Anyone else here in the post-PC era?

You're really a toolbag. "Girls" play MMO's too, genius.

I haven't figured out how to be productive with my regular computers!

TL;DR

What other OS's does the Transformer run? Netbook stuff, like lite versions of Windows?Again, just curious. Always been an ASUS fan and it sounds like a useful little device.

Specifically what defies logic? Again, double-clicking folders always opens folders. It doesn't ever do anything else on a Mac. If it did something else it's because you didn't double click it a folder.The "secret handshake" is Control-click, which doesn't make anything available that isn't already available in the main menus and is actually pretty intuitive; I guessed my way to it the first time I used OS X with no prompting, on my first try. Macs have had precisely the right-clicking behavior you think is missing for several years, now.And it seems to me that if Macs are intuitive for people who have little to now computer experience, that proves how intuitive they are. If they're completely counterintuitive to someone like you, then it's for the reason I've already explained - your previous computer experience has altered all your instincts when it comes to computers. "Better" in what way that isn't simply a function of your far greater experience with other OS's?Look, I'm perfectly OK with you using the platforms you know the best. Nothing is stupider than Apple evangelism that says that you're an idiot if you don't go out and buy a new computer right now. You're probably several hundred dollars committed into applications on the PC side, plus another several hundred at least in PC hardware. Nobody expects you to switch, that's stupid. What would you gain? Nothing.But why say such demonstratively untrue things about the Mac platform? Why make such sweepingly inaccurate characterizations and pretend your opinion has some kind of objectivity? Why can't you just say "eh, don't use Macs, I prefer PC's, probably not gonna buy an iPhone either" and be done with it? Why the Apple hate in a thread that isn't even about iPads?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Ctrl-I for "Get Info." Or you could right-click and choose the same option. Command-I on the Mac (all keyboard shortcuts on the Mac are Command-key based.)An easy mnemonic for that is because you wanted to change the info, you needed to get it. Hence, Get Info. Boy, fuck Apple for making that so hard to remember, right? Menu option: "Show Duplicates." Then click the track and press "Delete" on your keyboard.Truly, another completely counter-intuitive violation of established interface guidelines, or something.I'm sorry to make fun, Dwise, but the way that you continue to describe activities that are stupendously obvious and require only a single keystroke as counter-intuitive mysteries that took you hours to solve really is funny. You've made it apparent that there's nothing at all uniquely unintuitive about Apple software, you just have an ideosyncratic set of expectations about how software and interfaces should perform that are about thirty years out of date. Your experience as a programmer in the 60's and 70's just has no relevance, in fact it's the reason that modern computers are largely beyond your grasp. You keep expecting computers to treat you like a programmer, but since 1984 or so, it's been the goal of manufacturers to produce computers that treat you like a person. No, it's just frustrating for you. I'm a programmer, too, Dwise, though of a more modern bend: I can sling code in Java and Python, still remember Scheme from my college days, once wrote a custom content management system in PHP (though it wasn't very good, since I couldn't get at the database I had to store everything in flat files), and though I prefer the order of a good Object Oriented programming environment I'm not above getting down and dirty in the registers with C bitwise operators, like when I'm writing code for my ATMega328.And I just don't have any of the problems you have. It never takes me more than a minute to figure out how to work things on a consumer electronics device. I mean, how mysterious could this possibly be even to someone like you:Guess what it turns on. All of which are the same on the Mac as on the PC. That is completely untrue. The Mac filesystem is not tied to any application, and the default save folder for all applications in the Mac OS is "Documents", which is exactly what you would expect it would be. This is a bizarre complaint since it's not even close to true. The Mac encourages it. You want to work in a terminal? Open "Terminal", an application so fiendishly and counter-intuitively located in the "Applications" folder, by default. Boom, full bash shell for your 70's-style enjoyment.Where's the bash shell on a PC? Oh, that's right - I have to use DOS, or