Author: Roy Eassa
Date: 07:39:12 05/19/03
Go up one level in this thread
On May 19, 2003 at 09:53:20, Tord Romstad wrote: >On May 16, 2003 at 18:34:21, Roy Eassa wrote: > >>On May 13, 2003 at 17:18:10, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>>For me it is not very important that Rebel gets ported to Windows. I switched >>>to MacOS a few years ago, and I am sure a MacOS version of Rebel will not even >>>be seen in the fourth millennium. >> >> >>I'd be interested in hearing how/why you switched! > >I didn't really switch from Windows to MacOS -- I have never really used >Windows for anything except running commercial chess programs. My home >computer before I bought my first Mac was a x86 Linux box with a small Windows >partition. At school and at work I have exclusively used various dialects >of Unix (Irix, Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD). My knowledge and experience >about Windows is close to zero, and therefore I cannot really compare MacOS >to Windows. > >For me, there were two major reasons for switching to MacOS, neither of which >is likely to be relevant to most other people. The most important reason >was that it is the only platform on which I can run Macintosh Common Lisp, >which is by far my favorite development tool. A secondary reason was that >I wanted a Unix system which was easier to administrate, and where I could >use GUI tools for tasks where my knowledge of CLI tools is inadequate. >During my Linux days, I was too often frustrated when trying to install new >software or libraries. > >For a Unix person who wants a more user-friendly Unix, I think MacOS X is >an excellent system. I can imagine that the world looks very different to >a long-time MacOS user. I've used Unix in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, but am still NOT a Unix person. I programmed for the PC and its predecessors (CP/M) since the beginning, and for Windows as far back as 1.0 beta! I was a Windows programmer for 2 years before I discovered the Mac -- and learned just how pitiful Windows 1.x and 2.x (and, IMHO, 3.x) were. > >>There certainly still are numerous aspects of the Mac to prefer to the PC, IMHO. >> One example: filenames can and always could include question marks, slashes, >>and asterisks (etc.). Another example: several features are unique to the Finder >>(e.g., expandable/collapsible folders, folders sorted with files by each sorting >>criteria) and not available on the PC at all, AFAIK, even via 3rd party tools. > >Shows how different users are. I have hardly ever used any of these features. > LOL. We definitely come to the Mac from two opposite backgrounds. I find many things about OS X annoying as hell -- things that Apple had done elegantly and brilliantly in the past but did Microsoftly in OS X. But of course, that's because OS X is essentially not an Apple product at its core. I do, however, have a strong appreciation and respect for somebody coming to the Mac from the Unix side of things and thereby having a completely opposite view of the platform. Had I not detoured from Unix to DOS/Windows -- and then to the Mac -- in the '80s, I might well have been one of those people. I was completely a CLI guy from 1977 to 1988 and despised the so-called "GUI" of Windows 1.x and 2.x. >>A 3rd thing: never needed drive letters, never had 'em, never will. > >What is "drive letters"? > Is your question serious? On the PC, since day one (DOS, 1981, and continuing to today!!), you refer to the various disk drives (floppy, hard drive partitions, CD-ROM, whatever) as "A:" or "C:" or "D:", etc. That means that if you add or remove drives or partitions, or move a drive from one spot to another (e.g., internal to FireWire box), the name of that drive and often others as well change!! It's an incredibly old-fashioned and crude concept, yet nobody seems to question it. And the PC has always been obsessed with "pathnames" whereby once you install an application you'd better not rename the folder it's in or move the app or folder somewhere else, or it won't work anymore. On the Mac, disks always had names (just like any other folder) and you could rename/move any folders at any time and everything still worked. But just as in some ways Windows is more like the Mac, sadly the Mac (OS X) is in some ways more like Windows too. [I could write a whole thesis about both of those topics!] >>And then there's resource forks -- oops, Apple is dropping those. > >Although I like the idea of resource forks, I find that it makes my life >easier when they disappear. It is much less painful to transfer files >between Macs and Unix boxes (which I often do) without the resource forks. > Thus the problem with resource forks is and always has been that other platforms do not have them. There are many, many subtle and brilliant benefits to files having resource forks, but you're right -- you need to have a network that can handle them intelligently (I always have) or you need to zip or otherwise encode the files to survive trasfer through other OSs. >>But nowadays there are also numerous aspects of the PC to prefer as well, IMHO. >>One big one: web browsing tends to be faster (although I like the new tabbed >>version of Apple's browser, Safari). > >The speed of web browsing has never been a problem to me, but then I don't >spend much time browsing the web. > >Tord Yet again an example of how we differ. :-) Thanks for a great response!! -Roy. PS: I would love to learn about Norway. GM Jon Tisdall, an old friend, moved there years ago and I've always wondered why and also what daily life is like there as compared to the US.
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