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In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive?
HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X.
What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
To those of us that have either been on the platform for a while (or since the beginning), or have already switched from another platform to OS X, this article will not provide much that we do not already know. However, for those not familiar with OS X, it is a pretty good read. I have used many platforms in parallel for years from the early days of the PC revolution (Apple ][, Macintosh, TRS-80, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Compaq, Windows) to the later workstations (Sun, SGI, NeXT) and have my likes and dislikes for all of them. Having said that however, my preference has fallen on OS X. It is sooo easy to use, is truly plug and play, is more stable, more secure, has most of the GUI and CLI integration a geek could want as well as a pretty good selection of software that makes things either 1) more enjoyable and/or 2) more productive.
For a long while, I had multiple systems on or under my desk, peaking at one time with an SGI Octane, PowerMac 9600, Windows NT, and a Linux box to perform my scientific work, serve a website, do graphics work and general productivity. All of that functionality now exists beautifully in one OS X machine freeing up considerable desktop space. Also, thank goodness for flat panel displays! I serve a couple of websites up on my workstation as well as use it for computational calculations, a front for distributed computing, writing papers, doing graphics for figures and illustrations, preparing presentations etc...etc...etc...
No other platform offers this degree of ease of use combined with flexibility and functionality.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
As a programmer, I am much more productive in Linux because I can tie almost everything I do in Gnome (or KDE) to a key command. I don't use the mouse very much (or at all) while programming in gvim or Eclipse, and it really slows me down when I need to, say, launch a terminal or a browser.
As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office, I am much more productive in Windows. I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers. Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app". MS Office for the Mac is still wildly unstable, and although it's an option, it's not a very good one.
As a hobbiest or a general user, I'm more productive in Mac OS X, which sort of bridges both worlds. Because Macintosh enforces a pretty strict interface guideline, all the general purpose apps are easier to use on the first go. This is not really critical for stuff I use every day (as a programmer or a scientist) but is really useful when I'm trying out a new chess app or whatever.
If I had only one choice, I would use Mac OS X. At work I have both a Linux computer and a Windows computer on my desk (it's a pretty big desk). At home I use my iBook. I don't have to make that choice.
PalmOS 5. On my Treo 650 smartphone. The total integration, mobility, and preconfig'd apps for specific tasks - along with the dearth of options when things go wrong, except trying again, make it the perfect tool. It's practically invisible, while I'm communicating with people around the world, who don't need to have any equipment more special than a regular phone, or maybe any kind of email or web browser.
--
make install -not war
...especially since I need solid video editing (FCP 4) and I also need X, gcc (for embedded systems design work) and security. I bought my first OS X laptop about a year ago and since then I have gotten rid of everything Windows that I owned. My Mac, honestly, has been the most reliable and usable computer I've ever owned. I don't get involved in the whole DEFEND YOUR OS nonsense, my motto is USE WHAT WORKS FOR YOU, and for me, thats Mac OS X.
Abuse my rationalization of rhetoric as either metaphor or monotomy.
Yes, any operating system that can run Visual Studio will be the most productive. The autocompletion featrure for member functions/varaibles is to die for. Whenever I program in another environement I end up using short and unhelpful names for member variables, simply because I don't want something difficult to spell/remember. Also the integreated help system is nice. Now if only more people tried to incorperate its good features, but for the most part the only thing special about most development IDEs are systax highlighting/auto tabbing/in program compilation/degugging. Sigh.
Philosophy.
More then just GUI wise. Although there were a number of significant improvements in Panther over Jaguar. Expose and network browsing to name a couple. But OS X is one of the few OSes I've used where I've felt where the command line was just as functional as the GUI. Windows often feels lacking in that respect, not to mention some of the clunkiness found in the DOS/Windows command line over *nix variants.
Although the biggest thing for me on a mac is still a one-button mouse. While most functionality is on the left button, if you plug in a two+ button mouse into a mac you'll find that the right mouse button behaves more or less like how you would expect it to, and not having it makes you feel like you're missing something, even though you can control-click still. Seeing how many mac users hook up PC mice to their Macs now I don't see why Apple can't just start shipping Macs with two-button mice.
