When it comes to designed by then -> maintained by remember this table ->
key: Wrote it -> maints it = complains code is "bad"??
bad coder -> (good coder) = complains code is "bad" good coder -> (bad coder) = complains code is "bad" bad coder -> (bad coder) = complains code is "bad" good coder -> (good coder) = no complaints.
Brilliant and correct! Perhaps in 100 years all code will be written in C and Java -- but everyone's computer can edit their essays so that bloated rambles like this one can waste less of our time...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I think maybe he took his own advice when it comes to essay writting.. it's amazing I felt you yelling "An essay written without a plan is called a ramble you nitwit..!"..
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
Mine doesn't do that but it DOES refuse to register a double click if the mouse has moved but slightly from the first click.. So THAT is why it occasionally ignores my double click... Ah-ha! Hummm, I wonder if I can get them to accept that as a bug.... only one way to find out.
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
The preffered keys for navigating in the finder are
command - up arrow goes back a directory command - down arrow opens or activate an item
open + the commands above will close the window behind when the new window / app opens...
command - left or right arrow open up a triangle in list view
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
Renaming files: There is a delay in renaming that makes me crazy. I'll click on a file and it won't go into the rename unless I wait a moment and click again.
=-=-=-
No. If you click on a filename it pauses for a while to make sure that you're not going to do a double click then enters renaming mode.. This delay is actually too short and the finder is too unresponsive so that it's totlay useless because the second click arrives to late sometimes and it goes into renaming mode even if you double clicked on the name. There's also a few other problems with related to the finder loosing the second click.
The delay was introduced in system 7. System 6 made the file go into renaming mode as soon as you clicked on the filename and I remeber switching back and forth between them and system 6's behavior was really annoying.. I actually get flashback when macOS X finder looses one of the clicks.. I hate that bug! make the damn delay longer or fix the sluggishness that causes the second click to not register in time, Apple.
of course, if you want to naming right away you can click anywhere on the icon, hit return, and start typing.. again since system 7.
This table shows that market share on the mac has been flat for about 10 years.. Given that last time I had real numbers (the 1999 mac sales demographics) Apple was running about 45% new users or PC switchers (only on the imac, though, I admit I don't have the tower or portable's numbers which probably constitute quite a few repeat sales bringing the ratio down a bit on average). If this trend continued since then, either the users from 1995-1999 haven't upgraded or they have switched to something else.
In any case, I still submit that falling share in established markets are more of a worry than flat market share. (They also might account for the bulk loss in repeat customers!)
computers have a lifesan of 1-7 years with most new computers being bought in the span of 2-4 years. Computer sales have been flat since 1999. Mac sales have been flat for 10 years.
It details the sales per platform of every major platform in the last 20 or so year (yes even stuff like amiga and commodore 64).
Mac sales have been flat for at least 10 years. The mac market should be facing a steady state and they could maintain their sales if they only sold to their user base (since these guys must have bought another computer in the last 10 year). It implies that for every persone switching to the mac there is one switching away. Perliminairy number indicate that mac sales are again flat for this year. The split betweem people who have bought a mac before and people who are new to the platform (as far as iMacs anyway) was ~65 old 45% new... That's quite a chunk of people to be loosing... Sales of the towers have been suffering (I would expect that this is because the towers are sold to pre-press places which should be part of the installed base)..
In any case, this is all secondairy compared to Apple's sharply dropping numbers in its established markets like education and pre-press. This is the real killer 'cause if you don't have a established market niche you are 10% of nothing.. Actually Apple's marketshare is at 5% these days:(...
NOTE: I'm not trying to be a doom and gloom guy. I am really worried about the survival of the platform. Not only because it is actually very nice (I have a mac Towers these days as well as the PC), but because Microsoft with a monopoly does not do anything. Look at microsoft exploder. They've done bascially nothing with it since version 5. Mozilla has blown past it. (Well, in my opinion anyway)..
