The question is not whether MacOS is ahead of Windows. As an Apple user since the Apple IIe, I agree it's still the best OS by a mile.
But that has basically always been true, at least since Mac OS X. (I liked the earlier OSes too, but they really did crash all the time and have no memory protection, so arguably Windows had some compelling advantages.)
The interesting question is whether recent MacOS releases are ahead of their previous versions. Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. Maybe dark mode?
The hardware keeps better, and the experience of third-party apps I care about (VS Code and Ableton) is superior to Windows. But the OS and first-party apps seem completely stagnant.
Which, arguably, is OK. Maybe the OS should just be a commodity. But I have to imagine that there are user experience improvements they could make at the OS but I certainly haven't seen any.
I'm not so sure about that, modern Linux is pretty good — I was able to configure it to fit my needs much better than I could a mac. It's also free of dark patterns (looking at Windows).
If you're willing and able to configure Linux, I would say that, for some people, it's much better than a mac.
I wish I could disagree, but Microsoft won't let me thanks to their determination and speed in destroying what was good about Windows.
Right now I find myself forced to use macos for iOS dev, and Windows for gaming-adjacent stuff. For the first time in 33 years, I truly wish I could just have Linux everywhere.
Granted it's not a giant list, but each release does have little refinements here and there, and Claude may have missed some (it didn't mention container CLI, for instance; that was from my memory). I also omitted some features I don't care about (like Safari profiles and some other window management stuff).
What features are you hoping for? Aside from a tiling WM, which won't happen, I'd be happy just with refinements and bug fixes.
But that has basically always been true, at least since Mac OS X. (I liked the earlier OSes too, but they really did crash all the time and have no memory protection, so arguably Windows had some compelling advantages.)
The interesting question is whether recent MacOS releases are ahead of their previous versions. Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. Maybe dark mode?
The hardware keeps better, and the experience of third-party apps I care about (VS Code and Ableton) is superior to Windows. But the OS and first-party apps seem completely stagnant.
Which, arguably, is OK. Maybe the OS should just be a commodity. But I have to imagine that there are user experience improvements they could make at the OS but I certainly haven't seen any.