*sigh* When will Mac users start using tar+bzip2 or something instead of the intensely proprietary StuffIt? I mean, they come with the operating system.
Nice.. I got this a while ago for a Visor transition, but never thought of making it a screen saver. It’s making me a bit seasick though.
If you want you can delete the caption by opening it in Quartz Composer and just deleting the ‘credit’ object..
(Since this uses a Mac OS X specific technology, I think the Linux and Windows users are out of luck..)
PMsays
Regrettably, froze my PC also.
Keanussays
Neato!
In the clunky Windowscentric universe something a little Maccentric is most refreshing.
PC/linux users should avoid it. It’s a QuickTime file, but it uses a Quartz Composer Track which depends on something in the Mac operating system.
If you don’t have Stuffit, or want to save a couple steps…just wait for the movie to load, then click on the menu pull down in the lower-right corner and “Save as Source…”, change the folder in the save dialog box to your screen saver folder ([your hard drive]/Library/Screen Savers/) and save it directly in to it. Then change the screen saver in the System Prefs. Some of the other Quartz files there aren’t bad either.
Doc Billsays
You mean there are other people besides Mac People?
Fascinating!
Stogoesays
Eh. Fie on Mac. I shall always hate the one-button mouse. (seriously. WTF, mates)
Their marketing department also seems to have tapped into that ‘narcissistic hipster prick’ vibe that drives me nuts.
Stogoe – I’m trying to figure out whether you’re kidding or not. I mean, the old “1-button mouse” jibe? Forgetting that all modern Macs come with the 3-button scroll wheel Mighty Mouse, the Mac has been able to use any USB mouse for years. I have used a 3-button mouse with my Powermac G4 for years.
And aside from the plethora of multi-button mice, there is the abolute pleasure of the trackpad on a MacBook (Pro): two-fingered scrolling, and two-fingered click. Whenever I need to use a non-Mac laptop, I sorely miss that feature.
For the barbarians: you hold down two fingers on the trackpad, and click the (single) button — it’s the same as your right-click. Two-fingered scrolling means you move two finger simultaneously on the trackpad, and it scrolls your document (including left and right).
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
Ichthyicsays
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
omg, I of course could never do that on a PC, just by buying a trackpad and using the appropriate software.
gee.
I swear, it’s like hordes of mac users actually believe the commercials that Apple has been showing of late.
give it, people, there is NO functional difference between a mac and pc, as either can be easily configured to anything the other can.
if you get a good deal on a mac that makes it cheap for you, great! we used to get excellent educational deals on macs, for example.
other than that, you’re simply kidding yourself.
fyreflyesays
Jon (#3):
Thanks, but I’ve already done all that. There are no screensavers already in the folder and putting Squid into it doesn’t change a thing. Where are all the screensavers that came with OSX hiding?
Graculussays
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
Seriously, I do know what I am missing, as we have several Macs at work which I have to wrangle (along with PCs with various flavours of OSes).
Which is why I have a PC at home.
There is nothing wrong with Macs if they they perform the tasks that you engage in in a manner which does not annoy you, you can afford them, and you like their aesthetic.
However, they do not fulfill any of those criteria for me.
From what you are describing, it sounds like standard behaviour of laptops, so obviously I don’t.
I have some morale issues with Apple, who is the least environmental-friendly computer manufacturer out there. The prices of the machines is also enough to keep me away.
Ok. I am a .NET developer, so it’s not likely I would buy a Mac, even if those things were in order, but still…
Oh, and PZ, while you do write it’s only for Mac users, you might want to warn non-Mac users that it freezes up their computer. I mean, explicitly.
TheBlackCatsays
I also know what I am missing. My father has an extremely powerful powermac G4 that I was forced to use whenever I was home. I didn’t have a problem with macs until I actually had to use them. My father does as well, he got a new windows PC (because my mother’s office uses software that is only available on PC) and he has not used the Mac since. This is despite (or rather, because of) using nothing but that Mac for about 3 years.
Interrobangsays
Yeah, I twenty-second that “Please warn the Windows users that the file will kill their browser” sentiment — “Not for Windows users” just isn’t emphatic enough. I figured I wouldn’t be able to download the file, but I at least wanted to take a look at the page. Three Firefox windows later…
I’m not switching to Mac anytime soon, either, since I’m a technical writer, and the number of Mac TW jobs is vanishingly small, comparatively speaking. (My publisher runs a completely Mac shop; thank goodness for PDFs.)
Well I have a Mac (G4 Cube) with Mac OS 10.4.9 and it won’t work for me. Wrong graphics card (or something). Ah well.
I had no problem downloading it with my trusty Linux box though. No freezes.
But it won’t “play” on either system (sigh).
Perhaps I will try it on a newer Mac at work… after I reboot (I tend to run Linux on the Macs at work).
-DU-
Dalesays
Kristjan Wager wrote…
Ok. I am a .NET developer, so it’s not likely I would buy a Mac, even if those things were in order, but still…
You can install virtualisation software and run Windows under Mac OS X (which does increase the cost), so you can develop .NET using a Mac.
If it (and I haven’t seen what “it” is yet as the site is unavailable) brings your computer down then that is a fault of the OS. No operating system should go down because of a website (and maybe it’s a quicktime fault – in which case, silly Apple!). It’s hard to put warnings up for systems that you don’t use, so I sympathise with PZ for not putting a warning up.
Djur wrote…
*sigh* When will Mac users start using tar+bzip2 or something instead of the intensely proprietary StuffIt? I mean, they come with the operating system.
