I Hate Macs

[ORAC]

At home I am now down to a PC laptop and a Mac mini (with a 24" Dell screen). I have to buy a new laptop/PC in Fry's on Thursday for use in California for the next 2 years. I am taking both my PC and Mac software. So, should I buy a Vista laptop or a Duo core MacPro....

Oh, and why the thread title? To get your attention, and because of this in the Grauniad today.....:} :} :O

I Hate Macs (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html): .........I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are........

[Binoculars]

I have both. The chief advantage of owning a Mac is listening to PC people spluttering about Mac owners. Jeez, it's a computer ffs, who really cares? One thing worth selecting from that rant... PCs have charm;

ROFL!

[ChocksAwayUK]

Well said Binos, that journo's saying much more about himself and his issues than anything else.
(edit: Oh, it's Charlie Brooker - quelle suprise. Admittedly he occasionally has a witty turn of phrase but I have it good authority that he is as much of a tw@t in person as he is in print).

[Devlin Carnet]

Mmm... But you can have a right mouse button, its just turned off by default.

[eticket]

For some reason both Windows and Mac users give me funny looks when the question of one button mice on Macs comes up in conversation. Perhaps it is because I use a mouse on my Mac with two functioning buttons. Cut, copy & paste etc and other context sensitive choices are available on the right button.

I changed from the Apple Pro Mouse as I didn't enjoy using it for extended sessions. For some reason I haven't found an official Apple mouse that I can live with since the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II on the 9600 Macs. I reckon that it is only me as I never hear of anyone else wanting to change their official Apple mice. I do like the Apple Pro Keyboard though.

[Re-entry]

ORAC. In a nutshell. MACs are useless.
I HATE computers but have been compelled to buy this heap of silicon induced piece of junk.

[Saab Dastard]

I had to use Macs around 1993-1995. I hated the single mouse button. I had intellectual problems with having to drag a floppy disk icon to the BIN to eject it.

I like PCs. :)

SD

[scroggs]

I love the 'glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults' line! I shal use that - particularly with Danny....:}

Scroggs

A committed (in more ways than a few) PC user

[Re-entry]

btw ORAC.
A fine piece of prose. Most impressive.
Many would not 'get it'. Sadly.

[gingernut]

I wouldn't say I hate him, some of his opinions may be a little misguided, but he does come up with the odd good point.

[ChocksAwayUK]

I liked C*nt (don't we all?) and TV Go Home in general. And Nathan Barley was well-observed, very of-the-moment and at times genuinely unsettling in its accuracy. I just think his recent formula has become a bit tired. And I don't think you can really get away with bilously criticising the human flaws of 'minority group x' every week by making it clear at the end that it was all a joke and you didn't mean it anyway (admittedly, perhaps I don't 'get it'). He seems to have become a bit of a spokesperson for disenfranchised nerds and gamers (QED), an Internet-kiddy Bill Hicks.
Anyway, I will always admire him for his description of the sound of the exit reception of some particularly unpopular Big Brother inmates as being like 'an explosion in a boo factory'.
And in case anyone was feeling left out:
http://fuhrerchan.be/ma/src/1157960476967.jpg

[ORAC]

For interest, I bought my laptop last night - MacBook Pro 2.33GHz Duo Core.

Nice and thin, love the magnetic disconnect power cord. Will someone just tell me how I get Safari to go to a full screen display and delete/rename/sort the favourites. :confused:

Bought a wireless router for the apartment as well (internet cable modem is provided) and the Mac, my Vonage phone and AE internet radion up and running as well. Just about settled into LA again.

Just got to buy a mouse tonight to get away from the keyboard pad. Thinking about the Logitech V270 bluetooth, since it has OS 10 drivers. Anybody got one and any comments on it?

[AppleMacster]

ORAC,

Congratulations on your new MacBook Pro.

Safari's logic is such that if you press the green button, the page will go to the size necessary to show the page in its entirety. Most webpages don't require full-screen browsing (the Apple (http://www.apple.com/) website is a good example of this). Thus, Safari's logic is to conserve screen space, rather than have lots of empty space rendered on your screen. The green button toggles between this setting and the last one you set. To get "full screen" browsing, you will have to drag out the window at the bottom right and quit Safari with the window set like this for it to be saved as the toggle setting. It's just a different way of doing things from Windows, one aimed at making the most of limited screen "real estate."

If you're still not convinced, you can put this piece of javascript as a bookmark onto your bookmarks bar instead which will make it a full screen browsing experience:

javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth, screen.availHeight);

To sort out favourites, click on the bookmarks icon on your bookmarks bar; it looks like an open book. Alternatively, the key shortcut to that page is alt-Apple-B

If you get the Apple Mighty Mouse (http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/), you get four buttons, a 360º trackball for scrolling and the drivers are built into the system already. It also comes in a bluetooth version, which pairs seamlessly with your MacBook Pro.

Applemacster

[James 1077]

And download Firefox as Safari isn't actually all that good unfortunately!

[ORAC]

I have a mighty mouse, and a wireless mighty mouse, at home (because the wireless one needs to be installed, which means you need a mouse....doh...). Not particulary impressed. The little pimple isn't very user friendly, the side buttons tactilely poor. An example of Apple form of function. It is also full size and I really want a laptop size mouse for the carry case.

