No More Mac Tweaking? 792
netphilter writes "Apple is trying to "close the operating system to tweakers" according to this story on Wired. The addition of the BSD kernel and the command line left me thinking that they were trying to open the OS a bit more to tweakers, not close it. I'm not a Mac user, but I have been thinking about trying out OS X. However, if Apple is trying to CLOSE the OS (contrary to the impression that I had) then I'm not going to waste my time."
Jamie adds: life may be harder for them, I guess, but many developers are
still tweaking Mac OS X.
Good (Score:2, Funny)
Apples Target Market (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple wants people who are looking for a computer that just plain works. They are going after the "as long as it works I dont care about X, Y, or Z" crowd, which is (for the most part) completely opposite the Slashdot crowd.
As always, the real tweakers will find a way to do what they want with their computer. Its not a big deal...
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of the standard computer interfaces -- hierarchical menus, contextual menus, even Aqua itself -- were dreamed up by people working in bedrooms or back offices, now they want to curtail this?
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a lot of artists; I sort of move in a circle of friends who are all artists of one kind or another. Know how many of them like tweaking their Macs? None.
See, to the creative person, a Mac is just a tool. It's like a paintbrush or a typewriter or a videotape deck. Nobody wastes time and energy rearranging the buttons on their tape deck, or changing the way their pencil works. It's a tool, and you use it so you can get the real art done.
The tool should be effective, simple, and reliable, in that order.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure I agree with that. I had an artist friend that was always monopolizing the Mac in art class. Much to our dismay, he set the system font to a font he created by hand. Unfortunately, I don't know many people with Macs so I can't really comment on more than that one guy. [i]"One example doesn't reflect the whole world"[/i]. The thing is, his art was his passion. He found an avenue to express himself on that machine and he did. I know quite a few non-Mac artists that have done all kinds of fun graphic stuff to their computers. (i.e. customized Winamp Skins, etc...)
Am I right and you're wrong? No, I'm not saying that. In composing this post I realized that there may be a difference between your artists and mine: Are your Mac friends using Macs where they work? If so, I'd say there's a big difference.
The computer you use for work benefits from not being messed with too much. You never know when you'll get a new computer and have to start over. You never know when somebody else will want to use your computer. And you [i]certainly[/i] never know when a tweak could corrupt and endanger your machine.
Apple may have a point. If they're smart, though, they'll leave the door open so that people who want to sweep in and do their tweaks can do so easily. I've done lots of UI tweaking on my machine (heh it's fun watching other people use my computer) and the benefits have been enormous. I'd hate to have my workflow disrupted.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
While I've never used it, Mac OS X is based on BSD UNIX, and enjoys protected memory and filesystem permissions when configured properly. Any GUI tweaks that do not involve root authority should not impact other accounts or system hardware. It is quite common for UNIX users to create separate accounts to run untrusted apps, and this can be done with moderate to high confidence on patched systems. Unless a root exploit is involved, the worst a rogue app can do is trash your account (fork bombs excluded).
I realize the fear that many Mac users have of applications that crash the system. Under UNIX, this propensity is greatly reduced if not eliminated.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:4, Insightful)
The best of the artists I've met love to tweak the tools, whether it's a new pencil, brush, table, welding iron, or computer. That's how new techniques are developed, how inspirations become expressions.
Who said, "The reasonable person adapts to his environment. The unreasonable person tries to make their environment adapt to themselves. Thus, all progress is made by unreasonable people."
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:5, Funny)
George Bernard Shaw, and I don't think he had turning all of your Mac icons into pictures of Ellen Feiss in mind.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody wastes time and energy rearranging the buttons on their tape deck, or changing the way their pencil works. It's a tool, and you use it so you can get the real art done.
And just what are you supposed to do when the tool has a slight problem that makes it a pain to use? Think of how simple a pencil is, and now think of how many different kinds of pencils there are. If an artist doesn't like the way a pencil works, he can get a pencil that works better or change the one he has. Now scale that up to the complexity of an OS (much more complexity, very few choices). If I don't like having my screenshots come out as PDFs in 10.2 (TinkerTool could change this in 10.1), what are my options (besides going back to 10.1)? The truth of the matter is that nothing will be the best choice for everyone. I want my tools to be customized for how I work; I don't want some idiot in Cupertino deciding how I want to get things done. It seems like Apple is aiming for the market share of Linux and the user satisfaction of Windows, but still falling short on both counts...
(Note to moderators with the reading comprehension skills of a turnip (no offense to turnips): the above is not a troll or flamebait, it is just an honest description of the frustration that comes from watching your favorite tool do little things that really piss you off sometimes.)
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Every painter I've met spends time tweaking their brushes before use. After buying a new brush, they shape it, trim it, thin it out, whatever they think they need to make that generic tool a specialized tool.
Sketch artists have a variety of pencils of different hardnesses and thicknesses. Most carry around sandpaper or knife to shape the points to suit their needs.
Photographers are probably the best example of tweakers- they have a half dozen lenses and a slew of filters. Half of photography is the subject material, the other half is getting the camera set up properly. Ever heard of breathing on the lense to soften the image? There's a pretty good tweak.
Mac users tweak just as much as anyone else. Any graphic artist using MacPaint? Or do they have PS and a couple hundred plugins? Where did those plugins come from? From tweakers of course. Why is PS the premiere graphics program? Because Mac users have been prodding Adobe along, asking for tweaks to the program they couldn't make themselves.
Zen artists were known for dipping their hair into ink, slopping it on a sheet of paper, and turning that slop into an image of a flowing river. Dipped a chicken's feet in ink, let it walk across paper, and turned those prints into falling leaves. Can you call a chicken effective, reliable, or simple? It produced art nonetheless, because the ARTIST knew how to create. Art doesn't create itself if you have the right tools, the Artist creates with or without the right tools.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Informative)
Speaking as an admin whose first mac was an original SE in 1987, I can tell you that Apple has always had people messing around with their undocumented internals and they've always punished them. They don't want people to get the idea that it's safe to muck around in the internals because if any significant dependencies develop, they lose their portability.
