NeoMayhem Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I agree that I find some Office apps very very crashy. Excel is the worst on Windows, Word is the worst on OSX. You sure you installed all the updates? All of the office apps run and look like complete sh*t on panther without them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aldo Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Neo, I haven't. THats most likley the problem. However, I don't really use Office very much so it's not a big deal for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aristotle-dude Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 I don't understand why the stability of a system should depend upon the user of the system. I think that is a cop-out. Why should someone have to constantly tweak/baby their system to keep it from crashing/freezing? Could it possibly be that the system and its design is to blame and not the user who is simply trying to "use" the system? As a developer, I accept full responsibilty for the stability and/or instability of the software I write. I don't blame the user for flaws/bugs in the software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 All of the office apps run and look like complete sh*t on panther without them. One of the biggest untruths I've read in a long time. I'm runing Office on Panther and haven't applied ANY of the updates. I probably use Office more than anyone else here with all the papers I write. Word is in use about 3-4 hours a day on it's own. ZERO crashes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 I don't understand why the stability of a system should depend upon the user of the system. I think that is a cop-out. Why should someone have to constantly tweak/baby their system to keep it from crashing/freezing? Could it possibly be that the system and its design is to blame and not the user who is simply trying to "use" the system?As a developer, I accept full responsibilty for the stability and/or instability of the software I write. I don't blame the user for flaws/bugs in the software. The user is the only variable that differs from system to system. Word isn't going to crash because your soundcard drivers aren't installed properly. Watson won't crash because the video card drivers are corrupt. They crash because people don't correct their disk permissions, among other things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aristotle-dude Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 The user is the only variable that differs from system to system. Word isn't going to crash because your soundcard drivers aren't installed properly. Watson won't crash because the video card drivers are corrupt. They crash because people don't correct their disk permissions, among other things. On OS X, wrong permissions is usually the fault of the developer of the install program. On windows, there are no real permissions issues since almost all users run as either Administrator or Power User. Yes, the user is the variable but the user does not directly contribute to the propensity of a system to be unstable. That is the fault of the developers, not the user. Unfortunately, Apple's developers seem to be worst offenders when it comes to messing up permissions after patch install. The software is there to serve the user, not the other way around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divinatum Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 [FlameSuit=ON]i hate to be the one to bring a thread like this down, but... why do i/us/we care if Anand is using a Mac?? is he single handedly going to change the world by using a mac??[/FlameSuit] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aristotle-dude Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 It is significant because Anand is a known and respected reviewer of PC X86 hardware and past critic of the Mac platform. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divinatum Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 i donno, mabye im just being... well i cant think of the word right now. but it doesnt seem that big of a deal to me. *shrug* everyone sees everything diffrent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fusion Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 One of the biggest untruths I've read in a long time.I'm runing Office on Panther and haven't applied ANY of the updates. I probably use Office more than anyone else here with all the papers I write. Word is in use about 3-4 hours a day on it's own. ZERO crashes. What version are you running and why would you not install the updates? The latest one adds OS X native anti-aliasing to the text so it looks like everything else. Just curious as to why you would not install an update? I think there are only 2 or 3 of them total. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redestium Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 I don't understand why the stability of a system should depend upon the user of the system. I think that is a cop-out. Why should someone have to constantly tweak/baby their system to keep it from crashing/freezing? Could it possibly be that the system and its design is to blame and not the user who is simply trying to "use" the system?As a developer, I accept full responsibilty for the stability and/or instability of the software I write. I don't blame the user for flaws/bugs in the software. I look at it as the same way you treat a car. If you race it all the time, rarely check oil and other fluids, and leave it running in your driveway at night when you're not using it what would you expect to happen? Especially compared to someone who maintains their car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 The difference is that computers != cars. I could see if the point you were making was to do with the physical hardware (rotate the disk drives, and change the heat sincs every 3000 hours) but software shouldn't be susceptible to wear and tear. IMO it's that kind of attitude (that some assembly required is okay) that brought us the shady software we have today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redestium Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 The difference is that computers != cars.I could see if the point you were making was to do with the physical hardware (rotate the disk drives, and change the heat sincs every 3000 hours) but software shouldn't be susceptible to wear and tear. IMO