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Why Microsoft Is Beating Apple At Its Own Game
ttom writes "OSWeekly.com looks at Microsoft's promotional strategy and concludes that Microsoft is beating Apple at its own game." From the article: "Apple is to blame for this, at least to some extent. They just had to go and release Boot Camp, didn't they? By the way, please don't take my sarcastic tone as an expression of my dissatisfaction for the product. I think it's great, and I really never expected to see something like Boot Camp come out of the Apple Camp. I know that users have bombarded them with requests for officially allowing Windows usage on a Mac, and the fact that they yielded to these requests is interesting because they've emphasized the OS X and Windows experiences as being completely separate for quite some time."
The article's opening line & premise the rest of the article is based on is incorrect:
No. Boot camp made a small stir, but the vast majority of people out their still see Mac PCs as very different from WIndows PCs (and don't understand the dual boot process anyway). Macs are still getting far more ipod splashback publicity than they were five years ago.
A more interesting discussion would be "Why Dell Is Beating Apple At Its Own Game"? After all, two years ago I know I certainly wouldn't have expected to see:
1) Apple rushing to join an Electronics Industry Code of practice founded by Dell after sweatshop scandal rumours.
2) Apple scoring lowest on a "Green" survey - when Dell scored second highest.
Both those items are areas I expect Apple's marketing (if not reality) to shine, but instead it's Dell with all the glory.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
"Apple to drop ad campaign because editor of internet site declares it unsuccessful."
Sure, I love running WinXP on my MacBook Pro using Parallels. The real worry is that once you can easily run Windows on your Mac, there will be less incentive to port apps to the Mac side. Publishers will say "why should I put in all that effort when you can run the PC version?" I wouldn't even be surprised to see a wrapper that installs Windows apps on Macs to run without a full version of Windows installed... As a Mac professional, this prospect scares the crap out of me.
I have heard people at my business who never before considered a Mac very excited about getting a Mac because they can run that particular Windows software they have to run and have the Macintosh computing experience all at once. The downstairs computer lab has been switched to all Mac as well because of this. There simply is no reason to own a PC anymore. You can get a Mac and have your PC, too. All in one.
I'd say OSWeekly knows who their biggest advertiser is and are pandering to them.
Is OSWeekly written by 12 year olds now? That's got to be one of the worst article summaries I have ever read, and I've been reading /. for years...
Seriously, you have to be slightly brain damaged to think that MS is better at whole-system integration than Apple.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Take a survey and ask them how many of you paid or for your copy of XP on your Mac (and are not violating MS EULA). Any guesses out there? I will start and say 8%. I think I am high, but figure almost 1/10 users are honest. Most either: 1. Visited there local bay of pirates and downloaded it. 2. Had a copy from a current PC so are in violating the EULA and installing it. 3. Borrowed a copy from the local IT admin and installed it. Most of the legitimate people may have gotten it from work and they have a ELA with MS so maybe they are not violating. I know all of my friends have not paid for a copy of XP running on the Mac or are using a work copy. All of them. They are using it for testing, gaming and occasional software but are not publishing work from it, so MS will not be able to track them down. I bet this over the long term will hurt MS since many people I know used to buy a cheap Dell for testing, which at least had a legitimate OS on it. Now they just need an XP CD, and its different shoving out $200 for a CD vs $400 for an entire computer.
www.IBuyMacs.com
When was it Apple's game to announce groovy new products, then deliver them behind schedule, bereft of compelling new features, in more confusing variations than a cel phone plan, with hardware requirements that will spur the market penetration of GNU/Linux, and at prices that will surely drive ???profit???.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Are people like Dell, HP and so forth.
My next laptop purchase is going to be a Macbook early next year. The reason?
It can run Windows, that simple. There is software for windows that simply isn't available for OS X that I need. Conversely there is software on OS X that I need that I normally run under a VM with Linux. You could say Linux is a loser in this too.
But Microsoft having the beatdown on them? Nope, Apple see Windows as not going away anytime soon and frankly the majority of OS X users will use OS X the majority of the time. Apple are gaining pc users because of bootcamp.
I own a homebuilt pc and a Thinkpad, so i'm currently not a mac user and hadn't considered a Mac until the Macbook.
NB. I haven't read the article as it's not available.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Why not a boot camp designed for Linux layer compatibility on mac hardware. Sure, Yellow Dog covers that ground and so does Ubuntu, but how about the two underdogs banding together coalition style? Call it some thing like Degobah System. A place where 'warriors' can train. See where I'm going with all these neat marketing ideas?
We'd all own piles of dog crap too if some one was smart enough to make us all believe we need it.
