HACKER Q&A
📣 fastily

Windows/Linux software that has no real equivalent on macOS?


Asking about productivity software and not video games. I’m curious about any niches that are underserved and/or have no real alternatives

  👤 mmooss Accepted Answer ✓
Industry-specific applications often run only on Windows: Small organizations make them, limiting capacity to support more platforms, and their clients are businesses and therefore usually use Windows. For example, I'd expect that most software for running accountants' offices would run only on Windows.

A big exception is vendor-hosted browser-based software, which can run on more platforms. Some features could still be Windows-only. Another exception is phone-based software.

👤 bigyabai
Most of the killer apps I use on Linux are either free versions of Mac apps (eg. Planify) or server software that will never run like-native (eg. Docker).
👤 ashed96
IDM - Internet Download Manager -- Only available for Windows, never saw a proper alternative for Linux/MacOS with the same reliability and browser integration.

Though no longer download videos/files enough to complain about it.

👤 al_borland
The only thing I really miss at work after moving from Windows to macOS is AutoHotKey.

I tried Hammerspoon. I thought having a more normal language (lua) would make it easier, but it felt more like fewer batteries were included, which made the ramp up seem steeper. Trivial things in AHK seemed like they needed a lot of extra supporting functions to enable it in HS. Some rose colored glasses could be involved here as well, as AHK had a lot of its own quirks I had to work around to make it reliable… but that was for robust code, not simple functionality. I also had a lot of downtime at work when first using AHK… time I didn’t have when I was trying to get HS going. I stopped using it while trying to diagnose some mouse/windowing issues I was having. It’s safe to say it wasn’t the problem, but I haven’t gone back to it.

AppleScript exists, and JavaScript support has been added, but it seems like Apple doesn’t care much about it anymore.

Shortcuts isn’t as powerful, and without an Apple ID (which I can’t have on my work Mac), I don’t think I can actually share or migrate anything I make, which makes it feel like a dead end. It’s also pretty slow.

Automator also seems like it will be sunset at some point, in favor of Shortcuts.

👤 dasefx
Notepad++, I really want that software on my Mac.
👤 vismit2000
The ease of Windows Clipboard with Win+V; Windows Powertoys (particularly Find my mouse spotlight mode for presentation by pressing Ctrl twice)