Yeah, that ctrl button is WAY THE HELL over there.
Of course, if you have a Macbook, you could try clicking with two fingers for a right click. So, unless I'm an insensitive clod and you only have one finger... of course, then a two button mouse wouldn't work anyway.
Pretty well actually. Now, I'm not a regular Opera user, so take that for what its worth. I just use it for web development testing. The widgets are native, though one of the annoying things about web dev on a Mac is how differently the native widgets deal with new CSS directives in Camino, Safari and Opera. Safari ignores just about everything (except height and width on textareas and width on text), the sizing always seems wrong in Camino and Opera buttons inherit * { padding: 0; margin: 0 }
The speed is good and the rendering is clean though. I'm running 9.2 on this machine here.
Okay, hehehe, lemme clarify a little because I am not masochistic and there have been plenty of times I've wanted to rip my hair out trying to get IE to work right. (Try getting lists to render right... but I'm sure you already know.)
What I meant was fun, was trying to get Lynx and FF to work right on something. Designing for a browser and a text based browser and a text reader is something I find fun. Generally, it's a matter of integrating accessibility that I find fun. But still, like installing a web server on your Sega Dreamcast, I do enjoy "beating" IE sometimes and getting something to work. Thankfully, IE interpreted comments make a lot of workarounds pretty easy. Even more thankfully, the days of IE6 are numbered.
And "useful things" is kind of subjective. If I'm getting paid to work out an IE quirk, it's pretty "useful" to me.
Yeah, but it's the nature of the beast. I have yet to run into anything that a client wants so badly that when I say, "So you're fine having this at the cost of losing 10 - 30% of your potential visitors?" Even 10% is a lot of visitors. About the only time browser specific coding makes sense is for a company specific webapp (as in, not for the general public) usually on an intranet.
I'm not saying it's always easy to make it work in every browser or even that it's always going to work the same way, after all... it's going to work different in Lynx or to a text reader than it is to any browser. There's no reason you can't design things in a tiered manner. As an example, I can have CSS supply drop shadows to text in Safari. On my personal site, I utilize this, but the site till looks fine and stills works in IE6 and FF. They just don't get the pretty shadows.
Developers need to educate themselves and their clients. Web development ISN'T the same as application development and it ISN'T the same as print publishing. It's its own creature with its own realities. I haven't had a single client that I couldn't reason with and explain this sort of thing to. Not once.
As far AJAX and JavaScript in general, they're cool. I like using them. I also make sure that they enhance the web experience but that their use isn't necessary. Design from the ground up, not the ceiling down. Semantic XHTML first, etc.
Of course, if you know your ass from a hole in the ground and actually study your profession, you know how to work around these problems. Transparent PNGs are doable in IE6 IF you apply a little bit of JavaScript (and even better, use an.htc fix). Yes, there ARE differences which, I must say, is one of the most challenging and fun parts of web design.
The ONLY time you "have" to pick a certain browser is when you ABSOLUTELY MUST have some advanced feature. And in that case, odds are it's for some complex intranet application anyway.
This is ridiculous. If me, a lone developer, can do it for a reasonable price than ANYONE should be able to, particularly the well paid (probably overpriced) groups that work on big name, big business websites.
I run virtualization software on my laptop and can check dozens of browsers in multiple OSes from anywhere. It's not hard and it's not rocket science. If you understand and code to web standards and understand your IE quirks as well as do some basic study on web accessibility, you're good to go. If you're already coding to make sure your whole damn site works in Lynx or some other text based browser (which gives you a good idea of how it's going to work in some kind of text reader or other accessibility program) without fancy scripts then you know that older browsers will work and newer browsers can used enhanced features.
Read a couple fucking books, learn how to virtualize and BE A GEEK for crying out loud.
And seriously, test Firefox, IE6 and IE7 mainly and just make sure the others work. The nice thing about Opera, Safari, etc. is that 95% of the time (if not more) things that work in FF work in other good browsers.
I actually hoped life would get easier with the introduction of IE7, but it turns out that while it fixed a lot of IE6 issues, it introduced plenty of its own lame quirks which have increased testing time. With IE you spend more time tricking the browser into doing its job than you do actually doing work. I fucking hate Microsoft.