-ps: the use of boot camp is cheating, btw, imo. As well, I think Multi-booting is just plain inconvenient. Too much time to take to traverse from OS to OS in time of need. I do it. Done it for years. Linux, Mac, and Windows in many forms on many machines. But it's too time consuimg. A person could be better off owning multiple machines running different platforms. Period. As well have tons less heartaches and oh-shit-this-didn't-work-smacks-to-the-forehead about how much time has been wasted setting it all up only to discover som ething trivial, yet major, like wireless driver failure.
Switching to Intel closed the price, performance and (with BootCamp or Paralells) the application compatability gaps; advantage Cupertino. Apple reported their best hardware sales quarters ever just recently, and I have read some speculation that they sold 50% more MacBooks than they expected this quarter (not sure how true that is but the delays in shipping make it plausible). My local Apple Store is literally jammed all day long, including week days and the wait at the Genius Bar is upwards of an hour most days. I seriously doubt all that bustle is for XP install on BootCamp???
The only category that might truly suffer from BootCamp existing is game development, porting is expensive and this is the kind of easy way out the big game publishers love.
On second thought I might install BootCamp with Leopard... if it will let me run Ubuntu?!
And the only reason OSX is more secure is because of its significantly smaller user-base.
That is one reason. I really don't believe it is the only reason. I don't think anyone except a few of the more extreme Mac Zealots are claiming that OS X is perfectly secure. If Apple achieves 50% market share, of course there will be a few attacks made for it. Even Apple admits that OS X isn't perfectly secure. What they are saying is that OS X is more secure than Windows. Just the fact that pretty much any user program on OS X can run on a heavily restricted user account, provided the restricted user has perms to run that software, says a lot right there. Some Windows software practically requires you to use high-privilege accounts just to run software, and Windows by itself doesn't warn users if something is trying to be installed silently.
I imagine Apple's licensing policy for HFS.
Now something like that has been brought to the Windows world. What is Microsoft's NTFS licensing policy like?
Please not the "security through obscurity" argument again. It's unsubstantiated waffle. One might just as well claim that the fact that OS X has not been the victim of viruses or malware would spur virus writers and malware creators to be the "first". As it stands, the most recent "terrible breach in OS X security" was caused by a couple of guys who had to cheat to hack a MacBook.
If OS X was to be less of a target because of its marketshare, reasonable people would expect the picture to be the same as it was with the Classic Mac OS. That had a hundred or more viruses IIRC. Of course that's nothing compared to what Windows had at the same time, and you could probably put that down to marketshare, since the Classic Mac OS was not renowned for its security.
But OS X has not had a single virus in the wild AFAIK, nor do OS X users suffer from malware. It stands to reason that there must be other factors preventing the spread of malicious software on the OS X platform. Why can't people simply admit that Apple has released a pretty secure platform?
Microsoft on the other hand has released a Swiss cheese operating system that simply can't compete with OS X security wise, marketshare differences or not.
Now let's be fair. I actually (and perhaps naively) believe that Vista will fix a lot of the security problems the Windows platform has faced. It's not going to be perfect, but Windows users should be quite a bit better off than they were. When this happens, the same marketshare trolls will be trumpeting how superior Windows is to OS X security-wise. People can't have it both ways, no matter how much they try.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
When was the last time my Mac bitched at me about upgrading hardware invalidating my license for the OS, or required some stupid activation process so I could log in.
Never.
I upgraded my fathers computer to a new Core 2 system on the weekend and went through so much pain getting his system working; once I resolved the initial hardware issue and was able to actually boot an OS Windows XP decided to tell me it wasn't activated and prevented me from continuing until I activated it. I hadn't even had a chance to install the network drivers so I was forced to make a phone call to activate it.
Then it decided it wasn't a legitimate copy of Windows XP. Seems the date & time were wrong and therefor the copy of windows couldn't possibly be authentic.
Due to the hardware issues I had ran across trying to get the system setup I stripped it down to damn near nothing and installed things one at a time. At which point, an hour after I had got it up and running and passed the first authentication/illegal copy BS, I installed the rest of the memory and hooked up the other harddrive, and installed the soundcard. Then Windows decided it was upgraded too much and needed activation again. Atleast this time I had 3 days grace and could finish configuring the system. Unlike the first time where I wasn't even allowed to log in.
I tried the online activation at this point since I now had all the drivers installed and everything was working well. Online activation was refused as obviously the computer had been upgrade too much and I was in violation of the license; so then it required me to call the automated services again to get a new code.
At which point it refused to give me one as well and sent me to an actual live person.
The live person then asks me what changed, etc, and how many computers the os was installed on. The answer? 1. This is a retail Upgrade copy of Windows XP Pro. It is fully, and legally licensed; I would have had less hassle if the damn thing was a pirated copy!
