Mac - 'It just works.' Bullshit.

[Kitsune]

I decided to post over here so as not to clutter up shild's virus thread with shop talk about macs.

I own an iBook, the last model before they went Intel on the processors.  I own an iPod nano for all of my musicing needs.  I am, by most measurements, a fairly reliable Apple customer.  Not one of the hardcore who buys everything they sell, but I have a fair amount of their hardware.

That said, their whole, 'oh, our stuff just works great and will give you a blowjob while making the intertubes bring you porn' spiel is LIES.  Pure lies.  I, as a network admin and all-around competent computer user, can handle a macintosh just fine, no problems.  But then, I can handle linux, so that doesn't say a lot.

What does say a lot is that I did a short contract job for an elderly couple to get their iMac set up for them.  I arrived at their house, found a great big iMac sitting there, the larger model of the series, along with a printer, a digital camera, and a .mac subscription box.  The latter confused me, so I held it up and asked, "Why did you get this?"

"The man at the Apple store included it."
"Oh, so they threw it in for free?" .oO(Because free is all this thing is worth, but at least nice of them to give it away...)
"Well, no, but they said we needed it to back up the computer online."
"They said what?" .oO(Back up on the shitty ten megs they offer with this useless service?!)
"They said we can back up our computer online with this."
"Well, technically, yes, as long as you aren't trying to back up much content."

I was annoyed from the get-go that some asshole in the apple store had conned these oblivious old people into buying a hundred buck online service package that they had absolutely no need for.  If he wanted to upsell, he should have upsold the extended warranty, which might have actually been useful at some point.

I keep that observation to myself, though, and start setting up the computer for them.  Everything goes smoothly enough.  The Verizon DSL installation disk doesn't work, of course, keeping up with the 50% failure rate that shitty program has on PCs, but thankfully you can connect to Verizon's servers on unregistered DSL modems and do the installation that way, now.  Printer works fine.  Digital camera doesn't work.

Digital camera that the Apple store people sold with the computer didn't work.  Trying to use iPhoto to get the images out of the camera will download just one or two images, then time out.  After checking around some forums, find out that several other people are having the same problem, so I just switch iPhoto out for the HP photo application which does manage to work.

I go to tackle e-mail next.  'Just works?'  Oh no, not when you're old and don't know the first thing about e-mail.  Outlook Express, one of the worst e-mail clients ever, has a more intuitive setup wizard than iMail.  For iMail, I actually had to hunt down some vital settings that were nowhere to be found on the first page of the options window.  When a network admin has to click around searching for where to enter SMTP settings, what chance does a neophyte have?  And iMail kept 'helpfully' overwriting the settings with those of the .mac accounts, when the people wanted to use the Verizon mailboxes for their mail.

I finally got that working, then tried for a while to explain to them how one gets updates for macs.  "Okay, go to your Applications folder, then the Utilities folder, then double-click on the disk tools.  Run a permission fix on the disk.  Then update your computer from the apple menu.  Then go back to the disk tools and run another permission fix."  I was clearly speaking a foreign language at that point, so I changed it to, "If you see a bouncy blue arrow icon on the bar down here, run it."  Of course, updating a mac without running the permission fixes is liable to cause some problems, but this couple clearly wasn't going to be able to handle filesystem maintenance.

When I left their house, I was considerably less happy with Apple than when I arrived.  While to me, macs are easy to use, I hadn't fully grasped before then that a computer-ignorant person can't even handle that much; to them a mac is just as much a mystery box of evil spirits as windows.  It's just covered up in more shiny gloss.

The moral of this story?

In the hands of a competent user, a mac is no better than windows.  In the hands of an incompetent user, the mac won't get infected by the spyware of the week, but the user will still get an e-mail saying that their bank desperately needs them to log on to fix a financial problem, and the next week all of their money will mysteriously vanish.  One way or another, the incompetent user is gonna get fucked.  The competent user can find and install software to take care of what they need to do in either OS.  The incompetent user doesn't know how to find or use the software installed with the OS, and is afraid to click on it in any event.

And most importantly, the best games simply aren't gonna work as well on the mac.  Sure, you can boot a mac into XP now, but last I checked, macs aren't shipping with geforce 8800s inside.  For the cost of a macintosh with a decent video card, you could build a PC with a fantastic video card and still have money for liquor.

