11 ms·

Bruce Eckel on why he's moving back to Windows from Mac

60 points by johndcook 13y ago

misnome 13y ago
Interesting. I have a lot of respect for Bruce Eckel, and it's a well considered article. I'm a pretty avid mac user, and OSX has treated me well since I switched, but I fully support using the best tool for the job - and it seems that is windows, in his case.
mikeash 13y ago
> Having “fn,” “control,” “alt,” “option,” “command,” and whatever the last one is, I call it “flower” but I think in the past it might have been open-apple How did this fellow spend six years using a Mac without ever realizing that "command" is that flower-looking thing? And, of course, "alt" and "option" are the same thing. Sounds like he never really adjusted to the Mac and remained a Windows user at heart, and is now going back to what he knows. Nothing wrong with that! And he presents it as "what I had trouble with", not "what's wrong with the Mac", which is commendable.
- tropicalmug 13y ago
  It also sounds as though he never discovered common keyboard shortcuts. He complains about command-tab behavior being different from Windows, but I've found that command-tab for switching between applications and command-` for window switching within application windows on that desktop works even better for me. I'm almost never guessing what the order of windows will be.
  - graeme 13y ago
    I do wish that command-` switched back and forth between windows before cylcing through them, like cmd-tab does.
    - ams6110 13y ago
      Yep this little inconsistency still annoys me after years of using Mac OS X. Most of the time when I'm toggling windows with the keyboard I want to go back and forth between two windows. With the Mac I have to remember to use Shift with Cmd-` (or not) depending on which window I'm on.
      - graeme 13y ago
        Well, I just learned something new. Didn't know about the shift option. Though I still prefer the initial back and forth behavior used by default with cmd-tab for programs.
    - ollysb 13y ago
      Maybe it's because I use a browser all day but I actually prefer the consistent forward/backward cycling behaviour (with command-shift-` for back).
  - zmmmmm 13y ago
    > I've found that command-tab for switching between applications and command-` for window switching within application windows on that desktop works even better for me I constantly get frustrated because it's so hard to get windows of different applications side by side. Cmd-tab raises all the windows of an application above everything else, so I can't easily pull windows of two different applications to the top at the same time, unless I carefully apportion screen space so nothing is overlapping. For example, I often like to fill the screen with two terminal windows side-by-side, but then every time I cmd-tab to either terminal window Chrome gets hidden so I can't see what I was researching on the web.
    - m_mueller 13y ago
      You'd profit a lot from a second screen.
- deleted 13y ago
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- nairteashop 13y ago
  You know, I'm a mac convert through and through, but for a company that favors simplicity so much that they create mice with just one button, I've never quite understood why there are SO many modifier keys on a mac. I always get a mild migraine trying to remember which combination of shift, function, control, alt/option and command triggers an occasionally used keyboard shortcut. Anyone know the thinking behind this? Is it for historical reasons? I've googled over the years with no success.
  - dljsjr 13y ago
    No different than Windows (Alt, Control, Shift, Windows Key, and fn on most laptops and modern multimedia keyboards), and on Linux the array of modifier keys can be dizzying (Super, Meta, Hyper, etc. GNU Emacs recognizes 5 modifier keys).
    - lake99 13y ago
      But on Linux, if you carefully select window managers and programs, you'll have an easy answer to GP's questions "Anyone know the thinking behind this? Is it for historical reasons?" The answer is, "sure, I know the thinking behind this". I use Awesome WM. And I have configured practically every program I use. So, window management -> Windows (Super) modifer; editors -> Ctrl; Menubar -> Alt (can't change that); Funny chars -> AltGr (US International keyboard); Fn -> configured to whatever icon I see on the keyboard
    - nairteashop 13y ago
      I agree with you that it's no more difficult that a Windows PC. It's just that when I moved to the Mac platform years ago, I found the general simplicity quite refreshing (yes, even the lack of a right-mouse button!) and was surprised that they hadn't done anything about the numerous keyboard modifiers.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    "⌘" is for menu commands. "option" is a modifier. "control" was originally introduced for contextual menu ("right click"), and also provides EMACS-like shortcuts (Ctrl+A = Home, Ctrl+E = End, etc.). So in fact, it is simpler because you don't have Home/End/PageUp/PageDown/Insert/Delete keys. It also avoids overloading the same key with commands and editing shortcuts.
- nyrulez 13y ago
  Having both used Windows and Mac - the shortcut keys are an immense jumble of various modifier keys. It is almost like they want you to not use short cut keys and rely on the mouse instead. I know it is a matter of habit - but I never did consciously make an effort to learn the keys on Windows and I still struggle on the Mac after 3 years.
  - nyrulez 13y ago
    And not having a maximize mode aggravated me to no end. Thankfully, in their quest to make OS X more ipad-like, they put it back in (after years of arguing why it was not the best UI choice).
    - laureny 13y ago
      And it still doesn't work right. The only application that gets it right is Chrome (shift click on the green button), but they are simulating it. Mac OS still gets it wrong.
      - nilkn 13y ago
