Be Excellent To Each Other

Well yes there is that, but in lieu of doing a rebuild, it's amazing how much better you can make a new Windows laptop by simply uninstalling anything and everything that isn't required for the thing to run properly.

Personally I'd prefer to rebuild, but a mass uninstall achieves most of the same effect.

I can't think of anything that OSX does that much better than Windows 7 that you'd compare the two as "wrestling" and "simple". Windows 7 is hardly difficult to use. I think you're massively overstating the difference.

My mother-in-law gets on fine with her Windows 7 laptop. She's 76 and has an aversion to computers so large it can be seen from space.

My father-in-law has mastered doing the monthly church magazine on it, even to the extent of taking it down to the church, connecting it up to the printer there and running of hundreds off copies of the magazine with the right collation settings and everything.

Aye, this is a load of pish. Simple tasks are simple; you click a mouse and web browser launches or Word opens or whatever. Trying to pretend that these kind of things are a "nightmare" is just bizarre.

Except when they go wrong, which is a lot of the time with Windows. Then it's infuriating. As you well know.

Yeah... No wait, bollocks!

I'm tired of this awful reputation Windows has. I haven't had a single problem with 7 in over two years. Yes, Macs are nice and OSX is lovely, but that doesn't mean you have to pretend Windows is worse than it is.

Again, your incredibly well-reasoned argument has convinced me.

No wait, bollocks.

The irony is strong in this one. What was your argument again? Spurious claims about it "going wrong"?

It's a shame I don't have a paraplegic grandma or a ditzy girlfriend to channel a Windows success story, but I can tell you with some certainty, as a daily user of Windows 7 since the "beta" thingy, fuck all has gone wrong, it's easy to use, and I like it.

I like OSX as well, don't get me wrong, but I just don't understand why most Mac users seem to exist in a world where Windows is unfathomably shit, unreliable and difficult to use. That's just rubbish.

Spurious claims of it going wrong are not required; you could do a simple search of the countless threads on here created by people with problems with Windows. It happens on a weekly basis.

Windows is so terrible, Apple can't even program a decent version of iTunes for it.

It's not even that, really. Windows 7 is a great OS, and I've used it quite successfully for a few years (I used Windows exclusively up until 18 months ago). It's the little things OSX has over Windows that just edge it into being a nicer experience. It doesn't seem like a lot at first, but when I tried going back, things grated enough to sour the package as a whole. It's a mixture of a software and hardware problem.

The hardware all feels like it's actually been considered and thought out, like every detail has been meticulously planned. The trackpad is large and its material affords enough friction to give feedback on touching something, but not enough to ever get in your way of using it for its purpose. The multi-touch gestures built into the OS make navigating a much smoother experience. Everything works out of the box without having to fuck around with drivers or third-party software. You don't get that when your hardware- and software-manufacturer are separate.

On the software side, there are loads of subtle little UI tricks everywhere making things a little more frictionless. The use of animations to provide feedback and context is important, and not just eye-candy. Then you've got your menu bar at the top, which is obeyed by all apps and provides a centralised, persistent way to access features and settings, instead of having different interfaces for every programme. Even just the way you install, manage and remove apps is a lot less hassle and easier to comprehend than Windows, where everything is generally just one single icon in the Applications folder.

Nothing is a ginormous difference, and certainly not enough to make Windows feel like a piece of useless shit. But the details add up into making Macs feel, overall, a much nicer experience. And that's before you touch third-party software, which overall seems to have attracted developers who care about the experience and take pride in the interfaces of the stuff they put out. It's not necessarily more sophisticated or more competent than their Windows counterparts, just like things have actually been considered instead of plonked into a grey box.

Who do I ask about gaining access to this hidden Windows sub-forum?

So basically, Macs are nice. We know that. So why (essentially) fabricate problems that Windows doesn't have? To make Macs seem even better? I just don't understand this obsession Mac users and Mac converts have with making Windows out to be fucking awful, when it's a perfectly competent - nay, a perfectly GOOD operating system.

Where did I do that?

You said "the simplest of tasks are a nightmare". That's just bollocks hyperbole.

Problems I have had with Windows: A zillion
Problems I have had with OS X: none

It's conclusive - might as well lock the thread.

Are you actually trying to contribute to Malabar's argument, or are you taking the piss, or a mixture of both? Because the mixture isn't working at all. It's just irritating.

She once tried to empty the recycle bin, ended up deleting it from the desktop, and didn't have a clue how to get it back (and why would she? It's far from obvious, and where the fuck else do you access it?). She asked me to clean her laptop up, because it had become slow (which shouldn't happen), and I found 10GB of stuff in the trash.

