I Hate Macs

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namkcuR

ONE love, blood, life
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I detest those infernal machines. They are way to expensive, way too propietary, and way too simple. There's a reason why they 'never' break down...it's because everything programmed in them is simple, not complex, and the hardware and software are basically molded together, which, while decreasing the chance of problems, also leaves little room for any hope of upgrading. I will be a PC user for the rest of my life. I know it's hard for some people to understand, but some peeople, namely some PC users, want and need to have computer problems to solve every now and again. For computer techies, part of the fun of computing is running into problems and solving them. Part of the fun is the complexity of it all. And Macs take all that away. They are designed for people that don't know all that much about computing but yet need to use them to do things normally reserved for people who do know a lot about computers. If that makes any sense. The only Apple product worth buying imo is the IPod, which I admit is one of the greatest gadgets I have ever had the privlege of owning. Any company could accidentally make a gem twenty years down the line.
 
namkcuR said:
I detest those infernal machines. They are way to expensive, way too propietary, and way too simple. There's a reason why they 'never' break down...it's because everything programmed in them is simple, not complex, and the hardware and software are basically molded together, which, while decreasing the chance of problems, also leaves little room for any hope of upgrading. I will be a PC user for the rest of my life. I know it's hard for some people to understand, but some peeople, namely some PC users, want and need to have computer problems to solve every now and again. For computer techies, part of the fun of computing is running into problems and solving them. Part of the fun is the complexity of it all. And Macs take all that away. They are designed for people that don't know all that much about computing but yet need to use them to do things normally reserved for people who do know a lot about computers. If that makes any sense. The only Apple product worth buying imo is the IPod, which I admit is one of the greatest gadgets I have ever had the privlege of owning. Any company could accidentally make a gem twenty years down the line.

Please don't take offense to this, and consider it a friendly argument. I really don't like to "get into it" with another U2 fan :)

However, you are very misinformed when it comes to the way of the Apple & Mac world. You've made the common mistake of confusing top-notch usability and application design with over-simplification. There is no aspect of OS X or its applications that is over-simplified, they're simply all constructed with the best possible usability in mind. Apple has created a 500+ page document called HIDG, which stands for human interface design guidelines. This document defines every imaginable aspect of usability, and pretty much every Mac app conforms to it. As a result, it's almost second nature to figure out how to use a new application, and creates a very consistent feel throughout the OS.

Here's a good example of Mac vs Windows usability:

On the Mac, when you go to quit a program that has an unsaved document, the dialog box says "Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?" in fairly large print. Below that, in smaller print, it says "If you don't save, your changes will be lost." The options for that dialog are Don't Save, Cancel, and Save. The default is Save.

On windows, when you go to quit a program that has an unsaved document, the dialog box says "Are you sure you want to quit?" The options are Yes, No, and Cancel. The default is Yes.

I feel quite bad for the Windows user that doesn't realize quitting the application will lose any change they've made to the document.

Let me get back to the simplicity argument though. We'll use iTunes as an example, since it's available on both platforms. At first glance it looks very simple.

I moved to the Mac world from years, and years, and even more years in the PC world. That was before Windows was even usable (i.e. before 3.1). Once the whole MP3 thing started, Winamp came around and became my player of choice for years. I loved it, and was lucky enough to become good friends with its developers. When I decided to make the "switch", which I'll explain my reasoning for later on, I thought I would miss Winamp the most. When I first opened up iTunes, I was a little baffled, as it was such a different approach to being an MP3 player. I was use to having Winamp in mini-mode, and here was iTunes taking up the full screen. However, I expected change, so I attempted to embrace it. I loaded iTunes up with my music library, and started playing around with it.

At first glance, it seemed so simple, I knew it wouldn't have all of the functionality I was use to with Winamp. However, as I started to use it, I realized that wasn't the case. In fact, it was just so well put together, the functionality appeared when I needed it instead of sticking out all of the time. A great example was when I had all of these files I needed to edit the ID3 tags of. With Winamp (at the time), I was use to going file by file to edit tags. On a whim, I decided to select multiple songs, and then select to edit the tags. To my surprise, I was presented with the most useful multi-song ID3 editor I could have dreamed of. It was the usual easy-to-use editor, but had checkboxes next to the fields I wanted to edit on all of selected songs.

That's just one small example of great usability. That sort of thing holds true for every single Mac application, and the entire OS itself. Everything looks very clean, but when you find yourself needing certain functionality, it's there for you in a very natural way that doesn't require spending time searching the application for it. As I continued to use iTunes, I stopped becoming conscious of my interaction with it. The way it worked felt very natural, and I had to spend much less time to have it play what I wanted then with any other player.

I'll give you a few other quick examples. To search in Windows, you have an annoying dog that presents you with a bunch of questions before you can even begin to search. Once you do, it takes forever to bring up your results. With a Mac, you have a search box in every Finder window (Finder is similar to My Computer/Explorer), and the second you start typing in your search, it brings up the results (just like iTunes does, and Mail, and Address Book, and so forth). If you have 10 IE/Firefox windows open in Windows, you have to alt+tab between then hoping to find the right one. With a Mac, you have visual representations of the contents of each window as an icon in the Dock (similar to the taskbar/start menu), or you can use something called Expose, which (in a very cool way) displays every window you have open at once (they are shrunk down to all fit on screen), or just every window of an application. Even better, you can have a file on your desktop, drag it to an Expose hot corner (a corner of your screen which you've defined to activate Expose), and then continue to drag that file to the window you want to the application/window you want the file to open in.

I could go on and on about the hardware accelerated UI that enables amazing looking effects and enhance usability (for instance, when you maximize a window, the "genie" effect allows you to know where it's going), the astoundingly good spam filtering of Mail, iChat's DVD-quality audio/video conferencing, or, most importantly in my mind, the top-notch third-party applications. I mean really, compare your P2P app (for legal purposes of course) to http://acquisitionx.com/ -- which is free of adware and spyware I might add.

It really does come down to "it just works" though. There simply aren't any viruses or spyware/adware to worry about. When there's an update for the OS, Software Update opens instead of you having to go to a website and deal with a bunch of additional steps. Also, when it comes to updates, there aren't thousands of them to deal with. You can download and install them all in one step. For new installations of OS X, you don't have to deal with downloading every update released for OS X ever. Instead, they are combined into one update. Speaking of new installs, if you ever have to reinstall the OS (which is very uncommon), you don't have to worry about backing up your data. Thanks to something called Archive Install, all of the system components are completely replaced, but your applications, data, and preferences are all left alone. Just in case, a copy of everything that gets touched is backed up automatically in a convenient folder. Oh, one more thing about installs, it's entirely visual, there are very few steps, and it reboots just once during the process.

It is true though, one of the reasons it works so well is because Apple provides both the hardware and software. That's a great thing though. The hardware is the best you'll find, period. PC World (yep, PC) just gave the new iMac 5 stars and a glowing review. Also, because Apple does both, you never have to worry about driver issues, hardware conflictions, or parts going bad. If in fact you do have a hardware failure, you have just one company to deal with, and they also happen to provide excellent warranty support. You get what you pay for. Their computers are also priced very well, and I'm not sure why people think that's untrue. Check out the new iMac G5s. For $1300, you get an extremely fast 64-bit processor, the best 17" LCD you'll find, and a CDRW/DVD drive. That's all enclosed in 2" of space, and pretty much every part is replaceable. Or if you want a laptop, the iBooks start at $999, and also include a CDRW/DVD drive. Unless you're building your own PC, which runs its own obvious risks, you won't find better deals. You certainly won't find higher quality.

Finally, if you were thinking Macs were for newbies and people that know nothing about computers, let me tell you my story. I decided to switch to a Mac shortly after OS X came out. I'm a professional web developer, and I work all day maintaining and coding for Unix-based servers. While a PC user, I always questioned switching to Linux, but it simply wasn't ready to be used on the desktop. Due to the lack of consistency, lack of major applications, and other various things, I always stayed away from it. When I saw OS X was built on a Unix core, yet had an unparalleled interface, all the major applications I needed (Photoshop and MS Office for instance), and the most usable and consistent applications I'd seen, I knew I had to make the switch. As a web developer, that Unix core means a lot. It gives me the ability to compile all of the server applications I use, and work entirely locally. Windows simply could not provide that. As a Unix system administrator, having a fully Unix-standard terminal to work with was a dream. Obviously the average person has no need for that, but as a developer, it's a dream. Speaking of developers, OS X has _the_ finest C++/Java/etc development tools you'll find on any OS. All for free, I might add. Just for newbies? Not a chance.

Is it perfect for newbies? Yes, because it makes sense (for one example, refer back to my dialog box example). However, it's also perfect for any level of computer user. There are so many reasons to switch, and as I'm sure you can tell, I'd go on and on. I'm not saying it's cheap, but you'll never be a happier computer user. Everything does just work, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Playing around with a Mac at the Apple store is great, but until you actually use it as your computer, you don't get the full gist of it. With that said, you should check out http://www.apple.com/macosx/ and see some of the feature overviews. I highly recommend checking out Expose and Finder first. Also, if you click "Sneak Preview" up at the top, you can see what's coming in OS X's next release. Spotlight, iChat AV, and Dashboard are good things to check out. Feel free to ask me any questions, and as you may have guessed, I'll happily answer them.

