How much time do you spend between Windows and Mac OS X?

[Sonic McTails]

I'm curious what percentage you spend booted into each. I'm sad to say I'm currently at about 80 percent of my time in Windows, and the remaining 20 in Mac OS X but I have a fairly good reason to, so story time:

I'm a developer, and for one of my projects, I have to work on a Windows based game. We intend to eventually port to Mac OS X, but that day is far away. At this time, I had my PowerBook G4 for day to day stuff, and a Dell Optimex G270 for working on the game. Its wasn't an ideal solution, but it worked quite well for quite some time. Anyway, I had been expecting to replace the PowerBook fairly soon because it was showing signs of death (weird sounds, LCD flickering etc), but I wasn't in a rush, and since I can work with just Windows for awhile, I wasn't getting ready to replace it that soon.

In an incredible stroke of bad luck, the PC died first just before the XOM solution came out with blown caps on the motherboard. I tried to go back to my old PC, but it simply didn't have enough juice to allow me to confirmably work. I was about to go out and buy a new PC when I read on Slashdot that the XOM solution had been released. Deciding that the PowerBook was going to go any day, and I needed a PC just for development, and not for gaming (and since graphic accleration doesn't matter much to watching text scroll when compiling), I ran out, and bought a MacBook Pro, replacing both machines in one blow. I installed XOM, and after a few bloated installs, got XOM working nicely. After Apple replaced BootCamp, I reformatted (again), loaded Windows and XP, and have been incredibly happy ever since. Now that I have dual display working, the one major anonyance is the lack of audio sensing in Windows, but that's quite livable.

So how much time do you spend between OSes, and why'd you get an intel mac to do it?

[NeoRicen]

I spend most of my times in Windows, mainly because the Intel macs have crap all software yet and Windows can do everything it could on a PC, I guess that in time when photoshop/flash are Universal I'll be spending alot more time in OSX.

[organik]

90% osx

it would be all X except I need XP for 1 app for work. Using XP again just reminds me why I switched to Mac in the first place. I actually have never found windows equivalents of quite a few mac apps I love (contrary to what most people believe).

[jrock_col@mac.com]

....I guess that in time when photoshop/flash are Universal I'll be spending alot more time in OSX.

100% agree with you but right now I spend 95% of my time on windows:(


...Using XP again just reminds me why I switched to Mac in the first place.

Agree with you too... but what can I do?:( Photoshop/flash on intel mac just sucks:mad:

[kitch]

Well, right now I would say maybe 60% OSX 40% XP. It's the first time I've had good hardware in a while for PC gaming so I've been spending quite a bit of time in XP revisiting old favs like CS:S and HL2. Also quite a bit of time on the BF2 Demo.

I'd venture to guess that this split will become an even greater lean towards OSX in the near future. I bought the machine because I wanted some updated gaming hardware, but also because I love the form factor and OSX for everyday productivity. :) Oh, and when the WoW expansion comes out I might as well remove my XP partition completely, I'll be WoWing on OSX 24/7

[PShot07]

My percentage of time changes a lot... it depends on what I am doing.

For example, on the weekends and spring break I've probably spend about 80% of my time in Windows XP (in fact I'm in it now.. it's still spring break). This won't last though. The only reason I'm in XP so much is because I have time to play games that I have... that are only on XP. Examples include Age of Empires III, Rise of Nations, and Oblivion (which runs great I might add).

When school gets going again next week I can say without a doubt that I will use OS X more. Why? I trust OS X more than Windows. When I have papers to write I'll use Office for Mac and not my copy of Office for Windows. I don't trust Windows at all. They ONLY time I use windows is to play games... that's it. And I'm about to go back to Oblivion now in fact.

Macintosh will ALWAYS be my primary operating system.

[diamondsw]

I spend a good 95% of my time in OS X. For my needs, Photoshop runs fine in Rosetta, and I don't feel like buying/pirating Photoshop anyway. About the only thing I spend time in Windows for is tweaking and video transcoding.

[themacman]

I spend about 95% of my time on XP. I love Apple hardware, I have a MacBook Pro, 2.0 1 Gig RAM. I use it mostly for work. The irony is, it runs Windows better than any other PC that I have ever owned. When I need to play, like iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, etc. it is OSX time!!

[imapetert]

The MBP has allowed me to phase out my PC which was used mostly for gaming anyways.

It is funny now, due to the lack of Universal apps, I use windows for dev work, and gaming now (which is great).

