Re: [OT] My mini experience

[Don McAllister <donmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 4 May 2005, at 13:42, lists@xxxxxxx wrote:
> The traffic lights are a perfect example of this - any other OS
> tends to
> have an "X" type close button and other vaguely recognisable
shapes
> for
> maximise/minimise.
> The mac does not.
> It has a red traffic light which, yes, you could guess means
"stop",
> except it doesn't actually stop the application,

But the difference here is that with mac OS X you don't really need
to stop the application in most instances - the OS is good enough at
memory management to just park the app if you're not using it and
uses the red button to do this. This means that if you restart the
app it reappears really quickly as it was never fully closed down.
There are some memory heavy apps that are exceptions to this where
the application developer has decided that it's more efficient to
fully close down the app when the red button is pressed (iPhoto
springs to mind). Really it's taking away the memory management away
from the user and leaving it with the OS - If you're used to managing
your own windows environment, this takes a bit of getting used to.
When I 1st got the mini I was dilligently closing down apps using the
right click quit action, but to be honest I've since dicovered that
it really doesn't impact performance at all so I leave it up to mac
OS X to management this for me.

> but amber and green bear
> no relationship to "minimise" and "resize in some odd
way" that is
> their
> actual function in life....

Amber does minimise all apps as far as I'm aware and is consistent.

The green button we've already covered
>
> And yes, things like the genie effect look "cool", but
ATEOTD, I'm
> there
> to USE my machine, not sit back admiring the "cool" UI - and
that
> goes for
> this slowdown feature too where you can get things to happen more
> slowly
> to admire the effects....

Yes but you can switch off the Genie effect and most other flashy
effects (Dock magnification for instance) if you find this a slowdown
or distracting. Same as you can switch off some of the eye candy in
XP to increase performance.

>
> I do LIKE the mini but I don't think I could make a wholesale
> switch to it...

Fairy nuff!

I'm happy (more than happy) with most things mac except I'm still
undecided about the finder. I still find the Windows explorer easier
to use but I'm persevering. I've picked up a 3rd party app called
Path Finder (http://www.cocoatech.com/) which
offers a more explorer
like interface for mac os x but I haven't really put it through its
paces yet.

Don

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