2015-11-25  There are a lot of intricate differences between Mac and Windows computers, but here are some of the most important ones. We put together some of. 10 Differences Between Macs and PCs. By Clint Pumphrey. If you grew up in the 1980s, the concept of design might seem like a superficial and unimportant aspect of a computer. But design is a big differentiator between Macs and PCs. But none have achieved the popular acclaim commanded by Mac products. On the other hand Macintosh, commonly known as Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The Mac is the only computer in the world that can run all the major operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista.

Every day, we are bombarded with information comparing one operating system to another as if to provide some new breakthrough revelations in order to further widen the divide between users. Frankly, these two operating systems have more in common than they do in difference. Each has its own set of pros and cons, but they share many of the core features that define a desktop operating system in a modern era.

Let’s take a moment to move past the this vs. that way of thinking. If I were a first-time switcher to OS X, I would be better served by having the similarities pointed out to me rather than the differences. It’s these common features and capabilities that make the transition easier, after all.

So, what do these two titans of the operating system world have in common?

Robust External Accessory Support

Both OS X and Windows have a robust set of integrated drivers that enable a wide range of external accessories to work flawlessly out of the box. Printers, mice, keyboards, joysticks, webcams, and even those troublesome scanners can typically be used on either OS X or Windows on a plug-and-play capacity.

Despite popular packaging, there really isn’t a difference between a hard drive made for Windows and one made for OS X. You may have one pre-formatted with a Mac-specific journaled file structure or one set to NTFS for Windows, but all you really need to convert the clean (new) drive for use on either operating system is a quick reformat.

External peripherals have been commonly made to work with universal drivers for nearly a decade now. A webcam manufacturer may have their own preferred software for Windows and/or OS X, but it’s rare to find one made today that doesn’t operate from these universal device drivers pre-installed with Windows and OS X for the past several years.

Included Software

Both OS X and Windows come with bundled software to help carry out basic maintenance and security tasks out of the box. You can partition a drive, update the OS, pull up a basic document editor, and use a calculator without having to install any additional software.

You also receive an included browser which many people use to download other browsers of their choice, most of which work on both OS X and Windows.

Contrary to popular belief, OS X does not come with iLife. iLife is bundled with new Macs.

Available Productivity Applications

Microsoft produces its Office Suite on both Windows and OS X. Likewise, LibreOffice and other open source alternatives almost always do the same, making all the same productivity options available to users of either operating system.

While some of the supported video and audio editing programs may differ, both have a significant catalog of multimedia applications available for users. Adobe Premiere CS6, for example, is made to work on either operating system just as well. Where iMovie might be the popular choice for consumers on OS X, Windows Movie Maker is just as available for Windows users.

Gaming

You can argue until your face turns blue that one platform has more games available to it than another, but you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that one operating system is more capable of running them.

OS X and Windows each have significantly optimized operating environments that support common gaming engines. I’ve seen games perform exceedingly well on OS X, despite the platform having a reputation for not being a good gaming platform. Steam has opened its market to Mac users with a great number of titles being available across both platforms.

There are plenty of Mac gamers out there.

Common UI Elements

The Dock in OS X is a lot like the task bar in Windows. It houses common application shortcuts and gives you quick access to running applications, complete with a preview and ability to close things from it rather than having to rely on a hotkey or exit button on the application. The real difference between the two (since Windows 7) is that one looks different from the other, and that puts people on edge.

Application windows can be minimized and maximized using buttons along the top of the window, though those buttons may be located in different places. Software looks and runs the same as it would on either operating system.

If anything, the only real difference between the two operating systems are the hotkeys used to do things like copy and paste, and even those can be remapped to match either operating environment. There are some advantages to one over another here and there, but whether or not these are pros or cons is up to the user to determine for themselves.

App Store

Windows 8 introduces an app store for Windows. This would be another commonality with OS X as the Mac App Store has been around since Snow Leopard. Both of these stores help the user manage existing and purchased applications as well as to discover new apps they may not have otherwise known about.

