I’m sure that everyone has heard the old saying, “Mac for Productivity, Unix for Development, and Windows for Solitaire”. My experience has shown me that at least for my needs, the Mac is not only for productivity, but for development as well. Windows? Well, some things never change.
I switched to my treo 650 to play solitaire. As for my macs…love em. It’s not perfect yet, but getting closer every release of X.
one of the positive things about switching from windows to mac is switching from solitaire to chess.
The author doesn’t seem to using third paty utilities to extend the functionality of OS X, and many of his pros about OS X are based on these utilities, but hasn’t looked into similar third party utilites for Windows (which do exist for damn near everything he liked about OS X). Also, he makes the very large, and incorrect, assumption that many of these “articles” do, what works for is good enough for everybody else and we should take him at his word.
Could anybody read that article?
… a list of Solitaire games for Mac OS X:
http://tinyurl.com/5q3hx 🙂
A good IDE only requires you to start that program, and then you’re off programming the most difficult programs. And then every once in a while you switch back to the underlying OS, to copy files (althought cvs-like stuuf is also built into modern IDE’s), or work with other files (like graphics) or whatever (browse documentation).
I use Eclipse for instance, to program Java. It has most thing built-in. I don’t see how icons, menu’s or the location of My Documents would affect my programming or productivity on a day.
This article doesn’t make much sense. And while you’re talking about small icons or difficult to navigate menus, why don’t you change the background/text color for your article?
http://www.pvn-soft.com makes it, now you don’t need a PC what so ever now. They also make a fun game of Shanghai solitaire too.
big article.. with some terrible background textures :/
anyway, i liked it, and much of it makes sense. makes me very happy as I ordered my first mac (ibook) today
Those people always bashing Windows have no idea what they are talking about. I recently bought myself a mac but I still don’t play solitaire on my Windows machine.
I use a J2ME phone, to run VNC so I can play solitaire remotely on my old 400 mhz compaq pc. You just can’t beat the experience. Playing directly on the phone tsss.. that’s for Sissies!
Although, as always, there is advice (and so forth) to be given wrt the problems the author had with Windows and OS X:
1) You don’t have to enter in the file type/etc. in the Windows Find File dialog — just set it back to “classic” search. Furthermore, in Windows explorer a ctrl-F will open the dialog in the left panel.
2) You can set Windows Explorer to open with your favorites folder by changing the shortcut. True, it’s not going to be in the sidebar, but it’s a start.
3) Try Opera. It has the features you’re looking for and is faster than Safari. It looks pretty good on OS X, too.
Maybe no one noticed but…
(a) it was a GIRL.
(b) the background was really bad.
Linux Solitaire is better than windows version…
Is it just me, or is it ironic that a female Mac user created a web page that is 98.9% illegible?
All her points about usability go right down the shithole, because of her half-assed page design. I could build a better web page with a Commodore 64.
Hey ME,
Did you even read the article? It sort of appears like you did because you had comments but you kept typing “he” in reference to the author. You obviously didn’t read it.
The author’s name is Mary Stamper. In HER article, SHE even comments about buying HER boyfriend a copy of OS X.
You’re fired for not really reading the story.
Hey Grimm,
The way you write is similar to giving a baby a razor blade to play with. If you would take the time to read a little, instead of weilding your uncouth tongue like a hopeless swordsman, you might have thought for a moment to ascertain that Nelson was referring to how the commenter called “ME” didn’t know the author was a woman and kept referring to her as “he”.
Agreed… background is really bad.
Despite the naysayers, this was a great article. Funny, interesting, personal, and in many ways very accurate. The fact that it was written by a woman is an added plus (just because computer geeks are still largely a male-dominated class of people).
Thanks Mary for the good read!
Jared
“3) Try Opera. It has the features you’re looking for and is faster than Safari. It looks pretty good on OS X, too.”
Uhm, I don’t think so! 🙂
Safari is the best for me! ;-D
An article about usability rendered unreadable because of the most awful background image ever.
Personally, I liked it. It reflects my view on windows versus mac os x. Functionally basically the same for me, but the collection of little details make os x just so much nicer to use.
Why don’t you all just click on the Author Mode/User Mode icon in the toolbar? What? Oh, I see, you aren’t using Opera!
