Switched Off!

I think that some of your complaints is user error.
The task bar is better than the dock? How so? They're both pictures! One hovers and gives some popup bubble that MAY work (windows) and the other puts text on top of the icon which always works.
Web browsing is tiedous? I haven't experienced that.
I'm guessing again--user error.
Good luck with windows.

I recently switched, an d had some of your feelings...First impressions are everything, so I suppose you are already pretty much turned off of Macs now, but I have some suggestions:

1. If you want an app on the dock, just drag it from the Applications folder and put it where ever you want on the dock...I also dragged the actual Applications folder onto the dock so I can keep my most-used programs on the dock, and the lesser used ones are close by. I find I don't use that many programs everyday, so it isn't much of a problem for me. (The icons on the dock will shrink once it goes the whole width of the screen, so all the icons you want can stay on the dock BTW)

2. More RAM maybe? 1 GB i think is minimum for OS X to be really as responsive as it can be. Can't say too much here...I didn't have any problem with windows closing.

5. By Finder I suppose you mean Spotlight (Finder is kinda like Explorer in Win)? I have fallen in love with Spotlight. I think is is much quicker than the Search in XP. BTW, Longhorn will supposedly include something very similar to spotlight...1-2 years from now.

7. I just know what icon is what, but it is your opinion, I just got used to it.

8. Minimize and hide do different things. You can turn the Genie effect to Scale if you don't like genie. Command+H hides most programs.

10. TextEdit is more like Word-Pad in Windows. There are Formating options (Font, typeface, centering etc) that Notepad does not have. My Safari right now with 5 tabs open is using 26MB. Firefox is a great open-source app for PC, but I like Safari on OS X. Firefox used 50+MB of RAM on Mac and PC for me.

11. I have noticed rendering problems. Safari uses KHTML, Firefox uses Gecko. Unfortunately most websites are made to look good in Trident (IE's rendering engine) whether or not they meet the W3C's standards guidelines.

12. This took me a while to get used to.... I admit that coming from a windows/linux machine, it was weird at first. I actually see the logic in both sides of the argument. In OS X, the menus are always in the same place, no matter where the window is, no matter what app it is. In win/lin the menu is attached to the window...both ways seem logical to me.

14. I like the eye candy. I spent much time trying to get Linux (with security/stability) to look like OS X (pretty and nice to use). I guess thats all up to personal opinion.

I do fine on a 2.0 G5 iMac with 512MB RAM(bare minimum RAM, if you ask me) OS X does take up more RAM but think about it...OS X Tiger was released in 2005, it is new, XP is 4 years old. Of course the newest OS will require more RAM than an older one (compare 98 and XP on RAM).

Also, apps don't always quit when you click the X button. It just closes the window a lot of the times. If you still see an icon in the dock with an arrow under it, the app is still running in the background, the window is just gone. To quit it completely do Command-q or -App Name- -> Quit. That could solve some RAM troubles.

I hope you have better luck with your mac, it took a little bit of acclimation, but I have grown to love mine in the past 3 weeks.

Nathan

Hehe, why isn't there a 13th complaint? It goes from 12 to 14... maybe I'm just blind though...

Because 13 is an unlucky number of course! So is the number 4 apparently!

:spook:

claudius753 said:

Because 13 is an unlucky number of course! So is the number 4 apparently!

:spook:

Click to expand...

Yea, it means death in Chinese if pronounced incorrectly, lol.

I guess Macs aren't for everyone. I'm sure we all welcome your opinions.

i agree with jessica here that most of your complaints are user based mostly in the area that you didnt bother to actually learn how the new operating system works, expected it to be like xp and also expected the bottom of the line mac to run like a freakin dual 2.7 powermac with 2 gigs of ram

just my opinion
-chris

I have used Windows since Win95 and this is my first Mac (3 months old now), so it took me incredible long 5min to get use to OSX.
Sorry, but i can't agree with any point of the article. I know OSX has its weak points, but those are not the ones.

Being a recent convert as well, I can "understand" some points...but sheesh...what did you expect? Of course there is going to be a learning curve to adjust to a new operating system. I think this writer should quit b*itchin and try and remain a little positive about becomming addjusted to his new machine. But maybe that is just me, I like to learn new things, so every time I find out something new, or read a new trick about how to do something cool, I say to myself "d*mn that's smooth".

Overall I still feel the exeperiene on this machine is much better. What else can you say?

1. Access to applications is haphazard.
The start menu is simple and sweet. OS X you have to open the hard drive,
go to your Application folder and scroll (often latent scroll reacting) until you've found the program you want to run.

