What is Digg?113 Comments
- thepharmacist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Well, lazy people, or people not willing to invest a significant part of their time in learning to program. Seriously I tried installing linux on my PC, but when I read something about a kernel recompile that was supposedly needed in order to get my sound card to work, I promptly gave up.
- gleffler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24Nope, sorry, you can't switch the mouse. Une button uber alles!
Of course you can switch the ***** mouse. It's a regular USB mouse and any USB or Bluetooth mouse you find will work fine, including the *gasp* extra buttons. (Only two in the core OS, but more with USB Overdrive or the mouse drivers supplied with the mouse, same as Windows.) - Rndm_Tngnt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22The article is only three years old, eh?
That's some good timing. - timf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Why is everybody modding him down?
The height is indeed fixed, just look at the source: height: 2858px;
I'm using Firefox 1.5 on a Linux box - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26This article is very true.
A few months ago, after being a lifetime Windows user, I switched to a Mac. (a couple months later, I switched back, due to a critical piece of software I needed only being available on Windows) The experience is largely similar to mine. The Mac is a very slick, well-made combination of hardware and software, pleasing in many ways while sometimes frustrating in a small number of ways.
Now that I have switched back, I do have moments of regret ("Man, the Mac never gave me this problem" or "I really miss that translucent terminal on the Mac"), but certain things that made me frustrated are also now no longer a problem. Overall, the experience made me decide that I'd certainly take up a Mac again in the future, and it was too bad that my work required me to use a piece of software that I couldn't find an adequate replacement for on the Mac. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15I agree, but without the pejoriative implication. Computer programmers are lazy people, and Macs (the new OSX kind) seem to be well-tailored to them. I do think Macs supply the one thing that Linux needed (yes, I know Macs are BSD) in order to make it truly useful to a USER (rather than a hacker): a truly good interface.
- Tom_Riddle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I am a pirate and a mac user.
thing about mac.
theres even better software to pirate. ; )
and "Backing up" your friends DVD ISO's is a no brainer with the disk management utility.
not to mention if u just have the video and not an ISO you can import it to iDVD and burn away. - PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14"I was the ultimate tweaker in Windows... At first it seemed to be restrictive, but I've realized it has actually freed me to do things other than tweaking."
Eventually, you will come to realize, "who am i to question the mac?" and submit to the way things should be...according to SJ. - anonymonk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Yeah, I know, it's kind of old... but most of what he says still applies.
- yellowmix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Parent poster is correct and the problem should show up on every CSS-compliant browser. For some reason, the main content div has a height of 2858 pixels. This normally wouldn't be a problem because the default overflow behavior would allow the browser to display scrollbars. However, the parent DIV has overflow set to hidden, which the content DIV inherits, resulting in the text clipping if you increase the text size.
There is absolutely no reason to set an absolute height for the content DIV. There are many people with vision difficulties who need to set the text to a larger size. On the bright side, text-to-speech programs like JAWS would still read it in this particular instance. Still, it's not hard to make a page accessible, especially this kind in which it was explicitly made inaccessible by setting two unnecessary CSS properties. - zweben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Ywong- with the newer Intel Macs you can dual boot Windows and Mac OS, so next time you're buying a computer, you can get a Mac and run Windows only software on it too.
- Akram, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9do you think now boot camp is around, people will just have the best of both worlds?
i think when i get a macbook i'll just resort to windows whenever i need to, but spend most of my time on mac os x - chewbaka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@solidcube
True, but recompiling your kernel isn't exactly for the faint of heart either. How many times have you typed make and just have everything work? not very often is probably the answer.
Saying Apple is Linux for lazy people is like saying C is assembly for lazy people. Sometime you just want something to work without scouring the web for that obscure library dependency so you can download the source and spend 2 hours figuring out how to compile it correctly. - Cronus6, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I've worked in the PrePress/Print Production industry for about 8 years now, and the simple answer to your question is... all Mac users are pirates of some sort or another.
