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[lassarina]

FUCK YOU, Adobe. Your software has just as many goddamn tentacles as Apple's and they are even more fucking impossible to remove. FAIL.

*stomps off in annoyance to go do something more productive, like watch TV*

Comments

[adamjury]

The solution is to never remove Adobe software, just keep buying the new version every 18 months... :-)

[lassarina]

I don't want to remove the Adobe program. I want to remove a component. (in this case, the toolbars that Contribute and Acrobat force-install into MS Office that I cannot get rid of no matter what I do.)

My wrath at Apple is mostly based on the bullshit they bundle with iTunes that I neither need nor want and that consistently slows down my computer ARGH.

[adamjury]

Yeah, I'm not down with the way Apple snuck Safari onto a bunch of Windows machines.

I do, however, think it's funny when people bitch about Apple "forcing" people to have Quicktime on their machines in order to use iTunes. iTunes requires Quicktime. It's a distinctly different package because QuickTime can also be used individually, and so one can be updated without the other.

[lassarina]

Oh, I get the QuickTime, yeah. I'm not upset about that. I'm upset about stealth-installing Safari and MobileMe and a whole kit and caboodle of other things that I can see running, but can't disable without digging far more into the guts of my computer's OS than I am qualified to do.

I thought Apple's stuff was supposed to be user-friendly :(

[adamjury]

The reason why this is so notable is Apple normally doesn't make stumbles like that. They have their control issues [which change over time ... iTunes doesn't offer DRMed files anymore, for example], but I don't recall any other instance where installing one piece of Apple software forced an install of another unrelated piece of software.

I like iTunes and Safari both, a lot; but they're also better on OS X than they are on Windows. I'd class them as "fine" on Windows, but they don't blow me away.

[lassarina]

I mean obviously I still like iTunes because I still use it (oh yeah and I have an iPod so I kind of have to, but I do really like iTunes.) And even the bundle-install wouldn't annoy me that much if I could then cherry-pick things I wanted to uninstall (or better yet, pick and choose from the bundle in the first place) afterwards.

At least the new RAM makes the performance issues associated with it so much less notable. XD

[adamjury]

I think it's also a bit of difference of culture between PC and Mac users: Mac users are usually frequent upgraders, because, frankly, each version of Mac OS actually gets *better* in ways that matter to most users. Additionally, there's a lot more shareware for the Mac that is very generous about free/cheap upgrades, even to the next major version number. There is very little "fear of upgrading" within the Mac community, but I see a lot of it in the PC community, especially with a lot of people still hanging on to XP instead of Vista and wondering if they actually have a future using Microsoft operating systems.

[lassarina]

That's also possibly true; I am definitely still using XP and have no intention of upgrading to Vista. At this point I plan to wait for Win 7.

Yeah, upgrading is really harsh for PC software; my HTML software finally settled into a stable version so I no longer have to buy upgrades for it all the time, and the only other non-shareware non-MS-Office software that I have, Liquid Story Binder, is free upgrades basically forever. But I tend to be very wary of software with frequent releases for exactly the reason that you mentioned - I can't afford to pay for it every 2 months.

I loved my Mac when I had it, and my next laptop will likely be a MacBook (oh the wonders of family members with discounts.) But it will also probably have WinE because there are a few PC-exclusive programs I just won't let go of.

[adamjury]

Beyond games, what PC software are you bound to? I would be quite surprised if you couldn't fill the gap on OS X now -- there is a *ton* of amazing software available for it now.

[lassarina]

Liquid Story Binder - I know there's an equivalent for Mac in Scrivener, but I don't think I'd be able to easily swap and import between the two. Also Semagic, although I hear there's a new Mac equivalent or at least something that's trying to be.

Also I really, really, really love my HTML software (AceHTML), although that is slightly less of an issue since I'm much more likely to work on my site from my desktop than my laptop.

Other than that, it's mostly games. For what I use a laptop for, especially, I don't have a particular objection to a Mac, though.

[adamjury]

Yeah, Scrivener is awesome. I don't know if it will easily import LSB projects, but it can import most common document formats. It would probably be a total pain in the ass to try and use both of them to work on the same project, but Scrivener is designed so you can write outside of it, import into it, and export out of it to work on it in other apps easily

[lassarina]

The reason I like Semagic is cross-posting - I use both LJ and IJ and will be using Dreamwidth when that is in open beta, so I need the ability to post to multiple journals at the same time.

Since I started really working in Liquid Story Binder I think I will be using that for all my long projects, but I'm constrained a little bit by what I can use at work (i.e. MS Office or nothing) and I'm just....very accustomed to using MS Word for everything. I can make it sit up and do tricks (in fact, the removal of this toolbar is the *one thing* I have not been able to make Word do that I wanted it to).

LSB uses .rtf or .txt for all its files, which is awesome and very friendly to accessing your work again later; however, the problem would be making all of my planning notes and such jump easily between Scrivener and LSB. However, the LSB Yahoo Group indicates that it runs just fine on WinE both in Mac and Linux, so that's pretty awesome.

[adamjury]

By WinE, you just mean Wine, right? -- http://www.winehq.org/

[Not trying to nitpick, just was a bit confused by your previous reference to it.]

I suspect that MarsEdit, my preferred blog editor, will also hook into all the systems built from LJ's codebase.

[lassarina]

Ah, yes. I had previously seen people spell it the other way. Clearly I am wrong. Sorry about that.

Interesting! I shall have to investigate. pooka_madness informed me the other day that there was a new client for Mac that does all the things I want from Semagic, so that's really awesome.