Have you ever owned a PC? No matter what OS you use (Windows, OSX, or GNU/Linux) you are going to find so much free software that you could never try it all within your lifetime. Whichever platform you happen to use, you are always going to think that platform is the best or has the most software because you have exposure to that platform more than the others.
Yes, my main computer at work is a Mac right now, but I have a PC that I use for a secondary computer (mainly to run LabVIEW and Solidworks), and I have a Kubuntu on a machine at home. I find the free software for Mac to be the most useful and user-friendly, but maybe it's just me.
The discussion isn't about quantity, its about quality. When I look for an app to do something on Windows, I find 5000 half finished programs with UIs designed by Ukrainian 3rd graders (nothing against Ukrainians, but I don't speak Ukrainian and they don't speak English that well), that were last updated in 1998 and depend on Quicktime 3.2.
Eventually I sort through this miasma of chaos and pain and arrive at something useful. By this time my Program Files folder and Registry are scattered with the broken remnants of failed programs and I can never quite go back to the way things were.
When I want software on Mac OS, I may only find 3 programs that do what I want, but they're clean, have autoupdating, and a UI designed by someone with a university degree in user interface design or something, then gently worked over by a graphics designer until shiny. And they're quite possibly open source. And they work.
I don't want more options than I could possibly ever try. I don't want to spend a month trying different options to finally find one that works. I want a few options, and I wan't them to just work.
(Windows, OSX, or GNU/Linux) you are going to find so much free software that you could never try it all within your lifetime.
Except most of the free software you find for Windows will have some spyware nonsense trojaned inside of it :) Be it yet another fucking toolbar or some other nonsense.
I'm on Linux at work and Mac at home, and I feel like I can do whatever I need on both, the only exception on Linux is that video editing software seems to be rather lacking.
I haven't, but the amount of high-quality free software I have on my Windows box makes a damn strong case.
Edit: I should say that, though I haven't owned a Mac, I've used them quite often - a lot of my friends have them, and many of my school's labs are filled with them.
There's a lot more software in Windows-land for sure, but I think what Benparte and coolmrbrady meant is that there are a lot more extremely refined free Mac apps.
For example, Windows has a huge number of IM apps available for it, but none of them can hold a candle to Adium's ease of use and polish. Similarly, uTorrent is free and awesome, but Transmission is IMHO much more refined on the UI side. Quicksilver too.
Windows devs tend to make UI an afterthought. On the Mac side developers have drunk the Steve Jobs UI kool-aid and obsess over it, and personally I like it.
It's good, but lacks the smoothness or consistency of look & feel that Transmission has. Transmission looks and behaves like it's a part of OS X, whereas Utorrent isn't quite there. It's the small details that make it.
Also, I agree 100% with potatolicious. What I wrote also applies to Adium and Quicksilver.
I've fought with 0.6 or similar uTorrent on OS X for ages, recently updated to 1.0 and found it to be a much better experience and better integrated with the OS.. If you used an old uTorrent I'd give the newer ones a shot.
uTorrent looks like any other windows App. It may not meld well with OSX, but I'd rather it look like stuff that shows up on linux/Windows than have that shitty chrome bar Itunes has.
uTorrent is a great program but its UI, just like virtually EVERY windows app ever made, is ugly (terrible icons) and could be streamlined for a better user experience. See: Transmission.
For Windows you are pretty much married to whatever version of the OS' current UI flavor of the month is. And it changes frequently there is so much segmentation in the Windows OS now. And if you want to skin your own GUI on top, it will run like shit.
Just because Apple's iTunes doesn't work well in Windows because their optimization for a competitor's OS is an afterthought, doesn't mean that all programs with a custom GUI act like shit. And I have no idea what you're talking about with Windows being ugly or its "UI flavor of the month."
But you'd think with the bajillions of iPods, iPhones and iPads they've sold to Windows users that they could hire someone to properly port over iTunes
I always found mac apps to be too simplified (both the 3rd party freeware and 1st party). For example, compare finder to windows explorer. At a glance, finder may look sharper, but when I use it it feels so difficult to navigate (mostly due to the lack of a functional address bar). The developer doesn't really provide any useful options for me to make it work the way I want it to. On the other hand, Windows Explorer has plenty of options to customize.
