I've been using the M4 Mac Mini for a little over a month, and to be quite frank, I've loved it for the most part. I mean, that much was probably obvious from my review, but as I've gotten more accustomed to how things work on macOS, there are a few things that I actually prefer here compared to Windows, despite using Microsoft's OS all my life.
On the flip side, there are definitely things I still prefer in Windows compared to the behavior on macOS. So I wanted to take a look at the many things I believe each operating system could learn from the other. THere's actually a lot of back and forth here, and I have about 16 things to go over. Let's get started with things I wish macOS took from Windows 11.
17 Window management
It's so needlessly complicated
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First off, one of my biggest problems in Windows is managing my open apps and windows, and that's a problem on multiple fronts. First, managing open windows is very limited since all you can do is maximize them, snap them to half the screen, or manually resize them. It's a little too limited, and when Windows has the much more advanced Snap layouts feature, I have to wish that would come over to macOS. Better yet, some PowerToys-like implementation would be ideal. As it stands, I'm using a tool called MacsyZones to do the same thing, though it's a bit buggy at times.
But then there's the fact that open windows aren't shown on the dock (you can make minimized windows appear there, but that's not enough), and instead only app icons appear there. To open a specific window from an app, you need to right-click it first. What's more, using Command + Tab does the same thing -- it doesn't cycle through your windows, it cycles through your apps. It's just way more complicated than it should ever be to get to the window I want.
Thankfully, this too has a solution with the AltTab app, which isn't perfect, but does the job well enough for me.
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16 Uninstalling apps
It's pretty weird
Another thing I don't really like about macOS is how uninstalling apps works (or doesn't work), and to some extent the same can be said for installing them. I don't like how DMG files just have you drag the app icon into the Applications folder, especially when there's no clear indication that you're supposed to do it. It's terrible for a new user.
But uninstalling apps is the real problem here. You can uninstall an app from the Launchpad, but only if it was installed through the App Store. Apps installed from the internet don't show an uninstall button here, and there's not really a place where you can just click Uninstall. You're just supposed to open Finder, go into the Applications folder, and select Move to Trash on the app you want to remove.
The problem is this feels like it lacks transparency in regards to what's actually being done. Many files from uninstalled apps can be left over on your system, and sometimes things like startup items can still appear in the Settings app, too. It just doesn't feel like I'm truly uninstalling an app on macOS.
15 Image cropping
The one flaw in Apple's image editing tools
For the most part, I think Apple's image editing tools are phenomenal and far better than what Microsoft offers on Windows. There's just one exception here, and that's the ability to crop the image. Windows isn't perfect there, either, since you use the Photos app to crop and Snipping Tool to annotate, but it's even more cumbersome on macOS.
Preview lacks the ability to crop an image to a specific aspect ratio, and while you can use the Photos app for this, the Photos app doesn't just let you access all the images on your PC. You have to import them into Photos and sync them with iCloud, and images in Photos are not synced with the original file you imported. I just wish Apple would let me crop my screenshots to a specific aspect ratio without all this fuss, but for now, I have to use a third-party app called Diffraction.
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14 File management
macOS could make things easier
Part of my complaints with file management on macOS ties into the inability to uninstall apps in the way you'd expect. All you really do is move an app from the Applications folder to the trash, but you then have to hunt down leftover files, and Apple tries to hide these files from sight. The Library folder doesn't appear as a destination in the Finder menu unless you're holding down the Option key while using the Go menu, and that's where a lot of these app files are stored.
But a few other things can be frustrating when managing files on macOS. Highlighting a folder with the keyboard and pressing Enter edits its name, rather than opening the folder. You can't cut items with Ctrl + X (or Command + X) like you can on Windows. And overall, some things like the Movies folder are hidden from most menus for no real reason when they could greatly help store files in the right place.
13 A more compact app menu
It feels like it's made for a phone
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It's no secret that I prefer launching my apps using the keyboard these days, but for the occasions where I do want to use my mouse, macOS is a little too weird for my liking. The Launchpad (Apple's equivalent to the Start menu) only opens in full screen, with a good chunk of empty space on the sides and between each icon, particularly on ultrawide screens.
This feels unnecessarily intrusive since it takes over the entire screen and the contents are so spread out. it feels more like an iPhone interface expanded to a much bigger screen where it doesn't make sense. I wish Apple would build a smaller flyout menu that doesn't hide all my open apps and presents the content in a more compact way. The Windows 11 Start menu may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than this implementation.
