Did you see what I did there?
In any case, it’s pretty brilliant. It’s about the only real UI feature that I liked from OS X and Compiz, and one that was incredibly useful during my stint at Lucasfilm. In case you have no idea what Expose on the Mac looks like, basically think of it as the window manager Windows Flip 3D should have shamelessly copied, copyright issues be damned.
Which brings me to the 2nd part of my short discussion about Apple products.
Last time I talked about security and the various beefs I had regarding Apple’s much-touted superior security as compared to its rivals. There’s a lot more that I want to say on that issue, but I might as well write a goddamn book if I ever put all of my thoughts to print. Instead, since I’m pretty sure the average person couldn’t give a flying fuck about their security these days, I’m going to move on to what are perceived as more practical issues.
Like usability, for instance. Let’s start right from the beginning.
When you start Mac OS X, it, like any other operating system, goes through the ministrations of setting itself up for you in the most transparent manner possible. And yet my dad was unable to understand it without requiring (again) my assistance, even when the instructions were written, supposedly, in an ‘idiot-proof’ manner.
If the army has taught me anything at all, it’s that there’s no such thing as idiot-proof. Or unbreakable, either. What’s important is that idiots will be idiots, and people who actually know their ass from their thumb should be able to do whatever they need, fast.
The problem with the Mac, however, is that the design philosophy behind it has always been about ease of use. This does not mean efficiency of use, and that’s exactly where the problem lies.
A simple example would be fact that the delete button on the Mac does not function as a delete button at all without some config tweaks. You delete characters, but not files? I’m sorry, there’s a term for that. It’s called backspace.
A bigger example would be the shortcut for the dock, which is Ctrl-F3. Now, the whole point of keyboard macros is to free oneself from having to use a cumbersome, clumsy mouse to perform actions quickly and efficiently, much like how I have set up my taskbar in Windows 7 to activate Photoshop with the shortcut Win + 1. Or in the office, where I have Launchy set to launch any fucking thing short of a nuclear missle with a simple press of Win + Space and the first few letters of whatever it is I want. (For the record, I absolutely abhore Vista/7′s start search function because it is about as fast as my mom. And my mom has polio.)
Anyway, when you hit Ctrl-F3 on the Mac, you get the dock popping up….and you have no way to select any application on it. Not with arrow keys, not with the numbers. The only thing you can do is launch the currently selected app with the return key. I mean, who the fuck even came up with that? If I have to use the mouse to select whatever I want from the dock, then what was the whole point of even including a shortcut for the dock in the first place?
These are minor annoyances, to be sure, but there’s a fuck ton of these seemingly retarded design decisions hanging around the Mac, and all of them seem to be centered around focusing on the mouse to perform actions instead of the keyboard, which, incidentally, is the biggest hunk of absolute white plastic trash I have ever used in my life (Apple standard keyboard A1048), which is fitting, since the mouse joined it in that list as well (Apple Mighty Mouse).
The whole problem, I feel, is that Macs were designed to look good first, and everything else was placed on the backburner to that. It’s like one of the guys who I’m currently working with at my company, who buys clothing and other apparel based on their look, and not their function. I mean, I’m all for stuff looking great (Hell, I’m trying to be an artist) but when it comes to the Great Debate about form versus function, I always believe function comes before the bling.
(And if you’re curious, basically the keyboard had keys that were spaced out waaaay too wide, forcing my hands into awkward positions when trying to type or perform shortcuts. It required a lot more hand movement than usual as well, since I literally had to stretch my fingers sometimes to reach keys that I wanted. And the rubber dome feel of it was worse than usual. The modifier keys felt hard and annoying to press, while the normal alphabetical keys activated much too easily. And I hope the numpad was spoilt because it was just fucking over-sensitive, making it nigh impossible to use.
The mouse was fucking worthless, and I’ll just leave it at that. Seriously, whoever bought that instead of just spending a couple of bucks on an old Logitech MX518 or even 500 is a fucking retard. Instead, they spent probably twice or even thrice the amount for a lousy sensor, a downright damaging grip design and a cheaper feel than a hooker’s tits.)
But with all this, I feel, the most damning thing of all is the lie about how Macs are easy to migrate to and work with. There’s a popular saying about how you buy Windows if you want to do work and you buy a Mac if you want to get work done. Well, let’s see. To transfer a PDF to my dad’s Macbook all I had to do on my Win 7 rig was to find his name in Network and Sharing Center, login to a guest account and dump it in there.
For him to connect to me, however, was a whole different story. I told him about Samba and how to use it, and he stared in astonishment as I opened up Terminal on his mac to connect to my rig via direct IP connection, since he couldn’t see my network name under his equivalent. It was then that I realized what I had just done; I had just connected my Windows rig to a Mac using a fully-functional GUI, while vice versa required a command line.
(And of course, the moment he connected, his mac started dumped .DS_Store thumbnail files in the /Public folder. Good job there creating shit files, Apple.)
Ok, so maybe I’m going a bit far with this. A lot of my friends tell me they have no choice but to use the Mac for specialized applications such as video editing and compositing, since they work with Final Cut and (previously) Shake and would rather die than use Adobe Premiere. Fair enough; I agree that Premiere’s (and Adobe’s) UI design is pretty fucking stupid in general. However I’m going to say outright that the solution isn’t to use FCP or Shake either, because those are much worse choices.
Sounds crazy? Hear me out. And this time, it’s not like I’m basing it on minimal experience, either.
I’ll get to work on Part 3 in a few days, maybe.
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