OS X Mountain Lion Review 424
John Siracusa at Ars Technica has published a lengthy and detailed review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. (Lengthy enough that the review garnered a review of its own.) Siracusa methodically goes through all of the changes in the new version, covering everything from the minor new features to the overarching goals. Quoting:
"Despite the oft-cited prediction that Mac will eventually be subsumed by iOS, that's not what's happening here. Apple is determined to bring the benefits of iOS to the Mac, but it's equally determined to do so in a way that preserves the strengths of the Mac platform. Where we Mac nerds go wrong is in mistaking traditions for strengths. Loss aversion is alive and well in the Mac community; with each 'feature' removed and each decision point eliminated from our favorite OS, our tendency is to focus heavily on what's been lost, sometimes blinding ourselves to the gains. But the larger problem is that losses and gains are context-dependent. A person who never uses a feature will not miss it when it's gone. We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion. The fact is, we are not the center of the market, and haven't been for a long time. Three decades ago, the personal computer industry was built on the backs of technology enthusiasts. Every product, every ad was created to please us. No longer. Technology must now work for everyone, not just 'computing enthusiasts.'"
A somewhat briefer review is available at ComputerWorld, and there's a quick one from John Gruber.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:1, Funny)
Few would dispute the GNOMEs also became infected with tablet madness and were suffering from 'lets remove features until an idiot can't screw anything up" disorder/quote?
I thought that was the GNOME mantra.
GNOME won't run until the users are dumb?
Long Story Short (Score:5, Funny)
It's a post about a review of a review of a review.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Funny)
Look. All I want is a computer with two keys. A 1 and a 0. Preferably really, really big keys. No software. No firmware. Just me and the machine. No way to screw things up. It will do what I tell it, and no more. That way, I can keep banging away until I get either Turing's syndrome, or Tourette's.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Funny)
1000 different text editors and solitaire clones
Don't forget text editors which run solitaire! [gnu.org]
Or is that a solitaire game which permits text editing...?
Re:Long Story Short (Score:5, Funny)
post about a review of a review of a review.
Whereas this is a response to a comment on a post about a review of a review of a review.
Conclusion (Score:5, Funny)
"We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion."
That most users are ignorant?
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:3, Funny)
What if. What if Linux and Windows ARE that "multitude of options" to OS X? You know you can install GNOME in OS X and use that, right? You can drop right to a command prompt too and to the lay person it doesn't look any different than any other BSD OS.
What if. People actually like these improvements? What if you had actually liked GNOME3?
Dun Dun Dun.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Funny)
Or Carpal Tunnel
Re:Conclusion (Score:4, Funny)
"We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion."
That most users are ignorant?
You seem to have Slashdot still set to the default "vapid elitism" setting.
Re:Change to Mac File System (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, the new way. New since 1984. File -> Open anyone??
Re:Conclusion (Score:4, Funny)
There's actually a GUI setting for this, but it's disabled when you have Elitism set to Vapid. So he had to use the command line there.