My process to get up and running on a new machine is to change the keyboard layout to dvorak and run `wget -qO - bit.ly/newbox | sh`. On Windows I have to do everything in a Linux VM anyway, because I hate messing around with cygwin, coLinux, etc.
I know a lot of people will disagree with this, but to me a Windows box is a glorified Xbox with a web browser. Sure people work with them but unless you're using VS I don't really see the point of using Windows for development.
edit: I know I'm not representative of the larger population but I think there are more people switching away from Windows than to it these days.
Try to imagine telling a non-hacker manager that all their spreadsheet work needs to be done in a command-line text editor/kitchen sink emulator.
It's always easy to forget just how much of a minority hackers actually are - there's far far more computer users out there who aren't hackers than are. Orders of magnitude more.
Also, I heard from a writer that Microsoft Office is superior to any word processor (a.k.a computer program you use to write a novel) to the point that he writes novels in Microsoft Word under Wine.
published author here[1] who was talked into using OpenOffice to write a book. It was... pretty bad, worse, even than ms office, which (and yes, I tried) is pretty bad when you start passing back and fourth a monstrosity with a bunch of marked changes. But even with the little incompatibilities fixed, god damn, word processors were just not meant to deal with something that big.
You will find few people writing their second book using a word processor. Word processors are pretty great for short documents that need to be made to look nice quickly, and that have limited collaboration. (yes, modern word processors have really basic revision control functionality, but it sucks compared to using a revision control system.) But yeah, next time? some sort of TeX derivative, or I do the book in text and the publisher can do formatting after it's done.
That's insane. Word is a horrible writing environment. It's a passable document editing environment, but to write novels or stories there are a number of infinitely better tools, such as Scrivener or Writeroom (for mac - but there are equivalents on Winblows) on the minimalist side, or some others whose names escape me right now on the "let's have lots of tools to help someone write a novel" side.
Word sucks for writing.
http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.sht...
Why an author would prefer word or even open office over notepad is beyond me. Word count maybe? It gives almost no benefit and requires extra work when it's time to hand off the manuscript to the publisher.
See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/windows-7-over...
What I don't see are people switching from Linux or Macs to Windows. Geek or otherwise. Not one.
I've met a good number of people who have gone from PC to Mac and back to PC. Relatively few, if any, Mac to PC converts who have Mac users for 10+ years.
microsoft has the monopoly on windows. and every pc in the world is sold with windows.this is what i call an effective monopoly. add that to the wannabe bing monopoly and you know why microsoft is not an underdog at all!
They impose strict control on how you can use your device.
They control the app store.
and they seem to moving towards more control; not less.
I was considering getting a Mac at the beginning of this year. I got an iPhone, and decided never to buy any iThing ever again.
I like good design and visual appeal, but not to the point of sacrificing substance for form.
So, I assume that you'll be buying competing devices from other vendors for your future computing, mobile phone and portable media consumption needs?
If you answered yes, THAT is what makes Apple a non-monopoly.
Having a hard time with this one. Can you please explain how this makes Apple a monopoly?
I don't even have to think about dragging and dropping anything.
I suppose monopoly in English only refers to market control (my bad).
In certain other languages, the word for monopoly is the same word for "complete control".
I was assuming the word monopoly in English has evolved to capture that meaning as well -.-
All Apple devices are closed and restricted, it is as if when you buy an iPhone, you don't own it; you're merely getting permission (from Apple) to use it.
Five years ago, one would've imagined that only Microsoft can do something as evil as that.
I will throw in Zune as the best portable media player as well. After having an iphone and using itunes. Zune is far better then the lastest generation ipods. Super slick and easy ui, better integrated store, also the zune desktop app is better. Subscription service is definitely the way to go. I pay my $13 a month music tax and can have any song I want, I haven't listened to this much music ever.
This is just horrible, horrible UI design. A system notification or request to reboot should NEVER, EVER take focus. This is one of the many way that Windows punishes users every day.
Not to mention: why is it, that in 2010, we have an OS that still requires reboots at least 3 times a week?
One of the things that I love about Linux is what you only need to reboot to use a new kernel. 95+% of system updates will activate without reboot.
I _believe_ the only updates that will automatically reboot are critical updates.
