Windows vs Mac OS X

[MisterMe]

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I dont like this all stored in one big file route, and wanted to see if its true that other apps are going to do the same

That's just it. iPhoto does not store photographs in "one big file." It stores files in its iPhoto Library bundle. Click Show Package Contents and browse its directory structure 'til your heart's content. Most third-party photograph management applications treat the iPhoto Library as a regular folder.

BTW, before Apple converted the iPhoto Library from a regular folder to a bundle, many Mac users screwed-up their libraries by injudiciously moving files around.

 

[paulsalter]

That's just it. iPhoto does not store photographs in "one big file." It stores files in its iPhoto Library bundle. Click Show Package Contents and browse its directory structure 'til your heart's content. Most third-party photograph management applications treat the iPhoto Library as a regular folder.

BTW, before Apple converted the iPhoto Library from a regular folder to a bundle, many Mac users screwed-up their libraries by injudiciously moving files around.

i appreciate what you are saying, but if users screw things up by moving things then that is their fault

Conflicting info on your second point, I agree it can be used as a normal folder and other photo apps can read it, I checked on this a while back and was told it can screw up your library if anything external access's it

perhaps I am just a little old fashioned with things, but I like to learn how apps work, and would have found out that if these apps are using referenced libraries, then you dont go and change the folder structure outside the app

 

[Soliber]

I only require 2 versions while editing

main version
backup incase of problems (which can be deleted after main file saved)

Why do you insist on the old-school hands-on approach when the alternative is so much more convenient?
What Apple is proposing with Lion is basic and automatic versioning support for all your documents.
Us developers have long since stopped backing up our codefiles manually; we entrust that to tools like SVN, Mercurial, Git, which are infinitely more suited for that particular task.
Why would you then prefer to manage the versioning of documents yourself, when your manual approach will take more time, be less efficient and be more error prone?
The right tool for the right job and all that 😉

 

[paulsalter]

Why do you insist on the old-school hands-on approach when the alternative is so much more convenient?
What Apple is proposing with Lion is basic and automatic versioning support for all your documents.
Us developers have long since stopped backing up our codefiles manually; we entrust that to tools like SVN, Mercurial, Git, which are infinitely more suited for that particular task.
Why would you then prefer to manage the versioning of documents yourself, when your manual approach will take more time, be less efficient and be more error prone?
The right tool for the right job and all that 😉

The above is what i would want it to do

I work on a document, it creates a backup while I work, when I have finished and saved my work it deletes the backup

I dont need automatic versioning for all my documents, I only need 1 version, dont need a saved version every hour or however often it does it

If I want a new version, easy, Save As and give it a new new

 

[Soliber]

I work on a document, it creates a backup while I work, when I have finished and saved my work it deletes the backup

I you're finished, you simply lock the file and no versions will be kept for that document going forward.
I don't really understand your aversion to this... All the versions are mere changesets, it's not like Lion is storing whole copies of the document, so the space being occupied by those copies is minimal.
Anyway, if you insist, simply disable the whole versioning stuff and kick it oldschool 🙂

 

[flat five]

The above is what i would want it to do

I work on a document, it creates a backup while I work, when I have finished and saved my work it deletes the backup

I dont need automatic versioning for all my documents, I only need 1 version, dont need a saved version every hour or however often it does it

If I want a new version, easy, Save As and give it a new new

maybe i'm misunderstand your understanding of Versions but you will only have 1 file.. all the versions of that file are recorded in the single document.

it sounds like you think Versions is going to give you a new file every hour (project_v01, project_v02, etc).. it's not.

