Apple Does not 'Just work'
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Russell Morris wrote:
1. The keyboard. I feel like I'm typing on a My-First-Keyboard. "I'm typing a letter to daddy!"
Weird. I find it the best keyboard I've ever had.
I think it depends on the keyboard, my macbook pro keyboard is awesome - the wireless keyboard I use on the macmini is disgusting and exactly how he describes it, My First Keyboard. Also - home and end are very annoying, they don't exist on my macbook, but I think fn+left/right work just as well. Also, took me like 20 minutes to find the # key (alt+3). Now I do the shortcuts by instinct it is starting to become as quick to code using this keyboard layout than a normal UK keyboard, but it takes a good few weeks. They dont have the £, @. ", ~, \ keys in the right place either, even though this is meant to be a UK keyboard. Sigh... it just works, providing you are an American teenager who doesn't program or use anything other than ilife. Biggest gripe at the minute - if I use VMware Fusion in fullscreen mode then all the other windows in other Space's lose the ability to minimise via the min yellow icon, and yet, they happily do it with a cmd+m or double clicking the window. Still - there is something scarily nice about using my macbook, it's the smallest and powerful notebook I've ever owned, but then again, it's also the most expensive.... still, I'm happy enough.
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I can just fire up VMWare Fusion and run Win apps directly on my Mac desktop. Can't do that on a Windows machine.Did you try Virtual PC, or WMWare for PC?? Dude, the answer to almost all of yours "Can the Win do this or that ..." is Yes. But you are right - different platform have different pros and cons, so it unwise to start defending just one, or attack just the other. If something is good enough for you - that that is THE OS for you.Yes you can run Virtual PC's, but what I meant is run the other OS in a virtual sense, ie: run Mac OS X on a virtual machine under Windows. Don't get me wrong, my whole point really was that don't knock the Mac if you don't know that much about it. You're right each OS has it's place (and it's fans), but it's good to understand where the limits of each are.
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When did Microsoft last give away Visual Studio? How about Visual Studio 2008 Express editions. :)
OK, Express editions you got me there. Good products for the price, especially SQL Express. But there are limitations in the Express product set which MS puts in place to force your hand to buy the full version of Visual Studio. An example being if you want to be able to do Windows Mobile development you need the pro version.
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Andrew Bleakley wrote:
Try writing code for Macs - that makes using them a dream
It's that bad? I've never coded for Macs in all my years of programming (20+) :-\
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
Depends on what you're coding for. If you're writing apps for mac in Cocoa or Carbon, it's pretty cool. A friend of mine turned me onto them in college and is part of the team that makes the equivalent to WinZip called StuffIt. I've never had a chance to do any programming on it until now, but I'm using it for mostly Ruby apps and I have to say it's pretty slick. It's definitely not windows, which I am used to, but I like it better. Mostly because the apps I use, TextMate for editing and Transmit for FTP are really smooth and think of a lot of the things I would need. Like Macs, its really just a question of choice. Do they cost more? Yep. Are they harder to find software for and do things in a different manner? Yeah. Am I a Mac Fanboy? No, I just like the interface, and I'm having a fairly easy time with programming on it. Are they worth the money? Mine is a work machine, so I can't say. Would I go out and buy one? If I had the cash, sure. Until then, probably not. :-D
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I'm with you on the application crashing. Everytime I've used a Mac (OS 9 & 10.2/10.4) it 'just crashes' on me. At one place I worked where we used Macs (OS 9 days), I had to reboot 7 times before lunch because it locked up each time. Then everytime I got onto my partner's Mac (10.2/10.4), it would crash reguarly... with messages that she never got when using it! I'm not a big fan of the Mac therefore from my experiences, and few interface things drive me nuts. But hey, if you like the way they work, and are stable for you, by all means use them I say.
------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------
Years ago, I used Macs with OS 7 and 8 for a project. Not only did they constantly crash, there was no outward indication that they did so. You could pull down menus, turn caps lock on and off, move the mouse around, but no commands would actually work. In one case, we crashed it so hard, we had to reinstall the OS. The reason: we'd put more than 512 files in the root directory. (I've related this before, but it bears repeating. At this time, I worked with a guy that did both Mac and Windows development. I asked him which one he preferred. He said, "Whatever one I'm not working on.")
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Christian Graus wrote:
Objective C is nasty looking.
I agree. I guess if I ever get a project requiring Mac coding, I'll find out :-D
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
It's like anything, you learn it when you have to, and until then, it just looks odd.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you. If you're still stuck, ask me for more information.
