Users Hack Aqua to Make It More Usable 259
edibleplastic writes: "Wired is running an article about how many beta testers of Aqua are hacking the software in order to return it somewhat to its previous appearance. From the article: '"The most distressing part is feeling like a complete novice again." McIntyre said. "I've been using and programming Macs for ten years, and now I'm sitting in front of it going 'What? Huh? How do I launch an application? Where did my icons go?' Talk about disorientation."' Among the hacks are a desktop trash bin and the OpenStrip, an Open Source version of the Control Strip."
Re:Trashcans (Score:1)
How the hell are you supposed to eject your floppy disks!!!!?????
:p
(that always bugged me...)
Worries because of this (Score:1)
Re:Hey Mac users: (Score:1)
Re:Mac has an customizable interface now? (Score:1)
Re:Livin' in the Mac World (Score:1)
Puh-leeze.
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:3)
They were generally under typical use... Your point about GUIs being designed for the lowest common denominator is valid, but what about those who aren't the lowest common denomninator? Should we have to suffer with an interface that just doesn't work in a way we're comfortable with? Having the defaults target "the typical person" is fine, but if you don't provide options for more advanced users, you'll just wind up frustrating people.
-RickHunter
Re:I hated that control strip. (Score:1)
I can understand why people who only use Macs feel like they are in an alien environment when they use Windows.
software mods compared to cars (Score:2)
This brings me to the MacOS/Aqua/Win9x and customisation discussion. Should the work that is being discussed here be considered customisation (such as those cars with the modified headers, nitrous, and bored-out engines sans chassis modification) or improvements to the design as a whole (a systematic investigation and group of improvements into the aspects of a designed system)?
Many people have mentioned that the customisability of UNIX is one of the reasons that it is a bit frightening to novices. Now that the customisation is available at the UI level, should we worry that the UI may become another space that is frightening to users? I realize that novices would be hard pressed to compile some of the early code releases that we are seeing, but there will come a day when the installation is easy enough. And at that point, does most of the original design work of the original engineers go out the window?
The eternal irony... (Score:2)
Keeps happening.
Re:Maybe there's hope? (Score:2)
Have you seen InterfaceBuilder? ResEdit lets you modify an app's appearance, InterfaceBuilder lets you modify appearance and behavior. For example, you can open OmniWeb (web browser) in InterfaceBuilder, add a button to the button bar, and wire it up to the same action as the "View Source" menu item. Then when you run OmniWeb you have a brand new view source button that just works.
I am totally in favor of hacking this sucker for useability. I've tried a few of the add-ons, but I really don't like the idea of having to boot my apple menu after I boot my OS. I'm not digging tacking an extra 64 megs onto RAM useage in order to boot Photoshop.
You can make the apple menu app a startup item so it will automatically come up. (I do agree that it should be built into OS X though). And since OS X is Unix, memory management is vastly better than OS 8/9...the manual memory allocation is probably the least defensible part of the classic Mac OS.
Between the Cubes and MacOSX, it looks like NeXT shall rise again... rather the present Mac user base likes it or not. Mac OS X is definitely not NeXT. There are some NeXT concepts, but a lot of the cooler features were removed (like tear-off menus and a "real" dock).
Re:Isn't it true? (Score:2)
DTP was around *many, many* years before the PPC chips came out. Explain that.
DTP came about specifically because of the Macintosh: there was true WYSIWYG thanks to PostScript printers and apps like Quark and PageMaker. That was before the 68030!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Ironically (Score:2)
Re:Panicking Apple? (Score:2)
No. You're confusing Apple with a tornado.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Re: Quarterly results (Score:2)
I actually think Apple having a non-profitable quarter (first in ~11 quarters, BTW), is good thing for consumers. It will force them to drop the complacence act. This is a company that always provides better output as the underdog.
In the conference call, Jobs opening admitted that Apple botched a lot of things, which was refreshing to hear. Step one is realizing you have a problem...
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re:Article ignores Nextstep Users (Score:2)
Consider the ratio of Mac users to NeXT users.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Exaggeration (Score:4)
This is silly. You launch applications by double-clicking then. They're all stored in
- scott
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Scott Stevenson
Panicking Apple? (Score:4)
This is nothing. Wait until people are rewriting the hardware abstraction bits of the Mach microkernel to add support for non-standard hardware and then creating unauthorized ports. You can do that, you know-- i've talked to people who have recompiled their darwin kernels and installed them under os x and had it work perfectly. So once people start using this to make os x work on non-apple or non-supported hardware... ooh, that should be interesting to watch.
Which isn't to say apple doesn't secretly want that. Apple has a pretty firm history of denouncing such activity, then turning the blind eye of "unsupported" to a hell of a lot of things you'd think they'd be reacting against. Or writing in things to make such activity easier and then refusing to document them.
No way of knowing what would happen, of course. Apple Computer is the single most unpredictable force on earth.
You know what this makes it? (Score:2)
three types of os x pb user (Score:5)
There are three types of os X PB user.
first week of usage:
Unix guy: "Hey, the filesystem looks all funky, how come editing half the stuff in
Mac - Linux guy: "Where's the chooser? Where am I? screw it...cd
Mac guy: "Where's my damned tabbed folder...where's the chooser?"
Week 3:
Unix guy: "Cool...NetInfo does all the etc stuff...not to self, do not give anyone UID 500"
Mac - Linux guy "Sweet...got X-windows apps running in aqua, screw classic environment to run pshop...I've got gimp. Macos 9 gui is butt ugly compared to aqua"
Mac guy: "Ok...I can put an alias on the desktop, that'll be kinda like tabbed folders. I can get to the fileserver through the go menu. Internet Explorer is a piece of crap that doesn't know how to save files...classic is slow"
Week 5:
Unix guy "holy crap...if I type >console at login, I get a console....sweet"
mac - linux guy "cool, I can customize the desktop and GUI to my liking at the prompt....this is WAY better than ResEdit...I can get all the things I mis....wait, I don't miss the finder at all"
mac guy "I think I can work with this"
Re:I can't stand Macs. (Score:2)
If you're gentle removing the plastic crap you can even snap it back on if you sell the mouse.
