and them what? A feature that doesn't work like it should?
Maximize (or zoom) in OS X *does* work like it should, and it works the exact same way it has since 1984. You just *expect* it to act like Windows. Well, sorry, but MacOS had maximize *first* and they decided to do it this way. You just have to cope with it. Look at it this way: Apple could change maximize to work like Windows does, but then they'd piss off all their loyal customers who, since 1984, have expected it to work like it works now. Would that be a smart move? Of course not. Guess what? MacOS X edit fields still work like they did in 1984 also, because Apple knows it's dumb to piss off your base, the very people who kept them in business when they were making stupid business decisions in the mid-90s. (And ports from other OSes, even decent ones like Firefox, CONSTANTLY get edit field behavior wrong! Grr.)
The whole point of a windowing GUI is that you can keep multiple windows on screen at once. Maximize in Windows completely and utterly defeats that purpose, and I never use it because of that. I like to keep my buddy list convenient where I can see the list of names, but maximize covers it all up.
A few of your gripes are "it doesn't do what I'm used to." Well, "maximize" (or 'zoom' as OS X calls it) resized the window to the smallest size needed to contain its contents since 1984, so I think you have to hand Apple this one. (The "maximize to fill the entire screen" is a Windows invention, AFAIK. It's certainly never been in MacOS.)
You have to remember that a lot of Apple users agree with you. I loved OS 9, but I have to admit that OS X *does* suck in a lot of ways. Yes, the Dock sucks. Yes, the Finder sucks hard. Yes, the resize widgets stink. Apple's lost their way in recent years... they've improved the technology of the OS, but they've vastly removed functionality from the interface. And since the interface is the only part 99% of computer users see, I think that's back-asswards.
(Meanwhile, Windows has been getting more polished user-experience-wise, every release. I like Windows XP, except for a few small quirks. I think I'll like Vista more, from all the previews I've seen. I think Apple might fall behind if they're not careful.)
I dunno. Those original tear-drop iMacs back in 1997 were a marketing success-- Apple sold gobs of them. But they never 'dominated' the industry in any way.
I live in Western Washington. Recently, we started building a new bridge to supplement the Tacoma Narrows bridge. (The one built after galloping gurdy collapsed in the 50s... yes, that Tacoma Narrows bridge.) Now the Tacoma Narrows is known for having very high winds and a strong current, so the original design of the bridge was going to take advantage of this by putting turbines in the base to generate power. It was expected that the power generation would pay for the bridge in short order and they could avoid charging a toll.
Then the environmentalists got wind of it. Suddenly, a turbine was going to KILL FISH in the narrows! OMG! And it's dangerous and yadda yadda! Long story short, the whiny environmentalists got their way and now not only does Washington have less power generation capacity, but we all have to pay a toll to cross the damned bridge. Bastards.
Your suggestions are great, but do you know how expensive new windows are? I could outfit my 1927 house with new energy efficient windows (and in fact I'd like to), but $15,000? I can't afford that to save $250 a year. It'd take decades for that to pay off. (Insulation is much more affordable and, in fact, I should get that taken care of ASAP.)
No kidding. Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 crashes all the time, brings up annoying auto-update windows EVERY DAMN DAY which you can't get rid of, it won't work with certain printers (IBM Infoprints, for instance.) The product is a piece of crap... and usually I like Adobe stuff, but they really dropped the ball this time.
FoxIt for me, as well. At least on Windows where I don't have access to Apple's Preview.
Technically, that's a different "site" and the message is correct. But, yeah, it would be nice if it just fed you a link to the non-Windows Update download site if you try to use Windows Update with Firefox or whatever.
Everyone has their favorites. Personally, I thought "The Sting" was eh. But I love "Less than Hero". (Kif gets Knocked Up had moments, "evil Lincoln!", but I agree the other two pretty much all stunk.)