This includes ALL of my past employers. Let's face it Adobe/Quark products are just too damned expensive to buy a copy (or a massive site license) for every Apple in the shop.
BTW... I make my living using these odd little machines and I really don't care for them. There's nothing on the Mac side you can't do on the "PC" side... and usually it's cheaper on the "PC" side as well. The Mac community (at least at the "graphic arts" level) is full of Mac zealots... I really don't care much for them either.
OSX IS a huge improvement over the past OS's (most of which were horrid at best). But I still do my freelance work on a Windows box. - SkeletaLlama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It is Mac advertising and I'm grateful for it. I always heard all the myths about how bad Macs were and how switching over was a bad decision for whatever made up reason. I believed them. It wasn't until I read articles like this that I decided to switch. Now that I have I can say I'm sticking with the Mac it's computing bliss. I don't have random system crashes, hardware/software conflicts, annoying driver updates and all the other thousands of tiny annoying things in Windows that add up to a major headache. Macs just run great all the time.
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7>That's cause Mac users are generally (I said generally) people who really don't know their computers, and usually aren't in IT
I disagree - everyone I know who'se a Mac user really knows their computer inside out, and that's WHY they got a Mac- they are sick of fixing Windows. Anyone who doesn't know their computers will get that previously mentioned $499 Dell, because it's cheap. - Drahknon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'll echo some of the sentiments above that reflect a bitter-sweet experience. I have a Mac for "work" and a PC for "play." My PC worked great (XP/Linux) 95% of the time, but man... that 5% made me lose some pretty critical data. So I got a used iBook about 6 months ago, and though I love it, I don't really consider it a "replacement" for my PC. Rather, it's something of an adjunct.
Things I like better...
--Spotlight: I use it every day, and often every hour or so. It's indispensable to me, and Google Desktop can't compare. I open the bulk of my files and programs with it, effectively replacing, conceptually, the Windows Start menu.
--Programs close: every time, without fail, when I want to close something, it closes. I know it's a small thing, but after 15 years with Windows, it's revelatory... programs aren't supposed to stay open when you close them.
--Hardware: better built than my Dell, though, admittedly, other PCs I've used are about on par with the iBook in terms of sturdiness and design (Sony is particularly good).
--OS generally: it's pretty damn solid. My PC never crashed much, but I feel like I don't have to babysit my Mac quite as much. No registry to mess with, no defragmentation... nothing. Leave it on for weeks on end and install/uninstall whatever you like. Your Mac will work great.
--Integration: I like how all the i-apps work together. It's something totally lacking in Windows, but mostly because...
--i-Apps are great: they really are. Apple spent some time on these and it shows. They work well and are nearly always superior to the alternatives (though MS Entourage is O-K)
--Compatibility: Macs have come a long way in this regard since I last used them. A lot of the peripherals I didn't expect to work on my PC and Mac work just fine... flash drive, portable HD, mouse, etc. They all work just fine, and I didn't expect that.
Things I don't like better:
--No games: forget it. Just put games out of your mind. Beyond a few stand-outs, gaming is a no-go on Macs. This makes me get more work done, but it is a bummer.
--My old programs: Oh, how I miss Onenote. There%u2019s nothing like it for the Mac (really, nothing) and I%u2019d give anything to have a Mac-native version of it. Then there%u2019s GTalk%u2026 yes, I know Adium lets you log into it, but I miss the program itself. There are many other PC-only programs I miss. I guess it%u2019ll have to wait until my Intel-Mac. Heh.
--$$$$: like the author of the article says... Mac stuff is pricey. You'll generally spend more
--Mac Users/Zealots: They bug the ever-living ***** out of me. Once I got my Mac, it's like they appeared out of thin air, striking up little rant-fests about how crappy and inferior PCs are. I will never understand why people can't just accept that different platforms have different strengths. Everyone wants to belong, I guess.
--Customization: like the author, I really didn't expect the MacOS to be so... rigid. I mean, you can't change anything beyond the desktop wallpaper, really. That's something I sort of miss.
