Only reason why I cannot user another browser on OS X is because of Google Browser sync. Until something like this comes out for other browsers, it's unlikely I'll use others.
Listen, I know quite a bit about UI design and testing. If you pick up a good book on the subject you'll notice something, a lot of the "common mistakes" are still in Vista and a lot of the "good designs" are in OS X.
I'm not saying Vista is better, but I point out that I don't agree with some of your OS X points
The Windows UI operates almost on the assumption that you'll want to see one application, per screen at a time.
It can be annoying at times, but this is why I like Linux, I can maximize windows, set other windows to 'always ontop' etc.
On OS X that assumption does not hold true, so expanding to fit the content makes sense. You chose a very poor point to argue.
I find myself getting annoyed with Windows on OS X, sometimes I just want to maximize my use of the widths/heights because I need all the screen estate space I need so I can work easier on content. But I can't. Zoom has it's merit, but I still prefer maximize over it.
If you think double clicking and navigating through a wizard is easier than dragging to a folder, well you're wrong in the general case.
Seeing how easy it is to miss drag, I disagree, clicking 'next' a few times isn't as messy.
If you think not being able to move the application once installed is more flexible, or convenient you must work at MS.
Most applications work fine if you move them. Windows will even change the shortcuts accordingly
If you think opening up add/remove software and clicking through the uninstaller is easier than dragging to the trash, you must work at MS and may be drunk.
Actually I prefer package managers over windows's add/remove programs -- but yes, I do find it easier than dragging the trash. Too many times have I miss dragged or something and added the stupid thing to the dock (I'm not a novice with a mouse).
I don't work at Microsoft, infact Microsoft doesn't make my preferred desktop OS.
Some people do, most don't. The point of my post was to list the features where each OS is ahead of the other. Just because you don't use it or even because 99% of people don't use it does not matter.
To be honest, I think your point about running programs off portable media is a bit of a meaningless. I mean, we've been able to run programs off diskettes and so on since as far as I can remember. Of course you can say OS X is superior, because many applications, just come in a application folder. But this isn't a completely impossible feature to replicate on windows.
Hardware platforms. I can put an application on my thumb drive and plug it into two machines one a 32 bit PPC machine running OS X and the other a 64 bit Intel running a different version of OS X and it will work on both. If I upgrade from one machine to the other, the app still works without reinstalling. That is an advantage that Vista does not have that I've ever found.
.net can do this, it's produced binaries are architecture independent (which the interpreter that runs the binary can automatically later 'optimize' by compiling/converting it into something more native). OS X's universal binaries are from what I understand -- a PPC binary, x86 and x86-64 binary in one -- limited.
I've used cygwin for years and it is very, very limited and does not integrate with anything. You can't pipe data from a Windows app or even to a a Windows app from one running in cygwin without a lot of pain.
As having written my own win32 console applications, I didn't actually have problems piping data from them.
Not to mention some of my administration scripts that run under Cygwin, capture outputs from things like net.exe etc. just fine.
As for your arguments about terminal.app, I like it but it is irrelevant to this point. I was talking about the shell environment, not the terminal used to acc
Sane UI choices - OS X does not ignore the last two decades worth of human/computer interaction research.
Maximize button.
OpenStep application bundles - drag and drop installation and uninstallation of most applications, e-mail or IM working programs without having to save installers
I find that really annoying on OS X, I'd rather just double click on a package (not much OS X software is in a.pkg file) and run the installer.
run software off an ipod or thumb drive without having to install (including remembering per-machine preferences)
A feature I don't see many people using at the moment.
easy binaries for multiple platforms
.NET is better for this, sorry.
Usable shell environment - bash, tcsh, whatever; the CLI on OS X is very usable and powerful and a first class citizen.
I haven't been very impressed with the ANSI color support of term.app, even Windows gets this right. As for shells on Windows, while a 'reasonable' one may not pre-installed. I do find Cygwin more comfy than having say OS X + Darwin tools.