Not the Mooninites? The first two Mooninites episodes were genius. But pretty much everything in the second half of season two on stunk. They need to kill it off.
Same here. American Dad strikes me as just a pathetic effort to make the same formula-- ONLY BETTER!
For instance, why have one wacky 'pet' (a talking dog) when you can have two? An alien *and* a talking goldfish! Of course, the goldfish never gets any lines because he's 1) hard to write for, being confined to a tank and 2) not funny anyway.
Anyway, the only good part of American Dad is Patrick Stewart. Unless he's in the episode, I don't bother.
Cartoon Network's produced a cartoon series based on the comic. IMO, it stinks to high heaven... the animation is cheap as dirt and it's not as well-written as the comic it's based on, and most of the characters are cardboard cutouts personality-wise.
I think you missed the joke. In the Futurama world, people don't say "ask" they say "axe." People don't say "Christmas" they say "Exmas." People don't ask, "are we screwed?" they ask, "are we boned?" And filthy houses don't get overrun by rats, they get overrun by owls. There's probably more of these that I can't think of right now...
The GP was joking that they got "axed" (asked) something.
Yeah, but you're not a typical user. 99.999% of OS X users are using the menu bar all the freakin' time. The amount of QA they'd have to put into a hiding menu bar alone probably makes it not worthwhile, since maybe 3-4 people TOTAL would ever turn that option on.
Go into an Apple Store. Talk to them about the lemon clause of your warranty. They should be able to authorize a replacement laptop for you. It worked for me when my G3 iBook failed, and it worked for my parents when theirs did. (I had AppleCare on mine; my parents didn't.)
Did you go into the Apple Store or just deal with them over the phone?
From my experience, the phone support is mediocre to terrible. But support at the "Genius Bar" in the Apple Stores is top-notch. My local store (Bellevue, WA) authorized a replacement of my G3 iBook long before my warranty said I deserved one with no questions asked. I had the new G4 iBook in my hands before the week was up with a bonus free Airport card. (I figured I'd have to move the Airport card from my old iBook, but the Apple Store "Genius" thought it came pre-installed on my old one, so he ordered it pre-installed on the new one.)
On the other hand, I bought one of those terrible G3 800 mhz iBooks with the faulty motherboards. After having the motherboard repaired twice, I talked the "Genius" at the Apple Store into declaring it a lemon. Bam, free G4 iBook with all the trimmings came to my door the next week, and because I bought the AppleCare warranty.
(Of course, part of it was the *great* service at the Apple Store and the fact that the manager there had the power to give me a free replacement without running it through corporate jerkwads. The actual AppleCare warranty stated that it was only declared a lemon after it fails 4 times. I got a replacement after 2.)
FYI, if you had AppleCare, the HD replacement would have been free. (Because your computer would still have been under warranty.) That's kind of the *point* of the AppleCare program... so judging the extended warranty based on their refusal to service an out-of-warranty machine is a little kooky.
All I know is that after talking with the super-nice guys at the Apple Store, and getting a free laptop, I've happy with my purchase even if it was a lemon at first.
The actual ipod itself isn't that great. No radio, no recording capability, built-in DRM. People who care and know what they're buying can do better for themselves elsewhere.
The iPod isn't; but iTunes is. iTunes is *the* reason Apple sells iPods. Have you seen the software that comes with those other players? It ranges from terrible to abomination. Now you might think iTunes is bloated, but at least it works well.
Slashdot Mirror
and them what? A feature that doesn't work like it should?
Maximize (or zoom) in OS X *does* work like it should, and it works the exact same way it has since 1984. You just *expect* it to act like Windows. Well, sorry, but MacOS had maximize *first* and they decided to do it this way. You just have to cope with it. Look at it this way: Apple could change maximize to work like Windows does, but then they'd piss off all their loyal customers who, since 1984, have expected it to work like it works now. Would that be a smart move? Of course not. Guess what? MacOS X edit fields still work like they did in 1984 also, because Apple knows it's dumb to piss off your base, the very people who kept them in business when they were making stupid business decisions in the mid-90s. (And ports from other OSes, even decent ones like Firefox, CONSTANTLY get edit field behavior wrong! Grr.)
