ok, just to kind of do what the original poster wanted us to do
my only real complaints about using a mac are
1. we have to actually purchase Word and there isn't anything good preinstalled on MAc OSX.
2. the web browsing problem i can understand. sometimes i dont get why myspace loads so slow (this comes from my gf. she's a mac user to)
if someone could explain or fix that problem it would be appreciated.
3. some photo output programs like Picture It are not offered on macs (also coming from the girlfriend) she's not about photo editing but more about doing cute little things with pictures.
if someone could recommend something please do so. she's searched but hasn't found anythign that great.
Fair enough. I note though that your experience with either app sounds itself pretty limited. Though I might not know other people who use Office for Mac personally, I know what I see with my own eyes, and it ain't pretty. I also note that there are plenty of reports from actual users to back me up. But as you said, maybe it's a matter of priorities: ease of use and good looks vs. performance and features. This is probably also true of the OS itself and your typical Mac app. I guess it's a question of balance, and I feel that the balance is just way too titled to the left in the case of Office.
*nod* Understood - I used to use both Office suites extensively, but gave them up a few years ago. Since then I've been impressed with where Office/Mac has gone from what I've seen of it, and not so much with Office/Win. *shrug*
Like you said, we all have our priorities.
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ok.. misunderstanding here: I never said - or even meant to say - that AIM wasn't widespread (although it seems to me its spread is rather US-centric, unlike say MSN Messenger... everybody I wants to communicate with uses the latter but not the former).
All I said is that the two, iChat and AIM, are not as interoperable as Apple or AOL would have us believe (just like Apple and Intuit would have us believe that Quicken is great Mac software), according to everything I read on the subject on the web (and I read a lot of it!). Granted that was a year to six months ago, so maybe things have changed now, though somehow I doubt it.
In my experience, the iChat 3 upgrade was significant in this regard. Prior to that, ports to be opened in firewalls on the Windows end were problematic. Since then, no such problems that I've encountered.
Well, I take that back. No problems that I've encountered *when* the other person had upgraded to > 5.5, and had confirmed that it worked with other PC users. It's not perfect, but much improved.
I'd love to see a universal videoconf solution that all the big dogs could agree on. H.264 seems like the brain-dead obvious approach, but the obvious isn't always what happens. :P
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You're right... my reaction did come out as a bit over the top. Sorry for the "friendly fire".
I find that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. That is, what good is it to have all sorts of PC apps if they just end up crashing in Windows. . . I'm serious on this one. Windows itself never really goes down (although it goes to hell if you don't restart it regularly) but Office always crashes on me. Especially Outlook. It's very reassuring to work on the mac, since I'm less worried about the programs crashing and losing my data.
Oh yeah? I am using Bank of America, and as far as I can see it, they have nothing like the wealth of features a product like Quicken has built over the decade or so of existence.
Most of these things are not "built" into Quicken. It is Quicken, especially on the PC, using the built in Internet Explorer to take you to parts of their website and access the services via web pages.
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I doubt there is a website out there that would give you a complete picture of your financial situation especially across different banks, accounts and so on. Of course there is also the issue of security: not sure I would trust some random portal website with all my financial data. But maybe I am wrong and there is such a thing from a trustworthy provider.
You might have your services across a dozen accounts at a dozen banks(how is that secure again?), but my reasoning then is that you need to address the problem at the root instead of complaining about the programs. Quicken can help you do this but again, they charge loads of fees.
Also Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, these are hardly some random portals. Bank of America, via their website offers a features called MyPortfolio where it claims these features...
View your non-Bank of America accounts
* Use My Portfolio to view all of your online accounts, including non-Bank of America - in a single, secure location, using just one Online ID and Passcode.
* You can access your banking, credit card, and investment accounts.
* My Portfolio allows you to access your email accounts, news preferences, frequent-flyer miles and reward programs.
Over time, instead of simply deciding to link my non-Wellsfargo accounts to Wells Fargo, I've simply had them bid for my business. Everytime they have saved me money and your bank might do the same for you. Instead of having five credit cards across five banks, your bank might pull off something like a full balance transfer with 0% interest on the transferred balance and a better interest rate on new charges, etc.
