So you tout as collaboration the track changes functionality?
What do you call it?
That garbage hasn't worked correctly in the 10 years it's been out.
In what way is it "incorrect?" You should maybe back up your points with something.
I should have known since you picked PowerPoint as your example, arguably one of the worst programs in existence for its stated purpose.
I never said PowerPoint was a great program, or even a good program. I said that Keynote lacked critical features that PowerPoint has had for a long time.
Reading is fundamental. Next time, please try *reading* my post before replying. Thank you.
You really think it's secure? You're an idiot who's probably been pwmed after the first virus/trojan you came across. Here's a little reading to show you how you can harden various systems, although this still doesn't make them secure
Look, I don't doubt that you can make Server 2008 more secure than the default configuration. I said as much in my last reply that you didn't bother reading.
But... six *months*? That makes you either a liar or incompetent.
That's about the only sentence in your entire diatribe that's actually true. You have no idea, at all. And now you've figuratively opened your big mouth and let everyone else know too. I wish you'd stated this 2 posts ago and saved me some time.
At least I have enough respect for you to actually read your posts, instead of replying to random points that *you didn't make*. Fuckface.
P.S.=> Are they actually DOING that (fostering this type of sentiment around here)? I don't know, but, it would make a LOT of sense from the site owner's perspective @ least, to actually do so, for the purposes of monetary gain via website page hits adbanner monetary generation! apk
My guess is that they're too incompetent to be doing it on purpose, but they might luck into it.
but come on, if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility,
He didn't say it was "the" defragmentation utility (that is, the one that ships with the OS.) He said it was "a" defragmentation utility (that is, one that was written by a retard in 20 minutes for Windows 98 and still ships because if it doesn't actually crash it *must* work correctly still, right?"
why should a filesystem even fragment in the first place?
It doesn't, actually. Unless disk space is critically low, but in that case you have bigger problems. I just opened the Disk Defragmenter on my mostly vanilla Windows 7 install: C: 0% fragmentation. D: 0% fragmentation. I don't even know why they include that utility anymore, frankly.
But most people, like regular folk, they probably would want it on (because they've probably heard (wrongly) it provides them with more space),
Maybe that's why Microsoft still ships it: placebo effect.
So the bug may not be 'extraordinary', but it is stupid. Is what.
You still haven't demonstrated the bug has anything to do with Microsoft's code.
I'd bet a hundred bucks it's an ancient third-party defrag utility that hasn't been updated to understand the concept of shadowcopy. (Just because a disk block shows as unused doesn't mean there's nothing useful there.) It's particularly shameful because shadowcopy has been around since Windows XP.
Or it may be malware trying to cover its tracks. If a piece of malware knows it can be defeated by System Restore, I could see it removing restore points at boots to prevent that.
Either way, it's nothing that ships on the OS DVD.
Do you have any kind of documentation or link at all to back this up? Smells of complete bullshit to me. (And yes, I've used Windows 7 daily since release, I've never had an icon disappear. They get moved sometimes, but never deleted.)
As an old Amiga user, the line about Macs always being above the others is rank BS. After Jobs left Apple, he was quoted by BYTE magazine saying the *Amiga* was much of his inspiration for creating the NeXT. Virtually every Amiga system tool could function well as *either* shell-only or GUI using a standard method for implementing the two interfaces; most apps supported AREXX messages to an extent that was far beyond Hypercard and Applescript. Just like Windows machines, Macs were inferior personal computers for most of their pre-OS X lifespan!
Christ, I've said this a billion times. I'm not talking about technology features, I'm talking about usability features.
Its clear you didn't approach the new Unix platform with an open mind, or maybe you switched too soon and each new upgrade wasn't amply appreciated because of your initial disappointment.
Yeah, otherwise known as "the new version is significantly shittier than the last version." You seriously think that's ok? That version 10 has fewer features than version 9? That it's less usable? You're ok with going BACKWARDS?
Besides, I gave them a chance until 10.4. They had about three times the length of chance I *should* have given them.
Yours is the attitude I don't get.
This is a hopeless conversation to have on Slashdot anyways. Nobody on Slashdot understands usability. Nobody on Slashdot is ever going to give Microsoft anything the benefit of the doubt. Just an utter waste of words.
So I guess we'll be seeing a re-written GUI for any OS of your choice from you within the year? Here's a news flash: writing a GUI framework for an OS is a non-trivial task. Some of those "useful features" might actually have been avenues for bugs. Since I wasn't involved, I can't say why something was or was not included. I will say the resulting GUI is more than useful, although I never use the Dock and would be happy to permanently kill it except for the unobtrusive bouncing icon that lets me know something needs my attention.
