What separates a Mac from a PC?

[Q Classic]

You really shouldn't knock Aqua, as Luna is obviously a second-rate copy of it. A lot like most of Microsoft's product on that point, being a ripoff of an Apple innovation.

best i've heard in ages.

you're just mad because microsoft did to apple what apple did to xerox--with the mice and the gui and all...

===

and ari, KDE is so much nicer than Gnome. I don't get where all these people say Gnome is less cluttered--KDE is simpler and quicker.

===

all of you who are so into this "mine is better than yours" are so painfully blunted that i'm glad you guys won't even give linux the time of day.

that's the last thing we need-- my red hat is better than your debian is better than your windows is better than your solaris is better than your mac is better than your tomsrtbt is better than your red hat.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
and ari, KDE is so much nicer than Gnome. I don't get where all these people say Gnome is less cluttered--KDE is simpler and quicker.

Well... actually, my desktop used to consist of IceWM and about ten to fifteen xterms . Dunno if that was cluttered - depends on the definition of the word - but it definitely wasn't as nice as KDE. I'm still not quite sure if I'm going to stay with KDE, though. I don't like the wait at login nor the numerous small glitches that tend to crop up from the almost-but-not-quite proper interoperations of the applications. Sure, I might have had to type a couple more words with the old configuration, but it's much less work than actually running KDE. I'll have to see - if the system proves to be more usable than expected (or if I fall in love with some of its apps - haven't yet tried out Kate, for example) I'll keep it in use.

that's the last thing we need-- my red hat is better than your debian is better than your windows is better than your solaris is better than your mac is better than your tomsrtbt is better than your red hat.

Hey, if I wasn'tso cynical about all operating systems, I'd have been singing the praises of Gentoo all day long on this thread and others .

[Q Classic]

kde is slower than wm, but i still find it quite good for my purposes.

i've found that kate and koffice are all right, but abiword beats kate hands down in loading speed. openoffice, is pure sh|te in terms of speed, so...

of linux, the one thing that irritates me the most is its inability to detect my usb palm cradle... they're working on it, but nothing's worked to this point--not even coldsync. oy.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

Luna is in no way, shape, or form a copy of Aqua. In fact, the Whistler betas had a new GUI long before OS X even came out.

Yeah, them giving it a similar name was a complete coincidence.

And for the record, the general consensus in the HCI community (of which my uni specializes in) is the XP interface is the most functional out of the mainstream OSes.

Another vague appeal to authority.

Here's how dumb Windows is. If I stick a CD in my mac, it turns up on the desktop where I can access it straightaway. In Windows when I've used it I have to click on the "D-Drive" icon. There is absolutely no point in having drive icons, yet Windows has them.

And what happens if I want to stop Junk Mail with my expensive copy of MS Entourage?

Well I have to turn on the filter and guess which setting is going to work. Then I have to **** about with the help function to learn up how to set a rule, then I have to set up the rule and create a mailbox called junk. The initial filter is "dumb: so I have to keep checking up on it - and I still get a steady amount of junk mail that it can't catch.

In my free copy of Mac Mail I turn on the junk filter to training. If it marks only junk mail as junk (as it did for me) then I turn it on full so that the junk is deposited in the "junk" folder. If it doesn't catch something I highlight it and press the junk button. The program learns from my action and filters out similar messages in the future. Result, virtually no junk mail.

(the Dock is a design disaster, and I don't care if you're "used to it" and think it's fine -- it's not)

This is the dumbest thing you've said for a while Asher. If people get used to it and find it a useful and convenient addition to the interface then by definition for them it can't be a design disaster, can it?

If you would stop trying to use a Macintosh like it was a Windows PC you would get more done.

[MRT144]

agathon, if you stopped trying to use a mac like a windows PC youd get more done.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Yeah, them giving it a similar name was a complete coincidence.

Luna dates back to Windows Neptune (hence the Luna name) back in 1998. It just was pushed back to Whistler (WinXP). Try again.

Here's how dumb Windows is. If I stick a CD in my mac, it turns up on the desktop where I can access it straightaway. In Windows when I've used it I have to click on the "D-Drive" icon. There is absolutely no point in having drive icons, yet Windows has them.

Again, you display a clear ignorance to how Windows works.
If I stick a CD in my PC, I can have it either:
* Show up on my desktop where I can use it straight away (open an Explorer view)
* Open up to the correct medium (ie, play in Winamp, play in WMP, play DVDs in WinDVD, etc)
* Do nothing

It's configurable, and in fact it asks you what you want to do the first time you insert it. You can check off "Always do this" or leave it so it prompts each time.

