Hi,
The following is a rather uncontrolled rant by someone who was pumped up about macs beyond anything realistic, so please bear with me and take it with a pinch of salt. However, the answer to my question no 1 would actually be very much appreciated, as this is really quite crucial for me.
My partner wanted to buy a new laptop and there were five requirements she listed: must go to sleep, must be legal (so far we used a hacked windows copy), must be able to check her favourite website, must be able to check mail, must be ok for word-processing. I suggested mac, good hardware for the price and in OSX everything should "just work". I never had a mac, but I really believed in this "just works" mantra. In fact, with the exception of sleep nothing works. So let me start:
1. The wmv movies don't play! So it is not "just working", in safari they just don't play. (don't get me started about microsoft, I hate it too, but the thing is supposed to work out of the box). So I install Flip4Mac. They still don't play, they produce an error -1960 and a pop-up dialog about it not going to play it. The website in question is 24ur.com, my partner always watched it and she can't watch the movies and is quite upset. Same with BBC when one selects wmv. Any ideas? This is quite crucial.
I installed firefox. Movies still don't play. Installed MPlayer OSX, but couldn't get mozilla-plugin precompiled for OSX. Any ideas? I can't believe I am back to compiling and hacking as THE FIRST THING YOU DO.
2. Safari is generally useless. Google docs don't work. Gmail works suboptimaly. Doesn't remember passwords. How can you call this "just works?"
3. There is no friggin package manager. I thought you can't get a unix derivative without a package manager. It is the same idiotism as with microsoft, installing programs, moving them to folders and stuff. Am I supposed to check for update for every piece of software installed manually or what? I mean, surely the system updates itself, but there is no infrastructure for the remaining installed programs. Or am I just missing something?
4. Tried the "test drive" version of word that came with it. Internet is wrong: you can so obviously see that it is emulated in rosetta. Come on, it has a intel core 2 due, its a power horse and yet word is usable, but not as smooth as one would expect from such machine... And it is supposed to be the "king" of office. Huh. Will try neooffice.
5. It tried to open a .sitx file with excel?!?! A "file" command in terminal said it is a stuff it archive. Why are the two inconsistent? And why do I have to download random programs to open something that looks to me like a standard compressed format for the platform? The smelliest linux distribution opens .tar.gz and windows can open .zip archives so why can't mac open stuff-it archives out of the box? Isn't it supposed to "just work"?
6. This itunes business. I was really looking forward to see this, I was expecting to be blown apart by this quality piece of software. What the heck: first you have to spend 10 minutes looking through the options to switch off the annoying store and prevent some idiotic copying which I don't quite gather and then it pretty much just plays stuff, nothing else works. I mean the last kind of view would be quite cool, but it doesn't download covers for you, at least I can't make it to do that - any half baked player even forlinux does that automatically these days. No wikipedia or similar entries for artists either. No pandora, no last.fm, come on!
7. And now the cherry on the cake. The entire system is so patronisingly DRM it makes me sick. I always imagined OSX as this hippy kind of os, you know the "young gentlemen in colourful clothes making graffiti" kind of system. But then even before logging in for the first time it asks you to pay money for .mac, the itunes seems just a thinly veiled excuse for itunes store marketing but the worst of all is this DVD regioning. I put in a DVD and then it says I can choose the region code, but also that I have only 5 more changes left. How insulting! I bought you, computer and not the other way round. How demeaning is this towards users? I've never seen anything like that, ever, before. I don't believe windows does that (i also don't think windows writes over you firmware), and while I have never tried playing DVD in windows, linux definitely plays all DVD without saying anything. And when you go and check the internet it says that if you crack this it invalidates you warranty. If it was my computer I would change the code 6 times and then demand that apple fixes it. Or just get rid of OSX the moment it starts to insult me...
The following is a rather uncontrolled rant by someone who was pumped up about macs beyond anything realistic, so please bear with me and take it with a pinch of salt. However, the answer to my question no 1 would actually be very much appreciated, as this is really quite crucial for me.
My partner wanted to buy a new laptop and there were five requirements she listed: must go to sleep, must be legal (so far we used a hacked windows copy), must be able to check her favourite website, must be able to check mail, must be ok for word-processing. I suggested mac, good hardware for the price and in OSX everything should "just work". I never had a mac, but I really believed in this "just works" mantra. In fact, with the exception of sleep nothing works. So let me start:
1. The wmv movies don't play! So it is not "just working", in safari they just don't play. (don't get me started about microsoft, I hate it too, but the thing is supposed to work out of the box). So I install Flip4Mac. They still don't play, they produce an error -1960 and a pop-up dialog about it not going to play it. The website in question is 24ur.com, my partner always watched it and she can't watch the movies and is quite upset. Same with BBC when one selects wmv. Any ideas? This is quite crucial.
I installed firefox. Movies still don't play. Installed MPlayer OSX, but couldn't get mozilla-plugin precompiled for OSX. Any ideas? I can't believe I am back to compiling and hacking as THE FIRST THING YOU DO.
2. Safari is generally useless. Google docs don't work. Gmail works suboptimaly. Doesn't remember passwords. How can you call this "just works?"
3. There is no friggin package manager. I thought you can't get a unix derivative without a package manager. It is the same idiotism as with microsoft, installing programs, moving them to folders and stuff. Am I supposed to check for update for every piece of software installed manually or what? I mean, surely the system updates itself, but there is no infrastructure for the remaining installed programs. Or am I just missing something?
4. Tried the "test drive" version of word that came with it. Internet is wrong: you can so obviously see that it is emulated in rosetta. Come on, it has a intel core 2 due, its a power horse and yet word is usable, but not as smooth as one would expect from such machine... And it is supposed to be the "king" of office. Huh. Will try neooffice.
5. It tried to open a .sitx file with excel?!?! A "file" command in terminal said it is a stuff it archive. Why are the two inconsistent? And why do I have to download random programs to open something that looks to me like a standard compressed format for the platform? The smelliest linux distribution opens .tar.gz and windows can open .zip archives so why can't mac open stuff-it archives out of the box? Isn't it supposed to "just work"?
6. This itunes business. I was really looking forward to see this, I was expecting to be blown apart by this quality piece of software. What the heck: first you have to spend 10 minutes looking through the options to switch off the annoying store and prevent some idiotic copying which I don't quite gather and then it pretty much just plays stuff, nothing else works. I mean the last kind of view would be quite cool, but it doesn't download covers for you, at least I can't make it to do that - any half baked player even forlinux does that automatically these days. No wikipedia or similar entries for artists either. No pandora, no last.fm, come on!
7. And now the cherry on the cake. The entire system is so patronisingly DRM it makes me sick. I always imagined OSX as this hippy kind of os, you know the "young gentlemen in colourful clothes making graffiti" kind of system. But then even before logging in for the first time it asks you to pay money for .mac, the itunes seems just a thinly veiled excuse for itunes store marketing but the worst of all is this DVD regioning. I put in a DVD and then it says I can choose the region code, but also that I have only 5 more changes left. How insulting! I bought you, computer and not the other way round. How demeaning is this towards users? I've never seen anything like that, ever, before. I don't believe windows does that (i also don't think windows writes over you firmware), and while I have never tried playing DVD in windows, linux definitely plays all DVD without saying anything. And when you go and check the internet it says that if you crack this it invalidates you warranty. If it was my computer I would change the code 6 times and then demand that apple fixes it. Or just get rid of OSX the moment it starts to insult me...