A web developer worth his salt designs with standards and all browsers in mind from the ground up and doesn't have to think of a way to "tack on" other browsers to IE. And it's not "90%" anymore either, not even close.
There's a growing population of non-browser devices hitting the web too. The reality is, if you're designing for just IE you're alienating a lot of customers and EVEN IF if you're a lame web dev who would need to charge more to support all browsers, the extra cost of the coming years will catch up with that pathetic development savings.
(The real moral of the story is that if a web dev quotes you two prices, one with and one without "other browser" support, then you need to get yourself a difference developer because your current one probably uses Microsoft Publisher for making websites.)
Yep, that's how it goes. When I was young one of the popular shows was GI Joe and my brother and I watched it whenever it was on. We had a lot of the related action figures and vehicles too. One of the things that always annoyed us, even at 4 and 6-years-old, was the fact that no one ever died. It's not like we were cheering for death, but it seemed a little ridiculous that every time an airplane exploded that some random Cobra jackass was parachuting out. You have entire battlefields of guns blazing and NO ONE gets killed.
So, when we had the action figures in our grasp, people got wasted all the time. That's just one of many things. We did Cowboys and Indians, soldiers, knights in shining armor, Star Wars, whatever. The object for my brother and me, as well as any of our typical male friends, was the KILL THE BAD GUY. Given our evolutionary background, this isn't all that peculiar. Boys have been doing this for... well... I would guess throughout our whole existence. Even my sister, having two older brothers, did the same stuff. She turned out all right too.
Hell, my dad, once we got to be around 7 or 8ish used to read us fantasy novels in chunks rather than children's books. He read the Hobbit to my brother and me as well as the Iron Tower Trilogy. The latter had quite a bit of violence in it.
And I have to say this, children have vivid imaginations. My brother did, my sister did and I did. Scary graphics on the computer, no matter how realistic, have got nothing on what I could and did form in my own head. Although, with that said, I don't think putting a 5-year-old in front of GTA3 is a good idea either. Is there an age? No. You need to know your own kid and his/her level of maturity. The biggest problem we seem to have today is that parents want other organizations and technology to raise their kids.
I think this society has become way too paranoid. WAY too paranoid. As a joke, my sister got me a DVD with some old He-Man episodes on it the other day and my friends and I sat down and watched it for a good laugh. Given the freakish religious state of the nation right now, I can just see massive protests about Skeletor's staff with the Ram's Head on it and all the "evil magic."
Really, what it's come down to, is that no one wants to take responsibility for a damn thing any more. If a kid goes bonkers... it's not his fault, it can't be that his parents were crap parents, it can't be that being abused by school mates breaks people, it can't be teachers or administrators that did nothing about it... let's blame the faceless video game makers and gun makers and people who make violent movies. It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. When I was a kid, when I did something dumb or hurt someone else, my dad belted me and that was that. I didn't go into therapy to discuss my feelings. THe belting was quick, simple and did the trick.
Unalienable is indeed a word. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin in particular (as Jefferson used inalienable in some of the early drafts) were looking for a word that was stronger than inalienable. They wanted a word that was that implied more than the idea that a right could not be taken away. The idea behind UNalienable was a right that could not be taken or GIVEN away. It conferred an implied duty intermingled with a glorified privilege. Check out a copy of Black's Law Dictionary.
At some point all words are "made up." Someone had to be the first to use them. Point is, any grammar Nazi to get on you for that one is not only NOT a grammar Nazi but also severely lacking as a history Nazi.
Yep, same here. I actually ended up with a dual Pentium motherboard (vanilla, not Pentium Pro or Pentium II) and put together a router with BeOS. Funny thing was, you had to have two different kinds of network cards to do that since it couldn't distinguish between two of the same network cards. I spent a lot of time running IRC, email, etc from BeOS. It was fun and it got me into Linux too.
I miss it. And man, I've still never seen anything boot that fast. (Mind you, the lack of a multiuser environment was kind of a drag.) *wipes away a tear* Ahhh... the good old days.
Dude, where can I purchase one of these "AK47s" or "30-06s"? I can barely get 60 fps out of my current video card. And, what resolution are these babies pulling those kinds of frame rates on?
