UPDATE: Some of the items I mention below have been addressed by able folks in the comments. Make sure to check them out.

I’m in an interesting position in that I was a Mac user since 1984, moved to Windows just before OS X, used 98 – Vista (and in the interest of full disclosure worked on Vista), and now I bought my first Mac in years on which I’m running Tiger and Vista (using both Boot Camp and Parallels). All this switching around has highlighted some small differences between the experiences where I wish one behaved like the other. This is not meant to stoke debate, just observations of things I wish were supported on both platforms.

I have no doubt there are ways to work around/reconfigure each OS to address some of my issues, but I’m just dealing with what I was given. I’m running the shipping Vista bits on a MacBook Pro with tons of storage and RAM. I’m now mainly using Vista under Boot Camp but will also target the Windows partition with parallels as soon as Vista is supported.

OK. So here’s my list:

• Keyboard Acceleration – For years on windows I missed my trusty apple key. It was simple, it was clear, the letters assigned to each function made sense (apple-W vs. alt-F4 for closing a window). The most egregious example was the great apple-N to make a New Folder in the Finder vs. alt-F-N-F or some such series of keystrokes to make a New Folder in Windows Explorer. As a heavy keyboard user I never understood why certain common functions didn’t have more sensible shortcuts in Windows. Of course the flipside is that Windows went overboard (in a good way) in making every single piece of user interface accessible by Keyboard no matter what. So where Apple skimmed the cream, on Windows I can tab or alt my way to pretty much anything (There’s even a way to get to tab across task bar items). This hurts the Mac, not as badly as i thought, but still in a not great way. The browser is really my litmus. For weeks on the Mac as I filled out forms I would get super frustrated as I couldn’t tab through a form because there’s a checkbox or a popup menu. I did eventualy figure out that you can option-tab to access all the clickable objects on the page. That said, it’s still illogical to me to not have elements of a form in the tab order for a page (without a modifier), and even though there’s a way to do it in the browser, there are dialogs in the OS where it’s still an issue. Mostly it’s just not an expectation that Apple has reinforced so apps are all over the place. Mac OS 9 used to periodically show the keyboard accelerators on dialog boxes under the buttons when the apple key was pressed. That appears to have faded. Finally, I wish Windows had more rhyme and reason to their scheme. ALT can both be a modifier for shortcuts as well as the key letting you walk the UI with the keyboard. I wish there was more separation there. The latest Office2007 seems to have taken an entirely new model where the alt key isn’t held down (though to its credit, the shortcut letters are displayed on the UI).
• Window Management – Both operating systems have features I’d like on the other. The Mac has a notion of an optimal size and it would be nice if I could press a button on Windows and have a window open to the “right” size. On the Mac however I sure wish there was a maximize button. I’ve seen people laud mac apps with “full screen” modes that eliminate distractions. But there’s no way to take a window and have it expand to fill the screen. Furthermore, window resizing on the Mac is limited to the bottom right corner. On Windows you can grab any edge and resize to your heart’s content. This is exacerbated by the fact that on the Mac it feels to me like some windows shoe up with their bottom under the dock by default. This of course means a resize is impossible with hiding the dock or moving the window. Not the end of the world but annoying. I think the fact that the dock is taller than the taskbar (by default) and doesn’t occupy the entire width of the screen makes the user feel like that bottom band is still usable space when it isn’t really.
• Context Menus/Right Click – To me, right-click menus are one of the best UI inventions ever. They present great on-object options for advanced users, but hide away never to be seen by anyone who isn’t comfortable yet with those concepts. And the Windows UI clearly embraces right-click wholeheartedely (though not even as consistently as I would like sometimes). On the mac however, right-click support is simply spotty. I know there are arguments to be made for why it’s not emphasized, but from my perspective, if you’re going to support it all, you might as well go all the way and do a great job with it.
• Volume – It may seem small but it’s really irritating. On the Mac pressing the volume up key on the keyboard will toggle mute off if the system is muted. On Windows you will move the volume level up, but you still won’t hear anything because you still need to hit the mute button to get out of the mute state. It’s possible that I’m not a super creative guy, but I can’t think of any real situation where I want to lower or raise the volume from a mute state and not have it automatically unmute. Another nit is that I don’t get any onscreen feedback for volume changes on Vista. I think this is something that OEMs add after the fact, but it doesn’t appear to be built in to the OS (except when the Media Center UI is running).
• Window Switching – Both operating systems (in my opinion) have struggled with the notion of nested layers of Windows and navigating between them. For many years Windows emphasized MDI (windows within windows) as a viable UI solution. While that faded, a more structured MDI has surfaced – tabbed browsing. The Windows taskbar and alt-tab user interface don’t give you access to tabs thereby forcing you to navigate not just a list of windows but a hierarchical list of windows. One could argue the lack of all the tabs appearing in the window switcher lists is a feature, but I still think the namespace should be flattened somehow. Even more difficult however is the Mac approach where the Apple-tab window switching UI only lets you switch between apps. So even if you have three browser windows open on the Mac you cannot switch between them as peers to a window from another app.
• Dashboard/Sidebar – Both operating systems now have widget/gadget layers. Both get hidden by other windows by default (with the Mac layer not even being visible when you have no windows open. F12 brings the Mac Dashboard to the foreground (which is nice), but there’s an option for the Sidebar to always be on top. To me, especially for modules that are feeding you a stream of information you care about on a ‘low priority thread’ you want them to always be visible out of the corner of your eye – clock, stock ticker, news ticker, etc. I think the Mac should have an option of floating the Dashboard above everything else and pinning it there while Vista should have a key to bring the sidebar forward when you want. The main problem with pinning the Dashboard is that the items aren’t penned. This is a nice flexibility, but the Vista ‘shelf’ where the gadgets appear enables the pin on top feature.

I’m really enjoying the flexibility of having both operating systems running on my laptop. No longer do I have to be bummed when a cool new app appears on one OS only and I happen to have the other. It’s also good for testing purposes to have both OSes runnning. It would just be nice if some of the smallest niceties of each one were present on the other. I suppose this might be heresy for people who are religious about one or the other, but I’m a fan of diversity (I’m also a biased fan of Vista).

I will say that on the hardware front, the Apple MacBook Pro is the best Windows laptop I’ve ever had (and I’ve had just about all of them). One thing I don’t understand is why Dell and other PC OEMs haven’t copied the magnetic power adapter plug design. It’s one of my favorite features of my laptop.

Apologies in advance if I missed some setting, or option that enables one of the things I complained about not being there.