I consider myself a hardcore Rock Band/Guitar Hero player. It’s gotten so bad that it’s the only game I play all week. I haven’t even removed the shrink wrap from my copy of GTAIV.

But apparently, there are players out there that are more hardcore than I am. These are the players who actually build minature stages to really simulate the feel of performing for an audience. For these guys a riser or an elevated stage is not enough, lighting effects are an important part of the whole illusion.

PDP’s Rock Band Stage Kit is a great peripheral for these uber-serious gamers. It’s a great device that combines a compact LED lighting system, strobe effects and fog effects in one machine. The Stage Kit attaches to the Xbox 360 through a USB port and this enables it to interact with in-game performances. The folks at PDP actually collaborated with Harmonix to program actual in-game cues to both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. This means more accurate rendition of effects to the music and your performance, a big improvement or poor sound sensors that other solutions provide.

Space constraints in my house prevents me from getting this but I salute the Rock Band player who has the deep pockets and the space to really take advantage of thise gizmo.

Because it is a simple matter for a OS X user to increase the width of their browser on a case by case basis there is never a need to stretch to full screen. The button that most Windows people assume will expand a window to full screen instead, in OS X, expands or contracts to the documents dimensions. In the case of a browser it expands and contracts to the width of the web page.

In windows, there is no easy way to contract a window view. So, rather than jumping back and forth between window sizes a Windows person would just go full screen and stay there.

So in this case, the Mac user would be used to multitasking, with the slew of windows visible on the desktop, overlapping, and sometimes just peeking from behind the foreground window. The Windows user, on the other hand, tends to work solely on the current window visible in the foreground.

I’m both a Mac and Windows user, and I usually work on my Mac and Windows laptops side by side (each with their particular purposes). I’ve reached the point where I no longer get confused when I switch across the Mac and Windows interfaces. And guess what. I don’t usually maximize my Windows! Even before I started using a Mac, I never got used to maximizing. I always preferred having my Windows overlapping, with some peeking just behind the active window I’m currently working on.

A Workflow Issue

Yes, it’s a workflow issue. Having a window maximized has advantages, since this lets the user focus on the single task at hand. But having all your windows–or parts thereof–visible at all times (let’s not even mention Exposé) can also help in seeing the bigger picture.

Still, one has to consider that the human brain was not designed for multitasking. So it’s a question of productivity. Do you work (or play) better when you have a good grasp of the overall picture? Or do you need to be constantly focused on one thing?

Perhaps more interesting and intriguing with the restiffbard.com article is the reader discussion that ensues. There’s the Mac camp, and there’s the Windows camp, and there are the people that see things more objectively. Going beyond the My-OS-is-better-than-your-OS arguments, though, it’s really a matter of how effectively the machine can interface with the human. Both sides have advantages. And considering that Windows still has majority share in the world’s consumer OS market, how effective a UI may no longer be inherent in the operating system’s design. The Mac cult may argue about their’s being superior. But in the end, It’s about preference. It’s about user adoption. This is why some people still find it difficult to switch across platforms.

What about you? What’s your OS and what’s your preference in dealing with window sizes?