        This is something that confuses even veteran Mac users, but the green button is not for maximization. Every application defines a "standard state." This could be hard-coded or, in the case of Safari, the standard state can be defined dynamically in terms of the content you're viewing. The green button is supposed to toggle between the standard state and the user state (that is, the state you've manually put the window in). If you want to just redefine the meaning of that button to be "maximize," you can use something like Right Zoom: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30591/right-zoom http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30591/right-zoom In my case, I just use Slate and have Shift+Cmd+Enter bound to maximize the window. Then I've got Shift+Cmd+(H,J,K,L,Y,U,B,N) bound to what you'd expect based on the vim keybindings. That's just the absolute beginning of what is possible with Slate; I'm sure there's vast potential I'm not yet tapping into. Slate: https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate
        13y ago
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Hmm wasn't the "flower thing" called the Apple Key at some point? (I seem to remember being told this sometime in the mid 90s)
  - pwny 13y ago
    There used to be an apple on the key as well as the command symbol. At least on my (very) old PPC iMac.
    - fooooobar 13y ago
      The older apples had open apple (just the outline) and closed apple (a solid, filled in apple) keys.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      The Apple II had modifier keys called "open Apple" and "closed Apple", which occupied the same keys used for Command and Option on the Mac respectively. Many Apple keyboards printed both symbols.
      - __david__ 13y ago
        The Apple IIe, technically. The original Apple II and Apple II+ [1] did not have them. Interestingly, I believe those keys were tied to the joystick buttons. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Apple_II_Plus.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Apple_II...
        mikeash 13y ago
        Yep, definitely equivalent to the joystick buttons. I remember that clearly from my days of gaming on a IIGS.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
- MBCook 13y ago
  > And he presents it as "what I had trouble with", not "what's wrong with the Mac", which is commendable. I couldn't agree more. Whenever I see a title like this my immediate thought is "here we go again", but I clicked through anyway and was pleasantly surprised. I've never used Windows 8 (or 7/Vista for more than a few minutes), but his criticisms seemed well considered. Macs can be more expensive for the same amount of CPU. I expected he was going to be talking about the Mac Pros (which are based on what, 2010 hardware?) so I was a little surprised to see he was talking about laptops. The other thing that caught my attention was his note about trackpads. It seems like every review I read about a non-Mac laptop (which, to be fair, doesn't happen much) seems to mention how they are either terrible or just OK. Considering how important the trackpad is on a laptop, it always surprises me that this seems to continue to be an issue. I remember years ago when Macs had 3" trackpads and PCs still had tiny 2" models. My MacBook Pro has a 5" pad, but I've seen 17" desktop replacement laptops with 3" pads. Worse was that while Macs gained two finger scrolling (which was a great step up), may PCs gained "scroll areas", so that you'd lose a large fraction of the trackpad. The fact that part of it was horizontal scrolling (which is far less common) was even worse. Are trackpads in the non-Mac world really that far behind, or is it just selection bias where the few laptop reviews I read only mention the trackpad because it's bad and the rest don't even discuss it.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    Yeah, I was recently handed a new laptop - brand escapes me. Whatever it was had high specs and a big price. Asked what I thought I opened a web page then automatically tried two finger scrolling. The confused owned asked what I was doing then directed me to the little arrows in the corner of the widow. I couldn't happily own a laptop that didn't have this functionality or similar.
    - what_ever 13y ago
      I can't believe a recent laptop (on any OS) not supporting two finger scrolling. Some laptops have it disabled by default, but it is there. I haven't seen a laptop without 2 finger scrolling on last 15 (friends') laptops I have used.
  - 13y ago
- munger 13y ago
  I think the main confusion of hot keys going from windows to Mac (as a developer that tried it) is, "On Mac, command is control and on Windows, control is control" - but then Mac also has a control key... but then if you open up a terminal/iterm to a remote server, Mac control is terminal control so you have to remember which "control" you want depending on application context. For me, kind of annoying after using windows and Putty for remote servers where control is always control.
  - yoasif_ 13y ago
    On a Mac, Control is always Control. It's just that it does less than it does on Windows.
- Osmium 13y ago
  > How did this fellow spend six years using a Mac without ever realizing that "command" is that flower-looking thing? And, of course, "alt" and "option" are the same thing. What I always found bizarre (and maybe there's a historical reason for it I don't know about) but on the UK Mac keyboard the "option" key doesn't read "option" -- it just has the option symbol on it. I always imagined this must be very confusing for Mac new-comers in the UK reading advice online to press "option+whatever" and having no idea what key to press. Image here: http://static.paulboxley.com/mac_keyboard_differences.jpg http://static.paulboxley.com/mac_keyboard_differences.jpg
rufugee 13y ago