maybe it's not quite DOS anymore since Windows moved to a kernel that isn't DOS-based. So what is it, exactly? Window's "Command" terminal, which is really just an emulator, decides to emulate a filesystem and environment that nobody has any other purpose for? Right, that makes a lot of sense.Is that what you think of as "intuitive"? Isn't that just another example of familiarity, not intuitiveness? You know how to use the fake-DOS terminal on a PC, so you just expect all computers and devices to have fake-DOS terminals instead of the robust Linux-like terminals on Apple devices? Very considerate of you (I did actually know what it meant.) The issue here is that you've not proven the point you think you've proven - you've proven mine. Macs aren't lacking anything in the "intuitive" department, they're just different than what you're used to on the PC.And that's fine! Again, it's a major pain in the ass to learn a new workflow and toolchain. There'd better be a damn good payoff at the end if you're going to be made to do that. And there's not in this instance. But that's not an excuse for saying things that aren't true. Apple software usually makes sense to both kinds of people, just not you. And making sense to people who know nothing about computers is the exact definition of "intuitive" in this context. I'll give you a list in no particular order, and understand that it's not a list meant to make you switch - which I don't care if you do - but just a list where, if I was going to spend the money on a computer anyway, these are the "Pros" that would make me lean Mac:*Mac OS is BSD-based, with full bash terminal support, more stable than Windows, equivalent native software support for all major software packages and open-source, and almost no history of viruses or malware.*Macs can run Windows, but PC's can run MacOS. That means the Mac hardware platform has access to software. (The first thing I do on any new Mac is drop a copy of Windows on a second drive partition, just in case.)*The hardware has a better design and fit and finish, particularly the laptops. While they're frequently slightly underpowered at the same price-point, the power-per-weight ratio is usually much greater. That matters if you're going to be taking it places, and what's the point of a laptop if you never take it anywhere?*Intuitive and polished interface. This is true for the iOS devices, as well.*All the games I want to play are available for that platform.*Better gamma. I've tried to adjust the gamma on my PC to match but it just doesn't ever look the same.*It doesn't have Windows' idiosyncratic notions about networking terms and concepts, and it handles multiple network interfaces in a much more intuitive way.*Windows thinks of things as drives, when really what you're interested in is volumes, like on the Mac. Why does my SD card slot have an icon when there's no SD card inside? Why does my DVD drive get a drive letter when there's no DVD? Like, what am I going to do with my DVD drive except put disks in it and interact with them? And why have "drive letters" in the first place on a system that hasn't been DOS-based for over a decade?*Legitimate UNIX-style filetrees all the way down to the filesystem. Windows' idiosyncratic frontslash-based file descriptors are a pain in programming and it's never clear when the environment is going to switch that over for you. And what about when I'm remotely grabbing a file from a remote Windows filesystem via Samba URL? Front slashes or back? Who the fuck knows?*Safari doesn't suck, unlike Internet Explorer. The first and only time I open IE on a new Windows install is to download Firefox or Chrome. I do that anyway on the Mac, too, but Safari's ok to use. It's no Firefox but at least it's not a welcome invitation to malware.*Bonjour actually works pretty well, that is to say that it works completely without you thinking about it, your network shares and networkable devices just automagically show up to each other. Windows file sharing continues to be a nightmare. "Ok, I've shared my folder on PC A, now let me go over to PC B and.... uh, where is PC A, exactly?" "Network Neighborhood" and "Workgroups" have never, ever worked. Why would I want to proselytize a PC user over to the Mac? What a waste of time. 90% of what people do is in web browsers, anyway. I'd maybe take the effort to "proselytize" someone over to Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, if I was going to have to be the guy to fix their computer when IE broke it.To tell the truth I've always kind of looked down on Apple fanboys who felt like they had to stick up for Apple on the internet. If I'd known that it's because they have to deal with an incredible torrent of total bullshit from people like yourself, I would have had more sympathy for them.Anyway, sorry I wrote you a whole book.

