I Hate Mondays

So I'm sitting there, frantically trying to get a demo working for a major trade show, when my boss walks in and hands me a package, telling me I have to give up the wonderful laptop I've been using for the last year.



Now I have to learn how to use one of these crummy things...



That's what I get for having a job where half my customer base is composed of mactards.

Some Mondays, it's just not worth getting out of bed.

Oh well, I suppose something good may come of this. If nothing else, I'll have a chance to evaluate what it will take to make an OSX port of my game engine.

You can always downgrade it to Windows, you know.

Prime Junta said:

You can always downgrade it to Windows, you know.

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Hey, PJ, I have a colleague here who would exactly say the same thing. Personally, I only use windows to play games, because my true OS is Ubuntu. (pc at work and a small amount at home)

My sister's got an iMac. I simply love the GUI.
Everything's so much straightforward ...

I'll never understand why people like the Apple's UI. Maybe because it looks cool? I'm a geek, I've never cared about "cool".

I do know this: I have significantly greater difficulty in filtering out stimuli than most people. Anything that animates, changes color, changes shape, rearranges menus, slides, morphs, warps... Did everyone forget all of the mistakes of Kai's Goo? Does anyone even remember Kai? (googling doesn't count) How about reading "GUI Bloopers"? These things negatively impact the user's comprehension of the interface. Instead, they consistently end up as bullet points on a feature list.

Any time software starts doing this stuff, I end up focusing all my attention on figuring out what the frak is happening in front of me, and I can't think in any productive way. I can either think, or I can try to decipher the visual mess in front of me. I can't do both. It's like trying to listen to someone whisper to you while standing in a rock concert.

I categorically refuse to install Flash on any system I use. I like Windows XP. I can switch to the classic interface, delete all of the sounds and screen savers, disable everything that animates in the interface, delete a few choice DLLs from system32, avoid installing certain badly behaving programs, and I end up with a machine that is incapable of the horrible interface things that destroy my ability to concentrate. If I have to crack open the case to yank plugs or cut wires on flashing lights, then so be it.

Just watching people use macs and vista is unpleasant. They make me physically cringe. No, that is not an exaggeration. It's the biggest reason I've avoided macs and vista: figuring out how to disable all of the visual and auditory malware embedded in the very OS itself. Assuming it's possible. Apple is infamous for its lack of customizability. "You'll buy our stuff, 'cause it's cool! And a status symbol."

I appear to be a stereotypical programmer. I sit in a dark office with only enough light to illuminate the keyboard -- florescent lighting gives me headaches. I happily run an unnecessary collection of computers because they have loud fans that drown out sounds from the rest of the building. I usually wear headphones, infinitely repeating the same Deus Ex and UT mod tracker files (thank you, Alex Brandon, thank you) to further filter out the rest of the world. And if you walk in to ask me a question, don't be surprised if I sit there with a blank expression on my face. It just means I'm trying to figure out what all those words that came out of your mouth mean. Frequently, I don't succeed.

Then someone sets an apple in front of me, saying some variation of, "Isn't this cool!?!" And it sits there, demonstrating itself to be the very epitome of so many things I consider to be the worst possible, most cringeworthy things you can put in a UI. And people pay for this.

Yet perversely enough, I spend my entire life writing the very tools that artists use to create these visual affronts to my brain.

So... Anyone know any sites that can tell me how to turn all of this crap off, that I might have a machine I can stand to use? 'Cause if I frisbee this blasted thing down the hall, I just know the boss is going to get cranky.

A frustrated programmer walks into a computer shop and asks: "Can I get a mouse mat for my Apple Laptop?" The salesman thinks for a moment and replies: "Yes, that sounds like a fair trade to me."

I heard Mac's fanboys reputation rivalling the Fallout's hardcore fans. Haven't seen many here though so your are safe.

Stanza said:

I do know this: I have significantly greater difficulty in filtering out stimuli than most people. Anything that animates, changes color, changes shape, rearranges menus, slides, morphs, warps... Did everyone forget all of the mistakes of Kai's Goo? Does anyone even remember Kai? (googling doesn't count)

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Yes, I do remember Kai's Power Tools or how they were called.

I found the GUI of them very, very creatively made up.

Last things I heard from him was that he wanted to assemble a team of creative people for a so-called "bit-Burg", kind of a castle (?) they wanted to rent here in Germany.

It was meant rather to be for experimenting than for "real" products, living out and testing of creativity, I'd say.

Stanza said:

I do know this: I have significantly greater difficulty in filtering out stimuli than most people.

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I have a similar problem, however, I've trained myself to quickly get into GUIs that are relatively intuitive to handle.

And when I say "intuitively", I really mean it so. I'm not thinking when I'm tryong out to perform tasks "intuitively", and I must say that I've got a talent for that.
I can quickly get myself into machines - how they work - with my mind, I don't know why or how this is there, but I can do it.

I assume that my intuition is well-trained, so to say, nut on the other hand some say that it is not the intuition that is trained, but rather the actual "listening" to it.

I don't care much about it, as long as it works. And I *can* quickly get myself into things ...

In my opinion, there are tqo sorts of OS shells: The logical ones and the intuitive ones. I don't think I've ever seen fully developed shells which combine both.

Logical shells are usually non-graphic shells, I think. Like the Linux Bash, for example (a few days ago I stumbled upon an letter to the editor in a Linux magazine that was referring to an article that was going like "Bash vs. GUI". To me, this was not necessary to develop such an article; to me, this was the tapping on each other's shoulders of a bunch of people who hate the GUIs of the world anyway - to me, it appears like an BMW driver writing an article on how much better his car is over let's say an Beetle).

Intuitive shells are usually GUIs. Seeing is believing, and as long as you can see things, you can quickly access them. Icons involved.

