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X vs. XP.com Site Launched
Dan Pouliot writes "I've been compiling a shootout of X vs. XP for some time, but I've finally given it it's own domain xvsxp.com. Sure, I prefer Macs, but I've tried to have this site be as objective (and thorough) a shootout as possible."
FYI - With Mac OS 10.3, X11 will be standard equipment...
As for actual content, there are a few things that I disagree with. This person said that they are a Mac fan, so I'm not too suprised at these things. Here is what I see wrong/disagree with:
Do I have a preference? I've always liked Macs, but I use PCs because they cost less (I can build a PC for much cheaper than the lowest-end-mac costs). From Win95 on, the IBM/PC has had a superior OS over OS 7/8/9. OS X changes things. It's a great OS. Would I rather have OS X or XP? I'm not quite sure. I'd probably chose OS X, all else being equal. It's done so well. I also don't like alot of the stuff XP does. If the choice was between 2k and X, I'm not sure. I would probably go with X again, but only because of the Unix core; wihtout that it'd be 2k. I use 2k and love it. It's a very good interface.
Of course, this is just another one of those KDE vs. Gnome (KDE for me), PC vs. Mac (PC for me), DVD-R vs. DVD+R (whichever one someone wants to give me ;), Linux vs. BSD (Linux for me) type things. It has no answer.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
First I will steal a comment from a Macslash poster and say that each of the different categories should be weighted differently. The ease with which the average user can network two computers should carry more weight than out of the box chat capabilities.
Second I am so absurdly tired of anyone who mentions anything to do with one button mice. If you are reading slashdot you are probably a computer geek. As a computer geek you more than likely know lots of stories about that idiot that can't use their computer. That is why there are one button mice! Most people are the idiot that can't use a computer. I don't think I have ever used an out of the box mouse from any PC manufacturer simply because I spend enough time using the computer that I really appreciate a mouse that is comfortable. Maybe Apple could be a little smarter and have a check box on the Apple Store site that allows a user to select their choice of mice.
This is because Windows has been historically extremely vulnerable to viruses that take over the boot sequence and steal your login.
This is not true at all. Windows is no more vulnerable to viruses that take over the boot sequence to any other OS and login and/or password hijacking programs have never been common on Windows. The Ctrl+Alt+Del for login has been in NT from the start (ca. 1993) and is simply part of the secure login facilities that NT was *designed* with.
"General Interface"
XP routinely fails to notify the user if the system is busy. It doesn't give ANY feedback when launching Internet Explorer.
I've not seen a system for some time where IE startup wasn't so fast that feedback is required - but that's not the point. XP does give feedback - when the system is processing in the background, the cursor changes from an arrow to an arrow+hourglass icon. This includes (or should) the time while programs are loading and not displaying anything to screen. Unfortunately I don't have an XP box handy to test this with right now, but it certainly happens with Win2k and was also present in Win95.
Something else that isn't commented on is how often applications block (the beachball), particularly the Finder. It happens *way* too much and on tasks that really should be quick or multithreaded.
Whenever a window accidentally gets moved completely off the screen, the Size and Move keyboard commands can be invoked, and the window can be moved back onto the screen via the keyboard
I can't see how a window could be "accidentally" moved completely off screen. I can see how it could be done programmatically by the application, or deliberately by the user - but not "accidentally".
Dragging and dropping content from one app to another involves dragging the app down to the Task bar onto the button that corresponds to the window you want to drag into (even though the cursor switches to the Cant-Do-That icon), then finally drag the item back up the screen to the location you want to drop it. Not impossible, but not too practical either.
Cumbersome it may be, but it is infinitely better than the complete lack of equivalent functionality in OS X.
Corners are better used: the Start Menu is always placed in a corner, which makes it a very easy target.
This is only true if the taskbar hasn't been made larger than the default. If it is, the Start button moves out of the corner (what it should do is expand to fill the entire space).
Dragging test between windows is something that it is up to the application to implement on both OSes. Notepad is not a good example to use because it isn't really an app, it's just a text-control widget wrapped in a window.
"Drag & Drop"
More than one PC user has mentioned that they prefer cut and paste. And on Windows XP I prefer cut and paste too, not because cut and paste is an inherently superior method, but rather because XP's poor support for drag and drop has trained me avoid it altogether. But on Mac OS X?which has more thorough support for drag and drop?I use each method interchangeably depending on what best suits the current situation.
I prefer to use Cut & Paste for file management as well, and I'd prefer it in OS X to drag & drop. Unfortunately, the Cut & Paste functionality in OS X for this purpose is inadequate.
"Navigating the file system".
