“If you put a bad-tasting item in your mouth, the natural instinct is to spit it out. A similar reaction can occur to those stalwarts testing computer hardware and software. However, quite the opposite reaction could be seen as my colleague David Coursey extended his test of the Macintosh from one month to two, and then to three.” Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNews.
Can Macs and PCs Really Get Along?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Mac is pricey. PC is democratic.
I love democracy !
So no one else can choice mac! 🙂
I am receiving a Mac soon! A G4 Cube!
David (the OSNews owner) sent his Cube over to me, so I can write more Mac articles for OSNews. Thanks David!
It should be here before the end of the week. Can’t wait!
I am sure the Cube will happily co-exist and get along just fine with our four PCs, two laptops and the BeBox.
Cool! I’ve been drooling over those ever since they came out … Congratulations, Eugenia!
From the sound of it, I hope you have a great airconditioning system where you live – that’s a *lot* of computing-generated heat!
Mac is to communism as PC is to democracy.
I wanta play…
so apple is going to fall, lets see communism (go with russia here) went from i beleve 47-91 so 44 years apple has been around since what 78? so 24 years so apple has 20 years maybe? Yes I know there are other communist countries. oh and take this jokingly (sp?)
I don’t really see how politics can be used as analogies to the computer industry, but whatever works for you. I don’t like politics. I’m not an anarchist, just uneducated.
Any hoo, the question “Can PCs and Mac get along” is tough to answer, it depends on what level of getting along you want. I see Apple ads in magazines (The “Top 10 Myths” ad) that say year Macs and PCs share information everyday through e-mail, instant messaging and basically anything Internet base. Although those are pretty simplistic usages that are valid proof that Macs and PCs work well together. But some people would also define the interoperability factor as how well you can interchange Word or Excel files between the 2 systems.
Depending on how much work you’re willing to do, you can pretty much share anything between Macs and PCs. I could export an Excel spreadsheet into plain text and then import it into AppleWorks and claim that Macs and PCs work well together, the original data is integral the variable is how it got from one place to another.
Hmm, can’t think of anything else worthwhile to say and I don’t want to rant because that annoys people. Oh yeah! Best wishes to Eugenia on getting a Cube.
When are you going to get a REAL Cube??? Example: http://www.channelu.com/NeXT/History/NeXTPub/1M4873.3.92/index.html
I am not getting any, I think. I saw one for $200, two months ago, at the WeirdStuff shop, but the monitor did not work. So I did not buy it that day. If the monitor was working, I would have a NeXT Cube too now.
Here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2019187539
and:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2019124355
If you get one and then decide you don’t want it…..well, my birthday is coming up soon!
Isn’t there an Microsoft Office version for Mac? I thought I read that somewhere…
http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/office/
Am I the only one who seems to have noticed that the people who hate Macs the most usually havn’t used them very often or recently?
I know a lot of people who pay out Macs by basically comparing Mac System 7 to Win2K or similar. Of all the PC users who pay out Mac users how many of then have spent a few months using a modern Mac running OSX?
GOD I WANT A NeXTCube!!! Coolest hardware/software ever created, not that many left out there.
Actually I don’t mind Mac users being stuck in their little world by default, but why I _hate_ the cult is because most of them are simply too computer-illiterate to acknowledge how behind the technology (CPU-performance-wise..) is, and how st00pid they are in return for paying so much for it.
