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Zarf in Mac OS X Land
baruz writes "Andrew Plotkin (aka Zarf), award-winning interactive fiction author and Mac and Unix programmer, has not-so-recently posted a secret diary of his experiences installing and using Mac oh ess ex."
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Not quite Zork... not quite a PC... not quite interesting.
I'd just like to point out that I've had an install of OS X since the public beta release, and NEVER have I sent information in to Apple.
Another "journalist" complained about this then X first came out.
It's quite simple: when running then installer fill in the info, then when it asks if you have an internet connection, say no. When it asks if you want to register with Apple, say "later."
After it boots, go set up your Networking preferences, etc.
No info sent to Apple. I mean, how dumb do you gotta be to not realise that you dont HAVE to send anything in?!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
does it really matter
It's ten for sure. I pronounced it "ex" for quite a while, too.. until I had actually hear Apple's promotional material calling it "ten."
Man, I'd love to travel back in time five years and tell a bunch of Mac advocates that within five years, Emacs will come pre-loaded on a Mac.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
That would be "Mac Oh Ess Ten"
It has always been pronounced "Ten." I don't know where they get it, but every linux/unix/windows user that I have talked to about it says "Ex." Just ask Steve Jobs, it's "ten."
Likes American McGee's Alice.
;)
Hates Dock.
Doesn't get why you wouldn't want to have root access always on.
Doesn't like font handling.
Has strange habit of referring to Apple computer engineers and UI designers as 'Steve'
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The correct pronunciation is: Mac OH YES! SEX!
(Saw that in Dr.Dobbs I think)
"Bad design or stupid user? Hmm."
PEBKAC
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
maybe its because X is roman for 10, just a guess
Tomorrow they may say it in Basque.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Next news posting. How I uninstalled Windows in 24 exciting chapters...
Pssh!
If it's secret, why did he post it?
--Metrollica
Hire this guy and sack Katz :)
Well, for a UNIX guy I am suprised he was baffled by having to enter an administrator password to install a package or make other system level changes.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Simply brilliant ;-)
"Unsure how to proceed. One True Way needs revision"
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
...because I kept waiting for the grammar to devolve into Hulk-speak:
RARRR! No like OSX! Icons EVERYWHERE! Stupid Steve! HULK SMASH!
My sigs always suck.
Nice to know some made all of the stupid errors I made the first time too. It gets way better the more you use it.. Especially if you are looking for good UNIX usability as well as a great desktop.
I guess he's talking about the 1024 cylinder limit on older BIOSes, which crippled earlier versions of LILO, so the kernel image had to be on a partition within the first 1024 cylinders (usually 512 MB) of the hard disk.
But I thought that was an x86 platform specific issue. What kind of bootloader do the Macs use?
Your summarization was dead on, and leads well into my opinion of the post: whats the point? Frankly, this is the least interesting thing I've read on /. in a long while.
Nothing new is said -- just a recap of someone's experience with OS X... been there, done that... months ago. Literally, everything in the article is summed up by daeley... slow news day, I guess.
What annoys me most is the "You don't need to know" attitude it takes to a lot of the things in it. For example, it's possible to get detailed info on startup, but they hardly make it obvious how. And the help features are incredibly annoying. One other thing: I think the designers spent too much time thinking "Feature X is cool" and not enough time on "Will feature X be incredibly annoying after a few weeks' use?"
You must mean the X Window System.
PS: Read the damn article to see why he said it that way.
Hmmm.
disclaimer: I don't know Zarf and don't want to speak (or make guesstimates) of his intelligence level. But one presumes that he is at least somewhat familiar with Unix and Linux derivatives. Based on his comments, he seems to be bumbling around OS X and having more trouble than the average shmoe.
Case in point: "Click the lock to make changes" and he's completely lost? For crying out loud buddy, a new dialog is presented with only one choice on it! What to do... hmmm... try the "any key", I hear that works.
Seriously, he seems quite confounded by this simple dialog. Hint: It's asking you to enter a password to perform an admin-level function. What text-based utility have we seen that does this? "sudo" perhaps? This dialog is the graphical equivilent of sudo. I get the feeling good ol' Zarf tends to leave himself logged in as "root" on his Linux box...
Dumb user? Or simple case of unfamiliarity in new operating environment. Quick! Vote now!
um... has anyone noticed the 'aqua' look to the slashdot logo at the top of the page? I _love_ it!
I have a mac in front of me on my desk that I would love to install OS X on... but am _sure_ that it will be a huge brain-drain and take much too much time. Can anyone out there give me a reason to take the time?
(I am currently using a laptop with swappable hard drives booting Debian Sid on one, and Win2k on the other) Who needs OS X???
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
umm, read the article.
(hint: the guy who submitted the story obviously did).
Cleaning up mistake: "Delete User" on redundant "guest" account. Dialogue: "This user will be permanently deleted. The home folder will be reassigned to the administrator..." Choice of "System Administrator" or "Andrew Plotkin". Choose "Andrew Plotkin". Okay. The "guest" folder in Users is now changed to "guest Deleted". Don't need it, drag to trash...
/Users/shortname\ deleted"
"The item 'guest Deleted' cannot be moved to the Trash because it cannot be deleted."
What??
This is for security reasons. In order to delete the user, go to terminal and type "sudo rm -rf
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"Mac Oh Ess TEN"
Ten Ten Ten
"Ecks" is reserved for X (as in X11)
thank you.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Steve Jobs may have wanted us to pronounce SCSI "sexy" not "scuzzy", but SCSI is (unfortunately) "scuzzy". Similarly, he may want us to call it "Oh Ess Ten" - uncharacteristically, he wants us to avoid saying sex - but it is "Oh Ess Ex", because that's what millions of people call it.
By the same token, Hoover PLC may own the brand name Hoover, but if you're in the UK, a vacuum cleaner is just a hoover, no matter who makes it. Copyright law is insignificant - they're called hoovers, because people call them hoovers.
I think this outlines a fundamental problem in switching between OSen, though. When I first installed X, I installed ASM Menu, FruitMenu, everything I could find to make it as much as possible like MacOS 9. Over time, though, I've started trimming these bits back out because they really aren't neccesary. I was just trying to force my old UI preconceptions onto what was an entirely new OS, instead of adapting to fit what the UI was designed for.
