Mac people: Why?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I had to use iMovie for the first time today. Was assigned a group project where we had to make a video, and I was chosen as the editor.

I know jack all about anything video. While I did have to pull some strings (aka do some Googling) to figure out how to get the video off the DVD (could have been avoided if the videocamera we used had a USB cable) using iMovie was easy, and FUN. Everything was simple, just drag, click, etc. Adding music, text overlays, transitions, everything was so freaking easy. Easy to manipulate after you made a choice too, just click and drag stuff around. And I’m uploading it directly to my YouTube account right now from iMovie.

I hated Macs when I had to use old iMacs in high school yearbook. But I was originally a journalism major in college and Apple laptops were required, so I got an iBook. I just fell in love. It’s just personal preference. I have a MacBook now with the newer OS and I love it. It’s just so…pretty. And I love all the widgets, spaces is cool, coverflow and stacks. But YMMV obviously.

42

[QUOTE=myskepticsight]
I know jack all about anything video. While I did have to pull some strings (aka do some Googling) to figure out how to get the video off the DVD (could have been avoided if the videocamera we used had a USB cable) using iMovie was easy, and FUN. Everything was simple, just drag, click, etc. Adding music, text overlays, transitions, everything was so freaking easy. Easy to manipulate after you made a choice too, just click and drag stuff around. And I’m uploading it directly to my YouTube account right now from iMovie.
[/QUOTE]

That’s good to know. I’m a ‘shooter’. I like being behind the camera. But when it comes to editing… Well it was super-8, an Elmo 912 viewer, and a Hervic tape splicer. I started to use Final Cut Pro, but the ‘boss’ liked to do the editing himself and we were working on shooting a film anyway. I haven’t used iMovie, but I did download the manual. I’ve just got to find time to play with it.

43

Add me to the list of people who find Macs utterly anti-intuitive. My husband really likes his MacBook Air, and, on the few occasions that I’m forced to use it, is forever reminding me of the trackpad gestures you can use to move things around, or explaining to me how to find and open and close various files and programs. I just can’t grasp it.

And yet I love my iPod, and can’t bear a day without it. C’est la vie, I guess.

44

This may be the first discussion in the history of the world where Mac and PC users talk about their differences without it developing into a total flame-out.

45

[QUOTE=Risha]
Add me to the list of people who find Macs utterly anti-intuitive. My husband really likes his MacBook Air, and, on the few occasions that I’m forced to use it, is forever reminding me of the trackpad gestures you can use to move things around, or explaining to me how to find and open and close various files and programs. I just can’t grasp it.
[/QUOTE]

I used PCs from the 386 to the present. I got my MacBook Pro three years ago. I’ve found it to be fairly intuitive. Saving the documents, for example. I could see Documents. I reasoned that there must be a way to make a folder, and there it is under File. It’s also under the little gear thing. (Gear = do something. There it is.) In the Save dialog box there’s a New Folder button. There’s a little arrow by the Documents folder pointing to the next pane, and the folders there have arrows pointing to the next pane, and the folders there… For the most part it just seems obvious.

To be sure, there are things that I don’t know how to do and I ask how to do them here. But then, I don’t know how to do them on a PC either. I’d have to ask.

One thing that always bugs me about PCs is when there’s a trackpad. I try to drag two fingers across it to scroll, and it doesn’t do anything. I like that feature on a Mac. And it’s so easy to bang a corner to clear the screen or to display all windows. I try to do that occasionally on a PC and am reminded they don’t do that. I like being able to make special characters without having to know the ALT code. I do wish there was an easier way to do fractions though. Too much trouble on a Mac, so I just type them fullsize. I wish the version of Excel I have (2004 for Mac) had Find All. That would be handy and I wouldn’t have to use my PC over the deadly slow VPN/RDC thing. And I really wish my HP printer would work over the AirPort.

But I’m never going to buy another PC if I can help it. I made the switch three years ago and I’m happy with it.

46

[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
I like being able to make special characters without having to know the ALT code.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know any ALT codes and can make special characters all the time. Ä, Ẹ, ﭯ! Even a little bit of ▓, ₯, and Ѭ thrown in for good measure!

It takes like five second to open up the character map. What makes special characters so much easier in a Mac? I imagine it’s a similar process.

47

[QUOTE=bouv]
I don’t know any ALT codes and can make special characters all the time. Ä, Ẹ, ﭯ! Even a little bit of ▓, ₯, and Ѭ thrown in for good measure!