[naum]

/agree on the .mac, it's a waste of money and worse, some folks have reported that Apple is auto adding it to purchases, and people are confused, thinking they got it for free (though there is a free trial period).

As far as the other criticisms, I offer as a counter-example my wife's experience, who would never be able to do the following on Windows machines:

* Upload photos from digital camera (it just works on her iMac, and our other macs, and has worked without a  hitch for three different cameras).

* Rip and burn music.

* No hassle wireless access

Granted, she still gets confused about the close app vs. close window deal, especially in Finder where she clicks the 'X' and forgets how to get the window back (Cmd+N or clicking in the file menu…). Or in mail, she accidentally clicks on the little rectangle button that hides the toolbar and forgets that by clicking it again, toolbar will redisplay).

The .mac setup probably also borked the mail setup -- I've never had a problem setting up multiple emails.

As far as system updates go, again, don't see what the problem is there --- they run automatically (at least she is prompted) once a week and I've never had to fiddle with permissions (other than the global keychain dialog confirm popup that sometimes happens after a core OS upgrade)…

But I will concede that Macs in post OS X world are not as simple as they once were…

[WindupAtheist]

I remember Time magazine had a glowing cover article about the iMac years ago.  I fired off an email to them that basically amounted to "It's hideously overpriced and underpowered, who cares what kind of software it has for sorting photos? Just put them in a folder!" and to my surprise they printed it.  It was the high-water mark of opinion-spewing on my part.

Yeah, I dunno.  My parents manage to operate their PC on a day-to-day basis without difficulty.  My dad even got his digital camera working without any outside help.  What's the big deal?

[Kitsune]

/agree on the .mac, it's a waste of money and worse, some folks have reported that Apple is auto adding it to purchases, and people are confused, thinking they got it for free (though there is a free trial period).

Well, I can confirm that Apple is indeed adding it to purchases, having seen the proof with my own eyes.

As far as the other criticisms, I offer as a counter-example my wife's experience, who would never be able to do the following on Windows machines:

* Upload photos from digital camera (it just works on her iMac, and our other macs, and has worked without a  hitch for three different cameras).

* Rip and burn music.

* No hassle wireless access

Ripping and burning music is pretty stupidly simple in Media Player, if your wife can click on the 'rip music' button in iTunes she should be able to click it in Media Player, too.  And the hassle for wireless access is on the router's end, not so much the computer end.  Most of the customers I've dealt with can't figure out how to get into the router and find out what the encryption key is, they never even get far enough to worry about how to enter it into the computer.

As for photos, I can't really speak about digital camera experiences, as I don't own one and haven't often used them.

The .mac setup probably also borked the mail setup -- I've never had a problem setting up multiple emails.

You haven't, but do you think your wife could do it?  I didn't have a problem with the mail, but knew that my customers wouldn't be able to set it up if they had a manual and a hundred years.

As far as system updates go, again, don't see what the problem is there --- they run automatically (at least she is prompted) once a week and I've never had to fiddle with permissions (other than the global keychain dialog confirm popup that sometimes happens after a core OS upgrade)…

You should run a permission fix both before and after an update, as occasionally a system permission problem will fuck the update and make the computer start acting screwy.  Fairly common knowledge if you hang around mac user tech forums, but not known so much among the non-geeks.  You'd be wise to fire up the disk tools and go through a permission fix, it may save you a hassle down the road.

[Murgos]

* Upload photos from digital camera (it just works on her iMac, and our other macs, and has worked without a  hitch for three different cameras).

I don't get this.  If you're having problems uploading photos from your camera in windows just quit using any utilities at all.  Open the camera in explorer the way you do any other folder and drag and drop your images to where you want them.  Usually the act of plugging the camera in brings up the explorer window.

99% of the time when you get a new gadget and it comes with an 'installation' disk you are better off using the installation disk to snort coke off of than actually putting it in your computer.  If it really needs a special driver these days you can get JUST the driver off the internet and count yourself lucky that you managed to avoid dealing with some clunky, hacked together piece of shit software 'utility' that runs at boot, sits in your memory and does nothing 99.999% of the time and that when you do try and use it makes your life a living hell.

But what do I know?  I'm a power user and things that are obvious to me are esoteric and strange to others.

[bhodi]

99% of the time when you get a new gadget and it comes with an 'installation' disk you are better off using the installation disk to snort coke off of than actually putting it in your computer.

Truer words were never spoken. This goes double for anything relating to or connecting to the internets.

