Deathmatch review: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Windows 8.1 has languished as Microsoft seeks to move past its failure.

With OS X 10.10 Yosemite now shipping and Windows 8.1 done with its 2014 update cycle, how do the two flagship PC operating systems compare?

Windows 8.1 and some of its 2014 updates let users avoid most of the Windows 8 experience, so they can return to a Windows 7-like state of comfort. In contrast, Yosemite moves the Mac into new collaborative territory with iPads and iPhones, and it adopts iOS visual conventions. In short, Windows has essentially languished this year as Microsoft turns its attention to the next version to debut next year, and Apple has continued its steady pace of evolving OS X into iOS territory.'

My colleague Woody Leonhard has reviewed 2013's Windows 8.1 in-depth, as well as the Update 1 improvements from 2014, and I encourage you to read his take to understand the nuances of Microsoft's tablet/desktop hybrid OS. I've previously detailed the intriguing new capabilities in OS X Yosemite, which I also urge you to check out. Here, I highlight the key differences, strengths, and weaknesses of the two OSes, both of which I've been using since their first betas were released, organized by InfoWorld's scoring categories for desktop operating systems.

Meanwhile, the new OS X Yosemite changes the visual appearance of OS X to mirror that of iOS 8, while leaving most OS functions working as they did before. Instead, Apple has focused its changes is on new features, such as tighter integration with iOS and iCloud via its Handoff, iCloud Drive, and Continuity capabilities.

For example, using Handoff, a recent-model Mac can detect a nearby iPhone and transfer the email, calendar item, or document in progress there to the Mac. Using Continuity, a wider set of Mac's can answer calls made to a nearby iPhone (though the voice quality is bad) or participate in an SMS conversation on that iPhone.

But at the end of the day, OS X Yosemite is, like Windows 8.1, a small upgrade from its predecessor. For both Apple and Microsoft, it's an era of incremental change.

Ease of use: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 7
OS X Yosemite: 9
 
Apple defined the graphical user interface as we know it today, and despite nearly 30 years of changes, the core metaphors remain unchanged. That consistency makes it easy to use each new version of OS X, and Yosemite is no exception.

Yet the OS has expanded to support touch gestures in a very natural way, via touch mice and touchpads. Also, Apple's slew of helper utilities -- such as the Quick Look preview facility, the Notification Center, the embedded sharing capabilities, and the Spotlight search tool -- do what Apple does best: offer sophisticated capabilities that users can discover as needed, rather than face a steep learning curve to get started. The Dock and the persistent menu bar also simplify app access, while the full-screen mode introduced in OS X Lion lets users stay focused when they want to be, yet have quick access to the rest of the OS as desired.

Yosemite makes a few small enhancements to that UI: One is that the Notification Center, like its iOS 8 counterpart, can now contain widgets ("extensions"), such as for stock data, current weather, or third-party notions, including Evernote updates. OS X has also changed its unloved Dashboard feature -- which holds an earlier form of widgets -- so that it can now appear as an overlay over your current Desktop screen, not only as a separate Desktop. Still, the Dashboard remains pretty useless. Don't expect it to survive past Yosemite now that the more accessible extensions are here.

The bigger change is the change from iCloud Documents to iCloud Drive. iCloud Documents was awkward to use, with a wholly separate user interface in Open and Save dialogs from the standard Finder, and a clumsy method to move files between iCloud Documents and the Finder. Plus, iCloud Documents were available only to their apps.

The new iCloud Drive works like Dropbox or Box displayed as a virtual disk whose files and folders are accessible using the standard Open and Save dialogs, as well as the standard Finder windows. Apps still have their own folders, for compatibility with iOS apps that use iCloud Documents (including Apple's own iWork suite). On iOS 8, iCloud Drive is treated as an import/export function, not as a direct save/open a mechanism as it is on OS X Yosemite, so there are still vestiges of the clunky iCloud Documents separation in iCloud Drive.

iCloud Drive in OS X Yosemite works like any other cloud service's virtual drive. But it also provides app-specific folders for compatibility with apps designed for its iCloud Documents predecessor, such as Pages here.

In Yosemite, Apple uses iCloud Drive in its Mail app so that large attachments can be automatically stored on iCloud Drive, with recipients getting a link to the file (they don't need an iCloud account to retrieve them). That helps get past attachment limits in email servers.