Ha...good luck. I tired switching my wife and daughters back to Windows after 8 came out. They lasted around six weeks before switching back to Ubuntu. I used it quite a bit during this time as well. The interface is so heavily designed for a tablet, it ends up feeling very forced and clunky as a desktop. Additionally, in that six week period, there were at least three times where I would reboot the machine and get the dreaded "Preparing Automatic Repair" endless loop of death, resulting in a re-install. I really loved certain things about it...well, at least the design of certain things. For example, the process monitor you accessed via ctrl+alt+delete was beautiful and had some very nice features including cumulative resource usage per app which I found very exciting. However, I quickly found that most of your running apps rarely showed in this panel. Combine this with the fact that when a process went awry and you wanted to kill it, 95% of the time the process monitor wouldn't come up at all, it was next to useless. (I'll mention here that this OS is the first Windows I've had since 98 which wouldn't give you access to kill a process even with the system under heavy load, unless it was completely frozen). Windows 8 not so bad? Maybe in your experience, but in mine, it was a stinking pile of crap. If Skyrim and certain other games would run reliably on Linux, I'd be completely done with Windows. Come to think of it, games have been the only reason I've kept Windows around for the past decade and it was the driver to give 8 another shot (so my daughter wouldn't have to reboot to get to a few of her favorite games). I suspect various games and Office will keep a lot of folks on the platform, but there are MUCH better experiences to be had. I've tried various Windows, OS X, and various *nixs, and Linux just seems to suit my family (and me personally) the best. I couldn't say this five years ago (at least for my wife and kids), but I'm happy that I can now.
- laureny 13y ago
  > (I'll mention here that this OS is the first Windows I've had since 98 which wouldn't give you access to kill a process even with the system under heavy load, unless it was completely frozen). It's because you're using the wrong shortcut, it's Ctrl-Shift-ESC. Ctrl-Alt-Delete takes you to a more general screen that's not always available.
  - ameen 13y ago
    Woah. I'd never heard of this shortcut, seems to work perfectly. Now to see if it still does work when my PC is frozen. Thanks for the tip, though.
speg 13y ago
As a developer I don't think I could go back. Unless I was working on a Windows stack. Knowing you have *nix under the hood is just too comforting.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Exactly my feeling. If you're a developer, not doing .NET, Windows doesn't offer anything compelling. On a Mac, even if you're not doing IOS or Mac applications development, you have a complete Unix environment available. Even when I WAS doing .NET work on Windows (v1.1 timeframe) I would write my code in Emacs and compile it with csc. I don't think that's really very practical anymore.
  - __david__ 13y ago
    A year or 2 ago I had a consulting gig that used C# and that was my technique--code in Emacs then alt-tab to Visual Studio to compile/run/debug. It worked perfectly fine. It's the same technique I use with XCode, except I can "M-x compile RET xcodebuild && open build/program.app RET" for most things and rarely even need to switch to XCode.
- kenjackson 13y ago
  Why would having Unix be more comforting than having the Windows kernel under the hood? I've found the NT kernel well designed.
- falcolas 13y ago
  Except... it's not '*nix' as everyone knows it (or more importantly as deployed in production). Even while working on a mac I do all of my linux development on a VM, because the differences are always such a stumbling block for me. Half the utilities do not support long args, no real repos (resulting in broken or missing tools), old versions of utilities... ugh. I still use one, but I'm seriously considering dual booting centos on the hardware.
  - Camillo 13y ago
    Linux is not even UNIX.
ratsbane 13y ago
I'm surprised he's not more of a command-line guy. So many things I would hate to do without: vim, grep, ssh, rsync, git, tab completion, cron, .... I suppose you could install all of those and a lot more on Windows but what a lot of bother.
yoster 13y ago
I like both operating systems. iCloud on all my Apple devices makes life easier. On the other hand, my Windows 7 and Xbox 360 have no type of integration, but can run certain programs a lot better. They both have their perks, and I will still use both types.
- nohorse 13y ago
  Win 8 gets along better with your Xbox fyi
- nohorse 13y ago
  FYI: Win8 does a better job of sharing between devices. especially xbox. the music app for example has a "play on xbox" button if you are on the same network. and skydrive apps are available everywhere. So they are catching up there.
benatkin 13y ago
Here's a review on Amazon for a laptop with the same make and model as the one he got from Costco. It's better than the three stars on Costco. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008482UHG http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008482UHG
ExpiredLink 13y ago
Artima is still alive? The owner let the site rot for a long time.
quattrofan 13y ago
Agree with most of this article, had a Macbook Pro forced on me by a company a few years ago, I tried really hard to switch but ultimately put Windows on it and dual-booted. I dont agree about Win8, its a disaster of epic proportions, staying with Win7 until Win9. I hear 8.1 is much of the same since Ballmer has his head up his ass.
Chris911 13y ago
Switched from Windows 8 (early builds) to OSX a few months ago and at the moment I don't see myself even going back to Windows for development. I'm realizing how much I missed the command-line from my Ubuntu days and how much you can develop in pretty much any language quite easily on a mac. It's the perfect development machine.
sharms 13y ago
I know HN is a very pro Apple crowd, but I wanted to share that I have had a very similar experience. Windows 8 is actually incredibly solid, fast, and has a ton of great tools available. SSH on Windows works just as well as OS X, and sleep / resume etc is a solved problem, with the added bonus that you can run any game that comes out. For a developer who wants to focus on getting things done, it isn't that Windows 8 is so much more compelling than OS X, but the price and compatibility make it worth using.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
“Ultimately I needed to use Word, the Windows version, for page layout, indexing, etc. Nothing else does the job (I’ve tried, and keep trying the alternatives). The waterfall model of “first finish the book with one program, then do layout with a different program” just doesn’t work” The entire publishing industry would beg to differ. While MS Word (but preferably InCopy) is fine for copy, you won’t use it to lay out a cookbook and directly send it to a printer. If you supply a Word file to a printer, they will likely convert it to an InDesign file and charge you for it. Source: I publish books for a living and have been since 1996. “an equivalent-horsepower Mac is 3 times the cost of a Windows 8 machine” I thought OP was trolling, until I read the following passage: “I also wanted something with at least 4 cores, in order to do more concurrency programming experiments with languages like Scala and Go.” Not exactly typical use, but if the highest clock frequency and cores is what the author wants, then sure, he can get more bang for his buck with a Windows box than Apple’s offerings. Macs are made for small size, low weight, and power preservation. Many consumers won’t look at just clock frequency or the number of cores to make their purchasing decision. I bought a new notebook 3 months a go, a MacBook Air. It has a 512GB SSD, a fast CPU, and a decent GPU. I mainly use it for image and video editing, but because of Apple’s choices, I get battery use of 6-8 hours, while it’s not much larger than my tablet. That’s what I care about. Ten years a go, to do the same work, I had to lug around a notebook that weighed twice as much and had half as much battery life. With many Windows notebooks, that’s still the case.
camus 13y ago
I think that what the main argument is, when one gets a Windowd laptop ,one can get something really powerfull and cheap. Macs are not that powerfull and not cheap at all. I bought my Mac a few years ago, I could have bought a x2 more powerfull Windows laptop at the same price. But i must say ( dont know if it is still the case though) Apple has a better customer service than any other computer brand out there. My keyboard went out of order 4 years after I purchased my laptop ( it was my fault, i dropped it) , and Apple replaced it for free.
eridius 13y ago
It sounds like he never really embraced the Mac to begin with. And some of the stuff he sounds is just plain strange: > But in hindsight I realize there are a lot of things that never felt quite natural. [...] And more sophisticated things like any software installation that doesn’t come as a Mac installer. Is he really saying that software that doesn't come packaged as an installer is unnatural? Because the ability to simply drag & drop one "file" to install (or delete) an application is generally considered a feature of OS X (and the old Mac OS), not a negative.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Reminds me of the famous line from Steve Martin, "Those French, they have their own word for everything!" I expect Bruce will get a lot of page views, this sort of story pulls them out, but his story is not very compelling. Basically he liked the Windows experience better before and he has gone back to it. I didn't see a lot of effort to figure out "meme" for MacOS (which is fine I didn't either until circumstances made it my only laptop) and so returning to something more familiar removes friction in his life. Good for him. But it doesn't inform on the different choices between MacOS and Windows, only his comfort level with them.
pswenson 13y ago
Bizarre. He used a mac for 6 years and didn't know about cmd-` to switch windows within the same app? Finder does suck compared to Windows Explorer (use Pathfinder). No snap behavior for windows (use BetterTouch). Can't think of anything else to like about windows really. The command line is terrible on Windows. Even with cygwin, the terminal is awful. Copy/Paste is awkward. Resize the window and the text doesn't follow. No clear terminal keyboard shortcut. No searching in the console. Locked files everywhere, makes dev difficult. Installing apps is much more painful on windows. The apps spread throughout the system, I love on a mac how you can just drag in an app and run it. No 5 mins to install. Uninstalling is just deleting the app, no horrible uninstall process. rm -rf type functionality must take 10x as long on windows. No virus issues on mac.
pswenson 13y ago
Cost - yes. Windows laptops cost much less. But they suck much more. I guess if you don't value the touchpad, mag safe, retina, display, thin-ness, long lasting battery, and the aesthetics that much... I mean I use my computer a lot, it's my career. Easily worth an extra grand every 3 years to have the best.
- nohorse 13y ago
  this is likely the year where ultrabooks surpass the macbooks. All the specs you listed exist today in devices like the dell xps 13 as well as one important feature: a touch screen. that's a different debate, but spec-for-spec macbooks are great PCs, same parts as the others that have advanced construction and have enjoyed top tier status. The OEMs are reacting by building better PCs
moogly 13y ago
What's weirdest is the Windows "bit rot" claim, that they finally fixed not having to reboot once every so often by Windows 7. In my experience that was fixed almost 14 years ago with Windows 2000.

