What do you need windows for, and wish it happened on the mac.

Raidiant · Jul 1, 2004

For me:

MMORPGs: (Neocron, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, etc) (This is probably my biggest reason to even bother using windows)

Hardcore games we don't get: Half Life, Homeworld,

Game voice chat: Team Speak, Ventrillo

MSN 6: Damn shut up all my friends use it

Running minor exe programs, such as a crack, e-card or just an self
extractor or a small game

The DVD authoring programs windows offer.

Backward compatibility.

Making desktop icons go on the left hand side for wallpapers!

to open the occasional annoying file that requires some obscene windows program.

customising your system is ****loads of different ways.

have loads of programs and 2000 different methods to obtaining things over the web.

No worries about hardware compatibility. To prevent people laughing at you when you are in a store and say you need to check if it works with your mac, then proceed to bring your mac to the store to "try" it out just in case its incompatible.

All your friends happen to use this "program" and you can't run it.

what do you need windows for? (you could say "nothing")

Royal Pineapple · Jul 1, 2004

the only thing i use windows for is when my mac is in the shop. otherwise if it wont work on my mac, i dont need it

Horrortaxi · Jul 1, 2004

I'm not convinced. My friends (even those using Windows) are enlightened enough to share things in cross platform formats.

Your post seems a little odd--infrequent poster posts about how we need Windows, no Mac content, no question. I won't go so far as to say you're trolling, but your post does contain many of the hallmarks.

smllpx · Jul 1, 2004

Visio, its so nice for DB and software design, and I have tried many of the mac / open source variants and they don't compare to the pro version.

MS Project, say what you will, this is the standard for the medium level of project management.

A handful of stupid "IE" only websites.

a couple other minor programs.

Doraemon · Jul 1, 2004

Raidiant said:
Hardcore games we don't get: Half Life, Homeworld,

Same here.

Game voice chat: Team Speak, Ventrillo

Team Speak for Mac is under development. So, that should be solved soon.

Running minor exe programs, such as a crack, e-card or just an self
extractor or a small game

Huh? Self-extracting archives have been available for the Mac many many years.

Backward compatibility.

MacOS X has almost 100% backward compatibility. I don't see that problem.

Making desktop icons go on the left hand side for wallpapers!

Use Photoshop and edit the wallpaper.
Besides, the way the Mac does it, the desktop is so much cleaner and tidier.

to open the occasional annoying file that requires some obscene windows program.

What kind of file should that be?

have loads of programs and 2000 different methods to obtaining things over the web.

Lots of apps are available for the Mac, too.
And if you're referring to P2P file sharing, it's all there for the Mac, too. But it's illegal and therefore for neither system a serious criteria.

No worries about hardware compatibility. To prevent people laughing at you when you are in a store and say you need to check if it works with your mac, then proceed to bring your mac to the store to "try" it out just in case its incompatible.

Hm...is checking the box (of whatever you're about to buy) for a Mac logo so hard?

All your friends happen to use this "program" and you can't run it.

Except for AutoCAD, I can't think of a single program that makes me wish I had a PC. And with a little bit of luck, AutoCAD will be ported for the Mac, too.

Dude, you sound like you should go an buy a PC. Be happy with it.

jsw · Jul 1, 2004

smllpx said:
Visio, its so nice for DB and software design, and I have tried many of the mac / open source variants and they don't compare to the pro version.

I've found OmniGraffle Pro to be very good. Not good in the same exact ways as Visio, but quite usable and, in some ways, better. And OmniGroup support is excellent.

As for me, I've no reason to require a Windows system save for one: I need to use CheckPoint's VPN solution to access my work intranet from home. Need a PC for that. Turns out, I've found many ways to avoid requiring access to work's intranet when at home. Go figure.

As far as customization, etc.: not important to me. OS X isn't so ugly as to require me to try to escape it. Honestly, the only thing I miss from Windows is the ability to resize windows from all edges. That's it. Wish I could do that on my Mac. Maybe there's a hack for it - haven't checked.

DavidLeblond · Jul 1, 2004

Raidiant said:
The DVD authoring programs windows offer.

As a long time Windows user, I had problems with this point. All the DVD authoring programs I've used for Windows were horrible. I just recently got my Mac and was able to use iDVD with my PC's DVD burner and I liked it SO much more. I've never used DVD Studio Pro, but I'm sure its even better.

As far as finding obscure programs to run files (???) check the OSS community. If someone hasn't made a program to read the file, fire up XCode and do it yourself.

