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Apple Businesses

Follow-up To Critique of BeOS & Mac OS X 380

Posted by Hemos from the looking-under-the-hood dept.
UnknownSoldier writes: "Scot Hacker has posted a great follow-up to his Tales of a BeOS Refugee entitled Reactions to Tales of a BeOS Refugee. (Hopefully everyone involved in implementing 'Linux on the Desktop' will eventually incorporate the best ideas of Be and Mac OS X for smoother usability in Linux.)"
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Follow-up To Critique of BeOS & Mac OS X More

Follow-up To Critique of BeOS & Mac OS X

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  • Progress is in making choices too (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and less is more.

    Consistency is vital. A `deep' user interface notion is needed, instead of the concept of the user interface as shallow cosmetics.

    You cannot get consistency without coordination; consistency, and a deeply uniform structure in all things noticable, limits choice too.

    Less is more. Predictable behaviour over in-depth per-widget configuration is required.

    You'll never get there by borrowing here and adding there. A larger vision is called for, rather than ad-hock additions of code, no matter how l337 the c0d3 h@x0rZ be.

    • Re:Progress is in making choices too (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stew77 ( 412272 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @04:58PM (#2768818)
      ACK.

      One of the major points why I don't like KDE is that they don't make any choices but make everything a user decision. Having the menu bar in the window or on the screen top does not result in having the best but the worst of both worlds.

      I'd like to remind all the people working on a user interfaces of this quote from the KDE UI pages [kde.org]:Avoid rampant customisation. .. If a user can, by a few judicious choices, really improve the interface, we probably have done a poor job.

  • Nothing New (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dozing ( 111230 )
    I know I'm not saying anything new here so please don't mod me down for being unoriginal, but I am dying for a x86 desktop alternative.

    As somone who has been selling custom built computers for at least 5 years and tinkering with Linux and other free operating systems. I become increasingly disgusted when i have to buy a copy of windows forcing my customers to pay an extra $100 for the computer. If only there were an alternative desktop operating system which I felt my customers would be happy with.

  • New blood is good, but OSX isn't up to snuff yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wormyguy1 ( 266395 ) <hal.halbergman@com> on Monday December 31, 2001 @04:24PM (#2768689) Homepage
    The funny thing I've noticed is that a lot of the BeOS and Linux types are migrating straight for OSX for exactly the reasons brought up in the article. It's UNIX, it's got a great interface, etc, etc, etc. On the other end of the coin, people who have been with the Mac for decades (me included) have yet to migrate over. I have my excuses - no photoshop, and it runs nice and slow on my 3-year old Blue G3. OSX works fine on my Powerbook, which actually came with it installed, but I downgraded as I didn't feel I had enough disk space to warrant running a 1 GB OS. That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do... hell, I'm still using a 3-year old 350 MHz box for professional web design, Photoshop and video editing, and it works just fine. Rendering takes a few more seconds, but it's not noticable. As soon as I went over to OSX, it just got really choppy.

    While I think it's great that OSX is getting so much new blood into the Mac, power users at that, I simply don't find that OSX has enough to offer me yet. I won't go so far as to say I hate it, as some of my other iPod-toting hardcore-Mac friends have said, it just has a little more way to go.

    • Re:New blood is good, but OSX isn't up to snuff ye (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As an old time NEXTSTEP and SunOS/Solaris administrator, I was really skeptical about installing OS X on my friend's beige G3 266 Minitower. But, after slapping 512MB or RAM in there, and formatting the stock 9GB IDE drive in UFS, I was amazed at how _well_ OS X (10.1) runs!

      This is the equivalent of a Celeron 300 running Windows 2000 pro in 1600x1200 with all the visual effects on. I am surprised that it runs very nicely.

      Of course, I am still running openStep 4.2 on a Motorola 68040 25MHz, and it is fine as well. I have OpenStep 4.2 for Sparc on a 60MHz SuperSparc, and it iis quite usefull as well.

      it takes my Athlon 1.2GHz to run Win2K reasonably.

      Apple and NeXT just made good tight platforms with very solid HW SW integration. Same with Sun and HP on the UNIX side. Bemoan closed platforms all you want, who here does their daily work and surfing on 13 year old HW? I do. How about on 9 year old HW? I do.

      Why? Because I use enterprise grade pro-caliber equipment with OSes made by talented people who gave a damn about the concept and execution of Quality. Quality endures. I have a 18 year old Volvo GLT Turbo that has much more character and fun factor than my 2 year old Jeep Wrangler. Why? Quality.
    • Well, its a matter of your hardware becoming obsolete. Yes it runs classic really well. OSX requires a bit.. more. Fortunately and unfortunately. Newer hardware supports OSX wonderfuly. Not sure if its anyone's fault really. Just the desires of having a "really cool" OS.

      As for the software thing, give it time. Just like how linux and the bsd's went from a.out -> elf, it takes time.

      OSX isn't unfortunately suited to the population of mac owners who can only run classic and need them. Luckily, photoshop isn't my biggest need.. yet. And office is finally out, so I'm happy.

      Just think of it as X11R6 with a really neet window mangler ;)
      • Just think of it as X11R6 with a really neet window mangler ;)

        Oh no! Didn't we just have this discussion? [slashdot.org]
    • That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do...

      I'm sorry but that is the biggest MYTH.