I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm saying Apple had a perfect chance to do something amazing, and instead they did... nothing. They produced a UI with *fewer features* than the previous version.
You have a funny definition of hardware. Flash, last time I checked, is software. There's more going on here than merely Flash on the iPad or iPhone.
Then Apple's removing Flash support from Safari, right? Oh wait, they aren't? You mean... the feud is only about mobile? Gasp.
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
What are you talking about? Nobody brought up Sharepoint but you, just now.
Or, as an alternative, are you so fucking ignorant of PowerPoint that you didn't know that, like all Office apps, it has integrated collaboration and version control? Of course, this utter ignorance doesn't stop you from posting about it as if you were some sort of expert. Looks like all the guesses I made in the last post were correct.
Hey, why don't you actually *use* the product, then comment on it. Then maybe I won't instantly dismiss your opinions as hopelessly ignorant and invalid.
I've spent the last 6 months designing and implementing a Server 2008 R2 system to make it as secure as possible. I think that i might know a little more about the pile of crap pawned off on the unsuspecting public than you.
What does that even mean? It ships "as secure as possible." Fuck you can't even use a web browser on the damned thing without turning off half a dozen security features.
Ok, I'll admit that maybe there's something you can do to improve it's default security configuration, but six months!? Please God tell me that was 3 days of actual work, and 5.9 months of browsing Fark.com, because that's the only way you don't come out being entirely incompetent.
But do so by touting their strengths as you perceive them, not by insulting those with other viewpoints.
I reserve the right to insult whoever I like, fuckface.
While you aren't brainwashed at all, no sirree. Not one iota.
At least I know what features PowerPoint has.
I'll admit this - I've only used W7 a little bit. I don't like it either. Then again, it's the same core as 2008 R2. However, for a Windows system, it almost looks like OSx 10.2 or Gnome 2.6, or maybe even OS/2 2.4. But then again, I wouldn't know because I'd never use any of those either.
Huh? I have no idea what you're trying to communicate here...
What I am starting to notice is that when I talk about IT, I am talking about programmers, developers. But others are thinking about tech-support which I personally put closer to janitors and such.
Yeah, but if *gambling* is involved in a successful Linux install, you really gotta stop telling people like me that it all works perfectly fine. That's all I'm saying.
4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Big whoop, I did that with Classic, too. Newb. (The architecture was 68k to PPC, but same process.)
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon.
That's pretty insulting to the people who worked hard to create the feature. I'm sure you're so brainwashed that it's impossible to acknowledge anybody at Microsoft actually working to improve their products, but try reading this blog and see if it can soak through your skull: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/
rewrote the GUI (Cocoa),
Rewrote, but without making a single significant change to it (usability-wise), and while removing features in the previous version. This is not something to laud, this is laziness.
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow?
That's mobile, aka hardware. I've made it perfectly clear twice now that I'm not talking about hardware.
MS has gotten fatter and slower (I'm not buying the switch to lazy loading from Vista to W7 as making it "faster", that was a major bug fix)
Have you even used Vista? It's not a tenth as bad as Slashdotters claim. The only real performance difference between Vista and Win7 is that Vista would aggressively fill its file/DLL cache at boot, and aggressively indexed drives and Win7 does both lazily.
If you actually, seriously, and honestly *believe* the shit that Slashdot shovels relating to Vista, then I think you're beyond hope. There's no point debating with a person whose mind is set in stone.
We'll also not delve into Apple's other software offerings because there's just no state of the art in Keynote,
I won't go into details about products I haven't tried. I will say that until Keynote gets collaboration and version control features, it's simply not in the same market as PowerPoint... either Apple believes that every company giving presentations is a one-man shop, or they badly mis-estimate how people use presentation software. Keynote may be better in some areas, but it's missing extremely basic and extremely important features.
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
Oh please. You're switching because you want to be trendy, not because you care about the quality of the software. You've obviously never used Vista or Windows 7, but you certainly feel qualified to comment on it regardless. You obviously didn't fairly compare the alternatives.
I would actually go as far as to say you're the exact kind of poseur the starter of this thread was talking about.
Anyway, "it's good because its popular" doesn't work for McDonalds, and it doesn't work for Apple. Not in my eyes.
It's so hard to even write these replies, because I already know that you're so brainwashed, you'd never, ever, give anything from Microsoft the benefit of the doubt-- you'd never actually try using any of their products, and you'd certainly never, ever, ever say, "I haven't used that, so I can't comment on it." You can't argue with zealots. I think next time I won't even bother trying.