Seriously. I got more done in five uninterrupted hours of staring at white letters on a black screen (especially now with vi's color syntax highlighting and dangling } identifiers; where was this stuff when I was hacking code on VT220s?) than I ever possibly could in *any* GUI. With a GUI you've got Outlook's siren call (when forced to use Windows) or the Mac Mail.app icon and it's little red "you've got XX pieces of new mail!" appendage, the effortless ability to click over to a web browser "just for a few seconds," etc. ARGH.
;)
Grab three O'Reilly books, fire up the console, and get codin'! I did cheat a little bit, keeping a virtual console open that I used for:
- `man strncasecmp`
- telnet localhost 1390 (was working on, and debugging, a network app)
- ssh @ for the occasional pine session
- lynx http://www.google.com/ (for digging for sample code when I got stuck)
Just finished a "estimated time: 1 week" piece of a project this morning. Five hours. Console mode.
*That's* productive.
geek. lawyer.
1)No www etc to eat away time.
2)I quite often need to write and test out code in a test-bed like environment for later inclusion into some other, typically embedded, software. The most productive way I've found to do this is Borland C with MSDOS. I can edit/compile/test small code bodies faster using MSDOS and Borland C than a cute GUI interface with mouse clicking etc. Bummer though when a bad bointer crashes the whole box. Still, a reboot only takes approx 20 sec. I can do almost the same thing under *nix, but it isn't quite as snappy. *nix does same me from nasty ptrs and give better core dumps etc though.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
XP. Probably the only person here who feels the that way so I feel like I should vote. It does what I want it to do more often then anything else. I do use several flavors on Linux on several other machines at home. I gave on Apple many years ago when they just got to small to matter (to me).
http://www.busyweather.com/
I can't believe you actually recommend XP for web and mail - what a way to increase the number of zombies and spam-bots on TEH INTARWEB than to set people up with an insecure operating system, an insecure web browser, and an insecure mail client. Smooth move, ex-lax.
For web access, e-mail, and writing documents, a linux live CD is the way to go, with documents and preferences are stored on a USB flash drive. It's hard for a rootkit to 0wn a system when all executables are stored on read-only media.
My kids' computer runs windows (for the games), and that's why their computer is blocked by MAC address at the router.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I think that Mac and Windows are both good enough now that the most important thing is which one you are used to. I use Mac at home and Windows at work. I am much faster at Office for Windows, because I use it all day and am used to the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I can surf the internet faster [I almsot typed "more efficiently", but didn't think that made sense] at home because I am familiar with the Safari shortcuts and have a mouse with extra buttons that I configured for forward, backward and open in new window.
:) ]
Neither machine crashes very often. Neither has required maintenance voodoo. Each has certain OS features that I prefere over the other. [I hate window-in-window style of Windows applications. I prefer Windows Taskbar to the Dock.] The work machine has some weird remote access settings that IT occassionally tweaks when they modify our network.
I don't use Linux. [I know, what am I doing on Slashdot?
Even though I enjoy working on Linux (CLI) more, I find I'm more productive on Mac OS X since I spend less of my time coding 5 minute useless programs (more effort to create XCode projects than makefiles) or playing Nethack...
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
1)No popups from background windows poping up in the front, like in firefox or safari. If there is a popup in a different tab's page, it will not popup in front if im not focused on that page.
2) Faster bootup time.
3) when I shut down my computer, I can just click shut down and go away. In windows sometimes there would be a popup waiting for me to click. So I can't leave unless I the blue windows screen.
4) Expose..enough said
5) I have been using this for more than a month now and my Mini only got stuck once. Once! take that windows!
6) No need to install anti-virus software (yet)
7) No worries about the registry hell!
8) I donno why but all the programs (not just apples) works the way they are suppose to work! This is a very strange feeling. In windows world, I never expected programs to run the way they are suppose to.
9) this is just a small thing I noticed, but in real player ( sorry I have to use it), suppose I'm watching a video and shut it down in the middle. The next time i start that video I will see a mark where I left off the last time. This is a small thing but, if you are regular video watch like I, this is very very helpful.
