Re: Mac stuff

On Jan 22, 2005, at 2:32 AM, Roger Binns wrote:
> And it has all the annoyances of Windows (eg dumping what would be 
> drive letters on your desktop,

  Easily turned off. In fact, this was turned off in the first versions 
of MacOS X but user demand made them bring it back.

> trying to hide the distinction between files, packages, executables 
> and shortcuts)

  This is a perfect case of making it simple and manageable for people 
who don't know any better and would break things, but it's easy to work 
around if you know what you're doing. A ctrl-click on a package will 
give you a "Show Package Contents" for example.

>  with the amateurishness of Linux (crappy help,

  I haven't seen a good example of help yet on any system, IMNSHO.

>  bizarre preference settings, doing things in a non-obvious way),

  Non-obvious to a geek or non-obvious to someone who knows nothing of 
computers?  I'm only qualified to judge one side of that, but as often 
is the case the programmer or system designer's view of the "natural" 
way to do something will only match up as natural with a subset of the 
user base, you just hope to hit a larger subset on most functions.

> various idiotic error messages that Windows gives now and then also 
> have counterparts in MacOS, as well as sporadic confirmation dialogs 
> when they aren't needed, and no confirmation/undo at all in other 
> places (eg many preference dialogs).

  In the case of odd dialogs, I'd love to see your examples. I'd say 
Windows is far and above the king of useless confirmation dialogs and 
meaningless errors. Just curious which ones you are referring to.

> I was also amazed at just how primitive many of the apps are such as 
> Mail or the Browser.

  This is a different view of making programs for the users that cover 
the basic functions, but don't overload you with tons of options and 
obscure functions. You are always able to throw on other programs for 
either of those functions that better suit your needs, these are meant 
to be bare bones but yet functional starting points. For many people, 
that's as far as they'll ever need to go.

>   If I ever find out who decided that going to the very beginning or 
> end of the file/window/document was more common than the beginning or 
> end of the line and hence would map the home/end keys that way ...

  Most applications respect what I think are largely emacs bindings. I 
didn't use emacs that much, so I don't remember. ^A and ^E go to 
start/end of line for example.  Ctrl-left/right arrow go to start/end 
of line as well, and option-left/right arrow go to previous/next word.  
(option is the ALT on a windows keyboard)

> Ah well, enough ranting.

  Not at all, it's interesting to see how your experience will progress 
and as a system support person as well, it gives me better insight on 
things other users may encounter that I gloss over.




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