Is that still hyperbole?

Even trying to scroll is a fucking pain in the arse, either clicking a button and dragging the scrollbars down, or wrestling with the 1mm of trackpad space generally reserved for a dedicated scroll area.

It's the little things.

I am exaggerating, of course, but out of the last three Windows laptops I had (different manufacturers) only one ever worked properly for more than 18 months, so I've sworn off them for good.

A zillion times bitten, a zillion times and once shy.

I'm sorry, are we talking about shite laptops or fucking Windows?

As for deleting the Recycle Bin... What can I say? That's not an easy thing to do by accident...

So now we're shifting the blame to the hardware.

That's ok, it's still the same point, as OS X is designed to run on a very limited subset of hardware, which means it doesn't fucking crash all the time.

If you're comparing relatively cheap "PC World" laptops and Mac hardware, I can't say I'm surprised at your opinion. I was talking about Windows.

My last Windows laptop was a Dell XPS, but carry on talking complete bollocks as usual.

I'm not talking complete bollocks. You're the one saying "Windows is shit" when in fact you're talking about buying shite laptops. I'm not here to defend Dell's XPS range, I'm defending Windows.

Windows is so terrible it can't even run on laptops properly.

What actually went wrong with your XPS laptop? Too many porn sites?

It's in the right-click context menu, isn't it? Or you press the delete key on it I've done it before. And there's no such thing as a stupid user… only a poor UI.

Neither of those things. Tried them both as soon as you said your Mrs had deleted the recycle bin. The only way I know to "delete" the recycle bin is to go into the desktop icons settings and untick the box.

edit: There isn't even an option to remove the icon in the "properties" options in the context menu.

Maybe she put it inside itself and it caused my XPS to go boom.

Might have been changed in 7, then. This was in Vista. And I know 7 is miles better.

Luls. Windows 7 has been out for over two years - three, technically. You two have basically admitted that, despite saying "Windows is shit" (more or less), you were either talking about a past version of Windows, notorious for being "a bit shit" or you're talking about your problems with laptops.



I'm out of here! Football to watch!

I knew he'd find an excuse once he'd lost the argument!

WINNAH!

The rest of my complaints are applicable to 7; it was that one anecdote that applied only to Vista, seemingly. And having a version notorious for being shit is hardly helping your case.

Enjoy your football, you massive cunt

Football is shit and for wankers - he'll love it!

Yes, but Apple make hardware, Microsoft don't.

So windows is installed on any 3rd party hardware. That is the main differences.

I know. That was part of my point But it's as much a software as a hardware problem, if not more. It's difficult to go back and make major changes when you've started on rocky ground, though.

I must be luck and had no real problems with Win7. It just works

The laptops I have used it on have been quite high spec, and two home machines have been fine.

Crikey, go out and buy a lottery ticket before it's too late!

I haven't seen a Windows machine do a blue screen of death for about ten years.

I've seen a Mac beachball on Mountain Lion twice.

Plus you can't even maximise a window properly.

Apart from clicking the top-right hand corner of the window that maximises it properly?

I've seen about a zillion Windows blue screens in the last ten years.

Anecdotes are fun!

No, that's fullscreen.

and only came really recently.

I think Ange forgot to give Myp his Ritalin.

Or his kick up the arse.

Those aren't the same thing. Beachball is a wait state when the OS is unresponsive; the analogous situation on Windows is when you click stuff and nothing happens. It's a failed app, bit a failed OS. BSOD is a kernel fault that requires a reboot. The equivalent Mac screen is grey and says "please restart your computer" in a dozen languages.

Also, Windows versions since Vista (IIRC) don't, by default, BSOD anyway. They auto-reboot instead. So it's not surprising you haven't seen a BSOD in ten years.

Windows pisses me off on a daily basis, but then so does OSX.

In my experience, Windows is a bit more logical and does everything I could ever want, just some of it is utter shit at times, and at other times randomly fails.
OSX on the other hand generally works, but can be frustratingly illogical in how it works in some areas and misses functionality.

My iMac is the heavy lifter in the family and OSX is poor in memory management, it gets slower and slower after a month or so, until I give up and reboot. However my gaming PC is a Windows 7 box, and every so often it just gives up and I need to reboot after a random length of time. I'm not sure which I prefer...

Ironically, the best behaved computer in the house is the HTPC which is Windows XP. That "just works". I think I last rebooted it 6 months ago, and it gets used for a fair amount of time every day.

It amazes me how much effort Myp puts into winding WTB up and how much effort WTB puts into replying.

It's glorious, isn't it?

Please. Please. Please


Stop. Fucking. Polarising.

It makes me really want to flounce