Ars Technica Reviews MacOS X DP4

Mad Browser writes: "Ars Technica has posted a review of the recently released-to-developers MacOS X DP4. Check it out." Rather than concentrating on Aqua, this article is typical Ars -- it gets beneath the surface to consider the mechanisms for printing, screen display and more. As the writer points out, DP4 is not itself OS X, but only a snapshot of OS X as it matures.

Comments

The Article Itself

[Kesh]

I have to say, this is a well-written and fair article. It's part of a series, as indicated on the front page, and the whole set has been very informative and interesting to read. It's a good place to start if you want to know more about OSX and how it will differ from both *nix and the traditional MacOS.

The author does take certain aspects of the UI to task, and I really don't blame him. He is fair about it, rather than some reviewers who choose to do nothing but flame and complain. His arguments are well thought out and written, and he brings out certain concerns that, frankly, make sense. If you only read one article (or series of articles) on OS X, this should be the series.
______________________

Re:Now it's BSD, now it isn't!

[Otter]

A recent discussion on the Darwin development list:

From Creed Erickson at Apple:
>Hello all. I read somewhere (don't remember where right off) that
>terminal.app would not be included in the consumer release of Mac OS X,
>presumably for fear that novice users could/would dork up their system.

This is the first I've heard of it, but "they" rarely consult "us" about such decisions :-)

AFAIK, we intend to ship Terminal.app with the general release. Whether it is installed by default is another issue.

From Justin Walker at Apple:
On the subject of product content, I'll say the following: first, the various rumor pages and alleged news services have consistently misrepresented, confused, and butchered any information that we've put out, so I'd err on the side of ignoring whatever you read that isn't from Apple.

Second, we havn't made any specific statements about what will and won't be in a "consumer relase" of Mac OS X. However, Apple surely does not want to build in any reliance on, or requirement for, mechanisms like Terminal. We have said that BSD will be part of Mac
OS X, because that's what our code is built on. Beyond that, there's little to say at this point.

From Hary Wilke:
just put it in the "folder of death", apple extras.
it will live very nicely with other amazing yet underused things like applescript.

Re:Remember A/UX?

[binarybits]

It was targeted towards "high-end" servers, though why you'd be running them on one of those Macs is beyond me (the older Macs weren't very fast, even for their time). Does that description sound familiar?

No, it doesn't sound familiar, because that's not what Apple's saying. You need to pay more attention to what Apple does say. This was true of Mac OS X *Server,*, but OSX Server was more a technology demonstration and a way of getting some extra revenue than a separate product. What this article was about was Mac OS X, which is a replacement for the Mac OS and intended to be put on all Macs starting next year.

OS X looks nothing like Unix from the user perspective, and is not for "high end" machines.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for A/UX was the resistence of Apple users to switching to Unix, even an Apple Unix.

That's because A/UX was transparently Unix, while OS X hides the command line completely. The standard install will likely not even include a command line utility.

Because Apple is using BSD code, and because ever-increasing numbers of Unix users come from Open Source Unix backgrounds, the success of OS X is largely tied to the success of Open Source.

What?

I really don't know what to say here, since it's obvious you don't have a clue what you're talking about. OS X was developed almost entirely by Apple engineers, and they have the resources to continue to do so even if the OSS community entirely ignores them.

And there users aren't going to adopt OS X because it's based on BSD. They're going to adopt it for the same reason they adopted systems 9,8, and 7-- because it's the next upgrade to their operating system. The fact that it's Unix under the hood has no negative effect on its attractiveness to Mac users unless Apple doesn't hide those underpinnings well enough.

But if OSS fails, where will the Unix gurus be?

Who cares? "Unix gurus" are not a target Apple market. They sell primarily to graphics professionals, education, and home users. None of those users give a rat's ass about users, and most of them probably won't know a command line if it bites them.

Apple is not hitching themselves to Open Source. They are taking advantage of the OSS movement in hopes of cutting development costs and improving their product. They are also contributing valuable code to the OSS community. But they will be able to get along just fine if OSS flops.

Re:I am salivating...

[costas]

You are right; Unix may not be the way to go.

