Windows Update makes Windows barely usable. Weekly restarts to update OS at random points in time are unacceptable. There are plenty of other usability issues, for me lack of working Unix-like shell out of the box is one of them.

It's crazy how a billion people and millions of developers are using Windows when it's barely usable. Is there some small possibility that you're wrong about this?

Also, does macOS have a Unix shell that you can just start using for your work out of the box or do you have to use something like Homebrew to bring it up to modern standards first?

Usability is certainly an opinion. I can get a Unix shell on any OS, have been able to for decades. But we don't just want a shell do we? We want a decent desktop environment with a good system for managing application windows... We want updates that don't cause problems. We want a good file browser.

macOS has none of these things, not out of the box and not even with third party utilities to fix things and fill in missing features.

> Also, does macOS have a Unix shell that you can just start using for your work out of the box or do you have to use something like Homebrew to bring it up to modern standards first?

I'll take a Mac terminal over any Windows one, every time. Speaking as someone who uses all 3 OS's at work. The hoops I've had to jump through on Windows just to do basic things are maddening. Mac's terminal experience is one of the reasons I keep going back to it. I'm truly confused how one prefers a windows terminal.

> We want a decent desktop environment with a good system for managing application windows... We want updates that don't cause problems. We want a good file browser.

Again, you just described Mac. Spaces work amazing and still have better behavior than the windows version that's trying to catch up. Snapping left/right is nice in theory but I don't actually use it that much unless I'm on a huge monitor. And I have no idea what issues you see with Finder, which is generally a super smooth experience for me. Again, I'm just really confused here.

I’m confused about your issues...

The current shell in macOS is zSh and the Mac wrote the book on window management (other than the windows snapping ideas, which, fair, but it is just one app. On the other hand, macOS is like a wonderful land between windows and Linux with ease of use plus all the power features.

"..Windows Update makes Windows barely usable..." I find this claim to be over exaggerated. I'm not exactly sure how their update schedule works exactly but in my case it updates some parts transparently without me needing to stop working. Updates that require reboot definitely do not happen once per week and never when I am in front of computer.

I have no problems with access to working "Unix like" shell either. My laptops and desktop are beastly and have no problem running Ubuntu in VM. WSL works like a charm as well. But I rarely use either since for Linux development work and for running servers I use real Linux computers in headless mode running NoMachine for remote access. Windows being used for developing Windows GUI software duh, and for productivity tools, Video, Photo, CAD, PCB design etc. etc.

To be fair, I think these days Windows has a better auto-update story than OSX. They may both be equally annoying. I have suffered involuntary restarts on both operating systems.

The big difference is that I can turn off auto update on OS X. It's not even on by default, although you are encouraged to enable it.

(Apple has the ability to forcibly push updates, but they almost never use it.)

I have never turned on auto-update, and I have had my work laptop restart on me without my permission. It simply showed me a dialogue box stating that the computer is going to restart upon hitting ok and that I better save my work. Where I work, we mob program, and this has happened to my team mates on many occasions.

...well, I'm quite confused, because this has never happened to me.

It's happened to me frequently. I think it may be from corp device management forcing security updates

Ah, that explains it! Especially since GP was also referring to a work machine.

Windows has full linux distros installed from the store. Unlike mac that comes with outdated shell and yout have to trust whoever it is that runs brew.

Technically not yet, once WSL2 is mainline there will finally be proper Linux support in Windows. WSL1 is a series of shimmed calls to the NT Kernel and as a first implementation it’s pretty bad ass but to call it an environment for full Linux distros is misleading consider things like systemd are completely missing at the moment.

This is a solved problem now. It no longer does the restart thing (or hasn't for a long time). It gives a 7-day pause option too.

The two things that break Windows are spaces-in-filenames, and max-filepath-length. Urgh.

MacOS is broken in a different way: no more 32-bit (so the death of legacy applications) and notarization (need an Apple thumbs-up to run programs).

Windows updates go out once a month unless there’s a massive problem. If you’re seeing weekly restarts it is not microsoft that’s doing that.

I see a restart prompt about once every two months on my sole remaining w10 laptop, and it hasn’t forced a reboot on me in the middle of my work in over a year. Ubuntu prompts me to restart more often.

I dislike Windows too, but PowerShell is pretty nice if you are stuck in the Windows environment. It's not really a Unix-like shell, but it is comfortable enough compared to the rest of the ecosystem.

That's build 10162. It's now on build 18362.

That's like comparing current MacOS with one from years ago which also has some weird UI things going on. In Windows, certainly some of these have been fixed but aside from being visual anomalies everything works.

The kicker for me is Apple hiding / removing the things I use, such as Keychain in the menu bar. OSX / MacOS is slowly getting worse.

Windows is getting worse. They are adding crazy design ideas that they can't possibly support, with new UI quirks. While the foundation is tragically broken (typography differences etc). The new timeline has a hilarious hiccup in the animation that makes no sense at all.