From OS X to Windows 7
I am addicted to change, and I heard a lot of people say that Windows 7 is a lot better than the previous versions. Also, I recently decided to start learning C#, I want to make Windows desktop applications. So I decided to dual-boot Windows 7 and OS X.
As a side note, I tried linux numerous times and I love it. I actually maintain a couple of Linux servers and have a Linux box at home with CrunchBang on it. Going back to Windows is a much bigger challenge then going to Linux, for me at least.
As a Mac user, I tried to find alternatives for every application I used on a daily basis. Here is a non-exhaustive list of my findings in no particular order. I also mention the OS X applications that I use every day and for which I tried to find alternatives.
Notational Velocity
For those who don’t know Notational Velocity, it’s a note-taking app that synchronises seamlessly with SimpleNote. The equivalent app I found is called ResophNotes. It has most of the features of Notational Velocity and a couple of features from its popular fork, nvALT.
TextExpander
TextExpander is an amazing utility that maps abbreviations to longer strings of text. There is a very good windows alternative called Breevy.
Hazel
Hazel is an OS X Preferences pane which monitors folders for change and acts accordingly. I know it’s a very vague description but here is an example. I use Hazel to keep my Downloads folder organized. Whenever I download a file, Hazel moves it to another folder depending on its type (e.g. image, application, video, etc.). There is a windows alternative that is not known by a lot of people. Its name: Belvedere.
Choosy
“Forget the default browser, Choosy opens links in the right browser.” That quote is taken from the official site of Choosy, and it’s the best way to describe it. Another way to describe it is to make a video demo of it; the official site has that too, so if you don’t know Choosy, you should definitely check it out. Windows has also its Choosy, it’s called Browser Chooser.
Markdown Editor
There are a couple of good markdown editors and tools on OS X including but not restricted to Marked, Mou, Byword and iA Writer. I would have never thought that I would find any application that is as good as the ones listed above; but I did. The name is MarkdownPad.
Application Launcher
Launchbar, Quicksilver, Google Quick Search Box and Alfred. Those are all amazing application launchers. The combination of those two little applications is almost as good as any of the launchers above: the Windows Start Menu and Slickrun. The Windows Start Menu is a wonderful application launcher, but that’s about it. Slickrun (+ plugins) on the other hand does all the rest (e.g. empty recycle bin, restart/shutdown/sleep/etc., weather, online search, etc.).
Image Editor
There is Photoshop. And then there is the rest. I will write about the rest. OS X has Pixelmator. Windows has Paint.NET. That’s it.
Unarchiver
OS X has a two quality unarchiving tools in addition to the one that comes with the Finder: Stuffit Expander and The Unarchiver. Windows on the other hand has A LOT of unarchivers that are more or less good. And then there is one that stands out: 7-zip.
PDF Reader
OS X has one app that does it all: Preview.app. Then there is the alternative called Skim. There is also Adobe Reader, which is cross-platform, but I don’t like it. In my humble opinion, the best PDF Reader on Windows is Foxit Reader. The only thing that it can’t do is delete pages from a PDF file, but that will be covered in an other section of this blog post.
Music Player
I love minimalism, therefore I love lightweight applications. Winamp is not lightweight. OS X has three respectable lightweight music players that I know of, iTunes not being one of them. The first one, also the most lightweight, is Vox; it’s a really cool app. The second one and the third one are more full featured and can be used as lightweight iTunes alternatives: Cog and Minitunes. On Windows, the only lightweight music player that I know is Evil Player. It’s really minimalist and I love it. I never bothered to look for another one.
PDF Editor
Editing PDFs is not something that I do on a daily basis. For simple tasks like deleting a page or adding a note there is Preview.app on OS X. For more complicated tasks, there is of course the full version of Adobe Acrobat but it’s really overpriced in my humble opinion. As an cheaper alternative, there is PDFPen. However, I found a cross-platform tool called PdfJumbler written in Java.
IRC Client
Let me start by saying that there are a lot of crappy IRC clients on Windows, mIRC being the first one of them. On OS X there are a couple of good ones: Textual, Linkinus and LimeChat, which is my favorite. I don’t like Colloquy but some people do, so I think it’s appropriate to mention it. Of course there is also the venerable irssi that I use in conjunction with LimeChat. There is a windows port of irssi but I don’t like it because I think that it doesn’t integrate well with Windows. The only good IRC Client for Windows that I found is one called AdiIRC; and it’s free too!
Application Uninstaller
The first application uninstaller that I heard of on OS X was AppZapper which I got in an app bundle in my early Mac days. Since then, a lot of alternatives appeared; to mention only one: AppCleaner, which is really, really good. On Windows, I use CCleaner, and I am happy with it. I am sure there are other apps that do the same thing. To be honest, CCleaner is more an alternative to CleanMyMac but whatever…
Clipboard Manager
Usually this is integrated in the app launcher. All the OS X launchers I listed above have a clipboard manager integrated. On Windows, Slickrun doesn’t have a clipboard manager, so I had to search for one. The most lightweight one that I found was CLCL.
Twitter Client
On OS X, I use a client that not a lot of people know: YoruFukurou. The cool thing about this client is that it lets you filter your timeline’s tweets using regular expressions. The only Windows client that does this is MetroTwit, through an online service that is called Proxlet, which is very limited and it doesn’t work as well as YoruFukurou in my opinion.
GMail Client
In the beginning there was Mailplane. Then Sparrow came to life. And on Windows there is still a need. The closest thing I could find is a combination of two apps: GMail for Pokki and GMail Notifier (not the official one).
GMail for Pokki
GMail Notifier
Anti-Virus
There are a lot of Windows anti-virus applications. I asked a geek friend who uses Windows what he used, and he told me AVG is good. In my opinion, it’s free and it’s good enough.
Integrated Development Environment
To create C# applications, Visual Studio is without question the best application. The Professional edition is obviously better than the free edition but it’s quiet expensive too.
Visual C# Express 2010
Visual Studio Professional
Programmer’s text editor
On OS X, the number of good text editors is impressive: Textmate, MacVim, Vico, Chocolat, etc. On Windows, I had the choice to use one of the cross-platform editors (jedit, Sublime Text 2, Gedit or Geany), gVim or even E-TextEditor. But instead, I decided to give Notepad++ another try because it’s so popular.
Other
Finally, there is a list of cross-platform application that I use on both OS X and Windows:
My overall opinion of Windows as a Mac user is that the apps on OS X are much nicer, and, contrarily to what people might think, there is a lot more choice the the Mac.