Raidiant · Jul 1, 2004

what does trolling mean? Anyhow all those things I wish ran on a mac. To me half life 2 and so on isn't too much of a big deal, but MMORPGs are really only on pc, and I think they have a great gaming potential, yet apart from shadowbane and eq we have no seen much on the mac, WoW should be great btw.

Single players game are not big of an issue to me since, I have a PS2 and XBOX, however many people don't own such things, and for the low end systems the mac is costly, and is not very good for just the digital life stuff. Granted there are people who don't need games, but I know loads and loads and loads of people who would switch if the mac can play the same games. I know about 4 people myself who would switch.

Sun Baked · Jul 1, 2004

Sometimes less than 100% backward compatibility forces people/developers to upgrade their programs, otherwitse we'd probably still be using some of the original 24-bit/hardware dependent programs.

Even then there are ways of running them with emulation.

jsw · Jul 1, 2004

Raidiant said:
what does trolling mean?

Posting with the intent of provoking or insulting the intended readers.

I don't think you were trolling.

Raidiant · Jul 1, 2004

DavidLeblond said:
As a long time Windows user, I had problems with this point. All the DVD authoring programs I've used for Windows were horrible. I just recently got my Mac and was able to use iDVD with my PC's DVD burner and I liked it SO much more. I've never used DVD Studio Pro, but I'm sure its even better.

As far as finding obscure programs to run files (???) check the OSS community. If someone hasn't made a program to read the file, fire up XCode and do it yourself.

Well i've seen several decent dvd authoring program, the point is there is more choice. I wonder how many people still own a G3, i'm one of them so to me idvd and dvp is out of reach, so i'm biased on that point, but an equivelent of a pentium can run a lot more dvd authoring programs, while the mac offeres nothing for the G3, again I don't know how many people own them. However I know a lot of people don't upgrade every few months, though apple has offered time for people to upgrade, I would expect a large portion of the market still stuck with G3s.

Raidiant · Jul 1, 2004

Sun Baked said:
Sometimes less than 100% backward compatibility forces people/developers to upgrade their programs, otherwitse we'd probably still be using some of the original 24-bit/hardware dependent programs.

Even then there are ways of running them with emulation.

Well I do enjoy running my old dos games on my pc. Thats really what I meant, i'm not some hard core programmer who knows my stuff. I'm pretty sure apple loves to cut off backward support, after a product is brought down the support for it is minimum.

Well thats the thing I don't like it when companies "force" people to upgrade, but thats my point of view. Especially in the case of apple where a simple change in the plist can cause fcp4 to run on a g3, is a bit...erm ...

smllpx · Jul 1, 2004

jsw said:
I've found OmniGraffle Pro to be very good. Not good in the same exact ways as Visio, but quite usable and, in some ways, better. And OmniGroup support is excellent.

I have settled with OmniGraffle Pro when I use my mac, but it is by no means a replacement. With Visio I can reverse engineer a database structure, modify it, and make the changes to the database. Create site maps from live websites. Get UML diagrams from VS.NET. While I know most people don't use all these functions, I do.

Now I could accomplish some/most of this with AppleScript in OmniGraffle. Also, Xcode 2 looks like it will handle the UML diagraming. The way the tools are integrated is what makes Visio so powerful.

That being said, OmniGraffle's Smart Guides is a feature I wish Visio had. Maybe Apple needs to do what MS did, and buy Omnigroup and incorporate OmniGraffle into Xcode.

jsw · Jul 1, 2004

smllpx said:
I have settled with OmniGraffle Pro when I use my mac, but it is by no means a replacement.

Oh, I agree that Visio is more powerful and that you need to do more work on the side to get the best use of OmniGraffle's power.

On the other hand, Visio Pro is ~$500, and OG Pro is ~$120. On a value-per-dollar basis, OG Pro is excellent.

If I could get Visio Pro on the Mac, I might. I do like it on the PC. But I have managed to make do with OG, and, for me, that means doing my work, when working at home, on my Mac as opposed to my work PC laptop, and that trade-off works for me.

Horrortaxi · Jul 1, 2004

jsw said:
I don't think you were trolling.

After reading his follow-ups I don't either.

pooky · Jul 1, 2004

GIS. It's the only thing I need to do at work that I can't do on my mac. Unfortunately, I spend a good portion of my time working in GIS, so I need to use windows quite a lot.

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What do you need windows for, and wish it happened on the mac.

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