You only linked that Reg article about Mac/PC performance recently, go there again and educate yourself…
A typicall Mac-reply is usually that they can name a 1000 apps where the Mac is faster, but upon being asked for only 10, they don’t even produce a single one…
Now where everybody is tired of that age old Photoshop filter rip off (except Jobs himself, poor dude..) and where the Maccies are so proud to finally have Maya, I would like to see a top of the line Dual G4 and a Top of the line Dual Athlon and/or P4 render the same scene – This would a be a good demo to replace that photoshop filter bullshit in the new milennium…
If the Mac (-performance) would even be a fraction as powerful as most of the Maccies have been mislead to believe over the past years, then it ought to be at least similar fast…. Mac users be scared in case someone ever tries this… but most kilely Jobs already got a injunction at court in order to prohibit this… 😉
Here is another example of a Windows PC zealot not having a clue…
>>Actually I don’t mind Mac users being stuck in their little world by default, but why I _hate_ the cult is because most of them are simply too computer-illiterate to acknowledge how behind the technology (CPU-performance-wise..) is, and how st00pid they are in return for paying so much for it.<<
I don’t see the CPU performance to be an issue personally. The sad part is that Intel can’t compare to Motorola clock for clock (or even SSE/MMX verses AltiVec). PCs can say they have finally caught up to the Mac in the performance department… so after a decade of being behind the curve ball, it should feel good to be the front runner for once I’m sure. Now Apple needs to get off its arse and put us in front once again (which will happen). PCs are the ones who need to get with the times when it comes to peripherals… they need to get rid of the floppy (what a waste of space), PS2 and parallel/serial ports (well the serial port is still worthy) these are all dinosaur age gear. Though USB is good, it is good for only low data streaming (keyboards and mice come to mind here), so FireWire needs to be brought on board, and USB 2 isn’t going to cut it, so go FireWire if you want to keep up with the times!
Okay enough of the ‘st00pid’ silly debate and the anon-idiots that don’t know what they’re talking about!
I actually came in here to talk about the ‘Macs and PCs’ from the getting along on the network issue… Well I have been using my Ti-Book G4 within a cross-platform environment surrounded by Solaris, Linux and WinNT/2k. I have found to have zero problems in regards of file and print sharing amongst our diverse network. It’s been a joy to use a Mac in a Sun box and PC dominated environment with no issues to hamper my flexibility with working together with the other environments.
Of course I do have Microsoft Office v.X for Mac and it is a major improvement compared to older versions that I have used (or owned) in the past. I tested the demo before purchasing it and was very impressed indeed. The compatibility is seamless with MS Office on our NT/2k machines, so kudos to the MacBU folks for building a real great Mac version of Office!
I think Apple has overall done an excellent job of keeping Mac OS X very friendly with both UNIX (of course) and Windows environments 🙂
I don’t hate mac, I just prefer windows. I will admit though most of my mac experiance is os 9, I have played around with X and I’m not that impressed (I still think using a bsd core is a cop out). Of course I’m more then willing to admit when apple does something good (pushing wifi for example). I just don’t buy into that apple “good guy” image they’ve been trying to sell since 1984 (think different my arse, they sell you your hardware and your os).
Actually, technically speaking, the powerpc architecture is by far superior to the x86 architecture (which was crap when it was invented and still crap now). x86 is like an old Volkswagon that has had it’s engine tweaked to stay alive, but it’s still an old Volkswagon.
Truthfully, I couldn’t give a rats ass about benchmarks that show that one processor can render this in x seconds faster than the other etc… If it can do the work I want it to do in reasonable time, then it’s fine. Mostly only children that want to show off care about benchmarks. Hell I can show you some Alpha systems that would blow the pants off any Athlon/Intel system, but those system are far too expensive for me to buy which brings me back to my point. The reason why x86 is so popular is because it’s cheap not because it’s greater than everything else.
I myself don’t use Mac systems which clearly shows that I am not one of the Macists that everyone raves about (I own two athlon systems and a old P2 system), but when everyone raves about how great the x86 architecture is I have to laugh. Anyone that has written in assembly for x86 knows that it’s so screwed up and sloppy it’s just sad (at least if they’ve ever written assembly on something else to know better).
