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Ars Technica OS X 10.1 Review
Joystickit writes: "John Siracusa over at Arstechnica has posted his review of OS X 10.1. He comes to the conclusion that 10.1 is much improved but still leaves much to be desired. It is an excellent read. He always seems to have the most in-depth reviews. Check it out." John's earlier OS X reviews are excellent as well; seeing what Apple does right and wrong is informative reading no matter what OS you prefer.
Cause they're competition. New blood, competition, and rivalry prevent stagnation, inbreeding, and decay.
GPL Deconstructed
Here is CNET's review, which gives a quicker summary of the bottom line. Probably the most important piece is the improved feature set for working on a Windows network, which will make the Mac much more friendly in a corporate MS-owned environment.
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
Can we get over our parochial OS and license flame wars to say "Well done" to the BSD crowd?
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
It has a very good looking desktop. Yet behind that beauty it has the power of one of the most powerful operating systems in recent history. In the past it has been often immitated, but never equaled. Windows '95 was a direct rip of the current (at the time) version of MacOS. And yet it missed out on the important points. Sure I could put in a CD and it would autoplay it, but what if I wanted the contents of the disc that I had just inserted to be available to me at that instant from the desktop? On MacOS I wouldn't have to go through the the same old "My Computer->CD Rom Drive" nonsense.
Ease of use people. That's what it's all about. Apple has always had it, Microsoft keeps trying and missing, and Linux is getting there via comapnies like Mandrake and desktops like KDE.
Apple: Port OS X to the Intel platform. Microsoft is already running scared, now is the time to make them cower in fear.
There are some other problems with 10.1 but for the most part I'd say the upgrade is well worth it.
CNET also has a review of OS 10.1. There's some contraversy surrounding The "Free" OS X 10.1 Update that costs you $20. TechTV (formerlly ZDTV) also has a review of Mac OS X 10.1. I'd recommend anyone interested in Mac OS X 10.1 read all these reviews to get full coverage, and unbiased opinions.
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
...such an informed review of OS X finally.
Far too many reviews concentrate on the lack of Carbon apps for X. Of course this is a big deal, but it also shouldnt be any surprise - its a completely new OS. Besides, by next year, every major Mac application will be carbonized.
I recently started a new job and could choose between Windows, Linux and OS X. I thought, what the hell, I've never worked with Macs much, I wanna have a play with X, and if it sucks I can just slap Linux on there anyway.
After the first day of using it, I've never really thought about using anything other than X. Its a dream. As far as I'm concerned, its the best mix of Mac-style GUI, and a unix workhorse core. Who could ask for anything else?
Yeah, theres still some rough edges, things that should be there but arent, but theres also some damn nice stuff in there. I'd say I'm pretty neutral - I use Windows and Linux at home, and OS X at work with the occasional recourse to OS 9. I'm saving my pennies for a new 667MHz tiBook.
Os X is a Good Thing (tm). Bringing unix and open source to the masses. Stop pissing and moaning about what it lacks compared to Linux. OS X is nothing like Linux in user and market terms.
And, please, I implore, no one-button-mouse cracks.
While I respect John's reviews (and frequent ars), I think he understated the advantage of the speed boost in 10.1. Where my family's G3/450 desktop originally could not run OS X acceptably, as of 10.1 it has become the primary OS. RAM usage in classic has been massively improved (resulting in yet another overall performance boost), everything is quicker, and if you have a Dual 800 it will probably even slice your bread. ;)
On my 2001 iBook (with DVD drive) I am able to do the following (among other things of course):
1. Capture DV footage, edit it, and output it right back out onto a camera (or play it to a tv).
2. Run Apache, PHP4, and mySQL flawlessly together and then replicate my work onto my "real, live" server on the web.
3. Watch DVD's with no stuttering or slowdowns while working in the shell, editing code in BBEdit, listening to iTunes, and stress-testing the above Apache setup.
Make no mistake, OSX still has a way to go, but give it a year and it will be the propriatary OS to beat!!!!!
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
His rants on metadata are way off. Although file extensions for typing violate the basic rule of metadata, they still work better than Type/Creator codes.
I am sick and tired of hearing the rants about the inherently wrong nature of file extensions, versus the 'good enough' nature of Creator/Types. No. Both violate important principles, but file extensions can work well, and Creator/Type can not. Creator/Type advocates emphasize one virtue (the metadata nature of the typing system) and ignore the gross failures of Creator/Type to actually support what users need to do.
--Matthew
John Siracusa has written some wonderful reviews on each of the versions of Mac OS X, from early betas, right up to 10.1, and I have enjoyed reading them.
But I must disagree with him on his views about file extensions. He is almost right when he says that applications "MUST" use file types, but I would relax that to "should". It's still stronger than Apple's "may", but more realistic.
He should realise that there are too many places where file types and creators are lost to rely on them. For example, a pure java application can't do file types, or when you are file sharing using windows (smb) or Unix (NFS) servers, you're going to lose if you need to have file types in there.
The fact is that the rest of the world doesn't support Apple's innovations, and they can't fight this uphill battle any more.
