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Zarf in Mac OS X Land

Posted by pudge on from the go-steve dept.

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."

3 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. OSX Migration by ink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Zarf vs. Steve--This Time, It's Personal! by christopher_mcca · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    So how do you vote? Do you circle a candidate's name? Do you underline it? Or do you write it on the arrow? Or underneath? Or maybe it's the dots. Do you write the candidate's name on the dots? They seem sort of small. Maybe just his initials. Or do you color in the dots? If so, in what color? Maybe you scratch the dots with the edge of a penny. Or lick the dots. Again, this ballot does not spell it out.
  3. This is like fingernails down a chalkboard by 1stmammaltowearpants · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.