Mac people: Why?

In My Humble Opinion
61

[QUOTE=enipla]
Agree.
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.
[/QUOTE]

If an internet developer is doing his job properly, he produces a site that is compliant with www standards that are independent of the development platform. The ideal of the internet has always been to provide a platform-independent way to exchange information.

The first graphical Browser (Mosaic) was developed at the at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) under Unix/X windows and when ported to commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Windows. Mosaic developers founded Netscape, and when Netscape was taken over by AOL, the Mozilla organization, consisting mainly of (former) Netscape employees, pursued the development of the open-source Mozilla project (Firefox-Browser).

Microsoft has at times introduced changes in its internet explorer and development software that deliberately broke these standards in an attempt to force other browsers out, which made life a lot harder for developers.

62

[QUOTE=control-z]
I thought Mac mice had only one button!
[/QUOTE]

This is one of the reasons I just cannot get my head around the Mac operating system. I’m sorry, but the whole “Left click Do Something/Go Somewhere, Right Click= Bring Up Menu” thing is so ingrained with me that I can’t operate Macs with any degree of efficiency.

We sell them at work and not one of the sales people in the store are comfortable with them, with views ranging from “COMMUNISM!!!” to “This thing just doesn’t make any sense”. Needless to say, Macs don’t sell very well, partly because we hate them, partly because don’t have any software to go with them, and partly because Mac users tend to go to the Authorised Mac Dealers for, well, pretty much everything.

That and they’re useless for games, which is at least 25% of the reason I own the PC (the other 75% being Word Processing, The Internet, and Watching DVDs)

63

[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
This is one of the reasons I just cannot get my head around the Mac operating system. I’m sorry, but the whole “Left click Do Something/Go Somewhere, Right Click= Bring Up Menu” thing is so ingrained with me that I can’t operate Macs with any degree of efficiency.
[/QUOTE]

You have the same on today’s macs. Even back in the days when the macs came with a one-button (USB) mouse, you could just get a standard USB two- or three button mouse, adjust the settings in the mouse control panel, and use it. The operating system supported two-and three-button mice, they just were not included in the hardware package. On the one-button mouse which came with the hardware package, you used CNTL-click instead of right-click.
With today’s “mighty mouse” you have four buttons (right/center/left and squeeze) as well as horizontal and vertical scroll.

64

[QUOTE=Leaper]
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?
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure it’s a big factor for me. My very first computer had no freaking screen at all (you would type input on the printer/terminal and would type output back to you on the same printer/terminal) but I started on the Mac when a Mac had half a megabyte of RAM. The Mac had a mouse, overhead menus, standardized keyboard shortcuts, icons, etc; PC at that time looked like this:

A:
no contest.

The PC has come a long long way since then but I’ve never owned one and Mac behavior is “how a normal computer behaves” to me. Plus, having used them for over 20 years, I know a great many of the little secrets and hidden tools and stuff.

65

[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
I’m sorry, but the whole “Left click Do Something/Go Somewhere, Right Click= Bring Up Menu” thing is so ingrained with me that I can’t operate Macs with any degree of efficiency.

[/QUOTE]

Young whippersnapper. I can remember the days before Win95/NT4, when it was not unusual to get PS/2 mice with tiny shrunken vestigial right-buttons because they were hardly used. They were happily evolving towards convergence with the egg-shaped one-button mac mice, and then suddenly MS rediscovered the context meny and then BOOM, mouse buttons galore.

Although still nowhere near the mad-genius lunacy of Sun’s old mice. Three buttons and a laser tracker (that needed a special mat), plus a standard setting that middle-click meant “paste whatever I had selected in the most recently used window, into this window”. That was fan-tabby-dozie if you selected a few pages of text and then accidentally middle-clicked on the window of an application that was a bit picky about input. :eek:

Macs - I have one. I have an XP machine, I have a Vista machine. In terms of intuitiveness they all suck in my opinion. MacOS X is perhaps a bit more consistent in how it does stuff, but other than that, meh. It’s not like someone who has never encountered a computer before is going to sit down in front of any of them and go “ah, but of course”.

I use it as my “organising life” machine because it’s less prone to being broken/recently formatted than my other computers (my ‘games machine’ and my ‘built from bits left over when upgrading my games machine’ machine for messing about on).

When I bought my Mac Mini I got the “Switching to Tiger” book and the “Missing Manual” book - never really used either of them, got by just fine with my universal software-learning method of:[ul]
[li]Try the icons[/li][li]Try clicking the icons while holding down the more obvious modifier keys (shift, control, alt win/mac), alone or in combination[/li][li]Try some random combinations of the modifier keys, along with ordinary keys[/li][li]Try looking at the context help[/li][li]Google it.[/li][/ul]
Although to be fair I did own a mac years ago when I was student (Performa6200 for the loss!)