First off, the slashdot article is misleading. The link is for a page on adobe's site about a study done by somebody else on which is faster PC or mac and what somebody else recommends, it's not about which adobe recommends. I mean if Adobe had a note next to Photoshop's minimum requirements saying that PCs are recommended this might be interesting but simply putting up a summary about an article which talks about which is faster is really a much more ambiguous move. We cannot draw from it, for instance, the conclusion that Adobe is gearing up to drop the mac. Nor can we gather that Adobe is no longer investing as many resources in the Mac version. If anything, the only thing we can draw from it is that Adobe is aware that the latest G4 macs are not as fast as their PC counterparts, which I would assume they would know about anyway.
Quote::
Is it only me, or isn't ironic that they move now when UNIX (include MacOS X) is gaining ground at all fronts including the desktop users. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
While the Mac is attracting a record number of new users to the platform it is also loosing its established niches and customers. Apple's share in education, for instance, has gone from 50-60% to about 20% under jobs. Apple is also loosing quite a few customers in pre-press although I don't have any numbers on that. I think it is also telling that while Steve has shown in previous macworld keynotes that that the number of new users to the platform has gone from ~10% to 25-30%, Apple's market share is stagnant or decreasing and PC sales are flat which implies that for every new user to the platform Apple is loosing an established user.
What I believe is happening is that Apple is loosing market niches in which it has gained a sizable number of Early Majority users (as defined in Geoffrey A Moore's "Crossing the Chasm") and trading them for early adopter type users in other market segments. This does not bode well as it implies Steve has absolutely no idea how to market to an established user base. Since going from the initial inroads to niche market domination is the hard part, Apple's decline implies that it's quite possible that Apple will never, under Steve, gain enough market presence under in any niche to control it properly. If you have 10% of every market you're not important in any of them and you will be marginalized in all of them.
This definitely matches my experience. I was once a rabid Mac fan, however both the iMac and MacOS X did not present any obvious upgrade path to me since the iMac and ilk broke compatibility will all my peripherals and MacOS X did not leverage any of the knowledge I had acquired in using and debugging the MacOS. Oddly enough, it was easier for me to switch to the PC since my peripherals we're all PC Mac compatible and Windows was at least as Mac like as MacOS X.. and of course everything was cheaper. So I went with a new PC and have been quite pleased with it. This situation is typical when an established market is not presented with an obvious upgrade strategy.
Oddly enough Steve is quite good at setting up situations where he *could* dominate a niche. Like at the moment he looks to be going after the consumer market and the Unix market (quite a spread!). The thing is, as soon as he gets anywhere, I think he'll get bored and abandon the niches and move on to some other interesting niche technology. I seem to remember it was this type of mentality that got him fired from Apple in the first place:-)...
My app isn't happy in the new 1.4.1.. I have reported every bug I have found. I'm on 10 show stopping bugs on bug tracker at the moment. Hopefully they will fix one before the next release (sigh)...
You should have been on the java seed-list lots of fun complaning going on there.
Hey, I once owned an iMac and I know computers.. Although, I did hate the freaking thing. Not one of my friends could understand why either...
I hated it mostly 'cause the monitor couldn't hold a candle to my 19" viewsonic PF790. I think my freinds were all using the cheapest monitor they could find. They come see the iMac and gather 'round the tiny little iMac screen and go "wow, you can make things out!". I was using a professional monitor, baby! Spent the premium for it too. Worth every peny! It was painfull having to use that slow stupid freaking blurry thing... attaching the PF790 to the iMac was the thing that convinced me to get a dual 867G4 tower. The towers are the macs worth looking at. anyways...
From my experience selling Macs, people who were looking at towers wanted to hear as much technical detail as possible. Selling an iMac, you did the opposite. I got out of selling Macs 'cause I couldn't stand selling the iMacs.. so your experience is similar to mine.
Looking back at it.. I think I don't like anything about iMacs:-)....
