Apple, the iPod, the Mac and the Future

[trmptr4484]

To reply to the posts. I agree that Mac OSX on PCs would be a bad idea. For one thing; without control of hardware MacOS will probably suffer from many of the problems that face Windows currently. This would be horrible since the best part about Mac OS (besides the much better and efficent interface) is that it is very stable. I haven't restarted my iBook in over a month.

I think that an advertising push for MacOS and iLife would help boost sales, especially if Leopard will be able to do PC virtualization.

 

[cybermiguel]

"I'll be paying for it..." If you run OS X, you should have had to pay for it. If you haven't and Grandma hasn't bought you a Mac for your birthday, you are likely using OS X illegally, which should be booed upon no differently than if someone shoplifts or robs a nun.

LOL

hahaha...

I'm running a copy from an aunt's DVD that came with her Macbook. I asked her if I could try that OS in my custom Intel box and she said "well...why not? If it works, you can help me with this stuff. " xD

Now, Tom's Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com) and Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) are hardware review sites. They review hardware and give it a score. Usually, the highest scores in...Hard Drives, for example, are the ones that the Hitachi Hard Drives have.

You see...if you want have an stable system, you need to hand-pick your components. If they are crappy, they make windows work like crap, as simple as that. You could have the best hard drive in the world, but if the rams that you use are crappy, you will unavoidably get a BSOD...windows is VERY picky about RAMs.

Now, about computers....most people where I live buys their computer in a department store, but...sometimes they ask for a custom built PC.

...no, I'm not studying anything related with computers. In fact, I study chemistry and pharmacy and one of the reasons that I care for my computer is the fact that I need to run certain software for molecular modeling.

About Windows...I agree and disagree with "Norse Son". I agree that there should be no backwards compatibility at all with Windows 98 and below....only with NT 5.0 (wich is 2000 and XP), because that kind of code is somewhat stable (it doesn't use 80's technology), but the problem is that doing so, many companies would have to re-write all their internal apps and that costs money...money that they are NOT willing to spend in some new fancy windows version. Most companies are seriously considering switch to linux, but doing so, they face the very same problem: backward compatibility and a complete re-write of all the internal software apps.

For us, the home users and the power users, the newer, the better (well...most of the time) and if Vista has to be re-writen in about a 60%...well...there's a proverb in my country that says "the lazy works twice" (el flojo trabaja dos veces). I think that it fits perfect to the Vista programmers. Hahahahaha. xD

 

[Arnaud]

OK, you know what insults are not required on a forum that people view for pleasure. I'm not trying to upset anyone, or indeed argue; I'm very simply telling you my experience.

...

Calling an argument (which is based on personal experience and not the need to prove you wrong] "pathetic" or flawed is in itself an entire miscomprehension of my post; and more than that, it's downright insulting.

Insulting ? I suppose you got me wrong here, pathetic only means "arousing pity, esp. through vulnerability or sadness": I expressed what I feel when reading some posts which refer to "many" problems and "many" issues without a proper argumentation, which leads to a sort of sadness.

Windows has his share of problems, but I can swear some people have been referring to the same "issues" for the last 10 years without a real user experience on most recent Windows. Maybe, re-reading the posts, someone will complain about the lack of automated floppy ejection, and that you need to push a button on a pc...

Your post gave me that same unsubstantiated feeling, which is why it took the comment of "pathetic" for a few other posts as well.

Your personal experience made me think of "I have this car, all the other cars suck because the buttons are not in the same place and I need to do all the setting again". Well, once the setting is done, you go for a test-drive, but you need quite a while on the road to adapt yourself and really start comparing. It doesn't mean you have to like all the other cars, there is complete rubbish out there too.

 

[billyboy]

I reckon Apple are big and flexible enough to get OS X out into the marketplace themselves. So I was just wondering about how Apple could push OS X big time into the public domain. Horses for courses? Rather than saying OS X is better than XP because of X Y Z feature, (a tpic that never gets a solution) highlight the scenarios each OS was designed for, and let the consumer decide on the basis of fit for purpose - and I think the following explains why periodically XP drives millions of users skitz.