 

[paulsalter]

Anyway, if you insist, simply disable the whole versioning stuff and kick it oldschool 🙂

didnt think you could do that, if thats the case then no issue, I will just disable it

maybe i'm misunderstand your understanding of Versions but you will only have 1 file.. all the versions of that file are recorded in the single document.

it sounds like you think Versions is going to give you a new file every hour (project_v01, project_v02, etc).. it's not.

it keeps a version similar to how time machine works as far as I know (not actual files)

my point is, I do not want it to automatically save things as I am working, or if it does, I would like these backup versions it creates to be deleted when I have finished working

work on document in pages
pages creates a backup copy incase of problems
when I save file, these backups get deleted

I do not want/need multiple versions of the file, whether stored as separate files or embedded into the original document

as above though, it seems like this can be turned off and reverts back to the old/better for me way of Save/Save As which makes me happy

 

[flat five]

it keeps a version similar to how time machine works as far as I know (not actual files)

my point is, I do not want it to automatically save things as I am working, or if it does, I would like these backup versions it creates to be deleted when I have finished working

i guess that's your choice but i don't see why you wouldn't mind having the versions..
fwiw, versions is basically a dream come true for the way i work (mainly cad apps) and i've been pushing the developers to incorporate something similar in their apps for a while now.. seeing it handled by the os is even better and pushing the devs to tie into it hasn't been nearly as problematic as trying to get them to make their apps work this way.

work on document in pages
pages creates a backup copy incase of problems
when I save file, these backups get deleted

in this case, you'll want to work with auto-save on and versioning off..

(if i understand they way lion is going to work.. i personally haven't used it yet)

I do not want/need multiple versions of the file, whether stored as separate files or embedded into the original document

as above though, it seems like this can be turned off and reverts back to the old/better for me way of Save/Save As which makes me happy

again, i haven't used lion yet but i did see a video on youtube showing someone going through autosave/versions.. at one point, they either clicked on the window's toolbar or used a keystroke but the more normal 'save as' dialog did pop up..
i didn't see anything about using 'duplicate' and so far, it appears as if the duplicate file is saved in the same place as the original but i'm hoping that's not going to be the case.. i don't see why apple would feel the need to eliminate giving a user the choice of where they'd like a copy to be saved at.

i guess we'll know soon enough.

 

[paulsalter]

i guess that's your choice but i don't see why you wouldn't mind having the versions..
fwiw, versions is basically a dream come true for the way i work (mainly cad apps) and i've been pushing the developers to incorporate something similar in their apps for a while now.. seeing it handled by the os is even better and pushing the devs to tie into it hasn't been nearly as problematic as trying to get them to make their apps work this way.



in this case, you'll want to work with auto-save on and versioning off..

(if i understand they way lion is going to work.. i personally haven't used it yet)



again, i haven't used lion yet but i did see a video on youtube showing someone going through autosave/versions.. at one point, they either clicked on the window's toolbar or used a keystroke but the more normal 'save as' dialog did pop up..
i didn't see anything about using 'duplicate' and so far, it appears as if the duplicate file is saved in the same place as the original but i'm hoping that's not going to be the case.. i don't see why apple would feel the need to eliminate giving a user the choice of where they'd like a copy to be saved at.

i guess we'll know soon enough.

Many thanks for additional info

if auto save on/versioning off works as you say it sounds perfect for me

I will give these new things a try, but at the moment, reading about them, they just sound annoying

 

[munkery]

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12830926/

 

[Dark Void]

It's really not any better, it's just different.

i completely agree with this. it all comes down to what you prefer. i honestly have come to prefer mac os x but i still think win7 is a great os. i like xp too, i only dislike like vista.

 

[blueroom]

The only things I like about windows over OSX are...

1. cut & paste works
2. merges folders not overwrite! (I found out the hard way)
3. finder (list view) I can't for the life of me find anywhere to paste if the folder is full (no white-space) for that I'm sure I'm using it wrong.

Else it's much much better than Windows anything.

 

[reputationZed]

It's really not any better, it's just different.

Agreed, I found OSX to be an order of magnitude better than Vista, while Win 7, though different than OSX in appearance and features, is on par with OSX in terms of it's robustness and usability as an OS.

The only things I like about windows over OSX are...

1. cut & paste works
2. merges folders not overwrite! (I found out the hard way)
3. finder (list view) I can't for the life of me find anywhere to paste if the folder is full (no white-space) for that I'm sure I'm using it wrong.

Else it's much much better than Windows anything.

One Windows feature that I have never understood why Apple refuses to incorporate into OSX is a print current page option in the print dialog.

 

[Young Spade]

The only things I like about windows over OSX are...

