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This is mostly due to a major difference in design philosophy between OS X and Windows. In OS X, the menu bar is not part of any application; it's always at the top of the screen, separate from the application. It takes some getting used to but overall it makes things consistent. Back to your point, since the menu bar is not part of the app window, there is none of that annoying grey space on the OS X version. The app's buttons and url widgets are flush with the title bar above and bookmarks bar below (or tab bar if you've turned off the bookmarks bar). Obviously this isn't possible on Windows so they had to do the best they could. Personally I think it could look better too but when you're so limited I guess there's not much room for choice.

Back when Vista was still called Longhorn and there was so much speculation in the air about how much it was going to "borrow" from Mac OS this time around, I was so hoping Microsoft would do the global menu bar thing. I guess that would have been too similar, though.

Microsoft is unable to make any radical changes to their interface due to established history. If Microsoft were to create such a new interface it would essentially reset their operating system market share.

When MacOS transitioned to MacOS X, there was not much of a real shift in interface. Sure, the dock was added, but everything else was essentially the same. The plumbing was certainly different, and at this point it is the only thing that can change a lot.

A whole other bowl of worms so to speak. I dislike the Mac method but that's a whole separate topic. The 'global menu' from my viewpoint is far less efficient method of working but as always YMMV and a lot of people work differently.

It's a different design philosophy but when dropping their app on a platform that uses the other mode of operation, they could try and 'think different.' Thank you for pointing out why it looks bad, I didn't think of the menu bar difference.

I 'discovered' a new annoyance which prompted me to remove Safari. Bonjour was installed which for some strange reason prevented my system from connecting to the internet. It connected to the local network just fine but it decided that the Internet was a separate network connection but that connection would not talk to the local network which prevented net access.

Probably just a configuration thing with Bonjour but thank you Apple for installing a separate app I didn't ask for and screwing things up. The problem did not exist when I initially installed and didn't occur until I booted the machine up this morning. Un-installing Safari and Bonjour was an easy fix.

Apple is such an arrogant company. They have strict guidelines on how apps should look and function on their OS but they don't follow them consistently in their own apps for their OS. Then when they build an app for Windows it always looks so out of place. That don't seem to have any respect for others.

Someone should magically create a Shapeshifer or Safaricon for windows.