:)
:)
In general, though, this article was really on point with a lot of the interface crap Apple has piled on in recent years (I hate Sherlock!!!). Although his hatred of animations might have shown a need to move on from OS9 - does he realize OSX is preemptively multitasked, thus allowing you to do other things while the app icon slides out of the dock?
All in all, even with the occasional human interface snafu, I love MacOS X. It's still a mite bit slower than OS 9, but the overall experience and quality makes booting into 9 seem like travelling back in time 20 years. The development environment is unmatched, and it's like running 3 OS's worth of software (OS9, OSX, and GNU/Linux/BSD/OSS/Gnome/what-have-you).
Plus I like those little animations.
If you don't do better, I won't subscribe and tweak my Squid+SquidGuard config to ignore big ads Slashdot on my OS X box.
So there! Plus I haven't gotten a wedding invitation, yet!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Maybe you're entertained by counterintuitive pronounciations that you know and other people don't, you teach them and they learn, haha you're so popular. Most of us find it idioting and are protesting.
the new operating system has not been so hard to learn.
OS7.whatever was just the same when I bought my 6100/60 way back when.
Overall very pleased with it.
Still needs to have some rough spots worked out.
My G4/400 had almost 50 days of uptime before installing the latest update.
PS
I know very little of UNIX, but I am learning.
http://www.Slaveway.com
The mouse on my G4 has 4 buttons and a scroll wheel however ...
Having more buttons doesn't make you any smarter, especially if you use Windoze!
this guy is a moron
When you've got only one internal drive, it's always a good idea to make two partitions. When one fails for whatever reason, you can still boot from the other (always keep a backup System handy!). This is essential (or at least makes it very easy) to run DiskWarrior and Norton (not that you would ever want to run Norton... at work my co-worker had a slightly old Norton, and while he was running in OS 9 it automagically scanned his hard drive for errors, and changed every .dot file to a _dot file on his mounted OS X partition. Crap on a stick.).
:( I'd love to get those back.
Back to the subject, I bought my Mac when iTunes was new. I fooled around with it for a few minutes, and found that it came with a HOARD of good MP3 files. I dumbly thought that the Software Restore CD would put them back after I wiped the drive and repartitioned.
I was wrong
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Who's the moron that moderated this as "Informative"? This 'gralem' didn't read the post - he's just karma-whoring. Anyway, who exactly does he think he's informing about this pronunciation nitpick? The fanatics already know how to pronounce it, and those that don't, don't care.
Idiot.
-raph
I didn't realize people actually pronounced it this way. Forget whether you say X or 10, but 'oh ess'? Why pronounce the letters separately.. surely you say OS as it's written.. 'os'? At least here in the UK, MacOS has always been said 'maK-oS'.
We just finished moving about a quarter of our Mac users to OSX. It was almost painless; I was expecting many problems from different people about the new design. One user even went from OS8 to OSX on a B&W G3/300/192MB, and I haven't heard a peep from her since. The most "power" user we have runs Photoshop, Pagemaker and Illustrator, all of which run under Classic and she had the most problems migrating -- but after a couple of weeks of using it , she stopped in to thank me and to inform me that she hadn't had to reboot her Mac in over a week. Previously it was at least once a day (ie, "System Error -1 : Restart your Macintosh"). They unversally love the dock, and the all seem confused by the new finder. They also don't like the s l o w window resizing, but the consensous is that it's well worth the niggles and bugs that do exist.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
That actually reminds me of a funny story.
I had just recently installed the public beta of OS X on my G4 Cube. A friend of mine and his girlfriend dropped by to visit and take a peek at it. His girlfriend was a Mac user and wanted to see what OS X would be like.
I was demonstrating some of the new features of the dock, etc and she turned to her boyfriend and whispered, "I want oh-ess-ex." He heard it as "I want oh sex." and answered, "What? Here?!"
Seems confusing OS X with OH-SEX can happen. Perhaps its not a bad thing to make an note to refer to it as oh-ess-ten.
/// Zoid.
..to see a review of the OS X UI issues from a Linux or Windows centric perspective. PLEASE NOTE: I acknowledge the right of long-time OS 8/9 users to find pain in the new OS, but I'm not one of those.
I'm a Windows (at work) and Linux (at home) user who is growing a little fed up with both (okay, HATE Windows; Linux is starting to drive me a little nuts).
Fact is, I've got a clean RH 7.2 install sitting on nice hardware and half my apps don't work properly (Konquerer crashes, old Netscape sorta runs but has rendering problems, Mozilla -- forget it, Opera won't even start up -- haven't installed the just released beta yet).
I prefer KDE to GNOME, but after being into computers for over 15 years, the fact is, none of these systems work as well as they should. We've got 20+ years of consumer-level industry experience behind computers and they still suck.
Windows 2000 is almost serviceable, but XP is the bastard son of MS' strategy for hobbling half the OS against 3rd party media app incursions.
There are power management, sleep and hibernate issues that MS won't fix in W2K and that aren't that much more stable in XP. Hibernate twice and chances are things will start dying if you try anything. Drivers suck -- I can't set my desktop to sleep because the f&$king HP USB drivers pop up a dialogue after the machine wakes up every time. The only option is to LEAVE MY PRINTER DISCONNECTED BETWEEN USES. But yeah, my wife's a media artist -- she kinda needs the color printer. So much for my Energy Star compliant computer.
My laptop has 256MB ram and web pages can still choke media. My desktop has 512MB ram and switching among 2 users make it feel like a slug.
My latop is 1.5 years old and shipped, without me noticing (my bad), with ACPI. No linux power management..
I'm inclined to tell people who want to buy a computer not even to bother. Use the one at work for your email and spare your home life from the misery that is the modern computer industry.
give me a break.
if this article achieved one thing, it made me
feel sorry for apple's tech support gnomes.
i must've misplaced the friday flamebait warning
label on the slashdot article. hmm.
Poof.
