What’s the best thing about your favorite operating / windowing system? What’s the best thing about your least favorite system? I was thinking about it this morning, considering the most inspirational design in each of the systems I’ve used. While not every vendor finds that balance of excellence, releasing a functional system is itself a difficult problem.

• Windows XP/Vista: I love how the login/desktop locking system works. It supports multiple users properly, making switching between them trivial.
• Gnu/Linux + xorg + Gnome: multiple desktops + Compiz. It’s a developer’s dream, like a desk the size of a large room. Enough room for a dozen editor windows, without having to navigate a mess of windows or tabs.
• Apple’s OSX: It’s a brilliant looking desktop, with the best font rendering, colour and monitor management (nailing multiple monitor support). It does other things well, but I’m always impressed with its affinity to photo/video/music productivity.
• *nix: I love how the unix philosophy wreaks of pragmatism. It’s simple, decoupled, and completely bent toward scaled production uses.
• Nintendo’s Wii/DS/etc.: In a word, casual. Simple, predictable, and fun to the bone.

So what do you love about the systems you’ve used?

I’ve heard a few complaints about the new iPhone SDK, but I just realized (re-watching the demos) that Apple chose OpenGL and OpenAL. That’s big. They’ve picked a beautiful pair of APIs and put them in the hands of thousands of excited developers.¹ They’ve also picked other great tools like SQLite, Bonjour, and gcc … things that are vital for the health of the software industry. Yay standards!

1. Compare to Microsoft’s seemingly-insane approach of NIH ↩