      One half of Apple's current lineup of computers, the iMac and the iBook (2 computers that I bet make up the bulk of their sales) have NO expansion slots. No PCI slots on the iMac, and no PCMCIA slots on the laptops.

      This is nothing more than a stupid, short-sighted attempt by Apple to make the computer not last as long. In essence, your choices become: 1: buy the much more expensive TiBook or G4 tower, or 2: buy the cheap one and it's obsolete, FAST.

      Apple has end-of-lifed the video cards used in the first generation iMac - users of those computers are never going to get accelerated video drivers in OS X. If those were cheapo PCs with slots, you could at least throw a nicer video card in there and solve the problem.

      And don't bother posting that it doesn't matter that there aren't any expansion slots because "everything comes built in". Tell that to first generation iBook or iMac owners who like to use the iPod - "sorry, FireWire only". Those computers are less than two years old, and already becoming obsolete.

      Would you like to have USB 2.0? I will, and I can add it to my 3 year old Dell notebook via a card and it will work fine. The Apple iBook you buy TODAY can't be expanded with a single new tech. beyond what it ships with. Now which comp. is aging faster, the Apple, or the Dell? Even crummy $700 PCs and $1100 laptops have PCI/PCMCIA.

      PCI and PCMCIA slots let you add all sorts of stuff to your computer, in effect, "future-proofing" it by allowing you to expand rather than buy a new computer. A computer without expansion options hardly qualifies as "a computer that ages slower than PCs."

      P.S. I don't want to hear about how you can add all sorts of nifty expansion option via FireWire. I don't want 5 boxes hanging off my computer.

      • Re:New blood is good, but OSX isn't up to snuff ye (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Take a deep breath! You are about to dump core, or something.

        You seem to have confused expansion capability with aging, but they just ain't the same.

        **As far as being widely useful for getting work done** Macs last longer than PCs. That is what I believe the other poster is talking about.

        As far as Mac OS X and its interface, its nice that people used to generally weak interfaces think it is so great, but us long time Mac users are suffering a severe downgrade with Mac OS X and it Just Isn't Worth It for most of us.
        • I think we've kinda missed something here. If your needs never change then neither does the usefullness of your hardware - PC or MAC or, heck, Amiga. If it works, it works.

          If, on the other hand I now have a need for newer software, different hardware etc, then the question of life span becomes more important.
          In this case, though - the statement "Macs last longer than PCs" is clearly BS for the reaons stated in this parent's parent.
        • Once upon a time I would have agreed with you on the idea that Macs have longer lives. Back in the day, I remember my friends having to get new PC's very frequently in order to run the latest stuff. My Mac Plus and IIvx, on the other hand, served me for five years with only minor expansions (hard drive and RAM) each.

          Now that processors are so fast though, and RAM is so ubiquitous, most people don't need much faster machines. Bandwidth tends to be the key limiting factor in what people can do, especially now that CD burners are so cheap. My Pentium II is going on in to its fourth year right now, and it hardly feels aged when I don't browse the game isles :-) Aside from adding some more drive space and a burner, there's very little I've done to it.

          I think PC's, in general, have reached a point where they all have longer lives. Most people are still very productive with Win95, and until recently they could run everything they wanted on it. I think once upon a time Macs used to have the longer life, which made them a much more worthwhile purchase, but now that PC's have surpassed what people need they've switched to features, like firewire. I think the above poster is right to mention expansion. The capability to add a firewire card to an original iMac would add some extra life to the machine.

        • Give MacOSX a chance (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ZigMonty ( 524212 )

          As far as Mac OS X and its interface, its nice that people used to generally weak interfaces think it is so great, but us long time Mac users are suffering a severe downgrade with Mac OS X and it Just Isn't Worth It for most of us.

          I have a Mac Plus sitting on the desk next to me that we bought a LONG time ago. Is that "long time" enough for you? I have used MacOSX exclusively since the Public Beta. I dread having to boot into OS9 because of its weak interface. I fully respect your decision not to upgrade (yes *upgrade*). I am however sick of non-converters claiming things like "OSX is good for beginners but us power users need more". If you don't want to use it fine, but do realise that you are being left behind. I'd wager that a lot more people are currently happy with OSX than people who have *tried* it and given it a decent chance but still prefer OS9. It is not the next version of the MacOS, it is the first version of MacOSX. If you keep that in mind and stop trying to turn it into OS9 (like I did after about the first month), you'll have a much better experience with it.

          If you've done this (with 10.1, *big* difference) and still aren't happy with it, I'll accept that. I believe that MacOSX cured a lot of the long lived problems with the classic MacOS. Yes, it introduced a few annoyances of its own but with each (free) upgrade that apple puts out their numbers are diminishing quickly. Apple is listening to user feedback. If you have a gripe with OSX, besides "Please kill the Dock", tell them about it [apple.com].

      • Re:New blood is good, but OSX isn't up to snuff ye (Score:5, Insightful)

        by atlasheavy ( 169115 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @07:53PM (#2769204) Homepage

        Ok. As irritating as it is, I am going to have to do a point by point rebuttal here. Sorry in advance.

        Point One half of Apple's current lineup of computers, the iMac and the iBook (2 computers that I bet make up the bulk of their sales) have NO expansion slots. No PCI slots on the iMac, and no PCMCIA slots on the laptops.

