Luxury Computing

Commentary

So I bought a Mac in early December because my new job at Mozilla involves making cross-platform software for Macs, Windows, and Linux.

Intel-based Macs are pretty much the best choice for this at the moment—almost everyone at Mozilla uses one—because you can use OS X natively, and Windows and Linux through virtualization software like VMWare Fusion.

My opinion on the whole Macs vs. PCs debate could best be described as “complex”. Let’s not go into how much I want to punch the Mac guy in the face.

In a nutshell, though, I had always assumed that Macs were only marginally easier to use than PCs. I guess I’ve found over the past two months that in some ways, this holds true—the Mac is essentially an incredibly sexy-looking PC, with the same annoyances and a few polishes that make it a bit more humane to use. In other ways, however, the difference is truly like night and day.

This is a story about such a situation.

Today I decided, for various reasons, that I would like to plug my USB keyboard and mouse into the USB ports on the front of my PC. They were already plugged into the back of my PC and working fine from there, so this should have been a simple matter of plugging them out of the back ports and into the front ports. To say that doing this ended up being a bit more complicated than it ought to have been is a vast understatement.

For reference, my USB keyboard has a USB hub on it, to which my mouse is plugged in. So only the keyboard’s USB cable is plugged into the computer.

After unplugging the keyboard from the back of the PC and plugging it into the ports on the front, a dialog box similar to the one below appeared on my computer.

Except instead of saying “Linksys USB2.0 Network Adapter”, it said “USB Human Interface Device” (please assume this is the case for all the screenshots below, too).

The problem was, I couldn’t push the “Next” button, because the mouse and keyboard that Windows had apparently “found” weren’t yet installed. It was a catch-22: I had to use a mouse or keyboard to navigate a user interface that would allow me to use the keyboard and mouse that I just plugged in. So I ended up essentially unplugging my mouse from the keyboard and plugging it into the back of the computer. This allowed me to use the mouse to install my keyboard.

Wait, it gets better.

After clicking on the “Next” button, I was confronted with a dialog box like this:

I’ve always thought this warning was really funny, because I have never actually installed a piece of hardware on my computer that had passed Windows Logo testing. And I’m talking about hardware by top-tier manufacturers like Logitech and Linksys, whose packaging clearly has a Windows Logo on it. Anyways, I click “Continue Anyway”.

This brought up another window that looked like this:

Thanks, Windows. If I had a cookie, I’d give it to you.

Now the funny thing is that I am immediately accosted with another, all-new “Found New Hardware Wizard”—this time it has apparently found yet another “USB Human Interface Device”. Either my operating system has short-term memory loss or my keyboard has two USB Human Interface Devices in it (which is funny, because I always thought of it as being just a keyboard).

After going through the same three dialog boxes, the wizard appears yet again; this time it’s found a “HID-compliant device”, and I have to go through the same song and dance, after which I get yet another wizard for a “HID-compliant device”.

After all of this, Windows tells me that my new hardware is installed and ready to use. I then remove the mouse from the back of the computer and plug it into the keyboard again, and I have to go through the same four wizards.

Each wizard required 3 clicks to get through. I had to go through 8 wizards in all, so that’s a grand total of twenty-four clicks required to unplug my keyboard and mouse from one side of my computer and plug them into the other side. I’m not actually installing brand-new hardware here.

The first time I had to plug this keyboard and mouse into my Mac, I was floored. In the best-case scenario, I expected it to think for a second or two and then give me a reasonably unintrusive message informing me that I could use my USB mouse and keyboard. That would have been pretty humane.

But it did one better.

The Mac didn’t tell me anything, because my mouse and keyboard just worked the moment I plugged them in. When you plug in a power cable or a pair of headphones into a computer, you don’t get some kind of confirmation message from your operating system, because it’s obviously supposed to just work—why should plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse be any different?

So, like I said, this is one of those places where the usability of my Mac completely trumped and obliterated the usability of my PC. Perhaps Windows Vista is different in this regard—my PC still has XP on it—and if the case, then I’ll have to thank Microsoft for being so innovative and forward-thinking.

Sarcasm aside, though. I really hope I never turn into some sort of Mac zealot that would buy Steve Jobs’ poop in an off-white plastic case, but I have to admit that when it all adds up, I find my Mac to be significantly easier to use than my PC.

I’ll also concede that I find myself physically attracted to my computer in a way I never thought possible.

