Macs have no software
D'you know there's more than 10000 registered applications for Mac OS X? Did you know that most of the software written for Unix (surely the world's oldest living operating system, with a unimaginably large software base) is now available for OS X? It seems so very silly to me that anyone would still claim Macs have no software, that I wont waste anymore time proving otherwise.
What prompted me instead, was a series of recent events demonstrating glaring holes in basic critical Windows software. Productivity or enjoyment is not enhanced by hundreds of mediocre and poorly specified spyware removal tools. And I must admit, I don't long for tens of thousands of games instead of thousands of them. If I have to wade through ten or fifteen crappy pieces of software to find one gem, when I could have selected from three or four decent, well established products, I have not gained anything.
Where are the following bits of Windows software, and why don't regular Windows-breathing geeks know about them? Seriously, I'm still looking for them, so let me know.
1) System hardware identification - where can I get a heirarchial tree of connected hardware, brands and identification numbers, and their associated speeds? How in fact, do I know if the machine I'm working on has USB 2?
Mac OS X: it's built-in. Apple Menu->About this Mac->More Info. Very simple interface.
Windows: Well depending on your OS version, there's Start Menu->Settings->Control Panels->System->Hardware->Device Manager, but the heirarchial display ("by connection") is awfully obfuscated and still doesn't show speeds. Or there's Show Desktop->Right click My Computer->Manage->System Tools->System Information->System Summary, but nope, no connected hardware information. Although, a couple of clicks away I am happily able to discover that I have a Hardware Resource Conflict/Sharing (which one??) on IRQ 9 between Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System and Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM SMBus Controller - 2443. Ripper.
2) Graphic file conversion - what is there that can open a Hewlett Packard Graphics Language image (yes this really happened recently) and convert it to something else? At least that was the guess from the useful 3 character extension. What about Windows Metafile, PICT, Kodak/Minolta camera formats, blah, blah?
Mac OS X: Graphic Converter. Comes with the System, converts hundreds of graphic formats.
Windows: noone seems to know, but maybe you could find something, somewhere, for each of the formats. Probably wont do many of them, convert to what you want, or be much good. And you won't get them all, in particular the Unix and Macintosh (ie. formats used by professional graphic design studios) formats. Why does the fallacy about Macs not being "compatible" persist, when Windows fails to be completely compatible with its own formats, let alone any of any other platforms?
3) Graphic file batch conversion - what if we've got a bunch of these Hewlett Packard format files? Probably not too hard to manually convert each one, but what if we also wanted to crop out the white space, reduce each one to 640x480, reduce the bit depth and convert to PDF?
Mac OS X: Graphic Converter. Still free with the system, still complete, still easy.
Windows: Well, Advanced Batch Converter probably does it (although not with as many formats, but we've already covered that). It will cost you $US40, but that's not so bad (Graphic Converter cost around that before it was bundled with the system). But how many Windows users know about it?
4) 2D and 3D graphing?
Mac OS X: Used to be Graphing Calculator with the system, now Grapher with the system. Both awesome and complete.
Windows: Buggered if I know - I went through several alternatives and they all pretty much sucked.
5) Network configuration switching?
Mac OS X: Right there in the Apple menu. Define a "location" for wired, wireless, home, work, uni, whatever (particularly useful on laptops) and then switch between then seamlessly.
Windows: Navigate through tens of different dialog boxes changing all your settings. Ripper.
6) Windows networking diagnostics?
Mac OS X: all the Samba tools you want (smbclient, smbutil, nmblookup) plus the built in GUI app Network Utility for all pinging, tracing, porting, status, etc.
Windows: In my humble experience, Windows is pathetic at Windows networking (without a WINS server). No visible method to refresh broadcast of NetBIOS hosts and crappy network neighbourhood interface. Basically you have PING, NSLOOKUP and NBTSTAT and that's about it.
And so on...