        Rebuttal And this is bad why? The vast majority of people in the world out there DO NOT upgrade their computers. EVER. I worked at a computer repair firm [geeksquad.com] for two years, and I would guess that not more than a quarter of PC users actually get new cards installed into their computers. This, contrary to what most people on slashdot feel, is not a limitation for the vast majority of users. Here, think of it like this. Most PC users, when they're adding new stuff to their computers, will get things that can be plugged into serial, parallel, and usb ports. Not PCI. Not AGP. Not (god forbid) ISA.

        Point This is nothing more than a stupid, short-sighted attempt by Apple to make the computer not last as long. In essence, your choices become: 1: buy the much more expensive TiBook or G4 tower, or 2: buy the cheap one and it's obsolete, FAST.

        RebuttalAnd this is different from those microtower Dells, Compaq iPaqs, etc, in what way exactly? Furthermore, with laptops, what the hell is the point of a PC card slot on a laptop that has video out, firewire, usb, 10/100 ethernet, AirPort (802.11b), and a 56k modem built-in? I actually just bought a TiBook 3-4 days ago (it's still on its way), and I don't have any notion of what I'll actually use the PC card slot on it for. I've been using an indigo iBook for the last 14 months, and I am currently replacing it only because I am starting to find the screen size limiting (it's a pain to use Project Builder and Interface Builder in 800x600 pixels).

        Point Apple has end-of-lifed the video cards used in the first generation iMac - users of those computers are never going to get accelerated video drivers in OS X. If those were cheapo PCs with slots, you could at least throw a nicer video card in there and solve the problem.

        Rebuttal Ok. OS X is big. It's a dog on anything less than a 366 MHz G3 with at least 128MB RAM. The original iMac (the bondi blue variety) has a 233MHz G3 processor, and came with 32 mb RAM. The average person is NOT going to run OS X on that thing. They'd be absolutely nuts to do it. Apple knows this. That's a big reason why they will not bother writing accelerated video card drivers for the bondi iMac. No one would use them (or at least they shouldn't). If these people really want to run OS X, they should sell their Bondi iMac off for $350 or $400, or whatever they go for, and pick up the $799 iMac.

        PointAnd don't bother posting that it doesn't matter that there aren't any expansion slots because "everything comes built in". Tell that to first generation iBook or iMac owners who like to use the iPod - "sorry, FireWire only". Those computers are less than two years old, and already becoming obsolete.

        Rebuttal Ha. Yeah right. I hate to break it to you, but if you can't afford to pick up a new computer every two or three years (the iMac will be 4 next August, and the iBook came out ~one year after the iMac) there is no way in hell you could afford an iPod. The iPod is a toy for those with too much money. Don't get me wrong on this, I'd love to have one, but there's no way in hell I can afford one until I'm out of college (I bought the TiBook because it'll serve a definite purpose. besides, I bought an AVC Soul Player a year ago). These people aren't going to go out and spend $400 on the iPod unless they could afford a new computer anyway. Besides, it doesn't matter, since everything comes built-in anyways, right? ;-)

        Point Would you like to have USB 2.0? I will, and I can add it to my 3 year old Dell notebook via a card and it will work fine. The Apple iBook you buy TODAY can't be expanded with a single new tech. beyond what it ships with. Now which comp. is aging faster, the Apple, or the Dell? Even crummy $700 PCs and $1100 laptops have PCI/PCMCIA.

        Rebuttal Yet people continue buying iBooks, with their 400 Mbit firewire ports that have devices available for the port today. What idiots! Can you even buy a USB 2.0 card yet? By the way, take a look at your P.S. statement. Hell, I'll quote it here. P.S. I don't want to hear about how you can add all sorts of nifty expansion option via FireWire. I don't want 5 boxes hanging off my computer. But wait, you still want 5 USB 2.0 devices hanging off your computer? I'm confused. It must be because I'm one of those gullible anti-windows mac users (I'm typing this on my self-built coppermine-core system running XP pro right now.).

        Point PCI and PCMCIA slots let you add all sorts of stuff to your computer, in effect, "future-proofing" it by allowing you to expand rather than buy a new computer. A computer without expansion options hardly qualifies as "a computer that ages slower than PCs."

        Point I just did a search on Micro Warehouse for pc card [warehouse.com], and as you can see, basically everything listed is a wireless ethernet card, an ethernet card, a modem, or a usb controller. I HAVE ALL OF THOSE THINGS BUILT INTO MY IBOOK. Jeez. About the only thing I would find useful to buy for a pc card slot would be one of those pc card hard drives (that ibm makes). Even then, I'd rather just burn a cd with the built-in burner. More people have cd-rom drives than pc card slots. Furthermore, let's take a look at the cards I have in my PC right now. 1. An ATI Xpert 2000 (AGP 4x). 2. An SB Live (PCI). 3. A Linksys 10/100BaseT Ethernet card (PCI). 4. A firewire card. There is really nothing else that I am planning on ever adding to this computer. Sure, there are a lot of people out there who need second monitors, but none of them would buy an iMac anyways. They wouldn't be served well by a 15" monitor. The iMac is a consumer machine. The iBook (supposedly) is too (although most business types would probably be fine having one). The Power Mac G4 is a professional machine. Same thing goes for the Powerbook G4. You don't hear people complaining that their Dell Dimension 2100's won't let them install a burner inside the case. If you did, you'd probably ridicule them for not buying a higher-end machine.

        You know what, I will go on using my Apple laptop, my Intel/Microsoft desktop, and the god-awful Sun Blade 100 I get stuck using at school, and you can go on using whatever you want to. We'll just call it even.