Wow, this was ridiculously long, and I should have been asleep long ago :) I just can't sit by and not dispel some Mac myths though!

P.S. I don't work for Apple, but I probably should ;)
 
Macs make you type faster ;)

Actually, funny enough, I'm using an MS Natural keyboard. The one MS product I like :)
 
Don't have a mac and know very little about them, but I'd have thought usability is very important for anyone who isn't a developer of some sort. It's like wishing for a car that breaks down. Really.

I still rely on trusty old Windows 98 which from what I can tell is more stable than fucking XP. Go figure.
 
Gorman - excellent post. I'm a mac newbie who switch over after I had my ipod for a couple of months and fell in love with it. I'm not an IT person and don't really even have to use computers that much at work (something that will be changing soon with computerized charting - thank god). So I would be just a personal consumer.
That being said the switch to my powerbook was so easy - It was actually a bit disorienting how much easier it is to use a mac. The third party software is great, I have absolutely NO popups, the computer doesn't just decided to lock-up on me, I don't have to download patches every five minutes, it interfaces with windows if I want it to, and above all of that it is a darn stylish piece of equipment.
I'm saving up for a G5 right now but I believe that u2 tickets/airfare to u2 shows will leak into the savings for the next year or so:)
 
So am I to understand that usability, and reliability, and creativity of design are signs of an inferior product?


I think the only valid issue is the fact that they cost so much


I use a PC...but if there were closer in price....Id' switch to a mac to fast it'd make the monitor spin
 
Re: Re: I Hate Macs

gorman said:


Please don't take offense to this, and consider it a friendly argument. I really don't like to "get into it" with another U2 fan :)

However, you are very misinformed when it comes to the way of the Apple & Mac world. You've made the common mistake of confusing top-notch usability and application design with over-simplification. There is no aspect of OS X or its applications that is over-simplified, they're simply all constructed with the best possible usability in mind. Apple has created a 500+ page document called HIDG, which stands for human interface design guidelines. This document defines every imaginable aspect of usability, and pretty much every Mac app conforms to it. As a result, it's almost second nature to figure out how to use a new application, and creates a very consistent feel throughout the OS.

Here's a good example of Mac vs Windows usability:

On the Mac, when you go to quit a program that has an unsaved document, the dialog box says "Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?" in fairly large print. Below that, in smaller print, it says "If you don't save, your changes will be lost." The options for that dialog are Don't Save, Cancel, and Save. The default is Save.

On windows, when you go to quit a program that has an unsaved document, the dialog box says "Are you sure you want to quit?" The options are Yes, No, and Cancel. The default is Yes.

I feel quite bad for the Windows user that doesn't realize quitting the application will lose any change they've made to the document.

Let me get back to the simplicity argument though. We'll use iTunes as an example, since it's available on both platforms. At first glance it looks very simple.

I moved to the Mac world from years, and years, and even more years in the PC world. That was before Windows was even usable (i.e. before 3.1). Once the whole MP3 thing started, Winamp came around and became my player of choice for years. I loved it, and was lucky enough to become good friends with its developers. When I decided to make the "switch", which I'll explain my reasoning for later on, I thought I would miss Winamp the most. When I first opened up iTunes, I was a little baffled, as it was such a different approach to being an MP3 player. I was use to having Winamp in mini-mode, and here was iTunes taking up the full screen. However, I expected change, so I attempted to embrace it. I loaded iTunes up with my music library, and started playing around with it.

At first glance, it seemed so simple, I knew it wouldn't have all of the functionality I was use to with Winamp. However, as I started to use it, I realized that wasn't the case. In fact, it was just so well put together, the functionality appeared when I needed it instead of sticking out all of the time. A great example was when I had all of these files I needed to edit the ID3 tags of. With Winamp (at the time), I was use to going file by file to edit tags. On a whim, I decided to select multiple songs, and then select to edit the tags. To my surprise, I was presented with the most useful multi-song ID3 editor I could have dreamed of. It was the usual easy-to-use editor, but had checkboxes next to the fields I wanted to edit on all of selected songs.

That's just one small example of great usability. That sort of thing holds true for every single Mac application, and the entire OS itself. Everything looks very clean, but when you find yourself needing certain functionality, it's there for you in a very natural way that doesn't require spending time searching the application for it. As I continued to use iTunes, I stopped becoming conscious of my interaction with it. The way it worked felt very natural, and I had to spend much less time to have it play what I wanted then with any other player.

I'll give you a few other quick examples. To search in Windows, you have an annoying dog that presents you with a bunch of questions before you can even begin to search. Once you do, it takes forever to bring up your results. With a Mac, you have a search box in every Finder window (Finder is similar to My Computer/Explorer), and the second you start typing in your search, it brings up the results (just like iTunes does, and Mail, and Address Book, and so forth). If you have 10 IE/Firefox windows open in Windows, you have to alt+tab between then hoping to find the right one. With a Mac, you have visual representations of the contents of each window as an icon in the Dock (similar to the taskbar/start menu), or you can use something called Expose, which (in a very cool way) displays every window you have open at once (they are shrunk down to all fit on screen), or just every window of an application. Even better, you can have a file on your desktop, drag it to an Expose hot corner (a corner of your screen which you've defined to activate Expose), and then continue to drag that file to the window you want to the application/window you want the file to open in.

I could go on and on about the hardware accelerated UI that enables amazing looking effects and enhance usability (for instance, when you maximize a window, the "genie" effect allows you to know where it's going), the astoundingly good spam filtering of Mail, iChat's DVD-quality audio/video conferencing, or, most importantly in my mind, the top-notch third-party applications. I mean really, compare your P2P app (for legal purposes of course) to http://acquisitionx.com/ -- which is free of adware and spyware I might add.

It really does come down to "it just works" though. There simply aren't any viruses or spyware/adware to worry about. When there's an update for the OS, Software Update opens instead of you having to go to a website and deal with a bunch of additional steps. Also, when it comes to updates, there aren't thousands of them to deal with. You can download and install them all in one step. For new installations of OS X, you don't have to deal with downloading every update released for OS X ever. Instead, they are combined into one update. Speaking of new installs, if you ever have to reinstall the OS (which is very uncommon), you don't have to worry about backing up your data. Thanks to something called Archive Install, all of the system components are completely replaced, but your applications, data, and preferences are all left alone. Just in case, a copy of everything that gets touched is backed up automatically in a convenient folder. Oh, one more thing about installs, it's entirely visual, there are very few steps, and it reboots just once during the process.

It is true though, one of the reasons it works so well is because Apple provides both the hardware and software. That's a great thing though. The hardware is the best you'll find, period. PC World (yep, PC) just gave the new iMac 5 stars and a glowing review. Also, because Apple does both, you never have to worry about driver issues, hardware conflictions, or parts going bad. If in fact you do have a hardware failure, you have just one company to deal with, and they also happen to provide excellent warranty support. You get what you pay for. Their computers are also priced very well, and I'm not sure why people think that's untrue. Check out the new iMac G5s. For $1300, you get an extremely fast 64-bit processor, the best 17" LCD you'll find, and a CDRW/DVD drive. That's all enclosed in 2" of space, and pretty much every part is replaceable. Or if you want a laptop, the iBooks start at $999, and also include a CDRW/DVD drive. Unless you're building your own PC, which runs its own obvious risks, you won't find better deals. You certainly won't find higher quality.

Finally, if you were thinking Macs were for newbies and people that know nothing about computers, let me tell you my story. I decided to switch to a Mac shortly after OS X came out. I'm a professional web developer, and I work all day maintaining and coding for Unix-based servers. While a PC user, I always questioned switching to Linux, but it simply wasn't ready to be used on the desktop. Due to the lack of consistency, lack of major applications, and other various things, I always stayed away from it. When I saw OS X was built on a Unix core, yet had an unparalleled interface, all the major applications I needed (Photoshop and MS Office for instance), and the most usable and consistent applications I'd seen, I knew I had to make the switch. As a web developer, that Unix core means a lot. It gives me the ability to compile all of the server applications I use, and work entirely locally. Windows simply could not provide that. As a Unix system administrator, having a fully Unix-standard terminal to work with was a dream. Obviously the average person has no need for that, but as a developer, it's a dream. Speaking of developers, OS X has _the_ finest C++/Java/etc development tools you'll find on any OS. All for free, I might add. Just for newbies? Not a chance.