Quicken is a dinosaur. The core program tracks your register. All the other stuff, tracking your 401k, planning various things, all lead you to online sources at their site and recommend programs where they make more money instead of you saving more money.
I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse. And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
As for Quicken though...I have to say, like Nick says, the Web is the way that stuff is moving.
Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it? And don't tell me it can. It can NOT. It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
Yes. People with different opinions are automatically not on the same level as you because you are so much smarter than everyone else.
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I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Um, webcams were out LONG before they were really useful for video conferencing, or anyone actually had the bandwidth for it. It's not like other people might have a use for it... unless you think that all products have to pander to your needs and your needs only.
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Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse. And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Actually Apple 'Gets it' more than most of the other technology companies. Like Microsoft which made it so hard to do things when you are not an admin that most people just run as admin and get tons of spyware/adware/etc on their computer.
I'll admit that iChat kind of sucks when it comes to things like multiple accounts. But it's not like alternatives like Adium don't exist. If you judged every operating system based on a dislike for one piece of software on it, I don't think that any operating system could pass.
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Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
Not as much as you think. I don't think that a lot of people have really jumped onto the 'OMG I need to VIDEO conference now' bandwagon. There is a sizable portion of the population that uses these features, yes. But I don't think that many people value that as the only consideration when purchasing a computer. On that note, Skype has a lot to gain here by bringing the video to their Mac and Linux versions. Skype has been pretty good about making at least audio conferencing across platforms easy. And they haven't run into the "Oh noes! My computer is behind a firewall so I can't audio conference or send files!" crap that plagued AOL's Instant Messenger for the longest time.
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Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
I'd say yes if you were talking about Office v.X, but Office 2k4 seems to be an improvement. I don't use it enough to see the slowdowns that you seem to be seeing, but for typing up documents and spreadsheets, it's not like you need the computer to be on the ball or else someone will die like some sort of medical machinery.
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Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it? And don't tell me it can. It can NOT. It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
I want, I want, I want. In the words of Howard Stern, "Wah wah wah!" If it's such and easy thing to fix to write a flash plugin for Safari, then why don't you do it? What's Apple supposed to do? Put a nuclear device under Adobe-Macromedia and threaten to detonate if they don't fix the Flash plugin? Having hundreds of pages open? That seems sort of extreme. I doubt that everyone out there needs to open HUNDREDS of pages at a time. That's more like a stress test of the system than something actually useful. It also sounds more like you just don't know how to organize your information... It's like saying that a library sucks because their tables aren't large enough for you to have HUNDREDS of books all open to different pages while your are writing a paper. Ever hear of bookmarks? I hear they are useful in real books as well as browsers.
Plain and simple. 100+ web pages open at the same time is extreme usage. There are maybe a handful of people that need that functionality. To say that Apple needs to spend all kinds of time to save the maybe 2 purchases that this might prevent is a rather ludicrous proposition. It's like saying that every gas station in the world needs to have bio-diesel because only 100 people in Southern California have bio-diesel cars.
Didn't we just have the friendly fire discussion, or was it just me?
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I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Oh no, even then. I'm shocked that they did it myself... it makes me wonder what they have in store for it other than just iChat.
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Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse.
Er, yeah, since again, I haven't seen issues like that. I click, it works, no problems. Hell, I've had a flawless video chat between Chapel Hill, NC and Beijing before, no futzing necessary.
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And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Sorry, I'd chalk that one up to user error. Accounts are there for a reason, and if Fast User Switching via a single menu item is too difficult for someone, maybe they *should* look into switching platforms. Perhaps something from Fisher Price?
Now, if iChat had a 'guest mode' where you could say "Alright, just this one time, I want to log in as <user>, but don't use Address Book, don't save anything, just make it temporary", that might be handy. If you're using the same machine more than a few times though, I can't see how setting up an account is onerous. In fact, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
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Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
iChat to iChat or AIM 5.5 has *generally* worked really well for me. There are times when I just look at it and wonder what the hell its problem is, but those are quite rare now. If the major services could all just agree on a common format and codec, we'd be good, but they don't seem interested.
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As for Quicken though...I have to say, like Nick says, the Web is the way that stuff is moving.