Viruses

Contrary to popular belief, Macs can and have had viruses. Malware and spyware are problems for Mac users as they are for Windows users, and the introduction of synced universal browsers have opened up a whole new can of shared concerns as hackers figure out ways to cause mischief.

The only reason OS X hasn’t been the primary target for this malicious software as of yet has been its lower market share among corporations and budget consumers. Once this market share evens out, you’ll find out just how vulnerable OS X can be.

OS X and Windows generally fare about the same in hacking contests such as PWN-To-Own where hackers are timed to see who can infiltrate a given system and take control of it the fastest. Even some of the more popular Linux distros are not immune to malicious attack.

Final Thoughts

Should you buy a Mac? Should you buy a PC? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Each one will help you get done the vast majority of the things you need to get done throughout the day. In the end, it comes down to personal taste and needs.

The biggest problem I find while writing articles about either of these platforms is the constant bickering and nonsense that fills the comment threads associated with them. People have some strange desire to look down on (or talk down to) people who make different choices than they do when it really doesn’t matter at all.

I’ve written articles, edited video, updated my social media status, and gamed on both of these platforms extensively over the past decade and over that time I learned that either one is equally capable of getting the job done. It’s just a matter of what specific software you use, and where you prefer to use it.

Keyboard by Petr Kratochvil

Word on the Macintosh is basically Word for Windows re-compiled to run on the Mac. It's not just 'compatible'. It's not just 'like' Word for the PC. It is Microsoft Word, the same one Microsoft makes for every platform. However:

• Not all of the modules of Word on the PC are included in Word for the Mac.
• Word for the iPhone and Word for the iPad are quite different.
• Word for the web browser (Office 365) is completely different: a very lite version.

The cost and number of person-hours spent developing Word is mind-boggling. It's well over a billion dollars, and there are well over ten thousand person-years of effort in it. Making a new one just for the Mac would have been so expensive that a copy of Word would cost several thousand dollars. You might buy two at that price, but the rest of us couldn't afford it!

Because it is the same software, and Microsoft has a policy of bringing the two versions closer together, the differences will become less over time. Essentially, each version on the PC is matched a year later by a version on the Mac (Microsoft is trying to reduce that gap, recently the Mac Business Unit became part of the main Office Business Unit that makes Office for every platform).

Same File Formats Used in Mac and PC

Mac Office MVP Jim Gordon writes: 'The Microsoft Office file format Open XML (OOXML) is for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and used on both the Mac and the PC. The file format was accepted by an international standards body. Office 2010 for Windows with service pack 2 or later and Office 2011 for Mac comply strictly with the standard. Office 2008 for Mac and 2007 and 2010 for Windows prior to service pack 2 comply about 98% of the way to the standard (there's a very minor exception in Excel).

'Microsoft also ships a set of fonts with the same names on both Microsoft Office for Mac and PC. The fonts distributed with Mac Office have been very carefully adjusted ('hinted') so documents on the Mac will look and orint the same way as documents using the PC versions of those fonts on the PC. The differences are tiny, but they account for the differences in the way the Mac places pixels on the screen.

'As for having documents be identical when moving from one computer to another there are factors you must consider. This is true PC to PC, PC to Mac, Mac to Mac, and Mac to PC. Microsoft Word is a word processor that has text that flows, unlike a PDF or page layout program. Any difference in font or printer driver from one machine to another has the potential to affect spacing, breaks, window & orphans, paragraphs, etc. To repeat - these changes have nothing to do with Mac to PC, rather they are caused by computer to computer differences.

'Your documents should look the same on the Mac as long as ALL of these conditions are met:

• The documents on the PC originated in Microsoft Word 2010 with service pack 2
• The documents were saved in a current OOXML file format in Word 2010
• The documents used only fonts supplied with Microsoft Office 2010
• Old versions of the same fonts are not installed or active on either the Mac or the PC
• The documents are opened on the Mac in Microsoft Word 2011
• The current versions of the Microsoft Office fonts are active on the Mac
• The printer driver on the Mac behaves identically to the printer driver that was being used on the PC where the documents were saved.