I agree, good article.
For all those grousing about the background image (which I disabled with a bookmarklet), have you considered that the page might actually look okay in OS X? If so, then the greatest sin here is not doing cross-platform testing.
@me:
Also, he makes the very large, and incorrect, assumption that many of these “articles” do, what works for is good enough for everybody else and we should take him at his word.
Perhaps you missed the part in the introduction where the author said:
“I am also going to say that I believe that workflow preferences are probably dependent upon a complex matrix of background, understanding of the software tools, the specific tasks that must be accomplished, and brain wiring. Others may have different preferences than I voice here. I’m only telling MY story, in the hope that it will inspire someone somewhere to ‘think different(ly)’.”
but hasn’t looked into similar third party utilites for Windows
How do you know that?
I was using Firefox for a while, but I was having some of the same problems with the interface, so I decided to use Camino instead. Not only is it free and Gecko-based, but it looks like an OSX program. I actually use it “sans interface”. I turn off all the menu bars and solely use keyboard shortcuts for navigation. The only thing being rendered in the window is the occasional tab and the statusbar.
they want want their website back.
This isn’t even a troll, because it’s true! It’s been a while since I used them but the ones with GNOME and KDE basically come with every type of solitaire known to mankind and then some.
Poor, poor Windows. Even Rodney Dangerfield got more respect!
I won’t read things by people who hate their readers (the background).
…stopped at the inadequate background?
…noone was able to do CTRL+A (select all), CTRL+C (copy), and paste in Notepad?
A lot of you people are dopes if you can’t figure out how to get text off a web page and into another format for more comfortable reading. In any event the text has no background in Safari.
The author stated that she wanted to have multiple tabs/windows displayed side-by-side in her webbrowser. To the best of my knowledge, Opera is the only modern OS X webbrowser to offer that feature.
Since everyone hated the background so much, I’ve eliminated it. Sorry. Just goes to show you that people’s eyes are very different. I have no trouble reading it at all and neither did anyone to whom I showed it. I take no offense.
I have tried Opera, though not the latest version. I banished it from my machine due to incessant crashes at the time. It doesn’t have safari bookmark syncing with isync to my idisk though.
Yes, i know that I can change the default Windows explorer folder to the favorites folder, but it just brings up that folder as an ordinary folder, in alphabetical order…not the same order that I’ve placed them on the sidebar.
That assumes that your daily tasks are so limited in focus that you can live in a single IDE all day. I sure can’t. I’ve got a java IDE, system profiling tools, database tools and web browsers all in constant rotating usage throughout the day.
OK, you changed the background…
I was wondering why people were complaining — it looked fine to me!
Great article, by the way.
An article about usability rendered unreadable because of the most awful background image ever.>>
Aroo? I see black text on plain white background.
(Opera 7.54 for OS X)
man, you use next to nothing. ive got the db ide, a terminal with my local appserver, my java/jsp ide, my text editor, our bug tracker, our source versioning system, outlook, firefox pointing to the project tracker and whatever function i was last looking for(and sometimes osnews ;-)), itunes, and an intermitant soulseek. and these are the apps that are ALWAS open….
I thoughly enjoyed the article (printing it out and reading it on the way home, wasnt too tough). i was a mac user who went to windows for a year or two, then linux, and will soon be going back to mac (as the finances permit). i remember the initial few months on windows, i enjoyed tinkering with stuff, but found so much that was just deeply stupid (many of which were mentioned). i have tried many, many things with the taskbar to get it to suck less, theres just nothing you can do. the windows system directory requires a rosetta stone of some sort to navigate (hosts file? ahh, that would be in C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetc. thats the first place i would look) or trying to use that horrendous beast of a config system they call the registry. then theres the manditory reboot every few days when things just get wonky…
> .and paste in Notepad?
You mean TextEdit:P
i like macs as far as hardware goes. used to be a OS Xer my self and still run it on my server, but im converting it to gentoo as soon as i gat a place to backup my info. But i had to switch to being a PC user because PC’s are just cheaper. i like to upgrade my hardware almost as much as allot of my bleeding edge software, and youve gotta be rich to do that with a mac
If UNIX was for programming then tons of system programmers won’t code for Windows.