I cringe when I go to family and friends' computers and see 47 hotbar icons.

[Roac]

As far as the other criticisms, I offer as a counter-example my wife's experience, who would never be able to do the following on Windows machines:

* Upload photos from digital camera (it just works on her iMac, and our other macs, and has worked without a  hitch for three different cameras).

* Rip and burn music.

* No hassle wireless access

I can't speak for your wife, but neither my wife, my mother, or my female friends have any trouble doing these things on a Windows PC.  The only exception I know of would be my step-mother, who has difficulty even using a digital camera (but then, she is the only person I know who comes close to being techno-phobic).  The UI in both OSes has gotten to the point that if you can learn one, you can learn the other.  Both have occational technical hiccups that can make normally seamless things become difficult.   

[Righ]

I am, by most measurements, a fairly reliable Apple customer.

After reading your rant full of misconceptions, I find this unlikely. Maybe you just buy your Macs as pretty decorations however. Bashing Macs here won't change the world. But good luck.

[schild]

He's not trying to change the world. Even my redneck (super redneck) dad finds PCs easier than Mac OSX. And the only computer he'd EVER used before that was an LCII.

[Righ]

C'mon it wasn't even founded in reality. I'm not going to bother with a point by point rebuttal, but there was so much barking mad bullshit in there, it was an obvious draw post.

[naum]

The following summarizes my thoughts…

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20070405.html

The problem is a lack of respect for the consumer. The manufacturers don’t act as if the computer belongs to you. They act as if it is a billboard for restricted trial versions of software and ads for Web sites and services that they can sell to third-party companies who want you to buy these products.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/april#fri-06-mossberg

Apple is the one and only PC maker that sees the first-run experience as an opportunity to make you happy, rather than as an opportunity to make a few bucks by showing you ads and stuffing trialware down your throat.

[naum]

Microsoft is Dead

The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.

And in a followup reply from Graham:
http://programming.reddit.com/info/1gd49/comments/c1gi08

Basically, I hang around with people who are good programmers. I realize this is not a random cross section of computer users. But it is a disproportionately important subset, because what they use, other people will be using later. These were the people who were using microcomputers in 1980; now everyone is; the people who were using email in 1988; now everyone is; the people who were using the Web in 1995; now everyone is; etc etc.

More fuel for the fire… :)

[Morfiend]

C'mon it wasn't even founded in reality. I'm not going to bother with a point by point rebuttal, but there was so much barking mad bullshit in there, it was an obvious draw post.

I have to agree with Righ. I admin for an office with over 100 Macs, and a lot of that is ether bad luck, or trolling mac users.

[Strazos]

/waits for Surlyboi to appear.

[raydeen]

Here's a question for the Mac'cers here: Why can't I properly use FTP on a Mac? I have FTP enabled and am able to FTP into my Mac, but not the other way. If I want to transfer files I have to FTP from a Windows or Linux box into the Mac. I can't go the other way. If I try, I get the message that the contents of the remote drive/folder can't be modified. I don't get it. This became a bit of a pain when I switched from sending CDs to the yearbook company to FTP'ing the completed pages. I had to FTP from the Mac to the PC via the PC, then FTP from the PC to the remote server. Am I missing something really basic here? Yes, I suppose I could investigate other means of file transfers but FTP is the one common protocol that works with everything in my house and the intarweb.

I sometimes think Apple is different not because it's any better than whats already in place, but just because they can be different. I think the only two things I like about Macs right now are Target Disk mode and Expose.

[Kitsune]

C'mon it wasn't even founded in reality. I'm not going to bother with a point by point rebuttal, but there was so much barking mad bullshit in there, it was an obvious draw post.

Then step right up with a single point, just one.  Because everything I described happened exactly as I described it, about six months ago on a brand spanking new OS 10.4 machine.  I'd be fascinated to find out just what part of my day with that machine didn't actually occur.

[Kitsune]

Okay, here is a tech forum FAQ from Applenova about needing to run permission repairs after updates. 

Repairing permissions:

If your computer begins to act strangely, the first thing you should do is repair your permissions. You should also repair your permissions on a regular basis, particularly after software updates or installs, even if nothing seems wrong.

Open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app), select your hard-drive, switch to the 'First Aid' tab and press "Repair Disk Permissions."

