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Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

char.gd

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Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UI remains a convoluted Escher'esque nightmare. Comments like this make it hard to take any side of the discussion seriously. /Neither/ of the OSes are "Escher'esque nightmare[s]." My elderly mother can kludge her way through both of them, more or less reliably - admittedly, with more trouble than using her phone, but not a lot more. Nothing that a tech-illiterate can reasonably use on a day-to-day basis qualif…

> Comments like this make it hard to take any side of the discussion seriously. /Neither/ of the OSes are "Escher'esque nightmare[s]." • macOS Finder: http://i.imgur.com/9Y5hK0e.png • Windows Explorer: http://i.imgur.com/ef7CnJ4.png Alright. Maybe not nightmarish, but one of these IS objectively more convoluted than the other. Let's start with something simple: WHY does the "Options" button on the Windows Explorer Ri…

"macOS Finder": you are talking about that software that rename folders when you press the enter key? :p

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#233
post #201

I used to be hardcore windows guy... Then 10 years ago I got a mac. I never went back.. But what am I saving money for right now? To build a nice PC again. Mostly because of the exact reasons in the article. I have a fondness for apple... but they have definitely lost their way. First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Compute…

>First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Computer company who also made a phone. Then they became a computer company who also made a phone and a tablet. Then they became a phone company who also made computers and tablets. >Now they are a phone company who presides over the death throws of an amazing operating system that is…

Windows 8 was ridiculous, and one of the things that gave MS a big wake up call. Its now a different company. Windows 10 is leaps better in about every way than 8 (not without its own issues, of course). Disclosure: I am a MS MVP. MS will listen to me in almost every area I care about.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comments like this make it hard to take any side of the discussion seriously. /Neither/ of the OSes are "Escher'esque nightmare[s]." • macOS Finder: http://i.imgur.com/9Y5hK0e.png • Windows Explorer: http://i.imgur.com/ef7CnJ4.png Alright. Maybe not nightmarish, but one of these IS objectively more convoluted than the other. Let's start with something simple: WHY does the "Options" button on the Windows Explorer Ri…

"macOS Finder": you are talking about that software that rename folders when you press the enter key? :p

Can you give a reason why Enter to open a file is ideal, other than just because it's how Windows does it?

The Windows Explorer uses Alt+Enter to show the properties of something, and in games and other apps that shortcut means Full Screen.

Also, why does Alt+F4 quit an app? What does F4 stand for? Compared to Cmd+Q to Quit or Cmd+W to close it's a lot less intuitive.

And so on and so forth.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#235
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're failing to view things from the perspective of the average user? I see the MacOS Finder and see unlabelled icons. My elderly folks are terrible at remembering what various icons do, and what error messages are for, etc. I've trained them to pause and read the words on the toolbar, read the words on the window, etc. as they're generally self-explanatory. So the finder that is more convoluted for a more…

> I've trained them to pause and read the words on the toolbar, read the words on the window, etc. as they're generally self-explanatory. You're a miracle worker. :) Failure to read what's on the screen is one of the biggest reasons why "non computer" people don't get things done with computers.

Sometimes not just "non computer people". The number of times as a computer science TA (for a non-intro class) I had to read people their compiler error messages is staggering.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#236

I used to be hardcore windows guy... Then 10 years ago I got a mac. I never went back.. But what am I saving money for right now? To build a nice PC again. Mostly because of the exact reasons in the article. I have a fondness for apple... but they have definitely lost their way. First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Compute…

I too have become annoyed recently at really basic stuff not working in macOS, like I can't drag and drop a picture out of Photos app into Pixelmator to edit. In fact, dragging and dropping a picture out of Photos into any application is completely broken and doesn't work. Its as-if the Apple QA team no longer tests to make sure their applications play nice with each other in a way that has been fundamental to deskto…

You can't copy and paste an image out of Photos, either. It's really quite ridiculous.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#237

The question I'm left asking from posts like these is: As a non-game developer, what practical advantages does Windows hardware and software provide over Mac? The writing doesn't make it clear to me. Sure, there are some interesting facts noted, but there's no connection drawn or relationship established between the facts and the impact on the author's ability to work, or the work product itself.

Modularity, extensibility and price would be a few advantages.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#238

I used to be hardcore windows guy... Then 10 years ago I got a mac. I never went back.. But what am I saving money for right now? To build a nice PC again. Mostly because of the exact reasons in the article. I have a fondness for apple... but they have definitely lost their way. First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Compute…

"death throes"

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UI remains a convoluted Escher'esque nightmare. Comments like this make it hard to take any side of the discussion seriously. /Neither/ of the OSes are "Escher'esque nightmare[s]." My elderly mother can kludge her way through both of them, more or less reliably - admittedly, with more trouble than using her phone, but not a lot more. Nothing that a tech-illiterate can reasonably use on a day-to-day basis qualif…

> Comments like this make it hard to take any side of the discussion seriously. /Neither/ of the OSes are "Escher'esque nightmare[s]." • macOS Finder: http://i.imgur.com/9Y5hK0e.png • Windows Explorer: http://i.imgur.com/ef7CnJ4.png Alright. Maybe not nightmarish, but one of these IS objectively more convoluted than the other. Let's start with something simple: WHY does the "Options" button on the Windows Explorer Ri…

There's a lot to not like about Windows's UI, but Explorer is worlds better than Finder, there's absolutely no comparison. Every day I still struggle to remember how to go up a level. Option+Up? Nope that selects the next folder up. Control+Up? No, that made all of my windows do something weird that I don't know what that is. Ah, it's Command+Up. As far as I can tell, there's no non-keyboard way to do it. I can't click a button and go up to the parent folder, all I can do is go back, which is confusing if I forget what the previous folder was.

Likewise, "All My Files" sorts based on... what? And which folders does it look in? Because very often I save a file from the Internet and it never shows up in All My Files. And when I search for something when I'm in a directory, I expect the search to be restricted to that directory by default. Instead it defaults to My Mac, which makes no sense. Is there also no way to get the current path as text? On Windows I can type "C:\Users\My Documents" by hand in Explorer. I don't see an option to do that in Finder.

Explorer isn't perfect, but Finder is just awful. Just awful.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#240
post #153
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you're working off of recent, in-depth Windows experience? > I get the slickest hardware, great battery life, the best touchpad and keyboard, and a hi-resolution screen that doesn't have battery life, flicker, tint, or scaling issues. None of these things are universal among Windows machines. I can't remember which model, but a Verge review recently said that a Windows laptop had surpassed the best Mac (…

> None of these things are universal among Windows machines. I can't remember which model, but a Verge review recently said that a Windows laptop had surpassed the best Mac (in terms of hardware quality). Doubtful. Apple does crazy stuff like custom ACPI for Thunderbolt controllers so they can be very efficient. Or having each of the fins on a fan be at a different angle so they have a different pitch and fan noise i…

> It's universally known that display scaling is the forté of macOS, and has been for a long time

I have to interject here. Apple was the first one to have actually working and non-horrible implementation.

But the way they went about it has big performance cost. They can only render 2x versions. So if you use the physical resolution, the one that is "as big" as 1280x800 on 2560x1600 13" rMBP, they render it in 12802x800x2 and everything is fine.

But if you use scaled resolution, say "as big" as 1400x900 on 13" rMBP, they render it in 14402x9002 and rescale it to 25601600, and this gets laggy on bigger resolutions or on older devices or devices without dedicated GPU.

Meanwhile, other operating systems can do non-2x scaling and have no problem with resolutions like that.

(Personally I don't can what Windows can do - I'm not using that if I can help it. I just wanted to note that there's this issue with how Apple decided to do scaling.)

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