What separates a Mac from a PC?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

The reason they're largely being ignored is because they're nonsensical. Your argument boils down to "I like it, it's fine for me" -- which is fine. My problem is you're trying to argue pseudo-scientifically to enforce your position, and you're talking out of your ass and throwing impressive sounding words like Fitts' law and bragging about how intelligent your roommate is (but refuse to put him in touch with me).

Not really, the argument has mainly been over whether or not the dock can do certain things. You accused it of not being able to do things it clearly can do and does. That's not especially technical - it's just pointing out features.

Neither is claiming that looking at an icon in the dock is sufficient to tell you that it's running a high tech matter. Of course it's fine for normal people, but you seem to think this is confusing. If it were I'm sure that Drake and I would be confused, but we aren't. So your point is essentially stupid.

And are you insane? Why would I want to annoy my roommate by foisting you on him? He's got better things to do than get involved in tiresome exchanges with wannabes. And so have I....

You're out of your league. Tell me you like it because you think it's nifty and then I'll say "fine".

Blah blah blah..... I told you why I like it - I find it easier to use. I find Windows a pain, no matter what I do with it.

And as our friend over at xvsxp.com points out it is a matter of controversy as to whether X needs a seperate defragmenter.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Not really, the argument has mainly been over whether or not the dock can do certain things. You accused it of not being able to do things it clearly can do and does. That's not especially technical - it's just pointing out features.

Most of the stuff where you explained it could do something didn't address what I proposed, or it did but required "only a few more clicks".

Of course it's fine for normal people, but you seem to think this is confusing. If it were I'm sure that Drake and I would be confused, but we aren't. So your point is essentially stupid.

I've shot this strawman down at least half a dozen times in this thread, why do you keep bringing it up?

I'm saying it's not as straight forward, and more limiting, to do it like Apple did, mixing unlaunched & launched programs randomly. It makes more logical sense, it makes more functional sense, to have a division between what's running and what's not.

And are you insane?

Of course, why did you have to ask?

Why would I want to annoy my roommate by foisting you on him? He's got better things to do than get involved in tiresome exchanges with wannabes. And so have I....

Tell me, do you have tea with this roommate? Does he tell you to burn things?

Blah blah blah..... I told you why I like it - I find it easier to use. I find Windows a pain, no matter what I do with it.

Does this relate to my comment about Apple having to dumb down OS X, while Windows lets you do more? Is that why it's a pain?

And as our friend over at xvsxp.com points out it is a matter of controversy as to whether X needs a seperate defragmenter.

It's only a matter of controversy because technically it doesn't need one, it just needs one to stay fast after lots of disk activity. So you'll get the Apple zealots saying "Nope, it doesn't need one!" while the people who actually understand what disk defragmentation is and what causes it will tell you "Yes, it needs one!"

[MRT144]

Asher, champion of the world!

[Zero]

Originally posted by Asher

It's only a matter of controversy because technically it doesn't need one, it just needs one to stay fast after lots of disk activity. So you'll get the Apple zealots saying "Nope, it doesn't need one!" while the people who actually understand what disk defragmentation is and what causes it will tell you "Yes, it needs one!"

Maybe you should try explaining to him just what happens when data is fragmented.

EDIT: Actually, I will cause I have nothing else better to do than to play cards and lose money all night. Most Simply put:

You're hard drive stores things. And when you delete crap, you leave segments of free spaces avaialable. (because you dont always delete the data thats stored the latest).

So for example lets say you're HD looks like this.

11222222333445566777899

each number representing a data and digits representing certain amount of space. If you wanna store 6 digit worth of 0s in this full hard drive, you'll have to delete 6 digit worth of it (obviously) Now deleting 2s will let you do that no problem. But if you delete 1s, 4s and 9s, the the 0s will be fragmented. This causes slowup cause your hard drive has to actively go search for bits and pieces of data.

Imagine that you dont have a space for a furniture at your house, so you shred it up and store it little by little cramming it whereever you can. If you use the computer long enough, eventually disk spaces get ridiculously fragmentted that it does not run so smoothly. Think about many different furnitures shredded and you're searching for one type of furniture in a pile of mess.... Its a nightmare unless you defrag, something you do to relocate data so that everything is nicely arranged basically.

Not only that fragmentted data is wasteful because it has all sorts of needless datas instructing the computer to locate where fragmented datas are. Think about having a book right next to the piece of furniture that takes up space in the house directing you where the next matching piece is.

[MRT144]

Calc, that would make agathons head explode.

[Zero]

Originally posted by MRT144
Calc, that would make agathons head explode.

actually i think i did a rather good job at explaining it simply.

[MRT144]

that was pre edit

[Zero]

well darn it, look s like asher and agathon signed off.

