> When I sit down at a Mac, I know exactly how to do everything because all the tools and utilities are organized in a way that I understand. I do not find thi

> When I sit down at a Mac, I know exactly how to do everything because all the tools and utilities are organized in a way that I understand. I do not find this to be the case. (I run both Mac and Linux using synergy). I have found that I typically have to customize a Mac desktop before it is usable to me. About the same amount that I need to customise a Linux desktop. On Windows I get frustrated and irritated because things that ought to be simple are hidden away in control panels that use non-standard terminology (ie. "internet zone"). Most usability differences between OS's are matters of familiarity, there are only a few examples where minimising the cognitive load was a design goal for a piece of software. And in the case of a general purpose computer that is not an interesting goal, since a computer is supposed to become whatever you tell it to become. In other words the cognitive load of a general purpose computer is infinite, because you can always send it more instructions... The trick is to carve durable bits of functionality out of that infinity.