Comments on: Why Buy A Mac Instead Of Windows? http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html I've been observing personal computing behavior for a long time, and now I have some things to say. Here are my two cents about computing, music, software, and related topics. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:15:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1.3 by: Sarah Camp » Blog Archive » For all of you “Non-Believers” http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-1543 Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:20:30 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-1543 [...] I haven’t always been a mac user, I have owned PC’s in the past, and I also own one now to run tests on, and for my husband to use.  So I have plenty of experience with PC’s, and although I didn’t care too much before going mac, now that I have used one it is very difficult to go back. There are so many positives to owning a mac that most people wouldn’t understand until they actually use one themselves. Although I try to do my part to recommend macs to computer purchasers, there is only so much that I can do.  Here are some resources for anyone interested: Why buy Mac instead of Windows [...] […] I haven’t always been a mac user, I have owned PC’s in the past, and I also own one now to run tests on, and for my husband to use.  So I have plenty of experience with PC’s, and although I didn’t care too much before going mac, now that I have used one it is very difficult to go back. There are so many positives to owning a mac that most people wouldn’t understand until they actually use one themselves. Although I try to do my part to recommend macs to computer purchasers, there is only so much that I can do.  Here are some resources for anyone interested: Why buy Mac instead of Windows […]

]]> by: Saint Fnordius http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-621 Fri, 02 Jun 2006 10:51:47 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-621 As a user of Win2000 at work and Mac OS X at home, I find Peter's remarks a little smug. Wrong, but smug. Start at the bottom: he claims that power users only use the Mouse, ignoring that it is much faster to use a keyboard shortcut if your hands are already on the keys. It may only be a matter of seconds, but those seconds add up. Keyboard shortcuts are also less flashy than navigating a menu with a mouse. I think Apple's Human Interface Guidelines are actually one of the best from a productivity standopoint. I also use a lot of the keyboard shortcuts from inside Photoshop and Illustrator, two mouse-intesive programs. It's easier for me to leave the mouse where it is and hit Command-Shift-I to invert my selection than to try a context menu or even navigate to the menu bar. Thankfully Adobe keeps the keyboard shortcuts the same on both Mac and Windows versions, so it's only in the file dialogs for opening and saving that I have to use the mouse more than I would like. Even his incocation of Fitt's Law reveals a flaw in Microsoft's "the window is the application" philosophy: when you expand the window (and make cross-app drag-and-drop a chore), you still have to whack the top of the screen, then go back down to the menu without overshooting. Once again, the two seconds more involved get added to the balance sheet. Again, and again and again. Peter also complains about Apple's FairPlay being the only other DRM available as an alternative to WMA. For some reason it seems Real's solution is already dead in the water. Never mind that the only reason nobody else has created a DRM solution is due to pressure from Microsoft. Nor how JScript was supposed to kill JavaScript, or how Microsoft crippled Java on the Windows platform, or any number of other cases where Microsoft "enhanced" in such a way that you can either go web-standards compliant or make workarounds to accomodate Microsoft quirks. Peter also slams Apple for developing Font Book to replace Suitcase. I actually welcomed Apple's development, as I had never liked Suitcase. In System7-Mac OS 9 days, I used ATM Deluxe instead, as it was more reliable. Suitcase on Mac OS X was overpriced for my needs and felt like a badly ported Classic app. Some still use Suitcase, by the way, as it does provide more features than Font Book. Same thing for Konfabulator: with their implemetation of the original (pre-multitasking) desktop apps, they awoke Apple developers to a need that is better met from the OS itself. Theoretically, you could also get upset with Apple for making Safari and Web Kit, and thus competing with IE/Mac, Mozilla and OmniWeb. Microsoft bowed out, and why buy OmniWeb when Safari is good enough? But here's the rub: Apple builds hardware, and their primary interest is to provide software that makes the machine usable as soon as you unpack it. Their direct competitors aren't Microsoft, but Dell, HP, Sony and all the other desktop manufacturers. Heck, since this article was written a year ago Apple has released BootCamp, so you can even run Windows XP on a Mac! But one thing I will grant you: Steve Jobs really isn't interested in companies that aren't doing neat stuff. It's why he bought Pixar, why he created NeXT, and why he came back to Apple. Bill Gates played Monopoly, where money was the goal, but Jobs is playing a different game altogether, where the objective is to be cool and innovative. Money is something to be used, not a measurement of success. As a user of Win2000 at work and Mac OS X at home, I find Peter’s remarks a little smug. Wrong, but smug.