I have absolutely had it with people saying "Apple is dying" or "Steve Jobs is failing" or "OS X is on its way out." Apple are going to be here for a long time. You'll know that they're dead when you can walk up to ten people on the street, say the name "iPod" and get ten blank looks.
Considering that there are a number of posts suggesting that the Boot camp will promote switching...
After having managed a number of labs (some multi-OS, some OS-specific), I can tell you both from the maintenance and user perspectives, dual-booting will never make anyone a "switcher." If anything it will just end-up being a frustration to those who are partial to one of the OSs involved. As for those who are not very computer savvy, they will end-up frustrating tech support and vice versa. Boot camp is nothing more than a proof-of-concept idea and a marketing ploy targetting the geeky community. Beyond that, adoption will be spotty at best (that is not to say that there won't be adopters, but simply there won't be enough of it to warrant this move as a catalyst for winning over a large market share). Ultimately, the only way you can make multi-platform labs "just work" is to have dedicated machines for each os (parallels et al do not cut it if you need specialized systems since most of the virtualization options usually do not support several important hardware layers)...
I just installed linux a few weeks ago for the first time. I dual boot Windows still and use it from time to time for certain programs I need or tasks I need to do that I haven't figured out on linux yet. However, overall I'm extremely satisfied with linux and probably wouldn't have tried it if I couldn't dual boot. Allowing windows to boot with OSX will get more people to try out Macs.
You realise that this nag-screen exists because there are lots of people in the world who [a] never switch off their computer and [b] completely ignore any and all online updates that are downloaded, right? If you think Microsoft does this simply because it's Evil then you clearly never did much tech support ... unless nagged to reboot these people will simply never have updates to core system services (kernel, display server etc) applied. One girl I knew was still dismissing the "please let me install service pack 2" balloon half a year after it had been downloaded!
Like others have said - it's all about market share ;)
At the 3 software development companies I've worked at in the last year, all XP stations, crash frequently. This isn't specifically XP's fault, but the fault of the apps or specific needs of developers. If you leave it running at the login for months, I'm sure it's very stable...and useless.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I believe OSNews has missed the point.
Apple has always touted OSX as a superior experience to Windows, and is continuing to do so.
However, it is simply reality that many folks have Windows programs they need to run as well. Between Boot Camp and the various VM approaches Apple now has that option covered nicely.
Where does that leave Macs exactly? As:
- The worlds most versatile computers.
- Powered by a superior, more secure OS.
- Able to run legacy Windows applications as need be.
Windows continues to chug along on its own momentum, but I expect Mac sales to do VERY nicely. The vast majority of Mac user time will be spent in MacOS X, I predict. I also predict more and more native MacOS game ports over time, as the userbase swells.Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I work for an IBM customer. I have a machine and a table on a IBM building here on Rio de Janeiro, where I can keep a close eye on the project they are working on for us. Well, even having a PC there, usually I carry my Ibook with me, so, let me give an example of how Mac and Windows are different: Task: connecting to wireless network: MAC iBook ->Airport has detect network XXXXX... do you want to connect to it? "hey guys, what is the passphrase?" ..... Connected. online.
My colleague's IBM Thinkpad running windows -> Complicated and absurdely ugly wizard-style dialog asking bazzillions of technical details... he asks for help... "I don't know what all those questions mean"... "but, hey, you've connected right?" "hum, yes... but I am using a mac, it just asked for the passphrase", "(*)!"
Somehow we manage to find the correct parameters, reboot. he is online.
So, do you really think someone that has a Mac will switch to windows just because, he, err.... experienced windows?
think again.
The only thing I see on bootcamp is that you can run windows games on a mac. It's just a convenience. but even a seasoned windows user will find hard to come back to windows after a little time of Mac OS usage. "Hey, where are my mouse gestures? where is spotlight?"
Your ad could be here!
Windows is an inelegant mess, OS X is elegant and consistent in comparison.
This is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I find OS X to be inelegant and inconsistent. You have the Dock, where icons behave totally differently from any other icons anywhere else on the entire system, and where a whole bunch of totally different tasks -- launching applications, monitoring running tasks, etc. -- are all mixed together in one confusing zooming bouncing distracting usability nightmare. You have Finder windows that flip from brushed metal to Aqua when you merely show/hide the toolbar, and that STILL, after six years of OS X, have not come close to regaining the unparalleled usability of the classic Finder. You have places where drag-and-drop works beautifully inexplicably mixed up with places where it doesn't work at all: why can't I drag a document from the Recent Items list to open it in a non-default application? Why can't I assign an icon to a folder by dragging it into the Get Info window? Why can't I drag a document from the Dock to the Desktop? I thought this was supposed to be the One Consistent OS, where everything Just Worked?!
And you have limitations introduced in the name of "elegance". Like the crazy file selector dialogs that force you to laboriously click your way through the folder hierarchy, because Apple has decided you shouldn't want to save time by just typing the path in. Like iTunes, with its "streamlined" interface that just leaves average users upset because they can't understand why there isn't a "stop" button.
Not to mention the inelegant limitations. Why the hell can't I play videos fullscreen in the built-in media player? Oh, that's right, because they want extra money for that privilege. Yeah, let's enhance our customers' multimedia experience with a whole bunch of greyed-out menu options with price tags -- that'll make more elegant!
And the confusing interface that makes no distinction between the fundamental system menus and an individual application's menus. I still haven't managed to teach one aging Mac fanatic friend the difference between closing a document window and closing an application. On Windows, it's obvious, because the application either closes when you run out of documents, or has a giant application window that you can't miss. On OS 9, at least you had the clear and readable task list in the task switcher menu thingummy. In OS X, the application just sits there in the background, with the only indication that it's still running and taking up memory and system resources being a tiny black triangle in the dock. Thank God her new Intel Mac has enough memory that she isn't constantly running out any more -- that was a real pain on the old one.
For all that, OS X is a great OS, and for the most part, the more Microsoft copies from it, the better Windows will get. But let's be honest here: using OS X can be just as frustrating an experience as using Windows. Neither actually has a major advantage in terms of "elegance" or "consistency". When it comes down to it, OS X is just as inelegant, just as inconstent as Windows -- just in different areas.
But don't let that stop you being a smug Mac weenie and wallowing in your delightful self-delusion that Windows sucks in every way imaginable while using OS X is the closest a mere human can come to basking in the reflected glory of God Almighty Himself.
(Flamebait oblivion, here I come!)
-b.
Actually you misunderstood. The upgrade which was performed was equivalent to buying a new computer; and doing so with an Apple is easier. On a PC if it were truely a new computer we would have had to re-install all the applications. We were able to skip that step for the most part. On a Mac you can just link the new and the old computers together and have it move everything over. Even if the old mac is dead, but the harddrive is ok It's still easier to deal with. (In which case I'd throw the hd in an enclosure and hook it up via firewire or usb.). Free bonus if you can boot the new mac off the old drive when connected via firewire.
Technically he is probably using X-Plane on his upgraded (WinXP) computer right at this minute. He should be happy with its performance, etc.
But honestly if he didn't have as much money tied up in software for Windows as he does I would have readily pushed him to buy a Mac.
The key software he uses is available for the Mac and runs, in general, as well or better on the Mac than under XP. The only issue with him using a Mac is the performance in X-Plane is much better with a good video card and the iMacs aren't upgradable in that respect. Although they perform quite well anyway.
My dad listens to music, does some photo editing and plays a few games. The most important of which, X-Plane is dual platform anyway.
The ability to run Windows will sell more Mac hardware, which gives Apple more money, and increases their marketshare.
People will not worry about having to use a new operating system, they can fall back on Windows without having useless hardware. What would have been a no-sale is now a potential sale for Apple, lots of people are curious about Macs and Mac OS X, but were put off by the risk if they didn't like the software.
Other people can get two systems in one, ideal for laptop users. Others can keep on running that essential Windows app.
As Mac OS X marketshare increases, more and more of those essential Windows apps will get a Mac version, especially if their customers start demanding it - "I hate having to reboot into windows just to run your software", etc.
The road that Apple does not want to go is to support the Windows API out of the box. In this situation, there is less incentive to port to Mac OS X, if your Windows version will just run anyway. Some people think that Apple will support this however, that there will be a Windows.framework in an upcoming version of the OS.
Of course, I've had a Mac for just over a year, and I barely touch my Windows PC now.
The article meanders around without making much of a point, but this seems to be the gist of it:
He goes on to say:
Of course Microsoft is unconcerned, because they make money by selling Windows. They are not a PC OEM. Apple has a different business model. The company makes most of its money selling hardware. The well-integrated OS and hardware are what coax consumers to buy Macs. You can't have one without the other and still call it a Mac. As us old fogies remember, Apple tried letting other companies build Macs, and it was not exactly a rousing success for Apple. Sales of clones ate into Apple's market without building overall market share.
Boot Camp and the various virtualization technologies are giving Windows users the opportunity to buy Apple hardware and compare the Mac experience with the Windows experience on the same machine, with no special technical expertise required. So far the results have been overwhelmingly positive for Apple. There's a reason Apple was confident enough to bring a x86 processor into Macintosh hardware again (it's been done before). Apple knows that if customers compare Windows to OS X head-to-head, OS X will gain users. If even a small percentage of new Mac purchasers make OS X the primary OS on their Mac, OS X will gain marketshare.