Give it up John. File types and creator codes are one of the defining aspects of the Macintosh experience, until you try to share your work with other people.
Considering the MAC is primeraly used in the DTP/Graphics area, does anyone know when the real graphic apps (native mode) will start flowing.
If I could get a OSX native copy of Quark, Photoshop & Illustrator we would switch all of our OS9 desktops to OSX immediatly.
This has puzzled me for a little while... When OS X was first announced, I read it as the letter X, like Rally X. Apparently it's really pronounced "O S Ten", because that's what it is.
If that's so, then what's OS X 10.1? "O S Ten Ten Point One"? Surely it should be OS 10.1 (which is what it is) with no X, or OS X 1.1 or R2 or similar (if it's a whole 'different product')?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
If you have the pleasure of using an OS X box and want to install any of a number of open source packages, I highly recommend that you check out fink.sourceforge.net.
Fink includes a set of package descriptions that patch a downloaded sourceball, configure and compile, install it into a custom directory, then debianize the binary...
...and, finally, installs the debian package.
There is also a binary version available.
i.e. you can:
'fink install gimp'
... and it installs gimp and all depdencies.
Sircusa's article is extraordinarily pedantic, which is not all bad -- he raises valid points, and we need to keep Apple on their toes. However, the big point sort of gets lost in the details: OS X is the magic combination of Usability and UNIX we've been wishing for all these years.
Linux developers, take notes. Most of what OS X is doing is not magic -- it's just a lot of steady, careful attention to usability. Honestly, how hard would it be to implement OS X's lovely Network Settings panel under Linux, for example? Yes, the OS X Finder is still a bit glitchy, but it's still way ahead of the various Linux file system browsers I've used. Yes, the Dock has its glitches, but it's a darn shot easier to use and configure than either Gnome or KDE's taskbars. Apple is hardly perfect, but they are extraordinarily good at the usability stuff, where Linux software generally is not.
That's a shame -- Linux can and should be just as gorgeous and usable as OS X, or any other OS on the planet.
Linux developers: get off the high horse, and lay off the one-button cracks. You have a lot to learn, and if you are earnest students of this new OS now, in five years you'll be teaching things to Apple.
One thing to be wary of when inter-operating OS X 10.x with Windows machines is the Mac approach to links/shortcuts. When you make a shortcut in Windows, it's a bit like a soft link in Unix- it's only a pointer. When you copy a shortcut in Windows, you don't do anything with the target .exe
or whatnot.
When doing backups of OS 10.x laptops from an NT-based backup system, I found that OS 10.x was sending the remote client (the backup agent) into a filesystem loop. I had the user's home directory shared and the Agent backed up files similar to \\computer\share\Library\Documents\Library\Documen ts\....
Which made for a drawn-out backup of a 300 Meg set of folders.
On a personal scale, this is easy to remember, but IIRC Apple has been preaching about how good of a network citizen OSX is. Quoting their site,
"We've also added support to natively connect to Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Unix-based SAMBA file servers with the built-in SMB client. These servers appear right in the Finder like any other file server. This makes Mac OS X fluent in all of today's network languages."
I'm not flaming Apple, but it seems that when it comes to interoperability between OS's, Apple could learn a lesson or two from the Unix side of the market.
On a side not, was anyone else annoyed with the way Apple promised OS 10.1 is September, announced it on the 23rd, then waited until the last possible day of the month to actually ship it? I can't find the Register article stating it, but an Apple rep was quoted as saying something to the effect of "we promised September as a release date, and we are still technically on-target for that".
Well, yes, Micrsoft does make service packs available online... but not 500Mb ones. Also, downloading it would require people to burn a bootable X CD, which I had a whole lot of trouble doing successfully with Toast 4.1 (needed 5). I would have liked to get it sooner, but I think they probably made the right decision considering the circumstances.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
They've killed ars!
Making HTTP connection to arstechnica.com
Alert!: Unable to access document.
Yes it looks purty but I don't think it's any easier to use. In fact compared to 9.x the desktop metaphor is just plain retarded. I'm sure there is a strong voice somewhere in Apple insisting the dock should do everything. This voice is wrong; many Mac users like having icons strewn about the place so the dock should not be so integral. I also don't like that some context menu options like "Make Alias" are missing in certain view modes in finder and you can't label stuff anymore. I also don't think much of the Classic mode - it works, but seems to be an entity in its own right with little attempt made to share settings or account info between Classic or OS X.
Application wise, you get pretty much the equivalents of Mac OS 9 plus a few Unix style monitoring tools. No great shakes, everything seemed pretty much to work as expected. The DVD player is a major improvement over that piece of shit that OS 9.x touted, but still suffers from a minimalist UI. Quicktime still nags you to upgrade to pro - a major disencentive to ever use it again. iTunes is a nice new app for playing MP3s.
Aqua looks lovely but hogs CPU and offers few innovations beyond the old classic look. I would have preferred a incremental UI upgrade. I also wonder WTF Apple is doing by "hardcoding" all these colours and that damned brushed metal look - haven't they heard of customisation? I think this hardcoding will bite them as apps are likely to be skinned to look like Aqua which is all well and good until Apple go and change the L&F once more - UI hell will ensure just like on Linux.
