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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."
Maybe the guy at Computerworld could give us seeded developers a copy of the GM before release. Apple sure didn't bother.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Yes. It trumps Vista, of course
Is that really a big accomplishment? I mean, really? XP trumps Vista.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Doesn't look like they got the GM. Their dock is on the side and isn't sporting the revised look.
Does anyone know what holds MS back from adding the Multiple Desktop feature? I know it can be had with 3rd party software, however last time I used one it really slowed down my machine and caused some crashes.
The lack of such a feature that has been around for eons in the Unix/Linux world drives me crazy!
This is definitely on my list to buy. First looks seem to be positive. I read through this and found some features and touches to look forward to: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/liveblog/leopard-liveblog-the-first-two-hours-315093.php I'm personally excited about the changes under the hood with respect to multithreading as this is purported to take advantage of multicore and multiprocessor hardware even more than Tiger. This could be the best OS X yet, if not the best OS ever. :)
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
Why is it that any product made by Apple is automatically the most super-fantastic thing ever?
Of all of the new features of Leopard, I really cannot appreciate the addition of translucency to the menu bar. As a long time Mac user this really seems like one of those "because we can" features rather than it making any sense.
In depth for sure. Balls deep.
I'd like to see what they've done with Spotlight - if they've just added boolean search capabilities, or if they've made it even more central to using your computer (for example, make it easier to use as an application launcher).
Pah. Call me when John Siracusa has posted his in-depth review up over at ars.
Also, single-page link for the ComputerWorld Article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043838
There are 300+ of them
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043838 all on one page print link
It trumps Vista, of course;
The above indicates:
1) Unbiased balanced opinion (and adverbs, such as "of course")
2) Fanboy
3) Troll
4) Shill
5) Uh, nm I have karma to burn.
The difference between Mac and PC is like the difference between driving an automatic and a manual. Mac's are easy and cool to use, pc's give you some more power and are more difficult.
My secretary uses a macintosh. It's pretty neat. Every time she's asks me to fix it I laugh to myself a little. It is a Fischer Price PC.
If history was different, I might even prefer the apple guys to dominate the OS market. Well, it doesn't work that way.
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
Someone has got to take the time machine visualizer and change the background image to Goatse :D
What ever happened to those "extra features" Steve promised way back when Leopard was announced?
Can they please please please rewrite the Finder and the associated Open/Save controls from scratch? Managing files on OS X feels so awkward compared to every other OS out there. Hopefully the leopard finder will at the very least be properly multithreaded.
That said, I wasn't terribly excited for Leopard, as I had no real interest in Time Machine or the other "blockbuster" features. However, looking over the official feature list reveals some tantalizing treats. There are some especially nice developer/unix features -- DTrace, extensive support for Ruby, and 'bridges' to allow Ruby and Python apps to enjoy Cocoa and the OSX scripting interfaces. The Cocoa bridges should be immediately drool-inducing to Ruby and Python developers.
It's not in the list, but perhaps the biggest technological advance (in my opinion) is that Leopard will supposedly be completely resolution-independent, paving the way for very-high-resolution displays.
Looking to the future, Apple's next big move *needs* to be the implementation of a true metadata filesystem (preferably using ZFS). They can't let Microsoft beat them to it, and ZFS is simply too cool to pass up.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I would sure as hell take KDE 3.5 over any Windows environment.
Also something must be wrong with the news post, how can finder be better than anything?
"An FAQ"? "An FAQ?" What, was this dictated by a duck? There are still people out there on the net that don't know that "FAQ" is not pronounced "eff-ay-cue"? It's pronounced "fack"!
The 2D dock can be enabled using the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
UltraMon may be slow to develop Vista support (really it seems like UltraMon is a 1 man show & the forums are harsh on that 1 man ... killing his motivation I assume).
But UltraMon for XP kicks ass.
Mostly UltraMon "just works" Once you setup a few things, it really just stays out of your way.
How the Hell did MSFT miss a SmartTaskbar on the non-primary monitors?
How the Hell did MSFT miss "open in monitor X" options for shortcuts?
How the Hell did they miss the other few things UltraMon does so well.
The only feature UltraMon is missing is found in Shove-It an old Win9x program (which still works, but has trivial multi-monitor issues).
Tech-Recipes got a copy. Here are their first 20 tutorials about the new features of Leopard.
If you prefer the old dock style, Mac OS X Hints has that tutorial now as well.
Anybody going for a T-shirt tomorrow?
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.
This is a real easy-to-fix interface improvement. From the results list, support right-clicking contextual finder menu. When I want to right-click > Open With > My favorite application, I can't do it directly in Spotlight. I have to right-click > Reveal in Finder > right-click > Open With > My favorite application.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Subject says it all.
A quick question for those of you who have been running the Leopard betas... will I need to dedicate an entire drive (or partition) for Time Machine's exclusive use, or is it possible/okay to tell Time Machine to put its data into a subdirectory inside a drive/partition that is also used for storing other data?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Mac users: Why are you guys so quick to buy minor point releases (ie. bug fixes and a few little extras thrown in) of your OS rather than demand that they be freely available like Windows? OSX was a major point release for MacOS, like XP was for Windows, yet, you've had to pay for what amounts to "service packs" in the world of Windows. Every time Apple fixes stuff with their minor point releases, you purchase it (with the lone exception of 10.1, which Apple gave away free of charge). When M$ fixes stuff, we download it (after going through the WGA crap), install it, and are on our merry way without dropping so much as a nickel on it.