Why was the 68k->PPC transition so smooth? Because for the several years prior, Apple was doing exactly the same thing, changing their undocumented code around so that people wouldn't create a large installed base of code using undocumented APIs. Or, if they persisted in that foolishness, to create the expectation that every major OS upgrade was likely to cause a temporary break in this code until they re-did the reverse engineering to make it work again.
With Interface builder and the package standard for software, software is becoming more, not less modifiable. You used to have to download ResEdit to mess around with a dialog in an app, now you can open up the nib in Interface Builder and fairly easily add options, menus and commands. You can even add entirely new languages as the strings are supposed to be kept seperate. That creates an entirely new category of software tweaking as people can add Romanian or Urdu whether the original app maker has a clue about these languages or not.
Re:I too know a lot of artists (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple in recent years has gone to great lengths to use standards, realizing that they cannot make Apple Bus and AppleTalk etc. and expect companies to design hardware that works with their proprietary protocol.
In fact I'm hard pressed to think of a single proprietary protocol or otherwise that is in use in any modern mac. USB, Firewire, ATA, standard SDRAM, DVI, TCP/IP, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 802.11b, etc.
Not trying to say that Apple doesn't do dumb things, but I think they've gotten a lot smarter in the last few years, and I think its worth giving them credit where credit is due.
Spyky
Re:I too know a lot of artists (Score:3, Funny)
(reality distortion field cost extra)
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. The tools pay for themselves. If they don't, then you aren't using them right.
In other words, if you don't need a Mac to get the job done, don't use one. This says nothing about Macs; it does, however, say something about your own needs, talents, and abilities.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Informative)
No, it isn't. The connector is unusual, but it's documented, and adapters that break out the USB and power signals are available. This is no different from when some vendors use four-pin FireWire cables instead of six-pin cables. You simply need an adapter cable.
They do support the standard physical and electrical connections, but that doesn't mean you can take just any generic PCI or AGP card meant for a PC, and use it in a Mac.
Sounds to me like some vendors' PCI cards are non-standard. This says nothing about Apple's PCI implementation.
Apple has come a long, long way since the "skinny Mac," in which every single component was proprietary, right down to the nonstandard screws used to fasten the top to the chassis.
Okay, I'm starting to understand your point of view now. When you say "non-standard," you really mean, "I've never heard of it." Torx T-10 and T-15 screws are very much standards; they're just different standards from the ones you're familiar with.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
People can come up with some pretty awful "themes" - just browse a Winamp skin gallery sometime. I remember coming across some really window manager themes when I was using Linux, as well. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the majority of user-created temes look really bad.
Another thing is that when you've got a "theme" that rearranges buttons on a window, you'rw got a real interface problem. You mentally memorize the locations of buttons on a screen (for instance, to minimize a window), but all the sudden you have to "re-learn" the position, and when you switch the theme again, you're back to the old way. Consistency is very important in design - it's one reason I stopped using Enlightenment in favor of a WM that kept the position of buttons the same.
Now, some people are going to disagree with me, and that's fine. If you really must tweak things, use Linux or something along those lines. I think it would be nice if Apple allowed some level of access, while still retaining the same look and feel. Remember, though, Apple's hallmark is achieving quality through control of the OS, hardware, etc., and I can't say I don't blame them.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I would guess that /. has more than its share of "tweakers." Besides, if Apple's interface is so good then why do people want to change it? Clearly there is at least a small market for people who want to tweak their OS X interface. If Apple wants to write those folks off, that's their business, but it doesn't particularly make me want to Switch.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
It also lets application writers theme their applications. Then every application can look different than standard, people create their own widgets and hack the pull-down menus and the whole Mac uniformity is lost.
The great thing about Macs is that, by and large, all the applications look the same, feel the same, and work the same.
Apple probably isn't willing to sacrafice this uniformity to let bad application programmers write bad applications. Yes, you heard me correctly. BAD APPLICATIONS. Every study EVER DONE in User Interfaces maintains that uniformity is good. Writing your own custom widgets, hacking pull-down menus or title-bars to work differently than standard is ALWAYS BAD.
Justin Dubs
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Interesting)
If these non-standard applications are so bad then why doesn't Apple simply let the market take care of them? After all, no one wants to pay money for a piece of software that makes their computer harder to use. You apparently are very happy with the default interface to your Mac, but apparently not everyone feels the same way that you do.
It's Apple's software, they can do whatever the heck that they want with it. They might even be correct in thinking that most people want less flexibility instead of more flexibility. However, it appears to me that Apple is dismissing one of their more vocal (and loyal) userbases by locking out these "tweakers." I don't care what Apple thinks, that's bad business. After all, these tweakers spend money on Apple hardware too, and if they are unhappy they might switch to something more flexible. Most Apple users are already under some pressure to be compatible with the rest of the world (ie. run Windows). Apple can't really afford to create friction between them and their most outspoken users. Opening up the APIs necessary to change the look and feel of the desktop won't hurt anyone if most Mac users are (as you propose) looking for uniformity. If Mac users are truly looking for uniformity then applications that tickle these APIs will be unpopular. No one will use them, and they won't matter in the slightest. It appears to me that Apple is afraid that these changes will become popular.
It's a pity really. Apple's obsession over hardware control is what has relegated them to a secondary position in the market, and their obsessive control over the interface is not going to help them in the long run either.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my, this is likely to be good.
In other words, users are so stupid that even when they think that software to change the interface would help them they shouldn't be allowed because clearly they are insane.
Listen buddy, I use my computer for hours on end, and there are some things that I know improve the experience that aren't part of Apple's GUI. Heck, Apple doesn't even let you change the system font for crying out loud. Nothing is likely to turn me off to a system faster than some puffed-up HCI researcher telling me that how I want to use my computer is "wrong." Fortunately there are other games in town.
So not only are users dumb, but they go out of their way to support applications that make them less efficient. The folks paying money for these tweaks probably also enjoy sticking needles under their toe nails. In real life the only time that someone is likely to pay cold hard cash for something like a dock replacement is if they think that it is likely to improve their computer experience. Even if the software is free they aren't going to install it unless they think it will make their life better. Applications that don't get used die out of their own accord, even free ones. Linux, for example, has piles of window managers and file managers, but only the ones with community support end up sticking around for any length of time. The same thing is true of Mac software. If it isn't useful, it disapears.
