Mmm … well, I think you’ve got a bit lost in the tecchy stuff there. It’s really a conversation as to why Keith programs for the Mac, and I don’t. End users don’t really need to know about garbage collection on either platform. But it makes as programmer’s life a damn sight easier …
O, I do not think that I got lost, and I know quite well what a garbage collection is btw. Rather than lost I felt upset by the tone of the post.
Never mind, it is late in the evening here…
Maria
Yes, I can’t say I’m a big fan of the new look.
Really? There was something wrong with the tone?
Oh …
I thought I’d been quite civil.
Ahhh the classic question:
Is it a spirited verbal tennis match or vitriol. 
Evryone relax, we’re still at the tennis match.
My 2 cents worth anyway,
Iain
People used to say, “There are two things you should never talk about - politics and religion.”
I think that’s going to have to be changed to “politics, religion, and operating systems.”
I think the tone has been very constructive.
For me, I just wouldn’t want to write on a Windows machine, so creating Scrivener in Windows doesn’t appeal for that reason, too. And I do really enjoy programming on a Mac - much more than my dabbling on Windows - so, whilst that is subjective and myself and Rayz differ on this, it is still real (for me).
And to stick up for Apple a little: their Cocoa developer lists are superb. Apple engineers regularly answer questions. I cannot count the number of times Douglas Davidson, one of the chief engineers of Apple’s text system, has replied to my dev-list enquiries and given me invaluable help in getting to grips with the Apple text system.
The Mac development community are very friendly, too. I have shared code with Jesse Grosjean, developer of WriteRoom and Mori, Todd Ransom, developer of Montage and Avenir, and Jer, creator of Jer’s Novel Writer. Martin at Nisus has given me help with more of the intricacies of the text system, and told me how to get around an RTF problem that caused crashes in Nisus. jda, BookEnds developer, is helping me add slightly improved support for BookEnds. And Christian at Devon-Technologies has helped me ensure drag-and-droppability between Scrivener and DT. And that’s all just a drop in the ocean. By contrast, the Windows development forums I used to frequent were a little harsher (although they also had their fair share of helpful folk). There is also the problem that because so many people develop for Windows and frequent the forums, when you are starting out it is harder to get help simply because of the sheer amount of traffic. Not that any of this has much to do with the operating system itself, but it does impact your impression as a developer.
Best,
Keith
You’re so right, Khadrelt! Someone should do a research study on why we get
so attached to our systems. Obviously, we’re all influenced by the basic human
tendency to like what we’re familiar with and suspect what is alien. But somehow
with operating systems, there seems to be more going on. You don’t see shoppers
fighting in the aisles of supermarkets over which potato chips are better. You
don’t see people screaming at each other about their favorite airlines (not that
there’s been any screaming going on here; we’ve been quite civilized), but for
some reason, people get pretty emotional about their OSes (I’m certainly not
immune!).
Anyway, gotta go. I’m in the middle of an argument with my neighbor
about the best way to get downtown. I’m right.
Tim
Actually, I get pretty emotional about my crisps (that’s Brit for “potato chips” 
). In the UK, Walkers win hands down. McCoy’s do a good thicker-set crinkle cut, but Walkers ready salted are a classic. But pitched against Lay’s, it’s a tough call. Are Lay’s better, or is it just that they are a treat when I’m in the US or Canada? I don’t know. The Norwegian crisps I tasted recently that had olive oil instead of vegetable oil were pretty damned good, but I think they’d get sickly after a while. Hmm. Walker’s wins, I think. The best pack I ever had was on a boat in June '84, Best Before date September '84. Now, if anyone wants to tell me that KP make better crisps, I’ll 'ave 'em.
Best,
Keith
Pringles.
Oh, wait, were we talking about Macs and PCs??? OK, just to get back on topic:
I remembered another reason I much prefer the MacOS. A lot of people disagree with me on this, but I absolutely can’t stand how Windows has a menu bar in each and every window. I like the main menu bar up at the top of the screen.
I also dislike how Windows apps block out everything beneath them.
I also heavily dislike the name ‘Recycle Bin.’ 
Not that I’m nitpicking or anything…
However, one thing I do like about XP is how you can easily set a folder to display a picture it contains on it in Thumbnails view.
It is rather extraordinary how people get attached to a tool and how the tool works.
I’ve been a looooong time PC user. I’ve still got one. It’s called “Ted” (short for sh*t head). I hate Ted with a loathing I keep just for him. There are a few tasks that can only be performed on Ted (using the work network from home and a few other web related minor things) so he stays, even though we’re barely speaking these days. Ted’s top of the line specs, XP pro, firewalled and virus & spyware protected and he runs like a shot dog. I use PCs exclusively at work too. Thankfully, my work PC is marginally better than Ted, though it has to be rebooted a couple of times a day. I’m only a web developer, honest I don’t do anything that should break them.