60 points by johndcook 13y ago

Interesting. I have a lot of respect for Bruce Eckel, and it's a well considered article. I'm a pretty avid mac user, and OSX has treated me well since I switched, but I fully support using the best tool for the job - and it seems that is windows, in his case.

mikeash 13y ago

> Having “fn,” “control,” “alt,” “option,” “command,” and whatever the last one is, I call it “flower” but I think in the past it might have been open-apple How did this fellow spend six years using a Mac without ever realizing that "command" is that flower-looking thing? And, of course, "alt" and "option" are the same thing. Sounds like he never really adjusted to the Mac and remained a Windows user at heart, and is now going back to what he knows. Nothing wrong with that! And he presents it as "what I had trouble with", not "what's wrong with the Mac", which is commendable.

tropicalmug 13y ago
It also sounds as though he never discovered common keyboard shortcuts. He complains about command-tab behavior being different from Windows, but I've found that command-tab for switching between applications and command-` for window switching within application windows on that desktop works even better for me. I'm almost never guessing what the order of windows will be.
- graeme 13y ago
  I do wish that command-` switched back and forth between windows before cylcing through them, like cmd-tab does.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Yep this little inconsistency still annoys me after years of using Mac OS X. Most of the time when I'm toggling windows with the keyboard I want to go back and forth between two windows. With the Mac I have to remember to use Shift with Cmd-` (or not) depending on which window I'm on.
    - graeme 13y ago
      Well, I just learned something new. Didn't know about the shift option. Though I still prefer the initial back and forth behavior used by default with cmd-tab for programs.
  - ollysb 13y ago
    Maybe it's because I use a browser all day but I actually prefer the consistent forward/backward cycling behaviour (with command-shift-` for back).
- zmmmmm 13y ago
  > I've found that command-tab for switching between applications and command-` for window switching within application windows on that desktop works even better for me I constantly get frustrated because it's so hard to get windows of different applications side by side. Cmd-tab raises all the windows of an application above everything else, so I can't easily pull windows of two different applications to the top at the same time, unless I carefully apportion screen space so nothing is overlapping. For example, I often like to fill the screen with two terminal windows side-by-side, but then every time I cmd-tab to either terminal window Chrome gets hidden so I can't see what I was researching on the web.
  - m_mueller 13y ago
    You'd profit a lot from a second screen.
deleted 13y ago
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nairteashop 13y ago
You know, I'm a mac convert through and through, but for a company that favors simplicity so much that they create mice with just one button, I've never quite understood why there are SO many modifier keys on a mac. I always get a mild migraine trying to remember which combination of shift, function, control, alt/option and command triggers an occasionally used keyboard shortcut. Anyone know the thinking behind this? Is it for historical reasons? I've googled over the years with no success.
- dljsjr 13y ago
  No different than Windows (Alt, Control, Shift, Windows Key, and fn on most laptops and modern multimedia keyboards), and on Linux the array of modifier keys can be dizzying (Super, Meta, Hyper, etc. GNU Emacs recognizes 5 modifier keys).
  - lake99 13y ago
    But on Linux, if you carefully select window managers and programs, you'll have an easy answer to GP's questions "Anyone know the thinking behind this? Is it for historical reasons?" The answer is, "sure, I know the thinking behind this". I use Awesome WM. And I have configured practically every program I use. So, window management -> Windows (Super) modifer; editors -> Ctrl; Menubar -> Alt (can't change that); Funny chars -> AltGr (US International keyboard); Fn -> configured to whatever icon I see on the keyboard
  - nairteashop 13y ago
    I agree with you that it's no more difficult that a Windows PC. It's just that when I moved to the Mac platform years ago, I found the general simplicity quite refreshing (yes, even the lack of a right-mouse button!) and was surprised that they hadn't done anything about the numerous keyboard modifiers.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  "⌘" is for menu commands. "option" is a modifier. "control" was originally introduced for contextual menu ("right click"), and also provides EMACS-like shortcuts (Ctrl+A = Home, Ctrl+E = End, etc.). So in fact, it is simpler because you don't have Home/End/PageUp/PageDown/Insert/Delete keys. It also avoids overloading the same key with commands and editing shortcuts.
nyrulez 13y ago
Having both used Windows and Mac - the shortcut keys are an immense jumble of various modifier keys. It is almost like they want you to not use short cut keys and rely on the mouse instead. I know it is a matter of habit - but I never did consciously make an effort to learn the keys on Windows and I still struggle on the Mac after 3 years.
- nyrulez 13y ago
  And not having a maximize mode aggravated me to no end. Thankfully, in their quest to make OS X more ipad-like, they put it back in (after years of arguing why it was not the best UI choice).
  - laureny 13y ago
    And it still doesn't work right. The only application that gets it right is Chrome (shift click on the green button), but they are simulating it. Mac OS still gets it wrong.
    - nilkn 13y ago