Agreed. I recently started a new 'organize the finances!' rally, and have been looking around - I can either handle it online, now, for (mostly) free through my banks, or I can buy Quicken, pay Intuit a monthly fee, and then pay the banks as well. Hmm. Yes, having one central point of access is nice, and having a global view of the finances is good, but mine are not yet to the point of needing that sort of macromanagement. Jury's still out on what path to take with this one.
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Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
Oh god, you have no idea. Until at least '99/'00, Excel's macro language parser was a single ~30,000 line switch statement. I'll let the programmers in the audience have a moment to regain their twitching...
I know folks who still use Word 5 if at all possible.
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Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it?
Whaaaaaaa? Who the hell has hundreds of *ANY* kind of document open in an app, and expects the app to be able to handle it gracefully?!? Seriously... open a hundred .txt files in TextEdit, and it's going to get poky. Somewhere along the way, 'poor app' segues into 'unrealistic expectations'...
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And don't tell me it can. It can NOT.
You're right. It can't. Because it was never designed to.
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It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
Really? There are people out there who make OS decisions based on whether or not the included browser will be able to handle a few hundred open pages simultaneously?
Have you tried this test under Windows? How did it fare?
I'm not exactly *thrilled* with Safari's performance, but it keeps getting much better, and I also don't expect it to handle insane numbers of open pages at once. I hit about 15 pages, and I can feel it start to bog, and it's time to bookmark, drag to Desktop, or otherwise cache the URL until I need it again.
ichat does suck. i hate the look, i hate the way it works, is organized. i cant lie for ichat, it stinks lol. but it isn't a big deal cuz i'll just use other things... though does the built in isight work with aim on mac? or do i have to use icaht? cuz then i'll be annoyed.
i'll never go back to windows but i can agree with those people who are bitching.
safari is kinda slow, and ichat stinks.
though when using Word on intel imacs the other day at the store that bad boy felt fast and it was running under rossetta.
so maybe much software improvements will come out since the switch?
I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Are you really complaining that a computer that has multiple physical users doesn't work right because you are unwilling to set up multiple user accounts, but choose to use one "admin" account. Think through how silly your claim is for a second. Should Apple make it easy for multiple users to share a single account, or should they make it really easy to have multiple accounts for multiple people? Oh, and FUS is such a PITA. Setting up multiple admin accounts without passwords would be my suggestion for you.
Any other reasons beside the ones I presented? I certainly have a few more on my list, but the point of the thread to kinda have other people also contribute their own potential reasons for switching to Windows. All the discussion so far has been about the four points I raised. Any other takers?
PRESSING THE HOME AND END KEYS TO TAKE ME TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE.
In windows I used to use that all the time. I just tried it now, I noticed a spelling mistake I made at the beginning of the line, pressed home and...nothing. So I've got to hold the arrow keys for a while or lift my hand up to use the mouse.
This feature only works for me on a mac in guess what MICROSOFT Office. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day. This is a big deal and makes typing a 1000 times faster.
WHAT THE HELL. How could they not think of that?
Since I'm new to OSX maybe there is a way to do that but it should be the home and end keys. If it's not but it's there:
Apple (or 'Command' or 'Cmd' however you call it) + left = home
Apple + right = end
Apple + up = ctrl + home
Apple + down = ctrl + end
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the top line, you can press up to get to the beginning of that line.
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the last line, you can press down to get to the end of that line.
If you are in a text box that only has one line (like the location bar in safari), then 'up' arrow key will take you to the beginning of the line and 'down' will take you to the end.
You can skip between words using "Option + right" and "Option + left" which would be equivalent to "Ctrl + right" and "Ctrl + left" on windows.
Edit:
Note that some of these things may not be in all applications. Notably the up/down arrow keys in multi/single line text boxes that I mention doesn't work in some of the text boxes in Firefox. I'm sure there are other apps out there like that. Things like "Option + right/left" didn't work in Microsoft Office X, but they changed that in Office 2004. (IIRC it didn't work in Office X, but it's been a while since I've used that version)
As much as I like PCs and Windows, I can tell you that Dell is the worst PC world has to offer. Terrible hardware, trashed Windows OS from the start. The empahsis is on low price, compatibility and making it simple for IT "pros".
The results, unfortunately is: frequent hardware failure, slow performance, not-so-good compatibility... you know the rest.
PRESSING THE HOME AND END KEYS TO TAKE ME TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE.
What pyr3 said. Home and End historically (1970's workstations) took you to the top and the bottom of a document (or more likely a screen of text on the old consoles), just like they do on a Mac, but MS screwed it up along the way to make them work on just a line at a time.
Apple (or 'Command' or 'Cmd' however you call it) + left = home
Apple + right = end
Apple + up = ctrl + home
Apple + down = ctrl + end
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the top line, you can press up to get to the beginning of that line.
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the last line, you can press down to get to the end of that line.
If you are in a text box that only has one line (like the location bar in safari), then 'up' arrow key will take you to the beginning of the line and 'down' will take you to the end.
You can skip between words using "Option + right" and "Option + left" which would be equivalent to "Ctrl + right" and "Ctrl + left" on windows.
Edit:
Note that some of these things may not be in all applications. Notably the up/down arrow keys in multi/single line text boxes that I mention doesn't work in some of the text boxes in Firefox. I'm sure there are other apps out there like that. Things like "Option + right/left" didn't work in Microsoft Office X, but they changed that in Office 2004. (IIRC it didn't work in Office X, but it's been a while since I've used that version)
What pyr3 said. Home and End historically (1970's workstations) took you to the top and the bottom of a document (or more likely a screen of text on the old consoles), just like they do on a Mac, but MS screwed it up along the way to make them work on just a line at a time.
Ah so it was microsoft that screwed that up. Makes sense.
Comments
my only real complaints about using a mac are
1. we have to actually purchase Word and there isn't anything good preinstalled on MAc OSX.
2. the web browsing problem i can understand. sometimes i dont get why myspace loads so slow (this comes from my gf. she's a mac user to)
if someone could explain or fix that problem it would be appreciated.
3. some photo output programs like Picture It are not offered on macs (also coming from the girlfriend) she's not about photo editing but more about doing cute little things with pictures.
if someone could recommend something please do so. she's searched but hasn't found anythign that great.
Originally posted by cygsid
Fair enough. I note though that your experience with either app sounds itself pretty limited. Though I might not know other people who use Office for Mac personally, I know what I see with my own eyes, and it ain't pretty. I also note that there are plenty of reports from actual users to back me up. But as you said, maybe it's a matter of priorities: ease of use and good looks vs. performance and features. This is probably also true of the OS itself and your typical Mac app. I guess it's a question of balance, and I feel that the balance is just way too titled to the left in the case of Office.
*nod* Understood - I used to use both Office suites extensively, but gave them up a few years ago. Since then I've been impressed with where Office/Mac has gone from what I've seen of it, and not so much with Office/Win. *shrug*
Like you said, we all have our priorities.
ok.. misunderstanding here: I never said - or even meant to say - that AIM wasn't widespread (although it seems to me its spread is rather US-centric, unlike say MSN Messenger... everybody I wants to communicate with uses the latter but not the former).
All I said is that the two, iChat and AIM, are not as interoperable as Apple or AOL would have us believe (just like Apple and Intuit would have us believe that Quicken is great Mac software), according to everything I read on the subject on the web (and I read a lot of it!). Granted that was a year to six months ago, so maybe things have changed now, though somehow I doubt it.
In my experience, the iChat 3 upgrade was significant in this regard. Prior to that, ports to be opened in firewalls on the Windows end were problematic. Since then, no such problems that I've encountered.
Well, I take that back. No problems that I've encountered *when* the other person had upgraded to > 5.5, and had confirmed that it worked with other PC users. It's not perfect, but much improved.
I'd love to see a universal videoconf solution that all the big dogs could agree on. H.264 seems like the brain-dead obvious approach, but the obvious isn't always what happens. :P
You're right... my reaction did come out as a bit over the top. Sorry for the "friendly fire".
No worries.
Originally posted by cygsid
You're right... my reaction did come out as a bit over the top. Sorry for the "friendly fire".
See, you stop being a jerk and all of the sudden everyone is much friendlier.
Funny how that works, huh?
