I Know Change is Hard, But This is Ridiculous

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/why-im-returning-my-imac_b_796104.html' target='_blank'>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshu...c_b_796104.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"I practically floated into the Apple store. That's how excited I was to leave Black Friday with a new iMac. The salesman needed merely to gesture to the 21-inch flat screen on display, and I was sold: out the door, box in hand, convinced I had turned a corner in my career."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1292343284.usr105634.jpg" /></p><p>And so, his experiment with his iMac a failure, the author returned his computer to the Apple store, feeling deflated and beat down, dragging his power chord behind him. What a crock. When I first read this, I thought it had to be a joke. But I think the guy is actually serious, which leads me to agree with one comment that said <em>"he should stick with paper and pencil."</em></p>

[Jason Dunn]

This article was a pretty interesting read because I struggled with a couple of these issues myself.

The author seems a bit clueless, but I think it's fair to ask why he had some of the assumptions that he did. For us here on this site, we know that Windows PCs don't come with Microsoft Office by default any more than Macs come with Microsoft Office or iWork. But given the reputation that Macs have in the industry, can you blame the guy for not realizing that while Macs come with software to edit videos, photos, and make Web sites (iLife) they don't come with software to open an Excel file or Word document? Every Windows PC from a big OEM comes with Works, or now Office 2010 Starter edition (http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/office/pages/office_2010_starter.aspx), so out of the box they're more capable at document creation than Macs. That may have been part of his faulty assumption.

The salesperson should have suggested a copy of iWork at the very least, but given it was Black Friday I can't blame the salesperson for being a little off the ball...

Thinking he needed to take a photo for the login profile? Silly.

Disliking the Magic Mouse? I'm with him on that one - I think it kind of sucks from an ergonomic/usability standpoint. I think it's a really good example of function over form - the trackpad surface is amazing, yes, but from an ergonomic point of view it's a disaster.

The keyboard not having a number pad? Well, that's something you'd think he should have noticed before buying it, but the root question of why it lacks a number pad is a valid one. I can't even think of a keyboard for a Windows PC that lacks a number pad. For anyone that enters in numbers frequently, a dedicated number pad is a must. Is there really a good reason beyond design aesthetics that Apple removed it? They wanted to make it be exactly like the Macbook keyboards, but why is that a laudable goal for the end user? Why should a desktop computer be under the size constraints of a laptop?

Not realizing that there are alternate FTP clients out there for OS X? Silly. If he had searched for "OS X FTP client" he'd have found some great free options.

The problems he had with not being able to move files from the external drive, only copy them? I'm a Mac n00b myself, so I really don't understand this one either - I couldn't figure out why I couldn't delete files from a USB flash drive for instance. Long-time OS X users accept this as normal, but for a Windows user, this kind of stuff is pretty confusing. I find myself saying "Why is my Mac doing THAT??" quite often. If Apple licensed NTFS from Microsoft, it could write to NTFS-formatted external hard drives/flash drives/etc. without fuss, but Apple won't do that and so users suffer in the end. Thankfully some companies like Seagate are providing OS X NTFS drivers with their externals hard drives to lessen the pain.

Trouble with moving his iTunes playlists over? Legitimate gripe if it really can't be done (and I don't know if this is true or not) - why doesn't iTunes 10 have some sort of playlist export function? It would certainly make "Switching" easier. I personally don't use playlists so could care less about this, but I know some people spend hours and hours carefully crafting their playlists - and to not be able to go from iTunes on Windows to iTunes on OS X with your playlists seems inexcusable.

Quicktime's weak-ass file support? Legitimate. Sure, he should have gotten some advice from a Mac user and installed VLC Media Player, but that doesn't change the core weakness in Quicktime. I can now play MPEG4/MOV/h.264 files in Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7 without a hitch - I no longer need to install Quicktime. Microsoft clearly sees the need to support an array of video files, so why doesn't Apple?