      This is something that confuses even veteran Mac users, but the green button is not for maximization. Every application defines a "standard state." This could be hard-coded or, in the case of Safari, the standard state can be defined dynamically in terms of the content you're viewing. The green button is supposed to toggle between the standard state and the user state (that is, the state you've manually put the window in). If you want to just redefine the meaning of that button to be "maximize," you can use something like Right Zoom: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30591/right-zoom http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30591/right-zoom In my case, I just use Slate and have Shift+Cmd+Enter bound to maximize the window. Then I've got Shift+Cmd+(H,J,K,L,Y,U,B,N) bound to what you'd expect based on the vim keybindings. That's just the absolute beginning of what is possible with Slate; I'm sure there's vast potential I'm not yet tapping into. Slate: https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate
      - 13y ago
hkmurakami 13y ago
Hmm wasn't the "flower thing" called the Apple Key at some point? (I seem to remember being told this sometime in the mid 90s)
- pwny 13y ago
  There used to be an apple on the key as well as the command symbol. At least on my (very) old PPC iMac.
  - fooooobar 13y ago
    The older apples had open apple (just the outline) and closed apple (a solid, filled in apple) keys.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The Apple II had modifier keys called "open Apple" and "closed Apple", which occupied the same keys used for Command and Option on the Mac respectively. Many Apple keyboards printed both symbols.
    - __david__ 13y ago
      The Apple IIe, technically. The original Apple II and Apple II+ [1] did not have them. Interestingly, I believe those keys were tied to the joystick buttons. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Apple_II_Plus.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Apple_II...
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Yep, definitely equivalent to the joystick buttons. I remember that clearly from my days of gaming on a IIGS.
- deleted 13y ago
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- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
MBCook 13y ago
> And he presents it as "what I had trouble with", not "what's wrong with the Mac", which is commendable. I couldn't agree more. Whenever I see a title like this my immediate thought is "here we go again", but I clicked through anyway and was pleasantly surprised. I've never used Windows 8 (or 7/Vista for more than a few minutes), but his criticisms seemed well considered. Macs can be more expensive for the same amount of CPU. I expected he was going to be talking about the Mac Pros (which are based on what, 2010 hardware?) so I was a little surprised to see he was talking about laptops. The other thing that caught my attention was his note about trackpads. It seems like every review I read about a non-Mac laptop (which, to be fair, doesn't happen much) seems to mention how they are either terrible or just OK. Considering how important the trackpad is on a laptop, it always surprises me that this seems to continue to be an issue. I remember years ago when Macs had 3" trackpads and PCs still had tiny 2" models. My MacBook Pro has a 5" pad, but I've seen 17" desktop replacement laptops with 3" pads. Worse was that while Macs gained two finger scrolling (which was a great step up), may PCs gained "scroll areas", so that you'd lose a large fraction of the trackpad. The fact that part of it was horizontal scrolling (which is far less common) was even worse. Are trackpads in the non-Mac world really that far behind, or is it just selection bias where the few laptop reviews I read only mention the trackpad because it's bad and the rest don't even discuss it.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Yeah, I was recently handed a new laptop - brand escapes me. Whatever it was had high specs and a big price. Asked what I thought I opened a web page then automatically tried two finger scrolling. The confused owned asked what I was doing then directed me to the little arrows in the corner of the widow. I couldn't happily own a laptop that didn't have this functionality or similar.
  - what_ever 13y ago
    I can't believe a recent laptop (on any OS) not supporting two finger scrolling. Some laptops have it disabled by default, but it is there. I haven't seen a laptop without 2 finger scrolling on last 15 (friends') laptops I have used.
- 13y ago
munger 13y ago
I think the main confusion of hot keys going from windows to Mac (as a developer that tried it) is, "On Mac, command is control and on Windows, control is control" - but then Mac also has a control key... but then if you open up a terminal/iterm to a remote server, Mac control is terminal control so you have to remember which "control" you want depending on application context. For me, kind of annoying after using windows and Putty for remote servers where control is always control.
- yoasif_ 13y ago
  On a Mac, Control is always Control. It's just that it does less than it does on Windows.
Osmium 13y ago
> How did this fellow spend six years using a Mac without ever realizing that "command" is that flower-looking thing? And, of course, "alt" and "option" are the same thing. What I always found bizarre (and maybe there's a historical reason for it I don't know about) but on the UK Mac keyboard the "option" key doesn't read "option" -- it just has the option symbol on it. I always imagined this must be very confusing for Mac new-comers in the UK reading advice online to press "option+whatever" and having no idea what key to press. Image here: http://static.paulboxley.com/mac_keyboard_differences.jpg http://static.paulboxley.com/mac_keyboard_differences.jpg