it's that kind of attitude (that some assembly required is okay) that brought us the shady software we have today. But because of the "shady" software that analogy still works. It shouldn't be but it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aristotle-dude Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 It may work but that does not mean it's the right way of doing things. So much of the software out there from MS seems to be feature centric rather than user centric. As a developer, I used to think the same way. When presented with a problem, I would try to think of it in terms of functions rather than trying to figure out what the user is trying to do. If only developers on the MS platform would start out planning software by trying to capture the requirements of a user to do what they need to do rather than figuring out what features they can add to their software that they (as developers) think the end users might want to have. This approach would lead to more user friendly software with less need for wizards and big heavy manuals. I've been taking courses on analysis and use cases lately. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redestium Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 It may work but that does not mean it's the right way of doing things. So much of the software out there from MS seems to be feature centric rather than user centric.As a developer, I used to think the same way. When presented with a problem, I would try to think of it in terms of functions rather than trying to figure out what the user is trying to do. If only developers on the MS platform would start out planning software by trying to capture the requirements of a user to do what they need to do rather than figuring out what features they can add to their software that they (as developers) think the end users might want to have. This approach would lead to more user friendly software with less need for wizards and big heavy manuals. I've been taking courses on analysis and use cases lately. :) And then they'd just be accused of copying Apple's "user-centric" notions. This, by the way, is a phrase I?m hearing more and more since Jobs introuduced it with Panther?s Finde:p :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 And then they'd just be accused of copying Apple's "user-centric" notions. This, by the way, is a phrase I?m hearing more and more since Jobs introuduced it with Panther?s Finde:p :p Now the question is "what the hell does user centric mean"? When I write software I think "I need this program to do x y and z" What data structures will hold the information to do those tasks, What manipulations will I need to do to that data, then what is the most intuitive way to instruct the program do do those manipulations. You end up with the interface and data structures designed and 90% of your work is done. Does that make it user centric or should I add some brushed metal and a side bar too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redestium Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 Now the question is "what the hell does user centric mean"?When I write software I think "I need this program to do x y and z" What data structures will hold the information to do those tasks, What manipulations will I need to do to that data, then what is the most intuitive way to instruct the program do do those manipulations. You end up with the interface and data structures designed and 90% of your work is done. Does that make it user centric or should I add some brushed metal and a side bar too? Agreed, being a programmer and artist myself I can relate. I suppose this is why they do testing with people who have never seen the code to see how they react and what needs to be tweaked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redestium Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 Double post....grr...the slowness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoMayhem Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 IMO it's that kind of attitude (that some assembly required is okay) that brought us the shady software we have today. No, it is MS Windows that brought most of the computer world that attitude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoMayhem Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 Double post.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 It may work but that does not mean it's the right way of doing things. So much of the software out there from MS seems to be feature centric rather than user centric.As a developer, I used to think the same way. When presented with a problem, I would try to think of it in terms of functions rather than trying to figure out what the user is trying to do. If only developers on the MS platform would start out planning software by trying to capture the requirements of a user to do what they need to do rather than figuring out what features they can add to their software that they (as developers) think the end users might want to have. This approach would lead to more user friendly software with less need for wizards and big heavy manuals. I've been taking courses on analysis and use cases lately. :) But we aren't discussing the "right way" to do things. We are discussing how things are today. It is the users responsibility to maintain their computer. If something happens, chances are high it was something the user did or didn't do. No, it is MS Windows that brought most of the computer world that attitude. Come on, enough's enough. We know you dislike windows like the plague. There's no reason to keep posting about it. I would whole heartedly disagree that it was the fault of Windows that we've come to where we are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoMayhem Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 Come on, enough's enough. We know you dislike windows like the plague. There's no reason to keep posting about it. Alright. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 I didn't inttend to come across as mean in that post, which I may have. My apologies. I'm sure you get sick of people coming here and saying how much Macs suck. Windows may not be the os of choice for some, but it's still a good os nonetheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamp2p Posted March 3, 2004 Author Share Posted March 3, 2004 (edited) ...continued...: I typed this one in TextEdit - Thursday, Feb 26, 2004 6:50 PM In case you missed my previous blog, I had this entire post written up and an accidentally closed window resulted in me losing it all. Now you haven't been a writer long enough if you have never lost an entire piece of work to some sort of mishap; it seems like I've been a writer for entirely too long :) I haven't made a Macdate in a while, but that isn't to say that I haven't been using the machine. Since February 6th I've been using the PowerMac G5 2000 as my primary work computer non-stop, and now I'm at a very interesting point in my usage - I'm actually getting used to the Mac. When I first started using the Mac I was overwhelmed with the features and just getting used to the OS. Features like Expos? and the keyboard shortcut mania that I discovered were quite amazing to someone who had used DOS/Windows all his life. For the most part, the way things work in OS X just makes sense. I realized today that I hadn't touched on network interaction between Macs and PCs yet so let's talk about that. Networking was horrible under desktop PC OSes until Windows 2000/XP, but now we've all been spoiled with networking that just works. This directly corresponded to my expectations when I tried networking the G5 with the rest of my PC-ridden home network. OS X's Windows file sharing is made courtesy of samba, and although I've heard many criticisms about samba - under OS X it just works. I didn't bother burning any of my old documents, music, etc... off my old PC, instead I relied entirely on OS X's ability to see my PC's shared folders to get my much needed files onto the G5. As you can probably guess, if things hadn't gone smoothly my first blog would have been a much more complaint-oriented one:)) I don't know why this impresses me, but the fact all of the 6 PCs I've got on this network right now can be seen by the G5 (and vice versa) is something I definitely appreciate. Gone are the days when Macs and PCs didn't like to cooperate, it truly is a harmonious hardware home here. I bought a HP Laserjet 4000 years ago, and it's served me well. The problem is that it's a parallel port model and the G5 has no legacy ports: what a great test for Windows printer sharing under OS X:)) OS X had no problems finding the printer on my network and I've been using it ever since. Drivers were already available on OS X, making the process as painless as possible. Now onto CD burning and imaging... We're setting up a new db server for AnandTech (quad Opteron, 144GB RAID 10, 8GB DDR, the usual;))...) and Jason Clark (our fearless Webmaster/Server Guru) is up in Canada setting it up now. The problem was that the server was up in Canada and our copy of Windows 2003 Enterprise Server arrived - in Raleigh. Instead of Fedexing it up to him, I decided to give CD-ripping under OS X a try and upload the image to him. OS X has built-in CD burning functionality courtesy of a program called the Disk Utility. The built-in Windows CD burning utilities are basically useless for anything other than putting files on a CD. Burning an image or creating an iso requires the use of something more capable like Nero. Disk Utility manages to do more than XP's built in CD burning, but also has its shortcomings. I needed to make an iso, which Disk Utility doesn't support the creation of - directly. Instead Disk Utility will allow me to make a .dmg file, which is an OS X mountable image. So I did that, but I needed a .iso. A quick search on www.macosxhints.com revealed a method to convert dmg images to isos. Bring up the command prompt (known as the Terminal) and type: hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDto -o /path/to/savefile.iso I now had an iso (you can even script running the above to make it easier) and I needed to upload it to Jason. Here's where a complaint about OS X comes into play: you cannot upload using the GUI based FTP. You can download, but not upload. You can download using the command-line ftp command, but for whatever reason the GUI based interface only allows downloading. I'm not exactly certain why you can't, but it's just impossible without the use of a third party client. Thanks to a lot of recommendations I downloaded a copy of Transmit 2 and I was on my way. I've been using Safari as my web browser ever since I moved to the Mac, and I have not missed IE except for two issues: 1) Safari's smooth scrolling isn't as "smooth" as IE's for some reason. It is extremely evident when I go upstairs to use one of my faster PCs and then come back down to use the G5. Smooth scrolling in Safari just seems slower or choppier, and I'm not really certain why. I tried turning smooth scrolling off, but I don't think that's an appropriate solution - I like smooth scrolling but I just want it to be faster. 2) Safari renders pages much slower than IE. My first complaint is unfortunately unfixable (unless there's something else I've missed in the preferences) but the second one I can do something about. Mozilla's Firefox browser has become a big success on the PC and thankfully, a version is available for OS X. Firefox renders webpages significantly faster than Safari and its "Find As You Type" functionality is great for keyboard nuts like myself. I haven't had any rendering issues with Firefox, but the browser is definitely not as polished as Safari (granted I'm talking about a 0.8 release of Firefox). The default pinstripe theme does a good job of fitting in with OS X, but there are still some issues (both visual and functional). Quite possibly the most annoying thing about Firefox under OS X is that some of the keyboard shortcuts are clearly Windows-derived. There's nothing more psychologically frustrating than having every application share the same fundamental keyboard shortcuts - except one, and a very important one at that... ...which brings me to my next point of discussion: Apple's Keyboard Shortcut Preferences. What truly surprised me about OS X is that although it is built for users that are confused by more than one mouse button, it is built even more for users who aren't. The fact that there are keyboard shortcuts for everything illustrates this point while the ability to redefine an application's keyboard shortcuts further exemplifies it. Let me give you an example: under OS X, to get to the end of a line of text I have to hit Apple + Right Arrow (the equivalent of hitting the end key on a PC). As you can guess, to get to the beginning of a line of text I just hit Apple + Left Arrow. Unfortunately, Adium is