There were significant performance improvements in windows 7 &amp; 8. (Maybe 8.1 &amp; 10 too)<p>You have to understand Mac controls their entire product chain. Each OS has always been more or less locked to  similar era hardware. Windows has always had to deal with very, very weak and very, very strong hardware without knowing what that hardware is before hand.<p>So yes, Apple &quot;cheats,&quot; by being both a hardware company and a software company. (Everything that made Microsoft scary in the 80s and 90s is now true about Apple).