I'm not trying to start a fight here, I really want to know the rationale behind purchasing bug fixes. Yeah, they slip a few goodies in for you (which M$ did for us with XP SP2), but is it really worth yet another $129???
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Please give up on your crappy 2.5D desktops. Give me a cube to spin around and I might be excited. Let me make it a dodecahedron and I'll be impressed.
You're working too hard. You hoped to jump into a fanboi fray, and all you can do is dis someone's choice of a correct article to describe an abbreviated word.
Dude, you're losing it. Go play some XBox, quick, before you implode!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Sorry all you Bill fanbois...
Amen brotha! The Ars article on OS X 10.4 was superb quality. Between the Ars articles and the stuff on kernelthread, there really isn't anything left to learn about Mac OS X without going into the source code and manpages. (It was really strange to be tracking down a resource fork bug in tar and see John Gilmore's copyright in the source)
It makes a directory for itself on the root of the drive, no partitioning needed. :)
okay, so I'm just trolling here - but you know it's a perfectly good question. The 'map of' feature for addresses - can that be pointed at, say, Microsoft's map servers? Or map24? Or whoever, for that matter?
Leopard: Map Any Address in Google Maps
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2652/leopard_map_any_address_in_google_maps
Anyone know of a fairly in-depth review of the new Japanese translation/converstion features that I saw in the feature list? If the converter is better than Microsoft IME in Vista I may just end up purchasing a MacBook in the near future.
Because Apple's point releases are called 10.x.y, not 10.x. For instance, Tiger, which is 10.4, was released in April 2005, swiftly followed by 10.4.1, 10.4.2, etc, all the way up to 10.4.10 (the current version) and 10.4.11 (probably the last version, due probably tomorrow). These 'point point' releases provide the 'bug fixes and a few little extras thrown in' that you describe, and are free, automatic downloads through Software Update. It's these 'point point' releases that are equivalent to Microsoft's Service Packs. Leopard, 10.5, isn't a 'point release' at all in anything other than name. The only reason it's called 10.5 and not OS XV is because Apple like having the X/Ten play on words. Y'know, it's after OS 9, but it's also UNIX, ho ho ho. A quick run through http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html will show you that Leopard consists of much more than 'bug fixes and a few little extras thrown in', such as a completely new backup system, redesigned and simplified system preferences, a completely rewritten scheduler, full 64-bit architecture, and a whole lot more.
Bear in mind that numbering schemes are simply marketing and entirely arbitrary.
This news story was brought to you by the friends of Steve Jobs.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I have not used it myself, but from what I understand, the only restriction is that Time Machine will not put its data on a boot partition -- otherwise, you can put it on any partition or drive you want (even network drives), and it's ok if there is other data there, too.
So let's hear it...
Any of you gotten it to install on a 800MHz or less G4 yet? How's it run compared to Tiger on the same hardware? Compared to Tiger how does it do on a 1GB system? I remember when I upgraded grandpa's iMac G4 from Panther to Tiger telling him it would be much faster, it turned into a dog until I upgraded his RAM, then it was noticeably faster than before. So how much RAM will I need for Leopard to make an Intel Mac faster rather than slower?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I don't get it, I have all of those features on my Linux box with couple of tweaks. And guess what, its open source and it costs nothing.
wtf is everyone so excited about mac?
Its just another propriatery crap os for propriatery crap hardware. Its even worse than windows (hey, at least windows will run on any beige box meaning that I don't have to pay for expensieve hardware and all the apps will run on it)!
really, wtf mate?
resolution independence was supposed to be one of the big features of leopard way back when it was initially announced but it's not been mentioned in the last year or so of "previews". what the hell happened to it? I was really looking forward to having an insanely high resolution resulting in everything being far sharper, instead of just smaller.
TIAEAE!
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?
I don't consider Lisa to be a boner. A strong argument can be made that without the work done on Lisa we wouldn't have the Mac, OR Windows for matter. At least in their present forms and on the same timeline.
Yes, $10,000 per system was probably a bit strong... but consider that a good computer at the time would still set you back $5,000, that hard drives were so expensive they were considered only for workgroup solutions, and that Xerox expected people to pony up one HUNDRED thousand dollars for a Star system.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It was on page B1 of the print edition today.
Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal charges for their online content, but in brief Walter S. Mossberg said that OS X: Leopard is faster and easier than Vista and beats Microsoft, in addition to being more secure.
He particularly liked Time Machine (automatically backs up your entire computer in the background), Cover Flow and Quick Look (so you can view file contents without opening programs), and the built in networking and remote access features.
The only thing he wasn't as excited by was the menu bar being translucent, since if you had a dark screen image it was sometimes hard to see.
It can also coexist with Linux and has excellent backwards compatibility (Vista only got Fair for backwards compatibility).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am running Leopard and so far it will only allow my external drive. On top of that it wanted enough free space to backup my entire macbook. So time machine on the root drive will likely require at 2x more drive space then you actually intend to use.
If you're going to come in AC, be ready to jump up and hit like a man. There's acres of open fanboi target in here, and you took a swing at the drapes.
"If your computer doesn't meet those specs, it's time to upgrade your hardware or stick with Tiger for now. And if you're still running Mac "Classic" OS apps, forget it. Leopard drops support for what was once Mac OS 9."
So when Vista needs beefier hardware and some Windows 98 apps are broken on it, the reason is because Microsoft sucks and it's their fault for requiring a current computer to run their current OS. But when Leopard needs beefier specs, it's the user's fault they haven't upgraded by now and it's all taken in stride.
