What is Digg?270 Comments
- Phatt138, on 02/02/2008, -7/+105No kidding. When I bought my MacBook (and had my first experience with the Mac OS) last year, I couldn't even figure out how to install applications. There really -is- no manual that tells you how to do the simplest of things. Apparently Apple so believes in the system's intuitiveness that they think they can leave out basic documentation. The idea that I would drag an application into a folder by way of 'installation' was confounding coming from a Windows background, and it took me a few minutes to find my sea legs.
I gotta say though - once OS X starts making sense, it starts making a LOT of sense. It's unfortunate that the lack of documentation probably prevents most people from using the system the way it was meant to be used. Getting used to OS X is fun in terms of exploration, but not everyone has the time or technical confidence to learn things by trial and error. - ialan2, on 02/02/2008, -6/+81direct link:
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/macosx/ - Diggtatorship, on 02/02/2008, -18/+73I bought my first mac (a used powerbook G4) a couple of months ago. Within a week I was so impressed by OS X that I decided to go 100% mac. I've since re-sold the G4 for the same amount I paid for it (amazing how these things seem to never loose value) I used that money to order a refurb C2D 2Ghz Mini from apple, and in a few months I'll be shopping for a new MacBook.
Lest you remaining windows guys think I'm some kind of casual computer user(idiot mac user in microsoft terms). I've actually been building my own PC's for years, and even built PC's as a side-job at one point. I've been an avid PC gamer, and professionally I'm a Unix system administrator. I admit, the fact that OS X is essentially a Unix distro played a huge part in me wanting to at least give them a shot. I love being able to open up the terminal and hack the day away.
I almost regret not having made the switch earlier. All those years mindlessly discounting Macs as Idiot-boxes and what-not... I think I picked a good time to finally take the dive, and I can easily forsee Apple really taking a huge chunk of the market back from Microsoft. The apocalypse must not be far off. - rtcrooks, on 02/02/2008, -10/+60probably much needed with the recent influx in mac owners.
- Audacitor, on 02/02/2008, -9/+43For someone coming from Windows, OS X can seem weird. Installing applications by dragging them to the Applications folder is something so simple a Windows user wouldn't think of it.
- Phatt138, on 02/02/2008, -10/+42People have trouble because the Windows-style environment is so pervasive that any deviation from it is a potential stumbling-block.
I'm a long-time Windows poweruser, Linux devotee, and Mac addict, and I can honestly say that OS X's personality, while a little idiosyncratic, has much more to offer under the surface. For instance, a lot of WIndows users don't understand why shutting open application windows doesn't terminate programs on OS X. At first, it seems a little silly to 'x-out' of a window and see the application still running in the Dock. In practice however, the ability to close individual windows while leaving their parent programs running can be very desirable in terms of load time and easy accessibility.
The point is simply that the Mac OS makes perfect sense - but it's not a Windows clone, which is what most casual users expect when working on a computer. In my mind, time spent with OS X always yields some important and handy discoveries; it's like their UI designers set out to solve problems that you didn't even realize you were having with the Windows workflow. It takes some getting used to, but it's a very powerful and intuitive system once you're there. - daemon, on 02/02/2008, -8/+31Is Apple growing up to a scale where they can't do one-on-one training sessions anymore?
- PathDaemon, on 02/02/2008, -0/+16...what the ***** format do you expect Apple to use on its own website?
- acmethunder, on 02/02/2008, -11/+26@maxpower2911, you obviously never actually used a Mac, have you?
- node3, on 02/02/2008, -2/+17Yes, there's a "how to be a pretentious douchebag" guide for the average former PC user. For the PC users who jump into Mac forums and threads calling Mac users "Starbucks-drinking, ignorant, pretentious douchebags", no such guide is necessary.
- dbr_onix, on 02/02/2008, -10/+25Well, in all fairness, double clicking an Setup.exe file and following the onscreen prompts is a bit easier than extracting a someapp.dmg.gz file, mounting the DMG image, dragging the application from there to the Applications folder, ejecting the disk image, trashing the .dmg file, and dragging the application to the dock.