And here is a blog post describing the same problem in iPhoto that I experienced.

iPhoto is slow, and crashes just about every time I download photos from my digital camera. No, it's not my camera, I connected three different models, from different manufactures, and it crashes regardless. The photos get downloaded, but somehow when it's time to close the connection between it and the camera, it freezes. I have to Force Quit it. Also, when I use it to browse my photos, it'll crash unexpectedly and close. It does this every once in a while. Shouldn't it be more stable than this?

I'm still looking for a description of similar issues with .mac being a bitch about forcing itself to be the default mail account.  Since I don't use it myself, I can't just fire up my laptop and take screenshots, as much as I'd like to.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention, while I was trying to show off iTunes to them as an example of what their great computer can do, I put in a Beatles CD, which promptly locked the application and forced me to force quit it.

[Edit: Oop, I did fuck up on the .mac storage quota, though.  It's one gig.  Still completely insufficient for a backup solution, but rather more than ten megs.  My mistake.]

[Sky]

iPhoto sucks, I use image capture and make my own folders.

I don't use MSPaint, either.

I've never crashed iTunes, nor has it crashed for any users on our network, even after hundreds of cds have been added to the collective. Congrats!

In short, macs are computers. Computers aren't toasters.

You fix windows machines by the hour, it's the best way to get paid for working in windows imo. Generally I find most tasks take about twice as long when I'm working on a windows machine compared to the macs, and it's generally easier on the macs, to boot. I don't care about what computer I'm using, I want the one that gets the job done quickly and easily, I'll leave it to the format warriors to argue it out. In over seven years in a mixed environment, I'm all about the mac for 95% of everything we do.

[naum]

Here's a question for the Mac'cers here: Why can't I properly use FTP on a Mac? I have FTP enabled and am able to FTP into my Mac, but not the other way. If I want to transfer files I have to FTP from a Windows or Linux box into the Mac. I can't go the other way. If I try, I get the message that the contents of the remote drive/folder can't be modified. I don't get it. This became a bit of a pain when I switched from sending CDs to the yearbook company to FTP'ing the completed pages. I had to FTP from the Mac to the PC via the PC, then FTP from the PC to the remote server. Am I missing something really basic here? Yes, I suppose I could investigate other means of file transfers but FTP is the one common protocol that works with everything in my house and the intarweb.

Applications -> Terminal

man ftp

man scp

Or alternately, there is a Firefox extension "FireFTP" or you can DL Cyberduck -- which is a GUI FTP client that also supports SSH/SFTP…

[Kitsune]

iPhoto sucks, I use image capture and make my own folders.

I don't use MSPaint, either.

I've never crashed iTunes, nor has it crashed for any users on our network, even after hundreds of cds have been added to the collective. Congrats!

In short, macs are computers. Computers aren't toasters.

You fix windows machines by the hour, it's the best way to get paid for working in windows imo. Generally I find most tasks take about twice as long when I'm working on a windows machine compared to the macs, and it's generally easier on the macs, to boot. I don't care about what computer I'm using, I want the one that gets the job done quickly and easily, I'll leave it to the format warriors to argue it out. In over seven years in a mixed environment, I'm all about the mac for 95% of everything we do.

Like I said, I have no beef with macs.  What I have a beef with is Apple trying to market them to computer illiterates as a happy, friendly computer, when they have just as many whirling chains and pistons under the hood as windows.  The moment a user tries to do something that hasn't been clearly laid out by Apple's developers, they're thrust into a world that, if they aren't competent computer users, they'll never be able to work with.

Burn a disk?  Click on iTunes, click on the big yellow button, done.

Fix a problem?  Open the console, start typing in unix shell commands...

See the difference?  Grandma can conceivably do the former, but not a prayer of the latter.  Dealing with a mac can involve just as much wading through menus and icons as windows, which is not a problem to a computer professional, but can be a pretty big problem for the ignorant home user.

[stray]

Except there aren't as many problems as Windows -- nor do they have to be solved with UNIX commands most of the time anyways. Most things can be easily reconfigured through preference panels, dragging a preference file to the trash, or just rebooting. Killing an app is accessible from the Apple menu (and doesn't cause the computer to hang like XP does). Installing and uninstalling things is a snap. And even when uninstalling requires more than just dragging two files to the trash, Spotlight makes those situations easy too. Network configuration is fairly transparent. Hardware snags are virtually nonexistent.

Seriously, about the most difficult thing to operate on Macs is installing Windows. That's it (and even then, it's less of a pain than most PC's).

