Actually most doctors are lousy at knowing when to say push. What we ARE paying for however is 40 weeks of OBGYN care, one delivery, an ultrasound, two days in a hospital room and one post-partum checkup.
Consumer-based health care..do your research because you are getting ripped off AND you have bad insurance. We got 15 OBGYN visits and an ultrasound for $1800 through negotiated rates. That also includes the delivery fee for the doctor and one post-partum check. The other $3k is the big ripoff--the hospital stay, which wouldn't be an issue if our insurance would recognize birthing centers, but they don't. I'd gladly pay a mid-wife and a birthing center if I could get a little bit of help from the corrupt insurance company (who's in bed with the doctors and hospitals, obviously).
We are Bradley Method advocates and lend The Business of Being Born out freely to all our friends. With that, we are still having a hospital baby because we've found a very pro natural birth facility and OBGYN. Perhaps I'm not cynical enough for the average slashdot reader, but they DO exist. $5k still isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. $15k is ridiculous for an appendectomy, but without it you die...the ultimate supply and demand right there. You don't HAVE to have a baby though and you can save for them before needing to pay for one.
That's a crock. My wife is having a baby next month and the whole thing will be about $4000. With negotiated rates and my company pitching in $1,000 to my HSA, it is not even a blip on our financial radar (the birth, the baby and next 18 years very much so on the radar). We've had 9-months to save up for it, and long before she got pregnant, we were planning for it. Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
Dragging down to the bottom is a basic tenet of UI design (I forget the term, but it is a well-established concept). It is impossible to overshoot the intended object when it is on the edge of the screen. This is why the dock is at the bottom or sides, and the same reason there is only one menu, always docked at the top. You don't even have to aim your mouse, you just shoot it up to the top or bottom and it stops at the limit.
?6-8 pages? Those were all on one page (linked from the previous comment). Besides, I didn't say the dock was perfect, I just said that perpetuating common misconceptions about usability has reached the point of diminishing returns. And I don't expect Apple to knee-jerk react to one website's criticism of their UI, because Apple has to make a UI acceptable to a wider audience than the Nielsen Norman guys.
The criticism presented by this oft-cited web page is over-the-top and overtly biased (disgruntled employee much?). It is also out-of-date (written in 2001) and most of the problems noted in it have been addressed.
I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the everyday routine of trying to break Windows-centric habits of my students. Sorry if you took it the wrong way, but in no way do I own a high horse, let alone ride one.
Allow me to restate my comment more diplomatically. What sense does F2 make to rename a file, unless you learned "that's the windows way"? It is obviously not any better (or worse, one could argue) than the enter key on MacOSX, but just because users learned F2 = rename, doesn't mean it is bad when Enter = rename.
I didn't think of the virtual desktop, but then again, I despise the things (my small brain gets lost easily). You could just use the arrow keys to navigate to your target desktop then hit expose.
Actually, that's the thing the Dock does best. It's instant access to your most used apps, hidden away, yet easy to find and impossible to overshoot (placement at the edge of the screen). The only simpler ways would be mind-reading, an "F" key on the keyboard,or maybe voice command.
but you can't use the "Delete" key to delete a file.
It's a universally accepted behavior to require a modifier key to any keyboard shortcut that causes data destruction. Windows is a strong non-conformist in this realm.
Like I said, this is debatable.
No, it really isn't. Destructive process require modifier keys and confirmation dialogs to assure the user REALLY meant to invoke the destructive process.
Expose is very nice and, IMO, it's a necessary feature due to the fact that the Dock is so crippling when it comes to window switching. OS X would be almost unusable for me if Expose wasn't there.
And that's precisely why it's there. Expose is there, so the Dock is no longer "crippling". It's disingenuous for articles like these to criticize the Dock and not take Expose into account, because they work in tandem. The entire OSX environment is a collaborative one--it is a sum of its parts, none of which operate independently of the others.
Hot corners for expose? Forget that...middle mouse button. Other than that, well said. This article and these comments are all overlooking the fact that expose turns your entire screen into a document selector. Why constrain ourselves to the dock/task bar and alt+tab or alt+` ?
I love when people link that deconstruction of the dock.
The dock is "big and clumsy" = the dock is scalable and can be hidden to the user's liking
"Dock objects have no labels" = they used to not have labels but this is no longer true
"The trash can belongs in the corner" = the trash can is in the corner, in the same spot, every time, unless you decide to dock your dock on the sides.
There are more notable shortcomings of the dock--this linked story isn't a good representation of them.
This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from.
I'm a technology trainer (mostly Adobe and Apple stuff), and I can tell you Windows ego centrism is one of the largest roadblocks to learning there is. Just because something doesn't work the way YOU are used to, doesn't mean YOUR way is better. Furthermore, quit using that as an excuse to being completely un-trainable.
Finding the Window you want, as opposed to the app you want, can be a PITA when you a large number of windows open in one app.
If you are using the dock to find a window in a sea of windows, you are using the wrong tool. Expose is your friend in that case (mine's mapped to the scroll wheel button). All your open docs and windows layout side-by-side and you can visually pick out the one you want. I guess this could be a problem in a sea of homogeneous looking spreadsheets or something...