IMHO OS X loses out here completely because it doesn't feature the classic directory tree + file list style of GUI file management which I find to be the easiest and most efficient to use (when partnered with good keyboard shortcuts).
"Dock vs Taskbar"
One of the Dock's most impressive features is it's advanced real time application feedback.
Visually impressive it may be - however, functionally it's fairly pointless. Apart from the *massive* overhead involved (a busy minimised terminal window will drag the entire GUI to a crawl) the utility is fairly limited - for preview icons to be useful, they have to be huge, chewing up yet more valuable screen real estate in a GUI feature that already wastes more than it should.
"Keyboard application switching".
He forgot that Cmd+` will cycle between the windows of the foreground app. Also, a big weakness in OS X's keyboard switching IMHO is an inability to quickly & easily move to an arbitrary window (particularly without having all the app's other windows obscure the rest of the screen).
"Keyboard Shortcuts".
Some of the keyboard shortcuts are just flat out wrong. The standard shortcut for "new file" on Windows is Ctrl+N. Win+E is a shortcut for launching explorer. Although he rightfully picks up that there is *still* no shortcut key for creating a new folder in Explorer. The shortcut for "opening a file" in Explorer is Enter. Using Alt+F,O is the long way to do it. He also does not say anything about a shortcut that is seriously lacking in OS X - one to quickly go straight to the Desktop. This area is a big win for Windows IMHO, since it's possible to do anything from the keyboard in Windows quickly and easily with no extra configuration necessary.
It's also troubling that XP relies on the Windows key for system shortcuts, since not all keyboards have a Windows key (my IBM ThinkPad lacks a Windows key).
No ! This is exactly what it *should* do. All the keyboard shortcuts should be Win+ or have a programmable modifier key. Using the control key for shortcuts was a Really Bad Idea.
"Networking".
The network browser in OS X is really bad - although not as bad as the nightmare that was Chooser. You can't access anything on a remote machine without mounting it's share, searching for or connecting to specific machines is clumsy and opening up the "Connect to Server" dialog BLOCKS THE WHOLE FINDER.
Connecting to remote machines in Windows is vastly superior. You can navigate directly to machines, the shares they have and manipulate things in those shares - even launch programs - all without having to map or mount the share.
"Power User".
I'm not quite sure why "screen capture" is in this section - I don't think I've ever wanted to take a screen capture in my life, let alone cared about how flexible the builtin tools to do it are.
"Booting from alternate drives". This is a hardware issue and has _nothing_ to do with Windows or OS X. Just as there are PCs that require fidding in the BIOS to boot from anything except the first hard disk, there are also machine that let you hit a key on bootup to get a nice little menu of all the bootable devices the system knows about. It really doesn't belong in this comparison.
"Misc"
XP Home Edition doesn't support multi-processors.
That's because the audience it's targetted at won't be running machines with multiple CPUs.
You can only use your numeric keypad in XP when num lock is turned on, even with full size keyboards.
This has already been commented on, but it bears repeating. This is *precisely* how the system should operate. Not only that, but most PCs default to having the Num Lock on at boot - and if that isn't enough, Windows will remember the state the Num Lock key was in the last time you logged out.
Apart from these errors, which seem mostly to do with a lack of experience with Windows, lack of knowledge about it's history, and/or simple personal preferences, the site seems ok.
I could take you to task on many of your points, but this one is grossly inaccurate, and something has to be said.
I don't know how you could use OS X for more than a week and still think dock feedback is mostly pointless. Let's take the prime example: Mail. Even if my Mail icon is tiny, it still tells me if I have unread messages by displaying that tiny red star on Mail's "stamp" icon. If I have magnification turned on, I can see how many unread messages have just come in. If you can't see how that is useful, then there's no reason to waste precious CPU cycles explaining it.
Besides Mail, there are dozens of other apps that provide Dock feedback (CPU Monitor comes to mind), save me keystrokes and reduce the app's interference with my workflow to a single glance rather than a click, a glance, and another click to go back to where I was. Print Center shows me when my print jobs are going, and when they're finished, or if they've encountered any errors. It even shows me how many pages still have to print! And I don't have to open a single window to get that information. There are dozens and dozens more examples where these came from. And none of these examples require the icons to be huge. You can get one level of usefulness with the dock minimized, and another level if you choose to magnify it, which can be done with a simple flick of the wrist.
How can you possibly support that the dock feedback feature isn't useful with all that evidence?
I hope that one of the dying unix firms will see this and make a last ditch effort to save themselves by producing a new desktop.
They'd have to compete with Apple, which would be difficult, because Apple were a dying "high design" firm who made a last-ditch effort to save themselves by putting something decent under the hood (OS X's excellence does not come from high design alone).
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato