Re: Windows.. it's like coming home!

Dan Johnson <danieljohnson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I recently posted about some problems I had bringing
up my new Toshiba laptop. So now I feel my trolling
is incomplete if I don't post some explaination for why
I would want to buy a Toshiba laptop at all.

After all, I had a PowerBook G4, and the junkware
infestation on this Toshiba was not a surprise to me.

That I like MS as a company better than Apple is
one factor that will surprise no-one. But I have
better reasons too. Lots of reasons.

This will be a long post.

* Apple sacrifices a lot for style.

The PowerBook is beautiful. The aluminum
case is a marvelous look, and it is so thin!

But the PowerBook runs *hot*; burn-my-lap hot.
When using it on my lap, I had to lay it on its
carrying case for insulation.

And the WiFi reception is not so great. Sometimes
I feel I have to be so close, I might as well run a
cable. Making the case of metal makes reception
problematic.

I also have a similar PowerBook, and the heat is an annoying thing,
especially as I'm very inclined to use it on my lap. I've heard the heat
from the new MacBooks might be even worse, and this is the biggest
factor that prevents me from upgrading to one right now.

While you're right about these 2 issues, there are some aspects of
Apple's laptop hardware that I like over the PC laptops I've also owned.
All ports down the side and none at the back, for one thing. Plus the
ambient light sensor and backlit keyboard are handy for those of us who
prefer to write Java in the dark, to hide our shame :-D

Toshiba's laptop is standard issue Wintel ugly; it's
thicker, and has a three-tone plastic case. But it
runs reasonably cool- no icepack needed- and
gets better reception for WiFi too.

It's not art, but it is practical.

* Application Availability

I was not a very demanding user- mostly
Apple apps for me- but even with my
limited demands, I found I found app
availability to be a problem.

I had a devil of a time finding a decent
newsreader.

I eventually settled on Unison, which has
adequate UI- it looks like Aqua at least-
but it was terribly buggy then.

It's better now, but it's still mostly targetted
at Pr0n Surfing.

I posted rather less here because it was
awkward to work with threads in this
newsreader.

I also tried MT/Newswatcher, but the UI
was a crawling horror.

On Windows I just use Outlook Express
for this. Works fine, decent UI, no problem.

And here I was about to agree with what you'd posted, until you messed
it up with that last paragraph!

I basically can't stand all newsreaders, with the exception of MacSOUP.
The popularity of MT-Newswatcher, in particular, baffles me. I keep
trying it every few months, convinced that there must be something I'm
missing about it that everyone else sees. I've yet to find it, whatever
it is.

MacSOUP has a quirky interface, and is missing lots of features that
other people apparently like. It does everything I want in a newsreader
though, in exactly the way I want to do it.

I usually find that when it comes to the smaller, less-essential apps I
usually prefer a Mac-only program to anything I've been able to find on
Windows. I don't especially like having to use any other IM client than
Proteus, for example, and I can't find a Windows RSS reader as nice as
NetNewsWire.

I also bought a few games for the thing. I
wasn't expecting much, but I was still
disappointed. Little is available, and
what is there are ports of older PC
games, and they still do not play real
well on G4 hardware.
There does not appear to be much of
a Mac games industry at all.

* My Eyes! The Goggles, They Do Nothing!

If the googles had magnifying lenses,
then maybe they would do something.

Mac OS X has no resolution independance; it
treats all screens as 72 dpi. They are really
about 1
00 dpi; the result is teeny tiny UI.

This was just an ongoing sore with the
PowerBook; never a insurmountable
obstacle, but always annoying.

I've never found this a problem with my PowerBook, but then 1280x854 on
a 15.2" screen is a conservative enough resolution. I can only assume
Apple is waiting to have a resolution-independent OS before they crank
the resolutions up the level of PCs.

The first thing I did to the new Toshiba-
before even removing the jumkware- was
setting the dpi setting to "Large Size"

Such a relief!

* Surprise: Transition!

Being an Apple customer is an advanture;
you never know what the Next Big Thing
is. It's very exciting. But it's most.. impractical.

I really, really don't like it that Apple is
dropping Classic now.

In a way, I'm surprised it lasted this long. It was undeniably "Old
Apple", the last remnant of the pre-Steve Jobs era. You could tell how
Apple felt about by making no attempt in all the time it existed to
integrate it a little better with native applications.