I can keep going and going and going, but seriously, I can't imagine why I did not switched sooner . I'm planning on getting imac pretty soon (and give my mac mini to my dad or something)
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
The statement about bash is quite true. I have gotten used to it and prefer it over ksh, csh, etc. But I would say that regardless of what platform, as long as I have bash, it makes things a lot easier. I never liked Windows's version of history or its scripting language. So whether if I'm using OS X, or Windows (where I install cygwin) I use bash and it makes me more productive.
How would you recommend I learn LaTeX? I've tried a few times, but the learning curve seems to be *very* steep.
Really. I daily swap in and out between Solaris, WinXP, Linux and OS/2.
By far, OS/2 stays out of the way the most so I can focus on how to do the job within a particular application or task.
OS/2 is equally comfortable and useable either by pure command-line or pure GUI. Currently all the *NIX really suck if you wanted to go pure GUI.
(Go ahead, try one week without ever opening up a command-line prompt in *NIX and see how far you get).
WinXP, on the other hand, is a bitch when I go command-line, for whatever reason. Mostly because most of the tools, and Billy, don't expect the user to go there. Or something.
If I had to jump ship, I'd go OS X.
Sorry, but it's true. For most single-user tasks performed serially, cooperative multitasking is good enough. Mac OS X is still slow and ungainly in comparison (this is especially true for the Finder). Of course, for web and application development, OS X definitely blows everything else away.
I am far more productive under MacOS X than Windows XP. I also run Linux on my X86 box, but am not quite as productive since I spend a lot more time doing sysadmin and such than I do on the Mac.
:-)
One of the most telling factors is that I find myself trying to use my Exposé gestures on my X86 platform...
I can use Finder, Gnome, or KDE, or often time a combination of them at the same time, on my PowerBook.
Fink and DarwinPorts allow KDE and Gnome to be installed on OSX, and you then use X11 to run them.
I've found window managers for Windows to be kind of cumbersome. Partially because the system isn't designed for that sort of thing, partially because they're not well done. And there's no ratpoison for Windows. As for X on OS X, that's kind of cumbersome, too. Again, not designed for it, and it doesn't manage the cocoa/aqua applications, which means either having two "window managers" or replacing the system applications.
I disagree that its a silly question.
I've written lots of code over the years. My 1st commercial program that sold well was written on a color computer but it also ran on PCs. The coco had 40x25 screen but I was more effecent on it than a PC which was faster and had more screen. It may have been the fact that I could type commands like "list" and "run" as a single two handed motion that I never quite got right on the PC keyboard. In school we had punch cards and while the lines per day were low, I have never had fewer bugs per day. We could only submit a program once per day and had about 3 chances to get it right. After that I used vt terminals on a vax and EDT seemed to be ok but I didn't produce much code. Later I ended up with a blit and layers and for me that was the most productive platform I've ever used. About that time the PC coding platforms started showing up and I never felt the I got as much done on them. I've used x-code under os X and I'm not as productive using it as I am with vi and make in terminal windows. I do find that because of the extra keystrokes in os-x, that I don't cut and paste as much as I would under windows or KDE and with my poor spelling, that means I have more errors that I have to fix latter.
I love my old blit. It has a high resolution screen that 3:4 profile so I think my next monitor will need to be able to turned 90 degrees. I've got one now but the video cards seem slow and 768x1024 just isn't right.
I am an avid fan of linux and work on several boxes all with linux on them. Personally, I am more productive on linux than anything else but I am constantly bothered by my co-workers who use windows machines. I spend little time with the mac users vs. the 8 hours a week solving problems with people unable to print, wireless not working, installing software, virus checking, etc on windows (even XP). This would not be a big deal if I were the system admin and not a grad student but that is another complaint.
My basic observation is the majority of people know less about hardware and operating systems than they think. Macs are easier to get basic work done and encounter fewer problems. They have their downsides that have kept me from switching as well as the problems with supported software and they tend to cost more but if I were being paid by the hour this would be a big expense on our research group.
