Ars Technica Reviews OS X 10.5

E1ven writes "Ars Technica has published their in-depth review of the newest version of Mac OS X. John Siracusa both covers the user-visible features such as the new UI tweaks and Time Machine, and dives into the increased use of metadata and the new APIs introduced and what they mean for the future of OS X."

Comments

SLASHDOT SUX0RZ

[Anonymous Coward]

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goatse technica

I realize we all love Portal...

[Anonymous Coward]

But did the review really have to end with:

"This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!"?

Re:I realize we all love Portal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at you - still talking when there's science to do.

Re:I realize we all love Portal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a bad part of the new api:

if (!isHomosexual) {
        playSubliminalGayTraining();
}

Say no to Leopard if you love women an want to remain that way!

OSX and security

[klingens]

http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/98120

Re:OSX and security

[Mathi�u]

The article looks wrong, my install of Mac OS X Leopard doesn't exhibit any of the issues he describes:

$ netstat -an | fgrep LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 127.0.0.1.631 *.* LISTEN
tcp6 0 0 ::1.631 *.* LISTEN
$ lsof -iUDP
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
SystemUIS 164 username 9u IPv4 0x674d458 0t0 UDP *:*
Adium 175 username 8u IPv4 0x674ca38 0t0 UDP *:49181

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

what, no dhcp client? methinks your listing is a wee bit incomplete.

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a DHCP client be listening for incoming connections, or happen to have something UDP open? Like a ntp client, it should just be fired up, do its stuff once, and close the connections and go sleep until it's needed again.

Re:OSX and security

[cait56]

The article is extremely myopic. It assumes that protection from incoming connections must be provided by filtering TCP ports.

If they had actually tried so much as compiling an application they would have realized that Mac OS X shifts that security to controlling which applications can listen for incoming connections. Since this is something far more easily understood by users I would submit that this is a security improvement.

Using ipfw or other firewalls as you main line of defense on a desktop machine is far inferior to providing actual control over which files can be applications. Now if there are holes in that security feature I'd like to hear about it.

Re:OSX and security

[juct]

There must be something wrong. Not even Bonjour is running... You propably have the deactivated services. bye, ju

Re:OSX and security

[juct]

The only assumption in this article is: If your OS vendor supplies you with a firewall and you choose "Block all incoming connections" it should do simply that. If it does not and others can still connect to your system over the internet, there is something wrong with the firewall.

bye, ju

Re:OSX and security

[Mathi�u]

There is nothing wrong, and I haven't deactivated anything. It is a fresh install of Mac OS X 10.5 on a MacBook Pro.

Firewall is open, as per the default, and I have enough programs installed to do my everyday job. Do you have Mac OS X installed? What does netstat show for you? Can you identify what programs are listening to incoming connections?

Re:OSX and security

[tyrione]

You didn't address the parent poster's comments and the fact you don't know the Security Model for OS X Leopard. When Darwin 9 is released then test against that and read up on the networking redesign of Leopard.

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so the security model has changed. So what. If there's a GUI saying block all incoming connections it should just do that and not silently allow connections from allover the internet to my computer.

Re:OSX and security

[juct]

You used "lsof -iUDP" which indeed reveals nothing.
Try with "sudo lsof -iUDP" ...

bye, ju

Re:OSX and security

[juct]

In fact I could have gone into lengths discussing this (*).

But it's as simple as this: If I choose "Block all incoming connctions", I expect that it blocks all incomming requests.
What is wrong with this approach?

(*) Ok some of the caveats of this new design: The firewall automatically trusts all applications digitally signed by Apple. The problem is, that Apple delivers a digitally signed version of netcat, which provides you with a transparent communication endpoint (signed by Apple, therefor passing the firewall in limited access mode). So all the programmer of an (unsigned!) trojan needs to do is replace his calls to listen() (that would present a dialog asking for permssion) with a suitable combination of fork/exec -- in fact he could even write a wrapper library implementing this. So at the end of the day, your firewall is worthless again.

Note, that I didn't even start to talk about possible vulnerabilities in digitally signed applications yet.

bye, ju

Re:OSX and security

[Nimey]

If your OS vendor supplies you with a firewall and you choose "Block all incoming connections" it should do simply that. You probably /don't/ want exactly what you say, since blocking *all* incoming connections would render you unable to access the Internet.

I seem to recall that at least early versions (circa 2002) of Norton Internet Security would do just that[1] and we (at my old computer-shop job) would have to uninstall the poxy thing and replace with less-sucky s/w like ZoneAlarm and AVG.

[1] I expect you'd have to ingest near LD50 of PCP and crack to get to the mental state of that abortion's programmers.

Re:OSX and security

[Tony Hoyle]

You probably /don't/ want exactly what you say, since blocking *all* incoming connections would render you unable to access the Internet.

Huh? Why would you need *incoming* connections to access the internet?

Blocking all incoming connections is the default mode of nearly all routers, and all modern operating systems (in the last couple of years anyway). If OSX doesn't do it when you tell it to it's a security hole that needs fixing.

Re:OSX and security

[Nimey]

DNS, for example. You send out a query, it comes back. Same deal for HTTP, FTP, hell, lots of protocols.

Yes, old versions of NIS could be configured to block DNS replies.

Re:OSX and security

[Tony Hoyle]

They're not incoming connections, they're replies.

Re:OSX and security

[Nimey]

Semantics. They're incoming connections that you've initiated. Decent firewalls can distinguish between the two.

Re:OSX and security

[Tony Hoyle]

Not just semantics - very important. If a firewall couldn't distinguish they wouldn't be functional firewalls.

With TCP the packet type is a part of the packet data and even the old stateless firewalls could handle it. With UDP you could argue that there's no difference but even then you rely on certain standards to filter (in the old days you just let any UDP packet with a destination >1024 in.. luckily those days are long past us).

There's a *huge* difference between asking to OS to block all *incoming* connections and asking it to block replies as well. No firewall works like that.

Re:OSX and security

[Nimey]

Not just semantics - very important. If a firewall couldn't distinguish they wouldn't be functional firewalls. No shit, hence why I said "decent". Old NIS did not qualify since it *would* block DNS from working.

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

How is UDP handled these days? How do you maintain firewall state for stateless connections?

Also, "old, stateless" firewalls handled this by only blocking SYN packets. Holes in the OS could still be quite easily exploited since the firewall won't block non-SYN packets. Possibly worse, the firewall can be subverted with modified TCP stacks.

Re:OSX and security

[Em Adespoton]

Also, as another user has done, try running nmap from another machine and see what shows up. For that matter, run it from the target machine as well, to see what ports the firewall is actually blocking. I think one problem here is that "firewall" means too many things these days. A port blocker, a traffic shaper, a process network actvity monitor, an IP stack network activity monitor, etc.

Re:OSX and security

[Bill_the_Engineer]

(*) Ok some of the caveats of this new design: The firewall automatically trusts all applications digitally signed by Apple. The problem is, that Apple delivers a digitally signed version of netcat, which provides you with a transparent communication endpoint (signed by Apple, therefor passing the firewall in limited access mode). So all the programmer of an (unsigned!) trojan needs to do is replace his calls to listen() (that would present a dialog asking for permssion) with a suitable combination of fork/exec -- in fact he could even write a wrapper library implementing this. So at the end of the day, your firewall is worthless again.

If you don't mind, could you try that explanation one more time. I'm just casually looking at what you wrote, and I spot a problem with your trojan theory. How does a trojan promote itself to root? And what combination of fork/exec would cause the trojan to be able to promote itself to root? I only assumed that in your scenario that the trojan is root because it seems to be able to intercept system calls...

I have an idea on how this can be done (by fooling the user to allow an superuser operation at least once) but this degenerates into a user education problem... (eg. Once I fooled the user into giving me root, I can do anything I want to do anyway).

I can see the reasoning behind Apple's decision to auto-allow digitally signed applications. This is how they keep the "It just works" mantra true. Public-Key encryption should have enough milage on it by now to prove that it's a viable security tool... sigh.

Anyway you've demonstrated your ability to list running services, but you haven't followed up with what the *real* consequences are.

Believe me when I say that I am giving you the utmost benefit of the doubt about your findings. I just want to make sure it more substance than hyperbole. I do believe that if the mere act of upgrading to leopard turns off an already activated firewall, this is a bad thing (but not horribly bad). Of course I would have to actually look and verify that the firewall is working since (unlike some other OS) there isn't an annoying icon jumping up and down telling me that the firewall is working.

Of course, If your really super paranoid, you can always just override the firewall rules yourself (as you demonstrated in your article).

Anyway, it's been a long day but I still look forward to verifying your hypothesis (when I get home).

Later,
Bill

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

This is correct. The user didn't do it with root permissions and therefore saw no root processes....that said, I will be testing this when I get home because it seems unimaginable that apple would have a netbios listener on by default and not documented.

Re:OSX and security

[Anonymous Coward]

try using sudo e.g. sudo lsof -i UDP

lookin good

[Vanden]

All of the reviews I've read thus far, including Ars, have been very positive. It's amazing how much can be done in a corporate/development culture like Apple in 2.5 years compared to the debacle that is Vista, which MS took 5+ years to produce (not that there's nothing at all positive about Vista, but looking in comparison).

Hopefully a good step forward for Apple that will lead to larger market share. I'll be installing as soon as my job gets its site license worked out.

Re:lookin good

[sqrt(2)]

It's too bad Vista and OSX will never compete with each other directly. When you can install 10.5 on the same range of computers as Vista (along with all the myriad problems and support nightmares for Apple that go along with that) we could really see which is the better operating system. I've installed and tested Vista on a wide range of desktops and Laptop computers and it's stability and compatibility is wider than even XP or Ubuntu (the other two OSs I commonly use). This is important for a lot of people, myself included. I'd never consider buying a computer I couldn't rebuild or modify (or build entirely) so using Apple's software is never an option for me.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny? I don't get it. Troll makes even less sense. Someone mod overrated for the trifecta.

Re:lookin good

[Kadin2048]

The point of the Macintosh is that you don't expose yourself to the inevitable problems that come as a result of that.

The Mac OS doesn't compete with Vista as operating systems, but the platform as a whole, as a device for doing things, does compete with other platforms and manufacturers.

I don't see any reason for Apple to want to try to do what Microsoft does, and as a user of their products I frankly don't want them to. The reason I've always felt that Apple gear was worth the price is because it's a predictable, known quantity, and because it's sold as a system rather than as bits and pieces. While being able to assemble it would admittedly be nice for hobbyists (and it was nice back in the day when Apple sold motherboards through their VAR chain, so you could build them), it's not a compelling feature for most of their core market.

Re:lookin good

[sqrt(2)]

...and as a user of their products... Perfectly fine. However, there's a group of people that wants something completely different than you do. I wouldn't be happy with the restriction of the Mac platform, and maybe you'd be frustrated with a PC. The reasons you like Apple are the same reasons I don't like them and prefer the alternative. This doesn't make either position more or less valid than the other. Both of us end up just as satisfied with our respective outcomes. But for people not in your camp, Apple is not competing with MS for their business.

(And to the childish mods: if you disagree, post a reply. My original response wasn't a troll, flamebait, overrated or funny. You're not accomplishing anything productive by abusing the mod system.)

Re:lookin good

[prockcore]

Most of the complaints about Vista are in relation to drivers. OSX won't even run on AMD cpus... if OSX were actually competing in the same space as Vista, it'd be a laughingstock.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

There's no "WTF are you smoking?" mod.

Re:lookin good

[reddburn]

so using Apple's software is never an option for me Does this include Quicktime?

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiiight, because it'd be really tough for a company that's already running its OS on PPC, i386, and ARM to make it run on a freaking i386 CLONE architecture, assuming it ever wanted to.

Christ on a rusty bike, are you so blinded by your irrational hatred for the fruity OS that you can't think straight or something ?

Re:lookin good

[sqrt(2)]

I rarely reply to my own posts, but this is absolutely unacceptable and I needed to. This applies only to the moderators of the parent post:

Exactly where in my post above did I ever approach something resembling a troll? Every word was true and pulled directly from my own experiences or it was opinion (which, SURPRISE, might be different than yours). The Apple fanboyism is, by far, the worst this site has to offer. It's sickening. Mod THIS post offtopic if you like, because it is, but my original one was fine at +2 (what all my posts start at). I suggest all of you read the moderator guidelines again because frankly none of you deserved the points. When you abuse our moderation system you do a great disservice to everyone that uses this website and you erode the credibility and perception for whatever "cause" you think you're propping up. I'm done with this thread and discussion, which is a shame because I think there was a lot of good things people had to add and that I had to add as well.

Good luck at M2

Re:lookin good

[tyrione]

There's no question that OS X Leopard runs on AMD. It's that they have no plans to release it on AMD. The foundation of OS X has run x86 since Openstep 3.1. They kept it current until it was time to switch. If Intel screws over Apple they can switch to AMD.

Re:lookin good

[cyber-dragon.net]

I am curious what restrictions you found with OS X? This is a serious question as I switched to the OS X platform specifically because I found it more open and usable. I could do half again the work in 3/4 the time as I could on windows and was far less frustrated daily and spent much less time on maintenance and finding things. With Mac Ports any of my favorite Unix utilities were a command away.

That was my experience however... I am curious what restrictions you felt there were that caused you to avoid it and go with the one I found significantly more restrictive?

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. It kind of was flamebait - this is a discussion about what's new in OS X 10.5, and saying "I can't use it" doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's just an invitation for flamage.

Or did you think that nobody knew that you can't install it on self-assembled PCs?

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd never consider buying a computer I couldn't rebuild or modify (or build entirely)"

And you are referencing Vista?

I thought the license likes to die when you touch your computer wrong?

And if you apply your restriction to software the same way you are referencing hardware, what OS other than Open Source based ones can you rebuild or modify?

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

you are still locked in to their computer hardware

MS can run on AMD and Intel
MAC can run on Intel....

more choice, end of story

Re:lookin good

[omeomi]

because it's sold as a system rather than as bits and pieces

You do realize that the majority of Windows machines are sold as a system, not as bits and pieces. It's a fairly small subset of the population that builds their own computers. And aside from the motherboard, everything else on a Mac is just as configurable / replaceable as with a Windows machine. Apple fans might tend to choose not to upgrade components, but there isn't any real reason that they can't (again, aside from the motherboard / mainboard)...

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, absolutely. Quicktime is crapware. I vastly prefer the simple alternative codec for playback support on this relatively uncommon and quite superflous Mac movie format.

Re:lookin good

[enoz]

being able to assemble it would admittedly be nice for hobbyists Assembling a Mac is a hobby? Admittedly some fanatics would enjoy the work, but at the same token it makes the Mac sound like a toy.

Re:lookin good

[prockcore]

There's no question that OS X Leopard runs on AMD.

Except it doesn't. You know that hack that lets you install Leopard on vanilla PCs? Doesn't support AMD at all.

Could Apple make it work on AMD? Of course, but that's the point. Apple only has to make it work on the tiny selection of hardware they provide.

The point is that making fun of Microsoft for taking 5 years to put out Vista isn't a fair point at all since Apple doesn't even have to support something as basic as a *compatible* X86 chip.

Re:lookin good

[Egdiroh]

(And to the childish mods: if you disagree, post a reply. My original response wasn't a troll, flamebait, overrated or funny. You're not accomplishing anything productive by abusing the mod system.)

I've got to respectfully disagree. Your original post is overrated, flamebait, a troll and funny (in the way ignorance generally is).

They'll never compete? really? every new mac you can Leopard on is also a machine capable of runing vista. On intel Macs they do compete.

You want to see which is better? Again really? You really expect that one is better. With the vast number of things that an OS might be used for there is no one single metric for better-ness. And why can't you compare them, because one of them is better in regards to the breadth of hardware it supports? It would be cool if we could compare which is better but we can't cause one of them is so bad at meeting my needs to even run it for comparison. Yeah, ok. I can see right now that Vista is better at meeting your needs, now you know.

And what did you do minutes after some one responded to your mail, you responded with a smug, aren't I smart and superior to you response. Hmmm, it's as though that first message was some sort of bait. And since you railed at both the person whose comment you provoked and the mods, you were both trolling and flame baiting.

Oh and you didn't include this but it was essentially off topic too, As it wasn't about the review of OS X, or about OS X, just about how you couldn't compare it to vista cause you wouldn't buy apple hardware.

Personally I think that Apple hardware is very versatile and that they have an OS and software that let you take very good advantage of that hardware. I'm a sys admin and my mac laptops have been like computing swiss army knives for me. I've solved a lot of problems that other people would have and did give up on because I was able to leverage the flexibility of both the hardware and OS. That's not to say that what is good for me is good for someone with different ends in mind for their computer

Re:lookin good

[gig]

> You do realize that the majority of Windows machines are sold as a system, not as bits and pieces.

Yes, he realizes that. He is not talking about the end user building a system from parts, he's talking about PC vendors making PC's that look like end users built them from parts.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is far more derisive than his. But I bet you get modded higher because you follow the party line.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

thats funny, I had 10.4 running on an old sempron-based system many months ago. afaik semprons were made by amd

Re:lookin good

[crayz]

OS X can run on AMD fine. The fact is Apple prevents OS X from running on unverified x86 hardware to lock customers into Apple hardware. You can be for or against that decision, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the GP's point that "Most of the complaints about Vista are in relation to drivers" and that OS X somehow skates those issues to such an extent that it's unable to run on anything but a single x86 manufacturer's hardware

As the parent points out this is ludicrous - especially if you count the iPhone, OS X supports a much broader range of CPUs than Microsoft. I don't doubt Microsoft has spent more time addressing driver compatibility than Apple has, but there are a number of other issues in play, such as Apple's willingness to break backwards compatibility for the sake of cleaner APIs and a saner OS, and their utilization of third-party components wherever possible - BSD tools/Mach/KHTML/DTrace/ZFS(soon)/etc. Microsoft has full-blown NIH syndrome, with the end result that they go out and build everything from scratch, with 90% of it being worse than open source solutions. They're getting crushed by their own proprietary codebase and enormous level of legacy support

Re:lookin good

[tsa]

A few days ago I thought, since I read /. a lot I must have a very skewed view of Vista, so I went looking for unbiased reviews. The conclusions of the reviews I saw varied from 'nice but mostly eye-candy, no compelling reason to upgrade', to 'Vista turned me into an Apple fan'. Is it really that bad? Can someone point me to a review with a positive conclusion (not from an MS fansite)?

More on-topic, I was very happy with the ArsTechnica review. Finally a review where they didn't drule over the new eye-candy without considering useability. The review made me decide to wait for the next revision of Leopard before buying it. I am quite happy with Tiger, and I didn't see any compelling reasons to upgrade soon. Besides, I use black backgrounds all the time so I wouldn't even be able to see the writing on the new transparent top bar in Leopard :)

Re:lookin good

[toadlife]

I've got to respectfully disagree. Your original post is overrated, flamebait, a troll and funny (in the way ignorance generally is). With all due respect, you are being a prick.

Respectfully yours,

- Me

Re:lookin good

[jcr]

Well, Leopard's great, but topping vista isn't much of an accomplishment. The Llonghorn disaster was obvious for many years, just like Office Vision at IBM, or Copland at Apple. Vista isn't longhorn, it's a 1 1/2 year rush-job of an update, trying to distract the customers and investors from the magnitude of longhorn's failure.

-jcr

Re:lookin good

[tyrione]

I'm replying as someone who worked for NeXT and Apple. That hack is not what I'm discussing. There is no build of AMD on the net. Just know that OS X ran Intel before Rhapsody came out. I know because I saw it every day. The technology to turn the switch is always an option. However, Apple has no reason to switch, because Intel gets Steve Jobs and Apple and has built a long-term relationship with Apple that IBM and Motorola never cared to build.

Re:lookin good

[djupedal]

"You do realize that the majority of Windows machines are sold as a system, not as bits and pieces. It's a fairly small subset of the population that builds their own computers."

You've never been to Asia, I take it.

Fight the crowd...sit down...fill out a form...get a quote and wait briefly while the girls/boys in the back build your box to order:
- case
- motherboard
- power supply
- ram
- HD(s)
- optical drive
- cards
- k'board/mouse
- monitor

From Hong Kong to Shenzhen - Shanghai to Beijing. And this is just China. Thousands & thousands of computers are built every working hour, from South Korea to Vietnam, specifically according to user wishes and specials 'o the day.

The Asia configured assembly line boxes generally go to businesses.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

"you are still locked in to their computer hardware"

No, because it is the hardware I'm after. I have a company issued Dell laptop for work. It is a POS compared to my MacBook Pro.

Re:lookin good

[rucs_hack]

I see where your coming from. You want to know why everyone slams Vista. I know a lot of people slam everything Microsoft do no matter what. I don't, actually I use XP every day, even though my main work boxes are all Linux, I also (pause for effect) like MS word! (but then it was a free copy from my university), and liked win95 after a bit of coaxing back in the day. 95% of my productivity is Linux based, all my web browsing (firefox) and game playing is on XP. Its horses for courses for me. I prefer Linux for the real work, Windows is for relaxation.

I wanted to give Vista a fair chance, having in mind that eventually I'd end up using it anyway. We got a Vista box a few weeks ago, on a duel core machine with 2gb of ram. Its not my machine, but I've been playing with it because of the duel cores.

The copy function is awful. make no bones about it, never before has an OS had such a crippled copy function. Slow? Doesn't quite cover it. Not since the days of DOS has it taken me so long to copy large amounts of files over our network. I was shocked. And this is on pretty good hardware, with a decent network.

That is a biggie, a killer for some people, and if OsX were available on non apple hardware, it would make me switch. There's no excuse for such bad copy performance. The reason seems to be the rights management layer. Whoever thought that inconveniencing millions of customers many times a day was better than risking a small minority copying protected content was a fool. The take home for Microsoft is that they need to please customers, not content providers. The latter have never been into freedom in any case.

There is a plus, the explorer improvements are very nice, I like the new address bar system, very slick.

Alas the much hyped Aero is a waste of system resources, so its best left off. Pretty as it is, it has lots of animations that just aren't needed. Lets be fair no, I've used AIGLX in Linux, which is the closest thing to Aero in the open source world, and well, that suffers the same problems IMO. When it comes down to it you don't need animations, or transparent/wobbly windows to use a computer, you need a crisp, fast window manager that's easy on the eye, comfortable to use, and stays out of the way when you aren't using it, especially when you use a computer all day for work.

How Microsoft missed that one is beyond me,.

Re:lookin good

[anagama]

All of the reviews I've read thus far, including Ars, have been very positive.

The reviewers have apparently not tried to fire up X11 -- Leopard's X11 is real funky. I ended up installing Tiger's X11 (plus the yellow cursor fix) to get a usable shell. Even so, I have two X11 icons in my dock and (until you turn off bouncing), one them bounces forever. It's the best level I can find so far though. Other methods gave me one X11 icon in the dock -- but X11 would not die. Quit it and it would immediately respawn. Leopard's X11 can't be launched from the /Applications/Utilities folder as in previous versions. When launched from /usr/X11/somethingorother, it does lots of bouncing and pops a new icon in the dock for every shell window. Anyway, I'm non-plussed about the X11 changes.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

As a recent OS X convert myself, my experience has been exactly the opposite of yours. I used to be able to work a lot faster, a lot smoother, without having to stop and interrupt my flow of thought -- yes, on Windows XP. Linux has been slightly less usable, but still more so than OS X. Here's why:

First, the shortcuts are not consistent from program to program. Firefox, for example, uses Ctrl-D to deny cookies, while Safari uses Command-D to deny. Browsing back and forth is Command-Left and Command-Right, but that is also the shortcut to go to the beginning/end of line (when typing into a form field, for example). Microsoft Word for Mac uses Windows-style shortcuts (end/home etc). I realize that this is not an OS X problem, but in a way it is -- these keys are not enforced like they are on other OSes (yes, linux has good shortcuts). These impede my flow of thought when I have to fish for the right keys to move from word to word, use the delete key (on a laptop), show the desktop (F11? wtf). I could go on and on about bad shortcut keys, but I think I have gotten my point across. Oh, and using Open Office is not feasible in OS X. I'm sorry, but it plain sucks (slow, inconsistent, requires X11...)

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~. Furthermore, you can't even switch windows if one of them is minimized. Yep, you have to fish for it with your mouse (this makes the minimize button and Expose completely useless). And no, Expose does not show minimized windows either. So, my shortcuts are all messed up, my desktop is cluttered, and the "zoom" button has unpredictable behaviors (try it in iTunes, for example).

Third, I have had weird things happen with my MBP -- fans just started spinning at 6000rpm for no good reason. I had to reset the PRAM. Why? Also, when the battery goes empty and the system goes to sleep, plugging it in does not let you turn the system back on! Err what? I have to wait 10 minutes or so for the battery to get charged at least a little.

So, OS X indeed slows me down to the point where I lose my train of thought when I'm "in the zone." This just sucks, and it's a shame too. I really like the look of OS X, and I think it's a great system -- but my needs are different than those of many people, and sadly is simply not a system for me. But I readily admit that it's the best damn notebook I ever had (and for $5K it damn well better be -- it's my company's).

mk

P.S. Sorry to have to post as AC, but I don't want to go to Karma hell. It's not my intention to start a flame war anyway, just giving you an honest answer to your question, from my point of view.

Re:lookin good

[One Childish N00b]

For me, Ubuntu is more stable than Vista. I know the Slashdot crowd will lynch me for this, but I like Vista, once you turn off the worst of the unneccessary shine its a very good, very secure operating system, but it's still not as stable as Ubuntu. Take, for example, my attempts to install ZoneAlarm on Vista:

First off, ZoneLabs state on their site that ZoneAlarm works on Vista. You are offered versions for 98/2000/XP and a version for Vista (or it might be 98/2000 and XP/Vista, I don't remember). I download it and start to install, and stalls at 19% for a good ten minutes. Fair enough, says I, perhaps their installer has a bug. But then, when it gets to 100% and displays the 'Setting up ZoneAlarm' dialog, both times I have tried to install it, the computer has bluescreened at this point and had to be hard restarted. The first time my network connection stopped working (presumably due to a misinstalled or misconfigured driver injected into the system by ZA - it was early and I wanted to just fix it and go to bed), and the second time the system bluescreened and hung again immediately after logging in (again presumably due to some sort of malformed driver early in the startup sequence).

Both times required me to do a system restore to roll back the changes.

Now you can argue that the problem lies with ZoneLabs and their bad coding. Perhaps the problem lies with my hardware (though I can't see how - this computer is fresh out of the box as of about four days ago and everything else is working fine), but whatever it is, Vista should not fail in this way, with bluescreens and crashes on startup. This doesn't happen on Ubuntu, and the worst that happens is I have to kill X and restart it, and that's happened maybe three times in the entire time I've been using Ubuntu - the only time I've had the machine fully lock up was from drastic hardware failure.

Now, my point is, I like Vista, in fact, because of my burgeoning gaming addiction, I'm starting to use it more than my Ubuntu machine, but a modern OS supposedly made with system stability and security in mind should not behave like this - it should fail gracefully or at the very least fail sanely enough for me to be able to resolve the problem without an hour's work. Certainly not within four days of sitting down and activating the damn thing.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 has changed. It is there, but no longer in the dock. Just open a terminal and run Xeyes, you'll see.

