Give him the benefit of the doubt. Now that he has a Mac, it’s a cinch for him to copy your text, type pico Garageband in a terminal window, paste the text in, save and exit pico and then just type wc Garageband. Voila! 285 words!
That is what you did isn’t it mambozzy? Kinda creepy to do it the other way. 
That’s a thing of beauty. 
I use both platforms at work. Although I prefer the PC (because that’s what I cut my teeth on), I really appreciate how the Mac accomodates PC users. It can read PC files and effectively fake it when I need to convert from on platform to the other.
The only time when invisible files became an issue for me is when I would burn CDs. The Mac creates the invisible files to make the content usable by PC, but they show up in Windows Explorer. One client we sent a regular PC floppy to got all irate when we didn’t include those files. I had to explain to her reeeeaaalllly slowwwwwllllly that she didn’t need them.
The only times my drives get hidden from me is when I use Virtual PC. When I’m in that window, the Mac side doesn’t register that I’ve put in removeable media such as CDs and floppies. I have to eject them from Virtual PC, click out of the window and reinsert them.
Does OS X enable you to create file names by clicking on other similar ones? It’s a pain in the ass to type out a 20 character filename that’s different from another one by only 1 character.
Oh, admit it, you’re just jealous because the Macs are merrily working away, while all the Windows PCs are choking on that “Mydoom” virus-of-the-week.
–R.J.,
wearing his “Smug Virus-Free Mac-Using Bastard” shirt today
Right, because you like Unix, and you like Macs, so putting them together should be great.
So you don’t like Macs (or NeXT), apparently. And a “Unix box” sounds like something you don’t find very novel. Why were you all excited again?
That’s fine, I’m just trying to understand what upset you.
I do hate my Mac at work, but I’m aware that this is because (a) I was thrown in a classroom with it and no instruction, not so much as a manual, and thus had no idea how to use it except to click things and see what happened, and (b) it runs off of the public school system’s server, which is profoundly flawed.
I’m aware that these things are not the fault of Apple, and that I might like it better in a different situation.
Ha ha ha! Brilliant.
Still bitter about a fucking file the school’s Mac ate when I was in tenth grade.
Ahh, the intuitive Mac usage I’ve heard so much about :rolleyes:
I left out the single-keystroke method because I gave the OP the benefit of the doubt that s/he’d already treid that. Clearly an assumption that wouldn’t apply to you. Might wanna roll those eyes back.
Sheesh. If y’all sat down with me for six minutes, I’d teach you everything you need to get around the Finder. Don’t come whining about an OS because you refuse to take a minute and learn the first thing about it.
Y’know, I disagree with a great deal of what that guy had to say about Macs… but that was damn funny.
Heh.
Nowadays, the only major advantage that Macs offer over PC’s is stability. Even the speed claims of the G5 were shown to be false before the processor was released (well, not really false… just that they, er, took some creative liberties when comparing the abilities of the competition).
Apple and Microsoft are very similar. MS treats all its customers like morons (and, to be fair, the vast majority of their customers are). Apple also treats their customers like morons, but wraps it all up in a pretty package that lets those morons think they’re geniuses, but resulting in a slew of products that are more “appliances” than “computers”.
I remember the first time I worked with OSX. I had dealt with previous Mac OS’s, so I figured I could make do. It was annoying at first, but you just gotta explore a little. A lot of things seem like they were done solely to be DIFFERENT from the Windows platform, but after fifteen minutes of poking around, I pretty much had all the basics covered.
A suggestion for the OP, though… I’d recommend avoiding the worldview that YOUR experiences are universal. There’re so many horror stories about working a PC, or Windows… hell, I don’t think I need to say how bad it is. But just because your computer was the shit’s nit doesn’t mean that all Macs make sweet love to the stud of suck.
You’re welcome.
First of all, you should never be ashamed of asking for help. You can’t figure everything out on your own, and sitting about stewing doesn’t accomplish a whole lot.
What kind of CD was this, and what did you expect it to do when you inserted it? If it was an audio CD, it will only play automatically if the software’s configured to do so. The fact that the “techie” restarted the computer implies that there was a real problem, but offhand, I can’t think of anything that can go wrong with a CD that restarting would fix. Lacking further details I can’t really say what was wrong.
For future reference, if you want to eject a CD, click on and drag the CD’s icon to the Trash. You can also click on it and choose Put Away or Eject Disk (the command will vary depending on the OS version). Either method will spit the disc out.
One of the two files appeared, so it might be safe to assume the problem isn’t with your PC recognizing the files.
Is it possible that when you were looking at them on the Mac, they were actually in a different place than you thought? OS versions pre-X can have a ton of open windows and it’s easy to be confused about your files’ locations.
I assume these files were transferred from the Mac to your PC on a floppy or a CD. If you burned or copied these files over on the Mac, you may have not copied them as you intended. Or maybe the application you were using before you copied them saved them to the wrong location.
Logical how? I will grant that the file tree system, with the lines that indicate how deeply a folder is in from the root and the plus and minus signs to indicate whether there are items in the folder, is handy. I wish my Mac could do that. But the two do not have great fundamental differences between the ways they organize and display files. Both use folders and a file path system.