This Beast, this NewOS we're talking about may end up being only a remote relative of Unix, but maybe it should feel like Unix, if not for any other reason, just to be able to use the huge codebase of C/C++ code out there that's already been written for Unix.

It may sound like I am contradicting myself here, but I am really not. Unix is full of crud right now. And there are two ways to get rid of crud: 1) What BeOS or AtheOS have done; clean slate, only use portions of Unix design that you like, 2) What Apple did: Use a Unix framework and layer-by-layer remove crud, replacing it with better code of your own.

Because of the dynamics of OSS one of the rules of CatB is, in order to get people to work on a big OSS project, that some of the functionality needs to be there: i.e. shit has to work, so people can play with it. The overhead to do method (1) this way becomes much, much greater than method (2).

So, let's look around: what components are out there in OSS Unix-land that one can re-use in this NewOS w/o compromising on technology or design?:

The Linux kernel and device drivers; or if you want to be more cutting edge, the GNU HURD kernel. I'd go with Linux, because of the widespread device support.

GCC

Qt and/or GTK on the GUI front. I dunno how dependant they are on X, or if they abstract X functionality well.

There are gaping holes in this, of course, but it's much easier to start with something that already works, modify it to work under your very best design, and as components and functionality come in, you can potentially remove the old, aging components and put in new ones (e.g. swap the Linux kernel with a Mach-derived microkernel). I actually think most of this can be done starting with a Linux distro.

BTW, I don't want a great *consumer* OS. I think that distinction (between consumer and business, server and workstation) is bogus. A good design should scale; it should handle being a server just as well as being a workstation for Mom.


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Re:Eh? Why BSD?

[mindstrm]

BSD (Berkeley) is a traditional flavour of linux.
SYSV (System 5) is the other traditional flavour. (AT&T)

So... Linux is a hybrid of both. Solaris is SYSV. Old SunOS4.0 was BSD. All the freeBSD's are BSD.
And...

The new Mac OS-X is built on top of a BSD kernel. (Note, saying it's BSD doesn't mean it's the exact same code, just that it's descended from BSD)

So.. the reason OSX is a *big* deal is because it *IS* unix, with a Mac desktop, that can run Mac apps. And also.. unix apps. And they open sourced their kernel...

Re:Modularization Is Cool!

[ChristTrekker]

More self-fulfilling prophecy. No one develops for the Mac, so no one uses the Mac, so why should I develop for the Mac? Hmm, maybe if you did develop for Macs, there'd be more software that would attract more users, that would attract more developers.

If platform X (whatever that is) is the superior platform on its own merits, take the leap and build for it! Why just follow the herd? Think for yourself. Think Different.

Back on topic, though, the idea of loadable bundles is very cool. It sounds much more extendable and flexible than current methods in either Windows or Linux. If it works as seamlessly as it sounds it will, the user experience should be terrific.

Tune out the static trolls and FUD lobbers....

[init 6]

Look folks, I am by not means an expert on anything, BUT I did attend WWDC 2000 and have DP4. Being a registered developer I have an upfront bias towards Apple, so excuse me if this is not a flame against them.

1) Mac OS is a WORK IN PROGRESS. Don't loose sight of that - when you read a RUMOR on something considere the sources -- also jumping to conclusions is beneficial to no one and only serves to futher confuse the issues and facts.

2) MacOS X is built on BSD. Apple took BSD and build a "Darwin", a new BSD variant. This is why is is opensourced.

Atop Darwin, you have Quartz (2D Graphics), Open GL, Clasic/Carbon, Cocoa, java, Aqua, etc

3) Terminal, the interface to the MacOS X command line, etc will be there for the "l33t" users who want them, BUT Apple strongly expresses that a no time shall the user ever be REQUIRED to interact with the low lever command line interfaces of MacOS X. So what does the mean?

This means, that Apple does not want me and other developers to expose that level to the end user in our programs. This is a HI (Human Interface) guidline. I could write an app that is fully command line based and sell it if I wanted to. The command will stay. All of BSD will be there and what you don't have you can download and compile till you puke your guts out.

4) Apple is even building their own command line tools -- there are tools to compile applescript at the command line, and even the new project Builder is a GUI to gcc, gdb, jdk, etc -- so all that kewl BSD underpinning is being leveraged by a great GUI.