I get it. Makes total sense.
The defaults command is nothing new, that's been a part of OS X from the beginning.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Consider: there's a group in the geek population that can't stand to see someone else excited about something. Leopard? Cute. Tiger was ok. Jaguar was just fine.
.93 kernel from the Finnish kid. There wasn't much in between. Now there's choices.
This is Apple stealing thunder from Microsoft. I like it when people are jazzed. So many people are looking down their noses at software these days, it's nice to see some smiles.
There's the Windows brigade, the BSD cowbois and cowgirlz, and the Ubuntu GutzeeGibbonsGoonz, and so on. Ten years ago, you could pretty much do Windows or perhaps that dicey
But the grammar goons never sleep. It gets worse when you feed them with loads of caffiene, from coffeedrugz or 64ozMondoCokez. Add in some sugar, and they just cannot leap over the hurdle of a possible grammar mistake, even tho the targets are standing up everywhere, the weapon has 500 rounds in it, and the targets aren't hardly moving. It makes one groan.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
OSX and windows are not in competition except for a minuscule segment of the market. It is therefore a minuscule statement to say that one trumps the other.
For every person you know switching to a mac, you know 20 more who never will due to their being way too good in windows. Be honest.
You can eat the pavement pizza at the bus stop for free. I'd rather pay a professional chef.
i still have a 10.1.5 machine and a 10.3.9 machine... at this rate, i won't need to upgrade until 10.7!
and honestly, i really haven't seen anything in Leopard (from the review) that makes me want to pop for a new box... i'm kinda afraid of breaking what's working now...
Yes, just pointing out how useful a feature it is. Is such a command present in Windows or Unix, or is it simply a matter of such a thing needing to exist from the beginning so that (almost) every program will use a standard format for settings (XML in Apple's case)?
Unlike my general experience with OS X, I've been having to reboot my dual G4 desktop every other day for the past week. I've repaired the disk via the install disk, but the lock up are still happening. Since Leopard is coming out this week, I've bought a new HD to install on and will try the migration assistant.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
I was thinking about picking this up tomorrow evening, but I was first curious to know if it had any new anti-piracy features like Vista? Is there any activation/mandatory phoning home of any kind? Is there anything preventing me from installing it on more than one computer (I do not intend to, but anything that does this is likely to prevent some fraction of people from using it legally). Are there any new MPAA/RIAA-oriented features in it similar to Vista's protected video path?
I only want to buy this thing if it's a step forward from 10.4.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
The new 3D dock skin doesn't apply when the dock is on the side, since there were "vertigo" complaints among beta testers.
So aside from the usual Apple glitzy restore shell with the hypnotic new desktop with a deep-space background image, complete with moving stars and a spiral galaxy, does Time Machine actually do anything more than, say, Acronis True Image?
Da Blog
Different syntax, but controlling an App's settings via command line was a feature during the glory days of NeXTstep... Egad, fifteen years ago!
Face it, Fisher Price is apt.
only if you have to read each letter individually like a remedial child ...
try hard and you can run the letters together faster and faster to make to word like they teach you:
ff..ah..cue
ff.ah.cue
ffahcue
ffackcu
facku
fucku
fuckyou
FUCK YOU - see how that works?
There are none listed. There are references to signed applications but they don't seem to be a requirement, nor are signed drivers, and they disabled by default the Input Manager mechanism, out of some false idea that this improves security... but you can enable it if you choose to ignore their oddly phrased warning dialog.
Let these videos show you what the parent mean, they kind of explains the difference of Steve Jobs vs Ballmer quite good:
:D
:)
Jobs and mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo
Ballmer and Win 1.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
Pick your flavour
Regarding small vs large teams, a good example of this may be the development of DragonFlyBSDs Hammer filesystem vs Suns ZFS, we'll see how fast Hammer gets done thought
If you *must* try it, see if OSx86 runs, but believe me, you will NOT be getting the "full experience"...
Remember that if you get a Mac, you can always run Windows at full speed on it. If you get a Windows crippletop, you're stuck with Windows (and Linux, if it will even work with the wireless card, snark).
I've used both for a long time and I say go for it. The seesaw is about to tip the other way...
It amuses me that 90% of the comments here that are above my minimum-score filter are intelligent retorts to completely unfounded or inaccurate Apple slams.
This is like a testament to a new phenomenon- battered-user syndrome. You won't get a divorce because you've already invested so much...
Apple is symbolically "removing the tire from the wheel" with the X in OS X.
Sure, they still number it 10.5 after the X. The "X" is there to psychologically step between you, the OS, the version number, and the sense of "product".
They are "separating the wheel and tube from the rim", if you will.
Once they liberate the tube and tire, they'll start mounting them in different configurations. On the iPhone, on the iTablet, in the BMW and the Smart..
Steve is secretive and shrewd, but not without reason.
Ther is a bit of a double standard, yes, but dropping support for OS 9 isn't like droping support for Windows 98. The Win32 API in Vista is basically and ancestor of the Win32 API in Vista. OS 9 apps, on the other hand, are a whole different kettle of fish.
OS 9 wasn't a modern operating system. As an OS it was, in many ways, decades behind Windows 98. The OS 9 API was based on a model where memory management and scheduling by the OS simply didn't happen... the application got a chunk of REAL memory and until it voluntarily gave up the CPU noting could touch it. To work around this, they created a really gimpy partition model. Multitasking in classic Mac OS was handled conceptually through the window system... there really wasn't an OS underneath it at all, not even as much as there was in Windows 3.1.
Jobs wanted to get rid of the ghastly classic Mac OS API in 1997, but Adobe and a few other big manufacturers dug their heels in and told him they'd abandon the Mac if he didn't come up with a way forward.
So first of all he came up with a bridge API called "Carbon". Carbon applications got an API that couldn't do all the fugly old classic stuff, but were ready to at least run on Rhapsody (what OS X was originally going to be called) once it was revamped to support it. Carbon was introduced for OS 8 and became a standard part of OS 9. After OS X came out people really pushed developers to switch to Carbon... but there were still a bunch of die-hards that insisted on running some software from 1994 that had no Carbon version.
Several times in the early 2000s Jobs pulled the last G4 Powermac capable of booting OS 9 and running classic apps native, rather than under the "classic" emulation environment. Each time there was an outcry... until 2005, when it vanished and nobody complained. Six months later he announced the Intel macs that would not ever be able to run pre-carbon "classic" apps from the dark ages.
MOST apps released *for* OS 9 are not "classic", they're carbon-based, and run under Rosetta.
Most apps released before OS 9 have been carbonised.
NO intel macs have ever been able to run pre-carbon apps.
Don't think of this like Microsoft abandoning Windows 98 apps. Think of it like Microsoft abandoning apps that needed direct access to hardware registers and video memory. The kind of stuff you have to run under Bochs even on Windows XP. It just sounds worse because Apple left it SO late to get rid of that old "application-centric" environment and actually ship an operating system that was actually an operating system.
The real double standard is the resistance of Apple fanboys to admit just how bloody awful OS 9 was.
This is really just a semantic thing, but I'm a stickler for sending clear, consistent messages.
When I think of "backups", I tend to think "this will help me recover my files if my computer dies, is stolen, or is unexpectedly repossessed by nature".
The Time Machine feature is more of an archive than a backup.
This could cause confusion and complacency among Joe Users who make "regular backups", only to find their data irrecoverable when their hard drive terminates.
"But I was making regular backups, just like the nice people on Slashdot told me to!"
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
On the other hand, it seems that so many things in OSX have to be tweaked in this manner. I wouldn't expect the typical user to be able to figure that one out, or how to undo it should they decide they want the 3D dock back for that matter. Atleast if you direct the user to some panel, there is some hope that they might remember how to get there in the futere.
http://www.hiram.nl/ipsedixit/artikel/793/boolean-search-in-spotlight
Undocumented, and the syntax is very picky and non-obvious.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Whoever modded you troll should get an automatic -5 fanboi.
Is this sarcasm that went over everyone's head? It's always the first complaint about Linux systems. "I don't want to use a command line!" (I'm a long-time user and prefer the command line for many things,though)
Put identity in the browser.
But I have a worse paying job than I did a few years ago (thank yooooou economy and my whore of an ex). This makes buying the new hardware very hard. Which is why I'm still running a Powermac G4 933MHz machine. Every time I've upgraded OS X (which has been, well, every time a release has come out) the machine is just as, if not more responsive. The new features may not always be dazzling because of the old processor, but the new apps and interfaces just make it absolutely worth it (kudos to Apple for supporting the old hardware!). I just hope "stacks" (aka Piles from Panther but never in Panther) is a good replacement for the Overflow app. So... anyone wanna send me 2K for a MBP? Anyone? Anyone? damn...
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
the reason its not in a sub directory is because it would index its self sending it into infinity... then again u could probably set it not to index that part but why would u want a backup to be on the same drive anyways? the whole point is to back up ur data to have it safe for if the main drive fails... they just added in the going back in time part to sell it. dont be cheep get a external 500 gig drive for 100$ (i think thats what there down to when there on sale)
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Redesigned mail, notes, and calendaring systems?
speaking of notes, I noticed he has Lotus Notes on his dock in the screenshots. My Lotus guys are telling me that it does NOT run on 10.5
music lover since 1969
hello. i'm just wondering what the minimum install size is for leopard? without ilife, iphoto etc. because i'm after a compact flash card for my macbook, i already have a compact flash to sata adaptor and was hoping to fit leopard on on a fast 8gb card as i can't afford a fast 16gb card and don't want a slow card. in my normal install i only use safari, itunes, ichat and the terminal. iphoto, photobooth etc. isn't installed. i also have a few small third-party programs, that probably don't even amount to 50 mb additional. so, anyone any ideas if i could manage to squeeze that all on an 8gb card? i'd use an external 2.5-inch drive for my itunes library, films, and either that or a networked drive for time machine.
That's what TinkerTool is for. It hasn't been updated for Leopard yet, but I doubt it will take long. Now as to why Apple didn't do that is an entirely different story...
You don't need to dedicate a drive or partition to it, but you can't put it in a subdirectory, it will create a database in the root of whatever partition you use. And it will work on any drive other than the system drive (so you can use a second internal drive if you have a tower).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
shorthand: defaults write -> dwrite
One of the reasons that the 6600 succeeded was that Cray was in charge of the project - he had a relatively unique understanding of hardware, software and had 'good taste'. The 6000 series ISA is one of the cleanest that I've seen and is one of the first RISC machines. Cray knew how to get the right people to work on the project and backed them up when people outside his group criticized them. On the other hand, the 6600 was a bitch to manufacture.
noidentity: OK, open up the terminal
user: What? Is that in my Dock?
noidentity:..erm ok, then go to HD > Applications > Utilities > Terminal
user:OK
noidentity:Now type defaults write com...
user:Where do i write 'com', on my note pad?
noidentity:no, no I mean type write
user:I don't have a type writer
noidentity:sigh. No, the word write, type the word write
user:I think i typed it right, w r i g h t thats right, right?