It takes like five second to open up the character map. What makes special characters so much easier in a Mac? I imagine it’s a similar process.
[/QUOTE]

Ä is Option + u, then A. ü is the same, only with u. Option + u is for an umlaut Option + e is an accent: é á ó. Option + i is a ‘carrot’: ô ê â. And so on. Option + other characters (i.e., a one-step thing) can give you €, £, ¢, ∞, §, ¶, •, ª, º, œ, ∑, ®, †, ¥, ø, π, “, ‘, å, ß, ∂, ƒ, ©, ˙, ∆, ˚, ¬, …, æ, Ω, ≈, ç, √, ∫, ~, µ, ≤, ≥, ÷. And of course there are the other ‘two-step’ ones like the examples I started with.

48

[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=]
It’s kind of funny that this was the example of non-intuitiveness that the OP chose.

For one, + is arguably a more intuitive symbol than two overlapping boxes for “make bigger”. So, on the symbol front, the Mac system is slightly more intuitive. But, in addition to having symbols of similar intuitiveness, the Mac has colors!

Red/Yellow/Green colors have fairly universal meanings of Stop/Wait/Go due to their use on traffic lights. And what do the buttons do? Well, the red STOP button stops display by closing the window. The yellow WAIT button makes the display go away, but doesn’t stop it; you can still use it later. The green GO button makes the window full size so that you can immediately use it.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah. Those colors really confused me. Stop means, Stop. So this closes the window. Okay, I can kinda follow that. Yellow, in terms of traffic signals, means Speed up so you can make this light or Caution this light is about to turn red, depending on where you’re driving. (In Denver, the former, the latter will get you rear-ended, honked at, and flipped off.) Neither one of these translates very well to what clicking the yellow circle actually does, which is make the screen go away, causing panic. It was in the middle, I didn’t want to make it go away, I wanted it bigger.

Sorry, I don’t see how these colors on the Mac correspond at all to their (admittedly) fairly universal traffic meanings. Like I said, you mouse-over on the PC and it tells you.

49

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
Sorry, I don’t see how these colors on the Mac correspond at all to their (admittedly) fairly universal traffic meanings.
[/QUOTE]
I have the same problem. Red I’m fine with, but I have to dither over what the other two colors might mean. Connecting the traffic lights to minimizing and maximizing windows was a real conceptual stretch.

50

[QUOTE=Risha]
I have the same problem. Red I’m fine with, but I have to dither over what the other two colors might mean. Connecting the traffic lights to minimizing and maximizing windows was a real conceptual stretch.
[/QUOTE]

Red means stop and go away.
Green means grow like a plant.
Yellow means flow like urine to the bottom of the screen.

(Seriously, once I tell people this, they never forget).

51

[QUOTE=minor7flat5]

No “cut” in the file right-click menu
This means you cannot select fifty files, right-click-cut, navigate to some far distant land, and then paste. You are expected to drag them, while holding the appropriate mysterious modifier key to force a move (just like XP) and go through the “springloaded folders” before you drop.

[/QUOTE]

Of course, this is only “unintuitive” if you’re used to Windows.

Which brings up a question: is a Mac more “intuitive” if it’s your first computer, as opposed to being a switch from Windows? Might that affect this whole discussion?

52

My personal favorite Mac feature is Expose, of course, but I’m also a big fan of copying folders – not only is it successful more often than Windows, but if it fails you have the option of skipping the one problematic file and continuing, rather than getting stuck in a “retry forever” loop or getting half the files copied.

The other subtle thing is that typically a file created by a Mac application, when double-clicked, will re-open in the application that created it, regardless of it’s extension. (So you can have .txt files, for example, that open in different applications rather than always with Notepad.) This isn’t as universal as it used to be in the pre OS X days, but it still usually works.

You can also, in many Mac applications, use the icon in an open document’s menu bar as though it were the icon in the Finder – just drag it into an e-mail, for example, to attach. In general, the Mac uses dragging much more than Windows does; it’s surprising how often you can drag pictures, text, etc. around, even between applications that aren’t really “documents.” I’m surprised how often dragging a document onto an application that can open that document type doesn’t work in Windows, for example.

(Similarly - want to change the icon of any file or folder on the Mac? Do a “Get Info” on it, select the icon, and either paste or drag an image onto it. I don’t know how to do this at all on Windows, short of modifying code or all the documents with a given extension.)

53

Hilarity N. Suze - You can turn the corner button colours off in System Preferences > Appearance. The topmost option lets you change from ‘Blue’ to ‘Graphite’. 'Graphite has no coloured window buttons.

I didn’t find them confusing at all, just a bit childish looking.

Although, if going to system preferences (because there’s something you want to change about your system) and clicking on appearance (because the thing you want to change is to do with that) and seeing what the options there did wasn’t a step you intuited, then no, macs, for you, are not intuitive.

Also, what NinjaChick said. Can’t understand why people get so whiney about other people’s computers. Computer use requires a certain amount of system-brain integration in order for operation to feel and be successful. Given the myriad types of people and psychologies that we each encounter in our everyday lives, how can anyone be surprised that there is more than one operating system considered by some to be better?

54

The problem switchers often have, whether from Windows to Mac or from Mac to Windows, is mostly to “unlearn” the old system. If you are new to computers, you don’t have any preconceived notions how things work, and you know you have to learn how to do things, you try the most intuitive things first and you are prepared to have to look things up or ask somebody.

Switchers often get very frustrated because they think they know how to do something, and keep trying to do it the same way as they did on the other system. If you do switch, take the time to watch the introductory videos for Mac and to familiarize yourself with the new system.

55

[QUOTE=tdn]
You can get help on them by right-clicking them.
[/QUOTE]

I thought Mac mice had only one button! :smiley:

:ducks and runs:

56

[QUOTE=Buckler of Swashing]

Can’t understand why people get so whiney about other people’s computers.
[/quote]
Can’t understand why people get so defensive about their precious computers. You’d think we were insulting their child, or something.

How can anyone be surprised that there is more than one person who considers your operating system of choice not to be better?

57

[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
The other subtle thing is that typically a file created by a Mac application, when double-clicked, will re-open in the application that created it, regardless of it’s extension. (So you can have .txt files, for example, that open in different applications rather than always with Notepad.) This isn’t as universal as it used to be in the pre OS X days, but it still usually works.
[/QUOTE]
Ahh yes…another area where OS X does lots of secret stuff behind the scenes.

AFAIK, OS X checks the following when trying to launch an app:
[ul][li]The old-school creator codes from Classic pre-OS X Mac.[/li][li]HFS+ metadata on any given file (you can tell OS X to open one specific file with one specific application, such as “open *this *PDF with Acrobat, though all other PDFs open with Preview”[/li][li]The file extension, just like Windows, using a file extension database.[/li][li]The Unix file command, which uses a magic number database that describes offsets and sequences of characters that might be found in a file that identify a class of files (e.g. jpeg files).[/ul](I probably messed up some details here)[/li]
Who knows, there may be some other magic going on as well.

All in all, the right apps seem to launch most of the time :slight_smile:

58

[QUOTE=Leaper]

[QUOTE=minor7flat5]
No “cut” in the file right-click menu
This means you cannot select fifty files, right-click-cut, navigate to some far distant land, and then paste. You are expected to drag them, while holding the appropriate mysterious modifier key to force a move (just like XP) and go through the “springloaded folders” before you drop.
[/QUOTE]
Of course, this is only “unintuitive” if you’re used to Windows.
[/QUOTE]
Back in the day, the Spatial Finder interface made things quite intuitive to Mac users. The defining feature of this interface was that every object existed in exactly one place and would stay exactly where you left it. Multiple open windows of the same folder were not allowed, for example. This reinforced the mental concept of the file being one object within one folder in one place.

Though OS X has broken the Spatial Finder somewhat (for example, you can now have multiple open windows to the same folder), the roots are still there.

The “cut & paste” move does not fit this model at all, and is, as you rightfully indicated, a very Windows-type of mechanism.

But, there is no equivalent handy mechanism provided in OS X.

One suggestion that some have put forth that makes sense in a Spatial Finder world would be to have a “shelf” in the Finder window, where you can put stuff that you are in the process of moving elsewhere. Of course, one could just drag everything to a temporary folder, but a purpose-built shelf in the Finder window would more cleanly fit the model.

59

[QUOTE=Shayna]
Can’t understand why people get so defensive about their precious computers. You’d think we were insulting their child, or something. How can anyone be surprised that there is more than one person who considers your operating system of choice not to be better?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, well done, you’ve managed to both grasp and repeat my points and throw them back at me as though you made new new ones. I couldn’t care less who likes to use a mac and who likes to use a PC. That is the point. Neither one is more important or worthy of use than the other.

60

[QUOTE=Anaglyph]
The problem switchers often have, whether from Windows to Mac or from Mac to Windows, is mostly to “unlearn” the old system. If you are new to computers, you don’t have any preconceived notions how things work, and you know you have to learn how to do things, you try the most intuitive things first and you are prepared to have to look things up or ask somebody.

Switchers often get very frustrated because they think they know how to do something, and keep trying to do it the same way as they did on the other system. If you do switch, take the time to watch the introductory videos for Mac and to familiarize yourself with the new system.
[/QUOTE]
Agree.

I’ve been working on and with computers for 20 years. DECs, PS2, quite a bit UNIX for a while. I’m Windows now and have been for quite a while. I mentioned earlier the trouble I had with the iTunes interface. I suspect it is very intuitive to the MAC user. But it sure isn’t to me.

A question? Aren’t most of the heavy hitter internet sites that we use every day, the ones that have flowed into a common interface type, developed on PCs?

Perhaps I’m wrong. But if this is true, then the programmers and developers working on PC’s have found a way to build an interface that anyone can use.