I don't like the single menu bar at the top, and having only one button on the mouse makes it much harder to do stuff. (For example it took quite a while to figure out how to do a disk check on a disk volume.)
I wouldn't buy an iPod as soon as I realized you can not edit anything on the iPod itself.
It seems to me apple increases usability by removing functionality. (I hear there is no copy/paste on the iPhone?) That's not a tradeoff I appreciate.
Yes, but may I suggest that your difficulties with using a Mac come from the fact that you are not familiar with the platform, rather than any inherent difficulty in using a Mac.
Case in point - you say: I don't like the single menu bar at the top, and having only one button on the mouse makes it much harder to do stuff. (For example it took quite a while to figure out how to do a disk check on a disk volume.)
and yet on a Mac, you don't right click or middle click a volume's icon to do a disk check. You use the Disk Utility application. I'd go as far as to say that a Disk Check is not a regular thing to do on any well-designed OS, so why would you stick it into a contextual menu for quick access.
I've been using Macs since they first came out, which means I was an early adopter for MacOSX. Since 10.2, I think I may have done one disk check - once in 5 years is hardly a justification for having the option in a contextual menu.
Another case in point: every Mac shipped in the last few years comes with either a mouse that has 4 buttons, or a trackpad that accepts a two-finger tap as representing a right click.
Yet another case in point: There have been many discussions on the one menu bar vs menu bar for each window debate. The best that we can say is that both approaches provide advantages. As someone that uses Gnome, Windows and MacOSX daily, I can honestly say that I don't even notice a difference between the different implementations.
Well, what else would you put on the context menu for a volume? And it's more common then that - pull the plug on a device without ejecting it first, and you'll want to check it.
There's more stuff that just doesn't work well for me, those two just happened to be things that I noticed earlier.
Here's another: I put my USB flash disk in, and it read and read and read (it worked fine yesterday). I have no idea where I would find status info on what it's doing.
On linux it's easy: dmesg. (Ok, not obvious, but easy.) On windows it at least makes an icon immediately, and then reads it. On the mac? No clue. There was no indication it even noticed it except the light on it flashed constantly.
Mac's just don't think like me. I fight with the interface whenever I use it. It tries to hide the internals of the computer to make it easier to use. But for me that doesn't work - I understand the computer and I want to see what's it's actually doing, not the sanitized version.
Another example: in list view if you double click on a name it tries to rename it. You have to click on the picture. But I don't like that - if I want to rename, I'll use the menu and pick it (or make it be triple click). But they can't do that - it has to be easy for people to figure out how to rename, but at the expense of being able to launch something by clicking on the name.
Even if I would get used to a mac I'd find zero benefits. I don't need easy to use, I need discoverability and verbosity. Give me every single option, and lots of text.
What else? Well, Open, Eject, Get Information, Copy, Rename and Format are things which I'm guessing get done more often than running a disk check, and hence may be more suitable as options on a contextual menu.
The Mac almost certainly has a command line tool that is the equivalent of dmesg (I don't know for sure, as I've never had any need, as I just use the graphical interface provided in Disk Utilities, but I'd be astounded if this wasn't the case. How is this done in BSD land?).
As for double clicking on the name in list, normally this launches the file (I've just checked on my Mac). If your system decides that you are trying to rename the file instead, there are two possibilities - you've moved the mouse between clicks, or you're clicking too slow for whatever the setting for double clicks is in mouse preferences.
Even if I would get used to a mac I'd find zero benefits. I don't need easy to use, I need discoverability and verbosity. Give me every single option, and lots of text.
Well, you're a tiny tiny minority that Apple just doesn't care about. Most people don't want verbosity, it annoys them. They don't want lots of options that they don't understand, it stresses them out. Outside of this majority are the power users, who can write scripts and apps to fill in any blanks on their system that they feel that Apple has missed. And then there are people like you - people that know another system, and think that the Mac should act just like it. That will never happen. All of those options that you know from the Linux/Windows world confuse the majority of users. Apple understands this, which is why their market share has been going through the roof in recent years. If you miss them, you have two choices: become a Mac power user (if you know Linux, it won't be such a stretch, all your fave tools are there, from ipconfig and tcpdump, through to bash, perl, ruby and python), or accept that the Mac is not for you, and can never be for you without Apple comprising their main market.