On the other hand, OS X is Unix underneath (BSD in fact) and seems a lot more stable than OS 9. I did hang it pretty convincingly once and had to reboot but normally I could recover with the ALT+Apple+Esc. It's worrying that I've had to do this quite a bit during setting the machine up. I also finally figured out to enable the root (because it's disabled by default) so I was able to drop to a console and install a few GNU tools that I like.
So all in all a mixed bag. Stability good, usability bad. The desktop is a major, major step backwards. Personally I wouldn't recommend it to a traditional Mac user unless they're clamouring for the Unix stability. Wait until 10.5 or 11 even.
For trash, when you select the CD-ROM or mounted drive or whatever... guess what happens? The Trashcan icon *changes*. It becomes an eject icon.
Other than that you can *also* press the eject button, the f-12 key, or Apple-E.
On a Mac, the fifth window is accessable by right-clicking on the IE icon in the Dock and selecting the fifth window.
Or, if you use a single button mouse, ctrl-clicking. Or keeping the button depressed until the contextual menu pops up.
Point being, I think the MacOS UI is better, not everywhere, but in most places.
Instead of 50 items in the task bar (5 windows per app, 10 apps), you have 10 icons in the Dock with context windows of 5 entries each.
GPL Deconstructed
For example. If I have Mac IE open with 5 windows, to get to the 5th window (which is hidden behind quark) I have to click on the apple menu to activate IE, then minimise 4 windows before I can get to the 5th. On a PC, the 5th window is 1 click on the task bar away!
Apparently you haven't used OS X much?
Right-click on IE in the dock (yes, I have a two-button mouse) and you get a list of all of its windows. You can choose one to bring it to the front. You can also hide or show all of them en masse.
I always found the windows taskbar irritating, because opening more windows clutters it up. I like having the windows grouped by app. I guess familiarity is king, and it's all a matter of individual taste -- although in this case, Microsoft agrees with Apple, since they're switching to a windows-grouped-by-app model in XP.
In what way is that amazing to anyone but users of previous Mac OSes or win3.x?
In the same way that having a user connect a firewire DV camera into their computer and having it work without any configuration issues (yes, recompiling the Kernel for "Video-For-Linux" is a "configuration issue"), and then using an industrial strength GUI, and professional grade video editing software is amazing to Linux users. I mean, there barely is a viable DVD player available for Linux! (I know they're out there, but there isn't a feature complete one out there yet.) Also, I have yet to find USB support for Linux that rivals Apple's support.
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything. The funny thing is, OSX seems to be slowly becoming that.
You dont say what machine your using.
Which part of On my 2001 iBook (with DVD drive) ... did you miss? It is the first line of the post you are replying to.
Or were you just a troll?
Steve M
A couple of minutes with a hex editor and you'll be able to play DVDs in OS X.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Besides being ass-huge, one point that everyone misses is that 10.1 contains a DVD Player.
The DVD Forum license prohibits downloadable players. This issue generates flames on PC boards from time-to-time, so Apple isn't alone.
(and yes I realize that they could have packaged the DVD separately, but judging by the amount of flamage over the topic, it wouldn't have helped.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
It listed localization packs for Japanese, and other Euro langs..
Although there's no localization pack for the 'other' east asian language, does anyone know the status of chinese support under OS/X (ie, displaying, rendering fonts, input methods, unicode conversion etc...)?
Windows 2000 and Linux supports se asia l10n pretty well now, though w2k is really good! Everything is stored 'internally' as unicode, and the input/output can be converted to other (popular) encodings such as big5. Even the input methods are fairly complete.
I want to convert to mac for DTP stuff (but requires chinese typesetting for many clients). I tried searching for Chinese support (like truetype fonts, input methods) and the only thing I can find is old 3rd party software for Mac 7.x or something...
From your original post:
I would guess a dual 800 because thats not my experience.
I was unaware Apple had released a dual CPU iBook. And I was unable to find that option in Apple's online store.
The ability to run all of these tasks at once would be greatly dependant on RAM (It looks like the iBook supports anywhere from 128MB to 640MB)
So why didn't you simply ask how much RAM was in the iBook (or Mac since you missed the iBook part) in your original post?
So to answer your question, you idiot, I missed the part that specified the amount of memory YOUR ibook has.
Zero RAM. I don't have an iBook. I have never had an ibook. I don't expect to ever have an iBook. I'll let you figure that one out.
So, you want to rethink that bit about who's the idiot in this thread? (I suppose an argument could be made that it is me for feeding a troll.)
Steve M
Once again, John has done an excellent job reviewing the Mac OS. I have to disagree with him about the need for global menu bar modifications. He says,
He goes on to say it's a bad thing to not allow third parties to modify the menu bar
The problem is, when you let third parties modify the menu bar, they always do it, whether the user wants them to or not. I remember back in Mac OS 9 and before, every software developer wanted their application to be right up front, so it seems everybody was sticking inits in the Extension folder so they could have their own menu bar icon. Microsoft would add one for some sort of shortcut. Palm adds one to access Palm Desktop. Power On Software would stick one on there for their contact manager. I personally found it annoying that these apps would unnecessarily clutter the menu bar, forcing me to dig through through the System Folder to get rid of whatever they stuck in there. It was even more annoying that under Mac OS 9 you have to reboot after removing an init.
