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Re: yadda, yadda, yadda
Title: Re: yadda, yadda, yadda
At 2:09 AM -0700 8/4/04, loop.pool wrote:
I really like Win XP, myself and think it
is much faster to use than OS X
(although this is a really specious statement because I don't have a
ton of
familiarity with OS X
yet..............although I"m doing a lot of sound
design on it, currently).
Understand that my comments concern my personal feelings about
Windows and, by extension my (probably unfair, but deeply felt)
attitude about Windows users. Not about some "abstract"
suitability of Windows for doing creative work.
Others can debate the technical merits of the two operating
systems with more authority than I can, or than I'd want to. I've been
using the Mac OS since 1985 (full time since January '86), at which
time Windows didn't exist. Everything about early versions of Windows
repelled me. Nothing about it attracted me. As subsequent versions
appeared they got better (more "Mac-like") but they never
got "better enough" to change my feelings about the OS. In
all this time there has been only one application that I needed to use
that was Windows-only, and I hated working with it so much that I
eventually stopped using it.
Therefore I've never spent enough time in any version Windows to
get fast. One thing I did find is that there were many instances of
the OS interposing many "are you sure?" dialog boxes
whenever I wanted to do something.
I, frankly, think that it has been Steve
Jobs egotism that has made him
eschew right click funcionality on the mouse. I know that
there is some
right click functionality on the mouse in OS X but it is minute
compared to
how much you can do in Win XP.
You can Control-click to pop up a context-sensitive menu, though
I rarely use this. Command- and Option-click do certain things in
certain applications. This is especially true of graphics apps. I
think lot of what the right button does can be accomplished with key
commands, so you don't need to go mousing around the menus.
In addition, I have a Kensington trackball with 10 buttons that
allows me any kind of functionality I want. For the most part I use
just the four main buttons, which are programmed thus:
Upper L
menu
of currently running applications
Upper R
double-click
Lower L
single-click
Lower R
click-and-drag
Lower L+R
menu of commonly used applications
Even from an aesthetic standpoint, I can
make my desktop look like I want it
to look.
I wasn't talking about the desktop. Dialog boxes and even the
main windows of many applications are just plain ugly in windows. Both
the window graphics and fonts are boxy and jaggy.
The other reason why I like working in
Win XP is specifically that four of
my favorite programs are not found on both platforms:
ACID, FLStudio
Granulab and Tu2.
This is an excellent reason.
You also said:
"I have a friend who is a composer
and instrument builder...his music notation is dreadful and his
self-made instruments have an unfinished look."
I totally hear you there, but again, my question is,
is he wrong because
you don't like it?
He's not wrong, but I admire his work less because his visual
sense is undeveloped. I have greater enjoyment (and respect) for
artists who are artful in everything they do. Lou Harrison is an
excellent example. Even his chalkboard notes in the classroom were a
fine aesthetic experience.
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com