rufugee 13y ago

Ha...good luck. I tired switching my wife and daughters back to Windows after 8 came out. They lasted around six weeks before switching back to Ubuntu. I used it quite a bit during this time as well. The interface is so heavily designed for a tablet, it ends up feeling very forced and clunky as a desktop. Additionally, in that six week period, there were at least three times where I would reboot the machine and get the dreaded "Preparing Automatic Repair" endless loop of death, resulting in a re-install. I really loved certain things about it...well, at least the design of certain things. For example, the process monitor you accessed via ctrl+alt+delete was beautiful and had some very nice features including cumulative resource usage per app which I found very exciting. However, I quickly found that most of your running apps rarely showed in this panel. Combine this with the fact that when a process went awry and you wanted to kill it, 95% of the time the process monitor wouldn't come up at all, it was next to useless. (I'll mention here that this OS is the first Windows I've had since 98 which wouldn't give you access to kill a process even with the system under heavy load, unless it was completely frozen). Windows 8 not so bad? Maybe in your experience, but in mine, it was a stinking pile of crap. If Skyrim and certain other games would run reliably on Linux, I'd be completely done with Windows. Come to think of it, games have been the only reason I've kept Windows around for the past decade and it was the driver to give 8 another shot (so my daughter wouldn't have to reboot to get to a few of her favorite games). I suspect various games and Office will keep a lot of folks on the platform, but there are MUCH better experiences to be had. I've tried various Windows, OS X, and various *nixs, and Linux just seems to suit my family (and me personally) the best. I couldn't say this five years ago (at least for my wife and kids), but I'm happy that I can now.

laureny 13y ago
> (I'll mention here that this OS is the first Windows I've had since 98 which wouldn't give you access to kill a process even with the system under heavy load, unless it was completely frozen). It's because you're using the wrong shortcut, it's Ctrl-Shift-ESC. Ctrl-Alt-Delete takes you to a more general screen that's not always available.
- ameen 13y ago
  Woah. I'd never heard of this shortcut, seems to work perfectly. Now to see if it still does work when my PC is frozen. Thanks for the tip, though.

speg 13y ago

As a developer I don't think I could go back. Unless I was working on a Windows stack. Knowing you have *nix under the hood is just too comforting.

ams6110 13y ago
Exactly my feeling. If you're a developer, not doing .NET, Windows doesn't offer anything compelling. On a Mac, even if you're not doing IOS or Mac applications development, you have a complete Unix environment available. Even when I WAS doing .NET work on Windows (v1.1 timeframe) I would write my code in Emacs and compile it with csc. I don't think that's really very practical anymore.
- __david__ 13y ago
  A year or 2 ago I had a consulting gig that used C# and that was my technique--code in Emacs then alt-tab to Visual Studio to compile/run/debug. It worked perfectly fine. It's the same technique I use with XCode, except I can "M-x compile RET xcodebuild && open build/program.app RET" for most things and rarely even need to switch to XCode.
kenjackson 13y ago
Why would having Unix be more comforting than having the Windows kernel under the hood? I've found the NT kernel well designed.
falcolas 13y ago
Except... it's not '*nix' as everyone knows it (or more importantly as deployed in production). Even while working on a mac I do all of my linux development on a VM, because the differences are always such a stumbling block for me. Half the utilities do not support long args, no real repos (resulting in broken or missing tools), old versions of utilities... ugh. I still use one, but I'm seriously considering dual booting centos on the hardware.
- Camillo 13y ago
  Linux is not even UNIX.

ratsbane 13y ago

I'm surprised he's not more of a command-line guy. So many things I would hate to do without: vim, grep, ssh, rsync, git, tab completion, cron, .... I suppose you could install all of those and a lot more on Windows but what a lot of bother.

yoster 13y ago

I like both operating systems. iCloud on all my Apple devices makes life easier. On the other hand, my Windows 7 and Xbox 360 have no type of integration, but can run certain programs a lot better. They both have their perks, and I will still use both types.

nohorse 13y ago
Win 8 gets along better with your Xbox fyi
nohorse 13y ago
FYI: Win8 does a better job of sharing between devices. especially xbox. the music app for example has a "play on xbox" button if you are on the same network. and skydrive apps are available everywhere. So they are catching up there.

benatkin 13y ago

Here's a review on Amazon for a laptop with the same make and model as the one he got from Costco. It's better than the three stars on Costco. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008482UHG http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008482UHG

ExpiredLink 13y ago

Artima is still alive? The owner let the site rot for a long time.

quattrofan 13y ago

Agree with most of this article, had a Macbook Pro forced on me by a company a few years ago, I tried really hard to switch but ultimately put Windows on it and dual-booted. I dont agree about Win8, its a disaster of epic proportions, staying with Win7 until Win9. I hear 8.1 is much of the same since Ballmer has his head up his ass.

