What makes you happy ?

Windows: Plug in digital camera, get images. Store / view / change images. Remove camera. All good.
OS X: Plug in digital camera, get images. Store / view / change images. Remove camera. And iPhoto kindly f*cks the card so it needs reformatting.

So Windows works gracefully and allows a disconnection.
OS X forces you to interact in a certain manner.

Nice.

(It shouldn’t matter what I do, the outcome should be good for the user. That really is the very last time I plug my camera into a Mac. iPhoto? Bollocks.)

I’ve been playing with Virtual Desktops today. There was the XP Powertoy that I tried but it didn’t feel right for me so I dropped it and with then moving to dual screens it was not an issue. Last few days though I’ve been distracted from work by one thing and distracted back to work by something else. So I figured a virtual desktop was in order.
The one I installed was from VirtueDesktops and apart from 1 disappearance it’s been cool to play with. Having work on one, not work on another and ‘none of the above’ on the third will be very useful.
The next task though is to get Bonecho (the optimised Firefox) and Firefox (the actual one) to properly run and be switchable through the dock. It’s not always happening for some reason. Now why I can’t just run 2 Bonecho with the same profile – because I could on Windows – is beyond me. Life would be so much easier for this task. Unless there is a way of course….
But the desktops feel smoother on this machine and it makes a neater solution – for me – than Expose. Something to continue with. And now I need something else to explore/do/try.

I needed to put a red rectangle around part of a screenshot earlier. That’s all I needed to do. It’s really really basic. Can I? No. GIMP and Inkscape. With neither can I do that ever-so-basic task. That is no reflection on them but on my sheer incompetence at working them. I don’t pretend to have any skills there. By contrast though I had no problems ever with Paint Shop Pro on Windows. Anyway, off I am again to try and find something.
I downloaded OmniGraffle and this is good. Damn good. Within minutes and without needed to near the M let alone R it I’m away making diagrams, doing the Yes/No paths, using colours to try and indicate steps. Gorgeous program. And this means that when I do get to the RTM bit their is less chance of an F there and more chance it’ll make sense. I went trawling the FAQ to find something I could start with but that hits 2 problems:

• It would be using images rather than text. That increases load time and when people want answers they don’t want load time. I know I don’t.
• I’d be making the task fit the tool and that’s the wrong way around. There are some formatting changes I would make there but throwing a lot of yes/no into it wouldn’t help. Colour might though.

So it’s a really nice program but I can’t see a long-term use for it. That said it probably could have uses and playing brings some level of skill in using it so it’s going on my list on “What to buy when I can”.
And that still leaves me unable to draw nice rectangles so that remains the task to complete.

I do not recommend becoming ill while in a superstore while doing the weekly shopping.
Very much not fun.

And while I’m here – cmd+shift+4 is currently the shortcut I bow down to. Made a piece of work earlier bearable.

Filezilla: right-click, rename, click away. Takes a second.

Transmit: Click. Yawn. Click. Takes a-g-e-s to get that gap right and if it’s missed other stuff happens. Their site says they respond in a few business days. Is there a quicker way? Can this program be made to move as fast as Filezilla?
(And that double-click to rename is NOT intuitive)

Oh – and while I’m here:
Dear Transmit,
When I say upload the folder wp-includes, I mean all of it. The whole lot. 100%. Not just a few files if you can be bothered.

I have MenuMeters running in the bar at the top. I have it partly because it’s interesting to see the little lights go on/off (Yep, that’s shallow..) and partly to watch the CPU percentages change when tasks are happening – though now Opera is not used they don’t top out. Anyway…. the circular pie which shows all sorts of memory usually has about a third light green, an eighth dark green, a bit more than an eighth light grey and the just background grey. You’ll have to trust me on this – the image is too small to post. Point is, I see no red. I did once when I fired lot of stuff up but normally I see no red.
I did though the other day and in the end shut down everything but X-Chat. The red had started at when I had lots open and got more and more as I shut things down. The Activity Monitor showed no process out of control – it looked fine by CPU. So I have no clue what decided RAM was tasty and all I could do (knew to do) was restart the machine. Which worked – as you would expect.
Now it’s not that I don’t expect these machines to never freak out but if I hadn’t got my little green indicators I would never have know until I presume things went really strange. As it was I lost no work which is a good thing. Oddest thing yet was that. So.. if that happens again, what do I do to try and find what is eating the RAM?