Basically alot of the kewl AQUA stuff is built atop a unix command line util.

5) AQUA is a Work in Progress. I attended the Aqua Feedback Forum at WWDC 2000 and let me tell you that ALOT OF DEVELOPERS had ALOT to say about what they did and did not like in DP4. I would fully expect either DP5 (if they make a DP5) or the public beta to have alot of these suggestions in place.

They were VERY interested in the feed back, it was video taped, and there was an Apple Rep feverously typing notes into his powerbook.

Of the record alot of the Apple developers said they are listening and working on all suggestions. Just make sure they are sent to Apple.

For example- complains, suggestions, etc for the MacOS X Human Interface (AQUA) should go to:

HI@apple.com

Send them email -- don't rant about it in a public forum. Apple may or may not read it.

Can you actually expect them to spend hours trolling the net for suggestions and feedback!?

6) between now and the PUBLIC beta is the time the give Apple Feedback. When they release the public beta you will have EVERY oppertunity to give them feedback on what you like and do not like. If you fail to then you have no reason to complain.

It is much like you complaining that George W Bush is elected president, when you did not even go out and vote.

[btw i hate both Gore and Bush, but I trust Bush less than Gore]

7) Apple told every developer over and over in session after session to GIVE FEEDBACK TO APPLE. If WE (developers) do not give them feed back we are just bitching to the wrong folks. We need to tell THEM - NOT /., etc.

8) I would suspect that Intel / Window users might have pleasant surprises in store for them after MacOS X is shipped to consumers.

You see, MacOS X could be ported to other processors. Once the Darwin level is ported to intel, most of the remaining higher level items (the rest of MacOS X) would follow with relative ease.

9) I would suggest those of you who want to see MacOS X get ahold of a someone who has it -- I am sure you can find a Mac user with MacOS X lurking around somewhere.

Sit down, open a terminal window, download something GNU and try to gmake, gcc, etc it.

10) Get involved in the MacOS X Public when it comes out -- and remember to give Feedback, Feedback, Feedback.

Enjoy.

Re:As a long-time Mac user, let me say

[Shoeboy]

Let me tell you.. if windows was a) built on top of a unix kernel, with real normal gnu userland tools, and source and b) had a proprietary windows interface on top of it, that was also x compliant, and supported win32... the world would be in trouble.
Let me assure you that the only trouble would be the drop in productivity as all windows developers experienced simlutaneous spontaneous orgasms.
Trust me on this one.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)

Re:Modularization Is Cool!

[Che Guevarra]

The "loadable bundles" method of modularization seems far superior to the use of DLLs that need to be registered, and require the computer to be rebooted, in order to install.

Great, glad you think so. Remember that because it is going to come up later in my post.

The new UI is good-looking, but the lack of customization features is disappointing.

I think the UI will be very customizable. From Ars: "You can still move or rename Extras.rsrc in DP4 and end up with a somewhat spotty approximation of the old platinum interface. No, I'm not going to screenshot it again. Yes, this means that themes will be possible. No, this does not mean that Apple will release the specs for such theme files."

I've also read info from previous DP's about modifying things such as window zooming (defaults write com.apple.finder ZoomRects NO) and using Interface Builder to directly edit Extras.rsrc. To me this all sounds like the novice users will have an endless variety of freeware/shareware products to customize their UI, and more advanced users can do it themselves. It's a shame Apple can't please everyone, but the door is far from closed in this respect.

As always, Apple brings a great product to the table--nonetheless, I still refuse to buy one of their products.

I've heard it before and it makes no more sense today than on any other day.

In my mind, the benefits of an open system and a larger user base make the WinTel platform superior for product development. If Apple were smart, they would try to make it easier to port Windows applications to OS X.

Mac users are not hurting for apps. If ones entire platform choice is based on a specific software package, then by all means choose accordingly, but otherwise lack of software is not a problem for Mac users. Where there is a gap, one can always use Virtual PC. Most other popular aps like MS Office already have fine Mac versions. And why should the Mac OS always be a slave to poorly ported windows software? Instead of ports, Apple is trying very hard to serve the dev community by introducing better environments such as Cocoa.
From Ars Techica:
Previously known as the "Yellow Box", and as the OpenStep APIs before that, Cocoa is the most modern API in Mac OS X. The name change from Yellow Box to Cocoa is yet another horrible computer industry pun centered around the Java programming language. It's meant to highlight the fact that all of the Yellow Box APIs are now accessible via Java as well as Objective C.