        • It's a dog on anything less than a 366 MHz G3 with at least 128MB RAM

          I was first running OS X on a 266MHz G3 with 192MB RAM. Since then, in different steps, I upgraded the CPU to a 300MHz G3 (mainly because it has 2x the cache that the 266 does) and the RAM to 768MB. The heftier CPU helped a little bit, but the real noticeable difference came with the big RAM upgrade. With OS X, you need 128MB just to get the OS up and running and useable. Consider running any applications and that memory requirement goes up fast. When I upgraded the RAM, I no longer had to deal with the slow UI responsiveness that I had with the smaller amount of RAM. So I'd definitely say that OS X will run just fine any pretty much any speed G3-- as long as there is oodles of RAM for it to consume.
        • Technology changes over time. Nifty new things get introduced. If Apple manages to forget something, or merely succumbs to progress, then you have to trash and entire system when a single expansion slot might save you from this.

          Now one might argue against the complexity of opening up a desktop system. However, there is simply no excuse for this kind of narrow minded shortsightedness on a laptop.

          Ironically enough, this mentality locks the end user out of using traditionally Mac-only type of hardware (consumer SCSI devices).
        • Furthermore, with laptops, what the hell is the point of a PC card slot on a laptop that has video out, firewire, usb, 10/100 ethernet, AirPort (802.11b), and a 56k modem built-in? I actually just bought a TiBook 3-4 days ago (it's still on its way), and I don't have any notion of what I'll actually use the PC card slot on it for.

          Suggest you re-read parent post. The whole point of the PC card slot is for FUTURE technologies. Yes, the iBook has built in ethernet, modem, and Firewire. But what happens when you want some NEW technology? Out of luck.

    • OS X is unfinished to say the least. I was pretty excited when I got a new iMac with OS X to play around with. But when I got around to integrating it into my Linux-base environment, it really fell apart.

      NFS support is severely lacking. You can't even count on a command-line mount of an nfs volume. If I try to mount with "mount server:/local /mnt/local", the "/mnt/local" directory disappears. The mount doesn't and you can't unmount without rebooting. There is a shareware program that makes it possible to use NFS, but c'mon folks. This is a violation of some basic trust. NFS should just work.

      SMB is nearly as bad. At least you can reliable mount samba volumes. However, it's highly unstable. Changing files on the server will cause OS X to behave unpredictably. Updating an app binary, for example, will cause subsequent execution of that app to fail with bus errors.

      NIS? Good luck. Not supported. There is an FAQ for enabling it. But my success with this has been limited at best.

      Until they get the basics sorted out, it'll just sit on the kitchen counter as a nice little internet and recipe browser for my wife.

      • Re:unix core != interoperability (Score:4, Informative)

        by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @07:19PM (#2769123)
        "NFS support is severely lacking. You can't even count on a command-line mount of an nfs volume. If I try to mount with "mount server:/local /mnt/local", the "/mnt/local" directory disappears. The mount doesn't and you can't unmount without rebooting. There is a shareware program that makes it possible to use NFS, but c'mon folks. This is a violation of some basic trust. NFS should just work. "

        And it does. The Mac OS X machine I am sitting at RIGHT NOW has two NFS exports and 3 NFS imports. It does "just work". I guess your problem is that NFS doesn't use the set up procedure that are used to. This is because OS X using NetInfo for all set ups. Try using NFSManager [bresink.de] for easy setup with no learning curve, or "NetInfo Manager", which is infinitely more powerful. Ingorance is okay and can be cured, but I suspect you are nothing more than a troll, since you outright dismissed using "shareware tools" and wanted it to work your way.
        • I'm glad you found it acceptable to use third party tools to navigate the quagmire that is NetInfo. I did not. It shouldn't be so friggin complicated (setting up a single NFS import in NetInfo by hand takes 5 minutes) and if it is, then Apple should be the ones providing the tools. The out of box experience with NFS is appalling.

          However, NFS is only part of the story. There's a lot more to integrating a system than NFS mounts. NIS and SMB are also only pieces of the story. The point remains valid; and that is that OS X doesn't make any of it easy.

          Apple set the bar for ease of use a decade ago but seems to have walked away from it since. Any Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, or other un*x distribution is easier to use for network interoperability. If you can't see that then you're blinded by your loyalty to Apple.
    • Right there with ya on 9.2.2; I like the UI better, and it supports my printer. I dual-booted for awhile, but when I realized many of my apps were still running in Classic and the native apps didn't run better, I switched back.

      I would use OSX anyway, if I didn't also have a Linux box that I can ssh to.
    • That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do... hell, I'm still using a 3-year old 350 MHz box for professional web design

      This is a nice way of saying, "I can't upgrade my 3-year old Mac because Apple's hardware is too expensive." Right?
  • ...was that OS X can handle filesizes up to eight exabytes—sorry, I forgot [slashdot.org]—that's eight exbibytes [nist.gov]. More than a gigabyte for every man, woman & child on earth.

    Okay, I'm satisfied. Now let's see some ATA10000 drives with that capacity, and I'll finally be able to reload all my MP3's.
    • OS X can handle filesizes up to eight exabytes

      That's cool and all, if true, but XFS [sgi.com] has been able to handle 9 million TB files and 18 million TB filesystems for years and years.

      (Can't really handle the term "exabyte" ever since that tape drive company comandeered it. Besides, a million terabytes sounds bigger than one exabyte.)
    • and I'll finally be able to reload all my MP3's.