OSX has the following UI issues:
Scrollbars are hard to use
Window Max & Min buttons randomly work depending on the application
file dialog can't do any of the things the window file can do (Create folders, manage files)
Finders is pretty basic
I won't mention right clicking
accelerator keys are not as easy
*System monitor is pretty non-helpful most times
OSX shell is good, Windows 7 is the far better operating system. The hardware is also better but microsoft can force people to build awesome hardware
I can't tell you the last time I used a scrollbar at all. Wheels are a far better scrollbar interface, and come on 99% of new mice. Oh, and 2 finger scrolling on a touchpad is even better.
> file dialog can't do any of the things the window file can do (Create folders, manage files)
It can create folders, and it can also be configured (by the software) to have more functionality. I'd think that allowing all file management functionality from a "Save as..." dialog is a bad idea. New Folder and navigation should be all that's required. You shouldn't be able to decide to cleanup "My Documents" when your main goal is to save a file.
> I won't mention right clicking
I will. Right clicking is confusing in Windows because many a software hides some functionality in the Right-click context menu, but it never shows up in the "File Edit View" main menus. By eliminating right click on the Mac for novice users, and insisting in the HCI Guidelines that all functionality be accessible from the Main Menu, novice users can more easily discover the functionality they're looking for.
The software ecosystem on os x is much nicer overall because of the guidelines that apple publishes. Most OS X applications look and feel in a similar way. It's also why iOS apps tend to behave the same way as well.
In OS X I rarely use these buttons. "Minimize" is very rarely useful. If I want to get an app out of the way I use Hide (CMD-H). Hide Others (CMD-Option-H) is also useful for making the current app the only one visible.
Minimize is only useful to me when I want to get a window out of the way within an application (but not get the application out of the way). For example, lets say I had multiple Terminal windows open, and there was one that I knew I wasn't going to use for a while, and I didn't want it to show up when I cycle through windows when I hit CMD-`, then I would hit CMD-M to minimize. (This is hypothetical, though, I don't use Terminal that way.)
I admit the "Zoom" button (what you expect to be Maximize, but isn't) is rather inconsistent due to apps having different opinions on its usage (iTunes being one of the worst). If you want Windows-style maximize, you can use something like shiftit ( http://code.google.com/p/shiftit/ ) which gives you a keyboard shortcut for it. It also gives you Windows 7 style tiling and more tiling features. I have a fork of this open source project where I'm experimenting with being able to resize windows to percentages of the screen size using keyboard shortcuts: http://github.com/nileshk/shiftit
Also, checkout this company's non-free products: http://irradiatedsoftware.com/
Going back to your previous post, I think Windows 7's taskbar misses the point (assuming it's trying to copy OS X). What is nice in OS X is the whole app switching model. In OS X, when you click on an app in the dock, you are switch to that app bringing up all the app's non-minimized windows, whereas in Windows you are always switching to a specific window but not to the app as a whole.
While I use OS X's dock, I use QuickSilver to switch to apps even more, which gives me a more precise keyboard-based way of navigating to the app that I want, where I can literally switch to an app that I want without looking at the screen (more that I don't have to study the screen in this process, which makes it faster for me). Spotlight can be used similarly, though it doesn't handle Finder the same way as Quicksilver (can't switch to Finder with Spotlight). I don't use Expose because I find it takes to much time to find and pick out the window I am looking for.
Honestly, it took me 2 years of owning a Mac before I preferred it over my previous preference (Linux). I think it's a mix of the fact that it is a UNIX and the polish and little details of OS X (there is a lot to both it's form and function). It takes time to appreciate, because it is significantly different than other popular environments.
I'd like to know what is so great about Windows 7, but my experience with it so far has made me think it is just another Windows with some eye-candy (which is not to my taste) and some decent Window tiling features. But I have not been able to give it an honest chance, because one of the .Net projects I maintain requires XP.
That's because what the button with the plus on it (Zoom) is doing is not supposed to be making the window the size of the screen, but rather making the window the size that will display the most content from the current window with the minimum of scrolling. Some applications ignore this and just use the standard Windows behavior, hence the inconsistency.
2 finger scrolling on trackpads is much more intuitive and also, whats wrong with the scrollbar? I'm sitting here fiddling with the one on safari and still can't figure out anything wrong with it.