Start at the bottom: he claims that power users only use the Mouse, ignoring that it is much faster to use a keyboard shortcut if your hands are already on the keys. It may only be a matter of seconds, but those seconds add up. Keyboard shortcuts are also less flashy than navigating a menu with a mouse. I think Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines are actually one of the best from a productivity standopoint.

I also use a lot of the keyboard shortcuts from inside Photoshop and Illustrator, two mouse-intesive programs. It’s easier for me to leave the mouse where it is and hit Command-Shift-I to invert my selection than to try a context menu or even navigate to the menu bar. Thankfully Adobe keeps the keyboard shortcuts the same on both Mac and Windows versions, so it’s only in the file dialogs for opening and saving that I have to use the mouse more than I would like.

Even his incocation of Fitt’s Law reveals a flaw in Microsoft’s “the window is the application” philosophy: when you expand the window (and make cross-app drag-and-drop a chore), you still have to whack the top of the screen, then go back down to the menu without overshooting. Once again, the two seconds more involved get added to the balance sheet. Again, and again and again.

Peter also complains about Apple’s FairPlay being the only other DRM available as an alternative to WMA. For some reason it seems Real’s solution is already dead in the water. Never mind that the only reason nobody else has created a DRM solution is due to pressure from Microsoft. Nor how JScript was supposed to kill JavaScript, or how Microsoft crippled Java on the Windows platform, or any number of other cases where Microsoft “enhanced” in such a way that you can either go web-standards compliant or make workarounds to accomodate Microsoft quirks.

Peter also slams Apple for developing Font Book to replace Suitcase. I actually welcomed Apple’s development, as I had never liked Suitcase. In System7-Mac OS 9 days, I used ATM Deluxe instead, as it was more reliable. Suitcase on Mac OS X was overpriced for my needs and felt like a badly ported Classic app. Some still use Suitcase, by the way, as it does provide more features than Font Book.

Same thing for Konfabulator: with their implemetation of the original (pre-multitasking) desktop apps, they awoke Apple developers to a need that is better met from the OS itself.

Theoretically, you could also get upset with Apple for making Safari and Web Kit, and thus competing with IE/Mac, Mozilla and OmniWeb. Microsoft bowed out, and why buy OmniWeb when Safari is good enough?

But here’s the rub: Apple builds hardware, and their primary interest is to provide software that makes the machine usable as soon as you unpack it. Their direct competitors aren’t Microsoft, but Dell, HP, Sony and all the other desktop manufacturers. Heck, since this article was written a year ago Apple has released BootCamp, so you can even run Windows XP on a Mac!

But one thing I will grant you: Steve Jobs really isn’t interested in companies that aren’t doing neat stuff. It’s why he bought Pixar, why he created NeXT, and why he came back to Apple. Bill Gates played Monopoly, where money was the goal, but Jobs is playing a different game altogether, where the objective is to be cool and innovative. Money is something to be used, not a measurement of success.