You’ll probably have to work on the Mac more if it’s for a class. So I really think you’d benefit from a Mac book or two. Check out your school’s library or bookstore for a Mac For Dummies book or something from The Missing Manual series. They’re excellent for helping newbies.
About Mac labs: If you modify your rant to cover Mac lab computers, then I totally agree: they suck big time. Why? Because they tend to be run by people who don’t know Macs and patronized by users who aren’t much better. I’ve seen people indiscriminately install all kinds of crap and delete system files without having a clue what they were for. I’ve seen lab monitors whose troubleshooting steps were 1) slam the keyboard, and 2) restart. Two-year-olds would do less damage. I’m not at all surprised by what you describe.
But that’s not a good reason to malign all Macs. I hope you see how inexperience and unfamiliarity (but not inherent suckitude) are the reasons for your woes.
As for your departure: if you can’t take the heat, don’t post in the Pit. The response you get, whether fair or not, is part of the deal.
Personally, I don’t hate all Macs… just the ones I’ve had to try to use for work. One, in particular, is evil. You see, the mouse… it’s possessed. All you have to do is scootch it one pixel in any given direction and the mouse drivers think “Oh, you want to be ON THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE SCREEN!!!11” It’s impossible to do anything that requires fine mouse control. Fuck, it’s impossible to click on a fucking icon on the screen, because every time you get close to the damn thing the mouse FLINGS ITSELF TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN!!111
I don’t know why the hell it does that, but I blame Apple.
I’m an art student (somehow Apple brainwashed all artsy people in the 80s into thinking Apple was the end-all of computing when really it’s not much different)as well, and have had my share of difficulties in learning the Mac, but there’s nothing majorly wrong with it.
The only things about it that drive me nuts are the sideways scrolling find window ( vertically listing things as does Windows Explorer makes so much more sense in a horizontally scrolling language like English), and the mono-mouse that comes with half the ones at the school at least. ( I’m used to a 4 button mouse).
I’ve never had to use the CD drive on a Mac, I transfer files using a USB flash stick or my Ipod. I guess the location of the USB ports is the only place that Macs beat PCs on, having it on the keyboard is pretty handy. Otherwise, using a Mac is like learning a foreign language, it’s not neccesarily better or worse, but it seems a bit silly when everyone else around is speaking english.
Also art student, also used LAB Macs. Now I’ve seen the nice, new Macs. Those I wouldn’t mind using. However these are evil. (If someone finds a better pic, can you let me know?) There is no CD tray, nor is there a manual eject. AFAIK, if neither drag-and-drop nor the eject button work, the only option is to restart. Also, Zip drives confuse the poor computers. But I don’t blame them, they’re years out of date and have been mistreated. (Really, is it THAT hard to listen to the prof/lab instructor and realize that many kids will have to use that exact computer? And that you shouldn’t mess with it? That’s what, if you have one, you’re own computer is for!)
:shrug: I don’t know . . . I use both systems and don’t find that one is a “foreign language” to me. I prefer one over the other (I love OS X) but I don’t find Windows to be such a radical experience either.
I hope you’re not suggesting that it’s “silly” to use anything other than Windows. Because that, indeed, is a “silly” notion.
For instance, as I mentioned in my first post here, if I decided to “speak english” (i.e. use PCs all the time), I wouldn’t be able to run Garageband. And no one is prying Garageband from me now! And, those Final Cut Pro fans wouldn’t be able to do their thing—same with the Soundtrack folk, the iLife folk (well, Garageband is part of iLife), and so on. On the other side of the coin, diehard gamers probably aren’t going to switch to Macs, and why should they? There’s room for all platforms, after all.
That happens with PC’s, too. Just go to mouse settings and reset them to something sane. I believe they’re under the apple menu, control panels, mouse applet. If I remember right…I don’t have a mac in front of me to verify this.
Some people just like wonky mouse settings. One of my coworker’s tends to ratchet her mouse acceleration all the way. Drives me nuts when I have to fix something on her computer.
Eh, you don’t actually think that Mac’s hold some sort of monopoly on video and audio/music editing/composition software do you?
I’ve used (and still use) programs such as cakewalk for loops and beats (and I know of some 10 top notch applications for windows as well), and there are a myriad options for video editing on a PC.
So those people would simply be using windows app that are just as capable.
I use Linux and Windows at home and OS X in the lab. I love OS X, and if it were available for Intel boxes, I would install it on all of my computers. I love the fact that you can run MS Office and Photoshop, and still NFS mount a remote disk. Or that it comes with perl and gcc, and all of the BioPerl extensions that I use install flawlessly, and I can run things like Deneba Canvas in a window next to it. I love that it speaks to every OS out of the box – Windows through SMB, OS 9 Macs, Unix boxes, etc.
Sure the OS has its flaws. But it is, in my hands, more stable and secure than my XP box, and more user friendly and useful from a personal computer setting than my Linux box. It is a perfect compromise.
Oh, and my dual processor 1.8 GHz G5 ships today…
Why go through all that? It’s eaiser to copy everything into MS Word, drop down the Tools menu and select Word Count.