I want to build a new desktop, but I've been looking for something devoid of most/all legacy connections first. If I could find a motherboard with only SATA, PCI-e, USB and Firewire, that would rock. (Yes smart asses, I know I need a CPU socket and RAM slots among other things.) You'd think at least one manufacturer, particularly one that caters to gamers and tweakers, would release such a board. Abit comes close but it's not enough just to ditch serial and parallel ports. I want to see ATA gone. (It'd also be nice if more than like... two optical drives were SATA as well.)
"Yeah, performance, stability, ease of use, security, application availability, flexibility, hardware compatibility. I can see how those would be difficult for someone to get used to coming from the Mac world."
Are you fucking kidding? I can understand you having a preference, but this smug crap is just wrong.
1. performance: Sorry, my little G4 Mac mini has a more responsive desktop then my Core 2 Duo Windows machine. Granted, there are plenty of areas where Windows has the OBVIOUS performance advantage, but it's not exactly all encompassing on either platform.
2. stability: I'm sorry, did you say stability? *My* Windows machine is stable, but I know what I'm doing. My dad's/uncle's/grandfather's machines are not quite the same story. My mom's Mac on the other hand... I never get "the phone call" that all of us people who are the "family tech" get. Sorry, Macs and Linux have got Windows pwned hands down here. I'm not saying Windows can't be stable, but to say that stability is something foreign to a Mac user, especially of the OS X generation, is a joke. If you were a Linux user I could take you seriously, but I mean... Windows? Stability? Ha!
3. ease of use: A bit subjective, but my mom, aunt, 2 clients and sister-in-law imply that Macs have the advantage there too.
4. security: Hahahahahaha. Somehow, after the "stability" statement, I knew you were going to say this. And like stable, Windows CAN BE secure. Just stop using IE and get a third party browser and a third party mail app. Oh, and while you're at it, try making it easy for the average joe to NOT run as an administrator. Sorry, Windows, out of the box, is the horse's ass of security.
5. application availability: See, if you had just stuck to things like this, where Windows is the clear king, it'd be easy for me to take you seriously.
6. flexibility: Unless your definition of "flexible" means "I can do a lot because of my app selection and hardware" and not "my OS is teh UBER customizer!" there's nothing more inherently flexible in Windows than a Mac. And for pure GUI flexibility, Linux is king.
7. hardware compatibility: Hey, score 2 out of 7 for the Windows teet-sucker!
Mac fanboys are annoying. But really, fanboys are annoying, even you Windows types.
Okay, being a Mac user I figured I'd read this to see if it was interesting or some whiner from another platform that doesn't get Macs. Turns out it was both plus some complaints that are just retarded. Lemme start with my gripes and then move on to theirs:
1. Samba's integration (or lack thereof) with the GUI.
Come on folks, it sucks ass. It's worse than the printer debacle. There is the "Sharing" option under "System Preferences" but then to set your Workgroup you have to go to Applications > Utilities > Directory Access? And, unless I'm missing something, there's no easy way to select a folder and set it to shared and then set sharing security on it as I would in Windows.
I know the Samba config file pretty well and I can get it to do anything I want really, but the main reason I moved from Linux to OS X is I didn't have to edit config files for simple tasks anymore.
2. Aliases are inconsistent.
Apple's old school aliases and symlinks are not one in he same. This is REALLY annoying for those of us that actually use the CLI since aliases don't work in our world.
3. Finder sucks.
Just figure the cost of a third party file manager into OS X.
15. No Date Display.
Maybe it's my profession, but I don't find myself needing to know the date more than once a day because I don't have such a pathetically short term memory that I forget. The time changes constantly, but I can remember a date for the whole 24 hours I need to. I do NOT want the date eating up any space on my desktop. Clicking the time gives me the date and running iCal (if you use it as I do) keeps the date constant in a way that's clever and takes up no additional space.
Seriously, who needs this or even cares? (Other than the author of the article.)
14. Widgets Can't Be Placed on the Desktop.
Yes, they can. Devmode. Although there should be a simpler/better way of doing this. I have a feeling we'll see this in 10.5. (It's also another way of solving your stupid date problem.)
