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To leave Commie, hyper to
http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html
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>http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/9295/pc-advantage/50-pc-advantages-list.html
Oh... we had some debate here... Sorry, I forgot... ;)
Seems that any kind of thread just dies on Friday...
I'm the last guy to argue that Mac would be superiour
_technically_... Multitasking is poor, networking is poor... But the
user interface rules. If I'd want technical superiority, I'd use some
UNIX variant or BeOS - not Windows, which doesn't follow any
standards.
However, this guy's argumentation is really poor on the GUI
aspects... He doesn't seem to know very much about Mac's file system.
Most of the features he mentions as revolutionary in Windows have
been in Mac for more than a decade. Some statements just aren't true
or are out of date. Mac OS 9 _has_ multiple profiles and Mac OS file
system _can_ be navigated using the keyboard - it's just a bit
different approach. (The more important question in this "keyboard
shortcuts or mouse" case is, "Why use keyboard shortcuts in Mac,
because you can use mouse five times faster than in Windows?")
Then again, this guy's whole Windows <-> Mac comparison seems to be
rather provocative. The guy even introduces some Windows limitations
as "features"...
Like: "Also, when new files are added to an open folder, they are
automatically placed at the end of the list." If you click the "date
modified" field's title bar on a Mac folder window, the new files on
the window will show up _on_ _the_ _top_ of the window, which is far
more intuitive: you don't have to scroll down the window every time
you add something to it. In addition, you can reorganize the contents
of the window by name, by kind or by size with one click. You can
reverse the order, too...
But that's just the beginning. Mac uses file system that remembers
the locations of your files in _every_ window - not just on the
desktop. You can visually group the icons and they're exactly there
where you previously left them, the next time when you start working
with your computer again. You can give colors for your icons (without
changing the icons). For a decade, you've been able to put comments
on your files (Microsoft just announced comments as a revolutionary
new feature of Windows 2000). You can easily change icons of your
files - including folders (you can't change the icons of the folders
in Windows, because Windows file system can't handle information this
sophisticated). Not to mention that changing those icons is as simple
as copy&paste.
What's more sophisticated in Mac is that the files remember which
application created them - regardless of their file type. You can
select twenty GIF files, double-click them and they all open to the
program that created them. In Windows, they open to the program that
has registered GIF file format.
The most ridiculous statement was this: "File manipulation in Mac-OS
is limited to dragging and dropping." ... like dragging and dropping
was some kind of limitation. To put it simple, Mac is "drag and drop
all the time". Windows is "ehm... let's see... copy and paste maybe?
no... try second mouse button... or should you hold shift down at the
same time... i dunno...".
Hmmmm.... I know this is very childish, but I just have to defend my
lovable, little Mac on my desktop... Here we go...
"It is even possible to place shortcuts (links to other files or
hardware) on your desktop for quick access" ... what's so special in
that? In Mac, you can drag anything on the desktop and the mounted
harddisks are visible directly on the desktop, one step closer to
you. Not to mention that they mount automatically (not only cd-roms,
but hard disks and diskettes too).
In Windows, you see unmounted cd-roms on the My Computer window (not
to mention that you should first know where to go to find them (not
to mention that there are two different ways to browse the contents
of your computer)). Why is it visible, if it's not there?
Unlike in Windows, in Mac you really use the desktop for the purpose
it name implies it's there for. It's the visual TEMP folder, in
practice. You drag files to it for temporaly storage and later you
drag them to other application... In Windows, you usually don't even
see the desktop - it's behind ten fullscreen applications. In Mac,
you use desktop all the time (unless you go to the General Controls
and explicitely turn the desktop visibility off).
The worst thing in Windows is that you can't use drag'n'drop
effectively, because there's nothing you can drag to in full-screen
mode (which is the usual way to run Windows apps)! If you run the
applications in non-full-screen mode, you make most of them unusable:
Photosop runs inside a huge window. If you make it smaller, you also
lose your effective work space, because all the working windows are
inside that huge window. Usually those windows you need the most are
lost somewhere beyound the edge of the huge "mother" window.
In Mac, you have the whole screen all the time in use. You can
drag'n'drop between applications, which is a lot faster than
copy&paste.
In Windows "The first icon will minimize the window; sending it into
the Task Bar at the bottom of the screen." ... but they stop fully
responding: again you lose the drag'n'drop. You can't drag anything
on the minimized taskbar windows, like on Mac's popup windows (on the
bottom of the screen). You can only _open_ the Windows taskbar
windows.
In Windows, you can use effectively taskbar windows only as long as
there are about four or five of them - after that the window title
names start to truncate and you won't see what do the windows contain
with one glance. You can't select which windows are selected to be on
the taskbar. In Mac, you can put just those windows on the bottom of
the screen you _want_ there. (Again, just drag and drop.) What's more
important, applications and windows are not mixed in Mac. You can see
the open applications on the application switcher, which can float
over the windows or can be a popupmenu on the Apple menubar.
And, Mac popup windows are _on_ _the_ _edge_ of the screen, which
again makes a lot bigger target (infinite height). In Windows,
taskbar buttons are one pixel off the screen edge. In Mac, you can
just throw the mouse down and it always hits the target. In Windows,
you have to slow down your mouse which is about five times slower
(this is not an estimation, but a researched fact. It's not a
coincidence that Mac menubar and the popup windows are on the edges
of the screen.
"With Mac-OS, there is a single menu bar shared by every application
in the system. Though it does save a small amount of space, it makes
it difficult to determine which application's menu you are viewing."
Well well well... This is the classical one. I don't say anything, I
let the Mac interface designer say it.
Check out:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
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