Re:Panicking Apple? (Score:2)
Just thought I'd point that out.
Adrian Sutton
Macs don't have a future--they are the future (Score:2)
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
Grossly inferior. You can't label the icons in the dock. They move and shift and shrink depending on what else is on the dock. How am I going to distinguish seperate alias folders? How are other people using the computer supposed to know what they are, and where to find them?
The only reason that I am required to put up with these inferiorities is Apple Marketing. I resent that. The reason I chose a Mac in the first place was the superior utility and efficiency of its UI. Now that's being taken away by a bleeding marketing department? Not without hearing me complain it isn't. All the years of expertise and experience that went into the Macintosh UI Guidelines were chucked out the window because some salesmen wanted gumdrops and modernism? And they're trying to sell it to me as an "advance?" Isn't that what Microsoft is continually ridiculed for? The only advantage Apple had over the Wintel monolith was its superior engineering, and they're about to throw that away like an old pair of shoes. Total raging idiocy I tell you. God, I'm this far from going totally Kinnison...
And if Apple's marketing department continues to make UI decisions, it's going to take more than another 16 years of experience and tweaking for Aqua to become as streamlined as the one that it replaces. Bah! I might as well switch full time to WinME - at least its poor copy of the Mac UI is better than that of Aqua.
Re:some ppl use Macs not for the interface (Score:2)
A lot of it is Open Source? Maybe under the APL, but I won't get started on that...
Anyway, from what I've read, all of the GUI systems, the graphics layers, and everything else that goes between the user and the kernel, aside from standard GNU and Unix utilities, is proprietary.
-RickHunter
This guy is an idiot (Score:2)
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
Yes, but it also depends on what the user's used to. I use the keyboard for a lot of menu access anyway, and I tend to only use the mouse for stuff the interface won't let me do with the keyboard. Or when web browsing. As for Macs, I know two or three people who have timed themselves, and actually have good enough fine motor control that it is faster for them to go for a menu at the top of a window than to ram the mouse to the top of the screen, then adjust its position and find what they want.
-RickHunter
The Public Beta Isn't the Final Release (Score:2)
The public beta isn't the last beta before the final release. Updated versions between the PB and Release are being sent to seed testers. Not all of the changes between versions are bug fixes.
One interesting thing is that lots of Mac users who are running the PB have gotten interested in *nix. Many of the messages on the Seed message boards are of the "Where do I go to learn more about Unix?" flavor.
A lot of people seem to really LIKE the idea of having a shiny new car with a big-ass engine under the hood.
I disagree (Score:2)
I think most Mac users (certainly most I know) wanted some of the features they are getting with "Mac OS X" (it's really Openstep ver. something, at the very least they should drop the damn X and call it Mac OS 10... but I ramble) - they want the power and stability of it, some of them even care about having the underlying command line, though others dont, and even though the Mach kernel is a slow dog (why didn't they use a true BSD kernel? anyone have a clue?) the new Macs are so fast very few will even care about that.
But the one thing you won't see Mac users asking for is a new and totally unfamiliar interface. Aqua is an incredibly stupid move for Apple, given their customer base. It's pretty eye candy, but a very poor UI, and certainly not the one that Mac fans adore and expect. Sure, it impresses Windows (and Enlightenment) users, but to the stalwarts of Apples user base it can hardly be less than sacrilige.
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:2)
Yeah, or maybe it's because once you grok the subtlety, depth, and coherency of the "Classic" Mac UI, everything else is a clumsy, hackish, inconsistent mess. Maybe we put up with crappy memory mgt and such because of the UI, not because of familiarity... The poster at the top of this thread got it exactly right.
> 2. Apple is not going to care if these folks hack their OS this way. The folks with the beta now are either developers (not Apples real target market), or pirates (not Apples real target market).
Uh...Did you notice that Apple is selling the betas to anyone with $30? I'm certainly not an Apple developer, but I used my copy of OSX until I had some real work to do. 9 is just much faster - in the get-out-of-my-way-I-have-shit-to-do sense of "faster".
When I talked to the Apple developers at the BSDCon they said they were expecting the UI criticisms they got, and gave me the impression that they were trying to fix things, but then Apple has a LONG history of ignoring user feedback, and letting the shareware community fix their problem parts
- H
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:2)
Here use the superclock as your example. In ages past there was a CDEV by Steve Christensen called "SuperClock" which did one thing: Put a clock in the menubar. It was so popular that Apple bought all rights to it, and now it's a standard part of the System. "WindowShade" has much the same story.
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
I know a lot of people who did go totally kinnison when Apple introduced the Mac. I am also sad to see the Human Interface guidelines go. Tog ranks higher for me all but Woz. BUT, there are apps coming out by the bucketfull. I am 100% sure popup windows will reappear. I am also positive Apple itself will reintroduce the apple menu.
Aqua is a beta of a version one. I am hopeful that they will pull their head out of their asses on this.
As for Win98 being more maclike than win 98, I think we can not see the forest through the trees. we still can turn off all the animation. we still have infinite height menubars.
The dock needs work, true. and it does not totally replace the popup win. BUT changing the background color of each individual window (so, say, internet apps appears as a red window, music apps as a green window, etc) is a great visual cue. This is done for individual finder views in View>>Options. Turn off the default. You can now make all your finder views color coded. The changes stick.
Pretty handy hack. Yes, you only get the name by mouse scrubbing, so i rely on color for quick ref.
I am not saying not to complain. Above, i encouraged all of us to complain TO APPLE. These press peices by know nothing pundits are not the way to do it. Use the beta, inform Apple where the fsck up.