Apple is now saying, if you want a global menu item, use the Dock. Of course, some enterprising small developer will hack the menu bar for some specific function, but at least the big software companies won't clutter the menu bar just because they want the "premium real estate".
Related to that, it's even better now that applications are self-contained into bundles, because I found it equally annoying that apps would scatter things all over the System Folder, making it annoying to delete everything.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
On a side not[e], was anyone else annoyed with the way Apple promised OS 10.1 is September, announced it on the 23rd, then waited until the last possible day of the month to actually ship it?
(you really have to dig having spell-checkers work inside of web browsers...)
Now, you have to keep in mind that in the closing days of finalizing OS X 10.1 at least some key Apple employees were caught well out of Cupertino when weekend getaways got dragged out to a week or more due to the airlines shutting down here in the USA. The ship date was on track to be closer to the 15th. Even Steve Jobs can't prevent the kinds of events that took place on 9/11.
Which, I would argue, is actually the 'correct' or ideal behavior! If I want to close the APPLICATION, I'll do so, by choosing "file: quit". I hate the kludgy Windows way of doing it, where windows run inside other windows... it's too easy to overshoot the menu bar, landing yourself in another application.
With MacOS, it's impossible to miss, since you can't roll the mouse past the top/left of the screen. If I've got 4 browser windows open inside Internet Explorer, I can access each using the 'window' menu. On Windows and Linux, I get 4 IE icons on the taskbar, hogging space, eventually to the point where I can't read them anymore.
I'm not even an Apple 'fan', per se, (I use W2k primarily) but the way MacOS handles windows, menus, and switching between apps is superior.
OS X for Windows --> no more mac hardware sales --> no more Apple. Pretty obvious.
Unfortunately, their hardware ISN'T crap: on the contrary, it's extravagent, overbuilt, and overpriced. Is it really worth an extra $600 to have a door that opens to put memory in? Of course not.
No one really cares about that kind of stuff - they just want MacOS, and right now, it only runs on Apple hardware.
Man, it never fails...I always have moderator access to stories involving me. Anyway, now that I've forfeitted it, but while I still have a chance of being scored up, I'd like to pimp the Apple topic icons I emailed to Malda (where procmail no-doubt sent them to /dev/null :-P) The current one is just plain ugly, IMO. How about this instead? (Two versions of the same thing)
c ap ple-1.gif
c ap ple-2.gif
http://siracusa.home.mindspring.com/images/topi
http://siracusa.home.mindspring.com/images/topi
(Without the space...grrr)
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything.
And what of Windows?
I have been using Windows 2000 since early beta, and none of the "amazing stuff" this guy's Mac does sounds at all amazing to me. Its stuff I've been doing every day for years without even giving it any thought.
Don't get me wrong, I've used MacOS X and it is rather nice, but its not quite the revolution in computing some people make it out to be.
That's a good feature, and OS 9 is pretty pathetic in the handling of file types, even if it has the right data in the file system. But the problem is that the knowledge of what's in the file has to be in the users head, when the computer could easily keep track of it.
If it's your own files that you've worked with recently, that pretty OK. But if you're dealing with other peoples files or stuff you did years ago, you'll have to resort to a lot of trial an derror.
The image buffering thing is really unsettling. Given that Quartz is an inherently vector-based system, wouldn't it make much more sense to store the vector representation of the window, rather than the image contents? The memory requirements for this would be much more nominal.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I walked into CompUSA with my OS X box, showed it to the clerk, he handed me an OS X 10.1 upgrade, I walked out with it, and no money changed hands.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Posting late on this topic but I had to add my two cents,
I have used macs to make money for about ten years now. So OS X development has been real important to me and yeah I was very disappointed with system OS 10.0.0 and even 10.0.4. I could not get any work done on it.
I could not use my Wacom tablets on my Ti PowerBook or my G4 Tower, hence I never booted into OS X. I have a nice scsi raid that I inherited after my friend sold his Avid system and that wouldn't mount. I hate the Apple Pro Keyboard, mushy nasty keys and I have a nice USB Aftermarket one. It wouldn't work. With my powerbook I would get kernal panics and lockups for some reason when I had my second 256MB chip installed (crucial, good stuff). And yeah, slow.
Since the Saturday I installed OS 10.1 I have yet to reboot back into System 9. Everything works and everything is fast enough for me. It might not be as snappy as 9.2.1 but hey I will take the protected kernel and the flat memory architecture since I have yet to crash 10.1 on accident (installing X gave me some weirdness but I expected it, this is not the same as apps blinking into the either because you did something silly like trying to access the file menu in order so save instead of just hitting apple-S)
Classic works much, much better then I would have thought considering the OS is running as an app and I have yet to see an emulator this side of MAME works as well.
