On Mar 14, 2005, at 8:44 AM, Tom Saecker wrote:Daevad wrote in his informative and clearly stated post;Look people, it's this simple: OS X is an operating system that is an
order of magnitude more complex than OS 8/9.
This, for me and I suspect many others is the crux of the issue.
Complexity is a great help when one can use it. It is a great hindrance when you don't need it.
For me that sentence puts the finger directly on the issue.
You know, this is actually a pressing topic right now, as I am at this very moment, setting up our College Dean's brand new 15" ALBook ;-)
He made a comment today (he's a recent 'switcher'..his home PC is now sitting on a table near his office waiting for us to nuke&pave it for someone else's use.) that I found interesting.
"You know, the thing I like about the mac is that all I have to do is apply a little logic and I can figure out how to do things...I always had trouble doing that with Windows."
Windows lacks a lot of the internal consistency that the Mac OS has.
For example: control-C is copy, except for when it's alt-Insert. Windows open, BY default, full screen. I've run into people who have never learned that they can move files around by dragging from place to place in My Computer.
(Some of them do ALL their file manipulation in the MS Word file open dialog box.)
The torturous ways people do things on Windows is a direct result of these poor UI design choices.
The Mac is consistent.
This, in turn, is a problem for long-time OS 9 users. OS 9 is consistent. OS X is consistent. it's just *slightly* different, enough to really screw you up. Part of the problem is that Apple's systems folks tried really hard (and succeeded) in taking the OS architecture and layout f a Unix system and cloaked it as a Mac system. But behind the curtain, things are REALLY different, and some things just can't be cloaked.
Windows users expect a large amount of change, so things don't seem as diabolically screwed up.
So I don't think it's a matter of complexity. It's a matter of consistency. OS 9 is fiendishly complex. Ever try to teach a total Mac newbie that to delete a file they drag it to the trash, and to eject a disk, they ALSO drag it to the trash?
Extensions conflicts? Ye Ghods, longtime users glibly talk about this, but this is a huge and unnecessary complication. You mean you have to go in an manually change things around in the system folder to make things work?
Bruce,
That College Dean described EXACTLY what I don't like about Windows, and it's exactly why I prefer Unix and Mac OS to Windows.
My favorite example is the Unix filesystem: it's clear that Unix filesystem (/etc, /usr, /var, etc.) was thought out; ditto for the OS X filesystem. It's also clear that the Windows filesystem was not. (Ever wonder where DLLs go, and where you go to delete them after an application has been removed?)
Ever tried to set up wireless networking on a Win2k box? Took me less than 5 minutes on my PowerBook running 10.x, but it took me an HOUR on a Win2k box -- and I STILL didn't have it figured out. I had to call my father, an Windows sympathetic, who uses wireless networking on his notebook.
There are countless other examples, and it's this total lack of consistency that makes Windows completely unusable for me.
Eagle
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