Cheers,
Tom
disappointed by Aqua (Score:3)
Damn straight. The most bone-chilling comment on Aqua that I've read so far came from Bruce Tognazzini [asktog.com], usability guru and founder of the Apple Human Interface Group -- the main guy responsible for the stuff you love/hate about the Mac GUI. His quote:
Tog was probably gone by the time OS 8 added tabbed windows [maccentral.com], but I definitely would have a bad time using a Mac without them. And FinderPop [finderpop.com].
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
In my comment, I never said how keyboard control should be handled. It is a totally separate issue from where the menu is located. I believe that all functions should be available through the keyboard, but that shouldn't be considered the primary way access them. They should be shortcuts for advanced users.
In the case of your friends, they may indeed have the motor control required. However, the typical person doesn't and that's who is (and should be) targeted by this user-interface decision. Also, are you sure that they timed themselves under typical use? Or did they prepare themselves for the timing test? It could easily make a big difference in the results.
A transition, or a real functionality loss? (Score:2)
It would be interesting to hear about differences from the perspective of key shortcuts or the like, since this article seems to concentrate mostly on visual aesthetics.
BTW, is it just me, or did the Ars Technica guy come out of this sounding like an asshole? The actual quote that was stated sounded normal, but the intro was horrible:
"John Siracusa, a programmer who has written reviews of Mac OS X for Ars Technica , said that while the new system is more powerful, no one uses the Mac for technical reasons, they use it because of the interface."
What's so controversial about this? (Score:5)
Just like when Windows 95 users ran progman.exe to get their old folders and icons back, and those who run X just to have multiple X terms... some eventually change, and others just stay for whatever reasons: ease of use, no desire to learn new ways, or just to get things done without having to worry about changing the way you work.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
The Human Interface group was gutted by Steve, and most of Aqua's ideas are strictly Steve. The things that have changed are things that had very good irrefutable reasons; the monochrome scheme was to prevent losing the graphic designers, etc.
Stuff like useability of the Dock, and loss of good features like Apple Menua and spring loaded folders, just isn't going to fly with Steve, especially when it's at the expense of his baby "The Dock". (actually, I preferred the old NeXT dock, myself).
I'm personally not very hopeful that Apple is going to make any changes to OS X PB. Especially when I hear brain-dead comments like "most of the people who don't like it are just a very vocal minority". That's total bullshit, and if you've been on any public message board about OS X in the past three months, you'd know that. But nobody who likes their job at Apple questions Steve. At least we'll have our hacks and 3rd Party Tweaks.
No real surprise (Score:2)
I mean, Mac users have been changing and adjusting their GUI for years. From what I know, long before any other operating system. It was just a matter of time before people started messing around with OS X to change the outlook and functionality.
The only ironic part is that there are a bunch of themes out there trying to copy Aqua, and here we have a group of users trying to change their Aqua.
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
Multimon support (Score:2)
Yes, Win2K supports Multimon (multiple monitors)
I have a Millenium II and a GeForce 2 in the same computer. It rocks for 3D development.
You can check the Multimon database at http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/db.asp [realtimesoft.com]
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:2)
First of all, your attempt to sterotype all Mac users as neophobes is small minded and offensive. Many Mac users have been trying, fruitlessly, to change Wintel users over to the Mac, and continue to do so. Many Mac users look forward to the next release version of the OS, so they have an excuse to do what is otherwise completely unnecessary: tinker with their system software. And many Mac users will eagerly upgrade to OS X, either because it's cool, or because they've been waiting years for preemptive multitasking.
And we have little reason to believe that Apple's engineers are going to change their MO. Historically, popular Mac OS "hacks" have been assimilated by the OS. I confidently predict that people at Apple will care very much how people tweak the UI. They will watch which third party hacks are the most popular. Something very much like the following conversation will one day take place:
Software Engineer: "Yeah, most of us down in Engineering have those installed already. We've reverse engineered them in our spare time. Want us to assimilate them?"
Marketing Droid 2:"But we worked hard to make those gumdrops throb... it was a mission critical goal in 1999. Besides, for thinking up the throbbing gumdrop, Steve looked at me once. That was my baby."
Engineering: "Resistance is futile. The unthrobbing gumdrop can easily become a new option on the Controls Control Panel."
Marketing Droid 1:"Stop whining. We've saturated the throbbing gumdrop market. We must have something to sell OS XI with. Make it so. Contact Legal and tell them to proceed with acquiring all rights to the DeThrobinator."
OK, ok... so it won't be exactly the same conversation. But you get the point.
No big deal (Score:5)
What is news, is the fact that Apple has provided simple commands to change almost every aspect of how your desktop looks. Want a semi-transparent terminal? How about the trash on the desktop? Maybe you want that useless Apple in the middle of the Menu bar to actually do something, I'm sure you can do it. What's also cool is that "$man netinfo" pulls up a nice manual (read book) on the database for system settings, or that "$man perl" pulls up a damn BOOK on how to code Perl. OS X has the first functional man pages I've seen in my life (that is, they aren't written in geek speak for coders).
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
hacking aqua or writing applications (Score:2)
or are we juss writing applications for it ??
or am i getting the meaning of hacking wrong ??
"The world is coming to an end. Please log orff."
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
True, they did do usability testing, and they did find that a single menu bar was better. IIRC, they did have a menu per window at one point in the design (see "Insanely Great" by Steven Levy).
However, I believe that the size of the screen negated any other decision they may have wanted to go with (menu bar in each window, floating menu bar, whatever). Well, I guess, a combination of design decision and hardware limitations. A context-sensitive menu (a la Xerox PARC STAR) would require multiple buttons on the mouse (anathema to "easy to use" in Apple's mind), so a menu bar is required. The small screen negated the option of multiple menu bars (in a usability sense of having as many pixels available for documents as possible).
But, I still find that an old Mac SE/30 with System 7 is one of the great computers. I absolutely dote on mine. It's still a major axe in my arsenal. I even seem to be more creative at it.