13. Inconsistent Use of Context Menus.
Eh, I hardly use context menus. I don't know or care enough about this "problem" to comment either way.
12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock.
Dude, there is this awesome thing in OS X called Exposé. And there are plenty of Doc alternatives available for you if Exposé is just too complicated for you.
11. Managing Window Size.
Although I've more or less trained myself around this and in the Mac environment the only time I really change window sizes is when I'm using a web browser (and usually then it's only when my 12" Powerbook gets hooked to my much larger desktop monitor), this one one of the first real annoyances when I switched to using a Mac. I've dealt with it, but I could deal with at least a second corner at the bottom.
10. Accessing Applications.
Come on. "I need something special set up so that, for that program I use maybe twice a month, I don't have to spend an additional 10 seconds going through the application folder in finder." This doesn't seem like a common problem and the author even admits that there are third party solutions to the problem.
Hell, here's an idea, take all the programs you hardly ever use and symlink them inside a folder called "Apps I Hardly Ever Use But Whine About When I Have To Go Through The Application Directory" and then put that folder on your dock.
9. Backspace and Delete Keys.
Yep, Windows based notebooks have a delete key. Sometimes it's on the bottom. Sometimes it's on top. Sometimes it's hidden in a labyrinth guarded by a minotaur. There's NOTHING standard about the delete key on notebooks. If you can adjust to the moving target that is the delete key, you can handle fn-delete. Get over it.
8. Printer Setup.
Agreed. The print setup blows. It's been a gripe of mine since day one.
7. Inconsistent User Interface.
This isn't just a Mac "problem" but a problem that comes up a lot in any discussion about
You know... I just posted about how my 12" Al PowerBook wasn't a problem and then I read your post. I purchased the machine off of eBay and got a replacement battery along with it because Apple was recalling it. I've never used it with the original battery but I wonder how much of an issue that may have been. I'm writing this purely to clarify (if anyone read my other post) that I do indeed have a newer battery.
I own a 12" Al PowerBook and I use it, in bed, as a LAPtop. The only time it's particularly hot is when I have it charging while I work. When it's running off the battery alone it is just fine. I really don't know who these people are they freak out about the "heat." It's just not that bad.
You really don't understand warfare, do you? Particularly civil war. All the cool, hi-tech weapons in the world do not make it magically possible to occupy and control the people in a given area. If you simply want a "take all land and kill all the inhabitants" sort of war then, okay, toys win in most cases. When your own citizenry is fed up with you, can't just nuke your own cities. You can't use flying fortresses to strategically bomb your own cities.
No matter how far tech goes, you'll always need an infantry presence. If you can destroy your enemy's infantry, it doesn't matter how many tanks, battleships or airplanes he has. And if you think that's not the way it works, look at the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Guerilla warfare and that kind of revolt is not about winning. It's simply about not losing. No one would have to march in and "take" the White House. If the country collapses into that, the economic backlash would destroy everything else.
Tanks need factory workers, fuel, ammunition, etc. It doesn't take a lot of unrest to cripple that. Wars are often won in the will, not in the toys.
Bah, I was hoping with only like three posts up I could be the first to mention that. My PCs use AMD processors almost exclusively and I have been using AMD since my bloody 286. My main work machine, however, is now a Mac (a PPC one currently).
Since Apple first announced Intel I thought that it was pretty obvious why they went that route rather than AMD. This, right here, was one of the main reasons. Supply programs have haunted Apple for quite some time. Why switch to a new architecture just to get more of the same?
Hell, the fruity colored clamshell books were competitive. I remember mocking one in a forum once about how it was nothing but an overpriced toilet seat (oh to be 18 again) and one the cooler headed guys simply gave me a few comparisons that I checked out. Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony, etc. Sure, there wasn't an "el cheapo" laptop from Apple, but for similarly equipped machines, it was right in there price wise.
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Yeah, that ctrl button is WAY THE HELL over there.
Of course, if you have a Macbook, you could try clicking with two fingers for a right click. So, unless I'm an insensitive clod and you only have one finger... of course, then a two button mouse wouldn't work anyway.