The drive icons exist because they tell you what kind of medium is in the drive and if it's loaded or not, and it's just a graphical touch.

And what happens if I want to stop Junk Mail with my expensive copy of MS Entourage?

I have no idea, I've never used Entourage. Outlook 11 has very intelligent Bayesian spam-filters, you can also get Outlook plugins if that's what you want. Or you can use the Outlook dumb filters, match keywords & sort...

In my free copy of Mac Mail I turn on the junk filter to training. If it marks only junk mail as junk (as it did for me) then I turn it on full so that the junk is deposited in the "junk" folder. If it doesn't catch something I highlight it and press the junk button. The program learns from my action and filters out similar messages in the future. Result, virtually no junk mail.

Mac Mail uses simple Bayesian learning filters as well, which were actually developed by Microsoft Research and made public domain. Just FYI. See this for more info: http://research.microsoft.com/mlas/

This is the dumbest thing you've said for a while Asher. If people get used to it and find it a useful and convenient addition to the interface then by definition for them it can't be a design disaster, can it?

I can get used to the stick shift being on the ceiling of my car, too, that doesn't mean it's not a very stupid design.

The Dock is a problem because:
1) It lacks consistency (the button icons change location as you mouse-over by default)
2) Lots of wasted screen realestate
3) Uninformative icons
4) Mixes both running apps and ability to launch apps to the point where it's needlessly confusing and the only way you can tell if something's running is if there's a little icon on the icon
5) It gets complicated with multiple instances of the program

The Dock's only purpose is to serve basic task functionality and look pretty. It does that, but it's a horrid design.

The experts agree, and 95% of computer users agree. You may be used to it and find it functional, but that doesn't stop it from being a bad design.

[Boris Godunov]

One need only point to the standard keyboard to show how bad design can be something to which people become accustomed. It's ludicrous!

Thankfully, most people realized that one does not have to just "get used" to bad design (the keyboard a seeming exception), as that is much of what has driven technological innovation in the first place: making things better.

[Sava]

what's wrong with QWERTY?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sava
what's wrong with QWERTY?

It's an inefficient design by its nature...

Dvorak is far more efficient, but everyone uses QWERTY since it's the norm.

There have been some innovations in it that many people find helps their typing speed (like MS' Natural keyboard ), but Dvorak is still best.

[Boris Godunov]

Plus, "Dvorak" must be loved for the name alone!

[Sava]

Any links to sites that show why QWERTY is bad?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sava
Any links to sites that show why QWERTY is bad?

QWERTY's not "bad", Dvorak's just better.

Dvorak puts all the most frequently used letters in the english language closer to the home row, so your fingers don't need to move as often or as far as QWERTY.

QWERTY:

Dvorak:

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

Luna dates back to Windows Neptune (hence the Luna name) back in 1998. It just was pushed back to Whistler (WinXP). Try again.

Touche.

The drive icons exist because they tell you what kind of medium is in the drive and if it's loaded or not, and it's just a graphical touch.

It's a waste of space. I know what kind of medium is in the drive by looking at it. I don't have to look at a drive icon.

I have no idea, I've never used Entourage. Outlook 11 has very intelligent Bayesian spam-filters, you can also get Outlook plugins if that's what you want. Or you can use the Outlook dumb filters, match keywords & sort...

I haven't used outlook 11. Entourage is a good program apart from the silly junk filtering system.

Mac Mail uses simple Bayesian learning filters as well, which were actually developed by Microsoft Research and made public domain. Just FYI. See this for more info: http://research.microsoft.com/mlas/

You'd think that they'd put it in their own damn products then...

I can get used to the stick shift being on the ceiling of my car, too, that doesn't mean it's not a very stupid design.

Not what I said. I said I got used to it and found it to be more useful?

The Dock is a problem because:
1) It lacks consistency (the button icons change location as you mouse-over by default)

What are you talking about? Do you mean when you have magnification on? That should only be used when you have a huge amount of stuff in the dock. When that is the case it works very well. There isn't any point having it turned on otherwise.

2) Lots of wasted screen realestate

None wasted: if, like everyone I know you have the dock hidden until you pass the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen.

