gstark wrote:One of my favourite thoughts about the Mac is that, if it's so easy to use, why are there so many books and magazines that tell you how to use it?
Coming from a PC background, in some ways they aren't as easy to use. Sometimes I dont think OS X is as intuitive in some of its paradigms, but then every system has its quirks. I also found that I tended to approach things how I would in Windows and try to second-guess how the developer would have approached a task. It usually turned out that there was a far simpler way to do it that hadn't occurred to me because it was 'too easy'. That in itself was quite disconcerting.
There are also a lot of 'how to' books for Windows, Linux and every other OS out there. Windows is just so ubiquitous now-days that most people have had contact with it to some extent and at least know the very basics or knows someone who can show them how to do something.
These days there's little difference between them, but as a person woking in the business software development industry, there's very little money to be made in developing mac software.
Agreed that there is little difference in general, just different approaches. I find OS X keeps out of the way more (XP irritates me in its 'helpfulness' and focus-stealing). Windows is a little more 'keyboard accessible' in some ways and there is more share/free-ware out there for Windows. On the other hand, the shareware in the Mac world generally seems of a higher quality. The biggest irritation for me in the s/w side of things is with interfacing to other devices, like my dive computer. Most of these style of devices are only supported with Windows s/w and often only serial interfaces.
Definitely not an Apple fan-boy and I think Apple have some major improvements to make. I make my living with Windows / *nix and MS has some major advantages in some arena's, though their embrace-and-extend approach makes life really hard at times in heterogeneous environments! Apple also makes me nervous in that its a one-stop-shop and is relatively secretive by nature.
Having built every PC Ive owned, I find the relative lack of h/w configurability / availability highly disgruntling, especially with video cards. Id love a 20" iMac but the
AIO nature of the beast makes me feel like I lose too many upgrade options when it comes to extending the life of the machine.
I also agree that there is less opportunity doing Mac s/w development, though the guys at Delicious Monster (and a number of other small developers) are apparently doing quite well for themselves. The danger there is Apple shafting them. I do a little bit of dev as a hobby and Im quite looking forward to exploring some of the new bits in Tiger such as CoreData. Its the donkey-work that always lets me down (I lose interest) and some of the new functionality looks like it should do a lot more of that donkey-work for me, letting me concentrate on the interesting bits.
I have tried / used / supported a lot of PC OS's over the years. OS X is by no means perfect, but its the only other viable real-world option I have come across as an alternative to Windows for both me and others that have to use the system.
Finally, I like the fact that I can come home and use an OS that is stable, easy to use, has a UNIX core and reasonable security, that I can still natively access work documents (Office) and that I enjoy using. I dont tinker, I dont have to admin, I dont have to help the SO much, I just use it. And I find I USE it to DO things more than I ever did in Windows.
I know it probably sounds a little weird and its not particularly tangible. It reminds me of the Canon v's Nikon debate in a way. The D70 just feels right in my hands, so does the Mac.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 11:17 pm