Originally posted by cygsid
Oh yeah? I am using Bank of America, and as far as I can see it, they have nothing like the wealth of features a product like Quicken has built over the decade or so of existence.
Most of these things are not "built" into Quicken. It is Quicken, especially on the PC, using the built in Internet Explorer to take you to parts of their website and access the services via web pages.
I doubt there is a website out there that would give you a complete picture of your financial situation especially across different banks, accounts and so on. Of course there is also the issue of security: not sure I would trust some random portal website with all my financial data. But maybe I am wrong and there is such a thing from a trustworthy provider.
You might have your services across a dozen accounts at a dozen banks(how is that secure again?), but my reasoning then is that you need to address the problem at the root instead of complaining about the programs. Quicken can help you do this but again, they charge loads of fees.
Also Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, these are hardly some random portals. Bank of America, via their website offers a features called MyPortfolio where it claims these features...
View your non-Bank of America accounts
* Use My Portfolio to view all of your online accounts, including non-Bank of America - in a single, secure location, using just one Online ID and Passcode.
* You can access your banking, credit card, and investment accounts.
* My Portfolio allows you to access your email accounts, news preferences, frequent-flyer miles and reward programs.
Over time, instead of simply deciding to link my non-Wellsfargo accounts to Wells Fargo, I've simply had them bid for my business. Everytime they have saved me money and your bank might do the same for you. Instead of having five credit cards across five banks, your bank might pull off something like a full balance transfer with 0% interest on the transferred balance and a better interest rate on new charges, etc.
Quicken is a dinosaur. The core program tracks your register. All the other stuff, tracking your 401k, planning various things, all lead you to online sources at their site and recommend programs where they make more money instead of you saving more money.
Nick
I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse. And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
As for Quicken though...I have to say, like Nick says, the Web is the way that stuff is moving.
Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it? And don't tell me it can. It can NOT. It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
Originally posted by Aquatic
Ok. Yeah. You guys are definitely apologists.
Yes. People with different opinions are automatically not on the same level as you because you are so much smarter than everyone else.
I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Um, webcams were out LONG before they were really useful for video conferencing, or anyone actually had the bandwidth for it. It's not like other people might have a use for it... unless you think that all products have to pander to your needs and your needs only.
Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse. And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Actually Apple 'Gets it' more than most of the other technology companies. Like Microsoft which made it so hard to do things when you are not an admin that most people just run as admin and get tons of spyware/adware/etc on their computer.
I'll admit that iChat kind of sucks when it comes to things like multiple accounts. But it's not like alternatives like Adium don't exist. If you judged every operating system based on a dislike for one piece of software on it, I don't think that any operating system could pass.
Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
Not as much as you think. I don't think that a lot of people have really jumped onto the 'OMG I need to VIDEO conference now' bandwagon. There is a sizable portion of the population that uses these features, yes. But I don't think that many people value that as the only consideration when purchasing a computer. On that note, Skype has a lot to gain here by bringing the video to their Mac and Linux versions. Skype has been pretty good about making at least audio conferencing across platforms easy. And they haven't run into the "Oh noes! My computer is behind a firewall so I can't audio conference or send files!" crap that plagued AOL's Instant Messenger for the longest time.
Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
I'd say yes if you were talking about Office v.X, but Office 2k4 seems to be an improvement. I don't use it enough to see the slowdowns that you seem to be seeing, but for typing up documents and spreadsheets, it's not like you need the computer to be on the ball or else someone will die like some sort of medical machinery.
Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it? And don't tell me it can. It can NOT. It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
I want, I want, I want. In the words of Howard Stern, "Wah wah wah!" If it's such and easy thing to fix to write a flash plugin for Safari, then why don't you do it? What's Apple supposed to do? Put a nuclear device under Adobe-Macromedia and threaten to detonate if they don't fix the Flash plugin? Having hundreds of pages open? That seems sort of extreme. I doubt that everyone out there needs to open HUNDREDS of pages at a time. That's more like a stress test of the system than something actually useful. It also sounds more like you just don't know how to organize your information... It's like saying that a library sucks because their tables aren't large enough for you to have HUNDREDS of books all open to different pages while your are writing a paper. Ever hear of bookmarks? I hear they are useful in real books as well as browsers.
