I HATE APPLE

I've never felt such a mug in all my life. God just imagining the prospect of using Finder (or whatever bullshit "search" function, gadget or app they try & present to make it appear like the file browser is a trifling nonsense to be ignored) and iTunes again, with no good alternatives make me want to stick redhot needles in my scrotum (sorry Momus).

My feelings when I sit back in front of a Windows PC "Ah, good. Now I can stop pissing about pretending to be streamlined and efficient and actually f*cking get something done, as the operating system isn't permanently working against me so hard"

I can't even face unpacking my boxed up iBook to watch a DVD :( My sister apparently wants to buy it, but even that seems like keeping it in my life too much now (god no, not 'family' tech support for the evil f*cking thing).

xpost

the fix the finder stuff rilly can get irritating.

on the other hand, with the side-shelf & the right cmd & option combos, etc., navigating the finder is still waay faster than windows -- just took a little getting used to.

fail to see how volume madness is a "feature."

First off, throw out Suitcase completely. Extensis' developers have been completely out to lunch when it comes to proper OS X development and are currently racing with Quark as to how fast they can alienate their user base.

Second, download a copy of Font Explorer. It's free and it works fantastically.

I haven't been really happy with any of the Finder augmentation apps, but Path Finder seems to be pretty good - and it will sort by date in column view.

Apple don't include enough RAM for how their OS runs. this thing cost me 2 grand ffs!

tears before 7pm EST.

They're all non-issues unless you like to painfully nit-pick over things or are affronted that Steve Jobs didn't personally call you for your input in development. I'm a programmer, database developer, network cop, iPod owner, p2p user, etc. and I'm 85% satisfied with my set-up. If I sat down and thought about it some more I could probably work up a good series of complaints about that remaining 15% but since that 85% satisfaction is responsible for 100% of my income I don't really have the time.

hence, my latter-day lack of reasons to hate Microsoft anymore, and instead be perturbed at Apple because just-as-reliable ugly Dell gear comes with 1.5x better price/performance/compatibility ratio.

I think it's the coming-home-to-relax factor as opposed to working-with-it factor that's responsible for a lot of my OS X Finder et al. animosity. It's just not as easygoing or fun(ctional) as I remember it being.

xpost
I'm not sure about that 1.5x price-to-performance ratio. When I was buying my G5, I looked pretty close at Windows machines and saved very little money for the same quality.

this is one of those philosophical questions, isn't it? besides l'interweb-retina fusion, yer basic Word-based notepad-type stuff, plus I guess lots of music (and photo? dvd?)-downloading/storage type stuff, which i'll be totally new to.

gabby, just buy shitloads of RAM from a third party and never use the volume keys.

WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

They're all non-issues unless you like to painfully nit-pick over things

ok, that's what i was looking for

one thing i've noticed on my parents' OSX - these sidebar application icons that JUMP. OUT. AT. YOU. when you get within half a mile of them. is this what i have to look forward to?

*opens up Font Explorer and counts fonts*

I've got 2672 fonts loaded of which 314 are active right now. FWIW, a designer at one of the places I consult at has 5500 or so fonts loaded in Font Explorer and hasn't reported any issues with it (they were running Suitcase which caused problems daily)

-- grimly fiendish's scrotal sac

I didn't get much (any) sleep last night, was posting ... with nothing much to add.

The level of hate though is generated by the fact I would LOVE to use the thing. There are plenty reasons why Windows sucks too you know! And I'm sick of fixing desktop PC's, and Windows laptops are often fugly and poorly thought/laid out in comparison. I would love to use it but... it makes me tear my hair out in frustration. So I don't. Yes I'm crabby! I fell for the hype and I feel like a fool.

The piss-poor state of the finder though is something that I just can't ignore (and believe me I've tried!!) in regular use, it just gets in my way and confounds me at every turn. It really is the elephant in the room. It took me what... five minutes? to get my head around Windows Explorer's folder tree. SIX MONTHS struggling with the finder and I still wasn't really sure if I was using it right, and was mostly just AWARE of it being there.

This isn't a "geek" rant. Or an anti-Apple screed (mostly). I couldn't give a shit about brushed metal, I don't even mind the dock... I really like my iPod (but they NEED to fix the LAME VBR bug asap!)

I'm just a fairly competent PC user who is plain amazed that everyone else can get along with something so wrong and broken on a basic usability level. It isn't even the slowness of the thing that grates. And frustrated that it'll basically NEVER be fixed because Apple seems to think bells, whistles & PR will somehow bridge the gap. All I see in the future if I was to hang onto this thing is lies, self-denial, and excessive further costs to come. I dunno about "long term" but I still feel I'm doing the right thing by jumping off now before it gets worse. I hate them for putting me in this position.

"I can find my files okay" is SUCH a 'mac' response too. As if that's ALL a file browser does. ffs.

I'm not trying to be knee jerk here, nor am I invalidating your crappy iBook/iPod but there's a lot of "Macs don't do this one thing EXACTLY so it SUCKS!" talk in this thread that bothers me. Most likely, that iBook G3 you had was just crap and from looking at the results of this iBook and PowerBook survey quite a few people had problems with it...

"The iBook G3, which sold quite well, had the most failures of any Apple laptop we surveyed and the failures were critical (the motherboard). Some other Mac models have had quite a few failures as well, but they generally were due to specific component problems. The iBook G3 simply appears to have been a flawed design, but it took a long time for Apple engineers to get a handle on the problem and fix it."

Every manufacturer has a flawed design sooner or later (don't get me started on Dell laptops), but it doesn't necessarily extend to the entire product line. Gabbneb just wanted to know if he would be making a mistake if he bought a new laptop (I don't believe he would, but I think he should get AppleCare with it)

Of course I'm biased to some degree because much of my livelihood depends on having more Macs out there.

(I jumped to Mac in 2002, so I've never actually used the old Finder, but so far, the only thing that really bothers me sometimes is that it can sometimes be difficult to create a new directory when it's in list mode. I also seem to remember fuss about it being Carbon-based rather than written in Cocoa)

Going the Mac->Windows direction isn't much better either. I dread the Windows folder tree and still hate how it slows me down.

I used to find it a bit fiddly to get to non-dock applications, but then I realised I could put an alias to the Application folder in my dock.

Other than that I have no problems. Oh, integrated FTP and CD copying support would be nice.

This bothered me for a long time also, but upgrading to the latest DivX 6 driver seemed to have sped things up a lot (using OS X 10.4.4 with QuickTime 7.0.4 if it matters)

The windows folder tree is hardly perfect I'll admit! But it slow me down less because it behaves consistently, you can rely on it (except when it crashes obv.). That's the key.

OS X behaves in ways that are unexpected, unusual, random, illogical and stop you "just getting on with it". It's like a slippery electric eel, when it should be your pet dog & friend.

There's so much wrong with the fucking thing.

The first thing to understand is they're not windows anymore like they used to be...when you double click a folder you're not opening the folder, you're opening a little browser window that shows you what's in the folder. If you don't think to hard about it it may seem like I'm splitting hairs, but remembering that difference is one major way I'm able to understand how finder works now differently then before.

I honestly haven't experienced most of the things you mention! I do find Desktop icons are sometimes invisible in XP though... And XP's 'map network drive' view is appalling, where if the directory path is longer than about 12 characters it just truncates it and there's no way of scrolling or even copy-pasting it to see the full thing.

xpost: yeah, dan's precise summary of the New Way explains why column view is k-1,000,000 times better than the alternatives (although you STILL have to use list view to get date sorting, and you still have to use icon view if you want thumbnails without the irritating potential of accidentally firing up a QT preview)