Respect and Disappointment

[Stephen Kellett]

So yes,
Macs come with a one button mouse, here's your fact.

Thank you. You were denying this yesterday. Who is spreading FUD?

To open a context menu with a one button mouse you need to two hands
(one on the mouse, one to press the key on the keyboard that makes the
context menu work, wow, thats good UI design), with a two button mouse
you need one finger.

Not white (fully opensource), but also *very* far from being black, as
your "fact" would suggest.

No. I can't get Mac OS X from another vendor, like I could say Red Hat
(albeit with another name, recently sued by Red Hat to remove Red Hat's
name from their practically identical distro).

Apple's hardware is so proprietary and opaque, how is it possible that
you can run and install half a dozen Linux distros and/or BSD variants
on it ?

I never said anything about opaque. If I want to run Mac OS X on a
different brand G5 board I can't (I base this on the decision that Linus
purchased a Mac then reformatted it to use Linux - why pay the Apple tax
if you don't have to?). That keeps the prices for the hardware higher
than it needs to be. Intel (when it dominated the x86 arena completely)
claimed it didn't keep the prices high. Funny that as soon as AMD made
any significant inroads, prices fell dramatically.

If I want to run Linux/Windows I can choose any number of hardware
platforms, for many different chip types and chipsets.

The x86 platform is so open that Intel has various competitors including
one that has recently taken the lead in the 64 bit x86 arena.

got enough insults by email after this (you know who you are) to at

Funny, I haven't had one complaint. Anyway, thanks for answering my
points and actually proving the point I was making was correct. I won't
bother any more. If you hadn't started by insulting my statement of my
personal preference (I wasn't for a minute stating you shouldn't use a
Mac), none of this would have happened.

You could have replied by email. That would have been fine.

Stephen

 

[charlie]

I've always wondered, its either editors, languages or OS's and
sometimes desktops

... toolkit api's, multimedia api's, boot loaders, mail clients, chat
clients, web sites, pop groups, novelists, actors, football teams,
nationality, religion, politics and even sometimes 'who has the bigger
brother'. Heck, I've even had arguments with people about beer...

Oddly, this doesn't have a lot to do with technology ;-).

 

[Lyndon Samson]

... toolkit api's, multimedia api's, boot loaders, mail clients, chat
clients, web sites, pop groups, novelists, actors, football teams,
nationality, religion, politics and even sometimes 'who has the bigger
brother'. Heck, I've even had arguments with people about beer...

Oddly, this doesn't have a lot to do with technology ;-).

Ahhhh, but beer's important, now where is Brother Orval...

 

[Dominic Sisneros]

Home, OSX G5 - work Windows XP laptop blessed by company, ubuntu desktop
on the sly. But, most importantly for all of us, programming --Ruby on
Windows, Ruby on OSX, Ruby on Linux -- Ruby, Ruby and Ruby

Pragmatic where you can be!!!

 

[Austin Ziegler]

Time to try the new VFS plugins to Nautilus ;-)

Won't even compare. The only thing that is remotely close on Linux,
as far as I know, is Midnight Commander -- and it *sucks*. Nautilus,
being a Gnome application, is inherently unusable.

There's some really cool VFS plugins for Total Commander, including
a process explorer.

I can explore and unpack ISOs without a problem. I can explore and
unpack RPMs.

-austin

 

[Martin Ankerl]

Won't even compare. The only thing that is remotely close on Linux,

as far as I know, is Midnight Commander -- and it *sucks*.

You may want to give krusader a try. The features list is quite
impressive, it also supports sftp. It looks nice too

http://krusader.sourceforge.net/

martinus

 

[Nikolai Weibull]

* Austin Ziegler (Apr 01, 2005 15:15):

Won't even compare. The only thing that is remotely close on Linux, as
far as I know, is Midnight Commander -- and it *sucks*. Nautilus,
being a Gnome application, is inherently unusable.