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
I rate how productive I feel on an OS based on how much effort it takes to do simple tasks and to jack around with the filesystem - everything else is more a question of applications. (Yeah yeah, I know that the culture provides different experiences with the apps, too, but I have enough of a problem with keyboard dysentery withou having to talk about that, too.)
I regularly work with OS X, Windows, KDE, and WindowMaker, and here is what I think of the first three. (For the sake of disclosure, I was definite Mac hater three years ago, I have had vague feelings of annoyance with Windows going back at least 7 years, and I have never been a fan of Gnome or KDE - I use WindowMaker on my home PC.)
On Windows, it takes a lot of effort to do simple things. Even bringing up an extra Explorer window seems to take a lot of time, because I can't seem to find a good keyboard command or menu item for it. (If there are, Windows fails at making them easy to find.) Navigating the filesystem takes time, because there doesn't seem to be a way to make the places I go most accessible from anywhere. "My Computer" seems to be in a different place (sometimes the Start menu, sometimes the desktop) on every @#$@% computer in the office. Functionality is hidden in random places, and menu items seem to never be hidden under the most appropriate menu. I can't drag and drop things I think I should logically be able to drag and drop, and the alt-tab twitcher completely fails to allow me to switch between applications quickly and seamlessly. Worst of all, it pops up dialogs for things that I don't think should require dialog pop-ups - I hate it when I eject my USB key (which takes too many clicks) and go back to some task (which takes too many clicks) and am just starting to re-orient my attention when Windows throws it all away by throwing up a dialog that tells me my USB key has been unmounted and requires a click to close. The overall effect makes me feel like Windows is hell-bent on wasting my time a second or two at a time and slowly destroying my ability to concentrate.
KDE and GNOME aren't much better. In fact, they're worse - they feel a lot like Windows, only even more disorganized, less consistent, and less logically arranged. The file managers are all half-implemented, and drag-and-drop is barely given a nod. It doesn't help that I find myself constantly dropping to the command line to do simple things that should have an easy GUI equivalent - kill and ps, for example.
OS X isn't perfect, but it's shangri-la compared to the rest. I love that document-oriented apps give you an icon in the window's title bar that acts as a proxy for the file that is open in that window, meaning I can send a document I'm working on to someone else via e-mail without having to waste my time hunting for it in the filesystem. There are keyboard commands for EVERYTHING, and it is easy to find them, I love that. The shelf is a thing of beauty - I think that it is a bit half-implemented, but it's far and away better than anything that any other popular GUI can provide. Expose took some getting used to, but now I can say that it rocks my butt off, and I miss it when I am using other OSes. (I used to use Codetek VirtualDesktop. I still run it, but I rarely use it unless I decide that I need to grab a clean sandbox real quick.) The Dock isn't without its problems either (its handling of placing files in the Dock is just completely broken), but it crams a lot of useful information into a small space, and takes a lot less staring and thinking to figure out what you want to know from it than a taskbar. It doesn't tell you about individual windows, and I have grown to like that - when I work, my mental state tree goes application first, window second, and OS X follows this mental flow. Besides, the window I want is usually on the top of the display after I click on an app's icon, because it is usually the window in that app that I was using the most recently. By contrast, the Windows Taskbar feels like it is jumping the gun. And when I want a window instead of an app, I use Expose, and it's easier and faster than having to deal with the taskbar, which gets real cluttered real fast.
I have to disagree with you on the time it takes to gain in productivity when switching from windows to the unix command line. I've not been an intermitent Linux/Unix user for some years, but recently I've had to use unix machines a lot. So, I decided to take the plunge and learn properly how to work at the command line. After 5 months using vim as my editor and to edit the command line, checking 4 or 5 times a day the man pages, making an efort to use my shell history, etc, I can say that I've become 2 or 3 times as productive as I used to be with my windows hat on. I don't claim to be proficient at the command line but I'm definitely very productive with a reasonable amount of time invested.
My persepective on computer work productivity has changed so much since moving to a command-line world, that I now am very suspicious of wanna be "power-users" which use the mouse all the time.
