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A Mac & Daly follow up.
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Posted by Neville Franks
Aug 16, 2010 at 08:25 AM
I meant to reply to Daly’s “Profound Disappointment” thread but time got away from me. (I’m just wrapping up the next release of Surfulater.)
I recently came very close to buying a Macbook Pro to replace my aging Dell Inspiron. I’ve been interested in getting a Mac for some time now, primarily to try and understand why so many people are so enamored by Mac’s and to see how the User Interface and design of Mac software differs from Windows Software. And to see of I could learn anything useful to carry across into my software in the Windows world. In the end I purchased one of the new Acer TimelineX Notebooks for several reasons.
- I couldn’t justify spending so much more money (over twice the price of the Acer) on a PC whose OS and Software I would likely never seriously use, instead running Windows 7 on it most of the time.
- I couldn’t easily get to see and touch a Macbook Pro - no Apple shops anywhere near where I live.
- And little things like no right mouse (trackpad) button when running Windows apps.
I wanted to touch on the discussion of Mac applications doing just a few things well and using several applications to cover the same bases that one Windows app might. I can see some merit in this, however not enough to sway me. The least most applications I have to learn and use on a regular basis the better.
Another related point was a about Windows applications having too many features and Mac applications not suffering from this problem. I have two observations here. Maybe the fact that there is less competition in the Mac software market plays a part here. ie. Software companies aren’t having to keep adding so many new features to match or exceed competitors products. There is also an expectation in the Windows world that new releases come out regularly and these contain new features requested by customers. It is always a challenge for us software developers to weigh things up, maintain a sensible balance and still try and keep most of our users happy, most of the time. Saying “no” to some new feature request can be difficult, however this is something I’ve been getting better at over the years. Cases need to be stated and discussed and the merits or otherwise assessed. Again maybe Mac users have different expectations and Mac developers are less pressed to continually add new features. Or maybe Mac users prefer simpler applications and instead use multiple applications as mentioned earlier.
Enough of a rant from me - you can go back to your normal viewing now.
Neville
Posted by MsJulie
Aug 17, 2010 at 11:36 AM
Neville,
Thank you for your contribution to what I have found a very interesting discussion on the capabilities of Mac vs Windows for those who think and deal with words for a living/past time. It has made me more tolerant of my never ending battles with Vista. And I have steeled myself for upgrading my machine to Win7. I, too, have come to appreciate MyInfo, UltraRecall, MindManager, etc.
BUT what was most thrilling about your post in particular was the off-hand comment about the new release of Surfulater. I’ve come to not only appreciate, but be very dependent on it. Thanks for your good efforts.
Cheers and congratulations! Julie
Posted by Neville Franks
Aug 18, 2010 at 11:40 PM
Hi Julie,
Thanks for the reply and comment on Surfulater. I was hoping to see some discussion from the Mac folks here, but so far that hasn’t happened.
I’m using Windows 7 on my new Acer Notebook and have to say it really is a big improvement over Vista, which I never liked. I’ve heard people say “Win 7 is Vista done right” and would have to agree. My suggestion would be to upgrade.
The new Surfulater release should be out today. ;-)
Neville, http://www.surfulater.com
Posted by rogbar
Aug 19, 2010 at 06:34 AM
Okay, Neville, I’ll take the bait ...
I was a dedicated PC person from the early 1980s until 5 years ago. For much of that time I really liked the programs I was using but I felt I was spending too much time solving problems with incompatibilities or things just not working as they should. And there was a certain - I don’t know - let’s call it “inelegance” about the OS and many of its programs. And yet I stayed - mostly because of Ecco Pro. I loved it passionately and used it for a wide variety of things. It was so customizable that I was constantly surprising myself with different ways of utilizing it.
About six years ago I decided to take on a video project for a friend, and since it involved video and music, I decided I wouldn’t even try it in Windows. I’d had too much frustration with Windows in those areas. So I bought a PowerBook thinking I’d use it only for fooling around with video. And I got hooked. I greatly appreciated the way things did “just work”, as the commercials said. I also found the OS to be a more pleasing environment to work in. Not just from an eye candy perspective, but from a design perspective. But still I stayed with Windows. My feeling was that APple had better hardware and a better OS, but the Windows world had a greater variety of useful programs. Most particularly Ecco and Outlook (which I still think is the Microsoft’s best designed work.)
But over the last five or six years, the Apple world - in my opinion (YMMV) - saw a terrific growth in useful, beautifully-designed, reliable productivity apps. And Apple - which I used to think of as being more about graphics and a/v - now impressed me as a very powerful business tool. I write and I manage projects. I miss Ecco, but I find the combination of OmniOutliner, DevonThink, and OmniFocus work very well for me. OmniOutliner is a very useful, reliable and elegant outliner, but I deeply miss Ecco’s abiltiies to view the same information from different perspectives. DevonThink - with its Replicate function - is actually a better match for Ecco, and I’ve been finding new and more interesting ways of using it, too. And it’s a rock-solid, bullet-proof, industrial-strength app. I also use Apple’s built-in Mail and Address Book, and find them far better than Entourage (which is far inferior to Outlook). It did take me a little while to get used to the different conventions, but now they seem completely second-nature to me.
In the end I discovered that while my preconceptions about Apple may have been accurate in the 90s, they now were outdated. I respect the Windows world, and certainly understand people choosing to remain with it, but speaking just for myself, I have to say I’m very happy I switched, I believe I am more productive, I KNOW I’m spending less time as my own I.T. troubleshooter, and I haven’t regretted switching for a minute.
Posted by June C
Aug 19, 2010 at 09:39 AM
I have the same problem with you. I was bored.