One of the problems is Mac arn’t just lying around everywheres. there not common and not very accesable. There are many macs at my university, none though run OSX. Many many people try them cause they’re there and they are differant. People are very open to trying new things. But they quickly find them selfs hating them. There are reasons why Apple holds only 3-4% of the market and its not soley a cost issue. I still can’t even do basic things like copy and paste with a mac. Plus things like POS keyboards and one button mice bug the s&%* out of people so much i have seen people punch and throw parts of the macs. Until apple and mac fans relize that they are not intuitive or nice or really anything to most people this will not change. I have tried and tried again to try and get used to them or find something good, but fail every time. I know many many people and have meet many people in this world and have only known/meet 5 people who own/did own a mac. Until I found myself getting interested in computer a few years ago i didn’t even know apple still exsisted. It boils down to those who like macs will not change, they have gotten set in there ways and find the way apple does things to be right. People who use PC’s have decided they like how that world works. And at the end of the day Apple has 3-4% and PC/MS has like what 90% and the rest is who knows what. There may be many things one things effect this and if one such thing was differant bla bla bla. But in the end PC’s are dominant. PC started at zero market share and built their way up. So monopoly powers were not there in the begining. There sucess trend started for a reason.
Kelvin. If you would like though I’m willing to recive a new mac with OSX and try it for 6 months. But I doubt there are people with spare G4’s lying around with nothing better to do with them. I’ll wait for one to fall out of the sky, till then I will sit by my PC
Look beyond performance. I paid $2300 for a 550MHz TiBook 4 months ago and let me tell you that even though it is anywhere from slightly to extremely slower than a similarly priced x86 notebook, it is a dream. When you buy Apple, you’re paying for the whole experience – hardware, software, and the way they interact. I think that concept is foreign to most PC users, and as a result, they’re scared by it. Especially geeks, who are fundamentally unable to grasp anything but price/performance ratio when determining what hardware/software to buy. I know my machine is slower and I don’t even care, because it’s so absolutely trouble-free. It just works. I can do everything I want and need to do on it and there are no hiccups. Ever. That to me is priceless. I’m not stupid. I’m not a stranger to system-building or benchmarking or any of that. But I don’t need mad performance either. All of a sudden, I find that I am an ex-computer geek!
quote:”so apple is going to fall, lets see communism (go with russia here) went from i beleve 47-91 so 44 years”
more like ~1923-1991.
brad : “ent from i beleve 47-91 so 44 years apple has been around since what 78”
From 1917 to 1991. Apple Is present since 1976.
happy to heard that, when is planned the A1 arrival then?(ora a based Spark laptop)
um brad…..you never did very well on the relation tests in school did you?
saying “Mac is to Communism as PC is to Democracy” is not descriptive enough to assume that the person was making a positive corelation between the computer and its reletive Economic/Governmental (yes Communism is an economic thoery, not a governmnetal one) partner.
the person could have very well ment to have a negative corolation or no corolation at all. this would mean that Mac is the Oposit of Communism and PC is Oposit of democracy, OR it could mean that there is not a relationship at all (in the case of no corelation.
I’ve used Windows, MacOS 6-9, Linux and the BeOS extensively and I still like Macs the best. Here’s why.
The BeOS was probably the best OS I’ve ever used but it was missing so many features, and had so few applications, that it was useless for anything beyond reading email and some lightweight web browsing. The printing architecture sucked rocks big time.
Linux is a great OS if you love to tinker and don’t really have any work to do. I HATE tinkering. I just want to turn on the computer and use it. I do NOT have time to tweak the OS to get it to work right. I don’t have hunreds of hours to read HOWTOs and man pages to figure out how to turn something on or off. X Windows is particularly retarded. I can see why IBM loves Linux. IBM is a service company and Linux needs HUGE amounts of service in order to keep it running right.
Windows is actually a pretty good OS. It’s big problem is everything is in the wrong place. Everything is completely counter intuitive. Options that should be right next to each other on the same screen are spead out over two or three control panels. Options that should have a setting on a control panel don’t. (You have to edit the Registry by hand.) Options that shouldn’t be on a control panel are. I’ve gone through about 6 keyboards on my PC from pounding on them because nothing makes sense on Windows.
I really like Macs. Most things are in the right place and work the way you expect them too. Apps are intuitive. You turn on the machine, even the first time, and things just work. Attaching new hardware a easy. The OS gets updated regularly. Apple is responsive to it’s customers, mostly.