Besides, Apple has plenty of it's own applications that don't follow the guidlines. All the "metal" crap, for instance. I am not talking about some totally different metaphor here. I am talking about changing the system font, and perhaps swapping out the dock. Apple has nothing to lose by making this possible, except that people might decide they like someone else's dock better than the Apple one.
Of course, according to you mere users shouldn't get to choose their dock. HCI specialists should decree it from on high. And since you HCI specialists design your interfaces with the lowest common denominator in mind people with a little more expertise end up getting screwed. Unless the more skilled users can tweak the system a bit then we are left with little more than an expensive toy pretending to be a computer.
As for the rest, I am not even going to dignify it with a response. In the past modifications to Apple's UI have been quite popular with all sorts of Apple users. Pretending that only 13 year-olds want to change the system font or swap out the dock is ridiculous. Nearly every hard-core Mac users has a tweak or two that they would like to apply to customize their workspace. In the past Apple encouraged this, and now they don't. Besides, even if only 13 year-olds were interested in this it still goes without saying that the 13 year-olds in question have access to enough cash to have a Mac. Even IMacs don't come for free in a box of Cracker Jacks. I suppose Apple wants these users to buy a Dell instead.
The point is that if people didn't want these tweaks, it wouldn't be an issue. Apple could open up the APIs as wide as you could please and no one would use them. Apple has nothing to lose if people don't want to tweak their Macs, but apparently that isn't the case.
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not that it matters (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apples Target Market (Score:4, Insightful)
This is really making a mountain out of a mole-hill. I doubt that Apple is actively going out of its way to discourage developers from doing 'cool stuff' with OS X. I've used a few cool haxies that *didn't* break with OS X 10.2 (or any other update) because they did cool stuff *within* Apple's published APIs.
Everyone should just sit back and chill
Only with Aqua interface (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's still lame, but they're not trying to close off the whole OS..
And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that's why they were cracking down on the efforts to make Aqua skins for the various widget libraries that X apps use. Now they have GTK,Qt,Xaw,Motif, _and_ Aqua.
---
fee fie foe foo
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
As for anti-aliasing, chances are that this is an integral part of the PDF engine. My guess is that providing two paths through the Quartz display system, one that enabled anti-aliasing and one that did not would have required to many resources. Or, if that's the way it was previously, it may be that maintaining two paths was taking up too many resources. Either way, if you want a look at how anti-aliased fonts would look in OS X, open an app that uses font sizes below what you have your "General" system preference set to stop anti-aliasing below. Don't know about you, but it looks pretty damn ugly to me. Character spacing is totally whacked and formatting is totally horked. Overall, it gets pretty unreadable.
Maybe they should allow you to tweak the anti-aliasing, maybe not. Either way - this particular story is just a pissy Wired journalist on a slow news day. That's my opinion, but I'm stickin' to it.
Umm, wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean applications like iChat, Calculator, Address Book, and some others?
Apparently, it's okay for Apple to break any consistency in their UI based on some ridiculous rule such as this (paraphrased): Now, it may just be me, but how does this help the user in any way? From my experience, the brushed metal apps have slightly different conventions. Lists of items have striping (see iTunes), buttons that modify those lists are at the bottom of the window (iTunes, Address Book), etc. Essentially, there is a whole separate set of conventions that the user has to learn in order to deal with these programs.
How's that for consistency?
Ben
Re:Umm, wait. (Score:5, Informative)
It's up to the developer how they want to write their app. They can also port a UNIX or Java app really easily and hardly change a thing, so to say that developers can't do what they want on the Mac now is strange. Some apps install X Windows and run just like they're on any other UNIX; some Java apps can be started by downloading them from the Web and then approving their launch locally.
What Apple has with Aqua is a very plain and simple GUI language that they encourage you to either adopt entirely or else completely ignore. If you adopt Aqua entirely, your app will be a single icon that doesn't need an installer and that will just plain work when it's launched by 99.999999% of the users who encounter it. You can create a really elegant app that is a great Aqua citizen and it will be easy to use and people will pay for it and be very happy with it. Or, you can install X Windows, or ship a command line app, or whatever, and you won't have much of an impact on people who are attracted to Aqua apps for the ease-of-use that comes with their consistency.
One thing this article doesn't mention is that you can do all kinds of things to the display with Quartz. Rather than focusing on changing out bitmaps like on earlier systems, you can alter the way the system looks by applying a graphics filter to the whole lot when it's composited. If you check out an app called Black Light on Mac OS X it can change the way the display looks quite significantly using Quartz. To argue over getting into the System folder to put in substitute bitmaps is old-fashioned on Mac OS X. The window server is doing stuff with the bitmaps it has, not just showing them
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
It is kind of like web design. Web artists go to a lot of trouble to make their web pages look a certain way, but if I tell my browser to use a custom stylesheet it won't look the way it was intended. That is my prerogative, though, because it is my browser.
So basically, MacOS X still has a nice consistent user interface. If somebody buys a Mac and doesn't mess with the default settings, the desktop will be familiar and look the way it was intended. Jobs and Apple have accomplished their goal. There is no reason for them to prevent customizations if somebody decides they don't want a consistent interface, if they don't want their desktop to look like every other Mac desktop on the planet.
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, though - computer hackers may know that changing a theme could have unpredictable affects or know what exactly all is encompassed when a theme is changed. But, Joe Average user may just like the way a theme *looks* without realizing any further ramifications. This creates problems as installing themes and tweaks isn't limited to folks who know what's going on. Support becomes an issue not only for Apple, but for all the companies that develop apps for OS X. Office v.X has a very specific set of interface elements that integrate very closely with the way Aqua looks and feels. If Aqua is changed dramatically, then Office v.X may become more difficult to use, causing a problem for MS support.
Maybe one person would only want to change the color of the menu bar, maybe someone else would want to change the size of window decorations - well, all this would start making Apple's relatively simple APIs, unduly complex. Apple's trying to walk a fine line between providing the necessary flexibility in the OS to not curtail other's creativity, but also making the standard APIs easy enough to use that companies developing apps, games, add-ons, etc. can get in and bring a profitable utility to market ASAP. All the while trying to keep their own internal development, documentation and support costs to a minimum.
