It's The Little Things
It's no secret that when it comes to computers I'm a 'Mac guy'. I've never owned a Windows computer but I have had my share of opportunity to use Windows and I've maintained for years that I know more about Windows than the average Windows user. Of course that's not really claiming a lot, because the average Windows user really doesn't know a lot about how computers work and the role an operating system plays in that. They don't learn how to do more with their computer than the minimum to accomplish what they want or need to accomplish with it.
Over the years, Microsoft has made huge strides in improving Windows' useability, but in my opinion, it still falls well short of the Macintosh's useability. And that is after Apple arguably went backward in useablility in some respects with the transition from what is now known as the classic Mac OS to OS X.
It seems to me that Apple spends more time and energy with the little things in your day-to-day computing experience. Things that, by themselves don't seem that important, but as you add them together, they begin to affect one's overall perception and expectations as well as the machine's user friendliness.
I give you an example that I encounter every day at work. Our prepress department is Mac based. We have an Apple Xserve for our file server and four out of six workstations are Macs. We do have a couple of Windows machines that are used for the occasional job that arrives as Windows-native files although those have largely been eliminated with the trasition to PDF workflows that has taken place in the print industry over the past few years.
The company's internal email is handled by a Microsoft Exchange server. The Macs in prepress have their email client configured to send and receive mail for the operator of each machine's email account. This works fine for exchanging email with computers that are outside of the company, but for email that is exchanged within the company we have to have an account set up on one of the Windows machines and get the mail there.
So each morning when I arrive at work, I go to one of the Windows machines and log off of the default account (which is set up for our data collection service) and log in to my user account on the machine so I can check any email sent within the company over that last day. To log into my account, I go to the start menu and choose Shut Down, then from the dialog that pops up, I choose "log off of dcollect". Windows quits any running programs, logs off the dcollect account and brings up the login window.
Now here's the irritating part. The login window has three fields. A field for the user's account name, a field for their password and a field for the Windows domain that the computer is on (which we can disregard here). When the login window comes up, the account name field still has the name of the account you're logging out of filled in, and the cursor is positioned in the password field. This means you have to backward tab to the account name field to type in the name of the account you're logging into, then tab to the password field and type your password.
I just told the machine I wanted to log off of the account it was logged into. If the programmers were thinking about the process being done here, when the login window appears, the field for the account name would be highlighted, ready for the user to type their account name into. Then they can tab to the password field. If they really didn't want to log into a different account, they don't need to type a new account name, they just tab to the password field, leaving the account name field filled in with the previously logged in account. In case you wondered, that is the way that a Mac handles logging into different user accounts.
It's a simple thing, but those are the small touches that make a difference the the overall impression the two operating systems leave with you.
Over the years, Microsoft has made huge strides in improving Windows' useability, but in my opinion, it still falls well short of the Macintosh's useability. And that is after Apple arguably went backward in useablility in some respects with the transition from what is now known as the classic Mac OS to OS X.
It seems to me that Apple spends more time and energy with the little things in your day-to-day computing experience. Things that, by themselves don't seem that important, but as you add them together, they begin to affect one's overall perception and expectations as well as the machine's user friendliness.
I give you an example that I encounter every day at work. Our prepress department is Mac based. We have an Apple Xserve for our file server and four out of six workstations are Macs. We do have a couple of Windows machines that are used for the occasional job that arrives as Windows-native files although those have largely been eliminated with the trasition to PDF workflows that has taken place in the print industry over the past few years.
The company's internal email is handled by a Microsoft Exchange server. The Macs in prepress have their email client configured to send and receive mail for the operator of each machine's email account. This works fine for exchanging email with computers that are outside of the company, but for email that is exchanged within the company we have to have an account set up on one of the Windows machines and get the mail there.
So each morning when I arrive at work, I go to one of the Windows machines and log off of the default account (which is set up for our data collection service) and log in to my user account on the machine so I can check any email sent within the company over that last day. To log into my account, I go to the start menu and choose Shut Down, then from the dialog that pops up, I choose "log off of dcollect". Windows quits any running programs, logs off the dcollect account and brings up the login window.
Now here's the irritating part. The login window has three fields. A field for the user's account name, a field for their password and a field for the Windows domain that the computer is on (which we can disregard here). When the login window comes up, the account name field still has the name of the account you're logging out of filled in, and the cursor is positioned in the password field. This means you have to backward tab to the account name field to type in the name of the account you're logging into, then tab to the password field and type your password.
I just told the machine I wanted to log off of the account it was logged into. If the programmers were thinking about the process being done here, when the login window appears, the field for the account name would be highlighted, ready for the user to type their account name into. Then they can tab to the password field. If they really didn't want to log into a different account, they don't need to type a new account name, they just tab to the password field, leaving the account name field filled in with the previously logged in account. In case you wondered, that is the way that a Mac handles logging into different user accounts.
It's a simple thing, but those are the small touches that make a difference the the overall impression the two operating systems leave with you.
posted by RocketJam at 3:23 PM
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