Thunderbird font size? I can't speak to this one. I don't use the program, so maybe there was an easy way to increase the font size in the program in terms of email text display without impacting the outgoing font size. Most mail apps have this.

The way Safari renders his Web site? If he calls himself a "Web Designer" it's pretty ridiculous that he's never cross-checked his site in all the common Web browsers. He should be thankful that his bad coding has now come to light so he can fix it.

I think, all in all, this article was about 50% ignorance and about 50% truth. This guy clearly isn't techy, or else he'd have realized Windows is just as capable at video editing as OS X - you don't need to buy a whole new freakin' computer to edit a video.

But, still, I see the seeds of frustration here that I've experienced either myself with OS X, or witnessed via consulting others on Windows and OS X. There are small things Apple could do to OS X to improve the experience for first-time users.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Long post there Jason; could well turn it into an article of your own. :P

No complaints about mouse acceleration? It's the first thing that hits me when using OS X.

But I did have a good laugh; complaining about the way Safari renders his website was damn priceless.

[Jason Dunn]

Long post there Jason; could well turn it into an article of your own. :P

Oh, I think it's flame bait enough for this thread, no need to go all front-page with it. :D

No complaints about mouse acceleration? It's the first thing that hits me when using OS X.

Do you mean the way the Magic Mouse scrolls waaaay too fast at the slightest flick? Or the way it doesn't seem to accelerate when you move the cursor across the screen quickly? I find myself having to pick the Magic Mouse up a lot and move it to "home position" again to get to the other side of my screen, which is something I don't have to do with Windows.

Remember this was just my response to HIS points, not my own list of gripes about OS X. That would be even longer. :D

[Macguy59]

I have no problem with someone deciding a Mac running OS X is not for them but this guy is an idiot. Period. The equivalent of someone buying a WP7 and returning it because he can't access the Android Market or brush his teeth with it. @ Jason . . Why would you think you can't delete files from a flash drive in OS X ?

[Macguy59]

Remember this was just my response to HIS points, not my own list of gripes about OS X. That would be even longer. :D

Don't get me started about how many clicks it takes to do basic tasks in Win 7 or the entire convoluted way it handles networking :D

[Jason Dunn]

I have no problem with someone deciding a Mac running OS X is not for them but this guy is an idiot. Period.

Well, he might be an idiot, but don't you think he has some legitimate points? I think he does.

Why would you think you can't delete files from a flash drive in OS X ?

Because I couldn't - last night I was editing some video files that I told iMovie '11 to copy off the USB flash drive, and even when iMovie was no longer running it wouldn't delete them. I've just booted up my Mac Mini to confirm this - when I put my USB flash drive into the Mac Mini, it loads and I can see all the video files. When I click on one and press the delete key, nothing happens - but I think that's because the delete key is really a backspace key, right? Yet it functions as a delete key in some apps, like iMovie.

OK, so then I try dragging and dropping the file into the trash bin - that's the way to delete things on a Mac, right? When I do that, a message pops up that says "The item can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted".

I know OS X can't write to NTFS drives, but it can read them - can't it delete from them? :confused:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Deleting requires writing, Jason. Typically the OS writes a "delete byte" to the file that's getting deleted to let the file system know that area is available to be written over (that's knowledge from my DOS days, so if anyone has something more up-to-date that shows I'm wrong feel free to correct me).

Do you mean the way the Magic Mouse scrolls waaaay too fast at the slightest flick? Or the way it doesn't seem to accelerate when you move the cursor across the screen quickly? I find myself having to pick the Magic Mouse up a lot and move it to "home position" again to get to the other side of my screen, which is something I don't have to do with Windows.

Remember this was just my response to HIS points, not my own list of gripes about OS X. That would be even longer.

The mouse cursor moves way too slowly at the start, then way too fast when you push it faster. Initially it's like going through molasses then it's like a hyperactive chipmunk on 40,000cc's worth of sugar.

I was referring to his points; surprised he didn't pick that up.