And that's really it. Some strengths, some weaknesses. - tciny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I guess installing Parlells or dual booting with Windows would be more effective than installing Ubuntu and emulating via Wine. You'd have to pay for XP, but I think if it's really a mission critical app its well worth the price.
- greenbox, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10are macs capable of being gaming machines, I've never seen a G5 at an unreal tournament or anything. when i look at a mac mini I'm thinking "would i be stuck with what ever graphics card inside or could i upgrade?" also, is it possible to switch your mouse with something better? i hate how the mighty mouse is designed, it feels so cheap. I'm not trying to say anything really bad about mac users but i am curious.
- flog4file, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6wow i switched to an imac about 3 months ago and this perfectly describes my experience so far.
- thecwin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Eventually, you'll come to realise that the little registry tweak for making the passport stuff stop bugging you isn't important any more... seriously though, I use Linux -- and I love the "tweaks" you can apply, such as applying your own patches to [nearly] anything on the system. I like OS X too for it's lack of thought required when doing anything. It's nice for when you just can't be bothered with life any more. Windows probably has it's uses too but it's just not for me.
- coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I think you meant subjective... Anyway - it's about time too - XP is getting on for 5 years old!
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7There are LOTS and LOTS of things a power user can tweak on a Mac. The nice thing about them is that you don't ever HAVE to tweak things - but you can change around a lot of junk under the hood if you really want to.
- SkeletaLlama, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9If your software doesn't require a lot of power to run you can use the Virtual PC program to run it on a Mac. Or better yet you could install Ubuntu Linux on your Mac, install WINE and run your PC program from there for free.
I know the feeling you're talking about. After years of being a Windows snob I finally got my hands on a Mac and I won't switch back to Windows again unless a piece of software requires me too. But now that I've discovered WINE under Ubuntu I don't know if I'll ever need a Windows OS again. Here's to hoping! - cranium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"switching?" That's a false dilemma. I use Linux at work, OSX at home, my little kids use Windows, and my teenagers use Linux. I don't see anything wrong with using them all, at least you'll know what you're talking about in discussions like this.
- shakeyshakey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Nice. Somebody need to do a similar article, only this time, involving Windows to Linux switch.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@zweben
Yeah, the whole thing happened *right before* the intel Macs came out. Believe me, the next time around, I'm getting one of those things. - coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4They were going to, but the guy who was doing it missed the shoot because he accidentally screwed up a kernel recompile and couldn't get to his flight reservation details. ;^)
- drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well considering users don't have to do all the things that Linux users have to do just to get things to work correctly, if thats a definition of lazy then oh well. I prefer getting work done on my computer systems. Kernel recompiles and depedency hell don't help me with that. Also macs have a lot of software that linux doesn't have and thats just something Linux can't get around. I can run photoshop, office, games, etc. on my Mac while still have all the luxaries of a unix system to a certain extent.
- magus_melchior, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@Utopian:
Aha, thought there was an "easy" button in Firefox, thanks for the tip.
Now back to reading at 6 ft. away... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6In those cases, I think you'd be looking at the intel dual core models. Penny Arcade seems to think so:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/03/03 - Utopian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Turning CSS off in your browser solves that problem (View -> Page Style -> No Style in Firefox).
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I just convinced a mother of three with limited PC knowledge to switch to a Macbook Pro from an old Dell 1100 Pentium 4 notebook. In the three weeks she has owned it she managed to tackle the following : organize her pictures, sort her music, rely on her email application instead of it crashing consistantly & make DVD's from her old home videos of the kids. On her old p4 she was using Outlook 2003, Picas and Pinnacle Studio for about two years in an effort to try and tackle these tasks. She will not be going back to a PC anytime soon, her words not mine.
- daleallenbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Even old, this article contains many insightful comments. I recently "switched" (typing this on my ThinkPad) by adding a MacMini to my network. Integration was amazingly easy and secure. Linux config, though extensive, is no where near as easy as Windows (which rarely works the first six times you configure the machines unless you have a very very simple network), but not so with the Mac - it was laughably easy.
