Why Mac users don’t rant about the OS

http://www.itsmdaily.com/2013/12/06/why-mac-users-dont-rant-about-the-os

by kracalo • 13 years ago

33 66 13 years ago

itsmdaily.com

alisnic• 13 years ago

You've never been on apple forums, don't you?

petepete• 13 years ago

2 sets of pagination links, one broken.

cognivore• 13 years ago

That was how the page started, and they didn't want to change it so as to not upset anyone by making them have to cope with new page UI. Even if it would work better.

vinothgopi• 13 years ago

Well mac users do rant too. A lot actually.

If not for the title, I think you do have a point here. I've had a mac for close to 6 years now and after each installation/upgrade, it feels like I'm back on my old laptop - nothing seems to have changed drastically. And that is a great thing. You get back to work faster knowing that things have been improved under the hood.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

I don't feel like reading through four pages (yeah, I'm lazy), but I'll take a guess as to what the rest of the article talks about.

1) OSX doesn't change significantly. People ranted about OSX for years, until one day they kinda stopped. Because OSX was new and fresh, right up until the point when it became the same thing that it's been for 13 years.

2) More people use Windows so more people are talking about Windows.

3) Therefore, OSX is better because [insert reason].

elohesra• 13 years ago

First point was correct, other two weren't. It was basically a jab at how terrible the Windows 8 UI overhaul was, rather than a boast about how great the Mac UI is.

EDIT: Incidentally, the Windows 8 UI overhaul was terrible. Really terrible. I mean, that does need to be pointed out. Apple got a lot of stick for some slight changes to the way their icons appear on the newer version of the iPhone (forgive me, I'm not an Apple user so I can't comment, I just know the word 'skeumorphism' was thrown around with various levels of anger), but Microsoft seemed to get a much quieter and meeker acceptance of their terrible UI overhual. Yes, there were articles at the time saying "what is Microsoft thinking?", but it seemed -- at least to me -- to just be wearily accepted that Microsoft had dramatically changed their UI so that it was unusable for anyone coming from a previous version of their OS.

I'm not really sure why there wasn't more consumer outrage about Windows 8. Every Windows 8 user I speak to hates its UI, but they just seem to hate it and get on with it. Maybe it's because Windows users are generally less excited by their OS than Mac users? I've never really known a Windows user to speak at any great length, positively or negatively, about their OS.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

I went and read through the last page, and I would say that yeah, my second guess wasn't in the article but my third guess is. The author seems to be pointing out that OSX doesn't change and that's better.

It's still useless pagination.

Mikeb855• 13 years ago

Incidentally, the Windows 8 UI overhaul was terrible. Really terrible.

To be honest, I actually like it. Not enough to use Windows over Linux, but the Metro UI is really cool. Has search functionality, and every app is essentially its own self-updating widget. Very cool.

codfrantic• 13 years ago

page 2 and 3 is 98% screenshots ;-)

bluedino• 13 years ago

> People ranted about OSX for years, until one day they kinda stopped.

The hardware finally started to be fast enough for it to not be a slideshow. Early releases of OS X were so resource-hungry, and OS 9 ran like a rocketship on the same hardware. Besides, the G3 and early G4 Macs weren't really that fast anyway.

kghose2• 13 years ago

For me the Mac is nice because its command line almost matches a linux setup. I use it because it is like a pretty Linux GUI. However finder and preview in 10.7 have some annoying glitches that I really find annoying. For example, in preview you can no longer simply save a document you have to export/duplicate what not. Finder has an annoying habit of trying to be too clever: if you hover a set of files over a folder it will helpfully change the finder window to epxose more of the target folder. Unfortunately this will change the finder geometry causing me to often miss the target of my drop.

The OS is sufficiently different from Linux to be annoying in crucial moments when I have too look up why a certain command does not work, or works differently.

Also, bsd/linux source code compiling often work, but sometimes don't making things more annoying than if they never worked and you knew what to expect.

Wait: I was just ranting. And yet I'm a mac user.