Plain and simple. 100+ web pages open at the same time is extreme usage. There are maybe a handful of people that need that functionality. To say that Apple needs to spend all kinds of time to save the maybe 2 purchases that this might prevent is a rather ludicrous proposition. It's like saying that every gas station in the world needs to have bio-diesel because only 100 people in Southern California have bio-diesel cars.
Originally posted by Aquatic
Ok. Yeah. You guys are definitely apologists.
Didn't we just have the friendly fire discussion, or was it just me?
I seriously was startled when I realized just how useless a HUGE waste of money that iSight built in to all these new Macs is. Unless of course you don't have any friends with PCs.
Oh no, even then. I'm shocked that they did it myself... it makes me wonder what they have in store for it other than just iChat.
Sorry, iChat is a piece of shit. It doesn't even work with iChat. It NEVER works even with JUST audio for me with my sister and dad and we are all on very fast broadband, we're talking Verizon DSL, McGill and URI LANs. NO excuse.
Er, yeah, since again, I haven't seen issues like that. I click, it works, no problems. Hell, I've had a flawless video chat between Chapel Hill, NC and Beijing before, no futzing necessary.
And its interface is retarded. Apallingly retarded. Why does it use my girlfriend's address book on MY buddy list on her computer? I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Sorry, I'd chalk that one up to user error. Accounts are there for a reason, and if Fast User Switching via a single menu item is too difficult for someone, maybe they *should* look into switching platforms. Perhaps something from Fisher Price?
Now, if iChat had a 'guest mode' where you could say "Alright, just this one time, I want to log in as <user>, but don't use Address Book, don't save anything, just make it temporary", that might be handy. If you're using the same machine more than a few times though, I can't see how setting up an account is onerous. In fact, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Video on IM services just does not work. This is big and will get to be make or break for lots of potential Mac purchases.
iChat to iChat or AIM 5.5 has *generally* worked really well for me. There are times when I just look at it and wonder what the hell its problem is, but those are quite rare now. If the major services could all just agree on a common format and codec, we'd be good, but they don't seem interested.
As for Quicken though...I have to say, like Nick says, the Web is the way that stuff is moving.
Agreed. I recently started a new 'organize the finances!' rally, and have been looking around - I can either handle it online, now, for (mostly) free through my banks, or I can buy Quicken, pay Intuit a monthly fee, and then pay the banks as well. Hmm. Yes, having one central point of access is nice, and having a global view of the finances is good, but mine are not yet to the point of needing that sort of macromanagement. Jury's still out on what path to take with this one.
Office on Mac is good on the outside. But the inside code is obviously a piece of shit, as people have elaborated, it is slow slow SLOW and buggy. I hope they rewrite it. Didn't they say they were going to? It seems like Word 2001 in Classic felt smoother than Word 2004 on OS X. You know? Same goes for Excel. Really sloppy stuff under the hood probably.
Oh god, you have no idea. Until at least '99/'00, Excel's macro language parser was a single ~30,000 line switch statement. I'll let the programmers in the audience have a moment to regain their twitching...
I know folks who still use Word 5 if at all possible.
Browsing, so right. Safari is a piece of shit under the hood still. So what if it's Flash's fault that sites slow to a crawl. I don't want excuses, I want Safari to work with sites and not use 1000% of my CPU. I have HUNDREDS of pages open sometimes when writing papers. Why can't Safari handle it?
Whaaaaaaa? Who the hell has hundreds of *ANY* kind of document open in an app, and expects the app to be able to handle it gracefully?!? Seriously... open a hundred .txt files in TextEdit, and it's going to get poky. Somewhere along the way, 'poor app' segues into 'unrealistic expectations'...
And don't tell me it can. It can NOT.
You're right. It can't. Because it was never designed to.
It chokes OS X to death. FIX it Apple. Or again it will prevent purchases.
Really? There are people out there who make OS decisions based on whether or not the included browser will be able to handle a few hundred open pages simultaneously?
Have you tried this test under Windows? How did it fare?
