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Apple's OS X Leopard In Depth
jcatcw writes "Computerworld begins its Week of Leopard with an in-depth review and image gallery covering Apple's newest version of OS X. Is it worth the wait? Well, Yes. It trumps Vista, of course; the Finder, Quick Look and Cover Flow provide better functionality and eye candy; Time Machine is the biggest undelete ever and the restore function is one of the coolest things we've ever seen; it has iChat; and has lots of updates under the hood. The answer might be no if you're lacking in the hardware department - an FAQ on how to get ready for the new version will help."
Sure, Vista is great - if you hated the actually useful features that were promised for Longhorn that were stipped out, having your OS use fifteen frikkin gigabytes of space, a big performance downgrade, and DRM hooks all over the operating system as Microsoft puts the MPAA over you.
This is a feature that should be high on anyone's list: the ability to direct someone else to change system settings without having to give them a long GUI script along the lines of "Open this, click here, click there, this should say X, type Y". I just love being able to package up these types of changes into a command-line like that.
Even Windows 98 could do what you describe out of the box
Windows '98 = 1998
System (Mac OS) 7 = 1991 - but in fact, the multiple monitor support was in the Mac OS as early as 1986.
QuickDraw was based around a grid coordinate system, so you could place your two (or six, as I did once as a proof of concept with a Macintosh IIfx) monitors in any number of arrangements, instantly. Because the coordinate system was respected by anything that wrote to the screen using QuickDraw, only a very tiny fraction of apps had wonky behavior, such as always writing the top left corner of the window to 0,0 (some bad game ports did this).
Again, because of QuickDraw's flexibility and rather more enlightened design, you never had the very stupid behavior exhibited by Windows 98 and 2000 of dialog boxes that defaulted to the center of the screen, splitting the dialog among two displays. And you could place monitors in any configuration - even corner to corner if needed. The displays did not need to have identical resolution and bit-depth, as with 98 and 2000, nor did Mac users ever have to use a special video dual-head card simply to ensure that both video cards would work together, as I encountered many times on 2000.
I think the parent poster's point is proven - the Mac did multiple displays first and better. And while Windows has caught up in some respects, the Mac still does a better job of remembering window positions, etc. when moving from a laptop+large monitor to laptop display configuration.
How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to google for exactly how MANY developers Microsoft has versus how many apple has....but Microsoft had at least 5000 developers that worked on Windows Vista. While they must have lowered their standards in the last few years, originally microsoft was only hiring top graduates from top schools like MIT and CMU.
They have a gigantic number of some of the best people they can buy.
So why does their stuff suck so much by comparison to a small corporation? Apple cannot afford nearly the resources Microsoft has...I wouldn't be surprised if their OS X team had 1/5 the people.
I know that skill matters...but surely the top of the class people at Microsoft are no worse than the hippies at apple?
Another major issue with the shared menu bar is that half the time, the app I want to do something with isn't on "top" -- something which is non-obvious when the windows are spread out and not overlapping, but I've already gone up to the menu bar, and then have to go back down and foreground the app (or alt-tab), and then return to the menu bar. This notion of the "on top" application defeats the purpose of multiple and/or large monitors. With enough screen space, everything seems to be "on top".
Secondly, I don't have this problem of missing the menu bar at all. All of the forwarded X apps I use have the menu bar in the window and my experience is that they are easier to use because of that fact, not harder. As for why they're easier for me, I tend to look first, then travel. When I'm looking at something way off to the right -- easily two feet away from my physical focus -- I have to turn my head to look at the upper left corner after which I'll go there with the mouse. This is harder than simply continuing to look at the application already under my eyes' focus.
If you'll notice, I said Apple should offer window-bound menu bars as a choice. That way, people who don't work like I do can have things the old way, and I can have things organized conveniently for me. Offering a choice is certainly better than the one-size-fits-all, there-is-only-one-true-way system we have now.
Finally, after years of complaining, Apple has finally (re)introduced multiple desktops for those who want them. Apparently, choice is good. On that note, only middle-click-paste and window bound menus to go. Perhaps by 10.7.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
If that is your solution, I can rest my case.
Actually, this is exactly my job; I think it's even what my card says, minus the personal insults :-)
You only find this surprising because you're not used to it because not a lot of people who are responsible for UI on Windows and Linux actually take care of their responsibility. It's always easier to go with preferences, or with what the majority likes best. This is a cop-out, and UI designers should be ashamed of themselves if they don't have the cojones to stand up for their applications and implement the best solution.
Also, "the best solution" has got nothing to do with what I think. This is science; the best UI solution for any given issue can be found using proper application of theory (see Fitt's law), usability tests and UI iterations.