Me : Right, ok, now look on the keyboard. over to the left hand side. Is there a button on the keyboard marked "Caps Lock".
Her: Yes, and there's a little green light on.
Me : Ok, now press that button.
Her: [pause] ok. Oh the light goes off. Oh wait it's turned back on now. oh, it's off now... oh wait it's on again.. oh wait it's off again. oh now it's on again.
Me : Stop pressing the button!
Her: Oh, allright..
Me : Is the light on or off now?
Her: Which light?
Me : AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!! THE ONE YOU WERE JUST PRESSING!
Her: Oh, umm, how do I know that it's on?
Me :...
Her: Is it on when It's lit? Ok, it's not lit now.
Me : Ok, now type in your password and press return..
Her: It's not working.. oh wait, the box has disapeared.. why has the box disapeared? oh wait something new is happening.
Me : So it's working now..
Her: [Starts reading off icon names on the desktop].. yes I think that fixed it... I can take it form here. [reads off the program name she wants to use] that's the program right?
Me:Yes, fine that sounds good.
etc...
The funny thing is, she's usualy quite sane... It's amazing what computers will do to people..
Well, I am the lead developer for a p2p program called Myster. Myster is a 1.1 compatable Java program. From my experience I'm not too surprised there are not more java based apps out there. here's why:
1 - The phrase "write once test everywhere" still applies to Java. Even if you are very competent and write your java app carefully you still need to test it on all platforms you intend to deploy your app on because there are many small differences. These small differences are created by platform specific bugs, VM version specific bugs and all the differences between different OSes and what users expect. So many bugs between versions..
2 - If you write an app on the mac, it will look odd on windows and vice versa. Windows and mac apps behave differently, they have different UI standards.. I mean even aqua and MacOS 9 have huge differences. In MacOS X, the preferences menu item is in a system menu. On eveyr other platform on earth it goes under the edit menu. On Windows all windows have their own menu bar, on mac systems the menu bar is global per program.
3 - You never have enough control over the rest of the system. Sure you can do most common UI tricks but if you want to access resource forks or the like, you need platform specific code.
4 - Deployment on windows really sucks.
-The java VM does not come pre-installed.. well, actually there is a java VM pre-installed but it's 1.1 only, and crap.
-There is no standard way of making a double clickable.exe java program (Or giving it an icon!)
All these things make it very difficult to make a professional looking / acting application. I think Myster is about as close as anyone has come to making a java app that looks like it's a native macOS X application... and it still bugs me that it's not perfect..
SPEED IN JAVA
First off, java is not slow because it is not native. Java is compiled from byte code to machine native code before it is run via a mechanism called the just in time compiler. in tests this JIT can get code to within a few % of of C/C++ code!
Java is not slow because of the garbage collector. Recently the garbage collector has gotten much better. It's now only a tiny fraction the a problem it once was.
Java is slow because
1) Swing is pretty damn slow (widgets do their own java based drawing) (usually awt is faster) 2) Java encourages a style of programming that is not conducive to speed.
On macOS X java is slow because many of the components do their own drawing and the type of drawing they do is hard to speed up *in Aqua/Quartz*. Also aqua is just slower than any other platform to begin with which means many programs don't bother to optimise many of their routines which work fine until thye are run on MacOS X. from what i've heard the java team is working on these problems. It's from their work that we now have quartz extreme so more power to them!
oddly enough Myster is more popular on the mac than the PC!.. Also it's extremely popular in japan thanks to its use of UTF strings. (all the ??? you see in myster are japaneese characters.)
As for beta testing Myster.. Sure, tester are good.. Coders are better, (Myster is open source too). we're also looking for volunteer translators and people to help with the internationalization / documentation effort. Oh and martketing people are welcome too. Oh and we're loking for new web hosting/email.. weee. Mail here to inquire. wow, that was a shameless plug:-)...
