Apple Why do you like Apple's soo much?

OSX, great operating system that is easy to use and powerful and then you can just open up terminal and use Unix. You have all the power of a Unix system right under the fancy looking GUI.

Plus my powerbook has great battery life, it's compact (12") so I can take it anywhere I go. Has everything I need in one little package.

I have a PC which I use every day, it's not that I don't use my PC now that I have a mac. I will use the machine that is closest to hand or most suitable for a job.

Managing servers is far more enjoyable on the mac as you can open lots of Terminal sessions sshing into where ever. On the pc you have to install something like putty which isn't as user friently as the Terminal app.

Also I can run almost anything that runs on linux/unix and Xwindow apps under X11..

 

I think what most people like about macs (OSX, not other ones) is that they rarely slow down - I mean on my pcs, they occasionally loose themselves in their own thoughts for like a quarter of a second... sounds stupid, I know, but on osx that doesn't happen, so it feels better. If OS X does get stuck, you know about it -- you get a massive crash, and everything breaks and it switches off. At least thats what happens when I use the school emacs.

The reason I dont have a mac though is that you can't really mix and match parts from old ones, and they are crap at networking compared to windows: with some friends, we set up a network with 5 pcs in about 10 minutes, and file sharing, games, everything worked. Tried to add a mac however, and the control panel on it was horrible -- everything was mixed up, and when i did find the correct dialogs, I couldn't get the mac to see the pcs' shared files or the other way round. The mac could ping the pcs fine, but they couldnt ping it, even with samba and everything turned on. I gave up after an hour.

Anyway, that's my rant...
ch424

 

For me its how so many features are *seamlessly* integrated into OSX. Take address book and bluetooth for example. I bought a cheap USB bluetooth dongle, plugged it in and hit a few keys then 'connect' in address book. OSX took all my contacts and synced them, and i can send txts from my ibook straight away! When i tried to use the same dongle on my XPpro machine, it took about half an hour of setting up and installing new software.

OSX is one of those things what has to be used to appreciate how nice it is, performance and funcionality-wise, its on par with windows XP (IMO), its just cleaner, more reliable and just NICER. Its also hard to explain :/

Also contrary to popular opinion, macs can play games. I have halo, quake3, UT2003 and age of empires 2 all running on laptop and its not even high spec (OK theyre not new games but ssh, im too mean to buy new ones).

 

Ok, right now my computer is running Windows 98 SE (it's an old computer, no money) and I can navigate around it very quickly. Well whenever I say go on my sister's Dell (yuck) I have trouble moving around on XP, believe it or not, I find too difficult to navigate without turning classic mode on. But first time I was on OS X, I moved around it quickly, if not faster then Win98. All Mac OS store their information upfront,(click on hdd icon, bam all your files right there) not hidden like windows can be. It's very easy to switch over to and easy to use. No messing with drivers and all this 3rd party software, it's all there for you already! If you want to get pictures off your digital camera, just plug it in and pops up the iPhoto and all you need to do is hit import button and all your images are downloaded to the computer.

 

Same for me on XP, I just plug in the camera up pops MS scanner and camera thingie and one click has my picture downloaded to the PC (no additional drivers or software required)

 

No, yoda, you're 100% right. For everyday usage there really isn't much difference capability wise. If you just browse the net, do email, chat and whatever, you're best off keeping with Windows. Plus with windows to state the obvious you've got all the games available to you.

OS X is nicer to use though - no doubt. Everything is just right there - there's 10 times more clicking involved to do most tasks with windows than OS X. Screen space is used far more efficiently, and expose is just the best way to switch windows ever. Installing stuff consists of one click and drag operation. Uninstalling is the reverse.

The advantages I get from OS X for my usage is solely the fact that it is built on Unix. It gives me all the things I wanted from linux but without the hassle of maintaining a linux system.

 

Networking has been a doddle for me on the mac ch424. Maybe you were overlooking something.

 

Just been looking over OS-X at the apple website, and I'm pretty impressed.
Exposé looks so good, need something like that on Windows, also smart folder what a great idea.

One question I have, when you have a window maximised does the taskbar at the bottom cover part of the page if not minimised, cos that was something I found annoying when trying objectbar on windows.

 

maximised windows tend to sit just above the taskbar (usually called the dock) unless you move them. its not a problem I have, but if its something that bothers you then you can set the dock to minimise when not in use.

 

Expose is fantastic. Although my love of the F11 key jumping to the desktop stems from using the Desktop function in XP's Quicklaunch bar, using F9 to display all your running items is a godsend when you are running 100 things at once. Very handy.

Do you mean the dock? If so, anything that is maximised naturally doesn't go behind the dock, but expands to it instead. But you can move stuff behind there if you like. Or you could hide the dock to utilise the screen more efficiently. Or you could even have the dock on the left or right of the screen completely out the way.

I find that when I'm doing graphics work on the laptop's display space is at a premium so it helps to hide the dock or stick it to one of the sides.

 

Heh, found a program that does the same on windows, WinPlosion works a treat, just need to find something that does smart folders.

edit : I think I have found a Windows equivelent to smart folders, going to give it a try Blinkx 2

edit 2 : WinPlosion even works well over dual screen

 

I don't like all that fade/swish crap the windows do when you open and close them or making them fade to about 10% transparency when they loose focus for no particular reason other than making it almost impossible to read, which brings me on to the next point.

Why does the screen look fully anti-aliased? I mean reading anything in a low res for any length of time makes my eyes hurt. Granted its just like cleartype in Windows, but at least you can just switch it off.

 

What’s up with all that cheap crappy white plastic? Titanium, yes (anything to justify the bloated price) but white kiddy plastic? No thanks.

 

It's not just plastic, it's polycarbonate plastic, same as bullet proof glass. It's very tough. And it actually looks decent, like on the eMacs, they're pretty good looking.

 

fade/swish crap open and close windows? umm, not really, thats instant, the only real swish effect is when you send a window to the dock, and it's so quick it's really not worth talking about
No idea what you on about with the windows going transparent when they loose focus, the titlebars went down to about 80% in jaguar and older, but thats about it,

the top one is from my PC, and the bottom my mac



And if you don't like it on small text you can use the following menu



And as far as i know, theres no other anti-aliasing in the gui could be wrong there tho

 

Well, although I personally wouldn't want it turned off above around 10pt you can set the font smoothing to be turned off for a set amount of type sizes between 4pt and 12pt.

 

Does it update the windows when they're in Exposé mode?

 

Nah, its more like a static screenshot

 

well in are newspaper class we have assorted G3 to G5 including some G5 eMacs. Simply put those machines even on a fresh copy of OSx still lock up at least once a day. My pc at home however has the same install of SP1 since i built it a year ago and it rarly crashes. I use the same applications (Photoshop Cs/7, Indesign, ect.) but the macs crash alot more (and dont say i dont know how to use them ). We have tried different settings ect. but to no avail. My pc (2500 barton) seems to be just up with the power of opening programs and running them just as fast as are low end G5's and it cost less than the G5's. Dont get me wrong, Macs have there place but I hate it when Mac and linux people say there OS is the best in the world but i beg to see it in the real world. Im bascily the only tech guy in our newspaper staff that doesnt run linux as a main OS. I dont know why i dont use linux maybe its just because all my software runs on XP and linux is a b**** to work with. On OSx I do like the dock at the bottom and i even have a program called Object dock which creats this in windows. I can put a HD drive icon at the bottom of the screen so i dont have to use My computer to acess it. If they could make OSx a bit more mainstream in would probably become more widly used but apple sells there hardware at rediculous prices. $1,499 dollers for a low end G5 that only has 256mb of ram and a Fx5200?


//rant off

 

What's this automator thing, is it a macro builder?