Its not just about allowing or disallowing tweaks. Its about a good deal more than that.
Re:And I'm glad they're closing Aqua (Score:3, Insightful)
The only argument for this is false. It says that some of the tweaks encourage innovation. In fact, if you have ever tried to design such toolkits, you would know that such abilities to tweak are a complete roadblock to innovation. If somebody relies on the fact that they can change "how a menu item draws" they necessarilly have locked into the interface the idea that there is a "menu item" and that you "draw" it. In the real world this means the menu items are probably rectangular, fixed size, and that the data needed to draw them must be available before the menu "pops up".
This is difficult to state exactly, but I don't think people realize just how big of a hinderence this is to innovation. The best equivalent I can think of is filesystems, in the early days (pre 1970) there were record-based file systems with huge libraries to index and retrieve the records. The result was that it was very difficult to store new types of data, to implement new filesystems, and even the copying of a file from one device to another required the largest piece of software (pip) on the system. Then the seek/read/write type of file appeared, and the first systems that used *only* these files almost immediately supported enormous disks, networks, and communication and storage of files on almost any medium. The end result is that the systems with this "primitive" interface completely took over from the "fancy" systems and every single innovation in data storage and networking has been made possible because of this low-level interface.
I think the same thing is need in the GUI and we are nowhere near it yet. But congratulations to Apple for trying to force the current GUI interface into a library interface and getting it out of the system.
Doesn't mean they won't in the future (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't mean they won't in the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Did Kaleidoscope work when System 7 was replaced with MacOS 8? No. Do you know how these program work? They patch traps and do other funky-ass stuff deep in system memory because the old OS had no protection. All of the old UI hacks were just that: hacks that shouldn't be expected to be possible on a new, completely different OS.
Besides, it's a new OS with a constantly changing under-the-hood series of libraries. If you're building your life around those changing, you have a big surprise coming.
OS tweaking (Score:5, Insightful)
As a very long time Mac user (1985-ish) and day one OS X user (from the beta version on), I think Apple has done a wonderful job with X, and I for one am not complaining if I can't make my menus or windows look a little differet.
More power to ya, Steve Jobs, keep up the good work.
Re:OS tweaking (Score:3, Informative)
The same is still true with SMB file sharing and the firewall. Because their based on standard Samba and ipfw there are numerous configuration options, but to keep it simple (or to reduce development costs, or just get it out the door) Apple's control panels aren't that powerful. Third party tools unlock the potential, but they don't create the features.
I think Apple will eventually support interface modifications, but not until their OS matures and their user base grows. Locking out 'tweakers' has to more of a limitation and less of a liability for Apple to go for it.
One major issue I think could be holding them back is that right now most OS X themers replace graphics in the
UI != OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes and No. (Score:3, Insightful)
- They won't be turned off of Macs because of some rebellious "fight the power" attitude (a reference to the submitter's not switching to a mac because of this).
- They won't be interested in, or even be aware of, any such mods.
And the AC whom you responded to was talking to the Slashdot audience in general (and the submitter in particular) and not the typical Apple user. And theI dunno, maybe the original submission wasn't well thought out. The article is clearly about UI changes but they responded as if Apple had said they were tossing out the APSL and ceasing all further open source projects.
Having said that, I don't really think that UI changes affect Apple negatively. As you said, Apple has a target market. That target market expects the OS to look and work a certain way. That target market isn't GOING to change their UI. That target market will continue to Perceive the Reality that Apple puts forth unto them.
It can be argued even (and the Wired article touches on this) that UI hacking by those who care actually _help_ Apple. Many changes to MacOS over the years came from someone a hack. Even MacTCP (though not a UI hack) was a hack for a long time before Apple took it as their own.
This isn't tweaking.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping a standard user interface makes it easier for people to move from computer to computer. There's nothing that irks me more than working on a different computer at the office, and some wiseacre has removed the menus from MSIE.
Besides, most Kaleidoscope interfaces were ugly as sin....
Re:This isn't tweaking.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a GUI is flexible enough to allow the user to have a Salvador Dali melting widgets look and feel, it should also be able to provide a way to get the standard look and feel back with a simple command.
Yet more speculation running as news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok here's the deal: There are private APIs in OSX. They are undocumented and marked that way- these frameworks are in the private- frameworks folder.
Apple isn't deliberately breaking peoples products, it is changing internal APIs.
Many of these APIs start out internal and when they are ready for prime time, become public, supported, documented, standard APIs.
Until then, you use one and it doesn't work in the next rev, its your own damn fault.
And this is the right way for things to be- OS X is far more theme friendly than any other OS- hell the graphical eliments are all easily accessible pdf or tiff files and easy to replace. Want a different looking dock? Trivial. Want a different looking login window? no problem.
But the areas where things can cause instability in the OS should not be left wide open for people to change in an uncontrolled manner.
Quicktime has an API for skinning it. MAYBE Apple will release one for OS X, but if they are smart, they won't.
Standardized controls are what makes OS X much easier for newbies to use than other operating systems.
Let people change the look of their computer, but not the feel. That's the right strategy and the one apple seems to be following.
Double standard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you say "double standard"? When Microsoft has undocumented, private, internal APIs, everyone cries "Foul!" and accuses them of hiding these APIs from developers. When they then change those internal APIs, everyone again cries "Foul!" and accuses them of breaking these internal APIs intentionally. But when Apple does this, it's okay? I guess I just don't get it.
Not quite. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, Apple isn't in competition with the 3rd party developers - it's just not supporting them, either. It's a choice that I personally think will end up shooting Apple in the foot - but in no way is it the same as the "hidden API" stuff that was going on at Microsoft
Re:Double standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're talking about two different situations. Just go to your mac in
Private is a lable-- it means "Don't use this, it may well change".
What microsoft did was make the OS react different ly to different programs that were accessing published APIs. Microsoft was making its APIs not fit the specification, and it was providing hidden hooks into its OS.
The private framworks are there for everyone to see-- you're just told that they will change. When they do, you don't get to cry foul.