Apple can claim to have an out the box user friendly OS designed for home users who act as their own admin, whereas Microsoft have an OS originally aimed at businesses (designed to be maintained by specialist administrators). OS X is powerful enough to match XP in the business world whilst maintaining its user friendliness, whereas XP, if it is used at home, is a powerful product to match OS X features - but without the tech support and inside understanding necessary to keep the OS running sweetly. ie MS have morphed a business product into a home product but with not too much imagination (user friendliness begins and ends with that fricking paper clip!) XP is living proof that compromise comes at a price that millions of people are paying fopr in time and exasperation - something the vast majority of Mac users dont suffer from and dont understand.

For hardware, dont bother saying a Mac is a superior piece of hardware, just make the case that Apple's computrs are designed specifically to run with the OS and software suites installed as standard, whereas PCs, whilst powerful pieces of hardware, are faced with an impossible task to work well with an OS made by one company and myriad of drivers and apps made by others.

At the end of the day, Apple should keep showing snippets of how slick and elegant the Apple solution is, and keep making big bucks on hardware and not license anything to anyone.. ie carry on with what they are doing!

 

[MacRonin]

Meanwhile, the often mentioned possibility of Apple finally licensing Mac OS X to other PC manufacturers is again raised. And the articles reports that "Multiple PC makers have expressed an interest [in licensing Mac OS X for PCs]. It's not just Dell."

I think Apple plans to use the delay of Vista to announce a top-tier OEM licensing deal...

I remember reading rumors of five top-tier PC OEMs wanting to ship units with Mac OS X installed...

I remember Dell, Sony & HP...

Toshiba also comes to mind, as for the fifth?

The way to ensure the experience would be to allow (and support) only specific hardware configurations...

Apple would license Mac OS X to the OEMs, preload 60-day demos of .Mac, iLife & iWork from the OEMs; and make some scratch off of sales down the road. Plus the update sales even later...

Pros would still use Apple hardware; since Aperture, Final Cut Studio & Shake would only be available on genuine Apple hardware...

Users who want the best in design will also continue to support Apple hardware...

As for the rest of the PC using world, they would come to find a new OS choice when buying a new PC...

Could the rumor of Apple lining up a huge amount of offshore (India) tech support also point towards this move? The tech support for OEM hardware is provided by the OEM, but tech for the OS provided by the OS source (Apple)...?!?

In short, OEM licensing, yes...

Select top-tier OEMs selling select hardware congfigs...

 

[SeaFox]

"Oh, the company was going bankrupt, all right," recalls ex-board member Edgar S. Woolard Jr. But in mid-1997, Woolard called Steven P. Jobs and asked him to retake the helm of the company Jobs had co-founded in 1976. In short order, Jobs tightened up operations, re-energized Apple's talented troops, and in 2001 oversaw the debut of a magical little device called the iPod.

Don't you love how the article completely skips over what pulled Apple from the brink of Bankruptcy - the iMac? I mean, really! Steve Jobs came back, got everyone back on track at the company and, four years later, iPod! Lets completely skip over what happened during that timeframe. Apple was back on track financiallly when they introduced the iPod. They aren't alive today because of white earbuds, they survived because of the iMac, the G3, G4, and the other awesome machines that came out over the next few years.

 

[Tacitus]

Sorry I'm a bit late to this thread.

Sounds like you need to reconsider that MCSE. ........
Seriously though you should review your situation with your IT department. You must be running a poor configuration of the OS ...........
So to answer your question, I think it's FUD because I see a LOT of machines running every day without a crash. I can't even recall the last time I saw a WIndows machine actually crash. So yeah, I say it's FUD.

I use WinXP most days at work (a University) and to be fair it doesn't crash that often. But it b....y well shouldn't with an army of tech support people to keep it running. The Mac that I use at home I simply switch on and do the work - no crashes, no problems and no army of tech support people.

That's what gets me with all this "I use Windows and it never crashes" crowd. Most of them use it at work and ignore all the tech support that it gets.

For the record I also have a WinXP box at home - built myself, simply because I have to do some things on a Wintel box. Other than that it seldom gets used.

 

[qtip919]

OK, now open a hundred windows and then you see why expose is so much better at what you want to do... In windowz it groups them all together so you better know the title or your fishing for worms,,,

a hundred windows?

yeah, thats a totally commonplace scenario...I do it all the time...