Im a windows user, and I never ever had a Mac, main reason, my job (windows application developer) but I think windows sucks on design of user interfaces.
That problem has happend to me, with some other devices. I plug, for example, a USB hard disk in the back USB ports, and then I try to make it work in the fron USB ports, and dont work.
I hate that!

I think that Microsoft as a company has a missing layer of people (interface designers) that should be empowered to slap people silly when they let cruft like that out of R&D. Someone just needs to be the gate keeper and keep sending stuff back until it comes out polished. Then people would learn.

Yep. My Ubuntu machine does the same. Alerts to congratulate you on managing to plug in a piece of hardware are pretty close to the most annoying thing ever…

Even though Macs do really have their own quirks many things on them are way more user friendly than in Windows. The thing is that like with many good interfaces you don’t notice the work computer does for you unless it forces you to do its homework.
P.S.: Try pairing bluetooth devices and see how it works :)

@ Craig

Microsoft has actually hired some good interface designers. The principle researcher at Microsoft Research, Bill Buxton, has done some pretty interesting stuff (see links below). The redesign of the Office interface was a result of this.

The major interface design obstacle w/ operating systems like Windows has more to do with their divided way of business. Applications are like walled-cities because this is how the businesses that create the applications work — non-cooperative.

Reference:
http://www.billbuxton.com/buxtonAliasVideos.html
http://www.billbuxton.com

Craig, you won’t believe this, but Microsoft has an excellent UxD team… Unfortunately, in many cases this is not obvious :(

I am willing to bet the issue was that you had never plugged anything into the front ports of the computer, so when you did windows magicly found that USB Hub, installed both ports. Then found the USB Hub in your keyboard and installed both ports. But by the time it was installing the keyboard ports it was no longer there so it removed the information (trying to be helpful) and found that nothing was using the front computer Hub so it removed that info as well, then when you plugged the keyboard back in it had the Front computer Hub initialized, but since it wasnt signed drivers decided to double check that you really wanted to use these drivers.

Which is a horrible way to do things.

I started out as a Mac man, my first computer was an Apple ][ gs, with the 19 meg hard drive. And I stayed only with Mac’s until 1996 when I got a Job doing PC repair and Mac repair (I had been doing Mac Only and had never touched win95), then I got a job at M$ repairing computers on the M$ campus, and switched to PC only since my Performa 5500 was slow and out of date and it cost too much to buy a new Mac compared to a PC. Now I wish I had a decent core duo Mac since I do cross platform development and it is a pain to have to send my code to a few Mac users for them to test before I push new code live.

I don’t know. I kind of like the way Windows constantly alerts me about all the things it’s overseeing for my benefit. It’s almost like having an older sibling to help me out when I have to manage complex tasks like plugging things into other things. Like a big sister. Or an older brother. Something like that.

Not that Apple is entirely innocent of irritating the crap out of me. Every time Quicktime sets itself to run on startup, I want to smash my iPod into Steve Jobs’s face and set fire to his turtleneck.

Heh, I totally agree that Apple products have historically been irritating on Windows—Quicktime does inexplicably set itself to do something on startup and install a useless tray icon, yet there’s no analogous menubar icon that’s around all the time on Macs. In other words, many of the annoyances of Apple software on Windows don’t exist on their Mac counterparts.

I think the poorness of Apple’s software on Windows is actually a big part of why I had assumed that there wasn’t much of a difference between Macs and PCs. On second thought, though, perhaps Apple was just trying to make Windows more of a living hell for people so they’d switch, or perhaps kill themselves in frustration (as one less Windows user still gives Apple more market share).

Your theory that Apple is trying to kill its competitor’s customers is intriguing. It would go a long way toward explaining why the latest iTunes update caused a needle to extend from beneath the Tab key and inject me with bird flu.

I’ve always wondered how Microsoft could produce less-than-perfect products. They’ve been hiring the top specialists for >10yrs. Their R&D budget is absolutely enormous. They put an insane amount of money into usability research. The list goes on.

Tthere simply MUST exist a lot of good ideas within Microsoft. So why don’t they surface, or, if they surface, why do they do so in a form that is clearly not what the creator intended?

Poor management? Ill-defined processes? Over-Regulation? Internal lobbyism and favoritism? I don’t have a clue.

I’m a Mac user, but I think the world of most computer users sure would be a better place if Microsoft wouldn’t squander creativity like that.

When I develop it’s all Microsoft .. so therefore I’ve never bought that Mac. Until one month ago. And I will probably never regret this.