I should quickly explain his "One True Way". Basically, whenever he gets a Mac, he arranges the applications according to his own personal prejudices. He creates a top-level applications folder, called "Packages", and then creates a dozen subfolders inside that: Text, Video, Image, Sound, Disk, File, and so on. All applications go into one of these subfolders. He then puts an alias to Packages into the Apple menu. The Apple menu also contains a folder containing links straight to the top ten or so apps. So from the Apple menu, he can get to those apps very quickly; or he can also take the long route, and navigate anywhere in the Packages tree. I've tried this, and it really is pretty handy -- you can open "Packages:Image", for example, and see all the image-editing apps on the machine listed together. The standard all-in-one "Applications" folder of OSX seems very cluttered in comparison.
I know im going to get a troll for this but what he is describing sounds alot like the start button on Windows and Xwindows... That is one thing that always buggerd me about macs...
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
For a so called UNIX programmer, this guy is slow on the pick up. As was stated earlier, the registration process is easy enough to skip, escape, command q , and just say you don't have an internet connection, command q option is obviouse to the Mac people, escape is useualy tried by most users, but I think 90% of experienced computer users would know it cant send information to Apple if you tell it you have no internet connection.
OSX uses a propriatary boot loader, though I have heard it's similar to BootX which came with Linux PCC, though they share no code, this is acording to the writier of BootX as stated on Macslash. I guess he would use that 1 gig parition as a scrap disk, though OSX perfers RAM.
These comments are all derived from comments already posted as I can't get to the article, damn slashdot effect.
New OSS slogan. Free as in America read: not free
On a related subject, you can use the Mac OS X app Frotz to play all the old text-based interactive fiction games like Zork, HHGG -- basically the Infocom and Z-Code games.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
What is the point? It's a single user machine, why does it need security? If we're talking about protecting the user from his programs then what we need is a capabilities system that is intimately tweakable and preferably has unlimited undo accessible from a global event log.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I honestly can't say that I've encountered anywhere near the level of frustration that Zarf seems to have met with in his foray into the world of OS X. Maybe I've just been lucky; or, maybe I've spent more time actually trying to use my Mac than trying to beat the bejesus out of the UI until it perfectly matches my own personal internal representation of the perfect interface.
Don't get me wrong: I think it's perfectly valid to point out OS X's present shortcomings, or to mention areas of the UI that you wish were different. But for Christ's sake, please stop construing the fact that Apple didn't personally ask you how to implement each aspect of the UI as a failure on their part.
In the end, the diary gave me a vicarious headache as I envisioned the author's bitter moment-to-moment struggle with Steve's hegemony over his desktop. At points, particularly during the Administrator Password Crisis, it started to sound like the Al Gore sketch that Darrell Hammond did on SNL during the Florida mess.
you have to click an icon labeled
unlock to make changes
whereupon the prompt appears
go figure. This one had me stymied also.
It's just that this guy's organized...so what?
I do the same thing on my Windows / Mac / *nix machines.
It has nothing to do with the machine / OS, and everything to do with the person using it.
My favorite in-joke story...
A few years back, a non-tech co-worker asked if it was fair for a local computer shop to charge her $65 to fix problem. $65 is a bit much for a 30 minute fix I my mind, so I asked her what the problem was. She said that the shop owner told her it was just aother "Windows I.D. Ten T" error. Needless to say after I agreed it was a fair price and that she wasn't being ripped off, I about fell out of my chair laughing.
I.D. Ten T = id10t
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
Hold down Command+V at boot up and you'll get a detailed startup description (verbose).
Enjoy.
"War makes me sad." - Me
Please don't spell out the punchline for us. We get it. Really, we do.
That's why we don't throw our votes away in Presidential elections by voting for candidates with no hope of winning.
Stupid Andrew Plotkin. Andrew Plotkin no good intuitively understanding even most simple interfaces. Andrew Plotkin no figure out multiple window animations. Andrew Plotkin no figure out scale faster than genie. Andrew Plotkin no figure out customize toolbar until days later. Andrew Plotkin no figure out time since day be half hour or week.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
A friend of mine installed OS X at my urging. He's used Unix boxes in work for years, so he's computer dumb. He liked it, generally speaking.
Anyhow. He partitioned his harddrive four ways. It gave him troubles from day one. Not big ones, just little ones. The GUI didn't fit how he was using his Mac. The Application button, now was meaningless, the Documents button was meaningless, He never used his Home folder. He fought the interface to do it "his way". Looked for and downloaded shareware apps to help him OS 9ify his computer. He fought his computer for a year, changing this, changing that, trying to make his GUI work his way. That's fine as long as you don't want to get any work done.
So I tell him...."kill the partitions and use the supplied UI elements the way they are meant to be". He says no. Off and on, we have this conversation and he always wants it "his way".
Then one day, he decides that he will try my advice. I tell him how to save his mail and prefs, he backs up his "essentials" on CD. Un partitions, Reinstalls, updates, etc. For one week, he decided to actually USE the UI elements as they were meant to be used. That was 4 months ago. All that shareware he bought is now useless to him. He no longer fights his computer and has found that OS X is EASIER to use than OS 9 as long as you are willing to change a few habits. Not only that, changing those habits took very little time.
In the article, this guys first action was to ceremoniously declare (via instant format and partition, which he complains didn't go over as smoothly as he wanted) "f**k this setup, I want the set up to be TOTALLY different" and has been fighting OS X ever since. I'm willing to be if he set aside his precepts and used it the way it is set up, one week later, he would not be fighting his machine and would be back to getting work done.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The ONE time I really played with an OS X machine (ISDN router training, damn Ascend Pipe 50s SUCK) I was messing with quicktime, and managed to lock it up. Hmmm, so I used top to find the pid, and then kill -9ed it. It was sweet, the power of linux, with a GUI that doesn't scream CHEAP. Now I just need the moola to but a damn iMac, I'm broke.
What, me worry?
I love the new Aqua look on /. very well done. Also, love the fact that Apple has so many topics dedicated to it these days, llooks liek not all *NIX fanboys don't think it has to be free to be relevent.
Now in response to the article, this guy seems to have very little computer experience at all. I mean, all he had to do was hit escape, or command q, as all Mac users would have tried, and escape is useually tried by anyone. And anyone with computer experince, and alot of people without it know that if you tell the machine your not online, it can't send anything.
