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a quasi-substitute for a window manager, that would at least let you fiddle with the color/texture scheme of aqua is Shapeshifter. it's a nice little app, and many of the themes at least play with the shapes and textures underlying the interface. not a total solution, but it adds at least some more flavor to the view.

Pleased to meet you. I own a mac powerbook, and I'd like to tell you how much OS X sucks. Why?

These are some interesting points you make. I'd like to offer my input on them.

- Only one mouse button. Thats really debilitating. Sure, you can get a USB mouse for a desktop system, but on a laptop you are stuck having to hit the keyboard and the mouse button every time you want to right click. Not that there are ever any usefull funcitons in the drop down menus anyway - Mac applications are designed for people who can't use computers very well to be able to use. Those of us who want more functionality from their applications are stuck.

I'm using a $25 wireless USB mouse on my Powerbook right now and it works great. I hate track-pads on ANY laptop. I find hitting ctrl-and the trackpad button is a little counterintuitive at first, but eventually I just got used to it.

As for the contextual menu being useless by default, I rather agree... FruitMenu is a neat little app that makes the contextual menu completely customizable, and Menu Master does the same for drop-downs. Yeah, they're payware, but pretty inexpensive.

The phrase "Mac applications are designed for people who can't use computers very well to be able to use" makes me wonder if IHBT, but I'm going to continue on anyway.

- Window management is rediculous. You can't maximize a window without jumping through hoops. And those pretty eye-candy window control buttons in the tilte bar are way to small and easy to miss.

OS X is skinnable, so you can find a skin that makes those buttons bigger. Maximizing is different than Windows, and I agree can be a bit counterintuitive, but it's not a big deal in my opinion. Just click and drag the window to its maximum size... the Finder should remember it next time.

- The Finder is lame. Windows Explorer is crap too, but you can get a lot more functionality out of it if you know where to look.

I barely use the Finder anymore, as I use Quicksilver to launch all my apps and find things. Much easier that way. I actually find the opposite to be true now; the Finder's search function works seamlessly and quickly, while searching in Windows explorer takes too many steps for my taste. For an out and out Finder replacement, Pathfinder looks good, though I haven't worked with it enough yet to know if it's worth the money.

- Crashes just as often as my windows PC. I bought the thing for stability and have been very dissapointed.

I hate to be one of those guys that says "my Mac never crashes," but it never does. I had maybe three or four lockups back during 10.2 and none since. My uptime regularly runs into the months, until I need to reboot for security updates. And it's not like I don't try out a lot of new applications, either. It really should not be crashing that much, or at all, if it's running right. You might try doing some maintenance.

- Safari is way better than Internet Explorer on Windows, but far, far the inferior of Firefox

I find Firefox way too slow on OS X -- which is sad, because I like Firefox, but it's just too much of a hog on my Powerbook. I've gotten really used to working with Safari, and have very few complaints with it, even compared to Firefox (which I like a lot).

Don't get me wrong, I think Windows sucks too, and I do appreciate the OS X command line. But OS X's much ballyhooed GUI interface runs a far second behind windows in terms of actual utility.

So to anyone who is considering the switch, I say, dont. Take the extra money you would blow on a powerbook and buy yourself a nice Sony laptop.

I would have to respectfully disagree -- I think OS X takes

Pleased to meet you. I own a mac powerbook, and I'd like to tell you how much OS X sucks. Why?

These are some interesting points you make. I'd like to offer my input on them.

- Only one mouse button. Thats really debilitating. Sure, you can get a USB mouse for a desktop system, but on a laptop you are stuck having to hit the keyboard and the mouse button every time you want to right click. Not that there are ever any usefull funcitons in the drop down menus anyway - Mac applications are designed for people who can't use computers very well to be able to use. Those of us who want more functionality from their applications are stuck.

I'm using a $25 wireless USB mouse on my Powerbook right now and it works great. I hate track-pads on ANY laptop. I find hitting ctrl-and the trackpad button is a little counterintuitive at first, but eventually I just got used to it.

As for the contextual menu being useless by default, I rather agree... FruitMenu is a neat little app that makes the contextual menu completely customizable, and Menu Master does the same for drop-downs. Yeah, they're payware, but pretty inexpensive.

The phrase "Mac applications are designed for people who can't use computers very well to be able to use" makes me wonder if IHBT, but I'm going to continue on anyway.

- Window management is rediculous. You can't maximize a window without jumping through hoops. And those pretty eye-candy window control buttons in the tilte bar are way to small and easy to miss.

