4 ms·

I think that's very subjective: - International text input: I can't remember the last time I had to use accents or special characters not in my native language

by ikurei 12y ago

I think that's very subjective: - International text input: I can't remember the last time I had to use accents or special characters not in my native language; a few greek letters for formulae, and generally I can use '/alpha' instead of α. Isn't having to use chars not in your language pretty uncommon? - Trackpad quality: yes, I love using Macbook trackpads, but I use the mouse/trackpad very little anyway, and isn't something I find useful enough to miss much. - emacs keybindings: sounds fantastic, but a) not many people use them and b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me. Even if there are a lot of things that Mac might do better than Windows and Linux, I agree that the popularity of so many cross-platform tools and the web have nullfied a huge part of it.

stravid 12y ago
Re: International text input: I only use keyboards with the english international layout although I'm from Austria and the german layout would be the natural one. Therefore the keyboard layout in the OS is also set to english international. I do this because I program. And still I'm very happy about the easy access for special characters, because in literally every email I have to use one of ß, ä, ö or ü.
- Nullabillity 12y ago
  > I do this because I program. Really? I guess it might be different with the german keyboards, but I've had no difficulties programming on a Swedish keyboard.
robin_reala 12y ago
English has lots of loan words using accents including common words like café and résumé and more uncommon ones like crème brûlée. It has native although uncommon accents, e.g. in coöperation. Personally, I also commonly type in Swedish which has the extra letters å, ä and ö in its alphabet, sometimes type in German (ö, ü and ß) and occasionally use an IME for 日本語 (Japanese). IME aside, losing direct access to the above accents, all of which are muscle memory by now, is one of the major reasons I probably wouldn’t consider a Windows laptop. (I didn’t mention metakey access to typing typographically correct characters: –, “, ”, ‘, ’, … etc)
- nailer 12y ago
  Sure, but people rarely type them out - I might ask you to meet me at a particular cafe, but less likely at a particular café.
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    Isn’t it chicken and egg though? People rarely type them out because they’re very hard to type out on a Windows machine.
- Nullabillity 12y ago
  Or you could type it in two strokes instead by typing ´ then e. Typographical punctuation should be the editor's concern when it matters.
lloeki 12y ago
> b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me. They are: I am addicted to vim, and I use bash/zsh in emacs mode, so having the consistency is incredible. Also having cmd+C for the GUI and ctrl+C for the command line is awesome. This last feature is one of the few things that kills Linux for me (ended up hacking on GTK, which turns out to have both an undocumented setting and an obscure compile time constant somewhere that ends up not working. And no, remapping every single app shortcut is not an option — I tried).

by ikurei 12y ago

stravid 12y ago

Re: International text input: I only use keyboards with the english international layout although I'm from Austria and the german layout would be the natural one. Therefore the keyboard layout in the OS is also set to english international. I do this because I program. And still I'm very happy about the easy access for special characters, because in literally every email I have to use one of ß, ä, ö or ü.

Nullabillity 12y ago
> I do this because I program. Really? I guess it might be different with the german keyboards, but I've had no difficulties programming on a Swedish keyboard.

robin_reala 12y ago

English has lots of loan words using accents including common words like café and résumé and more uncommon ones like crème brûlée. It has native although uncommon accents, e.g. in coöperation. Personally, I also commonly type in Swedish which has the extra letters å, ä and ö in its alphabet, sometimes type in German (ö, ü and ß) and occasionally use an IME for 日本語 (Japanese). IME aside, losing direct access to the above accents, all of which are muscle memory by now, is one of the major reasons I probably wouldn’t consider a Windows laptop. (I didn’t mention metakey access to typing typographically correct characters: –, “, ”, ‘, ’, … etc)

nailer 12y ago
Sure, but people rarely type them out - I might ask you to meet me at a particular cafe, but less likely at a particular café.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Isn’t it chicken and egg though? People rarely type them out because they’re very hard to type out on a Windows machine.
Nullabillity 12y ago
Or you could type it in two strokes instead by typing ´ then e. Typographical punctuation should be the editor's concern when it matters.

lloeki 12y ago

> b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me. They are: I am addicted to vim, and I use bash/zsh in emacs mode, so having the consistency is incredible. Also having cmd+C for the GUI and ctrl+C for the command line is awesome. This last feature is one of the few things that kills Linux for me (ended up hacking on GTK, which turns out to have both an undocumented setting and an obscure compile time constant somewhere that ends up not working. And no, remapping every single app shortcut is not an option — I tried).