Wow, you sound like a total dick. You don't get a trophy for submitting a story, you know... and, as a side note, when people *really* don't care about things? They don't bother talking about them.
I can't believe your self-congratulatory wank-post got modded up.
Possibly, but I've heard that song and dance a hundred times before, and every time I tried Linux in the past it turned out to be nothing but filthy lies.:) Given, the last time I tried it out, it was a heck of a lot *closer* than it was the first time. (The first was RedHat 6, IIRC. Which failed to work with my SoundBlaster 128, even though that exact model of card was in the compatibility list...) RedHat, Corel (back when that existed), Suse, several different Ubuntus... it's never worked right. Believe me, I've tried the hell out of Linux, and I want it to work, it just never does.
So I'm sick of being jerked around. You (not you specifically-- the community) said it worked, I tried it, and it didn't. Rinse, repeat 5 times over a decade. I'm done now. It's over. You lost me. Sorry.
OS X is actually the first time I've ever experienced version X of a product having *fewer* features than version X-1. The number of features subtracted from OS 9 Finder alone was enormous. That's what bother me more than the backwards compatibility thing.
There were features Apple put in that I loved, and relied on every day, and... *riiippp* gone now! Tough shit! It's never coming back!
It's all about moving on to new things.
Yah, now we just need to get them to move on to *better* things.;)
"Unusable" was an exaggeration of the type that anybody in any forum other than Slashdot would immediately recognize it as an exaggeration. I momentarily forgot how literal-minded the average Slashdotter was.
I heard that you can pretty much configure it the way you want, have a choice between any number of user interfaces, and don't have to pay a cent for it.
I don't want choice, I want it well-designed out-of-the-box. And my time is equivalent to money, maybe yours is not, but mine is... if I have to spend a second more configuring it than I would Windows 7, then it's not "free" in any practical sense of the word.
I've been told that a lot of people write a huge variety of applications for that other OS and give them away for free as well.
I've tried this OS several times. I've yet to find a combination of hardware and software that worked with it completely. Heck, I've never owned (in my entire lifetime) a laptop that Linux could successfully put into sleep mode and then successfully wake up later on. And I've tried like 4-5 laptops.
Anyway, Ubuntu is doing good things, I do appreciate that. But I've wasted enough time on non-working Linuxes that I'm done with that idea for good. I've been fooled too often by pundits claiming Linux works "just fine".
You sound like someone stuck in the past, 15 years ago past no less.
Eh, ok. At least I'm not worshipping technologies stuck in the 70s like some Slashdotters are.:)
I, and probably 99% of the rest of the current mac users, couldn't care less about pre-OSX Mac OS anything. They sucked.
The technology of it sucked, mostly. Nobody's going to make the claim that cooperative multitasking or lack of memory protection is a good thing in OSes.
What I loved is the attention to detail, the useful features (many of which disappeared forever), the focus on consistency and usability. The entire OS was contained in a single folder, for all practical purposes-- nobody had to reformat a disk to upgrade. In fact, I went from System 7.1 to 9.2 on a single machine without ever formatting. The fact that the entire OS ran (what amounted to) a plug-in architecture.
And look, I know that the later versions of Mac were just a quick hack to distract us all from the fact that Apple's OS development had gone off into la-la land. That doesn't make them awful products.
And yes, it crashed. It crashed a decent amount, although I'd say that if the system was well-maintained (removing buggy Extensions) it certainly didn't crash any more than Windows 95 or 98.
You complain about a relatively congruent system and compare it to the Ribbon...
First of all, I like the Ribbon. I'm not going to apologize for that.
But more relevant to this conversation, at least Microsoft is *trying*. Even if you hate the Ribbon, you have to acknowledge that Microssoft was taking a huge risk by implementing it-- but they did the research, they surveyed the users, they truly believed that it was a step forward, and they took that risk. Successful or not, I respect that.
Those four things I just mentioned? Apple can do that with hardware, but when's the last time they took *any* sort of risk in their OS? Hell, they basically rewrote a windowing system and file browser *from scratch* and we ended up with something nearly identical to what was there before-- Apple doesn't have any guts at all anymore, and they certainly aren't doing anything to move the state of the art forward. Completely stagnant.
If you doubt me - just do a plain install of Win7 or 2008 R2 and check out the default administrative apps and their modal dialogs. There are at least 3 completely different types of windows.
I never said Windows had a better UI. Re-read my post.