(tho web browsing is pretty painful, plain old text editing is just fine)
DOS (Score:2)
bash, csh, etc. are all incredibly more powerful and much nicer (tab completion!!) than DOS. Wildcard expansion is better, and you can write real programs for the interpret, and not these klunky batch files that need the Norton utilities to be useful.
some ppl use Macs not for the interface (Score:5)
Not entirely true. Do Macs not have superior color calibration capabilities, and thus is the preferred platform for graphics designers? Furthermore, some of use Macs because the PHB uses them (lots of PHBs in academia use Macs).
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Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
Hard core hackers (Score:5)
I'm glad they rectified the problem. I just don't feel like an elite, hard core, down-to-the-metal hacker unless I have on my computer desktop a group of pixels in the shape of a garbage can.
Cheers,
the control strip??? (Score:2)
But anyway, being able to customize Aqua sounds damn cool, and only increases my desire to get a G4 system... I really want to see for myself what OSX can do - and yes, I really like having that spiffy little trash can on my desktop.
Re:perhaps this is confirmation... (Score:2)
Re:Panicking Apple? (Score:2)
A real test for Apple (Score:4)
Now that I think of it, this reminds me of the mess MS made with their stupid "one click to launch" and active desktop moves. The number one request they had was to turn them off by default, since the majority of users hated them.
Re:Ironically (Score:2)
Re:win2k does it fine (Score:2)
Wrong. Windows has had multiple monitor support since Windows 98 (or maybe 98SE). I use it every day at work, and you don't need a "fancy" card. I use the old Voodoo 3 2000 PCI out of my Pentium 233mmx, in conjunction with any number of AGP cards, GeForce, Voodoo 3, Matrox, ATI, you name it, it works for the most part. Pretty much any video card manufactured in the last three years will work just fine, if that doesn't meet your definition of "run of the mill" cards, then I don't know what does.
What you're probably being confused by is thinking that this ability requires a Matrox card with two VGA outputs. You don't need a fancy card like that, pretty much any two cards will work just fine.
My normal setup at my old job was a 21 inch Gateway CRT, attached to my TNT2 AGP card, and a 15 inch Apple LCD attached to my Voodoo 3 PCI card. Yes, Apple. The blue and white LCD panels work fine with PC's.
You can even get pretty cheap corporate PC's with dual head support. Just configure a Dell Optiplex GX110 or 115, add the TNT2 PCI card, and you're all set, since the motherboard has an onboard AGP video chipset as well. You just need to enable it in Windows, plug in a second monitor, and you've got loads of screen real estate.
Don't underestimate how useful this is, try it, even if all you've got is an old 15 inch CRT, you'll find it useful, I guarantee it.
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Re:The eternal irony... (Score:2)
Yeah, I've been trying for a while to completely ditch NT and go with FreeBSD but I'm too used to the 95 interface. Oh! You meant the different mac os's! :oD
Re:Is the GUI shell replacable? (Score:2)
The OS is not (witness Darwin), the apps, however, are. Though the term "Aqua" is somewhat ambigous. It could mean the theme that Apple is currently using on its GUI layer, or it could be the GUI layer itself.
Perhaps OS X users might be happier with a port of X, running Enlightenment and eMac.
Yikes. I sort of doubt that. Mac OS X is much more than BSD running a pretty window manager.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
No ! Not the ars technica article _again_ ! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the article is a nice piece of shit (wait a bit before moderating down, please. and read the article. it may also help if you use OS X on a daily basis).
The guy use very technical words to tell the world that what is miss is, mainly, an apple menu. He seems to have trouble keeping itself calm in the last couple of pages. He want is apple menu back. We'll he even reboot in real Mac OS 9, so he can have its apple menu. His OS 9 crashes two times, but, what the hell, he prefers crashing than lacking its fucking apple menu.
If he wants, he can go on www.Stepwise.com (on softrack), where he'll find free replacements for it, but no, no, no. He wants it in _standard_. He wants apple to push its apple menu to every mom and dad of the world.
Apple deserves him the holy apple menu.
There is a rant about the '5 seconds faster to boot that saves 50 lifes', which get in connection with its apple menu at the end. He probably beleives that the apple menu, beeing a so superior design, is probably worth 500 lifes. (Btw, give the time an OS 9 takes to boot and the incessant crashing it have, forcing the switch to OS X on every mac user would probably save the population of a medium city)
But the reality he refuses to face is that the apple menu plain sucks (cluttered. hard to read [icons are smaller than what is generally used for an app]. difficult to use with the nested hierarchies. used as a 'kitchen sink' for every crap in the computer, easy to laucnh the wrong app, impossible to launch several item at once, impossible to drag a document on a menu entry to do 'open with', etc, etc). He is used to it, and I can understand that, but it sucks as much as the windows start menu, or the gnome one. (Worse is better, bad ideas get copied). AND IF HE WANTS ONE, WHY CAN'T HE DOWNLOADS ONE ? By the time it took him to rant about it, I would have WRITTEN one.
There is a pathetic rant about the:
> lack of a universally accessible, user-configurable, hierarchical quick-access > mechanism. [it] is necessary if advanced users are ever to be as efficient in > OS X as they are in classic Mac OS.
Boys, I love the precision of the description.
* universally accessible
--> I want it on the menu bar, at a fixed place (ie: on the top left or top right). In one word, I want a menu
* user-configurable
--> I don't want it do be tied to the filesystem, or filled magically. I want to fill it myself, like the good old apple menu [note: this looks like a advanced feature for Mac OS X. My dad will never find how to fill an apple menu. He dosn't even _exctly_ know the difference between a macintosh and windows (sic)]
* hierarchical quick-access mechanism
--> I want it to be a hierarchical menu
This looks like jobs descriptions used when the guy is already choosed. Maybe he could have added:
* colorfull
--> As it is easier to spot. Maybe it could have rainbows color, so I could use it to check if I am not on a monochrome monitor. I would recommend the representation of a fruit, but a company logo could do well too
I also love the various attempt at 'the apple logo in the middle of the screen have no use', remove it, or (better) find a use for it (hint, hint)
Mac looser at its best.
Why don't he says what his trouble really is ?
