Apple/Mac/Windows.... Hang on though !!!!!

[GlennSprigg]

(Moderators read before blocking xx)....
I've ONLY ever known 'Windows', since the inception of the 1st PC.....
Everything I know about 'Apple/Macs' I could write on the back of a MatchBox !!   
(And still have room to write something deep & meaningful xx)

So just for fun, (and a bit of 'Edumurcation'), I'm setting up 'VirtualBox', for Operating System Virtualization,
and a (yes, probably not cosher) version of 'OS-X Yosemite' from 'Hackintosh', to run it on one of my PC's/Laptops.
It is NOT to make me money, or 'sell' anything at all, but PURELY as a learning tool, to understand the "Other Side" 

YES, I have ALL the required software, patches, coding, settings, instructions... to make it work !!!
I only want to say that I want to understand a 'LITTLE' of what this Alternative Binary Beast is about !!!!   

I don't think I will be 'converted', (and I know it's power & usage in the medical field etc.), ....
but at least I will 'understand' that which I didn't !!   

[Zero999]

I don't think the moderators give a toss if you pirate the hell out of Mac OS, so long as you don't post any copyrighted material on this site.

What's the point of this thread? You want experience of using OS X, good for you. Are you thinking about posting a guide telling others how to do it or are you asking for help?

Want experience with an alternative to Windows, then how about a free OS such as Linux or BSD which you can get without pirating anything?

[shteii01]

I find some little things about Mac OS (I go back to OS 7, still have set of floppies for it) to be inconvenient in some small things.  Just to show how small I am talking about:  the most inconvenient thing for me was the single button mouse.  I think those are long gone by now.  Everything else is fine, file manager is file manager, browser is browser, office is office, matlab is matlab.  I run Diablo 2 on pc and mac so I can have two accounts playing together on a lan, one is main character, the other for loot storage.

[james_s]

The single button mouse was always one of the most glaring issues with the classic Macs. I get the reasoning behind it, and I can see designing the OS such that only one button is really needed. It sure would have been nice though if they had incorporated support for a 2 button mouse for more advanced users.

[amyk]

I've tried Hackintosh too and while I can see how it would be "easy" for those who just browse the Web all day and run a very few number of applications, as a normal Linux/Windows user the UI is definitely far too "opaque".

[glarsson]

Opaque? It's a certified UNIX system, something that Linux hasn't managed to do.

[Halcyon]

Slightly off-topic, but relevant: I too have known DOS/Windows my entire life. Only recently have I taken a serious stab at using Linux as my primary desktop computer and I have to say honestly, the more I get to know it, the more I like it. Yes, the learning curve has been rather steep but if you know DOS command line, dumping into Terminal isn't that daunting.

The reason behind my move is mainly because I absolutely hate what Microsoft have done to Windows. They've taken too many pages out of Apple's book and have failed miserably. Windows 10 is abhorrent. I've been using it at work for the past few years and the more I use it, the more I hate it.

Apple Mac OS isn't much better, but I will say it's more refined in a lot of ways, when compared to Microsoft's offerings, still, some things aren't logical and paired together with Apple hardware makes the experience just that much more unbearable. Apple products actually hinder my productivity, that's when I'm not rebooting the damn thing or having to reload applications due to the spinny beach ball of death.

Yeah, no thanks, it's Linux for me from now on.

[Howardlong]

Although I have several Macs here, mostly from the years not too long ago that you could upgrade them, only one of them runs OS X, which is for Logic Pro (music arranging software). The rest run Windows.

They’re being gradually replaced with PCs now, mostly because new Apple hardware has no post purchase upgrade path, but also because PC hardware is now significantly better value, better performing, and has better specifications. That wasn’t necessarily the case five years or so ago, the Apple value proposition has changed.

[GlennSprigg]

I don't think the moderators give a toss if you pirate the hell out of Mac OS, so long as you don't post any copyrighted material on this site.

What's the point of this thread? You want experience of using OS X, good for you. Are you thinking about posting a guide telling others how to do it or are you asking for help?

Want experience with an alternative to Windows, then how about a free OS such as Linux or BSD which you can get without pirating anything?

Eerrmm.... sorry mate. I don't understand your negativity.......

Firstly, regarding no-one, (moderators), giving a 'toss' ......
I imagined (as a fallible human on such 'forums'), that 'certain' people might think that I was trying to
start some 'old' debate about "Apple vs Windows" which I'm sure has been done to death
USUALLY, this results in a 'Post' being Blocked/Suspended or what ever the 'techs' call it.....
(This was NOT the case mate)

Secondly... regarding your "What is the point of this thread?" statement......
Well... I was DARING to simply talk about 'fields' of 'computing' that 'one' might not know anything about,
but was willing to try to understand, even at a simple level, for the betterment of knowledge.....