Pretty well actually. Now, I'm not a regular Opera user, so take that for what its worth. I just use it for web development testing. The widgets are native, though one of the annoying things about web dev on a Mac is how differently the native widgets deal with new CSS directives in Camino, Safari and Opera. Safari ignores just about everything (except height and width on textareas and width on text), the sizing always seems wrong in Camino and Opera buttons inherit * { padding: 0; margin: 0 }
The speed is good and the rendering is clean though. I'm running 9.2 on this machine here.
Okay, hehehe, lemme clarify a little because I am not masochistic and there have been plenty of times I've wanted to rip my hair out trying to get IE to work right. (Try getting lists to render right... but I'm sure you already know.)
What I meant was fun, was trying to get Lynx and FF to work right on something. Designing for a browser and a text based browser and a text reader is something I find fun. Generally, it's a matter of integrating accessibility that I find fun. But still, like installing a web server on your Sega Dreamcast, I do enjoy "beating" IE sometimes and getting something to work. Thankfully, IE interpreted comments make a lot of workarounds pretty easy. Even more thankfully, the days of IE6 are numbered.
And "useful things" is kind of subjective. If I'm getting paid to work out an IE quirk, it's pretty "useful" to me.
Yeah, but it's the nature of the beast. I have yet to run into anything that a client wants so badly that when I say, "So you're fine having this at the cost of losing 10 - 30% of your potential visitors?" Even 10% is a lot of visitors. About the only time browser specific coding makes sense is for a company specific webapp (as in, not for the general public) usually on an intranet.
I'm not saying it's always easy to make it work in every browser or even that it's always going to work the same way, after all... it's going to work different in Lynx or to a text reader than it is to any browser. There's no reason you can't design things in a tiered manner. As an example, I can have CSS supply drop shadows to text in Safari. On my personal site, I utilize this, but the site till looks fine and stills works in IE6 and FF. They just don't get the pretty shadows.
Developers need to educate themselves and their clients. Web development ISN'T the same as application development and it ISN'T the same as print publishing. It's its own creature with its own realities. I haven't had a single client that I couldn't reason with and explain this sort of thing to. Not once.
As far AJAX and JavaScript in general, they're cool. I like using them. I also make sure that they enhance the web experience but that their use isn't necessary. Design from the ground up, not the ceiling down. Semantic XHTML first, etc.
Here fucking here.
Of course, if you know your ass from a hole in the ground and actually study your profession, you know how to work around these problems. Transparent PNGs are doable in IE6 IF you apply a little bit of JavaScript (and even better, use an .htc fix). Yes, there ARE differences which, I must say, is one of the most challenging and fun parts of web design.
The ONLY time you "have" to pick a certain browser is when you ABSOLUTELY MUST have some advanced feature. And in that case, odds are it's for some complex intranet application anyway.
This is ridiculous. If me, a lone developer, can do it for a reasonable price than ANYONE should be able to, particularly the well paid (probably overpriced) groups that work on big name, big business websites.
I run virtualization software on my laptop and can check dozens of browsers in multiple OSes from anywhere. It's not hard and it's not rocket science. If you understand and code to web standards and understand your IE quirks as well as do some basic study on web accessibility, you're good to go. If you're already coding to make sure your whole damn site works in Lynx or some other text based browser (which gives you a good idea of how it's going to work in some kind of text reader or other accessibility program) without fancy scripts then you know that older browsers will work and newer browsers can used enhanced features.
Read a couple fucking books, learn how to virtualize and BE A GEEK for crying out loud.
And seriously, test Firefox, IE6 and IE7 mainly and just make sure the others work. The nice thing about Opera, Safari, etc. is that 95% of the time (if not more) things that work in FF work in other good browsers.
I actually hoped life would get easier with the introduction of IE7, but it turns out that while it fixed a lot of IE6 issues, it introduced plenty of its own lame quirks which have increased testing time. With IE you spend more time tricking the browser into doing its job than you do actually doing work. I fucking hate Microsoft.
A web developer worth his salt designs with standards and all browsers in mind from the ground up and doesn't have to think of a way to "tack on" other browsers to IE. And it's not "90%" anymore either, not even close.
