I guess there's not much posted yet, but Arjan and Auke presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference this past week and demo'd a not massively modified linux booting to fully usable (all the way to X even) in 5 seconds. Discussions and hacking at the conference apparently trimmed an additional second or two off that. There was a lot of excitement, so I'd expect to see their mods making it upstream into the kernel, distros and X.
This wouldn't go over well seeing as Oregon has no sales tax. I'm quite happy not paying sales tax as an Oregon resident, whether shopping online or at a local store.
I don't smoke so I don't know, but there may be some sort of "sin tax" on cigarettes. If so, it's not high enough, because there are a tonne of smokers in Oregon.
I bought a PowerBook this fall. My intention was to run linux on it, but I've given OSX about a 6 month chance. I've been very disappointed with it. I feel my Ximian/Gnome installations are more usable.
My girlfriend has her masters in human-computer interaction and has also been surprised by OSX's shortcomings.
Check out www.asktog.com for one expert's opinions on OSX.
Some things off the top of my head that bug me are:
A normal linux distro comes with much more software (ie: OpenOffice, various browsers, &tc.) and is much more functional out of the box. Having to install lots of software is a usability issue.
Beyond the lack of apps, their location and accessing them is silly. I have to open up a Finder window and navigate to the right folder and start the app? Or have it on my desktop or in the dock wasting screen real estate and making visual clutter and confusion? Please! I know the "Start Menu" is always the target of derision, but I find a hierarchical set of menus easier to use. Especially if the lists don't dynamically condense, so your apps are always in the same space. You quickly learn the arcs to drag the mouse through to get to a certain things. Maybe I'm just wierd.
The OSX keybindings are longer for my common applications as the OS steals shorter bindings for things I never use.
Mouse click / focus behaviour is inconsistent and it generally takes multiple clicks to get what I want done where linux would require one.
Middle button paste is a huge time saver: two mouse clicks become two mouse clicks and four keys pressed. Plus the user has to remember that meta-c/v/x copy/paste/cut. There is a visual simplicity to click/drag to select and position and middle click to paste. Maybe there's a way to make OSX do this, but still you need a non-Apple-standard mouse or keyboard keys bound to "middle click".
Closing an application's only window does not close the application. The user has to keep track of what apps are running and close them either via the top panel or with the correct keybinding if they really want them closed. The dock makes it harder to find them. I really like the Ximian panel window list which is a clone of a Mac OS feature that was dropped from OSX apparently. It uses minimal screen real estate,can be placed in an easy to hit target (screen corner) and provides complete access to your apps running.
Like MS Windows, OSX has condensed menus that show just some subset of the choices with an arrow to click to get all of them. I've had condensed contextual menus come up that are vertically sized at over five lines to accomodate one line of text, some blank space and the arrow, when the full menu was only three options. So clicking the arrow for the full list gives me a smaller list. To be fair some linux distributors are starting to do this with their application start menus and are doing a poor job of it, but in linux customising these menus is very easy.
The location of functionality in the top panel's multiple menus seems arbitrarily different between applications.
The fancy OSX dock is actually a pain, for exactly the reasons Tog mentions at the above link. You really have to use it a bit to get over the eye candy but you quickly realise it decreases you productivity.
Applications seem to crash a lot. Applications seem to be ported with lower QA than the given vendor gives to the product on another OS.
This isn't so much an OSX issue as an Apple laptop issue, but their keyboard layouts seem to constantly change and don't have all the keys and require key combinations to do simple things (like backspace vs. delete). I understand they're aiming at simplicity, but simplicity limits the usability for the non-neophyte user.
All in all, I'd rather have linux and know I'm supporting a community that thrives on continual improvement and that bugs are acted on and usability is increasing. Apple seems t
I recently bought a 30GB Nomad Jukebox (now only $400US). This tarif would more than double the price given the current exchange rate!
I bought the thing partly to replace my failing cd changer and just for the convenience since it will hold my entire (purchased) cd collection. I guess I don't really own those cd's after all and I get to pay extra to listen to them when/how I choose.
This weekend he talked like he was going to be in New York and London and maybe Seattle or was else just in those places. Or maybe I was smoking crack or not paying attention cause I'm not in any of those places.
I got the book this weekend at the SF Bay Area book festival, got it signed, heard Gibson read Chapter 4 and talk about odds and ends of stuff and answer questions.
He apologized and seemed embarassed that the Golden Gate got on the cover when the story revolves around the Bay Bridge.
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I guess there's not much posted yet, but Arjan and Auke presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference this past week and demo'd a not massively modified linux booting to fully usable (all the way to X even) in 5 seconds. Discussions and hacking at the conference apparently trimmed an additional second or two off that. There was a lot of excitement, so I'd expect to see their mods making it upstream into the kernel, distros and X.
This wouldn't go over well seeing as Oregon has no sales tax. I'm quite happy not paying sales tax as an Oregon resident, whether shopping online or at a local store.
I don't smoke so I don't know, but there may be some sort of "sin tax" on cigarettes. If so, it's not high enough, because there are a tonne of smokers in Oregon.
My girlfriend has her masters in human-computer interaction and has also been surprised by OSX's shortcomings.
Check out www.asktog.com for one expert's opinions on OSX.
Some things off the top of my head that bug me are:
All in all, I'd rather have linux and know I'm supporting a community that thrives on continual improvement and that bugs are acted on and usability is increasing. Apple seems t
spiegel.de is reporting one of the sites they got was the US National Security Agency's press server.
I recently bought a 30GB Nomad Jukebox (now only $400US). This tarif would more than double the price given the current exchange rate!
I bought the thing partly to replace my failing cd changer and just for the convenience since it will hold my entire (purchased) cd collection. I guess I don't really own those cd's after all and I get to pay extra to listen to them when/how I choose.
This weekend he talked like he was going to be in New York and London and maybe Seattle or was else just in those places. Or maybe I was smoking crack or not paying attention cause I'm not in any of those places.
I got the book this weekend at the SF Bay Area book festival, got it signed, heard Gibson read Chapter 4 and talk about odds and ends of stuff and answer questions.
He apologized and seemed embarassed that the Golden Gate got on the cover when the story revolves around the Bay Bridge.