Tog Takes on Mac OS X 10.3

Rick Zeman writes "Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini, founder of Apple's Human Interface Group years ago, has finally pointed his electrons to Mac OS X 10.3. He's been dormant for while, and hasn't said anything since the early days of Mac OS X. His new articles include 'Panther: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' and 'The Top Nine Reasons why the Dock Sucks,' all coming from A Guy Who Knows."

Comments

Two simple changes to improve the dock

[ikewillis]

1. Make it lockable
2. When icons are dragged off the dock, instead of going *poof* they should be moved to the desktop, unless they are dragged into the trash (and of course, the trash can't be removed)

Re:Two simple changes to improve the dock

[wankledot]

The problem with that is the dock icons can represent at least five different things:

Running applications, non-running applications, folders, files, and open windows (minimized.)

So by moving things to the desktop... what are you asking it to do? Move the application? create an alias? move a window to the desktop (can't really do that.) move a document to the desktop? a folder?

Also, you can drag a dock item off to somewhere other than the desktop, such as a document or application window.

A fundamental idea of the dock is that it's not the actual file/program/window. It is just a representation of it, manipulating the dock icon of an object does not actually move, delete, edit, etc. the object. making the dock affect the actual item makes it dangerously powerful.

Re:Two simple changes to improve the dock

[oscast]

"If you notice in Windows XP, you can't change the size of the taskbar"

When items get added to it... something's got to give. You either need to make the items smaller or show less image data. Apple chose the wiser of the two options before it. The ability to lock the dock would be a step backwards IMHO.

"For the OS X dock this would be a good feature beacuse it is easy to accidentally remove programs from the dock by slightly dragging the mouse when you double click"

You don't double click items in the dock to launch/activate them. Its all single-click. Second, you have to drag an item relatively far outside the dock to remove it. If you slightly move it... (as per your analogy) the item snaps back to its origional position.

"and it is easy to change the size of the dock by accidentally dragging the mouse on the border."

You don't resize the dock by dragging the mouse on its border. You have to command-click the line-seperator and drag... (a combination you wouldn't be using otherwise when at the dock and so it makes the chance of accidentally re-sizing the dock almost impossible.

Re:Two simple changes to improve the dock

[daeley]

Enter in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning end
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation right


Then restart the Dock. Enjoy!

Slashdotted...

[signingis]

That's what you get for talking bad about OS X. Punkass.

Mirror

[delta407]

After 1 comment, the site is definitely very slow, but I managed to get a mirror before the server went down in flames.

• Homepage
• Panther review

The Dock Sucking, and how it doesn't suck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I find this curious. I've been told by quite a few people (some of whom use OSX, some who don't) and many who're opinionated about it state it as -fact-.

"The Dock Sucks trust me I know, the KDE/Windows/BeOS/AmigaOS solution is better."

Now, that's well and good for them. Really good in fact, that they have the choice between one thing and the other. Personally, I find the dock simple, transparent, to me it sits invisibly, I never notice I'm using it, and it performs admirably. For others obviously, it's sucky. Duh. we're not all clones.

But to say, as many do, "This is why it sucks and why X, Y or Z is better and your opinion is wrong" is priceless, when clearly for me that isn't the case. It's like saying "You're such a fuckwit if you think Chocolate is better than caramel, here's why"

(Just so y'all know, when it comes to MY computing experience I do like to go with what works for me, and I WILL be opinionated about what works for me)

Re:The Dock Sucking, and how it doesn't suck.

[Phrogz]

That's the thing about HCI people. They're part of an entire field devoted to telling you that your opinion is wrong.

Or, as the joke goes:

"Give an HCI person a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach an HCI person how to fish, and he'll give you a Visio diagram detailing why your way is all wrong." :)

Re:Dock

[oscast]

"All documents look the same" Um, no they don't. "But for the most part he is right. All documents look the same, no tagging, trash can in the dock, dragging from the dock erases what you drag. It's dangerous." No it doesn't. Dragging to the dock creates an alias (shortcut for you Windows users). Dragging away from the dock simply d-letes the alias

I like OS X's interface

[flabbergast]

*putting my flame proof jacket on* I like OS X's user interface, and I hated OS 9's user interface. I bought my iBook because OS X is based on FreeBSD (and I need a shell prompt and assorted other goodies), but I enjoy the user interface now that I've had time to adjust.

I think most of the problem is centered around "But the Dock is stupid because OS 9 did this instead." We have a natural tendency to resist change, and Finder and the Dock are huge changes to the Mac interface.

And yes, I did RTFA, and I do agree that there are some missteps (like all the Dock widgets looking the same) but a lot of the complaints here are "OS 9 is better! OS X sux!"

Re:Finder

[jared_hanson]

I find the new Finder (10.3) to be better and actually take less space.

In Jaguar, I had to customize the toolbar to put buttons for my Documents, Pictures, Music, etc folders. This made the finder require more room vertically and horizontally. (I could save the horizontal space by clicking the button which shows a fly out menu of hidden tool buttons, but I don't like that)

Now, in Panther, it actually takes less space vertically and horizontally. The vertical space comes from the fact that the toolbar buttons are smaller in size. And, I don't have to have 5 different buttons taking up horizontal room for my most used folders. Those go in a convienient sidebar for access.

Granted, the folder sidebar may take up horizontal room if you don't use it much, but Apple is pushing widescreen displays, so it makes more sense to use horizontal area than vertical area. The finder does this well.

Safari's hidden feature imports bookmarks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tog writes "The same problem is plaguing the Safari browser. You can't elect to import bookmarks into Safari, and there's no way to get them back out. No corporation would support a single-source supplier, and no individual should either"

There's a hidden Safari feature which allows you to import bookmarks ...

Type the following command in Terminal (while Safari is NOT running):

Quit Safari. Enter the following command in Terminal ...

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Launch Safari -- you'll have a Debug menu added to the application's bar. Amongst the Debug menu options are two ways to import bookmarks.

To get rid of Debug, quit Safari and enter the following command in Terminal ...

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 0

"As crisp as 9.2.2"?

[tholomyes]

In the article he claims that Panther is as "crisp... as OS 9.2.2". In my experience, 9.2.x was just kludged together to make it forwards-compatible with OS X, and introduced a lot of undesirable behavior.

In fact, I found this to be true with MacOS 9, period. 8.5 seemed a lot more stable and user-friendly. What did 9 have that 8.5 didn't?

My only problem with the Dock is dragging, say, 20 or 30 picture files on to Preview so you can look through them all; if you miss the Preview icon and the button slips-- WHAM!-- 20 more icons added to the Dock. Well, that and accidentally clicking on a program that takes a while to boot.