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No More Mac Tweaking?
netphilter writes "Apple is trying to "close the operating system to tweakers" according to this story on Wired. The addition of the BSD kernel and the command line left me thinking that they were trying to open the OS a bit more to tweakers, not close it. I'm not a Mac user, but I have been thinking about trying out OS X. However, if Apple is trying to CLOSE the OS (contrary to the impression that I had) then I'm not going to waste my time."
Jamie adds: life may be harder for them, I guess, but many developers are
still tweaking Mac OS X.
Both GNOME and KDE are already available on OSX via fink.
I think what this refers to is that third party apps that use the toolbar are relegated to something of a second class citizen status, and lack some of the capabilities of Apple-sponsored toolbar items.
For instance, my Proteus icon doesn't stay on the toolbar if Proteus isn't running, and I can't easily rearrange it on the toolbar by dragging while holding the Apple key down. I can do this(or remove the icon entirely) with the system-related icons approved by Apple(modem status, volume, resolution).
As a disclaimer, I am still using 10.1.5, so I can't speak for 10.2.
I have 10.2 on my iBook, and I am able to tweak many, many functions to my heart's content. The first thing I did was get rid of that stupid "favorites" heart in the top of the finder window. Removing that button (and adding other finder tools to the top bar) was as simple as drag and drop. Resizing or relocating the dock, and changing its behavior is also simplicity itself. Don't like the funky way Macs have the scroll arrows grouped at the bottom-right corner? You can set it to the traditional layout with a few quick mouse-clicks.
What is really going on in this article is the owner of the company that makes Kaleidoscope (a third-party UI tweaking program for older flavors of Mac OS) has been rendered obsolete, not by Mac breaking Kali's tools with updates... which often happened with versions 7-9 of MacOS, but because OS X is already tweakable enough withough their app.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Before 10.2, the API had been reverse engineered and was being widely used by shareware developers. WeatherPop, for example, used it to show the current weather, while Homeland Alert shows the U.S. government's level of terrorist alert. These utilities were broken by the Jaguar update. Unsanity recently released a utility, Menu Extra Enabler, to restore them. "
Not true.
I've got both WeatherPop and Homeland Alert running on 10.2 and 10.2.1 without Menu Extra Enabler.
This article is all fluff. You've got the one guy who wrote kaleidoscope complaining that the UI now has closed API's. In fact, if a user wanted to change their interface, the pxm resources can be easily edited with resources available.
Not only this, there are several themes available.
The complaint here is that although Darwin is open source, (with most of the core components of the OS), the window server is not. Being a UNIX system, however, you can make a new one if you cared to. Simply running strings from the command line can pull most API functions out of a binary, so emulating them would be a tast, but not an impossible one.
From the beginning, Apple has discouraged used from using elements in the Aqua theme file (extras.rsrc) which are copyrighted by them. However, a full replacement of that resource file that contains no Apple IP can't be pulled by Apple.
Please don't listen to this argument that the OS is closed to tweakers. It's different now to tweak things, but you certainly can.
See? A Titanium theme, a Rhodium theme, a Gunther theme, a Totally Aqua theme.
Hey, even a tool to make them.
Quit complaining.
Mac uses OpenFirmware (http://www.openfirmware.org/) which is much more standard than all the crappy PC bios... And Sun's OpenBoot PROM is also derived from OpenFirmware BTW...
There are at least 3 different programs to change themes; Duality4, MetamorphX, Chameleon.
There already is a program to change system icons, Candy Bar.
There is another coming, Xpression.
There are a myriad of menu items, dock enhancements, window enhancers, custom menu builders, and just great all around utilites that enhance and extend the OS.
The thing to remember, and what everyone forgets, it that Classic Mac OS was a mature OS that people had years to hack and discover. OS X is new enough that Apple is still changing APIs.
Mac OS X is a very customizable OS and Wired is showing very little research and fact checking in thier article.