Of course if the application only runs on one OS, and that OS has other problems that make it less than reliable or that demand time over and above the absolute minimum to get the system functional in the first place and back up application data ongoing, then that's another thing altogether.
My favourite application over the past 20+ years is one called filePro (16+) which started off as Profile on Radio Shack micros, notably the Model II (8" floppies and a Z80 with 64K RAM)
Over the intervening years I and my customers have migrated applications written with this system as well as data entered into them from TRS-dos to Xenix on RS model 16, to Xenix on Altos to Unix on Altos to Unix on x86 PC, to Linux on i686 and not had to re-enter anything or (with the exception of a couple of records in one customer's database that got missed in a record expansion) lost any records (or even worse, had to re-input them). One customer has records dating back to 1983 and still has access to them from his multi-location business now served by a Linux box - same data, same screen layouts, same back-end processing.
The point is that the application is fast, useful, keyboard oriented, easy to use and modify, works on everything from old hardware to the latest (including DEC Vax) and even runs on Windows of various flavors if you are truly perverse ;)
But the really great thing about it is that IT DOESN'T USE A GUI - it is text based.
I recall another (accounting) application many of my customers have used for years - that shortly after Windows 3.1 came out added a GUI version - and has pretty much dropped all pretext of being backwards compatible with the older text "shortcuts". It used to be that you could sit with a pile of receipts and bang them into the program without even looking at the screen - never taking your hands off the keyboard.
Now you have to take a hand away from the keyboard, grab the mouse and navigate to a button to store each and every transaction - getting only 10% or less productivity.
Now that DOS compatibility is pretty much gone from Window they can't even run the old code (not supported though it is); except - - hey - - is dosemu still around on Linux????
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Productivity for me means how quickly I can do a job and just focus on work-related stuff.
.rc file to make something look like the computers on star trek ;)
For me it's OS X.
I've played with Windows long enough and I suffered from needing to customize it just right and always ending up with a machine that just wasn't stable or fun to use.
I migrated to Linux when I found most of what I needed on it. Linux was a blackhole for time, because it was always neat if you could get it to do stuff that Windows could do (e.g. play DVDs print connect to windows share, etc).
Finally I got a Powerbook a few years back. I have all the fun stuff linux provided me, Gimp, a terminal, etc plus a good selection of apps, and things like Office which let me work with other people who use office. I like it and I've always been able to work between apps pretty easily as a programmer and web developer.
A lot of this is due to a nice clean CONSISTANT interface, and a lot is also due to it not crashing or me wanting to spend hours because I can edit an
-d
http://davedash.com/
As things stand it's nearly impossible to have two instances of XCode running in parallel. You simply get lost in a dozen windows, because OS X doesn't offer anything to logically group them. No tabs, no MDI, no nothing. You can't even hide one set of project windows all at once. You have to either hide ALL XCode windows, or go through them and hide every god damn window manually.
This is fucked up, IMO. I'm literally 10 times more productive in VS.NET, and that's what I do - I write code. There's no competition to VS.NET right now as far as coding productivity is concerned.
I have used Windows, Solaris/CDE, Linux (many distros and UIs), and OSX. As a coder/sys admin I feel most comfortable with linux, Gentoo and KDE in particular. The reason for this is the ease of system administration and setup for the software I need while maintaining the ability to tweak it entirely to my likely. No Gentoo was not productive for the first few days. As an added bonus, there is a ton of free software available that just doesn't work as well on OSX or Windows, which can also raise my productivity (Umbrello, Kate, KDevelop, Gimp). It runs best (if it all) in Linux, and getting something equivelant (and native) on Windows or OSX is likely to cost a fair amount.