However, I have discovered that several GIS packages that use X11 just don't do the right thing. Instead of just checking and using the DISPLAY variable, they first check the Receipts folder to see if X11 is installed. Leopard doesn't have a receipt for X11- so that test fails. They further go on to check for other things, none of which are necessary. Its the application that is failing, not X11.

Re:lookin good

[ThirdPrize]

Must ... fight urge to comment ... they would only mod me into oblivion.

Re:lookin good

[somersault]

Sounds to me that if you'd started out on a Mac, then you'd be complaining just as much about the way XP handles switching between windows too. I also have found the Mac version of alt-tab a bit annoying, but I haven't been using it for work anyway, tend to just use it for improved battery life and power saving options when I use my computer for playing music. As far as waking from sleep goes, I haven't had the same issue with my MBP - starts up as soon as I plug in the power and tap a key (though when the screen switches off in Windows on battery power it doesn't switch on again -.- ). Anyway, I can see situations where it would be beneficial being able to switch between apps and *then* switch between Windows, unfortunately for me I only found out about the Apple-tilde combination a couple of weeks ago and haven't even tried it yet :P

And my main piece of advice to you would be to use Apple-H to hide Windows rather than minimising them, I think that should sidestep all your minimisation woes?

Re:lookin good

[Jerom]

Try running VISTA on a G3, G4 or G5. See who'll be the laughing stock then.

*grin*

J.

Re:lookin good

[PopeRatzo]

Or did you think that nobody knew that you can't install it on self-assembled PCs?

But clearly that question has some relevance in any discussion of a review of OSX. Software that requires some artificially proprietary hardware is very 1980's. It's sort of like needing a parallel port dongle in order to use a software package.

I love using the Apple operating system. I adore Logic Pro (which is the main reason I have to have at least one powerful Mac). But I loathe the several thousand dollar premium I have to pay just to use OSX.

I'm very conflicted about this because Apple stock is sending my kid to school (although it's starting to look a little pricey, P/E-wise). I probably owe Steve Jobs a debt of gratitude (and maybe a reach-around) for the way his decisions have benefited my family (and I'm not talking about Toy Story 2), but there's something about the way he turned his back on the open, DIY ethic of the techie world that makes me sad. Maybe I'm just old.

Re:lookin good

[MetalPhalanx]

I recently bought a MBP and I'm getting used to it as well. One large difference that I've noticed between the Windows Family and OS X is that even when you close all of an application's windows it stays running. It was a little strange at first, but now I enjoy it. Terminating a program with command-q seems to be a system wide shortcut for whichever app is running in foreground.

Minimizing windows in OS X isn't really useful, as the GP said, it is rather frustrating to have to use the dock (I use quicksilver for pretty much everything except when I accidentally minimize a window). The longer I use my MBP the less I get the urge to minimize windows though. The only reason I used to minimize windows was so I could find another window (Expose does this faster), or because I wasn't using the associated application for a while but wanted to keep it running (Now I just close the application window instead and leave it running).

The fact that shortcut keys are inconsistent is annoying, but at least the command key can be used by applications. I think I used the windows key for 3 or 4 different keystrokes, and that was it. With the command key, I find it allows an extra range of key combinations.

Re:lookin good

[NotAgent86]

Use Command-H (Hide) rather than Command-M (Minimize) and then when you cycle through the window will be function as you want. Drove me insane too until I found it,..

Re:lookin good

[gerrysteele]

I don't think leopard is anymore innovative over previous releases than vista was over XP.

Re:lookin good

[Egdiroh]

I've got to respectfully disagree. Your original post is overrated, flamebait, a troll and funny (in the way ignorance generally is).

With all due respect, you are being a prick.

Sadly not being a prick wasn't one of my goals in that post. My post should have and did get modded down. I just hope that some of the mods looking at my post turned their eyes up-word and gave the whole tread the modding that it deserved.

Also I love that you posted your message as yourself.

Re:lookin good

[kardar]

I tried out 10.4 for a little while, after having used Linux for a long time. I felt a little lost, honestly. I installed Quicksilver, which helped a lot. I installed iterm, which helped a lot. I never got around to installing fink, and perhaps something like openbox on top, and I don't have the laptop anymore - but that might have helped.

Definitely, I am much more productive in Linux, I can customize things much better in Linux.

I'm excited by the technical nature of OS X, the fact that it's BSD, the fact that it's secure, that I don't have to constantly worry about viruses or updates or whatever, but usability wise, I felt like I was hanging upside down, heavily sedated, not sure where I was or what was going on. Almost makes me sick to my stomach.

For me, clearly the solution lies in installing Fink or Darwin ports, and installing a window manager where I can edit my own menus. Unfortunately I was only experimenting with the laptop, and I wasn't really in a position to install tons of software or whatever.

I bet you anything that as it is with learning - different people learn differently - so it is with user interfaces. Now I'm no fan of Windows, as I use Linux for most everything day in and out - but user-interface wise, I'd rather use Windows. Not-having-to-worry-about viruses wise, OS X is better than Windows.

For me, personally, the user interface in OS X just didn't work. I've used BSDs before, and I'm a big fan of their stability, but in the end, it's the configurability that makes the cake.

I can't build my own Mac (legally, at least).

I'm stuck with a single desktop environment (without Fink or Darwin Ports)

It makes me physically uncomfortable to use the interface (having almost exclusively used Linux for about a decade).

The truth, I think, it seems, as much as I _HATE_ to admit it, as much as I really, really, _WANT_ to love OS X, is that I'm better served by running Linux, and then using Windows only if there is absolutely no other way to accomplish that which I need to accomplish. It's not a huge problem to have XP running on a second-hand computer in the corner somewhere "just in case" I need to do something. I can even vnc in from the Linux machine...

I was excited about OS X, I tried OS X for a couple of months (10.4), and my conclusion is that Linux is better.

I can build my own machines, I don't have to pay ridiculous sums of money for hardware, I can use AMD, I can use my own cooling solutions, pick and choose which components I want, and then I can configure my GUI as I see fit.

If I didn't have the computer skills that I have, I would probably go for Apple over Windows, that's true. But knowing what I know, I simply couldn't make that choice. As a matter of fact, I wonder if the people who do make that choice actually realize what they're doing...

If Apple were to release OS X into the wild, so I could build my own PC (legally, that is - I know you can do it in an unofficial capacity - even on AMD - but that's not the point) and then install OS X on it, and then install Xcode and then install Fink and then customize - I would then use it as the "go to" system whenever Linux couldn't do what I needed done.

I love OS X, but I hate the user interface - and it looks like they just made it worse. AND I don't like being ripped off on my hardware -- $329 for a 500 gig hard drive? A 500 gig Seagate 7200.10 runs $119! C'mon man...

I'm sorry... Apple just doesn't cut it, as MUCH as I would LOVE to love this OS... I can get better functionality with Linux + Windows whenever I absolutely need Windows because Linux can't do something I absolutely can't live without.

At this point in time, I do NOT see an Apple in my future. I guess that makes me love Linux ever so much more...

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the big dick points anymore building your own system. I've built dozens over the years but my time and money are just too valueable these days. I just wasted days on a lemon Shuttle barebones that they refuse to take back then I had a nightmare with a bunch of pro level Quadro video cards. They refused to hold the drivers so every time I reboot I have to reload the video drivers. Tech support and updating the drivers didn't help. I finally got sick of it. The only companies I'll buy from are Apple, Alienwarre and Boxx. They all build solid hardware. In the old days if you wanted a good system configured in a useable form you had to build. These days I can get fast afordable machines from good companies not Dell crap where they sell for a name brand price then give you crap motherboards. I found reviews don't help avoid the problems because they can't check every configuration and I sure as hell can't so it's better to go with companies like Apple that do diligence themselves and just sell only hardware and software that work together.

Re:lookin good

[neersign]

I've experienced some of these problems also. The hotkeys are the biggest drawback for me too. I bought an old 12" powerbook just so I could experiment with the OS, and after using it for a year I still feel like a beginner. I still have to stop and think for a second before I use a hotkey. I've gotten fairly used to using the option key instead of the ctrl, but there are still a few key combos that I use in windows/linux that I still haven't found a substitute for in os x, mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox (i'll give command ~ a try tonight, that's the first time i've heard of it).

the other huge pet peeve is how closing programs is handled. I've gotten in the habit of always hitting 'command q' to quit all my apps, but my fiance still hasn't learned to fully quit each program when she's done. I can always tell when she's been using the powerbook because there will be a large number of programs till running even though all the windows are closed. It's not her fault, she's closing them out as she has learned to, by clicking the red dot. It should not be mandatory to go in to the menu at the top and clicking "quit" or using a hotkey. I'd really like to see Apple come up with a more streamlined way of closing programs. Maybe something like if you close the last window open, it quits the program.

the other thing that I've noticed with my fiances use of the powerbook is that she often loses minimized windows. They get thrown in to the dock with all of the other icons where it is easily looked over. Now, I did turn off the "magic" window minimizing animation because the powerbook is just a 867mhz and it's slow enough as it is, so it might be more obvious if she could watch the window minimize, but that shouldn't be needed.

i also want to note that she has absolutely no problem when she uses my desktop pc, which runs Linux.

Re:lookin good

[krelian]

There is a nice summery of Vista criticism on wikipedia After reading a lot of /. I felt the same as you.

Reading the list, I think there are two major flaws: system requirements, and lack of any killer features for end users. The main feature for the end user is the new user interface (which looks great), but since it requires too many system resources (nothing too staggering IMO. I also believe that people will be catching up soon so that the average newly sold PC will be able to run vista with no problems) , a regular user is left with the notion that Windows just became slower. At the end of the day I don't think that there is something more annoying to users than sluggish performance.

On the positive side, as much as /. has tried, it does look like Vista is a much safer OS than XP.

Re:lookin good

[ArikTheRed]

As a recent OS X convert myself The most important part of your entire statement. It takes time to get used to any system. I switched from Linux to a Sun Ultra + Solaris a few years back and ran into similar types problems. After a year, I couldn't work on anything else.

Re:lookin good

[ArikTheRed]

a few key combos that I use in windows/linux that I still haven't found a substitute for in os x, mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox Jesus, people... why must you complicate everything? http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=macosx+firefox+changing+tabs&btnG=Google+Search

Re:lookin good

[Tony Hoyle]

The whole apps not terminating stuff annoys me intensely (I've got into the habit of going through the dock doing right click/close every hour or so, or if it's really bad simply rebooting), and also the complete absence of any alt-tab equivalent is horrid... but I get by. I couldn't use osx full-time.. you spend too much time mucking around with stuff that should be simple. I'm hoping some of this is fixed on leopard (which I have but haven't installed as I'm waiting for the compatibility issues to be sorted).

Re:lookin good

[MobyDisk]

These types of complaints are common. I think OS X is so overhyped that nobody can see the flaws. It's like the goal is to try and be as unlike Windows as possible, even if Windows has a good idea. Instead of "Think Different" Apple should "Think Better"

Re:lookin good

[aquaepulse]

Apple's willingness to break backwards compatibility for the sake of cleaner APIs and a saner OS MS is crucified on /. for not making DX10 backward compatible to XP, why isn't this brave?

and their utilization of third-party components wherever possible - BSD tools/Mach/KHTML/DTrace/ZFS(soon)/etc. Microsoft has full-blown NIH syndrome Obviously there are issues with MS being able to use FLOSS. So this strikes me as disingenuous.

with the end result that they go out and build everything from scratch, with 90% of it being worse than open source solutions. That's just exaggeration. ETW which does what DTrace does has been around since Win2K.

They're getting crushed by their own proprietary codebase and enormous level of legacy support True about the crushing codebase. But the legacy support is why people use Windows. The pride of Linux is running on ancient and obscure hardware, why is this no good for MS?

Re:lookin good

[MobyDisk]

The problem is that "get used to it" is used as an excuse to ignore constructive feedback. If you used an awful system for years, you would eventually get used to it, flaws and all. The feedback of the recent converts is more valuable than the feedback of people who have gotten used to things and lost their perspective.

Re:lookin good

[Brat Food]

1- Shortcuts form program to program.

Firefox is a pretty bad example, as in almost every other program theres is a huge amount of consistency. Th shortcut differences in firefox mostly stem from the dev team trying to keep FF the same across platforms, though it is looking like they will make it more macified in the next major release. Honestly, if you dig a little bit, like in system preferences, you can change the behavior of a lot of whats pissing you off.

2- Window switching
I have to totally disagree.
command + ` usually switches between windows in the app on top

command + tab has a TON of options. First off, command+tab, you can let go of tab and you have the switcher up. Now, you can use mouse, tab, or arrow keys to move between apps. You can also minimize or quit an app from here, by pressing H to hide and Q to quit.

Expose is really the best way though. I map expose to a mouse button, as well as the last few F keys. You expose in to show all windows or show windows in current app. If you have a few documents open, doing it for that app is a ton faster then anything in windows. I use it extensively in photoshop, where I often have 5-10 things open.

Also, if you expose, you can tab and it will go app to app showing open windows. I wouldn't be surprised if theres a trick involving minimized windows, but imm not here to do your research.
To be honest, I dont even minimize things anymore. Theres really no point.

3- fans and battery
First off, fans going gung ho is usually because of some piece of bad software over utilizing the cpu/gpu. If theres something more sinister, it's either a hardware failure or theres probably an update for errant behavior. But, honestly, having a semi-easy way to reset your systems hardware.. is a good thing, right? Also, its not PRAM anymore for anyone reading (on the intel hardware). Crap happens, it's not just cus you have a mac.

Also, for people who REALLLLLY want to customize keyboard shortcuts and, well, everything else, try

http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/

really, it's amazing, and I use it for adding shortcuts on my logitech mouse on a per app basis.

Re:lookin good

[_|()|\|]

Browsing back and forth is Command-Left and Command-Right, but that is also the shortcut to go to the beginning/end of line (when typing into a form field, for example).

All of the browsers I've tried accept Command-[ and Command-] as shortcuts for browsing back and forth.

Re:lookin good

[_|()|\|]

the complete absence of any alt-tab equivalent is horrid

Personally, I've gotten used to Cmd-Tab on the Mac (and I love that it works in tandem with the mouse), but you might be interested in Witch, a donationware utility that lets you Alt-Tab your way through the windows of all applications.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI...

"Witch" allows you to easily switch between windows of any application. I use it instead of the CMD-Tab function all the time.

http://www.manytricks.com/witch/

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox, for example, uses Ctrl-D to deny cookies, while Safari uses Command-D to deny.

Sounds like a bug in Firefox to me, other shortcuts use command and option keys.

Browsing back and forth is Command-Left and Command-Right, but that is also the shortcut to go to the beginning/end of line (when typing into a form field, for example).

Use command-[ and ] instead. Command-left and right are there in the browsers for people used to Windows I think. I had the same problem at first.

Microsoft Word for Mac uses Windows-style shortcuts (end/home etc). I realize that this is not an OS X problem, but in a way it is -- these keys are not enforced like they are on other OSes (yes, linux has good shortcuts). These impede my flow of thought when I have to fish for the right keys to move from word to word, use the delete key (on a laptop), show the desktop (F11? wtf). I could go on and on about bad shortcut keys, but I think I have gotten my point across. Oh, and using Open Office is not feasible in OS X. I'm sorry, but it plain sucks (slow, inconsistent, requires X11...)

Use Apple Pages instead, it's pretty good. And no, other OSes don't enforce this either as I think the Word text widget is a custom drawn widget and no OS provided widget. You would have the same problem in Windows, or any OS if the vendor decided to implement their own and ignore standard keys.

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~.

Use Exposé to switch windows it is awesome, you can even drag and drop between windows in Exposé and you can use the cursor keys in Exposé to switch the active window.

Furthermore, you can't even switch windows if one of them is minimized. Yep, you have to fish for it with your mouse (this makes the minimize button and Expose completely useless). And no, Expose does not show minimized windows either. So, my shortcuts are all messed up, my desktop is cluttered, and the "zoom" button has unpredictable behaviors (try it in iTunes, for example).

Get used to not minimize as often as in Windows, OS X has better window management and you really don't need to. I only minimize apps I won't use for a long time.

Third, I have had weird things happen with my MBP -- fans just started spinning at 6000rpm for no good reason. I had to reset the PRAM. Why? Also, when the battery goes empty and the system goes to sleep, plugging it in does not let you turn the system back on! Err what? I have to wait 10 minutes or so for the battery to get charged at least a little.

Use your warranty and what does this have to do with OS X?

Sure OS X isn't perfect as no OS is but in my opinion it is the best desktop OS. You are still using it as if it were Windows, understandable if you used Windows for a long time but try to train yourself not to do that.

Re:lookin good

[Yer Mum]

Try Witch, a freeware application downloadable from here. It gives you a fairly Windows-like alt-tab. I'm not sure if it works on 10.5.

There are also other shortcuts besides alt + tab like command + `.

Re:lookin good

[krunk7]

First, the shortcuts are not consistent from program to program.

The blame lies in application developers, not with Apple. I'm not sure what you mean by "the shortcuts are enforced in other OS's". As far as I know there's nothing preventing a programmer on another platform from binding functions to any key they wish. However, the "Ctrl" combos are canonical for Windows/Linux (who got it from windows) whereas the "CMD" combos are for OSX. The developers should take this into account when porting. Basically, it's either laziness or they don't want to confuse old time users with new key combos. However, there's nothing preventing you from reassigning these combos in either OSX apps or the third party apps to conform to the combos your used to. (Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard Shorcuts.

Second, window switching is abysmal.

This is a difference in UI functionality. For windows you want to keep in your workflow you CMD+H to hide them. This unclutters the desktop and allows for switching via Expose. Minimizing apps/windows are for taking them out of the workflow. Say to put something on hold for several hours or so. A third solution is to script your most used apps to hotkeys that will either focus them if open or open them if not, this way no tabbing is necessary to focus an app.

Third, I have had weird things happen with my MBP

These problems sound unfortunate and are not the norm in the least. I'd suggest you have something funky going on with your laptop and should return it for repair/replacement.

It's not my intention to start a flame war anyway

Neither is it my intention. Rather I wish to provide some advice that can help your work flow. Don't buck the system, learn the system. OSX is highly configurable, if you don't like something there's a very good chance you can change it. (P.S. If the application switching really gets to you that badly and you can't grow comfortable with the OSX way of doing things there are many 3rd party (and often free or dirt cheap) apps out there to provide you with the windows like functionality you've become accustomed to)

Re:lookin good

[seebs]

You know, all your complaints about windows are the exact REASON that people wanted virtual desktops.

Try using them. After all, this is an article about Leopard. ;)

Inconsistent command keys are a problem, yes, but that's true everywhere -- I am perpetually mystified by the variety of mutually exclusive keyboard habits application vendors want me to use.

Here's my experience: OS X slowed me down too when I wasn't used to it. I'm used to that. Once I've gotten used to it, it's pretty decent; Spaces addresses the last big issue I had with it.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong key command to switch between windows. Use Expose! If you hit F9 you'll see ever open window of every application. You can then arrow (or mouse click) to what ever window of what ever application you want. If you use F10 then you can see every window of your current application only. Slightly different process, same outcome.

NeoOffice is a Mac specific port of OpenOffice. Give that a try. No X11 and more enabled Macness...

Not sure what's going on with your MBP. Mine doesn't do that, I can wake it immediately.

Re:lookin good

[Lemming Mark]

I'll be installing as soon as my Jobs gets its site license worked out.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:lookin good

[Peganthyrus]

changing tabs in a program like firefox
Some experimentation reveals that it's alt-apple-cursor left and alt-apple-cursor right. I can't find this exposed in the UI anywhere - which is the kind of nonsense that makes me avoid Firefox.

In Safari, it's apple-shift-[ and apple-shift-] - which you can discover by looking in the 'window' menu.

If you use Adium for your IM, look in the 'general' tab of its prefs - they let you choose between four different sets of tab-switching shortcuts.

Why do you need to close your programs when you're done with them? Most apps use no resources when they have no windows open, and will get swapped out to disc. When you need them, they can be swapped back into physical memory faster than they can be loaded.

And try setting the minimize effect to 'scale' instead of completely turning it off via Tinkertool or whatnot.

Re:lookin good

[Yer Mom]

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~.

Try Witch to fix that. It has options for working with minimised windows, too.

Not sure what Safari you're running, though — mine uses Cmd-D to bookmark a page ;)

As for the MS Office shortcuts, that's Microsoft's fault — just about everybody else uses the Mac standard keys. Hopefully they've fixed this for Office 2008, but I'm not going to put money on it.

Re:lookin good

[Penguinisto]

Heh - every OEM has to build their products as bits and pieces. With a smaller range, Apple can specify those bits and pieces, and have them assembled to form, shape, and spec. Apple has a habit of making sure the bits they do include are proven, tested, and simply do the job over insanely long periods of time.

On the flip side, yep - you can modify a Mac alright... right down to the CPU, where you could take a G3-300 box and hop it up literally to a G4 1.2GHz chip as a drop-in upgrade (caveat - not sure if the Intel models let you do that).

Hell, I remember shoe-horning an old ATI Radeon into a Mac Cube, and having to modify the unholy Hell out of the guts to accomplish that - simply because I figured I could. This included re-flashing the non-Mac Radeon (and praying that it took - it did), moving a major component (the DC/DC power dist board) out of the new video card's way (and actually finding room for it elsewhere in a cramped 7"x7" cubic space), and in general hacking the crap out of its internals while making sure the outside remained unscratched and normal in appearance.

So yes, you can hack a Mac. Even my workhorse dual G5 is starting to get the evil chop-town eyeball from me nowadays, and thoughts of "hmm... if I can do x and y to it, then z can be accomplished, and..." But, I want to get another Mac first before I go slashing away on this one.

Incidentally, there are folks who happily run OSX in a Non-Apple-built machine. Lots of people.

All that said, ~99.999% of Apple's customer base wouldn't even dream of doing anything fun like that to their machines. Same story with ~99.999% of Dell's customer base. Or HP's. or Gateway's. Or Lenovo's. Or... ?

Thing is, Apple sells computers. Microsoft sells a computer part (an OS). Thus you'd never really see the two compete that way. Apple is smart enough to avoid being trapped fully in the inexorable drive towards the OS being a mere commodity, by selling the whole package, and not just piece of one.

/P

Re:lookin good

[ArikTheRed]

But his major complaints are 1) It's not like Windows/Linux or 2) certain programs don't work as expected. Can I hate Windows because I prefer Emacs bindings? I like to type CTRL-S to search and CTRL-X-S to save... that's not the OS's fault that my preferences are different.

So, let me deconstruct them:

First, the shortcuts are not consistent from program to program. Firefox, for example, uses Ctrl-D to deny cookies, while Safari uses Command-D to deny. Browsing back and forth is Command-Left and Command-Right, but that is also the shortcut to go to the beginning/end of line (when typing into a form field, for example). Microsoft Word for Mac uses Windows-style shortcuts (end/home etc). I realize that this is not an OS X problem, but in a way it is -- these keys are not enforced like they are on other OSes What a load of horse crap. Firefox keys aren't "enforced" in Windows to be similar to Windows keys, they just happen to be. This has nothing to do with the OS - that has to do with the programs you CHOOSE to use.

(yes, linux has good shortcuts). These impede my flow of thought when I have to fish for the right keys to move from word to word, use the delete key (on a laptop), show the desktop (F11? wtf). I could go on and on about bad shortcut keys, but I think I have gotten my point across. Not really, since you can change all sorts of shortcuts in System Preferences.

Oh, and using Open Office is not feasible in OS X. I'm sorry, but it plain sucks (slow, inconsistent, requires X11...) That's why people use NeoOffice.

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~. Again, this is your preference. I enjoy this feature very much.

Furthermore, you can't even switch windows if one of them is minimized. Yep, you have to fish for it with your mouse (this makes the minimize button and Expose completely useless). And no, Expose does not show minimized windows either. So, my shortcuts are all messed up, my desktop is cluttered, and the "zoom" button has unpredictable behaviors (try it in iTunes, for example). You are correct about this. Check out Quicksilver or Witch. In other words, learn the tools of the trade.

Third, I have had weird things happen with my MBP -- fans just started spinning at 6000rpm for no good reason. I had to reset the PRAM. Why? Also, when the battery goes empty and the system goes to sleep, plugging it in does not let you turn the system back on! Err what? I have to wait 10 minutes or so for the battery to get charged at least a little. WTF? I have no idea what you're talking about here. Also, what does this have to do with OSX?

Re:lookin good

[Yer Mom]

but there are still a few key combos that I use in windows/linux that I still haven't found a substitute for in os x, mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox

In Firefox: Ctrl-Tab and Shift-Ctrl-Tab. In Safari: Shift-Cmd-[ and Shift-Cmd-] (or use the arrow keys instead of the square brackets).

Most programs will probably use the same keys as Safari (except TextMate, which uses them for indentation and uses Cmd-Opt-Arrow instead *sigh*)

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

They do... most of the inconsistencies I've ever found are BETTER approaches to UI than the alternative/old way.

Re:lookin good

[CatOne]

OS X for Intel uses EFI. OS X *requires* EFI. That's because, by Apple building the hardware and the software, they can ensure they *have* things like EFI, which, among other things, lets OS X boot on a laptop in about 35 seconds where some of the Vaio machines with Vista take upwards of 3 minutes to boot (!!!).

If OS X had to rely on lowest common demoninator hardware (and the PC market is just loaded with this -- hell you still have 32 bit Windows only supporting BIOS, because the systems vendors only support BIOS because Windows only works with it... well that's what you call a chicken and egg situation).

Re:lookin good

[cromar]

Just because you don't know the shortcuts, doesn't make it a bad design.

Re:lookin good

[Kadin2048]

Use Command-H (Hide) rather than Command-M (Minimize) and then when you cycle through the window will be function as you want. Drove me insane too until I found it,.. It's worth noting this was the pre-OS X version of window minimization. I'm not sure when it originated but it was definitely around in System 7; I used to use it very heavily. Then in OS 8 they brought out 'rollup' windows that let you reduce a window to its title bar, and this is what turned into the Dock minimization in OS X. But the original show/hide functions never left.

I've always thought that the Hide function was more useful than the Dock, though. Press Cmd-H and bam, the thing just gets out of your way. No animations, no screwing around, just out of your way so you can do something.

Cmd-Opt-H is also handy, it hides all the applications except for the currently active one, nice when you're using the Finder and want to see the Desktop but it's buried in other apps' windows. If you have a mouse with a lot of extra buttons that can be programmed on an application-by-application basis, you might want to think about putting those hotkeys in. (Back in the day I had them programmed into buttons on a trackball and it was great.)

I'm still hoping someday they'll bring back the Put Away command.

Re:lookin good

[anagama]

I know X11 is there. It's just borked if you need to do remote X sessions because you need a terminal.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

  "When you can install 10.5 on the same range of computers as Vista (along with all the myriad problems and support nightmares for Apple that go along with that)"

This alone is a good reason why Apple does things the way they do.

This new backup thing in 10.5 is another good example. By forcing the use of a different disk and by backing up complete files (and not just changed parts of files) Apple is obliging people to actually make useful working backups. After all, what good is backup data on a different partition of a failed disk?

