Dragaera

Brust weblog entry

Sat Feb 7 16:55:49 PST 2004

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
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