When microsoft releases a new product that breaks your own product that was using the public apis, then its legitimate to cry foul.
The difference is microsoft was making it so products could only work if they approved them.
Apple is merely saying "you're responsible if you use these, they will change".
Yeah, that's a double standard. Nope.
Re:Double standard? (Score:4, Funny)
Yea, offtopic, but I wanted to share.
Re:Double standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, you don't get it. The difference is that Microsoft uses undocumented APIs in their products that are sold outside of windows, while other application vendors don't get the benifit of those APIs. Apple's undocumented APIs are internal to the OS, and they don't use them in software that they sell in competition with third party application vendors. If an API is undocumented because it's internal to the OS it's OK, but if it's undocumented to give you an edge over other application vendors then it's wrong.
Re:Double standard? (Score:4, Funny)
But I thought MSIE was internal to the OS.... oh it's all so confusing...
Re:Yet more speculation running as news. (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Apple should have looked at the flame wars RedHat provoked with their attempt to create a "common" user look-and-feel between KDE and Gnome.
People think - and rightly so - "It's my computer, I should be able to do whatever I want with it."
Regards...
Re:Yet more speculation running as news. (Score:3, Funny)
I think they did and happily realized that they just didn't need to bother with such fuss. They already have a common look and feel and are quite happy with it, thank-you-very-much.
Re:Yet more speculation running as news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? These people aren't modifiying the shrink-wrapped boxes Apples sells in the store. They're modifying their own machine as they see fit.
This has nothing to do with stability. It's all about dictating to people how they can use a product they own by adding arbitrary restrictions.
Standardized controls are what makes OS X much easier for newbies to use than other operating systems.
Newbies aren't the ones doing this. Give your head a shake.
Let people change the look of their computer, but not the feel. That's the right strategy and the one apple seems to be following.
Why is it reasonable for a company to restrict the way we use the product? This isn't Apple designing a product to be consistent, this is Apple locking down an existing product that people are using is a way that they didn't anticipate, because the creativity these users are demonstrating angers them.
"Think Different" indeed. Try "Think the way we want you to think.".
Total speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously I can't verify the veracity of the rumor, but I can make these observations: 1) By keeping those APIs private, Apple is quietly trying to keep people from messing with what they consider low-level code that they probably have plans for, and 2) based on that assumption Apple is probably not concerned about themers like Kaliedescope, but major commercial programs messing with that code within an application a) thus shooting themselves in the foot with major revisions to/new versions of those APIs and potentially abandoning the platform b) lazily foisting distinctly counter-intuitive non-apple interfaces designed for another platform, or c) interfering with the proper functioning of other programs.
Misleading Crap Reporting! (Score:5, Insightful)
"For example, the API that allows for custom menus and icons on the right side of the top menu bar, next to the clock, prohibits all but Apple-approved menu items. "
Funny, I'm running Jaguar and have both LaunchBar and FuzzyClock running just fine in my menu bar...
I can't speak for all menu-apps but I don't think this article really speaks the truth.
Re:Misleading Crap Reporting! (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, my Proteus icon doesn't stay on the toolbar if Proteus isn't running, and I can't easily rearrange it on the toolbar by dragging while holding the Apple key down. I can do this(or remove the icon entirely) with the system-related icons approved by Apple(modem status, volume, resolution).
As a disclaimer, I am still using 10.1.5, so I can't speak for 10.2.
Changing back the Happy Mac Face... (Score:2, Interesting)
But what kind of tweaking? (Score:2)
The article's focus (as is to be expected from a pseudo-technical publication like Wired) is on tweaking to the UI -- theming the desktop to that the shiny candy buttons appear in your favorite flavor, changing the font in dialog boxes, making menus sticky so they don't fly back when you release them.
The more substantial performance hacking involving BSD kernels and command-line shell prompts and so forth seems to be a completely different subject altogether.
Enough already (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly everybody must realize by now that such statements are usually a load of shit. Most of you will never buy a Mac, or switch to a Linux desktop, no matter what, because Windows is all you know, and all you care to know. You don't want to invest the added cost of a Mac (or the added effort of Linux) to discover if their virtues are worth it. You are lazy and groping for excuses.
Just fess up. You don't like Macs, you don't want a Mac, you will not buy a Mac. That's fine. Use whatever the fuck you want, just stop with the constant whining about features that you (or some underpaid web journalist) think are missing from the platform.
Re:Enough already (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enough already (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I use a tibook for my primary machine, along with Solaris, linux, BSD and Windows 2000. Most of the EDA industry - designers of the toys we love - runs on Windows 2000. With the latest releases from Mentor Graphics, we've completely swtiched to Windows 2000 and Linux in the lab. But those machines do one thing, they are TOOLS. Just like the mac is a tool. It just happens to be a better tool (for me) to do most computing chores. Project builder is really nice. If something new that's even better comes along, I'll switch to that.
It really does just work. Apple has themselves a real winner here, but luck or design. The perfect home for open source software, oh, the irony.
Of course, that's just because I don't have time to be a zealot anymore. So maybe you're right.
Tweekers? (Score:2)
Wait, that's tweeking, not tweaking. Nevermind.
My take (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that no developer has steped up to plate to make a good PreferencePane for Skining and Icon changing. There is a difference between saying it's not possible and noone has bother to make a good app to do it.
I would go with the latter.
Many of the old Mac hacks were really evil (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't blame Apple for messing with internal API calls. If I were in their shoes, I'd deliberately break anything that used undocumented calls in every release. This keeps hack developers on their toes, as they are forced to upgrade their OS and re-test their hacks for every release; there's no more of this "well, it worked back in 1987 on my Mac SE, so it should run fine on my G3 using OS 9.1" crap Mac users have been living with for so many years. It also preserves Apple's ability to change the OS implementation internally; if they leave undocumented APIs static for too long, developers will start to take them for granted and users will complain when Apple breaks them. Better to break them on purpose and prevent anyone from getting too comfortable.
-Mars
interface tweaking closed only (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't want you messing around with the functionality of the widgets. You know what? I agree with them.
Esp. since you can run other window managers under Darwin (uh
And this article says nothing about them trying to prevent the kind of 'tweaking' most Wintel users use - namely, performance, setup, etc.