AdrianRossouw2• 13 years ago

my favorite is how they have a stupidly ridiculously low ulimit maxfiles of 256.. and keep on changing the way to persist it between os releases.

unless it's something unixey i use every day, i now just refuse to bother with installing it on OSX. a VM is so much easier.

kghose2• 13 years ago

Hey, which VM do you use and what kind of a performance hit is there?

berntb• 13 years ago

>its command line almost matches a linux setup.

Grumble, the most important feature isn't as good -- apt. Otherwise, I might switch back.

revscat• 13 years ago

.I have had more luck with Homebrew than I did with apt: my experience has been that brew handles dependencies better.

vitoreiji4• 13 years ago

It always amuses me when people compare operating systems and all they talk about is GUI.

ineov• 13 years ago

I think it's about experience. Let father (windows user) upgrade to Win8. Do the same for Mac 10.9 (mac user)

millerm• 13 years ago

I would say (which means: IMHO) that it's because the UI "is" the OS to 99%+ of the world. We developers, geeks, tinkerers, etc. know what an OS is. But to the end user, it's what they see on the screen. It's what they interact with. That is the abstraction we attempt for the vast majority of users. There is no need for most people know know how something is implemented. They just use it. The same applies for just about every other thing in existence. We use things. We consume things. We don't need to know how they are built to use them. Sure, some of us care, but most don't. Just talk to non-nerdy types and find out how ignorant (and I don't mean that in a pejorative way) they are when it comes to technology. Just as in Android and iOS. Those users don't care about a Linux kernel with a Dalvik VM vs. a BSD microkernel running applications compiled mainly in the Objective-C language. They care about cost, public image, features etc..

I'm just throwing this out there for thought. But, I don't hear a whole lot of us talking about who's microwave oven's firmware is implemented better. It just doesn't matter to the user, as long as it works. It is usually the style and ease of use from an interface standpoint. Same for cars to most people. They don't care about how the technology under the hood works. If they get the gas mileage, style, price, automatic or manual etc. they want, then that is what they buy.

So, to most people a Car is the Make and model. A computer is the UI and perhaps the software available for it. That's all.

vitoreiji4• 13 years ago

Hi,

Yes, I agree, and it is part of the reason why I am amused. It's so cute the way they have no idea what most of that means.

I mean, yesterday I learned that my father had bought a laptop with Windows 8 from a Japanese person, but had someone install Windows 7 afterwards because Win8 was in Japanese. He also bought a new keyboard because neither he or the person who installed the 'new' OS knew how to type "áéíóú" etc on the Japanese keyboard (yes, I configured the keyboard layout for him yesterday).

Now, be honest and tell me: is it not amusing to think this is the kind of people who are comparing operating systems? Is it not even more amusing to think that people who write blog posts about it should know better?

cLeEOGPw• 13 years ago

Because Linux always lose at this comparison? GUI is one of the most important parts of OS for most people.

Mikeb855• 13 years ago

Linux has some of the nicest DEs.

But we are used to the DE being de-coupled from the OS, and being able to change it. For Windows and Mac the DE is a 'selling point', for Linux it isn't because it can be changed any which way you want. I mean, in Ubuntu it's trivial to install 10 different DEs and switch every time you log in...

vitoreiji4• 13 years ago

Linux always loses? People who do this don't even know Linux exists!

pessimizer• 13 years ago

Because bikeshedding.

Mikeb855• 13 years ago

So true. Now that I've used Linux for awhile I could never go back. Having so much software available so easily and quickly, convenient package managers that manage dependencies, automatically update, etc... is fantastic.

vitoreiji4• 13 years ago

How do people live without package managers? It's complete chaos!

baggachipz• 13 years ago

I hope to hell that this person's first language isn't English.

Shamanmuni• 13 years ago

This simply isn't true. The jump from Mac OS to Mac OS X was huge and Mac users ranted for years about it. You had different file structures, compatibility issues, and Mac OS Classic prided itself in its "out of your way, no nonsense" GUI while OS X started the "Fisher Price" GUI era.