Is it perfect for newbies? Yes, because it makes sense (for one example, refer back to my dialog box example). However, it's also perfect for any level of computer user. There are so many reasons to switch, and as I'm sure you can tell, I'd go on and on. I'm not saying it's cheap, but you'll never be a happier computer user. Everything does just work, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Playing around with a Mac at the Apple store is great, but until you actually use it as your computer, you don't get the full gist of it. With that said, you should check out http://www.apple.com/macosx/ and see some of the feature overviews. I highly recommend checking out Expose and Finder first. Also, if you click "Sneak Preview" up at the top, you can see what's coming in OS X's next release. Spotlight, iChat AV, and Dashboard are good things to check out. Feel free to ask me any questions, and as you may have guessed, I'll happily answer them.

Wow, this was ridiculously long, and I should have been asleep long ago :) I just can't sit by and not dispel some Mac myths though!

P.S. I don't work for Apple, but I probably should ;)

May I present a rebuttle now? Thank you. I mean no offense either, but you are just wrong about some of this stuff. First off, I use Windows word processors such as Word and Wordpad and Notepad every day of my life, and I ASSURE you, when you close out of them they ask you if you've saved your file. I am 100% sure of this. Your claim that they only ask you if you're sure is just plain wrong.

Secondly, the 'annoying dog' comes up in Office applications when you're looking for help. For the most part though, it has little part in 'searching' as you put it. The search box in Windows is a simple and easy to use search box, and you need only answer two questions, what you're searching for and where you want to search. Simple.

Also, I too use ITunes almost every day and agree it is a GREAT program, but it's not propietary to Mac. You can use it on Windows too. I've used several Mac applications and I can tell you(and you should know) that ITunes looks and feels significantly different from other Mac applications. Anyway, I bundle it with the IPod and what I said earlier about it: any company can come up with a gem twenty years down the line.

And yes, Macs ARE simple. They're simple in the way they show things. Mac OS never tells you what is going on. I'll give you a few examples. Take the Finder for example. This is one of the most annoying things I've ever come across in the world of software, and I'm a web development major in college. You can never really tell if/which programs are open or not. There's no such thing as minimization. The Windows GUI where you can clearly see every application open on the taskbar works MUCH better and is FAR easier to look at and understand in five seconds. Another example. Do you remember those MAC commercials a couple years back, where they'd have somebody talking about having a bad experience with PC, having to wait to download drivers or whatever, and then they'd say how they got a MAC and whatever it was worked just like that, and then the commercials would end 'I'm Jeannie Hogan, and I saved Christmas' or something along those lines with different names and different thing being saved? If you plug in a camera or scanner or whatever into a Mac that's never been connected to that particular machine before, the Mac needs drivers just the same to make the hardware work. The difference? Mac doesn't show you any box or anything saying drivers are being downloaded. They figure the user doesn't care or doesn't need to know. Some users like to know. I could go on.

A Mac will NEVER make me happy. There is no flexibility within. I'm a computer guy, it's my field of study/work, and I'm telling you, people like me like to be able to fiddle around with an OS, edit what in Windows is called the registry, experiement around, maybe screw some stuff up. Macs don't give us that chance. They assume that no one wants that. I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a computer, I really can't imagine any hardcore comptuer techie like myself ever taking a Mac over a Windows PC.
 
Kieran McConville said:
Don't have a mac and know very little about them, but I'd have thought usability is very important for anyone who isn't a developer of some sort. It's like wishing for a car that breaks down. Really.

I still rely on trusty old Windows 98 which from what I can tell is more stable than fucking XP. Go figure.

Windows 98 is not even as stable as XP. Perhaps your computers' BIOS cant handle XP? That would cause instability problems.
 
daafish said:


Windows 98 is not even as stable as XP. Perhaps your computers' BIOS cant handle XP? That would cause instability problems.

:up: Maybe he meant Windows ME :barf:

I :heart: Macs and Windows machines alike! I was afraid of Macs for a long time since when I started college, hadn't used one since maybe 3rd grade. For work, I've got one of each and I'm required to support both. The Mac took some getting used to, but I LOVE OS X now.
 
namkcuR said:


May I present a rebuttle now? Thank you. I mean no offense either, but you are just wrong about some of this stuff. First off, I use Windows word processors such as Word and Wordpad and Notepad every day of my life, and I ASSURE you, when you close out of them they ask you if you've saved your file. I am 100% sure of this. Your claim that they only ask you if you're sure is just plain wrong.

That's not system-wide though. Some applications do it, which is great, but the majority do not. Every application on OS X has this. System wide is consistent and the way it should be.

Secondly, the 'annoying dog' comes up in Office applications when you're looking for help. For the most part though, it has little part in 'searching' as you put it. The search box in Windows is a simple and easy to use search box, and you need only answer two questions, what you're searching for and where you want to search. Simple.

I'm not talking about Office in this case. In XP, when you do a regular file search, it comes up by default. Here's a screenshot: http://g0rman.com/dog.jpg . The point is, you shouldn't have to go through 3 steps to do a search, and it shouldn't take forever for the results to come up. It should be Google-like.

Also, I too use ITunes almost every day and agree it is a GREAT program, but it's not propietary to Mac. You can use it on Windows too. I've used several Mac applications and I can tell you(and you should know) that ITunes looks and feels significantly different from other Mac applications. Anyway, I bundle it with the IPod and what I said earlier about it: any company can come up with a gem twenty years down the line.

Yes, it is a great program, which is created by Apple. I specifically said I was using it as an example of Apple's top-notch application design, since you, as a Windows user, have a chance to use it and verify my claims.

Which applications in specific are you referring to that don't function on the same level? As far as I'm concerned, there is no Apple-created application, and pretty the majority of the third-party applications are all of the same quality.

And yes, Macs ARE simple. They're simple in the way they show things. Mac OS never tells you what is going on. I'll give you a few examples. Take the Finder for example. This is one of the most annoying things I've ever come across in the world of software, and I'm a web development major in college. You can never really tell if/which programs are open or not. There's no such thing as minimization. The Windows GUI where you can clearly see every application open on the taskbar works MUCH better and is FAR easier to look at and understand in five seconds. Another example. Do you remember those MAC commercials a couple years back, where they'd have somebody talking about having a bad experience with PC, having to wait to download drivers or whatever, and then they'd say how they got a MAC and whatever it was worked just like that, and then the commercials would end 'I'm Jeannie Hogan, and I saved Christmas' or something along those lines with different names and different thing being saved? If you plug in a camera or scanner or whatever into a Mac that's never been connected to that particular machine before, the Mac needs drivers just the same to make the hardware work. The difference? Mac doesn't show you any box or anything saying drivers are being downloaded. They figure the user doesn't care or doesn't need to know. Some users like to know. I could go on.

First off, let me quickly debunk the driver myth. When you plug in a digital camera, there's no "downloading" of drivers going on. In fact, there's no installing of drivers. The built-in driver support of peripherals is astoundingly good, and stays very up-to-date. I have yet to have to search for drivers for any hardware I've used, and I have worked with a ridiculous amount of them. From digital cameras to external sound cards, they've all worked flawlessly.

Now, let's talk GUI! From one web developer to another, I urge you to check this out: http://g0rman.com/exposelove3.png . That's Expose in "application" mode showing off every open window in Photoshop. The regular mode of Expose shows off every window you've got open. There has never, ever been a more efficient way to find the window you're looking for. When you're working with a ton of Photoshop windows, or a ton of text files, or a ton of browser windows -- or all of those -- this is a godsend.

Those little windows appear _instantly_ as you move your mouse to one of the hotcorners (as described earlier), or by clicking one of the hotkeys. There's also a mode of Expose that immediately shows your desktop. You can do that in Windows by hitting the Windows key and D. However, with the Expose version, you can get all of your applications back in front instantly by either moving your mouse back to the same hotcorner or clicking the same hotkey. With Windows, you have to manually bring your windows back to the front.

Speaking of Expose, there are a few neat features I'd like to quickly overview. Let's say you have a bunch of IMs open in iChat, you can go into the application mode of Expose and see all of your IMs at once. I've already told you that, but what I haven't told you is that while in Expose mode (with all of the windows shrunk down to fit on screen), they continue to update just as if you were looking at them normally. This means that if someone sends you a message while in Expose mode, you'll see it instantly when it comes in. An even better example is that if you have a video playing, it will continue to play even while shrunk down. Ah yes, the beauty of an OpenGL/hardware accelerated GUI. An unrelated example of that is when you minimize a movie to the dock, the icon preview is actually a preview of the movie itself, which plays just as nicely as if you were looking at it normally.

To answer your Dock questions, let's compare the way Windows & Mac handle windows. We'll use XP and take into account it's program grouping in the taskbar. Let's say you have 10 browser windows open in both operating systems. With Windows, you have one method for getting to one of those browsers. You have to first click the program group in the taskbar, and then, from a text list, select the specific window you want to access. Chances are, you'll play a guessing game as to which window is which, as you probably have multiple windows open with a similar or even the exact same name. How annoying.