I don't have any problems with Apple trying to kill utilities that tweak the UI. There's still choice, and there wasn't in OS9.
As for Jobs saying, "Themes are dead", is he [deskmod.com] on [deviantart.com] crack [customize.org]? Or by dead, does he mean, "They're dead, because I killed them on this platform."?
redesign (Score:5, Funny)
ugh (Score:2, Insightful)
No thank you!
-Kevin
so wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
The interface is based on plists and pdf files, there is no way to stop tweaking. Apple tweaks things and breaks things that developers do with each new build but thats only because OSX is still evolving. In 3 years the interface will more or less be stable on Apples side.
Besides tweaking the UI is pretty lame. It works the way it is, it's attractive or people wouldn't be trying to copy it right and left. Don't people have more important things to do than make their UI look like a Star Trek terminal?
I started on Linux back in 1996 and I fell victim to the UI nightmares of the time. I spent countless hours tweaking my UI, much to the dissmay of my employer at the time who noticed I had a different window manager everytime he came over to my cube. Needless to say my productivity went to hell in a hand basket and I lost a lot of respect from the other folks in my department. This was all in some frantic attempt to make my OS usable. Apple has eliminated this altogether allowing me to actually get work done while using an attractive UI. Why someone would want to degenerate the OS into a hacked useless WindowMaker like experience is completely beyond me. However since most people who do this are kids I suspect they dont have anything better to do anyways. More power to them, just dont degrade Apple for making the OS useful for the rest of us.
OS 6-9 vs OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
Given Apple's desire to have a more stable OS, not to mention their rigid UI approach, is it really that surprising that they don't want to go down the old Extensions road?
While I'm sympathetic to those who want to tweak OS X, my teeth are set on edge by the phrases chosen by those who are reverse-engineering the hidden APIs. "They're stifling innovation!" Translation: "They're not letting me do what I want to do!"
Were Apple breaking documented and open APIs, then you'd really have something to get up in arms about. As it is, if you're using undocumented APIs, expect them to change. You're going to be in the same land that all of us TSR writers of the 1980s were in: you'll have to modify your code each and every time a new OS version ships.
There is no problem here. (Score:3, Insightful)
And besides, we're making mountains out of molehills here. Apple gives you a built-in shell and a free IDE, and you bitch about not being able to put icons in the menu bar?
Big Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
A consistent UI is a good thing people.
Besides, why is everybody aping about how pretty Aqua is if all they want to do is change it and muck it up?
Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Not true.
I've got both WeatherPop and Homeland Alert running on 10.2 and 10.2.1 without Menu Extra Enabler.
Not closed to tweaking. (Score:5, Informative)
Not only this, there are several themes available.
The complaint here is that although Darwin is open source, (with most of the core components of the OS), the window server is not. Being a UNIX system, however, you can make a new one if you cared to. Simply running strings from the command line can pull most API functions out of a binary, so emulating them would be a tast, but not an impossible one.
From the beginning, Apple has discouraged used from using elements in the Aqua theme file (extras.rsrc) which are copyrighted by them. However, a full replacement of that resource file that contains no Apple IP can't be pulled by Apple.
Please don't listen to this argument that the OS is closed to tweakers. It's different now to tweak things, but you certainly can.
See? A Titanium [geocities.com] theme, a Rhodium [mac.com] theme, a Gunther [violentlyfriendly.com] theme, a Totally Aqua [mac.com] theme.
Hey, even a tool [geekspiff.com] to make them.
Quit complaining.
Christ (Score:3, Insightful)
Some slap-happy journalist at Wired interviews a few folks and makes a broad statement about Apple being anti-tweaking. Talking about APIs not being open - hell, many of the OS 9 APIs weren't open, people just had ResEdit to tweak the hell outta things - big difference!
Aww, c'mon. Let's not rehash this. What the hell is an "Apple approved" menu item?!? Its not like a developer has to get an "Official Apple Menu Item" seal for his app or anything - just that previously there were multiple APIs for placing something in the menubar, now there is one definitive API. Big deal!
Apple isn't losing any users, at least not ones that will spend $$ (after all, Apple's a business - they care about the Mac culture, yes, but they care more about the $$). Professionals that use Macs want stability. So many of the hacks for OS 9 would demote the stability of the OS to the ranks of Win9x or worse. Combining hacks would be even worse. Heck, even legit plugins for things like Photoshop could wreck your system. Apple knows this, so they're trying real hard to develop a system that provides what will hopefully become 'legendary' stability.
Keep in mind, also, that Apple may be keeping its private-APIs private, not only to prevent instability from encroaching on the system, but also to prevent competitors (read: Microsoft) from easily stealing enhancements made to OS X. Obviously Microsoft can also steal an idea and reimplement it, but Apple doesn't have to make that easy on them. I understand that having the API isn't equivalent to having the source, but defining an API isn't exactly a piece-of-cake, either. It takes a lot of careful thought and a tremendous amount of time to develop a stable API and corresponding documentation.
Musta been a slow news day at Wired.
Steve Jobs's anality--some good, some bad results (Score:3, Insightful)
The main thing about System 7, though, was that it didn't really _need_ much modification. Oh, there were some useful little add-ons--toolbars like the Control Strip which floated above all other windows, menubar additions, Apple Menu tweaks. But mostly, the system was just fine the way it was, until Apple started fucking with it--the introduction of the "Platinum" (or Copland, or "Aaron", or whatever) look is when Apple jumped the shark, in my opinion. I played with Kaleidoscope for a bit, but I never used it for more than a few days, partly because it rendered the behavior of the system somewhat unpredictable (you never knew when some application's interface might not look really strange with Kaleidoscope enabled), partly because making the system look _pretty_, as in "ain't this a wonderful screenshot?" pretty, also makes it more difficult to use.
But for whatever reason, many people think that the ability to set your system font to 48-point Wingdings and your window frame colors to be yellow and purple is the ultimate freedom. Hence the Enlightenment window manager, for example. Lots of fun to play with, great for amassing an album of pictures of people's desktops, but good and useful? Not really.