More than a decade has passed since then, so I don't remember all the details, but you certainly had to learn the OS X way, just like the man learning Windows 8.

Goladus3• 13 years ago

The meat of the linked article are pages 2 and 3, where the author gives a breakdown and commentary of the Mac and Windows approach to UI. Those pages are short with lots of graphics. Page 1 is stupid and page 4 is redundant. (This paragraph is for people complaining about the supposed length of the article and for people commenting on the title only)

The point of the article is that Apple has never made any dramatic changes to their core UI while Microsoft never seemed to settle on one that worked. While I disagree in many respects, the author makes a reasonable case.

The truth is that for most windows (and even mac users), they tend to be locked in to their OS of choice for other reasons and just deal with whatever UI they get. The lesson is more relevant in the general sense and applies to all manner of other GUI software. Windows users might be stuck with Windows but what stopped Ubuntu users from jumping ship when Unity made arbitrary unwanted changes to the interface? What stops Firefox users from switching to chrome or Opera when upgrades break functionality?

edgarallenbro• 13 years ago

I think the bigger problem with Windows 8 was a broader problem that I saw articulated in a thread on reddit.

The thread was about how it seems like next-gen game companies seem to treat releases like they are beta releases. Many of the games for the PS4 and Xbox One are riddle with bugs. Companies seem to have gotten to comfortable with the fact that they can easily release updates post-release, and it's gotten to the point where they are releasing unfinished software to customers who expect it to be a finished.

Major problems with Windows 8 that should never have made it past QA/UAT:

1. Missing start menu button. Extremely confusing jump from 7. Fixed in 8.1

2. Confusing full screen start menu. Remedied in 8.1 with tutorials and better UI cues (down arrow for unpinned applications, embedded search bar on all applications page)

3. On Desktop, files should not open in metro apps by default. (still not fixed)

There should have been a longer beta testing period, and Windows 8.1 should have been Windows 8.

So really, I think the more important point is the mentality of the release cycle. Windows 8 was teased long before it was finally released, so there was a "why is this thing they promised us taking so long just release it already" effect. Apple, on the other hand, tends to hold off on announcing their products until shortly before they're released. There's a "it's been a while since Apple released something new, I wonder when they will release the next thing" effect, which allows them to wait until products are more releasable before actually announcing them

seanc722• 13 years ago

I wouldn't say missing start menu button was "fixed" in 8.1. All they did was put a button there that had the same functionality as that corner without a button already had.

leothekim2• 13 years ago

The joke used to go: Windows users blame Microsoft, Mac users blame themselves.

(Linux users just fix the problem on their own.)

I concur with other posters saying that Mac users ranted a lot when going from Mac OS 9 to OS X 10.0, and they had a lot to rant about. OS X felt slow and didn't support lots of devices, and was a brand new paradigm of computing for them at the time. Now, a lot of stuff just works, much like Mac OS felt like it did.

jedrek2• 13 years ago

Linux users just try another distro.

Mikeb855• 13 years ago

Depends at what stage they're at in their Linux adventures...

Some will try a new distro with better defaults, others will just change their set-up themselves...

pan69• 13 years ago

Well, since GNOME has gone to shits and Unity is pretty much a joke, there has been quite a bit of ranting in Linux community and switching distros is not going to solve one's problems. Actually, that's not true, I've recently switched to XUbuntu. :)

pmelendez• 13 years ago

"(Linux users just fix the problem on their own.)"

This is true only because 99% of linux users are power users. When/if the user-base grow you will see a change on that.

leothekim2• 13 years ago

"This is true only because 99% of linux users are power users."

My point exactly.

captainmuon• 13 years ago

Funny how they the article turns the stagnation of OS X into a benefit.

Also interesting that Windows users now rant about their OS, where they used to rave about most releases instead. I remember being genuinely excited about Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Longhorn (but was disappointed by Vista) and 7. I was even tempted to buy a new version from my saved pocket money as a kid - I eventually got pirated versions of 2000 and later XP though :-).

