I've been wrapped up in a datacenter move for the past two weeks - migrating old UNIX and ESX hosts from one old company to a fresh, vibrant new company.  At home, I'm also busy setting up a new VPN-enabled network and reconfiguring the various routers and switches I have scattered throughout the house.  In the process I've had to configure numerous networks.  My Mac is a great tool, and the IP interface is many fewer mouse clicks away than on Windows (not to bash Windows, but to single out usability issues).  On Windows 7 (Start -> Network Connections -> Right Click -> Properties -> Select Adapter -> Right Click -> Properties -> TCP/IP) - Mac ( Apple Icon -> Settings -> Network -> Adapter ).  

 

So yes, the Mac is a smidge faster to get to and change.  But you know what would be better?  If it let me specify IP profiles with preconfigured info so I can save myself the trouble of re-entering  data for this switch so I can test that Cisco ASA, but now I have to switch to that switch and test that other Cisco ASA.  Or at home, switch to Inside Network (static or DHCP), or the Outside Network (Static IP).  Because let's face it, in only one of those cases was DHCP actually available to me (Home router - inside network).  And while link-local DHCP is useful after a fashion (169.254.0.0/16), it turns out it's not very useful in actual practice.  But considering that I have had to switch between 4 or 5 different network configurations many dozens of times over the past two weeks debugging networking issues, a small change in usability would mean a huge change in savings for me. 

 

And this circles back to my previous thoughts of having "competency levels" in our OSes that alter the features available to people, depending on their competency level (duh).  If you're a total newb, you get an iPad-like interface (pretty hard to screw up).  If you're a moderately experienced individual, you get an interface such as the default today.  If you want to kick on the secret "super-user mode" you have to A) find it, B) pass a test (like compute binary numbers or subnet masks - same difference, right - LOL), and you get a richer feature set that's less likely to get in your way, or help you be faster at tasks.  

 

I know that the time invested is possibly not worth it for the fringe of folks who truly are "super-users" and can benefit from features such as this, but there are plenty of us out there - how much time could Apple or Microsoft save by making things just a smidge easy and more powerful for us?