"The best that we can say is that both approaches provide advantages."
The best we can say is that Fitts's Law says that the one menu bar approach is better, and I do not know of any UI research or design principles at all favoring the one-menu-bar-per-window approach.
"Fitts' law (properly, but rarely, spelled "Fitts's Law") dictates the Macintosh pull-down menu acquisition should be approximately five times faster than Windows menu acquisition, and this is proven out."
It's an oversimplification to say the the four corners of the screen are the fastest targets to point at. According to Fitts' Law, the time to point to a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In some cases that may be the corners of the screen (because they effectively have an infinite target size). But if the corners are very far away (as can be the case on large screens), then other nearby targets can be faster to acquire.
So, on a small screen, the Mac approach might be faster. On a large screen where the window size is a smaller fraction of the display size, the Windows approach might be faster.
But Fitts' law doesn't tell the whole story -- there's more to consider than just the raw target acquisition speed. What about the time you spend figuring out where the target is? That's probably lower with a single menu bar, because it's always in the same place no matter where the window is. But if the application has lots of controls in the toolbar, you might find that people instinctively start moving towards the toolbar first, before realizing that the command they need is actually in the menu bar. On Windows, it's a slight correction to start heading for the menu bar; on OS X, it might be a completely new movement.
A better example of how the multiple menu bar approach might be better: on a large monitor, when I have several non-overlapping windows, I sometimes head to the menu bar, only to realize that the wrong application is active. So I have to move the mouse again, select the correct window, then go back to the menu bar to make my selection. With multiple menu bars, this problem doesn't occur.
You're forgetting that first you have to make the right application active. And the only way to tell which application is active is the slight brightness.
And even worse the applications have no titles, so you have to be able to recognize the application you want by the shape of the window instead of it's name.
And that's why I don't like the unified bar.
With multiple bars you can directly click on the action you want, even if the app is not active.
And it's easy to tell what application it is because it's titled.
Plus it's impossible to use focus on mouse (i.e. move the mouse over an app and it's active, but doesn't move to the front) with a single bar. And I find focus on mouse increases productivity quite a bit.
And even fitts law isn't right, because the mouse will often be in the window you are working on, but to get to the bar you have to move all the way to the top, do it, then come back to where you were. With separate bars the distance is quite less.
And also how there are fewer and fewer killer desktop applications out there - doesn't matter what OS you have when everything new and exciting is on the web, so you may as well choose the one that gives you the nicest experience.
After I dumped Windows, moved to Linux and especially after bought a Mac I actually started enjoying installing and exploring new (to me) software. I can honestly say that these programs changed the way I work or even think about something: ssh, gvim, quicksilver and (oh yes) multi-touch on the latest MBP.
So far there is only one online application I use: gmail (dumped POP3 clients long ago) and it isn't particularly exciting.
Everything else is the same old online stuff: ever-changing flavors of news reading, talking to people, humor, etc. Just like it was last year, just like it had always been. Always, even before Internet, when I was on FIDO.
Apple makes computers fun again: there is a lot of cool stuff to play with. Do you realize that while everyone is drooling over little piece of online advertisement money, Apple is actually milking the desktop? Sometimes I wish PG didn't do Viaweb, but rather did something in consumer software space, YC'd been much more interesting.
Some of those are Web 1.0, but all the same, I can't think of any home runs for the mainstream audience since the late '90s that have been desktop software. In fact, the last one I can think of is instant messaging clients, which are now moving onto the web.
Your "same old online stuff" is the main thing people are thinking of when people say "I'm buying a computer to surf the web".
Web applications are certainly important but especially on the Mac there is a nice collection of well designed applications that people actually pay for.
