Windows.. it's like coming home! 3390

I usually resist this proposition, though I can't disprove it, because I don't like where it leads: that the Mac has already driven off all the 'normal' users, leaving an buttortment of platform zealots, MS-haters, and such.

Does the current userbase need appeasing?

It does seem to me that Apple is locking itself out of the largest markets by behaving in this way.

snip- intel transition

The way I figure it, the Intel switch was always an option, but it was a desparate one, which could potentially kill the company if it went wrong.

That they did not attempt this during the G4 stall shows, I think, that they thought this plan terribly risky.

The the revenues they are now getting from the iPod changed this equation; they are now pretty sure they'll survive, even if the Intel switch is a complete disaster. Even in the worst possible case, they just become an MP3 maker and music distributor.

And the G5's power and heat problems are a nasty echo of the G4's speed problems. They suggest that the G5 won't save them; eventually they'll be forced to make the switch to cheap but fast commodity CPUs.

Put that together, and now's the time. But I feel that if it were not for the iPod, Apple would not risk it. The G5 is not that bad, nor that far behind, not yet.

Thus I see this decision as separate from the OS X one; it was clear long before they even hired Steve back that they needed to do *something* about the OS, even though that too was a desparate risk.

snip

Sure thing.

But of course, this is illustrative of one difference between Windows and OS X; OS X tries, whenever possible, to select the right way to do something and leave it at that. It does not let you configure the system very much.

Windows is much more configurable, though MS does tried to choose good defaults. This allows it to appeal to a broader audience, but still work for those people who don't care about this stuff and just use it as is.

I don't mind Spotlights behavior much; it's not that big of a performance drain. But I would have liked to be able to control when an OS X machine hibernates, as I can on Windows.

snip

I prefer to use the Finder sidebar for navigation rather than program launching, myself. It's not that big, and the icons get smaller (like in the dock) if you overload it.

snip

The quicklaunch bar takes up part of the taskbar, and it is very small. It can autohide (with the task bar), if you like that sort of thing.

Indeed it is just *too* small for my taste.

I don't use it.

I don't think this is so; it would be a better program launcher if that's all it did, even if it were otherwise unchanged.

There'd be more room for app icons, obviously, and it wouldn't move around unless you were changing the set of apps it holds.