Let's get a few things straight. I have never had a problem with Windows Vista, it's far more compatible than XP was in its infancy, plus I like being able to find all my files. I don't hate Apple, but suspect that they try so hard to be different that they end up making their products less accessible. Linux is stuck in the catch-22 of it needing more users to gain better support from third party software retailers, and without said support will be unable to garner new users.
I'm a graphic designer. I have a pretty broad range of projects on the go at any one time and accordingly, use a wide range of tools. I build websites, design for print, create video presentations, flash animations 3D models and some animation. I still use older, Macromedia versions of programs (thank you eBay), as I don't have the money to upgrade to the newest Adobe versions.
My computer has plenty of RAM, and a decent processor. I have the full use of both arms and all of my fingers. So why does it take me so long to finish a project?
Well, no one program can do what I need. I used to be fairly Photoshop-centric in my work, but now I like Adobe Illustrator, as it does almost everything Adobe Photoshop can do short of photo editing and having all my art as vectors is better for file sizes and for scaling up in later projects. But, for example, if I'm making a video, and posting it online, often my work flow looks like this:
Receive brief from client. It's in .doc format, so I open it in Open Office. (if it's in .docx format, I get angry and have to dig out my Microsoft Word viewer)
- Create concepts in Adobe Photoshop.
- Email them to client from Thunderbird.
- Get the go-ahead from the client.
- Animate some segments in Blender.
- Edit together footage in Adobe Premiere.
- Export using Adobe Media Encoder.
- Import into Macromedia Flash.
- Create title overlays in Illustrator, as Flash wont read all my fonts.
- Import these as vectors.
- Save as a .swf.
- Build web page in Dreamweaver.
- Write the rest of the page code by hand in Notepad2.
Phew. As fast as my PC is, I can't realistically keep all of those programs running. However, to speed things up, I'll often have five or so open at any one time. Once I start moving content between them I start losing time.
I have several options. I could use Adobe Bridge. I could. It's cumbersome and at the end of the day, eve if I liked the interface, it's just one more program to run and will only link about a quarter of the programs I want.
I don't use Windows Flip 3D. It's beautiful, it's original (unless you've ever used a Mac in the last 10 years), it's.... ..utterly useless. It's eye-candy and the sort of thing that ageing men everywhere use when someone walks past their PC, just so they can look as if they're doing something complicated.
But, I digress. What I want to do is finish my project. I need to edit content, add stuff in and export it. I'm fairly sure that given enough motivation, someone, somewhere, could teach my PC to understand that a vector in one program can be a vector in another. I can drop stuff from Illustrator into Flash, (after a fair amount of groaning on my computer's part). Premiere can open up Photoshop files, though why it would want to is utterly beyond my comprehension. This is a start. And it's the reason I was happy to hear Adobe bought out Macromedia, though it will still take a while before the Macromedia programs are anything but Adobe in name only. Premiere has been an Adobe project of several generations, but still remains very different, besides it's ability to crash at the slightest provocation.
So, what am I getting at?
I think the very concept of the Windows OS needs re-examining. Windows functions by running, applications, processes and everything else in, (would you believe it!?) Windows.
Once upon a time, this model worked very well, everyone had 256k of RAM and they were happier for it. But not any more. Let me give you an example:
I'm running Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Blender and Open Office .org at the moment.
All of them have options to insert text into a document. This means on my PC, I have five instances of text features, running at once. They're not all compatible, Flash wont read all my fonts, Blender wont read the other half and that only leaves me with with Arial Black and Papyrus (which just screams, “I'm six years old, here's my Egyptian homework project!”).