There's a growing population of non-browser devices hitting the web too. The reality is, if you're designing for just IE you're alienating a lot of customers and EVEN IF if you're a lame web dev who would need to charge more to support all browsers, the extra cost of the coming years will catch up with that pathetic development savings.
(The real moral of the story is that if a web dev quotes you two prices, one with and one without "other browser" support, then you need to get yourself a difference developer because your current one probably uses Microsoft Publisher for making websites.)
Yep, that's how it goes. When I was young one of the popular shows was GI Joe and my brother and I watched it whenever it was on. We had a lot of the related action figures and vehicles too. One of the things that always annoyed us, even at 4 and 6-years-old, was the fact that no one ever died. It's not like we were cheering for death, but it seemed a little ridiculous that every time an airplane exploded that some random Cobra jackass was parachuting out. You have entire battlefields of guns blazing and NO ONE gets killed.
So, when we had the action figures in our grasp, people got wasted all the time. That's just one of many things. We did Cowboys and Indians, soldiers, knights in shining armor, Star Wars, whatever. The object for my brother and me, as well as any of our typical male friends, was the KILL THE BAD GUY. Given our evolutionary background, this isn't all that peculiar. Boys have been doing this for... well... I would guess throughout our whole existence. Even my sister, having two older brothers, did the same stuff. She turned out all right too.
Hell, my dad, once we got to be around 7 or 8ish used to read us fantasy novels in chunks rather than children's books. He read the Hobbit to my brother and me as well as the Iron Tower Trilogy. The latter had quite a bit of violence in it.
And I have to say this, children have vivid imaginations. My brother did, my sister did and I did. Scary graphics on the computer, no matter how realistic, have got nothing on what I could and did form in my own head. Although, with that said, I don't think putting a 5-year-old in front of GTA3 is a good idea either. Is there an age? No. You need to know your own kid and his/her level of maturity. The biggest problem we seem to have today is that parents want other organizations and technology to raise their kids.
I think this society has become way too paranoid. WAY too paranoid. As a joke, my sister got me a DVD with some old He-Man episodes on it the other day and my friends and I sat down and watched it for a good laugh. Given the freakish religious state of the nation right now, I can just see massive protests about Skeletor's staff with the Ram's Head on it and all the "evil magic."
Really, what it's come down to, is that no one wants to take responsibility for a damn thing any more. If a kid goes bonkers... it's not his fault, it can't be that his parents were crap parents, it can't be that being abused by school mates breaks people, it can't be teachers or administrators that did nothing about it... let's blame the faceless video game makers and gun makers and people who make violent movies. It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. When I was a kid, when I did something dumb or hurt someone else, my dad belted me and that was that. I didn't go into therapy to discuss my feelings. THe belting was quick, simple and did the trick.
Unalienable is indeed a word. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin in particular (as Jefferson used inalienable in some of the early drafts) were looking for a word that was stronger than inalienable. They wanted a word that was that implied more than the idea that a right could not be taken away. The idea behind UNalienable was a right that could not be taken or GIVEN away. It conferred an implied duty intermingled with a glorified privilege. Check out a copy of Black's Law Dictionary.
At some point all words are "made up." Someone had to be the first to use them. Point is, any grammar Nazi to get on you for that one is not only NOT a grammar Nazi but also severely lacking as a history Nazi.
You said "field strip." That's fucking awesome, since all I could picture was a Dell branded AK-47.
I gotta admit, they might be broken, but they amuse the hell out of me.
Yep, same here. I actually ended up with a dual Pentium motherboard (vanilla, not Pentium Pro or Pentium II) and put together a router with BeOS. Funny thing was, you had to have two different kinds of network cards to do that since it couldn't distinguish between two of the same network cards. I spent a lot of time running IRC, email, etc from BeOS. It was fun and it got me into Linux too.
I miss it. And man, I've still never seen anything boot that fast. (Mind you, the lack of a multiuser environment was kind of a drag.) *wipes away a tear* Ahhh... the good old days.
Dude, where can I purchase one of these "AK47s" or "30-06s"? I can barely get 60 fps out of my current video card. And, what resolution are these babies pulling those kinds of frame rates on?