a bit stubborn and decides that Apple + Arrow will switch through tabbed conversations. In Adium, Control + Arrow will move to the start/end of a line of text. Now I've grown accustomed to switching my keyboard shortcut habits for Adium, but it just dawned on me yesterday that I shouldn't have to deal with its unwillingness to cooperate - OS X gives me the power to force it to do otherwise. I hopped in the Keyboard Shortcuts preferences window, added Adium as an application and told it to assign the Next/Prev Message functions to Apple + Shift + Right/Left Arrow. Problem solved. The fact that these sort of user empowering features are included in the OS just blows my mind; it's not what I expected from OS X. Granted, you can't hit 'Del' and hop into the BIOS at startup but if you don't like the way a particular application behaves you can change it. Very nice. Memory usage has gone up tremendously on the G5, especially now that I'm doing more and more work on it. Right now I'm at 2.57GB used with 1.43GB free; I originally thought that a user like me could get by on "only" 2GB but it doesn't seem like that's the case. Maybe if I wasn't so liberal with my multitasking I could get by with 2GB, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon:)) When I started this project one of the first things I mentioned was that OS X's method of keeping all programs open even after you've closed all child windows was a good thing - provided that the OS was stable. Well OS X is definitely stable and its memory management is top notch so that's not a problem, but I do have a complaint. For whatever reason, if there are too many windows open I tend to get a bit uneasy - sort of like a desktop claustrophobia. Now I'm not a freak and I'm not claustrophobic in the real world, but it's something that has always bothered me. Right now I'm finding that even with my primary resolution at 1920 x 1200 there can be a bit too much on the screen at once. Apple does have a way around this - Apple + H - which will hide all of the windows of an application. Unfortunately, after hiding an application the only way to get it back is to click on the dock or to Apple + Tab through all the apps to get to it. I'm not exactly certain if I can come up with a better way, maybe it's something that I need to get used to. We'll see. I'm also finding that I don't like the default mapping of the Expos? functions to F9 - F11. I want something closer since my hands are never around the F-keys, much less the F9 - F11 keys. Luckily that's a trivial change, I just have to figure out what I'd like to map them to. The more I use it, the more I definitely like Apple's Mail application. I always had serious issues connecting to NCSU's IMAP server using Outlook (and not all of them were NCSU's fault!), but Mail's IMAP support is incredible. The only thing I wish I had from Outlook 2004 was the side preview panel, which really helps on wide displays. Just as I was warned - the Radeon 9800 Pro manages to make the G5 considerably louder. Before the video card upgrade the system was Dell-quiet, now there's this ever lasting hum courtesy of the Radeon 9800 Pro's GPU fan. I might see if I can mount the Zalman heatsink from the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT Ultimate on the 9800 Pro to quiet it down; it's running at a lower core clock so hopefully cooling using just the heatsink will be adequate. The noise is worth it though; the 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro makes Expos? with a ton of windows extremely smooth. It's still not as smooth as dealing with four windows, but it's a definite improvement over the 64MB 9600 Pro I had in here previously. People have asked how much of the performance increase is due to the fact that the 9800 Pro has more memory bandwidth and a higher fillrate - honestly I'm not sure, does anyone know if there are any clock adjusting utilities available for OS X ala Powerstrip? I feel like testi:) :) I think that's all for now, if I remember anything else to comment on I'll be sure to drop by again. Sorry for the delay in posting this thing, sometimes my "day job" (read: school) gets overly busy. Only 2.5 months left... Edited March 3, 2004 by adamp2p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamp2p Posted March 3, 2004 Author Share Posted March 3, 2004 ....continued... Trouble in Macland - Tuesday, Mar 2, 2004 7:56 PM The G5 has been crashing a lot lately; I complained about Adium being unstable, well it got to the point where I had to move back to an older build of the Alpha. Granted that we are talking about an alpha build of an application and the fact that it can run 24/7 normally without problems is pretty impressive. Yesterday the number of errors grew significantly, and that's what forced me to migrate back to an older build of the client (2/9/04). I'm going to stick with this one until there's truly a compelling feature that'll make me want to upgrade. That's what i get for being a little too eager :) An application that has historically never crashed for me was Unison - my newsgroup reader. I was browsing through some newsgroups yesterday (I got my start on comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips) and the application just kept on crashing. I would quit and restart Unison and it would still crash. The rest of the OS remained untouched but it was having some serious issues. Then today, I was doing some work and I went to go click on something on my secondary display and poof, my mouse pointer disappeared. I could see the mouse pointer on the primary display, but no mouse pointer on the secondary display. The mouse was actually making it over to the secondary display as I could still click on things and move windows around, but the pointer had vanished. I tried not rebooting to save my life but in the end, I had to shut everything down and reboot. When the mouse problem happened I had around 2GB of stuff in memory, so I've got no earthly clue what caused it. I wasn't doing anything too strenuous at that particular moment, and closing all the applications individually didn't rectify the situation so I'm not really sure what caused it. I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet, but I'm going to be keeping a careful watch on the system and I'll report any findings I have. Has anyone here encountered similar problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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