... about what developers wanted/needed access to in new versions of the operating system (yes, I know that this article is really about UI tweaks, but figured I'd offer a perspective on what the topic of the post implied). I attended one of the Apple WWDCs (World Wide Developers' Conference) when I worked for the now defunct (well, "assimilated into the NAI universe") Dr. Solomon's Software on Virex, an anti-virus application for the Mac. When OS X was announced, we were decidedly worried about how we were going to get access to the file system areas that we needed to hook in to to intercept file opens and closes, along with other similar things. During a particular mixer, where Apple engineers and architects were around to sip beer and eat free food, we talked to the main architect and engineers of the file system team and had a great dialogue about what we needed and how best we could get it. They were interested to hear how we had worked around so many disgusting parts of the OS 7, 8 and 9 systems, and were honestly quite horrified to hear what was required in certain circumstances :). But, customers want to be protected from viruses in every possible way they can access files, so we had to do it.
Traditionally this is a pretty tough thing to do, even in the best of times. Under OS 8 and 9, we had a hell of a time keeping the on-access scanning parts working with each new release of the OS... they would change behavior in AppleTalk functionality, asynchronous hooks, or whatever and POOF!, what used to work just fine now times out on accesses to remote volumes.
The Apple guys were very open to trying to give us more reliable, sanctioned access to the file system hooks that we needed to have. Unfortunately, Dr. Solly's was soon thereafter assimilated by NAI and I was not able to work on the product anymore, so I don't know what they eventually did with the OS X product.
-"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent
Memory interleaving is a feature of my old (early 1996) PowerMac 7600's motherboard.... and it accepts up to 1GB of ram. Currently this ancient box has the following hardware upgrades: G3, 560mb ram, 18gb scsi, 60gb ata-133, usb1, 32x CD-RW. It boots into MacOS 9, OS X orLinuxPPC. I occasionally program in MS Access using VirtualPC to emulate a Win98 box. Nope, no expandability or versatility here!
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
I suggest that you look inside some program bundles. There's a great deal *more* tweaking capability available than previous versions of the Mac OS allowed.
Speaking as an admin whose first mac was an original SE in 1987, I can tell you that Apple has always had people messing around with their undocumented internals and they've always punished them. They don't want people to get the idea that it's safe to muck around in the internals because if any significant dependencies develop, they lose their portability.
Why was the 68k->PPC transition so smooth? Because for the several years prior, Apple was doing exactly the same thing, changing their undocumented code around so that people wouldn't create a large installed base of code using undocumented APIs. Or, if they persisted in that foolishness, to create the expectation that every major OS upgrade was likely to cause a temporary break in this code until they re-did the reverse engineering to make it work again.
With Interface builder and the package standard for software, software is becoming more, not less modifiable. You used to have to download ResEdit to mess around with a dialog in an app, now you can open up the nib in Interface Builder and fairly easily add options, menus and commands. You can even add entirely new languages as the strings are supposed to be kept seperate. That creates an entirely new category of software tweaking as people can add Romanian or Urdu whether the original app maker has a clue about these languages or not.
I tried writing a utility to keep an icon to show when I have mail. The SystemUIFramework that is used for DockExtras and MenuExtras is in fact private, which means that there is no usable header file against which to link an application. However, some intelligent hacker has created a SystemUIPlugin.h that works, but there is basically no documentation other than that file.
There is a public header in the AppKit framework (NSStatusItem.h) that will allow you to create an icon that is displayed in the menu bar while the application is running, but this isn't how Apple's icons (like battery, volume, etc.) work: they directly use the SystemUIFramework.
Reference:
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
I realize the fear that many Mac users have of applications that crash the system. Under UNIX, this propensity is greatly reduced if not eliminated.
Interface tweaks are most likely to crash the window manager i.e. the thing that draws the purdy pictures on the screen. This has happened on my production Mac, in 10.1.(whatever).
The BSD subsystem was still running.(I could ssh in.) but the machine might as well have completely crashed. I couldn't use it.
