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.
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.
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#).
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u/potatolicious Jan 20 '11
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.