Still, OS X flaws like the iCloud Document remnants and Dashboard awkwardness pale in comparison to Windows 8.1's dissonant UI and awkward stitching together of two distinct environments: Windows 7 (called Windows Desktop) and Metro (which has no formal name).

As an example of an unfriendly change in Windows 8 not corrected in Windows 8.1, Microsoft has added the ribbon to the File Explorer file manager. Fair enough -- it's standard in Microsoft's apps, after all. But unlike the ribbon in other apps, the one in File Explorer is hidden until you click or tap the corresponding menu. That's fine.

The boneheaded part is that when the ribbon displays, it overlays part of your content window, obscuring whatever is at the top. In a file manager, that's especially problematic. Fortunately, you can turn off this autohide functionality to make File Explorer's ribbon work like all other apps' ribbons and stay affixed above the content area.

By contrast, the Metro part of Windows 8 can be downright elegant in its simplicity, focus, and use of imagery, without distracting chrome such as window frames and menus. It makes Windows 7 look dowdy and archaic.

Another nice touch, taken from Windows tablets, is the Snap feature that lets you run two Metro apps side by side. Figuring out how to enable this feature is not at all intuitive (right-click the upper-left corner of the current app), but once you know how to do it, you can use your Metro screen space more effectively, especially for running widgets that don't need a whole screen.]

The Windows 8.1 Snap view -- once you figure out how to enable it -- lets you use Metro's screen real estate more effectively, especially for widget-style apps like Weather.

Metro still struggles to work well with both keyboard/mouse and touch scenarios. For example, there are two ways to get app options, not in the app's screens, and they're easily reached through gestures. But if you -- like 99 percent of the planet -- use a mouse and keyboard, accessing the sharing and settings services (called "charms") involves an awkward action. If you don't have a physical keyboard, such as for a tablet, you simply can't use certain Metro features. For example, you can't search for an app by typing its name in the Start screen because there's no way to invoke the onscreen keyboard. You really need a keyboard to use a Windows tablet.

Fortunately, Windows 8.1 Update 1 brought two new icons -- Search and Power -- that now make search and restart or shutdown both easily discoverable and simpler to use.]

A pair of small but very useful additions to the Metro Start screen in Windows 8.1 is the Search and Power buttons (at upper right) that make these two common features easier to discover and access.

Despite its simplicity, the Metro environment can be befuddling. The Store app and Internet Explorer are difficult to navigate, for example, and easily let you run in circles. One reason for this: There's little apparent hierarchy in Metro apps, and you often have to use the application bar to navigate to specific functions rather than move laterally among them via the visible navigation controls. It's a bit like being forced to walk through a maze when you actually want to get somewhere as directly as possible.

However, IE11's copying of Apple Safari's iCloud Tabs is a nice touch, letting you access recently opened websites on other PCs linked to your Microsoft account. Windows 8.1 also nicely reworks the PC Settings app to bring in more functions, but you'll still rely on the separate Control Panel in the Windows Desktop, which provides much more control over the PC.

The Windows Desktop part is Windows 7 you know and probably love. The good news in Windows 8.1 is that you can set your PC to boot directly to the familiar Windows Desktop, rather than having to go to the Metro Start screen, then click the Desktop tile. And the taskbar shows running Metro apps now, not only Desktop apps.

Windows 8.1's taskbar shows both Desktop and Metro apps, for easier access to both.

Still, you can unexpectedly pop into the Metro environment by double-clicking a file and finding it opens a Metro app instead of a traditional Windows program. Microsoft wants people to switch to Metro, so it has set the default core apps such as email and media players to the Metro versions.

Also, the Start menu remains missing in Windows 8.1, so it's hard to get to your Windows 7 apps quickly. Microsoft has brought back the Start button, but all it does is switch you between Metro and the Windows Desktop -- as if you pressed the Windows key. (To get the handy Power User menu, shown above, you now right-click that Start button, or you can continue to use the Windows-X shortcut.)

Just as Metro works nicely via touch and poorly via traditional input methods, Windows Desktop works well via traditional input methods and poorly via touch -- Windows 8.1 does nothing to fix that. Icons and menus are often too small to read on a tablet screen, as well as too hard to touch or tap reliably. Plus, touch equivalents for common actions such as right-clicking do not work reliably in the Windows Desktop.
Ultimately, you're switching between two different computers that share a file system and a few core services, and each computer is optimized for a different set of input methods. As InfoWorld has suggested, it would have been better to leave Metro for tablets and Windows 7 for laptops and desktop PCs, then slowly merged the UIs as Apple is doing with OS X and iOS. For most users, Windows 8.1 will be a confounding mess, even if the two piles can be kept a bit more separated.