I don't WANT to learn about 'Linux' or 'BSD' as they are not as mainstream, and 'I' have no interest....
Ok... you have (had) 10,535 Posts, and I have (had) a measly 167.  (Yep... I'm a shit-kicker)
Unfortunately, (as in real life), with 'importance/familiarity' comes contempt for others.....

I hope that 'others' on this planet 'Earth' understand that I just wanted a little bit of insite, about
this little known facet (to me...) in this computing world.

[BradC]

I don't WANT to learn about 'Linux' or 'BSD' as they are not as mainstream

OSX is essentially BSD, and Linux runs on everything from your router to TV to telephone (unless you have an iPhone in which case it is running *BSD). Can't get much more "mainstream" than that.

(* Yes I know officially it's "Darwin", but it's still based on and mostly compromised of *BSD.)

[PlainName]

Everything else is fine, file manager is file manager, browser is browser, office is office, matlab is matlab.

How about the global menu thing? Isn't that a big pain when using more than one windowed app?

[tooki]

The single button mouse was always one of the most glaring issues with the classic Macs. I get the reasoning behind it, and I can see designing the OS such that only one button is really needed. It sure would have been nice though if they had incorporated support for a 2 button mouse for more advanced users.

Since other OSes really only use the second mouse button for contextual menus (if we ignore games and a few 3D design apps), I assume that contextual menus are really what you’re talking about. Mac OS has supported those since Mac OS 8, from 1997. They were triggered by a control-click, but you could just configure multibutton mouse software to issue a control-click from the right mouse button. In Mac OS X (initial non-beta release in 2001) has always opened contextual menus by default with a right click. All Apple mice since 2005 and all trackpads since 2008 have supported right clicking as well, though many people don’t realize this.

So in a nutshell, you have to be going back a long time to find a Mac without context menu support!!

[tooki]

Everything else is fine, file manager is file manager, browser is browser, office is office, matlab is matlab.

How about the global menu thing? Isn't that a big pain when using more than one windowed app?

Not at all. The single menu bar is one of the Mac’s biggest advantages: it’s always clear which application has focus and is listening to keyboard input, and above all, because of Fitt’s Law: the edge of the screen is a FAR easier target than something inside the screen, because it has essentially infinite height. Just bang the mouse up at high speed because it WILL get trapped by the edge, leaving it right in the menu bar. This advantage outweighs the proximity of a menu inside the window: it may be closer, but the fine motor control to operate it slows you down far more!

[PlainName]

Just bang the mouse up at high speed because it WILL get trapped by the edge

Not here. I have three monitors in an L configuration. If it attaches to the top monitor a single mouse move won't get up there.

always clear which application has focus

There is that, I suppose (but how does it differentiate the apps?). But I find I sometimes hit a menu item of a non-focus window, which performs some action and brings the window to the front in one go.

But at least the Mac hasn't discovered the ribbon, yet

[NottheDan]

Everything else is fine, file manager is file manager, browser is browser, office is office, matlab is matlab.

How about the global menu thing? Isn't that a big pain when using more than one windowed app?

How is that a pain?

[ebastler]

I don't WANT to learn about 'Linux' or 'BSD' as they are not as mainstream

OSX is essentially BSD, and Linux runs on everything from your router to TV to telephone (unless you have an iPhone in which case it is running *BSD). Can't get much more "mainstream" than that.

I think I understand where Glenn was coming from. Yes, Linux is "mainstream" in the sense of having a huge number of installations (although most of them "headless", running on embedded devices or servers without a GUI). But it is certainly not "mainstream" in the sense of

• feeling familiar to a significant share of desktop users,
  
• having one common flavor of distribution and desktop which even the majority of Linux users are familar with,
  
• having one common flavor of distribution and desktop which most of the answers you find when Googling for help will actually be relevant to, or
  
• being suitable as a recommendation to Mom for her desktop computer, unless you want to volunteer yourself as the part-time sysadmin at the same time.

[rstofer]

I think I understand where Glenn was coming from. Yes, Linux is "mainstream" in the sense of having a huge number of installations (although most of them "headless", running on embedded devices or servers without a GUI). But it is certainly not "mainstream" in the sense of

Linux is certainly used for servers but it represents just 2% of desktops.  It certainly isn't 'mainstream' in any sense of the word in the desktop market.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx

[Muxr]

Everything else is fine, file manager is file manager, browser is browser, office is office, matlab is matlab.

How about the global menu thing? Isn't that a big pain when using more than one windowed app?

