Oxford says Apple's OS X is a Linux distro 3252

snips

On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 12:51:08 -0700, Snit

I don't care whether you use Automater or BASIC. It's your OS, your system, and *your* claim that yours has this vaunted "ease of use" thing which the other guys don't.

It's *your* claim, so *you* get to back it up. I've given an example of a task I need to do, as well as an example of how I do it. Since your system, not mine, is the one with "ease of use", it follows that it *must* be easier to use your system than mine... so therefore there *must* be an easier way to do the job, using your system, than the way I do it.

See how it works? I use the system. With ease. More so, apparently, than you are capable of managing, with yours. But yours, somehow, has this "ease of use" thing, and mine doesn't.

Since it's just one task - we're not talking about an entire day's worth of work that I do, and all the dozens of apps, scripts, servers and whatnot I work with to do that day's work - it should be really simple for you to show how your system makes just that one, single little aspect of my day easier for me, easier than the way I do things now. After all, if your system has the "ease of use" thing, and mine doesn't, then your system should be easier to use, right? So fine - show me. Show me how you'd manage it *at all*, let alone making it easier.

What you're failing to grasp here is a very basic concept: not everyone uses a system the same way, for the same things. Maybe OSX has a more consistent GUI, and maybe that makes *some* tasks easier. That's fine, that's great, that's wonderful. But you're not claiming that OSX has "ease of use, but only if you're running word processor version 3.2, and only to do a spell check", you're claiming, have claimed, that OSX has this "ease of use" thing, and the other guys don't. That's a blanket statement, applying across the board - to all users, all tasks, at all levels.

Therefore, my use, my tasks, my jobs, *also* fall under the heading you've used, and those jobs, those tasks, are - by your own claim - easier on OSX, since it, according to you, has "ease of use" and things like Linux and Windows apparently don't.

So again, show me. Show me how it's easier to do even *one* part of my job, *one* task I need done, using OSX, than it is using my tools. I've shown you the task, I've shown you how I do it. Since yours has "ease of use" and mine doesn't, *show me* how yours does it more easily.

Very nice, very good. You've yet to demonstrate how this matters, or makes things any easier for me. Let's see, right now, I'm running Pan, which is, I believe, a GTK-based app. I'm running it in KDE, which is QT-based. I've got xmms running, which is Goat-knows-what based, but looks nothing like either.

I've also got a console window open. Several, actually; one to the local machine, one to the router, one to the internal web server. And I've got FireFox open. Do they operate differently? Sure. Does it make an iota of difference? No. Why? Because they're different apps, doing wildly different tasks, in wildly different ways. Any attempt to make them "consistent" is doomed to fail. Yet I'm using all of 'em, quite happily, right now.

Not happy with that? Here's a specific example of something to really knot your knickers. On an average day, I actually install, remove, update or reconfigure between about two and a dozen packages. There's this cute little GUI app to do the job, Synaptic. Very cool, very slick. Does something the others don't seem to do very well, allows you to search through the package descriptions.

Except, if I'm already logged in as root, and at a command line, why privates around launching that? There's a text-mode version which does pretty much everything it does - except for searching descriptions, AFAIK - called apbreastude. So I fire it up, find the packages I want (I can search by names) and voila, install.

Except, if I already know the name of the package I want, why privates around with that, when I can use a single command, such as apt-get install package, or apt-get remove package, or apt-get upgrade, or, if I simply need to reconfigure, dpkg-reconfigure package?

That's three completely different ways of doing *the same task* - whether it's installing, removing, upgrading or reconfiguring the package. Three completely different ways, using three completely different approaches, three completely different interfaces.

Yet I use *all* of them, pretty much every single day. I don't just use one of them, though. Why? Because, despite your harping on about consistency as something handed down from on high, it is the very fact that they are *not* consistent, that they give me *completely* different ways of achieving the same tasks, that make them so useful. Try to take any one of them away, or force it to have a "consistent" GUI interface, it would, in fact, vastly reduce the utility, the flexibility, the *ease* of using them.

In short, a consistent UI would be an active detriment to my getting my work done, a net *loss* of ease, a net reduction in productivity, in power, in flexibility. It would be a net *increase* in hbuttles, headaches and wasted time and effort.

Yet so far, the *only* thing you seem to offer to support your "ease of use" thesis is consistent dialogs. Well, guess what? It's not helping your case *one iota*.