That said, I much prefer the OS X way of doing things (It's so much more flexible. I normally extract new applications to the desktop, try it out, make sure it's of some use, then put it in my home-directories Applications folder. If not, drop it on AppZapper it and it's gone).. I suppose it's not really difficult, it's just different. - Diggtatorship, on 02/02/2008, -9/+23"your sesion has expired" - thanks digg (Grrrrrrr)
Anyway, I was going to add: My experience with Apple hasn't been all peaches and rainbows... The first few days were really frustrating, and it seems like it takes them an eternity to get things shipped out of their warehouse(Seriously? 2 weeks to get my Mini? Is that the best you can do?). With that said, it would have been great to have these videos a few months ago, and hopefully they can get their shipping lines in order. - blackjack75, on 02/02/2008, -4/+18Most of those videos are just tutorials on how to use iPhoto, iWork and alike. They are not troubleshooting videos. "It just works" doesn't mean "It reads my mind and does it alone while I click on random icons and buttons."
- inactive, on 02/02/2008, -8/+22Pretty much the same exact experience I had. I can't tell you how many programs I accidentally deleted because I thought I had installed them
But once you get to learn it OSX is leaps and bounds ahead of Windows. I don't miss it at all - ZephyrNinety, on 02/02/2008, -10/+23...I had no problem going from Windows to Linux to Mac, if you do, just stop using electricity.
- catachip, on 02/02/2008, -2/+14jesus ***** christ, if I hear another person throw out the "b b but, I thought macs just worked" line I'm going to lose it. scratch that, I've already lost it. we get it, alright, please follow every Vista problem post with "b b but, I thought the Wow starts Now"
- fkr3, on 02/02/2008, -2/+13.... about informationweek's summary when they could just "go to the site".
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/macosx/ - dagamer34, on 02/02/2008, -5/+16Even though I've had a Mac for a year, there are still a few things I constantly find myself wishing I had from the Windows OS. Examples:
1) Restoring a file to it's original location after it's been put into the Trash.
2) Cut & Paste (or perhaps Copy & Delete would be more accurate for filesystem reasons).
3) Ability to directly type a filesystem address in the path bar in Leopard's Finder.
4) Hibernate (draws NO power compared to Apple's sleep function)
5) Notification system built directly into the OS (i.e. Growl) - more developers would support a function if it weren't a 3rd party app. - cfulp, on 02/02/2008, -7/+17Do you enjoy being a corporate drone with no sense of individuality? See, I can go to the extreme too! Stupidity knows no bounds.
- OrangeSoda31, on 02/02/2008, -5/+14you, are an idiot....
- banmaster, on 02/02/2008, -11/+19Your family must be really stupid douches if NONE of you can resist clicking on the monkey to win a free iPod!
- fugazied, on 02/02/2008, -1/+9Yup I only switched to mac about 8 months ago. The one regret I have is not switching to mac as soon as OS X was released. A lot of wasted time on MS boxes.
- ibeetle, on 02/02/2008, -1/+9banmaster-
Just because you have a degree in Programing Languages, 15 years experience as head of a IT Department, 12 Microsoft and 3 Apple Certifications, and beat HALO 3 in a 3 day weekend. Does not mean the 40 year old woman that lives next door to you is a internet savvy.
Like you have never downloaded that Blink 182 CD from Pirate Bay only to have a Trojan installed. Or downloaded the new Photoshop from Softwarez.com only to find you now have a worm you have to squash. I guess you never bought a CD with a root kit on it either? - cfulp, on 02/02/2008, -0/+8It was an investment. Microsoft made a bundle selling the apples shares, not to mention how much they made after introducing office to macs (which happened around the same time).
- 8KROM, on 02/02/2008, -3/+11actually I ran a 400mhz G4 desktop w/ 10.3 up until 06.. sure it chugged along but she never crashed.. even running PS CS2.. it was just slow.. trying do that on a windows box.. or for that fact, gimp on a linux box that slow without it crashing. Just like an old Volvo.. haha digg me down!!
- z28com, on 02/02/2008, -2/+9I would check out the Mac Mini. It's one of the least expensive Macs. http://www.apple.com/macmini/
- Angostura, on 02/02/2008, -5/+12I'm a long time Mac user You make some interesting points, so I'll go through them. I've also tried supporting my 80-something parents on Windows and OS X..
"Like the other day, my dads mail client set itself to offline mode, he didn't know how to deal with that."
Yes, not the most intuitive behavior. Daft, I would say.
"Maybe it was because Leopard mail crashes once a week" I'm a serious Mail user with multiple IMAP and POP accounts and 10s of thousands of e-mail in my inboxes. I haven't had a crash yet.