I recently got a new PowerBook through work, and while I love it, there are limitations when compared to linux. Previous users stated that setting up OSX as a server is a breeze. Sure, this is true if you're only using a basic server, but if you need an advanced configuration, OSX can be a true nightmare. The tools are available under the hood, but it is NOT designed to be tinkered with. My reasoning for choosing OSX for work was the gaurantee for driver compatibility and full support (it was either put linux on a Dell laptop or get the PowerBook). I figured I would take a slight productivity dip, and I did. Everyone has a different routine, and to maximize productivity an interface must be highly configurable. Of course, the average user is not savy enough to deal with such a high level of configuration. OSX is a compromise. It is the best all around, but Linux has greater potential when configured for specific tasks.
I guess Windows is great if you measure productivity in Frames Per Second.
To sum up my perspective:
Linux productivity sucks in most "out of the box" configurations, but has the highest potential.
Windows is just "OK." It gets you by and lets you play games. It is also good for office apps as OpenOffice.org really isn't that great IMO (sorry - I have to question it's design), which makes MS Office the best office software by default. KOffice and the Gnome based apps have a chance at changing this in the long run.
OSX is highly productive out of the box, but has little capacity for getting that maximum tweaking. It is also VERY different than Windows. Most Windows users will feel more productive in a generic linux install than OSX. It is also a big advantage to be able to run MS Office on OSX (at least until it crashes).
Right now its probably right the best marriage of the two worlds and it helps that Apples iLife suite make using my music, digital photos and movies enjoyable to use (although an elegant its missing a Tivo PVR solution). The other factor I enjoy about Mac OS X is its ease of software installations, simple security updates and very little maintenance. I don't have to struggle to find drivers for my hardware and I can plug and play without wrestle the operating system to cajole it to work. Apple's elegant aesthetics and well thought out operating system (but not perfect) pretty much was the deal closer for me.
P.S.
Little things like the pervasive spell checker where I don't have to use another application to check spelling of my Slashdot posts are some of the niceties that help me be more productive. Also not having to dual boot Windows/Linux also helps when both applications from different worlds can coexist on one operating system.
For Mac OS X fans out there. I stumbled across this gem of a plug in the other day. GMAP plug in for Addressbook.app to invoke Google Maps and automatically get directions from your home. The script can be modified to work with Firefox (which it originally did). Very Cool!
its what i feel comfortable with, and kde's kioslaves make life great if your doing webdev over ftp or whatever.
I use it for my online media business, http://www.WhiteRoseSociety.org/
I record shows, process audio, edit HTML, and even serve files from this eMac here and two older iMacs.
I not only have all of the Mac software available, but almost all Linux/BSD/Gnu programs can be compiled and run under MacOS X, and I do a lot of that. Plus some C development.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Simply put it isn't the best UNIX, the best Windows or even the best MacOS but it is ALL of them at anytime and all the time.
I can do anything from run an Windows AD to run nessus in Gtk. It is as close to perfect as it gets. And my wife and 5 year old son can use it and never notice all the "tweak" stuff it can do.
And, look I know this isn't a popular sentiment but it's really pretty.
This
If I'm doing audio recording or editing, I'm much more comfortable in Windows. This despite persistent assertions that Macs are superior for A/V production, or that Linux audio has arrived.
If I'm editing text in a text editor, I'm far more productive in a 100x37 linux framebuffer console running Vim and Screen, than any other environment. I realize I can have 100x37 xterms, or even RXVT's on windows, but it's not the same.
But if I'm working with Eclipse, I prefer it to be running on my X desktop, but I'll settle for Windows.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think it is easy to say my productivity is worst in windows. Simply factoring in maintaince time, viruses, spyware, crashing, rebooting, formatting and reinstalling, etc. Now I'm sure some of you have no problems with windows and it works great blah blah blah, good for you, to each their own. Overall my best workspace is something with virtual desktops. I've used such a setup across more linux distros than I care to count and on my OpenBSD workstation that I presently type from as well as my FreeBSD laptop and work system. I use enlightment and that is simply because it was the first wm I used that was configurable such that I had 0 complaints with it. Now I can't say anything about OS X as I own no macs (something I hope to correct with a mini.) *bsd seems to give me the least amount of hassle and post-setup I can just use the computer instead of maintaining it. On the server side of the world it depends. Debian is by far the best to maintain due to apt-get and takes the least amount of time. For peace of mind on the shell server I run it is OpenBSD (stack overflow protection, heap corruption protection, etc. READ: even if an exploit exists worst case it should only be able to crash a program not let anyone gain access.)