Finding and launching applications and documents is painfull. There are other means to solve that than the apple menu. (For instance: search for NeXTstep 4.0 alpha screenshot on the web. There was a fantastic shelf in this version that never made it into 4.0. Pity).
This is something that apple can understand and take into account. Pushing an crappy concept in the new os is just plain stupid. And there is a lot more missing in OS X than the apple menu.
I bet apple have already the apple menu somewhere, but want to wait for 1.0 so jobs can make the holy demo: clicking on the apple, and having the menu down.
I already see al the suckers applauding.
Okay, now you can moderate down to (-1) flamebait.
Cheers,
--fred
Re:three types of os x pb user (Score:2)
Did you use DP4? BELIEVE me, things are improving over time. Expect to see a speed increase with the next release (final or not).
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re:An ounce of prevention... (Score:4)
127.0.0.1 goatse.cx
127.0.0.1 slashmirror.tripod.com
127.0.0.1 slashtroll.org
Never again will you see anything from those servers.
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:2)
While this is clearly a very objective, well thought out statement, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Automatic thumbnail creation of mimized windows is a stroke of genious, IMHO. And I've been working with quite a few more than two apps at once. Furthermore, minimization is not the only way to do window management. Project Builder, for instance, has only one main window, but a list of open documents between which you can swich. You can split the display multiple times to show more than one document at once, and you can override this behavior and use separate window if you like.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re:A transition, or a real functionality loss? (Score:2)
Yes.
the Apple menu
Not really, that's the Favorites folder. Used in combination with the Go menu. It's almost there, but the Go menu is only available in the Finder.
launcher
No. That's call the Applications folder.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re: rendering results (Score:2)
Hmmm, I haven't had the same results [wildtofu.com] as you have with complex pages in Mozilla. It's not surprising that iCab, OmniWeb and Netscape would render faster, though. For the most part, all they care about is HTML, and it one case - CSS (albeit poorly). You can't see it on Slashdot, but on sites that use CSS extensively (which are rapidly becoming quite common), you'll be wishing for the MacIE rendering engine. And that sophitication doesn't come without extra consumption of resources.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
Aye - tis true. In fact, many of the hacks were later adopted by Apple and worked into the OS (anyone remember SuperClock?) or became commercial products (or Now Utilities?). I guess the good news is there's lots of new niches for improvements!
I knew I wasn't the only one chagrined and disappointed by the Aqua interface. I told myself when I read the first reviews that I'm not going to, ahem, "upgrade," my Macintosh to OS X until I can customize it so that the UI works like OS 9 does. (I like my Apple Menu and my Tabbed Folders Full Of Aliases, thank you very much, and I resent being forced to use that clutzy icon dock for everything.)
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
infinite height
Right..............
Re:hacking aqua or writing applications (Score:2)
greater effort in properly utilizing the word
'hacking'. Since when does installing some
software or checking a box to enable a feature
constitute 'hacking'?
Now if these guys are porting the software
to the new code base, i would concider that
a hack. Again a distinction should be made.
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
:)
Can anyone else hear Stevie boy yelling "I told you NeXT was a good idea!!"?
Flamebait: Grow up (Score:2)
X is BSD and its a MARKET interface. Remember that
Ever here about Kaleidoscope?!? (Score:2)
http://www.kaleidoscope.net/
Macs have whacked interface schemes since Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose hacked this piece of shareware out.
Kaleidoscope has schemes rivaling anything on themes.org.
I've always prefered the interfaces and icons of Mac users create to anything coming out of the Windows or Linux camps.
Take a look at Audion's Faces [panic.com] compared to WinAmp's Skins [winamp.com].
Is there a Windows or Linux equivalent to Icon Factory [iconfactory.com]?
Re:I can't stand Macs. (Score:2)
I think you're just spewing nonsense and hatred, free from the burden of facts.
Re:Ironically (Score:3)
Running all 3 of those would completely piss off the network admins at one of my last jobs... They'ed make it a point to stop by my desk once a week just to see "what Lucas had done to his computer this week".
All that's happening now is apples releasing a new OS which lacks some features which users really enjoyed. So, said users are readding those features like they always have. Darwin isn't making this possible. Open source isn't making this possible. It's always been possible. And it's always been done.
Re:incompetent mac users. (Score:2)
I went to apple.com and read and learned where my apps are.
I read the docs and some websites (and downloaded the classic menu, open strip and jetclock.)
I took 15 fscking minutes to read the brochure that came with os-x.
The user they quoted is a lazy ass.
Remember Mac OS Before the apple menu? I do. The functionality (like being able to add aliases) were added in OS-6. The control strip appeared for powerbooks only in os-7. The mac os this guy misses is less than 5 years old. all of his widgets are relatively new.
OS-X will change over time too.
My fello Macheads...QUIT whining. Send comments ot Apple or whip up something yourself.
Cheers,
Tom
overreacting over Aqua (Score:2)
i see why these people are reacting so harshly: i did the same when i started using OS X. however after using it for a while, i started to realize that while not perfect, many aspects of Aqua are very good additions. at the very end, the article even gives a quote that expresses just this:
what it really comes down to is that people are afriad of change. still, it is nice to have a customizable GUI. keep in mind however that the MacOS has always been customizable through hacks, so this is hardly anything new.
- j
Re:Will this panic Apple? (Score:3)
Apple has usually been pretty indifferent about UI customization programs like Kaleidoscope. Apple keeps the UI consistent for newbies, but quietly writes in hooks for more advanced users to play with the system. Why do you think they released ResEdit as freeware years and years ago? They don't advertise what you can do, but it's all there. Apple seems to quietly approve of Mac users who like to tweak their system.
It's the blindness of people who are reliant on text files and CLIs to configure their system that leads to the Mac having a reputation of being uncustomizeable. Read any old Mac publication back-issues for a span of 3-4 months if you want to find an article on customizing your system. It was a pretty common thing.