I did exaggerate to call both Windows and OS X "unusable", that's clearly not the case-- both are a dozen times better than products of 10 years ago. I just momentarily forgot how literal-minded the average Slashdotter was.
The thing is, Apple products used to be head and shoulders over the Microsoft equivalents. Now they're pretty much exactly the same.
(Or as a more petty and small-minded reply: 3 window types, whee. What's OS X up to now, 12?)
Are you trolling or what?
No, I just happen to have an opinion that's different than yours. That's still legal, right?
I'm not complaining about the pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory. What I'm complaining about is mostly:
* Completely half-assed backwards compatibility. The "Classic" environment never worked worth crap, and Apple didn't even pretend to care about improving it after 10.2 came out.
* Removing features that were in Classic. Suddenly, Finder isn't spatial anymore, it doesn't have labels, you can't tab folders against the bottom of the monitor.
* Dismissing any sense of consistency. Suddenly, Macs have two completely different window styles, both in appearance and behavior, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Since that wasn't screwing with their users enough, they decided every new app should have it's own completely different window style.
* Pissing all over previous usability research. Remember when the destructive window control (Close) was widely separated from the non-destructive ones (Zoom, WindowShade)? We don't need that anymore-- in fact while we're at it, let's make it look like a stoplight (of all things!) instead of using the old icons that at least somewhat attempted to explain the button's behavior.
* Making new UIs that were... well, a complete mess. (To be generous.) Remember when the live search feature was added into Finder? What a disaster. Did Apple care? Nope, not even slightly. (I'm not saying the Windows one is better, but, again, Apple *used* to raise the bar for usability.)
Despite all this stuff, they've sold tons of machines, which goes to show that maybe usability doesn't matter at all. Which is a depressing thought.
I'm an old school Mac user. I switched to Windows when it became clear (after trying the first 4 versions of OS X) that Apple no longer gave half-a-shit about usability.
If the choice is between two unusable systems (as it seems to be), I'll pick the one with the most apps.
I favour anyone who can build and deliver a laptop with 12 hours battery live.
I would too, except ARM has consistently failed to do this for... well years now. How long has Slashdot been talking about the mythical 20-hour ARM-powered Linux-running netbook? I'm sick of hearing about nothing but vapor from the ARM camp.
It would be nice if they stopped running these articles until the product *actually existed*.
I thought in 20 years we will still be using x86 compatible CPUs.
Well, first of all, we're not using x86 compatible CPUs right now. At least, not unless the *only* device in your home is a PC-- all the game consoles released right now aren't using x86, for example.
Secondly, the reason that x86 is good at beating rivals is that it, generally speaking, can adopt the advantages of the rivals without losing compatibility. That's pretty much exactly what happened with PPC.
Kidding, sorry, but there are a lot of us in IT who actually care about user experience-- the problem is that the numbers are dwindling. The old guard for usability, Apple, now encourages absolutely no UI consistency at all. (Hell, in this crazy world, Microsoft's doing more practical usability work than Apple is-- when did that happen?)
Ubuntu (and GNOME) fortunately have a concentration of pretty much every Linux user who cares about usability right now. The problem is that you're not generally going to see those people on Slashdot-- the Slashdot idea of usability is "does it work the exact same as my 1985 BASH shell?"
SYNOPSIS
cpu [ -h server ] [ -u user ] [ -a auth-method ] [ -P
patternfile ] [ -e encryption-hash-algs ] [ -k keypattern ]
[ -c cmd args... ]
cpu [ -R | -O ]
DESCRIPTION
Cpu starts an rc(1) running on the server machine, or the
machine named in the $cpu environment variable if there is
no -h option. Rc's standard input, output, and error files
will be/dev/cons in the name space where the cpu command
was invoked. Normally, cpu is run in an rio(1) window on a
terminal, so rc output goes to that window, and input comes
from the keyboard when that window is current. Rc's current
directory is the working directory of the cpu command
itself.
It just goes on and on like this. What does it actuallydo!?
TBH, I switched to Linux a few months ago and remote administration/printing/etc is one of the pluses. It's great to be at school, think "Uh-oh, forgot that term paper," and be able to grab it off the desktop at home.
What were you using before that didn't have this? A TRS-80 perhaps?
It wasn't scary enough on its own. It wasn't even scary enough when you added the magical Slashdot buzzphrase "convicted monopolist." (Which means precisely nothing, but sounds scary to Slashdotters, I guess.)
Slashdot Mirror
So you tout as collaboration the track changes functionality?
What do you call it?
That garbage hasn't worked correctly in the 10 years it's been out.
In what way is it "incorrect?" You should maybe back up your points with something.