Part of the problem with the mad zealotry is the limited exposure people have had. I’ve only ever used various flavours of Mac, Windows, SunOS and Linux, but that’s enough to be moderately comfortable with different approaches to doing stuff.

66

I quite like the feel of them. The software seems… right. Plus I’m in love with the multi-touch trackpad on my Macbook Pro. This alone is going to prevent me from going to another computer.

Games are a bit of a problem, but I only play Blizzard games for the most part, and they write for both Windows and OSX.

67

I don’t get it. You’re just used to Windows, is all. You don’t remember learning anything on Windows, because that’s what you were raised on. Do you remember learning to speak?

Anyway, the Mac is a fantastic OS and if you take the time to learn it, with some patience, you’ll be able to get around in no time. If you’d rather stick to Windows, then do. If it has Intel processors, just install Windows on it.

To trash the OS, because you don’t understand a few of the basics, tells me you need to learn to use the OS. It’s the same with anything else in life. Don’t just take people’s word on their opinions, like it’s “intuitive” and all that. It may be for them, but really, that’s very subjective.

Ask for resources to learn the basics. They’re all over the net, as well as on Apple’s site.

How hard is this? Look at this as well.

I can understand if you want to rant about having to learn something new… but really, you should take it as an opportunity, and perhaps you’ll be rewarded.

68

[QUOTE=slaphead]
Part of the problem with the mad zealotry is the limited exposure people have had. I’ve only ever used various flavours of Mac, Windows, SunOS and Linux, but that’s enough to be moderately comfortable with different approaches to doing stuff.
[/QUOTE]

I agree here. I started out like AHunter3, on a teletype-interfaced machine (which makes me wonder why he wouldn’t have been comfortable with the MS-DOS’s CLI years later); I changed primary platforms every few years thereafter: CP/M > Atari 8-bit > Commodore 128 (I could use C64 and my old CP/M stuff) > Commodore Amiga. I finally jumped aboard the GUI bandwagon on the C128 (Jane; GEOS 1.3, 2.0, 128), after having been turned off by Apple’s stabs on the Lisa and original Mac.

I happen to use PC architecture platforms and OSes now because I chose a 386 in my platform jump from the Amiga; it’s been nice having a mostly uniform upgrade path over the last two decades. But using Macs, Unix or Linux, hell, even BeOS? No problem, and I’d happily jump to any OS that happened to support what I want to do. One of the benefits of using so many platforms in my life is that I can accept there is no one right way to do a given task. Mac doesn’t do something the same as Windows? Oh well. Time to experiment and play around and… occasionally… read a manual.

69

[QUOTE=Student Driver]
I started out like AHunter3, on a teletype-interfaced machine (which makes me wonder why he wouldn’t have been comfortable with the MS-DOS’s CLI years later)
[/QUOTE]

Heh! I said I used a no-monitor terminal-interface computer. I did not say I enjoyed it. I detested computers. Hated them passionately. Everything you did on them was about as much fun as opening combination locks in the dark with your toes.

They dragged me kicking & screaming into a Mac lab in 1986 and sat me down in front of a 512Ke running System 3. Made me create a word processing document, which I promptly titled “COMPUTER HATING”. I was won over by the end of 40 minutes. Haven’t looked back since.

70

[QUOTE=AHunter3]
Heh! I said I used a no-monitor terminal-interface computer. I did not say I enjoyed it. I detested computers. Hated them passionately. Everything you did on them was about as much fun as opening combination locks in the dark with your toes.

They dragged me kicking & screaming into a Mac lab in 1986 and sat me down in front of a 512Ke running System 3. Made me create a word processing document, which I promptly titled “COMPUTER HATING”. I was won over by the end of 40 minutes. Haven’t looked back since.
[/QUOTE]

Ahh, gotcha.

It might have been a good thing they didn’t put you in front of a 128k Mac first.

71

[QUOTE=Student Driver]
Ahh, gotcha.

It might have been a good thing they didn’t put you in front of a 128k Mac first.
[/QUOTE]

Well I did get to experience the floppy swap dance many times before they brought in SEs with their dual floppy drives.

72

Oh God how I hate Macs. So, so much. We use them at work and it’s a constant uphill battle for me. I think I would be literally twice as efficient if I were on a PC.

Now, I’m willing to concede that Macs may be no inherently less intuitive than PCs. However, it is abundantly clear to me that if your “native” computer is a PC, Mac is a horrendous, impossible nightmare. Or I’m just an idiot.