The behavior of Word is identical on the two platforms, provided the above conditions are met, if you want your documents to look alike when moving from one computer to another - regardless of platform. It's the fonts, file formats and printer drivers that are the sticky points when moving a document from one computer to another regardless of platform.'

Rules of Thumb

Having said all this:

• It’s a totally moving target. Every patch Tuesday, something changes.
• Network Templates 'Don’t' work in Mac Word. Due to multiple bugs in the file path resolving and handling mechanism, templates in network directories should not be shared between PC Word and Mac Word. For a long and happy life, copy the templates locally to the user's My Templates folder on the Mac.
• Ribbon Customizations are not available in Mac Word. They will be silently ignored, unless done in code, where they will blow up.
• Mac Word can use ONLY TrueType fonts and OpenType fonts with TrueType outlines. Other fonts will not appear/work or occasionally, crash.
• The color table is markedly different between Mac and PC (and even between PowerPoint and Word/Excel on the Mac). Generally Mac Office has a wider gamut, but Mac monitors have a very different gamma. Unless you are prepared to create color profiles and carefully color-match every device in the chain on both the PC and the Mac, just accept that colors are going to look quite different. It is expensive and time-consuming to fix this, and you will never get it perfect.
• Various commands in Mac Word exist only in the menu bar, which Mac Word still has, or on the toolbars that Mac Word still has. Toolbars remain customizable in Mac Word.
• The same physical printer will often produce different results from the same document depending on whether the printer driver is on a Mac or a PC. If the printer driver is running on a Print Server, results will be closer (but remember: the fonts are different!).
• Design for the Difference, Design for Re-Flow. Do not use hard page breaks anywhere. Minimize section breaks. Use paragraph properties to manage pagination. Assume your user is going to throw an A4 document onto a US Letter paperstock, or vice versa. Assume that a Mac will reflow text by about half a per cent. The people who have real trouble are the ones that have used floating text boxes and spaces to try to line things up: that will produce word-salad. Tossed word-salad…

• Jim says 'The text-flow problem is the same as you will find moving from one PC to another where font versions and default printer driver are different. The fonts provided by Microsoft should provide smooth cross-platform sailing provided the same version of each is the active version on all machines involved.'

Differences in Appearance

On each platform, Word adopts the default appearance of the Operating System. There is almost nothing that you see on the screen that is drawn by Word: on the Mac, the display is created by Mac OS; on the PC, by Windows. It saves money and it saves vast amounts of disk space and processor power.

The only difference you are likely to notice is that if you are in OS X, the window controls are on the opposite side to Windows.

Different Keystrokes

On the Mac the Command (Apple) key is the Control Key in Windows, whereas the Control Key from the Mac is the Right-Click in Windows.

On a Windows keyboard, the Control key is always labeled Ctrl. On a Mac keyboard, expect to find the ⌘ or ? symbol on the Command key. (These characters will not display on the PC; they should look like this:.) This paragraph is a classic example of the cross-platform font difficulties you will experience. There is no default font common to the PC and the Mac that contains both of those characters (in case you are interested, that's 'Lucida Grande', the most wide-ranging of the Mac OS X Unicode fonts).

Word is very right-click-centric. If you do not have a two-button mouse, you will find it is a very worthwhile investment if you are going to spend much time in Word.

The Control-Click (or Right-Click) brings up the 'context menu' wherever you happen to be. In Word almost everything you want to do, or everything you want to know, will appear on the right-click. The menus that appear vary dramatically depending on where your mouse-pointer is.

Word also responds to the scroll-wheel if you have one. (Not all windows; for example preferences and options dialogs do not..). Mouse scroll wheel support in Word pre-X depends totally on the mouse drivers. Microsoft drivers for the Microsoft Mouse generally work (and will often drive other companies' mice!).