Boot up OmniWeb and check out Slashdot to understand how nice the Quartz layer looks. Not only are the fonts beautiful but Slashdot gets a spellchecker since OmniWeb is hooked into the system library. IE 5.1... is a Microsoft product... If you like them, enjoy. Otherwise Mozilla and OmniWeb are all I need from browsers.
I have an external TDK VeloCD 16/10/40 FireWire and both the PowerBook and the Tower can burn disks from the finder with no problems whatsoever. Also, I keep hearing people saying that DVD playback is erratic. Heh, on my PowerBook DVD playback is fixed. It always sucked in 9.2.1 no matter which version I used of the player. Now it is flawless and I actually use it to watch movies now, this delighted me.
You know what sucks? This is what sucks. You can't tidy up the desktop as easily as you could with OS 7.x - 9.x. "arrange by name" is wonky and "clean up" only sometimes does. This is the desktop mind you, drive navigation is now actually fun. I also hate that the scroll wheel on my mice and trackballs work natively in OS 10.1, but don't under the classic environment, no matter if you load the drivers under classic or not.
The only thing I have not tried yet is Games, I have heard the OpenGL drivers are much improved and the tower came with a nVidia card so I should get around to it eventually. But if I do enjoy playing games on the Mac too damn much... well what am I going to use my Win2K box for?
I guess my point is this, I need my Mac to earn. So I can't have a broken OS, since installing OS10.1 I have gained much and lost nothing. That sounds like a successful release to me.
Thanks for being so condescending. Let me be clear: I don't like file extensions. It's just that Creator/Type is worse. I'm not a "win-whore," I'm typing this in OS X right now.
--Matthew
If this is what is required to make OSX useable, Apple is finished. Memory is cheap but you have to market to what the average Mac owner already has.
I can practically assure you that very few Mac users have 512MB desktop systems.
Good luck Apple.
However, I do agree that Apple should have made attempts to make it downloadable, but it is obvious that Apple had enough trouble just getting this out the door in September, let alone setting up a distibution net that could handle tens of terrabytes. As for Windows Update, it offers small updates usually not in excess of 15MB, just like Apple's Software Update, and I seem to recall that MS charges users for updates of the magnitude of 10.1, even if they are just bug fixes (which 10.1 is not).
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
All I can say is, whatever. I just bought a G4 733 a few months ago (got in on the "the new macs are coming" sale) and have been MORE than pleased with it. At first I had OS 9.1 only (the upgrade coupon took about 3 weeks), and I was a tad confused. Coming from a Windows environment, Macs take a little getting used to.
:)
I played a little Diablo 2 on it, learned some of the quirks, and basically got to liking how MacOS did things (there were various minor complaints, but mostly they were my preconceived "windows-esque" notion of how things work.) then my 10.0.3 CD came in the mail. I did the repartition thing, put OS X on and gave it a whirl. I liked it. It was a tad slow, but I liked it. I still found myself booting into OS9 to play D2 (which I still do with 10.1), but for the most part, I was an OSX user.
I got my 10.1 upgrade last weekend (figured I'd avoid the "rush"), and all the little annoyances in 10.0.4 were gone. I was astounded. This is no small feat, considering what a Died-in-the-Wool x86 person I was. Not anymore. OSX and my PowerMac have converted me.
I still use Linux (Gnome desktop) and that will never change. But I love MacOS just as much now. *grin* I don't have to 'abandon' MacOS to love Gnome and vice versa.
Of course the last line of your comment is quite funny. I doubt there are too many Mac users alive who'd even admit to giving up MacOS for WinXP.
Not to detract from the 50 or so people that will upgrade from Windows98:SE/Windows ME to XP, but I think Microsoft is aiming squarely for their foot with this release. Let's hope Ballmer & Co. are lousy shots.
JFT
---- James
Just to be clear, as I've said before, I'm not arguing file extensions as the Right Way - just better than Creator/Type.
No. I prefer a system where immutable metadata is separated from mutable metadata. File type is immutable metadata, whereas the appropriate application for a file (or file type, really - see below) is mutable metametadata.
It would be preferable to not being able to easily change what application is used by default. But even more preferable would be to have a list of appropriate applications for file types - no hijacking can be done, but new applications do become easily available for old files (something not true with Creator/Type).
Excuse me, how do I tell MacOS that Explorer.app, Omniweb.app and TextEdit.app are all appropriate applications for all HTML files? How do I tell MacOS that, universally, Explorer.app is no longer appropriate for any HTML file, except this one over here?
OS/2. OS/2 also supported storing this information in a metadata field (the file extension overrode this, so if you used metadata fields you didn't use extensions), and let you assign multiple applications (with one default, the rest available through a context menu) to each type (as well as set exceptions for an individual file).
Creator/Type violates the principle that immutable metadata and mutable metametadata be stored separately (the metametadata is "the kind of application(s) appropriate for this metadata type"); that multiple applications should be able to operate on the same file easily; that any sort of data intended to be immutable be sufficiently robust that the user doesn't need to try to change it.
But it fails to support the entire range of what users want to do. Amazingly, PERL tries to follow a principle relevant to this: "easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible."
--Matthew
>Both GNOME and KDE have more software available than OSX.