The vast majority of people out there just want to use the computer to browse pointless blogs and fly pointlessly around second life with no clothes on. Really they are clueless. A (for the moment) benevolent authority that forces things to work properly is a benefit. Microsoft conquered the world with their philosophy of making everything run Windows. Now everything running windows is participating in a botnet. I am not sure it's going to last.

For the moment Apple is the best solution I see. GNU/Linux is great but too diverse. It's still too much an experiment. Eventually something new and better will come along. Don't take it so personally. Although, like your taste in music, movies, literature and art it does reveal a lot about your personality -- you know that and that's why you're so sensitive.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but what if the recent converts are mainly complaining simply because the new system doesn't work like their previous awful system that they're used to? :)

Re:lookin good

[JonathanBoyd]

mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox (i'll give command ~ a try tonight, that's the first time i've heard of it).

control-tab and sift-control-tab will do it. Personally I prefer Safari's shift-command-] and shift-command-[ since they fit well with command-[ and command-] for going backwards and forwards.

Maybe something like if you close the last window open, it quits the program.

If they did that, they'd have every experienced Mac user up in arms over the problems quitting when they don't want them to.

Re:lookin good

[ncc74656]

there are still a few key combos that I use in windows/linux that I still haven't found a substitute for in os x, mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox (i'll give command ~ a try tonight, that's the first time i've heard of it).

Ctrl-Tab works in Firefox for Mac OS X the same way it does in Firefox for Linux or Windows. Unfortunately, that seems to be the only place where it works. I just stumbled across the OpenApple-~ (or is it OpenApple-`?) thing the other day...was frustrating to have to go to the mouse to switch between Terminal windows.

Re:lookin good

[tsa]

Ow, that's quite a list. Well, I like XP, and I like Tiger, and I will stick with them for a while. Thanks for the link!

Re:lookin good

[lazy_playboy]

"I could do half again the work in 3/4 the time"

You know, you could've just said something like 'I could do twice the work' ;-)

Re:lookin good

[lazy_playboy]

Your whole post can be summed up with, "I'm not used to it", or ,"I can't change from my Windows habits", which doesn't say much about OS X specifically.

I've never understood what's difficult to grasp about apps not quitting when the last window is closed. Why should I want that? 'apple-W' to close the window, 'apple-Q' to quit.

I'm hating the look and function of the new dock, though. Now that is something to complain about! ;-)

Re:lookin good

[timberwork]

I guess I'm the opposite of you. I tried Linux, mostly fedora, and found that if you wanted to configure some things, the settings were ALL OVER the "start" menu. Want to change the network setting? It's under one menu. Want to change the window behavior? It's under yet another menu. Not to mention it's installed utilities for both gnome and KDE and I have NO IDEA which to use, because they change different things slightly differently.

My impression of linux is that if you like to customize, it offers a million ways to do that. If you're an expert in linux, it's no problem. But for people like me, who just want to get work done, figuring out which utility is under which menu, let alone which to use among the myriad of utilities, is not something I want to spend my time on.

Re:lookin good

[EggyToast]

I've found that most people run into problems with OS X when they act like it's "windows, but different." A lot of linux desktops mimic Windows in many aspects, which is why some people don't run into those same issues.

For instance, I never minimize anything but PDFs, and that's only as "storage." Otherwise, there's no reason to minimize anything -- all the desktop clutter is perfectly normal, thanks to expose and the separation between "applications" and "windows." Windows users, at least the plain jane ones, are in the habit of opening up a window full-screen, and when they want to use something else, they minimize it to the doc and switch to the next window, also in full-screen. So the taskbar (since they're generally not using tab to switch between windows) is their main navigation.

That approach is completely unneeded on OS X, where there's no "gray background" for an app and you don't end up with windows inside other windows, but rather the overall "application" that spawns actual windows.

I know you're speaking for your fiance having those problems, but whenever I've had to help someone with a new mac, I spend some time giving them some pointers, and explicitly stating that "it's not windows, and here are some things I KNOW you do in Windows that you don't have to do anymore." Thinks like use their pinky for hotkeys -- I tell them to use their thumb instead, and they usually go "oooohhhhh... that is easier!" And they start actually using hotkeys. I also teach them about expose, and after I give them some pointers about it they realize it's more than just flashy crap.

I have to train people how to use macs at my job, since we typically hire people based on technical skills, not on OS allegiance, so I end up seeing a lot of odd habits that Windows users pick up. Your fiance's experiences aren't at all surprising to me; you really need to sit down with someone and tell them that what they're doing is wrong, which is never fun when dealing with computers :D

Re:lookin good

[lazy_playboy]

You have a point, but one of OS X's advantage's is that rather than presenting the user with many different configuration options, Apple has simply chosen the best and run with it. Yes this gets them into trouble sometimes (3D dock anyone?) but often a CLI command can change the behaviour if you really want to.

Also the trouble with recent convert's feedback is that it's tainted by Microsoftisms. Such as 'Why doesn't the maximise button work?' and 'Why doesn't the app quit when the last window is closed?'. This kind of feedback simplyn indicates that the user is completely missing the point and needs to get better aquainted with the OS.

It's the recent (windows) convert that got used to the 'awful system' you mention ;-)
Even converts from KDE and gnome have a similar problem, because a lot of these UIs were copied from microsoft.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be what is installed on theses bootleg 'Apple clones'

http://logan-1.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/5e/5e12fd19cfba17ea306c1f45fdcd1a0535d2f8d1.jpg

Re:lookin good

[Lally Singh]

Once you get past drivers, MS has no excuse for how bad their software is.

Just compare the OSs on two well-supported machines.

Re:lookin good

[EggyToast]

I think that's really key -- people get in the habit of minimizing things from Windows, and have a hard time breaking the habit. It's so ingrained as a legitimate form of actual navigation, that the idea behind it is lost. Minimizing means "put this away so I don't have to look at it, but I probably want it back in the future without hunting for the file." If it's put away, that means you don't want it as part of your regular workflow. Makes sense to me. Although, I do agree that there should be an easier way of getting things out, instead of hoping "apple+1 (through 9)" happens to be bound to that window.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Good Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.

LIAR!

Re:lookin good

[EggyToast]

It's funny that your post gives the impression that the ability to hack a mac requires actual hacking skills. Almost makes you think that the majority of people who put together their own "PC" computers are just trying to save money, and don't actually know what the parts they're putting in there are doing, or if there are any compatibility/power/configuration issues... (after all, that's why I gave up on building my own machines)

Re:lookin good

[ToasterMonkey]

MS is crucified on /. for not making DX10 backward compatible to XP, why isn't this brave? That wasn't bravery, they want to force gamers into upgrading. As it turns out, the single thing pinning it to Vista is now optional now, but don't hold your breath for DX10-XP, because Microsoft is so "brave".

Obviously there are issues with MS being able to use FLOSS. So this strikes me as disingenuous. Yes, 'personal' issues.

That's just exaggeration. ETW which does what DTrace does has been around since Win2K. Yes, that's a perfect example.

ETW is designed for C and C++ developers who write user-mode applications. From a Sun article titled "End-to-End Tracing of Ajax/Java Applications Using DTrace"

DTrace is a Solaris (10 and above) tracing infrastructure with scripting capabilities, which enables high observation capabilities into both system and user activities. It allows probing of almost every system (I/O, network, scheduling, memory) operation, as well as tracing user native and Java programming language code. It also has an easy-to-implement and straightforward mechanism, called USDT, to add user probes to a C program.

The pride of Linux is running on ancient and obscure hardware, why is this no good for MS? Sure they take pride in that, but that's not WHY anyone uses it unless you happen to only have ancient and obscure hardware on hand, and are afraid of contracting a BSD. -joke
Running on obscure hardware is not the reason MS is afraid of Linux. If that's all it were good for, they wouldn't have cause for concern.

Re:lookin good

[moderatorrater]

Actually, it's the blatant attempt to break slashdot with your irrational username. Thanks, jerk.

Re:lookin good

[Foofoobar]

As an IT person... I run Linux, Mac and Windows. And to hear someone say that Vista is more stable and better than XP is laughable. Macs in our office setup are troublefree. Linux installs are mostly servers and developers (and they maintain their own systems) so again trouble free; sorry Windows lovefest but Linux still has 5-10X the uptime and it takes two Windows boxes to compete with one Linux box using the same resources).

Vista though has been a nightmare since day one changing the way they do everything, throttling bandwidth when someones does any kind of multimedia, changing where they place settings, hogging resources like they are going out of style, freeze ups, stalls, etc. We dumped all our and move back to XP within 6 months. Now we don't plan to move to Vista EVER due to their major screwups in decision making of 'the microsoft way or the highway' and forcing this on the consumers.

This is what caused the switch to Firefox, this is what is causing the switch to Open Office. And this is what is causing Dell to sell Ubuntu and Macs to sell 2 million in the first weekend of a new OS release as compared to 6 months with Vista. They need to understand how to get back in touch with the consumer rather that dictating to the consumer what they want.

Re:lookin good

[BravoZuluM]

He could have and it would have taken half the time....

Re:lookin good

[blueskies]

I switched to a full OS X user (same speed as windows) with in 3 months. The only reason it took that long is that i am/was a power user in Windows using Window-P- to open apps in 3 keys strokes and such. There are a number of Apps i can't live without being installed on OS X, but once they are installed and my wetware is reprogrammed into OSX mode, i can move faster then when my brain is in XP mode on an XP machine.

quicksilver - i am keystrokes away from my apps
witch - gives better control of "command-tab"
Ctrl-F2 - takes me to the menu bar (most annoying key combo)
command-tab: cycle forwards through open apps
Command-`: cycle through an app's open windows
command-m: minimizes window (annoying to get back from dock)
command-h: hides windows
command-w: closes window
command-q: closes app

And I reversed my Function keys to not require fn, and i added the preference to be able to tab to all fields inside apps.

Re:lookin good

[FredAkbar]

And my main piece of advice to you would be to use Apple-H to hide Windows rather than minimising them, I think that should sidestep all your minimisation woes?

Command-H hides an app, not a window. Minimizing is the only way to hide just one window.

Re:lookin good

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

All of the reviews I've read thus far, including Ars, have been very positive.

All of the technical reviews from people who know what they're talking about seem to have been fairly positive overall. On the other hand, go check out the Google news archive for all the mainstream news reviews. They tend to be short, uninformed, often negative, and a number of them have been factually incorrect.

It's amazing how much can be done in a corporate/development culture like Apple in 2.5 years compared to the debacle that is Vista, which MS took 5+ years to produce (not that there's nothing at all positive about Vista, but looking in comparison).

I don't know. MS has done a lot in Vista, it is just that 50% or more of the work was things that are designed to benefit MS financially while hindering their customers. That is the difference between a company that is forced to compete in a healthy market (Apple in the personal computer market) versus a company that has monopoly influence in a broken market (MS in the desktop OS market).

Re:lookin good

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's too bad Vista and OSX will never compete with each other directly.

Well, sort of. Because of MS's monopoly influence in the market, if OS X were to be placed in direct competition, it would lose, regardless of the relative merits of the systems. That mean OS X would go away, giving us fewer choices. If, however, the desktop OS market were repaired, Apple's current bundling would put them at a significant market disadvantage and Apple would be forced to unbundle and compete directly with both Vista, and whatever other competitors would be pulled into the market.

I'd never consider buying a computer I couldn't rebuild or modify (or build entirely) so using Apple's software is never an option for me.

You have unusual priorities, luckily, since otherwise there would be even less choice for consumers and MS would have even less incentive to make any changes users want.

Re:lookin good

[uniquename72]

He didn't say it was a bad design - he said he didn't like it as much as XP or Linux.

Re:lookin good

[Penguinisto]

It's funny that your post gives the impression that the ability to hack a mac requires actual hacking skills.

It does, in a way. From making PC-flashed video cards to work on Macs (which requires more than simply booting off a floppy in many cases), to internals modifications that require doing a lot of things that the manufacturer never intended.

Almost makes you think that the majority of people who put together their own "PC" computers are just trying to save money, and don't actually know what the parts they're putting in there are doing, or if there are any compatibility/power/configuration issues...

For the most part, that's about it - to build a PC, you merely make the numbers and tech match, then you go shopping - starting with the mobo and using that as a guide for purchasing future bits and bobs to get your machine running.

When you're building your own cables and figuring pin-outs, soldering makeshift chassis ground bridges for displaced components, and using a slathering of electrical tape and thin fiberboard as insulation (which were only the small parts of what I did on the Cube modifications), then we can begin to compare. When you're crossing your fingers and hoping that the cobbled-together scripts you rigged up to flash a vidcard actually worked, and doing all of this knowing full well that any screw-ups will certainly not end in an RMA ticket, we can discuss how PC builders "hack" as a rule.

Don't get me wrong - there are a lot of folks out there who do hardware hacking on PC gear as well (e.g. the Japanese gent from 1998 or so, who jockeyed a soldering iron and a Dremel tool just to get a pair of PII Celerons operating on an SMB motherboard? He deserves the ultimate props for flirting with a warranty).

But... simply buying the bits and building a 'k3wl' gaming machine isn't really hacking at all. It's like (bad car analogy time!) comparing someone getting a new paint job, lower suspension kit, and a new sound system in their 2007 Honda Accord.... to someone who just got done converting a rusted-out 1968 Jeep into a rock-crawling off-road machine... and by the way the Jeep uses a Chevy engine, a Ford transmission, and sports a home-fabricated suspension, body, and roll-cage.

It's all a matter of degrees, no? ;)

/P

Re:lookin good

[mdwh2]

There's no question that OS X Leopard runs on AMD. It's that they have no plans to release it on AMD.

Which is exactly the point being made. The point isn't whether it would run or not on particular hardware, the point is that it's an awful lot easier to control bugs when the OS is officially restricted to certain hardware. Obviously it wouldn't be fair to criticise OS X if their back room unofficial version running on an AMD machine had a bug.

Not that there's anything wrong with such an approach; this is a benefit of all non-PC platforms. But the point is that they are different approaches, and you're not comparing like with like.

Re:lookin good

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

As a recent OS X convert myself, my experience has been exactly the opposite of yours. I used to be able to work a lot faster, a lot smoother, without having to stop and interrupt my flow of thought -- yes, on Windows XP. Linux has been slightly less usable, but still more so than OS X.

Often when people are power users, there is a big learning curve to get up to speed on a different system. The people I know who have the most trouble are those who insist on trying to exactly recreate their workflows from an old system and who are not open to learning new ways. People coming to OS X especially have problems because Apple often only really polishes one good workflow for a given task. At the same time OS X has some really useful new workflows and abilities that are often completely ignored by people who just want it to be exactly like Windows or Solaris or OpenBSD or whatever.

Please note, OS X is not the best platform for all tasks. Personally, I use OS X, Linux, and WinXP daily for different tasks and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I don't advocate any given OS for everyone and everything.

First, the shortcuts are not consistent from program to program.

Actually, I find them more consistent, with the exception of a small subset of programs that are quick and dirty ports or which intentionally try to maintain a cross platform interface based on another platform (like Firefox or Word). Have you tried Camino?

Oh, and using Open Office is not feasible in OS X. I'm sorry, but it plain sucks (slow, inconsistent, requires X11...)

OpenOffice is not well implemented on OS X. That is true. Try NeoOffice/J. It is the currently supported version and does not require X11. You must be using the really old and no longer supported X11 version.

I notice all the problems you mention so far are with using some given program that you used on another platform and which is different on OS X. Maybe you should consider the tasks you need to accomplish and then find the best software on OS X to accomplish them, instead of trying to find a port of what you used to use.

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~.

For very small numbers of open windows, OS X users suffer a slight penalty. For very large numbers of windows, the OS X way is significantly superior. Consider 100 windows open, 10 applications, each with 10 windows. On windows, to navigate from app1, window1 to app5, window5 you have to push 49 keystrokes. On OS X, you have to push 8 keystrokes (4 to switch to the right application and 4 to switch to the right window). That is a very serious usability win, even though it requires users learn to different keystrokes.

Furthermore, you can't even switch windows if one of them is minimized. Yep, you have to fish for it with your mouse (this makes the minimize button and Expose completely useless).

I see no reason in OS X to ever minimize a window. I think it is mostly a legacy control from pre-OS X MacOS. I recommend cutting it out of your workflow entirely.

Third, I have had weird things happen with my MBP -- fans just started spinning at 6000rpm for no good reason. I had to reset the PRAM. Why? Also, when the battery goes empty and the system goes to sleep, plugging it in does not let you turn the system back on! Err what? I have to wait 10 minutes or so for the battery to get charged at least a little.

Sounds like you are having hardware problems. My Macbook works fine while plugged in, even if I have no battery in it at all. All manufacturers will have hardware problems, but the consensus is Apple is right at the top of the pack for reliability, so I don't see that you can argue logically that this is a problem compared to Windows or Linux.

Re:lookin good

[Sancho]

You pretty much can't deny it. Settings in Linux are everywhere. Most applications have their own configuration file, while Gnome has a registry-like config.

It comes from the Unix philosophy: lots of simple programs, each which does its own job very well. When trying to build a system out of these parts, it's simply going to be all over the place. It doesn't bother me too much--I read the manual, find out where to change the setting, change it, and then I'm done. It's not always intuitive, though, so people who are accustomed to just being able to figure it out by tinkering will often have problems.

You're also spot on about customization. It's the bread-and-butter of Linux, and it's why I love it. I can make my computer behave the way I want it to--I'm not stuck with dictated standards from Apple or Microsoft.

Re:lookin good

[milkman_matt]

I still haven't found a substitute for in os x, mainly changing tabs in a program like firefox (i'll give command ~ a try tonight, that's the first time i've heard of it).

Actually, cmd+~ doesn't work for me, cmd+~ will switch between -windows- of a program, so if you have two firefox windows open it'll switch between the two of them. If you want to switch between tabs of a browser, cmd+1, cmd+2, cmd+3, cmd+whatever number the tab is will select the tab you want. Same seems to go with most tabbed programs (like adium chat windows do it too.) I wish the new tabbed terminal windows worked that way, but you use cmd+number to select which terminal you want to use already, so I guess that hotkey was already reserved...

Re:lookin good

[iron-kurton]

Actually, my main gripe is that the keys vary from application to application, and, like I said above, this is something that NEEDS to be enforced on a system-wide level, and not force developers to invent new keyboard shortcuts. Like I said, everything is different from Firefox, Safari, MS Office, etc. On windows and linux, you know that END takes you to the end of the line. My main problem is that I never know what will happen from app to app in OS X.

In my original post, I never said I have a problem with applications not quitting when the last window is closed. I understand the concept, and I can live with it (even though I think it's counter-intuitive). BUT, my problem is that I can't cycle through the App's open windows with one keystroke, instead of having to switch to the app first, then using a DIFFERENT key combination to cycle through the windows, and ONLY IF that window is not minimized. In the meantime, the same action on windows or linux would have taken a few alt-tabs and you're done.

Both of these "problems" are not bugs in OS X. The window switching works as designed. The problem is that the design is wrong.

As a funny aside, the first time I tried to do search-and-replace using Command-H (because it's Ctrl-H on Windows), my reaction was "wtf just happened?"

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, there's no reason to minimize anything

Why does the minimize button exist at all then? Remember OS 9 when all you could do is roll up the window? The point is that it's a completely useless button that can't be helped by Expose or Alt-Tab.

Similarly, the zoom button (aka maximize) exhibits unpredictable behaviors for various programs, thereby rendering THAT button useless as well. So really, the only functional button is the Red Dot. I know they needed to justify the stop-light analogy, but having 2/3 buttons clutter the title bar is not a good way to do it.

Re:lookin good

[clubby]

The whole apps not terminating stuff annoys me intensely (I've got into the habit of going through the dock doing right click/close every hour or so, or if it's really bad simply rebooting)

Seriously? You've built up a habit of rebooting rather than a habit of hitting Cmd-Q? Well, that's not the approach I'd take, but suit yourself.

and also the complete absence of any alt-tab equivalent is horrid

Now I'm upset. For those who don't know: alt-tab works pretty much the same under OS X as it does under Windows, and if this fellow had bothered to try the keystroke, he'd know this. It takes about 1 second to hit Cmd-Tab and see this fact first-hand. You, sir, are lazy, and you spread FUD.

Full disclosure notice: I'm a Linux user since 1994 who runs XP for games only, and I have a MacBook Pro that dual-boots between Leopard and Gutsy because they are both excellent OSes.

Re:lookin good

[JAlexoi]

...ZFS(soon)...
Are you sure about that? They just backed out Java 1.6 out of leopard, and Stevie J called Java developers "javatards".
I would not bet anything on Apple.

Re:lookin good

[GrahamCox]

...The Llonghorn disaster...

Yeah, they really shouldn't have relied on the Welsh computer industry, with their track record. (Silicon in the valleys, boyo?)

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

especially if you count the iPhone, OS X supports a much broader range of CPUs than Microsoft. Are you also counting all the different Windows Mobile phones, the Xbox 360, portable media players, television set top boxes, and AMD PCs?

Re:lookin good

[AmVidia HQ]

Except the video card, which you need Mac firmware and OS X drivers to run. I use both Windows and Mac and this is one thing I hate about Mac hardware compatibility.

If only they find to build in a standard video card interface that's makes it compatible with regular PC video cards and drivers..

Re:lookin good

[Pegasus5327t]

Pe---LEASE People we're talking about SOFTWARE here? Can we just admit it once and for all it's pretty damn good. Slashdot I RSS you in Mail and I'm writing this in my 2nd Spaces.

Steve Jobs NeXT I need an iPod recharger adapter so iCan have an iLife Ø8.9.1 without putting myself or my Plan B MacBook to sleep?

Re:lookin good

[KaptajnKold]

The key combos you mentioned in your first post - like denying cookies in browswers - are pretty specialised, and I don't really see how you would make the system enforce them. How is it an OS design decision to enforce browser-specifik behaviour? Furthermore, the key combos that are general and used in all applications are indeed "enforced" (or more precisely: Made available) by the OS. Things like quitting programs, copying and pasting, searching, getting help etc. You mentioned that you like Linux better which I don't understand, because on Linusx none of these work in a consistent manner which is why I keep insisting that Linux is "not ready for the desktop"(tm): Copy-pasting between Firefox, the xterm and Emacs makes you scratch your head in wonder. Why is it done in three different ways? (Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Shift-V and Meta-Y for pasting in those 3 programs).

But in fact I already know the answer: There's simply no way for an OS to enforce any standards, if developpers insist on implementing everything by themselves in their own way instead of using the facilities provided by the OS. This is the reason why Office on the mac works like it does on Windows. Because it uses a framework made by Microsoft for Windows and because MS haven't bothered changing it to behave like a proper mac application. Similarly, you'll find that iTunes and Quicktimes for Windows have some peculiar, non-standard behaviours that they inherited from their mac-codebase. And emacs works the same way, no matter what system you use it on because it uses no OS-specifik code whatsoever, which as an aside is probably something it's users consider a good thing.

I have no particular motivation to try and make you fall in love with OS X. But it does bother me that you accuse Apple of getting it completely wrong, when it seems obvious to me that your set of personal, subjective preferences are just that: Personal and subjective. What's more, it strikes me that the points you touch upon are very minor compared to the overwhelming number of flaws in Windows. I find that there are many things in OS X that bothers me and I wish that Apple would do them differently. It's just that there are infinitely many more things in Windows and Linux that bother me more, so for now I stick with my guns. It did however take me around 6 months to get used to the way things work on a mac, when first I switched in 1998. Back then it was even more frustrating because noone else I knew used a mac, so there was noone that could help me when I had a problem.

Re:lookin good

[Just Some Guy]

I also teach them about expose, and after I give them some pointers about it they realize it's more than just flashy crap.

I'm asking sincerely: what's so great about Expose? How is it substantially better than alt-tab and alt-` switching? I've started using a Mac recently since I got a great deal on a used one, and I'm still adjusting to it. I can see how zoom-vs-maximize makes sense and I'm starting to like it. I just haven't "gotten" Expose yet. What do you, personally, like about it?

Re:lookin good

[toadlife]

Also I love that you posted your message as yourself. Thanks. I meant it as more of a joke than a flame.

I don't think any of the thread should have been modded down. The poor GP got slapped down into oblivion by the Apple/Linux fanboi brigade for simply stating his preference for the Wintel platform.

All I see are a bunch of opinions in the thread, and I don't think opinions should be suppressed via moderation.

Re:lookin good

[Egdiroh]

All I see are a bunch of opinions in the thread, and I don't think opinions should be suppressed via moderation.

There are no right or wrong opinions (unless based on too little or incorrect information) and every one has a right to form their own opinion and should be to express it.

However I disagree with your assertion with regard to suppressing opinion via moderation. Supposing nowhere in the thread is anything intended to be a troll or flamebait or whatever. There is still one negative morderation tag that applies, and that is the offtopic tag. Slashdot comments are not intended as a wide ranging forum for free flowing ideas. They are intended as discussions on the topic of the story, or at least that is what the artifacts in the moderation system lead me to believe.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X (the Mach kernel, Darwin userspace, an HFS+ filesystem, Cocoa, Core Data, Core Animation, Quartz, &c.) runs on PowerPC, x86, and ARM.

Win32, the major Windows API, runs on ... x86. The XBox 360 doesn't run Win32, but it has something DirectX-ish, so I guess we'll toss PowerPC onto the stack. Set-top boxes normally run either x86 if they're going to use Windows MCE or they run "Windows Embedded", which is a totally different product from a developer standpoint.

Re:lookin good

[Anonymous Coward]

I concede this battle. You are right about the key-combos being over-ridden by boneheaded developers.

As for your comment about Windows based machines, I've rarely had real problems with them, although I constantly watched other people struggle with spyware, viruses, etc. In 10 years I used Windows, I had ONE virus which was not my fault (i.e. running I program I shouldn't be running). That was the lsass virus back in 2004 that propagated by itself. I am a far cry from a Windows apologist, by the point is that a lot of "problems" that Mac and Linux users seem the peg Windows with are initiated by idiot users who shouldn't click on spam links or open those "zomg_photos.zip" files. Yes, I was an idiot once too when my friend tricked me into installing Back Orifice. It was a good lesson.

That said, I've had numerous annoying problems, blue screens of death (although that was just a bad hard drive), or video card weirdness with Windows. On both OS X and Windows I've had problems reading my cameras, although it worked in Windows at SOME points versus not working at all in OS X (turns out, Canon cameras, like the XTi Rebel have some kind of protection that prevents the camera from being mounted in OS X, so that you are forced to use a card reader). The other day when I had a big in-class presentation, I copied something to a thumb drive, unmounted it, and mounted it back -- OS X started freaking out and mounting the drive 5 times every 2 seconds. Then, it wouldn't work at all. A colleague put it in his Windows machine and it worked. Every OS has bugs. Maybe it's subconscious, but consciously, I try not to be biased. I have no vested interest in seeing Apple fail (in fact, I own some of their stocks, so I want to see them succeed). I just get frustrated when I can't do my job quickly, and that is the bottom line.

So, in short, you are right about the application-specific key-combos, there are numerous things wrong with every operating system, and it's your fault for using emacs =P

Re:lookin good

[mcmaddog]

In Safari you move between tabs with "shift+command+[" and "shift+command+]", however because Firefox is cross platform it conforms to the Windows standard of using ctrl instead of command, so for Firefox to move between tabs is "ctrl+tab" and "shift+ctrl+tab".