Cocoa is NEXTSTEP's native API updated for the modern world and made accessible via Java. As any old NEXTSTEP developer will tell you (at length) if given the chance, NEXTSTEP had technology in the 1980's that's just beginning to appear in mainstream computing today: object reuse, sophisticated message passing, network transparency, runtime binding, clean separation of the UI from the "business logic", and platform independence."

I've read a lot of good about Cocoa, it may be worth a look.

In my mind, the benefits of an open system and a larger user base make the WinTel platform superior for product development.

More application developers write for Windows than for the Mac, and bridging the gap between the two platforms and promoting more software development would do far more to improve the Mac platform than simply making their machines technically superior.

Okay, you've already admitted that the loadable bundles are far superior to DLLs. And that the machines are becoming 'technically superior', so why not use some of this insight of yours and consider the possibility that these innovations along with all the other nice features under the hood of OS X could one day redefine the landscape of the computer world. Perhaps you should reconsider your quantity over quality way of thinking. Microsoft's time on top may not only be limited to the Justice Department's legal proceedings, with open source, and now OS X, the future of the modern OS and consumer choice has never been brighter.

I am salivating...

[costas]

...BSD with the configuration cleaned up, with Application bundles a la NeXT and the awesome-sounding architecture of Frameworks. Finally, someone cleaned *some* of the 40 years of Unix crud.

BUT the real question is: Why isn't anyone in the Open Source World doing this? Why isn't anybody cleaning up the kruft that is Unix/Linux/BSD? I don't want any more /etc, /var; I don't want badly written, unsearchable man pages. I don't want applications that install themselves in twenty different places in my system without asking. I want maintainability and manageability.

Apple has shown the way; bundles kick ass. XML for system configuration kicks ass. OSS can copy that design and improve on it:

XHTML for documentation; searchable, anotated documentation that can be tied back to the Internet --damn it, that's where "errata" belongs: as a link to my local manual; not buried in some "knoweledge base" somewhere.

Protected userland documents that are *not* tied to some a priori defined hierarchical structure. I want a 'soup' of documents I created that can be searched, sorted, sliced and diced by a local search engine.

I want a system that can introspect for a change; I want PHP to be able to find Apache by itself, configure it and itself (after asking of course) and, while it's at it, do the same for MySQL. OOP is not just for GUIs: System-wide, componentized configuration a la OSX extended even further.

X needs to be thrown away; just dump the whole ugly freaking mess. It belongs somewhere to access remote Unix machines, but it does not belong as the main layer under my GUI. BeOS (and AtheOS) has shown the way. Can we get the AtheOS GUI code and plug it in under Qt or GTK?

This is OSS: enough coders and the problems *will* be solved...

[Rant Off]


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Why has it taken so long?

[ACK!!]

Ever since the NextStep buyout by Apple this has seemed like a good idea. The idea of an all-encompassing friendly GUI wrapped around an industrial based Unixed system. But why has it taken so long? The work needed to make it backwards compatible was done a looong time ago. Apple has needed a new OS for longer than I care to go into. So, why has it taken Apple so long to pick up the ball and really run with it?

Listen, I understand that the corporate emphasis has been on the success of making cute little boxes and all. I know that and it works for them. Yet, it is amazing that someone particularily in our own Open Source community hasn't taken the clue and built an easy to use windowing interface for the end-user and left the procrastinating Apple in the dust. As long as there is a terminal and GNU commands to be taken and Xfree86 for those who want to go bare-bones then the geeks out there will be happy. Apple for once has the right idea. Make the system easy to use for the end luser and built on top of a system made to take loads of punishment.

If they were not so tightly tied to their proprietary hardware I would say that Apple had a chance of taking some steam out of the Linux community. However, because they are so stingy with their technology they have no chance of that even if they give part of the OS away. I hope that the UI gives the GNOME and KDE folks some ideas.

