Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

Sounds like a bug more than a feature to me. :)

In the mobile market? How about anything next-generation web? Social media? Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing well anywhere except the increasingly unimportant desktop and Office suite space.

Completely true, and as Steve Jobs famously said in 1997: "If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job."

@volski: "I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products."

Personally, I use Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Exchange, and I feel they are best in class. For every other product they offer, I feel there are better alternatives.

The notion that Microsoft has a problem stems from the fact that most of the new product lines that Microsoft has put to market in the last 10 years, few have been a success. Microsoft's profit comes mostly from licensing and servicing Windows and Office.

Meanwhile, in the last 10 years Apple has introduced iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- all mega hits. What makes it a sad sight to see is that every time Apple comes up with another iDevice, Microsoft tries to compete, and it simply hasn't worked out for them. Windows Marketplace, MSN Music, Zune, Kin, Windows Mobile 6.5, Courier -- the list goes on.

They just didn't grow in proportion to the industry. And they've had to cut and refocus on their core products to maintain profitability.

Microsoft is now in a very similar situation.

Fumbled opportunity might not drag down today's numbers, but it's still a problem.

I remember reading somewhere (I'll post the link if I find it) that in terms of computers, Apple and Microsoft actually occupy very different positions in the market. Apple have something like 91% market share in desktops and laptops priced above $1000, while Microsoft dominate cheaper priced machines (how many Apple computers can you buy below $1000?). A person who is a Mac user is unlikely to voluntarily switch back to Windows, they tend to keep buying Macs despite the price tag (product differentiation justifies the price in their mind). How many people spend over $1000 on a new PC? Gamers and people who need/want advanced hardware, but they are in the minority of PC users.

Obviously, this is in relation to the historical relationship between Apple and Microsoft, now Apple is mainly a consumer devices company in terms of revenue, and Microsoft will go toe-to-toe will Apple in the tablets and smartphones markets soon. Will be interesting to see how the relationship fares as this happens.

"Apple is run like a huge startup that makes 15 billion a quarter and has, ya'know, a strategy."

I don't consider myself a fantastic developer either. I'd be suspicious of any developer with a few years experience who couldn't write an application like that given the right amount of time and motivation.

This isn't to belittle your comment, just that I'm thinking to myself "yeah, that sound correct".

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/think-ibooks-looks-familiar...

Also, in Exposé it's possible to tab between applications and use the arrow keys to select windows.

As for right click: on an Apple trackpad, two finger click works much better for me than right click (either tap with two fingers or click with the thumb while two other fingers are on the trackpad) ever did on a windows laptop. YMMV.

FWIW, I also prefer the Mac ⌘⇥ (command-tab) behavior. You can drag stuff in and out of command-tab, you can hide or quit applications from it (Q and H keys), you can use either keyboard or mouse (or scroll wheel) to select apps, etc.

I think you’re mostly just unfamiliar with it... which is perfectly natural, but you might try phrasing your question in a less aggressive manner.

Personally I just use vim--using the normal letter keys for navigation and jumping to insert mode is easier to me than chording or reaching over to the far reaches of the keyboard. If you're not vim-inclined, I'd use the Mac OS X chords.

If you're chafing on command-tab, try hitting its complement command-backtick

As for tools, you can use whatever you think is best for the job, it's just that for anything that touches the GUI the best tool is going to be Obj-C/Cocoa. In other places, the HN mindset comes out to play pretty hardcore:

  The process sandboxing engine introduced in 10.5 is an embedded LISP
  Their CalDAV and Wiki Server implementations are in Python with Twisted
  They once shipped a desktop app written in Rails. Really.
  The iTMS backend is all Java, and at least formerly used WebObjects heavily
  For a while they had a bunch of GUI Java apps written with their Java/Cocoa bridge
  They've let motivated employees write Obj-C bridges for Perl, Python, and Ruby (x2)
  The guy that wrote two Ruby bridges is now doing a native Ruby implementation
  They've got at least 3 independent javascript frameworks shipping with webapps

I agree with a lot of your other points re: the keyboard layout, but FYI on this -- OS X is app-centric in its WM rather than window-centric. (Coincidentally, W7 has moved in this same direction with the Superbar).

CMD-tab cycles through applications; once you've gotten to the application you want, use CMD-` to cycle through individual windows. It's a little bit weird at first, but once you get used to it, I honestly think it scales better for navigating large numbers of windows.

HTH.