Most Mac people use dmg files – that’s what I got my students to create. Stuffit is a very old and not much used format anymore (I’m very surprised to see any new software using it).
Ichthyic wrote…
…that you can get two finger scrolling for non macs. I hadn’t seen it, and a quick google search only showed the following…
which certainly implies the availability of it. Is it built into any other OSs, or is an upgrade thing?
Also, I can’t let this go by…
give it, people, there is NO functional difference between a mac and pc, as either can be easily configured to anything the other can.
The operating systems (and I presume this is what he means – modern Macs -are- PCs for all intents and purposes) have fundamentally different architectures. I certainly don’t like the more lax windows security model which causes all sorts of problems (that surely we don’t need to go into here).
A lot of my (computing) students are buying Macs these days and enjoying them, so for some people there seems to be a difference.
Now if I can only get the other two people who use this computer to agree. One shouldn’t be any problem; we’ve been reading and talking about giant squids since her birthday, so it’ll go over well.
Oh, and if something says “for Windows Users Only”, I don’t click on it. See? Easy.
C’mon. If your system locks up because of a multimedia file on the internet, that’s the fault of the operating system.
Send a note to Bill, not PZ, because his for-crap OS can’t handle a little multimedia.
(Mac AND Linux in this corner, FWIW.)
Steve_Csays
First off… if you are a mac user how would you know it freezes up pcs?
And it does say only for mac people up there.
As for the two button mouse whine… Apple’s mighty mouse is a 5 button mouse with a multidirectional scroll umm… pea. it’s little. There is no longer a one button mouse from apple.
I saw a statistic that there are 9000 people switching from PCs to Macs every day.
And the newest OS X is coming in the next 2-3 months. So do hold off for a little while if you’re planning on switching too.
ColinBsays
You religious zealots (Mac, Windows, Linux) need to wake up. All computers suck. Some suck less at some things, they all suck at most things.
Which OS you use depends on what you want to do and which OS sucks the least at that particular task.
Now I’m going to through my laptop in the toilet because it sucks. Ha ha!
I’m sick of working on computers, I just wanna sell hotdogs this summer….
TheBlackCatsays
I’m sorry, but the “mighty mouse” is a joke. It is consistently 2-3 years behind other equivalent mice, and costs about twice as much as other equivalent mice when released. You can currently get wireless laser mice with features otherwise similar to the wired, conventional optical mighty mouse for as little as $30.
And having the ability to get software upgrades for windows to change its functionality is one of the great advantages with windows. You can make it do just about anything. Anything a mac can do windows can as well.
And the website does crash firefox, but when I opened it in internet explorer it popped up a windows telling me quicktime was missing components needed for the website and I needed to download them (although it does not tell me which ones and I have a dozen or more to choose from). That indicates it is a problem with quicktime (i.e. apple’s fault) and the Firefox plugin for quicktime and not a problem with the operating system itself.
And the ability to run virtualized windows on macs works the other way around. You can run a virtual Mac on windows if you really want to. In fact Microsoft gives away software needed to do that for free, instead of having to use commercial software like parallels on a Mac (although parallels is available on windows as well if you want it). That is probably the better solution considering the much wider software support on windows compared to a mac.
Steve_Csays
Wow you don’t get it… wider support for windows applications is irrelevant when you can run windows on a mac. With boot camp you are running a pc… period.
I’ve used plenty of mice, is the mighty mouse the best? nope. Worst? nope.
And there is a wireless mightymouse. I don’t know how you get that the mighty mouse is 2-3 years behind other mice.. is there some great leap in mice tech we don’t know about?
I don’t disagree that anything a mac can do a pc can do… but the question is which when does it without getting in the way?
So in the last three years I have experienced Windows computing on Sony, Dell, IBM, HP and generic built box platforms. And I have experienced (and still experience on the surviving machines today) problems on every single machine universally.
Your point about Vista is a fair one. My only real experiences with Vista so far have been with beta Vista software (and it’s not fair to judge beta software as I very well know being the CEO of a company with current beta software out). But when I read things like what Chris Pirillo wrote it just resonates with me. And even in the three comments on your post about this disappointment people are already complaining about Vista. Chris Pirillo is someone who is tech savvy and someone whose opinion I trust. When Chris says he’s “upgrading” to XP that says a lot. And my points about XP sucking are true for me. XP has sucked for me. And where it sucks most of all is in comparison to the Mac.
Maybe I’ve drunk the Mac Kool-aid at this point. But my years of hardcore daily computing experience tell me that there is something more to this. That there is something more to it than funny commercials and the soothing sound of Steve Job’s voice as he preaches to us about the iPhone. That fundamentally, I’ll say it again, “It just works.” And it just works over and over and over again. And that counts for far more than the clever ads or the sleek design, or the fact that all Macs are female (I haven’t picked a name for mine yet).
The thing is that there is just so much to do and so little time. In addition to my blog I’ve got four kids, a day job in the investment business, I’m CEO of an internet startup and on top of it all I’m trying to shoot 200-300 photos every day and build a library of 500,000 finished images before I die. The efficiencies that the Mac gives me are real and they are powerful. I hope Microsoft gets there.
Peter Barbersays
Moggie, you have a good point. I will just say that, having grown up using MS-DOS, then Windows 3.1, 9x and 2000, and having not been tempted by System 7 (I managed to temporarily screw up my mother’s LC II which she had been given by the Open University while studying for her PGCE, when I unwittingly dragged an important system folder to a completely different point on the disk, which rather put me off!).