Expose looks rediculous with anything over 20ish windows in my opinion...

any yeah, titles a much more meaningful to me than miniature versions of the actual item once they become too small to recognize...

 

[qtip919]

I NEVER do THAT, I have always clicked on windows to move to different windows.

In Windows I have never liked the taskbar, I guess because it is SLOWER.

Since it uses text it takes a moment to focus and figure out which is which, but clicking windows is just a lot easier, or icons or apps in the doc is easy.

And I just walk through them if I have many opened.


If YOU really must have this functionality on the Mac then minimize all the windows to leave them.

I HAVE said in the past that Windows had MORE easy of use, in some areas, I think I was talking about Wissserds and just the general ubiquitousness of Win made it easier for some beginners who had very insecure personalities.

But its NOT true anymore, now ITS GOING THE OTHER WAY !!!

Its FUNNY I have known a LOT of COWARDS in my day who for one reason of another insist that there is a good reason to buy from the BIGGEST companies NO MATTER WHAT

And those people ALWAYS expected me to ORPHANED BY APPLE, MANY YEARS AGO they expected this, NOW MS IMPLODES -- I LOVE IT

Hi, I love CAPS! IT MAKES ME SOUND SO MUCH MORE CONVINCING


Look dude, watch who you are calling a coward. People buy things for many reasons. Windows is purchased be perfectly intellegent people to do perfectly normal computing tasks other than browse the internet and pick up a trojan here or there.

What world are you on right now? MS IMPLODES?

1. Take a lesson in grammar
2. Get in touch with reality

Microsoft is as healthy as they have ever been. Vista is meaningless to the home user market...get a clue. ipod is doing NOTHING to their core businesses. Media Center makes more money than OS X. XBox has so much upside its silly. Windows Server System (SQL, Exchange, etc.) are FLYING off the shelves.

Microsoft is earning money that would give the CFO of Apple wet dreams. Apple is not killing Microsoft and no one should prance around here thinking OS X is about to destroy the MS user base.

 

[mark88]

Uhhh, the way to select the window you want on MY MAC is, move the mouse to the left (The doch pops automatically without *CLICK ), Click and hold on Safari (In a split second the popup appears !), Release mouse button over the Window I want -- viola ONE CLICK window selection !!!

Exactly, a two step process as you just described. I can switch documents faster in Windows than I can in OS X. It's that simple, hence I prefer the way you can switch documents in XP.

Compare the two methods just described:

XP: Look > Click = document
OS X: Look > Click + Hold > Look > Click Again(or release) = document

The dock method above is like XPs grouped menus option, I've never used it and don't know personally anyone else who does. It's only useful if you have small screen estate and tasbar buttons become small and harder to read.

If OS X had a tasbar equivilient I can't say I'd see myself using expose as much as I currently do.

 

[Arnaud]

Exactly, a two step process as you just described. I can switch documents faster in Windows than I can in OS X.

Compare the two methods just described:

XP: Look > Click = document
OS X: Look > Click + Hold > Look > Click Again = document

The dock method above is like XPs grouped menus option, I've never used it and don't know anyone else who does. It's also useful if you have small screen estate and tasbar buttons become smaller and harder to read.

Wow

Yac_moda, Mark88: you've both wasted so much time in trying to define who's drawing his window faster that you could have switched 100 windows meanwhile (whatever the OS)

 

[mark88]

You have a point for a small number of windows. I don't know how many times, even on a 17" monitor, I've found myself clicking through a dozen squished-up task bar buttons to find what I'm looking for.

A small number of windows or a larger screen, I have a 20" ACD hooked up to my XP Machine, it takes alot of documents for them to become unreable. The problem you describe is the reason why they introduced grouped menus, and I think it's on by default in XP?

Mac OS X designers realized this and developed expose

I think OS X designers realized switching to the document you wanted in OS X wasn't an elegant/fast process and hence they came up with expose. I don't think it had anything to do with Windows taskbar.

What will be interesting is how many people will actually use Flip 3D in Vista, as I have a large resolution and can see my documents on my taskbar just fine I can't see myself using it that much., as it's slower switching documents than the taskbar no doubt.