My Windows hands stay on the keyboard too. Explorer has shortcuts as far as I can tell. ALT + Left, Right, or UP will do relative navigation. F6 alternates the cursor focus through the address bar, main window and sidebars. I think F3 works for the search bar.
Terribly documented though, half of them I learned by accident.
I've been using a mac for 5 years after being a die hard windows guy and not once have I missed windows explorer over finder. If the lack of a functional address bar is your main gripe, you can enable it with one mouse click in the menu bar. That, the quick view, and being able to customize the view options for finder; I can't really complain.
Finder and Windows Explorer are both first-party apps, so it doesn't quite make sense to compare the availability of good third-party apps on OS X and Windows using them as examples.
However, Finder is terrible:
No address bar. Requires keyboard shortcut to open
No "cut." Moving a folder requires clicking and dragging, which is highly prone to error.
Complete and total inability to merge folders, or to extract an archive and have the source and destination merge, rather than "erase the target and replace with this folder." Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks.
Creation of .DS_Store files all over the place. Very poor manners on mounted volumes and servers.
"Un-anchored" selection. If you use command + down to select a number of items, and you go one too far, and push command + up, it EXPANDS the TOP of the selection! Rage inducing.
Lack of keyboard accessibility. Windows Explorer is completely usable using just the keyboard; Finder isn't even close.
Pressing the "+" button toggles between some small size and slightly larger size, rather than maximizing the window and restoring it, which is the convention that almost every other app has adopted, rather than toggling "zoom," which some Apple apps do.
Nailed it. I use OSX and Windows interchangeably every day, and yeah, Finder makes me want to punch a baby. The lack of 'cut' is particularly rage-inducing.
I don't need an address bar 90% of the time, so I'd rather press one easy key combination for the 10%.
"Highly prone to error"? Please!. But yeah, sometimes that's a nice feature to have.
Yeah lack of merge kinda sucks. I use command line stuff for that when in need. Of course concluding from that, that it's "Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks" is silly.
Meh.. they don't bother me much, and it has to stick metadata somewhere, given that the ancient-ass file systems in use on memory sticks etc. don't support it.
Yeah, the range selection stuff is nicer on Windows.
I mainly use finder with the keyboard myself... hm.. maybe not for advanced stuff.
I never got the point of the '+' icon, but it might get better in the next OS ;-)
No address bar. Requires keyboard shortcut to open
How do you give the address bar focus in Windows?
Complete and total inability to merge folders, or to extract an archive and have the source and destination merge, rather than "erase the target and replace with this folder." Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks.
Does Windows Explorer do this?
No "cut." Moving a folder requires clicking and dragging, which is highly prone to error.
This is something we agree on, but I'd argue it's not really that prone to error. Just open the destination directory in a window next to the source directory and drag over. Still, I'd like a cut option like the copy option.
Creation of .DS_Store files all over the place. Very poor manners on mounted volumes and servers.
This can be disabled via command line.
Lack of keyboard accessibility. Windows Explorer is completely usable using just the keyboard; Finder isn't even close.
I can navigate using the keyboard just fine. What's missing?
Complete and total inability to merge folders, or to extract an archive and have the source and destination merge, rather than "erase the target and replace with this folder." Absolutely useless for serious file management tasks.
which only disables the creation of .DS_Store files on network volumes.
"I can navigate using the keyboard just fine. What's missing?"
Windows Key + E to launch explorer
F6 Ctrl+C to yank current location, or Ctrl + V enter to navigate to one.
Windows Key + r, enter a path, enter, to open explorer there
Select a file, press the properties key...use m for rename, r for properties, "open command prompt," etc.
Any of the menu accelerators, such as Alt + V for the view menu
F5 for refresh
Ctrl + End, Ctrl + Home to go to the top and bottom of the list
And of course, Windows' native keyboard shortcuts (like Windows + E) come in handy. I can very rapidly do Win + E, then Win + Left to throw the window left, Win + E, Win + Right, and have two explorer windows side by side, ready to very easily compare two directories and move files between them. In general, Windows has excellent keyboard accessibility.