Good things i like when i develop in windows:
– Windows has the best development tools
– Windows has excellent debuggers (ever heard of SoftIce, Windbg)?
– Windows has excellent assembler and disassembler (Hint: IDA Pro, Process Explorer)
– Windows documentation (DDK and MSDN) provides a very complete and thorough details
Other than that
– I can play games on Windows
– I can watch movies on windows
– I can use ANY and i mean ANY hardware on Windows and it works…Not like Linux where my sound card doesn’t work
– Windows is cheaper than MAC
Overall windows provides everything i need from an OS, it is one place where i get all my computing needs done…I bet this author never developed any system software or she would know how damn hard it is to develop that on MAC with their inconsistent and insufficient documentation..
People like this author can only bitch about things and that too stupid things like My document is above my computer owaaaan
( why is it above my computer owaannn 
(
Really this article was quite lame.
Comment like this that makes me once again consider not to switch to mac. are all mac users just plain idiots?
Forgive the Author, she forgot to mention FreeCell, Pinball 3D and Minesweeper.
Wolf, your so kule, you use windows. Not MAC. MAC is too expensive for you. Also too pretty. You stay with windows. oowaaan! oowaaan! STAY! good boy
LoL, i understand my friend “Truth bites”, you know that. Thats why other than pretty and expensive, you couldn’t come up with any real example on how MAC is better
If MAC was better they would not be crawling at 2% market share.
<quote>
If UNIX was for programming then tons of system programmers won’t code for Windows.
Good things i like when i develop in windows:
– Windows has the best development tools
– Windows has excellent debuggers (ever heard of SoftIce, Windbg)?
– Windows has excellent assembler and disassembler (Hint: IDA Pro, Process Explorer)
– Windows documentation (DDK and MSDN) provides a very complete and thorough details
Other than that
– I can play games on Windows
– I can watch movies on windows
– I can use ANY and i mean ANY hardware on Windows and it works…Not like Linux where my sound card doesn’t work
– Windows is cheaper than MAC
Overall windows provides everything i need from an OS, it is one place where i get all my computing needs done…I bet this author never developed any system software or she would know how damn hard it is to develop that on MAC with their inconsistent and insufficient documentation..
People like this author can only bitch about things and that too stupid things like My document is above my computer owaaaan
( why is it above my computer owaannn 
(
Really this article was quite lame.
</quote>
/me shakes wolf’s hand for putting up a solid defense.
These are exactly why windows own most of the market. I should copy this and post it when ever I get an somebody complaining that Mac is better than windows.
As far as linux and drivers are concern, it ain’t OSS fault, Its the fact that very few companies release their hardware specification so that OSS drivers can be made, and they themselves don’t release drivers for linux. They are exceptions however, most quality hardware makers tend to have linux driver.
“Good things i like when i develop in windows:
– Windows has the best development tools
– Windows has excellent debuggers (ever heard of SoftIce, Windbg)?
– Windows has excellent assembler and disassembler (Hint: IDA Pro, Process Explorer)
– Windows documentation (DDK and MSDN) provides a very complete and thorough details”
Hey thats all good, but if the dev tools are that good why does Windows crash at CES. This has been going on since 1998!!!
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160317
http://angryhamster.com/archive/2005/02/10/1579.aspx
Your talking about an OS that has an R&D budget several times bigger than Apple. Whaz up with crashing?
OK just kidding. HAHHA
As far as the 2% marketshare thing. Is that right? Total Macs in use account for 2%. I guess thats why some of the biggest software makers like Microsoft make software for the Mac. I would really like to know how many Macs are in use. Why does Adobe, Kona, Macromedia, etc even make software for the Mac if what you say is true? How is Apple staying in business? They just did a stock split and outlived IBM’s PC division? How are they doing it?
XMan, good question about windows crashing. Once we analyze it, i bet you would know the answer. Do you develop software? Specially device drivers etc? One of the inherent problems with system software is that one mistake can take down the whole system. If you check windows stats, almost 8 device drivers are written for windows everyday. Many are written by very competent companies, many are not. One of the biggest reason for windows crash (NT series and not 9x) was third party drivers. It was not Microsoft code crashing. To solve this problem Microsoft started WHQL and you are already seeing the result with windows 2000, XP, 2003. Everyone even the biggest widnows haters admits that 2003 is rock solid.
