Bishop:
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I shot and cut some scenes for a company which then asked me to make some changes to fit their needs. The adjustments were some of the after effects available in... You guessed it... FINAL CUT...



So, is it that Final Cut is better designed, easier to learn, and even after you've learned it, still easier to use? Or, is it just that Final Cut is an industry standard?

duckduckgoose:
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The G3 machines came out around MacOS v8.5.1; the OS (and the apps) have matured a long way since then.



Not only have they matured, but they've been completely re-written. Mac OS 8.5.1 has nothing to do with where Apple is today. In the 90's, when Apple bought NeXT computer, they trashed the old Mac OS. Stopped developing it. Mac OS X is actually the operating system NeXT wrote. When MacOS X was released, Apple had written an emulator that ran on top of Mac OS X to run "classic" Mac apps.

It's not like Windows where you can take an application that was compiled under Windows 95 and run it natively under Windows Vista. Mac OS X was a complete break in backwards compatibility. They completely got rid of all the old garbage that held the software down for legacy purposes and started with an operating system that had been written from its inception with more modern technologies in mind.

To look at Apple with an eye towards what Mac OS 8.5.1 was, the closest analogy, you may as well look at Microsoft was with MS DOS. MS DOS and the original Mac OS started development within a few years of each other.

Bishop:
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Has any one else ever had to be on the phone with microsoft over in India for an hour, just to get them to give you the install codes for software that you have paid them for?



Microsoft's progress hasn't been a complete tossing aside of legacy issues like Apple's has. Microsoft controls way too much of the market to pull something like that off. But, they've gotten a hell of a lot better too. Vista got a way worse name in the media than it deserved. I still hate Microsoft, but since Windows XP, Microsoft has had a desktop that's plenty stable to run on the desktop.

Apple is supposed to have some 800 number people rave about. And, guys I know who work with Microsoft products professionally, they have "strategies" to navigate through Microsoft support. It's like you don't even plan on getting anything done with the first call, even though you have to sit on hold for like an hour to talk to someone. You have to figure out the things to say to level one support to get to a higher level. I'm pretty sure they were saying you really gotta get to level three support for anything to get done.