Five Mac Features I Wish Windows Would Adopt

A couple of days ago, put up a list of five things I wish Apple would steal from Microsoft when it comes to their main personal computing operating system. Now it’s time to turn the tables. Although both macOS and Windows are no very mature operating systems with over three decades of development, there’s plenty of things that macOS has that could make Windows 10 better.

1 – Messages

I receive a lot of text messages each day. Apple’s Messages app makes it easy to receive SMS messages as well as texts using Apple iMessage system so I can deal with the messages directly from the device I’m working on.

It might not seem like a big deal but, for me, this is a massive benefit. I only wish it could integrate WhatsApp so I didn’t need a separate app for that service.

2 – Spotlight

Spotlight’s search capability is brilliant. On a Mac, a simple press of Cmd-Space brings up the search window and I can access applications, files, settings or almost anything else on my Mac.

A system-wide search function is not new but I find Spotlight’s keyboard-based search to be far quicker and more user-friendly than the Windows approach.

3 – Quick View

Scrolling through a list of files, looking for the right one is a pain in the butt. Apple’s Quick View provides a preview of a file’s contents by simply hitting the space bar when the file is selected. And once a file is being viewed, I can use the arrows on my keyboard to go down the list and see a preview of each file in the folder.

The implementation is simple, the previews appear quickly and it makes life really easy.

4 – The Preview app

It is beyond me why Microsoft insists on using Edge as its default PDF viewer. Apple’s Preview app, which can be used to open and edit PDFs and images is a very handy tool. In fact, I can’t recall when I last bothered to install a third-party PDF viewer on a Mac I’ve used.

As well as viewing and some basic editing, such as filling in PDF-based forms, I can create a signature stamp that is easily applied to forms. That’s a super useful feature as I keep working on reducing the amount of paper

5 – Mail and Calendar apps

Although, as I mentioned in the first instalment of this two-part series, I think the user interface for Microsoft’s mail and calendar applications look better, Apple’s are functionally superior.

With Mail, Smart Folders make it super easy to file and find messages. And the availability of a single, unified Inbox straight out of the box is really handy. I know I can do that with Microsoft’s app but it’s easier, in my view, on a Mac.

Calendar has greatly improved over the years. For me, it’s ability to support multiple time-zones out of the box gives it a leg up over Microsoft. And Apple seems to handle shared calendars better as well.

Do you regularly switch between Mac and WIndows systems? What do you wish Microsoft would learn from Apple and apply to Windows 10?


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