 

[mark88]

Yac_moda, Mark88: you've both wasted so much time in trying to define who's drawing his window faster that you could have switched 100 windows meanwhile (whatever the OS)

Time is money, all those seconds wasted do add up

 

[Arnaud]

I think OS X designers realized switching to the document you wanted in OS X wasn't an elegant/fast process and hence they came up with expose. I don't think it had anything to do with Windows taskbar.

I must say I like Expose, because of the "natural" feeling it gives me: it's exactly the same as what I'd do on my (physical) desk to retrieve a special document - focus on one document, and then broaden your vision to all-documents and let your brain pick up the correct-looking one.

I'm not fond of task-bars, however. It gets my brain to scan through all the little icons and names before catching what I want.

Have you ever realized the difference when browsing for a music/film CD/DVD, between looking for the box/cover in your collection or the name on a list ? If I look for the box/cover, my brain is already trying to find the correct set of colors / typos / photos that I remember, while scanning through the names on the list is not as intuitive.

That's really my feeling with Expose. Indeed, my 20" screen helps - it can still take many windows before making Expose useless.

 

[mark88]

Have you ever realized the difference when browsing for a music/film CD/DVD, between looking for the box/cover in your collection or the name on a list ? If I look for the box/cover, my brain is already trying to find the correct set of colors / typos / photos that I remember, while scanning through the names on the list is not as intuitive.

That's really my feeling with Expose. Indeed, my 20" screen helps - it can still take many windows before making Expose useless.

I guess people work in different ways, I have no album artwork at all in my itunes library.

Expose has its drawbacks, especially if you're a developer who has a bunch of coded files open. It's like lucky dip.

 

[Attonine]

Market share

I`m English, but spend most of my time in either Saudi Arabia (work in a very large University) or Brazil (fun!). In Saudi I know one outlet for Apple, Office 1 in Al Khobar (though I believe there are outlets in Jeddah and Riyadh), and believe it or not, it is still selling G4 Tower Units, the old style (plastic surround) monitors, has no software, and the 1.33ghz G4 powerbooks - I`ve never seen an ibook in there - and a G5 iMac and G5 tower with a lower ghz processor. Now using "selling" may be optomistic as I have NEVER seen anyone in the store, and the stock is limited to about 10 units - this is the TOTAL stock of all Apple products in the store. I understand there is an outlet in the UAE, as I have 1 student who bought a mini form there.

In Brazil I know of nowhere which sells Apple, I`m sure there must be one outlet, but I have never come accross it. The very few people I know in Brazil who have a Mac got it from B&H Photo in New York (mail order).

Now to the point. I can`t understand all this talk of Apple reaching market share of 20% +. If I understand correctly, PC growth has slowed dramatically in the industrialized world (Western Europe, North America, Australia, Japan etc). The areas of growth are the developing countries, such as South America, much of Asia, North Africa etc. These are areas which Apple has next to no sales at all. In fact, as illustrated by Saudi and Brazil, they are often areas where, even if you wanted a Mac you couldn`t buy one. But, PC manufacturers are coming up with various incentives and programmes to supply some of these areas with cheaper, reliable machines.


For Apple market share to grow, more than switchers are needed. The first thing Apple has to do, even before resolving the conflict of whether Windows should boot on a Mac, or OSX on a PC, is get the machines out there. In the Arabian Gulf Apple could sell machines faster than they could make them. The Arabs have disposable income and love gadgets and good, cool looking technology. The electronics shops are awash with the largest LCD/Plasma screens you can get, DV camcorders, digital cameras, MP3 players, mobile phone shops every 10 feet, and build to order PC stores staffed by Indian technicians. And the turnover is high. Very high by Western standards. Yet Apple doesnt seem interested.

Although I don`t spend much time in England, I feel that Apple`s efferts in Europe are much the same. Yes England does have some Apple stores, but the marketing and advertising appears to be almost zero.

Apple really needs to get the machines out there, if the machines just aren`t available to these huge market sections, then obviously the buyers will buy the only altenative they have - a PC with either Widows or Linux ( and I would bet that most of the windows installations are pirated). The result being that any increases in Apple market share are swallowed up.