With the Dock, things are grouped as well. However, the way it functions is quite different. When you click an application in the Dock that has multiple windows running, it brings all of them forward, so you don't have to guess. If you want to, you can right-click on the icon and select a specific window to open. You're probably thinking "how is that list any better than the Windows list you just described?" Good question! Every right-click menu is designed to be most effective for the application, yet it retains consistency by sticking to the general guidelines. Because of this, you have useful information to go by on this menu. For example, with Mail, it would list the complete subjects of all messages you have open. However, it also lists several program functions, such as "Get New Messages" or "Compose New Message" right there in the right-click menu. With iChat, it groups IM windows in the list by requests and open IMs. If you have System Preferences open and right click on it's Dock icon, you're presented with a list of all of System Preference's panels. Having the right-click menus be context-sensitive is very, very useful.

As I mentioned, when you minimize something to the dock, you actually see a graphical preview of it as the icon in the dock. For example, if you minimize a browser window, you can actually see the web page you had loaded in the icon. As I mentioned above, if it's a movie, you'll see it still moving (if you want).

To be honest though, with Expose, minimizing or even going to the dock for anything but application launching is the second-choice for window managing. Expose is truly that useful.

Another way of dealing with windows is alt+tab, or command+tab on the Mac. With Windows, every window is listed separately. Guess what! That's even less efficient then trying to the right window out of the taskbar right-click menu. You can be cycling through windows on the alt+tab list in Windows forever, and still not find the right window. The command+tab functionality in Mac works similar to the dock, in that as you select the application, all of it's windows are brought to the front. This makes a lot more sense, since being window-specific in this sort of a list is just pointless. Furthermore, the command+tab list in Expose has some very cool functionality. As you highlight a program in it, you can press either Q or H. Pressing Q will quit the program without even bring it to the front (unless it needs to ask if you want to save, etc), and pressing H will hide the application and all of it's windows. In Windows, you've got nothing more than a fairly useless list.

There are so many other important aspects of window management, such as how the OS handles drag-and-drop. If you look back to my initial post, check out what I said about using Expose to drag-and-drop a file from your desktop to a non-visible application. Some other neat things are being able to switch from one application-specific view of Expose to another by simply hitting tab to reveal the next group.

A Mac will NEVER make me happy. There is no flexibility within. I'm a computer guy, it's my field of study/work, and I'm telling you, people like me like to be able to fiddle around with an OS, edit what in Windows is called the registry, experiement around, maybe screw some stuff up. Macs don't give us that chance. They assume that no one wants that. I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a computer, I really can't imagine any hardcore comptuer techie like myself ever taking a Mac over a Windows PC.

I knew I'd have the most fun with this part! The flexibility on OS X is completely unrivaled. Hands down.

Let's start off by talking about look and feel. OS X is fully skinnable, and the skins are beautiful. Because this is native, there is absolutely no performance hit if you decide to use one of these skins. They also have the luxury of using alpha-blending, which makes them look even nicer. Here are some great examples: http://www.maxthemes.com/themes/?theme=EYLO ... and if you're feeling a little out of place when switching to a Mac, you'll notice this specific designer has even made an XP skin! It's a sad day when the XP look looks better on the Mac! :)

You'll also notice that because OS X was built from the ground up to have a fully dynamic UI, the skin effects everything. Every window type, ever button, every scrollbar. It's the most consistent skinning system you'll see.

However, let's get application specific. Without the need of any special application, you can chance any image in any program, period. With Windows, you can sort of do this using programs that extract the images from an EXE, but it's rather hit-or-miss. On OS X, they're all right there for you. In fact, if you're feeling adventurous, you can actually fully redefine the look of a window by loading it up in Interface Builder, which is one of the freely provided development tools. From here, you can completely change the front-end (placement of anything) for _any_ application. Thanks to the modular way a program is put together on OS X, this is possible. As any good coder knows, keeping the GUI and code separate is always the way to go. OS X just makes it possible for you to fully change the GUI however you want without needing the sourcecode of the program. In fact, if you want to take it a step further, you can actually write add-ons to any program. You know how some Windows programs support plug-ins? Well, with OS X, you can make "plug-ins" for any application, without them specifically needing to support it. For example, someone made a great away message management plugin for iChat that hooks right into it -- you'd never know it wasn't part of the program to begin with.

I'll be the first to tell you that there is no registry in OS X. Thank, you, god. Whoever had the brilliant idea of putting every setting for the OS and applications into one easily corruptible "database" needs to check out how it should be done. The way it should be done is, as I'm sure you'd expect me to say, OS X's way. Before I get to that, I need to explain one additional thing -- the way OS X handles users.

OS X handles users like Unix does. Every user has their own home folder, which contains everything specific to them. Their preferences, their documents, their web folder, their media, their cache files, their histories, and anything else you can think of. There is nothing, and I repeat _nothing_, user specific outside of a person's home directory. What makes this actually work (as opposed to Windows failed "Documents and Settings" idea) is that one user can't access another user's folder. In fact, you can even enable on-the-fly encryption of your home directory. Because of this though, every user truly has their own preferences of _everything_. When you create a new user and login with that account, it's truly like the OS was just installed for them. Sharing a computer has never been less stressful. This also makes for a very clean filesystem. You have your computer-wide applications (you can also have user-specific applications), your home directories, and then the system components. Because there are only these three main areas of the filesystem, something called Archive Install is possible. This fully replaces the system components without touching the other two. That gives you essentially the same thing as a clean install on Windows, except you don't have to spend hours (or days) getting your computer running the way you want again.

Now, let's talk about OS X's version of a "registry". Instead of having an easily corruptible database that contains every preference, you have a folder, within your home directory, called Preferences. Within this folder is an individual file for various system components you can configure as well as every application. These files are all XML formatted, which I'm sure, as a web developer, you can appreciate. Every possible setting that you can define through the GUI, and in many cases, more, are fully editable through these XML files. If you want to take a program back to it's initial state, you simply trash the preference file. There is also an included application that provides a GUI to editing these files. Now that is an elegant way of dealing with preferences. By the way, hex editing is just as possible on OS X as it is in Windows, if you're really looking to dig down deep.

By the way, the registry is even less efficient on Windows due to the fact that many programs ignore the registry, and maintain their own settings files. As a result, the registry isn't even a one-stop-shop if you're looking to make a change or two. On OS X, every single application puts its preference file in the exact same place using the exact same formatting.

One last note about applications -- they're all self-contained in what OS X calls a package. Not only does this eliminate having to dig through folders to find a program, but it also eliminates having an application install files all over your hard drive, which as I'm sure you know, gets messy in a hurry. Every single file that the application needs is contained within this package. You can easily view the contents of a package, but the real beauty is how easy this makes installing and uninstalling. To install an application, you simply drag it from the CD or wherever you downloaded it to into the Applications folder (if you want). That's it -- no annoying installers, no files all over your computer. Uninstalling is even easier -- just drag the application to the trash, and it's entirely gone.

I won't get into all of the power that you have due to the Unix core, but let's just say that it's pretty limitless. Heck, you can make kernel extensions for the OS if you want.

Security is really where OS X shines. If a program tries to run indirectly (i.e. let's say a program would try to open up a virus it included), you would be notified that a program was trying to run indirectly, and you could elect to have it run or not (you're only asked once). Safari (the default web browser) blocks pop-ups by default and simply doesn't have the same vulnerabilities of IE, although Firefox is certainly recommended on Windows, and takes care of those security issues. Mail doesn't allow things to just execute on their own, and you always know exactly what you're opening, before you open it. While it's true that OS X has remained virus-free partially due to its smaller user-base, that's not the only reason. OS X was designed with security in mind, and the results thus far show that.

In closing, I definitely see that the biggest problem in Mac/OS X's adoption is simply that most people don't really understand it's benefits. It's true that you really have to use the OS for a while to realize all of it's tremendous benefits. I have no problem with people not knowing all of the benefits, as spending a lot of time with a Mac or having someone like me around isn't always possible, but the Mac bashing is really unfounded.

I'm far from a newbie, and I didn't switch to the Mac platform because it was easier. I deal with compiling kernels and fixing Apache problems all day -- ease of use isn't something I need. OS X simply provided me with the most innovative OS and apps, a stable and secure system, and the ultimate development platform. If I didn't truly believe it was _that_ much better, I would have sold my Powerbook immediately. It's going on two years now, and I couldn't be happier!

I'm also hoping to break some sort of long-post record here ;)
 
I have a dislike of Macs. I hate their one-button mouse, and I really don't like the layout (I hate the bar you get when you minimize a window, and then you've got gigantic horizontal bars all over the damn screen). I have one at work that I use for some experiments because it's compatible with a specific software, but it's nobody's first choice.

I like the design of the iBooks, but I find them to be too slow for the price they command. I'd rather go and get a Toshiba Portege for the same money then.
 
anitram said:
I have a dislike of Macs. I hate their one-button mouse, and I really don't like the layout (I hate the bar you get when you minimize a window, and then you've got gigantic horizontal bars all over the damn screen). I have one at work that I use for some experiments because it's compatible with a specific software, but it's nobody's first choice.