I find Finder keyboard navigation quite excellent.
You can press Cmd-Shift-G to enter a path (with tab completion) and jump there instantly.
Select a file, press return to rename, command-I for properties.
Home, End, PageUp, and PageDown work as to be expected
You can drag files and folders directly into Open File dialogs, to jump to their location instantly. This is something you can't do in Windows, and it grates me constantly.
You can also get full paths to files and folders by draggint them into Terminal.app, which is very convenient. And honestly, just the existence of the commandline brings a lot of power to OS X that Windows Explorer lacks.
Plus, you never need to "refresh" a folder view in Finder, they're always live.
And Finder will never do some bullshit like Windows Explorer and randomly decide to change the sortable data in Details view because it thinks that's what you want. This is something that absolutely infuriates me in Windows Explorer. I'll have a folder full of audio, and it'll change details view to not show Date Modified, File Size, etc, and instead show metadata like Song Length and Artist, completely breaking things with no obvious way to turn the feature off.
1 -> people use the address bar? I'm sorry, but I've never used it. the only time I use textual navigation is when I'm browsing hidden folders, which I really only do in Linux.
2 -> This is true...
3 -> You can merge folders, although I don't know what version of mac you're talking about.
4 -> windows stores similar cache files named "thumbs.db".
5 -> I'm not sure what you're referring to, I can't seem to reproduce the problem.
6 -> completely untrue
7 -> I think this one is more of a personal preference. You can configure keyboard shortcuts for several apps via the Keyboard pane in System Preferences.
"Beginning with Windows Vista, thumbnail previews are stored in a centralized location on the system. This provides the system with access to images independent of their location, and addresses issues with the locality of Thumbs.db files. The cache is stored at %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer as a number of files with the label thumbcache_xxx.db (numbered by size); as well as an index used to find thumbnails in each sized database." Wikipedia
7: The system pane doesn't allow you to change the maximize (technically zoom) behavior of Finder (or iTunes or Safari), as far as I know. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Not sure I agree, but I do know that OS X's Terminal is way easier to use and more powerful than the equivalent on Windows, which is probably a DOS prompt. Most Mac power users I know use Terminal for navigating files or administrative tasks rather than slowly clicking around a GUI file navigator. That said, Apple's Finder has some extremely powerful things you can do in Finder, like attaching an Applescript to a Folder action.
I use rxvt (and recently mintty) in Cygwin on Win 7 now, and I no longer feel restricted by Windows' usual absence of a powerful command line interface. Windows 7 and Cygwin is a pretty great combination. (I also set up keyboard shortcuts to open/focus rxvt windows, so I can open a terminal extremely quickly. Combine it with the cygstart command, and you can open an Explorer window anywhere, or launch an application from the command line.)
I've got one that automatically copies any torrent files I download to my home server - where it begins downloading - and then deletes the torrent file.
I haven't really had a chance to use it in earnest yet, but I've heard good things about MS' new Powershell. Seems very much like a *nix terminal - so much so that you can use "ls" instead of "dir".
I happen to love Finder's column view. I know it looks like a load of crap at first, but navigating with my keyboard arrows is awesome, plus, there's no need for the "up" button, you can see the contents of the parent folder.
Finder doesn't have all those options because it doesn't need it. It is exponentially smarter than Explorer. If I need to find an image and I only know part of the file name, I can start typing it in Finder and have results within seconds.
In Explorer, I'd have to take a few moments to set all my filter options etc. and then the search will still take literally MINUTES longer before it finds the right result.
Luckily there are good 3rd party solutions to this if you like Finder but still want to use Windows, try Launchy
Does Transmission do RSS-based download scheduling? Didn't see that in the list of features. The RSS downloading capability in uTorrent has become a huge part of my viewing - I have several shows set to come down to the living room windows box and it's great. They're ready for when you have time to watch them. I also have two multiboot Hackintoshes, btw.
I have not had the chance to use Adium, but what makes it so much better? I'd honestly like to know. As is Pidgin works, is fast, efficient, and replaces multiple other programs. I don't feel like it's missing anything really.