Amen,
nikolai

 

[Austin Ziegler]

You may want to give krusader a try. The features list is quite
impressive, it also supports sftp. It looks nice too

http://krusader.sourceforge.net/

This is the first thing that looks remotely close to Total Commander
in power. The next time I'm doing something with a Linux desktop, I'll
definitely give it a try.

-austin

 

[linus sellberg]

pluggable SFTP support (flaky, but...), it is the *single* application
that is *always* running on my system. Always.

Seems a lot like my relation with Directory Opus. I can't say which is
the most powerful of the two, but it gets downright silly if one
compares either to Explorer.

 

[Francis Hwang]

The simple answer is 'because it's really good.'

The next question that springs to mind is:

'what the hell does the developers personality have to do with your
choice
of tools?'

Talking more theoretically: It does matter. Most software is a process,
not a product.

If you're doing anything interesting, a new software lib is not going
to do 100% of what you need. Even a heavily patched, highly used
framework like Rails. So you'll need to submit patches or bug reports
and generally communicate with the folks that can make the changes.
(You can always patch yourself, of course, but for some gnarly bugs
that can slow a newbie down quite a bit.) You'd like to know that those
people are considerate and responsive and have a little bit of
humility.

I'm just speaking theoretically here. I don't use Rails--I don't find
its way of thinking a good fit with mine--but if I were considering it,
I wouldn't let DHH's blog post change my mind. But it is possible, in
general, for a software maintainer to be such a repugnant personality
that it makes me think twice about using his code.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Francis Hwang]

Thank you. You were denying this yesterday. Who is spreading FUD?

To open a context menu with a one button mouse you need to two hands
(one on the mouse, one to press the key on the keyboard that makes the
context menu work, wow, thats good UI design), with a two button mouse
you need one finger.

Then buy a two-button mouse. The vast majority of OS X apps today
consistently map Ctrl-click to the contextual menu, so any good
two-button mouse (I think I have the same one Bill Klebs has) can be
easily mapped so the right button gives you the context menu.

Now, I agree with you that this should be the default; I'm not crazy
about Apple's decision here. (Also, the hockey puck they shipped with
the original iMac was an ergonomic disaster.) But that said, I don't
think any platform is perfect, and any impassioned computer user is
going to have a lot of configuration to get any platform set up.
Personally, I'd rather buy a $15 two-button mouse for a Mac than learn
how to get my printer, external monitor, digital camera, three external
hard drives, and iPod to work with a Linux laptop. Or than learn how to
make a Windows box secure. Not that I'm saying here that OS X is
automatically the best choice for everybody. I'm just saying that
computing isn't an ideal business, and any platform you choose is going
to involve trade-offs. Just pick the trade-offs that are least painful
for you.

There are lots of good reasons *not* to buy Apple products. But I don't
understand this harping about the one-button mouse. With the options
that OS X users have today, that just seems like a legalism to me.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Francis Hwang]

I've always held the view that the Mac assumes a level of stupidity on
the
part of the user, and makes a bunch of technical and complicated stuff
harder to do that it would be on Win or Nix.

I have to pitch with just a bit of irresponsible advocacy here. The way
I see it, Microsoft assumes you're stupid. Apple assumes you're lazy.
There's a world of difference.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Francis Hwang]

The choices you make as a programmer serves as indicators for your
cultural standing and performance. The kind of books you read, the
methodologies that you favor, the pastime projects you're involved
with, and yes, your choice of programming language and computing
environment.

I find the term "cultural" quite provocative here. Does 37signals have
any sort of cultural opinion--either official or de facto--about
Apple's recent lawsuit which argues that bloggers aren't journalists,
and as such can be required in court to divulge their sources? Does
37signals agree with this legal interpretation? Would it ever consider
using such an argument itself in litigation?

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

This is the first thing that looks remotely close to Total Commander
in power. The next time I'm doing something with a Linux desktop, I'll
definitely give it a try.

Konqueror does sftp, too. Just type sftp://path.to.file/you/want into
the address bar.