[Jason Dunn]

Deleting requires writing, Jason. Typically the OS writes a "delete byte" to the file that's getting deleted to let the file system know that area is available to be written over

Doh! Of course...I can't believe I didn't realize that. :o So by Apple not being able to do any more than read an NFTS device, you can't delete files off it either. That's so pathetic.

I was referring to his points; surprised he didn't pick that up.

I don't think he's QUITE that sophisticated. :rolleyes: :D

[Janak Parekh]

The author seems a bit clueless, but I think it's fair to ask why he had some of the assumptions that he did. For us here on this site, we know that Windows PCs don't come with Microsoft Office by default any more than Macs come with Microsoft Office or iWork. Are people really that clueless? Especially an investigative journalist who does writing for a full-time living? I don't buy it.

In any case, he didn't actually try to compare TextEdit to Word; that might have been a way of representing the case you're trying to compare here. He compared TextEdit to Notepad and said the former was stripped-down. This is factually incorrect. First off, he meant WordPad, not Notepad; the latter is as stripped as it comes. Second, TextEdit is a capable rich-text editor. It's very basic, but it does have full font, spelling, and formatting support. He didn't even try to figure this out.

Finally, Apple has bundled iWork trials on Macs before, but in general, they try to minimize bloat. We decry the bundling of trial or stripped-down versions of software, and that's what Apple does, and then we cry about that. I don't buy it. Again, a journalist should know better. Moreover, the Apple Store would have helped him transfer his work over and would have suggested the purchase of a word processor.

Disliking the Magic Mouse? I'm with him on that one - I think it kind of sucks from an ergonomic/usability standpoint. I think it's a really good example of function over form - the trackpad surface is amazing, yes, but from an ergonomic point of view it's a disaster. This is your opinion. He stated a factual inaccuracy: that the power switch scraped across his desk. That's impossible, unless he had a defective mouse (in which case he should have returned it, and given that I've never seen this complaint before, I'd be surprised if that was the case). The switch is less deep than the rails on the side of the mouse. He didn't comment on any other aspect of the ergonomics. And, I have to say, the Mighty Mouse took me a week to get used to, but now I find it by far the nicest mouse I've ever owned, and I've been using mice since approximately 1985 (and I was using them even before I used Windows).

The keyboard not having a number pad? Well, that's something you'd think he should have noticed before buying it, but the root question of why it lacks a number pad is a valid one. I can't even think of a keyboard for a Windows PC that lacks a number pad. Really? There are plenty of compact keyboards for Windows machines. Microsoft themselves sell several without number pads. Moreover, you can buy an Apple keyboard with a number pad (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB110LL/A)! Apple calls it a "Keyboard with Numeric Keypad," even!

For anyone that enters in numbers frequently, a dedicated number pad is a must. Is there really a good reason beyond design aesthetics that Apple removed it? They wanted to make it be exactly like the Macbook keyboards, but why is that a laudable goal for the end user? Why should a desktop computer be under the size constraints of a laptop? It's a design decision, but again, he didn't mention any of this, nor did he say he enters lots of numbers. He said he "booted up his bank account," whatever that means. If I'm logging into my bank account, I don't miss the number pad. And, again, this is your opinion. I have a wireless Mac keyboard at home and love (and prefer) the compact form factor, and don't miss the number pad 99% of the time.

If Apple licensed NTFS from Microsoft, it could write to NTFS-formatted external hard drives/flash drives/etc. without fuss, but Apple won't do that and so users suffer in the end. Perhaps, but Microsoft is generally reluctant with NTFS licensing; I tried a search for "NTFS licensing" and found several hits right at the top where embedded companies etc. gave up because MS considers the full specs proprietary and won't generally release them. The most common implementations of non-Microsoft NTFS are clean-room implementations, but they're not fully compliant.

Besides, this is the kind of thing you ask for help about. The wisdom is to use FAT32 (or the newer version, which Snow Leopard does fully support) whenever you move between platforms. An investigative journalist, again, should ask. Apple offers plenty of free help. And, can I legitimately complain that Windows 7 doesn't have any HFS+ support whatsoever, which is what my external hard drive is formatted in? File format incompatibilities are unfortunate, but they exist in many different ways.