Mac hardware is a bit more expensive for a reason. It’s not crap. PC hardware is CRAP! Buying a new piece of hardware, and having it work in your system, is a crap shoot. With Mac hardware you just plug it in and it works. People have talked about replacing a motherboard in their PC like it was the simplest thing in the world. I tried that and Windows politely asked for the Win98 CD beacause it had found new hardware. It churned for 4 hours and rendered itself unbootable. You can take a Mac hard drive and put it in a new machine and it will just work. (The BeOS partition on the PC that ate it’s Win 98 partition accepted the new motherboard without flinching.)
The only issue I’ve had with the MacOS was the filesystem. It was way to easy to smash. I was a MacOS developer for a long time. (I worked on a bunch of different products including 3D accelerated video drivers at ATI.) During development you tend to crash your machine a lot. (Which is why Mac developers pleaded for protected memory spaces for so long.) Crashing a Mac 3 or 4 times a day tended to trash the file system pretty quickly. Not enough to loose data, but enough to be a pain in the butt.
My wife has been using MacOS X since it’s release and has had zero filesystem problems so I assume that the file system issue has been resolved.
Well, that’s my $0.02. My next machine will be a Mac because they really are the best. Especially if you have work that you need to get done.
geoff
well, If most maccies were interested in a pising contest Over “who has the most power that we don’t need” I am sure Apple would do somthing about that, wouldn’t they.
the fact of the matter is that NO home user needs processor speed as high as it is. who the heck needs 3 GHz?
I am not being apologetic, I have a 400MHz G4, and I recently upgraded my PC to a 900 MHz Duron.
Why do I need 2 billion operations a second? I don’t.
Word can only load so fast, and it has always thrown charactors up on the screen right away. what I need is lots of memory to keep swaping to a minimum.
and if I was going to compile millions of lines of code….well I would not be at home, I would be on a Unix station at work with a remote session to our Sun Server with 32 processors.
so give it a break.
Hey, I have a question to ask you buddy: what are you going to use all that extra PC power for? Maybe you have been mislead into swallowing the “more MHZ=better computer” BS that Intel/AMD have thrown your way.
Fact is: no programs, save the latest PC games, really need 2 GHZ processors. Few programs can currently take advatage of the dual INTEL/AMD system you speak of. All that performance is merely posing:”I have a PENTIUM 5GHz with a water cooled case, and strobe lights”. WHo cares? Get any work done?
More is not better. March yourslf down to your nearest APPLE store, or Microcenter, and get your hands on a MAC. Then talk.
Too many pepole who comment know not what they speak of.
Kelvin, no you are not the first and only one to notice this. PC users who bash Macs have their reasons. It would be foolish to think that one platform is 100% better than the other in every way. When a person uses a certain platform long enough they get use to it. Some refuse to try new things, that’s where we get all those anti PC, anti Mac people.
Dave Poirier, yes there is a Mac version of Office, but I prefer to keep all Microsoft software away from my iMac. I was simpily making a point.
RE: Power
I’ve seen the evidence for myself that the G4 can be quite powerful if used properly, I compared my Athlon 1 GHz to my G4 700 MHz using the RC5 client which is one of the few distributed computing clients that is optimized for specific CPUs. I like the G4, but the overall system of a Mac is kind of lousy. Apple should be thinking about DDR memory by now, and above all there’s a difference between actual performance and perceived performance. That’s where operating system performance is crucial. PC users see OSX in it’s slow sluggish UI drawing and immediately complain that Macs are slow. This is the wrong thing to do. Another example is Photoshop. Photoshop is definately not a good benchmarking tool. It should not be used to compare even CPUs within the same family. On XBitLabs (www.xbitlabs.com) they ran an article that explained why Photoshop is not a reliable benchmark. To summarize, the results you get when running filters in Photoshop vary quite greatly. Even if you were running the same filter over and over on the same computer, you would get different results each time and in many cases the results would vary widely. The results I’m referring to is the time it takes to apply a filter to the target image.
>render the same scene
Are there any nVidia Quadro’s for Mac? if no, then mac doesn’t belong in 3d, if yes, then x86 is still better
My problem is with stupid computer users in general. Both Mac/PC. I happen to own and use both on a daily basis. I work on PCs, *nix workstations because I need to, I use a mac because I choose to.
