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

"Patrick Nihill" <pa_nihill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:MPG.1f507013e6e5f94398969b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I can understand why they'd transition anyway- better
to do it now than when they are in real financial trouble
after all- but why rush it?

I suppose because they knew they could get away with it. Let's face it,
the current Mac userbase is not likely to be averse to quick transitions
or dependent on crucial older applications that they must maintain
compatibility with. If they were, they'd probably already have left the
platform.

I usually resist this proposition, though I can't disprove it,
because I don't like where it leads: that the Mac has
already driven off all the 'normal' users, leaving an
assortment of platform zealots, MS-haters, and such.

A slow transition would not have done an awful lot to appease the
current userbase, and would have delayed Apple's ability to start
offering more compelling products to the vast hordes of non-Mac users.

Does the current userbase need appeasing?

It does seem to me that Apple is locking itself out of
the largest markets by behaving in this way.

[snip- intel transition]
Do you feel this was all planned as one exercise? I
thought they had been trying to make a go of PPC/OS X,
and that's why the G5 happened.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this was all planned from the start, as
such. But it was cleary *a* plan that has been kept under consideration
all this time.

The way I figure it, the Intel switch was always an option,
but it was a desparate one, which could potentially kill
the company if it went wrong.

That they did not attempt this during the G4 stall shows,
I think, that they thought this plan terribly risky.

The the revenues they are now getting from the iPod
changed this equation; they are now pretty sure they'll
survive, even if the Intel switch is a complete disaster.
Even in the worst possible case, they just become an MP3
maker and music distributor.

And the G5's power and heat problems are a nasty echo
of the G4's speed problems. They suggest that the G5
won't save them; eventually they'll be forced to make
the switch to cheap but fast commodity CPUs.

Put that together, and now's the time. But I feel that
if it were not for the iPod, Apple would not risk
it. The G5 is not that bad, nor that far behind, not
yet.

Thus I see this decision as separate from the OS X one;
it was clear long before they even hired Steve back
that they needed to do *something* about the OS, even
though that too was a desparate risk.

[snip]
So if you don't agree with MS's decision to pause
indexing when the system is busy, you can change
it.

Aha, and here's me after using this for many months and failing to
notice this. Thanks.

Sure thing.

But of course, this is illustrative of one difference
between Windows and OS X; OS X tries, whenever
possible, to select the right way to do something and
leave it at that. It does not let you configure the
system very much.

Windows is much more configurable, though MS does
tried to choose good defaults. This allows it to appeal
to a broader audience, but still work for those people
who don't care about this stuff and just use it as is.

I don't mind Spotlights behavior much; it's not that
big of a performance drain. But I would have liked
to be able to control when an OS X machine
hibernates, as I can on Windows.

[snip]
Yes; and it comes up more quickly that the
Finder; also just having any old Finder window
isn't enough, you need to then navigate to the
right place.

You need to click on any of the shortcuts you've dragged to the sidebar
in the Finder window, just like you have to click on one of the pre-
defined shortcuts in the Start menu.

I prefer to use the Finder sidebar for navigation
rather than program launching, myself. It's
not that big, and the icons get smaller (like
in the dock) if you overload it.

[snip]
That is so. I had not thought of that. Of course,
you can use the quick launch bar if you want that
sort of thing.

You can, but the Dock is easier than this.

Ya. Bigger icons.

I was thinking more of not wasting more screen space with another list
of programs that can be launched, as opposed to the list of programs
that have already been launched.

The quicklaunch bar takes up part of the taskbar, and it is
very small. It can autohide (with the task bar), if you
like that sort of thing.

Indeed it is just *too* small for my taste.

I don't use it.

As I'm sure you've gathered by now, I
think the way the Dock doesn't differentiate between launching and
switching applications makes both faster.

I don't think this is so; it would be a better program
launcher if that's all it did, even if it were otherwise
unchanged.

There'd be more room for app icons, obviously,
and it wouldn't move around unless you were
changing the set of apps it holds.


.

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