Why are Mac people so evangelical?

[EllisDee]

@AHunter3

Oh, and when I want to save something, I go Command-S, which works in every single application, and I can do it a lot faster than you can mouse over to a toolbar icon, regardless of where it’s located

Agree 100%, and please, feel free to call me Ellis.

Okay, so using your example of BBEdit (or whatever it’s called), let’s say those two windows are actual word processing documents. And now lets’ say I want to change the line spacing on the upper document to double spacing, and the lower document to single spacing. Let’s also assume, being the Mac, I want to use the mouse, and because it’s a Mac that let’s me do things however I want, I can.

Where am I moving the mouse to in order to change the line spacing in the upper document? Somewhere in that window’s client area? Now for the lower document. Same deal?

Or am I moving to a different, third location for both in order to do more advanced, non-hotkey-intuitive functions?

And as I said, it’s easy to bypass the MDI interface in Windows by simply opening multiple instances of the application. The drawback is that you will be wasting screen space by displaying multiple copies of the menus and toolbars.

I see that you mention this wated screen space in the XP picture. Now, since I don’t really know FileMaker, I can’t say for sure whether or not it allows multiple instances to run simultaneously. If it does not, blame the FileMaker programmers; XP has no reason why you can’t. You are correct, however, that due to XP, you are forced to waste screen space (needlessly, in XP’s opinion) if you want to emulate the Mac “minimalist” windows.

But then again, since there don’t appear to be mouse-enabled extended functions in those windows, you could always turn off the toolbars and menus in your application to get a truer emulation. (Not that there’s anything right with that, hehheh.)

[Loopydude]

For me it’s more a desire to help, quite frankly. I see people I know struggle with a POS Wintel box, and I feel compelled to suggest they get a Mac. I make that suggestion because I own a couple, and I simply do not have the problems these people do. It’s like watching a a dear friend bash his or her head against a brick wall, and then they come asking you to fix their head. Naturally, you’re happy to apply the bandages, but you also feel something of a moral duty to point out the problem may continue so long as they keep hurling themselves head-first against the wall. You worry they’ll come to grief.

Well, one person who I practically begged to get a Mac is my father. He finally made the switch when a virus he caught destroyed all of the digital pictures he took of my wedding. I’m not joking. Everything on the hard-drive, and his backups, gone. He runs his own business. I bet he probably lost a week of man-hours for every eight he put into in, just on computer issues. It was never-ending. I simply couldn’t understand why he kept putting up with it, and I finally got to the point I had to refuse to give him more free tech support. Boy was he pissed at me for that. But what else could I do? I was an enabler in any other capacity.

So finally he got burned in his heart instead of his wallet, and that did it. I really, really wish he had taken my advice sooner. If he never had any problems, I never would have bothered him with the notion of a Mac. It’s that simple. I don’t tell people who are highly computer literate to switch. They can handle Wintel deficiencies tolerably well, and thus reap the benefits of aspects of the Wintel platform that are clearly superior to the Mac platform. But hey, if your PC is causing you pain, and you keep coming to me for help because of it, seems only reasonable I’d suggest something that will cure the problem, vs. putting a bandaid on compound fracture once a week.

[AHunter3]

Ellis:

Okay, so using your example of BBEdit (or whatever it’s called), let’s say those two windows are actual word processing documents. And now lets’ say I want to change the line spacing on the upper document to double spacing, and the lower document to single spacing. Let’s also assume, being the Mac, I want to use the mouse, and because it’s a Mac that let’s me do things however I want, I can.

Where am I moving the mouse to in order to change the line spacing in the upper document? Somewhere in that window’s client area? Now for the lower document. Same deal?

Or am I moving to a different, third location for both in order to do more advanced, non-hotkey-intuitive functions?

Well, BBEdit, being a text processor, does not itself have line spacing, but swapping to a word processor instead…

I click the line-space widget in the window I’m working in.. It’s right there.

[EllisDee]

@AHunter3

Well, BBEdit, being a text processor, does not itself have line spacing, but swapping to a word processor instead…

I click the line-space widget in the window I’m working in.. It’s right there.

Ah, thanks for that, that explains it perfectly.

For any Mac users who agree that this is a notable advantage Macs have over PCs, I’d state it as “Macs make more efficient use of screen space.” Seeing the evidence, I can’t dispute the claim. Windows has always been a bit clunky when using screen space.

Just for my edification, is there any feature at all that cannot be accessed by a toolbar button? Assuming there is, pretend I said that feature instead of line spacing. Now what would the answer to the original question be? (Do you go to the window’s client space to access that feature?)

Is it just a toggle button to turn the toolbars/menus on and off? If so, then yeah, that’s pretty friggin’ cool.

[Skywatcher]

@AHunter3

Ellis Dee:

Either I’m not following you or you’re not following me.

Mac: no MDI

Windows: MDI

I’ve actually included 3 types of Windows windows […checks sentence, decides it’s as coherent as it’s going to get]…umm, 3 kinds of Windows windows that are not MDI-compliant, and you can see how much easier it is to position them in relationship to the windows of other apps compared to the windows of the two MDI-compliant apps in this example.

You are aware that you can tile all open Windows with two clicks, right?

[AHunter3]

Just for my edification, is there any feature at all that cannot be accessed by a toolbar button? Assuming there is, pretend I said that feature instead of line spacing. Now what would the answer to the original question be? (Do you go to the window’s client space to access that feature?)