Which is why I'm looking at an alternate supplier.

[pogmothoin]

Safari's logic is such that if you press the green button, the page will go to the size necessary to show the page in its entirety. Most webpages don't require full-screen browsing (the Apple website is a good example of this). Thus, Safari's logic is to conserve screen space, rather than have lots of empty space rendered on your screen.
Ahhh, thanks for this, i just got a swish new MacBook Pro and am relearning the 'mac ways' after 10 years of pc's :8 Was wondering about the green button and no fullscreen window

loving the mac totally... shoulda done it years ago.....

[LMSil]

I started using Mac 4 years ago and the only thing hard to understand (and then again, maybe not...) is how some peolple still use PCs. Maybe the answer will reside in the deepness of their comments about Mac and its users - full of hate which only translates into one expression - "I wish I could have some..." (Dire Straits?).

Well, what really brings me here is a different matter. As an airline captain I get lots of information from Airbus, which, of course, does not run on Mac, except in PDF version.

Does anybody know any group of international pilots who is fighting against this "kind" of monopoly? Any way of getting around this short from running any program that starts with an M? (Will refuse to corrupt my Mac - literally)

Thank you,
LMS

[Cypherus]

Why all the Fuss, build your own PC including all your persoanl prefrences and quirks then add a good emulator and have the best of both worlds and run MAC applications in the XP enviroment....KEWL EH! :p

[Danny]

ORAC, make sure you get Parallels for Mac. I am writing this from within Windoze XP using IE7 (Don't ask why). Bestest ever PC emulator for the Mac. I used to use Virtual PC many years ago but that was slow and inefficient and then Microsoft bought the company and completely screwed the product to the point of a desire to cause physical harm to Bill Gates.

I use a small wireless mouse (Kensington PocketMouse) which uses a USB dongle thingie. Always have used a two button mouse as the right button is configurable but in default mode will use the contextual menus. Depends on how much you use it and the interval between changing batteries.

Don't listen to the sheep who follow the Microsoft lead. They are incapable of understanding the enlightenment the rest of us enjoy once freed from the mind altering drudgery of soing things the Microsoft way. :8

Now, I must get back to using this hideous MS operating system and browser to find out why some of the sheep are having problems using their back buttons due to some conflict with Google ads on these pages. As usual, only happens with MS browsers. :rolleyes:

[ORAC]

I bought a Logitech bluetooth travel mouse. Works fine - after it wakes up..

[WeatherJinx]

That Linux guy looks a bit like The Guvnor :uhoh:

[Mac the Knife]

"Don't listen to the sheep who follow the Microsoft lead. They are incapable of understanding the enlightenment the rest of us enjoy once freed from the mind altering drudgery of doing things the Microsoft way. :8 "

Amen to that!

http://www.mepis.org/files/pictures/picture-2287.png

http://www.mepis.org/

[Farrell]

Parallels for Mac.....was wondering how good that was.
Glad to read from someone other than Apple that it is great.

I am sick to death of my PC.

Am buying a Mac out of this months paycheque.

The only question now, is whether I should buy a Macbook or a Macbook Pro.....all I do is use Office and Photoshop.

[Telstar]

Farrell Make sure you check out Apples version of photoshop, aperture it its really really good. Much easier to use, I found Photoshop a nightmare!

[innuendo]

Telstar,
Adobe's Photoshop and Apple's Aperture are not really comparable programs. The comparison between Adobe's and Apple's programs should be Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture.
Aperture and Lightroom are programs with organizational
and image editing features with very god RAW file conversion abilities. The image editing capabilities are more of an overall image adjustment type (With some cloning features in Lightroom).
If you need more sophisticated image editing such as layers, masks, selections and so on, then Photoshop, (CS2 as its current version is called) or Photoshop Elements is the program.
You can try Aperture for 30 days and I believe Lightroom is also available for trial.

[Capt Chambo]

Can anyone tell me how to open a .tif document on my MacBook?

Cheers.

CC

[AppleMacster]

Capt Chambo,

.tif files can be opened in iPhoto, or even more quickly in Preview. If the file doesn't open by double-clicking on it, open Preview and open the picture from the File menu.

You can get the same result by right-clicking on the file and select Preview/iPhoto from the "Open With" option.

Applemacster.

[Capt Chambo]

Thanks AppleMacster, I have tried all of those. It's a document so I have even tried changing the file extension to see if I can open it in AppleWorks, Word or even Pages but it is not interested.
I have asked the sender to re-send it to me in a non-.tif format, but it's the first document I have had in years that I have been unable to open and I am intrigued.
Any other ideas?

CC

[Danny]

As far as I'm aware, tif files should be suffixed .tiff

GraphicConverter on the Mac should just about be able to open any graphics file.

[Evening Star]

As far as I'm aware, tif files should be suffixed .tiff

Scanning (gradually!) a lifetime of slides/negatives onto my Mac. Nikon scanner by default saves as .tif, which seems to give Photoshop Elements, Preview and iPhoto no trouble.

[Capt Chambo]

Danny thanks for the steer to GraphicConverter it has opened the wretched thing!
FWIW the the original attachment was prefixed by .tif which is why I wrote it that way. When I went to get more information (ctrl>click>more information) it confirmed it as a TIFF document. Either way it wouldn't open until I used GraphicConverter.
Thanks once again.

CC