My Mac Mini
mattmaroon.com
mattmaroon.com
"There’s no way that anyone could guess this procedure"
You are kidding right? My wife guessed this. My 9 year old can do this. It's brain dead simple, and makes perfect sense - you can see what stuff is there before you install. You can read a readme sometimes before installing.
I think it helps when trying something new, to have an open mind. Instead of just saying "eugh! this is different. It must be bad"
I have no idea how you delete applications on a Mac either. You have to go to Applications and delete that folder you copied to your Applications directory?
It is much better having an 'uninstaller' that does a half-assed job at removing things from the registry and cleaning up files.
Matt I realize trolling can feel good on the short term but people will give you more respect in the long run if you are sincere.
How is that not an obvious troll statement.
Either you're just incredibly bad at operating computers, or you wanted to get a reaction from people and start a fight.
Personally, I think dragging an application into your 'Applications folder' is pretty damn intuitive. I'm not sure quite how much simpler you could get. ok, it takes a couple of minutes to understand that it's mounted a disk image and you should unmount it, but after that you think "Yeah that's actually a nice way to do it".
A girl with some sort of mullethawk and a tattoo creeping up her neck asked me if I needed help and I almost said “no, but you do.”
It really doesn't matter, I would just prefer you did it elsewhere. And to end the conversation: Troll away, it seemed to work well on the poker blog.
Perhaps you can't piss in people's ears here and tell them it's raining.
That said, his point about installing programs is spot on for people from the Windows world. It makes sense in a UNIX-y way, but it's totally counterintuitive if you've come from Windows. I found it odd the first time, then grew to love it.
In my 2 months of experience with the Mac, I have found that the Mac is very appealing when it's new. It's beautiful, but sometimes it feels like Steve Jobs prefers form over function a bit too much.
Ubuntu: Synaptic or "sudo apt-get install xyz" Fedora: "yum install xyz"
Certainly don't see any goofy dragging app files around here.
Using a package manager or manually grabbing the files and building it IS basically like dragging files to an Applications folder.
You have all your files for an app in one known spot. That's all there is (excluding environment variables). What is non-unixy is installing a bunch of garbage into a registry (did I mention I hate registries?).
These OS X / UNIX techniques compared to Windows' "download an EXECUTABLE that does all the installation for you" is like night and day.
Mac: The application is a file. To get rid of it, just delete it like a file. Windows: You have to run a program to install it, and run a program to uninstall it. Do it any other way and
The mac paradigm is a bit leaky although, with .pkg files and what not. The .dmg distribution method is a bit annoying, but it allows developers to add fancy graphics when people install their programs.
Mac does due to all the reasons listed by the article.
Win sucks (at least circa XP, I haven't touched Vista) in that each installer is often still inconsistent and unique in its own little annoying ways. Plus you have issues with apps putting shared files all over, in different directories, so uninstall is a mess. Mac install is better in that regard, since uninstall usually means dragging the .app to the trash.
So, the reason the Mac approach seems strange is because it makes the whole install/uninstall concept just go away altogether. Perhaps a suitable HN metaphor: it eliminates an onion.
Funny, my cofounder's MBP works just fine with a second monitor.
The window maximizing thing is probably my biggest single annoyance when using a Mac. I've noticed that some people hate maximizing windows, and prefer having them smaller and overlapping, I guess to be able to see the contents and make switching between them easier. I'm the opposite, I need my windows maximized - I don't ever want to deal with moving or resizing them, alt-tab or the taskbar work just fine for me. I guess Macs work great for the first group of people, but not for me.
I can't tell which people understand the philosophy of window maximizing on the Mac and don't like it, and who finds the behavior just random, so let me explain:
The Mac UI assumes the point of maximizing a window is to see all of its content at once, so enlarging past the size at which all content is visible at once is unnecessary. This can be nice, once you understand what it's doing and are used to it. If you understand this and still don't like it, that is your prerogative, too, of course.
I still have trouble seeing how this philosophy can work for something like Word or even Firefox, where the content reorganizes itself to fit the window - I could swear Macs don't always make a window full-screen in these scenarios. And you can still move a "maximized" window, which is also annoying.
I'll keep this in mind next time and see if it helps me.
Obviously if you don't know what it is, it must be bad! Don't find out what it is, just assume it's bad :/
What the hell is a 'registry'? :P
Op, gentoo got the best of me.
(You can put a password on boot and wake from sleep and turn the password off your keychain, too, if you prefer not to type it every time, at a cost of having your passwords exposed if you leave it on and someone steals a minute on your computer.)
When I switched to mac I was actually pretty impressed that such a thing existed.
Call me a cynic, but I think you decided you hated macs way way before you ever tried one.
And yeah, the keychain is more secure. It's just harder to understand at first.