Upgrading hardware - upgrading a mac to a mac is as easy as plugging in a firewire cable clicking a button. This saves a lot of time and effort, amazingly better
Upgrading a Mac is so easy... You buy a new one?
Ubiquitous zeroconf - automatically and instantly finds printers, local chat, streaming music, file shares, and collaborative documents
Beyond local chat and streaming music, Microsoft software can do that out of the box.
Emulation/ports/virtualization/compatability - it is easier to run Linux and Windows software on OS X and there are more options to do so on OS X, than there are to run Linux and OS X apps on Windows (yeah I know about cygwin and Apple's licensing and the relative number of apps)
Actually, OS X doesn't get signaling right half of the time, porting Linux applications to Cygwin isn't as difficult in those aspects. Not to mention you also get drag and drop support, clipboard sharing with the X-server. Where is this on OS X?
Easier support of third party devices, plug them in and they just work much more often.
And the ones that don't work lock up the computer (like my bluetooth dongle:P)
Package manager - Windows has a pretty lame software install/uninstall manager, but it is still better than nothing
I disagree, I think package management via domain management is really nicely done, I haven't seen any better from OS X out of the box.
Well, I haven't seen a whole heck of a lot of cross-platforms apps
Off the top of my head... VLC, Firefox, Vmware, qemu, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Skype, KDE (Many, many applications -- probably 100+ if you include the extras), Azureus and there are far more, you can find a large amount of cross-platform software on sourceforge.
About the only progress made in the past two decades is that a PC can read a Mac disk and vice versa.
There has been far more progress than that, sorry.
VP6 and h.263 are as real as any any other codec. An MPEG-4 codec would be nice, admittedly.
But flash it self is not in my opinion a reasonable player (I have issues with it under Windows!). I've not been impressed with the options one can use for making videos available under Flash either -- large file sizes.
This is not a limitation of the Flash video system, but a choice by webmasters. Why do need high bitrates in an interview, anyway?
Fluendo aims to resolve this by making available many of the libraries previously used via w32codecs. As a result, they're probably going to pursue MPlayer on the subject.
MPlayer also uses ffmpeg, which supports MPEG, VC1, WMV (all the way upto version 9 apparently) etc.
ffmpeg is opensource and free. The only issue with it, is that in some countries, they haven't paid licensing fees for certain patents.
Interestingly, you pay a very small premium for this, though you do have to venture to the outside world or place an order to be delivered.
Actually the local stores here don't stock much industrial music or classical music.
Basically, your complaints seem to boil down to the same as the article. Even though there are ways to do what you want, you want to do this one narrow thing in one narrow way. I'm sorry it frustrates you.
I honestly don't consider ordering CDs from the USA much of a 'way' with the delivery costs involved.
Who says you have to recompress the music after you burn it to CD? Just reimport it directly back to AIFF or FLAC. There you go: music, compressed only once, that you can "share" with your six billion best "friends" as much as you like.
Oh great, I'm going to go waste what? five? twelve? times the space by doing that. Most mp3 players can't play AIFF or FLAC.
Of course, this probably wouldn't occur to a linear-thinking PC user like you. You can thank me for the insight later.
No, it occured to me, and it wasn't a viable solution. Converting a 3MB DRMed song to a 23MB flac (doesn't even play in most PC media players) is not a solution. What are you going to suggest next? WAV?
It's tragic and depressing, it is. If only there were a way for me to burn my FairPlay music to CDs!
CDs?... Most of us use mp3 players or mp3 CDs... Get with the times.
Then I could listen to it on any device, anywhere, anytime
Actually a CD doesn't fit into my mp3 player...
or even re-rip it, thus ending up with unencumbered music.
Once you encode something in a format like mp3, aac wmv, etc, it introduces numerous artifacts which cause the produced audio to be difficult to recompress -- At a similar bitrate, it would sound horrible.