3) Uninformative icons

Like what? The Mail icon is a stamp. It tells you how many new messages you have. If you are so dopey as not to recognise your own programs you can run the pointer over it and it will tell you what it is.

4) Mixes both running apps and ability to launch apps to the point where it's needlessly confusing and the only way you can tell if something's running is if there's a little icon on the icon

In other words, the only way to tell that it is running is by looking. That's really confusing.

5) It gets complicated with multiple instances of the program

I can't think of a mac program I'd want to open more than once. In fact I can't think of any reason to do this.

The Dock's only purpose is to serve basic task functionality and look pretty. It does that, but it's a horrid design.

Blah Blah.... It works if you bother to think about what you are doing with it/

The experts agree, and 95% of computer users agree. You may be used to it and find it functional, but that doesn't stop it from being a bad design.

Again an appeal to authority combined with a fallacy of majority belief. I really like the dock - I find that it works very well. In fact I'd be annoyed if Apple got rid of it.

A few mac people p*ssed and moaned about it when it came out, but I haven't heard many compaints lately.

[Zylka]

...but which company can offer me a portable, 17 inch dvorak

PREFERABLY CLIPPED

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
It's a waste of space. I know what kind of medium is in the drive by looking at it. I don't have to look at a drive icon.

If you think it's a waste of space, did you consider disabling them or changing the view so it doesn't show them? You know you can do that...

You'd think that they'd put it in their own damn products then...

It's in MSN 8 right now, and Outlook 11 will get it when it's released in a few months. They didn't think the early revisions were smart enough and had too many false positives (Apple disagreed, it seems), but they've refined it to the point where they think it's good enough for mainstream use.

Not what I said. I said I got used to it and found it to be more useful?

How can it be more useful?

None wasted: if, like everyone I know you have the dock hidden until you pass the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen.

Wow, what a complete ripoff of an MS innovation.

In other words, the only way to tell that it is running is by looking. That's really confusing.

It's confusing because it doesn't easily separate it. Like for my Trillian conversations, I sometimes have 7-8 windows open at once. How do I easily tell these apart with the Dock and easily switch between them all?

I can't think of a mac program I'd want to open more than once. In fact I can't think of any reason to do this.

It's not just opening up programs more than once, but windows. The Dock doesn't understand that sometimes people want to flip between windows rather than just programs. Another reason why it's a bad design.

Again an appeal to authority combined with a fallacy of majority belief.

Appeal to authority: Experts who study this (psychologists, HCI specialists) and based on usability research and testing. I don't know, I think that carries more weight than a blind Mac zealot chanting "it's better cause I'm used to it", doncha think?

As for "fallacy" of majority belief, you may want to check your market share figures.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

Wow, what a complete ripoff of an MS innovation.

Oh yeah, MS the great UI innovators.

It's confusing because it doesn't easily separate it. Like for my Trillian conversations, I sometimes have 7-8 windows open at once. How do I easily tell these apart with the Dock and easily switch between them all?

The last one is on the right and they go back in order. Stick the mouse over it and it will tell you what it is.

It's not just opening up programs more than once, but windows. The Dock doesn't understand that sometimes people want to flip between windows rather than just programs. Another reason why it's a bad design.

My way of doing that is clicking on the window I want to look at. Or using the "window" menu if it's obscured. If I have a lot of windows open in one app I can ctrl-click on the program icon and a popup menu will list all the open windows. If I'm one of those people who needs a two button mouse I could buy one so I wouldn't have to click and hold or ctrl click, but big deal.

I actually think there is a better solution than any so far offered. That is to use tabs. I'm a fan of tabbed browsing and I'd like to see the concept extended.

Of course there could be a keyboard shortcut - I agree that this should be added to the dock, but it wouldn't take much to do it, and certainly isn't a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. I still find it easier to use than the Windows taskbar which gets too full to read the labels properly. Of course you could make the taskbar taller, but this looks hideous and makes it harder to find stuff.

Appeal to authority: Experts who study this (psychologists, HCI specialists) and based on usability research and testing. I don't know, I think that carries more weight than a blind Mac zealot chanting "it's better cause I'm used to it", doncha think?

Nope. I don't unless they come up with reasons their opinions are so much hot air.

I did read the "10 reasons the dock sucks". IMHO there are a couple of good points but the rest of it is hopeless whining. One complaint was that it didn't preserve "motor memory" so that if I put stuff in the dock the trash moved to the right and I would find myself moving the pointer too far to the left when I attempted to trash something. The problem with this objection is that it only applies to mental cripples. If you have any sort of motor co-ordination at all this doesn't happen.