The whole point of a windowing GUI is that you can keep multiple windows on screen at once. Maximize in Windows completely and utterly defeats that purpose, and I never use it because of that. I like to keep my buddy list convenient where I can see the list of names, but maximize covers it all up.
A few of your gripes are "it doesn't do what I'm used to." Well, "maximize" (or 'zoom' as OS X calls it) resized the window to the smallest size needed to contain its contents since 1984, so I think you have to hand Apple this one. (The "maximize to fill the entire screen" is a Windows invention, AFAIK. It's certainly never been in MacOS.)
You have to remember that a lot of Apple users agree with you. I loved OS 9, but I have to admit that OS X *does* suck in a lot of ways. Yes, the Dock sucks. Yes, the Finder sucks hard. Yes, the resize widgets stink. Apple's lost their way in recent years... they've improved the technology of the OS, but they've vastly removed functionality from the interface. And since the interface is the only part 99% of computer users see, I think that's back-asswards.
(Meanwhile, Windows has been getting more polished user-experience-wise, every release. I like Windows XP, except for a few small quirks. I think I'll like Vista more, from all the previews I've seen. I think Apple might fall behind if they're not careful.)
I dunno. Those original tear-drop iMacs back in 1997 were a marketing success-- Apple sold gobs of them. But they never 'dominated' the industry in any way.
Are you a Linux writer? Out of ideas?
I know! Why don't you write a "switch to Windows" article? It's bound to be hilarious and I'm sure nobody has ever done it before.
I live in Western Washington. Recently, we started building a new bridge to supplement the Tacoma Narrows bridge. (The one built after galloping gurdy collapsed in the 50s... yes, that Tacoma Narrows bridge.) Now the Tacoma Narrows is known for having very high winds and a strong current, so the original design of the bridge was going to take advantage of this by putting turbines in the base to generate power. It was expected that the power generation would pay for the bridge in short order and they could avoid charging a toll.
Then the environmentalists got wind of it. Suddenly, a turbine was going to KILL FISH in the narrows! OMG! And it's dangerous and yadda yadda! Long story short, the whiny environmentalists got their way and now not only does Washington have less power generation capacity, but we all have to pay a toll to cross the damned bridge. Bastards.
Your suggestions are great, but do you know how expensive new windows are? I could outfit my 1927 house with new energy efficient windows (and in fact I'd like to), but $15,000? I can't afford that to save $250 a year. It'd take decades for that to pay off. (Insulation is much more affordable and, in fact, I should get that taken care of ASAP.)
No kidding. Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 crashes all the time, brings up annoying auto-update windows EVERY DAMN DAY which you can't get rid of, it won't work with certain printers (IBM Infoprints, for instance.) The product is a piece of crap... and usually I like Adobe stuff, but they really dropped the ball this time.
FoxIt for me, as well. At least on Windows where I don't have access to Apple's Preview.
*ahem* Running javascript applets in an easily-accessible location? Sounds like Active Desktop to me... that's, what, Windows 98?
Except Woz's inventions would have gone exactly nowhere if he hadn't had someone out there getting investors, making sales, branding the products.
Engineering skill is great, but to say that that's the ONLY thing that makes a company successful is a ridiculous claim.
Too bad it doesn't work with DishNetwork as transparently. I hate cable companies, and I'm not giving them any more of my money.
Technically, that's a different "site" and the message is correct. But, yeah, it would be nice if it just fed you a link to the non-Windows Update download site if you try to use Windows Update with Firefox or whatever.
Everyone has their favorites. Personally, I thought "The Sting" was eh. But I love "Less than Hero". (Kif gets Knocked Up had moments, "evil Lincoln!", but I agree the other two pretty much all stunk.)