I am the lead developer for a p2p app called Myster. myster is a 1.1 awt based program. Myster doesn't run too well with Apple's 1.4.1 as it still contains too many bugs. Luckly Apple has decided that all java apps inside application bundles shall continue to use 1.3.1 for now, which means that myster still works. To be honest, I think the 1.4.1 release is extremely rushed given the number of outstanding bugs and performance issues.
Understanding your filesystem is fundamental to having less troublesome computing.
==============
Ever sat down and used one of these OSes in there default settings? Everything is HTML graphical nonsence, half the files are hidden, all the windows look different..
Apart from having to understand the grahical file system, a user needs to understand the filing system through all sorts of noise that these modern OSes throw at them. Your average tech person doesn't even think about it 'cause they turn all this junk off ASAP. For a new user who does't know about hidden.extensions or the folders with graphics in them... yowsa...
Oh and just FYI: Users don't read manuals and don't do tutorials.. Life is to short.
The short answer seems to be "get a mac". Ease of use, standard ways of doing things, tendency to failsafe even if it wont let you eject the disk, and desscriptive error messages are the hallmarks of mac's human interface. even the computers cost more because in part they have higher standard for fabrication and higher level of standard features (fire wire, ethernet) so the software and users can count on commonality in operation and fewer options to choose from.
=====
yeah, get a mac. I have one and have had one for ages. Going from macOS to MacOS X is an increadibly annoying process.. They moved the resize button and window shade button to the left for no good reasone, the applications menu is gone, there's a useless doc thing they takes up the lower part of the screen, there are multiple "desktops" depending on what API the app is using which means saving a file to the desktop ends up fireing it randomly around the system, the style of the windows change depending on which API the apps are using.
Apple, with MacOS X, is guilty of changing the interface arbitrairaly with its latest release while keeping some aspects of the older release without reasone. Apple is nothing special here.
There are more than just two alternatives. Here is the most complete list of alternatives to microsoft internet explorer for Mac and Linux. If your favorite browser is not here just reply and add. (share and enjoy (tm)). I would do the PC list but it's long. I'll leave that to someone else. like maybe this:
PC: http://www.tucows.com/web95.html
Chimera Konqueror Safari iCab (http://icab.de/) Pheonix Cyberdog (http://www.apple.com/) (now dead:-( ) MacLynx (http://www.lirmm.fr/~gutkneco/maclynx/) MacWeb (http://www.sonic.net/support/setup/mac/macweb111e.shtml) MacWWW (for system 6 Mac users) Mosaic (of course!) Mozilla Netscape OmniWeb Opera Wanna Be (http://mindstory.com/wb2/download.html) WebTV Viewer(http://developer.msntv.com/Tools/WebTVVwr.a sp) (danger!) Lynx Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya/) Cineast (http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/wafe/Cineast/) Emacs
HP and eMachines are aproximately equals is crapiness. Especially at the low end. I have two low end HPs. They are evil little things. I also have a custom built PC and a mac wintunnel. They are far superior in quality (keyboard, mouse, screen, vid card case powersupply are all better). I will grant you that the processor speeds are were you would expect, however.
Slashdot Mirror
QuicKeys X + Applescript + UIScripting = Blow-your-mind-power in a GUI.
- Automate *anything* (applescript + UI Scripting).
- Trigger it any way you want. (QuicKeys)
With no command line BS to put up with.
Everyone memorise this table
When it comes to designed by then -> maintained by remember this table ->
key:
Wrote it -> maints it = complains code is "bad"??
bad coder -> (good coder) = complains code is "bad"
good coder -> (bad coder) = complains code is "bad"
bad coder -> (bad coder) = complains code is "bad"
good coder -> (good coder) = no complaints.
Brilliant and correct! Perhaps in 100 years all code will be written in C and Java -- but everyone's computer can edit their essays so that bloated rambles like this one can waste less of our time...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I think maybe he took his own advice when it comes to essay writting.. it's amazing I felt you yelling "An essay written without a plan is called a ramble you nitwit..!"..