I should have known since you picked PowerPoint as your example, arguably one of the worst programs in existence for its stated purpose.
I never said PowerPoint was a great program, or even a good program. I said that Keynote lacked critical features that PowerPoint has had for a long time.
Reading is fundamental. Next time, please try *reading* my post before replying. Thank you.
You really think it's secure? You're an idiot who's probably been pwmed after the first virus/trojan you came across. Here's a little reading to show you how you can harden various systems, although this still doesn't make them secure
Look, I don't doubt that you can make Server 2008 more secure than the default configuration. I said as much in my last reply that you didn't bother reading.
But... six *months*? That makes you either a liar or incompetent.
That's about the only sentence in your entire diatribe that's actually true. You have no idea, at all. And now you've figuratively opened your big mouth and let everyone else know too. I wish you'd stated this 2 posts ago and saved me some time.
At least I have enough respect for you to actually read your posts, instead of replying to random points that *you didn't make*. Fuckface.
P.S.=> Are they actually DOING that (fostering this type of sentiment around here)? I don't know, but, it would make a LOT of sense from the site owner's perspective @ least, to actually do so, for the purposes of monetary gain via website page hits adbanner monetary generation! apk
My guess is that they're too incompetent to be doing it on purpose, but they might luck into it.
but come on, if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility,
He didn't say it was "the" defragmentation utility (that is, the one that ships with the OS.) He said it was "a" defragmentation utility (that is, one that was written by a retard in 20 minutes for Windows 98 and still ships because if it doesn't actually crash it *must* work correctly still, right?"
why should a filesystem even fragment in the first place?
It doesn't, actually. Unless disk space is critically low, but in that case you have bigger problems. I just opened the Disk Defragmenter on my mostly vanilla Windows 7 install: C: 0% fragmentation. D: 0% fragmentation. I don't even know why they include that utility anymore, frankly.
But most people, like regular folk, they probably would want it on (because they've probably heard (wrongly) it provides them with more space),
Maybe that's why Microsoft still ships it: placebo effect.
So the bug may not be 'extraordinary', but it is stupid. Is what.
You still haven't demonstrated the bug has anything to do with Microsoft's code.
I'd bet a hundred bucks it's an ancient third-party defrag utility that hasn't been updated to understand the concept of shadowcopy. (Just because a disk block shows as unused doesn't mean there's nothing useful there.) It's particularly shameful because shadowcopy has been around since Windows XP.
Or it may be malware trying to cover its tracks. If a piece of malware knows it can be defeated by System Restore, I could see it removing restore points at boots to prevent that.
Either way, it's nothing that ships on the OS DVD.
Do you have any kind of documentation or link at all to back this up? Smells of complete bullshit to me. (And yes, I've used Windows 7 daily since release, I've never had an icon disappear. They get moved sometimes, but never deleted.)
As an old Amiga user, the line about Macs always being above the others is rank BS. After Jobs left Apple, he was quoted by BYTE magazine saying the *Amiga* was much of his inspiration for creating the NeXT. Virtually every Amiga system tool could function well as *either* shell-only or GUI using a standard method for implementing the two interfaces; most apps supported AREXX messages to an extent that was far beyond Hypercard and Applescript. Just like Windows machines, Macs were inferior personal computers for most of their pre-OS X lifespan!
Christ, I've said this a billion times. I'm not talking about technology features, I'm talking about usability features.
Its clear you didn't approach the new Unix platform with an open mind, or maybe you switched too soon and each new upgrade wasn't amply appreciated because of your initial disappointment.
Yeah, otherwise known as "the new version is significantly shittier than the last version." You seriously think that's ok? That version 10 has fewer features than version 9? That it's less usable? You're ok with going BACKWARDS?
Besides, I gave them a chance until 10.4. They had about three times the length of chance I *should* have given them.
Yours is the attitude I don't get.
This is a hopeless conversation to have on Slashdot anyways. Nobody on Slashdot understands usability. Nobody on Slashdot is ever going to give Microsoft anything the benefit of the doubt. Just an utter waste of words.
So I guess we'll be seeing a re-written GUI for any OS of your choice from you within the year? Here's a news flash: writing a GUI framework for an OS is a non-trivial task. Some of those "useful features" might actually have been avenues for bugs. Since I wasn't involved, I can't say why something was or was not included. I will say the resulting GUI is more than useful, although I never use the Dock and would be happy to permanently kill it except for the unobtrusive bouncing icon that lets me know something needs my attention.
I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm saying Apple had a perfect chance to do something amazing, and instead they did... nothing. They produced a UI with *fewer features* than the previous version.
