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category: general [glöplog]
i do like osx, but i ended up with the choice of using either
a) xcode and opengl
or
b) visuals studio and directx
for demo development. easy choice really..

actually.. it was also because there aren't any speccy emulators on osx that are anywhere near as good as the best windows ones

so now i have a mac running xp and i am happy. i can't even remember the last time i booted up into osx
added on the 2009-06-03 17:19:26 by evilpaul evilpaul
BarZoule..

mac has built-in capture screenshot.. just hit CMD 4.
win has ctrl printscr.. open paint.. paste image.. save to disk.

is that enough to convince you?
added on the 2009-06-03 17:20:48 by neoneye neoneye
BarZoule.. a feature I came to know about recently.

mac has built-in dictionary.. just hit CMD D.. and a window is shown with a description of the word.
win has nothing?
added on the 2009-06-03 17:26:05 by neoneye neoneye
neoeye:
hmmm well.. that can be handy. But most of my writing application either have builtin dic already (firefox, thunderbird, open office) or i don't care (msn, gtalk).
What i like from Windows is not about the fancy gadgets, it's the well-working core (once you cleaned off the gadgets).
Example: the way everything in the system is simple and dumb. If i change the extension the system will try to open the file differently.
Windows sure warns me sometimes about things i shouldn't be doing, but never steps in the way denying me access or whatever.
Indeed i'm tlaking about XP (2000 was slightly better!), Vista is another story.
Other + : Windows is good at multitasking. OS9- were extremely poor at that, and OSX is slightly better, but still not as good. And the beach ball of death is not my favorite feature :T
added on the 2009-06-03 20:30:37 by BarZoule BarZoule
What "power user" things am I missing on a Mac?
added on the 2009-06-03 20:32:24 by Preacher Preacher
Quote:
What "power user" things am I missing on a Mac?


Second mouse button.
jsyk, i'm not wanting to start any flame war or whatever. it's just that at the time i had to use osx (for work) i was always swearing against missing features and my boss was replying stuff like "mac is excellent, just not made for you, you'Re a power user". that's why i was talking about "poweruser thing" But he might be wrong, i mean, he's been wrong many time about other things.

but from what i remember, what i missed the most was:
right-click: sure you have ctrl-click equivalent but i found it somtimes badly supported;
the open/save dialog: that's maybe my favorite gadget in windows, you have this autotype thing that remembers the most recent files you've opened, you don't have to seek any folder, just pickup the file in that folder you're always working in, and delete the name part. Other fantastic thing: it has all the same functionalities a real folder window has: you can copy paste rename files, drag'n'drop;
del button: why have a del button that doesn't del, or only sometimes ?
added on the 2009-06-03 21:20:49 by BarZoule BarZoule
if you want a some high lights of whats wrong with mac...
windows has total commander.
mac has no equivalent.
added on the 2009-06-03 21:32:28 by neoneye neoneye
At least my mouse right clicks just fine in just about any application and you can delete stuff by command+backspace (which is clunky, I know). If your Mac experience comes from the dark days with no right click, I seriously suggest you update it :) I'm not sure what you mean with the file open/save dialog, but on OS X you can easily find anything on your computer by pressing command+space and typing what you want. It even searches inside your mail and documents, and you can open the directory the file is in Finder with a single keystroke if you don't want to open it straight from the Spotlight menu.

That said, there's a lot of stuff in OS X that pisses me off as well. Who's the idiot who designed the red-yellow-green window resize things and why can you resize a window manually only from the lower right corner? And why can't you do cut and paste in Finder..
added on the 2009-06-03 21:34:45 by Preacher Preacher
There are even more stuff that pisses me off in OS X (yeah I do use a Mac for the "oh hi I am sitting in Starbucks reading my e-mail from a glossy Mac!" experience), but more than that, there are nice little details that make me smile every time I am exposed to them. Alas, I am not yet that engaged into Mac coding.
added on the 2009-06-03 21:50:09 by decipher decipher
Preacher: thx for the info. Didn't know about cmd+bksp or cmd+spc.
I guess all resides in the amount of years you've been using an OS, finding shortcuts, be them designed or not.
But let me get back to my previous question: why is someone switching over? cuz of Vista? cuz it's treandy? cuz those laptops are cute? cuz it's the only platform you can legally code on for the iPhone/iPod ?
I've always seen Mac being made for aunts and grannies and technologically impaired, with Linux for geeks and Windows as some kind of middleground. So i'm intrigued when i see sceners switching over to MacOS. But it can just be me with my misconceptions..
added on the 2009-06-03 21:59:53 by BarZoule BarZoule
(and now i feel like an optimus with all my oh so profound questionings =) )
added on the 2009-06-03 22:00:46 by BarZoule BarZoule
Quote:
Second mouse button.