Mine doesn't do that but it DOES refuse to register a double click if the mouse has moved but slightly from the first click.. So THAT is why it occasionally ignores my double click... Ah-ha! Hummm, I wonder if I can get them to accept that as a bug.... only one way to find out.
The preffered keys for navigating in the finder are
command - up arrow goes back a directory
command - down arrow opens or activate an item
open + the commands above will close the window behind when the new window / app opens...
command - left or right arrow open up a triangle in list view
Renaming files: There is a delay in renaming that makes me crazy. I'll click on a file and it won't go into the rename unless I wait a moment and click again.
=-=-=-
No. If you click on a filename it pauses for a while to make sure that you're not going to do a double click then enters renaming mode.. This delay is actually too short and the finder is too unresponsive so that it's totlay useless because the second click arrives to late sometimes and it goes into renaming mode even if you double clicked on the name. There's also a few other problems with related to the finder loosing the second click.
The delay was introduced in system 7. System 6 made the file go into renaming mode as soon as you clicked on the filename and I remeber switching back and forth between them and system 6's behavior was really annoying.. I actually get flashback when macOS X finder looses one of the clicks.. I hate that bug! make the damn delay longer or fix the sluggishness that causes the second click to not register in time, Apple.
of course, if you want to naming right away you can click anywhere on the icon, hit return, and start typing.. again since system 7.
This table shows that market share on the mac has been flat for about 10 years.. Given that last time I had real numbers (the 1999 mac sales demographics) Apple was running about 45% new users or PC switchers (only on the imac, though, I admit I don't have the tower or portable's numbers which probably constitute quite a few repeat sales bringing the ratio down a bit on average). If this trend continued since then, either the users from 1995-1999 haven't upgraded or they have switched to something else.
In any case, I still submit that falling share in established markets are more of a worry than flat market share. (They also might account for the bulk loss in repeat customers!)
Yep, that's 'cause I'm a moron and pasted the wrong link. The correct one is below.
http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
computers have a lifesan of 1-7 years with most new computers being bought in the span of 2-4 years. Computer sales have been flat since 1999. Mac sales have been flat for 10 years.
. shtml
:(...
Take a look at this chart
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0007/18.share
It details the sales per platform of every major platform in the last 20 or so year (yes even stuff like amiga and commodore 64).
Mac sales have been flat for at least 10 years. The mac market should be facing a steady state and they could maintain their sales if they only sold to their user base (since these guys must have bought another computer in the last 10 year). It implies that for every persone switching to the mac there is one switching away. Perliminairy number indicate that mac sales are again flat for this year. The split betweem people who have bought a mac before and people who are new to the platform (as far as iMacs anyway) was ~65 old 45% new... That's quite a chunk of people to be loosing... Sales of the towers have been suffering (I would expect that this is because the towers are sold to pre-press places which should be part of the installed base)..
In any case, this is all secondairy compared to Apple's sharply dropping numbers in its established markets like education and pre-press. This is the real killer 'cause if you don't have a established market niche you are 10% of nothing.. Actually Apple's marketshare is at 5% these days
NOTE: I'm not trying to be a doom and gloom guy. I am really worried about the survival of the platform. Not only because it is actually very nice (I have a mac Towers these days as well as the PC), but because Microsoft with a monopoly does not do anything. Look at microsoft exploder. They've done bascially nothing with it since version 5. Mozilla has blown past it. (Well, in my opinion anyway)..
First off, the slashdot article is misleading. The link is for a page on adobe's site about a study done by somebody else on which is faster PC or mac and what somebody else recommends, it's not about which adobe recommends. I mean if Adobe had a note next to Photoshop's minimum requirements saying that PCs are recommended this might be interesting but simply putting up a summary about an article which talks about which is faster is really a much more ambiguous move. We cannot draw from it, for instance, the conclusion that Adobe is gearing up to drop the mac. Nor can we gather that Adobe is no longer investing as many resources in the Mac version. If anything, the only thing we can draw from it is that Adobe is aware that the latest G4 macs are not as fast as their PC counterparts, which I would assume they would know about anyway.
