item you're dragging will continue moving very slowly until you let go. You can use XP's "ClickLock" mouse setting as a workaround, but it affects the behavior of both the mouse and the trackpad, which makes the mouse feel "sticky."
- Visually, XP is rough around the edges.
- Scrollbars in XP respond unfavorably (when scrolling) to mouse movement perpendicular to the scrollbar. If your mouse travels too far left or right (about an inch), the scrollbar will snap back to its original location, which is particularly annoying if you're reading through a document and scrolling, and you accidentally move your cursor out of the range. OS X's scrollbars correctly ignore mouse movement counter to the scroll direction, requiring less dexterity.
Look ma, GUIArt™! You will never see something like this on OS X.
Reader input: "I personally consider this a feature. If I want to scroll up but keep my place, I scroll up or down and then snap it back when I want to return to my position." Point taken.
Non-scoring section
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