Comments | susangc7: an apple, a kiss, a moment of sky

susangc7

an apple, a kiss, a moment of sky

Sep 26, 2006 10:13

The former head of the HCIL has a new blog, in which he documents his experience switching from Windows to Mac. Note that he describes himself as a power user, but he's also a Windows developer who has in the past been funded by Microsoft Research and has a picture of himself with Bill Gates up on his wall (not that this point negates his ( Read more... )

mac, hci, other research

Comments 9

mkincaid September 26 2006, 16:30:09 UTC

Seeing as I "switched" about three months ago and now have both a MacBook Pro and a PC at my desk, I'll have to have a look that the blog...

susangc7 September 27 2006, 01:02:07 UTC

Yeah, you should check it out, especially since you have a background in usability and a lot of knowledge of Windows. I never got into the guts of a Windows install and I've never bought a Windows box, though I've set a couple up for other people.

dlv78 September 26 2006, 19:20:04 UTC

DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVER!!!

Well, perhaps not. He sounds like a lot of people around here who are *very* into Linux. I'd never recommend switching to them because they'd hate it and go out of their way to find reasons to hate it. Power users are whiney bitches; they know every single feature and if you change anything they freak out. (You should hear me when I'm forced to use Windows. It makes every day into Talk like a Pirate Day. Only I'm swearing like a pirate)

susangc7 September 27 2006, 00:58:33 UTC

Yeah, I was surprised that he went out and bought a Mac, especially the brand-new, high-end one. Though I suppose he's not the sort of person who could settle for a Mac Mini. He's the sort of guy who'll see some neat feature on an email program and then write an Outlook plugin that does the same thing ( ... )

dlv78 September 27 2006, 14:24:16 UTC

Yeah, high end workstation is not a good first Mac. I've seen people have better luck with a laptop as their first machine.

Part of my problem is that whenever I need to use XP it's because I'm doing something out there like [trying to] setup an embedded compiler for QRIO or get data off a third party sensor platform via their ghetto software - things that would suck no matter what, but when coupled with Windows' foibles produce torrents of primal rage.

donutjay September 27 2006, 15:05:07 UTC

If you can figure out how to play this file on your mac, here's the direct link to the stream...

http://a1986.v87251.c8725.g.vc.akamaistream.net/7/1986/8725/v0001/msnent.download.akamai.com/8725/DBA90618/published/Video/Misc/High/VeronicaMars_WelcomeWagon.wmv

Thread 5

bogosort September 26 2006, 20:01:54 UTC

The figure that I remember hearing is that mouse and keyboard switching takes about .40 seconds or so, while that's not a lot of time, there's still a huge differential between that and just using the keyboard or just the mouse mouse.

susangc7 September 27 2006, 00:47:41 UTC

That does sound like a more reasonable number -- 2s just seems like a long time, though I'm willing to believe it if you have to find where to put your fingers on the keyboard by sight. And continually switching back and forth gets frustrating. I keep defining new and more obscure shortcuts in Excel; pretty soon, I'm not going to be able to use anybody else's copy, because I'll keep hitting "Ctrl-Option-Down Arrow" to sort columns and similarly weird things.

I still don't think I'm going to get in the habit of navigating Windows menus with Alt and the keyboard, though. I usually keep my left hand on the keyboard and my right on the mouse unless I'm typing huge swaths of text (or drinking coffee). I may have played a little too much Civilization as a child...