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"Macs" backward is "scam".
April 23rd, 2008 (09:07 pm)
current mood: aggravated
current mood: aggravated
I dislike my Mac.
It's the third most expensive thing I've ever purchased after my house and my car, and it's the biggest purchase mistake by a long shot.
Let's break it down into a nice list, shall we? First, let me describe my computer -- it's a Mac Pro, with two dual core processors and 4 gigs of RAM, and a 750 gig hard drive. Izza big. Izza fast.
Izza pain. For all the talk about how easy they are to use, I've never had a harder time with a computer.
- The no-button mouse is annoying. It mistakes right-clicks for left-clicks and vice-versa about 1% of the time, which is way the hell too often.
- The keyboard is absurd.
- There's no PRINTSCREEN key, no INSERT key. It's got a nice feel to it, but having to hit THREE keys instead of one to grab a screenshot is ridiculous; and while I would've thought I wouldn't miss the INSERT key, I tried using VI (a *nix text editor you use on remote servers, for those of you who... oh nevermind) and suddenly found myself struggling desperately.
- It has this stupid Apple/Swirly thing key, which I believe they call the "Command" key, which is annoying -- why not put "CMD" or "command" on there, guys? How can I reference something that has no name? Swirly thing key. Stupid.
- HOME and END now behave completely differently. They take you to the start and end of a document, not just a line. So how do you jump to the end of the line? Swirly-key + right arrow. Two keys now, not one. Awesome.
- There doesn't seem to be a way to switch from DVORAK to QWERTY and back with a simple keystroke. At least Windows got that right.
- Oh, and BACKSPACE is now called DELETE, and DELETE is now called... DELETE, but with another bizarre symbol on it. Some vaguely arrow-looking thing with an X on it.
- I wanted to be able to edit my home videos easily -- iMovie was a big selling point for me. But lo and behold, the Mac won't talk to my Panasonic camera, and the software that came with the camera can create MPGs for me, but iMovie won't read the MPGs to let me edit them. I have no words to describe how frustrating that is (that aren't profanity).
- Well, there was still Garage Band, right? I wanted to be able to mix music and write music and OH MY GOSH THIS PROGRAM IS IMPOSSIBLE.
- Today, in the course of my duties as a programmer, I needed to convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal number. In Windows, you put the calculator in Scientific mode, select hex, paste in your number, hit decimal, and you're done. In Leopard... well, you google for an online hexadecimal converter.
- They say you can install/uninstall things by just dragging them to and from the Applications folder. This, of course, is a bold-faced lie. You can do that with SOME programs, just... not... THAT one. Take Safari, for instance. I won't knock it; it's the fourth-best web browser out there, after Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Mosaic. But I got sick of its constant requests for updates that would require a reboot, so I yanked it out and threw it in the trash. But the GHOST of Safari apparently needs updates, too.
- Oh, neat! If you press the scroll-wheel like a button, you get this display of calendar, weather, time, and the crappy calculator. What's that? You have a program, like Blender, that uses the middle-click function? Ohhhh, man. You're screwed. What are you using Blender for, anyway? Why would you need to do 3D modeling when you can could be listening to music on iTunes? Isn't iTunes great?
- My 24" Acer monitor, which never gave me problems on my Windows box, for no reason goes black every so often. It comes back a second later, but it's pretty unnerving. "ALL MY DATA IS GO--oh there it is." (I hate this about Vista, too -- anything that requires a security check makes my screen go black for a second before the security pop-up asks for permission to continue.)
- My monitor JUST NOW did the black thing.
- You know how you have that neat Desktop icon in the quick launch bar that lets you minimize everything at once? Yeah, you don't get one on the Mac. And you know that nice row of button on the taskbar that show you what apps you have open, and lets you switch back and forth? Yeah, no, none of that. I mean, you have a bar down there, but it's a combination of apps that are open and apps that you want readily available. Oh, and you want to jump to a different window in one of the apps? Yeah, there's no easy way to do that. So a browser pop-up disappears behind your main browser window, and you want to get over there... you can ALT-TAB between apps, but not between windows.
- My monitor just DID IT AGAIN.
- The toolbars that are so nicely positioned at the top of each window on Windows are always way at the top of the screen on a Mac. Not a big deal to you 15" monitor people, but having to mouse ALL THE WAY UP THERE is an added annoyance.
- Finder. FIIIIIINDERRRRR! </kirk> I can't find my way around my own files. They're totally obfuscated by Finder, which, frankly, would be more aptly named Hider. This is probably the biggest peeve of them all.
I need to get XP installed on this thing. The hardware should behave okay if I can just get the heck out of Leopard.
"There doesn't seem to be a way to switch from DVORAK to QWERTY and back with a simple keystroke. At least Windows got that right."
The keystroke is too simple. I am a QWERTY only user. Chalain has DVORAK set up on my machine for his convience. I'm typing along, cutting and pasting and using the Ctrl * key and all of a sudden I'm tying in gibberish because I accidently hit a wrong key. I don't know what it was so I have to click on the little keyboard icon on my task bar and change it back the slow way. I find that particular short cut to be REALLY ANNOYING.
And while we're ranting about computer stuff I just have to add VISTA is really stupid too.