The way the Mac makes things simple - is just so refreshing. Just before deciding to buy one or not .. I saw someone with a Macbook plugging in a secondary monitor and selecting how to use it in such an easy way.

I’m still using XP (via Parallels) when developing. And I’m still searching for an editor that can beat VS2005 when it comes to intellisence on xhtml, css or all xml related stuff.

So I’m stuck with both.

Btw … where’s your Mac versions of your software???

Kindly,

Jesper

@ Andreas

There are likely lots of amazing ideas at Microsoft Research, but likely fail because they don’t have the resources to be able to execute them.

Nice one.
But I hope you’ll never feel my pain of having a USB 1.1 connector for like 5 or 6 years and being told EACH TIME you connect something to it that “Your device can perform better”.
It really helps me! Thank you, Microsoft, for this one! I promise I’ll do better next time!

Last time I plugged something in the front USBs on my pc, apart from the dialogs you had, my PCI bus began to behave strangely. It took me four days to sort it out: plugging a webcam on a usb port made my soundcard invisible to windows. wtf.
Thanks God I can use only macs now :)

I *can* tell one thing though, that Vista has a LOT more polish to it than XP; which is the reason I use it over XP. And from what billy was saying, MS decided to start paying attention to UI and UE nowadays which is good news.

The only place where the polish lacks (and sorely) is UAC…. At some places (like every installer wanting to install multi-user) is fault of the program, But some are just plain annoying (why do i need admin priviledges to re-try my backup?). Enso never needed UAC due to single-user installations, I thank thee for that :D

I am baffled on how UAC ever made it out as a product. When granny sits down to use the computer, why does Microsoft think she knows best as to whether a task should be allowed to continue? Aren’t the security experts as Microsoft better equipped at making these decisions? Isn’t that their job?

Also, UAC and the Windows Logo “Continue Anyway” dialog are like the boy who cried “wolf.” Microsoft seems to be conditioning its users: “If you want to get anything done, desensitize yourself from security warnings and always click OK.”

Actually UAC is one of the main reasons unix OS’s are so *secure*. It’s similiar to Sudo, just that there are TOO MANY THINGS that want admin permission. Some are fault of MS, some are of software manufacturers (MS himself tells how to bypass em and stuff..) You can guess I’m a vista supporter :P

After using PC/Windows for years, I switched to Mac about 4 years ago and never looked back. For months after, I kept having the ‘floored’ experience you describe, and realized slowly that I had escaped from a highly abusive relationship.

Not strictly out of malice towards the customer, either. I think it’s because the decision making around Windows, regardless of the legendary UI design talent I keep hearing about them having (but *something* always keeps their best work from getting out there - sure), is made by engineers for engineers. The engineer’s mindset is the only one that counts in Windows development when it comes time to say what’s in and what’s out. And that’s why I left - I got the message loud and clear from Windows - I’m not smart enough to use it.

Or I’m just not interested in endless tinkering to do my work. I’m interested in my work, photography, connecting with friends and family. I’m not interested in device drivers, though I don’t fault those who are. I need a computer that’s a tool that works for me, not the other way around, and that’s why I use a Mac.

I’m glad to read about your experience, and hope you’ll find many other great moments as you get to know that Mac way of doing things. If that sounds too much like Justin Long, I guess you can punch me in the mouth :)

>I’ll also concede that I find
>myself physically attracted
>to my computer in a way I
>never thought possible.

This is not what is meant by “USB Human Interface Device”.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. :)

@ Jesper Ordrup:
Give Textmate a whirl.

@ Atul Varma:
I’m glad you’ve seen the light.
I use a mac pro at school, and plan to purchase a Macbook Pro for myself soon.

I liked this post so much that I just quoted it on my blog. I plan to read several paragraphs aloud to my students the next time I’m waiting for the Windows computer in my classroom to recognize my flash drive.

There is no doubting the aesthetic sheen of almost all Apple products, nor that (sometimes) things run a little more smoothly on Macs than on Windows. However, I think one must point out the closed nature of Mac Os versus Windows - specifically with regard to the creation of new drivers. Windows is expected to support almost every device conceivable - from Dell Monitors to USB cup warmers. Apple, I believe, have much stricter control over both the software written for their platforms, and the hardware it supports. If Mac Os supported the myriad of sofware and devices that Windows does, I would consider making the switch. Until then I will stick with my Windows box!

I’m using Vista right now and I must say that it’s fairly good on every aspect but the UAC.

When I’m on Linux, I don’t use sudo either. I always have a root window open and switch to it when I need to do rooty things.