Column view -- bleah. (Remember using NeXT boxes in college. Didn't like column view then either.)
The point is, UI is a very personal thing, especially when you're used to One Way. I /love/ column view. Maybe when he gets used to OS X, he'll start appreciating the UI, too.
As for slow Dock navigation, he's almost figured it out: control-click. Which is right-click on a two-button mouse. As for why Macs don't come with a two-button mouse... *ducks as war erupts*
Lies about crimes
Tell me 5 years ago that MacOS was going to be a full blown UNIX system and I'd have said WHEN!!!! Oh Wait... I was!
10p = tempe = temp
as in temporary, until XP SP1?
No, no no... it's "oh ess ten" baruz...
This website has been brought to you by the letter X...
and Microsoft corporation owns the patents to letter X; all rights reserved, etc, etc, etc
Why hasn't anyone gone after Microsoft's throats about "X" in "X Box" ? Or has MIT gotten weak-knees syndrome or have been asked by Microsoft to "borrow" "X" until people start blaming "X" for all their Green Screens of Death (XBOX alt. of BSOD).
Two things kind of bugged me about this article. One was the authors seeming expectation of an OS cutomized to his tastes out of the box. The other is his strange (in light of the previous) unwillingness to invest any effort in trying to adjust the UI preferences to suit tastes. For instance:
Miracle! Noticed "Customize Toolbar" option in Finder
And the like. "One True Way"... It reminds me of trying to deal with older engineers who have solidifed their ways of doing things and are unwilling to seriously consider input.
I've been using OSX for about 9 months. Every time I've had an issue/wish with it, I've gone directly to the apple forums, maxoshints and others (stepwise.org is a real gem). There's no mention of seeing outside help until day 9.
Reminds me of psychology readings about brain chrystalization...
Howard Dean for president
Well, I happen to know a university professor who has used UNIX since the '70s, and he was puzzled by exactly the same OS X dialog -- it really isn't obvious at first sight that it is just a graphical "sudo".
"a secret diary of his experiences installing and using Mac oh ess ex."
;)
It's been said a hundred times, though probably not here. It's spelled "Mac OS X"; it's pronounced "Mac O.S. TEN."
Geez...
Triv
I don't mean to imply that I think the OSX UI and general verbage within are perfect, however, the 'diary' seems to posit that the UI should be *absolutely* geared for the totally incompetent user (not that I'm saying the author is incompetent... just assuming he was taking on the role of someone who didn't know his arse from a hole in the ground... for the sake of his 'diary'-based review of the various imperfect elements in OSX). I am not a 'newbie' to the various elements of OSX... I've used MacOS, various *NIXes, NEXT/OPENSTEP, [other platforms], so perhaps I'm not ignoring my experience enough to make a fair judgement... in any case, I don't think the OSX UI/experience is likely to be quite the confusing fiasco portrayed in the 'diary'.
From the first time I installed OSX, I have had *no* trouble understanding when/how to use packages and when/how to enter which passwords. The lack of an active 'root' user was a bit disorienting at first, but was figured out/resolved/activated within a couple of minutes (BTW- Rather than the oft-posted "use NetInfoManager.app to activate...", I simply gave the root user a password in Terminal.app... same effect). I must say that I feel the article announcement's brief bio on the author's background (UNIX experience) set me up to be rather surprised at his inability to *grep* (ha!) the various pieces... that's why I've assumed that he's taking on the role of a newbie and not necessarily so confused himself.
I love OSX. I want it to improve. I know it will. Surely, it will improve to some degree by user feedback... but, I don't think that feedback is altogether useful when delivered in the form of: "stupid [designers]" or "lack of [some pre-existing feature]?!?!?! Apple/Steve is KILLING ME!!!!!". Sadly the vast numbers of people yelling in such manner, in ernest, also drags down the 'humorous' nature of such satire.
All the above: IMNSHO
Help! A dingo ate my baby!
There's an incredibly fast Sherlock replacement called Locator (freeware) which puts a GUI on the OS X locate database. Searches in Locator take all of a second or two. Plus no channels, no big GUI overhead, just hella fast searches. Plus if you use a program called Keyboard Maestro in it's free form you can reassign Command+F to point to Locator instead of Sherlock. Speed speed speed!
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
Buddy boy is picky! :-) ;-) j/k
Doesn't like icons, doesn't like generally anything related to ease of use. Just get a pc, install some distro without X and deal if you want it to be difficult.
I can understand some of his gripes though. Configurability is definitely a virtue in an OS, and (while I doubt his accuracy) he descriptions hows it o be lacking such a virtue.
Derek Greene
What makes you think it'll turn into a disaster? You should just go for it, and if she says no, just forget about it and stuff.
If that was me, I'ld run my fuckin' face away from the ambulance and jump underneath a semi's wheels to finish my death.
"I don wanna live...I don wanna live!
life stinks...life stinks...life stink...lyfe 'tink...ly tink...ly..." -Mel Brooks
SMART computer users do not like to change their habits based on what new OS they are using they want, the OS to change to their habits.
Smart computer users understand that the machine is a slave for the human and not the other way around.
So why should your firend or the writer of that diary have to learn a new way to do everything, when they have had enough experience to find a way that they like.
Why should someone bow to steve's or bill's decisions to what is the best easiest and funnest way for us to do things, when they have had enough experience to know for themselves what is the best way?
Sometimes I just wish I had an expense account at ThinkGeek so I could send people RTFM T-Shirts.
"Boy, I sure like Emacs, but this new-fangled GUI stuff is a bit too confusing!"
Not Stupid Steve. Stupid User (Most of the Time)
Thrusday, 19:05 EST
Mom's iMac was preventing access to mission critical application (System folder corruption not allowing AOhell to let her into msnbc crossword puzzle with morning cup o' tay)
"No problem" says I.. "plunk down a wad for OS X"
Financing and resources secured. I arrive for a gnarly bit o dinner + boredom watching installation bar creep.
Mundanity ensues and my 1st install of OS X goes well after last touching a mac when options included a mac, or a mac without a mac.