1. cut & paste works
2. merges folders not overwrite! (I found out the hard way)
3. finder (list view) I can't for the life of me find anywhere to paste if the folder is full (no white-space) for that I'm sure I'm using it wrong.

Else it's much much better than Windows anything.

You should try using TotalFinder. Gives you the ability to cut and paste any file or folder. Command X.

Also gives you a slew of other features as well, most notably tabbed Finder windows. (It looks like Chrome/Firefox/Safari) You also have side by side windows when you're moving things around. Worth the money.

 

[blueroom]

Thanks I'll give TotalFinder a look.

 

[r0k]

There have been several posts that win 7 and os x are fairly evenly matched. Perhaps in appearance but not quite in usability. I use both every day and find os x to be better for the way i do things now. I used pathfinder when i first switched but not any more. While there are a few times i'd like cut/paste i don't miss it any more.

 

[Benbikeman]

I used Win7 for 18 months before switching (back[1]) to OSX.

I'd echo what most people have said. Win7 and OSX 10 are pretty much on a par in terms of stability, and the security thing is definitely overblown: in 12 years of using several Windows variants, I've never had a virus.

Feature-wise, I'd say they are too close to call. Windows has a few edges on OSX, OSX has a few on Windows.

OSX wins for me in a few areas. First, there are far, far fewer OS updates. On Windows, I'd have to restart my machine maybe once a week for updates; on OSX, it seems rare.

Second, start-up and resume times. If I do have to restart OSX, it's about twice as fast as Win7, and resume is almost instant (versus 15-ish seconds for Windows). It's also much easier in OSX to auto-start the apps I want and nothing else (you can do the same in Windows, but it's a lot fiddlier).

Third, Time Machine. For a laptop user, TM and Windows Backup are night and day. TM is far, far easier and slicker.

Fourth, migration. Switching to a new machine and carrying across all your old apps and settings, OSX is again far easier and does a much better job of it.

My main gripe with OSX is the way it actively tries to hide the file system. Yes, I'm sold on letting apps manage it as much as possible (despite being deeply resistant to the idea initially), but there are times when I want a particular file in a particular folder because my folder structure (used for years under Windows) mirrors my business structure, and I sometimes have to battle OSX to achieve that.

Overall? I don't see a massive reason to choose one over the other, but having made the switch to OSX for circumstantial reasons, I do have maybe a 20% preference for OSX.

[1] I used Macs from 1984 to 1999, so a switch back to Mac rather than to OSX!

 

[maflynn]

My main gripe with OSX is the way it actively tries to hide the file system.

That's really more of application thing. I have no such issues with non apple apps. Perhaps Lion is only going to exacerbate that situation but I'm anal, and I have my documents and files set up in a way that works for me.

One of the biggest reasons for me to use Macs as always been that the system get in the way of the way I want to work. I'm hoping with the advent of Lion that won't change but it seems apple is trying to hide the file system interaction more and more.

 

[Merkyworks]

get a SSD and this issue will be no more, I have an intel 320 120GB SSD and have windows 7 64bit via bootcamp. from the time I push the power button till the time I see the log in screen on both OS's is about 13-19 seconds. I only use windows to run solidworks 2011, that program is on my work pc with a 7200 rmp drive takes a while to open but on my MBP its only a few seconds.

 

[Young Spade]

One of the biggest reasons for me to use Macs as always been that the system get in the way of the way I want to work. I'm hoping with the advent of Lion that won't change but it seems apple is trying to hide the file system interaction more and more.

That's definitely the first thing I noticed when I got the mac. I instantly became more productive. I can do anything and everything faster, mainly because I use keyboard commands.

Commands to move the window, commands to change the size of the window, commands to switch spaces, expose, commands to work around web browsers, programs, finding programs that are open, opening programs; I just didn't either know about them or I couldn't find them on Windows machines.

I'm a tinkerer and I love customizing the machines. It just feels like OS X was made to be individualized; I picked up my friend's MBP the other night and used it for a second. I didn't like it. Not because of the machine but because of the fact that it wasn't "mine". No system information in the menubar. No geeklets showing me uptime, date, calender information, or iTunes playback.

It only gets better from here.