Using a Mac, [a bit over] a week later
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Rutvik Dave wrote:
It is nice, until you start doing something serious with it. It gets job done when the job is simple. But when you start using it for serious work, it really gets in your way. And like all the other Apple products it will make you feel stupid / frustrated with simple tasks even if you are a pro.
Can you give a few examples of the "serious" work that you do so easily on a Windows PC that is so difficult on a Mac? This is an honest question. I've seen a few others make the same general claim and I'll be damned if I can't think of any work I do in Windows that isn't similarly easy or hard on my Mac. Makes me wonder what others are doing that I'm not.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
Mike Mullikin wrote:
Can you give a few examples of the "serious" work that you do so easily on a Windows PC that is so difficult on a Mac?
Off the top of my head, "Doom" and "Quake" come to mind. :-\
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
I went through that pain about two years ago, though I used the mac only part time (for an intended port--the entire project got canceled before I had to do serious work.) My view of Apple is that as long as you do things the way they want you to do them, everything is fine. Deviate from that and your life gets difficult. One thing I never got over (of many) was how the UI seemed to be three UIs cobbled into one and one was still using thirty year old font. I never did adjust to how some options in xcode were in the xcode menu and some were on the global menu (whatever it's called.) and some weren't on any menu at all (the silly amount of keyboard shortcuts issue, which wouldn't have been so bad had the key combinations made logical sense.) Then there's the joy of windows popping up in the background with no indication anywhere that a window popped up in the background.
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Rutvik Dave wrote:
It is nice, until you start doing something serious with it. It gets job done when the job is simple. But when you start using it for serious work, it really gets in your way. And like all the other Apple products it will make you feel stupid / frustrated with simple tasks even if you are a pro.
Can you give a few examples of the "serious" work that you do so easily on a Windows PC that is so difficult on a Mac? This is an honest question. I've seen a few others make the same general claim and I'll be damned if I can't think of any work I do in Windows that isn't similarly easy or hard on my Mac. Makes me wonder what others are doing that I'm not.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
e.g... - Mac will not work properly on a network, - It doesn't work when I enable user quota and permission on my NAS, - It can't write to my friend's external HDD (because most of them are formatted with NTFS partitions, it can read but not write), - It can't read from my smartphone that is connected using USB (no usb mass storage mode), - sometimes it will not connect to my mobile hotspot (this happened many times on my client demo). - Can't connect projector. not even my PICO projector with USB port. - Many times it will not find the printer on a network. - Desktop window management sucks, you need to do some stupid gestures to find that Copy Files Progress window. - Crazy amount of terminal commands required to setup a development environment. - And the amount of internet bandwidth it consumes is insane. - Many apps will not have a proper installation process so when you drag it to your Application, it will ask you if you want to run this unknown app even when you have enabled to run unknown apps it in the settings. - My usb headphones doesn't work on a Mac. It doesn't have a microphone jack so my other headphones also doesn't work. I am not saying there is no fix for all of the above, and I am not even looking for answers. What I am trying to say is when I try to use Mac in my office it gets in my way (Mostly due to design choices Apple made on behalf of you). It makes my system admin feel stupid even they are very good at windows and linux. It works great at my home for surfing and watching movies. :)
Remind Me This - Manage, Collaborate and Execute your Project in the Cloud
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Few more tips: - cmd-ctrl-shift-4 will place the selected screen area into clipboard, not a desktop file. - I often go to Preview and press cmd-n to create new file from clipboard. - cmd-shift-3 and cmd-ctrl-shift-3 will do the same as their -4 counterparts, but for fullscreen Btw. you have apparently some strange keyboard, I never seen a mac with # key in any other place but shift-3 ;)
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
I've been using Mac for ages - I love OSX, but would agree that the "It just works" thing isn't always the case. There are some pretty strange/non-obvious things which you need to do on the Mac. To change the filename in finder: select the file to change, and then press 'Enter'. Quick to use when you know it's there, but intuitive? Hell no. And don't get me started on the hundreds of hidden characters - on my (Finnish) keyboard, the {} | $ and many more are all hidden behind the alt key, and not marked on the keyboard at all. You get used to it after maybe 5 years, and it's always fun to alt through all the keyboard characters to see what's there. •Ω鮆µıœπ About a year ago, Apple started taunting us with the mysteriously moving taskbar on dual-monitor machines. No word of warning, it just suddenly started moving between screens - took a few weeks to figure out the mouse moves for it. Thanks, Apple. I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows and Linux but not Mac. Although you can keyboard through all the terminal windows, which is nice. (Cmd + arrow keys, only works on Terminal). And I really hate the 'natural scrolling crap' which they forced on us - like 99% of Mac users, I switch it off first thing. Love my , but not blind to the strange/questionable OSX design decisions.