--- Time Passes ---
noidentity:OK, now, using the keyboard on your computer, type the following words -boolean YES;
user:Whats a hyphen?
--- sound of gunshot ---
user:Hello?
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
System 7 also had Balloon Help!!
I was wondering the same. What about the discussion I've seen so many times:
Slashdotter1: Check out the source code with svn
Slashdotter2: What if I don't have svn installed?
Slashdotter1: #aptitude install subversion
Slashdotter2: What the heck is supposed to be that? I don't wanna type some obscure command line!!!!!1
We should say every time: click the "K" in the bottom left corner of your screen, or the "Applications" label at the top left of your screen or...
I know, don't feed the trolls. I can't resist this one.
Let's see those "couple of tweaks." Give us the details -- scripts, source code, whatever you like -- for how in "a couple of tweaks" you'll make Linux act like Leopard. Make sure to include Time Machine, Core Graphics, and Back to my Mac.
These will be impressive tweaks! I can't wait.
The lack of such a feature that has been around for eons in the Unix/Linux world drives me crazy! You are either full of it, or running some really underpowered hardware. My 3 year old desktop has no trouble running NVidia's multiple desktop feature (in Windows XP) w/o slowing the machine's performance, and of course Linux has no trouble w/multiple desktops either.
Bring back Sirius Punk!
Does jokes get funnier as they are retold, or is that a Slashdot meme?
When you hookup an external hard drive, Vista should ask to turn on backups
I like having at least one backup no co-located with the original. Can Vista back up securely over TCP/IP to a remote store? Can Time Machine? I know I can do it with some tunnelling and SSH, but it would be nice (for my relatives) so have some sort of one-click alternative.
Da Blog
For daring to have a real question that challenged the way of thinking of the Mac user, I get modded -1...
screw the fact that I was a mac user from '93 to 2003, screw the fact that I ran OSX (10.0 and 10.1) on my final Mac, a 400MHz B&W G3.
Nah... I'm obviously a troll.
I'm used to it tho, got modded troll for daring to say that updating linux can break apps (which did happen to me quite a few times)
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock OS X will never be ready for the desktop if you have to change settings using the command line
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.
Right. Except if you're in Linux, where changes packaged like that fall into the 'run obscure command-line voodoo that puts off newbs, thus BAD' sorting bin. Well, at least in OSX the black rectangle is surrounded by 'teh shiney'
But that's the point: Normal users aren't really supposed to figure this out. As a software developer and UI designer, it's part of my job to make sure every UI decision doesn't result in a new preference. 90% of the time, preferences are cop-outs: If the design team can't decide on what solution is best, they make it a checkbox. Don't do that. It's your job to figure out the best solution, don't burden the user with it.
What Apple does is the right thing: Make what they think is best default. Don't make preference for it. But if somebody absolutely needs to have his Dock look different, give him a way that does not involve changing the actual application resources.
"Go to your Apple Menu, select System Preferences. Now click on "Sharing" and on "Remote Access." Click "Start." Tell me the number it says at the bottom of your window. Okay, now wait 10 minutes." :-)
Tinkertool? Try Rixstep's Clix instead and learn how *nix works.
Maybe more desktops will actually help them manage their stuff, not hinder them? I think the lack of interest in virtual desktops is due to the crappy UI they generally have. Let's see whether OS X makes a difference and people start using them; it wouldn't be the first time Apple took a well-known idea and turned it into something normal people actually could use.
I think you're missing the reason why the menu bar on the Mac is where it is, namely Fitt's law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts'_law
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
The menu bar on top of the screen is faster, despite being further away from the curser than the menu bar on top of the window.
Image Galleries are utterly useless for describing OSs.
That's why there are always nice wallpapers, so you have at least something to look at.
I've just written about this: Don't make preferences until you absolutely have to. Furthermore, it wouldn't work: Many Mac applications have no windows. Why would, say, an unzip application need a Window? Unless you unzip an actual file, there's no need to show a window; so where would you put the menu bar? What about applications that have small windows, but wide menus?
It just makes no sense.
This is one thing that many of my PC-using friends complain about with respect to OS X: it's too hard to tweak/hack. Apple tends to make it very hard for a person without at least cursory knowledge of the internals of OS X and Unix, as well as familiarity with a CLI, to modify the OS. While I'm sure most of my friends would be able to figure out OS X's guts pretty quickly, the fact that they don't see the options for deeper tweaking right in, say, System Preferences, leads them to conclude that it's not possible.
Personally, I think that this is a good thing - it creates sort of a minimum competency barrier for tooling around with the OS. If you're knowledgeable enough to know how to change things, you're probably knowledgeable enough to know how to fix it if something goes wrong. Meanwhile, the average user never has to see any of these things if they don't want to, and are much less likely to accidently screw something up by mucking about in preference panes.
When I think of "backups", I tend to think "this will help me recover my files if my computer dies, is stolen, or is unexpectedly repossessed by nature".
That's why Apple goes on about making the backup to an external drive. Using the same drive is foolishness.
The Time Machine feature is more of an archive than a backup.