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:4)
Now I don't think the dock is a bad idea by itself, but they took away every other means for the user to customize the way his desktop works: the Hierarchical Apple Menu (with the Apple Menu Items folder) and the Tabbed Folders cannot be replaced with a row of icons.
Re:What's so controversial about this? (Score:2)
A couple of ""FACTS"":
1. The current set of mac users are the folks who are most resistent to change. Otherwise they would have left the platform long ago for a 'real OS' (or at least one that pretends to have protected memory, real multitasking, etc). Of course they're upset when Apple changes the way things work.
2. Apple is not going to care if these folks hack their OS this way. The folks with the beta now are either developers (not Apples real target market), or pirates (not Apples real target market). And why would they care if folks do this anyway? They never cared when folks installed inits/hacks before...
(disclaimers: I'm running OS X and OS X Server on the box I'm using now)
Re:the control strip??? (Score:2)
well, yeah! it looks so nice and shiny, much like a real trash can never does, and, I still look fondly upon the days when Oscar the Grouch would come up out of the can and sing me a little song, all on my ancient Mac SE... those were the days... and mind you, I still have the SE, it still works - quite nicely once it was upgraded to a 68030 - too bad it still only has 4 meg of ram, but the hell - it still runs, and quite well. (though the trash can on my G3 is much shinier - probably due to the presence of color).
If I only had a singing muppet to grace Window Maker / GNOME... I'd be in heaven.
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
what's really nice with KDE's way of doing it however is you have the choice to turn it off. or on. or off again. or on again...
Re:I can't stand Macs. (Score:2)
I don't know what's up with my computer, but that ranges anywhere from instantaneous to 15 seconds on my system. And it insists on spinning up my second hard drive before it'll autocomplete.
--
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
In terms of menus, this means that it's easier to hit a menu if it is placed at an edge of the screen. In Windows apps, there is a space above the menus, so you have to be more precise with the mouse. It's a subtle difference, but it makes a difference in daily usage of the OS.
There is further discussion, with examples, here [asktog.com].
Re:No big deal (Score:4)
Big deal! Some people have trash on the desktop without even having a computer!
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:5)
Many user interface studies have shown that it is significantly faster to have the menu on the top than on the top of Windows. Why? The menu height is infinite so there is much less need for fine motor control - you just jam the mouse to the top of the screen. The reason people don't think it is faster is that when accessing a menu on the top of a Window, users are using that fine motor control and lose track of the time it is taking. In other words, you may perceive it to be faster, but if you use a stop watch, it is actually slower. The orignal Macintosh user-interface designers studied this very carefully when they made the decision to put it on top.
See this [asktog.com] article on AskTog (go to question #5)
Re:some ppl use Macs not for the interface (Score:5)
It may be true that no one uses MacOS 8/9 for technical reasons, except graphics designers. If so, it's also true that nobody uses Windows for any good reason, except that everyone else does.
From a technical standpoint, Mac OS X is on par with or superior to Linux in many ways. Take a look at IOKit or Quartz or the capability for stackable file systems. Cocoa is also a sweet framework, and Project Builder is a very nice IDE, with all the standard unix tools (gcc, gdb...) in the backend. Why do I say it's technically superior in some ways? Because BSD is technically superior to Linux in some ways, and MacOS X inherits from BSD. Apple has also added some nice extras, as I mentioned earlier.
Linux zealots: yes, go ahead and flame. "There's no way Apple could ever match the holy power of the Penguin," yada yada... Keep in mind OS X isn't the dark side any more--a lot of it is Open Source. Hell, you should even be able to run Linux binaries...
Re:Hey Mac users: (Score:4)
A lot of the more popular interface hacks are simply people turning on functionality that's built into the OS but which they haven't written an interface for yet by default. For example, you turn on mounting disks directly on the desktop just by flipping a bit in a property list. Likewise, the terminal app has built in support for translucency that you can turn on just by adding a property to your prefs file. People are discovering more of these goodies every day.
Contrary to all the people wailing about how lost they feel, I'm excited to be spelunking in new territory, finding and being turned on to new details and fun shit every day. There's a lively network of young sites (macosx.com, osxtalk.com, macosxhints.com, etc) where people can swap bits of new knowledge. This is the fun part of an OS's evolution, before people's ingrained habits and the backwards compatabilty albatross start to become a drag. I know I'm not missing the fricking Apple menu.
-d.w.
We need a new mod category... (Score:2)
While you've got some points to make, there are stretches of your post that are virtually unreadable thanks to your... creative spelling, grammar and language. What otherwise would have been an informative or insightful post instead comes across as only slightly more sophisticated than the ravings of a lunatic.
Re:A real test for Apple (Score:2)
Burris
So? (Score:2)
Thankfully this is not so, and as a result I expect to see some really cool additional features added to Aqua by Apple that start out as user hacks.
Re:Will this panic Apple? (Score:2)
I wouldn't think so. They are no doubt expecting people to customize OS X after basing it on a free OS. I think Apple realises that customization is becoming a big thing, and they can avoid hindering that and base OS X on a proven OS at the same time. Not a bad plan
Re:some ppl use Macs not for the interface (Score:3)
Today, the field is probably more equal, but in the past, the answer to your question is a no-recount "yes".
I used to work in publishing (Production, although I was more useful as a network admin at the time). Designing in color used to be _so_ much easier on macs that no magazine I knew would touch a PC for anyone other than accountants.
There was simply no contest.
Today, I suspect things are better. I haven't produced a Quark doc with Photoshop tiffs that was going to plate in about 4 years (and I know most mags don't "go to plate" anymore; the publishing world is changing quickly), so I don't actually know. I suspect that there is a lot of inertia here, where people who know what they are doing are not willing to switch platforms to save $200 in sunk costs.
I will say that the whole "properties" orientation of PCs, along with "right click to do anything" frusterates a lot of graphic designers. The mac platform has been a lot more useful for designers due from an interface perspective.