      Given the theory "An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters"; with the random noise it has before formatting, the drive should already have your entire MP3 collection on it.:-\

  • Blah blah blah (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31, 2001 @04:39PM (#2768742)
    The great usability myth... By the way, I can't seem to connect to birdhouse dot org as his pipe seems to be saturated.

    Well anyways, back to the usability myth. I propose that it is just that, a myth. People think something is easy to use because they feel familiar with it, or they "know" how to use it, that's how something ranks high on the "usability" scale. The Mac mantra has always been how easy it is to use... well.. the couple of times I tried to use a Mac it seemed confusing to me and certainly not "easy" Why???? You may be asking??? Because, all I've ever used have been Windows machines and Unix machines. Those are easy to me. But that's mostly beside the point, which is, if usability was so important than why didn't the public migrate to the Mac? Answer, besides the obvious monopoly thingy, is because usability, for the most part, doesn't matter. Period. People learn how to use a machine to do what they need to get done and it becomes easy to do when you know how to use it.

    So, you can make Linux the most "user friendly" desktop OS on the planet and it won't matter at all. If you want Linux to matter then you need to come up with a reason for people to use it, a killer app or a killer tool or something along those lines.

    Now before you pundits get your panties all knotted up into a bunch, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to design an interface that is consistant and easy to learn, yes, that's important, but it's not the driving force for the public when it comes to using one operating environment over another.

    Thank You.

    • Re:Blah blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Monday December 31, 2001 @07:05PM (#2769096) Homepage
      You can't sit down in front of an unfamiliar system and judge its usability. You have to actually USE it for a month or so, getting real work done on a daily basis. Most people I know who have done that with Macs love Macs now, because the platform is simply better, once you get to know it well enough.

      And by the way, it's the platform that's better, not just the OS. Mac applications work in a consistent way, there are standards for how they should behave, there are user interface guidelines to ensure that everything feels right, and users shun poorly-designed apps (such as Microsoft Word 6.0, which was a direct port from the Windows version and felt completely backwards and strange to Mac users). This is where Apple has the real edge - Mac apps have been following these guidelines for YEARS. Most other platforms don't even HAVE guidelines, and those that do only started thinking about them recently.

      An example of application consistency: what's a keyboard shortcut to paste something you've copied? Now, list three applications on the same platform that don't do it the same way.
      • An example of application consistency: what's a keyboard shortcut to paste something you've copied? Now, list three applications on the same platform that don't do it the same way.

        Ctrl+V or Shift+Ins -- both work just fine damn near everywhere. The only app I can think of that has strange pasting is QuickBooks, and maybe other Intuit software. That's it, though.
    • Nice little speech too bad the article proves you wrong.

      In the article he say he tried using Linux on the Desktop for four months before trying Mac OS X.

      So he was alot more familiar with Linux then with Mac OS X. But still considers Mac OS X a better desktop.
    • Well anyways, back to the usability myth. I propose that it is just that, a myth.
      Look here, let's get something straight. When the marketing people talk usability, what they're talking about is the learning curve. And there are several ways to turn a learning curve into usability 'statistics'.

      One is the very bottom of the curve: with the most idiotic of users. How easily is it to sit down at a strange system and understand it? No one will argue that new users understand a GUI metaphor far better than the command line-- it takes a brand new user training in understanding the CLI metaphor. For most intents and purposes, then, a UI can't be considered 'usable' until it's graphical.

      The next two criteria seem to be at odds with themselves most of the time. The first is how error-friendly the system is: for example, can the system tolerate an error in case? For the Linux CLI (Bash most likely) the answer is no (And yes I know there's an option in Bash to change that but it's not enabled by default- which is what matters to a new user)- compare to DOS, which doesn't care at all. In this particular instance, DOS is more usable. But to turn the tables, Linux/Bash has command line completion, which helps prevent typing errors. However, you can't have your UI out-guess the user-- never let it push the user in the wrong direction.
      Complimenting error tolerance is how much power is available- how many options the user can select from at once. This is again a balancing act: give the user too few options and you give them no power, and yet if you give them too many at once they will not be able to determine the ones they want to choose. Nesting options helps, but may add to user confusion (that is, it only helps if done in a logical manner And I don't consider the way Windows does its' menus logical. Why is the dialog for changing file associations nested under the View menu? (This is from memory, I'm in Linux)).

      There are other things to consider, I will pass them over for the sake of brevity and to mention the way I would measure usability- being a programmer and not a marketroid. My measure is height of the first learning plateau. On any learning curve, there are plateaus- level-- or nearly so-- periods with little to no learning. Having a low first plateau on your curve means that the user will feel comfortable with some very limited parts of the system, yet have far more to learn to be able to manage it all at once. The "best" (most usable) system would employ a UI metaphor that enabled the first plateau to be as high as possible. This is more true with GUIs than a CLI (compare launching a new program-- from a brand new users' point of view) as well as more true of Windows than Linux (compare program installation- with Linux I still hunt dependencies often).

      People think something is easy to use because they feel familiar with it
      Without a doubt, the portion of usability that most lay persons bandy about is indeed familiarity, but that isn't too limiting a factor. Sit an aveerage Windows user down at a Mac and let them browse the web- you won't get that many questions. (Probably just "Why does this mouse only have one button?") Sit them down at the Mac and give them a reference book- they'll be able to use it quickly. (I assume, knowing the converse is true, that they will read the book.) The problem with the transition is that in each system the baseline skills are the same-- beginning users have no problem transitioning-- but the power users would flounder. Keyboard shortcuts differ. Mouse command keys differ. The control panel on each system works differently. And so on.