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Cut is done at the paste destination by using CMD+ALT+V Show path in finder footer Via view menu (or finder preferences, can't recall). Tags can be very useful in finder if you use the file system a lot. Familiarise with finder preferences difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path
---Guy H ;-)---
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Does this explain why most Apple enthusiasts are apparently so open minded that their brains fall out?
So what's the alternative? Sticking in one camp or the other, trolling "competing" forums, like Android vs iOS, PC vs Mac, C# vs Java? Does any of that behaviour actually make any sense? Perhaps as professional software developers, we should embrace new technologies and enjoy using new bits of kit or different ways of doing things.. look into them, work our their pros and cons and determine if we can make things better? Just a though :)
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
A few protips, I swapped over to OSx full time a few months ago, and I can say going back to Linux or Windows is not on my todo list for a every-day machine. Renaming files can be done easily; click on the name for 1/2 a second, and leave your cursor over it, it will allow you to rename it. Install LightShot, works on Windows and OSx, I assigned like CMD+^+9 for it and I can easily take a selection and save to where I want quickly, or just CMD+C and paste as normal. USB port overpopulation is something you can't really complain about, I have a desktop running a 'Slightly modified version of OSx'; USB sound card, webcam, keyboard and USB dongle plugged in, I could ditch the sound card (Internal went funny, and I had this on the side so I figured it will keep me running) and the webcam if needed, but USB ports are handy! With my macbook on the other hand, I hardly use them because its always being moved around. USB ports are handy on desktops, but on laptops they're more of a 'Ohh, I can plug a mouse in while I do this tedious bit of work' or for USB drives, however I transfer most files over the network using the file sharing or just good ol' rsync. Moving files is more done using drag-and-drop methods, if you wish to move a file between devices you're screwed, better move and delete or just fire up a terminal. All in all, OSx is designed for simplicity for new users, the biggest issue is coming from Windows or Linux and expecting stuff to work how it used to. Best tip I can give is to forget how you worked on another operating system and just accept what they've given you, or abuse the terminal to hell.
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e.g... - Mac will not work properly on a network, - It doesn't work when I enable user quota and permission on my NAS, - It can't write to my friend's external HDD (because most of them are formatted with NTFS partitions, it can read but not write), - It can't read from my smartphone that is connected using USB (no usb mass storage mode), - sometimes it will not connect to my mobile hotspot (this happened many times on my client demo). - Can't connect projector. not even my PICO projector with USB port. - Many times it will not find the printer on a network. - Desktop window management sucks, you need to do some stupid gestures to find that Copy Files Progress window. - Crazy amount of terminal commands required to setup a development environment. - And the amount of internet bandwidth it consumes is insane. - Many apps will not have a proper installation process so when you drag it to your Application, it will ask you if you want to run this unknown app even when you have enabled to run unknown apps it in the settings. - My usb headphones doesn't work on a Mac. It doesn't have a microphone jack so my other headphones also doesn't work. I am not saying there is no fix for all of the above, and I am not even looking for answers. What I am trying to say is when I try to use Mac in my office it gets in my way (Mostly due to design choices Apple made on behalf of you). It makes my system admin feel stupid even they are very good at windows and linux. It works great at my home for surfing and watching movies. :)
Remind Me This - Manage, Collaborate and Execute your Project in the Cloud
Wow! Sounds like you've had your hands full. That's a shame. I won't waste any of our time trying to address these individually. Suffice it to say that I've not experienced very many of these issues - despite doing the vast majority of them. In fact, the only one that stands out is "not writing to NTFS partitions". I understand there are licensing issues between Microsoft and everyone else (Apple included) that prevent Apple from officially offering full support for NTFS. Luckily those same issues do not apply to ExFAT[^] partitions (also developed by Microsoft). I format all my external drives with ExFAT specifically so they can operate with both Windows and OS X. Too bad the drive manufacturers don't do the same.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Rage wrote:
Plus the desktop had many icons on it
Which, to me, is a terrible thing to do.
Rage wrote:
Yeah, make the obvious hidden by default
Yeah, looking at the preferences wasn't obvious at all. :rolleyes:
Rage wrote:
Intuitive seems to be a concept, then.
Nobody is claiming that Apple is perfect but it helps to at least have an open mind when using something new. Sheesh! Were you one of those guys that screamed and whined when Windows 95 came out because it was soooo much different than Windows 3.1?
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
Mike Mullikin wrote:
Nobody is claiming that Apple is perfect but it helps to at least have an open mind when using something new.