A real backup system needs to provide both mirroring and archiving facilities. Most "backup" software I've seen only does mirroring. Time Machine adds archiving to that.
A lot of stuff changed behind the scenes. I predict you'll see dozens of Leopard-only apps appear within less than a month.
According to the friendly article, when you put the Dock on the left- or right-hand side, it uses a revised 2D appearance instead:
Which is nice.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Those are the "conventional wisdom" answers, and I think they're wrong.
* It's not that Apple throws you overboard after five years... in fact Apple has really only had ONE incident where they broke compatibility unilaterally... and that was the shift from Classic to OS X, and they did that because they had to... Classic had dragged their last two attempts to transition to a real operating system (Copland and A/UX) down to hell. Dropping Classic now is just the last echo of that transition. AND they gave people 10 years to get the hell out of Classic: Jobs announced that Classic was going away in 1997, and they released Carbon before OS 9.
* Microsoft doesn't write the majority of the device drivers, they just qualify them and bundle the drivers they collect from vendors. The overhead of maintaining device drivers is a tiny part of what's holding Microsoft back.
It's really corporate culture. Reading descriptions of Microsoft's development model and talking to people I know at Microsoft just make me shudder. They haven't figured out that they're not a one product startup any more and they're still trying to work like one.
The people who wants a complete nerd, unusable by general public OS X will mock those utilities and their users as usual of course.
I think if Apple gets enough bad feedback about "new" Dock, they will add a better accessible (e.g. right click menu or prefpane) Dock pref for it in a next build.
The power of OS X comes from being usable as pure GUI or a pure Terminal or mix of both without losing anything. That is how Apple manages to sell Mach/FreeBSD/NeXT hybrid to general public.
If you want middle-click-paste behavior on a Mac, it is pretty easy with most 3rd party mice I've seen.
For example, using the Logitech control panel, I can map the middle button to any keystroke...such as,
command-V (which every application uses for Paste). Boom - middle-click-paste.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
All I want is spinning hypercubes with fricken lasers on their heads!
You can have your spinny cube in OS X, and there's been a couple of "3d desktops"... the problem isn't getting real 3d, the problem is that people think 3d means you can walk around in your desktop and tilt windows to their sides like Sun was doing a few years ago and Microsoft is trying to WOW you with now.
The third dimension needs to be attention. Don't give me "spaces", just let applications I haven't used in a while fade into the background and drift off to the side and eventually turn into dock-like icons when they hit the edge of the screen, and let me manipulate them in 3d using the scroll wheel to drag them forward or shove them into the literal background.
That would really rock, even if people kept complaining it was still only 2.5d.
It won't reduce mouse travel time, because it will increase inaccuracy.
Bullshit.
I know they talk up the mile high menu bar at Apple all the damn time, but it's just wrong. Do you miss hitting other targets on the screen just because they're not at the top of the page? I don't, even suffering from RSI.
The thing that Apple seems to have missed is that there's FIVE locations that are easy to hit. The four corners, and where the mouse already is. Xerox put the menu right under the mouse, using a separate menu button on the mouse. Apple had this idea that extra buttons on the mouse were inherently bad (and have this nasty passive-aggressive resistance to correcting that mistake) so pop-up menus were out. So they came up with the menu bar instead.
Get rid of it and put the global menu in the contextual menu... maybe on the left of the mouse pointer instead of the right, since it's too late to change now.
One quick flick of the wrist with cursor acceleration properly configured will get you where you need to be
Cursor acceleration is another patch over the original problem. No wonder you can't hit small targets if you're using aggressive acceleration. You're slowing down all cursor operations by making it so easy to overshoot.
If you want middle-click-paste behavior on a Mac, it is pretty easy with most 3rd party mice I've seen.
I just love those "if you want [insert feature here] it's pretty easy if you use [product that I use]" posts. Not.
There are about two companies still making third-party mice for the Mac, and neither of them make mice that are less than painful for me to use. ALL the good mice are for Windows, and don't have Mac drivers.
To get the middle button behavior that I want I have to use three separate hacks to glue together the programs I need. Apple BADLY needs a general input manager preference pane that binds input events to application commands in ONE place that EVERY application can hook into without stepping on each others toes as they do in the current "clever" scheme.
Leopard was launched here at 6pm in stores too - so nyah-ya!
One thing I am noticing having installed it is that a) Spotlight reindexes all your stuff and b) if you enable Time Machine it also does a heavy-duty initial copy. These two processes happening simultaneously hit the disk pretty hard and doubtless cause it to zap all over the place. The upshot is a lot of disk thrashing and rather stuttery performance on things like the dock animation for the first two or three hours. YMMV (MacBook 13" 2GHz here). I expect it to settle down after this - but still in that initial period as I write this.
Also, the initial run of the Set-up Assistant failed to recognise my existing wireless network, and got thoroughly confused when I tried to enter the information manually as it requested. In the end I simply quit it to find that by default Leopard had turned off Airport. Turning it on again found my network and connected without any problems, so if you run into this, just tell Setup Assistant to get lost and enable it yourself.
The only problem with this is that you get a non-bootable backup. Actually, you need to restore all of your system from backup to a new drive (booting from the CD) in order to get back to work in case your primary drive got borked.
Tough if you don't have time for a full HD copy (but arguably still better than losing all your data).
I kinda hoped that this'll be configurable though...
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
Good response! I'd mod you up, but I don't have points at the current time.
hackshop.com - My tech hobby project hub
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.