 

[demallien]

The MINIMUM buy in for a new user is $600 US which is for a base single core mac mini. I can build my own competitive box with more RAM and disk for $300. This is why there's a question about licensing OS X to PC makers.

It ain't gonna happen!

If I was Steve Jobs at the moment, I would be watching whats happening over at Microsoft with a big grin on my face. Why? Because the latest releases of open source operating systems and office productivity (Suse Linux 10 and OpenOffice 2.0) are getting awfully close to their Windows rivals in quality. Price conscious consumers are going to start to figure out that they can save the $500 they used to hand over to Microsoft evry couple of years.

When that happens (it has already started in fact), Microsoft is going to be in big strife. You just can't compete with Open Source, which harnesses the efforts of sooo many people, for free.

Apple on the other hand couldn't care less. You can't make a Mac or an iPod with open source. Only a fool would choose to compete directly with a group of people that work for free, and offer their product for free. So, there won't be any licensing of MacOSX, because Apple has no intentions of ever being anything other than a hardware company.

 

[mygoldens]

It ain't gonna happen!

If I was Steve Jobs at the moment, I would be watching whats happening over at Microsoft with a big grin on my face. Why? Because the latest releases of open source operating systems and office productivity (Suse Linux 10 and OpenOffice 2.0) are getting awfully close to their Windows rivals in quality. Price conscious consumers are going to start to figure out that they can save the $500 they used to hand over to Microsoft evry couple of years.

When that happens (it has already started in fact), Microsoft is going to be in big strife. You just can't compete with Open Source, which harnesses the efforts of sooo many people, for free.

Apple on the other hand couldn't care less. You can't make a Mac or an iPod with open source. Only a fool would choose to compete directly with a group of people that work for free, and offer their product for free. So, there won't be any licensing of MacOSX, because Apple has no intentions of ever being anything other than a hardware company.

Have you ever used Linux. Linux would have to have some real commercial programmers to make a dent. Ever try to print over a network with cups....yikes! Linux will never be a real player on the desktop. Every thing has to be done at the command line for reliability. The GUI is written by so many wanta be programmers, most utilities do not work.

Apple has some big problems, like placing all their hopes and dreams on a fad. Every device, my phone for example is an ipod. The fad will fade.

What they have to do, is license the OS out to hardware manufacturers and get it to the people. Then their technology will solidify Apple in the technology arena.

Right now, they are selling a fad and placing their entire future on it.

 

[Arnaud]

I guess people work in different ways, I have no album artwork at all in my itunes library.

Expose has its drawbacks, especially if you're a developer who has a bunch of coded files open. It's like lucky dip.

Sorry, I wasn't clear: I was referring to the visual effect of the covers in your physical library, not iTunes. When I'm facing a shelf with 20cds or dvds, my brain takes the global picture and then goes for the colors / features to find what I'm looking for. This is the same for Expose. I don't have any artwork either in iTunes...

Of course, if all the windows have exactly the same type of content (pages of source), good luck to differentiate them in Expose... (it also happens to me when editing the design of a website in Dreamweaver and checking the result of uploads in Safari, I end up with two similar windows of the same webpage).

 

[ray_uk]

I find OS X to be a more pleasent computing experience

What mygoldens said about linux I totally agree with. Having been a windows user since the day's of 3.1, ive occasionally tried to get linux to replace windows as my work OS but its just not the sort of thing that you can do without prior know how or deciding to put a lot of time and effort into getting it to work properly for example the graphic, sound and dialup modem drivers.

In comparison security issues aside windows is substantially more easy to use then linux, I guess that is largely due to the hardware manufacturers almost 99.9% of the time providing functional driver support to windows.

But that aside I got my first Mac last year when the 2ghz 20 inch iMac came out and I definitely plan on getting an Apple Laptop, will wait and see what the MacBook spec's are going to be, if their to low will instead opt for the MacBook Pro, And then wait for Apple to release a Power Mac with Kentsfield in, for me now there is no going back to windows, I was and still am an avid gamer but I now prefer the Mac way of doing things and even on a gaming rig im hesitant about having to run windows, which severly limits my options for pc gaming.