Trouble with moving his iTunes playlists over? Legitimate gripe if it really can't be done (and I don't know if this is true or not) - why doesn't iTunes 10 have some sort of playlist export function? So, if you don't know, why do you assume he is correct? He's completely wrong. You copy the iTunes Music folder, drop it into place, boot iTunes, and your entire library, with playlists, is all moved over. Done. That's exactly what I did years ago. There's plenty of tools to help with migration. Apple provides free migration support for users at the Apple Store, on top of that.

Quicktime's weak-ass file support? Legitimate. Except he complained about, e.g., mkv and flv files, which as far as I can tell, WMP12 doesn't support either, you need a third party app or plugin for that. So, again, he's outright wrong on that note. Also, if you search for "mkv mac", you get a bazillion hits. Also, how did he get MKVs? They're typically produced by, e.g. DVD rippers. Someone who has done that knows a thing or two about codecs. He's just being lazy.

Also, may I suggest Perian (http://perian.org/) for you? Your media gripes (and a few of his) are certainly legitimate, but trivially fixable.

Thunderbird font size? I can't speak to this one. I don't use the program, so maybe there was an easy way to increase the font size in the program in terms of email text display without impacting the outgoing font size. Most mail apps have this. First hit in Google (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Font_settings_in_Thunderbird) for "Thunderbird font size".

I think, all in all, this article was about 50% ignorance and about 50% truth. No, it was 95% ignorance, and even worse, sheer laziness. I found many of the hits in the links above by the very first Google hit on a simple, naive search for, e.g. "foo mac". If he's going to go to the trouble to write an article, perhaps he should actually try that? Or, I don't know, use the free tech support that Apple provides, and is highly ranked for?

Other incorrect or ignorant points he made that you didn't touch upon:

1. QuickTime Player can't make playlists: yes, that's what iTunes is for.
2. Inability to network with other PCs. Macs have had first-class SMB and NFS support for years.

But, still, I see the seeds of frustration here that I've experienced either myself with OS X, or witnessed via consulting others on Windows and OS X. There are small things Apple could do to OS X to improve the experience for first-time users. Jason, here's my main argument: your post, if you worded it as your own frustrations, would be fine. I am disappointed you use them to defend the repeated, outright inaccuracies in his, though. I also am disappointed that you would assume his ignorance is excusable, when there are legitimate end-user channels to help him with most of them. If you're going to spend $1,500+ on a computer, wouldn't you do some research and give it an effort? No, this smacks more of someone who is uninterested and unwilling to learn a new computer. Which, by the way, is totally fine -- but then you don't go out and write a hit piece on a platform that you haven't even tried to figure out.

Jason, let me analogize it this way: didn't it make your blood boil when people who hardly tried to use Vista would slam it? Or people who would write that Windows 7 was a coat of lipstick on a pig? They were just as wrong as this guy was. They didn't make an effort either.

Finally, one last note on this last comment you made: Mac OS has been around for 26 years. Some of the UI aspects you find unintuitive have been around longer than Windows has been. Should Apple ditch its longstanding conventions, which its users are used to? When people ask me about OS X and learning it for the first time, I point this out, and say that there are conventions that have been established over the decades that are fundamentally different than Windows, and that it takes some time to get used to it, just like how they had to get used to Windows in the first place.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

No complaints about mouse acceleration? It's the first thing that hits me when using OS X. OS X and Windows have different mouse acceleration algorithms (and subpixel hinting algorithms, for that matter). Now that I've been using Mac for years, I find the Windows model more annoying. It's a matter of being used to it.

