In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive?

HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X. What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"

Comments

OS X

[BWJones]

To those of us that have either been on the platform for a while (or since the beginning), or have already switched from another platform to OS X, this article will not provide much that we do not already know. However, for those not familiar with OS X, it is a pretty good read. I have used many platforms in parallel for years from the early days of the PC revolution (Apple ][, Macintosh, TRS-80, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Compaq, Windows) to the later workstations (Sun, SGI, NeXT) and have my likes and dislikes for all of them. Having said that however, my preference has fallen on OS X. It is sooo easy to use, is truly plug and play, is more stable, more secure, has most of the GUI and CLI integration a geek could want as well as a pretty good selection of software that makes things either 1) more enjoyable and/or 2) more productive.

For a long while, I had multiple systems on or under my desk, peaking at one time with an SGI Octane, PowerMac 9600, Windows NT, and a Linux box to perform my scientific work, serve a website, do graphics work and general productivity. All of that functionality now exists beautifully in one OS X machine freeing up considerable desktop space. Also, thank goodness for flat panel displays! I serve a couple of websites up on my workstation as well as use it for computational calculations, a front for distributed computing, writing papers, doing graphics for figures and illustrations, preparing presentations etc...etc...etc...

No other platform offers this degree of ease of use combined with flexibility and functionality.

Re:OS X

[That's Unpossible!]

I'm a programmer. I like OS X, but every time I've used it I am amazed that Home/End doesn't work properly. What the fuck was Jobs thinking?

Re:OS X

[stallard]

I have to agree that I am simply more porductive in OS X. I admit that part the reason for this is that OS X is what I have used at home for the past three years. However, I do frequently use XP at work, school, and at a few relatives homes so it's not as if I'm unfamiliar with the operating system. To me OS X is simply layed out in a more logical manner and as such I don't have to think about the operating system and I can focus on my work (even if it is just posting comments on /.). I think the important thing here is to use what you're most comfortable with and don't bash anything that you havn't used more then once or twice. We may have different platforms, but we all still read /. Isn't that worth something? ;-)

Re:OS X

[michaeldot]

You make an interesting point, but it sounds to me like you have a fixed idea of how an interface should behave and are going to roundly criticize anything that doesn't conform to that.

Personally, I wouldn't like my Panther system to have ANY of the features you regard as critical:

• I find a common, fixed position, always there menubar is a great feature.
• Apps that need fullscreen can go fullscreen - PowerPoint, Keynote, VLC, DivX player, etc, etc. Having windows lose their title bars is available through 3rd party shareware programs. I don't agree that Apple should make it standard - I don't want it, neither do I suspect do most users.
• Firefox could do what these above apps do if they really wanted, but it's simply not a "Macintosh thing to do" to have windows entirely take over the screen. To their credit, Firefox tends to follow GUI conventions on each of the platforms they support.
• I find case-insensitive filenames make much more sense when dealing with publishing media, eg large numbers of images which may be sourced from digital cameras / emails from clients / FTP sites / etc. Their filenames all have a habit of flipflopping case. I DO NOT WANT THEM TO BECOME DIFFERENT FILES.
• Get used to it, XML storage is the way of the future,.

Treating these choices as "utterly asinine" and "engineers have a track record of making really stupid decisions" really just demonstrates your own point of view.

If you want that flexibility, that's really one of the great strengths of LInux. I think you've answered the Slashdot topic's question!

Which hat am I wearing?

[searleb]

As a programmer, I am much more productive in Linux because I can tie almost everything I do in Gnome (or KDE) to a key command. I don't use the mouse very much (or at all) while programming in gvim or Eclipse, and it really slows me down when I need to, say, launch a terminal or a browser.

As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office, I am much more productive in Windows. I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers. Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app". MS Office for the Mac is still wildly unstable, and although it's an option, it's not a very good one.

As a hobbiest or a general user, I'm more productive in Mac OS X, which sort of bridges both worlds. Because Macintosh enforces a pretty strict interface guideline, all the general purpose apps are easier to use on the first go. This is not really critical for stuff I use every day (as a programmer or a scientist) but is really useful when I'm trying out a new chess app or whatever.

If I had only one choice, I would use Mac OS X. At work I have both a Linux computer and a Windows computer on my desk (it's a pretty big desk). At home I use my iBook. I don't have to make that choice.

Re:Which hat am I wearing?