I like my mac because after a whole day of fixing, tuning and doing things with PCs. I want to come home to a computer that works. I just turn it on and do what I need to do.
Would I replace all the PCs at work with Macs if I could.. No!why?
Software is not there yet and it would cost to much.
Would I replace my Mac at home with a PC. No. Why? My personal time costs to much.
you have to love those next cubes. i worked on them in the early 90’s. nextstep was great, though i expect really great things from os x soon also. applescript will be integrated to a larger extent into the application development framework (may). many of the coolest features of nextstep are being implemented, but like next, few people need the tools. you’d be hard pressed to walk into a financial institution were somebody was not using the next to rapidly develop applications.
also, one has to be amused by the cost comaprisons. my tibook cost $500 less than my dell. democracy at work in the good ol’ usa.
Anonymous, Power means different things to different people. I like the Power to play new games and use commercial productivity apps on my unix box. Its a marriage I’ve been waiting for for 15 years. I like the power to use my computer for amatuer digital photography and video….seamlessly. I’m not a professional movie maker but I send VCD’s of my kid to family at least once a month. I’m a unix sysadmin and a maccie….and I guess that makes me a technical idiot from your point of view. I dont care if a dual PIV or athlon is faster, six months from now it wont matter for whatever you buy. The main reason I have a mac? OSX wont run on PC’s. I’ve been the PC road, I’ll pass thanks. I like it here.
<<
I dont care if a dual PIV or athlon is faster, six months from now it wont matter for whatever you buy.
>> By Shmegglefurt
Why won’t it matter in 6 months? Do you think 6 months from now Motorola, IBM, Intel, and AMD will stop making microprocessors for computers? Or maybe all computers will run at the same speed? 6 months from now, the G5 probably still won’t be out, Hammer will be on the edge of release, and Intel will still be riding the MHz wave.
On the software front, six months from now OSX will probably be much improved thanks to 10.2, Microsoft will be promoting some .NET version of Windows, but the software industry will still be Windows dominated.
I agree that “Power” can be defined in many different ways depending on who you ask. But I would like to see a lot changed on the Mac platform before I can say I have the power to be productive using a Mac.
I have to admit that those NeXT Cube machines with that really nice designed Monitor with total sleekness was an awesome look, and the black color scheme just made it even more stylish… that is why I can say Dell has done a good job of styling up a PC, it is eye catching. Maybe Apple (with Steve Jobs influence) will go with a retro style concept and mimic some of the old NeXT boxes… wishful thinking I guess 🙂
PC users feel compelled to bash Mac users largely because Mac users are now and have always been smug bastards. Most of this argument is emotional.
There are objective advantages to be argued on either side. Obviously there is an advantage to the cost and abundance of PC peripherals and when Mac fans try to pretend otherwise, they usually come across as uninformed or a little desperate. On the flip side, as any old Amiga user knows, there are distinct advantages to be had with well-designed hardware and coordinated software, even when using it limits you in speed and peripheral choice. If you’re more productive using that “non-commodity” platform, it’s a better platform for you.
The Amiga was the premiere platform for video work for a while (and still does well), SGI workstations were the premiere platform for animation and high-end editing for a while (and still do well). The Mac has been the premiere platform for prepress work for a while now, and if you talk to anyone in the prepress industry, it still is. It looks to me like Apple is gearing up to move into the niches once occupied by both Amiga and SGI. Sure, people will still be able to do things like that with PC hardware, just like they can now, but Apple will (if things work as they hope) be the premiere platform.
The PC is a great general purpose platform and nobody can knock it for versatility and price-to-performance. That doesn’t make it the One True Computer any more than the Macintosh is unblemished manna from heaven, either.
I made a point to show i was unsure on the dates.
also like i said I was joking
I do not understand your complaint: “I still can’t even do basic things like copy and paste with a mac.”