Oh yes, and how exactly do I rip movies downloaded off iTunes store again?
C'mon. You're already buying compressed audio or video.
Which is why we cannot afford to rerip this non-sense, the DRM needs to come off.
If you were serious about quality - or "freedom!!1!!!1!" - you'd be purchasing the highest-quality source material possible
I don't have a working vinyl player anymore and I don't think my particular equipment is good enough for digitizing the audio. It would probably come out worse than the lossy audio I can get.
But you're not. Instead, you're complaining because your convenience is inconvenienced by FairPlay. Pfft.
Actually, I'm happy with the quality provided by something that's been encoded once with a lossy codec for most cases, encoding it again, as I've mentioned before, is highly likely to make it sound horrible.
Which would you rather have - not have your place broken into in the first place, or have it broken into, but they catch the perp 6 weeks later after finally going over the video, he doesn't have any assets, so you get no restitution... and in the meantime he's also smashed a couple dozen other windows, done a few B&Es etc.
The latter obviously, however you can't guarantee a system that will stop that -- I lived in areas that was swarming with police, it doesn't stop crime. So until you can find a system that works, I'll have the CCTVs.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange thing is that I've seen more Firefox users on OS X than I have of Safari or Camino.
Only reason why I cannot user another browser on OS X is because of Google Browser sync. Until something like this comes out for other browsers, it's unlikely I'll use others.
I'm not saying Vista is better, but I point out that I don't agree with some of your OS X points
It can be annoying at times, but this is why I like Linux, I can maximize windows, set other windows to 'always ontop' etc.
I find myself getting annoyed with Windows on OS X, sometimes I just want to maximize my use of the widths/heights because I need all the screen estate space I need so I can work easier on content. But I can't. Zoom has it's merit, but I still prefer maximize over it.
Seeing how easy it is to miss drag, I disagree, clicking 'next' a few times isn't as messy.
Most applications work fine if you move them. Windows will even change the shortcuts accordingly
Actually I prefer package managers over windows's add/remove programs -- but yes, I do find it easier than dragging the trash. Too many times have I miss dragged or something and added the stupid thing to the dock (I'm not a novice with a mouse).
I don't work at Microsoft, infact Microsoft doesn't make my preferred desktop OS.
To be honest, I think your point about running programs off portable media is a bit of a meaningless. I mean, we've been able to run programs off diskettes and so on since as far as I can remember. Of course you can say OS X is superior, because many applications, just come in a application folder. But this isn't a completely impossible feature to replicate on windows.
.net can do this, it's produced binaries are architecture independent (which the interpreter that runs the binary can automatically later 'optimize' by compiling/converting it into something more native). OS X's universal binaries are from what I understand -- a PPC binary, x86 and x86-64 binary in one -- limited.
As having written my own win32 console applications, I didn't actually have problems piping data from them.
Not to mention some of my administration scripts that run under Cygwin, capture outputs from things like net.exe etc. just fine.
I disagree, I think package management via domain management is really nicely done, I haven't seen any better from OS X out of the box.
I own a cat and a dog. The cat is better. If you want to know why and you don't want to take my word for it, then buy one.
I guess he's never played world war II games and the like.
ffmpeg is opensource and free. The only issue with it, is that in some countries, they haven't paid licensing fees for certain patents.
(Note: I have not used the iTunes store yet.)
Oh yes, and how exactly do I rip movies downloaded off iTunes store again?Which is why we cannot afford to rerip this non-sense, the DRM needs to come off.I don't have a working vinyl player anymore and I don't think my particular equipment is good enough for digitizing the audio. It would probably come out worse than the lossy audio I can get.Actually, I'm happy with the quality provided by something that's been encoded once with a lossy codec for most cases, encoding it again, as I've mentioned before, is highly likely to make it sound horrible.
Scenario: Everyday you get out for work and come back, you find some dog crapped in the grass of your garden.
No... I can't really think of any acceptable reasons for allowing this.