OS X is skinnable, so you can find a skin that makes those buttons bigger. Maximizing is different than Windows, and I agree can be a bit counterintuitive, but it's not a big deal in my opinion. Just click and drag the window to its maximum size... the Finder should remember it next time.

- The Finder is lame. Windows Explorer is crap too, but you can get a lot more functionality out of it if you know where to look.

I barely use the Finder anymore, as I use Quicksilver to launch all my apps and find things. Much easier that way. I actually find the opposite to be true now; the Finder's search function works seamlessly and quickly, while searching in Windows explorer takes too many steps for my taste. For an out and out Finder replacement, Pathfinder looks good, though I haven't worked with it enough yet to know if it's worth the money.

- Crashes just as often as my windows PC. I bought the thing for stability and have been very dissapointed.

I hate to be one of those guys that says "my Mac never crashes," but it never does. I had maybe three or four lockups back during 10.2 and none since. My uptime regularly runs into the months, until I need to reboot for security updates. And it's not like I don't try out a lot of new applications, either. It really should not be crashing that much, or at all, if it's running right. You might try doing some maintenance.

- Safari is way better than Internet Explorer on Windows, but far, far the inferior of Firefox

I find Firefox way too slow on OS X -- which is sad, because I like Firefox, but it's just too much of a hog on my Powerbook. I've gotten really used to working with Safari, and have very few complaints with it, even compared to Firefox (which I like a lot).

Don't get me wrong, I think Windows sucks too, and I do appreciate the OS X command line. But OS X's much ballyhooed GUI interface runs a far second behind windows in terms of actual utility.

So to anyone who is considering the switch, I say, dont. Take the extra money you would blow on a powerbook and buy yourself a nice Sony laptop.

I would have to respectfully disagree -- I think OS X takes

A quick Google search reveals this application from our friends at Unsanity (a great software house for MacOS X tools). Since the original poster was AC, I got the impression that they didn't really want an answer, they just wanted to bitch.

Try out Unsanity's Fruit Menu if you miss the start menu. It will give you back that functionality that you are used to.

(On the plus side, you get windowshading, which Windows lacks.)

This is not included by default in OS X. There are addon apps though.

It's not impossible, but there's nothing that's anywhere near as mature as Tortoise. Here's an early version of one for Subversion and here's a similar tool for CVS, also very early in its development lifecycle.

Though it should only be of minimal concern to an end-user, the license on cvsfinder may prove questionable. It's BSD-licensed, but it apparently uses unsanity's APE sdk, whose terms in my (non-lawyer) opinion may forbid this. The unsanity guys seem decent and unlikely to pursue this, but if you're thinking of contributing code to it, read the APE agreement very carefully and form your own opinion. Also, I do seem to recall some intention on the part of the devloper to switch away from APE (to mach_override IIRC) so, if this is done already, then it's completely a non-issue.

I can attest to OS X being very usable on a 350MHz slot-loading iMac. Just make sure you have at least 256MB of RAM, preferably 512MB or even more depending on what it will be doing. AND MAKE ABSOLUTELY DAMN SURE YOU HAVE THE LATEST FIRMWARE INSTALLed ON THAT THING. I kid you not, I fried one iMac and almost fried the other one but was able to find the right firmware and flash it which arrested the strange process it was going through. Most importantly I hadn't even installed OS X yet when the video started going wacko on me. THE ACT OF BOOTING ANY OS X BASED BOOT CD WILL DESTROY YOUR IMAC UNLESS YOU HAVE THE LATEST FIRMWARE FOR THAT MODEL INSTALLED. Yes, that's right, I'm yelling. I think this message needs to get to as many of you potential upgraders as possible, so you can avoid the problems I had.

As long as you have the right firmware and pack it with plenty of memory (go Crucial.com!) you will wind up with a machine that is just as usable with OS X (10.3+) as it was with OS 9. It's really quite amazing.

Plus as I read in a post further up, there is a haxie called Shadow Killer that will turn off the shadow rendering and give you a bit of a speed boost on older Macs. It's really amazing what Apple has managed to do between 10.0 and 10.3.4. Every version has been faster and more stable. I'm sure there are many people out there that tried OS X in the 10.0 and 10.1 days when it was still under heavy development and gave up on it because it was slow and unstable. Well, Jaguar was better and Panther is immensely better. OS X is revitalizing a lot of old hardware.

MacOS 9.1 would run much faster on an older iMac than OS X does, so it might give a better user experience in that respect.


