Despite its pretty limited featureset, I love my iPhone - it is typical Apple - do a very small range of things, but do them really well .. so well that people actually use the feature and think you invented it. After realizing this, drooling over OmniGroup apps, reading about font-smoothing choices, and after setting Vista back to Classic mode, I began to again look at OSX as a platform choice. So with Parallels and Nicholas' subtle evangelism pushing me over the edge, for the third time I'm giving the whole Apple thing another go with a new MacBook.
Maybe I'll be more accepting of the OS because I'll attribute failures to Apple "not focusing on it" rather than "being stupid" as I had before. I'm also not writing much code anymore, so my use should be pretty different to the previous attempts.
It's time for ranting, regardless - I still don't like the window management as I use apps with large numbers of palettes (Photoshop). In MS' world, an application controls a big window with an ugly grey background that contains all smaller windows and palettes/panels - this neatly separates different applications, and lets you define regions of the screen to be dedicated to a single application, which works well with large monitors. Apple's approach is like having the same thing but being stuck with a maximized transparent main window, making your windows all kind of blend together in confusing ways (especially since palettes of unfocused applications are hidden, meaning that a refocus can cause windows all over the screen to appear and disappear.
I'm also getting bitten by the different focus models - In MS' world, application focus doesn't really matter if you're a heavy mouse user, since clicks always 'carry though' to the application, even if it isn't in focus, in Apple's world, your first click on an unfocused application only focuses it - this forces you to keep track of what application is in focus, since a click you do to focus an app may end up doing something if the app is actually in focus, or vice versa. It doesn't help that the visual distinction between focused and unfocused windows is even more subtle than Vista's.
Lauren gave me a week before I give up, though I think that was wishful thinking since 'someone' has a G4 Powerbook that is suffering from a distinct case of "I wish I was Glen's nice fast MacBook that will have no owner when he gives up on it".
3 comments:
Good luck. I bought my wife a MacBook last weekend, and it's been very tempting.
Keep the Macbook,but Bootcap+Windows XP is what you want.
I changed to using the Mac after 20 years with PC's and I actually prefer the Mac focus model.
Particularly in the Mac world where you tend not to maximise apps (which I always did on the PC), it is a handy safety net for a stray click to just focus another application rather than accidentally pressing the Ok button on the "Do you really want to wipe your hard disk?" dialog that was lurking underneath.
Sometimes all it takes to get used to a behaviour is finding a reasonable underlying rationale for it.
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