Some observations on “the little things” that have changed in Apple’s new operating system. These are the things that really make a difference in your daily use of the machine after the initial wow-factor of the new big features have worn off.
One of my favorites is an Undo in text areas in Safari 2.0. A lot of CMS systems allow you to edit templates directly in a text area, and it’s very irritating that Safari has never let you undo any changes you make in a text area like every other browser. Now it does, and all is well. I just hope they fixed the other incredibly annoying bug that will scroll the text area all the way to the top if you switch to another tab and then back to the template or post that you were editing. ‘Cause that’s really annoying too.
The other cool one is: “I have 16,529 files on my computer that contain the word “the.” 16,530 now that I’ve saved this document. Spotlight results are updated instantly.”. That’s pretty amazing.
As a PC user, but computer sciencey kinda person, I read through this with an open mind expecting to be wowed by some neat little things the OS seems to do for you. Frankly, a lot of it is stuff PCs (Windows in particular) has had for years. Undoing text in Safari? Should even version one have shipped without an undo feature? I think if I were a Mac devotee I’d be offended that I have to pay [good] money for things like this.
Search has been abyssmal on both OSes, of course; but it was easily better on windows until only a few years ago… pretty useless in the end, of course. Granted, Tiger has superior search and update cabailities now… and hopefully WinFS will be able to match it, but why does it always seem to take Apple years longer to provide a trivial feature. All my Mac friends are excited about these little things like a dog getting a treat, but they deserve a lot more than things which should be in a patch, not a paid upgrade.
Also, why is fullscreen still a Pro feature of quicktime… who ARE they kidding?
Sorry for the rant, but I’d like to see if anyone feels similarily. I’ve always had a secret desire to try going Mac, and try to find reasons to take a plunge, but it seems like my productivity would plummet and I’d be left feeling cheated and annoyed.
I know hundreds of families that feel cheated of buying Windows machines only to have them returned to the shop for virus removal after a couple of weeks use.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg…
Let’s keep to features — if Apple had the same market share people might write just as many viruses. I don’t even want to *touch* M$ adding virus scanning into the OS.
Also to pre-empt — my box stays up for 6 months before I restart it once; other people have a knack for trashing a system in a week — both Apple and M$ can be just as faulty or faultless, it is *not* built into the OS.
Just features and value for the money. IMO at least.
Yes Safari should have shipped with an undo in text areas. But IE, Firefox, and other browsers on OSX do support the feature, so it has nothing to do with the Mac itself. It’s just one application.
Search on Windows is absolutely horrible and completely useless. I never tried to use the search feature in Windows because it simply didn’t work. Even then you had to deal with a ridiculous wizard to make it work, choose which drives to search one, and many other little unneeded options. On the Mac (current versions, not even including Tiger) you just type what you want into a little box and it searches as you type. It works quite well and I use it frequently.
“why does it always seem to take Apple years longer to provide a trivial feature”
Is that a joke? Windows doesn’t even support PNG transparencies in IE, let alone CSS. Search has been in OSX from the beginning and has always been much more useful in my experience than the search on Windows.
Full screen in Quicktime can easily be done with an Applescript.
Sounds like you should stick with Windows to me.
1)The Windows search wizard can be disabled, replacing it with just a couple of drop-downs.
2) IE and Safari may be included with their respective OSes but their features (or lack thereof) shouldn’t really matter. Most people will get Firefox, Opera, or even IE on Mac if they wish to.
3) Unless video is recorded at a really high resolution, I wouldn’t watch it at full screen anyway.
4) Obligatory: Mac? features? how about right-click?
1) The Windows search is still more complicated and less useful than even older versions of OSX
2) Valid point, though with Longhorn IE will supposedly be much more integrated into the OS and not considered a freestanding app.
3) I only watch DVD rips full screen
4) You can use any mouse you want and it works fine. My mouse has 8 buttons and a scroll wheel. Though I agree shipping with a one button mouse is silly. I bought a nice logitech mouse with my first Mac. I’ve never used the one button mouse.
Another new and interesting Tiger feature is the ability to export any printed page directly to iPhoto via the Save as PDF option. I was then able to export straight out to JPG on on my PSP. Voila! Simple, perfect ebooks.
I created a custom page size of 3.78 x 6.66 inches in, opened up an HTML ebook from http://www.gutenberg.org in Safari, printed to iPhoto using the Save as PDF options menu in the print dialog box, selected all images and rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise in iPhoto, then exported to jpg at 480×272 pixels and save the folder to my PSP.
Opening the first image up on the PSP, turn the PSP 90 degrees clockwise and have a portrait oriented page to read with the page turn “trigger” button right under your thumb.
Most interesting is the fact that apple included this “Print to iPhoto” functionality at the system level…could mean a very interesting “iPhoto Book” in the near future.
“Full screen in Quicktime can easily be done with an Applescript”?
Would you please point me to where I can find out how to do this? And is there a way to do this under Windows?