However, both my wife and I now use Macs almost exclusively. I was impressed by the OS X interface (I found it more intuitive than Windows, I liked AppleScript, and the wireless networking was much simpler to set up); my wife gave up on Windows XP after its tendency to hang or crash if she just looked at it. That is only a small exaggeration. I probably spent hundreds of hours rescuing files and troubleshooting for her. We both spend a lot less time fixing problems these days, which is a major factor in choosing to stay with Apple!
There’s nothing religious about it, though. We have Parallels, WinXP and MS Access on my wife’s laptop for handling a few databases from work – we only cross ourselves three times before firing up the virtual machine! ;-)
C. N. Ashleysays
Very intersting comments. Amazing how many distorted views of the Mac are out there. One thing I’ve learned: you can lead a horse to water…. Unfortunately, Safari froze on my iBook when I opened the page. Of course, it is going on 6 years old and the graphics card is stone age. Thanks for your great site.
Steve_Csays
There are some issues with that website… I don’t think the server is cut out for all the attention. It had trouble loading even on my G5. It’s also in japanese… so there’s probably some issues there with the japanese characters too.
Ichthyicsays
lol.
after all the complaints about the page, from the very first I had no problems going there and checking it out.
on a pc.
with windows.
using IE.
shrug.
yes, I suspect the language module used on the site, and/or the plugin used to autoload the quicktime viewer might be what are causing the problems for various browsers.
most likely the language module.
Ichthyicsays
have fundamentally different architectures
irrelevant to end functionality.
I certainly don’t like the more lax windows security model which causes all sorts of problems (that surely we don’t need to go into here).
oh, but we do, since one of the ways i make my money is by setting up network security for companies.
windows security can be just as easily fixed, as for a mac, but then that wasn’t my point at all. I said the two platforms can be made equivalent in functionality, with hardware peripherals and/or software. this is not just idle words; I’ve certainly set up enough systems to know.
the OS is only part of it; heck, you can run various unix flavors on both, even.
platform favoritism is just that.
whatever works for ya.
TheBlackCatsays
Wow you don’t get it… wider support for windows applications is irrelevant when you can run windows on a mac. With boot camp you are running a pc… period.
The question is…why? Why run a mac if all the software you want is on a PC? If you are buying a mac just to dual-boot windows, then why not just go with windows from the beginning? And the same thing applies to windows, you can dual-boot to a mac (or better yet use free virtualization software to run it inside windows). There is no advantage to macs in this regard. Dual booting is easy, I currently dual boot windows and linux. There is nothing special about boot camp.
I don’t know how you get that the mighty mouse is 2-3 years behind other mice.. is there some great leap in mice tech we don’t know about?
There are constant improvements in mouse technology. The mighty mouse’s much-hyped horizontal scrolling had been in other mice for several years and was in all but the cheapest mice by the time the mighty mouse came out. Cordless mice had become commonplace several years before the mighty mouse had that option and were available for budget mice when the mighty mouse got it. Laser mice have been around for years and had pretty much replaced optical mice except for the very cheapest ones by the time it became available on the mighty mouse. The new thing seems to be the ultra-fast scrolling in the newest logitech mice. There is a definite pattern I am seeing here.
And Mac is not without its problems. We have had no end to hardware and software compatibility issues with my father’s mac. Scanners in particular have been a serious issue (and I have read, on websites by mac fans, that scanners are notorious on macs).
I can understand if people are upset when others judge macs without using them. But I have used them extensively. And I simply do not like them. I use linux, I use windows, but I do not use macs when I can avoid it. I like being able to do anything I want. I like being able to change anything and everything about how my computer works. I don’t want someone to hold my hand and make it easy and pretty. I want a computer that does exactly what I want when I want it and nothing else. Windows does that. Linux does that. Mac does not. You can replace windows explorer with your own folder navigator. There are programs like windowblinds that replace just about everything. There are even programs that can make the windows interface identical to that of a Mac while not losing any of the windows program support.
It is true, macs are stable. It is easy to make a stable OS when you have complete control over the hardware used to build the computer. It is easy when you put significant limits on what programs can do. It is easy when you prevent major changes from being made to the interface. But that also limits what hardware can be used. It limits what programs can do. It limits how much you can customize your experience. It is a trade-off. I prefer to be on the side of customization and versatility. And I am willing to give up a little bit of stability in order to do that. That is not to say XP is unstable. I have had less crashes in my 4 years of using my current computer than I have had on my father’s mac just when visiting. But it is possible to really mess up windows. That is the price of versatility. You can’t have both. There is a saying, “Fast, powerful, user-friendly. Pick any two.” I pick fast and powerful. That costs a little bit of the user-friendliness but it is more than worth it to me. Other people weight their needs differently. But macs are not the ultimate operating system. They have limitations. They have trade-offs. And those limitations and trade-offs prevent me from doing what I want to do.
Steve_Csays
Zzzzzzz.
I can’t imagine what you do that requires to you NOT to use an apple computer.
Macs are as powerful as any other desktop out there.
What expressly do you use that requires you NOT to use OS X?
Just curious. I mean most of your quibbles sound like computer geek requirements.
90% of computer users just want it to work, not spend hours customizing the interface
and programming. But if that’s what you need to do…
Scanners are notorious because the hardware makers don’t know how to make decent plug ins. They probably spent no time on the Mac versions as opposed to the PC versions because of market share.
I’ve used macs for 20 years and never intend to switch.