Speaking of PC weirdness, while I was posting this a YouTube video I had running in the background just crashed my display driver.Never had that happen on a Mac, just sayin'.

The only thing I ever tried XP Search for was the only thing anybody would ever try to use it for; that is, I needed to find a file when I remember what I called it, but didn't remember where I saved it.This is apparently something that no version of Windows search has ever been able to do. It's great that XP search could return you a list of every .txt file on your hard drive, but who on Earth gives a fuck about that?Like I said, if what I needed to do on Windows was find the location of a file by name, it has always been utterly useless.

No, I'l readily admit that Android runs on a whole lot more devices than iOS. The problem is that almost all of those devices aren't ones you'd ever want to buy. They exist mainly to trick people who are looking to buy a "smartphone" but don't know anything about them. They're like the hundred different varieties of yellow mustard at the grocery store, they're just looking to capture some portion of the mustard market that doesn't know to buy this:(Seriously if you aren't buying this mustard, you're doing it wrong. Your life is not worth living.) Right, but you're talking about only being able to buy 6 different fart apps instead of 30. Some "limitations" are actually things you want. Are things developers want, because who is going to find their app in the App Store if it's in the middle of a hundred thousand shovelware applications nobody has time to look through? It's not limitation, it's curation, the way (for instance) Facebook only shows you the statuses of your friends, not all 800 million of Facebook's users. And "major headlines" constitute an representative search of current patent litigation?And, look, Apple has these patents. If Samsung really is violating them, doesn't Apple have a claim about that? What's the point of a patent if not to prevent your competitors from exploiting your expensive research investment and just ripping you the fuck off? It's certainly the case that patent trolling is out of control in the tech sector. But it's specifically your competitors that patents are meant to protect you against!

Yeah, and my hope is that this trend continues - that tablet technologies are going to get elderly people caught up on the tech. My wife's grandma is like "how come you never call anymore?" and she's like "Grandma, nobody calls anybody anymore, we're using email and texts and Facebook."Increasingly, the elderly are finding themselves sequestered from everybody else because they won't use computers, and the reason they won't use them is that they won't play around with them, because as soon as it does something they didn't expect or immediately recognize, they're convinced it's "broken" and stop using it. I once had to "fix" her computer because a pop-up window came up. That's what was broken about it - there was a pop-up window.

Speaking of Google, you'll wish you had Googled before you made that claim:

quote:

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Google Retracts After Caught Stealing Ideas

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Monday this week Google launched its App Engine, which was very well received by developers and users alike. Unfortunately, attention turned elsewhere on Tuesday as Google was caught with its pants down by the online community. To demonstrate App Engine, Google created an app it called "HuddleChat." Quick-eyed users quickly noted however, that HuddleChat was a definite copy of 37signals’ Campfire app.

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http://www.tomsguide.com/...uddlechat-campfire,news-977.htmlThat took me about 20 seconds. If patent offices are going to allow generic patents then it's a free for all, and any company that doesn't take full legal advantage is going to be sued by its stockholders. Apple isn't in any way unique in this regard; how many online retailers has Amazon sued because it was granted a patent on being able to buy things by clicking a button? How many simply don't offer one-click buying because of Amazon's patents?I agree with you 100% - tech patents, especially software patents, are out of control. There was a great This American Life show about this exact subject. You should take a listen, I think you'd really like it. That's a little generic, don't you think? I mean how many names for an app that lets you sync over wifi are there going to be besides "Wifi Sync"? How many icons are there going to be for such an app that don't combine Apple's wifi symbol with Apple's sync symbol? The kid's icon used symbology that Apple already developed. He didn't create the circular arrows or the , Apple did. How is Apple using their own symbols ripping somebody off? He was ripping them off, seems more like. If Apple really did just copy his code then there's a legitimate claim of copyright infringement, but he doesn't allege that. He simply alleges that Apple made an app with the same obvious, untrademarkable name (you can't trademark a generic) that had an icon similar to his, except that they're similar only because the kid used symbols that Apple designed.Also - where is the app? I just checked and there's no "Wifi Sync" app that you can get, from Apple or anybody else. There's no icon like that on my iPhone.AbE: Oh, wait, I see - it's iOS 5. I'm not running that on my phone.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Right, but his claim is that they ripped him off, even though Wifi Sync was a feature they had already announced would be in iOS 5, and his evidence is that the icons are similar, in that they both use symbols Apple had already developed and associated with things like "wifi" and "sync" on the iPhone.I don't see any evidence that Apple actually ripped off his code, which a fair number of people seem to think doesn't work, anyway. And how do you know there's not a security flaw? Like the same kind of legal boilerplate that has always been used to indemnify corporations with active R&D against spurious legal claims from someone who claims to have had the same idea years ago. I mean, how do you think it's supposed to work, like this?That'd be nice, but anybody can have an idea. Actually doing the work to make it work is where the challenge lies, and it's what should be rewarded. Sounds like this kid made a half-assed app, couldn't be arsed to come up with a creative icon for it, and still made a ton of money on the Cydia store. Who exactly is being ripped off, here? This kid is basically Apple's version of the Winklevoss twins.