Grievances:

It’s “pretty”? No. I don’t think it’s pretty at all. I think it’s busy, and stylistically agressive. Windows is Spartan and doesn’t make me feel nauseous. The best analogy I can draw is to picture frames: Mac OS is a flamboyant gilded frame that is fairly eye-catching, but completely overpowers any painting within it. Windows is a simple wooden frame; nothing special, but it does its job quietly.

No right click. Oh dear God. Oh dear God.

Weird symbols that make no sense; half the time when I go to check a hotkey one of its components is some sort of bizarre construction of lines that looks like a messed-up tidal wave. An intensive perusal of the keyboard reveals no such symbol. I feel like I’ve been told what this symbol is about two hundred times, and yet I can never remember. Maybe because it’s not on the keyboard.

Windows never actually maximize to full-screen size. This drives me fucking crazy. I hate the busy-ness of seeing tips and scraps of nineteen different windows dizzyingly snickering behind the one I’m working on. I hate the ambiguity of programs sharing the screen. In Windows, when a program is on, MMM FWAORF I’M ALL OVER YOUR SCREEN MMMMM. In Mac, when a program is on, unless you have an actual window or file open, all that lets you know it’s on is the fact that the top bar thing has its name on it. As far as I’m concerned, what I see is what is on. That the selected program can be ‘invisible’ and I’m actually looking at something else drives me nuts.

Toggling through different windows and apps is horrible. I know there are fifty cute hotkeys to manage this but I can’t ever remember any of them except F9. I could have written a novel in the time I’ve spent nauseatingly panning in and out of windows.

Everything is just too damn animated. I hate the bouncing icons. I hate the cyclone-ing windows. I hate the turning rainbow wheel.

I hate the opaque methods of worming your way through various folders, and how it seems completely different in every circumstance.

I hate how it is impossible to search for anything you need. Ever. Including help on how to work a fucking Mac.

Oh, how I hate Macs.

73

[QUOTE=Lama Pacos]
No right click. Oh dear God. Oh dear God.

Weird symbols that make no sense; half the time when I go to check a hotkey one of its components is some sort of bizarre construction of lines that looks like a messed-up tidal wave. An intensive perusal of the keyboard reveals no such symbol. I feel like I’ve been told what this symbol is about two hundred times, and yet I can never remember. Maybe because it’s not on the keyboard.

<snip>

I hate how it is impossible to search for anything you need. Ever.
[/QUOTE]

Of course there’s right-click! It’s the right button on your mouse. If you have a one-button mouse, get a two-button mouse (with a scroll wheel). Or just ctrl+click.

I think you might mean the Option key: ⌥ It kind of looks like an escalator to me. So as Shift lets you use the ‘upper-case’ part of the keys, the Option key takes you ‘up’ to a higher function of the key. (Thanks for mentioning that, BTW. I finally found how to make a ½, ⅓, ⅔, ¼, ¾, ⅕, ⅖, ⅗, ⅘, ⅙, ⅚, ⅛, ⅜, ⅝, ⅞ more easily than knowing the ALT code on a PC.)

Searching is easy if you don’t know where something is. Just open the Finder and type what you want.

74

[QUOTE=Lama Pacos]
It’s “pretty”? No. I don’t think it’s pretty at all. I think it’s busy, and stylistically agressive. Windows is Spartan and doesn’t make me feel nauseous. The best analogy I can draw is to picture frames: Mac OS is a flamboyant gilded frame that is fairly eye-catching, but completely overpowers any painting within it. Windows is a simple wooden frame; nothing special, but it does its job quietly.
[/QUOTE]

That’s just a matter of opinion, but I love the way OSX looks compared to Windows.

Yikes! Right-Clicking has been there forever. Where have you been?

There’s only 3 of them. Up Arrow is Shift. Clover is Command. And the Backward Square Root looking thing ( ⌥ ) is Option.

I actually like the transparency of the Mac apps. Most times, if I want to switch over to another app, I just click it in the background.

That’s Exposé, and it’s awesome. One of the best inventions ever. I can’t believe you’re dissing it!

f9 = Shrink All Windows
f10 = Shrink Windows in current App
f11 = Reveal Desktop

Set them to one of your mouse buttons, and you’ll be using it all the time.

The only thing that’s really animated is the minimizing Genie effect for the dock. Just turn it off.

I don’t even know what you mean. There’s 4 different ways to view your folder structure in the finder:

  1. Icon View
  2. List View
  3. Column View (My favorite)
  4. Cover Flow (comes in handy when browsing imagery)

Wow, the Mac has one of the most powerful search engines in any OS with Spotlight. I can’t even imagine why you would think that. And if you need help, every app has a Help menu, with a search field built right in the menu. Also, their Help App is very nice.