I’m not going to get into the platform wars (I’ve never used any non-Apple PC at home; never any non-Wintel PC at work), but I’m intensely curious about one thing:
And the same thing applies to windows, you can dual-boot to a mac (or better yet use free virtualization software to run it inside windows).
Really? Is this new since Apple moved to Intel-based hardware? I’d love to see a pointer to software that would allow running OS X on a non-Apple PC. The last time I looked, the only things availabe were some open-source/amateur emulator projects for 68k Macs and older Mac OSs. If things have changed in the Mac emulation marketplace, I’d love to know more about it.
I mean most of your quibbles sound like computer geek requirements.
are you saying you aren’t a computer geek, steve?
;)
btw, I also spend a lot of time on photo blogs, and have seen similar travails with scanners and macs (including the latest versions of OSX).
never bothered to try to pin down exactly what was up; most likely bad driver releases from the companies, like HP/used-to-be-Minolta and Nikon, that kick out some of the more popular scanners.
I’ve even seen some conversions to the PC platform based on that issue alone in a couple of cases (people who spend a LOT of time converting slides into digital, IIRC).
Ichthyicsays
er, the above comments on scanners relating to BC’s post where he said:
And Mac is not without its problems. We have had no end to hardware and software compatibility issues with my father’s mac. Scanners in particular have been a serious issue (and I have read, on websites by mac fans, that scanners are notorious on macs).
Steve_Csays
I’m a mac geek. It’s true.
I’m also a design nerd.
A gadget freak and a music elitist.
I’ve found that most hardware makers
are really bad at creating software for macs.
I’ve used scanners in the past at every job
and they always were buggy and poorly supported.
Apple has gotten really good at building in drivers for
plug and play functionality for digital cameras and audio
equipment and printers for the most part. I don’t know what
it is about scanners that wreak such havok.
You can install virtualisation software and run Windows under Mac OS X (which does increase the cost), so you can develop .NET using a Mac.
Great, so I can add overhead and develop on a computer which is much more expensive. Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
I am not religious about neither my computer nor my operating system, but that’s just silly. It would be like running Mac OS X on a PC. It can be done, but what’s the point?
Steve_Csays
Macs are not much more expensive.
The point is you can develope for Macs and Windows… on a mac.
If you don’t want to ignore a growing number of users.
TheBlackCatsays
Really? Is this new since Apple moved to Intel-based hardware? I’d love to see a pointer to software that would allow running OS X on a non-Apple PC. The last time I looked, the only things availabe were some open-source/amateur emulator projects for 68k Macs and older Mac OSs. If things have changed in the Mac emulation marketplace, I’d love to know more about it.
Do a quick search for “virtual PC”. Microsoft released it free for windows. There are also lots of third-party bootloaders that can be used to make dual-boot configurations similar to bootcamp, although there is no guarantee it will work because Mac OS is not designed to support as many hardware configurations as windows is.
90% of computer users just want it to work, not spend hours customizing the interface and programming. But if that’s what you need to do…
And 90% of computer users use windows, too. What 90% of computer users want is irrelevant to what I want.
Scanners are notorious because the hardware makers don’t know how to make decent plug ins. They probably spent no time on the Mac versions as opposed to the PC versions because of market share.
They know how to make decent plugins for windows and linux seems to manage just fine. And the lack of software support for macs due to their market share is a limitation of macs. It took Mathworks about a year to release a beta version of Matlab compatible with intel macs and the final version does not come out until summer.
Steve_Csays
Maybe saying they don’t know how to make decent plug-ins is a bit strong.They don’t spend the required time and effort. It’s half assed to sell “mac compatible” hardware but not invest in the software to run with it.
I don’t get how more software is better. More options sure… but when the choices are mostly crap, what’s the point.
A mac is a perfectly good PC. It’s runs a potent operating system, it looks good, the interface is efficient and it just works.
I’d love to see a pointer to software that would allow running OS X on a non-Apple PC.
Do a quick search for “virtual PC”. Microsoft released it free for windows.
I actually own a copy of an earlier version of VirtualPC. It emulates a PC, allowing you to run Windows on Mac hardware (or, oddly enough, to create a virtual machine on Windows hardware); it does not allow you to run MacOS on Wintel hardware. AFAIK, nothing enables running MacOS on Wintel hardware. To my knowledge, there’s PearPC, which emulates a PowerPC machine on Wintel, and (as I mentioned before) an open-source/amateur project to emulate older 68k Mac hardware. According to its website, PearPC emulates a “sort of G4” and runs MacOS X v10.3.x pretty well… not exactly a robust solution. I say again, if anyone knows of a solid, usable way to run a current (v10.4.x) MacOS on Wintel hardware and get actual work done, I’d love to hear about it.
BTW, VirtualPC is only free on Windows; on Mac it costs (according my recent visit to the MS website) $249. It won’t run on Intel Macs (i.e., all new ones), and MS has no plans to support new Macs, so it’s effectively dead. (To be fair, BootCamp and Parallels make VirtualPC redundant, so why should MS put any money into porting it for Intel Macs?)
The point is you can develope for Macs and Windows… on a mac.
If you don’t want to ignore a growing number of users.
I’m an IT-consultant, I don’t develop shelfware.
In general, I don’t develop for Macs or other PCs. I develop for servers.
And in those rare occations where I develop applications for personal machines, I have to fit the customers’ requirements, which unsurprisingly, mostly means Windows OS.
It won’t run on Intel Macs (i.e., all new ones), and MS has no plans to support new Macs, so it’s effectively dead.