I have to disagree with running 2 monitors, I've done it for a couple years now and have never had any usability issues.
However, the Apple store comments are pretty much dead-on. I'd rather just order online or go to a reseller then deal with the Apple Store.
I've heard this line before - people say it as if something disastrous would happen if Apple gave in and made the green '+' a maximize button... so far nothing's coming to mind.
(btw, I haven't used windows for anything other than testing IE for about 9 years, and I still hate Apple's choice regarding the 'zoom' button).
If the application is a window into your data, why make that window bigger than necessary, thus obscuring your desktop, or some other window behind it? That may not be disastrous, but I think its intent makes sense.
Without further explanation, I end up suspecting that when he writes: "it almost never does what you’d want or expect it to," the emphasis is on his expectations as a Windows user, not on what he would prefer, all things being equal.
[and for the record, I'm speaking as an Ubuntu user, who has never owned a mac]
Personally though, I generally just use Spaces to have different screens containing only applications that I want to use together. So I'll have a programming doc open in Preview, next to my XCode project window. Or I'll have a web browser open with Textmate if I'm doing something with Rails. That way you only have the apps that you are interested in on screen in any given 'space'.
Next quibble?
http://abstractnonsense.com/desktop.png
If emacs wasn't taking up the whole screen, I'd have a scrollbar running down the middle of the screen, which would be really visually distracting.
I used virtual desktops a lot back when I used Linux for my desktop os. They're great, and I'm sure I'll use them again when I upgrade from Tiger. But, for me at least, they're no substitute for maximization.
Still cluttery, I guess... but I love it ;)
As for Linux... I posted something like this earlier; if you can't learn to use your software, then you're going to have to pay someone to write easier-to-use software. You act like it's the end of the world that software you didn't pay for doesn't work exactly like you want.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Linux being hard to use for the average Joe, and I certainly wasn't complaining about it. You're totally missing the point. The original quote was "If you can use Windows, you can use Linux." For 99%+ of the population this is untrue. Any moron can get around Windows with no prior instructions. They might not be editing the registry, but they'll be able to download and install programs. Not so with any Linux distro I've ever seen (haven't used Ubuntu yet).
You do all of your installing and uninstalling from one application, called "Synaptic Package Manager" in Ubuntu. It works really well as long as you figure out you need to launch Synaptic to install anything.
"Any moron can get around Windows with no prior instructions." Really not true. How often do people search and search for the right sub menu to change some hidden setting? What about the constant registry issues not to mention viruses etc
99% of the population don't download and install programs. Sorry, but they don't. So your argument makes no sense. For 99% of the population, as long as they can run firefox, office prog + email, they're all set. In which case Windows, Linux, OSX all work for the average joe.
Everyone under 50 uses bittorrent or emule or something to pirate music. Do those programs come installed?
Everyone under 50 uses instant messenger. Is AIM installed by default? How about Skype?
People do plenty of program installation.
Totally untrue. Give a Windows machine to someone who doesn't know anything about computers, and watch them fail. My parents bought a nice (~$3500) computer in 1998 and I set it up for them. From then on, Handholding Central. My dad couldn't figure out much on his own, and his wife was only a bit better (and only because she'd used a Windows machine at work sometimes).
When they decided that they needed to upgrade in 2006, I strongly recommended a Mac Mini to them. They bought that, and it took about 2 hours of instruction for them to know their way around, and I get a LOT fewer calls now.
Just an anecdote, but the point is that the fact that you've learned so much about Windows does not mean that Windows is naturally easier to figure out. My own switch, in 2003, was much more difficult, but that's partly because I was coming from Gentoo, and there were things I used all the time that couldn't be exactly duplicated ("select to copy" is something I still miss).
Maybe that's true for MythTV, but for most programs Ubuntu has the simplest install/uninstall process in the world. In fact, its package manager is the "killer app" for me that makes me dread using other operating systems. If I want a new program, I just go to the "add program" menu, search for the program by name or browse by category, click a box, and wait for it to install. To uninstall the program, I just unclick the same box. There are no shortcuts to missing or moved programs, no cluttered desktops, no mystery programs that don't show up in the "add/remove software" menu. It's slick.
Of course, you've stated that you haven't used Ubuntu, which just happens to be the most popular Linux distribution in the world, so you and I can both agree that your experience is incomplete.
Especially since MythTV only runs on Linux. :-)
other OS like OpenBSD doesn't give fuck about windows users. It's just created and used by and for themselves (altho others port it to virtually every os - OpenSSH? )
and no, i feel no hate from OpenBSD people toward windows users, at least not as much as linux users' in forums -- maybe if u really love what you do, you have no time to criticize others shrug
to me, OSX is also created for windows users (people who are less computer savvy) so i feel it's lacking (i use tiger for 3+ years)
Never had a problem with dual monitors aside from the fact that now the adaptor isn't bundled, and the DVI cable they will try to sell you first at the Mac Store uses a pin layout that no monitor or cable sold actually uses.