Once you do too much aggressive development you make mistake, so have Microsoft. IE for example, is one of the worst *designed* software in my eyes. How could one single application cause so many problems, but then as i said, we make mistakes…sendmail is an example of such bad software on UNIX. So just coming out and saying Windows sucks or this and that, doesn’t really solve anythign or help anyone.
Windows is able to cater needs of many people and that too very well…its not without flaws but saying Windows is for solitaire is really not appreciating something which it deserves.
Do you develop software for the Mac? If you did you’ll realise that the ADC has lots of relevant documentation, and you get loads of excellent tools for free.
I know Windows people swear by VS.NET and what have you, but there are alternatives out there.
It’s about the same. Okay true, GNUstep looks a lot better.
Hmmm. I have been wondering why my wife is “icon-blind”. She just doesn’t seem able to scan and identify icons and hyperlinks untile they are pointed out. She isn’t stupid (degree-educated) or visually impaired but she just can’t see them. Perhaps this originates in differences between male and female visual perception?
I find that the (seemingly) little details in Mac OS X are really major things. Namely the spell checker that’s in every text input field. I know that this also exists in KDE but I don’t know about GNOME or Windows ’cause I’ve never used them much recently.
Maximising windows is great ’cause the window only maximises to fit the window’s contents and not to the whole screen which saves a lot of screen space. This is really appreciated on my 14″ screen.
One of my big pet peeves ATM is the lack of tabs in iChat. This can waste a lot of space when I’m talking to more than 4 people at the same time. I’m aware of Fire but iChat seems to be the only one who’s features all work perfectly. I hope that Apple puts this much needed feature into iChat real soon. Terminal needs tabs too although I usually only have at most, 3 Terminals open so it doesn’t bother me too much.
I do agree with the author though. Using a Mac is really different to everything else out there. It took me about a month to get used to it too.
Well, AFAIK, females are better with language than men and men are usually better with more technical things like Maths. Maybe it’s because Men can visualise things better.
well to generalize one can draw a path back to hunter/gather, the men needed to claculate distance while the women needed to coordinate things back home. but that would make me a odd one out as im male, my sister is better then me at math and i have a slight knack for picking up languages when used around me (or so it seems).
“If UNIX was for programming then tons of system programmers won’t code for Windows.”
that statement alone is worth the price of admission. pure gold. the author has quite obviously been around for awhile, windows is a fairly recent development.
“Good things i like when i develop in windows:
– Windows has the best development tools
– Windows has excellent debuggers (ever heard of SoftIce, Windbg)?
– Windows has excellent assembler and disassembler (Hint: IDA Pro, Process Explorer)
– Windows documentation (DDK and MSDN) provides a very complete and thorough details”
windows has good dev tools, not the best. comparing vs.net to idea is like comparing a hammer with some sort of futuristic atomic powered hammering device (sorry, inspiration fails me… its still quite early ;-)). i, like most developers who make money nowadays, code in java, so asm/dasm are irrelivent. msdn is quite good, but recently they have made the searching total garbage. i used to use it mroe then i do.
“Other than that
– I can play games on Windows”
you can play games on mac too.
“- I can watch movies on windows”
you cant watch dvds on windows without third party software, you can on the mac.
“- I can use ANY and i mean ANY hardware on Windows and it works…Not like Linux where my sound card doesn’t work”
no you cant. can you use alpha? POWER? SPARC? oh, you seem to think that any and all hardware starts and ends with x86.
but wait, windows doesnt support any of my hardware out of the box, while linux supports everything but my vid card.
“- Windows is cheaper than MAC”
what is MAC? are you referring to a MAC address? no wait, your talking about the Mac. but wait, the price for osx on apple.com is 129$, and the price of windows on microsoft.com is 199$. wow, you are STILL wrong.
“Overall windows provides everything i need from an OS, it is one place where i get all my computing needs done…I bet this author never developed any system software or she would know how damn hard it is to develop that on MAC with their inconsistent and insufficient documentation..”
the author lived on mainframes (real computers as she calls them), and considered home computers a joke for quite awhile. i think she could handle coding for the mac. of course, considering there are idea icons in all her screenshots, chances are she is a java dev. you should at least skim the article before flaming.
“People like this author can only bitch about things and that too stupid things like My document is above my computer owaaaan
( why is it above my computer owaannn 
(”
it takes a special kind of idiot to not see why the inconsistancies that riddle the windows file system are confusing as hell. just because you have learned to work around them over the years doesnt make them any less frustrating for someone who came from a more consistant and logical environment.
“Really this article was quite lame.”
actually, it was quite entertaining 😉 you didnt read it though. heres why:
1) the article had nothing to do with development. your response just dealt with development
2) the article was about gui design and usability, your response had nothing to do with interfaces.
wolf=owned
“- Windows is cheaper than MAC”
what is MAC? are you referring to a MAC address? no wait, your talking about the Mac. but wait, the price for osx on apple.com is 129$, and the price of windows on microsoft.com is 199$. wow, you are STILL wrong.
I think he was referring to MAC: http://www.maccosmetics.com/
well, first of all she was new to all guis, so even if she didnt know how to use windows properly, she didnt have similar troubles with osx.
but i dont think thats the case, and i would like examples of it. personally, i get the impression the registry was hacked together by a six year old, the file system is a joke, and the attempts to make it appear more logical only end up with a discrepancy between where things really are, and where things are from a gui perspective. the sidebar is a joke, and after much trying have yet to figure out how to make it suck less. the theme looks like it was made for pre-schoolers, the configuration dialogues are never where you expect them, and the system files seem to be strewn randomly through the beast that is /windows. not to mention that you cant even do anything on it without third party software. in fact, microsoft tells me not even to connect to the web without firewall/anti-virus. how messed up is that? they are basically saying that what they sold you isnt enough to use the machine. file associations are managed by a friggin extension on the end of the filename, applications have wildly inconsistant behaviors (in the case of microsoft apps, they all even have different looks and feels), there arnt many keyboard shortcuts, and what there is tends to be inconsistant, configuration seems to be almost deliberately obscure, troubleshooting is an exercise in perserverance (someone NEEDS to introduce microsoft to the concept of a log file with useful, human readable output.), new technologies every year that are hyped to death, then replaced the following year, and a rediculesly long release cycle.
i would like to note as well, i dont HATE windows, but i do have gripes with it (just as i have with every os i have used). i get pissed off with windows more then other operating systems, which is the reason its not one of my favorites. just because someone critisizes something doesnt make them a newbie. but hey, hopefully i am, and you will be able to tell me how to get around these issues. would make my worktime a hell of alot easier, thats for sure
I found the article informative and echoes some of my own experiences with OS X.
My current favorite browser for the Mac is OmniWeb followed by Opera 8.0b. Subjectively, it is just as fast as any other. It does crash once in a while but has gotten much better. It also lacks Opera’s zoom function, instead, it allows only the text size to be adjusted.
I loathe the all-metal look of Safari and Camino lacks a tab session restore that I need.
because it crashes all the time
to be honest, i switched from C++ to C# and i never needed to debug ever since. finally microsoft did something right, but for the development i still use a mac….
A professional computer user needs to be at home on any platform, be it Mac, Windows, Unix. Those who claim to be more productive on one platform compared to another are usually of one-dimensional type.
I love Max OS X, Windows XP, Suse Linux. They are quite different but all fantastic OSes.
“A professional computer user needs to be at home on any platform, be it Mac, Windows, Unix. Those who claim to be more productive on one platform compared to another are usually of one-dimensional type”
Strange comment…..contrary to any number of highly skilled professionals that I know. Many of them feel more productive on on os or another. Cygwin is a perfect example of this.
“Strange comment…..contrary to any number of highly skilled professionals that I know. Many of them feel more productive on on os or another. Cygwin is a perfect example of this.”
IMHO:
If a person loves command line interface and hate mouse and GUI, he/she is one-dimensional.
If a person is comfortable with mouse and GUI and is lost with a cmd or xterm, he/she is one-dimensional.
A person who is equally productive on Max OS, Windows, and Unix is not one-dimensional. He/she is an eclectic type who survives under any circumstances.
My work PC is Suse/XP dual boot and my home PC is a Mac. I get the best of all worlds.