Huh? You can have the window as big as you like, the icons as big or as small as you like, you can use icon view, list view, etc. Scrolling performance has never been an issue on my Powerbook.
Contrast with the Start menu - one big list which doesn't stay in order. Once it goes off the screen, you have to put the mouse pointer on the little arrow at the bottom and sit there tapping your fingers whilst it scrolls down and reaches the software you recently installed. How's that more friendly?
BTW if you want to mimic the start menu, drag the applications folder onto your dock next to the waste bin. Right-click it and ta-da, there's your start menu.

2. In OS X, windows open and close with a huge delay.

How huge? I'll grant that things are sometimes delayed for a few milliseconds due to genie effects and stuff, that's the old snappiness vs. looking pretty debate. A small tradeoff, but I must admit some UI elements of Aqua are slower than say Win2000 (or OS 9 maybe)

3. File menu access requires knowlege of shortcut keys. In Windows you simply access any application's menu bar by holding Alt and the letter of the menu's name.
OS X has no such direct access at all like this.
- There is no shortcut way to reach a menu.

Yes there is - turn on universal access and use CTRL-F2.

- Sub Menu items are all assigned to quick keys. With a Windows prog., A sipmle Alt + F gives you immediate and visual access to all file menu options.

CTRL-F2, move to the menu you want and there's your options. It can be a few more keypresses, I'll give you that.

It's true that the most efficent "Mac Way" is to try and remember your shortcuts - ultimately it's a personal preference. The good thing about Mac shortcuts is they're all the same - e.g. CMD-Q will always quit, it won't suddenly change to ALT-X or CTRL-F12 at the drop of a hat. Same for CMD-O always being open file etc etc. You generally don't need to look inside the menus - but if you do, CTRL-F2 is there.

5. Finder is slow compared to Search in windows... Bottom line.

Examples? Statistics? You can't just make blanket statements and opinions like this if you want to be taken seriously.

Here's my example... I wanted to find some pics from my holiday in France last year.

XP: Type france, click search, the doggy goes off and sniffs around the disk for a quarter of an hour and brings up every filename with France in it.
Tiger: Click on spotlight, type france, and less than 5 seconds later it has everything to do with France in the metadata, descriptions, email content etc - all neatly categorised.

How on earth is Windows search faster than that?

6. Menus are tricky in OS X. They appear and dissapear at the most precise point of your mouse.
In Windows you never have to think about loosing a menu. You just click it, it's there and it won't abandon your mouse.

A fair point - Windows wins on this one. On the other hand though, have you ever tried to navigate the Start menu while something's loading (especially if you've just rebooted and your system tray apps are still loading)? Don't you just love the way it keeps on closing?

7. The Dock in OS X is a dumb, uniformative unuseful way of getting applications organized.

.... In your opinion. In mine, the icons are well designed and I've never failed to instantly recognise what each running program is, even with 30 of them on the go. I tend to prefer that to a row of grey squares with "Int..." or just "..." written in them.

8. The genie and other minimize effect is sloppy and runs slowly.

Take your finger off the shift key
It runs smoothly on mine, and it looks pretty. But some people do prefer an instantaneous reaction without any pretty effects... that's a personal preference. I'm pretty sure there's a way to turn the genie effects off if you so desire.

In Windows you minimize and Bam. There it is on the bar for you. OS X requires a bizzare unintiutive "hiding" method of window management. You have to go to the dock, right click the item, open the trickily clicked menu (see 6) find the "Hide" option once you're there. After all that you have hidden a program. What a wash.

Eh?? You hit minimise (the yellow round button) and a small version of the window goes to the right-hand side of the dock, and you can even see a preview of the window. Click on it and it restores. That's difficult, how?

The hide function is a separate thing entirely, that's an extra feature *as well* as minimize.

Please at least learn the *basics* of how to use an interface before trying to criticize it.

9. In Windows, applications are easily maximized and you're not distracted by layers of multiple sized windows behind it.

I'll give you this one, I much prefer the Windows version of maximize.

10. Any given OS X application is going to take up about 15+ megs of ram easy. Text Edit, the OS X answer to Windows' Notepad takes up some 20 megs. For a text app?? I don't even think MS Word on the PC uses quite that? It was very extremely hard for me to use up 512 megs of ram on a PC. In OS X you'll be topping out that 512 after running a couple of extremely simple programs, and maybe Firefox (60 whopping megabytes) and Safari (more or less 60 megs).