-j
Err. . . (Score:2)
Anybody here remember the old DOS SHELL? I loved that thing, used it as my GUI for ages, ran great, easy to pop in and out of, and it supported multi-tasking of sorts. If you wanted to customize it, you could change the colors of the window bars, text, and text background. That was it, period. No anti-aliased interpolated transparent buttons, no OPEN-GL effects, the damn thing just RAN, and on any computer too. Same thing with X-TREE, but its default color scheme was ugly (at least I thought so then.)
Sheesh, I never did understand the whole entire customize the look of your OS thing, hell, I think beige is the PERFECT color. There are so many different shades of beiege, the APPLE II line alone had a variety of Beige's! Gray, Beige, Black, White, that is what a OS's GUI should look like, period, end of story. I want to run a program, I click on its icon, it runs, no fancy sound effects, no bells and whistels, and NO freeze ups. Simple. You could write a decent GUI in basic if you wanted too, as long as you got a version of basic that supported running EXE's and BAT files.
Any plug-ins to modify your GUI just take up more HD space and increases the time it takes for your system to load, and with OS X running at a snails pace already (do to the above mentioned trancparency, OpenGL and such) I see no reason why a mac user would want to further hinder their system's performance with some sort of Scheme programs or any other sort of GUI ajustments. Of course, I guess with only 1 mouse button, they have to entertain themselves somehow (how DO you guys do 3d modeling with only 1 mouse button, isn't it mentaly painfull?)
Mac OS X is wonderful (Score:2)
However, please remember that it's Mac OS X, not X. I think X has gone as far toward taking BSD to the consumer market as it ever will. Instead of the ability to run multiple xterms, I think it is the Aqua interface and the BSD stability that will make Mac OS X a success.
fragments (Score:4)
Watching the mac community i have seen it simply split in half between those who want Aqua and those who don't. Those who have discovered aqua works for them are happy and have the luxury of getting to simply label anyone who doesn't agree with them as closed-minded and reactionary; those who don't are simply having to face the reality that for the next God knows how long they will hve to either live with this or screw up their system with half-assed, patchwork third-party hacks. Those in the second group are becoming desperate, and are probably closing themselves to some of the [very few, in my opinion] interface changes in os x that needed to be done. Apple, meanwhile, is (i'm afraid) going to wind up so inundated with DUDE WHY DID YOU GET RID OF TEH AAPPOLE mENU!!! you SUCK!!! That they will probably be somewhat closed off to any real, constructive critisism.
From my end, this is not about resisting change. It's about customizablity, and apple's dogged resistance to allowing it. The mac os, since version 8.5, has had the most advanced theming system ever designed for anything; apple refuses to release the specs on how to design for it. Themes exist based on reverse-engineered specs, and most of them are quirky and/or slow. Apple seems to have some kind of seige mentality.
Aqua is everything some people need. It doesn't fit everyone's needs. It was designed to be as simple as possible, to be straightforward for imac users and not overwhelm people. The problems from go from practical -- that os x, rather than doing things in a different way, simply removes huge blocks of functionality (say, an easy heirarchal interface to common things, or an easy way to knock windows out of the way such as windowshade as opposed to a minimize that turns the window into an postage-stamp white blur eating up the single most precious piece of screen real estate you have) without providing new ways to do it -- to personal -- in my opinion, maximize/minimize and excessively paned interfaces are hideous, clumsy concepts, and this is simply the way i feel and the way i've always felt -- to the simple fact that aqua, with its glaring white lack of contrast between different screen areas, gives me and many other people literal splitting headaches with prolonged use. (the headaches have stopped now that i've installed a far uglier but at least darker theme.) Obviously not everyone will feel these way. Some people will find the way the dock lets them do the practical things efficient, some people have different personal preferences, some people won't have the headache problem.. and i am happy that these people get to use mac os x and are satistfied with it. But apple needs to recognize that people's opinions will differ, and build in the greatest amount of customizability they can...
Or maybe they're forcing everyone to use the aqua interface as a test. Maybe they're preparing at the same time a completely old-school os 9 interface you'll be able to switch between at will with an aqua interface. There is already signs of this; there is a quick, simple command (defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSInterfaceStyle nextstep) that will let you completely convert all cocoa apps to an old-school completely nextstep interface, both in appearance and behavior. (Minimizing even works the old, cool, freeform nextstep-dock way.) Maybe apple is forcing us to use the new interface because they want us to all give it as much of a chance as we can so we can overcome our initial misgivings and give real, informed feedback on it instead of just switching into an OS 9-style shell without giving it a chance, and once the real os x is released they'll suddenly give us all these options that were hidden before. But i don't feel terribly optimistic.
Quick note to Prophet of Doom and Ex Machina: Yer idiots. Both of you. OK, maybe not idiots. But you are at the least uninformed. OS 9 was customizable. There were more wierd interface hacks for every Mac OS i've used since 7 than you can imagine, interface customizations that ran deeper than anything i've seen as part of windows. Maybe the proverbial sheeplike mac user who will accept whatever they put in front of them unquestioningly exists, but i don't know where they are. Most mac users either use it unquestioningly because they *like* it that way-- and if they don't, they switch to windows or download an extention or something. meanwhile: OS X will The "customizable" things here have nothing to do with the bsd code inside. The part we are talking about customizing here is the interface, which is not part of the open source core any more than GNOME is part of the linux kernel. Yes, it is possible now for us to compile our own kernels, which is wonderful. But in the end it isn't the least bit relevant to aqua. In the end it will be more possible to make os x "hackable" than it was for OS 9, but this has nothing to do with anything apple will do and allow and everything to do with simple subtleties of the way Objective C and the apis work, everything to do with nib files and messaging.. basically not becuase apple makes it easier to customize in os x, but because os x makes it easier to go around apple.
In the meantime if i was happy with a good, modern OS with a nice convenient bash shell and a clumsy interface i would have switched to debian a year ago. But i'm staying with os x because i think i can meld it to what i want, and because i believe below aqua it is the best OS ever created...