Gratuitous use of AOHell under OS X (they stole my KDE backdrop dammit!) embarks and I am stumped by 10 Across.
Foregoing urge to insert foot into crt, I depart.
Friday, 17:27 EST
21+ hours later and no whiny calls about iMac. I kick the cat instead. Job well done: Thanks APPLE!
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
I know of someone who never wants to accept change of any kind. I can understand his point of view, but it means that when improvements occur, like the installation of a new computer system, he's the last to take advantage of them.
To me, X is an enormous improvement to 9. For one thing, the "text that looks like hand-set type" is so beautiful I hate going back to anything else. Once I saw that, and got to try true multitasking on a Mac, I really hated going back to 9.
I haven't done any serious work in 9 since Final Cut Pro for MacOS X came out.
D
Ran through the OSX registration procedure
He complains about being forced to register... this has already been commented on. But having no true option is stupid.
Big dialogue box came up: "You need an Administrator password to install the software." Below this, icon of a padlock: "Click the lock to make changes." Totally baffled. What do I do now? No clue how to enter administrator password.
Yeah, that can be confusing. You don't know that your password is an administrator password (it never tells you about the concept of administrators, or that you're it).
Just so you know, he actually took three days to finish Alice (and that was in Easy mode and with a couple of hints on how to beat the bosses. Plus liberal use of cheat keys in final battle.)
I'm better at Alice than he is.
Getting more experience working with new Finder. No longer feel totally mummified, but still not comfortable. Column view -- bleah. (Remember using NeXT boxes in college. Didn't like column view then either.)
Bah, column view was something I always wanted in the Finder. It's good, get used to it :P It's better if you have more folders than files (it's good at finding files deeply nested, and makes it more convenient to have your files deeply nested).
Hit cmd-F to search partition. Oh, no. Sherlock. Forgot how awful Sherlock has become
Sherlock is a bane on the Mac's usefulness. Stupid Steve.
[Dock:] Can click app icon, wait for window list pop-up -- but this is slow and confusing. All Terminal windows have same name anyway
You can Get Info on a Terminal window and change the name. Very useful. Otherwise they have the ttyp# in the name.
Only missing UI element: configurable Apple menu. Or some way to do pop-up menu with hierarchical structure showing a directory tree. Needed for One True Way MacOS structure.
Well, get used to column view, and you've got it. Try this:
- Click Finder icon in the Dock.
- Hit Command-opt-F. This brings up Favorites. Set it to Column View.
- Close window now.
- Hit Command-opt-F. The finder should remember that that folder should be in Column View (it will also remember the window size, for when you open up a new window, instead of navigating from an existing window).
Here's your wonderful hierarchical list, as easy as clicking the Finder icon and hitting command-opt-f. Add folders with aliases in them as your hearts content. Alright, not as easy as the Apple menu, but people abused that thing to no end...This animation takes approximately 0.75 seconds. After approximately 0.375 seconds, I am banging on computer top, screaming "Get move on!!"
Yup, there's too much stupid animation in OS X. A lot of it is warranted and doesn't get in your way, a lot of it (like hitting Command-S(ave), return) takes too damn long as the sheets come and go.
How hard would it be to write a freeware Dock item which navigates folder tree, without delays?
Dock menus pop up instantly if you control-click. Or if you have a two button mouse and right click. He finds that out later, but not the two-button thing. I'm happy with one button... I use two at work because I got one there.
Spent more time selecting fonts. Font selection is annoying.
Font selection is pretty awesome, the Font panel resizes. When the panel is small you get popup menus for your fonts. At a bigger size you get scrollable lists. You can organize fonts into your favorite groups (like Monospace fonts, it doesn't do it for you). And you can set your Favorite fonts, and while you're browsing your favs you get a nice little custom UI for it (favs include bold/point size in one click).
More generally: Carbon and Cocoa apps have different font-rendering.
Actually, CoreGraphics (Quartz 2D) and QuickDraw have different font rendering. The Finder is a Carbon app. Some (many) Carbon apps don't want to jump to Quartz because (a) the developers know QuickDraw and (b) Quartz 2D isn't on OS 9, so the app won't run on both platforms.
(Five minutes later: Selected "Get Mac OS X Software..." from Apple menu. Nothing happened. The hell? I've got menu option eating space in Apple menu, can't get rid of it, and it doesn't work? Stupid Steve!)
He deleted IE, and has not set his default web browser (IE is always the fallback browser if it can't find the preferred web browser). Until he goes to Internet prefs and sets his browser of choice, it (and anything else that wants to launch an http url) won't work.
I've deleted IE, the OS X version is an amazing pile of do-do; absolutely busted functionality. OmniWeb, Mozilla, and Chimera rulez.
On the other hand, have sworn off using Help system anyhow, due to annoying animations.
And it takes about 30 seconds to load.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
How the shit was this offtopic? It's a valid question inspired by the article. I.E., could not be more on-topic. Obviously the moderator did not read the article.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Nothing's perfect. Remember that Mac OS X is a "1.0" in reality, and, given that, it's working pretty well for most. I've never had any system crashes since I started its use last March.
.plist files. Ditto for the transparencies and such.
Zarf's experience confirms three issues about using Mac OS X:
-If you are an experienced Mac OS 9 user, you will do things to your computer (and vice versa) that will be adverse. Example--moving applications out of the Applications folder. OS X updaters expect to find all Apple-installed apps in their original locations. Previous OS versions generally did not care, but this breaks OS X updates.
Tip: LEAVE OS X application locations alone. X apps and other non-Apple OS X apps can be placed whereever you want, but the Applications folder is preferable.
--If you are an experienced UNIX/Linux user, OS X feels fine, but the GUI gets a little in the way, particularly when you're trying to get to the CLI and stay there awhile. The way OS X handles configuration files threw him, too--OS X preferences can be edited, but you don't have dotfiles, but
--If you hate the fluff of Windows, a few interface issues will annoy both kinds of users. Fortunately, unlike Windows XP, the OS does not attempt to find a way to sell you something on launching any app. Also, (Office X excluded) Mac apps are usually not so overly helpful that you want to assassinate the MS Clippy team and their families for bringing up the "assistant" idea.