So far the strategy appears to be working. The low "green" rating for Apple is unfortunate, but it's not going to keep people from buying Macs. Dell, the company Jobs considers as Apple's biggest rival, isn't exactly kicking ass, and Microsoft's troubles with Vista are well-known.
How is it that Microsoft is beating Apple at its own game?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Anyone who is buying a Mac just to run Windows is crazy. Why would you pay a premium for Apple hardware only to handicap it by running windows? The only advantages to running Windows is for getting access to programs that don't run on the Mac, other than I feel the user experience on the Mac far outways having to boot into Windows.
For the average user you have a nice selection of well thought out applications and I system that requires less fighting to get things working. For the developer you have a Unix environment to feel at home in. On the down side is the lack of software like AutoCAD and issues working with Microsoft group ware.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Apple has included...in their contracts...must respect human rights...is simply a PR strategy for the Apple-hostile media.
Anyone who can use the phrase "Apple-hostile media" in the middle of a serious rant deserves a +5 funny!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
As far as the Thinkpads - here's a little secret: buy used. Many businesses seem to replace the things after a year, so you can find lightly-used examples with plenty of life left in them for significantly less than they'd cost new. (I paid $280 for a Thinkpad T23 - granted, this is was a 3 yr old computer at time of purchase, but it's still working quite well for me and is pretty much bloody indestructable - it basically spends it's life in a backpack going to client sites and being variously knocked about and has nary a crack in the case).
-b.
Personally, I find OS X to be inelegant and inconsistent.
Well, they did say 'in comparison' : ) There are some things which could be a lot better in OS X - including some of those you mentioned, though I'd disagree about dragging off the dock - those are links to files, not files themselves, and the user wouldn't want to drag them to the desktop. The same principle is used for toolbar icons and icons in the favourites list in the finder - it's not used only in the Dock.
Re separating the functions in the Dock, this would definitely be an improvement - it'd be nice if it had an area for running applications, and an area for documents, and if the trash can where still on the desktop so that it stayed still. As you say, there's plenty of things to improve (perhaps just less than Windows : ) )
Like the crazy file selector dialogs that force you to laboriously click your way through the folder hierarchy, because Apple has decided you shouldn't want to save time by just typing the path in.
If you want to type the path in while in a system dialog, you can press cmd-shift-G; presumably it's not in there because it would confuse users who don't know what a path is. Alternatively you can just drag in the folder you want to go to.
Like iTunes, with its "streamlined" interface that just leaves average users upset because they can't understand why there isn't a "stop" button.
I see, and what would this missing stop button do; exactly the same thing as the pause button? The stop button is a hangover from VCRs where there was actually a mechanical difference between stopping (and moving the head away from the tape) and pausing, it has no place on a non-VCR device.
And the confusing interface that makes no distinction between the fundamental system menus and an individual application's menus.
The only 'fundamental system menu' is the Apple menu on the left, which stays in the same place. Each application has its own menubar which appears when that application is active, seems sensible to me. I prefer this to the approach of replicating the same application menus in each window, but each to their own. There's no need to close applications after use, so why should the system encourage it? I'd prefer them to go the other way and leave all apps running unless you explicitly choose quit.
delightful self-delusion that Windows sucks in every way imaginable... Neither actually has a major advantage in terms of "elegance" or "consistency".
Having struggled through various Windows 'assistants' trying to get a basic thing like an external USB disk to work the other day (worked flawlessly on OS X, and other disks worked with XP), I beg to differ. This was using the built in XP mass storage device drivers, which usually work, but when they don't the Add Hardware dialogs are just a mess of confusing options and properties that the user hardly ever wants to see. Windows isn't so different from OS X, but there are still differences, and they way it handles problems and presents them to the user is one of the most obvious.
Flamebait oblivion, here I come!
On the contrary, on this site your point of view is the received wisdom, the silent majority are still using Windows.
Boot Camp is awesome, beyond awesome, but it's highly reminiscent of OS/2 and why OS/2 died: why bother building OS/2 native apps if OS/2 runs Windows apps? Code for Windows and you run on both; code for OS/2 and you're wasting your time! With the rumored native Windows support in Leopard, this could get even worse... eventually next to nothing will come out for Mac OS, which will appear to be a huge black eye for Apple. OS/2 was technically superior, too, but if all your apps are for Windows, why not just run the real thing?
:(
I miss OS/2.
