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Every single computer platform and operating system has its share of triumphs and failures. Every. I have used both Macs and Windows PCs for several years and I own a Windows PC. But I have resolved that my next computer will be a Mac. This is for many reasons. As I see it, there are indeed several reasons to use the Mac and there are reasons not to, which I will explain here. I will mostly refer only to what Apple has on the market right now. Mac OS X will not factor into this explanation except for the very last part. There are five parts to this series of articles, including ease of use, ease of learning, fashion, why you may not want to use the Mac, and the future of the Macintosh system. The whole philosophy behind the Macintosh computer is not to "Think different." That's just a marketing device to get you to pay attention to them. It's not to "change the world." It's a computer. It's a tool. It's a storage device. It's an entertainment system. It's not a vehicle for social change. Many people believe that the Macintosh inspires that sort of feeling in them, and you know what? That's great. But it really isn't the ultimate design goal of the Macintosh. The idea behind the Macintosh is that it's supposed to be simple enough to use for the novice while still being powerful enough and versatile enough for the power user. Part One: Ease of Use The Macintosh system has a reputation for greater ease of use than Windows PCs. I'm going to say precisely what I mean by that. First, what is ease of use? Ease of use means that the system is set up to have a set of conveniences that allow you to spend more time doing what you want to do instead of wasting time figuring out how you're going to do it. A system that has a good ease of use allows you to perform common tasks in few steps. It would have a degree of automation so that when you do one thing that always leads to something else, it would do that something else for you. Its interface and design would be very consistent so that once you begin learning how to perform tasks, it becomes increasingly easy to learn related tasks and more advanced tasks. Feedback from such a computer system would be uncomplicated and unmistakable. There would be no messages of the type "either this or that or the other," but it would only be "it is this." Visual cues would follow a clear set of logic and be easily distinguished from one another. Sometimes the computer needs to distinguish tasks that you can do now from tasks that are possible, but are not available under the present circumstances. When this happens, the computer needs to do one of two things. The difference between the two tasks must either be displayed markedly, or else the unavailable task must not be displayed at all. In short, a computer that has a good ease of use has to be easy to use and easy to understand. It must avoid needless complication and help the user in a way that is seamless and causes the user to take it for granted. The Macintosh system is not perfect, as I have said. But it strives to be easy to use and it does it better than Windows does, overall. The Windows platform is not an absolute piece of garbage, but it does have many shortcomings in regards to making the computer easy to use on a day to day basis. I have two pet peeves in particular: file renaming and remembering folder views. First, I will make clear that I know you can hide file extensions in Windows. But I think that it's ultimately pointless to do this. In many situations, you may very well want to change the file extension. This is most often in the case of text files that you want to change to another file type that uses only regular characters and vice versa. This could be INI files, INF files, MS-DOS batch files, HTML files, the Config.sys file, or certain unique configuration files which obscure programs use. Therefore, I believe that it only makes sense to use Windows with the file extensions visible. So here's my comparison of Windows file renaming versus Macintosh file renaming: Windows: 1. Select the file. Or: 1. Select the file. And if you really want an example where the file extension is hidden: 1. Select the file. And for the very shortest possible set of steps under Windows with file extensions hidden: 1. Select the file. Macintosh: 1. Click on the filename. So no matter how you look at it, it almost always takes fewer steps to rename files on the Macintosh. Only in one example did the number of steps in Windows come to a tie with the amount of steps on the Mac. And that's only because I counted waiting as a step. If I didn't, the Mac would have always won by a margin of one or two steps. This is for a couple of reasons. First, it takes fewer clicks to get the renaming function to activate. Second, you never need to worry about making sure you don't mess with the file extension because there was never one there to begin with. Another thing I hate about Windows is the fact that it doesn't save the viewing information for all of my folders. It can only remember about sixteen of them. Now, I customarily make many folders to keep all my documents organized. Currently, I have two thousand, five hundred and fifty six folders on my entire computer. That does NOT include ANY folders I have on my many Zip disks or any that I might have on my floppies. So. I have 2,556 folders and Windows can only remember how sixteen of them are supposed to look. That means that Windows cannot even remember one percent (.625978090766823161189358372456964% to be exact) of my folder views. I am constantly opening up my folders and finding them set to the default setting of large icons arranged by name without auto-arrange. I use the list view quite a bit because it takes less space to view the files in. I almost always set the view to list if the amount of files goes over a certain amount. When I do want the folder view set for large icons, I would prefer that it be set to auto-arrange so that the icons will automatically re-arrange themselves to best fit the window no matter what size or shape it is. But it constantly refuses to do that because it can only remember sixteen folders at a time. Sometimes I may want to sort the folder by date or by file type. It won't be able to remember that for long, either. In addition to those problems, when the folder is set to view files in a certain