[Hatta]

Exactly what (s)he said. I find it amazing/scary that anyone in science would use Excel as a primary tool (I am a physicist working at CERN myself... not that we have much to analyse right now ;-)

He's undoubtably a biologist of some sort. The kind of analysis needed in biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc is not anything like that in physics. Basic stats are often all that's needed. Unless you're into things like protein folding, Excel is pretty capable. The integration with powerpoint is especially nice. Not that *I* use it, I prefer R and LaTeX. But I don't know anyone else who does.

KISS

[Doc Ruby]

PalmOS 5. On my Treo 650 smartphone. The total integration, mobility, and preconfig'd apps for specific tasks - along with the dearth of options when things go wrong, except trying again, make it the perfect tool. It's practically invisible, while I'm communicating with people around the world, who don't need to have any equipment more special than a regular phone, or maybe any kind of email or web browser.

Mac OS X has been a dream come true for me.

[intensity]

...especially since I need solid video editing (FCP 4) and I also need X, gcc (for embedded systems design work) and security. I bought my first OS X laptop about a year ago and since then I have gotten rid of everything Windows that I owned. My Mac, honestly, has been the most reliable and usable computer I've ever owned. I don't get involved in the whole DEFEND YOUR OS nonsense, my motto is USE WHAT WORKS FOR YOU, and for me, thats Mac OS X.

Re:Windows

[Umbral Blot]

Yes, any operating system that can run Visual Studio will be the most productive. The autocompletion featrure for member functions/varaibles is to die for. Whenever I program in another environement I end up using short and unhelpful names for member variables, simply because I don't want something difficult to spell/remember. Also the integreated help system is nice. Now if only more people tried to incorperate its good features, but for the most part the only thing special about most development IDEs are systax highlighting/auto tabbing/in program compilation/degugging. Sigh.

MSDOS... seriously

[EmbeddedJanitor]

For a couple of reasons:

1)No www etc to eat away time.

2)I quite often need to write and test out code in a test-bed like environment for later inclusion into some other, typically embedded, software. The most productive way I've found to do this is Borland C with MSDOS. I can edit/compile/test small code bodies faster using MSDOS and Borland C than a cute GUI interface with mouse clicking etc. Bummer though when a bad bointer crashes the whole box. Still, a reboot only takes approx 20 sec. I can do almost the same thing under *nix, but it isn't quite as snappy. *nix does same me from nasty ptrs and give better core dumps etc though.

Love my Mac, but ...

[Chuckstar]

I think that Mac and Windows are both good enough now that the most important thing is which one you are used to. I use Mac at home and Windows at work. I am much faster at Office for Windows, because I use it all day and am used to the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I can surf the internet faster [I almsot typed "more efficiently", but didn't think that made sense] at home because I am familiar with the Safari shortcuts and have a mouse with extra buttons that I configured for forward, backward and open in new window.

Neither machine crashes very often. Neither has required maintenance voodoo. Each has certain OS features that I prefere over the other. [I hate window-in-window style of Windows applications. I prefer Windows Taskbar to the Dock.] The work machine has some weird remote access settings that IT occassionally tweaks when they modify our network.

I don't use Linux. [I know, what am I doing on Slashdot? :) ]

I'm a switcher,

[MasterOfUniverse]

I finally switched from windows to Mac OS recently (thanks to mac mini). I absolutely love it. Here are few things that I noticed.

1)No popups from background windows poping up in the front, like in firefox or safari. If there is a popup in a different tab's page, it will not popup in front if im not focused on that page.

2) Faster bootup time.

3) when I shut down my computer, I can just click shut down and go away. In windows sometimes there would be a popup waiting for me to click. So I can't leave unless I the blue windows screen.

4) Expose..enough said

5) I have been using this for more than a month now and my Mini only got stuck once. Once! take that windows!

6) No need to install anti-virus software (yet)

7) No worries about the registry hell!

8) I donno why but all the programs (not just apples) works the way they are suppose to work! This is a very strange feeling. In windows world, I never expected programs to run the way they are suppose to.

9) this is just a small thing I noticed, but in real player ( sorry I have to use it), suppose I'm watching a video and shut it down in the middle. The next time i start that video I will see a mark where I left off the last time. This is a small thing but, if you are regular video watch like I, this is very very helpful.

I can keep going and going and going, but seriously, I can't imagine why I did not switched sooner . I'm planning on getting imac pretty soon (and give my mac mini to my dad or something)

OS/2....

[Atomic Frog]

Really. I daily swap in and out between Solaris, WinXP, Linux and OS/2.