Having a locked-down interface isn't necessarily bad. The BeOS interface (remember BeOS?) was even more closed than Apple's (either System 7 or MacOS X), but since it was spare, functional, and worked reasonably well, most BeOS users, including myself, didn't really mind.
The trouble with Steve Jobs's obsession with preserving the Aqua look is that the Aqua look stinks. Not as badly as it used to, but the Dock is still an abomination, everything still takes up too much room, and if you're running a system at all limited in capacity (a 2nd-generation iBook in my case), the GUI's performance is irksome and slow. The beauty of System 7 was that it looked good whether you ran it on a Mac Classic or a PowerMac 8500. But Jobs's attitude seems to be, "Well, you should just buy a faster computer if it's slow, and a bigger monitor if it takes up too much room. Get with the program." (Ironic, considering that Apple is notorious for providing packaged systems with not enough built-in memory and small monitors.)
hyacinthus.
This article is total FUD. (Score:3, Informative)
There are at least 3 different programs to change themes; Duality4, MetamorphX, Chameleon.
There already is a program to change system icons, Candy Bar.
There is another coming, Xpression.
There are a myriad of menu items, dock enhancements, window enhancers, custom menu builders, and just great all around utilites that enhance and extend the OS.
The thing to remember, and what everyone forgets, it that Classic Mac OS was a mature OS that people had years to hack and discover. OS X is new enough that Apple is still changing APIs.
Mac OS X is a very customizable OS and Wired is showing very little research and fact checking in thier article.
What I wrote to the author of the article: (Score:5, Interesting)
I appreciate the even-handed approach of your article, balancing the frustration of tweakers with the reality of developing a stable, attractive, and easy-to-use operating system. But, as a student looking towards Human Computer Interaction as a specialization and immersed in the literature of the field, it's safe to say that no interface will please 100% of the audience. Those out to tweak endlessly fall into a minority that no interface designer can possibly account for without going insane, just as a scientist can't possibly account for all the potential variables and random factors in an experiment.
In the artificial, "closed system" of interface design, the people with the free time and inclination to endlessly modify are always going to be unsatisfied. Is this newsworthy? A number of application developers have put out tools that enhance and work with OS X to rave reviews. There are a number of successful interface tweaks out there (my iBook has a fully transparent dock, for example). And, as someone who used to theme and skin, figuring out how to modify a closed program is part of the fun.
I won't stick by Apple 100% on all of their decisions like some Mac users (after all, I've spent the last 6 years in Linux/*nix). But I will say that if you're going to do an article that more than suggests to Apple what to do and where to go, there are far more pressing issues than letting skinning nuts with too much free time make Aqua look like rusted clockwork, or whathaveyou.
Just my $.02.
Actually, Apple was interested in hearing... (Score:3, Informative)
Traditionally this is a pretty tough thing to do, even in the best of times. Under OS 8 and 9, we had a hell of a time keeping the on-access scanning parts working with each new release of the OS... they would change behavior in AppleTalk functionality, asynchronous hooks, or whatever and POOF!, what used to work just fine now times out on accesses to remote volumes.
The Apple guys were very open to trying to give us more reliable, sanctioned access to the file system hooks that we needed to have. Unfortunately, Dr. Solly's was soon thereafter assimilated by NAI and I was not able to work on the product anymore, so I don't know what they eventually did with the OS X product.
Themes vs. Usability (Score:3, Interesting)
If anyone out there has a good explanation as to why a themable interface is more powerfull or easy to use than a consistent, static interface, I would love to read it.
Personally, I think themed interfaces are the worst idea since... well I can't think of anything that comes close. For an interface to be usefull, and trusted by it's audience, it has to be predictable.
Why does my music player look completely different than my web browser or my word processor? I guess it kinda looks cool in a screenshot by itself. But I embrace computers in my life to get stuff done, rather than to post slick screen shots. Exploring and customising a new computer or software package can be fun, but for most people it's not the end goal of having a computer.
I can see how some OSX users on older hardware would like to be able to turn off text smoothing and gain a little speed. UI options for hardware compatibility or for people with low vision are fine, but "themes" as we think of them today have to go.
Themes basically exist for two reasons (warning: opinions)
In other words, UI designers lack leadership, and users crave consistency.
A few years ago, it was practically impossible to sit down at a friends X11 workstation and know what any of the keymappings were or how the menus worked, or even start a program. It's gotten much better now with most people using either KDE or Gnome, but massive improvements are needed before free software will be as easy to pick up and use as OSX and Windows are.
RH's choise to theme KDE and Gnome similarly was inspired, as are Steve Jobs' comments on themes. Thanks guys, keep it up!
Re:Themes vs. Usability (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironically, I really do agree with you there. Themable apps are a pretty horrible idea. That said, themes for the whole system are a whole different ball of wax.
Apples efforts against theming quite piss this basically happy G4 owner off, and I'm not the only one. They want a consistent interface on Mac, and I can certainly understand that, but it's still my machine, they got their money, and if I loan it to anyone I'll create a new user for them anyway. Apples concern with it really shouldn't go any further than making sure that new users start with the default theme. And it's not just themes they are doing this with, countless other minor utilities keep getting broken every time they upgrade OSX, and it seems most of it is deliberate. None of which improves goodwill towards Apple among the users who like these utilities, and none of which makes any sense except from exactly the sort of snooty, we-know-better-shut-up-and-eat-your-spam attitude that Apple should be avoiding like the plague. Think different - but only the same different we have prepared for you, don't you dare tweak anything. Anyway, read the article, it is really worth it, it explains some of the actual changes which I'm not going to duplicate.
I think what's going on is a backlash by certain sections within Apple against the expanded user freedom implied with the command line and the Unix base. They're overcompensating against the perceived 'complexity' introduced (even though they've done a good job of making sure the user doesn't even need to know about it, which is where they should have stopped) and so now they are clamping down on personalisation and customisability traits that have long been Apple hallmarks. A very very poor reaction. I certainly hope whoever is behind it gets straightened out or sacked soon, because I really do love these new Macs, and I don't want to see Apple shoot itself in the foot like this anymore.
