Slashdot Mirror
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.
Thats a misleading article.
.. right?), you still have choice.
They don't want you messing around with the functionality of the widgets. You know what? I agree with them.
Esp. since you can run other window managers under Darwin (uh
And this article says nothing about them trying to prevent the kind of 'tweaking' most Wintel users use - namely, performance, setup, etc.
I don't have any problems with Apple trying to kill utilities that tweak the UI. There's still choice, and there wasn't in OS9.
As for Jobs saying, "Themes are dead", is he on crack? Or by dead, does he mean, "They're dead, because I killed them on this platform."?
"Old man yells at systemd"
I've used computers running MacOS from 6 through X. One thing that always made me cringe when I started up a pre-OS-X Mac was the sight of all those little extensions loading away, piling one on top of the other into a giant pyramid. Sometimes things worked okay, but often they didn't. The MacOS extensions were reminiscent of the old TSR programs under DOS -- when you had a bunch of them, things became flaky.
Given Apple's desire to have a more stable OS, not to mention their rigid UI approach, is it really that surprising that they don't want to go down the old Extensions road?
While I'm sympathetic to those who want to tweak OS X, my teeth are set on edge by the phrases chosen by those who are reverse-engineering the hidden APIs. "They're stifling innovation!" Translation: "They're not letting me do what I want to do!"
Were Apple breaking documented and open APIs, then you'd really have something to get up in arms about. As it is, if you're using undocumented APIs, expect them to change. You're going to be in the same land that all of us TSR writers of the 1980s were in: you'll have to modify your code each and every time a new OS version ships.
If Apple was selling a skinning program that allowed users to change their desktop appearance, and there were skinning apps in direct competition with Apple's apps, then yes, this would be a similar situation, especially if Apple's skinner continued to work, and the third party apps didn't.
However, Apple isn't in competition with the 3rd party developers - it's just not supporting them, either. It's a choice that I personally think will end up shooting Apple in the foot - but in no way is it the same as the "hidden API" stuff that was going on at Microsoft
InThane
"I know a lot of artists; I sort of move in a circle of friends who are all artists of one kind or another. Know how many of them like tweaking their Macs? None."
I'm not sure I agree with that. I had an artist friend that was always monopolizing the Mac in art class. Much to our dismay, he set the system font to a font he created by hand. Unfortunately, I don't know many people with Macs so I can't really comment on more than that one guy. [i]"One example doesn't reflect the whole world"[/i]. The thing is, his art was his passion. He found an avenue to express himself on that machine and he did. I know quite a few non-Mac artists that have done all kinds of fun graphic stuff to their computers. (i.e. customized Winamp Skins, etc...)
Am I right and you're wrong? No, I'm not saying that. In composing this post I realized that there may be a difference between your artists and mine: Are your Mac friends using Macs where they work? If so, I'd say there's a big difference.
The computer you use for work benefits from not being messed with too much. You never know when you'll get a new computer and have to start over. You never know when somebody else will want to use your computer. And you [i]certainly[/i] never know when a tweak could corrupt and endanger your machine.
Apple may have a point. If they're smart, though, they'll leave the door open so that people who want to sweep in and do their tweaks can do so easily. I've done lots of UI tweaking on my machine (heh it's fun watching other people use my computer) and the benefits have been enormous. I'd hate to have my workflow disrupted.
Discussions of interface issues often make for hot news items and even hotter discussion, but are they really relevant?
I appreciate the even-handed approach of your article, balancing the frustration of tweakers with the reality of developing a stable, attractive, and easy-to-use operating system. But, as a student looking towards Human Computer Interaction as a specialization and immersed in the literature of the field, it's safe to say that no interface will please 100% of the audience. Those out to tweak endlessly fall into a minority that no interface designer can possibly account for without going insane, just as a scientist can't possibly account for all the potential variables and random factors in an experiment.
In the artificial, "closed system" of interface design, the people with the free time and inclination to endlessly modify are always going to be unsatisfied. Is this newsworthy? A number of application developers have put out tools that enhance and work with OS X to rave reviews. There are a number of successful interface tweaks out there (my iBook has a fully transparent dock, for example). And, as someone who used to theme and skin, figuring out how to modify a closed program is part of the fun.