There is hope: The forthcoming Windows 10 takes many of InfoWorld's suggestions to intelligently merge the Desktop and Metro environments. But until Windows 10 ships sometime next year, you're stuck with the Jekyll-and-Hyde split that is Windows 8.1.

Features: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 7
OS X Yosemite: 9
Over the years, Apple has made OS X much more than an operating system. It's also a product suite, with a very capable email client, calendar manager, note-taker, browser, lightweight word processor, image editor/PDF markup tool, maps-and-directions app, media player, and instant messaging client.

If you buy a new Mac, you also get the very capable iWork productivity suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), iPhoto (to be replaced next year with Photos, which is not yet in public beta), GarageBand, and iMovie apps for media manipulation and creation. For many users, these apps are all they need. Beyond the assortment of moderately to highly capable apps, OS X has exceptional support for human languages and for people with various kinds of disabilities.

Windows 8 offers much less than OS X across the board, partly because Microsoft wants people to buy or subscribe to its pricey Office suite, so tools such as WordPad and the Mail app in Metro provide only a subset of OS X's counterparts. You can, of course, pay extra for Microsoft Outlook in the Windows Desktop to get a full email client for Windows.

But even where Microsoft doesn't have a product it wants to sell you -- for example, media playback (Xbox Music, Xbox Video, and Windows Media Player) and PDF markup (Reader) -- its tools are decidedly inferior to OS X's (iTunes and Preview, respectively).

And after two and a half years, Metro's Mail app still doesn't support the oldest and most common type of email account (POP). Windows 8.1's services for sharing, notifications, and search are also less capable and more awkwardly implemented than OS X's equivalents.

Some of the Metro apps in Windows 8.1 are more functional than in Windows 8, and they're more like what's available in iOS and Android. For example, the Camera app supports panoramic shooting and the Photos the app allows for basic image manipulation such as cropping and color shifting, as in recent iOS and Android editions.

But the music and video players, calendar, and PDF apps are decidedly inferior to those in OS X. The Alarms app is inferior to what you get in iOS or Android, though OS X has no equivalent. Metro's Weather app is the most compelling of the Metro apps; OS X Yosemite's equivalent is a simple widget in the Notification Center. The Sports app remains a nicely customizable gateway to your favorite sports content.

Also new to Windows 8.1 are apps for scanning documents (long built-in to OS X's Preview and Image Capture apps, where it makes more sense to integrate scanning capability) and maintaining reading lists of Web documents (which OS X's Safari has had for some time, and again a more sensible location for this capability). The Metro Calculator app is very much like OS X's ancient version. Microsoft seems to be throwing widgets into Metro to increase the list of features, rather than creating a suite of compelling apps.

The big new thing in Yosemite is Handoff and Continuity, the features that let Macs work with iOS devices more easily. Handoff is very intriguing, but unfortunately, I found it unreliable on the Mac. Activities on my iPhone 6 or iPad Mini usually did not show up as available to Handoff on the OS X Dock, where they should appear. Ditto for the reverse. Yet Handoff worked nicely and consistently between my iPhone 6 and iPad Mini. For some reason, my 2012 MacBook Pro didn't often get the Handoff message, though it's compatible.

The Handoff feature in OS X Yosemite -- when it works -- is a great convenience if you use an iOS device and want to move what you're doing on a mobile device to your Mac, or vice versa.

By contrast, Continuity worked fine on both a 2009 MacBook Pro and 2012 MacBook Pro: The FaceTime app noticed when my iPhone 6 got a call and let me take the call on my Mac via FaceTime Audio. The same goes for the Messages app with SMS text messages received on my iPhone 6. The rest of Continuity existed in prior versions of OS X and iOS, such as keeping alerts, iMessages, passwords, browser tabs, "where I left off" status, and so on in sync automatically across your iCloud-connected devices.

Handoff needs some work in OS X, clearly, but based on how it functions in iOS 8, the capability holds much promise.

Windows 8.1 has nothing like OS X's Handoff and its equivalents to OS X's Continuity are limited to updating application settings and in the tiny number of apps, "where I left off" status for documents.