I hope even harder that they will take the hint and try to move the interface forward as opposed to just copying the coolest ideas from this or that other OS. Our whole movement has been about making the better mousetrap. Maybe it is time to do one-upmanship on the Apple folks and reinvent the mousetrap all together.

Knowledge is Power - and it's FREE!!!!!

[init 6]

Folks, If you are seriouly interested in forming your own opinion of MacOS X and not just is's GUI go HERE

And READ THIS PDF

This is the Same Manual that was handed out in printed form with MacOS X DP4 at WWDC to developers.

It is a GREAT read for those of you who have a clue -- or want one ;-)

FLEXIBILITY IMPORTANT!!

[OOG_THE_CAVEMAN]

ARSTECHNICA MAKE IMPORTANT POINT ABOUT HOW AQUA INTERFACE VERY GOOD FOR NEWBIES, BUT LIMIT EXPERIENCED USERS!! APPLE DOING RIGHT THING IN MAKING GLITTERY INTERFACE WITH FEW MOVING PARTS, BECAUSE HELP NEW USERS AND MAKE THEM NOT WORRY!! BUT NOT EVERYONE IS NEW USER!! MANY PEOPLE USE MACOS BECAUSE DETAILS OF MACOS BEHAVIOR MAKE WAYS THEY CAN USE FILES AND INTERFACE MOST EFFICIENTLY, AND SOME OF THEM LIMITED GREATLY BY LACK OF THINGS LIKE POPUP FOLDERS AND DRAG&DROP APPLICATION MENU!! OOG UNDERSTAND IMPORTANT NOT INCLUDE MANY CONFUSING FEATURES TO BLAST NEWBIES, BUT OOG NOT THINK NECCICARY REMOVE FUNCTIONALITY ALTOGETHER!! OOG THINK POSSIBLE MAKE DISTRACTING FEATURES DISABLED BY DEFAULT, BUT STILL THERE FOR POWER USERS!!

OOG THINK APPLE NEED TO REALIZE FLEXIBILITY IS IMPORTANT!! CONSISTENT USER INTERFACE IS GOOD, BUT SHOULD ALLOW USER TO CUSTOMIZE INTERFACE IF USER IS CAPABLE OF HANDLING IT!! IN LINUX, OOG HAVE ULTIMATE FLEXIBILITY BECAUSE DISPLAY INTERFACE OF X , WINDOW MANAGER, WIDGET LIBRARIES AND DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT ALL SEPERATE MODULAR PARTS!! OOG CAN CHOOSE WHAT NEEDED!! SOMETIMES PARTS NOT WORK TOGETHER AND ACT REDUNDANT, BUT OOG CAN TWEAK THEM TO MAKE WORK!!! OOG HAPPY!!

OOG WOULD LIKE APPLE TO MAKE FLEXIBILITY LIKE LINUX IN FINAL MAC OS X!! OOG SEE APPLE GOING SLIGHTLY THAT WAY BY MAKING DOCK SEPERATE APP!! BUT NOT ENOUGH SIMPLY MAKE FUNCTIONALITY POSSIBLE AND EXPECT THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS TO FIGURE OUT ON OWN!! APPLE NEED HELP THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS FIGURE OUT!! MAYBE EVEN RELEASE CODE FOR THINGS LIKE POP-UP WINDOWS AND APP SWITCHER TEAROFF UNDER ASPL, SO CAN BE PORTED TO MAC OS X EVEN THOUGH APPLE NOT PORT THESE THINGS!! APPLE NEED ANTICIPATE EXPERIENCED USERS ARE GOING TO NEED INTERFACE MORE IMMEDIATELY POWERFUL THAN AQUA!! APPLE ALSO NEED ANTICIPATE NOT EVERYONE LIKE HORIZONTAL LINES WITH ALTERNATING SHADES OF GRAY AND TEXT ON TOP!! OOG NOT LIKE THOSE LINES!! HURT HEAD!!! OOG NOT LIKE UNNECCICARILY PANED INTERFACES OR ANYTHING WASTING SCREEN SPACE!!! BUT AQUA BUILT AROUND IDEA OF USING ALL SCREEN SPACE POSSIBLE!! THIS GOOD FOR SOME PEOPLE, BUT STILL LOOK AT AQUA HURT OOG HEAD!!

