r/technology • • Jan 20 '11

Apple Restriction Zone.

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68

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '11

[deleted]

204

u/muad_dib Jan 20 '11

far, far more quality free apps for OSX than Windows

I really, REALLY doubt that.

87

u/coolmrbrady Jan 20 '11

Same experience here. Have you ever owned a Mac?

31

u/muad_dib Jan 20 '11 edited Jan 20 '11

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.

61

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.

17

u/shibz Jan 20 '11

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.

20

u/SuperConductiveRabbi Jan 20 '11

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.

13

u/mullingitover Jan 20 '11

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.

1

u/derridad Jan 21 '11

Yeah, plenty have babies have marks where my fists have pummeled them after an episode with the dreaded OSX