Global menu saves you screen real-estate. On Windows the menu is displayed all the time in each window, wasting precious vertical resolution (it's particularly bad on ultra wide screens). On MacOS you only see it for the active window. Much better imo.

This isn't the only example where MacOS is vastly superior in its design imo.

They keyboard shortcuts are much much better. They are uniform across all the apps. Unlike in Windows where a Ctrl-C means copy in one window but something entirely different (like stop process in Putty or Command prompt).

For the life of me I could never understand why Linux Desktop designers follow Window's broken keyboard shortcut scheme, instead of much more streamlined and easier to use MacOS one.

[ebastler]

It certainly isn't 'mainstream' in any sense of the word in the desktop market.

Kind of what I said, isn't it? 

[james_s]

It could be argued that "desktop" in general is almost not mainstream anymore.

Quite a few tech companies now are using Linux internally on everything. I have a few friends who had never seen Win10 yet because at home they have a Mac and at work everything is Linux.

[rstofer]

It could be argued that "desktop" in general is almost not mainstream anymore.

Quite a few tech companies now are using Linux internally on everything. I have a few friends who had never seen Win10 yet because at home they have a Mac and at work everything is Linux.

You could make the case that Surface type gadgets are replacing both desktops and laptops.  FWIW, the 2.2% number for Linux linked above is for desktops/laptops combined. 

And, no, desktops aren't a dead issue.  I just built another one a few months ago.  It uses an I7-7700K CPU and is primarily used for running compute intensive jobs like Xilinx Vivado.  That's why I built it.  I wanted to get the processing finished in a much shorter period of time.

All 4 of our Surface gadgets are Win 10 while our other tablets are Android.  I don't follow the trends so I don't know if there is a Surface like Linux device.  But, really, the Surface devices are just smaller and lighter laptops.  My Surface Book is actually my primary device.  It sits alongside the BlueTooth keyboard and mouse and is connected to a 27" display.  I almost never use it as a portable device.  Just the way it works out.  I have another Surface Pro in the living room for portable stuff.

[particleman]

I have used Debian since 2006. Last Windows I  used was XP.  Love the way Linux runs on my old ass 8 core AMD 8150 clocked to 4.4 GHz. I wont need a new desktop until this one dies. I work from home so I've never even seen windows 8 or 10.  A desktop with large monitor for me is mandatory.  Could not imagine scrolling through 50 pages of schematics on a laptop. I think I would rather put my face in a blender.

[tooki]

Just bang the mouse up at high speed because it WILL get trapped by the edge

Not here. I have three monitors in an L configuration. If it attaches to the top monitor a single mouse move won't get up there.

always clear which application has focus

There is that, I suppose (but how does it differentiate the apps?). But I find I sometimes hit a menu item of a non-focus window, which performs some action and brings the window to the front in one go.

But at least the Mac hasn't discovered the ribbon, yet

An L-shaped desktop is weird, but irrelevant: you can set up the Mac to have the menu bar appear on each display.

How does it differentiate the apps? One app is always the foreground app. This has always been the case on the Mac. It’s actually the case on Windows, too, but it’s not always as clearly visible.

Office for Mac uses the Ribbon, too. (But it also retains the menu bar!! Kinda the best of both worlds.) As a UX designer I’ve had heated arguments with colleagues about the Ribbon. I actually like it, and the UX research and testing behind it is really, really solid. (And the Ribbon guidelines — which are mandatory for any software developer who wishes to use it — are really well designed. They reduce the amount of unspecified behavior that has plagued windows software due to there being unlimited room for interpretation.)  I think that people that hate it mostly have it simply for being different from what they’re used to.

[james_s]

Of course desktops are not dead, I built a new one myself not too long ago as well. They are not really mainstream anymore though, they are a specialty item for people who have specific needs not easily met by mobile devices. There exist a huge number of people who never really needed a computer in the first place and only had one because that was the only way to access the internet and email. Those people's needs are often met by mobile devices, while people like myself and probably quite a few others here create content and still need a traditional desktop or laptop. I suspect the proportion of members here who use a traditional PC is much higher than from a random sample of the general public.

[james_s]

Office for Mac uses the Ribbon, too. (But it also retains the menu bar!! Kinda the beat of both worlds.) As a UX designer I’ve had heated arguments with colleagues about the Ribbon. I actually like it, and the UX research and testing behind it is really, really solid. (And the Ribbon guidelines — which are mandatory for any software developer who wishes to use it — are really well designed. They reduce the amount of unspecified behavior that has plagued windows software due to there being unlimited room for interpretation.)  I think that people that hate it mostly have it simply for being different from what they’re used to.

After being forced to use it for years, I still loathe the ribbon. If they simply offered the ability to turn it off and enable the traditional menu that would end virtually all of the controversy.