To just type the path into a file dialog box, type Shift-Command-G and a diaog will drop down for typing it.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
I"ve personally found that the best way to get a windows box TO a crawl is having antivirus, antispyware and other "protective" software running all the time. All these love to access the HDD frequently, causing it to skip back and forth between 2-4 protection programs and what you are doing at once, making the machine ass slow. This really kills laptops with slower HDD.
'they NEVER should have been allowed "caveat emptor" wiggle room. No other "industry" gets that'
I'd say you are wrong here. The publishing industry in general has that sort of industry practice. If I buy a book and it has an error in it, I don't take it back to the publisher for them to fix it. In fact, they might (or might not) fix it in their next release. If I buy a newspaper and there is an error in it, they print a correction in a newer paper a few days later - they don't recall or warranty the original paper.
Software does have a distinct difference... Thanks to Mr. Gore, this Internet thingy makes it a lot easier to make those 'modifications' in software more rapidly. (I'm not going to call them corrections, because in some cases, the code was right to begin with, just exploited for bad purposes.)
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Dock: So turn the zoom factor down.
Like the crazy file selector dialogs that force you to laboriously click your way through the folder hierarchy, because Apple has decided you shouldn't want to save time by just typing the path in
Type a path? That takes forever! Hit the Finder in the dock and drag the folder you want into the file selector. Or drag the exact file you want. Most of the time I have the folder I'm working in open in the Finder anyway.
If you have frequently-visited folders, drop them into the Finder's sidebar. They show up in the file dialogues too, then. If you must type, you could switch to the Finder and do apple-shift-g to type in the precise path and drag the folder in - OSX still has the 'drag the folder icon from a window's title bar to drag the folder' behavior that 9 did. Or you could pop up Quicksilver and navigate to the folder by the keyboard, then drag it in.
I still haven't managed to teach one aging Mac fanatic friend the difference between closing a document window and closing an application
Except in the case of a very few apps that suck up CPU, why does this matter? Stop using it and it'll get swapped out to disc. Most of the time I'll have had Illustrator and Photoshop running for days on end. They swap in when I ask for them, they swap back out when I go do something else. Why do I explicitly need to "run" an application that's an essential part of my toolkit? I'll need it again in a few hours, and it'll be there in a matter of seconds instead of the several minutes it takes to start up. Hell, if it's running, it might make it easier to get back to something in progress: some apps expose their recent documents list in their dock menu!
I'll agree that brushed metal/normal finder is stupid. I use Shapeshifter and the 'Good Grey' scheme to get rid of that. And the 'give us $25 more to unlock Quicktime Pro' is stupid, too.
egypt urnash minimal art.
You have the Dock, where icons behave totally differently from any other icons anywhere else on the entire system
This is true, but the Dock isn't supposed to be consistent with the rest of the system, it's supposed to be unique and separate. I find the left/top side of the Dock to behave in a very reasonable way. The right/bottom side is a bit weirder.
and where a whole bunch of totally different tasks -- launching applications, monitoring running tasks, etc. -- are all mixed together
Launching and monitoring applications are not completely different tasks. Remember that the Dock was created partly to solve some of the usability problems of Mac OS 9, one of which was that new users were constantly confused as to which applications were currently running.
in one confusing zooming bouncing distracting usability nightmare.
If I'm not mistaken, it doesn't zoom by default, you have to explicitly enable magnification if you want that feature. And the bouncing is meant to be distracting. If you don't like application icons bouncing when the application launches, you can disable that feature, but most people aren't trying to get anything else done while waiting for an app to launch, and the bouncing is better than no visual feedback at all. Application icons also bounce to alert you that the application wants attention, and I think this is pretty effective.
You have Finder windows that flip from brushed metal to Aqua when you merely show/hide the toolbar, and that STILL, after six years of OS X, have not come close to regaining the unparalleled usability of the classic Finder.
Yep, this is dumb. I'm hoping they'll fix it in Leopard.
You have places where drag-and-drop works beautifully inexplicably mixed up with places where it doesn't work at all: why can't I drag a document from the Recent Items list to open it in a non-default application?
Hmm. Which Recent Items list are you thinking of? Are you thinking of the one in the Apple menu? If so, then the answer is obvious: you've never been able to drag anything from a menu on a Mac. Windows sometimes allows it, but the Mac OS never has. However, it would be nice if the Recent Items list worked the way it did on Mac OS 9, where it was actually a folder full of aliases that you could open and interact with the way you normally would in the Finder.
Why can't I assign an icon to a folder by dragging it into the Get Info window?
Good question! I'm not aware that this is a feature that has ever worked either, but it's not a bad idea. You should suggest it to Apple.
Why can't I drag a document from the Dock to the Desktop?