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I am so, so sick of typing in my password every single time I want to do anything, and of apps crashing, and of things like the Airport Update rendering the Airport base station inoperative, and missing support for things like WMA files, and my USB drive, and all the other crap that Apple likes to thing only happens to PC users. I knew Apple was full of hot air and stretching the truth but it's now at the point of offensive. Get your house into order, Apple, before you think about slinging stones and arrows.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Aha, I knew it was a scam... at least on vista you don't have to put your password in all the time... you just have to click "Yes I want to run this malicious program". I have a couple of friends who switched in university, they are happy for the most part. I still laugh when they have a problem and point out that I have never had that problem with XP, Vista or Ubuntu. The other funny part is that one refuses to update to Leopard because it will break things that he finally got working the way he wanted them to... thats just a .x update... so sad... :laugh:
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I am so, so sick of typing in my password every single time I want to do anything, and of apps crashing, and of things like the Airport Update rendering the Airport base station inoperative, and missing support for things like WMA files, and my USB drive, and all the other crap that Apple likes to thing only happens to PC users. I knew Apple was full of hot air and stretching the truth but it's now at the point of offensive. Get your house into order, Apple, before you think about slinging stones and arrows.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
If iTunes for Windows is anything to go by, I can't really say I'm surprised...
Sunrise Wallpaper Project | The StartPage Randomizer | The Windows Cheerleader
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Depends on what you're coding for. If you're writing apps for mac in Cocoa or Carbon, it's pretty cool. A friend of mine turned me onto them in college and is part of the team that makes the equivalent to WinZip called StuffIt. I've never had a chance to do any programming on it until now, but I'm using it for mostly Ruby apps and I have to say it's pretty slick. It's definitely not windows, which I am used to, but I like it better. Mostly because the apps I use, TextMate for editing and Transmit for FTP are really smooth and think of a lot of the things I would need. Like Macs, its really just a question of choice. Do they cost more? Yep. Are they harder to find software for and do things in a different manner? Yeah. Am I a Mac Fanboy? No, I just like the interface, and I'm having a fairly easy time with programming on it. Are they worth the money? Mine is a work machine, so I can't say. Would I go out and buy one? If I had the cash, sure. Until then, probably not. :-D
I have heard of Cocoa and Carbon, just never have had a chance to work with them. I've always wondered about Qt since it is cross platform...
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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Try writing code for Macs - that makes using them a dream
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It's like anything, you learn it when you have to, and until then, it just looks odd.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you. If you're still stuck, ask me for more information.
Yes, that is very true. I remember how odd C++ looked when I had just come out of high school learning BASIC on an Apple ][e ( showing my age here :laugh: ). Then, after C++, found Java odd, learned it, then onto C#, and I have to say, I do like all three of the languages.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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I have heard of Cocoa and Carbon, just never have had a chance to work with them. I've always wondered about Qt since it is cross platform...
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
Cocoa and Carbon are if you're trying to make desktop apps. My roommate uses C++ for all of his stuff. Again, I think it's just a different platform to program for.
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I think it depends on the keyboard, my macbook pro keyboard is awesome - the wireless keyboard I use on the macmini is disgusting and exactly how he describes it, My First Keyboard. Also - home and end are very annoying, they don't exist on my macbook, but I think fn+left/right work just as well. Also, took me like 20 minutes to find the # key (alt+3). Now I do the shortcuts by instinct it is starting to become as quick to code using this keyboard layout than a normal UK keyboard, but it takes a good few weeks. They dont have the £, @. ", ~, \ keys in the right place either, even though this is meant to be a UK keyboard. Sigh... it just works, providing you are an American teenager who doesn't program or use anything other than ilife. Biggest gripe at the minute - if I use VMware Fusion in fullscreen mode then all the other windows in other Space's lose the ability to minimise via the min yellow icon, and yet, they happily do it with a cmd+m or double clicking the window. Still - there is something scarily nice about using my macbook, it's the smallest and powerful notebook I've ever owned, but then again, it's also the most expensive.... still, I'm happy enough.
atilaw wrote:
the min yellow icon
Ooh, that reminds me of a big gripe I've had with Apple's claim to be easier to use: What in the world is up with the colored circles for window operations? In Windows, you can look at a picture and pretty much figure out, the "X" closes the window, the little line makes the window small, the box does something with making the window big. With the Mac, you have - what is it; red, green, and yellow? Well, the red is (I think) obvious enough that it closes the window; but what in the world do the other two buttons do? And they claim to have a better UI. When are they going to wake up and realize that more artsy != better UI? Arrogant swine.