I like the design of the iBooks, but I find them to be too slow for the price they command. I'd rather go and get a Toshiba Portege for the same money then.

While Macs do come with a one-button mouse, you can use _any_ mouse by just plugging it in. I use a 5 button mouse with a scroll wheel, and it all works perfectly. My extra buttons are mapped to certain tasks even. The OS fully supports, and is designed for this.

I'm not sure what you mean by "gigantic horizontal bars" though.

The newest iBooks are very fast actually, I'm not sure which version you've used. They're also priced very well for what you get -- starting at $999, including a DVD drive.
 
Well, yes you can buy a mouse, but I'm not gonna buy one for work, LOL.

iBooks are considerably slower than the top of the line PC laptops. I remember when I got my top of the line Toshiba, it was a 2.2 Ghz, and the fastest iBook was 950 MHz at the time, and YES, the difference was obvious. Try loading a huge genome sequence on it and it was infuriating compared to the PC.
 
kennerado said:
MAC sucks, end of story, Microsoft won the war years ago.

Years before OS X existed. I'll be the first to tell you that Mac OS before Mac OS X wasn't the greatest. However, they definitely do not suck now. Perhaps you should read some of my arguments before making such a generic statement :) Also, since when is the biggest always the best?
 
That's not system-wide though. Some applications do it, which is great, but the majority do not. Every application on OS X has this. System wide is consistent and the way it should be.

It is system-wide as long as we're talking about Microsoft applications, which constitutes anything that comes with Windows. Obviously whether or not any third-party software does this varies from program to program. But I've yet to encounter a Microsoft application that doesn't ask me if I want to save or not.


I'm not talking about Office in this case. In XP, when you do a regular file search, it comes up by default. Here's a screenshot: http://g0rman.com/dog.jpg . The point is, you shouldn't have to go through 3 steps to do a search, and it shouldn't take forever for the results to come up. It should be Google-like.

Ok, you're right, there is a dog there...but come on, if you know what you're doing, and provided you have a sufficiently fast processor, answering those two questions and running the search will never take longer than a minute. That's not much to ask. Besides, and if Mac's search is like this too do tell, I like that I can use the * in the search in Windows to narrow my search...*.dll, or jo*.*, etc etc(I assume you can comprehend those with your computer knowledge). I've never had any problems with searching in Windows.



Yes, it is a great program, which is created by Apple. I specifically said I was using it as an example of Apple's top-notch application design, since you, as a Windows user, have a chance to use it and verify my claims.

Which applications in specific are you referring to that don't function on the same level? As far as I'm concerned, there is no Apple-created application, and pretty the majority of the third-party applications are all of the same quality.

Well, now that I think about, the difference was no doubt that I was running ITunes in Windows. If I had been running it in MacOS I'm sure it would've looked and felt similar to other Mac applications.



First off, let me quickly debunk the driver myth. When you plug in a digital camera, there's no "downloading" of drivers going on. In fact, there's no installing of drivers. The built-in driver support of peripherals is astoundingly good, and stays very up-to-date. I have yet to have to search for drivers for any hardware I've used, and I have worked with a ridiculous amount of them. From digital cameras to external sound cards, they've all worked flawlessly.


If what you say is true, than I was wrong on that count. However, there is still no guarantee that MacOS has every driver in existance within it or that every update will make it such. In the apparently rare occurance that it doesn't have a driver pre-loaded, it will have to download it.

Now, I must inform you about something: Windows XP's driver database is supurb as well. I've plugged in scanners, cameras, webcams, IPods, game controllers, USB thumb drives, and more, and it seems to ALWAYS have the drivers already. Of course there are the rare occurances where it doesn't, but those are extremely few and far between. The idea that a lot of Mac users like to put forth that Windows is always asking for drivers that have to be acquired elsewhere is, for the most part, untrue. It was fairly true with Win9X(which I might add was trusty and reliable OS for me for many years), but since XP came out two years ago, it's a thing of the past.


Now, let's talk GUI! From one web developer to another, I urge you to check this out: http://g0rman.com/exposelove3.png . That's Expose in "application" mode showing off every open window in Photoshop. The regular mode of Expose shows off every window you've got open. There has never, ever been a more efficient way to find the window you're looking for. When you're working with a ton of Photoshop windows, or a ton of text files, or a ton of browser windows -- or all of those -- this is a godsend.

Those little windows appear _instantly_ as you move your mouse to one of the hotcorners (as described earlier), or by clicking one of the hotkeys. There's also a mode of Expose that immediately shows your desktop. You can do that in Windows by hitting the Windows key and D. However, with the Expose version, you can get all of your applications back in front instantly by either moving your mouse back to the same hotcorner or clicking the same hotkey. With Windows, you have to manually bring your windows back to the front.

Speaking of Expose, there are a few neat features I'd like to quickly overview. Let's say you have a bunch of IMs open in iChat, you can go into the application mode of Expose and see all of your IMs at once. I've already told you that, but what I haven't told you is that while in Expose mode (with all of the windows shrunk down to fit on screen), they continue to update just as if you were looking at them normally. This means that if someone sends you a message while in Expose mode, you'll see it instantly when it comes in. An even better example is that if you have a video playing, it will continue to play even while shrunk down. Ah yes, the beauty of an OpenGL/hardware accelerated GUI. An unrelated example of that is when you minimize a movie to the dock, the icon preview is actually a preview of the movie itself, which plays just as nicely as if you were looking at it normally.

To answer your Dock questions, let's compare the way Windows & Mac handle windows. We'll use XP and take into account it's program grouping in the taskbar. Let's say you have 10 browser windows open in both operating systems. With Windows, you have one method for getting to one of those browsers. You have to first click the program group in the taskbar, and then, from a text list, select the specific window you want to access. Chances are, you'll play a guessing game as to which window is which, as you probably have multiple windows open with a similar or even the exact same name. How annoying.

With the Dock, things are grouped as well. However, the way it functions is quite different. When you click an application in the Dock that has multiple windows running, it brings all of them forward, so you don't have to guess. If you want to, you can right-click on the icon and select a specific window to open. You're probably thinking "how is that list any better than the Windows list you just described?" Good question! Every right-click menu is designed to be most effective for the application, yet it retains consistency by sticking to the general guidelines. Because of this, you have useful information to go by on this menu. For example, with Mail, it would list the complete subjects of all messages you have open. However, it also lists several program functions, such as "Get New Messages" or "Compose New Message" right there in the right-click menu. With iChat, it groups IM windows in the list by requests and open IMs. If you have System Preferences open and right click on it's Dock icon, you're presented with a list of all of System Preference's panels. Having the right-click menus be context-sensitive is very, very useful.

As I mentioned, when you minimize something to the dock, you actually see a graphical preview of it as the icon in the dock. For example, if you minimize a browser window, you can actually see the web page you had loaded in the icon. As I mentioned above, if it's a movie, you'll see it still moving (if you want).

To be honest though, with Expose, minimizing or even going to the dock for anything but application launching is the second-choice for window managing. Expose is truly that useful.

Another way of dealing with windows is alt+tab, or command+tab on the Mac. With Windows, every window is listed separately. Guess what! That's even less efficient then trying to the right window out of the taskbar right-click menu. You can be cycling through windows on the alt+tab list in Windows forever, and still not find the right window. The command+tab functionality in Mac works similar to the dock, in that as you select the application, all of it's windows are brought to the front. This makes a lot more sense, since being window-specific in this sort of a list is just pointless. Furthermore, the command+tab list in Expose has some very cool functionality. As you highlight a program in it, you can press either Q or H. Pressing Q will quit the program without even bring it to the front (unless it needs to ask if you want to save, etc), and pressing H will hide the application and all of it's windows. In Windows, you've got nothing more than a fairly useless list.

There are so many other important aspects of window management, such as how the OS handles drag-and-drop. If you look back to my initial post, check out what I said about using Expose to drag-and-drop a file from your desktop to a non-visible application. Some other neat things are being able to switch from one application-specific view of Expose to another by simply hitting tab to reveal the next group.

Wooooo, that's a lot, lol. First off, I don't think you should need an external program to navigate through your open windows with ease, but to each his own. You don't even have to press windows+D. There's a button on the quicklaunch bar that does it. This button is actually a link to a file that contains the mini-app that shows the desktop. If you want, you can link to this file right on your desktop or on the Office Toolbar if you use it, or anywhere else. As for not being able to get all the windows back instantly...with the taskbar, you can bring them all back up in 10 seconds if you're quick with a mouse. It's no big deal.

You mention XP's grouping feature on the taskbar. First off, it only groups windows that are of the same type, i.e. it groups IE windows together, Instant Messenger windows togther, etc. You probably already knew that but I wanted to make sure. Now, you say that the user is likely playing a guessing game when going to open a window from a group like this. This is untrue. Website windows have titles, Instant Messanger windows will use the user messaging you in each window for identification, text files will simply use their filenames. The only time this creates confusion is if you have several unsaved text or paint or whatever files open and they're all called 'Untitled'. So save them. Also, I use many messenging programs, ranging from AOL Instant Messenger to MSN Messenger to others, and all of them do the same thing. If you have several IM windows grouped on the taskbar, and someone messages you, the whole group item flashes, but all you have to do is click on the group and you get a list of the IM windows and the one that's being messaged is flashing for easy and quick identification.