(I'm a jackass. I know.)
I want to build a new desktop, but I've been looking for something devoid of most/all legacy connections first. If I could find a motherboard with only SATA, PCI-e, USB and Firewire, that would rock. (Yes smart asses, I know I need a CPU socket and RAM slots among other things.) You'd think at least one manufacturer, particularly one that caters to gamers and tweakers, would release such a board. Abit comes close but it's not enough just to ditch serial and parallel ports. I want to see ATA gone. (It'd also be nice if more than like... two optical drives were SATA as well.)
Always... never... forget to check your references.
I was with you, I really was. Then this:
"Yeah, performance, stability, ease of use, security, application availability, flexibility, hardware compatibility. I can see how those would be difficult for someone to get used to coming from the Mac world."
Are you fucking kidding? I can understand you having a preference, but this smug crap is just wrong.
1. performance: Sorry, my little G4 Mac mini has a more responsive desktop then my Core 2 Duo Windows machine. Granted, there are plenty of areas where Windows has the OBVIOUS performance advantage, but it's not exactly all encompassing on either platform.
2. stability: I'm sorry, did you say stability? *My* Windows machine is stable, but I know what I'm doing. My dad's/uncle's/grandfather's machines are not quite the same story. My mom's Mac on the other hand... I never get "the phone call" that all of us people who are the "family tech" get. Sorry, Macs and Linux have got Windows pwned hands down here. I'm not saying Windows can't be stable, but to say that stability is something foreign to a Mac user, especially of the OS X generation, is a joke. If you were a Linux user I could take you seriously, but I mean... Windows? Stability? Ha!
3. ease of use: A bit subjective, but my mom, aunt, 2 clients and sister-in-law imply that Macs have the advantage there too.
4. security: Hahahahahaha. Somehow, after the "stability" statement, I knew you were going to say this. And like stable, Windows CAN BE secure. Just stop using IE and get a third party browser and a third party mail app. Oh, and while you're at it, try making it easy for the average joe to NOT run as an administrator. Sorry, Windows, out of the box, is the horse's ass of security.
5. application availability: See, if you had just stuck to things like this, where Windows is the clear king, it'd be easy for me to take you seriously.
6. flexibility: Unless your definition of "flexible" means "I can do a lot because of my app selection and hardware" and not "my OS is teh UBER customizer!" there's nothing more inherently flexible in Windows than a Mac. And for pure GUI flexibility, Linux is king.
7. hardware compatibility: Hey, score 2 out of 7 for the Windows teet-sucker!
Mac fanboys are annoying. But really, fanboys are annoying, even you Windows types.
Okay, being a Mac user I figured I'd read this to see if it was interesting or some whiner from another platform that doesn't get Macs. Turns out it was both plus some complaints that are just retarded. Lemme start with my gripes and then move on to theirs:
1. Samba's integration (or lack thereof) with the GUI.
Come on folks, it sucks ass. It's worse than the printer debacle. There is the "Sharing" option under "System Preferences" but then to set your Workgroup you have to go to Applications > Utilities > Directory Access? And, unless I'm missing something, there's no easy way to select a folder and set it to shared and then set sharing security on it as I would in Windows.
I know the Samba config file pretty well and I can get it to do anything I want really, but the main reason I moved from Linux to OS X is I didn't have to edit config files for simple tasks anymore.
2. Aliases are inconsistent.
Apple's old school aliases and symlinks are not one in he same. This is REALLY annoying for those of us that actually use the CLI since aliases don't work in our world.
3. Finder sucks.
Just figure the cost of a third party file manager into OS X.
15. No Date Display.
Maybe it's my profession, but I don't find myself needing to know the date more than once a day because I don't have such a pathetically short term memory that I forget. The time changes constantly, but I can remember a date for the whole 24 hours I need to. I do NOT want the date eating up any space on my desktop. Clicking the time gives me the date and running iCal (if you use it as I do) keeps the date constant in a way that's clever and takes up no additional space.
Seriously, who needs this or even cares? (Other than the author of the article.)
14. Widgets Can't Be Placed on the Desktop.
Yes, they can. Devmode. Although there should be a simpler/better way of doing this. I have a feeling we'll see this in 10.5. (It's also another way of solving your stupid date problem.)