/.er figured out after 16 years of the 'low marketshare' Mac, no amount of excuses (68k -> ppc, OS9 -> OSX) will do?
... but since the packages are mostly unfinished shit, like GNOME and KDE themselves, it's no big loss. However, if you really want to torture yourself like that, just install XF86 and XDarwin...
>With such low marketshare, the sea-change from OS9 to OSX will see many Apple users moving to Windows (or something else).
Mmmm hmm. Apple's had 'low marketshare' for how many years now? Hasn't the average
>I applaud Apple trying to make a fight of it, but you can't make abrupt changes
Like classic.
>like this at the same time Microsoft is. For many Mac users, being forced to start over
... with classic mode, such a tragedy.
>will make starting over with Windows XP that much more attractive.
... until they upgrade their box and it doesn't boot.
Next time I need a computer for work, I'll be sure to mention to my boss that we have to drive over to UCLA and pretend to be on staff in order to buy it. He'll love that!
Sorry, but real companies do business with purchase orders or buy online. For all intents and purposes, if it's not on Apple.com, it doesn't exist.
$1099 might be a good price... now all Apple needs to do is sell them to the public at that price!
As an aside, the fact that Apple can sell the old G4 at $1099 and still make a profit is the ultimate proof that their systems are overpriced at $1699, and the ultimate insult to everyone who paid "full price".
They've tried many times in the past to switch tracks, but Apple is a hrdware company and they always will be. Porting OSX to x86 would destroy their hardware business, and the resulting port to x86 would be worthelss as it would have no software available. It would take years to get vendors to redistribute x86 binaries.
okay.. karma trolling here, but I missed this link the first time I read through the article.
Here's Apple's Technote on OS X 10.1 chock full of useful tidbits about what bugs were fixed (lots of 'em).
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"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
Why do I have to lie about being a student to get decent pricing from Apple?
Because if everybody got the educational discounts, Apple wouldn't have the means to develop and give away iMovie, iDVD, iTools, etc for free. Plus they subsidize Darwin and several other open source projects.
Dell and Apple have completely different types of products, business modules and value propositions. The only thing the two companies have in common is that they both make computers.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Its funny to me how we gleefully bash Microsoft for its monopoly, but hardly anyone ever mentions Apple's monopoly. The only difference is that no one really considers Apple a threat.
A monopoly over what? The hardware THEY design? Quick, somebody sue Nintendo. They have a monopoly over the GameCube.
Anybody else is free to make their own platform. Sony created the PlayStation. Sony doesn't have a monopoly over PlayStation hardware any more than Apple has a monopoly over Macintosh hardware.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Yes it looks purty but I don't think it's any easier to use
On the contrary, I think Mac OS X provides a much more clear message to the user about how to perform tasks. But it is different than Mac OS 9, which some people have gotten used to.
I'm sure there is a strong voice somewhere in Apple insisting the dock should do everything. This voice is wrong; many Mac users like having icons strewn about the place so the dock should not be so integral
Mac users can strew things across the desktop if they like, but I think the Mac has long been begging for a central management metaphor. In OS9, you had the control strip, the application menu, the Apple menu and some other gadgets. None of them really looked or worked the same. Sure people became accustomed to it, but that doesn't mean it was good.
Application wise, you get pretty much the equivalents of Mac OS 9 plus a few Unix style monitoring tools.
By this you obviously are talking purely about the applications that are included on the CD, which some people might not figure out unless you say it explicitly.
Aqua looks lovely but hogs CPU and offers few innovations beyond the old classic look
There are real improvements present, but some of them are subtle. Aqua itself isn't going to provide anything other than the look -- it's just a theme. But other Mac OS X UI conventions, like drawers and sheets offer something quite new and quite useful, IMHO.
I think this hardcoding will bite them as apps are likely to be skinned to look like Aqua which is all well and good until Apple go and change the L&F once more
UI calls are abstracted in most cases, and the OS generates the widgets. ProjectBuilder handles all of this for you.
Overall, I find Mac OS X feels more like home to me than Mac OS 9 does now. More work to do, but good progress is being made. Progress was not being made in OS9 UI, it was just familiar, and felt somewhat stale.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Hey Apple - as a dare, how about releasing OSX for the Intel platform?
There are so many reasons not to do it, and it would take quite a while to explain. I'll try to summarize:
[1] Revenue
[2] User Experience
[3] Value Proposition
[4] Mac Office
[5] OS X would never get preinstalled
Apple's biggest problem is that they cant decide what they want to be - a software company or a hardware company.
Jobs has been very clear that they are a computer company. That is they make the whole computer, not just the shell.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Unlike a certian OS company the begins with M. Apple seems to listen to their users. If enough people compain that they miss for example: spring loaded folders. They will bring them back.
And remember...post nicely! E.G. Don't tell them "the dock sucks". Tell them you "think the usability of the dock should be improved", and make suggestions to improve it.
many commentators with an eye towards, and knowledge about HCI find OS X to be a step backwards from MacOS
Well, perhaps the design differs from what they would envision, but that doesn't make them bad.