order, and you put a new file in or rename one, the folder does not resort itself to reflect the change. The files just stay there out of order. You have to tell Windows again what order you want them to go in for it to make the change. By contrast, the Mac remembers all of my folder views. All of them. It even remembers the views for my Zip disks, even when the folders are viewed on a different Macintosh computer. If I take that same Zip disk (or floppy, or whatever kind of removable media you've got) to another Mac (that uses the same folder viewing system. It has changed every couple of OS versions or so), I will see the folders come up precisely the same way as I saw them on the first Mac. You can also set default views so that folders you haven't looked at will come up in the way you like best. And when you add or rename files, the folder always resorts to reflect the new contents. This may seem like small potatoes, but when you can eliminate a lot of the annoyances of using a computer, it really makes a difference. Here are some other examples: In Windows, when you are ready to save a file, sometimes you want to create a new folder to put it in. So, you have a handy little button on the Save dialog that allows you to create a new folder. You click it and it automatically allows you to give it a name. You start typing and press Enter. But you're not ready to save the file yet. Now you have to get the Save dialog to take you in the folder you just made. You do this by either pressing Enter one more time or by double-clicking on it. Then you can save your document in that folder. What happens on the Mac? In the Mac's Save dialog, you also have access to a button that allows you to create a new folder. When you click it, a smaller popup dialog comes up so that you can immediately start typing a name for the folder in. Then you press Return. When you do that, the Save dialog automatically switches to the folder you just made. As soon as you're done making a name for the folder, you can save your document in that new folder. How about what happens when you insert and remove disks from your computer in order to work on a document? In Windows, you put the disk in the slot, double-click on My Computer, double-click on the disk icon, and if you have to go through some folders to find what you're looking for, you double-click on them too. When you're done, you press the button on the exterior of the unit to eject your disk. Oh, yes. You left the disk windows up on the screen. Well, they won't do you any good when you don't have the disk inserted. Time to close them. On the Mac, you put the disk in the slot and an icon of the disk immediately appears on your desktop. And look! You had been working with that same document before and its window is now on the screen as well. Right in front of you as soon as you insert the disk. When you're done, you eject the disk by dragging its icon to the Trash icon. There's no need to close the disk windows because they disappear when the disk ejects. They'll pop back up again when you insert the disk the next time you want to work on that document. What if you're ready to save a document, you've got the Save dialog on the screen, and then you think to yourself that you really should put the document on a disk because you're going to take it to another computer or you want it there for organizational purposes or for backup purposes? What happens on the Windows PC? You put the disk in the slot, you click on the location bar, you sometimes have to scroll up, and you click on the disk icon. Not too hard. But on the Mac, it's even easier. When you have the Save dialog up, you put the disk in the slot and right away the location for the Save dialog changes to the root folder of the disk. Since you're only likely to want to save the file on the disk when you put it in, it takes you right there. Often you may want to access a file that's located several layers down through your directory structure. Or it may be MANY layers down through your directory structure. Because I seem to be gathering more and more documents, I like to make more and more subfolders to keep them organized. (Hence my 2,556 folder total) This is good for organization, but it can also be more of a hassle to get to them and keep the desktop uncluttered. So what happens on the Windows PC? Well, you just start at My Computer, or perhaps My Documents or My Files, and start double-clicking on the appropriate icons until you get to where the correct file is. But you don't need all those other folders on the screen, so you close them again. You can go through all that on the Mac as well, but there is a better method. To begin it, you double-click on the hard drive or folder icon on your desktop, but instead of releasing the mouse button on the second click, you keep it held down. After a pause, the icon flashes and the folder opens up. When this has happened, you will notice that the cursor has changed from an arrow into a magnifying glass. Still having the button held down, you move to the next folder you need to go through. After a moment hovering over that one, it too will flash and open. If you need to scroll down the window to find the folder, you just need to move the cursor to the lower edge of the window and it will scroll. If you activated the wrong folder, all you have to do is move the cursor out of the window area and it will close again. Now you can find the right one. So you just keep holding the cursor over the folder icons and letting them open themselves while you keep the mouse button pressed until you get to where that file of yours is. You may say, "well, that sounds interesting, but how is it really any better than double-clicking on each folder?" Ahh, the best part is yet to come! When you are finally where you want to be, you release the mouse button and all of the incremental windows close. All you have on the screen now is the window you were looking for. There is no need to close the incremental windows because they have already closed themselves! This handy feature is called "Springloaded Folders." You can also make use of it when moving files. Perhaps you have a file in one folder that you want to move to another. You grab hold of the file and hover it over whatever folder or drive will take you to the one you want it to be moved to. After a pause, the folder will open and you can do the same