daver's Profile

  • Aug 16, 2006
  • 13
  • 0

Latest comments made by: daver

  • Actually, ya know what, I don't want new features, I want refinement of existing features. I want a working office suite. They had one a long time ago called Appleworks, then Clarisworks, then Appleworks. Then they just let it die. Why? Now it's taking forever to get a productivity suite back. And I want improvements to iCal, Mail, Address Book, and Backup. (OK, Time Machine sounds promising, I hope it lives up to the hype.) And I want interface refinement. When is the new improved Finder coming out? I can see the appeal in Apple's strategy of trying to do a little of everything (photog, video, music), but at the same time it seems they're neglecting the basics, consistency in the GUI, for example. The Mac does a lot of things very well, but if they're not careful it can end up like Windows, a bloat of confusing, inconsistent features.
    daver had this to say on Aug 16, 2006 Posts: 13
    Do You Want Fries with that OS X?
  • Shameless Plug: I like my own widget, it has a bunch of handy searches built in to it: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/search/jackofallwidgets.html
    daver had this to say on May 31, 2006 Posts: 13
    The 9 Best Widgets
  • I've seen this before, people who were taught on Windows preferring Windows. Hopefully we'll see that as more and more people are exposed to both simultaneously, they'll tend to prefer Macs.
    daver had this to say on Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 13
    Boot Camp: Apple's Insanely Bad Idea
  • Basically it boils down to this: Apple is finally pitting OS X head to head with Windows, and may the better OS win (no pun intended!). This could be a disaster move, if Windows turns out to be the better OS, but if more people prefer OSX, then it will be a stroke of genius. Only hindsight will tell. My money is on OS X.
    daver had this to say on Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 13
    Boot Camp: Apple's Insanely Bad Idea
  • Dude, you are soooooooooo wrong, and I'll tell you why. Solitaire 'til Dawn is waaaay more polished than Freecell. :-p
    daver had this to say on Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 13
    Boot Camp: Apple's Insanely Bad Idea
  • It is simply a waste of money. Oh Brother. FUD! How is it a waste of money?! It is a very fast machine, much faster than current machines (apparently the dual core 2.3 is even faster than the dual proc 2.5!) It is here *now*, the Intel Macs are not. Well, ok, the high end is available in about a month. Maybe the Intels will be a lot faster, but they'll have to be pretty [email protected]#N! fast to make up for the head start the Quad has on them. (I can buy a Quad in a month and have it crunching my numbers for, oh, at least a year (?) before the Intel Mac can even get started.) You know, I keep on getting sucked into these AppleMatters articles by the inflammatory headline, and when I get there, realize the actual article doesn't have any new or interesting ideas, it's just the same old meaningless argument: Computer X is no good now, because computer Y will be better later. Ok, you've convinced me, I will never buy another computer again. It's a waste of money, because something better is bound to come along next year.
    daver had this to say on Oct 21, 2005 Posts: 13
    Don't Buy A Quad G5
  • It gives me too many spinning beachballs. Yep yep yep! I am a memory hog, too, lots of open windows/tabs, and I frequently find that Safari bogs waaaaay down. Sometimes I suspect that it's trying to keep up with all the activity on all open pages (animated gifs and such), even if the page is not currently visible. Just a guess. In any case, yes, perhaps there are a number of fixes, cleaning out caches and such, but really, these ought to be done behind the scenes, the user shouldn't have to do a bunch of housekeeping all the time to keep Safari running well. I like these ideas, too: Remembering open pages on restart Draggable tabs List all open pages on the Window menu maybe list them in a hierarchy, like: .Window1 . Tab1 . Tab2 . Tab3 .Window2 . Tab1 . Tab2 ...
    daver had this to say on Oct 05, 2005 Posts: 13
    Is it time to ditch Safari?
  • Even more irritating is a web site that ... has the audacity to *refresh* the page, obliterating the long, reasoned, well-thought out post you just created. Hear, hear. Perhaps the website shouldn't offer surfers a box to put comments in until **after** they've logged in! Basically the way it is now, the box is completely useless before you've logged in, because the website isn't smart enough to take you back to your original spot after you login.
    daver had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 13
    What OS X Could Learn From Windows
  • "Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs." No, no, NO! That's one of the features I hate the *most* about Windows. When I want to save a new file I often want to name it the same as another file of a different type. But I can't see any other types! Plus, it creates the illusion that there aren't any other files in the folder. People will say "Hey, where's my file?!" A better solution (which is what OSX already does) is to grey out non-relevant file types. As for the problem of clutter, see below: "I don’t want to see all my iMovie, Excel, iDVD etc files." Dude, haven't you ever heard of subfolders? You don't just throw all your docs into one gigantic folder.
    daver had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 13
    What OS X Could Learn From Windows
  • On the third hand, I use dashboard and spotlight all the time, expose occasionally, and the only time I tried to use automator it didn't have the built in action I needed so I gave up (for the time being). One man's bloat is another man's bread and butter. (Although, sometimes bread and butter makes me pretty bloated... har har ;) I like the new Tiger features, but at some point I hope Apple stops piling on the new features and starts refining what's already there. I have a long list of little things I want fixed with the OS in existing programs like iCal and Mail, and I know lots of people have long lists of their own. In the long run I think it's this refinement that will win people over to Mac, not the suckiness of Windows. If it was the suckiness of Windows people would have left in droves already.
    daver had this to say on Jul 07, 2005 Posts: 13
    Will Longhorn Suck Enough to Cause Mass Mac Migration?
  • Actually, I think bookmarks could be quite useful, if the feature actually worked right. I don't think it's ever synced correctly for me. It gets some of the bookmarks, but never all of them.
    daver had this to say on Jun 24, 2005 Posts: 13
    What's Wrong With .Mac and How to Fix It
  • Graphs are good, I like pretty pictures! But even with graphs and such, to *really* prove your point that iPod sales has no effect on Mac sales you need a well designed empirical analysis controlling for everything possible, and prob. using sophisticated regression analysis or some other statistical analysis techniques. Until then, you can throw all the numbers and pictures around you want and it still won't eliminate possible alternative explanations for the apparent lack of effect.
    daver had this to say on Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 13
    Busting the myth of the iPod Halo Effect
  • The reasoning in this article starts off strong, (iPod isn't necessarily the reason behind rising Mac sales, and it's specious reasoning to say that correlation implies causation), but then the article does a 180 and crashes in flames as it then tries to do what it just demonstrated is fallacious. Just as suggesting that the iPod *is* the reason behind rising sales because you noticed a correlation is a logical fallacy, so is claiming that it is *not* the reason because you noticed the lack of a correlation. You came up with a nice plausible argument: past behavior doesn't show a correlation between the two, so the current correlation must be spurious, but I can think of a simple countertheory: a lag effect. It took a while for the "Halo Effect" to ramp up. Isn't it only relatively recently (last year or so?) that iPod sales really started to explode? And how often do people upgrade their computers? I'm sure most don't upgrade every year, or even 2 years. Maybe 3, 4, 5 years? A Halo Effect could easily take 5+ years to really show itself. I like the inital thrust of the article, but it ends up commiting the same mistake it's observing in others. Really the only way we will ever know what's going on is with some good, long term, empirical data. I personally have no opinion either way, I think the iPod probably helps, but it isn't sufficient, Apple must also make good computers that appeal to people.
    daver had this to say on Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 13
    Busting the myth of the iPod Halo Effect