Not the Mooninites? The first two Mooninites episodes were genius. But pretty much everything in the second half of season two on stunk. They need to kill it off.
You have to admit that for 95% of the episodes, that description is right on.
Also it's "Cyrogenics" and "Career."
It's pretty hard to top Bender fighting Godzilla. I guess he didn't really, though... but if he had, that's SO what he would have done!
Same here. American Dad strikes me as just a pathetic effort to make the same formula-- ONLY BETTER!
For instance, why have one wacky 'pet' (a talking dog) when you can have two? An alien *and* a talking goldfish! Of course, the goldfish never gets any lines because he's 1) hard to write for, being confined to a tank and 2) not funny anyway.
Anyway, the only good part of American Dad is Patrick Stewart. Unless he's in the episode, I don't bother.
Cartoon Network's produced a cartoon series based on the comic. IMO, it stinks to high heaven... the animation is cheap as dirt and it's not as well-written as the comic it's based on, and most of the characters are cardboard cutouts personality-wise.
I think you missed the joke. In the Futurama world, people don't say "ask" they say "axe." People don't say "Christmas" they say "Exmas." People don't ask, "are we screwed?" they ask, "are we boned?" And filthy houses don't get overrun by rats, they get overrun by owls. There's probably more of these that I can't think of right now...
The GP was joking that they got "axed" (asked) something.
Yeah, but you're not a typical user. 99.999% of OS X users are using the menu bar all the freakin' time. The amount of QA they'd have to put into a hiding menu bar alone probably makes it not worthwhile, since maybe 3-4 people TOTAL would ever turn that option on.
Single-system image or some type of tightly coupled clustering with NUMA
Numa? That fat kid singing into a webcam? Why would you want Apple to add that?
Go into an Apple Store. Talk to them about the lemon clause of your warranty. They should be able to authorize a replacement laptop for you. It worked for me when my G3 iBook failed, and it worked for my parents when theirs did. (I had AppleCare on mine; my parents didn't.)
Did you go into the Apple Store or just deal with them over the phone?
From my experience, the phone support is mediocre to terrible. But support at the "Genius Bar" in the Apple Stores is top-notch. My local store (Bellevue, WA) authorized a replacement of my G3 iBook long before my warranty said I deserved one with no questions asked. I had the new G4 iBook in my hands before the week was up with a bonus free Airport card. (I figured I'd have to move the Airport card from my old iBook, but the Apple Store "Genius" thought it came pre-installed on my old one, so he ordered it pre-installed on the new one.)
On the other hand, I bought one of those terrible G3 800 mhz iBooks with the faulty motherboards. After having the motherboard repaired twice, I talked the "Genius" at the Apple Store into declaring it a lemon. Bam, free G4 iBook with all the trimmings came to my door the next week, and because I bought the AppleCare warranty.
(Of course, part of it was the *great* service at the Apple Store and the fact that the manager there had the power to give me a free replacement without running it through corporate jerkwads. The actual AppleCare warranty stated that it was only declared a lemon after it fails 4 times. I got a replacement after 2.)
FYI, if you had AppleCare, the HD replacement would have been free. (Because your computer would still have been under warranty.) That's kind of the *point* of the AppleCare program... so judging the extended warranty based on their refusal to service an out-of-warranty machine is a little kooky.
All I know is that after talking with the super-nice guys at the Apple Store, and getting a free laptop, I've happy with my purchase even if it was a lemon at first.
The only part you're missing is the part where you explain why I should give a crap what software the server's running.
The actual ipod itself isn't that great. No radio, no recording capability, built-in DRM. People who care and know what they're buying can do better for themselves elsewhere.
The iPod isn't; but iTunes is. iTunes is *the* reason Apple sells iPods. Have you seen the software that comes with those other players? It ranges from terrible to abomination. Now you might think iTunes is bloated, but at least it works well.