As far as quitting/closing windows I understand recent converts' problem with the way Apple handles it. While still using various versions of Windows (when I have to) and Linux, I made the switch to Mac in the mid 90's and using "command+q" is second nature. However, when acclimating people used to PC's it's something I try to make them aware of and with each release of OS X more and more of Apple's included apps will quit when the window is closed by the red button.

Re:lookin good

[EggyToast]

It's fully-functional, most importantly. You can pick up a document (or a bit of text) in one spot, activate expose, and drag it somewhere else. If you want to use it entirely using your keyboard, that's cool too. It gives the appearance of being just a funky way of navigating a desktop GUI, but it keeps all of the functionality one expects of a desktop GUI.

Similarly, due to how Mac OS has historically separated windows from applications, it's exceedingly common for the bits of other windows to be visible, and most users get used to figuring out "oh, these other apps are what's poking out." Since Expose "spreads" everything out, it makes picking up on those nuances much easier -- you don't have to think about how your desktop is spatially represented, it happens more subconsciously. You know your mail window is smaller, your terminal window is smaller still and on a black background, and that's all represented in Expose -- no need to read text or try to remember which order your apps were in when you alt-tab.

On desktop GUIs that push a "everything is full-screen" approach, it's very easy to lose where you really are when working. What's behind your current window? More importantly, you're forced to rely on reading text on the screen, which is subtly time consuming, in order to figure out where things are. I know all the tricks -- I was used to keeping track of which order I accessed IE windows in, so I could hit them more quickly without having to read things. With Expose, you just need to have a vague idea of what color the window was, and bam.

The really neat thing about it is how it proves useful even outside of basic navigation. I've used it to sort photographs, by using the "application windows" option, and I use the Desktop option to scoot various bits around without worrying about minimizing windows to get them out of the way. I just leave stuff where it is.

Re:lookin good

[EggyToast]

They do have a use, just not the typical Windows use. Minimize is great if you want something open (as in, you want it where you can get to it without getting to it again using file>open or the Finder) but out of the way. The Zoom button I generally use with PDFs and moving between multiple monitors.

I will agree that they are used significantly less frequently than on Windows. However, I find it's more due to the fact that OS X is pretty good about remembering window layouts, and almost no apps default to opening "full screen." They open to what's needed, and the rest of the desktop GUI is based around navigating between those open windows. In some ways, I get the impression that they remain so that people who don't really "get" OS X aren't forced to use an OS in a completely foreign way. Kind of like throwing a parent in front of fluxbox.

Re:lookin good

[Stamen]

I think with anything, it's personal preference. You can use the dock, you can use alt-tabbing (command-tabbing in OS X), you can use Expose, you can use desktop managers like Spaces, or you can minimize everything. I like there there are many options, because I know my preferences won't be the same as yours.

I personally use Expose a lot, it's just easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I keep all my windows open, I never minimize, and I use Expose and Spaces (VirtuaDesktop in Tiger) to manager them. I rarely use the doc for launching (I use Quicksilver for this), and I never use it for task switching. This approach works well for my workflow, your mileage, most certainly, will vary.

Some Expose tips:

* Use F10 as well as F9, which only shows windows of the current application (great for looking at all the folders you have open)

* Use Expose with drag and drop. Let's say you have 10 Finder (File Explorer for you Windows types) windows opened. You want to drag a file from the foreground window to another one, but it isn't visible. Don't wast your time going and finding it and placing it next to your foreground window, just use Expose. Grab the file and drag it, hit F10, which shows you all the Finder windows, place your mouse over the other Finder window you want to drop it on, hit F10 again. Drop it. That's slick. It also works with the Desktop, and any other app.

* When Expose is open, hit your tab key, you'll see what it does

* Use Expose with the keyboard, not the mouse: F9, arrow, arrow, enter

Man, I love my Mac...

[microbob]

I used Linux as my primary desktop for years and years (started on Caldera), but I must confess that my Mac with OS X leaves all of 'em in the dust. XP was okay, but all the virus noise kept me at bay. Vista was an improvement, but all the constant interrupting was annoying.

As it looks, it'll be along, long time before I switch OSs again. Sure I'll keep trying the new ones as they come along, but I don't see anything on the horizon..say 3-4 years, that'll make me move.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[PrescriptionWarning]

must be a case by case thing... I mean my mac is cool and all, but Ubuntu it is not

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[sycotic]

all the constant interrupting was annoying I hope this doesn't start some sort of argument... but: OS X does the same thing, right?

I am sure that when I had a Mac a little over a year ago the GUI used to dim the background and prompt me for a password when I wanted to do things that required elevated privileges.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[sqrt(2)]

You know that most people just turn off UAC, right? Everyone that I've talked to about it said they turned it off after the first message. It's annoying, and if you're computer literate there's really no reason for you to have it on; you wont benefit from it at all. I'm far more annoyed at Ubuntu's constant "admin password required" to do anything important, I see those far more than the Vista UAC message (when it is turned on).

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Ash-Fox]

I used Linux as my primary desktop for years and years (started on Caldera), but I must confess that my Mac with OS X leaves all of 'em in the dust.

Ironic, I've used OS X for years and years and the numerous issues have pushed me more towards Windows, Linux and the BSDs.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Repton]

I run Tiger. My regular userid is not an administrator.

OSX will prompt me to enter an administrator username and password under three circumstances (in my experience):

1. I install a new application.
2. I click the unlock icon in system preferences (to allow me to make system changes).
3. I want to shut the computer down and someone else is logged in.

In all three cases, I expect the prompt and the reason is clear. I think it works well...

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[microbob]

Not even close. The volume of "are you SURE you want to do this?" prompts that I get on Vista far, far outweigh the number I get on my Mac. I can get upwards of a dozen per day on Vista (heck, I don't even use it *that* much) and maybe once a week I'll get interrupted on OS X.

Let not even discuss the sheer volumes of the little balloons that pop up in the bottom right. It feels like both XP and Vista always want my attention. Hey, no security is installed. Hey, you need to activate. Hey, you have new updates to install. Hey, are you sure you want to do this? Are you really, really, really sure????

For me, a good OS gets out of the way and lets me work...I don't need something yapping at my ankles all day.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[ColdWetDog]

I don't need something yapping at my ankles all day.

Thank you for that little vision. Vista (or XP for that matter) as an annoying, barking, 3 inch tall Chihuahua is just perfect.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[sammy baby]

Really, the issue is what requires elevated privileges. OS X will prompt you if you're trying to do something like modify a system-wide file (basically, anything that's not in your home directory), or changing your security settings, but that really doesn't happen that often.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

UAC is the best feature in Vista. It's the only thing I like about Vista and, yeah, I run Vista in VmWare in my MacBook.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[ToasterMonkey]

Ironic, I've used OS X for years and years and the numerous issues have pushed me more towards Windows, Linux and the BSDs. Are you sure you're talking about Mac OS X? I don't find it ironic, I find I find it very odd.
Not that you might have problems with it, but that you think any of those systems you mentioned would alleviate any of them.

I'm genuinely curious, what would switching your primary desktop to any of them fix for you?

I used Linux as my primary desktop for years and years (started on Caldera), but I must confess that my Mac with OS X leaves all of 'em in the dust. I started with RH 5.something but I'm otherwise in the same boat. I keep Ubuntu in a VM right now, and someday might build another desktop PC with either Fedora or Ubuntu on it (I do miss winex/cedega), but do I expect it to beat the experience I've had with my iMac & OS X? Heeeelll no.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[drsmithy]

Not even close. The volume of "are you SURE you want to do this?" prompts that I get on Vista far, far outweigh the number I get on my Mac. I can get upwards of a dozen per day on Vista (heck, I don't even use it *that* much) and maybe once a week I'll get interrupted on OS X.

What the hell are you doing to trigger so many UAC prompts ?

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[iron-kurton]

I get a vision of a jack russell terrier when the icons jump out at me from the (hidden) dock in OS X. /recent convert to OS X

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[dal20402]

Also genuinely curious what those issues are (other than lack of reasonable desktop hardware).

OS X has had considerable performance problems in certain specific server applications. And it's not a platform for gaming. Other than those two weaknesses (and occasional Apple lack of configurability) what have you found lacking?

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[dal20402]

That's a little many, but I get at least one per day to update antivirus and/or antispyware definitions. And, like GP, I use Vista for occasional specialized tasks (in my case, in a VM in OS X).

I get quite a few authentication requests in OS X too. But I don't find them nearly as annoying because they don't dim the screen, block all my other applications, and sometimes hang the system for a second or two before appearing.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[tlhIngan]

You know that most people just turn off UAC, right? Everyone that I've talked to about it said they turned it off after the first message. It's annoying, and if you're computer literate there's really no reason for you to have it on; you wont benefit from it at all.

Yeah, you turn off UAC, then you get a nasty red shield with "Windows is not protected" and balloons saying "User account control is off". A power user can ignore these security warnings since they probably already do the right steps, but a normal user will turn it off, see the red shield, then "fix it" and boom, UAC is on again.

Worse yet, there are apparently a set of distinct tasks that can only be done with either UAC off, or UAC on. Some tasks require UAC to be on, while others require it to be off (I can't remember the list, but there are a few picky settings).

Some things with UAC on just really make life miserable - before I reinstalled Vista, I copied off my downloads and a few other directories to a USB disk (why redownload files that are downloaded in the past week?). Afterwards, with UAC on, mysteriously all the executable files cannot be run at all, even answering "Allow" to the UAC prompts. Useless. Permission repairing, setting security, etc., I could not figure out how to get those executable installers running again. Turn off UAC, boom they work just fine. All it takes is a folder on a network drive, or copied from a thumbdrive, and you can be seeing this happening relatively often if one of your applications gets tagged like that. Worse yet, Windows may decide your app is insecure and start prompting you with UAC prompts. It's random enough to be frustrating...

I found the old IE model a bit annoying (where every file downloaded off the internet gets marked with a "downloaded" attribute (NTFS)), but at least it prompts you if you want to run them, then lets you run them. Better than making it look like it works, but fails silently.

The strange thing is, Unix, OS X, and Linux get it right. If you're changing a user setting, no annoying prompt. A system setting - a password prompt (and it's usually good for a few minutes, so you can avoid seeing it repeatedly). The differentiation between user and system is such that rarely does one need system privileges, so seeing the dialog is a rare enough event.

Vista's "user virtualization" (where the system registry keys and system folders are silently mirrored to user accessible versions) could accomplish the same thing for the millions of broken Windows apps out there, and the amount of prompting kept a minimum... but it's like Microsoft intentionally decided to inundate us with this "security".

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[ceoyoyo]

Shaped like a paperclip... oh, wait, that was something else.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[EvanED]

[I apologize for the long post, but I'm procrastinating from vital schoolwork and this is as good of a way as any to do so.]

Okay, this argument has come up in most Vista articles here. After one of them about a month ago, I started logging every UAC prompt I've gotten, because I didn't believe that Vista actually prompts for *that* much more than what you would get on other systems. I cannot compare with what OS X does, but I can somewhat compare with what Sudo does on Linux. These comparisons are not completely fair, because I'm running Vista in the normal setup, with the almost-admin user, but I have no reason to believe that there would be many more prompts with a limited account.

Since I started logging, I have gotten 72 UAC prompts in 25 days I have spent most of my time booted to Windows. I'll break down the prompts in a few ways.

First, by reason:
* 29 prompts were for program installations or updates, things that would require 'sudo emerge' or whatever on Linux. 10 of these prompts were while starting Firefox; I'm running the Alpha version, and get prompted to update to the latest nightly each time I run it. 4 of them were from trying to install one particular program, it's patch, and trying to work around a couple compatibility issues. One prompt was for Windows Update, to update Vista itself.
* 10 prompts were from when I logged in and this buggy hardware monitor program that I have ran. For some reason, it requests elevation. (Then, after running for a while, pegs one of my cores and I kill it. One of these days I'll remove it from the startup sequence...)
* 10 prompts were from enabling and disabling my NIC. I was having network problems for about a week, and was trying to diagnose. (This is essentially doing 'ifconfig eth0 down/up' in Linux, except that it tries to get a new DHCP address upon up, and I don't recall if ifconfig does this. )
* 8 prompts were from when I was trying to solve a weird permissions issue when I was trying to delete something. This involved various permutations of trying to take ownership of the file, changing permissions, doing something in the Users dialog, etc.
* 5 prompts were from opening the anti-virus dialog
* 2 prompts were for OKing software for the firewall
* 2 prompts were from doing some process management stuff; one from instructing task manager to show all processes, and one from running ProcessExplorer in admin mode, probably to try to figure out what program was holding a handle open to a USB drive.
* 1 prompt was from messing with the Steam service
* 1 prompt was from opening regedit
* 1 prompt was from opening the drive format dialog so I could see the options in it
* 1 prompt was from a user environment variable change. This is not entirely necessary -- a user doesn't need admin rights to change them. However, the dialog Windows provides to do so involves both user-local and system-wide environment variables, and doesn't appear to provide a way to access it with the latter in read-only mode, hence the elevation request. (XP does BTW.)
* 1 prompt was for something TrueCrypt related, but I'm not sure exactly what
* 1 prompt was for something that I have no clue about, because I got distracted before recording what caused it and forgot ...and 2 that I must have thought I counted but didn't. Oops.

Now, let's compare with what would have happened on Linux:

29 program installations. Assuming you're like my impression of most Linux users, you're using something like Portage or Apt to install programs, which means you're doing it as root, and need to sudo. In Linux it is usually possible to install programs locally, usually by downloading the source, doing /.configure with the appropriate options, and then building. However, when doing so, you have to worry about dependencies and such yourself -- the exact thing that made Linux an absolute PITA to use before distributions started widely using package management stuff. Because of this, I'm going to count installing

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Stamen]

Both OS X and Linux have the same concept of elevated privileges. Vista copied this concept. It's a good concept, of which no one would argue. It's Vista's implementation of the concept that is bad.

Wether you believe it or not, when people started using Vista, the complaints started rolling in over UAC. These complaints don't occur in OS X, nor distros of Linux, such as Ubuntu, which use the same concept. So either there's a global conspiracy to badmouth Vista, and only Vista, or perhaps, just perhaps, there is something wrong with UAC in Vista.

Copy a file to a folder in Program Files. You get 3 dialog boxes asking you various questions, 3! Um, perhaps we can take up a collection and send it to Microsoft so they they can hire some offshore programmers to turn that into 1.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac OS doesn't dim when it requires authentication. I think you're thinking of Vista's UAC. "Are you sure you want to run Notepad? (Cancel or Allow...)" vs. "Type an administrator's user name and password to make system changes..."

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the poodle bombs it leaves on your carpet are enormous.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[mrsteveman1]

When people refer to OS X as having "numerous issues" like the guy you replied to, they usually mean usability problems, such as being forbidden from maximizing windows without wasting large amounts of time, the number of mouse buttons on their laptop, the Finder, the ridiculous way OS X handles application menus on multi screen systems, being unable to resize windows but from a tiny corner, the tiny little window buttons that are impossible to hit quickly one of which is worthless, you get the point. Thats the sort of thing that ruins OS X for people who need to do more than read email once in a while or spend their entire career in a single application. Even managing your own files is painful in OS X.

But all of those things, despite everyone (including Ars' John Siracusa, the guy who wrote this review) complaining about most of them for YEARS, will remain because Apple says so.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[NMerriam]

What the hell are you doing to trigger so many UAC prompts ?

Are you kidding? I can't get at anything in the control panel without at least 2 or 3 prompts, and that's if I know where I'm going and don't have to open up a few other things on the way!

I think my favorite was when I get a confirmation message, then the gray approval security screen, then another confirmation message, all for one mouse click.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[GaryPatterson]

My favourite is moving things around in the Start menu. From memory I got three alerts for every item I'd move.

I'm all for better security in Windows, but that was ridiculous!

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[p0tat03]

forbidden from maximizing windows without wasting large amounts of time

This is deliberate, and when I first switched I hated it, but now I love it. The Apple UI does not encourage MDIs like it does in Windows, instead it's clearly designed for a huge amount of inter-application interaction (drag-dropping between apps and windows, etc). This is most probably born through Apple's media-centric roots where interacting between several apps very quickly is an absolute must. This is why the UI encourages users to keep windows to whatever size they need, and maintains a very "multitasking" feel by removing a simple way to shove a window over all available pixels. I find it only is annoying on poorly ported apps that maintain their Windows design cues - apps that demand a vast amount of screen space to do their job, and thus require constant maximization and takeover of my desktop.

the number of mouse buttons on their laptop

Clearly a preference matter. I've used Toshiba, IBM, and Apple laptops personally before, and I greatly prefer the fact that I have two-finger click on the Mac. It's a must simpler gesture than reaching for the other button, I find, but again, this is purely personal preference.

I gotta agree about Finder and menuing. The finder has been, IMHO, largely fixed in Leopard, something that has been LONG overdue. Menuing over multiple monitors is a huge gripe. Why can they not simply clone the menu across all screens? It's not perfect, but it gets the job done dammit.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[drsmithy]

Are you kidding? I can't get at anything in the control panel without at least 2 or 3 prompts, and that's if I know where I'm going and don't have to open up a few other things on the way!

Having just tried opening about a dozen control panel applets without a single UAC prompt, I'm calling bullshit.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Myen]

On both Windows and Linux, it would probably make more sense to install your development Firefox into somewhere your user can write to (C:\users\foo / /home/foo). It pays to have a stable version sitting around when the latest nightly doesn't start :)

You can run command prompt as admin (right click on it, it's an option); probably explorer as well (I've been doing this a lot in XP, so I assume it's the same). Just like you can su in Linux and keep a privileged shell open. No tabs though :p

How do you run, say, process explorer in non-admin? IIRC I get an "Allow" (and run as admin) and a "Cancel" (and quits the app) - even though all I want to do is mess with my own processes. This goes for some of the other apps too, actually, by procexp triggers this for me the most.

To me, the worst part of UAC was the blink as the screen switched. Hardly terrible.

(I did have a bunch of weird file permissions problems locally though - directories set as creator/owner not having full control, junctions from Application Data to AppData having explicit deny for some odd reason... But for all I know it could have been one of the apps I installed that messed it up)

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yeah, everyone you've talked to about it is obvious "most people". Most people go into the control panel and change advanced system settings all the fucking time.

Any computer literate person who has the brainpower of at least a sea urchin should be able to a) use Windows in such a way that they don't get a UAC prompt more than once in a long while, and b) understand how it is actually a good idea not to run every single fucking program with full priviledges.

Oh, wait, you're a god and are at NO RISK from malicious (or even incompetent) programs, because you only run stuff you've compiled yourself after combing through the source code. I'm sure that's it.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[El Lobo]

Seriously, it is SO HARD to understand that OSX can fell dull for some people? Geeeee.

I really use OSX because, unfortunatly, I must, but I really cannot stand that user interface. Yes, it pretty, and shinning, but for me, it is not at all, how can I say it...productive. It's like asking, why don't you drive a Toyota?, Well I don't like it.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's not merely yapping. It's jumping all over your leg trying to impregnate you with DRM, such as is used by the BBC's new IPlayer tool, Trusted Computing, and all the other special genetic codes that don't actually protect you from ordinary malice, they just make it painful to use non-Microsoft signed applications.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly a bit offtopic: I truly cannot fathom what Microsoft was thinking when it decided it was good idea to inundate the hapless user with these obnoxious, never ending, pointless notifications. It makes using many Windows systems unbearable. I hate it. I hate it so much the hating alone is a severe distraction, merely compounding the actual distraction of the prompts. And the alerts are so pointless!! No one would care about 99.44% of the froth that ceaselessly bubbles up. It's like the undead carcass of Clippy floating back up from the inky depths to haunt me.

For example: I pull the laptop out of my bag and set it on the desk. I open it up. Then I dismiss several non-informative bubbles about everything from updates, to random nearby wireless networks, to security settings, and finally get to work. Then I decide I'd like to use a USB mouse. So I pull out a bog standard USB mouse, and I hesitate -- I hesitate because I know what's going to happen next, and Windows has not put me in any mood for it. I grit my teeth and plug in the mouse. It immediately starts working and I use it to open a program. Then the computer goes and throws up an urgent alert that it has "found new hardware!" Great. Maybe that was because I just plugged in a mouse? I try to work some more, but only second or two later another alert pops up: "USB device bog-standard-mouse is connected!" OMFG! Could that be because I just plugged in a fucking mouse!??? How would I have know if you hadn't told me!?? So I plug in a network cable and connect to a shared volume. Then "Network cable connected!" Holy shit Clippy, could that be in any way related to me having plugged in network cable? Can I claw my own eyeballs out so I won't have to see this shit again?

Score 1 for OS X: I would not feel compelled to chew my own leg off to escape if I were left having to use it for an hour.

Microsoft needs to hire someone who is cranky and pinched for time to assess the "will this feature make the user want to gnaw his/her own leg off to escape" test. This would be the baseline threshold that all operating system features be required to pass before features are allowed in to a shipping product. Any violators of the policy would be required to go about in public for an entire year dressed as a ragged caricature of Clippy, and work in an office in to which a rotten egg would thrown three times a day by an angry customer.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[lazyforker]

Afterwards, with UAC on, mysteriously all the executable files cannot be run at all, even answering "Allow" to the UAC prompts. Useless. Permission repairing, setting security, etc., I could not figure out how to get those executable installers running again.
If the UAC is on: try right-clicking on the installer executable and choosing "run as administrator" (can't remember the exact wording - I'm posting from my Mac). The UAC uses a "manifest" file to determine what privileges an executable needs; but most current apps and installers do not have said manifests.... hence the sucky behaviour.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Ash-Fox]

I'm genuinely curious, what would switching your primary desktop to any of them fix for you?

I could go on about past issues with OS X which aren't a problem anymore, such as badly configured samba, apache being screwed up etc. But I'll stick to current issues. These are some from the top of my head and I'll try to skip out on application specific problems:

• Finder (core utility) crashes on Samba fileshares that have filenames of same files, but different cases (reported many versions ago)
• The built-in wireless card in the Macbook Pro I had at work would not work under the OS X 10.4.9 update (known issue, for some users, but Apple keeps this quiet), I had to stay on 10.4.5 for it to work
• The GUI really, really doesn't feel natural for me (I would say I feel most natural with KDE at the moment).
• I find majority GUI effects annoying because they slow down the computer when I'm doing intensive work and they're distracting. Disabling them all under Windows, KDE etc. very easy. On OS X, I need to download tweaking applications, shadow killer and even then, it won't disable all the annoying effects.
• The BSD subsystem does not handle things correctly, it's even sad that Windows's POSIX subsystem can actually handle things like signaling correctly while OS X can't.
• The OS generally feels less responsive on the hardware than running Kubuntu or Windows XP on the same hardware (hardware is not Vista ready), which I find very irritating.
• I am generally told to expect OS X to 'just work' on so many levels. So it really doesn't impress me when the OS just kernel panics when I connect a standard bluetooth device that works under Windows and Linux out of the box.
• Font rendering, I work with small fonts on my screens in general. I can barely read them under OS X, because it takes a large font and then scales it down.
• I do not like how many applications in OS X just aren't backwards compatible, you're forced to continiously upgrade and if you can't upgrade because Apple messed up on some driver (such as the one mentioned), you're pretty much screwed.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[dangitman]

Are you SURE you want to post to Slashdot?

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Scootin159]

And don't forget that you can't copy/paste from UAC "Administrator" applications to UAC "User" applications, no matter what hoops you jump through.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Nimey]

TweakUAC is your friend. With it, I've got my Vista VM set to have IE run in protected mode, but not bother me with the damned UAC prompts -- UAC must be at least partially on for IE protected mode.

You can probably do roughly what TweakUAC does by going to Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Local Security Policy->[can't remember: something about local security settings], but TUAC is more convenient.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[MBGMorden]

You forgot the X/Close button on the corner of the windows that closes the application but doesn't exit it. First time I got my Mac I couldn't figure out why it had gotten dirt slow after 2-3 hours of use.

Or the Home/End keys that don't go to the beginning/end of the line like every other computer on Earth . . .

I LIKE Apple. I've got 2 of them (1 Hackintosh and 1 true Mac). The platform is slick stylish, relatively fast(ish), stable, and generally virus/malware free. It could stand to be improved some in the area of usability though.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

but it's like Microsoft intentionally decided to inundate us with this "security".

If you can't see that it's protecting you, if it doesn't tell you it's protecting you, and if you don't know each time it's protecting you, then the average person doesn't know it's protecting you. Also, with it annoying you, if you disable the security mechanisms that Microsoft so carefully put into place, it's not their fault the system is insecure anymore. It's yours. They don't even really have to do a whole lot of work to make the system really sure if they make it so annoying that everyone turns it off.

It's like with IT support in large companies. They are an expense, they keep things working, and as long as they keep things working, they seem superfluous. I mean, everything works, why do we pay these guys to fix things if everything works? This could be likened to transparent and actually effective security. Unfortunately for IT in large companies, the second that something breaks, they get their butts chewed for not keeping things in perfect condition.

-M

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[kinabrew]

Apple-left and apple-right go to the end of a line.

This is consistent because apple-up and apple-down go to the beginning of a document or end of a document, respectively.

Leaving a program open after you close all of the windows makes sure that you don't have to relaunch the program every time you close a window. It also means that you can close all of the windows for one program using one sensible-and-easy-to-remember menu command: "Quit", or by using the keyboard, apple-q. If you want to close just one window, the command is apple-w, which is, again, easy to remember.

Would you argue that hitting alt-f4 a dozen times to close each of a program's windows is easier and easier-to-remember than hitting apple-q, when quitting a program? Or that hitting apple-w is harder than hitting alt-f4 once?

How about the keyboard shortcuts to open and rename files? Does that bother you too?

On a Mac, you hit return to rename the selected file.

On Windows, you hit f2(?!) to rename the selected file.

On Windows, if you have a file selected and you hit return, the file opens(much to the dismay of Mac users, who would prefer something Mac-like, say, apple-o?)

In terms of reasonable and consistent keyboard commands, Macs are far ahead of Windows-based systems. I wish I could do things like bring up the preferences of each my Windows apps by hitting a simple keyboard shortcut, like apple-comma. It would be a lot easier than dealing with whatever the particular program I'm using likes to name its "Tools" menu and "Options" option therein.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[sootman]

Let not even discuss the sheer volumes of the little balloons that pop up in the bottom right.

And let's not forget the unholy marriage that was the original XP and wireless networking:
"Hey, I found a network!"
"Hey, I just joined a network!"
"Signal strength: EXCELLENT!" (air guitars play)
"Network connection lost." ... moments later ...
"Hey, I found a network!"

And even that aside, those are the little things that SUCK OUT LOUD about Windows. Not only do they pop up a big ugly window (compared to how OS X just scrolls the name of the network in the menu bar for a moment) but you have two choices: A) leave the damn thing open until it decides to go away, or B) click on it to close it and take focus away from the foreground app. UGH! If I'm in Word and then run Calculator and then close Calculator, I'm back in Word. If I'm in Word and click a balloon, I've got to CLICK BACK ON WORD to make that app active.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[MBGMorden]

Apple-left and apple-right go to the end of a line.