Explain to me how *I* can do *my* job more easily, using OSX, than I'm doing already, with Linux, where a large part of the benefit to the tools I'm using is *precisely* the fact that they do *not* have consistent interfaces.

Again, "ease of use" either means making things easy to use, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, stop using the term. If it does, well, guess what, I'm a user, I'm trying to use the machine, so it either makes things as easy, or easier, or your whole ease of use argument is complete and utter bollocks.

Really. Good. I've got a PHP script which links together various traffic records for things going through our routers. The core data is stored in several databases, locally and remotely. Please explain how I move the data from those databases to the script, using your approach. Hey, it's not supposed to care where the data is stored, right, and you can move it program to program, right?

Do tell. Explain it to us in detail.

That's purely a matter of opinion. What you think is "well designed", someone else might find frustratingly crippled. And vice versa.

This is a *benefit*? My home machine and my work machine both run Ubuntu. Same version. They look and feel only the tiniest bit alike. Guess what? I use them for *entirely* different purposes. Trying to make my home machine look, feel, or act like my work machine would mean cluttering it up with umpteen things it doesn't need, which I don't need. Trying to make my work machine consistent with my home machine would simply cripple it to the point of uselessness.

No idea what Automator is, or does, or how it does it... but you've still failed, completely, to show how it's remotely as capable as what I've already shown you... or as easy, or as efficient, or as relatively immune to poking fingers, accidental runs, accidental stops, etc, etc, etc.

Might be useful if I need to control my parents. I suspect there are things of the sort available for Linux, though frankly I've never gone looking.

I do know there are some tools - DansGuardian comes to mind - which can be used to control some aspects of things; in this case, web browsing. I've actually used that one, though for different purposes. One thing I really do like about it is that it is both relatively "smart" and ultimately configurable - so, for example, if someone does a search on "breast", it can block "Hot breastties" and the like, while allowing breast research sites through.

Not quite sure what that all means. I want to save it, I save it. Anywhere I have write access. Slideshows are a function of what I use to view the image, not my email client.

Neat trick, that. So explain to me how you tell whether I'm online, since you have my public email address, but this has sweet FA to do with anything I use to "be online" as far as chatting's concerned. My IM accounts use completely different email addresses.

'Sides, is this an *email* client. or something else? My Emali client does... email. Clean, neat, efficient... and *easy*. One task. One concept. One thing for the user to learn and cope with. If you want a flippin' IM client, they're over there, doing what *they* do, again, simply, cleanly, efficiently - and easily.

How you figure that *adding* bells and whistles having absolutely nothing to do with the task being performed actually makes things *easier* is beyond me. Does your car's mirror adjust button also have a selection to place a pick-up order at your local pizza joint? Why not? It's a completely unrelated function, so it would make perfect sense to include it there, right? And that would make the whole thing *easier*, right?

Not quite sure what that's actually supposed to mean, but if you mean I can create an image which loads in viewer X instead of viewer Y, despite the identical extension. this, again, is adding an extra complication, an extra complexity. Now you apparently can't tell what app is going to be launched when you try to open an image, or, at least, can't predict. Weren't you the one harping consistency, yet here you are harping how *adding inconsistency* is somehow a benefit? Wasn't your whole original core thesis - something about print dialogs, as I recall - all about how consistency is what makes for ease of use? Yet here you are telling us how *inconsistent* behaviour makes for ease of use.

Can't have it both ways, you know. If consistency is what makes things easy, then this is a bad idea. If inconsistency is suddenly a good thing, then all your harping about the print dialogs and whatnot was a waste of time. Pick one story and stick to it.

This, of course, is meaningless, since icon size, contents, clarity and the like will depend entirely upon the image and the tool used to render them to the screen. And the screen itself. And the video driver. Among other things.

Which apparently include randomly gluing completely unrelated things onto each other and creating a complete lack of consistency in something as basic as opening an image. Yes, yes, you're doing a *stellar* job here of explaining how this equates to "ease of use" - while still failing to show how you can do *one* task I need done even remotely as easily, let alone more so, than I'm doing it now.

Good job, well done. You're making the case for... well... absolutely nothing, actually. Certainly nothing you're trying to do.

-- MS, because work should be measured by effort, rather than result.