      What I'm saying here is simple. Usability is not a myth. Having differed with your introdcution, I agree entirely with your conclusion.
      ...it's[usability] not the driving force for the public when it comes to using one operating environment over another.
      Nope. It's marketing. Joe Sixpack drinks the beer his favorite sports star does, wears the same brand name clothes his favorite TV/film star does, and uses the Operating System he is told to on his favorite TV channel. Once Linux registers on his radar at all, then it has a hope of really making it onto the desktop (getting a "respectable" percentage like Mac- as a Linux advocate I'd settle for 10% in a heartbeat! At least the Mac registers on the major software developer's radar). From there, who knows? And I won't prognosticate about that day at all- because I can't even tell if it will come in a year or in a hundred years. I just hope that the revolution comes before computers get outlawed.
    • not just the UI - it's Making Things Work.

      I've used a lot of UNIX machines, a few variants of linux and many PC boxes between work and home. I now have a TIBook and I have to say OS X is my favorite OS thus far because more things Just Work than on any other platform... it comes with great UI tools for many networking tasks if you don't want to waste a lot of time to learn the command line (though if you already know it, it's right there for you). Multiple monitors work as nature intended them too with no fiddling. I tried video creation under PC's and found the xperience exasperating.

      I get a combo USB/Firewire CD burner. Under Windows (98, admittedly I've only used NT/98 so far and not used XP so I'm not sure how different things would be) I have to install Special Software. Of course, after burning a few CD's I find that the default is to burn them under a windows format so the can't be read on a mac, and the hidden preference setting to switch to ISO has dire warnings about filename truncation.

      I plug the same drive into my Mac and just burn a CD - a handy dialog box comes up to ask if I would like that HFS+ or ISO? No extra software needed.

      Windows update feels klunky to me compared to the mac update, though I couldn't say exactly why. Perhaps it's that I've yet to have the mac update fail or render my mac update unusable, as Windows update has done to me in the past.

      The only reason you wouldn't want to get a Mac as far as I can see is that your selection of games might suffer somewhat - but in that case just get an XBox or PS2 or Gamecube. That's what I did to stop the rediculous upgrade cycle of PC's. And there are lot of games that come out for the mac so you might not have to suffer that horribly after all (especially true for RTS games which I don't think consoles do as well, or at least the same). As for office software, the Mac version of office has been said to be better than Office XP if you swing that way!

      I can boil down all my experiences to this - on my home PC, both under Windows and Linux, I was fiddling a lot more than I wanted to with system settings. With OS X I'm getting more done and fighting the system less, and that to me is usability. I still prefer Linux for servers but for a development box I really like OS X.

  • Runs fine on my G3 350. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Genady ( 27988 ) <gary.rogers@maRA ... minus herbivore> on Monday December 31, 2001 @04:44PM (#2768768)
    Well, looks like the site is already slashdotted, so I haven't read the article yet, but let me shed some light on a few things.

    I'm a UNIX person. I've run Linux, Solaris X86, IRIX (yes I had an Indy) at home. I like UNIX. It's what I do for a living, I'm a SysAdmin.

    I LOVE OS X. 10.0.4 blew dogs. It's what came with the new iBook I bought this year. 10.1 is prime time, if not ready for the masses. I recently started a new job and was given my choice between a 500 MHz Intel machine running Linux or a G3 at 350MHz running OS X. No brainer dude. Aqua is hands down the best window manager I've ever seen (I never saw a NeXT machine.) Rendering everything in PDF is just mind blowing, and the ease of application development in Cocoa is equally dope.

    Here's the thing though. If you're a hardware hacker it's not for you. Plain and simple, neither was the Indy, or the NeXT, or an Ultra Sparc. There are things you just can't do with workstation class machines that you can with desktops.

    However, if you're like me and could give a rip about the hardware and tweeking the hell out of it, well Mac OS X is SWEET! It reminds me of the early days of Linux when I'd download something and actually HAVE TO COMPILE IT! Hehehehe, yes i compiled bash, and the fileutils, and even vim on OS X, no problem at all. And since I can't fiddle with the WindowManager I'm not going insane trying to get the current version of Enlightenment (heh a one word oxymoron there) and all it's assinine libraries to compile. I was always partial to WindowMaker anyway, and here's the upgrade!

  • Criticizing OS X (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mushkalion ( 540256 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @05:44PM (#2768919)

    I've been following criticism of OS X on slashdot for a while. It seems that people here mainly reject OS X because either it's closed source or the hardware's too expensive.

    Well, criticizing OS X because it is closed source is ridiculous. Choose a product based on quality, not ideology. Linux will never gain many mainstream users because of ethics- people will choose the best product offered to them. Granted, compatibility, available software, and conformity may play into this more than some would want, (perhaps explaining why my parents use MS) but it is still a matter of quality.

    The cost of the hardware is a valid issue. However, the computers are well built, especially the laptops. If you're obsessed with customizing beige boxes, then stick to a different operating system. But, regardless, stick to criticizing features, not attitudes.

    • Re:Criticizing OS X (Score:2, Insightful)

      by uchian ( 454825 )
      I am only here challenging one part of your argument - closed source.

      There is one very big problem with closed source which open source neatly avoids, and that is the problem of what happens when the original company either stops supporting it, or vanishes off the face of the earth.

      Let's take a couple of examples - os/2 and Beos. Without knowing much about either operating system, but from reading the laments of others, if they had been open sourced when the original companies had lost interest, then they would still be alive and in development today.

      You may say, and it is a valid argument, that if these operating systems had become a success then they would have been in wider use, and thus wouldn't have been forgotten. Granted, this is true. Now consider the following cases.

      Windows 95 and Mac OS 9.

      Two operating systems, once widely used. (In the case of Mac OS 9, still widely used). But in Windows 95's case already, and in Max OS 9 it's simply a matter of time, no more security updates will be made. No new minor modifications. People who want to carry on using them, who have no wish to upgrade their hardware simply because the newer versions require higher specced systems, have to live with the bugs on their computer, with no hope of them being fixed.

      Now let's take an open source "success", and you may read this however you like - Nautilus. The company that made it, Eazel, no longer exists. Imagine if Nautilus was closed source - what would that mean? Well it's obvious - it wouldn't be developed anymore. It would have vanished into the mists of time. Some people might see this as a good thing. But the truth is, that because it was open source, it still exists, and is still being developed. What it turns into, who knows - perhaps it will be the best software ever, perhaps it will just become more and more bloated. At least it has the chance to find out

      This is the nice property of open source - software doesn't die unless everyone loses interest in it, which doesn't happen unless the alternatives are so incredible that they deserve to be forgotten... The fact that it doesn't cost anything is just a bonus.

      The bad property of open source is that it places software over the developer, and that we have yet to find an effective way of making sure that the developer does not get left out. but some developers have found effective ways - think Trolltech, for instance. When more companies have successful business models which integrate Open Source software into their philosophy, I think that they will become a very powerful competitor to the closed source models of software development.
    • But, regardless, stick to criticizing features, not attitudes.


      Rather ironic, don't you think? The bulk of your post concerns itself with criticizing an attitude.


      For my own part, I don't hold with your views. Running free software is important to me, and to others; to some people, that sort of criticism is interesting. By all means, choose according to your values. Even criticize other people's attitudes; as long as things remain civil, that's what public debate is about.


      But stick to criticizing attitudes, not criticizing people for criticizing attitudes.

  • Two comments from the articles stuck out at me.

    The first was copying and pasting in Linux. It has gotten *much* better in Mandrake 8.1 Gaming, where I'm at right now. I use KDE, so as a test I opened up Nautilus, copied the text from the address bar and pasted it into both vim and emacs, which would seem to be a pretty good test. With KDE, don't know about gnome, you even sort of get 2 clipboards. If you select text, you can paste it with the wheel or middle button. At the same time you can ctrl+c some other piece of text and ctrl+v it in, effectively giving you 2 clipboards.

    The other was using special characters with umlauts in Windows. I believe it is true that Windows itself doesn't support the simple ctrl+U, U to get an umlauted U, but I would swear you could do that in Word and maybe even Wordperfect; I'm not in windows right now, so I can't check to see if my memory is correct, I could easily be wrong. Not the same thing as having the os handle it so that the keystrokes work in things like a command prompt window or in notepad, but still close enough for most people.

    Other than that, a lot of the comments seemed to be along the lines of "this matches/doesn't match the way I prefer to work." Unfortunately there is no optimal way for all people to work efficiently. We can talk about mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, etc., but a lot of it comes down to personal preference and whatever the user is accustomed to.
  • I'm posting this from Mac OS X using OmniWeb. I've been using my brief Christmas vacation to get my home machine running just the way I like... this is the first time I've seriously tried to avoid using Classic or booting into Mac OS 9.2. There's just one thing I can't get working.

    I have a three button mouse on my iMac, and I can't find a way to map the buttons to anything other than the default! The left button is "click" and the right button is "ctrl-click," which is fine. But on OS 9 I map the middle button to "option-click," and I can't find a way to do that in X. Does anyone have any ideas?

    --saint
    (before you ask, option-click switches to the application whose window was clicked on while automatically hiding the application that you just used. It's a great time saver, and I want it to work quite a bit. Not enough real estate on a 15 inch iMac monitor, you know?)

  • once again, where are the good ideas? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by roffe ( 26714 ) <roffe@extern.uio.no> on Monday December 31, 2001 @08:30PM (#2769305) Homepage

    I'd like to reiterate what I wrote earlier in a similar thread which some moron scored down to -1. [slashdot.org]

    I think people have had enough of user interfaces that are based on the twenty-some years old ideas that Windows, MacOS, Gnome and KDE are based on.

    Where are the attempts at trying to create somehting exciting and radical?

    It's hard enough to convince a Windows-user that MacOS makes you more productive - the interfaces are so similar that it's possible to approach both MacOS and BeOs with a Windows-infused mind and miss out all the good stuff. It's possible to build a user interface that is both obviously different and obviously better - even with Linux, but it seems to me that the Linux community lacks the competence. I would like to be proven wrong.

    • One of the first rules of a good UI is: don't surprise the user. Believe it or not, a lot of people don't want "exciting" or "radical" changes in their UI, because it would be confusing and create training issues.

      Don't forget that the purpose of a UI is to help get stuff done. Adding eye candy or exciting widgets doesn't necessarily help that.

