Originally posted by Aristotle
... MacOS is better designed.
I don't know what part you mean is better designed, but either way, I find it hard to disagree.

There's two major parts to a PC operating system (and by PC, I mean a computer that one person handles and uses, not "PC" as opposed to "Mac" - an iBook is a PC, same as a Lenovo laptop is a PC). There's the underlying kernel and task scheduler, with all the handling of hardware-level signals; and then there's the shell, the user interface. With Windows, you don't get a choice - you pick your edition of Windows, you get that kernel and that shell. Mac OS is BSD kernel and a very Apple shell. When you pick a Linux, you're picking a kernel, but you can then install a variety of different shells (command line or GUI) on top of it.

When you say that Mac OS is "better designed", do you mean kernel or UI? Anyone who tries to claim that the Windows kernel is better than BSD Unix is either ignorant, idiotic, or insane... possibly all of the above. The UI, though, is a bit closer-run. There are many problems in both default graphical interfaces, mostly deriving from history.

Why Mac Sucks: Single mouse button mentality still pervades so many applications. Yes, you do get two buttons; but for the foreseeable future, most apps are going to support one button, which means that menus will come out if you hold the button down for a certain amount of time. I met this concept in SimCity 2000 for DOS; after playing the OS/2 version (in which you right-click to get the menus), the other one seemed horribly clunky. Even if I had the option of right-click or click-hold, it'd still be a nuisance any time I held the button without intending to click.

Why Windows Sucks: Way too much emphasis on the glitter and chrome, too little emphasis on usability. Again, it's more a matter of apps than the base OS, but philosophies pervade. Worst example I've found recently: Adobe Creative Suite apps do not acknowledge the CUA standard clipboard keys of shift-del, ctrl-ins, shift-ins - they only recognize the Windows standard ctrl-x, c, v. I'm accustomed to using the CUA keys, which is a real problem when I find that Shift-Del is treated the same as Del. It breaks the law of least astonishment; I told it to delete and put onto clipboard, it deleted (which is the only part I'd see) and did not put onto the clipboard.

There is no perfect UI. You can argue that A is better than B, and that B is better than C, and that C totally licks A hollow, but beyond coming up with new ways to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, it's not going to prove or achieve anything much, most likely. Still, it's fun to rant once in a while!