APPLE NEED ANTICIPATE WHAT USERS WANT!! APPLE NEED REALIZE WHEN UPGRADE TO MAC OS X, MANY USERS TRY TO HACK INTERFACE!! APPLE NEED TO ACCOMODATE USERS AND RELEASE APPEARANCE THEME API, AND MAKE BEGINNINGS OF API FOR REPLACEMENT TO THINGS LIKE DOCK AND MAXIMIZE BUTTON TO PLUG INTO!! OTHERWISE MANY OF APPLE'S MOST EXPERIENCED CUSTOMERS WASTE LOTS OF TIME, AND THEN STILL LIVE WITH QUIRKY INTERFACE WITH STRANGE BUGS BECAUSE HACKS NOT DONE RIGHT, AND INCOMPATIBLE WITH SOME APPLICATIONS BECUASE HACKS WORK AROUND OS RATHER THAN GOING THROUGH IT!!!

AT VERY LEAST, IF APPLE GOING TO IGNORE NEEDS OF EXPERIENCED USERS IN INTERFACE, APPLE NEED TO GUIDE INTERFACE HACKERS!!! EVEN IF APPLE NOT IMPLEMENT THESE THINGS THEMSELVES, NEED TO ENSURE THAT INTERFACE HACKS GO SMOOTHLY!!! WOULD BE VERY SAD TO SEE QUARTZ DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY SHACKLED PERMANENTLY TO LIMITED INTERFACE!!! WOULD ALSO BE SAD TO SEE HUNDREDS OF MANHOURS WASTED IN REVERSE-ENGINEERING INTERFACE SO HACKS CAN BE MADE, SINCE TIME COULD BE MUCH BETTER SPENT IN MAKING SHAREWARE FOR NEW OS!! OOG THINK IT NOT IN BEST INTERESTS IF ALL OF PROGRAMMERS INTERESTED IN MAKING WORKAROUNDS FOR AQUA RATHER THAN MAKING SOFTWARE TO EXTEND OS X FUNCTIONALITY!!

Yes, I'm Mainly Interested In Aqua...

[GeekLife.com]

We get a list of Aqua interface flaws, and the bad news that most of them still exist in DP4. Yet, as far as I can tell, nearly every change in DP4 solves (or moves towards solving) the problems

Use of bold-faced application name in place of small application icon - He admits this is much clearer for novice users and "according to Eric Schlegel of Apple, the eventual goal is to allow the application menu to take the form of an icon, an icon plus a name, or just name, according to the user's preference." Doesn't sound like a problem to me.

Useless Apple Logo - "The Apple logo at the center of the menu bar remains (and remains non-functional), but blessedly disappears in DP4 when an application's menus extend past it." Not a solution, but at least it no longer breaks the system.

Finder is now Desktop - Aside from a learning curve for the Mac veterans, "Calling it the Desktop makes more sense and, thankfully, does not hurt experienced users."

DP4 includes Preference Panels - "This is quite an improvement over DP3"

You can "Kill" the dock - In addition to improved organization of the dock (apps on left, everything else on right), and the return of the bottom 4 screen pixels (previously used for underlining active apps), you can send a "Quit" Apple Event to the dock. How much can you complain about a feature you can turn off? Seems like the next logical step to make the dock a Preference option.

So, he has some (valid) points about the Dock still (Icons aren't obvious tiles - only the icon itself is clickable), but other than that, where's the "Bad News" the heading promises? Sounds to me like they could (and possibly are trying to) respond and fix his every complaint and he'd still be upset about the new User Interface.
-----

Re:Yes, I'm Mainly Interested In Aqua...

[binarybits]

The "bad news" is that Apple has concentrated on polishing their new interface, but has done nothing to address the big issues Mac users complained about since Aqua was unveiled.

The classic Mac OS has the following useful interface features:

The apple menu

The control strip

Pop-up folders in the finder

The application menu

His steveness has unceremonially blown away *all* of them, and replaced them with the dock.

The dock is grossly inadequate to the task. First, these four interface elements perform different (although overlapping in some cases) functions. I don't think it's possible to replace all of them with one interface element. Secondly, the dock is a bad implementation of all of these.

