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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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.