I’ve used a PC for years, I’ve used a Mac mini for a couple of months.
This is the last mac/pc post I’m writing and at the end is a decision of sorts.
The path to that choice starts here:

Browser: Firefox (win) / Optimised Firefox (mac)
The off the shelf FF on Windows works smooth and fast. The same on the mac is like pouring treacle on a frosty morning. Once I had the optimised build, no such problems, very nice indeed. This is a draw – albeit one that Windows should actually have won.

Email: Thunderbird for both
A draw (though Charamel does look nicer…..)

Feeds: FeedDemon (win) / Vienna or Netnewswire Lite or Netnewswire paid
NNW Lite is okay but lacks the feed display I like. Vienna similarly. NNW is good but FD beats them all. It has the featureset and the looks. I’ve bought NNW. [Windows+1]

FTP: Filezilla (win) / Transmit (mac)
Transmit just hammers every client I’ve ever used. It is excellent. Love it. Bought it. [OS X +1]

IM: Trillian (win) / Adium (mac)
Functionally not a lot of difference given how I use them. Draw.

IRC: X-Chat for both. Draw (I tried Colloquy, didn’t like it)

Text Editors: Jujuedit/UltraEdit (win) / Smultron (mac)
I like jujuedit because it’s fast and can handle huge files. I like UE because it can ftp edit and has (basic) shell all in 1 app. I like Smultron because of it’s highlighting and seamless integration with Transmit.
Smultron is slower to open though. I prefer quicker to open. I’m sure Textedit or BBedit or TextWrangler will be mentioned and I’ll probably take them for a long run soon. Right now though Windows wins this one [Windows +1]

Clipboard: Evernote (win) / nothing comes close (mac)
I have looked, Lifehacker has had posts on note taking (here is one), WWD had a thread, Slacker Manager too. I love Evernote. It is a superb piece of code for the PC and one I would happily buy – yet they give it away for free. The mac has nothing as good for free. Sure it might have things that do more but what I wanted was the functionality not the adornments. Windows wins. [Windows +1]

Music: Winamp (win) / iTunes (mac)
I’m not saying it all again. [Windows +1]

Images: I have not tried anything on the mac. That said I have found all the Win apps to be not that great and I don’t think iPhoto can fill the gap.

Video: VLC on both. Draw

So that’s Windows 4, OS X 1.
Maybe that score is unfair though. Maybe I have yet to discover the programs that work for me, after all, I’ve had a couple of years start at least.

Eyecandy
1 – Hardware. Anyone who buys a computer just because it looks nice wants their head felt. If it more than does the job AND it looks good then fine. And so far I’m talking about the actual machine. Small white box, large black box. Small white box has 2 games on it and various bits around it so I can’t see it. Sat where I am I can see some of the black box near my left knee. So machine beauty does not come into it.
2 – OS. OS X is designed for the one setup. It damn well should look good. XP is meant to work on many many setups so looking good is harder – but with the Zune theme it works for me.
3 – Apps. Again, OS X apps have a 100% guarantee of environment, Windows apps do not. While the icons look nice in OS X it’s what they actually do that matters (see above).

Uptime
My PC has been rebooted less than the mini in the last 2 weeks.

Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

My XP is stable. It runs and runs well. No bloat, nothing unneeded going on. So the ‘Windows crashes’ stuff doesn’t apply here. XP also takes less time to boot from cold than the mini.

Money
I like freeware. Not just OSS but also real freeware. On my PC I have very little non-freeware. I have looked for Mac freeware and I find less. The costs involved are small but they are still costs, they still add up. This factor isn’t a huge one but it still needs to be considered.

But can I work with the mini?
Yes. I don’t feel I can work quite as fast in Firefox but once I get a few more shortcuts sorted my speed increase in other apps may help negate that.
Does it feel better? Yes and no. Yes in that the system feels more ‘joined up’ but again with one common spec it should. No in that I don’t feel there are places where I can tinker.

Mac Airline.
All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don’t need to know, don’t want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.

I still find the launch speed of programs very slow (something that no-one has yet been able to explain) (see blockquote above).