I think the dock has been hyper-analyzed--to the point of diminishing returns. The fact is you use it, the way it is designed, with a little bit of customization. You learn to use it the way it works instead of how you might want it to work...too bad. While this sounds like a deal-breaker, it has such surprising little impact on one's daily work flow, it is practically a non-issue.
What is more interesting about the linked article is the problematic way Windows handles multiple files open in the same application versus the way Apple does. I've never been able to pin-point what it is about Window that just wrecks a non-geek work flow until this article. It is laughable at how poorly Microsoft has tackled this (self-created) problem and astonishing they haven't unified the way apps handle multiple documents, even though they've had 13 years and six or seven version to do so.
If anyone truly believes Apple is some great innovator and that there ideas didn't stem from existing ideas then they're pretty oblivious...
I think you are confusing innovation with invention.
Anyone who doesn't realize that Apple takes existing ideas and makes them better is "pretty oblivious". Apple didn't claim to invent the mp3 player, mouse, desktop metaphor...they just made them usable, and those items grew into the mainstream, copied by everybody else in the industry.
I'm not sure what your definition of innovation is, but taking the already invented mouse and turning it into the most-used input device in the history of personal computing is pretty damned innovative to me.
I think the latter is more offensive. Microsoft has been copying Apple UI stuff very poorly for many years and proclaiming its greatness. Even if the Apple UI isn't original to Apple, at least it (usually) doesn't suck. Can MS, just one time, innovate something that OSX can incorporate? (disclaimer: I'd like to cut and paste documents from one directory to another, and I'd like to be able to set desktop picture by right clicking on any picture).
... OSX is not some holy friggen grail of OSes that everyone copies you know.
Then why has Microsoft been copying Apple since the late 1980s? Hell, even Vista is a shameless knock-off, right down to the "Aero" (aqua) interface and "Gadgets" (widgets). And hell, let's not have a trash can, let's COPY the trash can but be more enviro-friendly and call it a Recycle Bin! When's the last time you've reused something you put in the recycle bin anyway? Talk about a horrible misnomer! Can MS claim ANY UI innovation?
Slashdot Mirror
Judging by the number of Rent to Own stores, I'd say 60" HDTVs remain a viable (and popular) option for many people who otherwise couldn't afford one.
Actually most doctors are lousy at knowing when to say push. What we ARE paying for however is 40 weeks of OBGYN care, one delivery, an ultrasound, two days in a hospital room and one post-partum checkup.
Consumer-based health care..do your research because you are getting ripped off AND you have bad insurance. We got 15 OBGYN visits and an ultrasound for $1800 through negotiated rates. That also includes the delivery fee for the doctor and one post-partum check. The other $3k is the big ripoff--the hospital stay, which wouldn't be an issue if our insurance would recognize birthing centers, but they don't. I'd gladly pay a mid-wife and a birthing center if I could get a little bit of help from the corrupt insurance company (who's in bed with the doctors and hospitals, obviously).
We are Bradley Method advocates and lend The Business of Being Born out freely to all our friends. With that, we are still having a hospital baby because we've found a very pro natural birth facility and OBGYN. Perhaps I'm not cynical enough for the average slashdot reader, but they DO exist. $5k still isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. $15k is ridiculous for an appendectomy, but without it you die...the ultimate supply and demand right there. You don't HAVE to have a baby though and you can save for them before needing to pay for one.
That $4,000 I speak of is our out-of-pocket costs. We have insurance for the rest.
Oops, I forgot the keyboard. Still, you could have done that with just a mouse, if I'm reading your post correctly.
Well if you make less than $20k a year, maybe you shouldn't have a baby if you can't afford it?
That's a crock. My wife is having a baby next month and the whole thing will be about $4000. With negotiated rates and my company pitching in $1,000 to my HSA, it is not even a blip on our financial radar (the birth, the baby and next 18 years very much so on the radar). We've had 9-months to save up for it, and long before she got pregnant, we were planning for it. Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
Dragging down to the bottom is a basic tenet of UI design (I forget the term, but it is a well-established concept). It is impossible to overshoot the intended object when it is on the edge of the screen. This is why the dock is at the bottom or sides, and the same reason there is only one menu, always docked at the top. You don't even have to aim your mouse, you just shoot it up to the top or bottom and it stops at the limit.
?6-8 pages? Those were all on one page (linked from the previous comment). Besides, I didn't say the dock was perfect, I just said that perpetuating common misconceptions about usability has reached the point of diminishing returns. And I don't expect Apple to knee-jerk react to one website's criticism of their UI, because Apple has to make a UI acceptable to a wider audience than the Nielsen Norman guys.
The criticism presented by this oft-cited web page is over-the-top and overtly biased (disgruntled employee much?). It is also out-of-date (written in 2001) and most of the problems noted in it have been addressed.
I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the everyday routine of trying to break Windows-centric habits of my students. Sorry if you took it the wrong way, but in no way do I own a high horse, let alone ride one.