By far, OS/2 stays out of the way the most so I can focus on how to do the job within a particular application or task.
OS/2 is equally comfortable and useable either by pure command-line or pure GUI. Currently all the *NIX really suck if you wanted to go pure GUI.
(Go ahead, try one week without ever opening up a command-line prompt in *NIX and see how far you get).

WinXP, on the other hand, is a bitch when I go command-line, for whatever reason. Mostly because most of the tools, and Billy, don't expect the user to go there. Or something.

If I had to jump ship, I'd go OS X.

From a Java developer...

[JohnA]

I am far more productive under MacOS X than Windows XP. I also run Linux on my X86 box, but am not quite as productive since I spend a lot more time doing sysadmin and such than I do on the Mac.

One of the most telling factors is that I find myself trying to use my Exposé gestures on my X86 platform... :-)

Re: Click count and mindspace

[Bastian]

I rate how productive I feel on an OS based on how much effort it takes to do simple tasks and to jack around with the filesystem - everything else is more a question of applications. (Yeah yeah, I know that the culture provides different experiences with the apps, too, but I have enough of a problem with keyboard dysentery withou having to talk about that, too.)

I regularly work with OS X, Windows, KDE, and WindowMaker, and here is what I think of the first three. (For the sake of disclosure, I was definite Mac hater three years ago, I have had vague feelings of annoyance with Windows going back at least 7 years, and I have never been a fan of Gnome or KDE - I use WindowMaker on my home PC.)

On Windows, it takes a lot of effort to do simple things. Even bringing up an extra Explorer window seems to take a lot of time, because I can't seem to find a good keyboard command or menu item for it. (If there are, Windows fails at making them easy to find.) Navigating the filesystem takes time, because there doesn't seem to be a way to make the places I go most accessible from anywhere. "My Computer" seems to be in a different place (sometimes the Start menu, sometimes the desktop) on every @#$@% computer in the office. Functionality is hidden in random places, and menu items seem to never be hidden under the most appropriate menu. I can't drag and drop things I think I should logically be able to drag and drop, and the alt-tab twitcher completely fails to allow me to switch between applications quickly and seamlessly. Worst of all, it pops up dialogs for things that I don't think should require dialog pop-ups - I hate it when I eject my USB key (which takes too many clicks) and go back to some task (which takes too many clicks) and am just starting to re-orient my attention when Windows throws it all away by throwing up a dialog that tells me my USB key has been unmounted and requires a click to close. The overall effect makes me feel like Windows is hell-bent on wasting my time a second or two at a time and slowly destroying my ability to concentrate.

KDE and GNOME aren't much better. In fact, they're worse - they feel a lot like Windows, only even more disorganized, less consistent, and less logically arranged. The file managers are all half-implemented, and drag-and-drop is barely given a nod. It doesn't help that I find myself constantly dropping to the command line to do simple things that should have an easy GUI equivalent - kill and ps, for example.

OS X isn't perfect, but it's shangri-la compared to the rest. I love that document-oriented apps give you an icon in the window's title bar that acts as a proxy for the file that is open in that window, meaning I can send a document I'm working on to someone else via e-mail without having to waste my time hunting for it in the filesystem. There are keyboard commands for EVERYTHING, and it is easy to find them, I love that. The shelf is a thing of beauty - I think that it is a bit half-implemented, but it's far and away better than anything that any other popular GUI can provide. Expose took some getting used to, but now I can say that it rocks my butt off, and I miss it when I am using other OSes. (I used to use Codetek VirtualDesktop. I still run it, but I rarely use it unless I decide that I need to grab a clean sandbox real quick.) The Dock isn't without its problems either (its handling of placing files in the Dock is just completely broken), but it crams a lot of useful information into a small space, and takes a lot less staring and thinking to figure out what you want to know from it than a taskbar. It doesn't tell you about individual windows, and I have grown to like that - when I work, my mental state tree goes application first, window second, and OS X follows this mental flow. Besides, the window I want is usually on the top of the display after I click on an app's icon, because it is usually the window in that app that I was using the most recently. By contrast, the Windows Taskbar feels like it is jumping the gun. And when I want a window instead of an app, I use Expose, and it's easier and faster than having to deal with the taskbar, which gets real cluttered real fast.

It's not the OS - stupid!

[rcpitt]

It's the application!

Of course if the application only runs on one OS, and that OS has other problems that make it less than reliable or that demand time over and above the absolute minimum to get the system functional in the first place and back up application data ongoing, then that's another thing altogether.