:-)...
Here's the parent link on adobe's site.
Quote::
Is it only me, or isn't ironic that they move now when UNIX (include MacOS X) is gaining ground at all fronts including the desktop users.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
While the Mac is attracting a record number of new users to the platform it is also loosing its established niches and customers. Apple's share in education, for instance, has gone from 50-60% to about 20% under jobs. Apple is also loosing quite a few customers in pre-press although I don't have any numbers on that. I think it is also telling that while Steve has shown in previous macworld keynotes that that the number of new users to the platform has gone from ~10% to 25-30%, Apple's market share is stagnant or decreasing and PC sales are flat which implies that for every new user to the platform Apple is loosing an established user.
What I believe is happening is that Apple is loosing market niches in which it has gained a sizable number of Early Majority users (as defined in Geoffrey A Moore's "Crossing the Chasm") and trading them for early adopter type users in other market segments. This does not bode well as it implies Steve has absolutely no idea how to market to an established user base. Since going from the initial inroads to niche market domination is the hard part, Apple's decline implies that it's quite possible that Apple will never, under Steve, gain enough market presence under in any niche to control it properly. If you have 10% of every market you're not important in any of them and you will be marginalized in all of them.
This definitely matches my experience. I was once a rabid Mac fan, however both the iMac and MacOS X did not present any obvious upgrade path to me since the iMac and ilk broke compatibility will all my peripherals and MacOS X did not leverage any of the knowledge I had acquired in using and debugging the MacOS. Oddly enough, it was easier for me to switch to the PC since my peripherals we're all PC Mac compatible and Windows was at least as Mac like as MacOS X.. and of course everything was cheaper. So I went with a new PC and have been quite pleased with it. This situation is typical when an established market is not presented with an obvious upgrade strategy.
Oddly enough Steve is quite good at setting up situations where he *could* dominate a niche. Like at the moment he looks to be going after the consumer market and the Unix market (quite a spread!). The thing is, as soon as he gets anywhere, I think he'll get bored and abandon the niches and move on to some other interesting niche technology. I seem to remember it was this type of mentality that got him fired from Apple in the first place
My app isn't happy in the new 1.4.1.. I have reported every bug I have found. I'm on 10 show stopping bugs on bug tracker at the moment. Hopefully they will fix one before the next release (sigh)...
You should have been on the java seed-list lots of fun complaning going on there.
Similar story but she confused the floppy eject button with the monitor button... My mom is alot of fun.
Hey, I once owned an iMac and I know computers.. Although, I did hate the freaking thing. Not one of my friends could understand why either...
:-)....
I hated it mostly 'cause the monitor couldn't hold a candle to my 19" viewsonic PF790. I think my freinds were all using the cheapest monitor they could find. They come see the iMac and gather 'round the tiny little iMac screen and go "wow, you can make things out!". I was using a professional monitor, baby! Spent the premium for it too. Worth every peny! It was painfull having to use that slow stupid freaking blurry thing... attaching the PF790 to the iMac was the thing that convinced me to get a dual 867G4 tower. The towers are the macs worth looking at. anyways...
From my experience selling Macs, people who were looking at towers wanted to hear as much technical detail as possible. Selling an iMac, you did the opposite. I got out of selling Macs 'cause I couldn't stand selling the iMacs.. so your experience is similar to mine.
Looking back at it.. I think I don't like anything about iMacs
1) stupid comment
2) question mark
3) karma!
I can't believe people still find these things funny.. In russia, they would have got over it by now.
My favorite mom moment:
...
:Yes, fine that sounds good.
Her: The password doesn't work
Me : Do you have capslock on?
Her: Oh yes, I'm sorry.
