There’s a lot of talk on the Web about the upcoming new version of Windows known as Vista (which is only a few years late). It’s also been noted that Windows’ new interface, « Aero » is a total rip-off of Mac OS X’s interface « Aqua » (See a detailed comparison here or a few screenshots here.). Which is fine with me. Apple has always been Microsofts’ R&D department. Good for Windows users.
While look & feel is important, and while Windows XP’s UI is butt-ugly and Apple’s Tiger UI has its own set of problems and inconsistencies, the real difference between the two OS’s, which I both use every day, lies in small details that make all the difference in terms of workflow.
I could probably write a 500 page book on the subject, but for now, I may use sknoblog to occasionally rant about this subject. I should also say that I have no idea if the issues I’ll spout off about are fixed or not in Vista.
So here are a couple of simple, tiny things to start things off:
Text cursor roulette
Select a word or a phrase that you want to edit, say a file name in a Save dialog box, in the Finder/Explorer, etc.
On the Mac, if I press the left arrow key, the text insertion point appears at the beginning of the previously selected text. If I press the right arrow key, the insertion point appears at the end of the selected text. So if I want to prefix my file name, I hit the left arrow and type away. You get the idea.
On Windows? Well, it depends. Sometimes the behavior is the same as on the Mac, but sometimes, no matter which key you press, the insertion point appears at the end of the selection. So if you wanted to type a prefix, and you’re used to the Mac, you hit the left arrow key, type your prefix, look up, and there is your prefix, added as a suffix.
So much for muscle memory.
Refreshing
Let’s say you have a lot of files in a folder. Said folder is open in the Finder/Explorer, files are displayed alphabetically, and you’ve scrolled to the bottom of the window. You switch to a program (say Word) and save a new file, « Vista.doc, » into that folder (there’s a lot to be said about open/save dialog box behavior, but I’ll spare you for now). You now want to grab that file in the Finder/Explorer to move it, copy it, send it, trash it, whatever.
On the Mac, the new file just appears in your Finder window when you save it. So you can just grab it and do your thing.
In Windows, the file doesn’t appear. You first have to manually refresh the contents of the Window (hit F5). Windows refreshes the content of the Window, but in doing so, it scrolls the content of the window back to the top! So you now have to scroll down until you finally see the « Vista.doc » file.
It drives me CRAZY!
Aah, I feel better now. Thanks for listening.