]]> by: Peter http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-115 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-115 Actually, Leland, I looked most of them up on Wikipedia (the rumors are things I've heard over the years, read in various books, etc.)<BR/><BR/>Where I get a bit crabby is when you say that "Apple did this" and "Apple did that." Again, it was the folks at Aldus who gave us desktop publishing--not Apple. They did PageMaker--not Apple. Did NeXT come up with the world-wide web because the first web browser was written for the NeXT? Did Microsoft come up with VoIP because the first implementations were done on Windows?<BR/><BR/>There are plenty of <I>good</I> examples you could have used. How about ADB? 10 years ahead of USB.<BR/><BR/>But I figured I'd come back because I wanted to complain about a few other things in the article.<BR/><BR/>One of the complaints you have with Microsoft is that they want to control the computing standards and you use music as example.<BR/><BR/>Consider what Microsoft has done. Microsoft has created an encrypted audio format. Where is the competing format which is available for anyone to use? Nowhere. So Microsoft has developed something new, something that did not exist before. Actually, that sounds kind of innovative. And they're licensing it, so that other people can use it. Dare I say it, anyone can now open an on-line music store and provide copy-protection for the music they sell--a "necessary evil" as iTunes users like to say.<BR/><BR/>Remember that Microsoft is a software company. All they sell are "formats" and software to write those formats. With a few exceptions, Microsoft does not produce hardware. Their job is to create software--and, by extension, formats--which will allow other people to do things they couldn't do before.<BR/><BR/>If I want to sell music with copy-protection, what can Apple do for me? Well, I can sell it through Apple's store. But what if I want to run my own store and sell directly? Suppose I'm a musician and want to sell my music on-line and I want to have copy-protection for my songs? Apple has nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkus. Niente.<BR/><BR/>Sorry if I'm rambling in my rant, but I get a bit fed up with the whole "Microsoft is evil, Apple is good" argument. I've been using Macs since 1984 and I've been developing software on Macs since 1989. Frankly, as a developer, I'm far more impressed with Microsoft's stance in the music world ("We'll develop the codec, you guys do everything else.") than Apple's stance ("We'll develop the codec, the software to play the music, the portable player, the store, and anything else we want. You guys can make iPod sleeves. Oops! We're going to do that, too." Okay, that's an iPod Socks joke...)<BR/><BR/>Fun example: At last years developer conference, Apple showed off a cool new box called Airport Express. It allows you to play music through your stereo via wireless networking. Wow! But suppose I have a media player other than Apple's. Can I use this? Nope. Only available to iTunes. All data is encrypted as it travels to the Airport Express and Apple won't tell anybody the encryption key--though some have hacked it. But I'm sure that Apple will change the key at some point and hose them all. My, that's playing nice with others.<BR/><BR/>As an aside, I do understand some of Apple's rationale. Most software companies develop software for Windows. Some software companies develop for the Mac. But the Mac, for the most part, ends up as a second class citizen. At the very least, you end up with a least-common-denominator situation of software that is identically boring for both platforms ("Support speech commands? But you can't do that on Windows. We'll wait until Windows has it and then we can do it for both.") To really show off how a Mac is different/better than Windows, you need to have companies doing cool software.<BR/><BR/>Unfortunately, Steve Jobs likes big companies who aren't doing anything interesting. Remember the 1984 Mac ads? They had testimonials from all the big names in the IBM world: Ashton-Tate (dBase), Lotus, Software Publishing Corp. (the PFS series), and Microsoft pledging their allegiance to Apple and Macintosh and all of them were excited about developing groundbreaking new applications. What happened? Ashton-Tate shipped dBase Mac about ten years later, SPC did a half-hearted attempt at PFS:File, Lotus actually made a good shot with Jazz (except that it was too big for most Macs at the time) and Lotus 1-2-3/G. Only Microsoft really took the Mac seriously. Actually, I use this as an example for companies thinking of developing Mac software--if you look at the biggest names in the software business, they all do Mac development.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, so Apple's solution is to do it themselves. This way, they can show off the really cool stuff. Of course, that makes it harder to convince third-party developers to do Mac software because Apple might decide they can do it better than you and will come in and do it. Ask Powerschool's competitors how interested they are in developing Mac software. Ask the guys at Watson and Konfabulator. Heck, ask Extensis how their sales of Suitcase are doing since Apple developed Font Book.<BR/><BR/>Next, I have to say that I agree and disagree with you in regards to the menu bar. The menu bar is definitely an Apple innovation (Xerox machines used two button mice to bring up a list of options, if I remember correctly). But besides the whole cluttered look of Windows, you have to look at the functionality of the menu bar to really appreciate it and to understand one of the many reasons why Windows just doesn't work.<BR/><BR/>In UI design, you have something called Fitt's Law. It essentially states that small things are easy to hit when they are close to the mouse. As an object moves away from the mouse, it needs to become larger in order to remain easy to hit. The menu bar is easy to hit because it is infinitely high--you only need to get the left and right coordinate correct. Conversely, in Windows, the menu bar is under the drag bar for the window. Thus, to access a menu, you either have to get the spot exactly, which is not easy, or do what most Windows users do: Maximize the window, move the mouse to the top of the screen and then back down to the menu. Watch Windows users do this--it's pretty entertaining.<BR/><BR/>In fact, this is why Windows pretty much requires a two-button mouse. Because the menu bar is so difficult to access, Microsoft had to come up with another way to do this. And, thus, the contextual menu was born.<BR/><BR/>Finally, you state that "It may seem odd to your average Windows user who's never driven a Mac to learn that Macintosh power users don't use a mouse much at all... as little as possible, in fact." As a long time Mac user, I use the mouse extensively and rarely use the keyboard except for coding. If you want to start up a massive flame war, though, I recommend you start by reading <A HREF="http://asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html" REL="nofollow">this</A>, written by a former Apple UI Evangelist. Personally, I think this also relates to the one-button versus two-button mouse, but I've yet to spend the money to do this research.<BR/><BR/>In the mouse versus keyboard war, I always think back to a DOS/Windows developer I worked with. His mouse was continually buried under papers, snack food/cocaine bags (looong story), or was pushed out of the way and had probably fallen to the floor. If he had to use the mouse, he'd sigh, scrape away some space on his desk, put the mouse down someplace, and awkwardly point and click. He'd then complain bitterly about how he had to use the mouse to do something and there really should be a way to do it with the keyboard because the keyboard is faster. Of course, the reason the mouse was slower for him was that he never used it, so using it was a chore.<BR/><BR/>I would say that power-users use the mouse. Power-user-wanna-bees use the keyboard because all the clicking of the keyboard and popping up pictures and all looks so cool. But, then, if I said that, I'd probably end up starting a flame-war on your board... :^) Actually, Leland, I looked most of them up on Wikipedia (the rumors are things I’ve heard over the years, read in various books, etc.)