I suspect you mean dead in relation to Mac.
VirtualPC is still being developed, and is quite useful for development purposes (as is WMWare).
Yah, I meant it’s dead as a way to emulate a PC on a Mac… which was its original raison d’etre; AFAIK the Windows version is relatively new. I’m quite sure I don’t understand the utility of running a virtual PC on an actual PC… but then, I’m not a software developer; I’ll take your word for it. ;^)
Only for Mac people
I’ll say since just hitting the link locked up my PC.
I guess I will take that warning seriously from now on.
Great concept, easy download, but I can’t figure out how how to make it the screensaver instead of the desktop on my MacBook.
Click your finder, navigate to the hard-drive, then click the ‘Libraries’ folder, then scroll down and drop the file in the ‘Screensavers’ folder.
Open ‘System Preferences’ and click the ‘Desktop and Screensavers’ tab. Voila!
I’m a Mac person and I definitely like. :)
Is there a Windows or Linux version please?
*sigh* When will Mac users start using tar+bzip2 or something instead of the intensely proprietary StuffIt? I mean, they come with the operating system.
Nice.. I got this a while ago for a Visor transition, but never thought of making it a screen saver. It’s making me a bit seasick though.
If you want you can delete the caption by opening it in Quartz Composer and just deleting the ‘credit’ object..
(Since this uses a Mac OS X specific technology, I think the Linux and Windows users are out of luck..)
Regrettably, froze my PC also.
Neato!
In the clunky Windowscentric universe something a little Maccentric is most refreshing.
PC/linux users should avoid it. It’s a QuickTime file, but it uses a Quartz Composer Track which depends on something in the Mac operating system.
If you don’t have Stuffit, or want to save a couple steps…just wait for the movie to load, then click on the menu pull down in the lower-right corner and “Save as Source…”, change the folder in the save dialog box to your screen saver folder ([your hard drive]/Library/Screen Savers/) and save it directly in to it. Then change the screen saver in the System Prefs. Some of the other Quartz files there aren’t bad either.
You mean there are other people besides Mac People?
Fascinating!
Eh. Fie on Mac. I shall always hate the one-button mouse. (seriously. WTF, mates)
Their marketing department also seems to have tapped into that ‘narcissistic hipster prick’ vibe that drives me nuts.
Ah well.
Stogoe – I’m trying to figure out whether you’re kidding or not. I mean, the old “1-button mouse” jibe? Forgetting that all modern Macs come with the 3-button scroll wheel Mighty Mouse, the Mac has been able to use any USB mouse for years. I have used a 3-button mouse with my Powermac G4 for years.
And aside from the plethora of multi-button mice, there is the abolute pleasure of the trackpad on a MacBook (Pro): two-fingered scrolling, and two-fingered click. Whenever I need to use a non-Mac laptop, I sorely miss that feature.
For the barbarians: you hold down two fingers on the trackpad, and click the (single) button — it’s the same as your right-click. Two-fingered scrolling means you move two finger simultaneously on the trackpad, and it scrolls your document (including left and right).
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
omg, I of course could never do that on a PC, just by buying a trackpad and using the appropriate software.
gee.
I swear, it’s like hordes of mac users actually believe the commercials that Apple has been showing of late.
give it, people, there is NO functional difference between a mac and pc, as either can be easily configured to anything the other can.
if you get a good deal on a mac that makes it cheap for you, great! we used to get excellent educational deals on macs, for example.
other than that, you’re simply kidding yourself.
Jon (#3):
Thanks, but I’ve already done all that. There are no screensavers already in the folder and putting Squid into it doesn’t change a thing. Where are all the screensavers that came with OSX hiding?
You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
Seriously, I do know what I am missing, as we have several Macs at work which I have to wrangle (along with PCs with various flavours of OSes).
Which is why I have a PC at home.
There is nothing wrong with Macs if they they perform the tasks that you engage in in a manner which does not annoy you, you can afford them, and you like their aesthetic.
However, they do not fulfill any of those criteria for me.
>You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Seriously.
From what you are describing, it sounds like standard behaviour of laptops, so obviously I don’t.
I have some morale issues with Apple, who is the least environmental-friendly computer manufacturer out there. The prices of the machines is also enough to keep me away.
Ok. I am a .NET developer, so it’s not likely I would buy a Mac, even if those things were in order, but still…
Oh, and PZ, while you do write it’s only for Mac users, you might want to warn non-Mac users that it freezes up their computer. I mean, explicitly.
I also know what I am missing. My father has an extremely powerful powermac G4 that I was forced to use whenever I was home. I didn’t have a problem with macs until I actually had to use them. My father does as well, he got a new windows PC (because my mother’s office uses software that is only available on PC) and he has not used the Mac since. This is despite (or rather, because of) using nothing but that Mac for about 3 years.
Yeah, I twenty-second that “Please warn the Windows users that the file will kill their browser” sentiment — “Not for Windows users” just isn’t emphatic enough. I figured I wouldn’t be able to download the file, but I at least wanted to take a look at the page. Three Firefox windows later…
I’m not switching to Mac anytime soon, either, since I’m a technical writer, and the number of Mac TW jobs is vanishingly small, comparatively speaking. (My publisher runs a completely Mac shop; thank goodness for PDFs.)
Well I have a Mac (G4 Cube) with Mac OS 10.4.9 and it won’t work for me. Wrong graphics card (or something). Ah well.
I had no problem downloading it with my trusty Linux box though. No freezes.