This is consistent because apple-up and apple-down go to the beginning of a document or end of a document, respectively. Consistent, it doesn't match the established paradigm used by every other OS out there. It'd be like if the Apple Car (TM) made made the accelerator as part of the wheel so the further down you pushed it the faster it goes. People are too familiar with the concept of an accelerator pedal that they aren't going to change without a good reason.

Leaving a program open after you close all of the windows makes sure that you don't have to relaunch the program every time you close a window. It also means that you can close all of the windows for one program using one sensible-and-easy-to-remember menu command: "Quit", or by using the keyboard, apple-q. If you want to close just one window, the command is apple-w, which is, again, easy to remember.

Would you argue that hitting alt-f4 a dozen times to close each of a program's windows is easier and easier-to-remember than hitting apple-q, when quitting a program? Or that hitting apple-w is harder than hitting alt-f4 once? Most Windows programs either have multiple windows enclosed in a parent Window, or, if they are truly multiple Windows tied to the same process, the Exit command from the File Window will close them all. It make no sense in a world where most apps are single window anyways, to NOT have the close button exit, or even for multiple window apps, have it exist after the last window is closed.

On a Mac, you hit return to rename the selected file.

On Windows, you hit f2(?!) to rename the selected file.

On Windows, if you have a file selected and you hit return, the file opens(much to the dismay of Mac users, who would prefer something Mac-like, say, apple-o?) Opening the file on Enter makes a lot more sense to me than renaming. What has Enter got to do with renaming? Of course F2 doesn't either, but at least it's tied to a function key that has no other assumed function. Of course in either I can just reclick a highlighted name to rename the file, which I don't mind, though I still prefer to select it from the context menu when in Windows. When I'm in a GUI, I usually do things with the mouse, as one hand is on the mouse already. Taking my hand off the mouse is waseful if I could do it in a click or two. On the command line this is different because both hands are already on the keyboard.

In terms of reasonable and consistent keyboard commands, Macs are far ahead of Windows-based systems. I wish I could do things like bring up the preferences of each my Windows apps by hitting a simple keyboard shortcut, like apple-comma. It would be a lot easier than dealing with whatever the particular program I'm using likes to name its "Tools" menu and "Options" option therein. Whether or not the keyboard shortcuts match (which again, I don't like their setup myself), it still doesn't change the fact that most people are going to use the GUI, NOT keyboard shortcuts, and there are quite a few things that Apple's GUI just does bass-ackwards. That's not a killing blow to the platform - as I said I use it and like it; it has a lot of other advantages that are quite nice. The interface isn't one of them IMHO.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[SEMW]

Wether you believe it or not, when people started using Vista, the complaints started rolling in over UAC. These complaints don't occur in OS X, nor distros of Linux, such as Ubuntu, which use the same concept. So either there's a global conspiracy to badmouth Vista, and only Vista, or perhaps, just perhaps, there is something wrong with UAC in Vista. Actually, neither. The problem stems from the fact that, on Windows, people have historically almost always run as administrator. So a lot of programs not written specifically for Vista mindlessly assume they have admin privileges and use them, even when they don't actually need them (e.g. writing preferences in a system-wide rather than per-user fashion). Hence the UAC prompts. On OS X and Linux, there has always been a culture of privilege seperation, and programmers have always known not to do anything that requires root privileges unless absolutely necessary; hence fewer unnecessary prompts. This will improve with time as Windows programmers adapt to a culture of LUA.

Another problem is that a lot of the people badmouthing Vista only ever used the beta or one of the release candidates and not RTM; the number of prompts drastically reduced for RTM due to file & registry virtualization (no, Microsoft doesn't know what "release candidate" means). No 'global conspiracy', just outdated information.

Copy a file to a folder in Program Files. You get 3 dialog boxes asking you various questions, 3! I count 2, one to say "You don't have the necessary privileges to write to this directory, do you want to elevate to administrator?", and, if you say yes, a UAC prompt. The first one isn't strictly necessary, but seems to have been added to improve interface predictability (i.e. so users don't get shifted to secure desktop when they didn't expect it). But, of course, I'm sure you know far more about good UI design than Microsoft's UI design experts. Now, what's this mysterious third dialogue to which you refer?

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am doubting you actually use ubuntu, I don't need root for almost anything but installing new apps, and then I don't really install new apps so frequently, besides, disabling it is as easy or easier than disabling UAC so I miss your point.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Sax Maniac]

I'm surprised that any self-respecting geek leaves those useless balloon tips on. I used XP for all of about fifteen seconds before figuring out the registry setting to turn these evil things off. The sad thing is you can't shut off the sound effect. Bloop! Thock! Bloop! Bloop!

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Stamen]

How do you count 2? I just tried it, here are the 3 different dialog boxes that appear:

Copy File
"There is already a file with the same name in this location..."

Destination Folder Access Denied
"You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy to this folder..."

User Account Control
"Windows needs your permission to continue..."

Why are there 3? Why not 1 that says "You are going to overwrite this, you'll need to be elevated to administrator, do you want do do this"? I know I'm no "Microsoft UI design expert", but it doesn't take one to realize that 3 dialog boxes compared to one just annoys the hell out of users.

And I've never used the beta, only the version released, and I'll badmouth UAC anytime someone asks about it. Because I know for a fact, that my users simply disable it because it's so annoying, thus defeating the whole point to begin with.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Just Some Guy]

This is why the UI encourages users to keep windows to whatever size they need, and maintains a very "multitasking" feel by removing a simple way to shove a window over all available pixels.

Mildly OT: is there a way to get this effect in KDE? I liked maximizing apps and using virtual desktops to switch among them until I got a 22" monitor, and now that's way too large to comfortably use most apps in fullscreen mode. For example, reading a web page that wide would tire my eyes in a matter of a few minutes.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[dishpig]

• The GUI really, really doesn't feel natural for me (I would say I feel most natural with KDE at the moment).
• I find majority GUI effects annoying because they slow down the computer when I'm doing intensive work and they're distracting. Disabling them all under Windows, KDE etc. very easy. On OS X, I need to download tweaking applications, shadow killer and even then, it won't disable all the annoying effects.
• The OS generally feels less responsive on the hardware than running Kubuntu or Windows XP on the same hardware (hardware is not Vista ready), which I find very irritating.

I'm not trying to be an apple apologist, but these issues are perceptual. I mean, it's fine and valid for you to not like the system for these things, but they're not failings of the system, they're just counter to your preferences/perceptions.

I am generally told to expect OS X to 'just work' on so many levels. So it really doesn't impress me when the OS just kernel panics when I connect a standard bluetooth device that works under Windows and Linux out of the box.

Unless you've replicated this error with multiple devices on multiple machines, I'd have to say this is specific to your setup. Either your device or Mac hardware is futzed (I don't know if that's a word, but I'm going for it). I have never encountered this with any bluetooth/Mac combo I've encountered. I'd get it checked out. It should 'just work' - if it doesn't, there's a reason why.

As for the rest, yeah, I've had my own set of similar unresolved issues.
- Pre-10.4 VPN implementation was atrocious.
- The fact that I can't control whether the system uses anti-aliasing or not drives me batty.
- The desktop grid - would it be so hard to put in a user configurable desktop grid function so I can resize the damn thing? Or at least build in a few options - wide, medium, tight? Or better yet, give me a system preference that shows the grid superimposed on my desktop/finder window and lets me drag the lines around.

Even with all that though, I still find, in general, I spend less time thinking about my system in OSX. It behaves pretty much as expected. Hopefully that doesn't change too much with 10.5 :)

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...such as being forbidden from maximizing windows without wasting large amounts of time

If you don't like this, talk to the app developer. Unlike Windows, OS X leaves the behavior of the maximize button up to the developer to decide if it works better to maximize to fill the whole screen or maximize to fit all the content and leave as much room for other windows to be seen. Some make poor choices, but I find it hard to argue against letting the developer decide. I suppose Apple could add a user override to this behavior, but mostly this complaint is just from people trained on Windows and who want to duplicate things exactly. I usually prefer it if I can still see my other applications. For example, if a Web site doesn't need all the screen, I can still see my chat program.

the number of mouse buttons on their laptop

As a person who has seen usability tests on this, multiple buttons seems to be the problem, not just one.

Thats the sort of thing that ruins OS X for people who need to do more than read email once in a while or spend their entire career in a single application. Even managing your own files is painful in OS X.

I work at a company that develops and sells really expensive, Linux based network security servers. We get a choice of either MacBooks or Thinkspads. At this point, about 65% of the company is using MacBooks running OS X and probably 80% of engineering. Remember, this is by choice. Of all these engineers and other users I know of only one who switched to OS X and then switched back (he develops for a desktop Linux distro as a hobby and did not want to give it up). Everyone else who actually has tried OS X on the desktop has stayed with it over Windows and Linux. Most of these people are regular contributors to Linux and/or one of the BSD projects.

OS X has some serious usability problems. You might even say, the UI is broken, until you compare it to any other system available today, all of which are more broken.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

being unable to resize windows but from a tiny corner

This is a feature, not a bug. I can't stand trying to scroll down in a window, clicking just a little to the right of where I should, and accidentally resizing instead of scrolling. OS X has this right, Windows is wrong.

Re:Man, I love my Mac...

[spyder913]

UAC works fine if you are not running on an administrator account. I've had it on for months and just get prompted for my admin credentials when you would expect to -- just like in OSX. The problem is everybody is so used to running as admin on windows, and by default that's how it dumps you out of setup. It really does work though.

Hatred for the interface changes

[zhevek]

The story writer seems to have some pretty deep hatred for the interface changes to the dock, menu boxes, etc. Sure makes me want to skip upgrading my two 10.4 boxes.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Carthag]

If you read the other reviews Siracusa did for Ars Technica, you'll see that he has a long and difficult history with the OS X GUI. If I were you I'd try out 10.5 myself and see if it is a worthwhile update or not. All in all, I got the impression from his interview that while there were some changes that he absolutely loathes (rounded menus etc), there are many as well which he have been longing for (disabling the "are you sure" check when changing extensions for instance) or which really impressed him with their usability (quicklook).

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Anonymous Coward]

John Siracusa does have a long-standing hatred of some Mac UI design decisions.

But you see, his views are backed by reasonable arguments.

That's why, as a loyal Mac user of 22 years who hopes to never buy a PC again, I actually respect and agree with his opinion of the Mac OS X GUI.
Sure he's emotional about it, but he does know what he's talking about.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[dwehleit]

But its completely logical coming from the Classic MacOS, I also hate the new finder since OSX came out..the thing is that Macs are a completely different thing nowadays... I prefer the classic MacOS... System6 anyone ? :D

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Carthag]

That's true, he usually backs up every point he makes, even if once in a blue moon his reason is just "I don't like it". By far most of the time, his reasons are well-thought out and make sense (and that's whether you agree or not). He does seem to be softening a bit on it, I recall his earlier reviews being a lot less favorable in the UI department.

I myself haven't gotten the chance to try out 10.5 yet, but as soon as my parents get it, I'll go visit and see what it's like with my own eyes.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Telvin_3d]

I have to agree that there are a lot of bias on display in the review. On the other hand, he is aware of, and upfront about, all of them. And does a good job explaining why he is biased one way or another. Also does a good job giving enough of a look that you can make some determinations yourself. I have a lot of respect for that. It makes for a stronger review.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[brassman]

I was reading the review while the DVD was installing on my MacBook, and I think he nailed it. The changes to the Application folder icons (and so forth) are full of lose; but at least the damn' Calendar icon in the dock shows the right date now without having to launch the program!

Upon getting into Leopard, I was gobsmacked to find ALL of my local machines in the new Sidebar -- Windows, Linux and other Macs. Plus an Iomega networked hard drive that had required a driver disk to introduce itself to Linux and Windows XP. That's worth the price of admission right there; my wife rather frequently needs me to "do something" so her Mac can see a resource elsewhere on the network (usually the "something" involves an XP box).

Oh, Vista was able to find the Iomega, too, so let's call that one a draw.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Ilgaz]

The story writer seems to have some pretty deep hatred for the interface changes to the dock, menu boxes, etc. Sure makes me want to skip upgrading my two 10.4 boxes. I have barely used OS X 10.2-10.4 stock desktop. Always Shapeshifter and Candybar to rescue...

Apple doesn't understand one thing: Not everyone on Earth shares others , especially Steve Jobs graphical taste.

Now I am buying a 10.5 Family Pack and will be following Unsanity weblog for first Shapeshifter beta. Candybar is easy, I bet it will only take weeks.

The theme I will use at most of the times? Gershwix of course :) Reason may surprise you and people doesn't get point of themes: It is really low profile and simple which means easy on eyes.

The story writer wouldn't spare 3 pages if Apple finally allowed "themes" and didn't come up with Sci-Fi looking ideas like 3d Dock. On 3D Dock they are breaking their _own_ interface guidelines.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[mdarksbane]

I'm one of those people who, first thing when OS X came out, moved the dock to the side of the screen and never looked back. For us, the dock works exactly the same way :)

It really does integrate better with the way different controls and buttons are on windows and such. And screens are wider than they are tall, so you have extra space to work with.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Nimey]

He does give good reasons for what he says, but I can't grok getting quite so emotional about relatively trivial UI changes. It's just too alien to me.

OTOH I'll swear at Vista's gratuitous Control Panel changes along with everyone else, but that's not as trivial as how the Dock and the menu bar look.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Tony Hoyle]

Upon getting into Leopard, I was gobsmacked to find ALL of my local machines in the new Sideba

They've fixed the network browsing? Great... that's one off my list. I always hated the way you had to know the name of the network share to connect to one.

Have the fixed the AD integration yet? (ie. can you login as an AD user and browse shares without having to reenter your password constantly).

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[Blakey Rat]

I didn't see an interview, but in the review he mentions the rounded menus with kind of a shrug. He doesn't say they're harmful, or good, just different.

Re:Hatred for the interface changes

[7Prime]

Well, the Dock visibility issues are TERRIBLE, I can tell you first hand.

The up side, however, is that there's a simple terminal command (which he posted), that replaces it with a 2D dock that's worlds better than even the previous dock. I can understand an arguement for the new 2D dock design being less attractive, but it sure is a HELL of a lot more visible than the old dock. For one thing, the black arrows have always been terrible. The new 2D dock, however, is a dark transparency but bright white dots highlighting the open programs, which is a hell of a lot better than the tiny black arrows. My only gripe with the new 2D dock, visually, is that the white boarder has rouned corners, which I think doesn't fit with the rest of the interface. But aside from that... over the three dock types, I'll choose the new 2D dock any day.

I'm half expecting that halfway through Leopard's lifecycle, the 2D dock will be the default. Unfortunately, since the 2D one isn't visually as stunning, the best we'll get is the an option to use the 2D dock. I think the 3D one is here to stay... period... apple isn't going to back down on such a visually eye-catching element... even if it's annoying as hell.

Ya know, I think it all comes down to the perception of what the dock is and what application launching is for. Apple wants us to forget about which applications are open and which are not, because they want to toute that applications launching is so fast that it's not really even worth deliniating which applications are actively running, and which are not. The sad truth is, however, that that's not the case. Maybe with simple accessories like Safari and iChat, but not with MOTU Digital Performer, Final Cut, or Adobe After Effects. So that excuse for not clearly dilliniating open apps falls apart. But that's not the only reason why we rely on seeing which apps are open: we like seeing which apps are open because it jogs are memory as to which apps we are currently USING, if we're having to switch back and forth between many of them.

So, blue balls BAD! Absolutely terrible. They, right there, kill the usability of the 3D dock. If they had been nice big black balls, or bright white lights, that would have been great... but blue balls on a light blue background surrounded by icons which are predominantly... blue? Fuck off.

UI

[boyter]

It seems to have a lot of UI changes for styles sake. While I understand that will get people to upgrade surely its on the same level as the how most people see the change between XP and Vista. Dont get me wrong though I quite like that OS X. What I would really like them to do though is fix the Dock Bar so that when things are minimised to it they can be easily distinguised and save me looking through them all to find the one I want.

Great Review

[AndrewStephens]

I came across this article this morning. It's great to see Ars Technica pumping out another of their signature ridiculously-in-depth technical reviews. I have just (like 15 minutes ago) finished installing OSX 10.5 on my MacBook. The review is right about some of the aesthetic changes being a step backwards, but on the whole it feels snappier and some of the new functionality (stacks, time machine) is fantastic. I am looking forward to having a proper play tonight.

Re:Great Review

[cbuskirk]

Think of the Finder in each iteration of 10.X like a tech Demo. It shows off all the features buried underneath like the new Core Animation suite, or FSEvents. In a way its like a first party game by ID. Its just a tech demo so they can sell the engine to dozens of other houses. The Finder looks all shiny and new attracting new users, while the old ones can download an app 24 hours later to revert it to their old preference.

Re:Great Review

[AndrewStephens]

Actually, I have been using MacOSX.5 for a few hours now, and I must say that I actually like the changes to the finder. I like the new dock and the new look finder - the coverflow mode is actually useful when browsing for photos. On the other hand, replacing the folder icons with icons representing their contents probably sounded really cool in front of the design whiteboard, but it really confuses things.

Everybody is complaining about the translucent menu bar, but it really isn't that bad. Every minute I am coming across neat little changes from Tiger (I love the new Help system) - on the whole Leopard is well worth the price.

In case anyone is interested, I wrote a quick blog entry on Time Machine. The Ars Technica review is better though, so don't bother if you actually RTFA.

Re:Great Review

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great to see Ars Technica pumping out another of their signature ridiculously-in-depth technical reviews. - by AndrewStephens (815287) on Monday October 29, @11:16PM (#21166241) Maybe the person who wrote this is decent at actual technical information, but one of their "hack reporters" in Jeremy Reimer doesn't even have a degree or certification in the art & science of computing, & nor does he have any years to decades of hands-on professional experience in the trenches in this field.

Jeremy Reimer has no degree or certifications in computers and no professional hands on years to decades of experience in them either.

Jeremy Reimer was caught email harassing, impersonating, & bothering others online needlessly. That ended up having Jeremy Reimer's website have portions removed and his friends that helped him in it (a Mr. Jay Little of Atlanta Ga. USA) had their websites removed in their entirety. See here for that:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=41095&cpage=212#feedbackAnchor

Also, others from educational institutions where actual professional journalism & writing are taught, are questioning Jeremy Reimer's validity & credibility as a writer, period, here:

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/node/933

All Reimer does is spit back what others wrote already anyhow. He is an ambulance chaser at best. A mere "hack" reporter.

Jeremy Reimer and his friends were also caught here:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=41095&cpage=213#feedbackAnchor

Posting as others (i.e. same person posting under multiple names/guises/nicks/handles) along with his friend Jay Little above to "support one another" when they were found SO technically inacurrate, they were laughed off that site and both of them outright left & that was after law enforcement were called on them both. Windows IT Pro is a widely read publication in the field of computers. You read, you judge.

Re:Great Review

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the materlal up there in the url's posted from windows itpro magazine. Jeremy Reimer has mental problems and there is no question of that with his immature impersonation of other people online and making edited photos and libellous songs about them also on top of email harassing them. Reimer made his entire web site at arstechnica look like immature freaks. This Sircusa person doesn't though.

Ars Technica

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN HQ Stormed By Elite GNAA Operatives, Classified 9/11 Information Broadcast pagga (GNAP) - Manchester, Afghanistan

Following a covert infiltration of their Tel-Aviv headquarters by a crack team of elite GNAA agents, Zionist news organization CNN today publicly declassified top-secret information regarding the September 11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, information which was until now actively supressed by the Zionist Occupied Governments of the West. Thousands of jewish viewers across America choked on their evening halvah (muslim babies) as, in a primetime broadcast, Paula Zahn (herself a latent jew) was forced at dongpoint to reveal the awful truth behind the 9/11 attacks which the rest of the civilized (read: non-judaic) world has long suspected: Jews Did WTC.

Fast-forwarding past the 1080p CP on the greasy HD-DVD handed to them by bedpan, the CNN production team played back the devastating GNAA-compiled footage whilst Paula Zahn held back a rectal prolapse to present their findings. Irrefutable proof from highly credible sources (such as regarded public information portals jewsdidwtc.com & Encyclopedia Dramatica) was disclosed in order to finally put an end to the debate. In the interests of equal representation, a token jew was present for the post-footage discussion, together with a panel of gay niggers.

In the unlikely event that you missed this historic broadcast, it has been archived at JewTube.

Want to know more? See the proof for yourself @ http://www.jewsdidwtc.com/ and Encyclopedia Dramatica. About CNN:

Trolled

About GNAA: GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY?
Are you a NIGGER?
Are you a GAY NIGGER?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!

The freakin' Dock

[realmolo]

Seriously, does ANYONE think the Dock is good? It's an unholy combination of the "Launcher" from the old days, and the Windows taskbar. It does neither job very well.

The weird thing about OS X is that in most ways, the GUI isn't as good as MacOS 9. I mean, the only real problems with the "classic" Mac GUI were that there wasn't a easily visible way to keep track of/switch between running programs, and the Finder was a pain to work with. Well, and the lack of right-click context menus.

The Dock is a crappy task switcher, and the Finder is still broken in most of the same ways it has been broken since, oh, 1984.

Apple just bugs me. They have neat products, but they could be GREAT. They aren't bound by compatibility like MS is, or even Linux. They could do whatever they want. The best of everything. But instead they keep refusing to improve the obvious things.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Ash-Fox]

Seriously, does ANYONE think the Dock is good? It's an unholy combination of the "Launcher" from the old days, and the Windows taskbar. It does neither job very well.

I don't and I use a combination of operating systems daily. OS X, Windows, Linux, OpenBSD etc.

I just don't find the dock that natural at all. It feels irritating that I have to customize it to make it useful and even then, I still don't like how it operates.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Anonymous Coward]

"The best of everything. But instead they keep refusing to improve the obvious things."

Kind of like Linux.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[c_forq]

I will give you that the dock is a horrible application switcher, but who uses it as an application switcher when you have alt+tab and expose? (By the way, in OX-X you can use the mouse in the alt+tab menu). I personally like the dock a lot for iChat, e-mail, and newsfeed information. For an application launcher I use Quicksilver, but I hear the speed of spotlight in leopard has made Quicksilver pretty much obsolete. I have never found Finder broken, and don't quite get exactly what is broken when people try to explain it to me, but I find it just as useful and easy to navigate as explorer in XP.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[pammon]

> They aren't bound by compatibility like MS is, or even Linux.

Oh, how I wish that were true....but Mac OS X has very strong compatibility requirements, far stronger than Linux and in many ways stronger than Microsoft.

When Windows and Linux went 64 bit, they just broke all the drivers. Apple maintained compatibility with 32 bit drivers while enabling 64 bit software.
When Apple migrated from PowerPC to Intel, they maintained binary compatibility with all the old software via a transparent emulator - something you don't find on Linux and that works only partially on the Xbox 360.
The application frameworks - Carbon, Cocoa - are very much bound by backwards compatibility.

Linux, with its tradition of open source and recompiles, has it easy.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX has a few issues but they are minor compared to the problems I have every single day will all my Windows based PCs. I keep hearing people whine about interface issues that bug them but what bugs me is constant crashing and compatibility problems with PCs. The only real problem I'm having with OSX is the new version of Firefox is a trainwreck but I'm having trouble with the PC version as well, I can't even get it to install inspite of constant and annoying prompting. OSs are like most products, people get branded and the biggest complaint is that the other products don't function like the one you're branded to. The real telling truth is that millions of people a year are switching from PC to Mac and I'm not hearing of people switching from Mac to PC. Once they make the switch they tend to stay Mac where as PC users have a lot to complain about.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[JayWilmont]

I do. I like the dock - I think it gives quick access to things that you want quick access to: launching frequently used programs, what windows are minimized, and as a bonus, it can bring you to all of the windows open for a specific application! If you want an application-switcher, then try apple-tab or expose. Also, I find simply hiding applications helps greatly with clutter, and anticipate leopard's spaces will help even more.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[DaveWick79]

Note that Vista also includes support for the mouse in the Alt+Tab menu.

I'd have to agree the Dock implementation is horrible. I had the pleasure of downloading a file and burning it to CD on OSX today, and I'd have to say it was a pain just navigating between windows with the Dock. Frankly, the 'Burn to CD' Functionality is alot smoother in Vista also.

In my book, the only real downside to Vista over OSX is the UAC, which like most other people, I have partially disabled. So I also rarely see a UAC box.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[onefriedrice]

Why is this modded as flamebait? He said nothing that ought to be taken as inflammatory. Actually, he has a very good point. I've been using Macs for 10+ years, but it's true that Mac OS X could indeed be incredibly better of Apple focused on those small user interface problems that drive people nuts... Oh what's the point... I'll probably get modded flamebait, too.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[NMerriam]

Seriously, does ANYONE think the Dock is good?

Sure. It combines launching, switching, monitoring and viewing of applications all in one piece of real estate. No, it doesn't cure cancer or give you a blowjob, but it's good for what it is meant to do -- be the easily accessible one-stop shop for 95% of the application needs of 95% of the users out there. I agree with many of the UI criticisms leveled against it over the years, particularly when they seem to change something or sex it up just for the sake of change, but I don't think for most people those flaws outweigh the usefulness. The essential functionality is still pretty much the same as it was way back in the days of NeXT, because it works.

I mean, for all the criticism the dock gets, I don't see anything better out there either conceptually or in practice for solving those particular problems in a newbie-friendly way. Windows manages to spread the same information contained in the dock across several screen regions and multiple menus. Both Gnome and KDE interfaces generally copy the Windows design with cosmetic changes.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[VGPowerlord]

I will give you that the dock is a horrible application switcher, but who uses it as an application switcher when you have alt+tab and expose?

People who have keyboard drawers and have them pushed it when they're using applications that don't use a mouse.

I feel like Captain Obvious for even having to point that out.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[VGPowerlord]

Linux broke drivers? I thought the kernel team was responsible for all the drivers other than the ones nVidia and AMD/ATI refuse to give them to specs to implement...

Re:The freakin' Dock

[p0tat03]

Why was this post modded flamebait? It seemed a reasonable enough post to me, even though I don't agree with the contents at all. Can we exercise some judgment here mods? Moderation isn't a tool for you to pimp your opinion of the day, y'knokw.

The dock isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than any other competing equivalent on any common OS. Here are but a few things that are oh-so-right with it:

- Dynamically redrawable icons. Many apps communicate events with their users by redrawing icons. XCode during a compile will draw a little progress bar on the icon, a quick way to check progress so you can go work on something else. If a build fails it will pop a red circle up with the number of errors printed in it (I suppose so you can steel yourself before you dive into that 800-error-long log ;) ). Even many 3rd party apps such as Adium will print the names of unread IM senders, so you know whose messages are waiting for your attention. A huge number will print the little red circle-with-number dealie to inform you of any missed events (Skype with calls, etc.).
- Consolidating notifications by app. Windows XP tried this, it was a miserable failure. Instead of giving users absolute control by flooding the taskbar with every window (not a good solution, but better than this), they decided to put all windows of the same app into the same "group", except Windows windows tend to be hard to identify, relying on huge lines of truncated text to differentiate each other. This sucked. The Dock does this same thing in a much more elegant and usable way.
- It's like the start menu and task bar all at once. All open apps sit on it so you can switch easily, and all your favourites sit on it also. Most users have a handful of apps they use every day, there's no need to make them dig through a Start Menu for it, or even a tiny "drawer" of quick-launch icons like in Windows. Obscure apps? No need to make 'em dig through a Programs menu that inevitably becomes the size of Mt. Olympus, Spotlight will ALWAYS get you the app you need with only a few keystrokes.