Allow me to restate my comment more diplomatically. What sense does F2 make to rename a file, unless you learned "that's the windows way"? It is obviously not any better (or worse, one could argue) than the enter key on MacOSX, but just because users learned F2 = rename, doesn't mean it is bad when Enter = rename.
I didn't think of the virtual desktop, but then again, I despise the things (my small brain gets lost easily). You could just use the arrow keys to navigate to your target desktop then hit expose.
As a launcher, they are horrible...
Actually, that's the thing the Dock does best. It's instant access to your most used apps, hidden away, yet easy to find and impossible to overshoot (placement at the edge of the screen). The only simpler ways would be mind-reading, an "F" key on the keyboard ,or maybe voice command.
I'd half expect Microsoft to rename the SuperBar to "Genius Bar" at launch, given their proclivity to copy Apple whenever possible.
but you can't use the "Delete" key to delete a file.
It's a universally accepted behavior to require a modifier key to any keyboard shortcut that causes data destruction. Windows is a strong non-conformist in this realm.
Like I said, this is debatable.
No, it really isn't. Destructive process require modifier keys and confirmation dialogs to assure the user REALLY meant to invoke the destructive process.
Expose is very nice and, IMO, it's a necessary feature due to the fact that the Dock is so crippling when it comes to window switching. OS X would be almost unusable for me if Expose wasn't there.
And that's precisely why it's there. Expose is there, so the Dock is no longer "crippling". It's disingenuous for articles like these to criticize the Dock and not take Expose into account, because they work in tandem. The entire OSX environment is a collaborative one--it is a sum of its parts, none of which operate independently of the others.
Hot corners for expose? Forget that...middle mouse button. Other than that, well said. This article and these comments are all overlooking the fact that expose turns your entire screen into a document selector. Why constrain ourselves to the dock/task bar and alt+tab or alt+` ?
I love when people link that deconstruction of the dock.
The dock is "big and clumsy" = the dock is scalable and can be hidden to the user's liking
"Dock objects have no labels" = they used to not have labels but this is no longer true
"The trash can belongs in the corner" = the trash can is in the corner, in the same spot, every time, unless you decide to dock your dock on the sides.
There are more notable shortcomings of the dock--this linked story isn't a good representation of them.
This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from.
I'm a technology trainer (mostly Adobe and Apple stuff), and I can tell you Windows ego centrism is one of the largest roadblocks to learning there is. Just because something doesn't work the way YOU are used to, doesn't mean YOUR way is better. Furthermore, quit using that as an excuse to being completely un-trainable.
Finding the Window you want, as opposed to the app you want, can be a PITA when you a large number of windows open in one app.
If you are using the dock to find a window in a sea of windows, you are using the wrong tool. Expose is your friend in that case (mine's mapped to the scroll wheel button). All your open docs and windows layout side-by-side and you can visually pick out the one you want. I guess this could be a problem in a sea of homogeneous looking spreadsheets or something...
"Subtle" is not a term I would use about the differences between OSX and Windows. OS wars aren't steeped in "subtle" differences!
I think the dock has been hyper-analyzed--to the point of diminishing returns. The fact is you use it, the way it is designed, with a little bit of customization. You learn to use it the way it works instead of how you might want it to work...too bad. While this sounds like a deal-breaker, it has such surprising little impact on one's daily work flow, it is practically a non-issue.
What is more interesting about the linked article is the problematic way Windows handles multiple files open in the same application versus the way Apple does. I've never been able to pin-point what it is about Window that just wrecks a non-geek work flow until this article. It is laughable at how poorly Microsoft has tackled this (self-created) problem and astonishing they haven't unified the way apps handle multiple documents, even though they've had 13 years and six or seven version to do so.
If anyone truly believes Apple is some great innovator and that there ideas didn't stem from existing ideas then they're pretty oblivious...
I think you are confusing innovation with invention.
Anyone who doesn't realize that Apple takes existing ideas and makes them better is "pretty oblivious". Apple didn't claim to invent the mp3 player, mouse, desktop metaphor...they just made them usable, and those items grew into the mainstream, copied by everybody else in the industry.
I'm not sure what your definition of innovation is, but taking the already invented mouse and turning it into the most-used input device in the history of personal computing is pretty damned innovative to me.
I think the latter is more offensive. Microsoft has been copying Apple UI stuff very poorly for many years and proclaiming its greatness. Even if the Apple UI isn't original to Apple, at least it (usually) doesn't suck. Can MS, just one time, innovate something that OSX can incorporate? (disclaimer: I'd like to cut and paste documents from one directory to another, and I'd like to be able to set desktop picture by right clicking on any picture).
... OSX is not some holy friggen grail of OSes that everyone copies you know.
Then why has Microsoft been copying Apple since the late 1980s? Hell, even Vista is a shameless knock-off, right down to the "Aero" (aqua) interface and "Gadgets" (widgets). And hell, let's not have a trash can, let's COPY the trash can but be more enviro-friendly and call it a Recycle Bin! When's the last time you've reused something you put in the recycle bin anyway? Talk about a horrible misnomer! Can MS claim ANY UI innovation?