      Although, like you, I feel the current "desktop" metaphor is limited, I haven't heard any useful suggestions of what could replace it. Perhaps the real limitation is not in software, but in hardware. What could replace the current monitor/keyboard/mouse configuration?
      • But the original GUI that came out was "Exciting" and "Radical". So if people followed the rules you specified then we wouldn't even have any GUI.

        I would love to see a new "Exciting Radical" change in user interfaces instead of just rehashes and tweaks of existing ones. That could possibly be the "Killer App" for linux, if everyone just stopped trying to copy existing technologies.

        --jeff
    • It's hard enough to convince a Windows-user that MacOS makes you more productive - the interfaces are so similar that it's possible to approach both MacOS and BeOs with a Windows-infused mind and miss out all the good stuff.


      Correct--and that is a good thing. Time spent learning a new interface is not productive time. Most productivity gains can be had these days by making the standard (and well-known/understood) UI metaphors smarter, so that more things "just work" and don't require futzing around or technical knowledge to use... not by reinventing everything just for the sake of doing so.



      It's possible to build a user interface that is both obviously different and obviously better


      Is it possible? Are you sure? Can you point to any examples? Ones that people actually like to use, as opposed to 'interesting proofs of concept'? It's easy to wave one's hands and say "things ought to be better", and it's possible to write a user interface that is radically different from the standard one we have now (people occasionally do this [slashdot.org]), but I have yet to see an alternative user interface that is "enough better" to justify requiring everyone to re-learn how to use a computer. Hell, we can't even get people to use Dvorak instead of Qwerty, let alone getting them to give up an interaction paradigm that took many of them years to learn...

  • Mac OS X and metadata (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tachys ( 445363 )
    I wonder if apple is planning on making the default file system in Mac OS X to be UFS. This could help reduce costs on FS development. This does not mean the death of metadata. TrustedBSD [trustedbsd.org] is working on giving UFS extended attributes and ACLs. So maybe Apple could use those for metadata
  • That's the most concise statement of the problem I've ever seen.

  • Go to an Apple Store... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stenpas ( 513317 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @09:41PM (#2769452)
    If any of you guys are close to an Apple Store [apple.com], then get out of the house and drive to one and see how slick the hardware and software is for yourself. If you're reading slashdot, then you're bored and have no excuse why you can't. The slashdot crowd can swear ten times over that MacOS X is the greatest thing out there, but you aren't going to get what they mean until you use it for yourself. If you're like me without an Apple Store nearby, a Circuit City will do, but the experience will suck a lot more.

    I spent quite a bit of time using it at the local Circuit City here. It's no Apple Store, but it's decent enough for my needs. I just need a computer with MacOS X on it, and no one to pester me. It's PERFECTLY useable on Apple's low end machines. Just make sure you have a bunch of ram and you'll be fine. The interface didn't take too long to learn. The most confusing aspect of it was what the red, yellow, and green buttons at the top-left corner of every window are. If you can learn what those are, then you'll do fine with the rest of the OS. The thing that really struck me as handy was the one click to all the system prefs you could ever need. It's just right there on the dock. Click, and it comes up. Can't get much simpler than that.

    The software Apple bundles in is pretty slick too. iTunes is great stuff. The visuals are awesome. But then again, how hard can it be to make an easy-to-use MP3 program? I haven't seen one yet that wasn't common sense to use. The MP3s included are pretty good too. iMovie is incredible stuff. There was a camcorder already attached to the iMac when I got there. I don't think those guys at circuit city would care enough to install drivers and such. Thank god it just works at the mere action of plugging it in. But anyway, I recorded just a bunch of customers walking and I went to edit it with iMovie. I have never used it before, and within 5 minutes I had created a movie that looked awesome. Well, as awesome as it could look. Customers walking isn't too entertaining.

    I guess I'm a firm believer that technology should be simple to use. It is to be there to assist you, not to work against you. To that end, Apple's the best. Taking complex technology and making it easy enough for the average person to use. It's the reason why people bother purchasing macs. It's not like they're faster, or that they get the latest and greatest in software first, and it's certainly not price or that it's the latest trend. It's because they do what is advertised. They just work.

    A couple other notes: judging from the front page [apple.com] of Apple's website, I think MacWorld is going to be big. Very big. You can catch the live webcast on Janurary 7th on Apple's website [apple.com].

  • If you're an operating system development guy who is working on a Windows killer, don't move to OS X... there's nothing left to be done.
  • The debates over whether Linux, OSX, Windows, or BeOS are technically better are roughly like the debates over whether Ford or General Motors make better cars. There may be some differences in technology, style, and quality, and there may be some preferences, but they are basically the same mode of transportation. There is no technology in any of them that is fundamentally ahead of the technology of any of the others, marketing departments notwithstanding. Most of the differences are a matter of taste, not some deep insight that one group had and another one lacked (in particular, all the features Hacker likes in BeOS had been considered by other OS designers--and rejected).

    The real distinguishing factors are not the technology, they are the business positions. Windows comes from a wealthy, ruthless monopolist that knows how to generate a steady revenue stream by controlling APIs and formats. OSX comes from an upscale vendor with a valuable brand name and stylish design. Linux comes from a large group of volunteer developers and has a DYI flavor.

    And BeOS? Well, BeOS came from a small company that failed to sell to its one major potential client and somewhat predictably went out of business. That's the reason why most developers wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, no matter what its technical merits may have been.

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