You have a funny definition of hardware. Flash, last time I checked, is software. There's more going on here than merely Flash on the iPad or iPhone.
Then Apple's removing Flash support from Safari, right? Oh wait, they aren't? You mean... the feud is only about mobile? Gasp.
SharePoint? Give me a break. That's one morass of crap that still has to hit the fan. Is their version control still based on VSS?
What are you talking about? Nobody brought up Sharepoint but you, just now.
Or, as an alternative, are you so fucking ignorant of PowerPoint that you didn't know that, like all Office apps, it has integrated collaboration and version control? Of course, this utter ignorance doesn't stop you from posting about it as if you were some sort of expert. Looks like all the guesses I made in the last post were correct.
Hey, why don't you actually *use* the product, then comment on it. Then maybe I won't instantly dismiss your opinions as hopelessly ignorant and invalid.
I've spent the last 6 months designing and implementing a Server 2008 R2 system to make it as secure as possible. I think that i might know a little more about the pile of crap pawned off on the unsuspecting public than you.
What does that even mean? It ships "as secure as possible." Fuck you can't even use a web browser on the damned thing without turning off half a dozen security features.
Ok, I'll admit that maybe there's something you can do to improve it's default security configuration, but six months!? Please God tell me that was 3 days of actual work, and 5.9 months of browsing Fark.com, because that's the only way you don't come out being entirely incompetent.
But do so by touting their strengths as you perceive them, not by insulting those with other viewpoints.
I reserve the right to insult whoever I like, fuckface.
While you aren't brainwashed at all, no sirree. Not one iota.
At least I know what features PowerPoint has.
I'll admit this - I've only used W7 a little bit. I don't like it either. Then again, it's the same core as 2008 R2. However, for a Windows system, it almost looks like OSx 10.2 or Gnome 2.6, or maybe even OS/2 2.4. But then again, I wouldn't know because I'd never use any of those either.
Huh? I have no idea what you're trying to communicate here...
What I am starting to notice is that when I talk about IT, I am talking about programmers, developers. But others are thinking about tech-support which I personally put closer to janitors and such.
Wow, you're an asshole.
Yeah, but if *gambling* is involved in a successful Linux install, you really gotta stop telling people like me that it all works perfectly fine. That's all I'm saying.
4 upgrades and a seamless migration across architectures. I'd call that pretty amazing.
Big whoop, I did that with Classic, too. Newb. (The architecture was 68k to PPC, but same process.)
Hmm. I was more under the impression that marketing did the research, discovered how they could start up the ancillary certification and training revenue, and implemented the ribbon.
That's pretty insulting to the people who worked hard to create the feature. I'm sure you're so brainwashed that it's impossible to acknowledge anybody at Microsoft actually working to improve their products, but try reading this blog and see if it can soak through your skull: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/
rewrote the GUI (Cocoa),
Rewrote, but without making a single significant change to it (usability-wise), and while removing features in the previous version. This is not something to laud, this is laziness.
I guess you also missed the shot across Adobe's bow?
That's mobile, aka hardware. I've made it perfectly clear twice now that I'm not talking about hardware.
MS has gotten fatter and slower (I'm not buying the switch to lazy loading from Vista to W7 as making it "faster", that was a major bug fix)
Have you even used Vista? It's not a tenth as bad as Slashdotters claim. The only real performance difference between Vista and Win7 is that Vista would aggressively fill its file/DLL cache at boot, and aggressively indexed drives and Win7 does both lazily.
If you actually, seriously, and honestly *believe* the shit that Slashdot shovels relating to Vista, then I think you're beyond hope. There's no point debating with a person whose mind is set in stone.
We'll also not delve into Apple's other software offerings because there's just no state of the art in Keynote,
I won't go into details about products I haven't tried. I will say that until Keynote gets collaboration and version control features, it's simply not in the same market as PowerPoint... either Apple believes that every company giving presentations is a one-man shop, or they badly mis-estimate how people use presentation software. Keynote may be better in some areas, but it's missing extremely basic and extremely important features.
If they were pretty much the same, I and millions of others wouldn't be switching. There would be no reason to and the learning curve, however short, wouldn't be worth it.
Oh please. You're switching because you want to be trendy, not because you care about the quality of the software. You've obviously never used Vista or Windows 7, but you certainly feel qualified to comment on it regardless. You obviously didn't fairly compare the alternatives.
I would actually go as far as to say you're the exact kind of poseur the starter of this thread was talking about.
Anyway, "it's good because its popular" doesn't work for McDonalds, and it doesn't work for Apple. Not in my eyes.