A few years ago, when Ted’s forerunner gave me just one blue screen of death too many, I went out and bought an iMac in a fit of pique without knowing anything about them. Never even used one. I had many wonderful hours trying to figure out how the heck it worked (PC users never read manuals, it’s sort of a rule).
Now, my fave feature is that I can’t upgrade it myself. It’s wonderful. I’ve never spent a weekend “working” on my macs (I’ve also got an iBook, which I adore with a rather disturbing passion), not that I’ve had to, of course, but I love that it’s not an option.
Ted is due for a decoke & valve grind (every few months) and just thinking about it almost makes me cry.
I’m sure I had a point, but I’ve lost it. Anyway, nowadays, I much prefer the mac. I just can’t be bothered with my PC anymore. I guess I could turn it into a Linux box but it’s just such a lot of effort…and I’m at a time of my like when I’m old, I’m grumpy and I just want the darned thing to work without having to nurse it for hours (or days).
For me, that hits the nail on the head. Geographers and sociologists have known for a long while that villages are friendlier and more functional than cities. For quality of lifestyle, low-pop beats high-pop every time. That’s why Portland is a nicer city than Seattle, though personally I prefer Corvallis. [ducks latte-slinging Portlanders] I prefer Mac as a platform because it has a small market share, is not the backbone of business, and uses the GUI to reach folks with some right brain to spare. I like the greater success Apple has achieved in recent years, but I dread the day that it gets too big and rich. Staying small means greater flexibility, innovation, and support for independent developers.
I’ve heard this sentiment many times about Macs.
Never heard it about a PC. PC users say, “It’s a box. Nice keyboard, good price, etc.”
I’m inhouse IT for for a dozen PC’s, mostly XP, some lower. Different manufacturers, different monitors, different RAM sizes. The users range from pretty competent to pretty clueless about how the machines work. They all just want the software to run as they go about their tasks.
And not a week goes by that one of these machines doesn’t do something inexplicable; Word is now trashing a document loaded into it, someone can’t get into a part of the network they got into just yesterday, Internet access is mysteriously slow. I say it so often I should just have a button made & point to it, “Let’s reboot & see what happens.”
A lot of the time, that fixes it. The rest of the time, I go into the operating system and fix whatever mysteriously got trashed. And the person always asks me, “Why does it doooooo that?”
And all I can do is shrug and say, “It’s Windows.”
Why don’t they just reboot themselves? A lot of the time they do. But there’s a reluctance to lose what is now in limbo, there’s a reluctance to interrupt a busy day to take the computer down and back up again, and most of all they resent the fact that they have to do it at all.
As I do. My own theory stems from the days of split memory juggling and the tedious procedure of RAM and peripherals in PCs from the days before Microsoft bannered Plug N Play. I’m sure it’s better now. But it’s just this: Microsoft software, and stuff that runs on it, has an interior problem where the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. A lot of the time it issues contradictory instructions, and the system whacks out.
Some of this is inevitable; MS has to deal with who knows how many manufacturers, infinite layers of software upgrades, patches, fixes and workarounds.
I know more about the machines than anyone except our tech guy, who knows a lot more about security and networks and does the heavy lifting. And he’s baffled by some of the things the machines do. He just shrugs and says, “It’s Windows.”
The only people I know whose Windows systems are not constant trials to the user are people like him, and in a smaller way, me; somehow we’ve internalized the way the machines like to be used and we have fewer problems. But the average user? They hate their machines.
There have been times I’ve leaned close to my PC monitor and whispered, “You know, I really hate you.”
And in contrast, I love my Macs.
I smile when I see them, sometimes. Sure, it’s inexplicable. Sure, I complain in front of a PC person who knows enough to say stuff like, “Well, the interburgers must not be set right, or you’ve got permission issues where a machine doesn’t have the flinghy patch, or somebody is running a flong while someone else is running a krongo.”
Yeah, I know a lot of that. And, heaven knows, I fix a lot of that.
But I just hate dealing with it. And fortunately, at home, I don’t have to.
Just one final thought; last year the office bought a Mac for desktop publishing. And I capered and smiled and said to the VP supervising it, “You know what’s going to happen now? You’re going to want a Mac.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I do so much stuff for work on the PC, it’s what I have at home, it’s just a tool…”
A month ago she got a Mac laptop with a PC side. And when I went to fix a problem with the PC side, she said to me, “We’ve had the Mac for a year and don’t have these issues with it. So I find myself not using the PC side unless I can’t avoid it.”
And I just smiled.
I was a PC user until about six months ago. Since I have a fair amount of expertise and my husband’s a network guru, I’ve never really had the nightmare PC problems that some people complain about. (Well, not since I switched to Win 2000…) I always sort of rolled my eyes at the Mac fandom. PCs aren’t that bad (at least for me), I thought, so how could Macs be that astoundingly good?
Then I switched. Mostly because I like the hardware, and the advent of Intel Macs lowered the software hurdle substantially.