--- Evil robots don't kill people, Mad scientists kill people.
The Apple monitors are *not* incompatable with the rest of the PC world. The connector is based on a basic DVI connection and adds power and USB. You can get an adaptor from Apple themselves [apple.com]. And if you are considering spending $3500 certainly $150 is hardly a problem, as the entire package is still cheaper than most other LCD monitors.
The 23" HD monitors as they stand are incompatible with standard DVI cards (not to be confused with the 22" monitors, which are often, but not always, compatible, using standard DVI interfaces), requiring an external and troublesome adapter dongle to work at all. Even then, they do not function trouble-free. Interference occurs even on the digital signal through that irritating dongle as a result of the way Apple has coupled the power into the same interface. Apple would not guarantee that their $3500 monitor would work at all, and had it not worked I would have been unable to return it. Worse, the dongle, while it does convert Apple's proprietary interface to a standard DVI interface, doesn't work flawlessly, and any syncing issues which arise means you have three pieces of hardware (and one or more pieces of software, depending on the OS/Windowing system you are running) which you have to troubleshoot, rather than just the card and monitor. My experience with SGI screens and their proprietary interface to DVI conversion dongles suggests that the complexity of such situations goes up dramatically when a third entity (the converter dongle) enters the picture.
The Apple 23" screen is a bad choice for PC users, and Apple's belated regret at their marketing strategy is by no means mitigated by the converter dongle they offer. You are far better off paying an extra few hundred for the Samsung 24" monitor, which gives you an extra full inch of space, the same 1920x1200 resolution, Analog as well as digital DVI interfaces, and a couple of video interfaces as well in addition. Fully standards compliant, literally plug and play, without any need for troublesome dongles hanging between the card and the monitor, dongles which, I cannot stress enough, are as often as not responsible for syncing and other issues that can arise.
There are lots of good things about Apple, and my next laptop will likely be a powerbook of some kind running OS X and dual booting GNU/Linux, assuming Apple ever gets around to offering one with a DVD burner, but their decision to create Yet Another Proprietary Video Interface Which Must Be Converted To Standard DVI Via An External Device is really indefensible, particularly considering the fact that they should have learned the errors of such behavior from their own costly, past mistakes (repeatedly).
While I respectfully disagree with your defense of their proprietary monitor interface, I agree credit is due with respect to their standardizing on a FreeBSD-esque operating system (i.e. standard UNIX, making porting with other UNICES and GNU/Linux very easy) and their increasing use of standard components in other ways, including those you correctly cite, and for that they should be lauded. But in those cases where they revert to previous, very self-defeating (and to their customers or would-be customers profoundly irritating) behavior they should be equally harshly criticized.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The story on Wired reports that changing the appearance of the GUI has become more difficult with Mac OS X. Isn't it a little extreme to conclude that the whole OS can not be tweaked. If Aqua may not be reconfigured as easily as some wish it to be, Mac OS X is a UNIX operating system, that runs many open source programs, including XFree86, Gnome or KDE. And I have as much fun tweaking Mac OS X than I have tweaking Linux that run on the same iMac, even if I haven't changed the appearance of Aqua yet.
Can't tweak the interface? What a joke. For Pete's sake, we have the hooks to put rootless XFree86 on top of Aqua and run every Window manager under the sun.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Well, since you asked - Apple's DVI implementation is non-standard.
No, it isn't. The connector is unusual, but it's documented, and adapters that break out the USB and power signals are available. This is no different from when some vendors use four-pin FireWire cables instead of six-pin cables. You simply need an adapter cable.
They do support the standard physical and electrical connections, but that doesn't mean you can take just any generic PCI or AGP card meant for a PC, and use it in a Mac.
Sounds to me like some vendors' PCI cards are non-standard. This says nothing about Apple's PCI implementation.
Apple has come a long, long way since the "skinny Mac," in which every single component was proprietary, right down to the nonstandard screws used to fasten the top to the chassis.