Where I get a bit crabby is when you say that “Apple did this” and “Apple did that.” Again, it was the folks at Aldus who gave us desktop publishing–not Apple. They did PageMaker–not Apple. Did NeXT come up with the world-wide web because the first web browser was written for the NeXT? Did Microsoft come up with VoIP because the first implementations were done on Windows?

There are plenty of good examples you could have used. How about ADB? 10 years ahead of USB.

But I figured I’d come back because I wanted to complain about a few other things in the article.

One of the complaints you have with Microsoft is that they want to control the computing standards and you use music as example.

Consider what Microsoft has done. Microsoft has created an encrypted audio format. Where is the competing format which is available for anyone to use? Nowhere. So Microsoft has developed something new, something that did not exist before. Actually, that sounds kind of innovative. And they’re licensing it, so that other people can use it. Dare I say it, anyone can now open an on-line music store and provide copy-protection for the music they sell–a “necessary evil” as iTunes users like to say.

Remember that Microsoft is a software company. All they sell are “formats” and software to write those formats. With a few exceptions, Microsoft does not produce hardware. Their job is to create software–and, by extension, formats–which will allow other people to do things they couldn’t do before.

If I want to sell music with copy-protection, what can Apple do for me? Well, I can sell it through Apple’s store. But what if I want to run my own store and sell directly? Suppose I’m a musician and want to sell my music on-line and I want to have copy-protection for my songs? Apple has nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkus. Niente.