But, by allowing Windows to share space on my mac, I am constantly reminded how much better OSX really is, its like a breath of fresh air.

Before, I wasnt incredibly partial towards either one, but now I see that Windows feels cluttered.

As more apps become universial, I will start moving back to OSX. And here is to hoping that Apple provides a full speed virtualization app in Leopard.

[Spooof]

Well I went out and bought my first Mac (MBP 2.0) on the morning that they announced Boot Camp. I am a long time Dos/Windows user but now love the OSX. I primarily only use XP for Games right now. I would say that I am 90% OSX, but once the novelty of photobooth, imovie, etc wear off I will most likely spend more time gaming and therefore spend more time in XP.

-Spooof

[scenespin]

85% in OSX. since XP is more or less a gaming operating system. even though the universal applications aren't ready for OSX, the system is still designed to make better use of the operating system alongside the products.

[Sonic McTails]

Ugh, I've managed to go days between reboots into Mac OS X. It's more now for that rare Perl app this project requires, although it is ceterianly nice to have around. Startup Disk lets me boot into XP, although I always use mac OS X when I'm not coding or planning to code at the very least.

[daleth]

I actually use XP about 90-95% of the time. Although many of the apps I use frequently I also have for OSX (PS, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc), ALL of the sounrd-related/recording apps I need are PC only, or I only have for PC (FLStudio6, Traktor, Nuendo and all kinds of plugins). The one major advantage of having OSX around, for me, is to check web designs in Safari, as there is still no effective emulator for it.

And something that's always irritated me, though it may sound like a tiny thing, is mouse movement in OSX. First of all, you have to freaking hack it just to remove mouse acceleration, and even then it feels squishy and inaccurate. It continues to amaze me how many people suffer through such inaccurate mouse movement without realizing it! For some reason I just can't get the mouse to respond as sharply in OSX as it always has in windows.

If and when I get the Universal Binary version Final Cut Pro 5 HD, I will have another extremely good reason to use OSX, and it is for exactly this reason that I am so excited to at least have OSX there, available whenever I need it, even if I use XP most of the time.

[mbp23456]

since under xp there is no whine... i am figuring it is better for the haardware...
i was reading of people develoing the whine in the duo core with time
im waiting till mac updates the damn OSX software to eliminate the problem
if it turn out to be a harware issue... i'll ship it back
until they say for sure... XP for me

[FrostyFire]

Yeah I find myself using XP more....probably because of the lack of universal binary support thus far....I'm mainly using OSX to watch my video podcasts or downloaded movies. I download the stuff in XP using Azeurus then open it in OSX :) .

[buzzert]

Wow. I am amazed how many people say they use Windows more than half the time. If you use windows most of the time, why did you buy a Mac?

Anyway, I would actually have to say I use OS X 98% of the time. When I first installed boot camp, I was like "Yes! I can run any windows apps now! Even games!". About a month later, I realized that I've only booted into XP twice, once when I first got it working, and the second time when I was at a LAN party to play BF2 (by the way, the iMac makes a really cool LAN party machine, and when people see I can do anything on it, people get really jealous. :D)

I don't know, I guess it took Boot Camp to realize that everything I can do in Windows, I can do on a Mac (sometimes much better, and better looking).

But I love Battlefield 2, so I gotta have that :P

[ilkevinli]

Because the MacBook Pro is the nicest looking notebook out. Thats why.


Wow. I am amazed how many people say they use Windows more than half the time. If you use windows most of the time, why did you buy a Mac?

[kainewynd2]

99% OS X... I use Windows so very, very rarely. Pretty much everything I do except gaming is done on the OS X side. I hate the fact that I can't just download source code for things and compile it in XP without additional software... that and the four year old GUI is really beginning to bug me.

[Ari]

I've been using Windows nearly 98% of the time on my iMac, simply because, as others have mentioned, there's a serious lack of apps for the Intel Macs. I don't think Apple should have released the Intels this early; there just aren't very many universal binaries of big time Adobe and Macromedia apps like Contribute and Dreamweaver. It's terrible. I'd like to switch back to OS X, but throw in all the good games on Windows, and it's a tough choice.

[Ari]

I've been using Windows nearly 98% of the time on my iMac, simply because, as others have mentioned, there's a serious lack of apps for the Intel Macs. I don't think Apple should have released the Intels this early; there just aren't very many universal binaries of big time Adobe and Macromedia apps like Contribute and Dreamweaver. It's terrible. I'd like to switch back to OS X, but throw in all the good games on Windows, and it's a tough choice.