But I did have a good laugh; complaining about the way Safari renders his website was damn priceless. Nevermind that Webkit is a fantastic renderer, but he didn't even say Safari! He said "Mac's Firefox," whatever that means. Again, laziness.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

Doh! Of course...I can't believe I didn't realize that. :o So by Apple not being able to do any more than read an NFTS device, you can't delete files off it either. That's so pathetic. First question: why are you using NTFS on flash? NTFS is a journaling filesystem that does a lot of metadata writing, and I'm not sure it's the best choice for flash -- it's going to do a lot more reads and writes in general and will wear flash out somewhat faster. Of course, modern flash is pretty resilient, so perhaps this is not a major concern, but does NTFS give you something that you need? Given this day-and-age when I'm multiplatform, I make sure to use FAT32/exFAT, which both Windows and OS X support.

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

First question: why are you using NTFS on flash?

Really simple: for files larger than 4 GB. I often make backups of systems and need to move them around from place to place; having some of my drives formatted in FAT32 and some in NTFS would be painful (trying to remember which is which), so I keep them all in NTFS. I'm pretty sure most external hard drives come pre-formatted in NTFS format.

[Janak Parekh]

Really simple: for files larger than 4 GB. I often make backups of systems and need to move them around from place to place; having some of my drives formatted in FAT32 and some in NTFS would be painful (trying to remember which is which), so I keep them all in NTFS. I'm pretty sure most external hard drives come pre-formatted in NTFS format. You might want to consider using exFAT (FAT64 under a new name) for that. It was specifically designed by MS for USB flash media. :)

exFAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT)

As for external hard drives, the installer on most external hard drives reformats the hard drive depending on the platform you're on. If you're on a Windows machine, it'll reformat as NTFS or FAT32; if on a Mac, it'll use HFS+ or FAT32. Some ask, some don't.

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

You might want to consider using exFAT (FAT64 under a new name) for that. It was specifically designed by MS for USB flash media. :)

OK, thanks. I honestly had no idea what exFAT was - one of those things I meant to research but never did - but if it allows 4+ GB file sizes and is compatible with Windows and OS X, then it sounds like a good solution. :)

[Janak Parekh]

OK, thanks. I honestly had no idea what exFAT was - one of those things I meant to research but never did - but if it allows 4+ GB file sizes and is compatible with Windows and OS X, then it sounds like a good solution. :) Well, it's very very recent -- like, Mac OS X added support for it about a month ago, so until recently, it wasn't that broadly supported. But now that it is, if you do need a large-file cross-platform solution, it's the way to go.

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

Well, it's very very recent -- like, Mac OS X added support for it about a month ago, so until recently, it wasn't that broadly supported. But now that it is, if you do need a large-file cross-platform solution, it's the way to go.

What I find interesting is that it's still a proprietary Microsoft standard, but Apple has licensed it - so it must be easier to license than NTFS, which is a good thing.

[Janak Parekh]

What I find interesting is that it's still a proprietary Microsoft standard, but Apple has licensed it - so it must be easier to license than NTFS, which is a good thing. Well, yes. FAT and its cousins are the formats Microsoft wants to license as interoperability formats for flash media. NTFS is part of its proprietary server technologies it'd much rather not see Linux & co. adopt, as it presumably sees it as a competitive advantage (and, presumably, to make migration to other platforms harder).

--janak

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Goodness Janak, when did you become such an Apple apologist? I particularly don't like the "get used to it" bit. I detest mouse acceleration. It's turned off on every single computer I use. OS X since 10.3 (I think) has it on by default, has it fairly steep, and because some numbnut at Apple decided to tie it in with the mouse speed setting, it gets WORSE when I up the speed (I like my mice fast). When I had to use it, thanks to some classmates, it was downright irritating and unusable.

Thankfully in the years since there are ways to switch it off or change the behaviour thanks to 3rd party programs and hacks. If people were like you saying "get used to it", I think these useful utilities just won't exist.

[Janak Parekh]

Goodness Janak, when did you become such an Apple apologist? I particularly don't like the "get used to it" bit. Where did I insist you get used to it? I said it's a matter of "being used to [something]." That's actually quite a different statement. I hated the OS X model at first, but I am used to it now and find the Windows acceleration model irritating.

