Posted on 07/09/2007 6:14:34 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
Today I tried to help a Mac user save some pictures to a DVD. There were more than 1GB of photos, so it made more sense to use a DVD than two CDs. Unfortunately, Mac OS X thinks that you need to make movies when you insert a blank DVD disc -- it has no idea that you want to save data to it. What you, the user, want to do does not matter. All that matters is that you do what Apple says a computer should do. This is "the Apple way," and some people find it enjoyable.
(Excerpt) Read more at thejemreport.com ...
quote:
“The Apple Way is to make all of your decisions for you so that you’re not burdened by choice.”
Uh.. nope. All that has to be done if the DVD setting isn’t what you want is to go into System Preferences and CHOOSE how you want the computer to recognize audio CDs, DVDs, and BLANK media.
Sheesh.
Hoss.
I’m not an apple user so I’m asking this question out of ignorance. But I’ll ask anyway :)
If there is BSD underneath why don’t you have the power of the BSD command line interface. Why couldn’t you put the disk in, mount it, issue a dd command (or whatever).
Again, I don’t know, so just asking.
In fact, the first time you insert a blank DVD in Mac OS X, it asks you what you want to do. You can set it to open iDVD as the default, tell it to just open the disk in the Finder, or you can leave it so it will ask you every time.
Or, if you don’t like that way, you can start by right-clicking/control-clicking in the Finder and choose “Create Burn Folder.” Then put the files you want on the DVD in the folder and click the “Burn” button. It will then ask you to put in a blank DVD and burn the disk.
This is exactly my experience. I’ve been using Macs at work for at least 8 years. I currently have an iBook and will be provided a new one this fall.
I hate the “Apple Way.” If I try to load pictures into my iBook, iPhoto opens. I don’t want it to do that. I just want to drag photos to my folder. ~sigh~ That’s just one example. I want to do things my way.
I crossed over to Linux from XP [on my home computer] this past winter. I’m much more comfortable with Linux than my iBook (although I’m a Linux newbie). I’ll never spend a dime of my own money on a Mac.
That one’s easy too... you run the “Image Capture” program, and go into the preferences. There’s two preferences there. The first one:
“When a camera is connected, open: iPhoto”
Just change that setting to “No Application.” Ta da.
^^^^^^^^^^^All that has to be done if the DVD setting isn’t what you want is to go into System Preferences and CHOOSE how you want the computer to recognize audio CDs, DVDs, and BLANK media.^^^^^^^^^^
You completely missed the writer’s point.
Sure, you can change the setting, and it’s not terribly difficult at all, but the point is that the setting is there in the first place.
This type of setting can be made in Linux as well, but it’s not assumed outright. It’s not crammed down your throat.
Glad you decided to see for yourself. So many people buy into the hype that linux is hard to use. In many ways, it’s the easiest to use. For example, synaptec.
No it’s not... the first time you stick a DVD in, it asks you what you want to do. The user must’ve selected “Open iDVD” and checked the box to default it the first time.
All of the ones I’ve seen have this same activity.
I’ll take your word for it though.
>>OS X and Linux are essentially two extreme opposites. The Apple Way is to make all of your decisions for you so that you’re not burdened by choice. Some people enjoy that — they find simplicity in it that allows them to concentrate on other things. To me, it’s computing hell.<<
Right. Unix is powerful. What you put on top of it determines the user experience.
You DO have the power of the BSD command line.
I work from the command line (choice of all the usual shells) a lot, right on the desktop. There's a "Terminal" application standard, and a full "X11" application package for running xterms and other programs like OpenOffice which use X11.
There's no requirement that you use the GUI except at login, and if you are logging in remotely using SSh, you don't even need the GUI for login.
It's a full, largely-standard BSD Unix. The only stuff that's a little different are functions like user accounts, which are managed from OS-X level rather than the old standbys like /etc/passwd.
Thanks, mw. [The rest of this is directed to “all.”]
That’s something else about Apple. As long as I’ve used OS X, I never knew that “Image Capture” existed. Why doesn’t Image Capture open the first time I have a camera attached and ask me what I want to do? Answer: Because I might lose my dependency on Apple software.
Adept is why I can use Linux. [I use Kubuntu.] I can’t compile a thing. I’ve learned a bit about using the console to do things. Forums gets me through any other rare problems quite nicely.
I showed my older brother Kubuntu, and he switched over from Win98.
Cool. Thanks.
Geez - with all these settings and preferences, it sounds like your on a windows box!
I thought macs were supposed to be intuitive and easy to use?
I totally agree. I think I would put up with that only once. If it happened again, that crashing sound you hear would be the window breaking and the computer hitting the lawn.
Then you complain about too many choices - "Sure, you can change the setting, and it’s not terribly difficult at all, but the point is that the setting is there in the first place."
It's pretty obvious that you don't have a clue - you're just making up stuff as you go along.
Well, that won't really work. You can't mount the disk because a blank disk doesn't actually have a filesystem on it. You can't use dd command because writing to a DVD (or CD for that matter) is different from writing to hard disk or flash memory device because DVDs are essentially WORM (write once, read many) devices.
Now, If you knew what you were doing, you could create an ISO image of the DVD you wanted to create and then use a program like cdrecord (or whatever is available for Macs to write to cd/dvd media) to write the ISO to the DVD.
I've actually done the above from a command prompt in Linux, but generally don't any more as there are pretty good programs for Linux now that automate the process.
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