I won't stick by Apple 100% on all of their decisions like some Mac users (after all, I've spent the last 6 years in Linux/*nix). But I will say that if you're going to do an article that more than suggests to Apple what to do and where to go, there are far more pressing issues than letting skinning nuts with too much free time make Aqua look like rusted clockwork, or whathaveyou.
Just my $.02.
Exactly. OS X is still very much under construction - many regard 10.2 as the first version that is truly ready for primetime. I think the code behind the interface may actually be in a stronger state of flux than the rest of the system - consider the changes necessary to get to an incredible interface enhancement like Quartz Extreme from the intolerably slow one in 10.0! Nor is Apple's tweaking likely to stop here. I've heard at least one rumor that they are working on another iDevice (not a pda, but not a computer apparently) capable of running cocoa apps with only a simple recompile. Such a device would certainly involve substantially altered interface code, which could use standard or stripped down .nib files.
Obviously I can't verify the veracity of the rumor, but I can make these observations: 1) By keeping those APIs private, Apple is quietly trying to keep people from messing with what they consider low-level code that they probably have plans for, and 2) based on that assumption Apple is probably not concerned about themers like Kaliedescope, but major commercial programs messing with that code within an application a) thus shooting themselves in the foot with major revisions to/new versions of those APIs and potentially abandoning the platform b) lazily foisting distinctly counter-intuitive non-apple interfaces designed for another platform, or c) interfering with the proper functioning of other programs.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I resent that. I used to be a hardcore linux zealot. Hell, I ran linux througout university and sometime thereafter, from about 1996 until 2001. Something happened once I graduated and got experience though, all of a sudden, my time wasn't free, and messing with linux to get it "just right" started to get EXPENSIVE. A day or two of playing to get a digital camera or mp3 player working all of a sudden costs me more than the gadget in question.
:-)
Now, I use a tibook for my primary machine, along with Solaris, linux, BSD and Windows 2000. Most of the EDA industry - designers of the toys we love - runs on Windows 2000. With the latest releases from Mentor Graphics, we've completely swtiched to Windows 2000 and Linux in the lab. But those machines do one thing, they are TOOLS. Just like the mac is a tool. It just happens to be a better tool (for me) to do most computing chores. Project builder is really nice. If something new that's even better comes along, I'll switch to that.
It really does just work. Apple has themselves a real winner here, but luck or design. The perfect home for open source software, oh, the irony.
Of course, that's just because I don't have time to be a zealot anymore. So maybe you're right.
..don't panic
If anyone out there has a good explanation as to why a themable interface is more powerfull or easy to use than a consistent, static interface, I would love to read it.
Personally, I think themed interfaces are the worst idea since... well I can't think of anything that comes close. For an interface to be usefull, and trusted by it's audience, it has to be predictable.
Why does my music player look completely different than my web browser or my word processor? I guess it kinda looks cool in a screenshot by itself. But I embrace computers in my life to get stuff done, rather than to post slick screen shots. Exploring and customising a new computer or software package can be fun, but for most people it's not the end goal of having a computer.
I can see how some OSX users on older hardware would like to be able to turn off text smoothing and gain a little speed. UI options for hardware compatibility or for people with low vision are fine, but "themes" as we think of them today have to go.
Themes basically exist for two reasons (warning: opinions)
In other words, UI designers lack leadership, and users crave consistency.
A few years ago, it was practically impossible to sit down at a friends X11 workstation and know what any of the keymappings were or how the menus worked, or even start a program. It's gotten much better now with most people using either KDE or Gnome, but massive improvements are needed before free software will be as easy to pick up and use as OSX and Windows are.
RH's choise to theme KDE and Gnome similarly was inspired, as are Steve Jobs' comments on themes. Thanks guys, keep it up!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For the moment, however, there are a few malcontents that had a lot invested in the old way of doing things (the Kaliedescope folks) and just want to raise a stink because their sacred cow has been gored. The fact that Wired is giving them an audience simply underscores their journalistic calibre.
Anyone who really wants to customize the appearance of their OS X windows and controls can still do so. In fact, it is far easier in OS X than it was in classic Mac OS: In OS X, many of the window and control theme elements are stored as simple PDFs or TIFFs, somewhere in the /System hierarchy. All it takes to modify the appearance of things is to replace those PDFs or TIFFs, and, possibly, edit a .plist or two. Compare this to classic, where you had to write a bunch of code to insert your custom PICTs, MDEFs, CDEFs, and WDEFs into the system at runtime, and it's hard to see what anyone is griping about.