I find this is no longer true for version 10.3 of OS X and beyond, especially 10.3.3+. Plus I just read about Shadow Killer from a post above that will make it even faster on older computers. Apple has optimized the living crap out of OS X since 10.0 to the point where it's speed and performance is now comparable or better than OS 9 on the same hardware. It's certainly more responsive due to the significantly smarter multitasking architecture. The only caveat would be that you should have 256MB of RAM in the machine, preferably more AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE ABSOLUTE LATEST FIRMWARE, OR YOU WILL FRY THE COMPUTER, LITERALLY. If you have the latest firmware everything will be peachy. DON'T EVEN BOOT ANY OS X BASED BOOT CD ON AN OLDER IMAC THAT DOESN'T HAVE THE LATEST FIRMWARE. This includes the newer TechTools diagnostic disks and probably Norton SystemWorks/Utilities boot CDs and many others as well. I don't know what happens internally but just booting OS X from the install CD will start the process of frying the logic or video board inside, and you will soon wind up with a dead computer that will not boot. Trust me, I'm not making this up. I still have one iMac sitting in storage that is unbootable.

You must realize that sooner or later someone will try to boot some CD on that old iMac that is based on an OS X kernel and your machine will get fried anyway, so taking the small risk now of upgrading it to OS X is not a big deal.

I've upgraded a 350MHz slot-loading iMac to Panther and it's just as usable as when it was running OS 9.2, if not more so. It's certainly beneficial to have all the latest OS and Internet technology on there, including for instance the ability to use any USB flash drive and read CDs that were only written with the Windows Joliet filesystem, and run FireFox. Plus it's fully multi-user, which is highly useful in situations like labs or schools.

As the parent poster notes you won't have a great choice of web browsers on OS 9, besides an old version of IE5 which is rapidly getting older, or a clunky old version of Mozilla that barely works, or Netscape 4 *gag*. I don't think OS 9 is really a good option if you're donating an iMac to someone who really has a use for a good computer. Slap some new memory in there from Crucial.com (as much as possible) and the latest version of OS X (10.3.4), and that machine will be usable for another 5-7 years. Seriously. Try slapping XP on a PC from 6 years ago and see how useful it is. OS X is a different beast, and it's truly amazing what Apple has managed to do with it between 10.0 and Panther. We have no reason to expect that Tiger won't also be faster and thus work even better on older hardware than Panther does.

Or maybe it's just mindblowing because I've lived through a decade of Windows updates that required twice the hardware every 18 months just to keep the OS responsive. With OS X it's proving to be the other way around so far.

few quotes from TheRegister:

"A major revision of Apple's Mac OS X operating system released this week fails to come bundled with a vital, recently-issued security fix."

"A security patch (2004-05-24) which guards against a vulnerability in the Help viewer sub-system is absent from the Mac OS X version 10.3.4, despite claims to the contrary by Apple."

"This confusion is compounded by Apple, which has thus far failed to address another critical - and easily exploitable - security hole which it wrongly told Techworld was fixed by the Help Viewer patch."

"An updated version of a security testing tool by Unsanity establishes that even patched systems are vulnerable. So patched Mac OS X systems are vulnerable and unpatched systems are even more vulnerable."

Now, if I ever again see one of the Mac zealots here advertising MacOS against Windows because of vulnerabilities & patches stuff, I'll instantly go into "undefined behaviour"!

If you don't like it, don't use it. Plain and simple.

Some of us, for example, route audio from different applications to different places; when I play music or games, it comes out through my audio system and the amplified speakers - when an e-mail dings at me, it comes out through an internal speaker.

Haxies like Detour, which provide real, interesting function, which is useful for any pro-audio guy with a lot of very loud audio hardware that you don't want system beeps playing over, is fundamentally interesting - moreso if you've got more than one set of audio outputs.

So, before people go off badmouthing how awful it is, they should think twice: that same code injection technology enables everything from Shapeshifter to reskin your UI to useful functions like being able to reroute your audio away or into your pro-audio equipment on an application-by-application basis.

In other words: despite everyone's nasty opinions, it provides a useful service to those of us with unusual requirements of our systems.

In response to this, the latest version of Paranoid Android disables ALL URL handlers except http://, https:// and mailto://.

Nothing new here. I clicked on every link on the page and the only thing I got was a copy of "Test.dmg" in my Downloads folder after clicking http://ozwicx.dk/OpnAppFixer/Test.dmg (the second link on the page), which of course I did not mount.

I'm not debating whether or not this is a real security issue -- it is evident that it is. What I'm debating is whether or not Paranoid Android is the only way to protect oneself from it as is claimed on the Unsanity web site. It is not, and thus I'm still baffled by the baseless claims to the contrary. And I quote:

Because this sample exploit registers its own URL scheme, none of the methods people had been using involving disabling certain scripts, moving Help.app or changing the 'help' URL scheme would protect against it. At this time, only Paranoid Android provides protection from it.