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I am so, so sick of typing in my password every single time I want to do anything, and of apps crashing, and of things like the Airport Update rendering the Airport base station inoperative, and missing support for things like WMA files, and my USB drive, and all the other crap that Apple likes to thing only happens to PC users. I knew Apple was full of hot air and stretching the truth but it's now at the point of offensive. Get your house into order, Apple, before you think about slinging stones and arrows.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Interesting how much Apple has changed. I bought my first Apple II (serial number 800 something). It came with 4K of memory. upgraded it to 16K and later added a $800(!) 512K hard drive. Yes those are "K"'s. Apple was orginally the "open source" supplier, which was why I bought an Apple instead of a Trash 80 or Comode-a-Door. They published the bios code and all the hardware interfaces in the manual. I hacked the heck out of the basic editor. Today they will not even let a user change the battery in an iPod!
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Yes you can run Virtual PC's, but what I meant is run the other OS in a virtual sense, ie: run Mac OS X on a virtual machine under Windows. Don't get me wrong, my whole point really was that don't knock the Mac if you don't know that much about it. You're right each OS has it's place (and it's fans), but it's good to understand where the limits of each are.
You miss the obvious problem here: Why would anyone want to run Mac OS on a PC? Apple made it easy to run Windows on a Mac for a simple marketing reason: Windows is more useful, because more stuff is written for Windows. That way people who want to be snobby about having a Mac can continue to be snobby about having a Mac, and then use the better OS to get stuff done. And then they even manage to be snobby about that! I think there are two reasons there isn't an obvious way to run Mac OS on a PC: First, nobody cares (oh, sorry, three people do), and secondly, can you seriously see Jobs letting Mac OS be licensed on anything other than his own proprietary hardware? Jobs is a control freak. It'll never happen. Tomorrows headline: Virtual Mac released for PC
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If you're having to type your password every time you want to do anything there's certainly something wrong with either your system or with what you're trying to do with it. Try running Disk Utility and repair permissions on your system drive. I admit it must be annoying if that is happening, but hey UAC anyone? Hello? I've been using a Mac since early OS 9 days (circa '93) and Windows machines (3.1/95/98/NT/XP/Vista) for about the same. Are they different? Of course they are. Is one better than the other? Well that depends on what you are trying to do. That's like trying to compare a salad and a steak. One thing that I've found over the years is that using a Mac you get a better view of the wider world, particularly when it comes to file formats, usually MS ones. Personally I've never had any airport issues, nor any issues with any USB drive. WMA files, well as usual that's a MS proprietary file format. That's what they do. Forget adopting anything that is already good enough for the job, let's create our own format. Sony are just as bad. Unlike Apple who went with AAC for iTunes, but also made it flexible enough for people them a choice. If you want to play WMA on a Mac you have plenty of choices, try checking out MacUpdate HERE NTFS? Well firstly you can read NTFS disks by default under OS X and of course read/write even format disks in FAT32. When was the last time you were able to read an HFS/HFS+ disk on a PC? Need to write to an NTFS disk? Try NTFS-3G Forgot cross platform file issues though, have you ever tried to open a MS Works database file in MS Access? Or a Works Word Processing file in Word? MS don't even support all their own formats on their own platform (by default anyway). Granted that XCode might not be the slickest IDE in the world, but at least they don't have the balls to charge you for it. When did MS last give away Visual Studio? You want to write in BASIC, what about REALBasic? Alright, it's not exactly the same as MS VB, but it's not trying to be. That said though what MS tool will compile your VB code into an OS X/Linux/Win executable? Want to write .net code on a Mac try looking up Mono. Granted the GUI sucks, but it can be done. I could go on all day, but it's the same old story. The bottom line is that you need to accept that different computers are good at different things. I use a Mac on a daily basis for my graphic and web work, but I als
Bristle_Ike wrote:
WMA files, well as usual that's a MS proprietary file format. That's what they do. Forget adopting anything that is already good enough for the job, let's create our own format. Sony are just as bad. Unlike Apple who went with AAC for iTunes, but also made it flexible enough for people them a choice.
Wait, wait..... you're deriding Microsoft for forcing proprietary file formats on their users? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Hehe. iTunes is the reason I have my entire CD collection on my computer TWICE. I had it on there in mp3, and then I got my iPod. Ignoring the major interface issues I had with the iPod and iTunes (I had to wipe the iPod completely at least two or three times my first day with it), iTunes refuses to recognize other than Apple's proprietary audio format. Well, actually that might be a bit harsh. It does recognize it - but only to the extent that it offers to convert it for you. I'm just glad I got my iPod for free - which might have been too expensive after all.