Now we have another band-aid transition (in the sense that it's quick
and painful), after which we will presumably have a stable platform for
the forseeable future (unless someone can contruct a plausible
transition for Apple to embark on in another few years. I can't,
thankfully).

I understand the point you've made before about the stark contrast
between the way Microsoft transitioned from DOS to NT-based OSs, and the
way Apple has gone from OS 9 to OS X, and from PPC to Intel. I think
it's fair to say though that Apple's curcumstances simply didn't allow a
gradual transition, especially in going from OS 9 to OS X. They started
from a position of severe weakness compared to Microsoft.

They had a hopelessly outdated OS, dwindling support and sales, and the
air of a company heading towards an inevitable end. Occasional hardware
hits like the original iMac couldn't sustain them when the basic
platform was in such poor shape. So, they rounded up 2 of every app and
plunged straight into the transition as fast as they could.

Microsoft, on the other hand, had the luxury of taking their time moving
from DOS to NT. Windows 95 was insanely succesful, and NT 4.0 did a
pretty good job in the business market. Both were technically good
enough to compete in the markets they were aimed at, allowing Microsoft
to move them closer to each other and merge them at a much more
leisurely pace.

And I don't like my choices at this point:
I can buy a MacBook, and run my existing
software in emulation (ick), or stay with an
old computer and eventually be cut out of
new software. That sucks.

If I gotta repurchase software, it'll be
the Window version, thank you.

* Tools for the Previous Century

I came to the Mac, originally, to see the famous
developer tools; Objective-C, Cocoa and
Interface Builder.

It has been a mind-expanding experience. Objective-C,
in particular, is a very different way to think about
code. And If anyone wants to expand their horizons
by learning a new platform, I can recommend
Cocoa/OS X as the platform to learn, if you can
spare the cash to get into it.

But, in the end, it's just not as good as what you
get on Windows.

Objective-C has horrible syntax, and the memory
management in there is cruder than VB 6. And
you have to focus a lot more on optimization with
it, because it produces pretty slow code by
default.

Its syntax is a little nasty alright, but there are encouraging noises
that Apple has worked to address the memory management.

<snip stuff I agree with about Apple's developer tools>

I never thought I'd say this, but the UI of
Windows apps is *more consistant* than
what you get on the Mac today.

No, Really.

Nearly everything works with the battleship
gray Classic Theme. And they all work in
pretty similar ways; toolbars, menus, and
panes. It's not radical; it's just Microsoft's
update on OS/2's update of the original
Mac UI.

On the Mac, you get a mix of 'new style'
Aqua apps and OS 9 refugees.

The OS 9 brigate have been ported to
Carbon, but their UIs often show their
roots very clearly.

MT/Newswatcher was a real poster child
for this. It may use the Aqua widgets, but it
doesn't behave like Aqua at all.

I refuse to let you use MT-Newswatcher as a barometer for Mac apps! It's
amongst the very worst I've encountered on the platform, and not
indicative of Mac apps as a whole. Keep this up and I'll start
countering with a dicussion of Lotus Notes.

With pictures.

You see this on a smaller scale in many other
(Carbon) apps. Check out the Office: Mac
preferences, for one place I've noticed.

Even if you stick strictly the New Breed,
you still get a hodge-podge of visual styles;
some Aqua Classic, some with the new
'Unified' look, some with brushed
metal, some with 'unified' brushed metal,
and some with the 'pro' style.

All that in Apple's own products.

Yes, the visual styles are all over the place, and this is something I
hope is being addressed, or at least being acknowledged as a problem
within Apple.

The latest I've seen of Leopard suggest Apple is cutting down on all the
wacky variations.

They also vary in behavior, but not quite so
broadly. For instance, Cocoa apps often
use NeXT-style inspectors- Keynote and
Pages do this. Carbon apps will use
old-style dialog boxes, however: iTunes
does this.

I appreciate the technical problems Apple
faces here, but it really seems like they
go out of their way to make this worse.

* That'll be another $129, please

One spiffy thing about Windows is that
MS gives away a lot of the little stuff
for free download. Microsoft's Spotlight-
clone is one I've installed. It's as convenient
as the real thing, and quite a lot quicker.

