[Klug-general] You can't dis apple!

[Karl Lattimer]

> On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 11:50:24AM +0000, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> > 
> > > 1) 1 mouse button
> > Two finger tap
> 
> Cos thats intuative. You really think, Now, how do I write click? Oh, i
> know lets use both fingers.

Firstly, it tells you in the mouse preferences and allows it as an
option. Secondly it also mentions this on your user guide.

THIRDLY.

To write click, you take a pen in your dominant hand, put the pen on
some paper and begin to draw an arc toward the left following through to
the right to create an almost complete circle ... you know where the
rest of this is going.

> 
> > > 2) Track pad rather than nipple
> > Nipples are highly inaccurate and require buttons to facilitate clicks,
> > this is a big RSI no no on a laptop thats why you rarely if ever see
> > nipples any more on laptops.
> 
> Nipples are actually surprisingly accurate IMHO, And yes, you need
> buttons, which is why you have atleast TWO buttons on the laptop.

IN YOUR OPINION! I think the millions of ££s spent by laptop companies
on usability testing mean nothing because your opinion is RIGHT!

You buy a laptop with a nipple, I'll buy a laptop with a touchpad, in
five years I'll still be able to get a laptop with a touchpad. Nipples
will become extinct.

as an aside: why are all laptop input devices named after things which
sound just a little dirty?

> 
> > > 3) to big
> > 
> > 13" is too big, Funny, my laptop is smaller than every other standard
> > size laptop i've seen, with standard size == 15"
> 
> See comment about my 240, 10" x 8" x 1", fits in my handbag. It is very
> light weight and very portable.

Yeah, and? Ultra portables are ultra portables I doubt I'd be able to
type on a machine that small, and I do need to be able to code! Dainty
woman fingers may fit, but I have big fat man hands. The spacing between
the buttons on my mac is really nice and that is that is that.

> 
> > > 4) designed to run MacOS X, which I don't like
> > 
> > No its designed to boot from EFI and run any EFI enabled OS, that
> > currently limits it to Linux and OSX because m$ hasn't cottoned on yet.
> > However bootcamp has a bootloader which emulates BIOS which is nice.
> 
> Yes, but it is designed for OSX, if it was designed for linux, it would
> have atleast a second mouse button.

NO ITS NOT DESIGNED FOR OSX IT IS A COMPUTER!!!! Pretty much an off the
rack machine, just because it has one mouse button doesn't mean its
designed for OSX, ye gods man!!!! Have you seen mighty mouse? It has 9
buttons and a vertical and horizontal scroll ball

> 
> > > 5) built more for eye candy than use IMHO
> > 
> > Yes, it is humble, come back and tell me that after 6 months using apple
> > products
> 
> I couldn't use them for 6 hours without wanting to throw the machine out
> the window.

So you aren't willing to try something different but you use linux? I
think you should really rethink your use of computers, all OS's have
their place and Mac is for users.

> 
> > > 6) White - WHY GOD WHY? Black is much nicer :p
> > Also available in Black
> 
> What, even on the base model? or do you have to pay extra for a choice
> of black?

Actually you can get a base model in black, but you have to modify it to
make a custom machine.

> 
> > > 7) There was a 7th reason then the phone rang and I can't remember what
> > > I was going to write.
> > 
> > Probably because your argument is without any substance?
> 
> Its an argument largely driven by taste, there is no substance. This
> debate will rage for abit, then we all agree its all about taste, agree
> to disagreee, and meet for a pint in a pub somewhere. Happens on most
> LUG lists from time to time.

I think making that comment is suggesting that you haven't had any real
work time on apple machines you can't really argue against them until
you have.

> > > 8) Saying anything against a mac makes my housemate squirm.
> > Brilliant reason.
> 
> Oh, it is. :p
> 
> > Have you used beryl? It is incredible productivity improving usable eye
> > candy. Eye candy is not useless, it is incredibly important to the
> > future of the desktop.
> 
> What, prey tell, is beryl?

Google? 

Beryl == compiz + evolution

> 
> Now, explain to me how the eye candy helps the desktop experience? I
> find that wasting 20 pixels on a title bar, is a waste of 20 pixels I
> could use to get an extra 2 rows on my xterm. I find not having a menu
> bar at the top constantly means I can overlay one window over another,
> and use the one on the bottom without screwing things up (the joy of
> focus follows mouse). 

Expose, places windows so i can see all of them, when I do things, I SEE
what they do, the visual keys speed up working. If I have documents open
and i flick my mouse to the top left (fitts' law) it spreads them out.
Each piece of eye candy helps in its own way. You have to use it to
understand what that is. Compositing (which enables eye candy) also
makes redraws faster via XDamage or OpenGL depending on your compositor.

And finding a menu at the top of the window it
> relates to is much much more intuative. 

FITTS' LAW!!!! READ IT SERIOUSLY!! YOU SEEM TO KNOW F ALL ABOUT
USABILITY AND YOU'RE COMPLAINING ABOUT APPLE... THIS IS LAUGHABLE!


> > Auto hide? Which DOESN'T screw up like windows autohide startbar or
> > autohide panel in gnome.
> 
> Auto hide. Why is this not the default then?

So people can SEE the dock when they first log in.

> "What people mean when they say "Legacy Applications" is "Stuff That
> Works."
>         -- David Chappell in an open lecture at UKC on MS .NET"

Fair comment regarding .net ;P

> Yes it may seem medieval. BUT, vi works on my phone, my laptop, my
> desktop, my router, my cluster in london, my machine in slovakia, my
> footrest, my machine in ireland, my machine in the US, my machine in
> amsterdam, my sun box in the lounge, my switch, my door stop. IT WORKS.
> That cannot be said for these modern apps. 

I didn't slate VI i use it, over ssh to servers and locally as root. Vi
is good and yes it does work very well, however it doesn't do code
completion and related errata, every tool is different for every job.

I see where you're coming from but you don't know enough to argue your
points so just say, YOU don't like apple and be done with it, you can't
criticise them until you understand them. Or develop your own OS from
the ground up which is better than theirs. Good luck!

> 
> Once you break out of the mantra of one, you find that alot of the old
> stuff from the bad ole days of unix make amazing levels of sense.

Yes I know, I've been using Linux and other unix flavours for the last
10 years easily. I know the advantages and disadvantages of pretty much
every way of doing something. 

> > > Anyway, this is going off topic. Back to how great IBM laptops are :p
> > 
> > Slate and run... Very good.
> 
> Oh, I am happy to continue, I just don't want to annoy people by going
> totally off topic on the first thread I have contributed too.

I'll summarise to say that people are switching to macs by the millions
these days, they're definitely doing something very right. I can see
what that is you don't seem to, because you use your machine in a
different way to the majority of people doesn't mean that your method of
working is right, its just your way. OSX is still unix under the hood,
and you can build and run X11 in the same way, the thing about OSX is
that they did 4 years of solid usability testing before they released
it. That coupled with the previous ongoing usability testing meant that
they had the best OS when OSX came to market and its just got better and
better and is still better than Linux in so many ways. Doesn't have all
the power of Linux, but most of it is there.

One last thing, if you're worried about loosing 20px, then you're really
anal. And from someone who is quite anal himself that is really saying
something.

K,