Which OS to use?

I’ve grown up using Windows all my life. What can I say, $600 minimum was too spendy for a kid. I finally hacked Mac OS X on my PC a while back, though, and it’s currently my OS of choice. But will it stay that way?

Windows 7 has a lot of the features that I got used to and love on OS X. Hitting the Windows key brings up a search window that works just like Spotlight, and there’s no need to use the start menu ever again. You can fit more programs on the taskbar now that they aren’t 200px wide - and with the combination of built-in program launching, jump lists, Aero-powered window screenshots and cool keyboard shortcuts, I love the new taskbar. Maybe even more than the OS X dock! Windows 7 is a very good operating system.

But better than OS X? I still can’t decide. The OS is really defined by the applications it runs - more than you would think.

Best web development software? All of it is on the Mac. TextMate, Coda, Espresso, Ruby on Rails… the Mac really is the best choice for web development. The terminal environment is also better on the Mac - UNIX gives access to a lot of things that DOS doesn’t have.

Best instant messenger? Adium on the Mac. Sure, functionally it’s little different from Pidgin, but it supports real themes and skins, as opposed to GTK+ themes that do little more than change colors and round buttons differently. If Pidgin had that functionality, this match would be inconclusive - but as it stands, the Mac is better.

Best web browser? They’re all multiplatform (or, in the case of Chrome & Safari, very similar) anyway, so it’s a moot point. Except for Internet Explorer, which needs to go away or improve quickly.

Best media player? The Zune software. It just looks that cool, and on Windows it beats the crap out of iTunes. iTunes on Mac is a lot better performance-wise, and it does have an easier to understand UI, but its UI is about as pleasant to use as an email application. It’s merely functional. The Zune software is functional andcool, and even compared to iTunes on Mac, it outperforms it.

Best Twitter application? Mac OS X is where the Twitter applications all started, with Twitteriffic. Today, the best experience isn’t on Mac or Windows - it’s on the iPhone OS. Mac definitely comes in second, though, because the best Windows clients currently are Adobe AIR clients like Tweetdeck, and I don’t like them very much. If you have a Mac or iPhone, get Tweetie and find out how good it can be.

Best office suite? The PC, of course. Sure, iWork is pleasant to use and all, but there’s always some incompatibility or other when I try to create files that are even slightly outside the normal use cases, and Office 2008 is a slow and clunky mess.

Best window management features? The Mac. Aero is getting better, but there’s too many useless features and not enough useful ones. What will it take to get Microsoft to put up a real Expose or, better yet, a Spaces competitor?

Best OS for native application programmers? The Mac. Mainly because the programming situation for Windows is messed up. Dare I bring up Win32?

And finally, the best OS for gaming? The PC. No contest here - Mac is getting more games, but it’s never superior to Windows in any gaming category whatsoever.

There are other uses that don’t really make or break the case for either. The best for graphics editing? The Mac, probably, but with Adobe’s efforts to keep the Creative Suite virtually identical between the two OS’s the differences are unnoticeable to the average user. The best media center? That one’s not really one you can call, because Windows Media Center and Front Row fill different purposes and aren’t directly comparable unless you specify a specific use case.

So what will I do? Use my ever-more-precious disk space to dual boot and find out what I use more often. Once I finally stuff the hard drive, I’ll choose which one has to go. (Of course, Hackintosh installs can go at any time, what with no support from Apple, so I might never have to make that decision myself…)