I do C, Java, Lisp, Matlab, R, HTML, and others on all of the above platforms, and they work fabulously for me.
uh, she makes her money working on Windows…..she only uses a mac at home. It’s possible to get work done to a degree that suits an employer, eventhough one may not personally feel maximally productive.
> Hmmm. I have been wondering why my wife is “icon-blind”. She just doesn’t seem able to scan and identify icons and hyperlinks untile they are pointed out. She isn’t stupid (degree-educated) or visually impaired but she just can’t see them. Perhaps this originates in differences between male and female visual perception?
In a word, no. I’m female, and I have absolutely no problems with icons or hyperlinks. I doubt Eugenia does either, although I obviously cannot speak for her.
> A professional computer user needs to be at home on any platform, be it Mac, Windows, Unix. Those who claim to be more productive on one platform compared to another are usually of one-dimensional type.
Nonsense. Being able to use a variety of systems is useful to some people, and that’s…. pretty much it. Can you use VMS? BeOS? Solaris? OS/2? … there are more systems than anyone is feasibly going to have time to master.
Many people will never have to deal with some of the systems; for basic use, Macs, Linux, and Windows aren’t that different; for administration and application availability, they are.
Things which make a system more productive (as opposed to the applications) are things the author talks about, like good defaults, and tweakability. Good defaults are vital, because most people will never tweak; tweakability is useful, because it can let you eliminate things which annoy you, and add useful shortcuts. The author expresses this quite coherently throughout her article.
> I love Max OS X, Windows XP, Suse Linux. They are quite different but all fantastic OSes.
Fine; there’s nothing wrong with liking multiple operating systems. Claiming that a computer user is one-dimensional, or unprofessional, because he or she doesn’t enjoy every OS you do, ignores a basic fact – for most computer users, the OS is not the major focus. The applications which one wants to or must use are what is truely important.
For more experienced users, especially when they must double as administrators, the OS comes into play more; I personally choose to only run some systems which I actually like on my home computers. There’s nothing one-dimensional about avoiding headaches; I can manage to work on other common types of systems when I must.
In summary: all systems are not equal or equivalent. Most computer users have no reason to learn even one system deeply; most can manage to use any of the most common within a few minutes, albeit clumsily. Productivity is, as the author mentions, made up of many factors; for most users, the OS is a minor one. Knowing how to use multiple systems does not make an end user more professional; being able to learn if or when that is needed does.
My understanding of what the author said was that she had trouble REMEMBERING what the icons stood for. Some people simply do not have good visual memories. My husband read the article and was 100% in agreement with her.
> “- I can use ANY and i mean ANY hardware on Windows and it works…Not like Linux where my sound card doesn’t work”
It’s not truth. Many hardware manufacturers don’t support (binary drivers) some Windows versions (especially old hardware). With Longhorn this scenario will be even worse.
FOS drivers (Linux world) = lifetime hardware support.
Yeah! MS Windows is great for development… (ad|mal|spy)ware developers love it. :^)
…saying she didn’t like a feature in Windows but loved it in Mac OS X and Konquerer… Like the tabs. I know she said specifically that she didn’t like tabbed preference panels because they were confusing in Windows, but the switching concept is no different in Mac OS X, even if they don’t LOOK like tabs?! I don’t know. As another reader said, she did base a lot of her experience on 3rd party applications that she added onto her Mac…
If I were to rate the article, I’d probably give it 2 stars out of 5.
My job is writing adware and surfing trackers for companies.
Trust me, for the type of development that I do, NOTHING beats windows. Windows is the perfect delivery mechanism for these legal, and legitimate means of advertising and data collection
And in a service economy where getting people’s attention is harder and harder, this is good for everyone. Consumption of advertised products, no matter the means of delivery of the ads, get everyone working.
Tuishimi: I believe she was remarking how, when clicking on multi-level tabs, the order of those tabs shift around (I believe in one of the recent versions of MS Word it was particularly bad, with the sorted order of 3 levels of tabs changing on each click), not the fact that both OS have tabbed panels.
The article gets a 5 out of 5 from me.
ive never been the most avid word user, but i remember that one. the shifting tabs thing that really got me was tweakui for win2k. its the kind of app where you dont just plow through, chances are youll flip around, or be hunting for one specific thing. that version of tweakui approached the experience of editing the registry by hand. *shudder*