Because the Dock doesn't hold documents, it only holds icons. It's for launching things, not storing things. The behavior is similar to the sidebar in Finder windows. What you can do, however, is right-click (or control-click or click-and-hold) the icon and select Reveal in Finder.
I thought this was supposed to be the One Consistent OS, where everything Just Worked?!
I've decided to be mindlessly optimistic about Leopard. Maybe they'll get it right this time, even though I have seen very few indications to that effect.
And you have limitations introduced in the name of "elegance". Like the crazy file selector dialogs that force you to laboriously click your way through the folder hierarchy, because Apple has decided you shouldn't want to save time by just typing the path in.
Not being able to type the path isn't a limitation they introduced; Mac OS never had that option. However, keyboard navigation is certainly far inferior to what it used to be in classic Mac OS.
Like iTunes, with its "streamlined" interface that just leaves average users upset because they can't understand why there isn't a "stop" button.
Sometimes there is a stop button, depending on what you're playing. Try to figure out how to change the visualizer opt
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I love it how I used to hear nothing but, "you can't run Windows on it except that crappy VirtualPC emulator at 2 mph, and it costs a huge amount more, and OS 9 is extremely limited and out of date."
Now, OS X is decidedly not out of date. You can run Windows apps, in a variety of ways. (I just installed Codeweaver's WINE thing on my Mac mini, and it runs older Windows software like a charm.) You can run Ubuntu on it, live or installed, making it a triple-booting machine. VMWare is on its way. AND it's very low in price, comparable in many niches, in fact, to Dell, the low-price leader. So now what? Now it's time to whine that they won't release OS X to play on Windows machines. That they're lowering quality by lowering price. Yada, yada.
You know, when MS-DOS was king, they used to complain that GUIs were for dummies. That it stole processor cycles and ran too slow. Until MS adopted a workable GUI, then GUIs were just great!
I keep on trying to figure out the psychology of the Windows chauvinists, and I can never figure it out. (Windows, Mac, Linux, Sun -- am I forgetting anybody? -- they all have their good points. I'd like best that you could run anything anywhere, but first the monopolist here would have to stop friggin' around with web and video standards, and the business community, which made Windows King in the first place, would have to get a brain implant.)
Each game is a move in the meta game. The move doesn't have to be succesful (e.g., you win). It just has to improve your position in the meta-game.
Microsoft is a master of meta-game. It starts products and initiatives it intends never to win, or to win and stagnate, all the time.
Boot camp is a perfect example of a meta-game move. There is no way that users running windows on Mac hardware is good for Apple. But being able to is valuable. Ideally, people decide that getting a Mac is less risky, because they can always boot Windows if they need to, or even switch back. The key question is how confident they are their operating system is superior to Windows. If the answer is "very", then it's on balance a good thing that dual booting is possible. If the answer is "on par", then it's a bad thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The "stupid" thing about Quicktime is that you need the Pro version to view videos in full-screen. That feature is something that regular users need, not professionals.
Nah...
My WinXP hasn't crashed on me neither. But right now I'm trying to find out why my computer with WinXP is telling me that I have "Limited or no connectivity" from my network. A network which worked flawlessly last night. Works with my MacBook Pro. Even using the same ethernet cable for my WinXP computer in the MacBook works. But still my WinXP tells me that my cable might be unplugged (I did remember to put it back in) or that my gateway/router is not configured right.
How fucked up can Windows XP be?!
The network is working perfectly. The cables are connected correctly. I can use either cable in my Mac and it works. Put either cable in the WinXP box and I get "Limited or no connectivity"...
I'm going to cry.
And don't get me going on WinXP's handling of wireless networks.
*runs off to kill some MS programmers*
"You know, I think OS X has been temporarily pushed to the side right now because I've heard more discussion about Windows running on Macs then even before."
Maybe because Macs now use Intel chips and Windows can actually be installed natively on them now? Maybe because Parallels knocks the socks off of MS Virtual PC for Macs in terms of speed, which is only possible with Intel. Of course there is going to be more talk about Windows being installed on Macs, considering it is now fast with virtualization and doesn't require emulation, and also considering it is now POSSIBLE to do so natively. Like, durrrr....
"some users have shrugged it off and moved on to the Microsoft side of things."
Of course some are. Unless the author presents statistics stating HOW MANY users have done so, the statement has no real meaning.
"Apple is to blame for this, at least to some extent. They just had to go and release Boot Camp, didn't they?"
I'm pretty sure Apple was kind of expecting talk about Windows running on a Mac to increase when they, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, enabled this to be done easily and practically. I somehow doubt Apple expected talk to decrease when they did this. Again, durrrrr.....