But it won’t “play” on either system (sigh).
Perhaps I will try it on a newer Mac at work… after I reboot (I tend to run Linux on the Macs at work).
-DU-
Kristjan Wager wrote…
Ok. I am a .NET developer, so it’s not likely I would buy a Mac, even if those things were in order, but still…
You can install virtualisation software and run Windows under Mac OS X (which does increase the cost), so you can develop .NET using a Mac.
If it (and I haven’t seen what “it” is yet as the site is unavailable) brings your computer down then that is a fault of the OS. No operating system should go down because of a website (and maybe it’s a quicktime fault – in which case, silly Apple!). It’s hard to put warnings up for systems that you don’t use, so I sympathise with PZ for not putting a warning up.
Djur wrote…
*sigh* When will Mac users start using tar+bzip2 or something instead of the intensely proprietary StuffIt? I mean, they come with the operating system.
Most Mac people use dmg files – that’s what I got my students to create. Stuffit is a very old and not much used format anymore (I’m very surprised to see any new software using it).
Ichthyic wrote…
…that you can get two finger scrolling for non macs. I hadn’t seen it, and a quick google search only showed the following…
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000458.html
which certainly implies the availability of it. Is it built into any other OSs, or is an upgrade thing?
Also, I can’t let this go by…
give it, people, there is NO functional difference between a mac and pc, as either can be easily configured to anything the other can.
The operating systems (and I presume this is what he means – modern Macs -are- PCs for all intents and purposes) have fundamentally different architectures. I certainly don’t like the more lax windows security model which causes all sorts of problems (that surely we don’t need to go into here).
A lot of my (computing) students are buying Macs these days and enjoying them, so for some people there seems to be a difference.
Wow, this is just like a religious argument!
That…is…awesome!
Now if I can only get the other two people who use this computer to agree. One shouldn’t be any problem; we’ve been reading and talking about giant squids since her birthday, so it’ll go over well.
Oh, and if something says “for Windows Users Only”, I don’t click on it. See? Easy.
C’mon. If your system locks up because of a multimedia file on the internet, that’s the fault of the operating system.
Send a note to Bill, not PZ, because his for-crap OS can’t handle a little multimedia.
(Mac AND Linux in this corner, FWIW.)
First off… if you are a mac user how would you know it freezes up pcs?
And it does say only for mac people up there.
As for the two button mouse whine… Apple’s mighty mouse is a 5 button mouse with a multidirectional scroll umm… pea. it’s little. There is no longer a one button mouse from apple.
I saw a statistic that there are 9000 people switching from PCs to Macs every day.
And the newest OS X is coming in the next 2-3 months. So do hold off for a little while if you’re planning on switching too.
You religious zealots (Mac, Windows, Linux) need to wake up. All computers suck. Some suck less at some things, they all suck at most things.
Which OS you use depends on what you want to do and which OS sucks the least at that particular task.
Now I’m going to through my laptop in the toilet because it sucks. Ha ha!
I’m sick of working on computers, I just wanna sell hotdogs this summer….
I’m sorry, but the “mighty mouse” is a joke. It is consistently 2-3 years behind other equivalent mice, and costs about twice as much as other equivalent mice when released. You can currently get wireless laser mice with features otherwise similar to the wired, conventional optical mighty mouse for as little as $30.
And having the ability to get software upgrades for windows to change its functionality is one of the great advantages with windows. You can make it do just about anything. Anything a mac can do windows can as well.
And the website does crash firefox, but when I opened it in internet explorer it popped up a windows telling me quicktime was missing components needed for the website and I needed to download them (although it does not tell me which ones and I have a dozen or more to choose from). That indicates it is a problem with quicktime (i.e. apple’s fault) and the Firefox plugin for quicktime and not a problem with the operating system itself.
And the ability to run virtualized windows on macs works the other way around. You can run a virtual Mac on windows if you really want to. In fact Microsoft gives away software needed to do that for free, instead of having to use commercial software like parallels on a Mac (although parallels is available on windows as well if you want it). That is probably the better solution considering the much wider software support on windows compared to a mac.
Wow you don’t get it… wider support for windows applications is irrelevant when you can run windows on a mac. With boot camp you are running a pc… period.
I’ve used plenty of mice, is the mighty mouse the best? nope. Worst? nope.
And there is a wireless mightymouse. I don’t know how you get that the mighty mouse is 2-3 years behind other mice.. is there some great leap in mice tech we don’t know about?
I don’t disagree that anything a mac can do a pc can do… but the question is which when does it without getting in the way?
Thomas Hawk has something to say about it…
http://thomashawk.com/2007/02/microsofts-charlie-owen-is-disappointed_28.html
So in the last three years I have experienced Windows computing on Sony, Dell, IBM, HP and generic built box platforms. And I have experienced (and still experience on the surviving machines today) problems on every single machine universally.
Your point about Vista is a fair one. My only real experiences with Vista so far have been with beta Vista software (and it’s not fair to judge beta software as I very well know being the CEO of a company with current beta software out). But when I read things like what Chris Pirillo wrote it just resonates with me. And even in the three comments on your post about this disappointment people are already complaining about Vista. Chris Pirillo is someone who is tech savvy and someone whose opinion I trust. When Chris says he’s “upgrading” to XP that says a lot. And my points about XP sucking are true for me. XP has sucked for me. And where it sucks most of all is in comparison to the Mac.