It will be interesting when he installs XDarwin for an XFree86 GUI (it can run concurrently w/Agua or alone on the display)
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Stupid Steve = 25.
Go Steve = 12.
Steve, he doesn't like you. :)
I love my mac, I love it even more with OSX.
... then? The computer takes a whole other eternity to resolve how many times I clicked on the button, the comes back to life. SHEESH!
OSX works good, is way more stable than OS9 ever was on my mac, and looks damn good (plus it makes my linux loving friend green with envy, wich is fun).
but its so slow!
I can't tell you the number of times I've had to mentally count my clicks on a button to figure out if I had clicked an odd or even number of times while it was frozen stiff. I mean, click on button, nothing happens. Click again, nothing happens, but the harddrive makes a sound...too late...clcik again, quick!
But I'm free of my ISP's crappy DSL connection app now! Free I tells you! FREE!
Man my comp is slow now...
You can't take the sky from me...
That's why we don't throw our votes away in Presidential elections by voting for candidates with no hope of winning.
Really? We don't? I must have missed the memo on that one!
The reason that he wasn't able to use the 'Get Mac OS X Software' option in the Apple Menu is because it calls IE.
Which he said he deleted.
Is it just me, or does it seem like if the person writing the diary added "nick" or "inck" to the end of everything he would sound like "pitr" off off the UserFriendly comic strip? ...just a thought =)
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
We only sent it to the smart people. That probably explains why you didn't get one.
Maybe if he had spent more time using the standard interface instead of mucking it up with add-ons and modifications, he would have realized that a lot of his complaints are completely baseless.
Apparently, I learned more about the UI in twenty minutes than he did in several days.
It should stand as a testament to X's ease of use that someone who doesn't even understand how and why "root access" works can still partition and install multiple operating systems on one machine.
Who is this Zarf? Why is Slashdot even interested?
This to me sounded like a total and complete idiot when it came to using computers. I found OSX's UI very intuitive, the first problem this human being encountered with the "Click here to make changes" lock icon, was very intuitive to me. It makes perfect sense. Like the way Red Carpet asks for admin password.
This human needs more hacking time before their info is ever again posted on slashdot.
Stupid Slashdot! Go Apple!
Common, you'd think the unix geeks at slashdot
would get this right. Only the clueless CompUSA
employees call it oh ess ex.
holy crap! 921 pix of this babe!
You, sir, are my new god.
First of all, let me point out, I'm drunk and drinking and I'm just taking a time-out to respond to this incredibly stupid diary. Second, does anyone else find this guy to be incredibly lame? I mean, honestly, who takes the time to document in diary format your installations and experiences with an OS? Third, obviously OS TEN (yes, you better start saying the word "TEN" Zarf, because you could get beat up for saying "ex") is not perfect, but it is far better than anything else plus it's still in its infancy. Instead of spouting out that verbal diarrhea (get it? diary-a?), Barf should have taken the time to simply use the OS and get used to it. Every new OS has some learning required. Be happy with the fact that OS X has the shortest. Jeez. Ok, time to drink more.
[figz@figz figz]$ kill -9 `ps -ef | awk '$1=="figz" { print $2 }'`
Man, I'd love to travel back in time five years and tell a bunch of Mac advocates...
If you told them that they would still be using pretty much the same OS from 1984 for another 5 years, do you think they would hold out for it?
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
This had all the depth, insight, excitement, and originality of one of those "I spent this weekend trying to get on this information superhighway thing" columns from 1995.
It might have been vaugely interesting A YEAR AGO, when OS X was released.
So I run the previewer. Guess what? It takes about a second to render a page. Well...sometimes it's about a half. I try acrobat reader. Even slower! Come on Apple. When I used to use a NeXT running at 40MHz I could read postscript documents at this kind of speed. It's inexcusibly and unforgivably slow. On a 500MHz pentium I can drag PDF documents up and down the screen at about 10-15 fps. It's just like having a paper document that I can scan up and down. But un a supposedly more powerful machine on which PDF is native it's about 5-10 times slower. This is truly pathetic. This is 2d graphics. It's barely a million monochrome pixels that need rendering. What's the CPU doing for all this time? Am I really going to have to write my own PDF viewer?
Otherwise MacOS X is the dog's bollocks!
-- SIGFPE
Just wait until OS11. (OSXI?) How do you pronounce that, Oh Ess Eleven? Oh Ess Zee? Oh Ess Exx Eee? Oh Sexy?
--jw
Let's just state this for the record: You are saying that it is a good thing that users have to enter a password to install software. Who's computer is this again? Is this my computer or is this Steve's computer? If I cant install the software I want I should just go buy a toaster. Maybe you'd like to justify it by saying that installing software requires that the installer write into directories that you dont think the user should be casually deleting or browsing. In which case, that is exactly what should be restricted, perhaps through the finder application or a specific capabilities system, but largely, let's not forget who's computer this is. If I wanna screw it up I should be able to. Maybe Steve would like to warn me "You're about to delete a critical file, dont do this!" And maybe if I ignore him then I should be able to undo my change. But generally, installing a piece of software is not going to break the system and the protection mechanism should recognise that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
this is the best usability study I've ever seen. And because it is so charming, so critical, and now, so visible, Stupid Steve may just pay someone to take it to heart (and probably scrap all the improvements when someone sends a beta screenshot to the press.)
Not to be condescending (well, okay, to be condescending) but that's the way I imagine Apple owners using their computers. Personally praising (or damning) the computer manufacturer's CEO for their whole technological experience *er* lifestyle.
ya mean the text-only browser? or is there another lynx? n browse with omni. browse with iCab. sssssheeeesh.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I simply must believe that all Mac users aren't as braindead as this one. I've made what seemed to be simple mistakes in windows and linux but at least I was smart enough not to broadcast them to the world. Mac users have to be smarter than this guy.
-
Emacs games provide all sorts of entertainment (when your bored on a classified system you discover all sorts of things..)
1)Fire up emacs....(launch terminal app, type "emacs"
2)M-x dungeon
the classic. It's not infocom but...
or
2)M-x tetris
text tetris !?! really. it's not xemacs...
