Windows.. it's like coming home! 3379

I also have a similar PowerBook, and the heat is an annoying thing, especially as I'm very inclined to use it on my lap. I've heard the heat from the new MacBooks might be even worse, and this is the biggest factor that prevents me from upgrading to one right now.

While you're right about these 2 issues, there are some aspects of Apple's laptop hardware that I like over the PC laptops I've also owned. All ports down the side and none at the back, for one thing. Plus the ambient light sensor and backlit keyboard are handy for those of us who prefer to write Java in the dark, to hide our shame :-D

And here I was about to agree with what you'd posted, until you messed it up with that last paragraph!

I basically can't stand all newsreaders, with the exception of MacSOUP. The popularity of MT-Newswatcher, in particular, baffles me. I keep trying it every few months, convinced that there must be something I'm missing about it that everyone else sees. I've yet to find it, whatever it is.

MacSOUP has a quirky interface, and is missing lots of features that other people apparently like. It does everything I want in a newsreader though, in exactly the way I want to do it.

I usually find that when it comes to the smaller, less-essential apps I usually prefer a Mac-only program to anything I've been able to find on Windows. I don't especially like having to use any other IM client than Proteus, for example, and I can't find a Windows RSS reader as nice as NetNewsWire.

00 dpi; the result is teeny tiny UI.

I've never found this a problem with my PowerBook, but then 1280x854 on a 15.2" screen is a conservative enough resolution. I can only buttume Apple is waiting to have a resolution-independent OS before they crank the resolutions up the level of PCs.

In a way, I'm surprised it lasted this long. It was undeniably "Old Apple", the last remnant of the pre-Steve Jobs era. You could tell how Apple felt about by making no attempt in all the time it existed to integrate it a little better with native applications.

Now we have another band-aid transition (in the sense that it's quick and painful), after which we will presumably have a stable platform for the forseeable future (unless someone can contruct a plausible transition for Apple to embark on in another few years. I can't, thankfully).

I understand the point you've made before about the stark contrast between the way Microsoft transitioned from DOS to NT-based OSs, and the way Apple has gone from OS 9 to OS X, and from PPC to Intel. I think it's fair to say though that Apple's curcumstances simply didn't allow a gradual transition, especially in going from OS 9 to OS X. They started from a position of severe weakness compared to Microsoft.

They had a hopelessly outdated OS, dwindling support and sales, and the air of a company heading towards an inevitable end. Occasional hardware hits like the original iMac couldn't sustain them when the basic platform was in such poor shape. So, they rounded up 2 of every app and plunged straight into the transition as fast as they could.

Microsoft, on the other hand, had the luxury of taking their time moving from DOS to NT. Windows 95 was insanely succesful, and NT 4.0 did a pretty good job in the business market. Both were technically good enough to compete in the markets they were aimed at, allowing Microsoft to move them closer to each other and merge them at a much more leisurely pace.

Its syntax is a little nasty alright, but there are encouraging noises that Apple has worked to address the memory management.

I refuse to let you use MT-Newswatcher as a barometer for Mac apps! It's amongst the very worst I've encountered on the platform, and not indicative of Mac apps as a whole. Keep this up and I'll start countering with a dicussion of Lotus Notes.

With pictures.

Yes, the visual styles are all over the place, and this is something I hope is being addressed, or at least being acknowledged as a problem within Apple.

The latest I've seen of Leopard suggest Apple is cutting down on all the wacky variations.

Yes, but it relies on periodic re-indexing rather than hooks to the kernel code that modifies the filesystem, so new files that you create don't show up until some unspecified time in the future. This is a bit of a problem.

What about all the updates to iTunes!

Well you do get quite a bit more for $30 than just fullscreen playback. It is lame that fullscreen playback is lumped in with the "Pro" features though.

Apple makes iTunes and Quicktime updates freely available too. I have read that Fullscreen Playback will no longer require a Pro key in the next version of Quicktime. I'm sure we'll all have a "duuuuh!" moment when that finally happens.

The taskbar can hold more items if you resize it, but then you lose all that Fitt's law goodness for all the items that are not on the bottom row, and are left aiming at some very vertically thin targets.

The taskbar also suffers from the completely unstable program placement. Over the course of half an hour, the position of every single item in the tasbar can and will change, leaving you hunting down items. If you open a new instance of an already-running app, it opens somewhere in the middle of the taskbar, whereas if there wasn't another instance already running it opens at the end.

The Dock, on the other hand, has nice and predictable program placement. Programs stay in the same order all the time they're open, regardless of what window management you do.

I don't see how you can say the apps in the Dock move around all the time, because, quite frankly, they don't.

The Start Menu is a great solution as a complete repository for all your applications, but for quick-launching the most common apps the Dock beats it easily. The big reason for this is that the Dock pretends it's not a launcher at all, and that all programs, running and non-running are treated equally.

I have the programs I use 95% of the time all sitting in the Dock. Their positions and order do not change, no matter what windows I open and close, or whether or not any of these apps are open at any particular time. I click on an icon in the same place all the time, and I get the app I want.

I don't need to perform any mental gymnastics to remember whether or not the app is running (in Windows, the answer to this question determines whether or not I use the Taskbar or the Start Menu) and I don't need to wonder if it'll open alongside other similar windows in the middle of the taskbar, or whether it'll appear appended to the end of my existing application list. It's just always in the same place.

For the less-common apps that are launched now and again, the Start Menu is better than the Dock. But Spotlight (and, in fairness, MSN Desktop Search) is better than either.