Chris911 13y ago

Switched from Windows 8 (early builds) to OSX a few months ago and at the moment I don't see myself even going back to Windows for development. I'm realizing how much I missed the command-line from my Ubuntu days and how much you can develop in pretty much any language quite easily on a mac. It's the perfect development machine.

sharms 13y ago

I know HN is a very pro Apple crowd, but I wanted to share that I have had a very similar experience. Windows 8 is actually incredibly solid, fast, and has a ton of great tools available. SSH on Windows works just as well as OS X, and sleep / resume etc is a solved problem, with the added bonus that you can run any game that comes out. For a developer who wants to focus on getting things done, it isn't that Windows 8 is so much more compelling than OS X, but the price and compatibility make it worth using.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

“Ultimately I needed to use Word, the Windows version, for page layout, indexing, etc. Nothing else does the job (I’ve tried, and keep trying the alternatives). The waterfall model of “first finish the book with one program, then do layout with a different program” just doesn’t work” The entire publishing industry would beg to differ. While MS Word (but preferably InCopy) is fine for copy, you won’t use it to lay out a cookbook and directly send it to a printer. If you supply a Word file to a printer, they will likely convert it to an InDesign file and charge you for it. Source: I publish books for a living and have been since 1996. “an equivalent-horsepower Mac is 3 times the cost of a Windows 8 machine” I thought OP was trolling, until I read the following passage: “I also wanted something with at least 4 cores, in order to do more concurrency programming experiments with languages like Scala and Go.” Not exactly typical use, but if the highest clock frequency and cores is what the author wants, then sure, he can get more bang for his buck with a Windows box than Apple’s offerings. Macs are made for small size, low weight, and power preservation. Many consumers won’t look at just clock frequency or the number of cores to make their purchasing decision. I bought a new notebook 3 months a go, a MacBook Air. It has a 512GB SSD, a fast CPU, and a decent GPU. I mainly use it for image and video editing, but because of Apple’s choices, I get battery use of 6-8 hours, while it’s not much larger than my tablet. That’s what I care about. Ten years a go, to do the same work, I had to lug around a notebook that weighed twice as much and had half as much battery life. With many Windows notebooks, that’s still the case.

camus 13y ago

I think that what the main argument is, when one gets a Windowd laptop ,one can get something really powerfull and cheap. Macs are not that powerfull and not cheap at all. I bought my Mac a few years ago, I could have bought a x2 more powerfull Windows laptop at the same price. But i must say ( dont know if it is still the case though) Apple has a better customer service than any other computer brand out there. My keyboard went out of order 4 years after I purchased my laptop ( it was my fault, i dropped it) , and Apple replaced it for free.

eridius 13y ago

It sounds like he never really embraced the Mac to begin with. And some of the stuff he sounds is just plain strange: > But in hindsight I realize there are a lot of things that never felt quite natural. [...] And more sophisticated things like any software installation that doesn’t come as a Mac installer. Is he really saying that software that doesn't come packaged as an installer is unnatural? Because the ability to simply drag & drop one "file" to install (or delete) an application is generally considered a feature of OS X (and the old Mac OS), not a negative.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Reminds me of the famous line from Steve Martin, "Those French, they have their own word for everything!" I expect Bruce will get a lot of page views, this sort of story pulls them out, but his story is not very compelling. Basically he liked the Windows experience better before and he has gone back to it. I didn't see a lot of effort to figure out "meme" for MacOS (which is fine I didn't either until circumstances made it my only laptop) and so returning to something more familiar removes friction in his life. Good for him. But it doesn't inform on the different choices between MacOS and Windows, only his comfort level with them.

pswenson 13y ago

Bizarre. He used a mac for 6 years and didn't know about cmd-` to switch windows within the same app? Finder does suck compared to Windows Explorer (use Pathfinder). No snap behavior for windows (use BetterTouch). Can't think of anything else to like about windows really. The command line is terrible on Windows. Even with cygwin, the terminal is awful. Copy/Paste is awkward. Resize the window and the text doesn't follow. No clear terminal keyboard shortcut. No searching in the console. Locked files everywhere, makes dev difficult. Installing apps is much more painful on windows. The apps spread throughout the system, I love on a mac how you can just drag in an app and run it. No 5 mins to install. Uninstalling is just deleting the app, no horrible uninstall process. rm -rf type functionality must take 10x as long on windows. No virus issues on mac.

pswenson 13y ago

Cost - yes. Windows laptops cost much less. But they suck much more. I guess if you don't value the touchpad, mag safe, retina, display, thin-ness, long lasting battery, and the aesthetics that much... I mean I use my computer a lot, it's my career. Easily worth an extra grand every 3 years to have the best.

nohorse 13y ago
this is likely the year where ultrabooks surpass the macbooks. All the specs you listed exist today in devices like the dell xps 13 as well as one important feature: a touch screen. that's a different debate, but spec-for-spec macbooks are great PCs, same parts as the others that have advanced construction and have enjoyed top tier status. The OEMs are reacting by building better PCs

moogly 13y ago

What's weirdest is the Windows "bit rot" claim, that they finally fixed not having to reboot once every so often by Windows 7. In my experience that was fixed almost 14 years ago with Windows 2000.