I knew a 'tweaker more than artist' before.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Misses The Point (Score:4, Insightful)
I use Windows, Linux and Mac every day, and like them all. But objectively, OSX is light years ahead of anything else. IMHO, that is. It will take another year or two before this becomes clearly apparent.
It should be pointed out that... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the moment, however, there are a few malcontents that had a lot invested in the old way of doing things (the Kaliedescope folks) and just want to raise a stink because their sacred cow has been gored. The fact that Wired is giving them an audience simply underscores their journalistic calibre.
Anyone who really wants to customize the appearance of their OS X windows and controls can still do so. In fact, it is far easier in OS X than it was in classic Mac OS: In OS X, many of the window and control theme elements are stored as simple PDFs or TIFFs, somewhere in the /System hierarchy. All it takes to modify the appearance of things is to replace those PDFs or TIFFs, and, possibly, edit a .plist or two. Compare this to classic, where you had to write a bunch of code to insert your custom PICTs, MDEFs, CDEFs, and WDEFs into the system at runtime, and it's hard to see what anyone is griping about.
Which is it? Customizability--good or bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like making lemonade out of lemons. The Macintosh was "completely customizable" because it was a real-mode operating system. People could hack into its data structures from user programs whether Apple wanted them to or not. To bring at least some order to the madness, Apple added some APIs.
For Apple, opening up the APIs that "control the placement, function and look of windows and menus" was a necessity. It wasn't something they "pioneered" either: X11 had those APIs designed into it from the ground up. That's why, for better or for worse, you can use dozens of toolkits seamlessly on the same screen, pick your window manager and lots of accessories on X11 as you like.
For years, one of the big attractions of the Mac was the ability to customize the operating system. Users could completely overhaul the machine's interface, sometimes to the point where it was entirely idiosyncratic.
Mac evangelists can't have it both ways. Either they like end-user customization or they don't.
Out of the box, X11 desktops like Gnome, KDE, or Motif are as consistent as Macintosh, but X11 allows extensive end-user customization, it allows applications written with completely different toolkits to work together, and that's designed in, easy to use, and open.
But that's not Apple's philosophy: Apple wants to bring a standard, simple user experience to the Macintosh, and having people "tweak" the UI interferes with that. That's another possible point in the GUI design space, and there is nothing wrong with that philosophy.
But you can't have a GUI that offers both the possibility of, and support for, tweaking and simultaneously doesn't offer it. Apple has made the valid choice of trying to prohibit tweaking in OS X. That will appeal to many schools, universities, and IT managers. But it will also not appeal to many other users.
Ultimately, Mac zealots have to learn the painful lesson that engineering and design consists of tradeoffs: it's impossible for a single product to be the best at everything. A company can design products that are bad at everything, but here is no "best personal computer", "best user interface", or "best operating system".
Typical fake conflict journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at our primary sources here:
"Apple is uptight about (changes to the interface)," said Brian Wilson, business manager at Unsanity, which has created a number of OS X interface utilities. "But at the same time they haven't given us any grief. We've had neither help nor hassle."
Sounds like a draconian regime of not caring much, doesn't it?
"It's the end of an era," said Greg Landweber, co-developer of Kaleidoscope, one of the most popular Mac customization tools ever created. "Under the old Mac system, doing these little interface tweaks was really easy. You could change almost anything. Now, you can't change the way they work, only their appearance."
Greg Landweber's take, then, is that you can change the appearance, you just can't move the functional elements to completely different locations. Did anyone really use the Kaleidoscope themes that had the window buttons on the side? Those are the ones that just hit the rocks.
I took delivery on my 17" iMac last Friday. Believe me, there's no shortage of tweaks to the UI. I'm running a handful now. If Apple's making noise just now, it's just to emphasize that tweakers are there only at Apple's discretion -- always the case, right?
Just another overstated conflict story where there really isn't much of a conflict, if you ask me.
I Had Something of a dialogue with Apple on this (Score:3, Interesting)
Is tweaking the GUI tweaking the OS? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple Menu (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Then what about ASM [sourceforge.net], which I cannot get by without ...?? BTW, yeah it works with Jag.
Re:Doesn't seem like a problem to me... (Score:2)
This from the company who's motto is "Think Different". How can we think different if they are forcing us to all be the same?
Re:Doesn't seem like a problem to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyhow, if the Slashdot crowd wants to get under the hood and tinker, they can run BSD with Darwin, and not run MacOS or Aqua. Apple never pretended that Aqua was going to be anything but a proprietary piece of software.
Re:And Apple isn't a monopoly ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Easy console access, plugins, hacks (Score:5, Funny)
They're tough. You have to do a really complex installation process known in Mac circles as "plugging the fucking thing in."
Re:Easy console access, plugins, hacks (Score:3, Informative)
Can't tweak the interface? What a joke. For Pete's sake, we have the hooks to put rootless XFree86 on top of Aqua and run every Window manager under the sun.
Re:Easy console access, plugins, hacks (Score:3, Informative)
you almost forgot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Apple shows it's true colors (Score:3, Funny)
Apple has taste.
(Apologies to Steve J.)
Re:Apple... (Score:5, Informative)
I have 10.2 on my iBook, and I am able to tweak many, many functions to my heart's content. The first thing I did was get rid of that stupid "favorites" heart in the top of the finder window. Removing that button (and adding other finder tools to the top bar) was as simple as drag and drop. Resizing or relocating the dock, and changing its behavior is also simplicity itself. Don't like the funky way Macs have the scroll arrows grouped at the bottom-right corner? You can set it to the traditional layout with a few quick mouse-clicks.
What is really going on in this article is the owner of the company that makes Kaleidoscope (a third-party UI tweaking program for older flavors of Mac OS) has been rendered obsolete, not by Mac breaking Kali's tools with updates... which often happened with versions 7-9 of MacOS, but because OS X is already tweakable enough withough their app.
Re:Apple... (Score:3, Funny)
Zexplain zis drag and drop you zpeak of...
Re:Ok Everybuddy!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Thus I remain steadfast in my conviction that anti-apple idiots don't understand the basics of computers operation or architecture.
Re:A step backwards... (Score:3, Funny)
Word of mouth doesn't constitute research. You will learn this in college thankfully. So you are excused for the time being.
These people were? Let me guess, the typical