You speak of these right-click menus...forgive my ignorance, but every Mac I've ever used has had a one button mouse - something I can't stand - so how exactly can one 'right-click' in Mac OS with a one button mouse?

I like the alt-tab method. When you've scrolled to the last icon it just starts the cycle over again, so unless you're particularly unattentive I don't see how you could not find what you're looking for. It's a quick and imo easy way to alternate between windows. I'll admit, in order to be able to smoothly, efficiently, and quickly make use of it, you must have had used Windows for a while, but, you can say that about a number of things in MacOS(as well is in Windows too).

If you're under the impression that you can't drag and drop to non-visible windows in XP, that's wrong. You can do it just fine if the application in question permits it.

I knew I'd have the most fun with this part! The flexibility on OS X is completely unrivaled. Hands down.

I'm not going to respond to the paragraph or two immediatly following this statement because it's apparent to me that we are not talking about the same kind of flexibility. You're talking about making the OS run just the way you want it, making it look just the way you want it, etc etc, and I'm sure you're right about all of that. However, I'm talking about the flexibility of the machines themselves. As we've already established, MacOS and the hardware of a Mac computer are intertwined and are designed with each other in mind. This makes it tricker to, say, replaced a video card or an internal sound card or a CD drive or anything like that. It can be done, no doubt about it, but everything I've heard and read leads me to believe that upgrading or replacing internal hardware is easier on a PC machine. Going back to what you did say, though, Windows has desktop themes, there are literally tens of thousands to get on the internet or on CD or elsewhere, and they act not only as skins, but as color schemes, sound schemes, curser schemes, icon schemes, etc etc, and I enjoy using them very much.

I'll be the first to tell you that there is no registry in OS X. Thank, you, god. Whoever had the brilliant idea of putting every setting for the OS and applications into one easily corruptible "database" needs to check out how it should be done. The way it should be done is, as I'm sure you'd expect me to say, OS X's way. Before I get to that, I need to explain one additional thing -- the way OS X handles users.

OS X handles users like Unix does. Every user has their own home folder, which contains everything specific to them. Their preferences, their documents, their web folder, their media, their cache files, their histories, and anything else you can think of. There is nothing, and I repeat _nothing_, user specific outside of a person's home directory. What makes this actually work (as opposed to Windows failed "Documents and Settings" idea) is that one user can't access another user's folder. In fact, you can even enable on-the-fly encryption of your home directory. Because of this though, every user truly has their own preferences of _everything_. When you create a new user and login with that account, it's truly like the OS was just installed for them. Sharing a computer has never been less stressful. This also makes for a very clean filesystem. You have your computer-wide applications (you can also have user-specific applications), your home directories, and then the system components. Because there are only these three main areas of the filesystem, something called Archive Install is possible. This fully replaces the system components without touching the other two. That gives you essentially the same thing as a clean install on Windows, except you don't have to spend hours (or days) getting your computer running the way you want again.

Now, let's talk about OS X's version of a "registry". Instead of having an easily corruptible database that contains every preference, you have a folder, within your home directory, called Preferences. Within this folder is an individual file for various system components you can configure as well as every application. These files are all XML formatted, which I'm sure, as a web developer, you can appreciate. Every possible setting that you can define through the GUI, and in many cases, more, are fully editable through these XML files. If you want to take a program back to it's initial state, you simply trash the preference file. There is also an included application that provides a GUI to editing these files. Now that is an elegant way of dealing with preferences. By the way, hex editing is just as possible on OS X as it is in Windows, if you're really looking to dig down deep.

By the way, the registry is even less efficient on Windows due to the fact that many programs ignore the registry, and maintain their own settings files. As a result, the registry isn't even a one-stop-shop if you're looking to make a change or two. On OS X, every single application puts its preference file in the exact same place using the exact same formatting.

One last note about applications -- they're all self-contained in what OS X calls a package. Not only does this eliminate having to dig through folders to find a program, but it also eliminates having an application install files all over your hard drive, which as I'm sure you know, gets messy in a hurry. Every single file that the application needs is contained within this package. You can easily view the contents of a package, but the real beauty is how easy this makes installing and uninstalling. To install an application, you simply drag it from the CD or wherever you downloaded it to into the Applications folder (if you want). That's it -- no annoying installers, no files all over your computer. Uninstalling is even easier -- just drag the application to the trash, and it's entirely gone.

I won't get into all of the power that you have due to the Unix core, but let's just say that it's pretty limitless. Heck, you can make kernel extensions for the OS if you want.

The registry isn't all that corruptable. Believe me, I've screwed it up enough times to know :wink: It's easy to make a backup of the registry though, one file, and if the registry gets screwed up, just launch the backup file and reboot, registry restored. Now, if it's so screwed up that Windows won't even start, that's a different story, but you'd have to TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY screw it up for that to happen. If you're using Win9X, there's a way to get into the DOS command prompt before Windows attempts to start, and then you could actually delete the registry files, making Windows simply create a new, clean registry when started again. XP doesn't run on DOS though, so that option is gone.

XP does Users in the same way. When it starts, you choose which user you want to log in as(unless you're the only user, then it just starts). Each user has a folder within a folder in the root directory called 'Documents and Settings'. Each user folder has a number of subfolders. For example:

C:\Documents and Settings\Jon, and within 'Jon', there are 'My Documents', 'Shared', 'Cookies', 'Templates', 'Application Data', 'Desktop', among others, and you can totally mold the OS to your liking. Also, in the Documents and Settings folder, there is an 'All Users' folder, which contains info and settings that are system wide.

I can appreciate that you perfer MacOS's way of setting preferences(the XML files), but I have an attatchment to the registry, and I take pride in the fact that I can go into it, edit countless things, and not cause the system to stop working. I really like the registry and think it works well...that's just user opinion though.

Now, I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but I'm going to because you're a web developer and you'd be able to discuss this with me. XML is XHTML, no? I don't like the idea. There's just too much pointless addition of code involved with it. Forgive me, but I just don't see why the "<img>" tag has to be closed at the end. It works and has always worked without closing it, so why add more unneeded code? And closing a "<br>" tag is as pointless as it gets imho. And have you ever tried to validate a webpage with embedded flash for xhtml? That is tricky business and, frankly, I don't think it's worth it. Big websites like CNN.com and Microsoft.com aren't even xhtml-ified yet. Not that I'm pointing to Microsoft.com as an ideal for what a website should be. I think we can agree that trying to find your way through Microsoft's site is kind of like trying to find your way through mirror maze in the dark.

Back to the topic at hand...the dragging install/uninstall sounds nice. But let me ask you this. What if I want to customize my installation of Office. What if I only want to Install Word and Powerpoint and forgo Access, Outlook, and Excel? Is that possible? Or can you only drag the whole thing to wherever you want it installed?

In closing, I definitely see that the biggest problem in Mac/OS X's adoption is simply that most people don't really understand it's benefits. It's true that you really have to use the OS for a while to realize all of it's tremendous benefits. I have no problem with people not knowing all of the benefits, as spending a lot of time with a Mac or having someone like me around isn't always possible, but the Mac bashing is really unfounded.

I'm far from a newbie, and I didn't switch to the Mac platform because it was easier. I deal with compiling kernels and fixing Apache problems all day -- ease of use isn't something I need. OS X simply provided me with the most innovative OS and apps, a stable and secure system, and the ultimate development platform. If I didn't truly believe it was _that_ much better, I would have sold my Powerbook immediately. It's going on two years now, and I couldn't be happier!

I suppose you're correct in saying that people don't understand Mac's benefits. I think I do for the most part and they don't really lure me. On the flip side, I think one of the biggest reasons Mac people like yourself perfer Macs is that they don't have much patience for glitchiness or any other type of problem. Note that that doesn't mean they don't know computers and/or how to correct these problems, it just means they don't have the patience to deal with it. To that, I say to each his own. I can completely understand it, as I'm the guy every person in my family as well as close circle of friends come to when they have computer problems. But although I understand it, I don't share it. I love the challenge of fixing a computer problem that my friends or even fellow techies haven't been able to. I love the challenge of figuring out what causes these problems. It enables me to have a greater knowledge, in the end, of how computers work. And in the end that's kind of what it's about for me. I know most people can't relate to that at ALL, but I would think you being a computer-literate person can at least understand what I'm saying. In closing, I honestly think that Windows can and does run as smoothly and as effectively as any operating system(speaking of XP now).

Just two last general dislikes about Macs. One, I've already mentioned, the one-button mouse. I just can't get into it. I've used two and three button mice my entire life and I find them much more effective. Two, the ejection of zip disks, CDs, DVDs, and other removable media. There is no physical eject button. You have to drag the removable media to the trash can(which turns into an eject symbol), and I find that a nuisance. I like to be able to just press the button and have it spit out my disc(k).