Yep, OS X is RAM-hungry. I can't believe how much the widgets take up. On the flip side, the memory management is much nicer so you don't notice any paging etc.

11. Web browsing is tedious for OS X.
Scrolling through a web site you will immediately see there is some kind of bad rendering problem with most browsers (although IE for Mac doesn't have this problem oddly). A page in Windows flips up and down without a single breath.

That's due to badly designed sites that don't follow standards but rather are designed blindly around IE. That's not Apple's fault. You could also try Firefox.

12. I realize this has always been how a Macintosh handles it's application menu, but it's a royal pain in the rear to have to leave the actual application you're on, to the Menu bar at the top of the entire screen. Why would you do this? It just seems only normal to let the users get their menus ON THE PROGRAM ITSELF, not off on some remote detatched planet up there at the top.

The menu follows a basic part of HCI user interface design methodology - if you want something to be easily targettable by a mouse, make it a big target. Putting it on the edge of the screen makes it an inherently massive target and much easier to click on - because you just whizz the mouse up and you can't miss it by going past it etc.

14. OS X uses an overabundance of garish type looking eye candy in it's interface.
It's not at all functional. It's tricky.

More personal opinions. The eye candy looks very nice to me. I'm not sure how it's 'tricky'

It's a general lack of feedback on what you're doing.

Sigh... yet again, your examples are.............??

Here's mine:
I launched Firefox on a Windows box earlier and I didn't think I'd clicked on it properly because there was no hourglass or any form of feedback, so I clicked on it again. 10 seconds later I got 2 instances.

I did the same on my Powerbook, the Firefox icon bounced in the dock to let me know it was starting, and from experience I knew how many bounces it'd take. It didn't stop bouncing until the window was there on my screen.

File copying - fairly smooth. Did a similar file copying operation on Windows and it said 2 minutes, then 30 hours, then 9 days, then it went back to 1 minutes 30 seconds... yuck.



You have one or two good points such as the RAM usage and the maximize/zoom feature, which is understandable as there are pros and cons of both interfaces, but in other areas of your article you seem to be clutching at straws as if you have an axe to grind and are simply looking for excuses to put the Mac interface down. You need to concentrate more on facts and examples than just trying to find things to snipe at and saying they "just suck".

I think this person over reacted a bit, but I must say I do agree with some of his points. One thing to keep in mind is that a Mini, especially with it's stock 256MB memory is sssslllllooowwww.

Also, I do find that the start menu is a much easier way to organize programs then the mishmash of having a few on the dock, some as shortcuts (OK aliases) on the desktop, or just looking them up on the hard drive to run. Frankly, the dock is convenient only if you use a very few programs, and shortcuts all over the desktop is sloppy.

And frankly, if his Mini is running panther and he was using Safari, then I can understand the gripe about web browsing-- Safari 2.0 is much better, but the old version was really a dog, which is why I used Camino.

The rest is just unfamiliarity with the system, which you get used to over time.

Eww, you put icons on the desktop? That's definitely for Windows users I hated that, everything always insisted on putting itself on the desktop and the quick launch, and also the system tray if it could get away with it. I think the Finder/Applications is quite reserved. (Think of the dock as a combined quick launch and taskbar)

I don't see how the applications folder is any different to the start menu. Most things install themselves either as an icon or their own subfolder, and you can easily make the Applications folder work in exactly the same way.

I've never been hugely keen on Safari though, Firefox feels a lot more developed and stable.

i am discusted with the above comments. I switched 3 weeks ago. Yes it was very difficult at first, but hey learning curves are normal.

Personally I got used to mac OSX Tiger now, and I enjoy every minute of it. I even find working on Windows frustrating now!

I noticed that this complainer's post was his whoppin' first one. So instead of really checking things out, he just went out and bought a Mini without first doing tons of research, reading posts on forums like this one, then asking piles of questions. This could be an assumption on my part, but it would appear by the nature of his complaints that he was extremely ignorant of OS X and Macs in general before taking the plunge.

Then to top the cake, he didn't seek counsel in forums like this before almost entirely writing off Macs and beaking off about it in his article.

Before I switched, I did 3 MONTHS of intensive Internet research and - surprise, surprise (not) - my transition to Mac was a matter of a few days that also went quite smoothly. I knew the strengths and limitations of Mac and OS X very well beforehand which is why I bought extra RAM, for example.

When you leap before you look, don't be surprised if your impression isn't as rosy as you thought it would be. This person obviously expected Macs to be like "Bill Boxes" and hit a brick wall when they weren't.

dan828 said:

And frankly, if his Mini is running panther and he was using Safari, then I can understand the gripe about web browsing-- Safari 2.0 is much better, but the old version was really a dog, which is why I used Camino.