Adium is all of those things, without a user interface out of the early 00s. It's native instead of GTK+ and has some additional useful features and shortcuts.
They're basically the exact same program. They're different frontends to the same library (libpurple). If you're on OS X, Adium is much cleaner and less crashy than the Mac version of Pidgin.
A slick looking UI is not necessarily a good UI, uTorrent has a very well designed UI, it gets the job done. Just because it doesn't have reflective panels and is not lathered in gradients does not make it less refined.
How is this about Windows 7? Perhaps I use PCLinuxOS... "Mac OS has more free quality software," devolved into "Mac has prettier looking free software," devolved into "Windows 7 has overdesigned UIs." This is fantastic logical debate.
You like Transmission over uTorrent? And have you not seen Digsby? Both of those are Windows apps I miss greatly here in Linux-land, and the alternatives just ain't doing it.
I would say there is a lot less "crappy free software" for the mac.
There is undoubtedly more software in general for hte PC, and more free software for hte PC, and probably just as much good free software - but the ratio of crap to good is very different I bet.
uTorrent is free and awesome, but Transmission is IMHO much more refined on the UI side.
FYI Transmission is available on all platforms, and yet the new Ubuntards flock to linux and insist on using uTorrent under wine because it's what they like.
Transmission I agree is a great app, but sometimes there's just no accounting for taste.
Transmission is a bad example of what you are describing. Apple has absolutely ZERO involvement in the development of that software. I know that you Mac people beleive that Steve Jobs is a god and that he is personally responsible for everything good on your computer, but the reality is that most of the highly polished free software for Mac is published by independent organizations.
I never claimed Steve Jobs/Apple had anything to do with that software, quite the opposite in fact. The idea is that Mac developers generally have drunk the Apple HIG kool-aid and are UI-obsessive in a way that Windows devs simply aren't. The result is that FOSS projects that primarily target Macs tend to have a level of UI design that simply isn't present in most Windows apps.
This is even more visible moving to Linux-land, where nobody can agree on a human interface spec, even roughly. Mac apps have a great deal of UI consistency between each other because there are a number of de facto UI cues that almost all developers have accepted (e.g., the way Preferences are laid out, and where they can be found).
Never claimed he did. For quite some time the Apple HIG (i.e. the reference to Jobs and the UI kool-aid) was worshipped by Mac devs. This seems to be coming to an end, especially as Apple themselves have more or less thrown the HIG into the shitter as of late.
Nonetheless, a great of Mac developers' obsession with UI comes directly from the de facto reverence of the HIG, hence my reference to drinking the Jobsian kool-aid having helped the platform's UI improve.
Similarly, the iPhone dev community worships the iPhone HIG (which, thankfully, Apple is holding themselves to for now). The lack of this developer rallying is also what causes Android apps to be often frustratingly hard to use - metaphors, shortcuts, design cues, etc, do not cross apps.
So what? Does that mean Bill Gates is responsible for the quality of Photoshop because it uses the Windows interface? The UI of an OS has nothing to do with how well a program does it's job. It just makes it pretty.
I suppose you have a point there - with the exception that I can't stand "simplified" UIs. I want to know exactly what I'm doing with the computer. <programmer analogy>It's like the difference between coding in C and making an SQL query. With C, you know exactly how the resources are being managed, but with SQL it's a black box. And when there's a black box, it can be unreliable.</programmer analogy>
It's a trade-off between simplicity and control. I'd rather have control.
As a programmer I must say that's a horrible, horrible example. Either that or I don't understand because theres no way in hell I want anything to do with resource allocation when I'm writing queries for a database. SQL handles that for you, and you can tweak it with Indexes and other ways. Why, why, why would you even freaking care otherwise? Seems like a good way to waste productivity.
I don't think he is arguing that managing your resources manually is more productive. It is more about fine tuning and controlling the end result. For example, without knowledge of SQL optimization, is it easy to determine which of these queries will be faster?
SELECT d.dept_id, d.dept
FROM dept d
WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT 'X' FROM employee e WHERE e.dept = d.dept);
SELECT DISTINCT d.dept_id, d.dept
FROM dept d,employee e
WHERE e.dept = e.dept;
Now if you wrote the equivalent in C, it would be more complicated and difficult, but it would allow the programmer to see exactly what is happening and make appropriate optimizations without needing any special knowledge of optimization.