In Windows, the keyboard shortcuts are listed in the Help, in a topic surprisingly enough called 'keyword shortcuts'. On the Mac, only some of the keystrokes are listed, in various topics such as 'About using shortcut keys' and 'Select text and graphics'. To find the list on either platform, use Search from the Microsoft Office Help to look for the word 'keyboard'.

You can look at the Key Assignments by using Tools>Customize>Keyboard on either platform. If you select a command, and it has a key assignment, the Customize dialog will tell you what it is. This is a better place to look than the Help, because users can (and should) change their keystrokes to suit themselves on either platform. The Customize dialog also includes a handy Reset button if you decide you do not like the keystrokes you inherited from the previous user on that computer.

Finally, each version of Word enables you to print a list of the currently-assigned keystrokes so you can stick them on the wall. To print them on the Mac:

1. Go to Tools>Macro>Macros
2. In the Macros In pop-up menu, click Word Commands
3. In the Macro name box click ListCommands
4. Click Run
5. In the List Commands dialog, click Current Menu and Keyboard settings and OK
6. On the File menu, click Print.

You do it exactly the same way in Windows, or see here for a more extensive pre-built list.

One keystroke that will catch you out a few times is Command + h. Ctrl + h in Windows is the shortcut for the Replace dialog. On Mac OS X, Command + h hides the application! Use Command + Shift + H for the Replace dialog on OS X.

With OS X, Apple changed some of the keystrokes reserved for the operating system and added some new ones. On each version of Mac OS, Word follows system convention.

Some Mac keyboards do not have a Forward Delete key. Word needs one: there is a difference in Word between Forward Delete and Back Delete. You will strike it most often in tables: in a Table, Delete becomes 'Clear' which removes the cell contents without removing the cells. Use Cut to delete the cells themselves. Back Delete will remove text within a cell but has no effect if more than one cell is selected. If you are on a Mac laptop, the Forward Delete key is probably Function + Delete.

The Mac has an Option Key, Windows does not have an equivalent. Generally what you expect from the Option key will be on the Control Key in Windows.

Three very commonly-used shortcuts are Command + c (Copy), Command + v (Paste), and Command + s (Save). On Windows these are Ctrl + v, Ctrl + c, and Ctrl + s.

A keystroke that may catch you out a few times is Clear Formatting: on the PC it's Ctrl + q to restore paragraph formatting to that of the underlying style, and Ctrl + Space Bar to restore character (font) formatting. On Mac OS 9, they are the same. On Mac OS X, these are Command + Option + q and Ctrl + Space Bar.

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Later versions of Word have an Edit>Clear>Formats command on the Menu bar, which will save you trying to remember the other two. However, note that Clear>Formats resets the formatting back to the formatting of Normal Style (it applies Normal Style) whereas the individual commands simply reset a paragraph to the formatting of the current style.

Different Menus

One thing that will catch you out all the time is that on the Mac, Word adopts the Mac convention of having a Preferences command. In OS X it's on the Application (Word) menu, in OS 9 it's on the Edit menu, again, following the OS convention. On the PC, this is Tools>Options on the Tools menu. It's the same thing, the tabs are exactly the same inside.

Word on the Mac still has a Work menu you can put on your menu bar; this has been replaced by the Task Pane (which is nowhere near as convenient) in later versions of PC Word.

Mac Word also has a Font menu which the PC lacks.

Different Print Mechanism

In order to display a document in WYSIWYG mode, Word needs to know a lot about the capabilities of the printer the document will eventually be sent to.

In Windows this is very simple: Word reads all the information it needs from the printer driver for the printer set as the Windows default. On the Mac, it attempts to do the same thing, but the mechanism is vastly more complex. Look here for more detail.