Manageability: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 9
OS X Yosemite: 7
If you're willing to spend the money, you can manage Windows 8 PCs every which way from Sunday using tools such as Microsoft's System Center. Remote installation, policy enforcement, application monitoring, software updating, and so forth are all available.

OS X Yosemite provides similar capabilities through its use of managed client profiles -- including enforcing the use of disk encryption -- through OS X Server. Alternatively, OS X management capabilities are available through third-party tools such as those from Quest Software that plug into System Center or via MDM tools from the likes of Citrix Systems, Good Technology, and MobileIron.

OS X Mavericks rationalized the OS X policy set with iOS, so it's easier to manage Macs using the tools you likely have in place for mobile devices. Mavericks also supported enterprise-style app licensing for Mac App Store apps, a big shift IT should welcome. Yosemite keeps these and adds a few more policies to cover new features like Handoff.

But the degree of control available to Windows admins -- as well as the number of tools to exert that control -- is still far greater than is available for OS X admins.

Security: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 8
OS X Yosemite: 9
With nearly every computer these days connected to the Internet, security is a big focus, including both application security and data security. Windows has been a malware magnet for years, and antivirus software has been only partially effective in protecting PCs.

Macs have been immune from most attacks, but in the last two years, the Mac has seen a handful of high-profile Trojan attacks through plug-in technologies such as Oracle Java and Adobe Flash. Windows, of course, suffers hundreds of such attacks each year.

Microsoft provides in Windows 8.1 the free but basic Windows Defender antimalware app (as it provided Security Essentials for earlier Windows versions), so you get some native defense against malware. Likewise, Apple has included antimalware detection since OS X Mountain Lion, with daily checks to update signatures and remove known malware.

But Windows' registry makes it harder to truly eliminate malware than Apple's Unix-based approach of relying on discrete files and folders that can simply be deleted if found to be harmful.

OS X has a feature called Gatekeeper that prevents installation of apps without a valid Apple developer signature, meant to block stealth malware from secretly installing itself. You can disable that feature permanently or on a  case-by-case basis (such as to install old software from CDs you trust). Windows will alert you to suspect downloads, but it can't prevent sophisticated malware from self-installing as OS X can. OS X also won't run Java versions older than Java 7, which cuts off a major route for malware infections.

Security researchers such as Trail of Bits say OS X is much harder for hackers to successfully attack than Windows, though Microsoft's Vista and later have done a good job of closing up many holes in Windows XP. Also, many more tools are available to monitor and protect Windows, commensurate to its greater risk, than for OS X.

Both OSes' boot loaders include antimalware detection, and OS X has a password-protected firmware option to prevent startup from external disks. That way, no one can bypass the startup password by booting from a different disk. (One of OS X's handy features lets you boot a Mac from external disks and network volumes easily, which is great for testing and shared environments.)

Beyond such application security, both OSes support FIPS 140-2 cryptographic encryption. Both OSes also provide IT-manageable on-disk encryption, though Microsoft's BitLocker requires a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to implement it fully, and few PCs have such a chip.

For me, that means I can't access corporate email from one of my Windows 8 PCs via the Metro Mail app because it has no TPM to enable encryption; also, our Office 365 Exchange server requires encryption be enabled to gain access. That same server works fine with OS X, iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 devices' encryption, and of course it works fine with my TPM-equipped Surface Pro tablet.

Also easier in OS X is data security, thanks to the included Time Machine backup program. With Time Machine, it's dead simple to back up a Mac or OS X Server, and the backups can be encrypted and even rotated among multiple disks. System restoration is also exceedingly easy, with no driver installation or command-line setup involved.

Windows 8 introduced File History, which backs up data files in certain locations to the choice of your startup disk, an external disk, or Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service. Like Time Machine, File History keeps incremental versions of these files so that you can roll back to a previous point in time. Unlike Time Machine, it can't restore your whole PC in case of a crash or simply to transfer your environment to a new machine. Windows 8.1 doesn't change that.

Of course, Windows 8 relies on its OneDrive cloud storage service as the default location for Office and other Microsoft apps' files, as does OS X Yosemite for iWork and other Apple apps' files. Cloud storage makes backup less of an issue -- a toasted hard drive doesn't matter.
On the other hand, cloud storage is synced storage, so deletion in one place deletes a file everywhere, increasing the risk of loss. For cloud data recovery, Windows 8.1 moves OneDrive files deleted from the PC's File Explorer to the local trash, so it can be recovered from there until you empty the trash. It also moves files deleted on OneDrive into a trash folder you can access via the Web.