A lot of the article I've read in the context you describe consists of people heavily mixing their own personal tastes with fact. They are afraid pretty things are major threat to robot-like efficiency.
All too often, there are people speaking purely from the perspective of scientific interaction, not taking overall experience into account. There's more to it than how quickly a action can be performed. Experience is what really dictates the user's level of satisfaction. My sister, for example, enjoys her iBook much more with Mac OS X installed on it. Whether a UI expert thinks she should or not doesn't really matter. She likes Mac OS X.
I share my sister's sentiment. I like my computer experience much better with Mac OS X running than any other operating system.
User interface is in no way a mature medium, and I would guess rules are going to be rewritten before some stablization occurs. Not that these commentators didn't bring up some valid points, but many of them have been addressed since the public beta came out.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
You know how Solaris 2.6 was reported as SunOS 5.6? It's like that. Mac OS X is more than a version number, it's a new brand name. They may change it again, though.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Just a few things I want to mention...
TrollTech has a beta of Qt for Mac OS X.
GTK+ has been ported and GIMP runs on it.
I've compiled and run WindowMaker myself.
More software doesn't mean better software. What good are hundreds of text editors and graphics apps compared to BB Edit, GraphicConverter, the Gimp, and a dozen other tools?
Most Mac apps run just as well in Classic on Mac OS X as they do on Mac OS 9. See http://guide.apple.com/ if you'd like to search for something.
What does WinXP have that could possibly be attractive to a Mac user? I really haven't seen anything particularly promising; did I miss something?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Go check out the avsforum.com site; it's like slashdot. If you can get past the trolls, you can glean some nuggets of truth. Even better, though with a different emphasis, is hometheaterforum.com.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Which, I would argue, is actually the 'correct' or ideal behavior!
It might have been ideal behavior, but it certainly wasn't "correct" with MacOS's crappy memory manager. (Program memory had to be *contiguous*, which meant having a 20MB chunk allocated and not doing anything would negatively affect other programs. Furthermore running into VM slowed everything down.)
With OS X's VM, the behavior is fine - the program swaps out and no troubles.
And Mac HCI guidelines have forever said that double-clicking the icon of a running program with no windows should open a new document window. If a browser doesn't do this, it's broken.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Just to be clear, as I've said before, I'm not arguing file extensions as the Right Way - just better than Creator/Type.
I still don't buy it. I can accept your argument that a better method than Creator/Type exists, but just extensions coded into the file name ain't it.
I prefer a system where immutable metadata is separated from mutable metadata.
Okay, and extensions are mutable metadata that do not separate file type from favored application (your mutable metametadata). I fail to see how this statement supports your argument.
how do I tell MacOS that Explorer.app, Omniweb.app and TextEdit.app are all appropriate applications for all HTML files?
You don't need to; they tell MacOS what they can do. If you care which of them opens the file on double-click, use a utility to set the creator code (you don't need to know the code, just pick the app). Use drag-and-drop to override that choice. (*.app, ugh! Damn Apple for screwing up a previously excellent system!)
How do I tell MacOS that, universally, Explorer.app is no longer appropriate for any HTML file, except this one over here?
Remove Explorer from your system. :-) Or use a drag-and-drop utility to change the creator of selected HTML files to something other than Explorer, or write a 5-line AppleScript to do it across whatever subset of your filesystem you wish. How do you do it in Windows or Unix? Bonus question: Can you cleanly remove an app from OS/2, Windows, or Unix by dragging its folder into the trash?
OS/2. OS/2 also supported storing this information in a metadata field (the file extension overrode this, so if you used metadata fields you didn't use extensions), and let you assign multiple applications (with one default, the rest available through a context menu) to each type (as well as set exceptions for an individual file).
It looks to me like OS/2 lets the user muck with immutable metadata (by changing the extension). I thought this was supposed to be bad. The only thing that I see OS/2 do that MacOS doesn't is give the user a menu of apps to open a document. It's a perfectly valid human interface decision to conclude that most users don't want that. If you do, you can whip up a 15-line AppleScript to do it -- or, just wipe the Creator field of your documents; then MacOS will offer you a menu every time.
Extension overrides metadata (OS/2). Metadata overrides extension (MacOS). Extension is the only metadata (Windows/Unix). I fail to see how you can maintain that extension-only is better; it looks to me like the Mac way and the OS/2 way you prefer are nearly identical; only the Windows/Unix way is clearly deficient.
Creator/Type violates the principle that immutable metadata and mutable metametadata be stored separately (the metametadata is "the kind of application(s) appropriate for this metadata type");
They are stored separately. One is the Creator code, and the other is Type; both are quasi-mutable. You apparently want to separate Creator from "Favored viewer". Show me a system that records both. Extensions don't separate these metadata at all, which sounds clearly inferior to me.
that multiple applications should be able to operate on the same file easily;
Drag-to-open is extremely easy. If you insist on a menu, use the methods described above.
that any sort of data intended to be immutable be sufficiently robust that the user doesn't need to try to change it.
As opposed to file extensions, which the user can change by accident. You are doing an excellent job supporting my case that Creator/Type is the better of these two alternatives.