I'm also hoping to break some sort of long-post record here

I challenge you for that record :wink:
 
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Actually, for someone who really gets down into the nitty gritty of solving problems in the computer, I guess I can see why Macs would be annoying in that they attempt to eliminate the problems.

To Daafish, I don't have Windows XP, I'm merely commenting based on hearsay from everyone I know who instals it, and then has fun experiences like not being able to run Outlook Express because their virus program thinks it's a virus.

All that said, nothing I've heard has convinced me I would ever wish to have XP.
 
I'm loving this, hehe

namkcuR said:


It is system-wide as long as we're talking about Microsoft applications, which constitutes anything that comes with Windows. Obviously whether or not any third-party software does this varies from program to program. But I've yet to encounter a Microsoft application that doesn't ask me if I want to save or not.

I was referring to _all_ applications. Apple's and third party. Thanks to the human interface guidelines, 99% of Mac apps maintain a very high level of consistency, which includes using proper Mac dialogs. In fact, I can't think of an application that I've seen on OS X that doesn't follow at least those dialog guidelines. That is certainly not the case on Windows, aside from Microsoft's own applications. I'm not blaming that on Microsoft (although it would be nice if they had a similar guide for this sort of thing), but it's simply one example of OS X's great usability.


Ok, you're right, there is a dog there...but come on, if you know what you're doing, and provided you have a sufficiently fast processor, answering those two questions and running the search will never take longer than a minute. That's not much to ask. Besides, and if Mac's search is like this too do tell, I like that I can use the * in the search in Windows to narrow my search...*.dll, or jo*.*, etc etc(I assume you can comprehend those with your computer knowledge). I've never had any problems with searching in Windows.

That's exactly my point. If it had proper usability, you wouldn't have to answer those questions nor have any prior experience to get fast and accurate search results. OS X's searching, as I said, is like Google. The results are instant, you don't have to deal with wildcards (really, no new user even knows what a wildcard is), and there are no steps... it's just a search box you start typing in. You don't even have to hit enter. That's a combination of simplicity and power that I love!

With that said, if I want the highest possible level of searching, as a power user, I can drop into the console and use a regex string to search the entire hard drive. Or I could use the familiar Unix "locate" or "whereis" command line tool. It's nice to have the options.


Well, now that I think about, the difference was no doubt that I was running ITunes in Windows. If I had been running it in MacOS I'm sure it would've looked and felt similar to other Mac applications.

No doubt about it. iTunes is sort of a fish out of water in the Windows environment. Even so, it's still very good on Windows, in my opinion.


If what you say is true, than I was wrong on that count. However, there is still no guarantee that MacOS has every driver in existance within it or that every update will make it such. In the apparently rare occurance that it doesn't have a driver pre-loaded, it will have to download it.

It doesn't download anything. That sort of automatic, no clue what's going on, hidden to you downloading is never a good thing. That's one reason I don't like the little system tray version of Windows Update, which by default connects to the 'net a little too much for my liking. If there is a missing driver, then you'd grab it off of the included CD with the hardware, or from the manufacturer's website. However, as I said, I've yet to see this happen. The driver selection in OS X is really astounding. XP's isn't bad either, but actually having it work is a different issue. I still find it quite amusing that Microsoft coined the term plug 'n play. XP is much better than previous iterations of Windows at it, but still a far way away from OS X's ability.


Now, I must inform you about something: Windows XP's driver database is supurb as well. I've plugged in scanners, cameras, webcams, IPods, game controllers, USB thumb drives, and more, and it seems to ALWAYS have the drivers already. Of course there are the rare occurances where it doesn't, but those are extremely few and far between. The idea that a lot of Mac users like to put forth that Windows is always asking for drivers that have to be acquired elsewhere is, for the most part, untrue. It was fairly true with Win9X(which I might add was trusty and reliable OS for me for many years), but since XP came out two years ago, it's a thing of the past.

I fully agree that XP is much better at it then any previous version of Windows, but it really isn't on the level of OS X. When you plugin a device to a system running XP, you'll have to wait for 30 seconds or so while it recognizes the device, installs the driver, and does any post-install configuration. That's of course hoping that it doesn't need a driver you don't have and there are no conflictions.


Wooooo, that's a lot, lol. First off, I don't think you should need an external program to navigate through your open windows with ease, but to each his own. You don't even have to press windows+D. There's a button on the quicklaunch bar that does it. This button is actually a link to a file that contains the mini-app that shows the desktop. If you want, you can link to this file right on your desktop or on the Office Toolbar if you use it, or anywhere else. As for not being able to get all the windows back instantly...with the taskbar, you can bring them all back up in 10 seconds if you're quick with a mouse. It's no big deal.

It's not an external program. It's part of OS X, it just happens to have a name - Expose. It's just another (and better) means of navigating Windows. I know about the quicklaunch shortcut for that, but it's still the same thing :) As for being able to get everything back up in 10 seconds... that's 10 seconds I'd rather spend working (or typing out wordy Mac vs PC posts!) The point is, is that you shouldn't have to spend your time doing that stuff.


You mention XP's grouping feature on the taskbar. First off, it only groups windows that are of the same type, i.e. it groups IE windows together, Instant Messenger windows togther, etc. You probably already knew that but I wanted to make sure. Now, you say that the user is likely playing a guessing game when going to open a window from a group like this. This is untrue. Website windows have titles, Instant Messanger windows will use the user messaging you in each window for identification, text files will simply use their filenames. The only time this creates confusion is if you have several unsaved text or paint or whatever files open and they're all called 'Untitled'. So save them. Also, I use many messenging programs, ranging from AOL Instant Messenger to MSN Messenger to others, and all of them do the same thing. If you have several IM windows grouped on the taskbar, and someone messages you, the whole group item flashes, but all you have to do is click on the group and you get a list of the IM windows and the one that's being messaged is flashing for easy and quick identification.

Well yeah, what else would it group by? :) You gave a good example there of why Window's grouping isn't quite ideal. It's not uncommon to have a bunch of text files open that you've taken notes in or something, and haven't saved. Also, what about when you have a bunch of browser windows open at the same site? What about when you have a bunch of Explorer windows open at a similar folder? There are so many instances that I remember becoming very annoyed at that. Sure, you can save the files with names, or close some windows. The point is though, you shouldn't have to do this. The OS should be designed well enough to deal with these problems.


You speak of these right-click menus...forgive my ignorance, but every Mac I've ever used has had a one button mouse - something I can't stand - so how exactly can one 'right-click' in Mac OS with a one button mouse?

Ah yes, the #1 Mac misconception! OS X fully supports any number of buttons your mouse can throw at it. I'm currently using a 5 button mouse, with all 5 buttons programmed. That's in addition to full scrollwheel support (much better than in Windows, where in some areas, the scrollwheel does nothing) of course. OS X is designed to fully make sure of right-clicking, as I described. However, for those that prefer the one-button mouse, which a lot do actually, you can hold down control and click normally to emulate a right-click. I couldn't live without my multi-button mouse though. It's perfect for assigning Expose hotkeys too!


I like the alt-tab method. When you've scrolled to the last icon it just starts the cycle over again, so unless you're particularly unattentive I don't see how you could not find what you're looking for. It's a quick and imo easy way to alternate between windows. I'll admit, in order to be able to smoothly, efficiently, and quickly make use of it, you must have had used Windows for a while, but, you can say that about a number of things in MacOS(as well is in Windows too).

Yeah, you can say that about any aspect of any OS. The thing is, with Windows's implementation of alt+tab, you have to spend far too much time going through the list trying to find the window you're looking through. The fact it has to cycle is laughable enough. OS X's implementation dynamically shrinks/grows icons to fit, so you can see it all at once. Granted, Windows doesn't have something like Expose, so it needs to show all of the windows on alt+tab, instead of just the program groups. That's no excuse though :)


If you're under the impression that you can't drag and drop to non-visible windows in XP, that's wrong. You can do it just fine if the application in question permits it.

Yeah, that should be system-wide. That's another one of those consistency issues. Trust me though, it's much harder to drag and drop to a hidden window on Windows. I do speak from experience here. I used Windows since 3.1, after switching from DOS, and I was an MS beta tester for 2000 and XP. To this day, I still have to spend some time on XP for testing related things. As a result, I feel comfortable comparing the two.


I'm not going to respond to the paragraph or two immediatly following this statement because it's apparent to me that we are not talking about the same kind of flexibility. You're talking about making the OS run just the way you want it, making it look just the way you want it, etc etc, and I'm sure you're right about all of that. However, I'm talking about the flexibility of the machines themselves. As we've already established, MacOS and the hardware of a Mac computer are intertwined and are designed with each other in mind. This makes it tricker to, say, replaced a video card or an internal sound card or a CD drive or anything like that. It can be done, no doubt about it, but everything I've heard and read leads me to believe that upgrading or replacing internal hardware is easier on a PC machine. Going back to what you did say, though, Windows has desktop themes, there are literally tens of thousands to get on the internet or on CD or elsewhere, and they act not only as skins, but as color schemes, sound schemes, curser schemes, icon schemes, etc etc, and I enjoy using them very much.