3) M-spook
fun stuff to put in your emails....
For those not familiar with emacs M=esc
to quit type control x then control c.
Wow! I hope I'm right in feeling like he represents an unusual class of user: Impatient with many more traditional GUI conventions, but still interested in some handholding beyond doing everything from the command line.
I just realized that TheAJofOZ is right about all his usability rants. The only way he could have responded to so many posts, defending Oh Ess Ecks Dot Lower Case Ell design so vehemently and thoroughly is because of his improved efficiency.
in case i'm not the only one who had never heard of icab until this article, here's their web page place. i've used it for 5 minutes and am impressed by its configuability. better ad-blocking than moz and omniweb, for example. freeish, in development. mac oses only.
A brief summary of the article:
"Go Steve!"
"Stupid Steve."
"Stupid Steve."
"Go Steve!"
"Stupid Steve."
"Go Steve!"
[Steve Ballmer takes over and begins to chant "Developers! Developers!"]
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Sure that happened. Uh huh, why do i get the feeling you got it from here.
Even if it didn't happen it wasn't original, when was the last time you met an intelligent tech at best buy?
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
Right-click the ad, choose "Block Images From This Server", release mouse button. Sure, you lose the icons and the Slashdot logo but who cares when there's so much off-topic doscussion to enjoy!
We vote for Ralph Nader, instead, and get an executive branch full of grinches, instead.
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/sitemap-pict.html
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/cave/index.html
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/sitemap.html
Tell me those are usable and I'll go back to living under my bridge.
Wax on, wax off baby!
How is this different to any other device? You have to get to know every new person you meet to - does that make you avoid meeting people? (Okay, bad example for /. but hey.... :)
Proof of this is in the manner in which people will invariably forget passwords, bank account pin numbers and safe combinations. All are very similar UIs in that they are a series of alpha numeric characters in a set sequence of similar length (though PIN numbers are often the shortest).
No, the ATM is the UI, the PIN is data. Data is much harder to remember because there is (usually) no prompt to help you remember it. This is also the reason that GUIs are easier to use than CLIs - the options are presented to you instead of having to remember them. With GUIs you don't need to learn as such, but rather develop habits.
The more of each of these required to be memorized, the greater the likelihood that one will fail because while the UIs are similar, they are not consistent or the same. This is not to say that they shoudl necessarily be the same, but as a counter to your argument, it works.
So let me get this straight - your argument is that they should all be the same so that we don't have to take any time to learn them. I have three counters to your argument:
Andrew Plotkin write many good stories with big flowery language. Andrew Platkin obviously save up language skills for when writing stories and not waste any on diary. Andrew Plotkin still good. People not think Andrew Plotkin good need read/play 'The Meteor, The Stone And A Long Glass of Sherbet' or other award-winning interactive fiction written by Andrew Plotkin.
That's why we don't throw our votes away in Presidential elections by voting for candidates with no hope of winning
You realize that's a self-defeating attitude, right? Vote for the lesser of two evils (rather than the Good) and all you'll ever get elected is the lesser of two evils.
The ability of folks voting for the Good to result in the worse of two evils being elected is unfortunate -- it's also why preference voting (ie. a borda count) is needed. Even as is, though, I'm not about to engage in helping to perpetuate the two-party system I oppose.
A Mac-smoking friend slid his Powerbook
across the table to me at the local coffee shop
and said: "It's got Unix underneath... OS X."
Intrigued... I asked for a terminal window
and poked about... interesting. I might
be at home here and finally loose MS'es
deathgrip on my brain.
The coffee shop has an 802.11 wireless connection
and his Powerbook's Airport gets past the
URL re-directing gateway to download at DSL speeds. I've tried 3 times to get my DLINK'ed
802.11 config to work as the ISP advertises
it should... hmmm... DSL into my office net
with my morning coffee. [Yes, I've spent a
few hours considering Linux for my wireless
laptop... I'd expect many more would be required
to get it all correctly config'ed... should work
but like my MS experiences NOT without great pain
and combinatoric exercise]
So, I ask if I might see if Zope would work
on the Mac w/ OS X. He allows the "test" and
helps my find a package for mac's, download
and install Zope. Someone has made Zope fit
the Mac install paradigm... It's the easiest
Zope install I've seen (vs Windows, Solaris, Linux). I start Zope... and ask if I might add
the Squishdot package (Slash-clone written in
Python and Zope's D(H)TML). He allows...
I download/install it, restart Zope...
Works painlessly.
Now I have this $3,000 decision... To Titanium
or NOT to Titanium... hmmm, clock's ticking and
I can't get myself to re-up w/ the MS eXPerience.
How much might painless computing be worth and
would it remain painless long enough to get
some of my music recorded, video edited, and
real work done from the coffeeshop?
Decisions, decisions... I did enjoy that NeXT
system back in 1991 I borrowed. I miss my Amiga
days... Computers should be fun to use and that Mac was fun.
No, it's CLEARLY pronounced "Austin" as in the Texan city. AUSTIN! Say it slowly a hundred times and you'll get the hang of it.
--you have been trolled--
The GUI *is* geared for the totally incompetent user. Who else would purchase a MAC in the first place??? Get a clue.
--you have been trolled--
That's what I get for trusting my memory on something.
Thanks for the correction.
Though it seems you may be simply trolling... just in case it was unclear in my prior post:
-- The author seems to think that *a* GUI (any GUI) should be written for incompetence. I disagree. --
Other than that; you don't like Macs. I do (with OSX, anyway). You don't, I do, so what?
What is a clue, anyway. Maybe I should get one. Are they expensive? If not, perhaps I'll get two; one for each of us.
Can't just leave a working computer alone, must fsck with it till it breaks and then complain about poor design. Is it any wonder Linux will never make it to the desktop.
Here's one thing that might brighten your day, if you've never found this before:
:)
Linux ACPI support.
It appears that the 2.4 kernel series supports ACPI (with some tools, see link) but has to be compiled with the acpi option (marked as experimental). Do some research, you may be pleasantly surprised.
-- Reverius
I had a similar dilemma - a big mean x86 workstation or the Titanium Powerbook.