As for "fallacy" of majority belief, you may want to check your market share figures.

Doesn't stop it being a fallacy.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Sava
Any links to sites that show why QWERTY is bad?

QWERTY is bad, because it was designed to slow you down to avoid typewriter jams.

[Drake Tungsten]

The Dock is a problem because:
1) It lacks consistency (the button icons change location as you mouse-over by default)
2) Lots of wasted screen realestate
3) Uninformative icons
4) Mixes both running apps and ability to launch apps to the point where it's needlessly confusing and the only way you can tell if something's running is if there's a little icon on the icon
5) It gets complicated with multiple instances of the program

Not a single one of these "problems" is valid. Pretty weak showing, Asher.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Oh yeah, MS the great UI innovators.

In that case, you're right. MS was the first to do the auto-hide thing, as well as have a bar at the bottom of the screen with programs running/launching programs. Apple blatantly ripped that off.

The last one is on the right and they go back in order. Stick the mouse over it and it will tell you what it is.

See? That's completely stupid, and not functional.

In Windows, I've got a list of all of the windows on the taskbar. The circle icon color determines which medium it is (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Y!, etc), and then the person's name is next to it. I can easily see which window is open and click on it, which is far more functional than the dock's method.

Example:

If the Windows start getting too cluttered, Windows can (by default and this is optional) group together the program's windows under one entry, called "Trillian", and when you click on it, a list appears above it with all of the active windows and their titles.

Example:

You can also use ALT-TAB to scroll through all active programs, with a little screenshot of that window appearing in the center.

Call me crazy, but I think that's way more functional than having unnamed little icons in a "chronological" order on the dockbar, mixed in with shortcuts to launch programs...

Drake:

Not a single one of these "problems" is valid. Pretty weak showing, Asher.

Feel free to debate, but as usual you're not contributing anything but interjecting randomly and waving your hand, dismissing arguments randomly by calling them "invalid" or some other nonsense.

If you want to contribute, you're welcome to do so, but you're going to have to explain to those of us who are not mentally deranged why any of those objections to the dock are "invalid".

[Q Classic]

ag, a cd thing that appears on your desktop? that's an icon... so naturally, what appears on your desktop, it itself is a drive icon...

I can't think of a mac program I'd want to open more than once. In fact I can't think of any reason to do this.

how about finder or explorer windows?

Oh yeah, MS the great UI innovators.

it's not like mac os is that much more innovative:
1. the innovation for mouse/gui came from xerox;
2. the innovation of multiple mouse buttons is not mac-native;
3. the innovation of the way the finder works in mac is taken outright from nextstep;
4. the innovation of darwin is straight from the bsd world...

windows does have its moments:
1. integrating the browser and making it the default file system explorer;
2. the taskbar first appeared in windows;

[Drake Tungsten]

Feel free to debate, but as usual you're not contributing anything but interjecting randomly and waving your hand, dismissing arguments randomly by calling them "invalid" or some other nonsense.

If you want to contribute, you're welcome to do so, but you're going to have to explain to those of us who are not mentally deranged why any of those objections to the dock are "invalid".

Agathon already dealt pretty effectively with your dumb reasoning. I just wanted to kick you while you were down.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Agathon already dealt pretty effectively with your dumb reasoning. I just wanted to kick you while you were down.

Agathon's clearly stumbling around blindly trying to make points without any success, and you're his little cheerleader on the sidelines.

There's no need to "kick me while I'm down" (since I'm not down), but you can certainly save your own battered ego and abort the silly cheerleading.

(Once again you display you don't have anything to contribute, because you also don't know what's going on -- otherwise you could actually deal with the points rather than plugging your ears and saying they're invalid, hmm?)

[Drake Tungsten]

The Dock is a problem because:
1) It lacks consistency (the button icons change location as you mouse-over by default)

You can shut off the magnification quite easily. You don't even need to go to a control panel; just control-click on the Dock and the preference menu will pop up for you. It takes all of 1 second to change and then you have all the consistency you want.

2) Lots of wasted screen realestate

You can hide it as Agathon said. You can also adjust its size if you don't like the hiding feature, like me.

3) Uninformative icons

The big, beautiful OS X icons are better than anything Windows has to offer.