The maximize button is indeed bizarre. I just maximized safari and it made the window 2/3 the size I had it and shifted it to the left hand corner of the screen. Then I "maximized" iTunes and it sent it into mini mode. Maximizing iChat seems to switch the buddy window from a skinny column to a wider, but shorter rectangle.
Not sure why installing problems is so hard, my grandma and 11 year old cousins have no problems with this. However, every die hard windows switcher can't seem to figure it out.
Fonts are a matter of taste and Windows users have none. But that's OK! MySpace is the #1 social network, NASCAR is the #1 sport in America and Bill Gates is the richest dude around. Taste doesn't really matter as much as people who have it would like to think...
Don't mean to nitpick, but he's currently #3, actually (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires).
NASCAR probably does have the highest average viewers at live events (they do have crazy amounts of seating) but they can't compete with baseball's 2400+ games per year. NASCAR has just over 110 events per year if you count Sprint, Nationwide, and Craftsman truck series. (I could be wrong on this, but I'm close. Pretty sure it's one race per series per week for 9 months.)
So NASCAR isn't #1 by any metric any person would normally use to define it. In fact, the Yankees alone sell almost as many tickets as all of NASCAR put together. The NFL, NBA, and MLB all outsell NASCAR by over 5x in terms of tickets.
NFL and MLB are also dwarf NASCAR in terms of revenue. Both are near $6b, which is roughly 3x NASCAR. (This also means that the NFL's average revenue per game is about 10x MLB).
Don't forget, I run a sports-related startup :)
Some installers make the process easier with the little window that shows you both icons and tells you to drag the program icon to the applications icon. That's still far more complicated than Windows, but a lot better than most Mac programs, which don't even give you that.
In the best case, they could just click on it and the right thing would happen. This works, but the results aren't what you'd expect usually, since the app will go away once the dmg is gone. The exception to this is Delicious Library 2 (unreleased), the only app I know of that will tell the user the app was loaded from the disk image, and offer to put it in /Applications for you.
In the second best case, you are given the shortcut, and you manually drag it yourself. Then you click applications, and then you click the app. Perhaps a little convoluted.
In the worst case(and by worst I mean, worst assuming the standard default configuration), you aren't presented with the applications folder link and you end up dragging it anywhere -- perhaps the Desktop. But, if you do that, the app still works! That's the beauty of the app bundle, it doesn't matter where you launch it from.
Could the whole process be refined? Yes. And developers are actively making it better (just like they are actively making things like upgrades better with Sparkle). I for one, though, still think its much more friendly than any windows installation with its ridiculous wizards, shortcuts added to four different locations, and the mess that is the windows registry.
(I may be remembering this all wrong; someone please correct me if that's the case.)
First of all, installation is a no-brainer. Once you click a link for an app, Safari downloads and automounts the dmg, leaving you with the simple task of dragging it into the application folder. How is dragging a new application into a folder called "Applications" counterintuitive?
Second, I've used many macs and I've never had a single problem with the dual-screen setup. This issue was something environmental in your case, I believe.
I think the larger point is, if that is the biggest usability barrier in adopting an entirely different operating system, the Mac UI people are doing something right.
http://jon.smajda.com/blog/2007/06/30/keyboard-control-for-m...
The fact that you can use keyboard shortcuts makes this even better.
You know, that seems a pretty hostile way to (almost) talk to a stranger. Maybe it's a cultural thing ...
Although I've only used it on a server (and not a desktop), Debian/Ubuntu's aptitude/apt-get package system is probably the easiest thing I've ever used. It's awesome.
I am surprised Matt didn't notice the slicker look and feel, and far better responsiveness of OS X. I am continually surprised at what my Mini can manage with 512mb of RAM compared to my M1330 running Vista with 3GB.
That might no longer be true as PPC died, but anybody serious about doing software should experiment Mac OS and the application ecosystem around it. What surprised me the most was the fit between the Apple market and some applications that have no equivalent in Windows/Unix. For me Scrivener was a dream I had.
There's a lot to be said, and it's really interesting to compare the platforms, but not in reply to a post of a smart guy who finds counterintuitive to install in Mac OS.
Hey Matt you don't have to live with applications that have 20+ buttons in the first 2 rows of the interface.
And I also think u can keep the controversy tone of your posts without being dumb. You were in a great path.
why do you have to put extra efforts when you can just use tiled wm (i use dwm and dmenu) ? maximizing comes automatic
don't two monitors kill your focus flow? maybe you are more productive (result from research by monitor manuf - doing repetitive stuff)
the real danger is you'll be less creative
Master, indeed.