I'm not exactly *thrilled* with Safari's performance, but it keeps getting much better, and I also don't expect it to handle insane numbers of open pages at once. I hit about 15 pages, and I can feel it start to bog, and it's time to bookmark, drag to Desktop, or otherwise cache the URL until I need it again.
i'll never go back to windows but i can agree with those people who are bitching.
safari is kinda slow, and ichat stinks.
though when using Word on intel imacs the other day at the store that bad boy felt fast and it was running under rossetta.
so maybe much software improvements will come out since the switch?
Originally posted by Aquatic
I don't think Apple gets that people in general do NOT have different accounts. They make an admin account and that's it. And why should we make more accounts? It's a pain to switch Users. It just is. I guess Apple just doesn't "Get It"
Are you really complaining that a computer that has multiple physical users doesn't work right because you are unwilling to set up multiple user accounts, but choose to use one "admin" account. Think through how silly your claim is for a second. Should Apple make it easy for multiple users to share a single account, or should they make it really easy to have multiple accounts for multiple people? Oh, and FUS is such a PITA. Setting up multiple admin accounts without passwords would be my suggestion for you.
sorry
lmao
PRESSING THE HOME AND END KEYS TO TAKE ME TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE.
In windows I used to use that all the time. I just tried it now, I noticed a spelling mistake I made at the beginning of the line, pressed home and...nothing. So I've got to hold the arrow keys for a while or lift my hand up to use the mouse.
This feature only works for me on a mac in guess what MICROSOFT Office. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day. This is a big deal and makes typing a 1000 times faster.
WHAT THE HELL. How could they not think of that?
Since I'm new to OSX maybe there is a way to do that but it should be the home and end keys. If it's not but it's there:
SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE GODDAMN KEY IS!
Apple + right = end
Apple + up = ctrl + home
Apple + down = ctrl + end
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the top line, you can press up to get to the beginning of that line.
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the last line, you can press down to get to the end of that line.
If you are in a text box that only has one line (like the location bar in safari), then 'up' arrow key will take you to the beginning of the line and 'down' will take you to the end.
You can skip between words using "Option + right" and "Option + left" which would be equivalent to "Ctrl + right" and "Ctrl + left" on windows.
Edit:
Note that some of these things may not be in all applications. Notably the up/down arrow keys in multi/single line text boxes that I mention doesn't work in some of the text boxes in Firefox. I'm sure there are other apps out there like that. Things like "Option + right/left" didn't work in Microsoft Office X, but they changed that in Office 2004. (IIRC it didn't work in Office X, but it's been a while since I've used that version)
The results, unfortunately is: frequent hardware failure, slow performance, not-so-good compatibility... you know the rest.
I hope your IT guys are good!
Originally posted by ecking
PRESSING THE HOME AND END KEYS TO TAKE ME TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE.
What pyr3 said. Home and End historically (1970's workstations) took you to the top and the bottom of a document (or more likely a screen of text on the old consoles), just like they do on a Mac, but MS screwed it up along the way to make them work on just a line at a time.
Originally posted by pyr3
Apple (or 'Command' or 'Cmd' however you call it) + left = home
Apple + right = end
Apple + up = ctrl + home
Apple + down = ctrl + end
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the top line, you can press up to get to the beginning of that line.
If you are on a text box that has multiple lines and you are on the last line, you can press down to get to the end of that line.
If you are in a text box that only has one line (like the location bar in safari), then 'up' arrow key will take you to the beginning of the line and 'down' will take you to the end.
You can skip between words using "Option + right" and "Option + left" which would be equivalent to "Ctrl + right" and "Ctrl + left" on windows.
Edit:
Note that some of these things may not be in all applications. Notably the up/down arrow keys in multi/single line text boxes that I mention doesn't work in some of the text boxes in Firefox. I'm sure there are other apps out there like that. Things like "Option + right/left" didn't work in Microsoft Office X, but they changed that in Office 2004. (IIRC it didn't work in Office X, but it's been a while since I've used that version)
I cannot even begin to thank you enough.
Originally posted by Kickaha
What pyr3 said. Home and End historically (1970's workstations) took you to the top and the bottom of a document (or more likely a screen of text on the old consoles), just like they do on a Mac, but MS screwed it up along the way to make them work on just a line at a time.
Ah so it was microsoft that screwed that up. Makes sense.