If you didn’t have a button on the document window and you did not know the keystroke shortcut, you would go to the menu bar. The Macintosh menu bar is modal — there’s always one of them, and only one of them, and it’s always at the top of the main screen. (If Excel is the active app, the menus are Excel’s menus. Click on a Photoshop document window and the menus in the menubar switch to Photoshop’s menus. Referring back to the Windows screenshot, you can see that for the non-MDI apps, the menus are always where the documents are — less of a reach with the mouse than on the Mac (at least in many cases), but at the expense of many menus taking up screen real estate. Whereas with WordPerfect, the MDI app on the left with two open document windows, if you wanted to invoke a menu command to apply to the lower of the two documents, you’d have to go all the way up to the top of the application window to get to where the menus are, so it’s the MDI compliant apps that are again the worst of the lot.

Is it just a toggle button to turn the toolbars/menus on and off? If so, then yeah, that’s pretty friggin’ cool.

Well, that depends on the individual application. AppleWorks lets you hide the ruler and other overhead doohickeys using Command-Shift-U. The Finder lets you hide the side and top widgets using command-T or by clicking a widget that hides extraneous crap. My web browser has the same widget and hides the Back-Forward-Reload-etc buttons and the address bar. Excel puts its various buttons on a series of button bars each of which has a standard close-window widget (but to get it back you have to select it in the menu). So it’s only semi-cool, because it’s one of the handful of things for which there isn’t a standard Macintosh convention.

I should add, as an aside, that screen real estate is important to me, and things that chew it up are among my pet peeves. You’ll notice the complete lack of the famous Macintosh Dock in all these screen shots. Also no huge honking 64 x 64 icons.

But the MDI thing is a real problem (or would be if I used Windows). I don’t spend all day with document windows from 4 or 5 applications strewn around the screen and needing to view them simultaneously while editing them sequentially, but I do need to do that several times per month. I’ll have an email from someone requesting a change, a PDF of the field definitions in the file I’m editing, a BBEdit window to jot notes in, and the FileMaker Script Editor open, and I’ll genuinely need to be able to view them all concurrently. I use two screens at work, so it’s less crowded than these screen shots are, but if anything the MDI format is more ruinous to the flexibilitiy of multiple monitors. With two monitors it becomes very feasible to have one PDF on one screen, a FileMaker layout to its right, and off on the second monitor another PDF followed by a different FileMaker file in layout mode showing the field names and positions. MDI just eats that alive because you can’t intersperse your document windows.

[EllisDee]

@AHunter3

The Macintosh menu bar is modal — there’s always one of them, and only one of them, and it’s always at the top of the main screen. (If Excel is the active app, the menus are Excel’s menus. Click on a Photoshop document window and the menus in the menubar switch to Photoshop’s menus.

Gotcha. Not a bad feature. I don’t see it as a big deal, but I can certainly understand that if I were accustomed to it, I would be annoyed in a Windows environment.

But the MDI thing is a real problem (or would be if I used Windows). I don’t spend all day with document windows from 4 or 5 applications strewn around the screen and needing to view them simultaneously while editing them sequentially, but I do need to do that several times per month. I’ll have an email from someone requesting a change, a PDF of the field definitions in the file I’m editing, a BBEdit window to jot notes in, and the FileMaker Script Editor open, and I’ll genuinely need to be able to view them all concurrently.

Been there, done that, and quite frankly, the best Windows approach involves printing out a hardcopy. hehheh.

I use two screens at work, so it’s less crowded than these screen shots are, but if anything the MDI format is more ruinous to the flexibilitiy of multiple monitors. With two monitors it becomes very feasible to have one PDF on one screen, a FileMaker layout to its right, and off on the second monitor another PDF followed by a different FileMaker file in layout mode showing the field names and positions. MDI just eats that alive because you can’t intersperse your document windows.

I disagree. As I’ve said, you could just open two instances of the PDF viewer. Problem solved. (Though it does eat up extra space with the multiple toolbars and menus, as previously noted.)

Btw, I’m digging the clean borders on the Mac windows. Unless maximized, (and even sometimes in maximized windows as well,) Windows chews up a lot of decorative space. Mildly annoying, that.

[EllisDee]

@Lute Skywatcher

You are aware that you can tile all open Windows with two clicks, right?

While that’s always been an available feature in Windows, I have yet to see it perform satisfactorily in any situation I’ve run across that warranted its use.

[Skywatcher]

@Ellis Dee

Btw, I’m digging the clean borders on the Mac windows. Unless maximized, (and even sometimes in maximized windows as well,) Windows chews up a lot of decorative space. Mildly annoying, that.

I have an XP theme that mimics Panther, right down to the little Apple icon in place of “Start”.

[EllisDee]

@Lute Skywatcher

I have an XP theme that mimics Panther, right down to the little Apple icon in place of “Start”.

Now that is the first useful application of themes I’ve ever heard.

Themes in general drive me batshit. One of the more annoying aspects of writing Windows programs is checking the appearance of them in a random sampling of themes, color schemes, and font sizes/DPI settings.

[Skywatcher]

If anyone wants their XP to look like Panther, it comes bundled with StyleXP.

[AHunter3]

You could install that theme on an XP box, put it close to your Mac-using coworker’s station, and switch all the USB and video cables…

[rjung]

@Ellis Dee

Themes in general drive me batshit.

Ditto. Despite what people may claim, it is possible to theme MacOS X with third-party tools like Shapeshifter. I occasionally get the urge to try them, but inevitably throw them out a week later because I find the themes too gimmicky for prolonged use.