Click to expand...

Tell you what. Thanks for that little bit of info. Never heard of Camino. But using it now and it runs much smoother than Safari and Firefox.

I am now using an old clamshell iBook this is my first mac system but I have been exposed to them before. My friend owns a current G4 iBook and i used them in a recording studio. I found learning how to use them very intuitive. There were things that could be improved but you suffer those to be able to use other features.

Personally I love the dock. I was always one to use a few programs, and have them in the quick start bar in Windows98SE. I hated the newer Scrolling start bar in WinXP. Much prefer the old version in Win98. Also the whole hiding the icons that you dont use, just show much what I can access dammit!

Back on track. Mac OSX is a much better system in my opinion. There are things I cannot seem to get access to but I'm sure the console would allowe me (Hard)Core access

I call troll. The original poster has yet to respond, even when I openly attacked him by calling it user error. Most would have snapped back.
Fruitless or not, I'm guessing troll.

jessica said:

I call troll. The original poster has yet to respond, even when I openly attacked him by calling it user error. Most would have snapped back.
Fruitless or not, I'm guessing troll.

Click to expand...

I don't understand what you are posting?

I do not think he is a troll actually. I do not agree with his assessment but that does not make him a troll.

- He does not appear to have done much research prior to buying his mini.

- If it has a stock 256 MB of RAM it will be painful assuming he is not just using a single app. Much of his complaint I will tack up to this. Though it is possible that he is one of the not so small crowd who find OS X responsiveness painful no matter what.

- If not on Tiger or 10.3.9 Safari is a dog for performance. I have a love/hate relationship with all OS X browsers at the moment. None of them give me all of the features I want. Camino is the closest and what I am using currently but I want spell checker darn it.

- I prefer for zoom/maximize to fill the screen. Point for him. Most apps that I use seem to do so though. It is mainly apps made by Apple themselves that infuriate me with zoom. <cough> Safari <cough> If I do not want the app to fill the whole screen I will adjust it to an appropriate size myself. I do not need the OS to decide this for me.

- While I am apathetic about the dock to be honest I barely use it. No need. (see next bullet)

- In a sense I can see his argument about launching programs by going to the applications folder. I use QuickSilver the best program ever. Man how I love QS, though documentation is scanty and it does take a while to get used to plus learning curve.

-Given the factor that I use ShapeShifter and WindowShade X I guess I like the eye candy. I find it mildly ironic that I use, and actually have a use for, 5 different types of minimize (including hide)

Finally an unbulleted comment. What makes OS X for me are the 3d party programs. OS X in and of itself is nice but the litle additions increased my satisfaction quite a bit.
Shapeshifter (appearance), WindowShade (minimize in place and transparency), Witch (tab through minimized apps plus <ctrl>z to zoom), QuickSilver (my savior), Growl (notifications), DejaMenu (<ctrl><cmd>z to bring up the menu where the mouse is, a true savior on a large dual screen set up), SideTrack (corners of the trackpad for expose commands, edge for scroll) and those are just the ones off the top of my head. On Windows and to a lesser extent on Linux everything sits in its little space and does not seem want to "work well with others." For me the use of OS X seems to be a form of wu wei, the nature of effortless action. Everything is interconnected and strengthens the whole.

djmitch said:

I noticed that this complainer's post was his whoppin' first one. So instead of really checking things out, he just went out and bought a Mini without first doing tons of research, reading posts on forums like this one, then asking piles of questions. This could be an assumption on my part, but it would appear by the nature of his complaints that he was extremely ignorant of OS X and Macs in general before taking the plunge.

Then to top the cake, he didn't seek counsel in forums like this before almost entirely writing off Macs and beaking off about it in his article.

Before I switched, I did 3 MONTHS of intensive Internet research and - surprise, surprise (not) - my transition to Mac was a matter of a few days that also went quite smoothly. I knew the strengths and limitations of Mac and OS X very well beforehand which is why I bought extra RAM, for example.

When you leap before you look, don't be surprised if your impression isn't as rosy as you thought it would be. This person obviously expected Macs to be like "Bill Boxes" and hit a brick wall when they weren't.

Click to expand...

Research is always a good idea, I did not do any acual research, I just used them in my digital imaging class and then again in my tv studio in my high school. I eventually learned everything very quickly, and it was incredibly easy.

PowerBookG4 said:

I don't understand what you are posting?

Click to expand...

Sorry the word troll really confused me, but I cought on.