Nowadays, I dread new OS releases. Be it Windows, OS X, Linux (Ubuntu, Gnome) - OSes and desktop environments get heavier with each release, yet loose features, and get hideously redesigned because Touch and UX, LOL.

From that perspective, the stagnation of OS X really is a virtue, since Apple is at least not messing it up.

(I like the inverted scrolling from Lion, the new notifications are useful, and Mission Control is not bad. I can pretend Launchpad is not there. OS X feels like Ubuntu anno 2010 or XP with a Mac theme, which is a good thing.)

mulletbum• 13 years ago

It's odd because I am a long time Windows user and just recently (2 years ago) bought a Mac. I have to say the things I dislike the most about recent Mac UI is the dock, notifications, and mission control.

The dock staple is part of my biggest problem with my Mac. It takes of screen space and is completely useless after I open the couple programs I am working in. Sure, you can auto hide it, but the transition, plus deal with it randomly popping up on my screen make it extremely cumbersome.

This is where Windows 8.1 gets things right (and some wrong). You can make the menu on the bottom extremely thin, then use an overlay transition to choose your programs.

This is why on Mac I wish I could just rid myself of the dock completely and use Launchpad. I don't understand why there is both. When I minimize a program and want to go back to it I just pop launchpad open and click the app again.

Most of all these both work perfectly with touch based screens. I personally don't have any touch based screens yet, but that is the way technology is going and it embraces it while still making it useful for mousing.

ollysb2• 13 years ago

If you're a power user do yourself a favour and install Alfred[1]. You can keep the dock hidden and launch/switch_to apps with a couple of keystrokes.

[1] http://www.alfredapp.com/

Udo• 13 years ago

The article misses the mark completely. The main thesis is that Mac OS did change only incrementally, while Windows leaps chaotically between new features and philosophies. That's not true, and in fact the illustrations used contradict the conclusions drawn in the article.

For example, when they talk about the introduction of the proto Dock in Mac OS, they say "no major changes in UI". But when Windows introduces the Start menu and task bar that's changing the UI "completely". Then come the incremental UI refinements and color changes that coincide with new graphics capabilities, again this is heralded as being more of the same for Mac but radically different with each version of Windows. Looking at these screenshots which show similar trends in UI development side by side and coming to wildly different conclusions in the face of those similarities is just a stunning display of cognitive dissonance.

The change to Metro would be the only big jump where the article is actually right in asserting a real change, if we'd be willing to forget the fact that Metro (or whatever it's called now) is nothing but a thin veneer you have to get past in order to access the real Windows, which is of course pretty much a clone of its predecessor.

All this just to explain a conclusion from an anecdote, a conclusion which the article itself proves wrong unwittingly. Even if we accept that OS X users don't buy books about their OS and don't rant as much (which I find particularly out of touch with reality), that's because there are vastly more Windows users around. Because the numbers are so great, there are also a lot of Windows users who lack the tech intuition but want to learn, so they buy a book about it. OS X clientele is just by and large different. That's where the real difference lies.

pit2• 13 years ago

I agree. The GUI changes in Windows (pre-8) are pretty negligible. Your Start button used to be rectangular; now it's a circle. Big whoop.

The most frustrating thing for me about Windows over the years is that the path to perform routine tasks is always changing.

Goladus3• 13 years ago

Your Start button used to be rectangular; now it's a circle. Big whoop

Between versions of windows there are fairly substantial changes in how the start menu is organized and how a user can customize it. I'm using Windows 7 and I'm still not sure how the items in the primary menu are selected to be there. It usually seems to have what I'm looking for so I don't worry too much. But it's not as usable as I remember from older versions of windows.

That said, I do think the article sells windows short unfairly. It's true that (pre Windows-8, anyway) key gui features of windows have remained consistent between versions. I haven't ranted about Windows in a long time (other Microsoft products, that's a different story).

