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Friday, February 15

The Difference between two operating systems

Often I am critized because I rave on and on about the Mac platform and constantly put down Microsoft without ever actually saying why I hate (MSFT) so much.

Its simply because its hard to explain. When you are using Microsoft Windows, let's say XP because that's what I am forced to use, you get the overwhelming sense of misplacement. Things don't function as they should, icons, toolbars, and menus feel out of place and not well constructed. The whole OS just feels like a kludge. Like it was designed by a commitee, on a white board, and no one in the room was told "no" to any idea.

Installing apps is insane. Next, next, next, agree, ok, next, done, reboot (sometimes). Now yes there are a bunch of mac programs that do the same thing, especially the ones from Apple itself but I think the apps that really get it right on the Mac platform are the ones that, when you download them, they automount and present you with two icons. The one for the program you just downloaded, and a shortcut icon for the Applications folder. All you have to do is a one second drag and drop from left to right. The program installs. Done.

That's the way it should be.

This article that I just read really hits the nail in the head. I enjoyed reading it it prompted many of the thoughts that I just wrote up there. So excuse if you read some redundancy.

Take a read. Its a great article.

4 comments:

craig said...

Ironically, I've NEVER had an easy install in Panther. Every program I've installed buries the executable and I have to manually search for it.

Leopard may be different, but Panther has been so painful, I don't install anything unless I absolutely must.

I'm not crazy about MS (I've converted to Ubuntu Linux), but at least when it installs something, it automatically puts it in the start menu.

BTW, why can't something close all the way when I click the x? One click, one close.

Joel Esler said...

Applications are put in the Applications folder. I don't know if you consider that "buried" or not. But, that's where they are. In Finder, click on "Go" at the top of the screen, then click on Applications. There they are.

When you click the "X", it closes the Window. Not the program. This is different from Windows and Linux. If you want to close a whole program, either go to the tool bar and click the name of the program and click quit, hold down the "Command" key, and hit "Q", or hold down your mouse click on the Dock on the program you'd like to quit.

craig said...

Ironically, I've NEVER had an easy install in Panther. Every program I've installed buries the executable and I have to manually search for it. Leopard may be different, but Panther has been so painful, I don't install anything unless I absolutely must.I'm not crazy about MS (I've converted to Ubuntu Linux), but at least when it installs something, it automatically puts it in the start menu.BTW, why can't something close all the way when I click the x? One click, one close.

Joel Esler said...

Applications are put in the Applications folder. I don't know if you consider that "buried" or not. But, that's where they are. In Finder, click on "Go" at the top of the screen, then click on Applications. There they are.When you click the "X", it closes the Window. Not the program. This is different from Windows and Linux. If you want to close a whole program, either go to the tool bar and click the name of the program and click quit, hold down the "Command" key, and hit "Q", or hold down your mouse click on the Dock on the program you'd like to quit.