Re: War on the Wintrolls

In article <pan.2006.05.18.22.21.03.804984@xxxxxxxx>,
TheLetterK <non@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 18 May 2006 03:40:47 +0000, George Graves wrote:

In article <pan.2006.05.18.02.38.02.42697@xxxxxxxx>,
TheLetterK <non@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 13 May 2006 20:47:28 +0000, George Graves wrote:

In article <pan.2006.05.13.02.37.16.629286@xxxxxxxx>,
TheLetterK <non@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2006 13:47:37 -0700, Donald L McDaniel wrote:

On Thu, 11 May 2006 15:00:32 -0700, George Graves wrote
(in article
<gmgraves-AF3F1A.15003211052006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):


My brother recently purchased a new 20" Intel iMac, and gave me his
17"
Intel
iMac.

I thought the price was very reasonable. We both got two machines in
one
--
a Mac (With OS 10.4.4) and a Windows machine. Now we can both
maximize
all
our Windows software as well as our Apple software.

Sort of. Parallels would be well worth the money.


He paid about $1750 (after discount), plus two gigs of extra memory
(not
from
Apple, however). So all in all, he paid about $1950. His machine
arrived
within 5 days of ordering it.

I don't think I'd be dropping more than $1500 for something as powerful
as
an Intel iMac with 2GB of RAM, even considering the 20" display. And
that
would be at the high end.


Needless to say, we are both happy campers today.

Please, Wintel users, stop believing all the FUD about Macs. I used
to
believe it, and coming to realize that that is just what it is:
"Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt".

Don't worry--you'll get tired of it again in 2-3 years. OS X has some
very
fundamental problems, in both the UI and in the underlying technology.

Such as?

Trying to meld the Nextstep UI with the Mac OS UI, for one. Causes quite
a few UI inconsistencies, that. OS X's interface is actually rather
schizophrenic compared to something like GNOME--it takes random concepts
from Nextstep (like, say, the dock) and marries them to seemingly random
concepts from Mac OS (like, say, the Mac OS style menu bar). With the
examples cited above, you end up having Mac OS's document-oriented menuing
system combined with Nextstep's atrocious window management. Sure, Apple
put together a kludge to alleviate the immediate symptom (Expose)--but a
more elegant (and intuitive) solution would have been to simply fix the
underlying UI inconsistency that causes the problem in the first place.

Don't even get me started on the stupidity of Apple's decision to use XNU
for OS X's kernel. They would have been much, much better off using a real
BSD kernel.


Users just don't realize it for awhile. Apple's philosophy regarding
software design and pricing isn't exactly endearing either.

Well, that's a personal matter, isn't it? I mean, if one takes the
attitude (as I do) that Macs cost what Macs cost, and don't pay too much
attention to it, then Apple's pricing doesn't mean too much.

If you don't care about pricing, the pricing doesn't matter? How profound.
I think I now understand why Apple has 3% of the desktop PC market.


I switched to
Mac. Then figured out it was a waste of money and switched to Linux.

Interesting. I tried Linux and figured out that its a waste of my TIME:

1) Steep learning curve

Less steep than OS X, really. If I handed someone a pre-installed Ubuntu
or SuSE box, I'd lay good money on a new user figuring out how to work
with it before they would OS X on a new Mac.

Couldn't prove that by me. Every time I decide to install Linux it turns
out to be a nightmare.

Build or buy a system with Linux in mind.

With a Mac OS install, just a couple of mice
clicks and the rest is pretty automatic.

Until you actually try to get it working *properly*.

When I first installed OSX on
my Mac, I found I profoundly to operate, not so either KDE or Gnome (and
looks to me like one pretty much has to have both installed).

I don't have KDE installed on this box (my desktop machine--the one I
use constantly). The only reason I've even got libqt installed was for
some game or another. No reason to install both KDE and GNOME, unless you
just like switch between the two.


2) Real "geeky" UI

How so?

See above.

3) Very little results - I.E. essentially no major software, and Linux
equivalents are feature poor

Most of the people I hear complaining about OSS software make the claim
that the UIs are bad, not that the applications are lacking features. Can
you cite some examples (maybe four or five major Linux applications that
are lacking major features compared to their Windows or OS X equivalents)?