But it fails to support the entire range of what users want to do.
You are being unreasonable. It is impossible to support the entire range of what users want to do. I want my OS to represent the file system as a Venn diagram of metadata types. I want to add my own metadata types. (I note that MacOS does allow me one use-defined mutable metadata field.)
It is not the job of the OS designers to present all users with a bewildering array of choices by default; that is the result of lack of design, not good design. It is the job of the OS designers to make the common case as easy as possible, while still providing flexibility for special cases. Creator/Type does this quite well, and in my judgment provides more alternatives than does any purely extension-based system. That is why I don't accept your proposition that extensions-only is superior.
Amazingly, PERL tries to follow a principle relevant to this: "easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible."
Now you're speaking my language. Of course, Perl also has this characteristic: One typo, and you're screwed. Not only do you want the default case to be easy, you want it to be safe too. The default file extension system is not safe. At least, over the years, it has begun to approach easy.
This discussion was never about whether an augmented extension-plus-metadata system (like MacOS X or OS/2) is best; it seems we both agree that it's better than extensions-only. The question is whether an extensions-only system (Windows or Unix) is superior to a system with, effectively, two hidden-but-changeable extensions (MacOS Classic). I don't think you have come close to showing that it is.
There is actually a reason for this... Apple sells quite a bit through its online store now, but many (if not most) of its systems are sold through 3rd party vendors such as clubmac, powermac, outpost, etc.
They have in the past specifically requested of apple that they keep the ram amounts fairly low, as it gives them incentives and packaging deals to try to move units. Ie, "oooh clubmac will give you 256megs free with every imac for $30 install fee!" If you check out you'll see what i mean.
??? Here's the test: can you change the 'favored application' for a file type without touching a single file (with extensions)? Yes. Can you do so with Creator/Type? No.
So if I were to do so, I could then double-click on any HTML file, and - regardless of how it was set up when Explorer.app was around, it will now automatically open in OmniWeb.app? Oops, no - it won't.
That's a hack and you know it - changing something 'file by file' is not global, but local (all over). The difference is in scalability and robustness. I can't answer how to change the appropriate application in Windows, because I don't use it, and - for Unix - absolutely no 'appropriate application' information is stored (except by 'desktop systems' like KDE, which aren't Unix). As for 'cleanly removing' apps - in Unix, easily. In OS/2- yes. In MacOS - no (see above - anything with a Creator code for presents an unnecessary dialogue if Explorer is gone).
No. OS/2 can operate entirely within the confines of file extensions, and still encodes immutable metadata and mutable metametadata separately. What do I mean by separately? By and large, file type is file-specific, so it is stored with the file. "Appropriate application for type" is generally file-type specific (not file-specific), not necessarily 1-1, and not necessarily at all related to the application that created the file. Windows and OS/2 (and maybe KDE or similar) all manage to support all of this, even with extensions.
Why do you need to store Creator information? What purpose does it serve? I can't show you a system that records both, because the systems with which I'm familiar rightly see no use in recording Creator. The information they record is purely functional - how do you use the file. Extensions are not, to repeat, "type and creator" rolled into one. They are type. Creator is regarded as useless, and application is recorded in a non-1-1 fashion by file type.
To make this clear, consider that you can change the association of your HTML files from Netscape to IE without changing the extension; the file might have been created in FrontPage (shudder), but that doesn't matter on iota.
It is. It still works better.
Allow me to clarify the OS/2 system: if you double click on the file, it opens in whatever application is at the head of the list of applications. If you right click on the file, it gives you a menu much like MacOS (with Ctrl-click). One of the options is to open the document in a different application. It is "immediate, intuitive usability" and "extended functionality" rolled into one.
HACK ALERT! HACK ALERT! UNSCALABLE NON-ROBUST SOLUTION PROPOSED! :-) Going through file-by-file is inappropriate, and providing the selection every time is tiresome. There is no need for the Creator code.
No. There is no reason to require three Finder windows to be open, or three spaces in the Dock taken, just to be able to open a document in three programs.
Sure, but "multiple applications for HTML files" isn't very far out there. I was exaggerating to make my point that Creator/Type is excessively limiting.
Yes, that's why it was amazing to me that PERL got it right. And while I agree that the default case should be easy (it is, Windows or MacOS), the non-default case is not that hard in Windows. Modern versions of Windows are also somewhat safe (although it required hack upon hack).
First: Windows is effectively a "hidden but changeable" system now. Second: MacOS is extremely difficult to change (you confuse "Applescriptable" with "easy," I think). Third: MacOS does not scale well to uncommon cases or large filesystems, but Windows does.
--Matthew
Excellent! It's very difficult to do long posts in IE, and OmniWeb is a little slow... so replying was difficult for me :)
As far as "scaling to less common cases" is concerned: MacOS, in general, probably scales better than Windows (better support for color-blindness/poor motor skills/less exposure to computers, excellent scripting built-in, etc.). My argument is simply that Apple made an assumption in HFS[+]~18 years ago that doesn't apply very well today.
I very much enjoyed this, and if you'd like to continue any lines of inquiry off /. my e-mail address is functional.
--Matthew