By contrast, for iCloud Drive, you can recover deleted files if you deleted them from OS X, where they're placed in a trash folder. But if you delete them on the iCloud.com website or from an iOS device, they're gone forever, with no undelete capability -- a dangerous move.

Compatibility: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8: 10
OS X Yosemite: 8

Because Windows 8 is Windows 7 with the Metro environment tacked on, it is compatible with all the software, hardware, and services you already have. Yes, some older PCs won't run Windows 8.1, but that's about resource requirements and lack of drivers for those that also don't support Windows 7.

OS X Yosemite, of course, runs only on Apple's Macs, for which there is a smaller set of hardware and software available than for Windows. Although Apple is ruthless in dropping technologies over time as it deems them problematic or limiting, none has been dropped in Yosemite, which also runs on the same Macs that supported the previous version of the OS (Mavericks).

But you can't use Yosemite's new Handoff features unless your Mac is a 2012 or newer model; they require radios that support both Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi Direct, which earlier models don't have.
OS X is frequently underappreciated for its compatibility with corporate resources. It supports Microsoft's SMB file-sharing; it supports Open Directory and Active Directory; it supports corporate VPNs, and its email, calendar, task, and notes apps all support Exchange out of the box, though some enterprises have reported odd compatibility issues with Exchange calendars.

The Safari browser is also much more compatible with the current and emerging HTML standards than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For example, IE11 scores 376 out of 555 points in the HTML5Test.com tests, up from IE10's 335, but well short of 427 in OS X Yosemite's Safari 8, 475 in Mozilla's Firefox 32, and 512 in Google's Chrome 37. Still, if you want maximum modern Web compatibility, on either platform Chrome is the clear leader.

The sad truth is that IE is a woefully outdated browser that's not compatible with many websites. Enterprises often stick with it due to the use of ActiveX-based apps, but that forces organizations to support both IE for legacy apps and Chrome for modern websites.

It's best to cut the IE cord and standardize on a single browser that works on almost everything and leave the ActiveX world behind. Microsoft has been urging businesses to drop ActiveX for years, to little effect. But IE11's horrible compatibility with the modern Web might finally force the issue, though by moving companies to a competing browser.

Value: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 7
OS X Yosemite: 10
 
OS X Yosemite is clearly the better value, offering more capability and ease of use -- the two factors that matter most to the public -- then Windows 8. In addition, the psychic price of Windows 8's split personality is quite high, even with Windows 8.1's ability to better hide the Metro side.

Apple's free upgrade price for Yosemite is hard to beat. But Microsoft has sort of matched it with Windows 8.1, which is free to Windows 8 users. If you're running a prior version of Windows, Windows 8.1 Pro costs $200. If you're running OS X Snow Leopard or later, you can upgrade to Yosemite at no charge. Also, you don't need to do an intermediate upgrade first, as Window 8.1 requires if you have Windows XP or Vista.
For enterprises, OS X may have a higher cost for IT, at least initially, as staff must learn to manage and support the OS and the company must invest in tools to achieve the same level of management as the tools already purchased for Windows allow. Mac users tend to require less support than PC users, perhaps because most Mac users choose the platform and are thus more likely to be self-supporting in the first place.

How it all adds up: Windows 8.1 vs. OS X Yosemite

Scores
Windows 8.1: 7.8
OS X Yosemite: 8.7

Clearly, OS X Yosemite is a better operating system than Windows 8.1. It's better designed, more capable, and -- contrary to many people's beliefs -- supportive of mainstream business security and management needs. But Windows supports a much wider universe of apps, so many people legitimately can use only a PC.

The misguided UI mismatch in Windows 8 caused many users to look for alternatives -- most simply stuck with Windows 7. If you're in the market for a new PC, you should get one running Windows 7 while you still can (a few are still available online).

If you must get a PC with Windows 8.1, the good news is that it is more tolerable than Windows 8. The bad news is that it's still basically Windows 8, so if you want a new computer, move to a Mac, using a Windows virtual machine as a transition aid.

InfoWorld Scorecard	Ease of use (25%)	Features (25%)	Manageability (15%)	Security (15%)	Compatibility (10%)	Value (10%)	Overall Score
Apple OS X Yosemite	9	9	7	9	8	10	8.7
Microsoft Windows 8.1	7	7	9	8	10	7	7.8