The Finder was a pain in Tiger, but you will find it's been improved leaps and bounds in Leopard. It's not quite perfect, but it's a least competitive with all the other file managers out there.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[tmalone]

Odd, I love the dock. It is in fact the one part of Mac OS X I can't do without. When I'm in Linux (which I've been using since Slackware 96 came out), I find myself searching far and wide for a dock like panel replacement every few months. I hate that all the dock like programs out there just want to mimic the look and not the feel. Then again, up until recently, I was strictly a window maker kind of guy. I like then when I want to launch an app, I click on its icon. When I want to bring a running instance of an app into focus, I click on that same icon. It makes sense.

I think it only doesn't make sense if you want it to work like Windows. The taskbar in windows by the way is horrible. If you run more than 5 programs at a time, the information it displays is completely worthless. Give me the dock and expose anyday over that travesty.

The finder, I don't know, it works fine for me most of the time. I find most graphical file managers to be annoying. The best I've seen is rox, but even that has its drawbacks. I've never understood the complaints about the finder. I agree though, I like more power in my file managers. Still, if they got rid of the dock, I'd probably stop upgrading OS X.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[mr_matticus]

it was a pain just navigating between windows with the Dock. How?

I'm really curious, because I have never understood the origin of the animosity. Exposé is what you use for window switching, and it's far more effective than a taskbar or Cmd-Tab. The Dock is a very effective application launcher and switcher (especially coupled with Application Windows Exposé) and a pretty convenient storage space for minimized windows. It provides better information (Toast status updates, Adium message indicators, mail counters, "action needed" bounces or spins, etc.).

I like it quite a bit, and I like the Leopard one, too, and Stacks. If Stacks had a "Menu" view option to be more in line with the "old" style everyone is so accustomed to (and allowed custom icons), it'd be nothing at all to complain about.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[zdzichu]

Sorry to reply about Linux under Mac OS X article, but there is a FUD everywhere...

When Linux went 64 bit 12 YEARS ago (it was ported to Alpha in 1995) not many drivers broke. Over following years there were sometimes not 64 bit clean drivers, but they are seldom. And mostly fixed at code review stage. There wasn't any driver breaking in Linux.

In fact, not long ago 32 and 64 PPC kernel sources were unified. And just recently, similar unification merged i386 and x86_64 sources. No driver was broken.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Branka96]

Apple maintains compatibility with 32 bit drivers because Leopard still has a 32 bit kernel. Apple has a long way to go before they have a true 64 bit operating system.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Trinn]

I really wish the dock *was* like the NeXT dock. That would make it 100x better right there. I know its not as "pretty" but I'm sure there are ways around that. The clip/draggables/etc. are just much much better than the springy bouncy dock, for reasons others have covered in way more depth than I am interested in going into right here.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[DaveWick79]

Frankly, finding a minimized window on the Dock is much more difficult than finding one in XP/Vista, primarily because the icons are small and unlabeled until you mouse over them. Switching between multiple firefox windows that were minimized to the dock was painfully slow because I had to move the mouse over each one to determine which window I wanted to bring up.
Granted, I only spend a few minutes a month on Macs, and while I get around on it I am much less familiar with it than with Windows. However, I think the Windows Taskbar (especially with Quick Launch Toolbar) is an effective application launcher and a much better switcher in a more compact format.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[SlamMan]

Just make it go back to the 2d one. defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

Re:The freakin' Dock

[c_forq]

One, that sentence made no sense. I assume you mean applications that don't use the keyboard (as you can navigate expose and alt+tab with the keyboard alone). Two, you can set expose to a mouse button, so even if you are only using the mouse you can navigate expose with ease (unless your using a puck mouse, in which case I may have to question your sanity). (By the way, the mighty mouse default setup has expose set to the side sensors).

Re:The freakin' Dock

[c_forq]

I burned a CD through the finder for the first time the other day too, but I didn't find it any harder than in XP (I don't know how much they switched it in Vista). You can also use the "Create New Burn Folder" from Finder, which is a neat tool. But again I think the Dock is most useful if treated as a launcher and a way to get information at a quick glance. Ever since getting expose-like function (which I first encountered on Ubuntu) I have changed my work habits so I rarely, if ever, minimize a window. It is so much easier to use expose (when I used Beryl it even a button for all windows on all desktops and one for all windows on this desktop, in addition the button for all windows of this one application). I imagine that will be one thing I will think Ubuntu still does better than leopard, but I'm going to save that judgement until I finally have some time to play with Spaces.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

why do people minimize windows? I don't get it. since I switched to a Mac 2 years ago I found hiding applications to be a far superior method of window management.

just because you do it in Windows doesn't mean you have to do it on a Mac.

I really like the dock, probably because it is always the same. I have all my common applications in it and so can get to any one quickly, whether it's already running or not.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[MobyDisk]

The fact that icons get arranged under the doc is ridiculous. I get icons from downloads and stuff under there all the time. It's a totally obvious thing they will never fix because then the dock becomes like the Windows task bar. For Apple, it's more important to be different than right.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Rufty]

Can I put in a request for a "maximize" button?
(It can just go in where the "randomly muck up the size-and-placement" button is now.)

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statements are almost entirely incorrect.

When any OS transitions between 32-bit and 64-bit every single driver must be at the very least recompiled, if not modified. A 64-bit kernel cannot load 32-bit code. In order to use a piece of hardware, a 64-bit version of the driver must be available. Linux does have an easier time with this than Windows because you can generally recompile the source for the drivers yourself. Apple and Microsoft both have to rely on third parties to provide drivers to hardware they do not support on their own.

The same problem exists with individual applications. A 64-bit process cannot load 32-bit libraries. This is even mentioned in the review as likely a cause of a lot of problems with Adobe Photoshop going forward. Unfortunately the resolution will probably have to be similar to that of Microsoft, where you end up with two versions of the program, 32-bit and 64-bit, as well as two versions of virtually every library.

In terms of API legacy support, nobody beats Microsoft. I can run 20 year old 16-bit DOS software on my Windows Vista box seamlessly, with VESA graphics and SoundBlaster-16 support. Apple simply has nothing that compares.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[painandgreed]

Seriously, does ANYONE think the Dock is good?

Yep, I love the dock. It bugged me at first, but now it works great. It holds 99% of all the things I need to open including applications, files, folders, and server connections and is never hidden by windows that normal cover my desktop. It shows me which apps are running at a glance. It even show me if I have mail without having to switch to the mail app. BTW, it's much more a replacement for the old Apple Menu than anything else.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[anaesthetica]

The Dock is a crappy task switcher, and the Finder is still broken in most of the same ways it has been broken since, oh, 1984.

I seriously don't understand why any non-grandma users even bother with the Dock and Finder. I have nothing in my Dock except Preview and Text Edit--two applications that I can drag various documents into to open automatically. Otherwise I keep it hidden all the time. All of my launching is done with LaunchBar/Spotlight/Quicksilver/insert-your-favorite-search-n-launch-program-here. There is no reason to use Dock shortcuts. I plan to make zero use of the new Dock and zero use of stacks. I will probably delete the Downloads stack out of privacy concerns to boot.

Again, what use is the Finder at all? Besides moving files from your download folder to their various content ghettos (Movies folder, Documents Folder, Pictures Folder, etc.), I almost never use the Finder to look for files or launch files. It's all LaunchBar/Spotlight/Quicksilver. Obviously, for FTP you're not using the Finder--you're using Transmit or CyberDuck or equivalents. For mass file handling or renaming there are any dozen of apps to take care of that.

Power users ought to hide the Dock and avoid the Finder. Use your favorite search-n-launch, be it LaunchBar, Spotlight, or Quicksilver, and quit bitching about the Dock and Finder. Everyone knows they're not all that useful anymore--move on, better tools exist.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[DaveWick79]

Why? Because I can do it with one click of the mouse. Then I can bring it back quickly with one click of the mouse on the taskbar.

If I hide an app on the mac, I still have to go to the Option+Tab screen or the Dock to bring it back. This may not be very annoying if you only occasionaly go from app to app, but if you switch back and forth between multiple apps for a while, the Mac can get very aggravating.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

I find using Option-Tab, Option-H, and Expose makes it very easy to switch apps or windows.

on the other hand, if you minimise a window then you can only get it back by clicking on it in the corner of the dock. plus it means the dock is always expanding and contracting, and the minimised windows aren't necesassarily always in the same order.

what I like about the dock is that I can have an app such as Mail open in the background, but hidden, so it works constantly yet takes up no more screen space than if it were closed. I think the dock makes things easier by encouraging you not to constantly open and close apps, just show and hide them.

I still fail to understand the point of window minimisation and personally wouldn't care if Apple removed it altogether.

and I'm usually only working with 12" of screen space, a limited number function keys and no mouse. if you have a large screen, full size keyboard, multi-button mouse, and Leopard with Spaces, then I can't see what could possibly hold you back in your app-switching desires, other than PEBKAC.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[jsz0]

I love the Dock. It's one of the best features of OSX. How is it a crappy task switcher? An icon represents a program (either running or not) and right clicking reveals all the individual windows. What more do you need? What are the other options? A taskbar?

Re:The freakin' Dock

[SlamMan]

Can you give me an example? I'm scratching my head trying to thing of the last application I used that I didn't need to use a keyboard with. VLC (and other apps that just play, and not edit, video) is the only thing I could come up with.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[pammon]

You're right, I should have been more clear. I meant that Linux enabled 64 bit software in a way that broke binary compatibility with drivers. This is not an issue for drivers that get recompiled as part of the kernel, but it is an issue for drivers that are not.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[pammon]

> When any OS transitions between 32-bit and 64-bit every single driver must be at the very least recompiled, if not modified.

I installed Leopard, and now I run 64 bit Xcode without needing to recompile or even reinstall USB Overdrive, my 32 bit 3rd party shareware mouse driver. It just works. That would not have been possible under Linux or Windows. My comment was correct.

> A 64-bit kernel cannot load 32-bit code.

Of course it can. Mac OS 9 ran 68k code in the same process as PowerPC code. It's just a matter of how seriously you take compatibility. Apple chose not to write a mixed mode manager for 32 bit code, but that was a judgement call, not a technical limitation.

> In terms of API legacy support, nobody beats Microsoft. I can run 20 year old 16-bit DOS software on my Windows Vista box seamlessly, with VESA graphics and SoundBlaster-16 support. Apple simply has nothing that compares.

Heh - you have better luck than me, then. I find that I need DOSBox to run software that old.

In any case, I said that Apple has stronger compatibility requirements than Microsoft in many ways, not every way. 64 bit is an example. Apple enabled it transparently, while Microsoft did not; that 16 bit software you mention does not run in 64 bit Vista.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe how many Mac users in this thread talk about either alt-tab or option-tab. These keystrokes do nothing!

Re:The freakin' Dock

[mr_matticus]

Frankly, finding a minimized window on the Dock is much more difficult than finding one in XP/Vista, primarily because the icons are small and unlabeled until you mouse over them. Okay, but the application's icon is superimposed on the live preview, which makes it just as effective as in Windows, where you click on an application group to expand a list of windows. In Windows, your mouse movement is vertical. In OS X, it's horizontal. It's not actually more work.

Granted, you may be the type that prefers application windows to spread out over the taskbar and benefit from title recognition. Other people are more visual, and the live preview is more effective at recalling which window they want based on its colors and layout. Again, it's not less effective, it just has different priorities. As most users are more visually-oriented, the layout makes more sense.

That still doesn't address why a user would want to have more than a few minimized windows anyway. OS X is designed to have multiple floating windows. Minimization is a tool to get rid of distracting windows or something you don't have a foreseeable need to interact with. It's related to the same complaints of Windows users that there is no "maximize" button. There isn't supposed to be. Windows aren't supposed to take over the whole screen for no good reason. They're supposed to live on the desktop and be interactive (drag and drop, cross reference, translucency, etc.) with one another.

If you're not a multimodal user and you prefer one window and all the others put away, you're going to prefer the Windows approach. But it's not a result of one or the other having deficiencies--it's simply a matter of a different approach to workflow. It's not supposed to be like Windows. In many ways, it's supposed to be exactly the opposite. I understand if that puts you out of a comfort box, but it's not a failing of the Dock to accomplish its goals. It's a failing of the Dock to be a task-oriented UI element.

Like creating a Dock for Windows, I'm sure there are third-party applications for the Mac that will give you a taskbar.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[DaveWick79]

In effect, what you call hiding and what I call minimizing are the same thing.

I just am of the opinion that Windows Taskbar makes it easier for me to quickly call up those "hidden" apps.

Re:The freakin' Dock

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that in Mac OS X, hiding and minimising are two different things. If you minimise a window, it will appear in the dock like in the Windows taskbar. If you hide a window, it won't. You have to call it up again using command-tab.

I notice Leopard ships with a BSOD... sorta

[FoolsGold]

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/16

(down the page, you'll find it)

Re:I notice Leopard ships with a BSOD... sorta

[VGPowerlord]

Don't forget this one.

Re:I notice Leopard ships with a BSOD... sorta

[Blakey Rat]

That's just childish. Makes me lose a lot of respect for Apple.

I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Pausanias]

There is nothing new in Leopard that would interest most geeks.

Time Machine? I have had something very similar to it set up since the Panther days (via rsync).

3D interface? According to the ars review, it's not so hot.

I was so hopeful that ZFS would make it to Leopard. It has, but only with read access AFAIK, and certainly not in time machine---ummm, not very useful.

So, lots of eye candy for the casual user. Anyone care to chime in why a geek might want to upgrade?

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[shawnce]

Do you develop software? If so Leopard has a LOT new and enhanced features at just about all layers in the system that allow developers to do things more easily and robustly then they could in the past.

Do you use software? The former developer features will result in better software for you to use.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Dtrace, better 64-bit support, better process parallelization, native VNC.

Put simply, 10.5 lays the foundation for a lot of neat stuff to follow in the 10.5.x line.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Shados]

Thats the main new "better" thing in Vista, and no one cared, though Im sure Leopard will do just fine even without that.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll through 2 small reasons I've noticed:

1. When manually adding search domains and then receiving a DHCP addy that pushes more search domain directives 'nslookup' and 'dig' can now correctly parse '/etc/resolv.conf'.

and

2. X11 is installed by default and when forwarding back to the local X server Terminal.app will automatically launch it.

Two small items that where big annoyances to me in Tiger. Probably not a big deal to most...

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[ceoyoyo]

Nope, none at all. Objective-C 2.0, a new version of Xcode, Core Animation, the Dashboard development app....

Or were you talking about a different kind of geek?

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[overunderunderdone]

Really? Did you read the same review I did? It seems Siracusa was saying the opposite, that all the exciting stuff is for developers that users won't even notice (Aside from the cool new stuff developers can do with it) DTrace, FSEvents , Core Animation, Core Text, better 64-Bit support, Objective C 2.0.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, lots of eye candy for the casual user. Anyone care to chime in why a geek might want to upgrade?"

Dude...that entire article was an answer to your question. Didn't you even read it? (I know, I know, this is Slashdot...)

75% of the article is about EXTREMELY cool changes under the hood that nobody but a developer geek would even care about.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Llywelyn]

There is nothing new in Leopard that would interest most geeks.

This is a troll, right?

• DTrace
• 64 bit
• Unix certification
• Scripting bridges for Ruby and Python, Xcode and IB support for them.
• Sandboxing.
• Terminal improvements (lots of them)
• CoreAnimation
• CoreText
• Objective-C 2.0 w/ Garbage Collection
• LLVM for OpenGL (and more uses coming soon)
• More efficient and more widespread use of threading.
• ZFS soon.
• Boot Camp

What exactly on this list is "not of interest to geeks"?

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA bonehead

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[seebs]

SPACES SPACES SPACES!

I cannot conceive of feeling functional without virtual desktops. I learned the habit on the Amiga, where the natural model was for each application to have its own screen, and to just page back and forth between them.

Why on EARTH would I have applications sharing screen space if I don't have to? Full screen, bigass fonts, and LET ME FOCUS ON WHAT I'M DOING.

I have spent months and months trying to track down usable virtual desktops for OS X. (FWIW, "You Control Desktops" is the one I ended up with on 10.4, and if you're not getting Leopard, I recommend it as a viable desktop switcher.)

Basically, if they'd done nothing but add Spaces, I'd grumble a bit but I'd buy the upgrade. Yes, it matters that much. We're talking a feature that roughly doubles my effective productivity on any platform; I am simply not functional without it.

Add to that the death of nearly all of the inconsistent UI displays (FINALLY), and we have an upgrade worth getting; I just wish the title bar were still opaque, and the dock didn't suck. (I'll be using the right-hand dock, yes.)

The development environment is buffed. That they ended up not doing Java 6 with the release has pissed off a lot of Java people, but Java 5 is still improved over what was in Tiger.

64-bit native support? Another BIG win for me.

Rumor has it that Mail will no longer utterly destroy all incoming meeting invitations, too, which would be a big plus for me -- $DAYJOB is gonna send me calendar invites, and I can make them or not, but if I pick "not", they might stop paying me.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[onefriedrice]

> So, lots of eye candy for the casual user. Anyone care to chime in why a geek might want to upgrade?

Apparently you didn't even read the review. Yeah, there are new visual effects, but his whole review points to the fact that it's really the under-the-hood changes (I.E. for geeks!) which should motivate people to upgrade. To say there's nothing new in Leopard that would interest geeks directly contradicts what the reviewer concludes, therefore you should find the answer to your question in TFA.

What a surprise.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit Cocoa API?

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[bubba451]

So, lots of eye candy for the casual user. Anyone care to chime in why a geek might want to upgrade?

Oh, were there only an extensive article highlighting all of the under-the-hood changes that a "geek" might be interested in. Sure wish that were in the OP.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Quobobo]

Look, I know you want to start a discussion but... RTFA. Really.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here, move along.

1)DTrace
I give you this one. This is very useful and i'd kill to have it for Linux or Windows.
Ultimately there is a chance I will ditch my linux systems for a Solaris one because Sun is working hard on delivering usability for developers with Project Indiana.

2)64 bit
Oh come on. Only bloody faggots would think it's worth to mention 64 bits support. Linux had the WHOLE system recompiled in 64 bits for ages. You can have ALL The apps in your system recompiled for it. OS X is a mix of 64 bits kernel and some 64 bits libs and most of the rest 32 bits.

3)Unix certification
This has nothing to do with geeks and everything to do with bureaucracy. Tiger wasn't less compatible with apps from the posix world just looking at all the apps distributed via Fink. Unix Certification is only of interest for pointy haired bosses.
Linux might not be unix certified but nearly all the major unix can in fact run linux apps, some of them without even a recompile (think Solaris). And linux GUIs are using standard X11 while X11 looks out of place in OS X, writing an app for X11 while using OSX feels truly alienish.

4.1)Scripting bridges for Ruby and Python,
It's not new, it's only officially supported in Leopard. So what.
4.2)Xcode and IB support for them.
I give you this one but ultimately Xcode and IB are of the worst development environment ever conceived. Try IntelliJ Idea, Netbeans 6 (5 and older weren't up to stuff) or Visual Studio 2005 and you will never care to give a look back at Xcode. Netbeans 6 support for ruby is very very good btw.

5)Sandboxing.
Linux had it for ages and it's called SElinux, an implementation of Mandatory Access Control. I think some other proprietary unixes might have something similar.

6)Terminal improvements (lots of them)
It can't be hard to improve on a TURD. Tiger terminal is a real, browny turd.

7)CoreAnimation, CoreText
Windows Vista already has much better APIs in all the desktop department. AND IT HAS TRUE RESOLUTION INDEPENDANCE. Leopard still isn't ready for resolution independance and so you macfags are stuck to lowly resolution on your laptop while we can have bigger UI and such on our very high resolution Dell.

8)Objective-C 2.0 w/ Garbage Collection
Objective C is the most irrelevant language ever used in the mainstream. There is no crossplatform runtime truly usable on other systems, don't tell me about GNUStep it's a joke.
It is, like C++, trying to mix low level and high level programming in the same language. It never truly worked. Game programmers are writing in a lowlevel C++ subset and all the game logic in high level languages usually, like Python, Lua, or their own scripting engine (QuakeC, UnrealScript et al.).
Having both lowlevel and highlevel constructs in a language is a pain. I'd rather write C or in a lowlevel subset of C++ and then write everything in a truly high level language. Or, when performance is not needed, write everything in Java or C#.
For that matter, Java 5 support in Leopard sucks and Java 6 support is late.

9)LLVM for OpenGL (and more uses coming soon)
Good one. It's actually new, and useful, I give you this one too. LLVM is a work of Art.

10)More efficient and more widespread use of threading.
For a desktop os that had the worst multitasking subsystems, it's expected to improve on its smelly shit. Windows 2000 and Linux had much better SMP support and efficient use of threading than OS X at the time.

11)ZFS soon.
I will only start to care when you can actually install the OS on it. For now, you are stuck with a crappy filesystem for the OS. HFS isn't up to stuff compared to ext3 and NTFS.

12)Boot Camp
The mac is the only desktop platform so fucked up it needed a software like this to allow you to install multiple OSes on your computer.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[syzler]

Terminal improvements (lots of them)

You can't just leave us hanging like that. I saw on the Apple site that they added tabs, but what other features/improvements did they add?

Is viewport backgrounds now available? The current transparency is really worthless if you have multiple windows with text open on the desktop since all the text starts to bleed together.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me add one more thing. Instruments. Scroll down on this page for a screenshot.

This stuff is crazy. It can automatically start monitoring a running program (with DTrace as its backend) and graph performance data in real time. Then, you can click through the graphs to see the monitored events listed in detail.

--Justin

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you check out the new generic PC icon? Man, if that isn't worth the upgrade...

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[smcdow]

Also, FSEvents. Not exactly groundbreaking, but very, very convenient. And a great solution to a nagging problem.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Wooky_linuxer]

I run Virtue with Tiger. It was never quite fully functional with some apps, like Adium, but it got the job done. Too bad the development has stopped due to Spaces. I don't wan't to troll, but it seems that Spaces can't show an window/app in all desktops? It is one of the features I miss most in Virtue (it is there, but won't work with the apps with which I most need it). I also think the Exposé like transitions seem kind of bland, I'd like more fancy effects like real 3D transitions.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[revscat]

You are comparing rsync to Time Machine?

You, sir, are a fucking joke.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[seebs]

I haven't messed with Spaces yet, because I haven't had time to upgrade -- I need a couple days when it's okay for my laptop to be dysfunctional.

I don't know about showing something in all desktops. I bet it can be done, even though I don't know how, just because it's a pretty common feature.

I don't care at all about transition effects. The transition effect I want is the one where, on the next refresh, I see the screen I selected. Nothing else.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Marsell]

Your comments regarding Linux are misguided.

I'm not using Linux; I'm using OS X. I really don't care whether Linux has been doing it since 1991, since I'll never touch it again outside of a server context. All I care about is whether these features are new to OS X.

Are they? Okay then.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be "Unix certification".

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

First, it doesn't matter if Linux or Vista already has some feature, since Linux and Vista do not have other features that may determine which OS a geek uses for a given task. For example, Linux lacks proper system services, easy migration to new hardware, and support for some software (like omniplan). As a result, a lot of geeks use OS X for tasks where those are important. Just because Linux already supports MAC or something.

2)64 bit Oh come on. Only bloody faggots would think it's worth to mention 64 bits support. Linux had the WHOLE system recompiled in 64 bits for ages. You can have ALL The apps in your system recompiled for it. OS X is a mix of 64 bits kernel and some 64 bits libs and most of the rest 32 bits.

Sigh. Are you one of those "64 is bigger than 32 so it must be better" people? Some code benefits from being 64 bits and some is hindered. With Leopard, you have seamless support for both, depending upon the platform code is run on and the developer's decisions. That is a big win.

P.S. using slurs against people of a given sexual orientation does not help your case, it provides the impression that you're a 13 year old who's still unsure if he's gay and trying hard to make sure no one knows.

Unix certification This has nothing to do with geeks and everything to do with bureaucracy.

Agreed.

5)Sandboxing. Linux had it for ages and it's called SElinux, an implementation of Mandatory Access Control. I think some other proprietary unixes might have something similar.

Yes FreeBSD has jails, and Solaris has MAC as well. The thing is, I don't know any Linux distribution that ships with it setup and running by default so that developrs can count on all their users having it to work with an application they code. The Firefox team can't assume Linux users will have SELinux installed and thus use it to sandbox their code, but the Firefox team can now make that assumption for OS X users. Further, since so much mainstream hardware requires WINE on Linux, setting up sandboxes for those applications (or really an applications) can be a huge pain in the ass, even for competent people. Now developers for OS X will be coding with the assumption that sandboxing is a concern.

6)Terminal improvements (lots of them) It can't be hard to improve on a TURD. Tiger terminal is a real, browny turd.

Again, this is a matter of perspective and how it is used. If you're planning on SSHing into 100 remote servers at once, their are probably better terminal applications that terminal.app. If, however, you're tunneling to a private IRC channel and would like integrated, translation between English and Japanese and German, well terminal.app is probably your best bet.

10)More efficient and more widespread use of threading. For a desktop os that had the worst multitasking subsystems, it's expected to improve on its smelly shit. Windows 2000 and Linux had much better SMP support and efficient use of threading than OS X at the time.

Independent evaluation shows this is not true. It all depends upon your resource constraints.

12)Boot Camp The mac is the only desktop platform so fucked up it needed a software like this to allow you to install multiple OSes on your computer.

Probably 99% of the populace would never attempt to install a dual boot system. Even for geeks who do so, installing a boot manager and getting all the drivers for both OS's can be a huge pain. Bootcamp is just a boot manager and set of Windows drivers for the hardware, nicely packaged. You don't need it, it is just really convenient.

Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade

[seebs]

Spaces can show something in every desktop. The list of "assignments" in preferences has "every space" as an option. You win!

ZFS: Zune File System?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't Apple create anything on their own? Ripping off Microsoft? Who's next on their hitlist? Xerox?

Re:ZFS: Zune File System?

[glittalogik]

Does this mean we can get Apple-flavoured squirts?

Re:ZFS: Zune File System?

[jcr]

Oh, come on, mods! That wasn't flamebait, it was funny.

-jcr

Vista Review?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where's the rest of Ars' Vista review? I guess they want to wait until SP1 is released. Just goes to show that Vista is still in beta and consumers are the guinea pigs. RTM's been out for almost a year.

My review of OSX

[kuactet]

9:00 a.m.

Despite having no friends, no life, no education no job, and no prospects, despite the war in Iraq, a plunging dollar, the looming energy crisis, global warming, and the sheer horror of being alive in this day and age, this morning, I woke up happy, for today would be my most exciting review: OSX 10.5 was being released.

