Sigh.
Stupid religious war on Slashdot today about which OS is better.
Look, people are different. Most people are primarily verbal or primarily visual.
They will be more productive in an operating system that caters to that. A verbal person will prefer a command line, a visual person a well done GUI.
Mac OS X is visual/kinesthetic.
Linux tends to be pure verbal.
Windows is a bastard verbal GUI. (more on that later)
So if you’re an artist, you’ll find Mac OS X to be easier to use and you’ll produce better work then you would on another operating system because the OS will synchronize with your cognitive mode.
If you’re a lawyer, you might well be happier on Linux. If you ask a lawyer, they’ll tell you they were happiest on Word Perfect 5.4 under MS-DOS.
No one can be productive on Windows, because Windows manages to be a verbal focused GUI. Under Windows, its all all about choosing verbs and nouns using a GUI, vs. Mac OS X which is more about the visual manipulation of objects. So there is no cognitive mode were Windows is really usable… Even worse for a visual person, the color scheme is like being screamed at all day. For most artists, using Windows is the death of a thousand stings. More subtly, art done under Windows is usually inferior to art done on Mac OS X, because Mac OS X is easiest to use in a visual cognitive mode. Windows, by forcing a shift to the verbal mode, hobbles the artist.
As an experiment, ask yourself this:
If you are drawing, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are writing, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are programming, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are designing programs, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
What you’ll find is that depending on the primary cognitive mode of the task you’re currently doing, you use the computer in different ways.
This is why all OS religious wars are stupid. Different people have different preferences depending on their particular cognitive preference.
Except for trashing Windows, because it sucks because it requires mutually exclusive cognitive modes. That’s ok. :-)
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