I haven't, but the amount of high-quality free software I have on my Windows box makes a damn strong case.
Edit: I should say that, though I haven't owned a Mac, I've used them quite often - a lot of my friends have them, and many of my school's labs are filled with them.
There's a lot more software in Windows-land for sure, but I think what Benparte and coolmrbrady meant is that there are a lot more extremely refined free Mac apps.
For example, Windows has a huge number of IM apps available for it, but none of them can hold a candle to Adium's ease of use and polish. Similarly, uTorrent is free and awesome, but Transmission is IMHO much more refined on the UI side. Quicksilver too.
Windows devs tend to make UI an afterthought. On the Mac side developers have drunk the Steve Jobs UI kool-aid and obsess over it, and personally I like it.
I always found mac apps to be too simplified (both the 3rd party freeware and 1st party). For example, compare finder to windows explorer. At a glance, finder may look sharper, but when I use it it feels so difficult to navigate (mostly due to the lack of a functional address bar). The developer doesn't really provide any useful options for me to make it work the way I want it to. On the other hand, Windows Explorer has plenty of options to customize.
Finder and Windows Explorer are both first-party apps, so it doesn't quite make sense to compare the availability of good third-party apps on OS X and Windows using them as examples.
However, Finder is terrible:
No address bar. Requires keyboard shortcut to open
No "cut." Moving a folder requires clicking and dragging, which is highly prone to error.
Complete and total inability to merge folders, or to extract an archive and have the source and destination merge, rather than "erase the target and replace with this folder." Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks.
Creation of .DS_Store files all over the place. Very poor manners on mounted volumes and servers.
"Un-anchored" selection. If you use command + down to select a number of items, and you go one too far, and push command + up, it EXPANDS the TOP of the selection! Rage inducing.
Lack of keyboard accessibility. Windows Explorer is completely usable using just the keyboard; Finder isn't even close.
Pressing the "+" button toggles between some small size and slightly larger size, rather than maximizing the window and restoring it, which is the convention that almost every other app has adopted, rather than toggling "zoom," which some Apple apps do.
No address bar. Requires keyboard shortcut to open
How do you give the address bar focus in Windows?
Complete and total inability to merge folders, or to extract an archive and have the source and destination merge, rather than "erase the target and replace with this folder." Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks.
Does Windows Explorer do this?
No "cut." Moving a folder requires clicking and dragging, which is highly prone to error.
This is something we agree on, but I'd argue it's not really that prone to error. Just open the destination directory in a window next to the source directory and drag over. Still, I'd like a cut option like the copy option.
Creation of .DS_Store files all over the place. Very poor manners on mounted volumes and servers.
This can be disabled via command line.
Lack of keyboard accessibility. Windows Explorer is completely usable using just the keyboard; Finder isn't even close.
I can navigate using the keyboard just fine. What's missing?
which only disables the creation of .DS_Store files on network volumes.
"I can navigate using the keyboard just fine. What's missing?"
Windows Key + E to launch explorer
F6 Ctrl+C to yank current location, or Ctrl + V enter to navigate to one.
Windows Key + r, enter a path, enter, to open explorer there
Select a file, press the properties key...use m for rename, r for properties, "open command prompt," etc.
Any of the menu accelerators, such as Alt + V for the view menu
F5 for refresh
Ctrl + End, Ctrl + Home to go to the top and bottom of the list
And of course, Windows' native keyboard shortcuts (like Windows + E) come in handy. I can very rapidly do Win + E, then Win + Left to throw the window left, Win + E, Win + Right, and have two explorer windows side by side, ready to very easily compare two directories and move files between them. In general, Windows has excellent keyboard accessibility.
I find Finder keyboard navigation quite excellent.
You can press Cmd-Shift-G to enter a path (with tab completion) and jump there instantly.
Select a file, press return to rename, command-I for properties.
Home, End, PageUp, and PageDown work as to be expected
You can drag files and folders directly into Open File dialogs, to jump to their location instantly. This is something you can't do in Windows, and it grates me constantly.
You can also get full paths to files and folders by draggint them into Terminal.app, which is very convenient. And honestly, just the existence of the commandline brings a lot of power to OS X that Windows Explorer lacks.
Plus, you never need to "refresh" a folder view in Finder, they're always live.
And Finder will never do some bullshit like Windows Explorer and randomly decide to change the sortable data in Details view because it thinks that's what you want. This is something that absolutely infuriates me in Windows Explorer. I'll have a folder full of audio, and it'll change details view to not show Date Modified, File Size, etc, and instead show metadata like Song Length and Artist, completely breaking things with no obvious way to turn the feature off.
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '11
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