MacOS has copy and paste just like Windows and BeOS. You either use the Edit menu or the same keyboard shortcuts as in Windows/BeOS (remember to use the modifyer key next to the spacebar – the apple key I think – and not the one that looks like the PC’s CTRL key – copy is C, cut is X, paste is V).
Is that what you’re referring to? Macs are actually quite easy to use, but they can be frustrating if you expect it to work like a PC with DOS or Windows.
actully as i thought about it i did figure out that. I was how to open a link in a new window that was baffaling (sp?) one day. I only use the keyboard method when for some reason right click doesn’t give me a copy command. Having to use both mouse and keyboard at same time is anoying as hell. I think my problem with the copy paste was 1) no right click copy, i hated that beos didn’t have this to. 2) you had to go to the menu at the top. But macos has that thing were the application you are using takes over the deskbar. so you don’t think to look there. Not just for this reason by having apps tie themselfs to that thing has to be one of the most anoying things ever.
If i thought long enough or sat at a mac for enough time i would come up with more things that baffel or anoy me. Having shutdown under the obscure special option comes to mind. I think that is where it is. I can never remember and have to go looking.
I think macs have a heavy dependancey on the keyboard shortcuts since they don’t have the extra mouse button. and for the desk bar the beos and windows method of having one button that starts you through your options is much better for someone new to the OS. Start then shut down makes perfect sence. It’s just easy to make fun of at first till you relize your going to start to shutdown.
Macs have always had a lot going for them. They are far from problem-free, though. But any crashes I’ve encountered on Macs (LOTS) were always because of the OS design and the software running on it. Because of the OS, I’ve used PCs my whole “computing life.”
Do I like PC hardware? Hell no. I think it sucks. I’m tired of interrupt requests (and all that). I hate the floppy drive standard (no OS can sanely manage a storage device that has no notification or locking – LS-120 is my savior!). I mean, come on… x86 hardware is LAME top to bottom (with only a few good parts here and there). Why? Too much fiddling for no good reason (designing it that way is not a good reason).
PC cases have been horrible for years (only in the last two years have sane and humane cases become almost standard in PC-land). And don’t get me started on the whole lame-ass BIOS issue.
Do I like the operating system found on most PCs? Hell no. I hate MS Windows (all kinds) and I am sick of command-line interfaces and windowing environments that try to look like MS Windows but fail to be as useful as MS Windows. But I use BeOS most of the time, so the only part of my computing experience left to hate is the hardware. Hence my PPC+BeOS search.
But, even without BeOS, I still have used PCs all my life. Why? I used to be a tinkerer and a happy computer geek. That’s no longer the case. Why still use a PC, then? Software investment. If I could convert all my Windows software to MacOS software, what would hold me back?
MacOS would hold me back. MacOS (pre version X) is far too primitive (reboot for this, reboot for that, one app kills the whole lot, lowsy window management, etc). Yes, I love a few things about MacOS (things MS should have learned, like not filling the system with tons of files that are all interconnected and vital to “proper” system behavior or are a waste of space – who knows), but most of what I love about MacOS was left out of OSX. I didn’t like MacOS X, on a cursory investigation, but I’m willing to give it a shot on a full-time basis (if I ever get my UMAX Supermac upgraded to a G4). But I still think its window management stinks. Plus, OSX does not feel as responsive as BeOS; I’m just plain spoiled by the user-interface responsiveness in BeOS. Candy coating be damned, I want an OS that pays attention to me. What’s more important than the user?
I admire the hardware, but I want an OS that behaves. I seek older Macs and Mac clones that run BeOS. A PPC machine with an OS like BeOS is my ideal. Lack of software still sucks, though.
Anyway, my point is that the fight between Macs and PCs is pointless. They’re both virtually the same thing. Fighting over politics and MHz is lame. Every person I know in the real-world (local family, friends) couldn’t care less about MHz. They just want something that gets their work done. Both MacOS and Windows have such flaws as to irritate them in one way or the other.
Choose your irritant.
Use what works for you; don’t bitch about people who are happy with what they have. Even if their happiness seems false. I’ve become an anti-geek where computers are concerned because computers just plain suck.
