So I finally tried out apple

[Dark Metal]

I've not had any major problems adjusting to the differences...

[Nightshade]

Your point about me using one as I'd use the other is vacuous without any meaningful response to accompany it. I may as well have said:

"I tried out a 486 66 mhz machine the other day, and compared to my AMD 2ghz machine, I think it sucks.

This thread is silly, but Jules do you honestly think your statement here makes sense? MKJ's totally correct here and you try to respond by alleging a comparison between two things that are SEVERAL GENERATIONS APART. OSX and XP are current products of a similar type. He's not trying to say that you're using OSX like you would DOS.

[Grudge]

people who can't figure out and adapt to using both Windows and OS X are tards who probably should stay way from computers altogether

[saturn]

Now I've bought my second Mac cause I have formed the opinion that it just works better and takes away hours of tweaking, formatting, installing, defragmenting I had to do on my PC with XP.

You didn't have to do any of that shit, you chose to.

Buy a PC, it comes with XP on it. Put your name in, maybe a few network settings all in a wizard, and you're good to start.

Most of the brand boxes come with recovery boot options where you select an option and it rolls your PC back to factory settings.

If you spent hours defragging, formatting, installing and tweaking your PC, either you were fucking it up, bought a duff box, or are a complete sucker for making your life more complicated than it needed to be.

Nonsense, and you know it. How big is the pool of people who's computer's running like shite and that are asking you for help? My PC (with XP) is still running fine for years now, but it requires more maintenance. Most of the PC people have to deal with mundane tasks like defragmenting or cleaning up the registry. The few times Windows or XP simply crashed or accumulated shit in the registry have cost me hours of time. Hey, it wasn't that bad, it was part of the deal when you're using Windows (or so I thought). And I had a fast and quite stable system to run Quake III.

[saturn]

But it's so hard to use Windows!!!!1

No, but it could've been much more user-friendly. A granny shouldn't have to know about turning off Windows Zero configuration when she wants to set up her Wireless Lan. Of course this is different if you're an elitist snob.

p.s. I still use PCs daily at work

[+JuggerNaut+]

rofl, old folks have problems finding start menus - comparing that to setting up wifi? rofl, sure thing.

[saturn]

lol, i had to give some stupid example

[+JuggerNaut+]

YOU!

[Geebs]

WiFi is unnecessarily complex on Windows. Wtih Apple, "It Just Works"TM

[Tsakali_]

shit, so it all boils down to a fanboy argument on both ends.

and for the record I have found Xp to be considerably solid through and through , but then again i don't try to be a pioneer on running new software/hardware on it. As for user friendly I can't tell I've been using pc's for years so it's like second nature to me.. again I never used a mac so I don't know what I'm missing but when find something that I wish i could do with a pc and I can't then I'll consider one ( holy run on sentence batman!)

[R00k]

But it's so hard to use Windows!!!!1

No, but it could've been much more user-friendly. A granny shouldn't have to know about turning off Windows Zero configuration when she wants to set up her Wireless Lan. Of course this is different if you're an elitist snob.

p.s. I still use PCs daily at work

Maybe you just chose a bad example to try to make your point, but Wireless Zero Configuration is there specifically so old people can connect to wireless networks. Most times, when you install a wireless card in your computer, the software/driver that comes with it will turn off Windows' wireless auto-configuration and use their own instead. But most of the time I prefer to use the Windows configuration anyway, because it's usually simpler.

I know a lot of real idiots who love XP because it's so easy to use. Heck, as a technical person, my biggest complaint about XP is that it's geared too much toward people who don't enjoy technology and don't want to have to learn about it, and the workings of the system itself are obscured by simplified wizards -- in that respect it's closer to a Mac than any other OS in production, IMO.

Not that it shouldn't be that way -- making computers more accessible to a wider audience is a great goal -- but at least you have the option to turn those things off and see what's really going on, down to the minutest detail if you need to.

I'll definitely concede that there are a lot of instances where Microsoft would do well to take a chapter out of Apple's book (transferring all your data and settings from one computer to another is wonderfully easy AND reliable on newer Macs, for instance), but a lot of people make it sound like Windows is just so hard to use for technical laymen, when that's simply not the case. It used to be true, but things have changed.

Honestly, it seems to me that this point comes up so often because it's one of the last few, somewhat defensible reasons to have a Mac over a PC these days. (Obviously no one needs to defend their choice of personal computer, I'm not trying to imply that they should - I'm just talking about the times when conversations like this one do come up). Apple computers used to be a lot better at certain things than Windows PCs were (multimedia editing for example), but over time PCs have taken away a lot of those advantages by improving, catching up and competing. A lot of the Macs in my company have gone away over the last few years, because it's getting harder to justify spending so much money on a machine that can be functionally replaced for half the price (or less). It's also not true that Macs have to be worked on/serviced less than PCs do - at least in a company network environment.

I also personally think that's the reason that these conversations are coming up more frequently than they used to; because PCs have been encroaching on the Mac's bread and butter customers over the last few years. I don't know that for a fact -- I haven't looked at any market share numbers or anything, I'm just saying that from the perspective of my own company, because our industry has always been one of Apple's most reliable customers until the last few years, so I wouldn't be surprised if others were following the same trend.

[R00k]

WiFi is unnecessarily complex on Windows. Wtih Apple, "It Just Works"TM

Don't be silly -- it's one of the easiest things to do in computing.

Click the balloon that says "Wireless networks are available," click the one you want, then type the password and hit OK.

It "just works" on Windows XP.

[plained]

a scientific mind

[ajerara]

actually, Apple has been gaining back market share for it's computers over the past couple of years, especially since it moved to Intel processors. As far as enjoying a technical challenge, OS X is Unix, so if you like to tinker you can use Unix command lines in the Terminal.

[Dave]

WiFi is unnecessarily complex on Windows. Wtih Apple, "It Just Works"TM

Don't be silly -- it's one of the easiest things to do in computing.

Click the balloon that says "Wireless networks are available," click the one you want, then type the password and hit OK.

It "just works" on Windows XP.

Until a user changes their password on an 802.1x network and you have to go into their registry to manually delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Eapol\UserEapInfo key. Then you occasionally have to download a patch before XP will support WPA2. We've also had machines so badly fucked we've had to reinstall the TCP/IP stack. Then there's the list of crappy supplicants... Aegis, the new Cisco piece of crap (which is Aegis), the terrible Intel 2100 card (thank god those are disappearing), which never would have been created if Windows wireless support hadn't sucked.. So, yeah, if that's your definition of just working, then it works just awesome

The new GPO integration with Vista and wireless domain login, part of the Windows Server 2008 GPO template changes, is a step in the right direction, but XP was and remains terrible at reliable and easily configurable wireless.

[[xeno]Julios]

This thread is silly, but Jules do you honestly think your statement here makes sense? MKJ's totally correct here and you try to respond by alleging a comparison between two things that are SEVERAL GENERATIONS APART. OSX and XP are current products of a similar type. He's not trying to say that you're using OSX like you would DOS.

no you misunderstood my analogy. I'm saying that MKJ's point, which is that my problems arise from using OSX incorrectly, are as vacuous as someone saying "you're using the 486 incorrectly".

In the 486 vs AMD case, it'd be downright silly to say you're using the 486 incorrectly, since it's obvious that the 486 is inferior.

in the xp vs osx case, it's not downright silly to say that, but it is as vacuous to do so when the complainer has issued concrete points to complain about. MKJ did nothing to address the four points I made, and at least 2 of the points have nothing to do with using the OS in the wrong way.

[+JuggerNaut+]

sounds like apple tried you.

[[xeno]Julios]

1) The way Mac OS works is centered a lot on drag and drop. They expect you to drag stuff from a program or window into another. To go fullscreen on a lot of windows really isn't necessary and is actually a bit of a hindrance to workflow on OS X.

I spend a lot of time working with applications which don't have a fullscreen feature, and which I absolutely need proper fullscreen for. In Windows, you have the best of both worlds since you have the fullscreen button, and you have the cascade like button next to it which you can calibrate to your own preferences so that it only partially maximizes, if I want to drag and drop between windows.

2) Never had problems with finder. I don't really see the deal between 'type' and 'kind'. Either way on both OSes, I have no problem finding what I'm looking for.

Did you see my screenshots where I showed you how .m and .mat files were grouped together? That absolutely is a big deal for me. Now it may be the case that that example is due to sloppy programming by the matlab creators, in which case it's a moot point. I'm going to browse some more file types on monday to see if this problem is not simply a sloppy exception.

I personally think that OS X has a much superior search feature that finds exactly the file you're looking for. Windows is okay, but I find it slower.

No argument there - I've not yet tried the search feature, but the XP one sucks ass on many levels.

3) You can do the same in OS X. I guess you haven't found out how yet.

Please explain how. I've experimented ad nauseum with the key combinations, and have asked other mac users in the lab, and none of them can figure it out. Look at the image I posted with the multiple file groupings and read that post carefully.

4) The system preferences doesn't have a million different options because it simply doesn't need a million different options. Setting up a network in Windows for example, you need to do quite a few steps manually. Even the wizard takes a fair bit of 'next, next, next'. In OS X, all you need to do is open the networking window, setup the name of the network and password, and select enable file sharing. It does the rest for you and it does it well.

My gripe in system preferences came primarily from the sound configuration. Perhaps the rest of it is sufficiently comprehensive, but you'd be lying through your teeth if you said the sound config was sufficient.

[Dave]

sounds like apple tried you.

In Soviet Russia...

[obsidian]

Please explain how. I've experimented ad nauseum with the key combinations, and have asked other mac users in the lab, and none of them can figure it out. Look at the image I posted with the multiple file groupings and read that post carefully.

My gripe in system preferences came primarily from the sound configuration. Perhaps the rest of it is sufficiently comprehensive, but you'd be lying through your teeth if you said the sound config was sufficient.

In list view (you can do the same in any view, but you had list view in your screenshot) click and drag to select your first grouping of files. Then hold down the Apple button and click and drag to select your second grouping of files. Note, don't click and drag the actual file and name (that assumes you want to move the file into another folder or something), in the list view, click on the empty space to the right of the actual file. In folder view, this works exactly the same as it would in Windows, just use the Apple key instead of Shift.

Handy screenshot:


What exactly are you trying to configure in your sound options. I personally haven't found much of a need to tweak anything specifically in either Windows or Mac. If there's something specific you are trying to do, let me know and I'll see if I can find an answer for you.

[[xeno]Julios]

awesome - thx - will try it tomorrow. I actually never tried using the mouse to drag to select files - rather i'd just hold down the apple button and click on the first file, and then the last one. Will try your method by dragging in the empty area.

as for sound tweaks, there are a few issues:

1) turning off user interface sounds doesn't get rid of all sounds. There are still annoying little beeps when certain events occur.

2) There's no option to turn off that annoying bootup sound without muting or disabling the speakers (you can get third party addon to do it properly, but it's an example of OSX's personality that it doesn't allow you to do this by default).

3) You can't customize which sounds are turned off and on (though you can do this via unix command line tweaks).

[shadd_]

i just noticed vista lets you set volume levels for system and any running application with a click of the speaker icon.

neato!

[MKJ]

in os9 and below, you could simply turn off all sounds. the menubar would flash in case of a beep.

the bootupchime requires some sort of hack indeed. thats more part of macs equiv of the bios that the os tho. comparable to the winxp logo & blue bar before the desktop shows.

or, maybe even comparable to the pc speaker beep tho those arent used much anymore

[Doombrain]

if you don't like it, don't fucking use it.

[Doombrain]