I like well-developed GUIs, and the iMac GUI I saw was the first one where I could believe this. (Another one that had impressed me was the OS/2 Workplace Shell for Windows 3.1 - a port by an IBM employee, apparingly).

The windows GUis are not well-developed in my eyes, although they imho do have some good points.

The Gnome and KDE (prior to 4) shells are in my eyes not very well developed, because they only act as graphical substitutes for the logic-driven non-graphical shell of Linux.

A large percentage of laptop users in my university are using the thing and our computer lab is almost required to have a couple Mac PC's on hand.

I've never seen a situation where those things have not been a problem, like how inconsistent Java runs on it or just trying to find the proper dongle to run Powerpoint to the overhead projector.

I'm an old Apple ][ user. The things were completely open to us and the company showed us where everything was. When the ended that line we were forced to go to IBM clones because, although they were junk, they gave us somewhat of a level of flexibility - when they worked.

All the Professors now run PC's and the last of them removed the Mac from their office. Its taken a long time but they are finally off their desks. The Mac's in the lab were primarily used to run Youtube and music as the school had secured Flash out.

Since that's been fixed they are used to boot windows if all the other PC's are taken.

I have no interest in ever using a Mac. I see no reason to ever use a mac. I took a Photoshop course at a local college, and when i got there, i saw the entire lab was macs. I used it two weeks, and hated every minute of it. So I dropped the course, and took it online so I could use my pc instead.

Yeah, blah blah blah supposedly Mac is superior for graphics work, all that. Whatever, i do plenty of graphics work on my Dell 8400 P4 2GB ram here, and it does just fine thank you. You freakin yuppies can have your overpriced geek status symbol to sit in the coffee shop with while you sip your latte and rail about rampant consumerism and what not. My girl bought into the anti-windows trendy thing and got a Mac, hated it, couldnt get anything good to run on it, put XP on the thing and now she runs that instead.

I feel for ya Stanza, I'd prolly be puttin out my resume if my boss put one of those things on my desk.

Corwin said:

A frustrated programmer walks into a computer shop and asks: "Can I get a mouse mat for my Apple Laptop?" The salesman thinks for a moment and replies: "Yes, that sounds like a fair trade to me."

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Hehe, nice one.

To restore the balance, even though I'm happy with Windows and Linux (An oldie perhaps, but I still find it funny.):

"The only product Microsoft could make that didn't suck, would be a vacuum cleaner"

--
Pibbur who really miss OS/2 Presentation Manager

xSamhainx said:

I have no interest in ever using a Mac. I see no reason to ever use a mac...

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Some people love Apple and hate Microsoft, some... use Microsoft and hate Apple. My customers are an even mix of both. Can't elaborate further -- I work in a job I can't talk about in public. But that's work, not gaming, and I'm here for the gaming.

The case modding has begun. The built-in camera that can never be turned off has been deactivated. Permanently. Irreversibly. The physical fix is quicker and so much more rewarding than the reversible software fix. I prefer staying firmly ensconced behind the camera, thank you. Being in front of the camera is for the paid talent. And I have no such talent.

I used Macs all through college for my photojournalism studies. They were fine, but I never thought they were any better than PC's once Win 95 came along. Even before that, being a Dos guy, I preferred PC's. Nothing wrong with Macs, I just didn't think they were worth spending so much more money.

Stanza said:

I'll never understand why people like the Apple's UI. Maybe because it looks cool? I'm a geek, I've never cared about "cool".

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Nope. Because it *just works* most of the time.

My father just bought my mother a Mac. She's far from computer illiterate -- she's been doing massive amounts of stuff with photos, some page layout, that sort of thing, for years.

And she can't stop singing the praises of the machine. "Everything is where I expect it to be, everything works as it's supposed to do, it's *so* easy to do stuff that I never could figure out on Windows" etc. etc.

I hear the same thing from what seems like everyone. My hardcore Unix sysadmin colleague. My equally hardcore C++/Java programmer colleague. My Dr.Tech father. My sister who doesn't know jack about how computers work. My wife.

Whatever Apple is doing, they're doing *something* right -- and it's not the swoopy genie effects (which you can turn off, I'm fairly sure).

Oh, by the way, Stanza: you can always disable the GUI altogether and boot the Mac into command line. That'll get rid of the eye candy all right.

i'm used to be with Window..but you are still lucky to feel the GUI ..

by the way, i hate Mondays too..because as usual, Monday is the busiest in a week lol

Oh, yes, me too, so hate Mondays, and would always get frustrated when it's Sundays' nights. But would be so happy when it's Friday, lol.

And she can't stop singing the praises of the machine. "Everything is where I expect it to be, everything works as it's supposed to do, it's *so* easy to do stuff that I never could figure out on Windows" etc. etc.

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That's strange, I am the resident computer expert, and my friend is a newspaper reporter. She could not figure out how to send the pictures from her digital camera in an email to her boss, so she asked my help, I could not help but laugh a little bit as she asked as she is quite smart. 4 hours later I was about to cry, I also could not figure it out. Finally I found a program which could make the image open and you could right click and choose send as email, however several days later her boss complained this program appearently auto-downsized the quality of the image without giving any information to us what-so-ever.

I told her to buy a PC.

Does anyone remember this spoof apple ad that was doing the rounds on teh internets a while back?

Stanza said:

I categorically refuse to install Flash on any system I use. .

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It is the devil's software. Can't link to it, can't hurry through the tediously irrelevant animations that designers wank themselves stupid over while completely forgetting that it is one of millions of sites on the web and most users want to get to what they want quickly and painlessly rather than be entertained.

Evil, evil programme. I have it disabled on my computer, and only wish that I could extend that to the software creators and all flash programmers.