You might want to be even more clever and quip how the latest macbooks have *no* button on their trackpads! It gets us Mac users every time!
added on the 2009-06-03 22:06:16 by Shifter Shifter
BarZoule, if you didn't know about spotlight nor how to delete a file you're hardly in a position to judge OSX from the viewpoint of a power-user :)

Rightclicking btw can also be done by clicking/tapping two fingers instead of just one.

.. and where does this "granny/tech-impaired" thing come from? Ever tried executing a command in the terminal? :D

(I'm glad I've switched to Mac.. it's a bit like the good old days where I was trying to convince everyone that AMIGA was better than PC .. and once again I know I'm right! :D :D)
added on the 2009-06-03 22:18:14 by booster booster
long story. I started on an A500, it was a great computer and the file system idea was outstanding (which I still miss) and had AMOS. Then switched to DOS so I could play Doom, big set back with a lot of cursing, but that was also the age of TurboC and TurboPascal. Later I switched to windows 95/98/ME/2000/xp and also toyed around with linux/freebsd, which I used as desktop os for 2 years. Finally I got so tired of everything and need to try out the last resort.. mac. It picks up nicely after my Amiga.

I appreciate the consitent UI, the consistent Cocoa api, the consistent way programs install themselves without fucking the registry, that darwin is opensource so I can see how things are implemented, that a bunch of opensource libs are shipped with the os. And TextMate rocks.

I acknowledge that there are way too many mac fanboys that take photos of their hardware and hang out in coffee shops.

Apps I miss: Total Commander, Chrome, VTune.

Things that sux about mac: default keybindings, xcode's builtin editor, ...
added on the 2009-06-03 22:26:58 by neoneye neoneye
now, what about mac.scene.org?

(btw, one thing i like about osx is that it is a unix when you need it, but you don't have to fight it when you don't need it. Now I don't especially like the unix thingy, but since the rest of the world use it, I have to admit that it is really convenient to have it. Also it is a royal pain to do any unixy stuff on windows. Actually anything command line is a pain on windows. So that's about "power users". Also the terminal in osx is even better than all the linuxes, as copy-paste actually works :)
added on the 2009-06-03 22:38:54 by blala blala
barzoule: the beachball thing got massively improved with leopard. It was a bit annoying now and then before, but it shouldn't be an issue these days. OS9 and before.. forget it. Mac OS from my experience was pretty shitty in those days, but osx is a totally different os (to the extent that apple used to provide a VM for running os9 apps).

The "maximise" button everyone complains about: I think it's not bad. Really, the windows version is just as wrong as the mac one, but because everyone is used to the windows style maximise the mac style is noticed more. Really, most of the time you don't want "maximise", but "make it big enough to show everything in the window", which is what the mac one does. Well, usually. But if you want it full screen you have to do it by hand. And wtf is up with itunes, where the maximise button makes the window tiny? o0

Why I switched over: mainly, I was sick of all the 'messing about' in windows. Updating stuff, running virus / rootkit / malware / etc. scanners. Fixing things, and reinstalling every 6 months. I still do some of that stuff with osx, but nowhere near as much, so as a rule i can turn the computer on and start work immediately, not wait for updates or anything. I reckon my productivity is a fair bit higher.

That said, the windows security situation has improved a lot since then, and I've had to reinstall a bit more regularly since leopard I'd say, so it's probably evened out a bit more. There's stuff I hate about windows, and stuff I hate about osx, but hey there's vmware etc. for the things you need from other oses.

Windows stuff i really miss in osx: directory opus, and demos of course :) I find xcode pretty good, but then i've not used visual studio to compare it. Mac stuff I miss on windows: drag + drop piracy :D And buying a new machine and just putting the old hdd in, and everything just works. And expose/spaces, i hate being without that mapped to spare mouse buttons. (Anyone complaining about mac's "1-button mouse" still, mouse support in osx is actually way better than windows these days!)

Also, what bstrr said about amiga, and what blala said about mac.scene.org :)
added on the 2009-06-04 00:12:18 by psonice psonice

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