Me : Ok, try again.
Her: It doens't work.
Me : Is capslock on?
Her: Yes.
Me : Could you turn it off?
Her: Oh, sorry.. [Mouse clicking sounds] Ok..
Me : Right, ok, now look on the keyboard. over to the left hand side. Is there a button on the keyboard marked "Caps Lock".
Her: Yes, and there's a little green light on.
Me : Ok, now press that button.
Her: [pause] ok. Oh the light goes off. Oh wait it's turned back on now. oh, it's off now... oh wait it's on again.. oh wait it's off again. oh now it's on again.
Me : Stop pressing the button!
Her: Oh, allright..
Me : Is the light on or off now?
Her: Which light?
Me : AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!! THE ONE YOU WERE JUST PRESSING!
Her: Oh, umm, how do I know that it's on?
Me :
Her: Is it on when It's lit? Ok, it's not lit now.
Me : Ok, now type in your password and press return..
Her: It's not working.. oh wait, the box has disapeared.. why has the box disapeared? oh wait something new is happening.
Me : So it's working now..
Her: [Starts reading off icon names on the desktop].. yes I think that fixed it... I can take it form here. [reads off the program name she wants to use] that's the program right?
Me
etc...
The funny thing is, she's usualy quite sane... It's amazing what computers will do to people..
anyways...
Well, I am the lead developer for a p2p program called Myster. Myster is a 1.1 compatable Java program. From my experience I'm not too surprised there are not more java based apps out there. here's why:
.exe java program (Or giving it an icon!)
:-)...
1 - The phrase "write once test everywhere" still applies to Java. Even if you are very competent and write your java app carefully you still need to test it on all platforms you intend to deploy your app on because there are many small differences. These small differences are created by platform specific bugs, VM version specific bugs and all the differences between different OSes and what users expect. So many bugs between versions..
2 - If you write an app on the mac, it will look odd on windows and vice versa. Windows and mac apps behave differently, they have different UI standards.. I mean even aqua and MacOS 9 have huge differences. In MacOS X, the preferences menu item is in a system menu. On eveyr other platform on earth it goes under the edit menu. On Windows all windows have their own menu bar, on mac systems the menu bar is global per program.
3 - You never have enough control over the rest of the system. Sure you can do most common UI tricks but if you want to access resource forks or the like, you need platform specific code.
4 - Deployment on windows really sucks.
-The java VM does not come pre-installed.. well, actually there is a java VM pre-installed but it's 1.1 only, and crap.
-There is no standard way of making a double clickable
All these things make it very difficult to make a professional looking / acting application. I think Myster is about as close as anyone has come to making a java app that looks like it's a native macOS X application... and it still bugs me that it's not perfect..
SPEED IN JAVA
First off, java is not slow because it is not native. Java is compiled from byte code to machine native code before it is run via a mechanism called the just in time compiler. in tests this JIT can get code to within a few % of of C/C++ code!
Java is not slow because of the garbage collector. Recently the garbage collector has gotten much better. It's now only a tiny fraction the a problem it once was.
Java is slow because
1) Swing is pretty damn slow (widgets do their own java based drawing) (usually awt is faster)
2) Java encourages a style of programming that is not conducive to speed.
On macOS X java is slow because many of the components do their own drawing and the type of drawing they do is hard to speed up *in Aqua/Quartz*. Also aqua is just slower than any other platform to begin with which means many programs don't bother to optimise many of their routines which work fine until thye are run on MacOS X. from what i've heard the java team is working on these problems. It's from their work that we now have quartz extreme so more power to them!
oddly enough Myster is more popular on the mac than the PC!.. Also it's extremely popular in japan thanks to its use of UTF strings. (all the ??? you see in myster are japaneese characters.)