OK, I submit now for your flames. I suggest you ignore the question of whether i am making any kind of general point, take some one tiny aspect of what i've said which is flawed, blow it up real big and use it as an excuse to dismiss everything else i or any other mac user has ever said and conclude with a personal attack.
-mr. cranky
i hate slashdot
Re:Not true- many mac users customize (Score:2)
That's a design difference between Macs and Windows/X -- one menu bar is easier to mouse to and understand than 3 or more on separate windows.
For a new user, if you tell them to go to the menu bar, they don't have to ask "which one?", if there's only one.
The funny thing is, I think Apple just stumbled into this one -- the UI was designed for the original toaster Macs (128K, 512K, SE, SE/30, Classic, etc), which only had 512x324 pixels. A menu on each window would eat up a LOT of screen real estate.
Re:No big deal (Score:4)
"OS X has the first functional man pages I've seen in my life (that is, they aren't written in geek speak for coders)"
Um, aren't practically all of them more or less the same man pages we know and love from other Unices? The Perl one you mention definitely is.
In any case, you can read them all here: http://www.osxfaq.com/man/ [osxfaq.com]
Re:No ! Not the ars technica article _again_ ! (Score:3)
Well - this illustrates two sets of people, in my mind. One set appreciates, and benefits from the Apple Menu - and you hit the nail on the head, it's for relieving the pain of finding and launching applications. The deal is, it isn't going to work unless the user has the ultimate power to configure it. This is where Windows' Start menu fails. There's too much crap in Start menu that you can't configure, and when you do try to configure it, it's kind of a pain in the ass. Apple Menu is very simple, because it's a Finder folder/directory. You click on a folder, instead of drilling into it's contents menu, and that folder pops up, and you can instantly change the aliases within to whatever you like, through the familliar interface of the Finder's file-management. Windows' Start Menu works roughly the same way, but they reserve the top level for, basically advertisements. (AIM launcher, Netscape SmartUpdate, New Office Document - why the hell can't I put my own things there?) Then the lower levels, are not easily accessible, unless you open Expolorer, separately, and drill down through obscure hierarchies to where your profile's menu folder is. And you cannot control sorting (as you CAN in Apple Menu). Windows fails - because it's not configurable to the degree the power user expects it to be. Apple Menu SUCCEEDS because it is very configurable (plus BeHierarchic kicks ass too). The Dock fails miserably, because it is not configurable, or hierarchical. Damn dock.
The other type of user, is "less of a power user" - they don't see that going through the trouble of keeping Apple Menu organized themselves is worth it for simply having a quick convenient popup tray for launching apps. They use "tabbed folders". Also a pretty nice feature, but I never saw any use for it myself. But this is a significant subset of the users out there.
Personally, I think tabbed folders requires too many clicks for the access you get to your apps. It's purely the mechanical difference between the tabbed folders and the menu. However, tabbed folders are probably much easier to keep organized.
The Launcher fails, because it is not as configurable, and is not hierarchical, and uses too much screen real-estate. Apple learned this, I know they did, because the Launcher was installed by default back in the System 7.x timeframe, and then they decided to make it optional later. Someone made that decision based on the information that people thought it sucked.
Now Apple makes the Launcher mistake again, with OS X's Dock, only they make it so that there's no alternative (you can't simply deactivate the dock).
People who LIKE the dock, are probably the majority of users, who use one or two apps at a time, and don't have trouble distinguishing between the big-blue-"E" icon, and the control panel icon, and the mail icon. But add any reasonable amount of RAM to a system, and your user is going to have the capability of launching 5, 6, 7, or more apps simultaneously, and past that point, the Dock does become totally useless. You're entering power-user territory here, and that's why the majority of testers haven't complained, because A). most people aren't power-users, and B), there really aren't enough apps available for OS X yet that get people into situations where they need to run 10-15 apps simultaneously. But I'll tell you one thing. With OS X's stability, it now makes it POSSIBLE to run that many apps. People will be doing it. And with OS X's Unix roots, and the Unix philosophy being - many small discreet apps, each great at one little task, people will be needing a much better method of managing application launching and document windows. The Dock ain't it.
I agree with you about the NeXT dock. That would be a much better solution.
Re:Err. . . (Score:2)
Maybe there's hope? (Score:2)
Same on my powerbook, the only difference being that the bettery meter told me how long a charge was going to take when I plugged into the wall.... I'm not trading the big stack of features I love the MacOS for in exchange for one itty bit of convenience.
The Mac has always been hackable- and one up on everything else, you can hack a COMPILED binary. This is great, and I'll miss Resedit if I EVER get around to using OSX.
Users want the Apple Menu. They want the Desktop (a LOT.) They want tabbed folders, they want the control strip.... and out of the handful of Pittsburghers that have tried the Beta, not one of us has anything positive to say about functionality. The menu windows are bulky and ugly, universal drag and drop is a joke, and there are so many things just fundamentally WINDOWS in the way the system now handles that I'm sure more than one crossplatformer is tearing his hair out in anger.
I am totally in favor of hacking this sucker for useability. I've tried a few of the add-ons, but I really don't like the idea of having to boot my apple menu after I boot my OS. I'm not digging tacking an extra 64 megs onto RAM useage in order to boot Photoshop.
Whoever can hack Aqua and replace it with a useable interface- for example, the OS 9 front end (finder windows, apple menu, desktop, control strip, and NO FRIGGIN DOCK) will probably be hailed as a hero in the Mac community.
Mac users want current MacOS functionality, if they wanted NeXT, they would have bought NeXT cubes when the company was still around. Aqua fails to deliver in every area so far, with the possible exception of Colorsync.
Between the Cubes and MacOSX, it looks like NeXT shall rise again... rather the present Mac user base likes it or not.
Re:An ounce of prevention... (Score:2)
Re:Ironically (Score:2)
Re:some ppl use Macs not for the interface (Score:2)
I guess I'll find out soon eough which platform is better for all those high-end Adobe packages... I just hope I don't run out of money first.