Weird.

75

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
In a misguided attempt to improve our lives, two of our sons went together and bought us a Mac a couple of years ago.

This computer has been a disaster for us. The only one who can work it is our 12-year-old, who uses Macs at school and knows all about them.

A friend of mine, who has a PC, says she prefers them and wishes she had a Mac instead of a PC. I asked her why. “More intuitive,” she said. “Easier to work with.”

Not for me. Example: On the PC I have a screen. In the upper RH corner are three little boxes. One is a dash, one is an X, and one is two overlapping boxes. If you mouse over, a pop-up tells you that the -sign is “minimize” the x is “exit” and so forth.

On the Mac, on the upper left, there are three circles of different colors. When you mouse-over…nothing. What do these do? Click them and find out! Probably it’s not what you wanted to do at all!

That is one example. Then there’s having multiple windows open and using Alt/Tab to switch among them. How do you do this on a Mac? I don’t know. How do you FIND OUT how to do this on the Mac? I don’t know that, either.

Well, those are two examples. I find nothing on the Mac to be intuitive. I’ve never used one in any office I’ve ever worked in, which probably contributes, somewhat (since I’m lazy and don’t learn things unless I need to). But I don’t remember any sort of learning curve on a PC. You need to know something, there is help. I just don’t see that the Mac is better at anything. Although my sons claim the Mac will outlast the PC by several years. (Probably true, since it’s the most rarely used computer in the house.)
[/QUOTE]

This is a perfect example of why there are more than one OS in the world. Hilarity N. Suze doesn’t find Macs intuitive or fun. Others do. Hilarity shouldn’t be expected to use a Mac, I shouldn’t be expected to use a PC. Neither platform is better than the other. They are however different. Wondering why is identical to wondering people are different. Rather than be puzzled, let us all rejoice that there are differences in this world!

As for why-in my case it is because of where I started. My first home computer was a Mac (the original 128K single-sided single drive Mac). I suspect that if I had purchased a PC back in the day, I would be typing this on a Windows machine.

76

I can’t really disagree with those refuting my points; that really should have been a Pit post on my part. That is, I don’t necessarily feel that they’re defendable other than as personal preference, but my frustration with Macs during the workday is so palpable that the venting was therapeutic. :slight_smile:

77

The green “maximize” button on Macs tries to guess how large your window needs to be rather than just filling your whole screen the way Windows does. I don’t need my whole window covered most of the time, and prefer the Mac way even though sometimes it guesses wrong. Easy to resize windows manually then, by grabbing the lower right-hand corner. Windows is all or nothing and you have to minimize it again to get access to your desktop.

78

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
The green “maximize” button on Macs tries to guess how large your window needs to be rather than just filling your whole screen the way Windows does. I don’t need my whole window covered most of the time, and prefer the Mac way even though sometimes it guesses wrong. Easy to resize windows manually then, by grabbing the lower right-hand corner. Windows is all or nothing and you have to minimize it again to get access to your desktop.
[/QUOTE]
No you don’t. Just click on the Restore button at the upper right of the application.

79

I use a MacBook with OSX–I think it’s Tiger. I love it, but realize, reading this, that I don’t really use it to its full capacity. One thing, though–their “support” is not very helpful. I have this Keychain issue right now that is bugging me. I tried Help and it didn’t fix the problem. I then posted a query on the Mac bb and got a BS answer–basically, try the Help menu type thing. I am now going to take it to an Apple store and ask.

Also, intuitive is in the eye of the beholder. I like the MacBook and the way it’s set up, but I bought Word for Macs and use that to produce documents. I like the drag and drop–I don’t want to have to remember the name of every file etc. I love my mightymouse–or did until the roller ball that let’s me scroll died. It has these cool buttons on the side, though, that let me look at all my open “windows” at once. And you gotta love the iPhotobooth…

Happy Mac user, but can see why some are not.

80

[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia]
No you don’t. Just click on the Restore button at the upper right of the application.
[/QUOTE]

Or the “show desktop” button in thew quick-launch bar, or ALT-TAB to a new window, or (in Vista) the “cascade windows” button (is that what it’s called?) in the quick-launch.

I I find it amusing that when us PCers make mention of the lack of right-click, we are told that all we have to do is go buy a two button mouse, change some stuff in the settings, and voila! Now you can right click! Really? That’s all I have to do? You know what I have to do with a PC? I just right click because my mouse and software are already configured with a right button (and probably a middle button in the form of clicking the scroll wheel that is also there by default, and odds are it has two to four side buttons, too.)