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I am so, so sick of typing in my password every single time I want to do anything, and of apps crashing, and of things like the Airport Update rendering the Airport base station inoperative, and missing support for things like WMA files, and my USB drive, and all the other crap that Apple likes to thing only happens to PC users. I knew Apple was full of hot air and stretching the truth but it's now at the point of offensive. Get your house into order, Apple, before you think about slinging stones and arrows.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
I agree. I find a lot of things annoying about them. I'm also quite pleased by OSX. I feel that the right mix of OSX, XP and a tiny dash of Vista would make the best operating system to date. I find that I'm carrying my macbook more often than my XP Vaio, even though they have the same processor speed, probably because my Vaio has already been in the shop for major repairs and is feeling a bit finicky even now. I'd carry my Vista HP tablet more often, but it has an AMD processor that doesn't seem as fast or as battery efficient as either of the other two. That is another note. I like the fact that power management works so well on my macbook, but we'll see how that fares 2 years down the line. My Vaio was a champ with battery life until things started wearing out. As for you typing in a password every single time you do anything... I only have to do that when I add things to the applications folder or perform system updates. Just what the heck are you doing? I feel for ya on the missing support for audio/video. I want my zune to work with my macbook. Heck, I want a good player that does mkv subtitles correctly (VLC doesn't do it right and I can't figure out how to make MPlayer OSX do it at all).
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Really ? I have to type my password in to install a program, it's nothing like Vista. I'll give you WMA support, but everything else I've tried to bring over, has worked fine. And, I am loving my Mac ( I am using it right now ). Perhaps you've just used yours more than mine, I played my first mp3 tonight, I basically web browse and use XCode. I would agree that people who think Mac is perfect, are wrong, but overall, I do like the Mac environment a lot. I have several USB and portable hard drives, they all work. I am using a Microsoft keyboard and mouse right now. My Mac has had a lot of use ( again, in limited ways ) and never crashed. Not once.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you. If you're still stuck, ask me for more information.
I think I crashed mine once. I think it also didn't do a true hibernate when it was running out of power once too. I've experimented with my macbook a lot. I've even written fortran code on it ;). Using the Intel compiler on that produced good code, but their interface to xcode/gdb is attrocious and shouldn't even be called "Preview". The only device that I've tried that hasn't worked right off is my Zune, but we all knew that to begin with. I also am in the group that hardly ever has to type in a password. Something that does tick me off though. There is a guy who compiles and releases Darwine on a pretty regular basis. He is awesomely on top of it. I can't ever get it to ask me for a password when I try to copy it over to the applications directory and instead it just says that I don't have some type of permissions. I don't know what he isn't doing, but everything else does ask me for the password. Ah well, your experience sounds like mine.
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Really ? I have to type my password in to install a program, it's nothing like Vista. I'll give you WMA support, but everything else I've tried to bring over, has worked fine. And, I am loving my Mac ( I am using it right now ). Perhaps you've just used yours more than mine, I played my first mp3 tonight, I basically web browse and use XCode. I would agree that people who think Mac is perfect, are wrong, but overall, I do like the Mac environment a lot. I have several USB and portable hard drives, they all work. I am using a Microsoft keyboard and mouse right now. My Mac has had a lot of use ( again, in limited ways ) and never crashed. Not once.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you. If you're still stuck, ask me for more information.
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You miss the obvious problem here: Why would anyone want to run Mac OS on a PC? Apple made it easy to run Windows on a Mac for a simple marketing reason: Windows is more useful, because more stuff is written for Windows. That way people who want to be snobby about having a Mac can continue to be snobby about having a Mac, and then use the better OS to get stuff done. And then they even manage to be snobby about that! I think there are two reasons there isn't an obvious way to run Mac OS on a PC: First, nobody cares (oh, sorry, three people do), and secondly, can you seriously see Jobs letting Mac OS be licensed on anything other than his own proprietary hardware? Jobs is a control freak. It'll never happen. Tomorrows headline: Virtual Mac released for PC
Trevortni wrote:
can you seriously see Jobs letting Mac OS be licensed on anything other than his own proprietary hardware? Jobs is a control freak. It'll never happen.
not legally, but there're lots of hackintosh guides out their for anyone who does want to do it.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall