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bill-p

macrumors 68030
Jul 23, 2011
2,884
1,545
1. I use OS X and don't use that feature now. Doesn't seem to be a big selling point.

You don't seem to write a lot then. Being able to use multitouch gesture to zoom, pan, and scroll through PDFs or other documents while typing up your own documents is quite a big deal.

Not to mention in OSX, you can scroll a window without having to focus on it. You have to click a window and then scroll in Windows.

2. Most corporations use Outlook.

Doesn't change the fact that Outlook is clunkier than the Mail/Contacts/Calendar/Reminder/Notes combo.

Also if you own a phone that's not a Windows Phone, chances are very high you don't have Outlook anyway.

3. An article I read said that companies aren't wasting tons of money for big bling screens for the fancy face-to-face nationwide meetings and such because it's not worth the money. It wasn't needed before, there is no need for it now - not for corporations, who are so worried about "cost" that they'll eventually starve in the end anyhow... facetime and the other glitzy bling is for the customer consumers that prattle on facebook all day. No sale.

My company has meetings almost every other day... and at least once a week. I'm not in sales, but I talk to sales people almost every day be it via email, text, or face to face via Skype. Some of them have iPhones, and they enjoy talking to me face to face more than texting or emailing. Why? Because sometimes it's faster to talk than to write.

A lot of my clients also have iPhones and iPads now, and they enjoy FaceTime more than Skype since they can just tap my email in the address field to initiate a FaceTime call without having to go through Skype.

This may be a stretch still, since I admit I receive more calls than FaceTime requests, but it's not like I don't receive FaceTime requests at all. And yes, that's from business contacts. Not from your average joe consumer.

5. Windows 7 has some not-dissimilar utilities integrated. Otherwise there are plug-ins... they're not hard to find, so is it worth the massive additional cost?

They are not hard to find, but they are extremely cumbersome to set up in order to do the same tasks, and some of them are not free.

Please feel free to find a free utility to turn a huge folder of images and texts into a PDF file by right clicking under Windows. I'd love to know if there exists one because last time I looked, I had to either fork out some extra dough, or write my own routine.

As for the claim of "20 reasons" for developers and designers... What are those 20 reasons?

1) Mac OSX is Unix, or at least Unix-like if someone needs to nitpick it.

2) XCode is only on Mac, and it's arguably the best way to write iPhone and iPad applications. Whether you like Objective-C or not doesn't take away the fact that if you want to write anything worthwhile on iPhone or iPad, you HAVE to use Objective-C.

3) Coda is only on Mac, and it's also arguably one of the best ways to write a website. Dreamweaver can be an alternative, but I don't see why anyone needs to fork out hundreds of dollars for a Dreamweaver license for themselves when Coda costs a lot less.

4) Mac OSX allows me to split my workspaces up into different desktops, so I don't have to cluster just one desktop with everything. I can have Photoshop running on one desktop, XCode running in another desktop, and Safari in another desktop. In case you ask what Photoshop has to do with coders, sometimes I need to look at Photoshop or Illustrator mockups to know how to layout the interface in an app. Switching between them is as easy as swiping the trackpad, or Control + Arrow key.

6) If you want to submit your iPhone/iPad app on a non-Mac computer, you'll have to jump through a lot of hoops... And by "a lot of hoops", I really mean "save yourself the troubles and just use a Mac, please". I HAVE tried to submit an app on Windows. Wasn't a pretty experience.

7) iTunes is much better on Mac than on Windows. Now... you may ask: what does iTunes have to do with a coder? Well, if you develop iPhone/iPad apps, you'll have to go through iTunes eventually. No way around it.

8) As mentioned before, Automator. Achieving the same tasks on Window is possible, but cumbersome, and sometimes costs money.

9) Nitpicking but true: I can hover my mouse over a tech doc and scroll it up, down, left, right, sideways... while typing my code in the other window without having to click back and forth like a maniac. If you have ever tried to deal with something that has a very long tech doc (like a virtualization project), then you know what I'm talking about.

10) Talking about virtualization: either Parallels or VMWare Fusion on Mac can legally and properly virtualize almost everything. You can't legally virtualize a Mac OSX machine on a Windows machine.

11) If I need hardware information about my Mac computer, then System Information under Mac shows me almost everything I need to know... down to whatever cycle count or capacity my MacBook's battery is at. Doing the same thing on Windows requires... many hoops, and some third-party applications (to read battery information).

12) Lug along an HDMI cable and an Apple TV, and all I have to do next is click one button at the top right corner of the screen, then choose the Apple TV. That's all it takes for me to beam my current screen onto a projector or HDTV. Beats having to plug cables in, tether my computer to one spot, and troubleshoot problems with resolutions and what-nots. What does screen mirroring do for a coder? It's for when I need to show the prototype of an app. Wireless HDMI works as well, but the cost of entry would be more than the Apple TV itself.

13) Mac OSX now has built-in Recovery partition that allows me to download a temporary image off of the internet, or restore completely from a Time Machine backup. If I ever mess my computer up, it takes just a few moments to get it back up and running, with the exact same files that I had before. Windows? No such luck. Break the partition that contains everything in there, and you're screwed. The recovery partition in most Windows machines I have seen are only there to completely restore the computer to stock, not to restore it to a previous state.

14) This is nitpicking, but: it's annoying having to deal with two different brightness settings under Windows 7. What am I talking about? When plugged in, my computer has a different brightness setting. And when unplugged, my computer has another brightness setting altogether. There is no known way so far to unify those two settings so that brightness doesn't change as soon as I yank the cord.

15) Another nitpicking point: Windows forces you to update sometimes, and there is no way to opt out of it. It'll continuously pester you to delay it after some certain time interval. And it's not just Windows. Java also does that. Mac OSX does NOT pester you for updates. It tells you there are some updates available, and you can update any time.

16) And here's the third nitpicking point: Mac OSX does not ask for my permission every time I launch my application, or every time I open a text file, or... etc... Windows asks for my permission for every little thing. Being a developer, I'd poke into system files a lot, so this is quite an annoyance. Turning those dialogs off under Windows compromises security so it's not like I can do that either.

17) Fourth nitpicking point: Mac OSX has a dedicated app that guides me step-by-step through creating another partition to install my Windows OS. So I can make my Mac dual-boot in under 5 minutes. Dual-booting on a Windows machine? Oh brother... I'll also include this point here, too: a modern Intel-based Mac computer can run both Mac OS and Windows. A Windows machine can't run Mac OS, either natively or virtually, without legal issues... or if you throw away the legal issues, there are still other hoops to jump through.

18) Last nitpicking point: Mac OSX doesn't have any driver management system, nor does it encumber you with the task of managing drivers. Windows makes you manage drivers for every little thing. And different driver versions have different stability sometimes, so it's a cluster****. Plugging an Android phone into Windows requires a bunch of drivers to be installed. Plugging an Android phone into Mac OSX... nothing happens. And nothing needs to happen. I just open Eclipse, lets it hook the necessary processes, and start writing codes.

Most of those have been reasons for developers, so I only have 2 left for designers:

19) Mac OSX properly supports Color Profiles, and it comes built-in with a Color Calibration tool that's at least more useful than whatever came with Windows. If you're a designer and you work with prints, then you know why Color Profiles are important.

20) Apple now has MacBook Pro with Retina display, and Adobe has just released Retina versions of their apps. Premiere Pro has supported Retina for a long time.
 
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