Windows sucks

[figmo]

I had to say it. This isn't a "religious" thing; it's a post from someone who is frustrated at all the crap she has to run to keep her system from getting invaded by stuff.

People keep saying Macs are more expensive, but when you add the maintenance costs to the Windows boxes and note that the Mac will be useful for a longer period of time, Macs turn out to be cheaper.

I just wish Adobe would effing port FrameMaker to MacOSX or Linux so I wouldn't have to run Windows at all.

I now go back to making my systems usable so I can get back to work. :-(

Comments

[berry-k.livejournal.com]

Looks like your options are: run the Windows version of Framemaker under Parallels, Bootcamp or Crossover, or run the older v7 Mac version.

I have a very old Solaris version at home that still works pretty well.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I have to run FM8, and I haven't yet gotten any of the aforementioned emulators to run successfully on my PowerBook.

The real problem is with Windows itself being so effing vulnerable.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest sending the gist of this message, couched as politely but insolently (are you fools?!?) as your are able, to the nice techie people at Adobe with a list of recommendations.

This, of course, takes time - which attempting to run a windows program doesn't give you.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

There's already an "FMforOSX" mailing list, and I'm on it.

We've petitioned Adobe, and there are folks at Adobe who know there's a huge demand for FrameMaker on OSX, but there's someone somewhere in the company who doesn't want to let the port happen.

[sorek.livejournal.com]

The only reason you don't have to do that all that crap in Mac and Linux is that the number of users of those systems are few. It is not economically effective for the crooks to go after those systems.

Just recently Apple put out a statement encouraging Mac owners to buy and install antivirus software. That statement was later pulled, but it shows Apple is beginning to worry.

See Apple deletes Mac antivirus suggestion

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I run antivirus software on my Mac. It's hysterical to watch it find Windows-only viruses in files.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Not the only reason. Windows really is much more vulnerable, as well as being more common.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you're having trouble with your computers. I wish there was a Mac OS X version of FrameMaker too.

[sfo2lhr.livejournal.com]

Wait, won't the UNIX version of FrameMaker run on MacOS X under X11??

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Alas, AFAIK it's a Solaris-only version.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

The running half-joke is the "porting" command to get it to run on MacOSX is "make".

[sfo2lhr.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that's likely pretty much true. Something that runs on Solaris X86 under X11R6 wouldn't need much hacking to run on Leopard. With Adobe you never know whether it's brain damage or evil machinations that holds something like that back. Maybe they want the whole Mac market to be on InDesign (higher margins? easier support? more progressive code base?), and they're really trying to wean people off FrameMaker as has been rumored since forever.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

Windows doesn't necessarily suck. Just the version you're using. ;-)

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I'll bite. Which version of Windows doesn't suck? Please don't tell me "Vista," because I know better.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

Win 7!

And that's about all I'll say in a public forum.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Obviously you can't answer this (NDAs and such), but as a longtime Windows user I am finding the Vista-like changes to MS Office frustrating because I can no longer keystroke many commands (I avoid using the mouse whenever possible because I like to avoid repetetive motion injuries). The most frustrating one I can no longer keystroke is the one in MS Word where you do a Paste Special. It used to be "Alt-E S" followed by whichever format (or non-format) I wanted. Now I can't do that, and it slows me down BIG TIME when I have to use MS Word.

If somehow you can get feedback to The Powers That be that some of us don't like to do everything with a mouse and would like to be able to keystroke everything, I'd really appreciate that.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

There was a TON of rigorous, triangulated user research done on the 2007 ribbon design. So given that knowledge I think it's unlikely they'd miss something *that* big. Do you just mean that you want to be able to Paste Special without using a mouse?

That's Control-Alt-V now. Or am I misunderstanding?

A good list is at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP101476261033.aspx

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Office pointer; I wish I could have found that in the UI.

As for the "TON of rigorous, triangulated user research," they didn't ask me for my input, and they certainly didn't ask the other tech writers I've spoken to who find the new interface frustrating.