:(){
Try using *nix sometime? Virtual desktops != Multiple desktops. Yes in xp there is a powertoy for multiple desktop support. Have you tried using it? It's horrific. Mature virtual desktop support doesn't have issue with showing more apps in a taskbar that are viewable on THAT desktop. Also, lets talk about edge flipping, customizable virtual desktops (do you want a 3x2?) Grab fluxbox or enlightenment or any other *nix wm that supports virtual and multiple desktops and you'll instantly see the difference, and then cry at how cluttered a windows system looks and feels.
:(){
I feel more productive in Windows XP (specifically I get paid for writing code with Microsoft Visual C++ 2003), but that's a boring answer. So here are my annoyances with the operating systems that I use.
:)
== MacOS X ==
* The maximize button isn't (even though it's marked with a little + symbol). It's really a "make the window a different size" button. When I'm trying to look at a collection of files in Finder, I want a "MAKE THIS WINDOW AS BIG AS POSSIBLE SO THAT I CAN SEE THE MOST CONTENT ON SCREEN" button. You know, so that I can actually view the contents. Did you know: The "+" button can actually make the window SMALLER if it feels like it (this is true).
* The keyboard commands are completely non-standard and a mess. At the whim of the application designer (and if it's running in a terminal window), copy might be CTRL+C, APPLE+C, OPTION+C? As someone elsewhere here pointed out, this can be remapped, I'll try it when I'm home. But I still wonder why the defaults aren't sane in the first place.
* The god-damn dock. It was pretty at first, but now I want it to be a nice, svelte topmost bar like Windows taskbar - and when I maximize windows (which I can't), I want them to fit in the desktop space neatly between the menus and the taskbar. Without an edge of the window disapearing underneath the dock. The freeware program "ObjectDock" provides a Dock for Windows, so where can I get a taskbar for the Mac?
== Windows ==
* Too many applications do things behind your back, developers are trying too hard to make a buck by using "helpers" and "background updaters". I seem to spend a couple of minutes every week cleaning these out. Oddly enough, Apple is a particular offender - with their Quicktime and iPod helpers. And Adobe - shame on you for placing advertising in Acrobat reader!
* I miss Expose from OS X. I know there are programs that emulate the functionality, but they're never as nicely implemented as Apple's. The enhanced XP task switcher (that is a downloadble XP Powertoy) is a poor substitute.
* Poor UI customisability. Windows XP's default color scheme includes shades of urine yellow in application menus that can't easily be changed. I only solved it by downloading the Windows XP Media Center edition skin.
== Linux ==
* There are seven hundred versions of Linux and none of them work properly - or work with each other.
* Linux supports exactly four 3D graphics cards. Two are not made anymore, one is never in stock at any retailers - and the other costs a thousand dollars and is designed for CAD work. Well, maybe that's not completely true, but you get the picture.
* Even within the same version of Linux, you'll have to be running different versions of libraries in order to run the programs that you want to use. Compile from source? Sure. Um.. which versions of which libraries will I need? Do I have to edit a configuration file? What window manager will I need. Running Linux on a home desktop is needlessly, pointlessly complicated - and not worth it.
* Trolltech and their viral pseudo-free QT library underpinning KDE. It's actually one of the most overpriced software libraries ever made.
== FreeBSD ==
* Is perfect. I don't expect anything from it - except for it to be a sane, consistent and reliable server - so I love it.
Let's see if they sneak up on you and get big while you're ignoring them.
:)
:)
I too thought that Apple was just niche market, nothing but. Graphics, publishing, edu. That was it. And really, before OS X, I pretty much considered they sucked.
Of course, now they make a product that fits my niche, that of a network guy with an open source leaning.
It's really the best of both worlds. It's the shiny interface that I'd buy for someone like my father or brother and it's got that raw powerful system behind it that I can open up into even in their version of Terminal.
