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."

Comments

Pretty good article

[fritter]

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. :)

One reason why he has problems...

[Auckerman]

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.