<quote>

Ive written a sample exploit that delivers and executes its payload without user intervention and operates by registering its own URL scheme handler. Until Paranoid Android, there was no way of protecting against this attack, which freaked me out enough to write Paranoid Android.:)

If you click the sample exploit link below, heres what will happen:

• A disk image named MalwareDiskImage will be mounted on your desktop.
• LaunchServices will read the Info.plist file of the application in this disk image automatically, and register the application as the default handler for URLs with a 'malware' scheme.
• The webpage will wait 10 seconds, and then redirect to malware:unused, causing LaunchServices to launch the payload application within the disk image.
• The application within the disk image will write a text file to the users home directory called owned.txt explaining that the machine has been exploited, will present an alert to the user, and will eject the disk image.

Because this sample exploit registers its own URL scheme, none of the methods people had been using involving disabling certain scripts, moving Help.app or changing the 'help' URL scheme would protect against it. At this time, only Paranoid Android provides protection from it.

benign sample exploit -->innocousPage.html

Portions of this sample exploit are based heavily on a prior sample exploit at insecure.ws Conclusions

Until Apple fixes this vulnerability, you should install Paranoid Android and surf safely.

Copyright Jason Harris, 2004, All Rights Reserved

</quote>

<quote>

Ive written a sample exploit that delivers and executes its payload without user intervention and operates by registering its own URL scheme handler. Until Paranoid Android, there was no way of protecting against this attack, which freaked me out enough to write Paranoid Android.:)

If you click the sample exploit link below, heres what will happen:

• A disk image named MalwareDiskImage will be mounted on your desktop.
• LaunchServices will read the Info.plist file of the application in this disk image automatically, and register the application as the default handler for URLs with a 'malware' scheme.
• The webpage will wait 10 seconds, and then redirect to malware:unused, causing LaunchServices to launch the payload application within the disk image.
• The application within the disk image will write a text file to the users home directory called owned.txt explaining that the machine has been exploited, will present an alert to the user, and will eject the disk image.

Because this sample exploit registers its own URL scheme, none of the methods people had been using involving disabling certain scripts, moving Help.app or changing the 'help' URL scheme would protect against it. At this time, only Paranoid Android provides protection from it.

benign sample exploit -->innocousPage.html

Portions of this sample exploit are based heavily on a prior sample exploit at insecure.ws Conclusions

Until Apple fixes this vulnerability, you should install Paranoid Android and surf safely.

Copyright Jason Harris, 2004, All Rights Reserved

</quote>

<quote>

Ive written a sample exploit that delivers and executes its payload without user intervention and operates by registering its own URL scheme handler. Until Paranoid Android, there was no way of protecting against this attack, which freaked me out enough to write Paranoid Android.:)

If you click the sample exploit link below, heres what will happen:

• A disk image named MalwareDiskImage will be mounted on your desktop.
• LaunchServices will read the Info.plist file of the application in this disk image automatically, and register the application as the default handler for URLs with a 'malware' scheme.
• The webpage will wait 10 seconds, and then redirect to malware:unused, causing LaunchServices to launch the payload application within the disk image.
• The application within the disk image will write a text file to the users home directory called owned.txt explaining that the machine has been exploited, will present an alert to the user, and will eject the disk image.

Because this sample exploit registers its own URL scheme, none of the methods people had been using involving disabling certain scripts, moving Help.app or changing the 'help' URL scheme would protect against it. At this time, only Paranoid Android provides protection from it.

benign sample exploit -->innocousPage.html

Portions of this sample exploit are based heavily on a prior sample exploit at insecure.ws Conclusions

Until Apple fixes this vulnerability, you should install Paranoid Android and surf safely.

Copyright Jason Harris, 2004, All Rights Reserved

</quote>

<quote>

Ive written a sample exploit that delivers and executes its payload without user intervention and operates by registering its own URL scheme handler. Until Paranoid Android, there was no way of protecting against this attack, which freaked me out enough to write Paranoid Android.:)

If you click the sample exploit link below, heres what will happen:

• A disk image named MalwareDiskImage will be mounted on your desktop.
• LaunchServices will read the Info.plist file of the application in this disk image automatically, and register the application as the default handler for URLs with a 'malware' scheme.
• The webpage will wait 10 seconds, and then redirect to malware:unused, causing LaunchServices to launch the payload application within the disk image.
• The application within the disk image will write a text file to the users home directory called owned.txt explaining that the machine has been exploited, will present an alert to the user, and will eject the disk image.

