6 OPINION WWW.KANSAN.COM/OPINION/ Tell us your opinion Contact the Kansan at editor@kansan.com or call 864-4854. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2003 Free for All Call 864-0500 Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansas editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded. For more comments, go to www.kansan.com (sung) Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific. Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio.Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television, North Korea, South Korea Marilyn Monroe. Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, The King and I and The Catcher in the Rye. Eisenhower vaccine, England's got a new Queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye. - Yeah, uh, we need to get some rich alumni to donate some money to KUJH or we need to have the guy that's in charge of that station fired because it stinks. The video quality is very bad and I was watching some stuff on there the other day and the audio was about a half an hour behind the video,and we need to do something about that.All right. Speak like Yoda; more people must. Mizzou sucks. I'm curious to know how the basketball camp's going for Bill Self's first time. I'm wondering if the kids there are learning how to play basketball or learning how to stutter their words. - So I'm on the beach right now holding a Keystone Light, and people say parties are supposed to happen when you have the Keystone Light. Where the hell are all the girls? STINSON'S VIEW Zach Stinson for The University Daily Kansan SUBMITTING LETTERS AND GUEST COLUMNS The Kansan welcomes letters to the editors and guest columns submitted by students, faculty and alumni. GUEST COLUMN GUIDELINES The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. Maximum Length: 650 word limit Include: Author's name Class, hometown (student) Position (faculty member) LETTER GUIDELINES Maximum Length: 200 word limit Include: Author's name Author's telephone number Class, hometown (student) Position (faculty member) PERSPECTIVE SUBMITTO E-mail: opinion@kansan.com Hard copy: Kansan newsroom 111 Stauffer-Flint Macintosh: The bane of my existence Anyone who tells you Macintosh computers are more user-friendly than PCs is perpetuating a myth. Here are some quick examples of how I, Tim Sears, have noticed that Apple Computer took a simple concept and made it complicated. COMMENTARY Staci Wolfe and Tim Sears geekspeak@kansan.com For some inane reason, the manufacturers of Macs have decided that to eject a disk, the user must drag a copy of the image from the desktop into the trash can or press the up arrow key. If the keyboard doesn't work, CD ejection requires minor surgery with a paper clip. Would it really be so hard to put an eject button on the computer itself? I don't think so. To me, the naming conventions of the Microsoft operating system make sense, whereas you need a dictionary and reference manual to decipher the Mac OS. Of course, I am exaggerating the insanity of the Mac a little bit, but this is not just an isolated example. Another quick example of how Mac can be confusing is somehow the Mac engineers thought it was necessary to have two separate Applications folders. One called Applications and one called Applications (Mac OS). AAAARGH!!! Yes, Macs are sleek and sexy. They are visually appealing and do a great job creating images and graphics. But in the computer world, functionality triumphs over appearance nearly every time. Do you want a computer that is sexy or usable? For almost every task, a Windows-compatible software application exists. Not so when dealing with Macs. Many of the top producers of computer software do not design Mac-compatible products. When they do, it is an afterthought. Try to find a good word processing program that works well with a Mac. The Microsoft Office programs — such as Outlook and Word — dominate the market. Does anyone still use Claris Works, which was developed for the Mac? I rest my case. Even the Mac world is gradually being overtaken by Microsoft products. Sears is a graduate student in the integrated marketing communications journalism. He is the Kansan systems technician and an assistive technology trainer for the disabled. - Wolfe is a graduate student in journalism with an emphasis in business and technology. She has worked for more than six years as a support analyst, computer trainer and project manager. She is also the Kansan Web editor THE KANSAN ONLINE kansan.com Computer debate poll* Out of 74 votes, 78 percent of readers prefer PCs over Macintosh computers. 22 percent prefer Macintosh. *This is an informal poll.