Nonsense, it just sucks :~
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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`Cough cough[^] :) that was in the "cons" list
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
You actually made laugh out loud. :laugh:
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Hi, Keith. Sorry if someone else has pointed it out already (I don't feel like looking at the entire conversation thread just to find out...), but you don't really need to open Get Info window to rename a file (see below)... Some little tips: > Rename a file from Finder: All you have to do is press enter key. Type the new name and press enter again. That's it. > This can lead to a question: So how do I open a file from Finder? Answer: cmd + o (I know... It takes a little time to get used to this, but it is consistent with every other App's shortcut to open a file) > When you want to type a path to navigate to it, use the cmd + shift + g shortcut. > To get a sense of where you are in the file system, use the following menu entry: View | Show Path Bar. The bar will appear at the bottom of the window (a little weird, but still better than nothing). > Screenshots: >> cmd + shift + 4: capture a portion of the screen to a file. >> cmd + control + shift + 4: capture a portion of the screen to the clipboard. >> After pressing cmd + shift + 4 or cmd + control + shift + 4, press spacebar and the mouse cursor will change to a camera. Then you click a window and it will be captured. >> cmd + shift + 3: capture the entire screen to a file. >> cmd + control + shift + 3: capture the entire screen to the clipboard. >> To change the path where the files will be saved, use the following command on a terminal:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Path/Where/You/Want/Your/Screenshots
>> To set it back to default (the Desktop), use the following command:
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture location
>> To change the file format used to save screenshots, use the following command:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg && killall SystemUIServer
Replace jpg with the file type you want: jpg, png, bmp, gif. I hope these tips are useful to you. Cheers.
Cristiano V. Moreira ------- There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binaries and those who don't...
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Not that I like Macs at all but the "rename file" thing is actually easier that what you've discovered. Just hit . Yep. I had to ask 'cause I couldn't find that action anywhere. But, to rename a file vs. opening/running it? Like I said: don't like Mac.
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Keith Barrow wrote:
Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there
Uhm...what?! To rename you just click on the name while the icon is highlighted. No need to go to 'Get Info'.
Keith Barrow wrote:
A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
Hmm...I have a '#' right there over the '3', but not the other key you mentioned. But I see you are in the UK. So, the keyboard must be different there. Interesting. Must be because it's a different language then in the US. :laugh: (Don't worry, I know that the US version of English is the mangled version!)
Keith Barrow wrote:
No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad
There are actually different keyboard shortcuts depending on the type of screenshot you want to take: http://www.imore.com/how-take-screenshot-mac-os-x[^]
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone - Bjarne Stroustrup The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Not pro- or con- Finder, but I rename files in Finder the same way I do in Windows Explorer: I click once on the filename until it's highlighted, wait a second, and then click again and it becomes editable. I'm pretty sure that my keyboard has a # over the 3 key like normal US keyboards, but like others here I'm on a PC at work and my Mac is at home so I can't verify.
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I've been using Mac for ages - I love OSX, but would agree that the "It just works" thing isn't always the case. There are some pretty strange/non-obvious things which you need to do on the Mac. To change the filename in finder: select the file to change, and then press 'Enter'. Quick to use when you know it's there, but intuitive? Hell no. And don't get me started on the hundreds of hidden characters - on my (Finnish) keyboard, the {} | $ and many more are all hidden behind the alt key, and not marked on the keyboard at all. You get used to it after maybe 5 years, and it's always fun to alt through all the keyboard characters to see what's there. •Ω鮆µıœπ About a year ago, Apple started taunting us with the mysteriously moving taskbar on dual-monitor machines. No word of warning, it just suddenly started moving between screens - took a few weeks to figure out the mouse moves for it. Thanks, Apple. I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows and Linux but not Mac. Although you can keyboard through all the terminal windows, which is nice. (Cmd + arrow keys, only works on Terminal). And I really hate the 'natural scrolling crap' which they forced on us - like 99% of Mac users, I switch it off first thing. Love my , but not blind to the strange/questionable OSX design decisions.
SpoonLord wrote: I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows and Linux but not Mac. Although you can keyboard through all the terminal windows, which is nice. (Cmd + arrow keys, only works on Terminal). Cmd-~ cycles through windows within the current application - I'd been using OSX for years before I know this one. The thing that I really don't like is that Neither Cmd- nor Cmd-~ will visit a minimized window - you to do some dance with cmd-tabbing to the app and down arrow while still holding down Cmd to find a minimized window.
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Don't often post here, but seeing this, I just had to say something. I used Windows devices until a few years ago, until I found Linux. That's all I've used since, except for maintaining enough knowledge to fix other peoples Windows computers. As for something on topic..
Quote:
bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple
I'm not a fan of their philosophy or OS design, and how oversimplified everything seems. The first impression I got, helping someone install a new version of OSX, was that it seemed fairly familiar to some of my Linux installs. It's all a matter of getting used to, I suppose. However, I don't see how anybody could use these things for production. To each his own.
