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Comment by bdhe | Hacker News Reader

This is not a criticism, just a curious enquiry. How does Apple manage to get so much support and discussion that seems very organic and grassroots in nature about its product releases, but somehow Microsoft and Windows get the short end of the stick? It is in no sense a scientific observation, but I did not notice so much interest when Windows 7 was released, even on Hacker News.

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I think if Windows shipped with the ability mount an ISO, open a tar file, ssh client, virtual desktops, usable notepad, "Open with" doesn't make you hunt for an exe, drag to resize command windows, dialog boxes you can clip error messages off of, ctrl-a consistently selects all of the text in a field, that might be a start to getting positive support.

2c..

But Ubuntu, say, doesn't get all the buzz that OSX releases do, does it? It has all those things.

For Linux on the Desktop it does quite well though...

Indeed. There are also programs that have long been used for such purposes in the Windows world (i.e. Notepad++/Programmer's Notepad, WinRAR/7zip, Windows Powershell and Putty) which are likely to be better than anything MS can ever integrate into the system (err, excluding Powershell).

There is also the problem where if MS somehow integrate those features into Windows, even then they'll get flack for it for not being "good enough," so we still arrive at the original question.

You forget that if they did integrate that stuff they're going to be called out for monopolistic tendencies. There was a massive whinge-fest when Microsoft Security Essentials came out from the AV industry.

The MS mind set is often unaware of subtleties, and doesn't see a reason to place much of any value on them... I think that's why they get flack all the time, despite doing what they were asked. They then get frustrated since it seems irrational to them. Like getting a doughy croissant vs. a flaky croissant, they'd just see you got a croissant, what's the problem?

I had a MS usability researcher (actually a whole team) come on site and during my interview tell me he will be "triaging my usage" of one of their popular non-technical applications. To which I gave him a blank stare, and said "you want to know how I use it?" Sort of reminded me of Feynnman asking the NASA engineers if by "pressure induced harmonic oscillation" they meant a "whistle" during the Challenger investigation -- albeit NASA engineers are allowed to be out of touch. ;-)

Apple doesn't release updates where the window manager crashes and you have to do something like alt-f2, unity --replace to make it work again.

True, but they have nice updates which will freeze your Apple when put under heavy load...

> I think if Windows shipped with the ability mount an ISO, open a tar file, ssh client, virtual desktops, usable notepad, "Open with" doesn't make you hunt for an exe, drag to resize command windows, dialog boxes you can clip error messages off of, ctrl-a consistently selects all of the text in a field, that might be a start to getting positive support.

No, I bet if it could do all this things, it would get more lawsuits and BS. It's all about Steve Jobs famous distortion field.

Disclaimer: proud mac owner.

What is the "usable notepad" that comes on OS X? Are you referring to TextEdit? I guess I've never learned to use it properly because it just saves code as .rtf and blows it all up.

As far as I see it Windows requires getting Notepad++ and Mac requires getting something like Text Wrangler.

I think it's safe to say at this point that most "techy" people have moved to Macbooks - by "most" I mean over 50%. And if you happen to browse tech sites there's a good chance a majority of them are using OSX now.

I'd bet such Mac-proliferation varies greatly by country.

I agree: in Mexico, for example, all geeks run Linux (Ubuntu if they're not very geeky, Gentoo if they consider themselves hardcore). Geeks widely regard Macs as being not bad but only really useful to show off your wealth.

Varies a lot by country and by community/programming language/kind of job.

I think it's safe to say at this point that most "techy" people have moved to Macbooks - by "most" I mean over 50%.

Oh, Americans and their blinkered worldviews.

Windows 7 did get a lot of press but it followed Vista, an OS by my understanding that was hated by many. Thus the improvements were perceived as fixes rather than revolutionary.

Apple has spent decades working on its reputation. Success today depends more on what you were doing 5, 10 years ago.

They're a design-oriented company so attract people interested in the details.

It seems strange to me that you would associate design with the details.

Perhaps details of the aesthetics, but not the details of what's actually happening (i.e. the technical details).

Having said that, I set up an Apple Time Capsule today expecting it to be painful. The hardest thing was remembering my router password to turn the wireless off. I think that's probably a better reason why they get such press - that the user experience is more important than the features.

I figure anyone actively discussing tools has a certain bent for nerdery.

In fact there's a relevant Steve Jobs quote: "... That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

Microsoft probably has more casual users who don't really care.

This site should be renamed Apple Fanboy News, that's why. I'm tired of these worthless submissions. There are lots of things I like about my OS, but I'm not insecure enough to need to justify any love I might have by telling everybody on Hacker News about it.

It's actually a very good submission. I didn't know Leopard had all these neat features. Now I want to upgrade.

I also have a Windows box, and I wouldn't mind a similar SE about Win7 niceties, and of course Win7 having such niceties...

This is a fascinating goldmine of interesting little things for UI or UX people.

The spell checker auto-detects the language you're writing in and switches to the correct dictionary for a sentence. How cool is that?

Hah, looks like I touched a nerve here. -9 points and counting.

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