"and the fact that they yielded to these requests is interesting because they've emphasized the OS X and Windows experiences as being completely separate for quite some time."
They still are. It still requires a reboot to switch between them (excluding Parallels). Apple has recognized that some users want to switch to a Mac, but still require Windows for one or two applications. They have made it possible for most of these users to switch. (I think Parallels solution is more elegant personally). Apple also recognizes that very very few Apple purchasers are going to dump OS X and run Windows exclusively.
"Boy, for something that they speak so badly of and accuse of ripping them off, they sure are in a hurry to let you run it side by side with their offering. Why is this? Well, it's all in the numbers."
Because some people need to run one or two Windows applications, but prefer using a Mac for most things. A good example, there is absolutely NO Canadian Tax software for the Mac that I am aware of, but Parallels/Boot Camp make it possible for a Canadian such as myself to do their taxes on their Mac (such as my Mac Mini). Without access to Quicktax and similar pieces of software, I probably would have stuck with a PC. Boot Camp was actually an intelligent move in my opinion.
"Apple knows that those who are envious of the Mac hardware will be more inclined to purchase it if they can run Windows (their relied upon operating system of choice). The suits at Apple may try to innocently play this off like you can run Windows and OS X separately and without interference, but you know as well as I do that they're hoping Windows users will begin to spend a little time with OS X, become hooked, and then essentially ditch their former love. It almost sounds like a soap opera when you put it that way, huh?"
I somehow find it very difficult to believe that Windows users are envious of Mac hardware, which in most cases is over-priced compared to Dell, or even Alienware in the case of laptops. I have yet to meet a single Mac user, including a few Intel owners, who bought a Mac because of the hardware. They all bought it because of OS X. I also was in the Apple store the other day, and they had 3 iMacs, 2 running OS X and 1 running XP Pro. A couple people said "oh cool, they run Windows as well now", and then promptly moved onto the OS X computers to play around with them instead.
"I've enjoyed watching Microsoft's response to all of this, because there really hasn't been much of one."
What did you expect them to do, start reselling Mac computers for Apple? Of course they're going to be happy when more Mac users buy licenses for Windows, but there isn't really much they can respond to. Apple still isn't shipping Windows on Macs, and I asked a person at my local Apple store
However, Greenpeace cheers for HP and Dell, who generate far more e-waste than any other PC makers. They churn out disposable, cheap PCs with short life spans, often using far more toxic CRT displays to hit the low price target. HP was rated good on "Chemical Management," despite missing their goals last year. Meanwhile, Apple was rated "partially bad" for not having as many published goals, when in reality they had already banned use of those toxics, including Hexavalent Chromium and others.
If you like facts, here are more examples of how the Greenpeace report was misleading and incompetent.
It's really too bad the Greenpeace report was thrown around without any criticism from the mainstream media or even from bloggers. Even Slashdot refused to cover it. Everyone is afraid to say anything about Greenpeace, but ignoring their misleading and irresponsible report on the grounds that it's politically incorrect to critique anything calling itself "Green," actually waters down the efforts of real environmentalists and those interested in forwarding the state of the art in clean and responsible business and manufacturing.
Incidentally, the Greenpeace report was written by a SVTC member. That's the group that targeted Apple last year in a campaign against the iPod, saying that people would throw their iPods away when the battery ran down. More about the Toxic Trash campaign on Apple.
If MS really wanted to pretend to be "more compatible", they could always implement even one of the Linux filesystems on their own. The code is out there, people are even attempting to port it by themselves. Hell, Linux already has an HFS implementation, so what's stopping MS from doing one, really?
Same to Apple, really. You support FAT, but you don't support ext2? Or any of the other ones I've thrown up there in the subject line? Really, Linux is currently the most compatible OS on the market -- even though it isn't "on the market", really.
MS has always abused their market share to be able to implement things however the hell they want, and claim everyone else is incompatible for not using their "standard". Every time someone else implements their own version of it, they are made to look less compatible. Take OpenDocument. If I sent an ODT to someone who didn't already know what it is, they'd automatically assume I was sending some weird, non-standard format. They'd continue to think that once I explained it, even though the truth is, ODT is a standard, and DOC is not. They'd be confused as hell if I sent a DOC back to them and said "I can't read this non-standard format."
So of course everyone has to reverse-engineer and re-implement MS "standards", as well as come up with their own, since the MS ones suck so much -- FAT? In 2006? -- so of course, when you've spent more work reverse-engineering a shitty solution than coming up with your own brilliant one, you have a right, nay, a responsibility to stand up and be proud and say "We're more compatible."
Anyone who wonders why we dare to create real standards that aren't the broken MS Way may kindly go fuck themselves.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!