- Books, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Well you've obviously never switched...so you have no idea what you're talking about. After using Windows based PC's for several year, all the things he listed are completely true for me.
- StoneWolf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I use a Mac at work and I'm not a pirate. I am, however, a ninja.
- coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4About customisation - while it's true that Windows has more options for changing interfaces colours and type sizes out of the box, it doesn't amount to much. Apple are also keen to avoid the support calls from those who have switched their interface to black on black. Both platforms go much further if you use other software, on OS X, ShapeShifter (http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter/) is where it's at. Smaller behavioural tweaks (often simply exposing hidden built-in features) can be had with tools like TinkerTool and Cocktail.
These days, there's simply no reason to be either/or - I've got OS X on my MacBook running Windows and Ubuntu 6.06 via Parallels - if it has not been said enough already, it's a really fantastic solution. Also, it's entirely feasible to buy a Mac just to run Windows on natively just because you like the hardware - there is simply no equal to a MacMini as an SFF PC - even a Shuttle XPC is over 800% bigger, and anything smaller tends to be severely CPU limited. - MacGyverDXS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I just "switched"....love my 20" iMac, only had the chance to play with it for about 4 hours total since it arrived...but damn it's fast, the UI is slick and polished, and it's just easy as hell to edit video with it. For all my multimedia, web publishing, web surfing, chatting, and photo editing the mac will be my primary machine. My home built PC is running Ubuntu 95% of the time and I still have a XP partition on there too for my games.....but the pc will end up being my primary bitch work machine...doing DVD burning and duplicating, long downloads that I don't want to tie up my mac with, and rendering 3D files in Blender to keep my mac free. For me the switch to mac was more about getting away from the security and privacy issues that Microsoft has....If I could have gotten Dreamweaver, Flash, and at least one good video editor working in Linux I would probably not have made the jump to this awesome little machine....but I'm glad I did.
- coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I meant to add, I agree. FWIW, I have two computing degrees and 25 years of IT experience, I'm a full-time web and application programmer and sysadmin for Linux and OpenBSD servers. Whenever I have to deal with Windows, it's like talking to a small child - use short words, speak slowly and clearly if you want to be understood... So much lowest common denominator crap.
- ElJefeGrande, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I don't mean to flame, but some people talk about Macs like they are some wonderful piece of machinery specially designed for video editing and graphic design. But what does that really mean? Have you ever actually used a Mac to edit 400-600MB files in photoshop (which, when open take up nearly 1.5GB in RAM)? I work at a design company and I do exactly that on a new $5500 G5 with 4GB of RAM and there really is not much of a difference between the mac and my dual core dell running windows (which only cost about $1500). I'm not saying that I hate the mac (or the pc)! What I am saying is that I don't notice any differences as far as being a "designer" goes.
- joelhardi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Totally unreadable in Konq/KDE 3.5.2, no matter if I try to enlarge or reduce the font size. Switching to firefox ... I guess when all browsers become ACID-2 compliant, this article will become completely unreadable.
- BrandenWill, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I just did the switch in Feb. I love it. I have always wanted to use one and one day I just went out and bought an iBook. I have not used windows since. I love my mac. Each person will like what they like. There is no reason to fight about which one is better. To each there own. For me I will never use Windows unless I have too. That is just my two cents.
- coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"There's nothing on the Mac side you can't do on the "PC" side... and usually it's cheaper on the "PC" side as well."
Technically, sure. It just won't be as pleasant an experience. Cheapness often comes at a cost, and certainly doesn't always mean better - sounds like you'd consider a $1 mouse better in every way than a decent Logitech. Oh, so you'd be willing to pay more for a device that does it better? So where exactly is your real complaint?