" and safari crashes at least once a month for serious users (like I open up every digg page in tabs every morning). "
Yes Safari does seem flaky at the moment.
And Mail, at work like many other peoples, it NEVER closed for me. When you tried it close it, you needed to force kill it to get rid of it eventually. "
I've had the problem with laggy closes once or twice in the last month.
"To be brutally honest, I'd say that Vista is as easy to use as Leopard these days. "
My parents find OS X easier, the fact that the 4 or 5 programs they want sit in the Dock and the way that iPhoto lets them easily import photos and e-mail them makes it a snap. The fact that they had to choose 'start' to shutdown used to confuse the hell out of them.
"Part of the problem with Apple is stuff like their iphoto library. He couldn't find his photos easily to paste into an email. Because the iphoto library is a mess. In windows, its stored as it should be."
This is without doubt the biggest misconception in your message and shows where you just 'don't get' the Mac way. iPhoto acts as a photo database, you might as well argue that Oracle is crap because you can't use DOS find the file where it stores a particular record. You want to e-mail a photo? click the e-mail button in iPhoto. I would argue that iPhoto stores them 'as they should be' - in a proper structure with meta data stored against each photo - not in a DOS hierarchy.
Also, no offence to Apple, but if they keep up their "Mac OSX cant get viruses" attitude, and don't stop charging for every minor upgrade, the crap will hit the fan real fast in the future.
Straw man. Apple has never said Mac OSX cant get viruses. Sensible users don't say that either. They do say that there aren't any in the wild yet and that the OS is intrinsically more resistant.
"If nobody believes me, go to an Apple reseller, and say "btw, I do a lot of browsing, and sometimes my safari crashes, about once a fortnight, I'm running Leopard and the latest updates. I've run the ram tests and they all passed (or any old Apple App, but safari is a good one)". Your response will probably be that its likely that your hardware is faulty, or that "there are small bugs in new releases" blah blah blah. "
My response is that Safari is pretty flaky at the moment. Hopefully this month's 10.5.2 (free) will fix.
If you want to guarentee a bad response, ask them if they have been any issues with Leopard server off the record. Off the record, you'll discover quickly, its not production ready (I know that as a fact, because we tried deploying it on 2 different networks, both had severe issues in almost every Apple based component. Of course
Yup, server's not ready.
And please phatt, many elements of their GUI don't make sense. Every GUI interface development course will use their traffic light buttons as an example of poor gui design, especially the isolated one which simplifies the windows. And yes, almost every customer which came into our store didn't understand the buttons fully.
The green traffic light button is a long term bit of stupid GUI design.
"So really, thats just crock you heard from Apple's development team. The GUI, despite what ppl get told, is certainly NOT apple's strong point. Its actually other elements. Go ask your computer science teacher. The only thing Apple has done right GUI wise is drag and drop. "
Sorry - I thought you said that the interface was the only thing keeping them alive.
"In fact, Start menu is obvious to every user. But EVERY user, I need to explain how the dock properly works."
See counter example above.
"And their Mighty mouse I think needs its own help site, because its so bad that it almost certainly ends up psychologically torturing its users."
My kids, wife, parents have never expressed any problems. Now the old hockey-puck mouse - that sucked. - tadunne, on 02/02/2008, -2/+91) agreed
2) Not really a problem, but I can see the need for the option
3) Clicking on Go menu -> go does the same thing?
4) The sleep feature in current laptops can draw no power. When you sleep it suspends both to disk and ram so if the battery is removed you can still wake from sleep when a power source is found. How this works can be changed, but I guess a pref pane would help.
5) Good idea! - Nossie, on 02/02/2008, -1/+8sounds like you bought up a load of crap....
1. Palm bought Be. Inc (BeOS) property, sat on it and then sold it to access who have allowed Haiku the use of the source/license to get that OS up and running while sending threatening letters to Zeta developers for using code they were not licensed to use.
2. Steve Jobs got kicked out of/ resigned from Apple and started his own Company called NeXT. NeXT made mostly high performance accountancy servers and one of them was in the shape of a cube (also the very first www server). Apple then bought out NeXT because they wanted a promising Unix BASED OS and OS9 was going the way of Win95. Funnily, over a short period of time the NeXT board ended up taking over the Apple board of directors INCLUDING Steve Jobs... and we know what happened to him after that.
So where/when did Apple sit on BeOS ? tell me its not true that OSX is really BeOS in disguise?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT - cyberghost232, on 02/02/2008, -2/+9How about making it so i can afford one. Seriously. I dont care about the hardware. I just want the OS and not some hacked pirated ***** that doesn't work half the time. I would gladly pay anywhere up to $400 if I could run it on the box I have now along side my windows install.
- jer2eydevil88, on 02/02/2008, -1/+8Wow! adblock removes informationweek.com images to the point where the site is nothing but text... it improves the site so much that its faster than ever!
- Auzy, on 02/02/2008, -24/+31He hasn't, but I worked at an Apple reseller, and no offense, but I left because if it wasn't for all the FUD being spread by Apple, the only thing that is keeping them alive is their "pretty interface". They have so many weird bugs.
Like the other day, my dads mail client set itself to offline mode, he didn't know how to deal with that. Maybe it was because Leopard mail crashes once a week, and safari crashes at least once a month for serious users (like I open up every digg page in tabs every morning). And Mail, at work like many other peoples, it NEVER closed for me. When you tried it close it, you needed to force kill it to get rid of it eventually.
To be brutally honest, I'd say that Vista is as easy to use as Leopard these days. And yes, I'd say Vista is much more stable Application wise (but definately not fast for gaming). I know I'll get dugg down for saying it, but I tried OSX for 3 years, worked at a reseller, and tried Vista for 2 months (64bit version). My Dad can more easily use Vista then OSX. Vista is better for regular home usage.
Part of the problem with Apple is stuff like their iphoto library. He couldn't find his photos easily to paste into an email. Because the iphoto library is a mess. In windows, its stored as it should be. Yes there are some things in OSX which are nice such as proper EFI support, which can make some things easier, and better upgrading process, but EFI will be properly supported in Vista SP1.
Also, no offence to Apple, but if they keep up their "Mac OSX cant get viruses" attitude, and don't stop charging for every minor upgrade, the crap will hit the fan real fast in the future.
If nobody believes me, go to an Apple reseller, and say "btw, I do a lot of browsing, and sometimes my safari crashes, about once a fortnight, I'm running Leopard and the latest updates. I've run the ram tests and they all passed (or any old Apple App, but safari is a good one)". Your response will probably be that its likely that your hardware is faulty, or that "there are small bugs in new releases" blah blah blah.
If you want to guarentee a bad response, ask them if they have been any issues with Leopard server off the record. Off the record, you'll discover quickly, its not production ready (I know that as a fact, because we tried deploying it on 2 different networks, both had severe issues in almost every Apple based component. Of course
Apple has bitten off more they can chew now. Its not fiction but fact. Steve said himself they had to redirect all their resources to the iphone department which slowed down leopard.
And please phatt, many elements of their GUI don't make sense. Every GUI interface development course will use their traffic light buttons as an example of poor gui design, especially the isolated one which simplifies the windows. And yes, almost every customer which came into our store didn't understand the buttons fully. So really, thats just crock you heard from Apple's development team. The GUI, despite what ppl get told, is certainly NOT apple's strong point. Its actually other elements. Go ask your computer science teacher. The only thing Apple has done right GUI wise is drag and drop.
In fact, Start menu is obvious to every user. But EVERY user, I need to explain how the dock properly works.
And their Mighty mouse I think needs its own help site, because its so bad that it almost certainly ends up psychologically torturing its users.
And for all those people saying that Mac OSX looks the best, Vista has movie desktops known as dreamscapes built in that look awesome. Linux has lots of random type stuff I wont get into built in too (like beryl) that can pretty it up. Both supports theming. OSX? Only themes you get are technically hacks to system resource files, and Apple doesn't encourage theming at all.
Seeing i'm not a power digg user, theres no way I could ever bring this to attention unless I mention ubuntu, OSX, and steve jobs in the title, but someone like engadget really needs to properly compare the 3 of them. Because theres too much fud these days. - NeoSporin, on 02/02/2008, -4/+11You will probably get dugg down as with all valid points against something in a fanboy thread.
- node3, on 02/02/2008, -1/+8Off topic: Is the above post dugg down for anyone else right now?
- Audacitor, on 02/02/2008, -5/+11Wow. Never thought I'd see someone who used to be an Apple basher fully admit that when they'd made the switch. I trust you've already discovered Quicksilver and Growl?
- MacParrot, on 02/02/2008, -0/+6I didn't expect to win an iPod, but I did enjoy clicking the monkey!