Maybe I’ve drunk the Mac Kool-aid at this point. But my years of hardcore daily computing experience tell me that there is something more to this. That there is something more to it than funny commercials and the soothing sound of Steve Job’s voice as he preaches to us about the iPhone. That fundamentally, I’ll say it again, “It just works.” And it just works over and over and over again. And that counts for far more than the clever ads or the sleek design, or the fact that all Macs are female (I haven’t picked a name for mine yet).
The thing is that there is just so much to do and so little time. In addition to my blog I’ve got four kids, a day job in the investment business, I’m CEO of an internet startup and on top of it all I’m trying to shoot 200-300 photos every day and build a library of 500,000 finished images before I die. The efficiencies that the Mac gives me are real and they are powerful. I hope Microsoft gets there.
Moggie, you have a good point. I will just say that, having grown up using MS-DOS, then Windows 3.1, 9x and 2000, and having not been tempted by System 7 (I managed to temporarily screw up my mother’s LC II which she had been given by the Open University while studying for her PGCE, when I unwittingly dragged an important system folder to a completely different point on the disk, which rather put me off!).
However, both my wife and I now use Macs almost exclusively. I was impressed by the OS X interface (I found it more intuitive than Windows, I liked AppleScript, and the wireless networking was much simpler to set up); my wife gave up on Windows XP after its tendency to hang or crash if she just looked at it. That is only a small exaggeration. I probably spent hundreds of hours rescuing files and troubleshooting for her. We both spend a lot less time fixing problems these days, which is a major factor in choosing to stay with Apple!
There’s nothing religious about it, though. We have Parallels, WinXP and MS Access on my wife’s laptop for handling a few databases from work – we only cross ourselves three times before firing up the virtual machine! ;-)
Very intersting comments. Amazing how many distorted views of the Mac are out there. One thing I’ve learned: you can lead a horse to water…. Unfortunately, Safari froze on my iBook when I opened the page. Of course, it is going on 6 years old and the graphics card is stone age. Thanks for your great site.
There are some issues with that website… I don’t think the server is cut out for all the attention. It had trouble loading even on my G5. It’s also in japanese… so there’s probably some issues there with the japanese characters too.
lol.
after all the complaints about the page, from the very first I had no problems going there and checking it out.
on a pc.
with windows.
using IE.
shrug.
yes, I suspect the language module used on the site, and/or the plugin used to autoload the quicktime viewer might be what are causing the problems for various browsers.
most likely the language module.
have fundamentally different architectures
irrelevant to end functionality.
I certainly don’t like the more lax windows security model which causes all sorts of problems (that surely we don’t need to go into here).
oh, but we do, since one of the ways i make my money is by setting up network security for companies.
windows security can be just as easily fixed, as for a mac, but then that wasn’t my point at all. I said the two platforms can be made equivalent in functionality, with hardware peripherals and/or software. this is not just idle words; I’ve certainly set up enough systems to know.
the OS is only part of it; heck, you can run various unix flavors on both, even.
platform favoritism is just that.
whatever works for ya.
Wow you don’t get it… wider support for windows applications is irrelevant when you can run windows on a mac. With boot camp you are running a pc… period.
The question is…why? Why run a mac if all the software you want is on a PC? If you are buying a mac just to dual-boot windows, then why not just go with windows from the beginning? And the same thing applies to windows, you can dual-boot to a mac (or better yet use free virtualization software to run it inside windows). There is no advantage to macs in this regard. Dual booting is easy, I currently dual boot windows and linux. There is nothing special about boot camp.
I don’t know how you get that the mighty mouse is 2-3 years behind other mice.. is there some great leap in mice tech we don’t know about?
There are constant improvements in mouse technology. The mighty mouse’s much-hyped horizontal scrolling had been in other mice for several years and was in all but the cheapest mice by the time the mighty mouse came out. Cordless mice had become commonplace several years before the mighty mouse had that option and were available for budget mice when the mighty mouse got it. Laser mice have been around for years and had pretty much replaced optical mice except for the very cheapest ones by the time it became available on the mighty mouse. The new thing seems to be the ultra-fast scrolling in the newest logitech mice. There is a definite pattern I am seeing here.
And Mac is not without its problems. We have had no end to hardware and software compatibility issues with my father’s mac. Scanners in particular have been a serious issue (and I have read, on websites by mac fans, that scanners are notorious on macs).
I can understand if people are upset when others judge macs without using them. But I have used them extensively. And I simply do not like them. I use linux, I use windows, but I do not use macs when I can avoid it. I like being able to do anything I want. I like being able to change anything and everything about how my computer works. I don’t want someone to hold my hand and make it easy and pretty. I want a computer that does exactly what I want when I want it and nothing else. Windows does that. Linux does that. Mac does not. You can replace windows explorer with your own folder navigator. There are programs like windowblinds that replace just about everything. There are even programs that can make the windows interface identical to that of a Mac while not losing any of the windows program support.
It is true, macs are stable. It is easy to make a stable OS when you have complete control over the hardware used to build the computer. It is easy when you put significant limits on what programs can do. It is easy when you prevent major changes from being made to the interface. But that also limits what hardware can be used. It limits what programs can do. It limits how much you can customize your experience. It is a trade-off. I prefer to be on the side of customization and versatility. And I am willing to give up a little bit of stability in order to do that. That is not to say XP is unstable. I have had less crashes in my 4 years of using my current computer than I have had on my father’s mac just when visiting. But it is possible to really mess up windows. That is the price of versatility. You can’t have both. There is a saying, “Fast, powerful, user-friendly. Pick any two.” I pick fast and powerful. That costs a little bit of the user-friendliness but it is more than worth it to me. Other people weight their needs differently. But macs are not the ultimate operating system. They have limitations. They have trade-offs. And those limitations and trade-offs prevent me from doing what I want to do.