But then again who knows what the future's going to bring, maybe 10.5 will see the dawning of substantially more game that are released for the mac and if that doesnt happen maybe Darwine will offer favourable speeds for such tasks, or maybe even a version of Cedega for OS X or maybe even Apple's own Chameleon?

 

[strydr]

Ok, that's it. I'm full of all the crap that people speaks here. Is there anyone here that knows something about computers? NO ONE? NOT A SINGLE SOUL??????

First. I've built my family's computer years ago and I've built my own computer myself. It's the coolest thing you will ever learn. Why? because you will know exaclty what components your computer has, what kind of ram, hard drive, dvd-rw, graphic board, etc.....It's just great.

Now, about forcing windows...let's define "force windows". Forcing windows to work with something is installing it in a machine that would not run it at all, and you still want to make ir run. Does that happen with custom built PCs? The answer is a great NO!!.

Installing drivers is forcing windows to do something? Absolutely not. In fact, in every single OS that I have ever installed on my computer, the FIRST thing I do (yes, I have OS X for x86 too) is downloading all the latest drivers for my devices. Why do I do that? to have better stability, better performance and better compatibility with new apps and games.

Yes, I know that some of you will say that you don't need to do that in OS X....well...let me tell you that YOU HAVE TO DO IT ANYWAY. For example, If you have an ATi card, I recommend you to go to the ATi site and download the latest drivers, because they fix some problems with some games and some apps.

And yes, I have OS X and windows running on my "crappy" PC as you may call it, but...you know what? I'm 100% sure that each of the carefully hand-picked components that I chose to build it are superior to the ones found in some Macs.

Impressed? You shouldn't be impressed. You just have to know the brands of the components and how they are. That's the reason that sites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware exists.


Well...I am sure that there will be stupid people talking crap like any other forum, but I urge you not to take the Mac as the "ultimate platform", because they aren't and that even you can make a fine computer...even much better than the PowerMacs.

Regards ^^


BTW...It would be very nice to see OS X for retail...I'll be paying for it....and It would be VERY nice to see Macs running Windows by dual boot or by virtualization (wich, for my taste, is even better)

Wow, where do I begin. First off, talk all the BS you want, I've been building computers for 15 years. I have a list of certs that I EARNED. My first pc was a 33Mhz pentium. Yes, I went to the swap meet, bought all the parts, and built it. I have a mechanic background, and this kinda stuff comes natural to me. I built the servers that are navigating our tanks in Iraq right now. I've built well over 1,000 servers for Yahoo, and designed some of the first NAS and iSCSI devices. I am Intel certified in their Blade servers, and the Tiger platform (Itanium2). I was one of the first two people trained on the Itanium in CA. Please don't try to say " Is there anyone here that knows something about computers? NO ONE? NOT A SINGLE SOUL??????", because you just sound like a IDIOT. You don't impress me one bit. I love my macs, but ya know what, I have a monster PC (actually 2 of them) that I hand-built, and yes, they are very powerfull (Dual Xeon 3.06 workstation with 4 15K SCSI drives in RAID, and a Dual core AMD with 6 SATA HDD's)- these machines are better than most machines, be they PC or Mac. You must understand, not everyone can "build their own computer".. I repeat, "NOT EVERYONE CAN BUILD THEIR OWN COMPUTER" This may not apply to you, or your friends, but ask your parents if they want to try.. Here's one, why don't you take appart their PC, and have them re-assemble it. I gurantee, unless they are mechanically inclined, they will not want to even try. I know this, because I have tried to teach this to my (54year old) mom. Most people are afraid of even opening up their tower. Most people are obviously not you or I. Most people buy a pre-built computer from Dell, or Gateway, or Apple. Most of them don't have time or inclination to care what's inside. They just want it to work- This is Apple's appeal. It "just works" out of the box.

You talk about driver installs, well, yes there are drivers (specifically Vid. card drivers) that add functionalaty to the base driver installed by OSX, but for the average user, they will not know the difference. Last time I reloaded my XP box, it took me 1.5 hours to install drivers (and SP's), before my machine was running properly. My Mac??, well everything worked right out of the box. Sure, if I wanted to have the extra functionalaty, I needed to DLoad the latest driver from ATI, but the fact is, if I wasn't a geek, or didn't need this to fix a game, I would have never noticed the updated driver.

