Peter, I'm going to be getting a new laptop (macbook pro) here soon and I can send you my 12" powerbook (once I have the new computer and all of my files) if you want to at least try OSX. It's quite slow so it won't be able to do some of the things you want it to but you'll at least be able to play around with the OS a bit.
You know, that's actually pretty tempting. My old laptop is dead anyway, and I'd really like to have one. Let me know when you're about to move on to the new one and we'll talk.
Just keep in mind that OSX has a very different mentality from the other OSes. For example, the biggest difference (no not the dock) is that there is no maximize button. People keep thinking that the third button on the windows is a maximize button but it's not. In today's world of 17" laptops and 20, 24, and 30" desktop monitors, you don't want to maximize a window on that. This button is called the zoom button and is designed to resize the window to the most efficient available size. For example, it will resize a Safari window to be the width of the page you are viewing.
and I would actually posit that the biggest difference is that there is no close button -- my experience has me remembering there being two different types of minimize and then the zoom... (or am I totally crazy here?)
the file system is pretty Different as well from what I recall
I agree about the close button. I find it somewhat inefficient to have to go to the menu to close a program. I expect when I hit the little red button (especially if it is the last window of that program open) to actually shut down the program and get it out of memory.
Well, yes, it probably is slower to have to go through a menu, but consider two things.
1) You could press ⌘-Q to quit the program, which is pretty quick because the keys don't generally move. 2) The close button in Windows is inconsistent, at least in a couple apps. Particularly, I'm talking about Office, which distinguishes which instance of the editor you opened a document in. Their multiple-window interface implies that the close button ought to just close the document, but in reality it closes the instance, which could take other documents with it.
2) The close button only closes the editor you have that document in unless it's the last document open in which case it closes the parent window as well. The "Document X" closes the editor you have the document in but will not close the parent window.
I promise.
I installed Office 2003 like a week ago and I just verified this. (Incidentally I happen to Really like the office suite when compared to the alternatives and 2007 is nifty in new exciting ways... though not without some annoyances)
Try this: open a document by double-clicking the file, then use the menus to open another file. If you do that, both files are in the same instance of the editor, and using the window close button kills both of them. It took me a while before I figured it out, and it's frustrating because it breaks the entire paradigm of the taskbar and the window close button.
The equivalent to that is the systray icon. The responsibility of hiding an application window from the task-bar is that of the program, not the OS. Gaim(Pidgin) does it, uTorrent does it, Virtual DAEMON does it, lots of things do it... lots of things written by open source developers do it -- it's not the most arcane of tricks.
catering to the uncommon case (as you say this is) means that OSX is removing a commonly used feature it order to ... do what exactly?
I've had instances where certain programs were running that I had thought were closed and that I didn't want running were taking up 200+ megabytes of RAM. I don't know if the OS X version of Firefox leaks memory even without any open webpages as the windows one does, but if I hit the shiny red close button I would expect the program to actually close the program. I just wouldn't want the default behavior of that button to be what it is.
The detached menus take some getting used to, and people tend to either love it or hate it. However, it is provably faster (unless you're dumb enough to put your second monitor above the screen with the menubar). Personally, I don't mind.
I do like how the menu includes a group for the program as a whole with options like "Quit", which makes much more sense than it being in the File menu. (Quit a file? What does that mean?)
The filesystem, at least now, is pretty *nix-like. I think it still has support for "colors" for your documents, which never really made much sense to me. But it's really just a filesystem.
I accept provably faster and raise you aesthetically unpleasing
and I know the file system in *nix-like... thats part of my problem, I don't really like or understand *nix's approach to FS organization, but in unix I'm not supposed to, it's black magic.
How do installs work on a Mac? does it spit crap everywhere the way it does in *nix or did they at least fix that?
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Also -- why would a 17" laptop be different from a 17" desktop?
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the file system is pretty Different as well from what I recall
and the menus being detached I found disorienting
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1) You could press ⌘-Q to quit the program, which is pretty quick because the keys don't generally move.
2) The close button in Windows is inconsistent, at least in a couple apps. Particularly, I'm talking about Office, which distinguishes which instance of the editor you opened a document in. Their multiple-window interface implies that the close button ought to just close the document, but in reality it closes the instance, which could take other documents with it.
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2) The close button only closes the editor you have that document in unless it's the last document open in which case it closes the parent window as well. The "Document X" closes the editor you have the document in but will not close the parent window.
I promise.
I installed Office 2003 like a week ago and I just verified this. (Incidentally I happen to Really like the office suite when compared to the alternatives and 2007 is nifty in new exciting ways... though not without some annoyances)
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catering to the uncommon case (as you say this is) means that OSX is removing a commonly used feature it order to ... do what exactly?
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I do like how the menu includes a group for the program as a whole with options like "Quit", which makes much more sense than it being in the File menu. (Quit a file? What does that mean?)
The filesystem, at least now, is pretty *nix-like. I think it still has support for "colors" for your documents, which never really made much sense to me. But it's really just a filesystem.
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and I know the file system in *nix-like... thats part of my problem, I don't really like or understand *nix's approach to FS organization, but in unix I'm not supposed to, it's black magic.
How do installs work on a Mac? does it spit crap everywhere the way it does in *nix or did they at least fix that?
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