Dear Mac Users:

[pelopelopelo]

I use a mac because I didn't pay for it, my dad did.

Were I buying for myself, I would have gone with windows, because it's cheaper.

It's a damn good OS though, that's for sure. Preferable to Vista, though I haven't tried Win7 yet for comparison.

The mouse is horrendous, however, and after a year of use the scroll ball (which took 'em a while to get round to implementing) doesn't scroll up at all, and intermittently scrolls down. The new Magic Mouse or whatever they call it looks pretty damnably win though.

I use it mostly for the internet, doing essays/stories and Photoshop. Things which NO WINDOWS COMPUTER DARE COMPUTE.

I have Final Cut Pro, but I don't use it all that much, so its USP, the whole artist thing, is null and void.

People that care too much one way or the other are just... well they care too much.

Looks pretty, though.

 

[Trotgar]

The mouse is horrendous, however, and after a year of use the scroll ball (which took 'em a while to get round to implementing) doesn't scroll up at all, and intermittently scrolls down. The new Magic Mouse or whatever they call it looks pretty damnably win though.

Exactly my thoughts.

I use a Mac, and I have a bootcamped windows for playing games.

 

[Lilani]

My major is computer animation, so I figured a Mac would suit me well. Also, the university bookstore needed to get rid of their stock to bring in the new Macs, so my 24" iMac was $700 (U.S) off the original price Also it's just so much easier to use overall. Fewer errors, more streamlined interface and funcitons, and less having to micromanage everything that goes on.

And another thing: I don't get why people have such issues with the mouse. I had to use one in a graphic design class, so I got used to it. But if that's not your thing sure, whatever, just go to WalMart and pick up a $15 optical mouse from the tech section. I don't get why people hold things against computers that can be easily changed. I already had a normal mouse from the computer before the Mac, so I just plugged that one in and the Mighty Mouse hasn't seen the light of day since the day I first unpackaged the computer.

 

[Tolerant Fanboy]

I grew up on Macs, and I just like them more. Sure, there isn't as much software available for them, but most of the games I play online are Flash- or browser-based, so that really doesn't matter. Windows just feels too bogged down in itself. And besides*, given how much Microsoft has cribbed from Apple over the years (and vice vers, to a lesser degree,) can anyone really be purely pro-Windows and anti-MacOS anymore? It's like saying you hate garlic, and yet you still happily consume recipes that use it, simply because you don't see the garlic.

*Batten down your flame-hatches, everyone. This is probably gonna be controversial.

 

[Uncompetative]

The Truth

This is a good summation of the situation, apart from something I have a very serious issue with:

Spoiler: A typical life-enhancing device...

Better than texting...

No. NO. The touchscreen keyboard on the iPhone is one of the most appalling failures of user interface on any modern operating system. There's no feedback from the keyboard, either tactile or haptic, and the keyboard is horribly laid out, with the necessity for big keys requiring people to press a separate button if they want to put as much as a full stop into their text. I mean, it's not fair to ask for an E90 Communicator/HTC Touch Pro-style five-line full QWERTY keyboard, but seriously, Apple, you need to figure out the line between useful simplicity and "this keyboard is worse than the one on a Sinclair ZX81".

Agreed.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.88365#1352807

I re-read your earlier post on the subject and felt that you made some good points. The landscape keyboard helps somewhat, but I don't do a lot of typing on mine. Anyway, if you have a phone you may as well just use interactive voice-mail, which Apple have fixed so that you can review your messages in any order you like. If anything spoils it, it is the new OS which adds a very poorly integrated Cut/Copy/Paste feature, practically ruining the UI experience. It would have been far better if you could have set a Collation point and then navigated to the source and held down the Home button to act in a similar way to a Shift key on a keyboard and then swipe over the region to be copied, or tap at either extent (with the aid of the lens to get the ends where you wanted before you released your finger), at which point the content would be automatically pasted after the Collation point and the Collation point moved to after it, whilst the source region remained highlighted red so that an extra tap within it would delete it (giving you the Cut operation). Unfortunately, they used the hold Home action to activate Voice Over (which is kinda stupid as that is only of benefit to iPhone users, whereas a Collate button would benefit iPod Touch users also).

So, I suppose a bad example there with the portrait keyboard. Even a membrane keyboard is nicer. I don't know... are there any bluetooth self-powered membrane keyboards for the iPhone? A Fitaly keyboard would be a nice option too:

see: http://www.fitaly.com/fitalycomment/garykrakow.htm

Spoiler: Speech recognition would be the obvious solution if accuracy/privacy/background noise issues could be resolved...

Not likely.