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Comment by schlomie | Hacker News Reader

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..

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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.

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.

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