It’s taken me quite some time to both get Windows working how I want, to know what the essential tools are and to get the programs which work and do not irritate. So when coming to the mac I was swapping an environment where I was good because of experience to one where I needed to learn. So I was bound to get annoyed and frustrated. This was accentuated by the ringing in my ears that Macs are intuitive, wonderful, bug-free, virus-free and are totally reliable. (When I went to Mexico I gave my girls complete freedom to the mini. I had nothing invested in it so said they could do what they wanted. They had root access. They disliked it.) I do not find it intuitive (click on item then click on it’s name to rename it? Weird) The blockquote above? I find that restricting. Whatever – this isn’t an anti-mac rant. The frustration continues but more because I can’t find the programs that I want. The puzzles I have yet to solve will be posted once I give up.

What would I buy?
This is the tricky bit and it’s one I’m still to an extent struggling with. I’m not assuming money is no object because we’d all have 2 machines then to get the best for apps and games. I’m thinking about what I would do if I could only get 1.
Desktop. It would be a PC. If I can only have one then I want to be able to play games and make the most of the freeware. It’s also the cheaper option.
Laptop. It would be a Mac. But it won’t – because of cost. D’s laptop (a good one too) was £600 ($1200) and that’s it – no more money needed. A (basic) Macbook is £750 ($1500) then add more (£60/$120) for the memory. There is a 30% cost increase for not necessarily a better lifespan. [Edit: I'm not saying the Macbook is not worth it. I'm referring to the handing over of more money. The act of parting with cash that could be spent elsewhere]
And ditch the pc and use Parallels? Why? Right now I have full-screen full-effect Dreamfall on the PC and a screen of work here. Two machines, two workloads at exactly the same time.

I like the mac. Since switching I have spent less than a couple of hours on the PC working which when you consider the amount of time online I do then less than 120 minutes is nothing. Am I totally seduced by it? No. Do I think I could grow to like it a lot? Yes, certainly.

Is the mac better? No. I’ve said it before – it’s a computer. A means to an end. A tool. And a tool is only as good as the person using it. Microsoft are as good/bad as Apple.

But there.. that’s my last mini v pc post.
The mini is for all things work, the pc for gaming and music.

[If OS's were airlines]

Note: Fanboy comments run the risk of being deleted or ridiculed.

I’ve searched and I don’t think there is but is there keypress that somehow gets rid of everything on screen except the active program ?
I was trying to create a graphic earlier and was getting really frustrated at GIMP and Inkscape. The screen clutter didn’t help. I don’t run anything maxed and usually just cycle through – but this time I wanted to hit something which would throw everything else to the edges really quickly. I know I could set things up differently, I could use Think (which I have) but that means I’d plan creating this thing and I’d be able to do it (I switched to the PC in the end). So. Keypress? I know this is being hopeful :)

Okay. 1.83ghz. 1gb ram. Firefox. Runs like a dog.
I have 8 tabs open. Post a reply to a helpdesk in one tab, go to another tab to right-click and close it. I see the beachball. I have to wait to close a tab. I’m clicking Send in a decent piece of software yet I have to wait to close a tab?

I said this before and I’m saying it again – I find Firefox on OS X a much clunkier app. Slower to respond in all aspects. Optimised build? Why? I don’t use one on the PC.

I restarted in vain effort to get things working more smoothly but no, clunk clunk clunk.

In Mexico I could open 10 helpdesk tabs and whizz through those on a laptop. I find that at 6 tabs this Firefox slows. At 8 it costs me time.

Right. Said it. Now I wait because on every post where I have criticised the Mac someone has swooped in and told me that I have the problem, that I’m the stupid one, that the mac has never had anything even coming close to a problem.

Today is a crap day at the office. Supremely so. You know it’s bad when you go past swearing. I’m sitting here completely silent just plugging away. Some people have not the slightest clue how much restraint I have exercised all day. I doubt they ever will know.

Anyway. Inkscape. I just found Inkscape. I needed something that would do nice things to images but that did not cost $400. That stuff from Adobe might do zillions of things but just like I wouldn’t run it on the pc I’m not running it on the mac. All I need is something to help me make good screenshots with arrows and things.

The GIMP cannot do arrows out of the box. You would think a basic -> would be something included in the script-fu but no. And I couldn’t find one. And that means it doesn’t work for me. I shouldn’t need to script an arrow. So between The GIMP and the Pirate Bay I found Inkscape. Okay so it too doesn’t do arrows but it does stars, hexagons, other polygons and lots of swirls. That worksforme. I can now do some funky screenshots.

Back to the office….