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0 pointsjstevens8516y ago0 comments

Conduct a controlled experiment. Spilt the world into two parallel universes. In one, give your Mum or technologically illiterate sister a Macbook, and in the other, a Dell Inspiron. You will most likely find a more positive experience with the MacBook. Computers aren't just for socially autistic engineering nerds.

This probably doesn't need repeating, but there are a lot of hackers out there who appreciate a UNIX OS that works out of the box, runs commercial software not available on Linux, and can easily sync with your iPhone.

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Tichy16y ago· 3 in thread

As a matter of fact a Mac is the worst of the three options I could imagine to give to my mum. I keep saying to Mac fans, first try to explain it to your mum. Have you tried it?

It's all the small unintuitive things, like "x" doesn't close the application. There are no hints for accomplishing basic tasks like renaming a file or moving a file (Finder doesn't do cut, only copy). And so on... I consider myself experienced with computers, but on OS X I have to google how to accomplish the most basic tasks.

Really, please try it. You know, explain it to the kind of person who has to write down every step on paper. (Not that my mum is that bad - actually I have her on Ubuntu and she is doing fine). So that person has to write down "don't close the application with x, use cmd+q" - it's ridiculous.

Gestures look great in presentations - but how do you learn them? There are no hints in OS X as to what to use (OK, I can remember pinching and scrolling - but I don't resize pictures much, so guess what, it is not THAT helpful after all).

It's fine if people love their OS X (for whatever reason), but the claim that OS X is simpler is definitely not true.

philwelch16y ago

My mum is dead now, but she happily owned a succession of iMacs for about ten years prior to that. My elderly father does just fine with the iMac too, though I actually had to turn off the right click to keep him from getting confused.

By the way, the "unintuitive" things you mention aren't unintuitive, just different from Windows. It's no less "unintuitive" than whether or not you set your parking brake with a pedal or a hand lever (so better not get your mum a Toyota if she has a Ford).

By the way, OS X is good enough at multitasking and memory allocation you don't have to actually quit your applications. It's sufficient to just close the window. That way it starts up faster when you want to use it again.

Tichy16y ago

Maybe it only works for some people - fair enough. It doesn't work for me. I had to google for renaming a file. On other OS I just have to remember one rule: try the right mouse button. Instant expert.

As for not closing apps, I find that hard to believe. Maybe if you only ever use 3 apps it is OK. Otherwise, why even have a mechanism for starting and stopping apps? Could just start them all upon booting. (Actually this will probably be the future, but not yet).

Also it is very confusing if you have closed all windows of an app, but not the app itself. Because then if you click the app icon, nothing happens (it is already started, after all).

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GeneralMaximus16y ago

> It's all the small unintuitive things, like "x" doesn't close the application.

That's because many OS X applications are document-based apps. All windows are either documents, or are meant for directly manipulating one single document. The 'X' is supposed to close the document, not the application. Applications in which the document-based approach does not work (Songbird, for example) will automatically quit when you close the last window. This is perfectly intuitive behavior for people who have been using Macs for a long time. Just because Windows does it differently (and Linux copies it blindly) does not mean it's the One True Way. In fact, I'd kill to get document-based apps in Linux and Windows.

> There are no hints for accomplishing basic tasks like renaming a file or moving a file. (Finder doesn't do cut, only copy)

You have a point here. I'd give anything to get 'Cut' in the Finder. But, then again, Finder is the second worst piece of software in OS X (the worst being iTunes).

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