Because this sample exploit registers its own URL scheme, none of the methods people had been using involving disabling certain scripts, moving Help.app or changing the 'help' URL scheme would protect against it. At this time, only Paranoid Android provides protection from it.

benign sample exploit -->innocousPage.html

Portions of this sample exploit are based heavily on a prior sample exploit at insecure.ws Conclusions

Until Apple fixes this vulnerability, you should install Paranoid Android and surf safely.

Copyright Jason Harris, 2004, All Rights Reserved

</quote>

1. The "new and unknown URL scheme" issue exploited by malicious applications in downloaded and mounted disk images. Avoid this by not allowing disk images to be mounted automatically. You have to disable "Open Safe Files" (to avoid mounting disk images downloaded over http) and the disk: and disks: protocols. Having to mount all disk images by hand requires a decision from your side and gives you time to think about what you are doing.
2. The "help://runscript" issue caused by the Help Viewer accepting arbitrary commands. Disable the help: protocol, who needs it anyway?
3. The "telnet://-nfoo" issue caused by telnet's ability to overwrite existing files. Disable telnet:, ssh exists.

> Some notes about the now-fixed exploit:

It's not clear from your writing if you realize that there is another similar exploit that has not been fixed yet. Malware writers can invent their own URL protocols and LaunchServices will automatically register them on mounted volumes (e.g. through disk://, and maybe also ftp:// and afp://). In other words, the same kind of exploit is possible without HelpViewer, for details, see this link.

As already noted in the writeup and elsewhere in this thread, the Apple fix isn't enough. The other issues, discovered on the MacNN forum, are summarized here.

Paranoid Android protects against all of these potential exploits, including telnet://-nfoo.

Then load up Metallifizer, and they all will!

Wow, that was the second on topic-post... :-)

For myself, running OS X (Panther), it's:

1. LaunchBar
2. Default Folder
3. ASM
4. LiteSwitch (I use Adobe apps and don't want to learn new selection-tool-switching habits)
5. FruitMenu
6. WindowShade
7. Little Snitch
8. Net Monitor
9. Eudora
10. Mozilla


slide

Wow, that was the second on topic-post... :-)

For myself, running OS X (Panther), it's:

1. LaunchBar
2. Default Folder
3. ASM
4. LiteSwitch (I use Adobe apps and don't want to learn new selection-tool-switching habits)
5. FruitMenu
6. WindowShade
7. Little Snitch
8. Net Monitor
9. Eudora
10. Mozilla


slide

• Developer Tools
• fink, and then:
  • $ fink install nmap;
  • $ fink install osxutils
• Next is Carbon Copy Cloner,
• Transmit or some other ftp file browser.
• Finally, to make it "home", I'll install Windowshade X and Xounds.
• Also will edit my .bash_profile, naturally, and have been known to put a fnorder in the login script.

nobody asked, but that won't stop me from answering :)

For AIM: Adium
For a tweaked OS: Cocktail and TinkerTool
For a better OS: my collection of haxies for Unsanity's Application Enhancer (ClearDock, FruitMenu, Metallifizer, Mighty Mouse, ShapeShifter, SharedMenus, Silk, WindowShade X)
For privacy/security: NetBarrier, PeerVanguard (not because I trade P2P, but because I wear a tinfoil hat), Little Snitch
Helpful apps: Butler, QuickSilver, DragThing
For everything else: VLC, SBook5, Transmit, Path Finder, Apple Dev Tools

it's more than 10, but those are all put almost instantly on every fresh OS X install I touch.

You're completely right:

I use Unsanity Software's Shapeshifter theme changer.

Can you guess what my two favourite themes are? "Aqua Extreme" and "Smooth Stripes." They're basically just Aqua with slight tweaks, such as removing the pinstripes, adding sunken buttons instead of raised buttons, and getting rid of the streaks in brushed metal, etc.

I've found that every single theme I've tried that strays too far from Aqua ends up being a total disaster.

There is an alternative, sort of. It's called XTender, and its public beta was incredibly unimpressive. The day after XTender went public an update was made to ShapeShifter, and everyone again realized how good it was.

Also, ShapeShifter has cost money since its inception. No underhanded tactics there... although it did have the big themers involved in its creation to do the things that they wanted to do. The same guy develops the theme changing and theme creating software, and he is very approachable in regards to feature requests and bug reports. ShapeShifter is technically under the Unsanity umbrella, but Jason Harris makes both. ThemePark (to create themes) also allows exporting to many other non-guikit formats, including the format native to ShapeShifter's competitor (XTheme), and the format supported by Open Source alternatives such as ThemeChanger.

