You have a razor sharp wit. Good for you! Sadly, you’re funny because what you say is all true. Perhaps your funniest remarks were your predictions about future Windows enhancements. Applications which spiral into view–Mac has that; check! Bouncy icons–Mac has that, too; double-check! More pretty, CPU-intensive animations–implemented with Vista to be more Mac-like; triple-check!

My reason for buying a Mac was to learn to support it in my new job in addition to PCs. I see I needn’t have worried that a Mac would be so simple that support would hardly be needed. Just the opposite. I’m now building additional job security–woohoo!

I think perhaps the best example of form over function on a Mac can be aptly demonstrated by their Time Machine backup program. The “Star Wars” interface is very pretty, but virtually useless. So whenever a user screws something up badly and needs to recover, where do they go? “Hello, this is tech-support. My name is John. How may I help you?”

I guess MacOSX is just another OS and has its pros and cons.

This is, sadly, true. And even more sadly, most complaints are related to the user interface, not the underlying operating system internal workings.

Apple relies heavily on visual and cosmetic appeal to attract new buyers, and they will tell you how their OS is the prettiest and coolest out there, when in actual fact it has the least ergonomic graphical user interface ever. It really makes me wonder: ‘WTF where you thinking when you designed your GUI??’

Windows has a much better GUI in terms of usability (e.g. resizing windows, maximizing that does something useful, per-window menu bar, and many other good stuff. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. However, OS vendors these days seem to devote most of their effort to making their products look pretty, but you cannot polish a turd.

In my opinion the main reason why clever people buy Apple is because they hope, in vain, for greener pastures, and the main reason why people with an average IQ buy Apple is because looks pretty. I guess Apple got that right, from a business perspective, as daft people far outnumber smart people.

Apple is using beauty to market its products. But I am yet to see an OS vendor use the following selling points:

• Small hard drive and memory footprints
• Lightning fast so you don’t have to wait: things happen instantly
• Visually simple yet elegant graphical user interface: fewer bugs and distractions.
• The most intuitive, flexible and user-friendly user interface on the market: window snap to other GUI elements, windows always-on top toggle, quick-launch menu that pops up under mouse on right-left click, etc, etc, etc (long wish list here)

Who wouldn’t want that?

I really can’t imagine what will be next in the Windows product line. Perhaps more pretty, CPU-intensive, animations? Applications that spiral into view? Bouncy icons? Or perhaps they will remove even more useful features that were already present in XP? Seriously, I don’t know, but some very big changes are going to happen in the next 20 years. The bottom line is I get the work done on Windows 7 just as well as I got it done on XP five years ago. Only the look and feel have changed

I still think what OS vendors should do is fulfil the four points I listed above. The problem is that if they do we will no longer need powerful computers anymore, putting hardware vendors out of business. In the long run this can backfire for OS vendors, because they cannot make money if nobody is making computers to run their OSs. Catch 22, also known as the Wintel alliance.

…and yes i know what im talking about im a computer programer

Sorry to point this out but “programmer” is spelt with two Ms. You surely work at Google! Computers are not only about editing photos and recording music. I happen to use my computer for recording music, and the software I use can run on both Mac and PC, yet I chose a PC (and I say this coming from a Mac). Even if Mac OS could be installed on a PC (which it can although it’s rather convoluted), I still wouldn’t bother with it now. Why? Because I have figured I can work much faster on my Windows machine than on my Mac. In fact, my system is tweaked to perfection and I can assure you I can work 20x faster than you on a Mac. Many of the tweaks are made possible by 3rd party apps but the point is these apps are not available for the Mac or Linux. All operating systems have weaknesses but on Windows I am able to overcome all of them by means of third party applications, and it may be a botch, but it works the way I want it to, so as far as I am concerned, Windows it is.

1. Mouse acceleration feels more natural (this one is my favourite)
2. Windows taskbar allows me to see what’s running at a glance, rather than a little dot under running apps, plus the name of running apps is shown on taskbar buttons.
3. Resize windows from any side or corner
4. Menus within active window better than single menu bar for multiple-display setups, plus I don’t need to give focus to a window to access its menus, I simple click the menu directly.
5. No need to give focus to a window or app in order to click a buttton (Mac: click window, then click button; Windows: click button directly)

That’s my two cents.