Now I’m becoming one of those obnoxious Mac evangelists. OS X just works. Seriously. Yes, PCs have more software, but that just means you have two dozen mediocre ways to accomplish sort of what you want. And none of those programs work with each other. Evil bloatware that it is, Microsoft Office really does represent the state of the art in PC software integration.
Nothing in the PC world even approaches programs like Scrivener, DevonThink, or Quicksilver, to name just three. I reverted to my PC laptop for a week for a trip. All the software I’ve used for years was still there, but it was like working with one arm tied behind my back.
But there’s no way to explain any of this to PC users. They’re like the people in Plato’s Cave, unable to believe that there’s a different reality out there.
Katherine
I think a lot of them believe that if they ignore us we’ll go away…
My desk. Let me see now.
A Sony Vaio Z1 laptop running XP - a rather nice, if now somewhat dated laptop that really needs a clean install to lift performance from the crawl that now predominates any attempt at serious use.
A Sony FX301 running (Ha! That’s a joke!) Windows Multiple Errors - I’ve kept this laptop simply to give Xubuntu a try, but my procrastination has become entrenched over the years, and is now more accurately defined as chronic indolence. I do wonder if I’ll ever get round to it.
An Apple PowerBook G4, mit OS X 10.4 and all the trimmings. Sheer bliss! Apple folk are so inventive. There are a few instances where Tiger doesn’t quite ring the bell (and I do mean a paltry few) but, for those rare occasions, a plethora of elegant solutions are but a Google away. Ben Willmore’s Isolator, for example, or the HUD inspired Overflow. Leopard will integrate these ideas in to the Apple OS, but they will still remain excellent utilities. For applications there’s (dare I say it?) Scrivener, or Will Thimbleby’s LineForm, and I’d recommend trying TimeLine as well. Intuitive and elegant software that is, above all, so eminently usable. What dumbfounds me is that, in these examples - and they are by no means unique - the conception, creation, programming and on-going development result from the singular dedication of an individual. Eat that Redmond!
As an engineer, I need Excel and Word in order to play with my playmates. I simply can’t avoid it. I’d rather be mooching around in Mellel, doodling about in DevonThink, or finding divers other means of perpetuating task avoidance. But I cannot deny the fact that Scrivener has become my nest. This is where the twigs are gathered, woven, embellished, utilised or discarded. With such distractions, is it any wonder that, when I do visit Windows, it is with as much enthusiasm as when I’m forced to revisit London?
That’s it! Windows is London! All bustle and bluster and “Oi! Wot you lookin at?â€
[quote=“Juddbert”]
That’s it! Windows is London! All bustle and bluster and “Oi! Wot you lookin at?â€
Blissful? Yes, I think it is. My analogy was whimsical but, on reflection, it is close to the mark. OS X… the Apple way of doing things - there’s a rhythm that you tune to and, without realising it, feed on. Cornwall has the longest coastline of any county in the UK. A long thin peninsula, you’re never far from the ocean and its rhythms which, again, you tune to and feed on. For me, those rhythms are akin to endorphins that both excite and satisfy. Cornwall does it; OS X does it. An addictive business, this living lark, isn’t it?
I’ve been reading Rayz take on the Windows v OS X issue with some interest. In the main it’s a cogent argument, though there are lapses:
If this is true, then why are so many PC users switching to Macs? Why are the likes of HP and Sony loading the High Street vendors with MacBook Pro clones? I do have some unease about Apple’s current marketing strategy and their dated product line, but I’m certainly not so dismissive and sceptical as to agree with that statement.
I seem to recall that they stole the idea from Opera but, hey! The whole industry is riddled with imitation, plagiarism and, well, blatant theft. It’s what we humans excel at. If you go back to GEM, or the Amiga 5000 GUIs, it’s not difficult to follow the route map.
I’ve surrendered my PCs without a second thought as age has got the better of them. But I know it won’t be like that with my PowerBook. It’s become a friend and confidante; we share time together. How sad is this?? Ah well, that’s Apple for you. 
[quote]
[But I know it won’t be like that with my PowerBook. It’s become a friend and confidante; we share time together. How sad is this?? Ah well, that’s Apple for you. quote]
Hi Judbert,
When I bought my first MAC (a BW G3), in 1999, my youngest daughter told her best friend`s dad.
He`s the manager of a small software company, in Stockport, and a programmer himself (PC only).
According to my daughter, his immidiate response was, “Oh shit!”
When she queried his negative response, asking him, 'Why, aren`t Apple any good?" he answered, that on the contrary, they were brilliant computers. The problem lay with the people who bought and used MACs. “You see Sarah, Mac owners are known to lock themselves away, on their own, with their MACs and talk to them. And rumor has it, that concerned family members and friends, with their ears pressed to the door, have heard strange and bizarre voices answering them”.
So you see Judbert, your relationship with your MAC, isnt sad, its normal, it`s par for the course.
When you bought your MAC, you didnt buy a computer, you bought into a whole belief system`.
Take Care,
Vic.
You may well be right Vic, you may well be right.