[Trippy]

I got myself a Mac mini two weeks ago yesterday and I can say that so far I've run into far more annoyances with Mac OS X than I ever have with Windows XP. This is my first Mac running OS X though I was a long time die hard Mac user starting from the original 128K Mac and going through System 8 (the PowerMac 8500 was my last Mac before the Mini) before giving up on it since it was too expensive to support a two platform computer habit (three if you counted my Linux boxes).

On Windows there are really only two things that bug the heck out of me on a fresh install -- no built-in way (hacking the Registry doesn't count) to put the Control key back in its proper place (fixed by ctrl2cap) and the totally brain damaged Task Bar that doesn't let you rearrange the items on it (fixed by TaskArrange).

Mac OS X, on the other hand, I could write pages and pages about how brain damaged the UI is -- it's a huge step backwards from the "classic" Mac OSes and epitomizes the expression "style over substance". While Googling around for fixes to these problems I came across a new term that I've (painfully) come to understand -- FTFF -- or Fix the Fucking Finder.

As for the "It just works" thing I do believe the Mac provides a better "default" out-of-box experience, mostly because Apple bundles more useful apps compared to Windows XP since 3rd party developers would scream bloody murder if Microsoft tried to do that (though MS does still do that on occasion) but in the Mac world they just shrug and go off and do something else. And the Dock is so nice and shiny for novice users to play around with even though the UI and functionality on that thing blows chunks. If all you need to do is Web browsing, email, and some simple word processing, though, Windows, Mac, and Linux all work equally well, IMO, except of course that you are much safer not using Windows unless you know how to avoid all the bad stuff out there targeting Windows users.

[stray]

I probably don't delve into things as much as you do, but I'm not really sure what you mean by OS X having a bad UI compared to Classic Mac. Seems like things work in a similar manner to me.

On a basic level, menus and commands follow the same guidelines. Everything is more or less in the same place. Dragging and dropping still functions the same. The Finder not only behaves like the old Finder, but I get the additional NeXT like behavior with Column view (So to me, it's better than the Finder. More like a Finder Plus). Window commands (the red/yellow/green buttons) seem like a more intuitive choice than the old mac window buttons.

The only thing interface-wise that I find stupid is preparing tracks for cd burning in iTunes and the few options it offers for browsing the music library (more of an iTunes specific bitch, not an OS X one). In the case of burning, I think it's dumb to have to go through a "Make Playlist with Selection" step just to select the tracks you want to burn. In the case of music browsing, I think it could use a tree/branching view in the left column.

Also, I like the Dock. Much better than dragging things into the "Apple Menu" folder like the old days (or to the "Launcher" folder, if you remember that thing).

I admit, Windows automates the process by placing things in the Start Menu (not to mention the Start Menu gives you a generous amount of space to scroll through in the Program Menu), but I don't have a problem with having to go through the Applications folder to launch programs that aren't on the Dock. Macs have always been like that (besides, just the fact that most application data is located in the Applications folder alone is a plus in itself. Windows has to create those menus just to make sense of out of things for the end user, seeing that each prog is cryptically named and contains a hundred little parts sprawled across the system).

[Trippy]

The Mac OS X Finder is not the same as the "classic" Finder. Google "spatial Finder" for more info. But some of that is a personal preference thing so here's a simple example of a Mac OS X Finder annoyance that has nothing to do with the above:

WHY DOES THE FUCKING FINDER NOT REMEMBER MY FOLDER SETTINGS?

This is something Finder 1.0 from 1984 was able to do properly, and yet somehow 15 (or 17) years later Apple engineers seemingly lost all knowledge of how to do that. Now the members of the original Mac team were a bunch of fucking geniuses but come on!

Here's another fun one. If I "eject" a network folder (like something shared on my Windows box) I can not mount that folder again, unless I reboot the fucking machine. Not even quitting the Finder fixes that problem. In fact the whole Network thing in the Finder is just fucked up. I just unshared and shared a Windows folder for shits and giggles and now the Finder can't even see the fucking machine anymore -- it thinks the machine alias is messed up now. Actually if I wait like an hour things will sort of revert back to normal so rebooting technically isn't required as long as I'm willing to wait for the FF to fix itself and I don't actually need that network folder in the meantime. Google on "spinning beach ball of death" and Finder for more fun and hilarity.