It'd have been nice to have an option to go back to the old UI.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

I'd invite you to get acquainted with the design & research process that supported the design change and to see if you still feel the same way:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx

Personally I think it's among the best-designed and researched interfaces ever implemented given the set of constraints and diverse audience expectations. So I'm probably not the right person to complain to.

[howeird]

The big diff between the reliable Mac and the not so reliable Windows: Apple has a lock on what hardware you can put into the box, and this greatly reduces the range of OS, software and driver issues.

I'm puzzled about Adobe not porting FrameMaker to Mac. After Unix, Apple was the first port for Frame, and Adobe has a history of creating almost identical products on Mac and PC. Maybe the architecture they inherited when they bought Frame way back when has them handcuffed.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Um, no.

When Apple first announced MacOSX, Adobe asked the at-the-time Mac FrameMaker base if they were likely to switch to OSX anytime soon.

Given the history of how things work with Apple, they of course said, "No!" You don't rush to switch to a new version of MacOS if you're afraid it'll break stuff, and this was a total rewrite.

Had they asked, "Do you think you'll want to run FrameMaker on OSX in a year or two," the answer would've been "HELL YES!" Unfortunately, they didn't ask that, and some high mucky-muck decided it wasn't worthwhile to port FrameMaker to MacOSX because "nobody will buy it."

There has been a petition of over 1000 people who have pledged they would buy a MacOSX FrameMaker if it existed, but trying to get whoever made the foolish decision to not port FM at all to change their mind has been futile so far.

Ironically, the whole reason I started using Macs was because FrameMaker ran on them and not on PCs!

[tomlemos.livejournal.com]

I understand completely.

I just had a computer that I had just reformatted and fixed infected in seconds by someone who went to a website and played a game after I told everyone NOT to do anything.

That was all I needed to start working on moving over to Macs down at work.

[justeps.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, Windows Sucks. Nothing to see here, move along.
2. There are a lot of things that can make a laptop run slower than it "should," even in the best of circumstances. Some of it has to do with power management, some of it has to do with thermal protection. You might be able to configure some of this.
3. A dual-core CPU isn't twice as fast as a single core.
4. I too am sticking with Firefox 2.x until the bitter end. Firefox 2.0.0.19 and 3.0.5 are out now, BTW.
5. The one thing I've found that makes Firefox not hang when accessing "particular sites" is ... (drum roll, please) ... FlashBlock. Yep, it turned out all the badness I was experiencing was really Adobe's fault.
6. I don't know why people like to push products that cost money (e.g. Parallels, VMware Fusion) when free alternatives (e.g. VirtualBox) might work just as well.
7. No, you can't run Boot Camp, Crossover, Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox on a PowerPC-based Macintosh. There are Intel emulators (e.g. Q, based on QEMU), but they're v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.
8. The Windows version of FrameMaker 7.2 has a "Platinum" compatibility rating with Wine, meaning that it works perfectly on Linux. The Windows version of FrameMaker 8 currently has a compatibility rating of "Garbage," meaning that it doesn't work at all. Comments suggest Adobe doesn't care if FM 8 for Windows works with anything other than Vista.
9. You'd think there'd be a market for FrameMaker for OpenSolaris running on Intel processors.
10. I'm hoping that, one day, a free, open-source Page Layout application like Scribus will be able to replace the proprietary Adobe product you're currently using.
11. Repeat the above for Gimp, Inkscape, etc.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

How do I do this FlashBlock? Enquiring minds want to know!

griffen found an emulator that runs on PowerPC Macs, but I haven't put the time into getting it to work.

As for FrameMaker 8, it does work on Windows XP.

I wish Adobe would do what Oracle does for its ports where it doesn't feel like putting the effort into porting onto a processor but the vendor of the processor wants Oracle on it: Let the vendor seat some employees and/or contractors on site at Oracle and do the porting themselves. Data General has been doing that for years. I wish Adobe and Apple would do something similar.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

flashblock is a firefox extension. get it here: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

i occasionally need to run ms office at work - how i do it is i run a windows xp virtual machine inside my linux box, using the free vmware server. you need at least 2G of ram, but other than that it all just works.