Yes, but it relies on periodic re-indexing rather than hooks to the
kernel code that modifies the filesystem, so new files that you create
don't show up until some unspecified time in the future. This is a bit
of a problem.

Apple isn't into freebies, I notice.

What about all the updates to iTunes!

* That'll be another $30, please

I still think it's incredibly lame that Apple
demands $30 bucks for fullscreen playback
in QuickTime player. Talk about nickle-and-
diming you to death!

Well you do get quite a bit more for $30 than just fullscreen playback.
It is lame that fullscreen playback is lumped in with the "Pro" features
though.

New versions of Windows Media Player
are one of the many freebies MS makes
available. I've got WMP11 beta on here
now; its very slick.

Apple makes iTunes and Quicktime updates freely available too. I have
read that Fullscreen Playback will no longer require a Pro key in the
next version of Quicktime. I'm sure we'll all have a "duuuuh!" moment
when that finally happens.

* The Dock and The Taskbar

Apple's application-centric Dock also annoys
me. I almost never want to switch to an app,
but to a window. The taskbar is much nicer.

And the taskbar blows less real-estate, so
I can leave it visible. It can also hold more
items; it can be more than one tile tall,
and it auto-combines tiles into menus
when necessary.

The taskbar can hold more items if you resize it, but then you lose all
that Fitt's law goodness for all the items that are not on the bottom
row, and are left aiming at some very vertically thin targets.

The taskbar also suffers from the completely unstable program placement.
Over the course of half an hour, the position of every single item in
the tasbar can and will change, leaving you hunting down items. If you
open a new instance of an already-running app, it opens somewhere in the
middle of the taskbar, whereas if there wasn't another instance already
running it opens at the end.

The Dock, on the other hand, has nice and predictable program placement.
Programs stay in the same order all the time they're open, regardless of
what window management you do.

* The Dock and the Start Menu

As a program launcher, the XP start menu
just kicks the dock up and down the field.

The start menu, like the dock, keeps small number
of apps immediately available, but unlike the
dock, they don't move around all the time.

Muscle memory works; Apple used to care about
this sort of thing. But not anymore.

Plus the start menu offers all sorts of system
configuration and control stuff, like the Apple
menu in Mac OS X. But the start menu can be
customized.

I don't see how you can say the apps in the Dock move around all the
time, because, quite frankly, they don't.

The Start Menu is a great solution as a complete repository for all your
applications, but for quick-launching the most common apps the Dock
beats it easily. The big reason for this is that the Dock pretends it's
not a launcher at all, and that all programs, running and non-running
are treated equally.

I have the programs I use 95% of the time all sitting in the Dock. Their
positions and order do not change, no matter what windows I open and
close, or whether or not any of these apps are open at any particular
time. I click on an icon in the same place all the time, and I get the
app I want.

I don't need to perform any mental gymnastics to remember whether or not
the app is running (in Windows, the answer to this question determines
whether or not I use the Taskbar or the Start Menu) and I don't need to
wonder if it'll open alongside other similar windows in the middle of
the taskbar, or whether it'll appear appended to the end of my existing
application list. It's just always in the same place.

For the less-common apps that are launched now and again, the Start Menu
is better than the Dock. But Spotlight (and, in fairness, MSN Desktop
Search) is better than either.

Plus the start menu shows recently used apps;
I find that very handy.

And of course, the start menu also has a
complete program list in it too. But that's
not something I use too much.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Windows.. its like coming home!
    ... I think Apple does have a problem, ... or I could just buy a Windows ... Objective-C in the footsteps of Smalltalk. ... I prefer the Dock myself. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Windows.. its like coming home!
    ... Apple sacrifices a lot for style. ... On Windows I just use Outlook Express ... Mac OS X has no resolution independance; ... Windows apps is *more consistant* than ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Windows.. its like coming home!
    ... Apple sacrifices a lot for style. ... On Windows I just use Outlook Express ... Mac OS X has no resolution independance; ... Windows apps is *more consistant* than ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Windows.. its like coming home!
    ... Apple sacrifices a lot for style. ... On Windows I just use Outlook Express ... Mac OS X has no resolution independance; ... Windows apps is *more consistant* than ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Windows.. its like coming home!
    ... boot Windows on it. ... Uh, they all work pretty different, especially MS own apps. ... Apple's application-centric Dock also annoys ... The taskbar is much nicer. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)