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."

Don't send in your info

[Pope]

I'd just like to point out that I've had an install of OS X since the public beta release, and NEVER have I sent information in to Apple.
Another "journalist" complained about this then X first came out.
It's quite simple: when running then installer fill in the info, then when it asks if you have an internet connection, say no. When it asks if you want to register with Apple, say "later."
After it boots, go set up your Networking preferences, etc.

No info sent to Apple. I mean, how dumb do you gotta be to not realise that you dont HAVE to send anything in?!

Correction

[gralem]

That would be "Mac Oh Ess Ten"

Brilliant

[aengblom]

Simply brilliant ;-)

"Unsure how to proceed. One True Way needs revision"

Re:Correction

[baruz]

As a Macintosh user since 1984 (about March, or April?), I do follow this stuff and yes, it is pronounced Oh Ess Ten. If you had read Andrew Plotkin's log, thoguh, you'd understand the reference.

Gee, I posted this to the Apple section, which I thought would get less attention and not slashdot Zarfhome. Guess it's a slow news day?

Re:Brilliant

[notfancy]

You should play his games, then. Zarf's narrative is immersive, evocative and depressing at the same time. "So Far" [eblong.com] is a massive cathartic trip.

I really don't care much for the problem-solving side of IF (I don't enjoy playing games, I'd rather solve math problems :-), I wish he would write a novel some time, because I do believe he has The Gift(TM).

say it with me...

[option8]

"Mac Oh Ess TEN"

Ten Ten Ten

"Ecks" is reserved for X (as in X11)

thank you.

Be careful about repartitioning a new Mac!

[melatonin]

When you've got only one internal drive, it's always a good idea to make two partitions. When one fails for whatever reason, you can still boot from the other (always keep a backup System handy!). This is essential (or at least makes it very easy) to run DiskWarrior and Norton (not that you would ever want to run Norton... at work my co-worker had a slightly old Norton, and while he was running in OS 9 it automagically scanned his hard drive for errors, and changed every .dot file to a _dot file on his mounted OS X partition. Crap on a stick.).

Back to the subject, I bought my Mac when iTunes was new. I fooled around with it for a few minutes, and found that it came with a HOARD of good MP3 files. I dumbly thought that the Software Restore CD would put them back after I wiped the drive and repartitioned.

I was wrong :( I'd love to get those back.

Re:Pretty good article

[DebtAngel]

He specifically mentions that he's been trained to watch every animation he sees. Besides, if you want to click on a button on the thing that's sliding out of the dock, and its taking far too long to slide out of the dock, I can see frustration building there.

Re:Summarization

[psaltes]

troll, but I'll bite...

> Likes American McGee's Alice.

The full quote is "Pico-review: visually brilliant. No plot, ten-second gimmick idea for character. McGee thinks he's going to make a movie out of this? Then again, I went to see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within."

I'm not sure that indicates like.

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

hmm, I don't think this is what he was saying. Rather, his normal login was in fact 'admin' on OSX, but it still made him type a password (his own password), and the method of figuring out how to type a password was nonintuitive. And he seems to have been fine with using 'su' to install software, except for some reason (hard to tell from what he says) it wasn't immediately clear that this was specifically necessary.

> Doesn't like font handling.

I think what he said is that he didn't like the font selection interface.

Command+V

[babymac]

Hold down Command+V at boot up and you'll get a detailed startup description (verbose).

Enjoy.

Sherlock Replacement...

[Randar the Lava Liza]

There's an incredibly fast Sherlock replacement called Locator [versiontracker.com] (freeware) which puts a GUI on the OS X locate database. Searches in Locator take all of a second or two. Plus no channels, no big GUI overhead, just hella fast searches. Plus if you use a program called Keyboard Maestro [versiontracker.com] in it's free form you can reassign Command+F to point to Locator instead of Sherlock. Speed speed speed!

Justified Comments

[Spencerian]

Nothing's perfect. Remember that Mac OS X is a "1.0" in reality, and, given that, it's working pretty well for most. I've never had any system crashes since I started its use last March.

Zarf's experience confirms three issues about using Mac OS X:

-If you are an experienced Mac OS 9 user, you will do things to your computer (and vice versa) that will be adverse. Example--moving applications out of the Applications folder. OS X updaters expect to find all Apple-installed apps in their original locations. Previous OS versions generally did not care, but this breaks OS X updates.

Tip: LEAVE OS X application locations alone. X apps and other non-Apple OS X apps can be placed whereever you want, but the Applications folder is preferable.

--If you are an experienced UNIX/Linux user, OS X feels fine, but the GUI gets a little in the way, particularly when you're trying to get to the CLI and stay there awhile. The way OS X handles configuration files threw him, too--OS X preferences can be edited, but you don't have dotfiles, but .plist files. Ditto for the transparencies and such.

--If you hate the fluff of Windows, a few interface issues will annoy both kinds of users. Fortunately, unlike Windows XP, the OS does not attempt to find a way to sell you something on launching any app. Also, (Office X excluded) Mac apps are usually not so overly helpful that you want to assassinate the MS Clippy team and their families for bringing up the "assistant" idea.

It will be interesting when he installs XDarwin for an XFree86 GUI (it can run concurrently w/Agua or alone on the display)

Re:will you macheads ever understand

[TheAJofOZ]

Jeff Raskin is an dumb ass and for the most part "usability experts" are people who get some vicarious thrill from telling others how to work. Friggin CIS majors.

There are many quantitative methods of proving that customisability is not a feature of good UI design in most cases. The best way would be to get a large random sampling of people and let them use a program, half with customisability enabled and half with it disabled. After a few months give them a task and see which group finishes it first. When this kind of test is performed it consistently finds that a well designed interface which is not customisable is better than the customisable interface.

There is no reason that the UI could not be shipped exactly as it is, defaulting to that scheme for most users while allowing power users to change things to their liking.

There's no reason why it can't be done but there is a very good reason why it should - it's bad design. In fact, it's bad design on two very basic counts. The first is the fact that when you customise a good interface you invariably make it less productive and just don't realise it. Secondly, it is extremely poor user interface design to have two modes - one for new users and one for power users.

Computers should be flexible and shouldn't needlessly constrain you, however you are much better off taking the time to relearn a few habits to become more productive, even if you feel constrained while you are relearning.

Basically, go away and read the book then you have something to argue. Right now you're spouting off with no evidence to back yourself up. Not everything is as it first appears.

Re:Summarization

[marmoset]

The prettier Core Graphics font antialiasing is available to Carbon apps (see here [smfr.org] for an example), it's just harder to implement [mozilla.org] from Carbon apps. I wouldn't call this an OS flaw, it's just a place where the Carbon devkit needs some work.

Re:Don't send in your info

[alex_ant]

Registering does have some benefits. Apple, as opposed to other companies, is actually pretty good about customer privacy. But one arguably neat (some might say privacy-invading) thing about the registration process is that Apple learns your machine's serial number. So if you ever have a registered Apple laptop and it gets stolen, then in addition to calling the police, you can call Apple, and the next time the machine with that serial # uses Software Update, bam!

Alex

icab web browser and stuff

[nemp]

in case i'm not the only one who had never heard of icab until this article, here's [www.icab.de] their web page place. i've used it for 5 minutes and am impressed by its configuability. better ad-blocking than moz and omniweb, for example. freeish, in development. mac oses only.