It's so hard to even write these replies, because I already know that you're so brainwashed, you'd never, ever, give anything from Microsoft the benefit of the doubt-- you'd never actually try using any of their products, and you'd certainly never, ever, ever say, "I haven't used that, so I can't comment on it." You can't argue with zealots. I think next time I won't even bother trying.
Wow, you sound like a total dick. You don't get a trophy for submitting a story, you know... and, as a side note, when people *really* don't care about things? They don't bother talking about them.
I can't believe your self-congratulatory wank-post got modded up.
Possibly, but I've heard that song and dance a hundred times before, and every time I tried Linux in the past it turned out to be nothing but filthy lies. :) Given, the last time I tried it out, it was a heck of a lot *closer* than it was the first time. (The first was RedHat 6, IIRC. Which failed to work with my SoundBlaster 128, even though that exact model of card was in the compatibility list...) RedHat, Corel (back when that existed), Suse, several different Ubuntus... it's never worked right. Believe me, I've tried the hell out of Linux, and I want it to work, it just never does.
So I'm sick of being jerked around. You (not you specifically-- the community) said it worked, I tried it, and it didn't. Rinse, repeat 5 times over a decade. I'm done now. It's over. You lost me. Sorry.
I already mentioned hardware as being the exception. Please read the entire post before replying, k, thx, bye.
OS X is actually the first time I've ever experienced version X of a product having *fewer* features than version X-1. The number of features subtracted from OS 9 Finder alone was enormous. That's what bother me more than the backwards compatibility thing.
There were features Apple put in that I loved, and relied on every day, and... *riiippp* gone now! Tough shit! It's never coming back!
It's all about moving on to new things.
Yah, now we just need to get them to move on to *better* things. ;)
"Unusable" was an exaggeration of the type that anybody in any forum other than Slashdot would immediately recognize it as an exaggeration. I momentarily forgot how literal-minded the average Slashdotter was.
I heard that you can pretty much configure it the way you want, have a choice between any number of user interfaces, and don't have to pay a cent for it.
I don't want choice, I want it well-designed out-of-the-box. And my time is equivalent to money, maybe yours is not, but mine is... if I have to spend a second more configuring it than I would Windows 7, then it's not "free" in any practical sense of the word.
I've been told that a lot of people write a huge variety of applications for that other OS and give them away for free as well.
I've tried this OS several times. I've yet to find a combination of hardware and software that worked with it completely. Heck, I've never owned (in my entire lifetime) a laptop that Linux could successfully put into sleep mode and then successfully wake up later on. And I've tried like 4-5 laptops.
Anyway, Ubuntu is doing good things, I do appreciate that. But I've wasted enough time on non-working Linuxes that I'm done with that idea for good. I've been fooled too often by pundits claiming Linux works "just fine".
You sound like someone stuck in the past, 15 years ago past no less.
Eh, ok. At least I'm not worshipping technologies stuck in the 70s like some Slashdotters are. :)
I, and probably 99% of the rest of the current mac users, couldn't care less about pre-OSX Mac OS anything. They sucked.
The technology of it sucked, mostly. Nobody's going to make the claim that cooperative multitasking or lack of memory protection is a good thing in OSes.
What I loved is the attention to detail, the useful features (many of which disappeared forever), the focus on consistency and usability. The entire OS was contained in a single folder, for all practical purposes-- nobody had to reformat a disk to upgrade. In fact, I went from System 7.1 to 9.2 on a single machine without ever formatting. The fact that the entire OS ran (what amounted to) a plug-in architecture.
And look, I know that the later versions of Mac were just a quick hack to distract us all from the fact that Apple's OS development had gone off into la-la land. That doesn't make them awful products.
And yes, it crashed. It crashed a decent amount, although I'd say that if the system was well-maintained (removing buggy Extensions) it certainly didn't crash any more than Windows 95 or 98.
You complain about a relatively congruent system and compare it to the Ribbon...
First of all, I like the Ribbon. I'm not going to apologize for that.
But more relevant to this conversation, at least Microsoft is *trying*. Even if you hate the Ribbon, you have to acknowledge that Microssoft was taking a huge risk by implementing it-- but they did the research, they surveyed the users, they truly believed that it was a step forward, and they took that risk. Successful or not, I respect that.
Those four things I just mentioned? Apple can do that with hardware, but when's the last time they took *any* sort of risk in their OS? Hell, they basically rewrote a windowing system and file browser *from scratch* and we ended up with something nearly identical to what was there before-- Apple doesn't have any guts at all anymore, and they certainly aren't doing anything to move the state of the art forward. Completely stagnant.