All ShapeShifter guikits can be extracted into images and a Extras.rsrc file using Guikitty. They can't be directly used by another application, so in a sense it is closed and proprietary, but the above mentioned XTender was able to automatically load ShapeShifter guikits if you had Guikitty installed.

Another big point is that a lot of themes use ShapeShifter because it has features that go above and beyond what is capable with any other theme changer, even in terms of things as simple as changing text colors.

Competition is always good, don't get me wrong. But there isn't a whole lot to complain about with ShapeShifter, and any competition it has had has been crushed despite the higher price tag because of ease of use, features, and theme-changing safety (it doesn't modify any system files, or even attempt to overlay those owned by root).

And finally, theres nothing preventing the winning theme from being released in the DLTA (aka Open Source friendly) format as well, the only restriction would be if the theme requires features that are only available in ShapeShifter.

Alright, I think that about makes the case...

Q: How many desktop UI's do you have available to you?
A: One. Aqua

Q: How "customizable" is your interface (aqua).
A: pretty limited.

If you want to change the (very large) range of eye candy on OS X there are plenty of options. Check out Shapeshifter.

I'm not connected with the company that makes it, I just think it's neat.

It's an iBook G4. I'm now a happy and proud owner of such a machine, and user of both MacOS X Panther an Linux on it.

The first thing I did when I got my hands on it was to re-partition it's hard drive and install Panther. Then I followed the instructions on setting up the mother of all Linux distributions on it from here.

I did the initial install of the Debian GNU/Linux base system (not without having to use a different kernel image for the ATA support, among other things to fiddle with), but then I started to take a serious look at OS X. It's an impressive operating system, with such a lovely and responsive GUI but the real power of UNIX I'm all used to underneath. I installed lots of open source software that I've get used to and couldn't live without. It all works so smoothly and nicely along other native applications, such as iTunes, Mail.app, Safari, Keynote, etc. - you get the best of both worlds. You have fink, you have darwinports, there's even OpenOffice.org. And if you're a developer, you also got Xcode from Apple. As I said, the both of worlds. And for some extra bucks you can get back some of your most beloved features from the Linux world: WindowShade X is a fine example of it.

Panther is also packed with some neat features not present anywhere else. Finder, for example, if one of the best file manager I've ever used. And Expose - I really miss it when working on Linux. One of the most useful enhancements a desktop environment could have get, it's not only eyecandy.

But then the necessity came and striked me hard. I have a small Linux consulting company. I was in a meeting with a customer the other day, and he wasn't so convinced that Linux could be a _viable_ alternative on the desktop. He thought it was just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such. And there I was, with my iBook with Debian loaded on it but with no desktop environment to show off. Just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such.

So I spent the whole night that day googling around and finally got my iBook to work nicely with Linux 2.6.2, supporting almost every single feature that's present on it except for Airport Extreme and the sleep functionality, which are not supported: sound, networking, USB 2.0, firewire, the combo drive, the ATI Radeon 9200 with DRI, the special function keys, the CPU frequency scaling. I even configured it to use an hfsplus partition for the /home directory, so now I have a single home for both Linux and OS X. Same desktop, same config for common programs.

There are still some things that Linux can do better than OS X. Like OpenOffice.org or GIMP. Certainly both programs do exist for OS X but their performance and overall integration with the rest of the system is not so good.

The conclusion of it is that, even if MacOS X is one hell of an operating system, Linux is fun. I love to use the same plataform on my x86 desktop I've grown used to for more than 6 years than on my PPC based laptop. And I still have the chance to reboot and use Panther for the amusement of it.

Regards,

Shapeshifter is kinda like Kaleidoscope, but for OS X. You might need to build your own walnut panel theme though, since it's fairly new.

:chortle: know what would be cool? Global or per-window setting that doesn't require nib-fu.

here is your per app solution :) (not currently compatible with Panther)

> You actually swiched OS's because of the Dock? Seriously? I'm impressed.

I'm not surprised. I, too, have been reluctant to make the switch because I find the dock horrible. Fortunately, I can get the application menu back with little effort, but the dock is still lame. To each his own I guess.

Everyone who knew the simplest thing about OS9 knew you could customise the Apple Menu to hold cascading menues of applications, files etc, and the OSx Apple Menu completely sucks in that regard.

Luckily, the fine folks at Unsanity also figured that out, and wrote a Haxie that I recommend:

Fruit Menu

With Fruit Menu I can develop quick and easy ways to get at any range of apps and documents and folders without resorting to the idiocy of the Dock.