When I talk to people who don't even know what source code is, I open an editor window and say "This is what we go through every time you find a bug!"
-
Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Interesting timing for this thread. I just got done reading it and, as usual, I can see there's a great deal of division over whether the things are any good or not. So here's my 2-cents. I have been watching Apple technology (from afar) for a lot of years now. A month or two back I bought a late 2009 MacBook 2nd hand off eBay to prove to myself once-and-for-all how lousy the things are; it only set me back about $400 (after I put the SSD drive in it) so at least I could speak from experience with these Apple devotees I run into all the time. Anyway, I added the machine to my lab thinking that it would only get occasional use and eventually wind up gathering dust in a drawer or be resold on eBay. Instead I found myself picking the thing up more and more often. I find that, when not doing development work or something, that I prefer its simplicity. The fact that it integrates so nicely with my iPad and iPhone is probably of no small consideration as well but the thing just has the feel of being a swiss watch compared with a Timex. The presentation is just that nice. No, I'm not going to abandon the Windows platform and "switch" to Mac. There's no way that could happen without me ripping the guts out of my professional knowledge and retool to a new platform. The thing I do see, though, is that when I go away on vacation or just want to go sit on the beach, relax, and do a bunch of non work related things (books, photography ... anything not development related) that this is the box that's going to go with me. I liked the thing so well that I bought a new MacBook Pro for myself and am going to give the 2009 to my wife. She doesn't use the laptop she has very much (Windows 7) because she can't use it well with her i-Devices. She's not a "techie" like me but sure has taken to those things. I think the big trouble is that when people have been using Windows (particularly us developers) you look at everything through developer's eyes so you constantly compare the Mac to a Windows box. Of course things are not going to work the way you expect them to! The Apple platform (at least as I see it) was not intended to be attractive to the developers among us. It was intended to be attractive to people who want to focus on other things like photography, education or whatever. It's hard to explain but as I said to one of my Apple devotee friends after using it for awhile I finally "get it". Again, I won't stop developing my Windows products or using my Windows equipment I've invested in but I finally
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Surprisingly, I'm largely over the "who moved my cheese?" phase. It's a bit of a mixed bag:
Pros
- Very stable
- Very light - went home without the beast like Dell for the first time last night and had to check I'd actually packed the machine. This is a biggie
- Some of the OS well thought through, it's pretty similar to Ubuntu's GUI TBH. Some processes are very smooth
- Bootup time, compared to win7 at least is insane
Cons
- Finder - a sort of windows file explorer-cum-search. Makes it unnecessarily difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path. Sometimes I've dropped into a terminal because its easier
- Had to learn a silly amount of keyboard shortcuts - I'd want to learn most of these anyway to be fair, I know the equivalents in windows, but on for some tasks its quicker to take the hand of the mouse and use the keyboard.
- A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
- Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports. But thunderbolt with adapters - they need to be everywhere
I'm doing a lot of screenshot work preparing materials, this typifies my experience. No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad. Instead of printing the screen, I get a selection cursor to choose which area to capture good. The image is saved as a .png to my desktop bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple - the filename defaults to a date and time, so I need to use either the terminal to move and rename, or scrabble round the UI. I really don't understand what the hype is about - it's OK as a machine, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Using for (mostly JS) dev the experience is similar to working under a *NIX - pretty good, but again I'd rather save the cash and do just that.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
Interesting timing for this thread. About a month or so ago I purchased a 2nd-hand MacBook (2009) to prove to myself how much I would hate it. The opposite happened. I liked it enough to go out and buy a new MacBook Pro and give the 2009 to my wife. Nice machine. Integrates really well with my other i-Devices. Replace my Windows equipment it does not, but I see now why people like 'em.
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Don't often post here, but seeing this, I just had to say something. I used Windows devices until a few years ago, until I found Linux. That's all I've used since, except for maintaining enough knowledge to fix other peoples Windows computers. As for something on topic..
Quote:
bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple
I'm not a fan of their philosophy or OS design, and how oversimplified everything seems. The first impression I got, helping someone install a new version of OSX, was that it seemed fairly familiar to some of my Linux installs. It's all a matter of getting used to, I suppose. However, I don't see how anybody could use these things for production. To each his own.
When I talk to people who don't even know what source code is, I open an editor window and say "This is what we go through every time you find a bug!"
I'd prefer to be under a proper Linux environment, but there it is - it's either Windows or OSX where I work and that's it. Windows wasn't really usable for my work and I need to get used to OSX to help the next intake who'll need to make the same transition, so I had to more or less switch.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!