As for the Dock you can read this for starters:

http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

Here's one of my major gripes with the Dock that isn't in the above list. With the Windows (and Linux) task bars you can "stack" similar window types together. So for example, if you have 4 browser windows open, they'll all take up just one "space" on the task bar and when you click on it you can select from a list of all the windows of that type like so:



Now it takes some fiddling to setup the Task bar in Windows to do that (PowerToys helps a lot) and you need something like TaskArrange to get the windows into a consistent order but once you do that it's trivial to go to the window that you need. E.g. my Opera windows are always the first on the left side and my f13 related tabs are in the first window at the bottom of the list as you can see above.

The Dock sort of does most of that, but not quite. You can click-hold/right click on a running Dock app and see the list of windows and you don't have to fiddle with stuff like you do in Windows XP, which is nice:



However there's a bunch of crap at the bottom for manipulating the Dock app/icon that gets in the way of selecting the window that you need and you have no control over the ordering of the windows either from the Dock or from within the app itself (AFAIK). E.g. the first window you open in the app appears at the top of the list which means it's the farthest from where you clicked to open the menu rather than the closest. With Windows the first window you launch for that app appears at the bottom closest to where you clicked which is much more efficient than the Dock method and you can use something like TaskArrange to force a different order when you need to.

The other problem is that the Dock shows both running and non-running apps so while there's some spatial reference (ignoring the fact that the Dock expands and contracts so that the target you are trying to hit keeps shifting on you) you can't, for example, have all your running apps shown on the left side unless you drag them there but then you mess up the launch order unless you drag them all back. This is more a personal preference thing rather than an absolutely UI blunder but it does demonstrate how the Dock suffers from the problem of trying to do too many things at once as discussed in Tog's article above (the extra menu items above is yet another example).

Now Expose looks way cool but it is nowhere near as efficient as a properly setup Task bar since where the window you want ends up varies depending on any number of factors and the windows aren't labeled unless you mouse over them. Command-Tab also doesn't work cause it doesn't show the individual windows for each app.

Witch almost does what I need in a keyboard-oriented way (which has its pluses and minuses) except that I can't arrange the order the apps and their windows appear in so that spatial reference keeps changing depending on how the windows are stacked (e.g. the front most app always appears at the top of the list), analogous to the problem Expose has but at least the items are clearly labeled unlike Expose:



Edit: Okay fixed that section

[Sky]

See the difference?  Grandma can conceivably do the former, but not a prayer of the latter.  Dealing with a mac can involve just as much wading through menus and icons as windows, which is not a problem to a computer professional, but can be a pretty big problem for the ignorant home user.

Computers. Aren't. Toasters.

Of course Apple sales people try to sell shit...they are sales people. Hello?

Trippy: I hated OS9, and I love OSX. So I guess I don't get how the interface sucks now. I was considering another job when I was running an OS9 network with an ASIP server (and then the OSX 1.1/2 server that they installed a couple months after I started before I put my foot down! OSX 1.2 was an abortion)

I have no idea about the rest of the stuff you're bitching about, I mount and unmount network folders all the time, as do the most clueless users (in computer terms) on our network, including an 84-yr old librarian. I have a bunch of custom folder settings, again not sure what the problem is there.

The dock gripes seem real fucking picky, and I don't use Expose.

except of course that you are much safer not using Windows unless you know how to avoid all the bad stuff out there targeting Windows users.

You say that like it's not a big deal. My father uses windows and despite telling him what apps to run to be safe, his machine is a nightmare. Every time he calls he has a new virus or some spyware running (Why is my homepage different? Arg). My mother runs OSX, and while she still can't figure out iphoto, at least she's not a zombiebot forwarding russian pron spam.

Computers aren't toasters. There is no computer for grandma to press the magic button and have it Just Work. Period. Every computer has problems, from novice users to advanced, no system is better than any other except for personal preference and for professionals, the ability to get the job done quickly. As I've said, given my experience for over seven years now, I'll take macs every time just for the time and hassle they save me, so I can be more productive. That's more important to me than worrying about the order of some browser window. Not that that's any less relevent for /you/, but to damn the OS for such trivial things is (imo) silly.

[eldaec]

1. Funny looking white box with apple logo.
2. Arbitarily restrict functionality for snob appeal.
3. PROFIT!

It Just Works.


You're all getting confused about from whose perspective that slogan applies.