Window Max & Min buttons randomly work depending on the application
Window Max maximizes the screen to the maximum amount of space "needed". Though this might not feel great on a 13" macbook, move onto a 27" screen and you will understand WHY firefox taking up the entire screen is a plain simple waste of space.
I won't mention right clicking
You better not mention it, cause you do realize that on the mac it is called 2-finger-clicking. It exists. So, you mentioning it won't make much of a difference.
The hardware is also better but microsoft can force people to build awesome hardware.
People who love great software make their own hardware. Google did it for their servers. I used to use a dell laptop. Bought in 2007. Trashed in 2008. Replace by a mac. Its still on Warranty. Why you ask. 1 year and 4 months = 7th Motherboard, 2rd Screen, 5th Keyboard, 3rd hard drive.
And my macbook pro, 1 year and 4 months later: NOTHING.
no alt to access menu
no double click window header toggles maximize
That switch icon they use for 'option' confused me because it's not on the keyboard anywhere
Overall it's pretty good, but I agree, I miss the little things
Hit Command-? (command-shift-/), start typing, and use the arrow keys to highlight the search results. You'll be surprised what happens. It's been there since 10.5
Another option for getting to the menu is the "Move focus to the menu bar" keyboard shortcut which defaults to CTRL-F2, but is assignable. Neither of these methods are as direct as the Windows way, as you have to use cursor keys to move to where you want, but it works.
Note also that this is a general problem not restricted to Windows.
The iPhone's notification system is f#$%ed up. Please fix it apple.
Apple is overwhelmingly capturing college marketshare. At some universities they are more than 50% of the market now. The workers of tomorrow will be comfortable in a Mac environment, not a PC one. By 2020 I fully expect Mac dominance of the corporate market as well. The retraining costs would be too high otherwise.
They are screwing up a lot, and they don't come across as great innovators (nor as people adapting to the world they're in) rather than a company who is still relying on the same core platforms they did a handful of years, if not a decade, ago. Granted, their corporate structure is different than, say, Apple's, and I don't want another Apple, but they feel gridlocked.
I don't know which term is the most apt for this, but it's not a gratuitous one.
I'm a Windows user myself, but I can't help but feel that I am putting my eggs in the wrong basket sometimes.
He's talking about mobile platforms. Microsoft is very much the underdog after ignoring the platform for so long. Apple had a monopoly over good smartphones by beating everyone to market by such a large margin, though it's hard to call them a monopoly now that Android has been selling so well.
In fact, if I walk into a mobile phone shop, I've overwhelmed with competing products and can hardly see the iPhone.
Five years ago you could have made an argument for Symbian being the Evil Monopoly in this market, but Apple/iOS has never been anything like a monopoly. People seem to confuse control over one device with an actual monopoly. They're not even remotely the same thing.
They have 90% of the mp3 market and 75% of the mp3 player market but that's still not a monopoly.
The only thing they could be accused of is a monopoly on non-crappy web apps. Pretty amusing.
(As of Q1, 2010, pre-iPhone 4, source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013)
No one seems to mind their MP3 player monopoly because the iPod was so much better than the alternatives.
Smartphones aren't expected to reach 50% mobile market share until Q3 2011.
Most people on HN have a really poor understanding of the global market. The US leaders are not the world leaders in the mobile space.
Example, iTunes is nearing monopoly status in that they can largely tell the industry, "I don't like your DRM proposal, and we're so big that even if every other company wants to do it one way, you can't. You have to listen to us".
Now remember monopolies are not illegal. But actions of monopolists can be.
Your point stands, though.
Linux is outselling Apple and Microsoft.
Compare Android: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/100221.html with WebOS: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/111453.html from a linux kernel developer's perspective
The userspace is different, but if you want Gnome on your phone get Maemo/Meego.
http://developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.ht...
And you're right, WebOS and Nokia(Meego) have Linux phones too. Linux is the the future of smartphones is one form or another.
Throw in the iPhone and we can say Unix, the past, has become the future of smartphones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
(In June 2010, Windows 7's market share was only 2.6 times larger than Mac OS X's, when considering the market of "web clients", which is composed mostly of personal computers)