That's too much work to do a comprehensive comparison, but here's a
couple. I have the three or four "linux" Open Sopurce apps that I would
use, installed under X11 on my Mac. GImp - limited CMYK support
(basically a plug-in that lets one convert RGB to CMYK, not actually
work on a file as a CMYK file whata PITA). InkScape = Illustrator 3 AT
BEST,

Inkscape is not the only vector graphics program on Linux.

and OO is only semi-Word compatible. Take a complex Word document
with tables and lots of graphics and open it in OO and watch what
happens.

The graphics and tables won't cause a problem--embedded an excel
spread*** would, though.

I beg to differ with you (about the graphics and tables. Not about
Excel, about which you are correct).

, slow to get problems corrected,

Uhh, what world are you living in? Even wintrolls hesitate to say that OSS
software (on the whole) has a slow release cycle.

I haven't seen any move in a direction to address the shortcomings these
apps exhibit next to their "shrink-wrapped" equivalents.

The OOo folks have been improving Office compatibility for ages--it's
just a difficult task, considering they've got to reverse engineer
Microsoft's ever-changing formats.

I don't use Inkscape, so I can't comment on their progress, but it's
usually pretty fast. OF course, there are examples of commercial software
that's slow to change too. Like Photoshop, or Quark.

Now one COULD
get the job done with any of them, don't get me wrong. But why go
backwards? Why make more work for one's self?

Because most people don't like dropping a few thousand dollars in software
when there are free alternatives that work well enough?

That's false economy. If one makes one's living with computers and uses
these types of apps every day, the fact that they are free does not make
them attractive. If one is just "playing" with computers, they're fine.
But they are next to worthless, productivity-wise for professionals.

If I used these apps, to
do what I do, it would more than double the time it now takes. I know, I
actually put one issue of the magazine I publish together with them.
Believe me, it gave me a new appreciation for Adobe's products.

and suffer
from the well known "too many chefs in the soup" syndrome.

Can you support this claim?

The inconsistent interfaces are pretty convincing evidence of this AFAIC.

What inconsistent interfaces? If you have a problem with inconsistent
interfaces, why would you set up your Linux desktop to be inconsistent?
It's certainly not difficult to avoid/solve.


OSS has a different development model, yes.
GNU/Linux also tends to be a fairly chaotic platform, as a whole. But
there are a lot of advantages to going in every direction at once.

Well, if there are, I certainly don't see them. Gimp is FAR inferior to
Photoshop,

In some respects. The GIMP is quite a bit better than Photoshop when it
comes to developing custom scripts and plugins.

InkScape isn't a pimple on Illustrator's arse

Inkscape isn't the only vector graphics app on GNU/Linux.

and Scribus is
to InDesign or Quark what a Model T Ford is to a new Bentley Continental
GT!

So use one of the alternatives.

You mean like Texshop? Even worse.

And in the year or so I've had them installed, I haven't seen any
REAL improvements in any of them.

Then pay attention!

I have been. The fundamental problems are all still there.

The only one with any daylight in it
is OO. They have embraced the new ISO document interchange format.

They developed it, actually. ODF was the new OpenOffice document format
long before it was an ISO standard.

Soon,
compatibility issues between Word and OO will be a thing of the past and
I embrace that.

Not cutting it down, mind you, just didn't like it.

Just like how I think OS X is, at best, a mediocre operating system.
Certainly not worth paying Apple's premium for it.

I don't think that there is anything on the planet that can come within
a country mile of OSX as far as an OS is concerned. If it's mediocre,
than everything else is less than useless.

Feh. OS X is slow, hard to work with, difficult to develop for, and
ridiculously expensive. If the best thing Apple can say about it is "It
doesn't suck as much as Windows". then they *really* need to take it back
to the drawing board.

I disagree. It might not be perfect (nothing is) but its light years
ahead of anything else available.

--
George Graves
The health of our society is a direct result of the men
and women we choose to admire.
.