PS. I don't use a Mac, I've never felt the need, personally I don't care if they are better/worse because the PC I use works fine, and nothing the Mac does makes it worth me messing with with an apple.

[Miasma]

I've never liked apple but I think they've been going down hill for a while in terms of ease of use and the lack of annoyances.  They are coasting on their brand name and that won't last forever.  They have had quite a few serious hardware recalls in the last few years and thier policy of denying anthing is wrong until enough people complain is burning away their reputation.

When I first started my career I had to test the banking web site's browser compatibilities and I always dreaded having to go down to the lab to test on the mac.  Just to start with I would always have to turn my windows computer into a dns server so that I could reach the address I wanted to hit since there was no simple hosts file to point to the server I needed to test.  Then the one mouse button bullshit, God that drove me nuts.  The actual UI and programs were also painful to use.

When I bought an early iPod mini I loaded it up with music and brought it to work so that I could put on some other music I had there, after installing iTunes it decided to automatically format everything I had on the iPod because it just assumed since the iTunes was new the iPod must be too.  Didn't even give me a warning, just poof no songs.  The newer version if iTunes at least corrected that.

Today I brought in a new Nano I got as a birthday present, I wanted to put a couple songs I bought at home onto my work computer and remarkably that worked.  However, I was presented with a shitty pop up which stated that an iPod can only be "synced" with one iTunes so I apparently can't move music from my work computer to the nano, it doesn't even show up as a device on the left bar.  I am now going to burn the music I bought at work onto a CD, bring the CD home, rip the CD to an mp3, import the music into my home iTunes so that I can finally move those songs onto the nano...

And why the fuck do I have to intall quicktime to install iTunes?  And why do I have to clear out my registry to stop that god damn useless quicktime program from cluttering up my system tray with that icon?  And how come even if I remove the iTunesHelper process from the registry iTunes puts is right back in so that I always have this asinine iTunesHelper process running?  Luckily I found out I can just type gibberish in the key value and that process never gets a chance to start up.

Apple is just as shitty as Microsoft.

[Trippy]

I have no idea about the rest of the stuff you're bitching about, I mount and unmount network folders all the time, as do the most clueless users (in computer terms) on our network, including an 84-yr old librarian. I have a bunch of custom folder settings, again not sure what the problem is there.

As I said, Google on "spinning beach ball of doom" or you can read these comments if you are bored:

http://www.43folders.com/2007/02/28/mac-whines/#comments

Search on "network" to see the problems people have with networked folders. If I get motivated I'll make a screencast of "Finder Follies".

The dock gripes seem real fucking picky, and I don't use Expose.

As a power user it's all about efficiency. Inefficiencies annoy the heck out of me.

except of course that you are much safer not using Windows unless you know how to avoid all the bad stuff out there targeting Windows users.

You say that like it's not a big deal. My father uses windows and despite telling him what apps to run to be safe, his machine is a nightmare. Every time he calls he has a new virus or some spyware running (Why is my homepage different? Arg). My mother runs OSX, and while she still can't figure out iphoto, at least she's not a zombiebot forwarding russian pron spam.

Heck I'm the one who suggested that schild switch to a Mac because he got his files trashed from a virus.

[Trippy]

And why the fuck do I have to intall quicktime to install iTunes?

Cause it needs the codecs that come with QT.

And why do I have to clear out my registry to stop that god damn useless quicktime program from cluttering up my system tray with that icon?

There's finally a preferences setting that allows you to turn that off. Praise the FSM! Of course it keeps turning itself back on everytime you update the damn thing...

And since you mentioned QT, here's a gripe I wrote in my original reply above but deleted since it wasn't OS X specific:

Another thing they need to fucking fix (but won't) is the QuickTimer player (this isn't unique to Mac OS X, the Windows player is equally fucked up). That's the only application I can think of that loses features with every major revision (I'm talking about the free version here). By the time it reaches version 11 or so I predict it'll be like one of those minimalistic FLV players with just a play/pause button and maybe, if we are lucky, volume control. Just one example of how screwed up the UI is on that thing if you click in the display area it'll pause the video. Cool. Lots of media players do that. However, unlike all those other media players you can't fucking click again in the display area to unpause it -- you have to click the Play button.

[Strazos]

Yeah, that's one thing I've never liked about iTunes and iPods; I just want drag and drop, and to be able to play whatever format I like.