I am not normally one to get excited about reviewing a product, especially if it is my first time using it; usually there is a feeling of trepidation about stepping outside my comfort zone, but today, it is notably absent. Perhaps because I have been following this product since its inception, living the Apple lifestyle in preparation, and becoming fully engrossed by the user community. The experience has been like a second birth to me, and the release of 10.5 is the wonderful culmination.

But I should back up. For those of you who have been living normal, healthy lives, 10.5, also known as the Leopard is the single most anticipated OSX release of all time, packed with 300 new features that would surely leave its competitors (the monolithic Microsoft and agile Linux) stunned and possibly bleeding as it whizzes by in a blur of growing market share and spots.

Apple Inc., the Cupertino-based personal electronics company behind the Leopard, burst into the public view in 2001 with the introduction of the phenomenally popular iPod music player. Apple then followed up that success with the iPhone brand cellular phone, which has sold a whopping 1.4 million units since its summer debut. Today, Apple hopes to leverage that success to bootstrap its long-stagnant personal computing platform, the Mac.

For the last decade, the Mac has maintained a relatively constant 5% share of the global computing market. In recent months, however, increasing disillusionment with the new Microsoft Vista operating system has pushed more and more people into Apple's open arms, but the uptake has been slow. The release of the Leopard, Apple hopes, will be the impetus for users to peek beyond the simple familiarity of Windows. Drawn by the prospect of a bigger and better world, they will slowly venture beyond their thatched grass huts into the thrilling unknown. The Leopard will then snatch them up and drag them into its stylish and intuitive tree to feast.

Or so it is planned. But will Apple be able to succeed where so many others have failed? Will it finally be able to wrest control of the desktop from the Monopolist? Yes, of course. But it is my duty as a reviewer to show, not just tell. So join me as I prepare to drink deeply of the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid and plunge myself into the Leopard, to prove this Apple revolution is truly the way of the future.

Part 1: Getting OSX

3:30 p.m.

The cold rain pours down outside, but under the glass roof of the Christiana Mall, it is warm and dry. Twenty yards away is the only Apple Store for miles, and consequently where one must go for the latest Apple releases.

Though I had arrived early, there is already a sizable line, stretching back to where I find myself now. The head of it, I am told, had been waiting since early morning, growing progressively more excited as the day wore on. His manic energy is infectious, it seems, and the light buzz of excitement percolating through the crowd quickly set my nerves on edge in the best possible way. This, I reflect, is better than most drugs.

I strike up conversation with the man waiting impatiently in front of me. When I ask him what he intends to do with the Leopard when he brings it home, he stares at me for twenty minutes. His steady gaze says more than any words could, and when he tells me he will teach it to love, and then maybe make a movie, I weep for the sheer joy that wells up in my heart. He holds me, understanding.

5:57 p.m.

The excitement has reached an almost painful level. It is a silent buzz permeating the very air; the crowd is l

Re:My review of OSX

[NosTROLLdamus]

This would've been better if it was titled "article text" and everything after "part 2: installation" was after the cut.

Re:My review of OSX

[aarku]

Thank you, that made my day.

Re:My review of OSX

[n dot l]

Subscribe...newsletter...must...intrigued...

Thank you for that. I needed a good laugh.

Re:My review of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Please. It's Leopard. Not the Leopard. Your post was funny, but that ruined it for me.

Re:My review of OSX

[bakes]

Beautifully written, wonderful twist. Great job.

Re:My review of OSX

[sootman]

Excellent post (and ignore the guy who doesn't get that "the Leopard" is part of the joke--this thing is packed with lots of subtle, subtle jokes) but you should have mentioned that you actually did write that--since you obviously didn't whip that up for a slashdot comment, I went to google to find the source so I could accuse you of plagiarism, only to be led here. Nicely done. But next time, give credit where credit is due--even if it's to yourself. A) you deserve it and B) it'll save me some time. :-)

Again, great job. The whole thing is great, top to bottom (and the punchline is a killer.) Well played. The style reminds me a bit of this guy with the way he gets details wrong and is unaware of some major things.

Re:My review of OSX

[Darksun]

That is the funniest thing I've read in days....thanks for that :)

Re:My review of OSX

[bar-agent]

The box is heavy in my hands. No, not heavy; sturdy, powerful, as though the beast contained within was projecting itself beyond the confines of its cardboard prison. Or perhaps it was the weight of newfound brotherhood.

Tycho? Is that you?

Re:My review of OSX

[edmac3]

Thank you for that! I don't often post in this way but your story really made me laugh so I had to register my appreciation. Is this considered comment spam?

This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

I read the review written by John Siracusa today. I have to say I disagree with him on many points. What makes him qualified to nitpick these changes? SE/30? He's used OS X since 99? That's kid stuff. Basically, this review is from a PC-centric-everyman point of view. To me, this review is basically a Jazzed-up Troll that is being passed off as Silicon Ten Commandments. Specifically, where he loses credibility in my book is when he says: "...The phrase "arbitrary graphical change" has become increasingly applicable, and the sheer number of possible looks for any given element of the OS has exploded." - arbitrary according to you, Johnny_come_lately! You would think someone from Ars would study up more on Interface Design. 3D effect? Manipulation of Data, Depth as part of the User Experience? Metaphors? http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGHIDesign/chapter_5_section_2.html Translucence is part of a real world set of Metaphors. It's not Eye Candy. As an astute poster has mentioned on /. in the past, translucent objects are used in the real world every day. Map Panels, Dividing walls, Map Overlays, etc. find use by Engineers, Scientists, Military, etc. Continuing to use the metaphor is a progression towards advanced 3D UI's IMO. This guy just doesn't seem to get it. When real world metaphors that use cues,depth, reflection, translucency are used they help for people to FORGET the interface and focus on the task. This is arguably the goal of a tool such as a computer, a Turing Machine, a Robot. Getting closer to real. Get it? Instead, we get this guy whining about the minutiae admittedly that we all love so well and have to focus on as part of our work here but the rest of the world doesn't really care about. In short, to recap, If a computer or gaming platform is a task enhancing device or tool, then real world metaphors in the user interface that bring it closer to an intuitive, natural interaction similar to real life are to be promoted. Think of it as suspension of disbelief to use a phrase from Cinema. /rant

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparency is usually crappy because it's distracting. The text/images behind what you're working with interfere and make it harder to see what you're doing. Vista really got this right because they didn't just crank down the opacity on window borders, they made the borders blur what was behind them. That way you can tell what's there, but it isn't so distracting because you can intuitively tell the difference between foreground and background.

dom

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, need to go wash your mouth. It seems your tounge is all brown.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

I would argue that Vista got it wrong and Leopard got it right, that Vista was taking cues from OS X development and that your comments are inaccurate. Post as something other than an AC and we'll talk. One more thing about the review: the Ars reviewer knows lots about code, but not lots about UI's. Yes UI's matter.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[overunderunderdone]

"translucent objects are used in the real world every day. Map Panels, Dividing walls, Map Overlays, etc. find use by Engineers, Scientists, Military, etc"

Sure but in (most of) those cases the translucence is doing something beneficial. In the cases Siracusa is complaining about it's not, it's actually detrimental. Translucency isn't bad in itself (and his really damning complaints aren't about the translucency anyway), it CAN be useful, but it can also be misused and Siracusa's specific complaints are well justified. There's a good reason for a map overlay to be translucent, so you can see the map below it. That doesn't hold true for the menu bar, no useful information is being conveyed through the transparency, just visual clutter that makes the menu illegible. The dock is even worse, translucency may be marginally useful there revealing some of the real work area beneath it (& the Dock is already translucent) But vignetted icons on who knows what background and shiny surfaces reflecting visual noise are just bad ideas. They only make it more difficult discern the information that's being conveyed to you. There's simply no excuse for the stupidity of how the dock now deals with folders. Stacks are an intriguing idea but this implementation is significantly less useful than a simple folder, and displaying not the folder icon but the first item in the folder? That's not just bad but wrong.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

But it doesn't have to be doing something discretely beneficial, per se, if it's about a spatial consideration, which is where I was going with my comments. A spatial consideration is about a general level of perceptual depth, think Semiotics or Gestalt Psychology. When you say "...That doesn't hold true for the menu bar, no useful information is being conveyed through the transparency, just visual clutter that makes the menu illegible...." this is your opinion, and clearly subjective. In my opinion, the depth and translucency add to the Gestalt of the UI in a restrained manner, as opposed to Windows Vista and Aero, which IS distracting with the overtly blurred translucency. So to recap, the lack of useful information you cite in your above example is actually latent spatial information and you, sir, are incorrect.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[Logic and Reason]

The first half of your rant is basically irrelevant, elitist mumbling about how John Siracusa isn't "qualified" to offer his opinion on user interface design. Passing over that:

Translucence is part of a real world set of Metaphors.

A metaphor for what, exactly? What does making the menu bar translucent actually accomplish? You can argue that it fits better with the "Gestalt" of the interface as a whole, but unless you can point out specifically how the translucency improves usability, Siracusa's point stands: the translucent menu bar's decreased legibility makes the change a net usability loss.

This is arguably the goal of a tool such as a computer, a Turing Machine, a Robot. Getting closer to real.

A "real" menu bar is what, exactly? More than that, I do not want my computer's interface to be "real"; I want it to be usable. Computers are significantly different from other consumer products, so it stands to reason that the best interface for a computer would not necessarily mirror those of other, physical devices.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[Space cowboy]

but unless you can point out specifically how the translucency improves usability, Siracusa's point stands: the translucent menu bar's decreased legibility makes the change a net usability loss.

Er, how about it makes it less distracting, less of a sharp contrast between the background and the menu-bar, thus preventing the eye from being dragged to the wrong place (the top of the screen) and subtly directing it to the correct place for most work (the main windows on the desktop).

Besides, it's ~10% transparent, at a guess. The text is perfectly clear on my background (a nature scene with trees and foliage where the menu bar is).

Simon

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[coolGuyZak]

Vista really got this right because they didn't just crank down the opacity on window borders, they made the borders blur what was behind them.

The menu bar & menus in Leopard do the same thing. I'm also in the camp of finding the translucency annoying. Luckily, it's easy to ignore.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[smash]

Fuck, i've got no idea how many man-hours i've spent looking at non-transparent menu bars because they were distracting me.

actually yes i do. zero.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[VGPowerlord]

I read the comment by graviplana about the review written by John Siracusa today. What makes him qualified to nitpick these changes?

(I'm too lazy to put more effort into this)

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[VGPowerlord]

So... since I didn't go into depth in my other post in my thread, I think I'll go more in-depth here.

A UI, even in real life, doesn't need transparency. My car's steering wheel, foot pedals, and guages don't; elevator buttons don't; signs on a wall don't; and those are just the first few examples that popped into my head.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What makes him qualified to nitpick these changes?

Well, I've done UI design and testing professionally, taken classes specifically on the subject as part of my undergraduate degree, and attended a number of conferences and lectures on the subject. I've got to say, he does make some good points (in my opinion).

Translucence is part of a real world set of Metaphors. It's not Eye Candy.

I must have missed where Mr. Siracusa argued against using transparency. In fact, I seem to recall him saying that it can be a useful interface feature. What he was arguing against was is being used where it provides no benefit or where it is actually detrimental. Anyone who has ever worked on such a project will be able to tell you, without formal testing, usability cannot be determined and presumably, Apple has done such testing and should know better than Mr. Siracusa. However, almost everyone who has ever done such testing will also tell you at least one anecdote where a manager or marketer has pushed hard for ignoring the results of such testing in favor of making something look "flashy." It is entirely possible, that is what happened with several elements in Leopard and if I had to guess without seeing formal usability testing results, I'd have to lean towards Mr. Siracusa's view.

Having the menu bar translucent does not make its purpose any clearer or serve to make people more accepting of it in any way I understand. It does seem to make it slightly less readable in some situations. Why is it you think it was not changed to "look cool" and "sell boxes" instead of to maximize usability?

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

The first half of your rant is basically irrelevant, elitist mumbling about how John Siracusa isn't "qualified" to offer his opinion on user interface design. Passing over that:

Translucence is part of a real world set of Metaphors.

A metaphor for what, exactly? What does making the menu bar translucent actually accomplish? You can argue that it fits better with the "Gestalt" of the interface as a whole, but unless you can point out specifically how the translucency improves usability, Siracusa's point stands: the translucent menu bar's decreased legibility makes the change a net usability loss.

This is arguably the goal of a tool such as a computer, a Turing Machine, a Robot. Getting closer to real.

A "real" menu bar is what, exactly? More than that, I do not want my computer's interface to be "real"; I want it to be usable. Computers are significantly different from other consumer products, so it stands to reason that the best interface for a computer would not necessarily mirror those of other, physical devices. I did argue that the translucency fits with the "gestalt" of the interface. You just steamrolled over it. As your website clearly shows, user interfaces are not your priority. All future opinions from you now have a good context.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

"...Well, I've done UI design and testing professionally, taken classes specifically on the subject as part of my undergraduate degree, and attended a number of conferences and lectures on the subject. I've got to say, he does make some good points (in my opinion)...."

I have done UI too.for.years. I don't agree, we have different experiences, and I think I have very different experiences than you have had. I think most people here are missing the forest for the trees on this one.

"...I must have missed where Mr. Siracusa argued against using transparency..."

He said it right here when he used the word arbitrary, he implied that it was used in Leopard and that it was bad:

"...The phrase "arbitrary graphical change" has become increasingly applicable, and the sheer number of possible looks for any given element of the OS has exploded."

I think you're right that it's possible that it's just flashy, but that would go against the history of Apple and their usability, which the Ars reviewer lopped off by excluding all of the development of Mac OS X by only looking at it from '99 on. His review about UI is lacking. His under the hood review was good. End_of_story.


To recap, it is a latent spatial depth cue adding to the Gestalt of the UI, towards a more 3D metaphor of operating systems in congruence with real world objects. If you don't like that or think its real, guess what? - there are millions of other people in the world and some of them do!

- You clowns can mark me troll all you want but it doesn't change the fact that Apple has a history of looking at this and you guys just think it's electro porn and you're wrong. :D -

You just want to bash Apple and OS X so you can hump your Ubuntu builds (which I love, BTW, but it still needs a lot more work).

The only person in this series of replies who gets it is Space Cowboy. Kudos to you. I'm done.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[overunderunderdone]

I think I'm understanding your point, "eye candy" like reflections and translucency can be conveying real information using the metaphor of 3-dimensional space. I certainly have no problem with that (I'm a graphic designer by trade). The problem is that the subtle information about relationships being conveyed by your "latent spatial relationships" could be conveyed in another manner. The manner it IS being conveyed with has the potential (in the menu) and the certainty (in the Dock) of completely obscuring the critical information you NEED to display in those cases. The knocked out icons on the dock are certain to often be over-layed on top of visually busy backgrounds since they pop-up into the work area, the menu *might* if the user is unwise in their choice of background images. The glowing dot active application indicator is pretty subtle even without clutter, and as I said before there is no possible excuse for "stacks" deceptively displaying the wrong icon because they display not their own icon but the icon of whatever object happens to be the first in the directory. Perceptual depth is a good thing, gaining it at the expense of legibility is not. I can forgive the menu since they decreased the transparency in the released version and I can control the background on which it's over-layed, the new dock though is a big step backwards for an interface which was already problematic.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

He said it right here when he used the word arbitrary, he implied that it was used in Leopard and that it was bad: "...The phrase "arbitrary graphical change" has become increasingly applicable, and the sheer number of possible looks for any given element of the OS has exploded."

That's an argument against the way transparency is being used in Leopard, not against its use in general.

I think you're right that it's possible that it's just flashy, but that would go against the history of Apple and their usability

I don't think you'll find many UI experts who have not noted that when Apple incorporated all the NextStep engineers and all the traditional UNIX people into their organization their focus on UI became less so (focused). They've made a number of usability errors that would not have made it past the old organization.

To recap, it is a latent spatial depth cue adding to the Gestalt of the UI, towards a more 3D metaphor of operating systems in congruence with real world objects.

Except that cue as indicated by transparency is not tied to the linked objects, so it fails to tie the menu with the windows of an application, providing an inaccurate clue. At the same time it reduces readability. Even Apple must have noted this since they reduced the amount of transparency in later builds. None of us can know for sure what Apple's usability tests showed, but from a basic UI design perspective, it does not seem to make sense.

You just want to bash Apple and OS X

Please refrain from the strawman arguments. They don't help your case.

Re:This guy knows little about UI principles, IMO

[graviplana]

"..That's an argument against the way transparency is being used in Leopard, not against its use in general..."

Correct! I'm glad you understand!

One more time:

To recap, it is a latent spatial depth cue adding to the Gestalt of the UI, towards a more 3D metaphor of operating systems in congruence with real world objects.

"...Except that cue as indicated by transparency is not tied to the linked objects, so it fails to tie the menu with the windows of an application, providing an inaccurate clue. At the same time it reduces readability. Even Apple must have noted this since they reduced the amount of transparency in later builds. None of us can know for sure what Apple's usability tests showed, but from a basic UI design perspective, it does not seem to make sense...."

Hey smart guy, take a read and quit steamrolling over my response with your clever trolling: http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A%20gestalt&sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 It doesn't reduce readability, that's your opinion, and not everyone agrees with that. To recap, it is a latent spatial depth cue adding to the Gestalt of the UI. You're just not able to grokk what I wrote.

Did comprehension suddenly go out of style? Depth cue? Hello world? It's like you've never seen Star Trek II. "..pattern indicates 2 dimensional thinking..."

I think it's great

[Space cowboy]

Personally I don't see the beef people have with it. It works well for me. I like the "shelf" look that people are bitching about as well. Perhaps it's because I don't give much of a crap about "the angle at which the icon points", for crying out loud!

The other main complaint is the menubar - it's about 10% (guesstimate) transparent. It just adds a subtle shading to the otherwise-white bar. I rather like it, as did most of the commentators in the discussion that I skimmed through. Some people get far too fixated on minute inconsequential details...

I mean, the only real problems with the "classic" Mac GUI were that there wasn't a easily visible way to keep track of/switch between running programs, and the Finder was a pain to work with. Well, and the lack of right-click context menus

So Leopard has an easy way to switch/keep track of running programs (the Dock), the Finder is no longer a pain to work with, and OSX has a context bar. And this one is worse ? I got to admit, I'm not an "old-mac" fan - I thought the OS was a piece of crap, and I far preferred my unix workstations of the day, so perhaps there's some magic thing the old OS did. I'm *really* not seeing much wrong with Leopard though. It's still the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them...

Simon.

Re:I think it's great

[wootest]

The problem with the shelf Dock is that the Dock has always been mostly transparent. Now it's anything but - it's got that S curve, and it reflects windows from just above it. The icons also get extra shadows applied to them for no reason whatsover - if you look at the Transmit icon, it looks like it's doing a pirouette on the wheel at the bottom. The shelf Dock would be great if it just shucked these elements and easily allowed non-stack folders (perhaps dragging in an alias to a folder will do that, I haven't tried) because I like the basic look - it's the unnecessary effects that make it look like they may just as well have glued on spray-painted macaroni.

The menu bar isn't a big worry. The transparency at the cost of legibility is far down since earlier, and if you want it white you can just draw a white 22 pixel line on the top of your wallpaper.

Re:I think it's great

[Anonymous Coward]

Except these "minute inconsequential details" are why a lot of people say OS X is a superior operating system.

Honest opinions appreciated.

[thatskinnyguy]

This might be a tad off topic, but I was just wondering what Apple is going to do for OS 11. I mean, Leopard and every other point release of OSX has had improvements. But nothing as ground-breaking or readily apparent as upgrading from OS 9.x to OS 10.x. In order for Jobs to out-do himself will he have to go on sabbatical and start from the ground-up again? Or will OS 11 just incorporate more little tweaks and features that users have to be told are there in order to notice? Or will it incorporate more superfluous stuff like the Beryl/Aero-like desktop switcheroo thingy?

Re:Honest opinions appreciated.

[c_forq]

I think they are currently laying the groundwork for it, and it will be instead of or immediately after 10.6. I think OS-11 will be when we see Quartz GL, resolution independence, ZFS, and much more enabled by default, in addition to being completely 64-bit. I think this will be after LLVM has reached maturity. But then again, OS-X may live on for a decade to come due to the marketing fondness of the big "X".

Re:Honest opinions appreciated.

[ceoyoyo]

Apple has trademarked quite a few more big cats. With the new two-year release schedule I think you'll be waiting a good eight to ten years to see an OS 11.

OS releases SHOULDN'T be as overwhelming as OS 9 to OS X. Apple was way behind the times with OS 9 and badly needed a big jump. They managed to pull it off, and now they're making steady, really quite quick progress. But the giant leaps are bad -- they disrupt everything and they're risky and expensive for both Apple and it's customers

Re:Honest opinions appreciated.

[Anonymous Coward]

There won't be Mac OS 11. While X is read as a roman numeral for 10, people keep thinking that it is the current version. That's wrong. Leopard is not a point release. I don't know how many times it must be said on /. before people understand it. /. is supposed to be for geeks/smart people, yes?

The version number is 5 as in 10.5.x where x is the point release. It's not as if X becomes XI when the version number hit 10 like in a decimal system. Apple has shown that they don't follow that logic by releasing 10.4.10 (and will release 10.4.11 soon). Besides, real numbers don't have 2 decimal points. I'll bet you will be seeing Mac OS X 10.12.11 or something similar.

And with it comes

[Trogre]

one of the silliest advertising campaigns of recent history:

Add a new Mac to your, uh, Mac.

Have those claims been peer reviewed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The security article was posted what, a few hours ago?

Meh

[vought]

I've been using Leopard for three days now.

I don't notice the changes all that much. After day two, the changes kind of faded, and the features became more important than the subtle UI changes.

I don't think it's just me, and I can see a strategy behind it; like a car company, Apple keeps evolving the sizzle around a particular model while tweaking the internals to get ahead or stay competitive. It works for me.

You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[interactive_civilian]

So said realmolo:

The Dock is a crappy task switcher, and the Finder is still broken in most of the same ways it has been broken since, oh, 1984.

You are doing it wrong. The dock isn't meant to be a task switcher. It is a launcher/shortcut area. If you want an application switcher, you have a few options: exposé and cmd-tab to name two. If you want a task switcher, you really can't beat exposé, though most Mac greybeards are probably comfortable with having a portion of the window from their other task visible behind the current front window (which really only works if you are only doing 2 or 3 things at one time).

According to the article (with which I agree), the only real reasons the finder seems to be broken is because Apple is making it a crappy combination of a browser (or explorer, if you are more comfortable with that term) and a spatial system (like the old finder) instead of clearly separating these things and letting the user to decide what they want to do. The new global view options mung things up even more as far as an intuitive UI goes, IMHO. I guess I can understand the gripes about the Finder, but I really don't use it that much. I prefer using it as a browser in column view, and with that I rarely have to have more than two finder windows open to do any given task. However, my organizational style is probably quite different from others.

That said, I haven't used Leopard yet, but there are a few things that I'm really not looking forward to. The Dock doesn't seem like too much of a nightmare if it is pinned to the sides (stacks default to grid view, I'm told). I'm a "pin it to the left, keep it small, and keep it hidden" dock user. The new folder icons and their previews on the dock look like they will drive me crazy, but it shouldn't be hard to change that (hopefully).

Anyway, I don't think the dock is really meant to be a task switcher. Just a launcher that can also give some basic application status information.

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[VGPowerlord]

You are doing it wrong. The dock isn't meant to be a task switcher.

So... I imagined those little arrows/dots below running applications? And the live preview for running apps?

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[mr_matticus]

That's application status information. Just like the mail counters, the Adium message indicators, Toast status indicators, and the other unobtrusive information it contains, the Dock. It's not task-oriented, but rather application-oriented.

The Dock is an application switcher/launcher, but not a task switcher. You can subdivide it two ways--an All Windows Exposé for a one-key direct shot, or you can switch to a busy application and then use Application Windows Exposé for more effective task switching within an application--far superior to a pop-up list (e.g. when you're working with 15 files in Photoshop or 10 palettes in a drafting application).

It is more or less the opposite of Windows priorities. It's not a good taskbar because it's not supposed to be. To do so would be redundant.

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[VGPowerlord]

That makes sense... until you consider that Exposé didn't show up until 10.3 (Panther).

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[CatOne]

There's a preferences setting to remove the 3D "shelf" of the dock on the bottom (well, you have to use the command line as it's hidden).

As to defaulting to the grid view on the side -- that's the ONLY option on the side. The fan view is not available (at all). I suspect that's because the fan view, on the side, would look quite phallic. I'm sure someone tried it and was like "Oh, we can't have that."

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[poot_rootbeer]

You are doing it wrong. The dock isn't meant to be a task switcher. It is a launcher/shortcut area.

Every version of Windows for the past 12 years -- and every *nix window manager that takes UI concepts from those Windows interfaces -- has had a task switcher area at the bottom (or side) of the desktop.

I won't say that it was a bad choice for Apple to disregard that de facto convention when designing the Dock, but perhaps they could be doing a better job of managing the expectations of OS X neophytes familiar with other systems.

Re:You're doing it wrong (Re:The freakin' Dock)

[mr_matticus]

Sure. And the ability to put Windows application links directly on the taskbar (in the Quick Launch area or whatever it's called) didn't show up until Windows 98. The ability to condense applications to a single button in the taskbar didn't show up until XP.

Things evolve over time to address weaknesses. Are you really going to say that a solution is inadequate because it didn't exist before it existed? I don't think that's your intent, but that's the effect of your comment.

Dumbledore is a pole smoking cocksucker

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbledore is a pole smoking cocksucker and so are you.

The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

I'd never consider buying a computer I couldn't rebuild or modify (or build entirely) so using Apple's software is never an option for me.

Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop... and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time. Over the years people have offered processor upgrades as well, made easier of course by them using Intel chips now where processor swaps are just as easy as any other PC motherboard.

And of course I have a laptop. And just like most laptops, there are more limited changes I can make - but Mac laptops come with a good range of i/o options, including gigabit ethernet and firewire 800.

Are you honestly saying you never ever would buy a laptop? To me I just can't see saying that someone would never buy a Mac because they can't upgrade one, is just not being true to yourself. You don't want a Mac for other reasons, that's fine - but lets all stop pretending the upgrade options are so very different.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[dal20402]

Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop... and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time.

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions. The Mini uses low-end laptop components, sacrificing performance in the quest for small and quiet. The iMac uses a laptop MB and processor (most notably limiting RAM expansion), can fit only one hard disk, and saddles the buyer with a non-reusable, non-upgradable monitor that will still be looking gorgeous when the iMac is obsolete. The Mac Pro uses a staggeringly expensive dual-Xeon board (with equally expensive FB-DIMMs) and custom componentry throughout. (Oh, yeah, and costs $2200 and way up.)

I see the logic behind Steve's not wanting to offer a prosumer/hobbyist desktop. It would violate his design principles, cannibalize his high-margin iMacs, and create support problems for some users. But what he should do is license OS X on a very narrow basis. Allow one or two white box manufacturers to sell OS X-capable mid-price desktop machines with a very limited range of hardware, that could be extensively tested to keep "it just works" intact. Make the boutique makers offer their own support. I think you'd find small makers eager to take up the challenge for what would probably be a $200-$300/box OS X premium. I know I'd pay it!