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12 Ease up on the permissions
Does it need to be this controlling?
One thing that I find extremely odd about macOS is how much it needs the user to confirm everything they want to do on their machine. Simple actions like installing a free app from the App Store require your Apple ID password. Installing OS updates requires your local user password (which can be different), and so on.
Then there's the fact that every app needs to ask permission to share your screen and that permission is revoked automatically after about a month, so it forces you to accept it again. You also need to restart apps after giving them permission to capture your screen, which just makes things take unnecessarily long to get going, especially if you're in a meeting or something.
11 Move menus inside apps
The menu bar is terrible for big screens
The menu bar is one of the most iconic elements of macOS design, and in many ways I do like it. But it becomes a real pain when the menu bar is used for pretty much every app's own menus, which wastes a lot of my time. For a MacBook, this may not be as big of a deal, but I have a 49-inch 32:9 monitor, which means I have a lot of space for windows, and moving my mouse to the upper left corner of the screen every time is time-consuming.
I think the Windows approach of having the menu for each app above the app itself makes a lot more sense and gets things done faster.
10 Clipboard history
It's so useful
When Microsoft added a clipboard history to Windows 10, it instantly became one of the most useful features for me, being able to quicky access a piece of text I copied previously without worry. So it was baffling to me that macOS still lacks anything of this kind. It's very easy to accidentally copy something and overwrite whatever is currently in the clipboard.
When I wrote my weekly report for XDA, I often need to copy the links and titles of news pieces, and it's much easier to do that all on the same tab before switching back to the email I'm writing. Clipboard history lets me do that easily, and not having it on macOS definitely wastes some of my time.
Thankfully, I've been using an app called Pasty to fix this, and honestly I wish Apple would integrate the functionality exactly as it is here, as I even prefer it to the Windows 11 clipboard.
9 Smaller updates
It's kind of ridiculous
This wasn't something I had planned to write about, but just as I was writing this article, a major update to macOS Sequoia 15.2 appeared on my Mac Mini, and when I started the download, I noticed it was a huge 15.25GB package. It took close to an hour to download, which is frankly ridiculous.
Microsoft makes this a lot easier on Windows. Security updates have been getting smaller, and even full feature updates like Windows 11 version 24H2 are usually under 6GB to download in full. It seems like Apple updates download a full system image with very little compression, and it's not a good experience.
That's a lot of things macOS could stand to learn from Windows, but if you think Microsoft comes out on top here, think again. There are also a lot of things that macOS does that are a lot better in my opinion, so here are a few things Microsoft should copy from Apple.
8 The smaller status bar
macOS just feels right
One thing I've really grown fond of on macOS is the way all kinds of status information is displayed at the top of the screen. The menu bar also houses icons for all your apps running in the backgrund, in addition to things like volume and brightness sliders, Siri, and the current time.
This status bar on macOS is tiny, but I love it as a result. It's a completely effective way to show me all the information I need and it doesn't feel invasive at all. It saves a lot of screen real estate for the things I'm actively doing, and I think it feels a bit more natural than the Windows taskbar. Plus, it has a much nicer transparency effect compared to Microsoft's Mica material.
7 Generally less intrusive behavior
Apple isn't as pushy
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One thing I believe almost every Windows user can agree on is that Microsoft has become increasingly aggressive in trying to shove things down user's throats. The setup experience alone on Windows 11 is so frustrating as you not only have to choose things like language and region, plus sign in with a Microsoft account, but you're also asked to enable all kinds of things. You're prompted to enable recommended browser settings so Edge is your default, you're asked to try out Game Pass, you're offered Microsoft 365, you have to choose what kind of use the PC will have, and you can link your phone. And what's more, skipping some of these steps will result in Microsoft showing you thesetup screen again a few days later to try and get you to do it.
And once you're on the desktop, it doesn't really stop. Plenty of promoted apps in the Start menu, OneDrive folder backups populate your desktop with useless icons, and many smaller things constantly feel like Microsoft is trying to upsell you on something.
macOS may advertise some of its features during setup and after updates, but it's so much less intrusive. And when you turn something down, it's gone, you don't need to worry about it again. Microsoft acts like you don't know what you want, and it gets tiring.
6 Support for multiple webcam streams
Microsoft is finally doing it
All my life, I've lived with the notion that when an app is using my webcam, no other app can use it at the same time. I even remember using some software to work around this a few years back. It's been so ingrained in my memory that a couple of weeks ago, I didn't realize I had actually been using my webcam for a meeting while also being in a hangout group. It was then that it hit me that this was only a stupid Windows limitation, and macOS has no such problems.