4) Mixes both running apps and ability to launch apps to the point where it's needlessly confusing and the only way you can tell if something's running is if there's a little icon on the icon

As Ag said, all you have to do to tell if an app is launched or not is look at the Dock. That's not a problem for all non-retards.

5) It gets complicated with multiple instances of the program

Why the hell would you want to run multiple instance of the program? The Mac OS is set up in such a way that such absurdity isn't necessary.

There, I countered all your moronic points. Happy now?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten


The big, beautiful OS X icons are better than anything Windows has to offer.

The difference being Apple thinks all its users are morons (which is true, to an extent ) and thinks they can't read. So all they have is purty little pictures to tell what a program is.

In the Windows world, we've got icons and descriptive text, which is actually much more functional.

As Ag said, all you have to do to tell if an app is launched or not is look at the Dock. That's not a problem for all non-retards.

As I've said, that's not the issue. Apps that are running and apps that are not running are two separate things, mixing them together is just...wrong. Counter-intuitive. You may be used to it now, and I'm sure anyone can be once you start using it, but this is why Apple's marketshare only continues to shrink. Everyone else looks at it and thinks "what the ****?" and Apple fans jump up and down crying about how it's great and you "get used to it".

Why the hell would you want to run multiple instance of the program? The Mac OS is set up in such a way that such absurdity isn't necessary.

Oh gee, I don't know.
1) Multiple internet browser instances (so plugins or whatever don't bring down all your windows if there's a crash)
2) Multiple AIM/ICQ/MSN programs
3) Multiple file browser/finder windows
4) etc
You see, the Windows world is advanced enough to allow you to do both, while the Apple world doesn't think its users can handle that (or maybe their OS can't handle it), so they restrict you to only one instance at a time.

There, I countered all your moronic points. Happy now?

Quite, they're precisely what I expected.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Agathon
QWERTY is bad, because it was designed to slow you down to avoid typewriter jams.

Jamming in typewriters was caused by pressing two letters that were close together down at the same time (or one after the other). As such, the QWERTY keyboard layout combatted this by moving often-used keys away from each other so that you could type fast without jamming.

[MRT144]

are mac users so dense that they dont understand why someone would want to run multiple instances of the same program? or are they still coming to grips with being able to run more than one program at the same time?

[Skanky Burns]

Hell, I make multiple virtual computer environments on my system, let alone multiple programs.

[Drake Tungsten]

In the Windows world, we've got icons and descriptive text, which is actually much more functional.

The Dock has descriptive text as well.

Apps that are running and apps that are not running are two separate things, mixing them together is just...wrong.

Good logic. The Dock is obviously flawed because you think it is just... wrong.

3) Multiple file browser/finder windows

I do this all the time.

As I said before, pretty weak showing Asher.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
The Dock has descriptive text as well.

Can you post a screenshot?
I don't mean mouse-overs.

Good logic. The Dock is obviously flawed because you think it is just... wrong.

The Dock is flawed because it reduces productivity (no easy way to flip to specific windows, only programs), no ways to launch multiple instances of a program, lame icons instead of icons + text, mixing launched/unlaunched program into one random-mix bag.

That's why it's wrong.

It's designed to look pretty have basic functionality, and that's it. Sure, by jumping through a bunch of hoops you can accomplish nearly the same things, but it's far less functional and efficient than the Windows taskbar design ("which Apple stole the concept from, and did a half-assed job of it" )

I do this all the time.

Sure, but only because the program just added new threads. How do you switch to the windows? You need to go up to the Windows menu, right? How stupid.

As I said before, pretty weak showing Asher.

Pretty weak? Your whole argument was annihilated several times over. You just don't realize it.

[Oerdin]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Jamming in typewriters was caused by pressing two letters that were close together down at the same time (or one after the other). As such, the QWERTY keyboard layout combatted this by moving often-used keys away from each other so that you could type fast without jamming.

This is a text book example of an old technology standard standing in the way of newer technological efficiency. By WW1 type writters had advanced to the point where jamming was not as big an issue as it previously had been and several enterprising people went out and designed a keyboard which would speed up typing by puting the most commonly used keys close together at the center of the key board. Novices who paid to take blind tests and people found the new keyboard to be much faster and easier to use but people who had already learned the old key board (which remember was designed specifically to slow typers down so as to prevent jams) didn't want to relearn how to type and refused to switch over.

Thus we still have a keyboard which was designed in the 1880s for the sole purpose of making it hard for people to type quickly.