Ah, my fault, I misunderstood the question initially. I completely agree, PCs do have a greater deal of flexibility when it comes to hardware. You can't really build your own Mac (well, you can, but getting a hold of the parts is a challenge). However, Apple's hardware quality is untouchable, and after spending years build my own PC and dealing with hardware issues, it's nice not to have to waste my time with that anymore.

Although, when it comes to sound and video cards, Macs have extremely good support, especially for pro-level devices. All you have to do is flash the bios on your video card, and you can truly use any PC ATI or nVidia card. There are drivers built into OS X for all of them, which Apple works with ATI and nVidia to provide. Both ATI and nVidia sell versions of their cards with Mac bioses in place. As for sound cards, every pro audio card out there supports Mac, since pretty much every studio uses Macs for audio and video, or really any creative work (print design, etc). M-Audio provides the best sound cards out there, and they recommend Macs. In fact, I'm thinking about picking up one of their Firewire 24bit soundcards for my Powerbook.

In terms of Windows customization, I have a vast amount of experience there as well. I use to run a site called DeskMod, which was the largest archive of user-submitted themes/schemes/wallpapers/etc. The themes aspect was primarily Windows oriented in fact. Over the years of running that, which started when I was a hardcore PC user and hated Macs, I became very aware to the abilities and limitations of Window's customization.


The registry isn't all that corruptable. Believe me, I've screwed it up enough times to know :wink: It's easy to make a backup of the registry though, one file, and if the registry gets screwed up, just launch the backup file and reboot, registry restored. Now, if it's so screwed up that Windows won't even start, that's a different story, but you'd have to TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY screw it up for that to happen. If you're using Win9X, there's a way to get into the DOS command prompt before Windows attempts to start, and then you could actually delete the registry files, making Windows simply create a new, clean registry when started again. XP doesn't run on DOS though, so that option is gone.

XP has come a long way in making the registry not so corruptable, but I have seen it happen. It just shouldn't be possible. Really though, my main point is that there shouldn't be a registry. It's a mess. It's a mess to navigate, and it's a mess to try and make changes with. OS X's way is extremely clean and elegant, by using easily identifiable XML-based preference files. Also, if you mess up a preference file, it's not going to mess anything up. While XP doesn't force you into DOS anymore to fix registry problems, it's hilarious that it ever did. I mean, how is any average user going to have any clue what to do? Those were the days when it did just corrupt without the user touching it too.


XP does Users in the same way. When it starts, you choose which user you want to log in as(unless you're the only user, then it just starts). Each user has a folder within a folder in the root directory called 'Documents and Settings'. Each user folder has a number of subfolders. For example:

C:\Documents and Settings\Jon, and within 'Jon', there are 'My Documents', 'Shared', 'Cookies', 'Templates', 'Application Data', 'Desktop', among others, and you can totally mold the OS to your liking. Also, in the Documents and Settings folder, there is an 'All Users' folder, which contains info and settings that are system wide.

Yeah, that's nice in theory, but it never stays that way. It's also not secure at all -- any user can easily access another user's files. The main problem is that most Windows programs don't respect this, and write ini files in their own directories that results in system-wide preferences. The majority of third-party application Windows applications do this, and it means every user has to share the same set of preferences and possibly other types of data (big security/privacy risk). Windows wasn't built from the ground up to support users the "right way", and 2000's/XP's way is completely tacked on. It's just ineffective. I'm sure you could look around your hard drive and find all sorts of data that is specific to you that isn't in your home folder.


I can appreciate that you perfer MacOS's way of setting preferences(the XML files), but I have an attatchment to the registry, and I take pride in the fact that I can go into it, edit countless things, and not cause the system to stop working. I really like the registry and think it works well...that's just user opinion though.

Making changes to system preferences shouldn't be a hobby :)


Now, I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but I'm going to because you're a web developer and you'd be able to discuss this with me. XML is XHTML, no? I don't like the idea. There's just too much pointless addition of code involved with it. Forgive me, but I just don't see why the "<img>" tag has to be closed at the end. It works and has always worked without closing it, so why add more unneeded code? And closing a "<br>" tag is as pointless as it gets imho. And have you ever tried to validate a webpage with embedded flash for xhtml? That is tricky business and, frankly, I don't think it's worth it. Big websites like CNN.com and Microsoft.com aren't even xhtml-ified yet. Not that I'm pointing to Microsoft.com as an ideal for what a website should be. I think we can agree that trying to find your way through Microsoft's site is kind of like trying to find your way through mirror maze in the dark.

XML and XHTML are different. XHTML is HTML influenced by XML, but in my opinion, is quite a joke. Just as you said, if you're dealing with a big site that includes outside source, it's just never going to validate. Furthermore, I agree that <br /> and similar tags is pretty pointless. I'm all for standards compliance, but I don't think XHTML has enough advantages at this point. Although, just for the sake of compliance, I do try to use it, but I don't see it as a big deal either way.

XML is a totally different issue though. XML is a great solution for text-based (i.e. not database-based) data storage. It's great for things like templates, preference files or any type of settings, or even for transferring data from one web-based application to another. It's also perfect for things like website feeds, which use a version of XML called RSS or ATOM. It provides structure to a text document, while not being overwhelming or hard to use. That makes it perfect to be parsed by near any type of application.


Back to the topic at hand...the dragging install/uninstall sounds nice. But let me ask you this. What if I want to customize my installation of Office. What if I only want to Install Word and Powerpoint and forgo Access, Outlook, and Excel? Is that possible? Or can you only drag the whole thing to wherever you want it installed?

Yep, you just drag what you want. In the case of MS Office, when you put in the CD, you see all of those applications. You just drag over the ones you want to use.

I suppose you're correct in saying that people don't understand Mac's benefits. I think I do for the most part and they don't really lure me. On the flip side, I think one of the biggest reasons Mac people like yourself perfer Macs is that they don't have much patience for glitchiness or any other type of problem. Note that that doesn't mean they don't know computers and/or how to correct these problems, it just means they don't have the patience to deal with it. To that, I say to each his own. I can completely understand it, as I'm the guy every person in my family as well as close circle of friends come to when they have computer problems. But although I understand it, I don't share it. I love the challenge of fixing a computer problem that my friends or even fellow techies haven't been able to. I love the challenge of figuring out what causes these problems. It enables me to have a greater knowledge, in the end, of how computers work. And in the end that's kind of what it's about for me. I know most people can't relate to that at ALL, but I would think you being a computer-literate person can at least understand what I'm saying. In closing, I honestly think that Windows can and does run as smoothly and as effectively as any operating system(speaking of XP now).


I completely respect that. I'm the same way... whenever someone has a computer problem, they come to me. It is true though, I don't have the patience to deal with those problems anymore. Having a fully functioning computer is absolutely essential to me, and while I have no problem fixing the problems, I just don't want to spend the time with them. These days, I'd rather spend the time furthering my knowledge in fixing problems with things like Apache or other "hard core" problems then Windows stuff. I've spent waayyy too much time in the past doing that :) When Longhorn comes out, I'll certainly spend time with it just so I'm familiar with it, but there's absolutely nothing it's going to offer that OS X won't have before it's released (including full-text searching of documents and so forth). Really though, I fully respect your views, I'm just trying to inform you about some common misconceptions :)


Just two last general dislikes about Macs. One, I've already mentioned, the one-button mouse. I just can't get into it. I've used two and three button mice my entire life and I find them much more effective. Two, the ejection of zip disks, CDs, DVDs, and other removable media. There is no physical eject button. You have to drag the removable media to the trash can(which turns into an eject symbol), and I find that a nuisance. I like to be able to just press the button and have it spit out my disc(k).


See above for the mouse thing. As for the eject buttons, check the keyboard! There's a physical eject button on every Apple keyboard. It works just as well as having it on the drive itself (i.e. even if the computer isn't fully booted).

I challenge you for that record :wink:

We'll see about that by the time this tread is over!

Actually, send me a message on AIM -- my screenname is g0rman there (the 0 is a zero). I think we've bored the people here at Interference a bit much as is ;) I'd also like to show you some stuff.
 
Actually, send me a message on AIM -- my screenname is g0rman there (the 0 is a zero). I think we've bored the people here at Interference a bit much as is I'd also like to show you some stuff.

I'll definitely do that...but not until Sunday night or Monday. I'm leaving town tomorrow morning and I won't be back until Sunday night. I was just on AOL and I added you to my buddy list. You were on, but 'away'. Now, I don't know if you were actually away or if you're one of those people that always puts the away message on in hopes of dissuading certain people from trying to talk to you :wink: so I didn't say anything. Anyway, catch ya later.
 
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