OK, you mention "forcing Windows", lets take a different view of this. Last time I had to Force-quit a App in OSX, it did just that, the bad app. shut down, and I reopened it, and was right back where I was 10 seconds before. Last time I had to "end task" in windows, it took 20 min, and repeated CTL_ALT_DEL's before it actually quit. This is a huge productivity loss. Why does it not do as I ask???

In closing, grow up a bit. Lots of people have learned to build their own PC's, and will always think their system are superior to the rest of us, but until you know ME, don't try to assess my skills or knowledge base. I'm sorry if I have insulted you, but I take your comments as a huge insult to me.

 

[peharri]

Exactly, a two step process as you just described. I can switch documents faster in Windows than I can in OS X. It's that simple, hence I prefer the way you can switch documents in XP.

Compare the two methods just described:

XP: Look > Click = document
OS X: Look > Click + Hold > Look > Click Again(or release) = document

That's not really the case. If you have a small number of windows open, then usually (but not always):

XP: Look for Window Title > Click = document
OS X: Look for Application Icon > Click = document

I say "not always" because XP, after about four windows are open, will start grouping windows by app. If that's unlikely to help, then you start getting abbreviated labels inside each button on the task bar, making it harder and harder to find the document you want.

Likewise, if you're using one app to have more than one document open under OS X, then just bringing the relevent application to the front might not help. You may have to select the app and go in the Window menu, or use the Dock "slow click" (or right click, realistically, it's a right click, only die hards are still using single button mice and avoiding the keyboard shortcuts that emulate multibutton mice) to select just a specific window.

So, when things get a little more complex:

XP: Click on multiple Taskbar buttons until you find the Window you wanted.
or:
XP: Find application you want. Click on Taskbar button. Find Window you want. Click on that.

OS X: Right click (or slow click) on App, scroll up to Window, click (or release slow click)

One can probably argue that both methods suck. And they do. On the Mac, people generally use Expose more and more when the window count gets excessive. Some apps, like Terminal.app, are fairly nice and have a "Previous Window/Next Window" keyboard shortcut, but it's not standard on all applications alas.

The XP one gets kind of nasty in that I've had situations arise where the same label was used for all windows for a particular application. Under those circumstances, I'd prefer to be able to select the entire application, bringing all the windows to the fore Dock style, but that's not an option unfortunately. Not an option I've found anyway. If it's possible, I'd love to hear how to do it as it'd make my Windows usage a little easier.

 

[mark88]

That's not really the case. If you have a small number of windows open, then usually (but not always):

XP: Look for Window Title > Click = document
OS X: Look for Application Icon > Click = document

Hmm, that's not correct though, please explain to me how this:

OS X: Look for Application Icon > Click = document

will get me to the finder window I want, if I have 5 Finder Windows open? All it will do is bring finder to the front, the document you want may be at the back of the stack. I guess, it would only be the case if you have 1 document open for each application, which I think is your point? but in reality how often do you have just 1 document open for each app? I've constantly got a couple finder and safari windows open.

I say "not always" because XP, after about four windows are open, will start grouping windows by app. If that's unlikely to help, then you start getting abbreviated labels inside each button on the task bar, making it harder and harder to find the document you want.

The grouping in Windows is an option, ie. It can be turned on and off. Abbreviated labels are a consequence of small screen estate, hence the reason I mentioned resolution, grouped documents were introduced because of this problem. Take alook at the attachment, 13 windows open, each one is a click away. If I had the similar windows open in OS X, no matter how large my screen, navigating between them is slower, that's all I'm saying.

Likewise, if you're using one app to have more than one document open under OS X, then just bringing the relevent application to the front might not help. You may have to select the app and go in the Window menu, or use the Dock "slow click" (or right click, realistically, it's a right click, only die hards are still using single button mice and

exactly, which is why getting to the document you want within 1 action in OS X is not always possible. Because I have a large screen, I never run into this problem with XP, unless I have like 30 windows open, which never happens.

So, when things get a little more complex:

XP: Click on multiple Taskbar buttons until you find the Window you wanted.
or:
XP: Find application you want. Click on Taskbar button. Find Window you want. Click on that.

