http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=287190


in reply to Re: My Favorite Holy War is:
in thread My Favorite Holy War is:

The *nix vs windows is a pretty pointless war, IMHO, especially when one could have both functionality *and* user friendliness by getting a Mac. ;)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: My Favorite Holy War is:
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 27, 2003 at 23:39 UTC

    Does this legendary Mac user-friendliness apply to iMacs? I ask because other than Mac classics they're the only macs I've used for more than an hour and I found them to be less than productive (to put it nicely).

      How old of an iMac? Was it running OSX? OS9 and below wasn't really designed for developers, so most don't really like it. OSX, on the other hand, is a different story all together... However, OS9 and below are still extremely user friendly, IMHO, for people who don't have to write code.

        It was pre-OSX. The problem I've found with Macs in general is that they aim for simplicity rather than consistancy. Take the device configuration procedures, in the versions I've used you'll select to configure the mouse and it'll give you something like two options: one for mouse speed, and one for click sensitivity (or something, I forget :). So what happens when you need to load a new mouse driver? That's located somewhere completed different not cross-referenced at all. A different more "advanced" operation? Somewhere different entirely. Macs have often appeared to me as something that has been over-engineered for ease of use at the sake of usability. Oddly enough, I often feel the same way about Perl.

        I'm coming from using almost exclusively Linux and BSD-based operating systems, so my assumptions and what I find intuitive are probably quite different from the average user. However, I think Apple could benefit substantially from a control center approach (such as KDE) that is directly referenced from the more "user-friendly" configuration menus. Then again they may already have done this in OSX ;-).