The apple menu takes up a tiny amount of screen space and allows rapid access to common functions. It is universally available and its contents are fully customizable. The dock, on the other hand, takes up a great deal of space, and it must further share that space with other apps. In addition, because it is not hierarchical, it can only hold 10-20 items comfortably.

The application menu serves the function of a task switcher and a crude window manager. In addition to listing the names of all open applications, it can be torn off from the menu bar to make a floating applications pallette. This pallette can be made quite small and can be placed anywhere on the screen. The dock does a decent job of performing this function, but it is less customizable, it doesn't list the names of applications, and it takes up a hell of a lot more screen space.

The control strip provides rapid access to common system configurations. I keep volume, bit depth, screen resolution, and bit depth panels in it. This allows me to change these four settings in under a second, and it takes up a rectangle of screen real estate of under 20 pixels high and under 80 pixels wide. The dock simply doesn't compare. In its present form, it can launch control panels, but it does not provide the immendiate, direct access the control strip does. And unlike the dock, the control strip can be anchored anywhere on the screen and can be minimized to under 20 pixels square.

Pop-up folders are a feature I don't use, but they are highly customizable (buttons, icons, lists) and their hierarchical nature allows access to hundreds of items in a matter of seconds. The dock doesn't provide anywhere near the functionality to screen space ratio.

I could live with any one of these going away. And I could handle them being replaced by improved versions. But when all four of them are replaced by a single element that doesn't work as well as any of them and takes up more space than all of them combined, then I see that as a massive reduction in the usefullness of the OS.

Not only that, but Apple seems to have a compulsive need to rearrange interface elements that were just fine the way they were. The minimize and maximize buttons should be put back on the right side of windows where they belong, the application menu should go back to the right side of the menu bar (to prevent the File and Edit menus from bouncing around) and the apple menu needs to be put back on the left and it needs to be a menu and not just a logo.

The trash belongs on the desktop in the lower right. And there should at least be an option for fixed disks to show up on the desktop. These are arbitrary preferences, but they are what Apple's user base is used to, and it is stupid to change them simply because Steve thinks it's fun to change things around. Apple should concentrate on replacing the OS's creaky innards, and leaving interface changes for future versions.

OK, I'm done ranting now. Suffice it to say that Apple has not succeeded in pleasing this Mac use with the new layout. I only hope that third parties provide ways to get back some of that lost functionality, and that Apple allows an option to turn off the dock.

BSD murders MacOS, dons its skin

[DaveWood]

I would have laughed at the possibility of hearing this news five years ago. Now I am seriously confronted with it. I don't know whether to be pleased or shocked. Well yes, I do, actually.

It is obvious that mating a mature, modern kernel with a reasonable user interface is the finish line of a marathon which pretty much every systems player is hurtling desperately towards.

• Linux will beat X to death until it is impossible to see through the bloody pulp on your screen. Then (one day, I pray) they will replace it with something sensible.
• Microsoft will keep dumping code into the DOS/Win95/Win98/WinNT/Win2k landfill until they've made the largest functioning (?) program ever created.
• And Apple... Apple is somewhere in between. Smart enough to use BSD (only Linux would have been smarter ;-). Smart enough to discard X. But are they smart enough to discard ALL that which makes Unix awful?

I realize it seems easy in principle. I understand that it is in fact desperately hard. Put yourself in that systems engineer's shoes. It is painful beyond measure to take a perfectly good Unix like BSD and then toss out backwards compatibility with all your Unix apps just so that Mac users all over the world won't wake up one day and discover they need to log in as "root" and find their files buried somewhere deep inside a directory called "/usr/home/root/.msword/c|/WINDOWS/MyDocu~1/". They put up with it every day. You can almost hear them screaming here in New York. "Let those bastards eat CAKE!" So what if unix filesystem hierarchies, library handling systems, common executable namaes, and so forth seem exactly as half-assed and hair-brained as they are...

My point is simply this: Mac users do not want unix. They want a stable MacOS. They want it no matter how much all those NeXT people flatter themselves. They do not want to "log in" to their powerbook.