Some Features Didn't Make it

Making software is a depressingly manual activity. Every line of code has to be planned, typed, and checked. There are more than 30 million of them in Microsoft Office. There simply was not enough time and money to bring all the features of PC Word across to the Mac. And some of them we wouldn't want, anyway! Most of the omissions are of interest only to solution developers:

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• Font embedding is not supported on the Mac.
• Customized toolbar buttons are supported on the Mac, but the Icon Editor is missing.
• Speech recognition is not available.
• HTML support in Word for the Mac is not at the same level as it is in Word on the PC: many web pages load as a shattered mess. The code stripping utility HTMLFilter2 available for the PC is not available for the Mac.
• Word on the PC has a menu item enabling you to Export to Compact HTML. On the Mac, this is an option on the File>Save As Web Page menu option named Save only display information into HTML. The other option, Save entire file into HTML is the equivalent of the Word PC's Save As Web Page; it saves a Word document expressed in XML. Note: if you 'Save only display information', the file looks the same, but the structural information and content that enable Word to reconstruct a Word document from the XML file has been removed.

Fonts Can be a Problem

On the PC, you can use characters with impunity: if the PC does not have the font, it will find the closest font that contains the character. On the Mac, in Word 2004 and above, you can use the exact same range of characters because Word 2004 is running in Unicode; however, because you cannot embed the font in the document, you need to make sure that each character that you use exists in one or more of the Unicode fonts your recipient has. If in doubt, for PC compatibility, use only the fonts that Microsoft supplies.

Microsoft includes a pack of fonts with Mac Office that have been very carefully hinted to display and print the same on the Mac as the same-named fonts do on the PC. Although the Mac can happily use PC fonts, the rendering of those may be subtly different, particularly on the high-res Mac displays.

Jim Gordon reports that he has no problems at all with the following list of fonts:

Arial

Calibri

Cambria

Candara

Consolas

Constantia

Corbel

Times New Roman

Verdana

Meiryo

Jim says 'Office for Mac has a very nice feature to make font compatibility a cinch. When you choose a font using the Home tab of the Ribbon, the first item in the list is Font Collections. The easy way to ensure compatibility is to choose fonts from the Windows Office Compatible font collection submenu.

What Is The Difference Between Microsoft Windows And Apple Mac Os X

'If you have company specific fonts they must be installed onto each Mac in order for Mac Word to use them. There is no work-around to the restrictions John mentioned. Fonts embedded by Windows Word are ignored.

'I haven't had problems with cross-platform differences with our HP, Epson, and Lanier printer drivers, but we do test for differences before purchasing so that we don't run into such problems.

While there's no interface on Mac Word to make Font Themes and Color Themes (you can do it in PowerPoint, or with VBA), Themes made on PCs will work on a Mac.

The Advanced Typography settings you can apply in Mac Word will display in Windows Word, but there's no Advanced Typography interface in Word for Windows, so you have to use Mac Word for this feature.

Differences Between Microsoft Windows And Mac Os X 10 11

VBA a Level Behind

The VBA level in Mac Word is markedly less capable than in PC Word: around the level of Word 2003 but with missing bits.

Visual Basic for Applications on the Mac is at version 6 (on the PC, this is Word 2000 level of VBA); Word 2013 on the PC is at version 7. Code you write on the Mac will run on the PC if you are careful. Expect code you write on the PC in Word 2000 or above to generate compile- or run-time errors on the Mac.

Active-X controls will not work on Macs. 'Legacy' controls will work. Some of the latest controls from 2103 won't work on a Mac.

Developers should read George Clark's article for more detail.

ActiveX is not supported on the Mac at all. If you create userforms, use only the controls provided in the Forms Toolbar on the Mac, anything else you bring from the PC will generate an error when the user opens the document.

Digital Signatures are not supported on the Mac, and neither is code signing. You will not be able to open a signed project in Mac Word. If the signature prevents you from changing a macro, the code will be execute-only on the Mac.

AppleScript is not available on the PC. VBA is very powerful: investigate scripting your application from AppleScript with VBA, using the 'Do Visual Basic' command.

The VBA Integrated Development Environment is severely cut back on the Mac. If you plan to develop much VBA, invest in a copy of Virtual PC: the productivity you gain is enormous. Hint: Use Windows 7 and NTFS disk format.