I detest mouse acceleration. It's turned off on every single computer I use. Well, you didn't elaborate that on the previous post, ergo the misunderstanding (my assumption was that you prefer Windows mouse acceleration). In any case, there's a lot of mouse features OS X does not let you customize. It's unfortunate, but as you have discovered, you need third-party drivers to do so. I suspect you're a minority use case, as most people (myself included) use acceleration just fine. To each their own. :)

(But, yes, I do like OS X and Apple products. Call me an apologist if it makes you feel better. I also happen to not mind Vista, and sometimes like Windows 7, and Windows Phone, and Linux, and so on, but I find OS X to be the most useful for me right now. Though the mouse acceleration model on Linux does drive me nuts at the moment. ;))

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

Wow. That's quite a response Janak! :) I don't have the time to do a point by point rebuttal, so I'll just say a couple of brief things:

1) You said several times "That's YOUR opinion" - well of course it is. I don't pretend to speak for anyone else other than me. I acknowledge that some of my points were simply triggered by his points, so they were mostly about what I thought about my Mac experience and less about his.

2) I appreciate the correction on the things that I was clearly wrong about. I wrote that I may have been wrong about some of them, but I really didn't have time to test his every assertion.

3) In retrospect, I agree that this piece wasn't 50/50 legitimate...it was probably more like 90 crap/10 legit. ;)

[QUOTE=Janak Parekh;730830]Are people really that clueless? Especially an investigative journalist who does writing for a full-time living? I don't buy it.

Well, here's the thing: I looked at his other articles (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors), and basically none of them are about tech. So he's a journalist, yes, but he's not a tech journalist. I really do think he's that clueless - the words he uses ("booted up my bank account") are the kind of things you hear from people who really don't know what they're doing. So, yeah, I believe that he believes what he's saying makes sense.

You can dismiss him entirely, or you can admit that there are some things Apple can do - with their software, with their hardware, with their in-store experience - to make switching easier...even for the truly clueless people like this guy who don't like learning new computing platforms. :D

[Janak Parekh]

Wow. That's quite a response Janak! :) I don't have the time to do a point by point rebuttal, so I'll just say a couple of brief things: Ugh, sorry. I got entirely too worked up about it, and wish I had a blush emoticon right now.

You can dismiss him entirely, or you can admit that there are some things Apple can do - with their software, with their hardware, with their in-store experience - to make switching easier...even for the truly clueless people like this guy who don't like learning new computing platforms. :D Why can't I do both? :D

On a more serious note, I feel like articles like his weaken the case for "the troubles with switching." People are (somewhat rightfully) dismissive and overlook the fact that OS X does have some difficult aspects to it because his article makes invalid points. I guess I would not be so dismissive of him if he was a casual person conversing to me as opposed to a writer putting a pen to paper. Perhaps I expect too much of journalists nowadays (not meaning you, of course).

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

I guess I would not be so dismissive of him if he was a casual person conversing to me as opposed to a writer putting a pen to paper. Perhaps I expect too much of journalists nowadays (not meaning you, of course).

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'd guess though that when he submitted this to the editors at the Huffington Post, they clapped their hands together with GLEE and cackled "PRECIOUSSS PAGEVIEWS....PREEEEEEEECIOUS!!!" They knew this was link-bait and would blaze like a supernova across the Apple-focused sites.

But, FWIW, I really do think he was 100% serious. I deal with people this clueless fairly often. :o

[Tim Williamson]

His piece was a satire: http://www.joshuakors.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/returning-my-imac-2-reven_b_797091.html

He has some valid points though.

[Jason Dunn]

His piece was a satire:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/returning-my-imac-2-reven_b_797091.html

He has some valid points though.

Heh heh. Interesting stuff! I didn't think it was a satire - I've heard/seen people say things just as crazy/ignorant - but I guess that explains how it got published. The Huffington Post got what they wanted though...lots and lots of page views!