This is half rhetorical and half serious, but please don't take it as a personal criticism, but "How many niches will they have to fit in before they become big enough?"
BTW, might want to get rid of that immediate link to the DVD copy crack on your site, http://brainglass.com/downloads.htm Them there RIAA, MPAA and SPA folks are monitoring this site, ya know.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
(Score:5, Ironic)
;-) ). The developer documentation microsoft supplies is unmatched. Visual Studio is a well-written and well-supported product. Other companies have caught on to this; Apple's XCode is evolving into an awesome application. If anybody saw the OPENStep application building demo posted here a few months ago, remember that XCode is basically a highly-evolved version of the same thing.
I'm pretty sure he's being serious. Visual Studio is higly acclaimed by windows programmers not biased against Microsoft.
Linux lacks a true "good" IDE. I don't think I'm nearly as productive in vi/EMACS as I am in visual studio. Why can't the UNIX world learn to accapt the GUI?
Microsoft is very nice to its developers (I mean -- what CAN'T VBScript do?
the only IDE which I feel comes close to matching the strength of VS is Eclipse (which is Java-only).
The funniest IDE i've ever used was Borland's C++BuilderX ---- which was written in Java. Were they admitting defeat from the start?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Obviously it would be a complete waste of your brain to realize those exist on Windows and OS X as well. Terminals are pretty easy to come by, OS X has one, PuTTY is nice and free on Windows, ...
Yeah, and I was expecting to find an explanation of why the common operations in a terminal window are as easy on OS X as on linux (or any X-Windows system). I've been using a Mac for a year or so, and I keep finding that nearly everything that I do is possible, but much slower than on any X-Windows box. It's partly that dumb 1-button "mouse", but there are other problems, too.
I was disappointed that the article only explained why OS X was more productive than Windows. Hell, I knew that. Watching over the shoulder of expert Windows developers is painfully slow. Yeah, you can do everything that you need to do, but it takes so many keystrokes and/or mouse events.
The simplest example is copy-and-paste. You can always do this. But the X-Windows scheme is quick and simple (and doesn't involve the keyboard at all); just three quick clicks or a click-swipe-release-click. OSX is materially slower, though slightly faster sometimes than Windows.
Similarly, linux and other X-Windows systems implements focus-follows-pointer, and doesn't insist on raising a window when it gets focus. This is a huge time saver when you get used to it. As far as I can tell, neither Windows nor OS X permits this. And they don't have a way to lower a window either; in X-Windows it's a single click. This means that you can push a window to the bottom when you're done with it, and get quickly to the next window. With Windows or OS X, you have to go through a real song and dance to locate and raise a hidden window (which you often didn't want to hide).
Now, I know I could put an X server on OS X. I haven't, because I've been trying to avoid falling back to what I know. I wanted to give OS X a chance to show how wondereful it was. So far, frankly, it hasn't been all that wonderful. Nearly everything is slower and clumsier than on my linux box. And when I ask Mac experts what I'm doing wrong, they usually tell me that I'm doing it right.
The one thing that I'd say is better on OS X is drag-and-drop. But even there, I keep trying it, and it either doesn't do anything at all (most often), or sometimes does something different than what I want. It's better than both Windows and linux, but still not all that good, and I can't find many time that I can actually use it while writing software. Dragging text between windows doesn't much work; you have to use copy-and-paste.
Resizing windows on OS X is a real pain, because you can only do it by adjusting the lower-right corner.
Also, it's not just that I'm a dummy. I do keep trying to watch the experts. Windows experts are agonizingly slow, with lots of extra motions for everything. OS X experts are noticably faster, but it's still painful to watch.
It's always a relief to get back to an X-Windows box, where I don't feel like I'm swimming in molasses whenever I try to do something.
Maybe I should give up and install an X server on my PB. If it's still clumsy after a year of experimenting and asking the experts, I've wasted too much time with it. I'd want to get a 3-button mouse, too; too bad I can't replace the PB's button with 3 little buttons.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Personally, I have multiple computers with multiple OS's that I multitask between. That's when I'm most productive. Each OS has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Use them for what they are each good at.