On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 03:54:00PM -0800, David Goldfarb <goldfarb at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote: > From: Matthew Hunter <matthew at infodancer.org> > >I will also note for the record that I have used Macs, both > >before and after OS X, and don't like using either. Their user > >interface always makes an effort to get in my way. [...] > >Strangely enough, I'm one of those users for whom UNIX > >(specifically, Linux) gets the interface *right*. > You are aware, aren't you, that in OS X you can start up Terminal.app > and have a tcsh command line? In fact, there are system directories > available that way that aren't accessible at all through the GUI, so > far as I've been able to tell. Yes, I am aware of that. That is a major improvement over the past. But it doesn't make up for bizarre bouncing icons in glowing 3D that take up about 1/10th of the screen, and so on. Maybe it's configurable to be less annoying, but I won't know until I need to use one for long enough to find out in pure self-defense. I've always hated the Mac GUIs on their own merits, rather than simply because they lacked a command line. Adding a command line fixes a major flaw in the operating system, but doesn't fix the problems in the GUI. And to be honest, I doubt Apple sees them as "problems" that want "fixing"; taste varies. Most of my technical annoyances about Macs went away with OS X. Most of my user-experience annoyances about Macs are there by design. And so I don't see any point to specifically choosing a Mac when platforms that suit me better are available. If I'm forced to use a Mac, the command line is a benefit. But I'm not, and when I do need to support someone who uses a Mac, the odds are I'm not going to be supporting their use of the command line... -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp