Zarf in Mac OS X Land

baruz writes "Andrew Plotkin (aka Zarf), award-winning interactive fiction author and Mac and Unix programmer, has not-so-recently posted a secret diary of his experiences installing and using Mac oh ess ex."

Emacs

[LordNimon]

Started Terminal app. Unix shell! Go Steve! Emacs! (Okay, Emacs 20, not 21. Close enough.)

Man, I'd love to travel back in time five years and tell a bunch of Mac advocates that within five years, Emacs will come pre-loaded on a Mac.

Summarization

[daeley]

Likes American McGee's Alice.

Hates Dock.

Doesn't get why you wouldn't want to have root access always on.

Doesn't like font handling.

Has strange habit of referring to Apple computer engineers and UI designers as 'Steve' ;)

Re:OS "Ex" or OS "Ten"?

[Dr. Awktagon]

The correct pronunciation is: Mac OH YES! SEX!

(Saw that in Dr.Dobbs I think)

Re:Summarization

[buzban]

excellent summary!

now, here's my (o-ess-ex user's) article-o-meter:

'stupid diary! - 57'

'good point! - 3'

It made me laugh...

[mystery_bowler]

...because I kept waiting for the grammar to devolve into Hulk-speak:

RARRR! No like OSX! Icons EVERYWHERE! Stupid Steve! HULK SMASH!

Boot partition?

[Spock the Vulcan]

Booted "Mac OS 9 Install" disk. Used good old-fashioned tools to wipe hard drive and repartition. (Three partitions: 35 gigs, 30 gigs, 10 gigs. Plus a little one at the front, left unformatted -- I hear Linux needs something like that, and I can certainly spare a few megabytes just in case.)

I guess he's talking about the 1024 cylinder limit on older BIOSes, which crippled earlier versions of LILO, so the kernel image had to be on a partition within the first 1024 cylinders (usually 512 MB) of the hard disk.

But I thought that was an x86 platform specific issue. What kind of bootloader do the Macs use?

Usability Woes

[notfancy]

Explore interface for a while. Not very comfortable. New UI like having sex with brand-new partner, while blindfolded and wearing mittens and half-drunk so you can't remember what goes where.

Maybe it's Zarf, maybe it's me, I can relate to the metaphor but I swear it was easier for me. On both accounts.

Re:Emacs

[Dancin_Santa]

5 years ago, they would have thought that Emacs was just a buzzword-compliant alternative to the Imac.

Dancin Santa

Re:Emacs

[daeley]

Even better, go back 10-15 years and tell Mac users that a ton of their future counterparts will be excited to have a powerful Command Line Interface. :)

And you want me to pay for this?

[toupsie]

I use MacOS X. I love Apple. I would even take a bullet for Steve. Woz that is. But if you want me to sign up for subscription service can you stop with these lame Apple stories? iWarez was bad, this is unbearable.

If you don't do better, I won't subscribe and tweak my Squid+SquidGuard config to ignore big ads Slashdot on my OS X box.

So there! Plus I haven't gotten a wedding invitation, yet!

Re:This should be obvious... OT

[GodHead]

My favorite in-joke story...

A few years back, a non-tech co-worker asked if it was fair for a local computer shop to charge her $65 to fix problem. $65 is a bit much for a 30 minute fix I my mind, so I asked her what the problem was. She said that the shop owner told her it was just aother "Windows I.D. Ten T" error. Needless to say after I agreed it was a fair price and that she wasn't being ripped off, I about fell out of my chair laughing.

I.D. Ten T = id10t

Re:Emacs

[christopher_mcca]

Oh, probably about as well as a Unix or Linux user from 5 years back would know what a usable and/or attractive GUI is. We all have to be late to the table for something.

Andrew Plotkin bad!

[Refrag]

Stupid Andrew Plotkin. Andrew Plotkin no good intuitively understanding even most simple interfaces. Andrew Plotkin no figure out multiple window animations. Andrew Plotkin no figure out scale faster than genie. Andrew Plotkin no figure out customize toolbar until days later. Andrew Plotkin no figure out time since day be half hour or week.

Re:Delete user

[tomreagan]

I couldn't get this to work. No matter how many times I tried to remove Tim Johnson's account, it just wouldn't go away - that goddamn tjohnson deleted folder kept staring me in the face, so I reinstalled the OS.

On a totally unrelated note, does anyone know why my friend Steve Hortname who sometimes uses my machine lost all his stuff? They guy had some great mp3's in his home directory...

Re:One reason why he has problems...

[ethereal]

I'm picturing someone named Inez creating an Irix clone...

Re:And you want me to pay for this?

[version5]

No no, you don't understand... We only want to hear good things about Apple. All this fair and impartial discussion of all things Apple is making me feel bad. :(

Re:Don't send in your info

[sean23007]

I mean, how dumb do you gotta be to not realise that you dont HAVE to send anything in?!

Ummm.... just about dumb enough to buy Windows XP. Oh wait- that's a "feature," never mind.

:)

Re:Emacs

[EvilGwyn]

Comparing vi and emacs is much like comparing a screwdriver to a 747 repair facility.

...when what you really need is a shovel