 

[Austin Ziegler]

Konqueror does sftp, too. Just type sftp://path.to.file/you/want
into the address bar.

What people seem to be missing here is that neither Nautilus nor
Konqueror is as easy to use for heavy-duty file manipulation as
Total Commander, because they're both single-folder display. (Sure,
you might have a quick list or a tree available, and with Konq you
can have a command line window, but these are of limited value
compared to what I can do with Total Commander.)

-austin

 

[hubert depesz lubaczewski]

Austin Ziegler wyrze¼bi³(a):

What people seem to be missing here is that neither Nautilus nor
Konqueror is as easy to use for heavy-duty file manipulation as
Total Commander, because they're both single-folder display. (Sure,
you might have a quick list or a tree available, and with Konq you
can have a command line window, but these are of limited value
compared to what I can do with Total Commander.)

can you explain what do you mean by "single folder display"?
especially after checking this:
http://www.depesz.com/shot.jpg

depesz

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

What people seem to be missing here is that neither Nautilus nor
Konqueror is as easy to use for heavy-duty file manipulation as
Total Commander, because they're both single-folder display. (Sure,
you might have a quick list or a tree available, and with Konq you
can have a command line window, but these are of limited value
compared to what I can do with Total Commander.)

Konq does do split windows (and has for some time), but I don't know if
it has all the features you want. Try loading the Midnight Commander
view profile. I just checked that it can have a local tree view on one
side and an sftp view on the other, and drag files back and forth. It's
nice, but I still usually do everything in a terminal, and scripted, if
possible.

My only qualm about KDE is the lack of integration of the other non-KDE
apps I use...

 

[Austin Ziegler]

Konq does do split windows (and has for some time), but I don't
know if it has all the features you want. Try loading the Midnight
Commander view profile. I just checked that it can have a local
tree view on one side and an sftp view on the other, and drag
files back and forth. It's nice, but I still usually do everything
in a terminal, and scripted, if possible.

I have a feeling it doesn't have the features I want and need; a
split view is useless to me if I still have to use the mouse. I can
do 95% of what I need in TC without the mouse, giving me the speed
that I'd have on the command-line with a far simpler interface for
common activities.

-austin

 

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

I find the term "cultural" quite provocative here. Does 37signals have

any sort of cultural opinion--either official or de facto--about
Apple's recent lawsuit which argues that bloggers aren't journalists,
and as such can be required in court to divulge their sources? Does
37signals agree with this legal interpretation? Would it ever consider
using such an argument itself in litigation?

Apple gained ground in court not because the bloggers couldn't be
considered journalists, but because the nature of their revelations
didn't reach the status of being for "the public good" (like whistle
blowers at tobacco companies for example). As such, the court found
there was no ground for protecting the identity of people who've broken
their NDA's. From a legal stand point, I actually somewhat sympathize
with that ruling.

I do believe that dePlume is serving in a role of a journalist, but the
case wasn't about that.

Legal issues aside, it appears to have been a bad marketing move.
Although, I also recognize the damage that a rampant rumor mill can
have on Apple both from a competitive and stock market perspective.
Whether it was worth pursuing the case (from a business perspective),
then, I don't know.

Personally, I naturally don't like the heavy-handed methods. And even
if the legalities appear to be at least somewhat sound, I would much
rather they hadn't pursued the case like this.

All that said, our cultural ties and admiration of Apple at 37signals
goes to their products and marketing skills. The attention to detail,
the capability to execute, and the coolness with which they carry all
of that is very seductive. I don't mind being seduced by good products
at all.

 

[tony summerfelt]

This is the first thing that looks remotely close to Total Commander
in power. The next time I'm doing something with a Linux desktop, I'll
definitely give it a try.

on linux i used to use 'worker' at
http://freshmeat.net/projects/worker/

but now i use ndn for both windows AND linux:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/ndn/

text based, but it's the closest thing i've seen since the old dos
program 'arcmaster'
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1
telnet://ventedspleen.dyndns.org