Re: Apple Computer sides with Satan

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 16:54:28 +0200, Paul Schlyter <pausch@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>The interface is nowadays not that different on a Mac and a Windows
>machine - they both use menues, icons, etc, and if you know an
>application on one of them, it's usually easy to find your way around
>when running that same application on the other platform. People who
>are so picky about these details that they strongly dislike having to
>swithc will get equally irritated whenever the platform of their choice
>goes through a major upgrade -- which, as we all know, happens once
>every few years or so, no matter which platform you've chosen.

I find that most people don't like switching interfaces. You can call
that picky if you like, but it's pretty much the way of things. I
consider the default XP interface noxious (what I call the Drunken Clown
theme). IMO the Windows interface peaked with W98, although some
elements were better in Win3 (like 3D buttons, for example). In any
case, I use the classic interface with XP, and that is always the way I
configure other people's Windows machines if they ask me to set them up.


>If you have some special software which is available only on one of the
>platforms, the choice is obvious: choose the platform which has the
>application you want! After all, most people buy a computer to run
>applications, not to admire the OS..... :-)
>
>If you don't have such special software needs (i.e. if the applications
>you need are available on both platforms), the next most important
>question is: with whom will you be working? I.e. which people will you
>do most of your file exchanges with? If you know the answer to this
>question, the choice of platform also becomes easy: choose the same
>platform as these people are using. Not having to deal with inter-
>platform issues can be a great relief.

You've ignored the issue of how well certain OS services support the
user's needs- things like the file system, networking, color management,
security, etc. These are things that most people want transparent, that
they don't want to think about at all. The choice of OS is important for
these things, though.

Most of my clients have come to me because these sorts of things are
giving them headaches. Outside of a trivial operating environment, no
operating system out there can be easily maintained by users who don't
have a lot of computer knowledge. This is true for Windows, OS X, and
the *nix systems. What I try to do is configure their environments so
that dealing with these things becomes simpler.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
.

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