I find it odd that Tog missed that. Oh well, that's why /. was invented, I suppose.

RS

If GWB is re-elected there is a 50-50 chance there won't be an election in 2008.

To make things a bit clearer, no features were "dropped" when Mac OS X. They simply didn't exist because it's an entirely different OS than Mac OS 9. Apple has come a long way since the public beta, in terms of reimplementing the features we used to have (simple file searching, labels, app switcher, etc.)

Products like Unsanity's Labels X, Windowshade X, and Xounds and ASM also bring back missing functionality. I gladly paid for those enhancements. Labels were reimplemented in Jaguar though, and I don't recall ever seeing an open memo from the Unsanity folks bitching about it.

Speaking of NIH, some MS apps dont work with Winshade X because they dont make system calls to draw windows. Of course it doesnt work on apps running as root either. I hope over time there will be less and less need to run apps as root (privlidge elvation)

I'm happy you like OS X and even more so that you have something that fits you even better (heard lots of good things about E will probably try it out when I rebuild the Athlon). But there is a very good hack to bring back Windowshade, it is shareware though but when I used it last (10.1) it was flawless.

You can easily enable/disable the brushed-metal theme on OSX apps, Apple or third-party. See here for details.

It's been done - by Unsanity: metallifizer
Well, it's not open source, but it is free. And Apple hasn't had any complaints.

I know it's annoying to buy hacks for things that once were built into the OS, but have you tried "WindowShades OS X"?
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/wsx/

I find that the mac world in general is more open to shareware. In the Windows universe, the trend seems to be 'try it for 30 days, and if you like it, google for a crack' - everyone I know does this. I don't know anyone who's actually paid for 'shareware' - most of the time, because it's not worth paying for.

However, when, last year, my parents got their G4 set up with OS X, I went looking to see what I could find, and I found Unsanity software, which had a lot of really good little utilities, some free, some shareware, but all extremely handy.

One thing about being a mac owner is you feel as you're part of the community. Maybe it's just my history (the first computer I'd ever seen was a Mac Plus), maybe it's the small marketshare, but when you find out someone's a mac user too, things change. You know that either they have played Escape Velocity, or that they will thank (or curse) you for introducing them to it. You know all the handy utilities, and can tell them about ones you know of that they don't, and vice versa.

When I tried out this Unsanity software, I wanted to pay for it - not because the trial was going to run out, but because it was worth paying for. The website only took credit cards, and I could only use paypal at the time, so I tracked the programmer down on IRC, and asked if there was any way I could paypal money to him. To my surprise, he actually gave me a hell of a deal on the whole package - even stuff I hadn't intended to purchase.

Since then, whenever someone asks if I have a registration code for any mac shareware, I always tell them that they should pay, because it's worth it. In the Windows world, however, there's always another program that does the same thing, and it either has a longer trial, or no timeout.

--Dan

Just use MightyMouse from Unsanity

I could be wrong, but this isn't something we should bash MS about -- as far as I can tell, this can be done in many languages as long as you're comfortable with dissassembling a library or using a hex-editor. Which is to say, it's out of my reach.

This seems to happen a *LOT* in the apple world. Look at Unsanity

They've figured out a whole ton of hacks for OSX which are clearly based on undocumented code.

My guess is that this sort of stuff is easier for languages with massive run-time introspection (like objective-c)... but like I said, I'm no expert at this stuff.

Brushed metal is indeed annoying. Fortunately, it's simplicity itself to be rid of. Wether an application used Aqua or brushed metal widgets is defined by a single variable in an xml file inside the application bundle. Change that variable, restart the application, and the accursed brushed metal is gone!

There are free programs that'll demetallify all your apps in one step; or do so on an app by app basis, and keep track of the altered ones in a central location.

If you're some kind of freak, you can even ADD the brushed metal skin to applications that didn't use it in the first place!

cya,
john

SafariNoTimeout is a little utility that removes the 60 second connection timeout from Safari.

Without it on my dial-up connection, Safari is virtually useless while downloading and/or with a few tabs loading at once.

It should make Safari useful again for you. It sure did for me.

1) There is no 'Menu' button. I do not want to have to run an Application to get a list of programs which I then have to click through. Mouse-over opening menus is nice. It doesn't have to be called Start, or 'K', or anything fancy but a button that has menus and sub-menus listing my appications would be a start.

Quick easy way to achive this is to drag the entire 'Applications' folder to the dock. Or you can create your own unique shortcuts folder with on the applications you want and drag this to the dock. Or you can get Fruit Menu, F10 Launch Studio, or a host of other applications that do the same things. Search Version Tracker if you want them.