Why should one lousey system be THE standard? There used to be all kinds of computer and OS choices. Some of them (the ones that failed) were working towards being very user-friendly in logical ways (not programmer or marketing-conceived ways). Today we have two major operating systems that are commercially viable, and then a free one with users who swear it’s the savior, but it clearly isn’t made for normal human beings.
the fact that the menu is in the same place on the screen for whatever app is being used has been prooven to
1) be more efficient and productive
2) be more intuitive.
people who are computer illiterate are a good example. you give them a windows machine they have to look around for the menu, yeah they get use to it, but on a mac, it does not matter what they are using or doing, you say go to the file menu. they think that the file menu is the same one that is always there.
yeah for you who is use to Windows it is anoying, but I have used windows for the last 7 years, I actualy like the Mac way better. it gives a more unified feel to the whole system and it makes you feel as if the Operating system is out of your way, you are using an application rather than using the operating system.
I do with they had the application switching of classic mac though. and perhaps take the dock and make it slideable like the old launch strip so that it does not pop up with out your request.
first thing, I’m in no way trying to argue with you.
With that out of the way.
How has this been proven. far as productivity and intuitive ness. I also don’t see how people have to look around with the MS windows setup. the menus are part of the app, there is no way you can’t know where they are. and they follow the same style from app to app. The big problem with the mac setup, or rather an example is if i have an app up and want to shut down i have to get that app out of the way to be able to shutdown since when an app is using the deskbar (or whatever mac calls it) i cannot get to the option to shut down. Also trying to use more than one app at once is a pain. Yes some people in time will get used to such setups. I just don’t see how it’s more intuitive. If it was, I think people would be able to sit down at a mac and go at things and never get confused, but i have yet to see this. I have had the oportuinity to see a person touch a computer for the first time (my grandmother) and she caught on to damn near everything a normal person would in a matter of minutes. Unfortently it is impossable to try the same person on each operating system as if it were their first time. Only if we had a batch of clones (people, not apple clones )would we be able to even try such a test. I truely do think if they were so easy to use and productive and everything as people claim many many more people would have one. Many people have money to burn so the cost isn’t a big deal. The big thing that got alot of people into macs the last few years was the Imac cause parents bought them for their kids (cause it was pretty, or cheap, differant, on sale at sears) and it was the kids first computer, or computer they could really play with. This will be a boon to apple in the comming years as these kids decide they want to upgrade and will probobly stick with macs since thats what they are used to. The Imac was a great idea by apple i must say. Any computer that is sold in the home electronics department like a toasters or coffee makers is impressive. Walk into a store see a stack of imacs pick a few up maybe in a asortment of colors, go home plug them in, feel trendy.
>>I think macs have a heavy dependancey on the keyboard shortcuts since they don’t have the extra mouse button.<<
Actually we have another mouse click, with the ‘ctrl-click’ wil bring up a ‘right-click’ menu
>>The big problem with the mac setup, or rather an example is if i have an app up and want to shut down i have to get that app out of the way to be able to shutdown since when an app is using the deskbar (or whatever mac calls it) i cannot get to the option to shut down.<<
Mac OS 9 and older;
There is 2 options on this…
1) you either hide the App you are using, which will bring finder forward to you
2) select Finder from App switcher
Mac OS X;
Just go to the ‘Apple’ Menu, just like you would the ‘Start’ Menu… and X has fewer steps in this regard than XP 🙂
>>Also trying to use more than one app at once is a pain.<<
Just use the App switcher (Mac OS 9 or older) or the Dock (Mac OS X). It makes for easy app switching 🙂
Don’t forget the very best way to quickly shutdown a Mac (something PC’s still do not have): the power button. Either the one on the keyboard (YAY! where it belongs!) or the one on the front of the machine. Some OEM machines can do this correctly if the OEM software is running (stupid requirement), but other than that, PC’s are junk where the hardware and software integration behaviors are concerned. This is one place where the Mac has always kicked butt. I just wish that the OS was more function than form.
The power button on the machine does not seem to do what I said. Though the one on the keyboard DOES.