[Yegolev]

Honest question, Trip, are the nfs issues with the OS or the UI?  Meaning, does this go away if I do everything from a command line?

[Trippy]

Honest question, Trip, are the nfs issues with the OS or the UI?  Meaning, does this go away if I do everything from a command line?

Dunno. I believe the problems stem from the fact that the Finder is not in fact a full-blown OS X app (it's a Carbon app, not a Cocoa app). However reading some of the comments on that page I linked above imply that people are getting locked out of their machines entirely and not just the Finder in some situations. I haven't tried to reproduce the network folder SPBOD problem yet (though I've run into other network problems as mentioned above) but if I can I can test out whether or not the share is accessible from a shell.

[naum]

The network folder spinning beachball deal I have experienced — seems to only happen when I am connected to Windows networks, is a major annoyance, and another gripe is probably my bad, I haven't figured out easy, no-brainer method to auto-mount network volumes (actually, don't want to audomatically do it, just hit a button and have them all mounted).

People used to Windows (or Linux) way of working with Computer all will have annoyances when they try to use a Mac like a Windows machine. The whole windows vs. app closing for instance…). Also, many arn't aware of keybindings, or even some of the ones that arn't apparent (it took me six months before I figured out Cmd+delete on laptop was the forward delete
function). 

* Services menu is powerful, especially in Cocoa apps.
* Any menu item in just about any app can be easily hotkeyed.

For lifting stuff off of iPod, I use Senuti. There is a similar type app (may have on one of my home boxes) to lift stuff off shared iTunes hosts… …don't know if you square that criticism on Apple though, they trying to make RIAA lords happy and at least they haven't cowtowed to the extent of Gates & company…

Finder justifiably is an object for scorn, but I really prefer it over Windows explorer… …and it remembers my settings (view mode) and when I clilck into folder where I haven't previously set options, a simple cmd-J puts it into similar place.

And I will agree that Apple has slid in terms of easy new user UI grokking. Meanwhile, it's a platform that developers (at least web developers) have flocked to. At some recent conferences (Ruby, O'Reilly…), Mac laptops easily outnumber Win/Linux in attendance…

[Sky]

I don't have an ipod dumper, but my girlfriend does. My boss bought some shareware and for some reason he bought it over again, so we got the new license.

We're running an OSX server, so maybe that's why we haven't been having network problems. I did have some headaches trying to set up automounting home directories when we first installed it, I wanted to basically have dumb terminal imacs so people could work entirely from the server (we're small and robust enough for it). Everything should have been working great, but (iirc) I got stuck with kerberos only authenticating over ssh but not the login gui. My boss decided it was taking more time than it was worth and we just stuck with basic filesharing, kinda bummed me out. Then again, I was trying to learn on my own locked in a storage closet, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad.

Services menu is powerful, especially in Cocoa apps

:)  >Start speaking text  :)

[Righ]

C'mon it wasn't even founded in reality. I'm not going to bother with a point by point rebuttal, but there was so much barking mad bullshit in there, it was an obvious draw post.

Then step right up with a single point, just one.  Because everything I described happened exactly as I described it, about six months ago on a brand spanking new OS 10.4 machine.  I'd be fascinated to find out just what part of my day with that machine didn't actually occur.

Sigh, very well, though you're clearly trolling.

I finally got that working, then tried for a while to explain to them how one gets updates for macs.  "Okay, go to your Applications folder, then the Utilities folder, then double-click on the disk tools.  Run a permission fix on the disk.  Then update your computer from the apple menu.  Then go back to the disk tools and run another permission fix."  I was clearly speaking a foreign language at that point, so I changed it to, "If you see a bouncy blue arrow icon on the bar down here, run it."  Of course, updating a mac without running the permission fixes is liable to cause some problems, but this couple clearly wasn't going to be able to handle filesystem maintenance.

You're asserting that running a Disk Utility 'repair permissions' is a routine operation performed before and after running Software Update. It isn't. I have a bunch of Macs, and have never once needed to run it. Not once. Since the days of OS X closed beta. I don't know quite what 'expert user' actions you did in the first place to bugger up your file system permissions that you'd want to use the tool, but it certainly shouldn't be used as a routine operation, and it doesn't actually repair anything - it resets permissions to a predetermined state that may not even be appropriate for software you have subsequently installed. It certainly isn't designed to be routine maintenance, and using it in that way is more like the actions of an "incompetent user" than anything grandma might have done.