Lets give this war torn thread a rest and let it sink. Its almost reaching 500 too.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Calc II
well darn it, look s like asher and agathon signed off.

No I got bored with Asher's anti contextual "refutations" and started to watch a hockey game.

I know very well what a defragmenter does, after all I used to use Windows. When I say that OS X requires no defragmenter it is not a case of Apple zealots irrationally saying it doesn't need one. The system runs daily and weekly cleanups on its own - I don't know whether this includes defragmentation or not, but my system has never been defragged and doesn't seem to have become sluggish or slow. It's a reasonable assumption to make that if it was causing major problems there would have been a hue and cry for an OS X defragger (esp from pro multimedia users), but there hasn't been - so make of that what you will.

*edit* it looks like I was right. The system does it's own cleanup.

If you can get past Asher's hooting and cawing at points taken out of context those are the facts. What to make of it I don't know.

And I discovered that you can in fact run the same program twice in OS X by using the terminal. I assume if people wanted to do it that badly some haxie would have been created to enable this thru the Finder.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MRT144
Calc, that would make agathons head explode.

Hardly. What would is if Asher stopped being childish and admitted he was wrong about what X can do.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
No I got bored with Asher's anti contextual "refutations" and started to watch a hockey game.

"anti contextual"



A real pretentious tw4t would have known to hyphenate that.

I know very well what a defragmenter does, after all I used to use Windows.

Ah, so you had an OS with software engineers bright enough to code a defragmenter.

When I say that OS X requires no defragmenter it is not a case of Apple zealots irrationally saying it doesn't need one.

It sure as hell does -- Apple doesn't have a defragmenter. They don't have an app for it, and they don't go and "clean up" in the background. It's just now how a defragmenter works.

It's a reasonable assumption to make that if it was causing major problems there would have been a hue and cry for an OS X defragger (esp from pro multimedia users), but there hasn't been - so make of that what you will.

There's not a big hue and cry for an OS X defragger, because if Apple users gave a damn about performance, they'd be using a PC.

The people who use Apple use it because they like Apple's style, they like the simplicity of the GUI permitting things like only one instance of an application at once, and only having one menu bar on the screen.

The last thing on their mind is if they need a defragmenter, or why they don't have one. And to be frank, a lot of them just don't want to admit that there are lots of things missing from OS X.

And I discovered that you can in fact run the same program twice in OS X by using the terminal. I assume if people wanted to do it that badly some haxie would have been created to enable this thru the Finder.

But how would you keep track of it if the dock is castrated so as to only put one icon on the dock per program?

That's what we call a kludge.

And besides: "Running two instances of a program????? that is teh sux!!!"

Hardly. What would is if Asher stopped being childish and admitted he was wrong about what X can do.

I'm not wrong, you just consciously or subconsciously redefine what I ask it can do, then say "Yeah it can do that!".

[Zero]

and after a short break, the thread reheats up.

anyway Agathon, I really dont know if Mac doesnt have Defrag or not, Im not here to take sides, but Asher did say there was no defrag capability in OS X and if what he says is true than its problematic.

It is possible to have everything run smoothly without defragging. Problem with Windows 98 makes you unable to defrag unless you shut down almost everything, which mean defrag starting up while you're comupter is on during nights or when you're away is useless (it keeps defragging the first 1%) So in my old computer I defragged a total of twice while I used it (first one withing a month of use and last one within 1 year and afterwards I just said **** it) Without defragging, everything still did run smoothly. However, defragging does improve performance. I just didnt notice it cause my computer was a decent perfoming one that ran everything smoothly to begin with.

[Zero]

which reminds me... I have some defragging to do. I ran up an analysis and its pretty fragged up.

-----

Volume (C
Volume size = 37.22 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 33.40 GB
Free space = 3.82 GB
Percent free space = 10 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 21 %
File fragmentation = 40 %
Free space fragmentation = 3 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 73,382
Average file size = 576 KB
Total fragmented files = 8,041
Total excess fragments = 72,610
Average fragments per file = 1.98

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 203 MB
Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 3,738
Fragmented folders = 229
Excess folder fragments = 1,856

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 85 MB
MFT record count = 77,499
Percent MFT in use = 88 %
Total MFT fragments = 7

------

XP is great, I dont remeber if 2000 did this, but it reports specifically which files are fragmented. I obviously took that reports out. There are some filenames with personal info and of course there are porno filenames as well

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by Asher
It's the little things that make Windows more enjoyable for me, like GUI responsiveness:

Now that is something that annoys me about MacOS, and always has. A bunch of people in the department group-bought 17" Powerbooks, and even on those, the )%& scroll handle doesn't follow the mouse correctly.

At least there isn't a huge delay between pressing keys and letters showing up on screen anymore.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
And efficiency in general (file deletion):

You can't beat a CLI that supports regular expression for efficiency. Who needs thousands of clicks?