- Goobernutz, on 02/02/2008, -10/+161) First of all, most apps aren't gzipped. So you can cut out that step. Or else you could add "extract zip file" into your windows steps. This is hardly a worth mentioning.
2) "Mounting the DMG" == "double clicking a Setep.exe"
3) Dragging the app to the apps folder is usually accomplished by following the 1 on screen instruction showing an icon, and an arrow pointing to the apps folder. And it's not just a graphical instruction, it actually IS the app and the apps folder. One step compared to "next" "next" "next" "next" etc.
4) Ejecting and trashing the dmg is a problem? Granted, it's not obvious that you need to eject it. But removing the installer?...So what do you do with all your exe's?
5) Dragging to the dock is no different than creating a shortcut in window. You do it if you want to. Otherwise, just click on the apps folder in the dock because it will already be there.
Sounds like an even match to me. Except that a large percentage of exe's can wipe out your entire system without even touching them. And good luck removing all traces of ANY windows app, even with the uninstaller. - blackjack75, on 02/02/2008, -1/+7Well.. choose your own:
Preferences => Keyboard => Shortcuts. - inactive, on 02/02/2008, -1/+7Preinstalled on Macs. Not a problem for Mac users.
- chazza125, on 02/02/2008, -0/+6So I'm not getting a free ipod?
- astrosmash, on 02/02/2008, -0/+6I remember the first time I used OS X (10.2), new eMacs that our university had just bought. The first thing I tried to do was reconfigure the Dock. That is, add, remove, and rearrange the Dock's icons.
Now, I had been a Windows developer for a number years and had become very familiar with how Windows and Explorer do things, and I was very set in my ways as far as how applications should work. I tried the Dock's context menus, I poked around the Control Panel/System Preferences. Nothing. I then tried to find the Dock settings file in /Library/Preferences, thinking that the school had locked down the Dock in some way. True story.
Then, of course, I figured it out, and it was one of those profound 'bah!' moments that made me reevaluate my whole approach to software. It would be a couple of more years before I would buy my first OS X machine (10.2 wasn't really up to snuff) but the seed was planted that day.
If you were to document in words, step by step, how to install applications in OS X, it would come sounding like an impossibly complex process. It's better to just let people poke around and figure out the metaphor on their own. I think it has much more to do with unlearning the way things worked on your old computer than anything else. - UKsHaDoW, on 02/02/2008, -1/+7I think he will enjoy it.
- Barbosa, on 02/02/2008, -10/+16This is a great idea. My friend has a Mac, but I am a user who only has experience of MS OS's and more recently Linux (have been too broke to buy Apple except for the Apple 2e in elementary school with the green monitor and no mouse). The few times I tried to use my friend's Mac I found myself unable to complete simple tasks and sometimes got frustrated (granted I have only spent about an hour total using it so far). Unfortunately my friend is no help because they just started using Mac at her house and they are all learning too. Definitely a site we can both use. Thanks!
- tadunne, on 02/02/2008, -3/+9"Windows users need their brains descrambled"
Yoda said it best: "you must unlearn what you have learnt" - tapo, on 02/02/2008, -0/+6I don't know. I guess there's still the image of the foaming-at-the-mouth, elitist Apple fanboy that Digg users are trying to attack. Thus the comments of "WHAT DO U SAY NOW GUYZ, U SAID IT JUST WORKSS!!!11"
You'd think that Mac vs PC fanboyism would be dead by now. - TheBigSquid, on 02/02/2008, -0/+5Typing on a G4 iBook right now. I don't need the latest and greatest just for email and web browsing.
Besides, your comment is just plain rude. - harkondo, on 02/02/2008, -7/+12Fantastic. I've been looking at Mac's recently and was hesitant about learning the ins and outs.
- MacParrot, on 02/02/2008, -0/+5Any chance you'll come back and acknowledge your stupid error jabberwolf?
And your comment about holes? Wanna give me a list of exploits that will automatically run and do damage using those exploits on OS X?
nah, didn't think you would. - yabos, on 02/02/2008, -0/+5Are you retarded?
- EntropyFan, on 02/02/2008, -1/+6Did you ever see OSX when it was first released? It couldn't even play a DVD. It was slower then any OS I'd ever seen, and crashed all the time.
It made the Vista launch look like paradise.
It has come a long way, but believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to use it when it launched -
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