Windows 8 and OS X Lion: How Do They Compare?

It's still far also early in Windows 8's exploitation cycle to pit the nascent OS against its fully baked competitor. But Apple's recently discharged OS X Lion offers the most recent competing view of what a PC operating system should reckon like in the age of the smartphone and tablet.

I equal to think I'm platform agnostic: I lame connected a Windows desktop, I process an Ubuntu desktop, and I recently picked up a MacBook Air to supervene upon an aging Windows laptop–and to complete the set, to be honest.

Lion has been my first real taste of Apple's take up connected the desktop OS (I've closely-held iPads and iPod Touches), and I'm liking what I'm seeing: It's a decidedly neo OS, blend lessons that Apple has knowledgeable from iOS into a physical body that makes sense when you have a priggish keyboard and pointing device available.

That same, my admittedly limited time with Windows 8 has been something of an eye-opener. Thither's still quite a a chip of prison term before it'll see the visible radiation of twenty-four hours, but Microsoft's vision of the future of operating systems reflects the company's metre in the mobile arena, and the refinement state of war information technology has arguably lost in floodlighted of Apple's meteoric rise in popularity.

So how do the two OSs compare?

Judging a Book by Its Cover

Mac fans are legion, so I'm reliable that quite a little of people out there are willing to explicate why a brushed-nerve wrapping on absolutely everything is the pinnacle of design. The uniformity bleeds down from the figure redress onto the user interface, without much in the style of customization options–barring third-political party utilities, of course. I'm not much of a stickler for this sort of thing (function over form, always), but I find Windows 8's colorful aesthetic such more … well, grateful.

Bright and inviting aren't words I like to ascribe to operative systems, or any other tool. Simply they're apt here. Given the pick between Apple's staid minimalism and the lively interface Microsoft has whipped leading, I'm going to gravitate toward something that's a weeny more lively.

Beauty Is Clamber Deep

Simply looks aren't everything, and the Subway system interface will be the biggest hurdle for onlookers to get finished–some your platform of choice.

It's important to understand that Microsoft hasn't simply shoehorned a desktop OS into a pill intersection. The party has created an operational system to address the sea change in technology we've witnessed over the past few years, and it's kind enough to wreak archaic, refer-free platforms along for the ride.

As the PCWorld editor charged with covering desktop PCs, I view a touch-centric OS from the leading developer of PC operating systems as the rather thing that leave get me looking over my résumé. Simply Windows 8 isn't or so ditching the mouse and keyboard so very much like it is about addressing the way we use technology today.

Leo the Lion is winning steps in the right direction: You can see hints of Apple's future (I hope) in the Launchpad, which borrows to a great extent from iOS. Applications are condensed into icons, with numbers giving you a bird's-eye view of anything that needs your attention. Windows 8 goes one stair foster: Tiles are much Thomas More efficacious, doling out information at a carom, instead of forcing you to dive into a particular app to see what messages or notifications wait.

Finding Your Stuff

File trees and folders are archaic. They hark back to a prison term when determination a specific photo operating theatre a particular track off an album required memory where you put it. Today, explore is king. And I thought it couldn't get easier than Dominate-Space on the Mackintosh, which brings the focus over to the Spotlight hunting bar.

Windows 8 offers the same functionality, but divvies results up into Apps, Settings, and Files, and rolls few spare functionality into the mix: A search for "cake," for example, will point to any files on the device, and with a tap (or click) I can extend that enquiry to Facebook, Chirrup, or locales nearby–it turns out there are quite a a few bakeries in the area.

It's All About the Apps

Windows 8's tiles, while attractive, are at long las unwieldy. Sliding through the name of colorful icons is pretty cool the number one few times. But should your collection of Subway system apps start to grow, you'll be curst page after Sri Frederick Handley Page of lively tiles to flip finished and organize.

A fewer pinching gestures make sifting through tiles a bit more streamlined, and you can group preferred applications unitedly and plainly bypass the rest to the far right of your Start Test. But a metre will come when you'll have too many tiles and Metro apps to manage efficiently.

Atomic number 3 Windows 8 is still in its early stages, I can alone ideate that a superior method acting of navigation is on the way–iOS didn't get folders to corral apps until adaptation 4, after all.

Making the Right Gestures

Not some of a contest here: When IT comes to multitouch-friendly shortcuts, Lion's trackpad gestures come unsuccessful ahead.

Windows 8's gestures depend on the touchscreen: pulling aweigh the Start out button with a swipe from the right, or reaching the application Browning automatic rifle aside swiping up, for instance. That's every hunky-dory, simply those of us without touchscreens are back to right-clicking the mouse or pressing keyboard shortcuts.

There's nada particularly wrong or so that, but I must intromit that my time with Lion has made me a worshipper in gestures. Carving what amounts to esoteric runes onto my trackpad is an efficient manner to jump across multiple desktops and applications, or to flip back and Forth River between Web pages in Google Chrome. In improver to being awesome, of course.

And the 'Winner' Is…?

My MacBook Aerial isn't releas anywhere–the Windows 8 PC experience is still dependant on Samsung, Toshiba, Dingle, and the rest, and my self-confidence in their ability to deliver a laptop computer that's portable, powerful, and (relatively) affordable runs thin.

But erstwhile my time with this developer preview slate draws to a close, I'll certainly glucinium downloading the build that Microsoft is making available, and spending a few months watching this OS develop.

I have a bit of a predetermine here–I antimonopoly suchlike new things. Simply I haven't been indeed excited for something as mundane as an operating system in a age.

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