thing you did when you wanted to find that other file. Keep hovering over folders and allowing them to open themselves, and when you get to the correct folder, release the file from your grasp. It will be deposited in the folder and all of the incremental folders will close. You can adjust the amount of time that the folders will wait before springing open, too. How about the help system? Some tasks may warrant that someone guide you through the steps and point everything out to you while you're doing it. This is particularly so for new users. Well, what if you don't have any such person nearby? You see what the help guide has to say. In Windows, a large window pops up and probably obscures quite a bit of desktop space. It doesn't have a step by step guide, but you'll probably figure it out before too long. A novice might have some trouble. On the Mac, you can find step by step guides within the help system. There's only a small window sitting unobtrusively at the lower left corner. Each step pops up one by one as you advance by pressing the "Next" button. If you're really clueless, press the button that says, "Huh?" When warranted, the help guide can actually draw circles on the screen to show you what you're supposed to do. What do you do when you want to change settings such as the color depth or pixel resolution on your computer? With Windows, you use the Control Panel. You can use a similar interface on the Mac, but there is also a stroke of genius called the Control Strip. This is a little hovering popout strip on your desktop that contains many shortcuts to common Control Panel features. There's a default set, and you can get plugin modules that usually come with other programs. They can be taken out and added to as desired. But it doesn't just serve as a shortcut (or alias) to the Control Panel item. It actually serves as a control in and of itself. So, here's a comparison of changing the resolution of your monitor with both the Windows Control Panel and the Macintosh Control Strip: Windows Control Panel: 1. Click on the Start Button. (Mouse clicks: 10) (Mouse movements: 10) Or: 1. Double-click on the "My Computer" icon. (Mouse clicks: 13) (Mouse movements: 10) Or: 1. Right-click on the desktop. (Mouse clicks: 7) (Mouse movements: 7) Macintosh Control Strip: 1. Click on the Control Strip tab to pop it open. (Mouse clicks: 4) (Mouse movements: 4) Here, the Macintosh Control Strip beats the Windows Control Panel by a significant margin no matter how you look at it. There are several other such examples that I could use, but I thought that this one would be sufficient. Then there's the experience of using programs. One feature that a lot of programs will give you in Windows is keyboard shortcuts. This is a system which mainly uses a combination of letters and the Control (Ctrl) key, although sometimes the keyboard shortcuts may employ the Shift or Alt keys, the Microsoft logo key, or a combination of them. These can be real time savers since you don't have to use the mouse to move the cursor into the menus and select the option you want. Not for all of them, anyway. But the fact is that not all programs in Windows share the same keyboard shortcuts and some, such as Notepad and Sound Recorder, don't use them at all. On the other hand, keyboard shortcuts on the Mac are truly universal. All programs which can take advantage of keyboard shortcuts use them and they are consistently used. I should also mention the menus while we're on the subject of using programs. In Windows, each window and each program has its own menu. They are separate. Why is that? It may not sound like a bad idea on the surface, but it can have disadvantages. For one thing, the menus eat up more screen space than would be taken up if there were only one menu. This is precisely what the Mac does. The Macintosh has a centralized menu. The contents of the menu change depending on what program you're using or if you're just looking at the contents of your computer. The way the Macintosh menu is situated removes one more worry about how precisely you have to move the mouse to click on a menu item. In Windows, you have to make sure you don't overshoot the menu item in both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions. On the Mac, you only have to be sure that you don't overshoot the menu item in the horizontal dimension. The cursor can't go beyond the top of the screen, and that's exactly where the Macintosh's menu is. You can't overshoot it that way. How do you know for sure what window is being used when you click on the Macintosh's menu? That is very easy to answer. Like Windows, the Macintosh has active and inactive appearances for its windows. The window that has an "active" appearance is the one which is using the menu. And if you want to be sure what program you're using, all you have to do is look to the very right of the menu bar. That shows the icon of the program you're using, and as of Mac OS 8.5, it can also display the name of the program you're using. Another reason for having a centralized menu is that it reduces the visual clutter that one can often encounter when using a computer. You don't need to see menu after menu. You only need to see one menu, so that's all the Mac uses. One menu. Yet one more reason for having a centralized menu is to reduce the possibility of accidental menu activation. Say you've been using the computer a while and start to do things as fast as you can because you like to work as efficiently on your computer as you can. You want to click on another open window to make it active or to move it. If all the windows had menus, such as in Windows, you might accidentally click on the menu and maybe even choose a selection. It might not be too likely, but it could happen. On the Mac, the possibility of that happening is virtually nil, unless the window is right at the top of the screen. You can see that just giving a computer system a Graphical User Interface does not automatically make it easy to use. It must be very well thought out. Very well thought out. GUI's only become easy to use when they make sense in every conceivable way. When the designers do whatever they can to give the user conveniences that are so seamless that the user takes them for granted. This is where the Macintosh excels. Next: How easy is it is to learn this stuff?
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