My favourite application over the past 20+ years is one called filePro (16+) which started off as Profile on Radio Shack micros, notably the Model II (8" floppies and a Z80 with 64K RAM)

Over the intervening years I and my customers have migrated applications written with this system as well as data entered into them from TRS-dos to Xenix on RS model 16, to Xenix on Altos to Unix on Altos to Unix on x86 PC, to Linux on i686 and not had to re-enter anything or (with the exception of a couple of records in one customer's database that got missed in a record expansion) lost any records (or even worse, had to re-input them). One customer has records dating back to 1983 and still has access to them from his multi-location business now served by a Linux box - same data, same screen layouts, same back-end processing.

The point is that the application is fast, useful, keyboard oriented, easy to use and modify, works on everything from old hardware to the latest (including DEC Vax) and even runs on Windows of various flavors if you are truly perverse ;)

But the really great thing about it is that IT DOESN'T USE A GUI - it is text based.

I recall another (accounting) application many of my customers have used for years - that shortly after Windows 3.1 came out added a GUI version - and has pretty much dropped all pretext of being backwards compatible with the older text "shortcuts". It used to be that you could sit with a pile of receipts and bang them into the program without even looking at the screen - never taking your hands off the keyboard.

Now you have to take a hand away from the keyboard, grab the mouse and navigate to a button to store each and every transaction - getting only 10% or less productivity.

Now that DOS compatibility is pretty much gone from Window they can't even run the old code (not supported though it is); except - - hey - - is dosemu still around on Linux????

I second that sentiment

[saha]

A few years ago I dabbled with OS X beta and the two workstations in my office I used all the time where a SGI O2 and a dual-CPU SGI 320 NT (running Win2000). I didn't take the plunge until 10.2 Jaguar came and today both desktop workstations are turned off a majority of the time and do all my primary work on a Powerbook G4. I still have to administrate all the Windows, Macs, Linux, Irix, Solaris, HP-UX and QNX machines from a single laptop thanks to Apple Remote Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection and X11. I have all my Microsoft Office + Adobe apps, and many other commercial tools plus a majority of the open source tools using Fink. It beautifully integrated with my Handspring Treo 180 with iSync (+ Palm conduit) and miss only a few features from the many other OSes I've used in the past. With the imminent release of Tiger live searching the filesystem is back from the BeOS days and finally a built in dictionary/thesaurus is back from the old NeXT days. Basically I have 90% of what I need from the Windows world and 90% of what I want from the Unix/Linux world.

Right now its probably right the best marriage of the two worlds and it helps that Apples iLife suite make using my music, digital photos and movies enjoyable to use (although an elegant its missing a Tivo PVR solution). The other factor I enjoy about Mac OS X is its ease of software installations, simple security updates and very little maintenance. I don't have to struggle to find drivers for my hardware and I can plug and play without wrestle the operating system to cajole it to work. Apple's elegant aesthetics and well thought out operating system (but not perfect) pretty much was the deal closer for me.

P.S.

Little things like the pervasive spell checker where I don't have to use another application to check spelling of my Slashdot posts are some of the niceties that help me be more productive. Also not having to dual boot Windows/Linux also helps when both applications from different worlds can coexist on one operating system.

For Mac OS X fans out there. I stumbled across this gem of a plug in the other day. GMAP plug in for Addressbook.app to invoke Google Maps and automatically get directions from your home. The script can be modified to work with Firefox (which it originally did). Very Cool!

MacOS X, absolutely!

[Archeopteryx]

I use it for my online media business, http://www.WhiteRoseSociety.org/

I record shows, process audio, edit HTML, and even serve files from this eMac here and two older iMacs.

I not only have all of the Mac software available, but almost all Linux/BSD/Gnu programs can be compiled and run under MacOS X, and I do a lot of that. Plus some C development.

OS X ... hands down

[ellem]

Simply put it isn't the best UNIX, the best Windows or even the best MacOS but it is ALL of them at anytime and all the time.

I can do anything from run an Windows AD to run nessus in Gtk. It is as close to perfect as it gets. And my wife and 5 year old son can use it and never notice all the "tweak" stuff it can do.

And, look I know this isn't a popular sentiment but it's really pretty.