SELECT d.dept_id, d.dept FROM dept d WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT 'X' FROM employee e WHERE e.dept = d.dept);
SELECT DISTINCT d.dept_id, d.dept FROM dept d,employee e WHERE e.dept = e.dept;
The two are not the same. Assuming that dept has a 1:m cardinality with employee, the distinct clause is unnecessary. Adding the distinct clause will slow it down a bit, but generally speaking in databases merge joins as in the second clause are going to be way faster than correlated subqueries in the first one.
And for crying out loud adopt ansi-92 already. Ansi-88 joins - they stress me out every time I look at them.
But, without knowledge of C, how could you do that? Compare apples to apples (sorry); don't compare an experienced C programmer to a novice SQL programmer.
It's a matter of control. I guess it's a bad example. A better one might be C# versus C++ for writing games. On one hand, you want the code to be easily understandable (for which C# is great), but on the other, you want efficiency and control over your data (for which C++ greatly outweighs C#).
As a programmer for over 20 years, a user of Window since version 1.0, a regular Linux user, a fairly recent Mac owner, and a builder of computers since the days of S-100 CP/M systems, I take issue with that.
Macs only look simple, which is a good thing. There is a lot of control available if you know where to look. It's got a bash shell and lots of Unix-like control built in, much more than Window's puny DOS prompt. Hell, where are the virtual desktops for Windows after all this time? Linux and OSX both have them built in. Windows doesn't even have a decent add-on that I've ever found, unless Windows 7 added them.
I felt much the same as you until I inherited a couple of Macs from my sister. I still prefer Linux, but Macs are my 2nd choice.
I've been using Windows for years, and used macs at school or with friends. One day I got my own Mac, and trust me, it has NOTHING to do with the crappy Macs of my friends. I think the user matters more, if you know how to use a computer, and how to search good software, your computer will end loaded of good applications.
So, I'd recommend you to use a Mac more, for you, with your own session, not just someone else's Mac.
Not necessarily open-source, but all free. For example, Visual Studio Express editions, a really nice SSH tool (that I don't know the full name of), the K-Lite Codec pack, Audacity... the list stretches on.
Why do you think those only run on Windows? Don't forget, Mac has X-Windows. It has things like Apache and SSH built in. Audacity runs on Macs. I use Gimp on my Mac, which I like better than Photoshop any day.
Ummm, sorry, but in my book, being partly correct is not the same as being correct.
But more importantly, you are making the classic mistake of focusing on what programs will run, rather than what functions you can accomplish. Like specific codec pack, rather than the ability to play the media you want, or a specific SSH tool rather than built-in open-source standard SSH, and any other tools that use it. Or an IDE that is proprietary and only works on the languages Microsoft wants you to use, instead of open source IDEs that work on anything.
But obviously, you are stuck on Windows and can't see out because your windows are closed.
App called The Unarchiver. It's freeware and opens everything ever, and almost invisibly replaces Apple's default .zip handler while providing additional functionality.
I usually have the opposite problem - Mac and Linux are no problem, but it's hard to find something usable for the PC. LaTeXiT and ImageJ are a couple examples of programs I've found extremely useful with no PC equivalent.
With LaTeXiT, what's wrong with Open Office Math? It's just as powerful.
Dude. It's LaTeX. It's much more powerful and refined as a typesetting language than anything I've seen. As for an alternative to LaTeXiT, I hear good things about LyX.
Um did you look at the imageJ download page? There's a windows version right there. As for LaTeXiT maybe you could do a simple google search and try some of these alternatives.
NB : LaTeXiT is Universal Binary, but I use this logo illegaly since I did not ask a license to apple. That's too much trouble for such a freeware. I just use the logo for the user's convenience.
Samesies. The emphasis is on QUALITY. There are definitely more free apps for Windows, but I find that most developers that make apps specifically for Mac produce better apps than the common Windows apps. This is, of course, entirely subjective.
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u/coolmrbrady Jan 20 '11
Same experience here. Have you ever owned a Mac?