As for beta testing Myster.. Sure, tester are good.. Coders are better, (Myster is open source too). we're also looking for volunteer translators and people to help with the internationalization / documentation effort. Oh and martketing people are welcome too. Oh and we're loking for new web hosting/email.. weee. Mail here to inquire. wow, that was a shameless plug
I am the lead developer for a p2p app called Myster. myster is a 1.1 awt based program. Myster doesn't run too well with Apple's 1.4.1 as it still contains too many bugs. Luckly Apple has decided that all java apps inside application bundles shall continue to use 1.3.1 for now, which means that myster still works. To be honest, I think the 1.4.1 release is extremely rushed given the number of outstanding bugs and performance issues.
Oh well....
When Apple releases Copland, we'll all want to get PPCs.
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Yep, only a year more to wait... yippy! The real fun will be Gershwin a few years after..
No, it's real. I remember reading it in 1995. It was widely circulated in the mac camp back them. Nice too see slashdot is keeping up with the news...
Understanding your filesystem is fundamental to having less troublesome computing.
.extensions or the folders with graphics in them... yowsa...
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Ever sat down and used one of these OSes in there default settings? Everything is HTML graphical nonsence, half the files are hidden, all the windows look different..
Apart from having to understand the grahical file system, a user needs to understand the filing system through all sorts of noise that these modern OSes throw at them. Your average tech person doesn't even think about it 'cause they turn all this junk off ASAP. For a new user who does't know about hidden
Oh and just FYI: Users don't read manuals and don't do tutorials.. Life is to short.
The short answer seems to be "get a mac". Ease of use, standard ways of doing things, tendency to failsafe even if it wont let you eject the disk, and desscriptive error messages are the hallmarks of mac's human interface. even the computers cost more because in part they have higher standard for fabrication and higher level of standard features (fire wire, ethernet) so the software and users can count on commonality in operation and fewer options to choose from.
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yeah, get a mac. I have one and have had one for ages. Going from macOS to MacOS X is an increadibly annoying process.. They moved the resize button and window shade button to the left for no good reasone, the applications menu is gone, there's a useless doc thing they takes up the lower part of the screen, there are multiple "desktops" depending on what API the app is using which means saving a file to the desktop ends up fireing it randomly around the system, the style of the windows change depending on which API the apps are using.
Apple, with MacOS X, is guilty of changing the interface arbitrairaly with its latest release while keeping some aspects of the older release without reasone. Apple is nothing special here.
I didn't forget Pheonix...!
AGH! How could I forget Links...
There are more than just two alternatives. Here is the most complete list of alternatives to microsoft internet explorer for Mac and Linux. If your favorite browser is not here just reply and add. (share and enjoy (tm)). I would do the PC list but it's long. I'll leave that to someone else. like maybe this:
:-( )e .shtml)a Be (http://mindstory.com/wb2/download.html)a sp) (danger!))
PC: http://www.tucows.com/web95.html
Chimera
Konqueror
Safari
iCab (http://icab.de/)
Pheonix
Cyberdog (http://www.apple.com/) (now dead
MacLynx (http://www.lirmm.fr/~gutkneco/maclynx/)
MacWeb (http://www.sonic.net/support/setup/mac/macweb111
MacWWW (for system 6 Mac users)
Mosaic (of course!)
Mozilla
Netscape
OmniWeb
Opera
Wann
WebTV Viewer(http://developer.msntv.com/Tools/WebTVVwr.
Lynx
Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya/)
Cineast (http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/wafe/Cineast/
Emacs
HP and eMachines are aproximately equals is crapiness. Especially at the low end. I have two low end HPs. They are evil little things. I also have a custom built PC and a mac wintunnel. They are far superior in quality (keyboard, mouse, screen, vid card case powersupply are all better). I will grant you that the processor speeds are were you would expect, however.
I would like to point out that Myster is still not that much of a mess.. Come to think of it Kazaa is not that much of a mess either. Nor WinMX.
I think what you mean is not "networks are a mess" but the Gnutella network is a mess. Which is, oddly enough, why I don't use it.