To give credit to Microsoft, though, at least the company is finally making it possible for multiple apps to use your webcam at once, which is done bybasically creating a virtual webcam, just like third-party software does. However, it's still an optional feature you have to enable, while on macOS, you don't even have to think about it. It just works. I imagine Microsoft will probably fix this at some point.
5 Better bulk file renaming
Did you even know it was possible in Windows?
Recently, I've learned that many people don't even know that you can rename multiple files at once on Windows 11, and I can't really blame them. Renaming multiple files is kind of strange since the edit box just appears under one of the files you selected, and there isn't much control over how renaming works.
macOS wins again here because it actually has a proper file renaming tool with a few options to choose from. You can create a wholly new name, add text to the existing name, or just replacing part of the current name. And then you can choose to add a date or a number counter to make each file have a different name. It's a great solution that ensures almost no one will need a third-party tool, and Microsoft would do right to mimic Apple here.
4 Better image editing tools
macOS is a lot more competent
Editing screenshots is something I have to do a lot for work, particularly when it comes to writing guides and tutorials. Both Windows and macOS offer tools for this, but annotating images on Windows is kind of nerve-racking because if you're drawing an arrow or rectangle, you need to get it right the first time. You can't resize or move a drawn shape in Snipping Tool, so you may end up having to retry over and over until it's done right.
macOS makes things a breeze because any shape you add to an image can be moved and resized to suit your specific needs, and it works perfectly. The Preview app even helps you align different elements so it all looks just right.
And on that note, Apple's smart features are also a bit more accessible. If you want to grab text from a screenshot on Windows, you need to enable text recognition and wait a few seconds for the image to be scanned. On macOS, just open the image in Preview, and you can simply select text right away.
3 A native video editor
Clipchamp is still a web app
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Windows went without a proper video editor for years until Microsoft finally acquired Clipchamp in 2021. This was a good move, but Clipchamp is still a web-based app all these years later. It's not a bad app, really, but every other major platform knows that to offer a truly flagship experience, you want a native app.
Apple has included iMovie with macOS for a long time, and while it's not a professional video editor, it works very well for basic use, and it benefits from that native UI design and performance that Clipchamp can't leverage in quite the same way.
Microsoft recently made Copilot a native app, and it's baffling to me that Copilot takes precedence over a video editor when it comes to getting a native app.
2 Advanced noise removal
I only want to edit video on macOS now
In addition to my work on XDA, I run a very casual YouTube channel where I talk about gaming, and prior to getting the Mac Mini, I'd edit my videos on Windows with a discrete GPU. But when I tried editing on Mac, I discovered a feature that has basically made this machine essential to me.
That feature is a special "sound isolation" filter that appears in DaVinci Resolve only on macOS, and this does an extremely good job of filtering out background noise and echo from my recording environment, which is far from optimal. Once I started using the filter, the difference in audio quality was very apparent, and it worked far better than the noise reduction and removal filters in something like OBS, which messed up a lot of my words frequently. Even Nvidia's RTX Broadcast app caused a bunch of issues.
I know Windows PCs have some form of noise cancellation, but it's nowhere near as good, and you can't just use it in a video editing tool like you can on macOS. This would be basically a necessity at this point to get me to move away from macOS, at least until I have better hardware to record more professionally.
1 Faster search
Spotlight handily beats Windows Search
I've mentioned a few times that I'd much rather open apps using my keyboard than my mouse, and after switching to macOS, it's become clear that Apple is so much better at it than Microsoft. Windows Search is simply not good, it sometimes takes a second to respond to your latest input, and more often than not, you'll probably end up performing a web search (which forces you to go to Bing and Edge) instead of opening the app you want.
Spotlight on macOS is so mch more optimized to open your apps. The full list of results may take a couple of seconds to show up, but your top suggestion is available instantly and it's far more accurate, so you can just press Enter and go. It works a lot like Flow Launcher on Windows, but that's a third-party tool that Microsoft doesn't offer out of the box.
And while we're at it, when you do want to perform a web search with Spotlight, it just opens your default browser. No weird shenanigans trying to force you to use Safari like Microsoft does with Edge.
No operating system is perfect
The main takeaway here is that no matter what side you're on, there are always things that could be improved. Windows fans should be able to recognize its flaws, and macOS users need to know it's not perfect, either. Personally, I've found myself less annoyed with macOS than Windows lately, but there are good reasons to pick either side. Where do you stand?