But this is only true if you have small screen estate and a certain number of windows open. Which like I said, I don't, hence I never have this problem

OS X: Right click (or slow click) on App, scroll up to Window, click (or release slow click)

One can probably argue that both methods suck. And they do. On the Mac, people generally use Expose more and more when the window count gets excessive. Some apps, like Terminal.app, are fairly nice and have a "Previous Window/Next Window" keyboard shortcut, but it's not standard on all applications alas.

I use expose alot of my powerbook, because it has a smaller resolution I find things can get kinda untidy pretty quick so in that respect it's great.

The XP one gets kind of nasty in that I've had situations arise where the same label was used for all windows for a particular application.

I think that's down to bad programming, I don't have any apps that don't use the document title for the taskbar tab. Which apps do you have that do that?

 

[mark88]

I never see this, but I can understand how some people may do if they have 800x600 or something.

 

[peharri]

Hmm, that's not correct though, please explain to me how this:

OS X: Look for Application Icon > Click = document

will get me to the finder window I want, if I have 5 Finder Windows open?

It won't. But it would be false to describe what I said as "not correct" on that basis. What I said, which is completely compatable with the above scenario, was:

That's not really the case. If you have a small number of windows open, then usually (but not always):

XP: Look for Window Title > Click = document
OS X: Look for Application Icon > Click = document

I say "not always" because XP, after about four windows are open, will start grouping windows by app. If that's unlikely to help, then you start getting abbreviated labels inside each button on the task bar, making it harder and harder to find the document you want.

Likewise, if you're using one app to have more than one document open under OS X, then just bringing the relevent application to the front might not help. You may have to select the app and go in the Window menu, or use the Dock "slow click" (or right click, realistically, it's a right click, only die hards are still using single button mice and avoiding the keyboard shortcuts that emulate multibutton mice) to select just a specific window.

If I qualify something, I'm not looking for a generic opt-out, but at the same time, I think you'd agree my comments were fundamentally true: saying "It doesn't happen to me because of my big-ass monitor" doesn't contradict what I wrote, and will not until most people have huge monitors. As it is, most non-techies I know are still "stuck" with 1024x768 (having just gotten out of the 800x600 and 640x480 age...), and most technically minded users are on 1280x1024, anything larger is, today, unusual. My task bar at 1280x1024 has enough room for five labels at the default size before it starts to squish or group them.

A Mac OS X overenthusiast could have tried to contradict my comment by claiming they can just make Expose come on by moving the mouse to a corner of the screen. Or maybe there's a third party extension that makes window browsing a breeze. I'd be smacking him or her down too. Most people will not do that.

The grouping in Windows is an option, ie. It can be turned on and off. Abbreviated labels are a consequence of small screen estate, hence the reason I mentioned resolution, grouped documents were introduced because of this problem. Take alook at the attachment, 13 windows open, each one is a click away. If I had the similar windows open in OS X, no matter how large my screen, navigating between them is slower, that's all I'm saying.

Sure, but in the majority of cases, most users aren't in that situation. Again, this is an important distinction. Saying "Mac OS X is inferior to XP because in a specific situation, namely a situation where large numbers of Finder/Explorer windows are open, presumably overlapping, and where I have a screen far, far, larger than average, then it takes one click less to select the window I want" doesn't work.

In the majority of cases, either you don't have many windows open, in which case both OS X and XP will let you find your window with one click, or you do, in which case both OS X and XP will have advantages and disadvantages with their respective window finding techniques.

I think that's down to bad programming, I don't have any apps that don't use the document title for the taskbar tab. Which apps do you have that do that?

Sometimes it's because you're using multiple instances of something without any naming going on. Opening multiple copies of Notepad or Wordpad so you can make multiple notes will cause the titles to be identical until you actually save something.

MSDOS prompt (and Cygwin, which appears under the same "Application group" with a slightly different icon as MSDOS prompts, but still usually ends up with the same label for each session) springs to mind.

There's no easy way of doing this of course. I think that's part of the reason why Terminal.app does the whole Cmd-Arrows thing to select windows, you can just flick through them until you get to the one you want.