Sorry if I’m rambling in my rant, but I get a bit fed up with the whole “Microsoft is evil, Apple is good” argument. I’ve been using Macs since 1984 and I’ve been developing software on Macs since 1989. Frankly, as a developer, I’m far more impressed with Microsoft’s stance in the music world (”We’ll develop the codec, you guys do everything else.”) than Apple’s stance (”We’ll develop the codec, the software to play the music, the portable player, the store, and anything else we want. You guys can make iPod sleeves. Oops! We’re going to do that, too.” Okay, that’s an iPod Socks joke…)

Fun example: At last years developer conference, Apple showed off a cool new box called Airport Express. It allows you to play music through your stereo via wireless networking. Wow! But suppose I have a media player other than Apple’s. Can I use this? Nope. Only available to iTunes. All data is encrypted as it travels to the Airport Express and Apple won’t tell anybody the encryption key–though some have hacked it. But I’m sure that Apple will change the key at some point and hose them all. My, that’s playing nice with others.

As an aside, I do understand some of Apple’s rationale. Most software companies develop software for Windows. Some software companies develop for the Mac. But the Mac, for the most part, ends up as a second class citizen. At the very least, you end up with a least-common-denominator situation of software that is identically boring for both platforms (”Support speech commands? But you can’t do that on Windows. We’ll wait until Windows has it and then we can do it for both.”) To really show off how a Mac is different/better than Windows, you need to have companies doing cool software.

Unfortunately, Steve Jobs likes big companies who aren’t doing anything interesting. Remember the 1984 Mac ads? They had testimonials from all the big names in the IBM world: Ashton-Tate (dBase), Lotus, Software Publishing Corp. (the PFS series), and Microsoft pledging their allegiance to Apple and Macintosh and all of them were excited about developing groundbreaking new applications. What happened? Ashton-Tate shipped dBase Mac about ten years later, SPC did a half-hearted attempt at PFS:File, Lotus actually made a good shot with Jazz (except that it was too big for most Macs at the time) and Lotus 1-2-3/G. Only Microsoft really took the Mac seriously. Actually, I use this as an example for companies thinking of developing Mac software–if you look at the biggest names in the software business, they all do Mac development.

Anyway, so Apple’s solution is to do it themselves. This way, they can show off the really cool stuff. Of course, that makes it harder to convince third-party developers to do Mac software because Apple might decide they can do it better than you and will come in and do it. Ask Powerschool’s competitors how interested they are in developing Mac software. Ask the guys at Watson and Konfabulator. Heck, ask Extensis how their sales of Suitcase are doing since Apple developed Font Book.

Next, I have to say that I agree and disagree with you in regards to the menu bar. The menu bar is definitely an Apple innovation (Xerox machines used two button mice to bring up a list of options, if I remember correctly). But besides the whole cluttered look of Windows, you have to look at the functionality of the menu bar to really appreciate it and to understand one of the many reasons why Windows just doesn’t work.

In UI design, you have something called Fitt’s Law. It essentially states that small things are easy to hit when they are close to the mouse. As an object moves away from the mouse, it needs to become larger in order to remain easy to hit. The menu bar is easy to hit because it is infinitely high–you only need to get the left and right coordinate correct. Conversely, in Windows, the menu bar is under the drag bar for the window. Thus, to access a menu, you either have to get the spot exactly, which is not easy, or do what most Windows users do: Maximize the window, move the mouse to the top of the screen and then back down to the menu. Watch Windows users do this–it’s pretty entertaining.

In fact, this is why Windows pretty much requires a two-button mouse. Because the menu bar is so difficult to access, Microsoft had to come up with another way to do this. And, thus, the contextual menu was born.

Finally, you state that “It may seem odd to your average Windows user who’s never driven a Mac to learn that Macintosh power users don’t use a mouse much at all… as little as possible, in fact.” As a long time Mac user, I use the mouse extensively and rarely use the keyboard except for coding. If you want to start up a massive flame war, though, I recommend you start by reading this, written by a former Apple UI Evangelist. Personally, I think this also relates to the one-button versus two-button mouse, but I’ve yet to spend the money to do this research.

In the mouse versus keyboard war, I always think back to a DOS/Windows developer I worked with. His mouse was continually buried under papers, snack food/cocaine bags (looong story), or was pushed out of the way and had probably fallen to the floor. If he had to use the mouse, he’d sigh, scrape away some space on his desk, put the mouse down someplace, and awkwardly point and click. He’d then complain bitterly about how he had to use the mouse to do something and there really should be a way to do it with the keyboard because the keyboard is faster. Of course, the reason the mouse was slower for him was that he never used it, so using it was a chore.

I would say that power-users use the mouse. Power-user-wanna-bees use the keyboard because all the clicking of the keyboard and popping up pictures and all looks so cool. But, then, if I said that, I’d probably end up starting a flame-war on your board… :^)

]]> by: Leland Scott http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-114 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-114 Oh dear... It looks like Peter, while not drinking kool-aid, doesn't read very well.<BR/><BR/>I included the following prominently in the article for the very reason that there's always some guy who comes along and tries to diminish Apple's accomplishments by pointing out that Apple didn't really invent any of these things:<BR/><BR/>"Before that guy in the back of the room gets his back up and starts shouting, let me remind everyone that nobody ever argued that all of these ideas were Apple's. But I do argue that Apple's engineers had the vision to actually put the ideas together into a user interface that advanced the technology. Apple showed the world how it could be done, and they contributed unique ideas as they adapted ones that had not been fully fleshed out in earlier non-commercial products."<BR/><BR/>Peter, next time try reading the whole article before you start reacting. Also, if you read the article, you'll notice that the list you try to take issue with is from Wikipedia.com. The nice thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. So if you'd like to do that, by all means run on over there and give them a piece of your mind.<BR/><BR/>Geez... Oh dear… It looks like Peter, while not drinking kool-aid, doesn’t read very well.

I included the following prominently in the article for the very reason that there’s always some guy who comes along and tries to diminish Apple’s accomplishments by pointing out that Apple didn’t really invent any of these things:

“Before that guy in the back of the room gets his back up and starts shouting, let me remind everyone that nobody ever argued that all of these ideas were Apple’s. But I do argue that Apple’s engineers had the vision to actually put the ideas together into a user interface that advanced the technology. Apple showed the world how it could be done, and they contributed unique ideas as they adapted ones that had not been fully fleshed out in earlier non-commercial products.”

Peter, next time try reading the whole article before you start reacting. Also, if you read the article, you’ll notice that the list you try to take issue with is from Wikipedia.com. The nice thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. So if you’d like to do that, by all means run on over there and give them a piece of your mind.

Geez…

]]> by: Peter http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-113 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-113 Somebody really drank the kool-aid.<BR/><BR/>First, you have the "old Apple" (pre-Jobs) and the Apple of today (post-Jobs). Have you noticed on your list of Apple "accomplishments" that most of them are things that happened while Steve Jobs was not at Apple and, according to rumor, are things that he didn't approve of while there. You're also taking some liberties with third-party applications.<BR/><BR/>The Postscript language was developed, if I remember correctly, by Adobe. It competed with PCL, developed by HP. Apple popularized Postscript with it's LaserWriter. According to rumor, Steve hated the LaserWriter when it was first brought up ("Who's going to pay $6000 for a printer?").<BR/><BR/>One of the first "desktop publishing" programs was from Aldus (later purchased by Adobe), not Apple.<BR/><BR/>SCSI was developed by NCR and Shugart Associates, not Apple. In fact, according to rumor, Steve hates SCSI.<BR/><BR/>Audio I/O occurred after Steve Jobs left, as did the CD-ROM drive, FireWire, and the PowerBook. Thank John Sculley for those.<BR/><BR/>In regards to the UI stuff, again, color labels have been around since System 6 or 7, I believe. Spring-loaded folders showed up in Mac OS 8, which I believe was under Gil Amelio.<BR/><BR/>Now if you look at what's left, mostly it's best-of-breed implementations of existing standards. AirPort is 802.11b. USB is from Intel. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. After all, why should Apple come up with ADB 2.0 when Intel already has done it? (Yes, you left ADB off your list of accomplishments) Apple doesn't have the market clout to push their own standards, so it's better to make USB Joysticks work with Macs than to try convince Joystick makers to make an ADB version. This is one good thing in the "new Apple."<BR/><BR/>I'll try later to point out some other issues I have with what you wrote later... Somebody really drank the kool-aid.

