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Jef Raskin On OS X: "It's UNIX, It's backwards."
drfalken writes "Interesting piece here about OS X from Jef Raskin's point-of-view (he was one of the wizards behind the original Mac GUI). He thinks that even the concept of an OS is a hold over from an older era, and that work should be done to get the user closer to the app. I dunno if I agree. "
This has been tried several times before. Basically he is saying that we need console type systems that come pre-configured and are controlled by the company that sold you the thing. IBM tried it with the PC-Jr. Radio Shack had a PC out in the early days that pop up their own little shell when you turned it on and tried to reign the user into their own little arena.
They all fail for the same reason. Joe Blow gets the thing home and uses it for a week just like IBM et.al. intended. Then he heads over to CompUSA and sees how the $10 calendar program lets him put his own pictures on a calendar. "Why can't my computer do that?" he ask. Then he gets mad at whoever it was that sold him the computer in the first place, and starts looking to buy a real computer.
Computers are complex and get in the way, because people want to do complex things that go in so many different directions that no matter where the OS is it is bound to be in the way eventually.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I find it annoying there both the /. headline and the original article's headline focus on MacOS X when the article is clearly about OS's & interfaces in general (though brought up in context of MacOS X.) It would have been more honestly headlined as "Former MacOS developer wishes OS's would fade into background".
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Brilliant! I agree, we should move to direct apps.
Hmm...but I want to run more than one...hey wait a minute, I have a great idea! Let's get rid of the OS and just make an app. We'll have the app hold a bunch of shared files, and then we can fiddle with it so it allows multiple instances of one program. No wait, let's make it so we can run a bunch of different apps at once and change between them. And let's make our app "special" so that if one of the mini-apps breaks, the big app can just kill it without the mini-app taking out the whole system. Man, this is going to be GREAT!
Oh yeah, that app would be an, uh, OPERATING SYSTEM. Oops.
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Let me give you the lowdown
Wanna bet?
Here's the process I used:
Here, I'll press command-v for ya here:
(Of course, HTML doesn't know what to do with the linefeeds, but they are there.)
That's a directory listing of my Sinfest archive.
Nothing in that procedure that would be unknown to any Mac user.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Handhelds and kitchen-counter-top Internet appliances have a totally different engineering goal: "What the hell is Bob's phone number?" or "Mommy, can I check my email before dinner?" Just because a user wants to have total convenience in one context does not mean he or she desires the trade-off in flexibility in another. The workstation paradigm still has its place.
As for those who say that Internet-distributed apps via Mozilla-XUL or MS-.NET are the future, you are omitting an important human element: Territory. My workstation is my territory; I want to control it's config to suit my tastes, I want to determine its design tradeoffs (e.g. speed v. portability), etc. I would not be comfortable with getting all my apps via the Net no matter the speed, for it would just as weird as living in barracks and getting my toiletries by ration every morning.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***