July 2001 || Volume 01, Issue 12

Connecting...

Welcome to Connect, our column for reader email! We want to hear your thoughts and opinions about things you've read in Mac OS Journal, about Apple, your computer, Mac OS X, and so on. So let us have it people! Send email to connect@macosjournal.com or use this form.

Mac Websites

I like your commentaries each month about Mac-centric websites. One request: when you've finished, please put them all together in one article so we can access them all from the same page.

Paul Parmiteer

Paul,

It'd be the easiest column I've ever written. But it surely would be vetoed by Tyrannical Editor Marc: just too easy [Grr... - Ed.]. Besides, even though this month's Surf Watch concentrates on other parts of the Web, I'm not sure that any endeavor of this kind ever gets finished. If I see more worthwhile Mac-centric sites, I'm certainly not going to guarantee not to put any of them into Surf Watch.

Why not do it yourself? Use Bookmarks/Favorites, and that way you can get 'em all in the order you like.

We haven't had many suggestions for new ones in the last couple of months either. Some kind of consolidation in the electronic Mac world, maybe? Or are the twenty or so I've already written about already giving some of you folks indigestion?

Dennis Field

More Plaudits for Tex-Edit Plus

I want to endorse what José D. Morales said about Tex-Edit plus. I've been using it for a year now, and not once has it crashed or done anything I didn't expect or didn't want it to. What has been happening, though, is that seems like every week I discover something new that it can do. Beat that, Microsoft!

Jerry Zagers
Philadelphia

Jerry,

Beat that, you say. Well I can beat you. I've been using TE+ and its predecessor Tex-Edit for at least ten years. Crashes, well as a former President said, "not a single time." And Tex-Edit is especially useful for stuff like converting Wintel text (with all those crazy carriage returns) to proper Mac text, which just wraps at the end of whatever line it's on, like any good text document should but which Wintel text doesn't.

But why bother with Word anyway? I still use AppleWorks 5.0; I don't like 6.0 because it takes me extra mouse movements to do things like opening a new Draw document that I like to do with a keystroke. Guess that when I move to OS X I'll have to convert, but I think I'll hold off on that for another few months.

The key to it all is usability in tasks that we all have to do every day. I've been into quite a few offices in various countries in the last few months, and almost always I see secretaries with Wintel MS Word stuff on their screens. I've asked quite a few of them if they're happy with it, and found that very few are. Whenever they try to do something they haven't done before, they've told me, Word always seems to get them screwed up, as a result of which they feel stupid. And looking at what they do, not one of the people I've talked to has needed anything like all of Word's abilities or complications. They know that, and it makes them feel even stupider.

And if there's a prescription for making people unhappy with their work, it's making them feel stupid at something they do all day, day in day out. Thank you Microsoft [Look next for MS's attempt to corner the anti-depressant medication market - Ed.].

Actually, thank you the IT Managers and public and private sector bureaucrats who decided to buy the Microsoft packages. Hey guys, are you listening? Your users don't need what you're buying them. Something much simpler will do very well, thank you very much. And even in the Wintel world, surely there must be something that will let ordinary office personnel write ordinary business letters without feeling dumb.

I had a bit of this experience myself last month. Doing my email in the Netherlands, and needing to write something a bit more complicated than what Outlook Express could manage, I started up MS Word. Yes, on a Peecee. Know what: g***mn wizards kept appearing -- in Dutch. I kept having to stop what I was doing, mouse over to the wizard's window, and hit the button that said "Nee". Once I hit the "Ja" button by mistake, with the result that my work disappeared altogether and was replaced by gibberish -- also in Dutch. I never did get my stuff back.

Sure you can get the Wizard to go away and stay away, I guess. But which menu, which submenu, which dialog box? Having it all in Dutch just made everything worse, and made me feel stupider faster. Good exercise for the IT managers who decide on software purchases. Work on software that makes you feel dumb; see how it feels. Then go an apologize to all the people who you stick with the same feeling every day.

And of course, yes, go an look at a Mac as well. But then watch out. Your department wouldn't have to deal with all those calls from panic-stricken dumb-feeling users any more. You'd have to lay off staff. And then of course, someone higher than you would wonder what they needed to pay you all those big bucks for. You guys are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

End of rant. Now on to something more pleasant [That should have been more pleasant. You got a nice letter about Tex-Edit Plus, and look what you did with it - Ed.].

Dennis Field

Why Wintel?

If you look at Apple's new Powerbook lineup: the extraordinary titanium widescreen model, and the wonderful new titanium-looking ibook, it's hard to see why anyone would buy a laptop with Windows, don't you think? Totally irrational.

Jenny O'Meara

Much as I'd like to agree with you, Jennie, I regret to say that I don't think that 90% of my computer-owning friends are totally irrational, and I don't find it hard at all to see why they don't have Macs.

First reason: killer apps that aren't available on the Mac. Where I live, with phone calls to the U.S. running at well over a buck a minute, the killer app is Net2Phone. For reasons I've explained before, I hate it, but you can't argue with 3¢ a minute instead of $1.30. Even if it doesn't always work, and even if you do have to get used to delays before the other person answers. A whole new way of talking on the phone. Try to tell people they shouldn't save the money, though. And unfortunately, it's an app that's not available on the Mac. I looked at www.net2phone.com again as I write this, and they still claim that Mac versions will be available in "Early 2001" -- this is July, right?.
Get on to any mailing list, such as www.macevangalist.com, and you'll see similar laments. Yeah yeah, the companies that don't write Mac versions of their apps are stupid, lazy, and all the rest. But the fact remains, the apps we need aren't always there.

Second reason: lots of people work in places where someone else, such as an IT Manager, has decided should use Wintel exclusively. Again: stupid, lazy, etc. OK, but that's the way things often are. So if you're buying a machine for yourself, and sometimes you do office work on it, what do you buy? Not totally irrational to get one with the same OS and the same apps. And perhaps advice from friends who know the system at work if anything goes wrong (which happens more and worse on Wintel machines, but people often don't know it.)

Brings me to the third reason. For the same reason as there are more Wintels in existence, most people know more friends who can help them with Wintel problems. Mac users are nearly all Mac enthusiasts, and lots like to support friends with Macs, but we do have to face it: there aren't as many of us around. And if you were new to serious computing, or apprehensive, or just didn't want to get involved in the geeky side of things, might it not be that you went with something that lots of your friends had?

Finally, don't forget: the Mac lineup hasn't always been as attractive (especially, as you say, in laptops) as it is right now. If someone went with Wintel when the Mac world was falling behind a few years ago, and since then they put all their stuff in it, and bought apps for it, and wrestled with its quirks to the point that now after several years they can actually get some useful work done on it: well, do you think that such a person will dump all that time and effort and go into a completely new system? At least, don't put the person down. Not necessarily irrational.

So hey Jenny, maybe we can disagree with Wintel people. Maybe we can wish that there weren't so many Wintels around. But we really can't say that all of them are owned by totally irrational people.

Dennis Field

Send your rants and raves, questions and comments, compliments and criticisms to connect@macosjournal.com or use this form.

Dennis Field - dennis@macosjournal.com
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