NOS-110 4/27/12 MAC OS-X LION vs. Windows 7: Beyond the fanboy bias.

Jordan Trujillo First things first there is no such thing as a superior operating system. Both o perating systems are both good and bad in some way. Case in point, they both get viruses and and can be hacked. They use similar features and have unique featur es too. They also work differently too and also the same as well. One of the main features that is talked about in on the Mac is the ability to in stall programs without using installer applications. That is because a lot of pr ograms are self contained in their own folder or drive. This reduces the need fo r defragmenting the hard drive. Windows has a lot of programs that are not self contained and install components in multiple locations on the hard drive. Also Windows uses it's own proprietary command prompts where as OS-X Lion uses a linux based command shell prompt. Until recently OS-X did not read emails sent from windows machines properly. It was only until Snow Leopard did that get fixe d. Before that, you used to get load of ascii junk when you tried to open Micros oft Exchange or outlook emails on Mac OS-X. Hopefully they added support for .ex e files in Lion. Comparison: http://www.apple.com/macosx/ http://blog.laptopmag.com/mac-os-x-lion-vs-windows-7-which-is-better Much like Windows 7, OS-X Lion has complete full screen support for most applica tions. the only difference is they added a full screen button to the title bar o f the window. OS-X Lion added multi touch gestures used for interacting with the OS rather the n a mouse. A mouse can still be used though. Windows 7 also has multi touch func tions too but they work differently. If you compare Mac OS-X Lion with iOS 5 for iPad, you will find that a lot of th ings are used in both. Examples include the pinch to zoom that you see on a lot of touch screen devices now and the swiping to scroll. Even the launch pad featu re copies the iOS home screen verbatim. Windows 7 still uses the icon desktop. N ot to say that Lion still doesn't use that interface still. Mac also has an app store which allows you to install applications to your iMac with the same ease as the iOS app store. However you can still install applicati ons the old fashioned way too by downloading them off the internet or from a dis k. An interesting thing to note is that both operating systems make really cleve r was of using application short cuts. The dock, much like the task bar in Windows 7 is still kept but Windows 7 now ha s the ability to pin programs to the task bar just like OS-X Lion. The jump list s that let you see the most used areas of web browsers or recent documents for o ffice programs by just right clicking on the icon is only a Windows 7 feature. Mission control is a good example of how OS-X made multi-tasking a lot like Wind ows 7. It allows you to see all windows in all applications open at once. This i s just like Windows 7 auro interface. Custom backgrounds for open window with icons inside are also nice. Note that th

ere do exist third party add ons for Windows 7 that will let you do the things t hat Mac OS-X can do to. The most prominent feature in OS-X Lion is the auto-save function which automati cally saves your documents periodically allowing you to view and compare differe nt versions of the documents and never have to worry about not saving your data if it crashes. Windows 7 has a document recovery version of this feature but it works differently. Since only Macs can run OS-X Lion, the hardware selection is severely limited un less you use ones that have serviceable parts. Windows has generally has a more diverse selection of hardware you can use. Compatibility is still an issue too, although software is getting more into the Mac OS-X areas, Windows still has the most diverse software selection. So in conclusion, both operating systems are as good as some things more then ot hers. Mac OS-X is more oriented to user friendliness where as Windows is more o riented toward performance and functionality.