Incidentally, I believe the particular feature you refer to, the start menu as a general principle, is one of the best design choices microsoft ever made. It's not the most efficient way to organize a UI, but a hierarchical system is a great way to design for incremental discovery.

erifneerg• 13 years ago

Even if we accept that OS X users don't buy books about their OS and don't rant as much (which I find particularly out of touch with reality), that's because there are vastly more Windows users around.

I would have assume most mac users who want to learn buy Apple's 'One on One' courses or some other related service.

ollysb2• 13 years ago

I wonder what the response would have been if they'd billed the metro screen as the new start button i.e. when you click start the metro screen appears. Then it would have seemed like more of a stylistic change than a major UI update.

bunderbunder• 13 years ago

So it's absolutely true that Apple does introduce big new UI features. The real difference is, Apple introduces these big new features as additional features, not as major changes.

So, to take your Dock example: Apple didn't yank the Applications folder at the same time that they introduced the Dock. A decade later they introduced Launchpad, and did not simultaneously yank the Dock. In fact, the Dock still works pretty much the same it did back in the '90s, when it only existed in NEXTSTEP. And the Applications folder is still there and still working pretty much the same way, too. I don't bother with Launchpad, personally, because I prefer the old way of doing things. . . and unlike Microsoft, Apple's totally fine with letting me do that.

To compare with Windows: When the Start Menu came out, it completely replaced the Program Manager. Over the course of the Start Menu's life, it got rearranged a few times - not a crisis, but obnoxious. Even just switching between XP and Vista, I occasionally find myself hesitating for a moment trying to remember where $widget got moved to. And again, when the Start screen comes out in Windows 8, it doesn't just get added for the benefit of people who want to use it. . . it replaced the Start Menu, so now less-savvy users have to re-learn how to use their computers yet again, and I have yet another source of friction when switching back and forth between versions of the OS.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

The UI changes with each version of windows before 8 are small, but significant. Look at the taskbar for example. First came item-grouping in XP, then came the merging of the Quicklaunch and the Taskbar in Vista, then they dropped the text-labels in 7. Obviously that's all configurable, but those are all substantial changes in the way we interact with the taskbar.

And the user's perception of "windows" doesn't end with the OS. The drastic UI changes in MS Office with every version can't be discounted. There was the move from mdi to one-window-per-document (with utterly broken "close" functionality in Excel) then the buttons were replaced by the Ribbon and that crazy Office Button in 2007 merged the File menu and the Control Box. Then they backed off on that and now there's the weird full-screen File menu in 2012. And with every version they release a completely new suite of icons for each Office app, often with new colour-scheme... which kind of counters dropping text-labels off the taskbar in Windows 7.

xradionut• 13 years ago

Mac users do bitch about the OS, there's forums where they have done so for decades. There's still folks calling for Apple to fix the fucking Finder. I used Mac OS back in the day and was one of the early users of OS X. But none of this was magically intuitive, people did and still bought how-to books and spend hours Googling tips.

And yes, Windows hasn't been that great over the years, but like most tools is manageable with effort. Windows 8.x has been a step backwards on the desktop but Windows Phone is surprising good.

As a pro I still think GUIs are one piece of the system, but CLIs still rule in my world.

AdrianRossouw2• 13 years ago

i could actually rant for hours. but it just frustrates me.

i loathe the app store to the deepest core of my being and actively resent any software I am forced to install with it.

snow leopard was a tragedy. most people I know had their machines developing weird quirks around then. supposedly osx only stays wonderful as long as you always have the latest and greatest.

i now avoid new mac releases as much as possible. last time it was xcode that forced me to upgrade. That is just the most ridiculously large installer for gcc ever.

Oh god yes, and even if you go 'theres cli-tools' (behind a registration wall that you have to know specifically to look for) ... last month, apple decided to booby-trap their gcc binary to force you to open up xcode and agree to a new license agreement before you were allowed to compile things on the command line.

if you didnt have xcode, you had to download it, to open it up, agree to the compulsory license agreement to unlock your cli binaries.

daughart• 13 years ago

Why the app store hate? My work computer needed an OS re-install recently (learned to be careful with sudo) and then they bought me a new computer shortly after. The app store made it easy to re-install a bunch of my apps like Evernote, Aperture, iWork, etc., and the app store keeps these constantly upgraded. Then I had to go through and download a bunch of other non-app-store apps (MS Office, ImageJ, Matlab, Adobe suite, Canopy, etc.), and these apps are always popping up with their own custom update software to remind me to update them when I open them.

I think it would be great if I could just use the app store to keep track of all my software, easily install and uninstall it on different machines, and keep it updated in the background.

bitwalker• 13 years ago

You didn't need to download Xcode for that, you just run `xcodebuild -license` from the command line.

kstenerud• 13 years ago

Some examples of books on how to use a Mac:

http://www.amazon.com/Books-Learning-How-Use-Computer/lm/RMA...

http://www.amazon.com/Macs-For-Dummies-Edward-Baig/dp/111851...

http://www.amazon.com/My-iMac-Mountain-Lion-Edition/dp/07897...

http://www.amazon.com/OS-Mountain-Lion-Pocket-Guide/dp/14493...

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Guide-Mac-Mountain-Edition/dp/1...

Doesn't seem all that different from Windows, after all. I've also heard plenty of Mac users rant about their computers.

finder83• 13 years ago

At least in my circle of friends, and company, which are pretty much all Mac users, the basic premise that they don't rant, complain, or talk about Mac OS is completely flawed. I have to hear about problems with every Mac OS release for days and weeks after each release, and get tired of the cross-chatter about it. The Mac users I know talk about and complain about Mac OS probably more than any other topic I hear them talk about, nearly as much as sports fans talk about sports.

I'm really just jealous that the people I know don't all use Linux and aren't as passionate about it. :-/ But there's a certain blindness when you're the fan to how much you fan out about things.

ebbv• 13 years ago

This is a terrible article which is made worse by unnecessarily being broken up into 4 pages to quadruple ad views.

Mac users bitch about the OS. It just so happens we're at a point where Windows 8 is a drastic change from Windows 7 and OS X hasn't made any drastic changes for a while.

ChikkaChiChi• 13 years ago

Apple features are only used when you explicitly call for them. Otherwise the entire Finder experience can be considered almost kiosk-like in its simplicity.

If you do want to learn how to use a new feature, you have to Google it just like the rest of us.

If you have a problem with OSX, prepare to enter the dark world of the Apple Forums where any expectation of something working outside of Apple's narrow definition of functionality will be met with derision and ridicule.

But is OSX is a slow torture than Windows 8 is a rocket launcher to the head.

I've never understood why we have to 'like' one over another. Can't we just hold them all to a higher standard?

post_break• 13 years ago

OSX doesn't do shit that pisses me off. That's what I like about it. It doesn't do things without asking. Oh you want to shut down? How about we run some updates first. Oh lets just reboot because I ran some updates. Hey there's a new JAVADOBEVIRUS update you should get it. Oh you're on a laptop? Lets run 253 updates while it's booting up, you don't need that battery life right?

Telling my computer to do something, and having it do something completely different is one reason why I use OSX. Sure, you can force windows to try and be like that, but how long until an update undo's all your little tweaks you've put in place?

nswanberg• 13 years ago

I expected this thread to have more debate. I'm hardly the first person to point out that the OS is increasingly irrelevant, but I think this thread adds evidence for that theory.

neeks• 13 years ago

yawn

Anyone that has been tinkering with OSs for a while will understand they all have their benefits. As a web app developer, I run Arch Linux w Gnome Shell 3.10 on my personal computer and my company provides me with an iMac at work.

For an experienced user, Mac OS is a unix prison. All the cool tinkering and customizations I love about my linux build are usually locked down in a Mac.

When it comes to family members and non-tech people who ask for my recommendation on products though, I usually push them towards Apple. Apple products are essentially tech-training wheels.

Why Mac users don’t rant about the OS

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