"Macs aren't built ... for easy, functional networking"
That's hilariously wrong! Macs have had built-in, instant plug-and-play, auto-discovering networking on pretty much every machine since 1986. Get 2 Windows PCs, sling an ethernet cable between them. Does it, without reservation, 'just work'? If any of the terms 'ethernet card', 'driver', 'crossover cable', 'netbios' or 'DHCP' even cross your mind, it just tells everyone that you're as much a victim of the inferior experience MS has forced upon you as those who don't even want to know what those things mean. It just doesn't have to be that way. - coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Windows is very customizable, orders of magnitude so compared to OSX. Beyond the basic options, programs like Window Blinds can make a PC look like pretty much anything (even a Mac)."
Did you actually look at ShapeShifter? It goes quite a long way in that direction - you can easily make OS X look like XP or whatever, for example: http://www.maxthemes.com/themes/?theme=Mac%20OS%20XP
Did you know that WindowBlinds was originally a MacOS 9 app? OS 9 had complete built-in theming, but Apple never enabled it in public.
Personally, I'm not really interested in that kind of thing anyway - I've got work to do.
"And please don't get me started on Linux as a replacement for XP/OSX... it just isn't."
Huh? I don't think I said anything in that direction. Here's a recent example that I think neatly illustrates the way of the world (and I think you might agree): My MacBook has a relatively uncommon 1280x800 screen resolution. OSX supports it immediately, out of the box. Windows supports it with a simple driver update. Ubuntu currently doesn't work at that resolution because I can't figure out how or where I'm supposed to tweak the modeline in my X11 config files and there doesn't appear to be an update to the 915resolution package to support this chipset yet...
For the Mac Mini, the price thing doesn't hold a lot of water - you can't buy a mainstream PC that small for any price. A barebones Shuttle XPC with a core duo is slightly cheaper, but then it's 8 times the size, noisier and requires more money and work to make it do anything at all. Anyone even considering such a product would certainly have to know how to do things like install an OS, so it's unlikely your Grandma would even be in the market. I didn't say it's for everyone, just that it's a possibility that I've not seen mentioned. - thejadedmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3yeah, that's when I gave up with linux too... Ubuntu is better about it then Suse 9.0 was (at least for me) if you ever want to give Linux a go again.
- jpt62089, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hooked up my Logitech MX 1000 to my teachers iBook once and it worked instantly, no driver installs or downloads! Literally Plug and play! And all the buttons worked too! well except one, but that thing won't even work on my Windows PC!
- HackWithRamzi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes, Mac OSX Tiger is a complete joy to program. Cocoa is incredible!
- coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Let's see - to make a shortcut on OS X:
1) right-click, select 'Make Alias'.
2) command-option drag the item
3) there is no three
4) Select item, select 'Make Alias' from file menu
5) Select item, hit command-L
6) ln -s
So, that's evidently the 'force the user to work only one way' approach at its finest.
The 'make a broken shortcut and then fix it' method sounds like a fairly bad idea to start with, especially from a support point of view.
MacOS had aliases long before Windows had shortcuts, and OS 9 aliases were vastly superior things (OS X ones are not so good) as they were effectively unbreakable.
Being grumpy because it doesn't use the same keyboard shortcuts or terminology as Windows is not Apple's problem. - node3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Digit
Computers may be causal (this is almost a meaningless distinction as everything above the quantum level in our universe is causal), but that does not mean they are fully predictable. Look up the "halting problem" for proof of this.
But more specific to the top at hand, in Windows things "randomly messing up" refers to the fact that Windows has a tendency to acquire problems from fully legitimate usage under no fault of the user. They did not deliberately command the machine to malfunction, nor were their actions ones that are, or should be, inherently risky. They were operating the computer properly, exactly as they had always operated, yet this time it failed.
Yes, this can happen on any OS, but the fact is that Windows is significantly more prone to this than Mac OS X or Linux. This is evident by the fact that even highly experienced and skilled users will have had to re-install Windows due to system abnormalities *far* more often than they will have had to do so for Linux or OS X. - t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Grab a program called TinkerTool, and tweak away.
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