First, you have the “old Apple” (pre-Jobs) and the Apple of today (post-Jobs). Have you noticed on your list of Apple “accomplishments” that most of them are things that happened while Steve Jobs was not at Apple and, according to rumor, are things that he didn’t approve of while there. You’re also taking some liberties with third-party applications.

The Postscript language was developed, if I remember correctly, by Adobe. It competed with PCL, developed by HP. Apple popularized Postscript with it’s LaserWriter. According to rumor, Steve hated the LaserWriter when it was first brought up (”Who’s going to pay $6000 for a printer?”).

One of the first “desktop publishing” programs was from Aldus (later purchased by Adobe), not Apple.

SCSI was developed by NCR and Shugart Associates, not Apple. In fact, according to rumor, Steve hates SCSI.

Audio I/O occurred after Steve Jobs left, as did the CD-ROM drive, FireWire, and the PowerBook. Thank John Sculley for those.

In regards to the UI stuff, again, color labels have been around since System 6 or 7, I believe. Spring-loaded folders showed up in Mac OS 8, which I believe was under Gil Amelio.

Now if you look at what’s left, mostly it’s best-of-breed implementations of existing standards. AirPort is 802.11b. USB is from Intel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. After all, why should Apple come up with ADB 2.0 when Intel already has done it? (Yes, you left ADB off your list of accomplishments) Apple doesn’t have the market clout to push their own standards, so it’s better to make USB Joysticks work with Macs than to try convince Joystick makers to make an ADB version. This is one good thing in the “new Apple.”

I’ll try later to point out some other issues I have with what you wrote later…

]]> by: Anonymous http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-112 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-112 Actually I could command tab in system 8. Actually I could command tab in system 8.

]]> by: Anonymous http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-111 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-111 I love the whole Mac fans are Red Sox fans angle (or I suppose Cubs fans if you have to.) Basically, if you gave up on the Red Sox for the Yankees or some other team, you missed out on something great. If you left the Mac because you believed that it was doomed, you missed out on something great as well. Now the Red Sox are the world champions in baseball and Microsoft, like the Yankees are afraid of their old rivals again.<BR/><BR/>:)<BR/><BR/>(Sorry to any Yankees fan who are also Mac fans, draw your own analogy) I love the whole Mac fans are Red Sox fans angle (or I suppose Cubs fans if you have to.) Basically, if you gave up on the Red Sox for the Yankees or some other team, you missed out on something great. If you left the Mac because you believed that it was doomed, you missed out on something great as well. Now the Red Sox are the world champions in baseball and Microsoft, like the Yankees are afraid of their old rivals again.

:)

(Sorry to any Yankees fan who are also Mac fans, draw your own analogy)

]]> by: Les Posen http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-110 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 15:59:59 +0000 http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2005/05/why-buy-mac-instead-of-windows.html#comment-110 Well written article - congrats! One that summarises much of what fellow Apple boosters often try to articulate to those who ask why we persist with Apple over Windows and just don't get an emotional connection to technology.<BR/><BR/>"I use Windows professionally because I have to; I use Apple when I can because I want to."<BR/><BR/>Your article helps others yet to actually get their hands on a current Mac understand the empirical evidence underpinning the above statement. Well written article - congrats! One that summarises much of what fellow Apple boosters often try to articulate to those who ask why we persist with Apple over Windows and just don’t get an emotional connection to technology.

“I use Windows professionally because I have to; I use Apple when I can because I want to.”

Your article helps others yet to actually get their hands on a current Mac understand the empirical evidence underpinning the above statement.

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