2) I want the windows to store my settings. If I list applications by details, rather than as naff, huge icons, unless there is an option that I can find to tell it to store my settings, I expect it to be done automatically.

MacOS X lets to set window setting either 'Globaly' for your account, or for any given window. To do this open the folder you want then click on 'View - View Options' (or hit command + j) then click the radio button next to 'This window only'. Then any changes you set for this view will stick for this folder, or if you selected 'All windows' then all folder views.

3) I want to be able to tab through all my Windows. Not just '1' of each application. If I have a terminal up and 2 Mozilla windows (not 1 window with tabs), I want the Apple key + Tab to be able to go through all 3.

'Command + Tab' cycles through Applications, 'Command + ~ (tilde)' cycles through an individual Applications windows

4) I want it to tell me -- without requiring me to search in depth, and spend about 20 minutes -- what these shortcut keys are. I can't be the only one used to Linux/Windows, surely?

The standard shortcut keys for all Mac systems dating back to the original Classic is: Cut (Command + X) / Copy (Command + C) / Paste (Command + V) / Select All (Command + A) / Undo (Command +Z). There are many others depending on the Application and the amount of time the developer put in to this. The short cuts are normal listed next to the comand in the Application's menus.

MacOS 10.2.x enables you to turn on 'Full Keyboard Access' if you want additional Shortcuts. Go to System Preferences - Keyboard - Full Keyboard Access.

Also there are a ton of third party apps which will enable you to define your own if you want.

5) I want to be able to change settings in the 'Control Centre' without having to go back to the menu of options at each stage. This is just usability. If I want to go from one option to the next, I have to click one, which redraws my window, make changes, then click the button to show all the options. I can't a) look at more than one and b) have a list of options in the background (if you're changing something in every category it's handy to see where you're upto).

Try looking at the menu options listed up there next to 'Apple / System Preferences / Edit / View / Window / Help'. Clicking on the 'View' option will give you an alphabetical listing of every option in the System Preferences.

6) I want the maximise button (the +) to fscking well maximise. I don't mean 'get bigger' - I WILL DRAG THE WINDOW IF I WANT THAT. I WANT YOU TO MAXIMISE.

Read the previous response to how the MacOS handles windows.

7) I want to be able to tell OSX what I want click events to do -- I want the double click on the title bar to MAXIMISE. NOT MINISE. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO TELL IT THIS.

Individual preferences; however, Apple is keeping the behavior consistent with MacOS 8.x+ in terms of minimize/window shade features.

8) I want the terminal to run faster than my P200 running Linux. If I run the default shell, or even more so bash, it crawls. I use the ter

Renaming files: There is a delay in renaming that makes me crazy. I'll click on a file and it won't go into the rename unless I wait a moment and click again.

This is intentional. I don't know for sure about OS X, but in OS everythingelse, you could click on the name and then move the mouse, and it would go into rename mode immediately. Just a few pixels will do.

Labels: If you haven't blah blah...

Clearly, you've never discovered Unsanity Software's products. Their haxies are a must-have for any OS X user. Check it out.

--Dan

Renaming files: There is a delay in renaming that makes me crazy. I'll click on a file and it won't go into the rename unless I wait a moment and click again.

This is intentional. I don't know for sure about OS X, but in OS everythingelse, you could click on the name and then move the mouse, and it would go into rename mode immediately. Just a few pixels will do.

Labels: If you haven't blah blah...

Clearly, you've never discovered Unsanity Software's products. Their haxies are a must-have for any OS X user. Check it out.

--Dan

Renaming files - as has always been the case with MacOS, either hit return to instantly start renaming, or click on the name and then jog your mouse to the side. You'll enter rename mode immediately.

Column view - yeah, sometimes I'd like to be able to sort by date. But...you don't SEE the date in the column. Sorting by some arbitrary attribute which you can't SEE to compare from one to the other is rightly omitted, IMO.

Save Dialogs - I don't know what your problem is here. You're annoyed by their modality? For applications properly using the OS X Sheet API the save sheet is attached the the window it is modal to and you can still access other items outside that window. If you're upset that it's modal, well then talk to the software developer who chose to make the Save dialog modal.

Labels - although I firmly believe that, just as spring loaded folders were added back in with Jaguar, we'll see labels and other tried-and-true features in 10.3 and later. BUT, for now, you can get this 100% effective haxie to give you labels in the finder.

OSX does not have the interface sounds available anymore, and even if they were, those were not the sounds I heard. However, there is a haxie from Unsanity call Xounds that adds this capability to OSX.