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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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Apple is trying to close access to UI tweaking, not the OS.
Keeping a standard user interface makes it easier for people to move from computer to computer. There's nothing that irks me more than working on a different computer at the office, and some wiseacre has removed the menus from MSIE.
Besides, most Kaleidoscope interfaces were ugly as sin....
ScienceSeeker.org
Ok here's the deal: There are private APIs in OSX. They are undocumented and marked that way- these frameworks are in the private- frameworks folder.
Apple isn't deliberately breaking peoples products, it is changing internal APIs.
Many of these APIs start out internal and when they are ready for prime time, become public, supported, documented, standard APIs.
Until then, you use one and it doesn't work in the next rev, its your own damn fault.
And this is the right way for things to be- OS X is far more theme friendly than any other OS- hell the graphical eliments are all easily accessible pdf or tiff files and easy to replace. Want a different looking dock? Trivial. Want a different looking login window? no problem.
But the areas where things can cause instability in the OS should not be left wide open for people to change in an uncontrolled manner.
Quicktime has an API for skinning it. MAYBE Apple will release one for OS X, but if they are smart, they won't.
Standardized controls are what makes OS X much easier for newbies to use than other operating systems.
Let people change the look of their computer, but not the feel. That's the right strategy and the one apple seems to be following.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Wired has truely become a worthless source of factual information...
"For example, the API that allows for custom menus and icons on the right side of the top menu bar, next to the clock, prohibits all but Apple-approved menu items. "
Funny, I'm running Jaguar and have both LaunchBar and FuzzyClock running just fine in my menu bar...
I can't speak for all menu-apps but I don't think this article really speaks the truth.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Nearly everybody must realize by now that such statements are usually a load of shit. Most of you will never buy a Mac, or switch to a Linux desktop, no matter what, because Windows is all you know, and all you care to know. You don't want to invest the added cost of a Mac (or the added effort of Linux) to discover if their virtues are worth it. You are lazy and groping for excuses.
Just fess up. You don't like Macs, you don't want a Mac, you will not buy a Mac. That's fine. Use whatever the fuck you want, just stop with the constant whining about features that you (or some underpaid web journalist) think are missing from the platform.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. The skin resource file for OS X (even 10.2) is understood and people continute to "skin" 10.2 (Keildoscope author not with standing). The same 3rd GUI apps for OS 9 are available for for 10.2. I've talked to people who hide their dock and use OTHER apps with other functionality. So there is no Apple sanctioned "Appearance Manager" in 10.2. Frankly, I would say, Apple only grudging supported the Appearance Manager, after pulling their own skins from 8.x after the beta process.
The problem is that no developer has steped up to plate to make a good PreferencePane for Skining and Icon changing. There is a difference between saying it's not possible and noone has bother to make a good app to do it.
I would go with the latter.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Apple is the only company that makes Apple computers and Apple software. Ford is the only company that makes Ford automobiles and parts. Neither is a monopoly in their industries. There are lots of other people willing to sell you PC's, operating systems, and cars.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It's easy to customize the interface when the system provides a mechanism for patching any system call and offers no memory protection. You can hook yourself right into the UI code and do whatever you want. Of course Apple doesn't want to support this sort of thing anymore: it practically guarantees instability. INITs were always hard to do correctly, and I'm glad to see them go even if it does mean it's harder to customize the UI.
I don't blame Apple for messing with internal API calls. If I were in their shoes, I'd deliberately break anything that used undocumented calls in every release. This keeps hack developers on their toes, as they are forced to upgrade their OS and re-test their hacks for every release; there's no more of this "well, it worked back in 1987 on my Mac SE, so it should run fine on my G3 using OS 9.1" crap Mac users have been living with for so many years. It also preserves Apple's ability to change the OS implementation internally; if they leave undocumented APIs static for too long, developers will start to take them for granted and users will complain when Apple breaks them. Better to break them on purpose and prevent anyone from getting too comfortable.
-Mars
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"
Anyhow, if the Slashdot crowd wants to get under the hood and tinker, they can run BSD with Darwin, and not run MacOS or Aqua. Apple never pretended that Aqua was going to be anything but a proprietary piece of software.
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You know, apple.slashdot.org should redesign the graphics on their site, just for spite. ;)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Hardware tweaks are very difficult though - no conventional changable BIOS. How are hardware upgrades done on Macs?
They're tough. You have to do a really complex installation process known in Mac circles as "plugging the fucking thing in."
Yes, but this is the same company looking to make itself accessable to artist, etc, who want to display their creativity. Now they are going to lock it down so that everyone's Apple looks the same?
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.
See, to the creative person, a Mac is just a tool. It's like a paintbrush or a typewriter or a videotape deck. Nobody wastes time and energy rearranging the buttons on their tape deck, or changing the way their pencil works. It's a tool, and you use it so you can get the real art done.
The tool should be effective, simple, and reliable, in that order.
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.
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.
"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.
Can you say "double standard"? When Microsoft has undocumented, private, internal APIs, everyone cries "Foul!" and accuses them of hiding these APIs from developers.
You're right, you don't get it. The difference is that Microsoft uses undocumented APIs in their products that are sold outside of windows, while other application vendors don't get the benifit of those APIs. Apple's undocumented APIs are internal to the OS, and they don't use them in software that they sell in competition with third party application vendors. If an API is undocumented because it's internal to the OS it's OK, but if it's undocumented to give you an edge over other application vendors then it's wrong.
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.
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.
George Bernard Shaw, and I don't think he had turning all of your Mac icons into pictures of Ellen Feiss in mind.
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?
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. 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.
Apple in recent years has gone to great lengths to use standards, realizing that they cannot make Apple Bus and AppleTalk etc. and expect companies to design hardware that works with their proprietary protocol.
In fact I'm hard pressed to think of a single proprietary protocol or otherwise that is in use in any modern mac. USB, Firewire, ATA, standard SDRAM, DVI, TCP/IP, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 802.11b, etc.
Not trying to say that Apple doesn't do dumb things, but I think they've gotten a lot smarter in the last few years, and I think its worth giving them credit where credit is due.
Spyky
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.