Be careful, or whomever you're helping will complain that on "those damn non windows machines you have to type long commands to get anything done". As we all know this is the popular belief today about Linux... I don't think Apple would like the same for Macs.
It's very good for automation though.
Did you know that mothers-in-law sometimes reasonably assume that the proper way to turn off a computer is to hold the power button for 5 seconds?
Did you know that e3fs can get corrupted?
Did you know that using the phone to walk your mother-in-law through logging into a Ubuntu system (that replaced her WebTV) in single-user mode and fscking the drives can induce seizures in both parties?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Is such a command present in Windows You could use regedit.exe to insert / update / delete regisrty keys from the command line if you wanted to or Unix GUI apps under "real" *nix environments (e.g. Linux) are nearly always front ends for CLI programs anyway. All changes can made via command line, and if you look in any forums 99.9999% of advice is given out as CLI procedures because they are much more universal than an individuals desktop GUI which can vary widely.
CheShA: Manchester Breakcore / Drill and Bass Yes I'm a s
Don't even have to go that far anymore..
Launch iChat, Share screen..
voila
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Care to ellaborate on the "ghastly" mighty mouse?
The "right button" does not allow chording, and it doesn't register as a right click at all for many people (including you and me, and a number of reviewers). The buttons on the side prevent you from lifting the mouse while holding the button depressed (an operation that was iffy but at least not impossible in the previous model). The way it forces you to hold the mouse is extremely bad for people suffering from some kinds of RSI, and the usual workarounds do not work because of the shape of the mouse and the way the right "button" operates.
I also am not impressed by the scroll ball. It's too hard to middle-click without nudging it, or scroll without clicking it, but that might just be me. Besides, I count 4 strikes against it without including that one... it's already far out it couldn't find the plate with radar.
...what Windows machines look like in Coverflow.
I'm curious, did Apple improve how they do threading in the finder? Finder may hang when mounting network volumes, or working with slow media, which is really quite annoying.
I think the point was that, in fact, pretty much all of the stuff can be done if so desired on a linux box. Not easy, not elegant, not intuitive...
.tar files for incremental backups. Is it Time Machine? No. Does it do incremental backups? Yes. Is it "fun"? ... (seriously, if you find backups fun you should be using a mac, you sick, twisted bastard.)
.Mac users only, so you could use something like dyndns or you could have a private https page that gets pinged from a cron job... and then use FTP, NFS, whatever.
http://www.linux-backup.net/Full_Inc/ talks about using
Back to your Mac can be accomplished in several ways as far as I can tell. First, according to apple.com it's for the
As for Core Graphics, what is that? http://www.flickr.com/photos/isriya/430290826/
This diagram found on Flickr shows that it's basically just a GUI/graphics backend? All of that (compiz, ffmpeg, etc) exists for linux in various strengths and integrations. Is the ``Core'' stuffs gonna be better integrated? Yep.
So to reiterate about what Apple's OSX seems to hinge on is pure integration issues. And that's always been their selling point. You stick your finger in an Apple(tm) electrical socket and you will be happier than a ECT patient on a Thorazine drip. It's for people with the money and wont to say 'get out of my way computer.'
Most desktop linux users seem to appreciate some amount of their computers getting in their way. They like to solve problems and to learn how things work. I think that's the main difference. That and the money.
Please let me know if I'm wrong. My first computer was a mac back when it was OS 4.1 and I was a very young kid. My mom didn't like some game it had saying "geez, you suck" to a little kid. Since then my only other real encounter with a mac was a few years ago when I was doing temp work at a local bi-weekly paper. The mac they had me using acted a lot more like windows than a mac but it, alas, was also pre-OSX.
Everything I've heard about OSX has been pretty good. Now if Apple could learn to embrace hobbyists that want to hack their [iphones ipods imacs ilives] I might finally find it in my heart to shell out for one of their computers again.
The last time I got a new (Apple) laptop, plugged a firewire cable into my old one and selected the upgrade from old mac button. Then, I went and got some coffee. It migrated everything over flawlessly including user accounts, files, preferences, applications, bookmarks, and stored passwords. There was zero work on my part and I didn't even have to have a network connection.
Do you know how I "tweaked" my Linux install to do the same thing? I stored it in a VM on my Mac.
I know for a fact Vista can
Okay, that's pretty cool, and the first time I've heard anything about Vista that's really impressed me. If Leopard does it as well then I guess regular backups have advanced significantly.
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goScreen is awesome. It's not pretty, but it works. Light resources too. I even ran it in Windows 9x years ago! It's not free, but cheap and free upgrades.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Advanced modes are a bad idea, because "Advanced" doesn't tell you anything about what's hidden behind it. If you're looking for something, you'll always have to check out the advanced mode; you don't know if what you're looking for is hidden there. Group things in a way that the user can see what each group contains; don't group things by arbitrary rules, such as "beginners probably will not want to see this."
I fundamentally disagree with using poor usability as a way to discourage users from doing what they want.Hopefully I did not give the impression that this is what I was suggesting :-)
I'm not suggesting that we should discourage users from what they want. I'm suggesting that we should not show them that the option is available at all. Most users don't actually know what they want, or what's best for them (see the discussion about the menu inside windows, which users seem to want, even though actual usability tests consistently show they're slower). It's the UI designers job to figure out the best solution, and provide it to the user. That is not poor usability, it's good usability.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Virtual desktops are also great for two other things:
:)
1. Context switches !. I'm a prof. A student comes to ask me a question, I switch to an empty virtual desktop, open whatever programs we need, explain, solve etc; when I'm done, easily go back to whatever I was doing !