Zzzzzzz.
I can’t imagine what you do that requires to you NOT to use an apple computer.
Macs are as powerful as any other desktop out there.
What expressly do you use that requires you NOT to use OS X?
Just curious. I mean most of your quibbles sound like computer geek requirements.
90% of computer users just want it to work, not spend hours customizing the interface
and programming. But if that’s what you need to do…
Scanners are notorious because the hardware makers don’t know how to make decent plug ins. They probably spent no time on the Mac versions as opposed to the PC versions because of market share.
I’ve used macs for 20 years and never intend to switch.
I’m not going to get into the platform wars (I’ve never used any non-Apple PC at home; never any non-Wintel PC at work), but I’m intensely curious about one thing:
Ooops… sorry about the horked-up blockquote. If only we could edit our comments…
There have been hacks to try to get OSX to run on PCs.
I’m not sure if any of them work very well.
http://www.osx86project.org
http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-os-x/how-to-install-os-x-on-a-pc-117211.php
I mean most of your quibbles sound like computer geek requirements.
are you saying you aren’t a computer geek, steve?
;)
btw, I also spend a lot of time on photo blogs, and have seen similar travails with scanners and macs (including the latest versions of OSX).
never bothered to try to pin down exactly what was up; most likely bad driver releases from the companies, like HP/used-to-be-Minolta and Nikon, that kick out some of the more popular scanners.
I’ve even seen some conversions to the PC platform based on that issue alone in a couple of cases (people who spend a LOT of time converting slides into digital, IIRC).
er, the above comments on scanners relating to BC’s post where he said:
And Mac is not without its problems. We have had no end to hardware and software compatibility issues with my father’s mac. Scanners in particular have been a serious issue (and I have read, on websites by mac fans, that scanners are notorious on macs).
I’m a mac geek. It’s true.
I’m also a design nerd.
A gadget freak and a music elitist.
I’ve found that most hardware makers
are really bad at creating software for macs.
I’ve used scanners in the past at every job
and they always were buggy and poorly supported.
Apple has gotten really good at building in drivers for
plug and play functionality for digital cameras and audio
equipment and printers for the most part. I don’t know what
it is about scanners that wreak such havok.
Great, so I can add overhead and develop on a computer which is much more expensive. Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
I am not religious about neither my computer nor my operating system, but that’s just silly. It would be like running Mac OS X on a PC. It can be done, but what’s the point?
Macs are not much more expensive.
The point is you can develope for Macs and Windows… on a mac.
If you don’t want to ignore a growing number of users.
Do a quick search for “virtual PC”. Microsoft released it free for windows. There are also lots of third-party bootloaders that can be used to make dual-boot configurations similar to bootcamp, although there is no guarantee it will work because Mac OS is not designed to support as many hardware configurations as windows is.
And 90% of computer users use windows, too. What 90% of computer users want is irrelevant to what I want.
They know how to make decent plugins for windows and linux seems to manage just fine. And the lack of software support for macs due to their market share is a limitation of macs. It took Mathworks about a year to release a beta version of Matlab compatible with intel macs and the final version does not come out until summer.
Maybe saying they don’t know how to make decent plug-ins is a bit strong.They don’t spend the required time and effort. It’s half assed to sell “mac compatible” hardware but not invest in the software to run with it.
I don’t get how more software is better. More options sure… but when the choices are mostly crap, what’s the point.
A mac is a perfectly good PC. It’s runs a potent operating system, it looks good, the interface is efficient and it just works.
I actually own a copy of an earlier version of VirtualPC. It emulates a PC, allowing you to run Windows on Mac hardware (or, oddly enough, to create a virtual machine on Windows hardware); it does not allow you to run MacOS on Wintel hardware. AFAIK, nothing enables running MacOS on Wintel hardware. To my knowledge, there’s PearPC, which emulates a PowerPC machine on Wintel, and (as I mentioned before) an open-source/amateur project to emulate older 68k Mac hardware. According to its website, PearPC emulates a “sort of G4” and runs MacOS X v10.3.x pretty well… not exactly a robust solution. I say again, if anyone knows of a solid, usable way to run a current (v10.4.x) MacOS on Wintel hardware and get actual work done, I’d love to hear about it.
BTW, VirtualPC is only free on Windows; on Mac it costs (according my recent visit to the MS website) $249. It won’t run on Intel Macs (i.e., all new ones), and MS has no plans to support new Macs, so it’s effectively dead. (To be fair, BootCamp and Parallels make VirtualPC redundant, so why should MS put any money into porting it for Intel Macs?)
Just sayin’…
I’m an IT-consultant, I don’t develop shelfware.
In general, I don’t develop for Macs or other PCs. I develop for servers.
And in those rare occations where I develop applications for personal machines, I have to fit the customers’ requirements, which unsurprisingly, mostly means Windows OS.
I suspect you mean dead in relation to Mac.
VirtualPC is still being developed, and is quite useful for development purposes (as is WMWare).
Yah, I meant it’s dead as a way to emulate a PC on a Mac… which was its original raison d’etre; AFAIK the Windows version is relatively new. I’m quite sure I don’t understand the utility of running a virtual PC on an actual PC… but then, I’m not a software developer; I’ll take your word for it. ;^)