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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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"Bad design or stupid user? Hmm."
PEBKAC
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Hire this guy and sack Katz :)
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?"
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.
Then why doesn't Apple spell it "MacOS 10"?
;-)
"X" is an "ecks", not a "ten" to us English-speaking folk. If we were discussing a Roman operating system, I might agree with you, but in the US, "X" is a letter, not a number!
I mean, if Apple released an operating system calles "MacOS +" everyone would call is "mac oh ess plus", not "mac oh ess ten" even though "+" is the Japanese character for 10.
I say, as long as it says "OS X" on the box, we can call it "oh ess ecks". The hell with what Steve Jobs calls it, what does he know about Macs anyway
0 1 - just my two bits
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.
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 think his problem was that the interface for doing so is not intuitive, and he has a point. The text on the installer window says "Click the lock to make changes", which is rather vague; it should be something like "Click the lock to enter your password." Better yet, it should ask for your password right away.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Even better yet, go back 15 years and tell the DOS-heads that almost everybody will use a GUI.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The big confusion, for me at least, would be that if I'm already logged in as an admin, why should I have to type my password again?
It does sound like the sudo dialog box wasn't worded very well, but on the other hand he should know that if there's ever an authentication step to go through, clicking on images of a lock or a key is usually the way to go.
The rant about the difference between icons for objects versus actions was very insightful - somebody should really apply that interface metric to Windows and Linux systems as well. Sounds like Mac OS really took a step backwards there.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
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.
Because they (or rather the user interface designers that work for them) most likely know more about user interfaces than you do. Contrary to popular belief (particularly with Linux users) customisability is very poor user interface design and this is pointed out in Jeff Raskin's book "The Humane Interface".
When it comes down to it, you are far better off adjusting your habits to something that is more productive instead of continuing to use less efficient techniques to save relearning time. A new OS doesn't come out that often, take some time to appreciate it's new features and benefit from them or there's simply no point in upgrading.
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.
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
What you have failed to realise is that there is always some relearning time when moving to a new interface regardless of whether or not that interface is good or bad. If you "cannot STAND the layout/workings/look/feel of a UI" then you are experiencing that change over period. If you take the time to learn the interface you will most likely find (assuming it is a good interface) that you are more productive and are not affected by stress from the interface but instead actually come to like it).
Now my challenge for you - find a study which shows that customizable interfaces are more productive using objective measures.
Have to mention - a more efficient interface for Minesweeper would be to show you where the damn mines are from the start.... poor interface design is actually what makes most games fun (for certain values of poor).
The other way to improve Minesweeper would be to remove it altogether and get back to your real work. :) (Same goes for /.)
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.
-
But you ARE making changes. If you load a driver, it obviously wasn't there before. You are changing the system...! Sheesh. I've got an idea..., it's the iHandPuppet! Now Kookla, Fran, and Ollie will appear to guide users through those tough problems like "How To Enter Your Password" and "Why Dont I Have Permission To Trash My /Bin Folder???...."