I think many people don't realize how the operating notion of learning among people our age - try it, if it doesn't work, try something else, use what you learned to try a third thing, and so on - is very much an artifact of the times and in all likelihood, something most of us have learned from video games. (This is from a video game comic.)My wife's parents joke about their toolbox. "This is my plumbing tool, this is my electrical tool, this is my tech support tool" and each time they hold up an index finger. It's the finger they use to dial numbers on the phone, in other words. A few Christmases ago, the garbage disposal broke. Since it was Christmas Eve, it was going to cost about 300 dollars to have a plumber come out and fix it, but Sears was open and a new disposal was like $75 bucks.So I convinced them to let me take a look at it, and with a screwdriver I was able to remove the old unit and attach the new one.What do I know about garbage disposals? Nothing. Jack shit. But I know that plumbers install them* and, therefore, it can't require a bunch of fabrication, there's probably a standardized connection to mount a disposal to a sink, the electrical wire either terminates in a standard harness or simple screw terminals, etc. And I knew that as long as nobody turned it on while I was under there (I taped the switch so they wouldn't) I probably couldn't hurt myself or the unit by fucking around with it.I don't know what it is but people of a certain age are just completely stymied by the first time something isn't what they expect. And these are perfectly intelligent people with advanced degrees! My father-in-law was dean of a college until he retired last year. I hope to god that in my dotage I don't lose mental flexibility to that degree. Maybe it was common for malfunctioning household goods to just blow up in your face when they were growing up? Also I notice you don't see a lot of those tinker shops where old guys fix toasters and stuff. People say that's because we throw things away instead of having them fixed, but maybe it's because we fix things ourselves instead of needing "handymen" to do it?*None of that is to say that plumbers are dumb and can't do those things, it's just that if they had to do it every time they'd complain to the manufacturers until they standardized the mounts and connections.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Reduce image width.

The menu that it is "stuck away in" is the File menu, which makes sense to me, since it was an operation you wanted to perform on a file. I'm not sure what interface design expectation you think it violates to put file operations in the File menu, could you elaborate? You wouldn't. If you'll take a moment and read more carefully, you'll see that I told you to hit Ctrl-I in iTunes for the PC and Command-I in iTunes for the Mac. Using Control+key shortcuts is a common thing on the PC which I guess I expected you to be familiar with. You're sure you're a PC user? Yes, it's greyed out if you don't have anything selected, because iTunes can't read your mind and automagically know what songs you want to delete from your library. You actually have to select one or more of them.There are no other circumstances under which iTunes will grey out the Delete menu item. Right, toolbag, but you act like you uncovered some state secret by doing so. Apple doesn't hide the Terminal; about the only thing they do that could be considered "hiding" it is that it's not present on the Dock by default, but surely that's not a surprise - the vast majority of users aren't going to have any use for the Terminal and are more likely to use it to break something.So the Terminal gets tucked away into the same place all the other apps and utilities go. Finding it there hardly strikes me as an achievement on par with discovering King Solomon's Mines, as you portray it in your dotage. The Mac OS 9 filesystem ("HFS") isn't tied to applications, either. It had somewhat different default behavior in applications when you opened a save dialog - most programs defaulted to their own install directories, but the rigid distinction between application install locations and document locations wasn't something that was common on computers in those days. Contemporary versions of Windows had the same behavior for the most part. Well, right, but I'm struggling to see the complaint here. Apple doesn't offer any desktop/laptop OS's but Mac OS X, I think they're up to "Lion", now? 10.7 or something? I don't understand what's so surprising about the fact that very old versions of the OS don't include developments that post-date them. You're not going to get all the advantages of the PC in Windows 95, are you? No, it makes it non-familiar. By definition learned behavior isn't "intuition." Intuition is problem-solving that precisely doesn't rely on learned behavior.It's not your "intuition" that makes it harder for you to use a Mac, it's your training in the PC. Your experiences don't reflect on the "intuitiveness" of using a Mac because your experiences aren't a result of your intuition, but your training.

In my experience it has not ever done it even once.I don't know what to tell you. I've even had the exact experience you mentioned - started a Search, then manually located the file by inspection, and even as I'm staring right at it, Search has no idea where it is.I don't know if it's index lag or what, but I have not ever had a successful experience using Search in any version of Windows. For what it's worth, it's been rocky in Mac OS X too, with the result that filesystem searching is probably the largest difference between various versions of the Mac OS. (I'm thinking of the misconceived "Sherlock" system, for instance. Oh, you're looking for "Taxes 2003"? Here's everything from Amazon.com about doing taxes.)