[gui-talk] question about the Mac

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Ray Foret Jr wrote:
> What about finding things on the Mac screen?  From what I hear, the screen 
> on a Mac is laid out in a very hap hazard sort of way so that in order to 
> find this and that, you have to spend much of your time arrowing up and down 
> left and right until you finally find what you're looking for.  The Mac, it 
> seems, was designed for sighties who just like to point and click their 
> mouses at things they see on the screen;

Both Mac OS X and Windows were primarily "designed for sighties who just 
like to point and click". But arranging things in a logical, consistent 
fashion is good for sighted and blind alike. I think it would be very 
difficult to demonstrate that Mac OS X is more "haphazard" than Windows 
as either a visual or an aural experience. But it's hard to form an 
objective judgement either way, because if you use a Windows system for 
years you become habituated to its quirks and vice versa if you use a 
Mac system for years. I work as a web developer and use four different 
operating systems every day (Mac OS X, Windows XP, BSD, and Linux). They 
are all have their idiosyncrasies. Having said that, while there is 
plenty to confuse users moving from one system to another, there is a 
lot more in common between the different interfaces than the more 
extreme fanboyism might suggest.

I think the unique selling point of of a Mac right now is that you get a 
machine where you can run multiple popular operating systems (Mac OS X, 
Windows, BSD, Linux), either dual-booted or running under your Mac OS X 
in a virtual machine. That way you can get the best of all worlds. 
Another important advantage is that Mac OS X brings together the fruits 
of two development communities: *nix developers and Mac developers. That 
means there is a vast array of software at your disposal. And anything 
that can only be run in Windows can always be run in a Windows virtual 
machine.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis