Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

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Apple ran the "I'm a Mac; I'm a PC" ads. Those started off as great advertising because they only pointed out bad things about Windows that everyone already accepted as bad things. Once those ads started becoming unnecessarily adversarial, they became bad advertising. Apple probably ran that campaign a bit too long.

Depending on your point of view, Apple's products are either A) Clearly superior or B) Not obviously inferior. For a not insignificant number of people, their choice of smartphone is a personal statement. Attacking products that people love is not a good way to create converts.

Attacking products that clearly suck works until a point. Then it starts to feel like a bully beating a defenseless kid. Microsoft's advertising feels more like a nerdy kid who spent all night thinking up clever and witty retorts, only to fail miserably in delivering them when face to face with the bully. The crowd of cool kids don't laugh with the nerdy kid, they laugh at them.

Depending on your point of view, Apple's products are either A) Clearly superior or B) Not obviously inferior.

I prefer systems with a window manager that actually supports multi-tasking.

Having one shared menu bar is a pain. Having a row of icons for possibly-already-running applications, instead of a list of what windows you have open, is a pain.

Click-to-raise is less of a pain, but still annoying. Which is why I run XFCE on my desktop at home, since MS Windows and Gnome (and I think KDE?) get this one just as wrong as Apple does.

One shared menu bar at the top of the screen is supported by Fitts's Law, which says that targets at the edge of the screen are faster and easier to click:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fittss_law

No comment on the rest.

Fitt's Law also says that closer targets are easier to click, and is concerned only with how long it takes to move the mouse pointer rather than how that fits into the larger picture of what you're doing.

Having the menu separate from the window breaks spatial locality and associates the menu to the computer rather than to the application.

And this is mostly relevant on big screens like the biggest iMacs. It's just wrong, imo.

Gnome doesn't require "click-to-raise," though it's the default.

You aren't likely to convert any current tablet owner with a commercial. You can influence the customers who aren't married to any ecosystem or brand, though.

Of course you can convert any iPad owner who is eager to have a usable keyboard and a great Office suite on her tablet so she can stop carrying both a tablet and a laptop with her everywhere.

Office suite, sure, but keyboard? In both cases, a physical keyboard is an add-on that you buy, and the quality of the keyboard is pretty much up to you to decide then.

Useable keyboard: bluetooth keyboard. Office suite: Pages, Numbers, Keynote.

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