I have heard many things that encourage me that Apple understands this, and may therefore be the first to create a Unix-stable, xerox-style operating system. I have also seen many things that discourage me, because they indicate Apple is buying the benighted notion that BSD-compatibility is worth a damn to their business. It is not. Let me repeat: it is not. And furthermore, it will eviscerate the utility of the MacOS. Do you hear me, Tevanian? Hide that damn shell. Hide it somewhere where we will never find it.

Unix users are smart, self-reliant people. We can find plenty of ways to get our jollies without mastering our problems onto millions of MacOS CD's.

Re:Modularization Is Cool!

[Golias]

A split infinitive is like ending a sentence with a preposition -- it's not something most people notice.

Bingo! And what is the prime directive of all marketing campaigns? To get noticed!

I would say that it was a brilliant move. They are sort-of saying, some people are so pedantic that they nit-pick about the grammer used in advertisements, but we are not like those poor souls... we think different.

(This reminds me of a pretty funny rumor: Steve Jobs is notorious for parking his Mercades pretty much wherever the hell he wants on the Apple campus, usually taking up at least two spaces. As the story goes, some brave employee snuck up and put a sticker on his back bumper that said "Park Different".)

Re:Now it's BSD, now it isn't!

[Snocone]

Heh. Everyone who actually reads the official documentation does ;)

Inside Mac OS X: System Overview

But specifically, from page 42:

In developer versions of Mac OS X, the kernel environment exports BSD services
and commands to the upper layers of the system through the System framework.
User versions of Mac OS X do not. Because the BSD command environment is a
special optional environment, it is not described further in this document.

In DP4 it's all standard BSD, matter of fact when you telnet in it says right up front it's BSD 4.4. Shell is tcsh but I'm sure you could install whatever gets you hard. Emacs is there too :)

Think different?

[King Babar]

Think is a verb, different is an adjective.

Can you say, "Comma splice?"

Adjectives should not be used to modify verbs.

OK, let's look at this more closely. Shoeboy seems to suggest that Apple marketeers are morons because they are using an adjective ("different") to modify a verb ("think"). The other possibility is that the construction "Think different" is, in fact, different from what Shoeboy thinks it is. Or, maybe it is a pun. Or, a more figurative use of language.

Consider the following examples:

1. That looks different.
2. *That looks differently.
3. If I were you, I would look different.
4. ?If I were you, I would look differently.
5. Look different, if you want to attract attention.
6. *Look differently, if you want to attract attention.

In the above, I have marked with an asterisk those sentences that I think are actually ungrammatical in English. A question mark denotes a sentence that is either dubious, or is unlikely to mean the same thing as the unmarked version.

Shoeboy might notice that the "adverb" versions of these sentences look strange (not "look strangely"). They seem pretty weird. I don't have time to provide a full lesson on the syntax of the "look" construction and its friends. Suffice it to say that the rules for when and where you use adjectives and adverbs with verbs that can take fuller complements concerning the state or existence of the subject are not as clear as Schoolboy might wish to believe.

Now, what that has to do with "Think different" is that "think" is a verb that often takes a complement that expresses the existence or state of some entity. Also note that in a sentence involving ellipsis, that you can get non-imperative sentences with phrases like "think different" in them pretty easily, and even imperative versions with a little bit more effort:

Compared to other Wintel offerings, do you think Apples' products are the same or different?

1. A: I think that they are different.
2. B: I think the same.
3. A: Well, you really should think different.
4. B: But I don't.
5. A: Try and think different.
6. B: I can't.
7. A: Just think different.

So, I maintain that Apple's slogan really doesn't stretch current American usage much beyond (if at all beyond) it's current state. Now, you might argue that most readers are not likely to come up with the above dialogue at the drop of a hat. And I agree. But the whole point of advertising is to make a striking statement that gets people to pay attention to you. Now, some people try to do this just by being provocative for no obvious reason. Shoeboy does this, for example, by using repetitive obscenities:

Think differently and use a fucking adverb you fucking morons.

More sophisticated people might use some kind of verbal trick, pun, or game to achieve the same effect. And it is usually more effective.

Does anybody think Apple's ad writers are just the same as the drones who write, say, Dell's ad copy? Think different.