If you doubt me - just do a plain install of Win7 or 2008 R2 and check out the default administrative apps and their modal dialogs. There are at least 3 completely different types of windows.
I never said Windows had a better UI. Re-read my post.
I did exaggerate to call both Windows and OS X "unusable", that's clearly not the case-- both are a dozen times better than products of 10 years ago. I just momentarily forgot how literal-minded the average Slashdotter was.
The thing is, Apple products used to be head and shoulders over the Microsoft equivalents. Now they're pretty much exactly the same.
(Or as a more petty and small-minded reply: 3 window types, whee. What's OS X up to now, 12?)
Are you trolling or what?
No, I just happen to have an opinion that's different than yours. That's still legal, right?
I'm not complaining about the pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory. What I'm complaining about is mostly:
* Completely half-assed backwards compatibility. The "Classic" environment never worked worth crap, and Apple didn't even pretend to care about improving it after 10.2 came out.
* Removing features that were in Classic. Suddenly, Finder isn't spatial anymore, it doesn't have labels, you can't tab folders against the bottom of the monitor.
* Dismissing any sense of consistency. Suddenly, Macs have two completely different window styles, both in appearance and behavior, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Since that wasn't screwing with their users enough, they decided every new app should have it's own completely different window style.
* Pissing all over previous usability research. Remember when the destructive window control (Close) was widely separated from the non-destructive ones (Zoom, WindowShade)? We don't need that anymore-- in fact while we're at it, let's make it look like a stoplight (of all things!) instead of using the old icons that at least somewhat attempted to explain the button's behavior.
* Making new UIs that were... well, a complete mess. (To be generous.) Remember when the live search feature was added into Finder? What a disaster. Did Apple care? Nope, not even slightly. (I'm not saying the Windows one is better, but, again, Apple *used* to raise the bar for usability.)
Despite all this stuff, they've sold tons of machines, which goes to show that maybe usability doesn't matter at all. Which is a depressing thought.
I'm an old school Mac user. I switched to Windows when it became clear (after trying the first 4 versions of OS X) that Apple no longer gave half-a-shit about usability.
If the choice is between two unusable systems (as it seems to be), I'll pick the one with the most apps.
I still like Apple's hardware though.
I do, however, have great interest in watching any making-of featurettes that may be included.
They did it on a computer.
Well, in that case, Microsoft "embraced" H.264 ages ago. The Xbox 360 has been able to play it since release, as has the Zune (for example.)
I favour anyone who can build and deliver a laptop with 12 hours battery live.
I would too, except ARM has consistently failed to do this for ... well years now. How long has Slashdot been talking about the mythical 20-hour ARM-powered Linux-running netbook? I'm sick of hearing about nothing but vapor from the ARM camp.
It would be nice if they stopped running these articles until the product *actually existed*.
I thought in 20 years we will still be using x86 compatible CPUs.
Well, first of all, we're not using x86 compatible CPUs right now. At least, not unless the *only* device in your home is a PC-- all the game consoles released right now aren't using x86, for example.
Secondly, the reason that x86 is good at beating rivals is that it, generally speaking, can adopt the advantages of the rivals without losing compatibility. That's pretty much exactly what happened with PPC.
Speak for yourself, idiot. :)
Kidding, sorry, but there are a lot of us in IT who actually care about user experience-- the problem is that the numbers are dwindling. The old guard for usability, Apple, now encourages absolutely no UI consistency at all. (Hell, in this crazy world, Microsoft's doing more practical usability work than Apple is-- when did that happen?)
Ubuntu (and GNOME) fortunately have a concentration of pretty much every Linux user who cares about usability right now. The problem is that you're not generally going to see those people on Slashdot-- the Slashdot idea of usability is "does it work the exact same as my 1985 BASH shell?"
It just goes on and on like this. What does it actuallydo!?
TBH, I switched to Linux a few months ago and remote administration/printing/etc is one of the pluses. It's great to be at school, think "Uh-oh, forgot that term paper," and be able to grab it off the desktop at home.
What were you using before that didn't have this? A TRS-80 perhaps?
It wasn't scary enough on its own. It wasn't even scary enough when you added the magical Slashdot buzzphrase "convicted monopolist." (Which means precisely nothing, but sounds scary to Slashdotters, I guess.)
You better boldface that thang, buddy!
Fakeo Air flight 999
Type: Controlled flight into terrain
Toll: 54 casualties
Cause of accident: Gameboy lodged in rudder pedal