Okay, I'm starting to understand your point of view now. When you say "non-standard," you really mean, "I've never heard of it." Torx T-10 and T-15 screws are very much standards; they're just different standards from the ones you're familiar with.
Yeah, themes. Love the fuck out of those. I also love the fact that I used to charge $125 everytime I had to "fix" someone's machine because they installed some stupid theme application like Kaleidafuck. Even with the introduction to Mac OS X, there were lame individuals who whined like little babies that they couldn't make thier Mac look like Windoze or some other aberation. You know what? I could give a shit if it were worth my time.
Yeah, I hacked around when OS X came out, changed my login window, blah, blah, blah. It was easy with a little mucking around and trial and error. It also taught me how to fix things if the OS started acting flaky (hooray for the ability to boot into single user mode, UNIX rawks!).
But come on people. The UI that Apple has created is that way for a reason. A common ground. A basic shell for all users, no matter how advanced or novice. Something that anyone could walk up to any Mac running OS X and know where the Applications Folder is located. They know where the System Preferences are.
And I would guess that by elimintaing or greatly reducing the ability of 3rd party hacks to futz with the UI and the system stability, the number or Bubba calls on the Phone Support lines was greatly reduced. I know how hard it is to talk to an "artist" or bozo Mac gimp who wants "free" support for thier Mac and you spend 2 hours on the phone with them trying to figure out what the fuck is the problem with thier machine and then after banging your head against the wall they mention they have some UI hack installed and wouldn't you know it, that's what's causing the whole problem to begin with.
Then there's the matter that Aqua is Apple's new trademark for OS X. They have to come to a consensus about any feature put into the UI and it has to be benficial to all aspects of the user experience. This is something Steve Jobs learned by watching Apple flounder during his years away and with his trials and errors at NeXT. I just watched some very old videos of Steve and his wonderous Reality Distortion Field that was in full effect even when he was at NeXT. And he's learned from many mistakes with the UI.
Another thing to realize is that Apple wants to try and teach you things about computers while you use them. I've heard about a million complaints from users new to OS X that don't understand why Apple won't let them move the System folder or change the hierarchy of the Applications Folder (you know, to "clean it up a little" or some shit). Apple is teaching us about shared computing. I think being able to walk up to a computer and know that any Application installed on the machine is located in one central place rather than nested 20 folders deep in some random folder called "Moo!". And to those lamers who whine about this, I have one thing to say. It's called "ALIASES" and you can put folders in your dock with "ALIASES" organized any way you wish.
Then there's the gimps who have to have thier favorite icon on all thier folders. Guess what. Remember how to change the icon in OS 9? It's exactly the same in 10.1 and up. Open the "Get Info" window, highlight the icon, select "Copy" (you're choice, use the edit menu or be all cool and shit and use the keyboard command), select the "Get Info" for the folder you want to change the icon for, and highlight the folder icon, then select "Paste". If you couldn't figure it out, I hope you feel like a complete jackass since you spent more time and energy complaining about this supposed "issue" rather than trying to figure it out for yourself. But I'm being way too mean to most Mac users. I'm showing great gobs of contempt for my fellow Apple users. But I am very busy wasting my time berating you for your own good, since you have so much time to spend kvetching about how Apple has mistreated you, the loyal followers of everything Apple. ARGH!
My brain is exploding with great piles of steaming loathing for the great empty pit that is the Mac Fanatic. Sorry, I love Apple. But it always makes me think of my favorite religious prayer. Lord Jesus, please save me from your followers.
Amen.
For those of you offended by this post, you have no understanding of the power of smeg.
Rotten apples are the only news or slant Wired has.
Just is another good example. Darwin is as open as ever and OS X? It never was. The Apple OS is proprietary but its BSD heart, Darwin, has continued its aggressive open source posture to the benefit of both Apple and the open source community.
Go to apple.com and see all the new stuff that they've got put up now for Open Darwin. You'll have to go to the Darwin site to get all the info and the downloads, but this Wired story.....they need to change their name to Cracked.