13. Inconsistent Use of Context Menus.
Eh, I hardly use context menus. I don't know or care enough about this "problem" to comment either way.
12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock.
Dude, there is this awesome thing in OS X called Exposé. And there are plenty of Doc alternatives available for you if Exposé is just too complicated for you.
11. Managing Window Size.
Although I've more or less trained myself around this and in the Mac environment the only time I really change window sizes is when I'm using a web browser (and usually then it's only when my 12" Powerbook gets hooked to my much larger desktop monitor), this one one of the first real annoyances when I switched to using a Mac. I've dealt with it, but I could deal with at least a second corner at the bottom.
10. Accessing Applications.
Come on. "I need something special set up so that, for that program I use maybe twice a month, I don't have to spend an additional 10 seconds going through the application folder in finder." This doesn't seem like a common problem and the author even admits that there are third party solutions to the problem.
Hell, here's an idea, take all the programs you hardly ever use and symlink them inside a folder called "Apps I Hardly Ever Use But Whine About When I Have To Go Through The Application Directory" and then put that folder on your dock.
9. Backspace and Delete Keys.
Yep, Windows based notebooks have a delete key. Sometimes it's on the bottom. Sometimes it's on top. Sometimes it's hidden in a labyrinth guarded by a minotaur. There's NOTHING standard about the delete key on notebooks. If you can adjust to the moving target that is the delete key, you can handle fn-delete. Get over it.
8. Printer Setup.
Agreed. The print setup blows. It's been a gripe of mine since day one.
7. Inconsistent User Interface.
This isn't just a Mac "problem" but a problem that comes up a lot in any discussion about
What jackass marked this as a "troll"? (Yeah, mark me up as well. Fuck you preemptively.)
And even if your numbers were correct about the percentages...
The majority has always been right, hasn't it? Am I right or am I right?
You know... I just posted about how my 12" Al PowerBook wasn't a problem and then I read your post. I purchased the machine off of eBay and got a replacement battery along with it because Apple was recalling it. I've never used it with the original battery but I wonder how much of an issue that may have been. I'm writing this purely to clarify (if anyone read my other post) that I do indeed have a newer battery.
I own a 12" Al PowerBook and I use it, in bed, as a LAPtop. The only time it's particularly hot is when I have it charging while I work. When it's running off the battery alone it is just fine. I really don't know who these people are they freak out about the "heat." It's just not that bad.
You really don't understand warfare, do you? Particularly civil war. All the cool, hi-tech weapons in the world do not make it magically possible to occupy and control the people in a given area. If you simply want a "take all land and kill all the inhabitants" sort of war then, okay, toys win in most cases. When your own citizenry is fed up with you, can't just nuke your own cities. You can't use flying fortresses to strategically bomb your own cities.
No matter how far tech goes, you'll always need an infantry presence. If you can destroy your enemy's infantry, it doesn't matter how many tanks, battleships or airplanes he has. And if you think that's not the way it works, look at the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Guerilla warfare and that kind of revolt is not about winning. It's simply about not losing. No one would have to march in and "take" the White House. If the country collapses into that, the economic backlash would destroy everything else.
Tanks need factory workers, fuel, ammunition, etc. It doesn't take a lot of unrest to cripple that. Wars are often won in the will, not in the toys.
Bah, I was hoping with only like three posts up I could be the first to mention that. My PCs use AMD processors almost exclusively and I have been using AMD since my bloody 286. My main work machine, however, is now a Mac (a PPC one currently).
Since Apple first announced Intel I thought that it was pretty obvious why they went that route rather than AMD. This, right here, was one of the main reasons. Supply programs have haunted Apple for quite some time. Why switch to a new architecture just to get more of the same?
Hell, the fruity colored clamshell books were competitive. I remember mocking one in a forum once about how it was nothing but an overpriced toilet seat (oh to be 18 again) and one the cooler headed guys simply gave me a few comparisons that I checked out. Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony, etc. Sure, there wasn't an "el cheapo" laptop from Apple, but for similarly equipped machines, it was right in there price wise.