2. Doing several things at once. When I was doing my thesis research, I had one desktop for running the experiments, another one for Latex (writing the thesis), and another one for email, browsing etc. Can move to either one, work for an hour on something, switch to another one.
I think the main issue is that in Unix, we tend to use many different programs rather than an integrated suite, and the virtual desktops allow you to almost convert any set of programs into a suite
More power? Dude. Like, get a grip.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What are your options for operating systems these days. I love Ubuntu, WinXP isn't bad, vista kills a good machine, OSX 10.4 runs too slow on an intel machine. Then you have this. Fast, efficient, clean looking, best loading times I have seen on programs (which may be something to do with full 64-bit and proper scheduling for multicore even when programs arent written for it). Bag apple all you like, I enjoy doing it too, but leopard is the one bit of common sense in the computer industry these days, hopefully KDE 4 follows suit and the under the hood and usability takes preference over excessive eye candy and effects.
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Mac OS X 10.0 doesn't count. 10.1 is the first version I will acknowledge too.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Yes. What we do (and I guess Apple does, too), is run usability tests on iterations of interfaces. Most of the time, these show that one of the options is vastly superior to all other options. That doesn't mean that the test subjects like this option best, or that all users work best with this option, it just means that, all tests considered, one option turned out to work best in a huge majority of all cases.
We then make this option standard and discard all other options.
Yes, KDE has its advantages. If you want a system where you can configure everything, use KDE. You'll be much happier with it than with Mac OS X (although most likely, you'll also be much less efficient without even noticing it).
As for the hidden files things, this is broken in Mac OS X. Mac OS X does something incredibly stupid: It mixes two different "hidden files" system, the one from Unix and the one from pre-X Mac systems. The Unix system is something the user controls. Put a dot in front of your file names, and the files disappear. They are still files the user is expected to be able to control; you don't want to hide .htaccess forever, for example. Hidden files from the Mac side are different. These are files where the system stores its own meta data. You never want the user to see a .DS_Store file.
Incredibly, Apple decided to hide all .files, regardless of where they come from and what they contain. What they should have done instead is show .files, and only hide all files with invisibility bits. Then, set those bits for the files the user should not see. That way, stuff the user should not see (like .DS_Store files) would be hidden, while stuff the user should see (like .htaccess files) would be visible.
Apple dismissed the MS-DOS command line which is simply backwards. NeXT came with the same architecture as OS X, it is Unix. MS DOS is a very different approach and it is really a great candidate to dismiss as "backwards".
Old timer Mac people, especially DTP professionals still choose GUI tools rather than command line.
I still don't get the difference from manually typing fsck -fy or letting a easy script like Applejack(sourceforge.net) manage it.
How many potential users Linux lost by dictating the need for chmod
As far as I know, every preference in Gnome is able to be set through the command line. An example from the man page:
This sets the default font to Serif 12.
Cheers.
Put identity in the browser.
I placed the Dock on the right side of the screen, and it is automatically 2D. Evidently they listened to comments.
No, I was advocating it as a possibly simpler way to direct another user to change a particular preference; a GUI is the best interface for a single user to explore the preferences. I still stand by my claim that having to relay a GUI script that the user must manually execute is kind of silly, though others have shown that giving the equivalent command-line is probably only simpler for users experienced with the terminal.
This is one thing that many of my PC-using friends complain about with respect to OS X
You are not kidding.
Most of the people I've ever met who were doing OSX support work have been little more than 'power users'.
I have, actually, yet to meet *anyone* who has anything like the level of 'under the hood' knowledge of OSX that even 'power users' of Linux or Windows have.
For my own part, I'd love to learn more about OSX and how things really work under the hood but so far have found very little info. I got 'the missing manual' but thats just 'how to be a power user'.
Any links appreciated.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Well, 'under the hood' of OS X, it's really just Unix. As long as you have a decent knowledge of how Unix/BSD works, and a familiarity with a CLI, you can figure most everything else out.
/Users/Your User Name/Library/Application Support/Name Of Application/ folders, and digging around in those with Plist editor can be fruitful (always make backups first, though).
For example, dig around in the packages of System applications, like the Dock (right-click, then select "Show All Applications"). All the graphical elements that the new Leopard dock uses are in there. I've changed those so I have a black dock (without the annoying curvy highlight), and white application indicators - much easier to see.
Also, a lot of the preference lists (plists) for applications are kept in your
Mainly, get as familiar as possible on Unix/BSD, and you will become more knowledgeable of OS X's underpinnings. Some good sites are Mac OS X Hints and O'Reilly's Mac Dev Center.
Well, 'under the hood' of OS X, it's really just Unix. As long as you have a decent knowledge of how Unix/BSD works, and a familiarity with a CLI, you can figure most everything else out.
/etc/fstab which does nothing at all.
Most everything... how about mount points? There appears to be an
User and group management appears to be similar. I heard that it inherited this from Next, NeXT, NexT or however thats capitalised nowadays, but that this is changing in Leopard.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you - I think the command-line is a wonderful thing, and that typing commands is not at all difficult to learn (witness the old Apple ][/IBM PC days - nobody had trouble running programs back then) Both a command-line and a GUI have their place and use ...
... :)
I was just having a chuckle at how far the Mac user-base has come from the dark days of completely-CLI-free 1984