Productivity is highly variable based on task

[quelrods]

I think it is easy to say my productivity is worst in windows. Simply factoring in maintaince time, viruses, spyware, crashing, rebooting, formatting and reinstalling, etc. Now I'm sure some of you have no problems with windows and it works great blah blah blah, good for you, to each their own. Overall my best workspace is something with virtual desktops. I've used such a setup across more linux distros than I care to count and on my OpenBSD workstation that I presently type from as well as my FreeBSD laptop and work system. I use enlightment and that is simply because it was the first wm I used that was configurable such that I had 0 complaints with it. Now I can't say anything about OS X as I own no macs (something I hope to correct with a mini.) *bsd seems to give me the least amount of hassle and post-setup I can just use the computer instead of maintaining it. On the server side of the world it depends. Debian is by far the best to maintain due to apt-get and takes the least amount of time. For peace of mind on the shell server I run it is OpenBSD (stack overflow protection, heap corruption protection, etc. READ: even if an exploit exists worst case it should only be able to crash a program not let anyone gain access.)

Re:Easy...Ninnle!

[yack0]

Let's see if they sneak up on you and get big while you're ignoring them.

I too thought that Apple was just niche market, nothing but. Graphics, publishing, edu. That was it. And really, before OS X, I pretty much considered they sucked.

Of course, now they make a product that fits my niche, that of a network guy with an open source leaning.

It's really the best of both worlds. It's the shiny interface that I'd buy for someone like my father or brother and it's got that raw powerful system behind it that I can open up into even in their version of Terminal.

This is half rhetorical and half serious, but please don't take it as a personal criticism, but "How many niches will they have to fit in before they become big enough?" :)

BTW, might want to get rid of that immediate link to the DVD copy crack on your site, http://brainglass.com/downloads.htm Them there RIAA, MPAA and SPA folks are monitoring this site, ya know. :)

Re:Easy.

[jc42]

Obviously it would be a complete waste of your brain to realize those exist on Windows and OS X as well. Terminals are pretty easy to come by, OS X has one, PuTTY is nice and free on Windows, ...

Yeah, and I was expecting to find an explanation of why the common operations in a terminal window are as easy on OS X as on linux (or any X-Windows system). I've been using a Mac for a year or so, and I keep finding that nearly everything that I do is possible, but much slower than on any X-Windows box. It's partly that dumb 1-button "mouse", but there are other problems, too.

I was disappointed that the article only explained why OS X was more productive than Windows. Hell, I knew that. Watching over the shoulder of expert Windows developers is painfully slow. Yeah, you can do everything that you need to do, but it takes so many keystrokes and/or mouse events.

The simplest example is copy-and-paste. You can always do this. But the X-Windows scheme is quick and simple (and doesn't involve the keyboard at all); just three quick clicks or a click-swipe-release-click. OSX is materially slower, though slightly faster sometimes than Windows.

Similarly, linux and other X-Windows systems implements focus-follows-pointer, and doesn't insist on raising a window when it gets focus. This is a huge time saver when you get used to it. As far as I can tell, neither Windows nor OS X permits this. And they don't have a way to lower a window either; in X-Windows it's a single click. This means that you can push a window to the bottom when you're done with it, and get quickly to the next window. With Windows or OS X, you have to go through a real song and dance to locate and raise a hidden window (which you often didn't want to hide).

Now, I know I could put an X server on OS X. I haven't, because I've been trying to avoid falling back to what I know. I wanted to give OS X a chance to show how wondereful it was. So far, frankly, it hasn't been all that wonderful. Nearly everything is slower and clumsier than on my linux box. And when I ask Mac experts what I'm doing wrong, they usually tell me that I'm doing it right.

The one thing that I'd say is better on OS X is drag-and-drop. But even there, I keep trying it, and it either doesn't do anything at all (most often), or sometimes does something different than what I want. It's better than both Windows and linux, but still not all that good, and I can't find many time that I can actually use it while writing software. Dragging text between windows doesn't much work; you have to use copy-and-paste.

Resizing windows on OS X is a real pain, because you can only do it by adjusting the lower-right corner.

Also, it's not just that I'm a dummy. I do keep trying to watch the experts. Windows experts are agonizingly slow, with lots of extra motions for everything. OS X experts are noticably faster, but it's still painful to watch.

It's always a relief to get back to an X-Windows box, where I don't feel like I'm swimming in molasses whenever I try to do something.

Maybe I should give up and install an X server on my PB. If it's still clumsy after a year of experimenting and asking the experts, I've wasted too much time with it. I'd want to get a 3-button mouse, too; too bad I can't replace the PB's button with 3 little buttons.