I chose the Powerbook, and I think i definitely made the right decision.
MacOS X feels a lot slower than Win2K or Linux, and it is a big step backwards from OS9 in terms of GUI functionality, but its mostly tolerable.
The chicks dig the dock magnification and window resize animations, anyway.
I develop Java/Tomcat apps, do web design with Photoshop and remotely administer my Linux and Win2K servers with XDarwin and rdesktop.
The Powerbook is IMHO way superior to any x86 laptop I have used, and i've used a few.
It wakes from sleep practically instantly, is easy to switch between different locations, has a useful array of expansion ports, and is light enough to carry easily. It doesn't crash often (Though the Finder locks up for me quite a lot - easily fixed with a 'Force Quit' that actually works reliably for the first time in MacOS history)
Add a good, free (as in beer) IDE and extensive GUI and general purpose APIs, and its a dream to program for.
I would recommend this machine, except for the Aqua GUI, which i can't say has grown on me with time. However, this is a minor annoyance, and I can always run a fullscreen X server to cover it up.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Seems to some sort of i-d-ten-t error causing all this lads problems. Poor fella.
/probably/, just *maybe*, refer to the system? Maybe it's just me and every bloody other OS X user who has misinterpreted this context. We are so foolish. A thousand pardons.
/Windows/. Not at least without coming up with some decent justification for what is otherwise careless and obnoxious - unwanted and unwarranted - opinion.
To explain, in brief, some of my argument:
* The intro to OS X takes at most 60 seconds to read, plus any time you need to type in your info [obviously varies between users]. If your attention span is less than 60 seconds, I'd suggest you take up inappropriate sports, like sky diving, or tight rope walking. I think this apparent case of ADD accounts for the writers inability to focus on anything but moving/animated objects.
* Most of the 'problems' experienced were the typical "I hate this because it's different" reactions we saw with the original release some distant time ago. I thought everyone was over this. Oh well. From someone who's long been simultaneously using OS 9, X, Linux and recently pure-Unix [on some nasty school terminals], I can assure you, as can any other experienced user, that OS X is not so bad as you think, at least as a relative measure.
* Artistic impression is hard to fairly criticise, so I'll accept fairly the point that the writer doesn't like Aqua as such. However, I really must question some of the things where he tries to convince himself Aqua raises practical problems, like the transparent window titles.
* Blaming a very distant CEO of two major companies for a person's inability to decide how to organise their own god damn files seems something of a stretch of justifiability.
* What the hell is going on with the "I don't get the 'changes' thing"?!? Do you not understand that, in a system software installer, you are in the context of the computer system - you know, that boxy thing you have somewhere near you - and so therefore changes would logically,
*sigh...*
I mean no 'personal' disrespect to the author, but his disgusting writing style doesn't scream "novelist" to me, and his ineptitude for basic computing concepts and designs makes me suspicious about any claims of "software development". Being a [past] RealBasic developer (shock horror!), I'm considered by other developers to be on peer level to a viral infection - of a bacterium living on a piece of slime at the bottom of a barrel full of shit - yet I've managed to use fink and other such utilities without having psychotic episodes.
It saddens me to see the Mac abused so by people like this. Even the most hardcore Mac evangelist wouldn't write such slander about
I rest my rant.
P.S. Sourceforge's user tools are going spastic as usual with the create user forms, so I couldn't identify myself properly. My name, for those interested, is Wade Tregaskis, and I can be contacted via .
> Then why doesn't Apple spell it "MacOS 10"?
Simple, it's a double pun.
(1) Mac OS X, as in the Roman numeral for "10". Not surprisingly, this is the operating system after Mac OS 9. Roman numerals are not unheard of in the US (movies are notorious for using them), so it's not like they're using Greek letters or something like that.
(2) Mac OS X, where the "X" indicates Unix, like X-window or anything like that.
I guess it could be a triple pun, where the X means "unknown", because millions of Mac users who *thought* they knew how their Macintosh works now are confused and lost because version 10 is so different than previous versions.
But the people I've known who switched to Mac OS X all have had a short period of minor disorientation ("What's the Dock?", "Where are the control panels?", etc.), but afterwards they (like me) quickly liked it a lot better than Mac OS 9.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
He is complaining about bad things it the UI that Apple learned about 15 years ago, and forgot when NeXT was paid to buy them out. Things like "Icons should be nouns, and not verbs."
There are certain things that certain people in Apple researched and formed opinions on. That doesn't mean they're true from now until eternity. Somebody can disagree with the earlier findings and try new things. They're not necessarily going to perfect out of the gate.
In my opinion, there's an abusrd amount of arrogance regarding the Mac UI. I think people could be confusing fondness and familiarity with perfection. Yes, it has many good points. But it's far from perfect.
He was spot on with the problems with the Installation dialog.
I agree the authentication thing is a too vague. My personal opinion is he went a little overboard on the commentary on that subject.
I am complaining about the fact that the UI expects you to know that the little lock, inside a circle, is a button, and the only way to install the software. It would have been _much_ better UI to have an authenticate and install, rather than a quit button.
I agree.
Again Apple learned years ago that translucency sucks, yet they insist that all Macs come with translucency.
I believe it's a personal preference in most cases. The fact that certain types of people like flat shaded color and it helps them work better does not mean "transparency sucks." It means they don't like it. The are people that find it interesting to look at, and it allows them to feel like computer work is not such drugery.
Apple learned years ago how to make files and folders not rely on file paths
I agree. This is an aspect of the Mac with no perceptable down side. You apparently gain nothing and lose much by refering to files by ID instead of hard text paths.
Oh, and if I want to put other apps in my home folder, they won't register services either. Of course, if there was anything as infinitely cool as services for Mac OS 9, it would register at startup, and be done with it.
Only problem there is that many people never want to reboot their machines -- just put them to sleep.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Hi Metrollica.
I asked you a question about the "user discussion", and you answered me but apparantly someone deleted that discussion, so can you answer again?
Btw: This Apple thing is very weird. I can see subjects here that doesn't show up in the main page.. is that normal?
Elkobim
I want tender love now!
Elkobim