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[kgruscho]

Apple tried allowing licensed clones at one point and were not happy with the results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[floamy]

The Mac Pro is very expensive, but nothing you mentioned there is nonupgradable. I can shove new PCI Express video cards in, as much memory as I can imagine, and the same processors many PC slashdot'ers have. Because it's an expensive rig you don't consider it upgradable?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[drsmithy]

Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop...

Let us know how you go swapping out the motherboard in that thing. The video card is also pretty much a token gesture, given you have to search far and wide for one that you can be sure will definitely work with the Mac's legacy-free EFI and then within OS X.

Not to mention the minimum buy-in for an "upgradable" Mac is a US$2500 Mac Pro.

and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time.

Yeah, that one change of the mainstream motherboard form factor from AT to ATX over the last ~25 years (with a ~5 year overlap) sure caused problems.

You don't want a Mac for other reasons, that's fine - but lets all stop pretending the upgrade options are so very different.

Please stop pretending the upgrade options for the average Mac are even in the same class as the upgrade options for the average PC. They're just not.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions.

The Mini is actually one of the easier systems to upgrade, since you just have to pop the case off. Much easier to get at than a laptop... I can upgrade much of the system with improved laptop components (like a faster drive and more memory). Mostly the things people would upgrade anyway.

The iMac only holds one disk internally but offers Firewire 800 which is fast enough even for serious photo editing. As I said, Macs have excellent i/o options which somewhat reduce the need to upgrade the system itself.

The MacPro is expensive, yes - but you were talkign ABILITY and not EXPENSE. In my experience people either build a cheap system whose needs are met by something like a mini or iMac already, or they are building Uber Expensive Gaming Rig in which case you are talking MacPro money anyway!

Yes you can get away with something in the middle cheaper by building yourself, I used to build my own systems as well. But then I realized I valued my time, and was tired of myriad components that always needed just a little tweaking to actually work right together...

But I digress, again I am addressing the myth that Macs lack upgradability and expandability compared to most PC systems in use.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

The MacPro is expensive, yes - but you were talkign ABILITY and not EXPENSE Which is the beauty of the other side's argument. Once you start talking ability, by bringing in Apple's expensive MacPro, that's when we start talking price. The PC doesn't have to beat every tier of Apple in every category. One or two is enough. At the low end, the PC wins with expandability and selection (and STILL price but it's close), at the high end where Apple is able to narrowly close that gap then the PC starts winning because of price--the Macs costing sometimes twice as much. Talk up the merits of the OS all you want, they are there, I'll be the first to admit leopard is better than vista, but that counts for nothing when it's locked to the lesser of two platforms (made even more humorous by the wall that separates the two being a contrived construct made by apple to ensure higher margins.)

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anomolous Cowturd]

Now they should try unlicensed clones.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about being able to plug *any* generic piece of hardware into the mac and getting it to "just work"? What if I want to use a different video card (say NVidia 6600, or 8800?) or use a different sound card, mobo etc (to give better price/performance)? Mac is very limiting that way - you CAN'T just plug in any peice of hardware you can with Linux or XP/Vista. To me this is a dead point - unless Mac can offer the same level of hardware support that Linux and Windoze can then count me out. I want the option to be able to use whatever I like in my PC and not be locked down!

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

I just went to apples store to configure a system that's as good as the PC I just built. It ended up having smaller monitors, more hard-drive space, and a far worse graphics card. It also ended up costing $6,000. My pc cost me $2,000. Anyone buying such a system from apple is nuts and has been brainwashed by marketing gimmicks.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Kjella]

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions. The Mini uses low-end laptop components, sacrificing performance in the quest for small and quiet. The iMac uses a laptop MB and processor (most notably limiting RAM expansion), can fit only one hard disk, and saddles the buyer with a non-reusable, non-upgradable monitor that will still be looking gorgeous when the iMac is obsolete. The Mac Pro uses a staggeringly expensive dual-Xeon board (with equally expensive FB-DIMMs) and custom componentry throughout. (Oh, yeah, and costs $2200 and way up.) I see the logic behind Steve's not wanting to offer a prosumer/hobbyist desktop. It would violate his design principles, cannibalize his high-margin iMacs, and create support problems for some users.

Hey, if you don't want my business I won't chase you down. But this points out exactly what I miss, it's a standard box with external screen, with a one-socket Core 2 motherboard using regular DDR2s with room for standard SATA drives and regular graphics cards. I'm not going to go down in standard (or end up with a extremely expensive Mac Pro) just because Jobs is absolutely refusing to make anything like a standard desktop. Too bad though, because Leopard looks impressive, but I have a nice monitor, several extra disks etc. and I'm not downgrading my hardware.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[VGPowerlord]

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions.

The Mini is actually one of the easier systems to upgrade, since you just have to pop the case off. Much easier to get at than a laptop... I can upgrade much of the system with improved laptop components (like a faster drive and more memory). Mostly the things people would upgrade anyway.

Strawman. On a standard desktop PC (bolded for emphasis), I can pop in a new video card if I feel mine isn't up to spec. Same with sound. Same with ethernet cards (ooh, gigabit). I can't add any of those to a Mac Mini, or I wager to the iMac.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[coolGuyZak]

Next time don't configure an XServe in place of your home box.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[kongit]

um they are already, or at least some people have unlicensed clones..


not me I swear..


I have a gun steve


I swear I dont have os/2 I mean os x, ok?


Really I dont have it steve please stop calling


aahhhhgggg noooooo

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

On a standard desktop PC (bolded for emphasis), I can pop in a new video card if I feel mine isn't up to spec.

I can and have placed a new video card in my Mac desktop too.

Same with sound.

Now I've not done that but I've not felt the need. Who upgrades sound cards these days anyway?

Same with ethernet cards (ooh, gigabit).

All macs (even the mini) come with Gigabit... and I can add more ethernet cards to my desktop mac as well. It's got slots just like every other PC, the exact same slots in fact.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[gig]

One way Macs are upgradable is the high resale value. You sell your current Mac and buy a new Mac, which comes with all the latest software also. Nobody had to get out any tools and now there are two happy Mac users with two complete and functioning Macs. It's a sensibly designed PC with a full array of ports and compatibility with Mac OS X, BSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows XP and Vista. What exactly are you going to fix about it? Just sell it whole and buy a new one, like a watch or a TV.

Some people just buy a new Mac when there is a new OS and sell the old system. That is a great way to fly. Not only do you always have the most current gear, you have zero recycling problems.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[msimm]

Is striping the motherboard and CPU as simple? I'm actually curious. That's what I like about my PC, the incremental upgrades. I tend to do MB/memory/CPU >> memory >> video/hard drive or some variation depending on where I think I'll get the most performance. I've only ever worked on a Mac laptop and the components I priced where outlandish, but it was a laptop so I didn't think much of it.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[drsmithy]

I see the logic behind Steve's not wanting to offer a prosumer/hobbyist desktop. It would violate his design principles, cannibalize his high-margin iMacs, [...]

It's not cannibalising iMac sales they're worried about, it's _obliterating_ Mac Pro sales.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, when my watch runs out of batteries, I go out and buy a new battery, I don't buy a new watch. I buy ink instead of a new printer when the cartridges run dry. Maybe it's just the conservationist way I was raised in Eastern Europe, where we run everything into the ground before we buy something new. (but I'm not pretending for one minute that Eastern Europe is making environmentally conscious decisions -- their conservationist ways come from the fact that everybody is poor).

Some people just buy a new Mac when there is a new OS and sell the old system. That is a great way to fly. Not only do you always have the most current gear, you have zero recycling problems.

I would argue that, collectively, we have a bigger recycling problem. Now there are TWO computers to dispose of instead of just one motherboard or video card. But who cares about recycling, anyway? It's not like it's your problem anymore once you sell your old Mac...

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Savage-Rabbit]

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions. The Mini uses low-end laptop components, sacrificing performance in the quest for small and quiet. That's kind of the point with the Mac Mini. For most people the Mini is a cheap option for getting ahold of a Mac, either for them selves, their kids or for use as a media center and it does that reasonably well. If you need to be able to run the latest 3D Shooters at maximum resolution with the insanely expensive graphics or audio card of your choice buy a PC.

The iMac uses a laptop MB and processor (most notably limiting RAM expansion), can fit only one hard disk, and saddles the buyer with a non-reusable, non-upgradable monitor that will still be looking gorgeous when the iMac is obsolete. Again, the iMac is a compact computer that is not aimed at people doing insanely CPU intensive tasks that demand a top notch Graphics or Audio cards. Most people I know and who own one use it for surfing, e-mail, social networking word processing and other office-type work and their concept of 'Gaming' is a bit of Tetris, Solitaire or Chess. Oh, and according to the Apple store, the new iMac can now be upgraded with up to 4GB of RAM. Do you need 8GB?

You seem to have run into the usual disconnect between the needs of normal users and hobbyist computer builders. Macs are computers for people who don't have the time or the patience to build their own systems. This is exactly why I bought one, it does what I need it to, adequately, it works just fine out of the box and doesn't run Windows. If I was inclined to build my own system I would have done so and would I would probably be running Slackware on it just for that little bit of added tech-trouble for me to enjoy dealing with but I lost the patience for that sort of thing many years ago.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[vux984]

The MacPro is expensive, yes - but you were talkign ABILITY and not EXPENSE.

You should read versatile less pedantically. The expense of the product makes it an unsuitable platform, even though its technically feasible.

In my experience people either build a cheap system whose needs are met by something like a mini or iMac already, or they are building Uber Expensive Gaming Rig in which case you are talking MacPro money anyway!

Then you don't have much experience. Most gaming rigs clock in the 2k range. Yes, "uber expensive" stuff goes well beyond that, but you can get a fast Core2Duo, 8800GTX, 2GB RAM, with a raptor hard drives, and a 500GB secondary drive, XP Pro or Vista Ultimate, and a premium powersupply for ~2k without really trying. And that's roughly the sweet spot for gamers and value conscious overclockers today. (sure there's variation, OCing Core2Quads Q6600 to 3GHz and beyond is popular too, and the 8800GTS is a cheaper video solution, some people opt for 4GB of RAM, but its mostly in that ballpark of 2k.

500 for CPU/Mobo (E6850 and a reputable mobo from Asus or MSI or your brand of choice)
200 for RAM 2GB (2x1GB)
50 for DVDRW
150 for P/S brand name stuff, good quality
100 for case
600 for vid card say an 8800GTS or upper end ATI 2900XT
500 for Hard drives a pair of 250GB raptors
100 misc aftermarket cooling fan, floppy drive maybe, get a sexier case, whatever...
-----
2200

As you can see the above system is by no means cheap. Premium parts all round, not 'take my money cuz I'm stupid' (except for maybe the video card, but hey, it IS a gaming rig. You could still build a very serviceable gaming rig for considerably less by dropping into a cheap case/ps, using value ram, dropping to 7200rpm hard drives, and going with an 8800GTS.

Now lets try and build my 'respectable' gaming rig on a Mac platform. imac and mini are right out because the video card upgrade simply is not an option period. That leaves the Power Mac.

So we start with a $2500 machine; remember, my rig was 2200. So were at 300 premium and we haven't even started! Right off the bat the cpu is a problem. 2x 2.66GHz core2duo "xeon". nice on paper, but utterly useless... a single 3GHz core2duo E6850 would benchmark faster in games. But you can't get that. To get close to that on a PowerMac you have to get a pair of 3Ghz 2core Xeons for another $800. ouch.

The apple store doesn't offer fast drives, so we keep the 250GB one, and have to add the raptors or 500GB drives at home. Paying $129 to upgrade to a 500GB is a rip... you can get a whole drive for that much. And Apple charges $329 for the second drive. Robbery. Budget $500 for a pair of raptors for when it gets home.

Next up video: nothing but shit 7300GTs from Apple. So take that and toss it, budget 600 for a 8800GTX when it gets home.

Next up RAM. 1GB on 2x512. WTF who spends that much on a machine and gets 1GB? I want 2GB minimum and Apple screws you there... instead of 2x1GB its 4x512MB. WTF?! There's just no winning with these clowns. And its ECC RAM... so good luck on the OC front. But going with their 2GB option adds another $300 to the price. At least its got 8 slots so we can add more down the road without a total loss on these.

Total cost of a the rig on a PowerMac:

2500 base
800 cpu to 3GHz
500 hard drives added at home
600 vid card added at home
300 memory to 2GB
----
4700 total

$4700 for a system that STILL won't benchmark as fast as a $2200 PC in any game. Sure its got an extra xeon sitting on the board that I didn't need, but its not doing me any good and I'd just as soon sell it. But what's the point its $320 new, and would go for maybe $200 used, if I could find a buyer who actually needed one. $4500 doesn't really do me any favors. I suppose I could have gotten the pair of 2.66's and tried selling both of them to fund a single 3.2 Xe

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[DrXym]

Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop... and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time. Over the years people have offered processor upgrades as well, made easier of course by them using Intel chips now where processor swaps are just as easy as any other PC motherboard.

The fact is you can swap a PC's motherboard, or case, or PSU, or GPU, or memory, or CPU as and when you see fit to do so. Assuming you have the sense to buy generic components, not a custom case from Dell, Compaq or whoever. Apple has certainly opened up in recent years, but you really can't compare the expandability of an Apple to a PC. It is proprietary, and the driver support in OS X is terrible by comparison (to Linux or Windows) too. Apple hardware is also expensive by comparison.

I agree it makes no major difference to laptops since they're all proprietary. Although even there you might be bitten by the lack of drivers / software if you want to plug some random USB device in.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are telling me that you can install a Geforce 8800GTX and a new Auzentech X-Fi Prelude in your Mac desktop as you would in a normal pc ?

I don't think so... please keep facts true. Or else make your written drivers available.

Not trolling apple, i have a MBP and i love it.

OS X biggest strength is the close environment in where it runs, makes it a better experience for end users without any glitches, something that linux can't offer.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[itsdapead]

Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions.

Well, yeah, the LCD issue is what puts me off iMacs (hey Apple - why not put a DVI-in so that people could buy a new iMac and use their old one as a monitor? The iMac is compact enough to make that non-stupid).

Apart from that, though, Macs still use "standard" RAM, standard CPUs, standard HDDs etc. just maybe not the cheapest standard. OK, the FB-DIMMS in the Pro have beefed-up heatsinks c.f. the standard versions (but there are at least two non-Apple sources). There are tons of instructions on teh interweb for upgrading your Mini's CPU or upgrading your Pro to 8 cores. The "tragedy" is that Microsoft wimped out of EFI support for 32-bit Vista (and/or going 64 bit-only) otherwise we might be seeing more PCI Express cards that would work in the Mac Pro (although AFAIK standard cards will work under WIndows in the Pro...)

Plus, internal expansion (beyond RAM) is getting less important to the typical "general purpose" PC user. The MHz war has eased off for CPUs, a single internal hard drive now provides more than enough storage for day-to-day use and an external USB or NAS hard drive is often a better solution for your video collection. Internal sound cards are mostly good enough for regular use, and if you're an audio pro you may prefer an external box anyway. Even onboard video is usually good enough for anything short of serious gaming or pro visualisation.

The usefulness of upgrading PC CPUs is overrated - I've used built-from-component PCs in the past and it usually turns out that a significant CPU upgrade also entails a new motherboard and RAM. By upgrade time, better hard drives, video etc. are also available & you could really do with a bigger PSU and quite frankly its easier to build a new PC and keep the old one working.

Yes - some people still have a good reason for wanting a pick-n-mix tower PC but they are getting more and more niche.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[jsebrech]

If you're willing to spend in excess of $2000 on a machine just to play games a bit smoother, then you're simply not who apple is targeting. If you are willing to spend that kind of money, either money is not an object, or an extraordinary amount of your time is spent gaming, in which case you won't mind the time and effort to build a custom gaming rig, which will always be cheaper.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[jsebrech]

Too bad though, because Leopard looks impressive, but I have a nice monitor, several extra disks etc. and I'm not downgrading my hardware.

All currently sold macs accept external screens, and can use that screen as a primary monitor. Also, all macs accept external disks, because all macs have at least a USB port, and most (all?) have a firewire port. My mini has an external second drive as well, and it's faster than the internal drive (hooked up via firewire), so performance is not an argument either.

Now, what was that about downgrading?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[MMC Monster]

The thing is, Macs tend to last longer in a functional way than PCs. A three year old PC likely will not run the latest PC OS (Vista Ultimate). A three year old Mac will likely run OS X Leopard Ultimate (same price as Basic!) at about the same speed as the OS that originally shipped with it.

Because of this, people tend to keep hold of Macs much longer. I went to an apple store the other day. A lady had brought in her G4 iMac running Leopard because of damage to the case. Still in good use with the latest OS.

The resale value of Macs are phenomenal compared to PCs. Just look it up in ebay.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[aliquis]

And what would Apple earn on that? I doubt they can make as much money on their OS as they can of their OS for a lower price + hardware now.

OS X are only 129 dollar now but without any income from the hardware that would probably change, and how many would pay?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[nine-times]

Personally, I'm not so set on being able to rebuild and modify my machines. I used to be, and then I realized that it's pretty much a waste of time.

Sure, every once in a while it's useful to build something custom when you have specific needs. On the other hand, having owned a laptop for a while, I realized my needs aren't so custom and swapping individual parts isn't all it's cracked up to be. Looking at upgrades, if you want to upgrade your processor or motherboard, it's usually best to upgrade both, and memory while you're at it. And at that point, when you "upgrade", you're really just salvaging the case and hard drive.

The only time it ever really made sense for me to upgrade a machine in the past few years was when I bought a new video card back when I was playing a lot of games. But even that has limited value when they upgrade the port that the video card plugs into. When they went from PCI to AGP, buying that new video card meant buying a new motherboard, which meant buying a new processor and memory.

Anyway, since then, I've figured out that it just really isn't that helpful (for me, at least). I'd much rather buy a full machine that's sleek and well-integrated, and get support on it so it's someone else's problem if it breaks. If I want to "upgrade", I find someone who wants the old system, sell it for what I can, and buy a new system. It's definitely easier, and usually not much more expensive.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Predius]

Note, by 'unhappy' he means Apple got pissed at the cloners releasing FASTER machines than any Apple offerings, for lower pricing. Apple supplied the board designs, the cloners took better advantage of them. Apple shut them down in a panic.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Then your desktop Mac is not the Mac Mini in question, now is it?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking you don't know what a straw man argument is.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Paradise Pete]

so that people could buy a new iMac and use their old one as a monitor?

You can - there's just an extra step involved. Here's how it works: You sell your old one and use the money to buy a really nice monitor, which you then connect to your new iMac.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but OS X has fairly substantial issues with nvidia's 8xxx series cards. You'd probably be best served with a 7900 GTS or something like that.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[justinchudgar]

I'm using a Gateway E4200 from circa 1999. I've gone through 3 mobos, using a MSI Neo3 something now, have gone from a PII to a P4 to a Pentium D with a Core2Duo on a UPS truck somewhere on the way to my house now. I've gone from a 6GB IDE drive to SATA RAID 1 + IDE drives. Changed from integrated to PCI to AGP to PCIe graphics. Changed PSUs (this required judicious use of the Sawzall). Replaced the floppy with a flash reader, even painted the case to more attractively blend with my (wife's) decor. Oh, and, I've gone from Win2K to XP to Longhorn Beta to Ubuntu 6.06-->6.10-->7.04-->7.10. All without buying anything that wasn't exactly what I wanted and nothing more. Could an Apple product be so flexible?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[dal20402]

Apple allowed the clone makers too much discretion to cannibalize its market. This time, it should limit the licensing program much more carefully, by restricting them to the hobbyist/prosumer market, which is a small niche where Apple does not compete, and by carefully specifying specs. Keep the machines to 2 internal drives, 1 PCI Express slot, and 8GB max RAM in order to minimize cannibalizing the Mac Pro. Make them just expensive enough to make an iMac look more appealing to consumers. And don't sell them at retail or advertise them extensively -- sell them online, relying on word of mouth and reviews, etc.

My guess is that such a business would be small, non-threatening to Apple, and highly profitable, both for Apple and the clone maker.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[dal20402]

No, because it's an expensive rig I consider it expensive. The sort of consumer Apple has abandoned (for the reasons I listed above) has no need for a $2500+ (plus expensive FB-DIMMs) box featuring ECC RAM, two workstation processors, a 1000W PSU, and the world's slickest expansion mechanisms. If you're after an upgradable machine with merely decent performance, a $2500+ machine, no matter how upgradable, is hardly competitive with a $1500 tower with ordinary desktop-class components. Thus my characterization of the Mac Pro as "limited" (by price) for such a user.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[zenslug]

I grew up on Macs, then went off to college and got my first Windows machine. After that one I started to build my own. I could save money and create the computer I wanted. After a couple years I got tired of having to fix my computer. I had too much computer crap around and wanted to get rid of it all. So I got a Mac again and sold off my computer hardware. It's nice to just have my laptop.

You might never get tired of the customizations as I did, but it could happen. I don't play computer games, either, so that made it even easier to switch.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[radish]

I'm thinking of buying a mini as a "toe in the water" of the mac world. Would it have killed them to put a panel on the bottom to allow access to the ram slots? Or even used screws to close the case? The fact that they charge an ABSURD $150 for 2gb and do their hardest to PREVENT you upgrading is enough to really put me off the whole idea. If I bought a PC for the same price I could sure as hell add memory without needing to attack the case with a putty knife. I don't want to run games on it, but we all know that 1gb is already only "OK" for many apps and will soon, inevitably, not be enough.

From what I can tell the Pro is much more PC like when it comes to upgrading, and that's great, but I don't understand why they make it so hard on the lower end machines. Well actually I do, and I don't like the reason.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to break it to you but I didn't. I just added two 20" apple monitors which cost 5 times more than what my 22" monitors cost me. Needed a RAID-1 array but shockingly it's not supported on the motherboard so had to add a raid card for 1k. Also needed 4gigs of ram...which cost 700 bucks. So, nice try but why don't you actually go and try to configure one at the apple store and see how ridiculous their prices are?

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[ToasterMonkey]

So where exactly do your old watch batteries or PC components go? At least someone is using the old Mac for some time.

This is what people do with cars. Imagine if there was no used car market, and everyone just bought new cars and swapped out parts every couple years. You'd have enough junk parts in a few years to build a whole used car. Who would use the junk parts if they were always upgrading? You know someone isn't going to 'upgrade' to that old Athlon Thunderbird you just threw out. Even if people commonly built 'new' whole PCs out old parts, you still have the same total component count in circulation, just a lot of wasted time building PCs.

With your method, the net effect might be that some components stay in circulation longer than the whole computer otherwise would.. That would be limited almost entirely to stuff that doesn't change every six months, power supplies and cases. Cases are very recyclable. Hey, lots of car parts outlive the cars too, but they go to junk yards with the rest of the car, where people can re-use what they want.

Re-using old machines (whole) works out better for most people, all components age at the same time, but everyone saves a LOT of work.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

My 7 year old PC runs the [second-to] latest version of Linux just fine. The thing that will cause me to upgrade, will be hardware failure.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[ToasterMonkey]

The Pro is really a workstation, not a desktop PC. Xeon, ECC memory, etc.

iMacs have a little screwed in panel covering the ram slots, and are very easy to change.

As for the Mac Mini, yes it looks difficult to do the upgrade yourself, and if you don't want to buy the upgrade from Apple, try the 1GB and decide if that's enough for what you do.
Crucial sells a 2GB kit suitable for the Mini here for $59.99. RAM prices change very fast btw, the prices jumped up near what Apple was charging for a few months at least after the Intel iMacs started using this package.

If you really want to dip your toe in, why don't you buy a used iMac? With the new aluminum ones out now, there ought to be a lot of old ones up for sale.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[coolGuyZak]

I was going for the funny mod, but here's a reply:

• Concerning the monitors: You must have gotten a hell of a deal somewhere, as a 22" TFT monitor on NewEgg is about 250 bucks. Apple's price is about 2.5 times more expensive, not 5. Furthermore, 20" monitors with comparable pixel density to the Cinema Displays run $400+. Furthermore, the Cinema Displays integrate with ColorSync to ensure accurate color representation between devices.
• The RAID card you put in the box far exceeds the capabilities of onboard solutions. (RAID 5 capable, dedicated RAID chipset (Onboard RAID uses CPU for much of the work), a 256 MB cache with 72 hour battery backup, etc).
• The RAM on the Mac Pro is buffered ECC RAM, which tends to be $expensive. Not to pry, but what type of RAM did you install in your PC? I'll still give you the benefit of the doubt here, coz Apple is known to "gouge" their RAM sales.

Overall, is Apple more expensive? Of course. But, believe it or not, that's a selling point. Apple customers pay a premium for a quality product, and you can bet most customers configuring a Mac Pro know it.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[EggyToast]

Agreed -- the only parts that really easily move from one home-built system to the next are the cheap parts: network cards, sound cards, USB cards. And those are, more and more, simply becoming elements of the mainboard. Heck, they've *been* part of the mainboard for years. When I built my last computer, in 2002, the only thing I plugged into the PCI slots was a FireWire card. Everything else was on the mainboard.

I mean, home built computers are, essentially, "mainboard, cpu, video card, ram." And, as you point out, those are the things that everyone wants to upgrade at the same time anyway.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[EggyToast]

It's kind of sad, actually, because whenever a major upgrade comes out for the Mac line, I typically take a look, drool a bit.. and then end up on my computer and home and realize that the machine I already own still kicks ass, and does everything I need.

Sure, a new one would do some things faster, but things like video encoding take a long time no matter what, and I always set them up to go overnight. Whether it finishes at 2am or 5am doesn't really affect me.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Blakey Rat]

Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop...

The only "Mac desktop" (actually a workstation) that allows that costs the same as THREE high-end Windows PCs. Until Apple figured out an affordable and upgradable tower configuration, I can't justify buying their hardware.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Achromatic1978]

I have a two-and-a-half year old laptop that runs Vista Ultimate just fine. Asus A7Vc. Pentium M, 1.86GHz, 2GB RAM, and 128mb dedicated, 128mb shared ATI Mobility Radeon X700.

Runs fine. Has more problems with newer games, as you'd expect, than Vista.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[paanta]

Dunno, in terms of total cost of ownership, the Mac Pro might still be cheaper because of the resale value. A 3 or 4 year old dual-G5 powermac is still worth half(ish) its original value lookin' at ebay. And that's for soon-to-be-obsolete non-Intel stuff.

I think a lot of people just don't want a good all-in-one solution and would rather put something together themselves EVEN IF IT IS NOT AS GOOD AS THE ALL-IN-ONE SOLUTION. For an overly-represented-on-slashdot group of people, the need to screw around with hardware and tweak kernels is just too great. The pleasure of constant tinkering is 90% of the reason they like computers in the first place. Others are just so anti-fashion that a Mac is _NEVER_ going to happen for them..which goes so far off the anti-fashion scale as to circle back around to the fashionista side of things.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

I already pointed out why a sound card is not needed, and the mini comes with gigabit ethernet already. That only leaves the video card then, and in any desktop PC the form factor of the mac mini you aren't going to be playing games much anyway - so the point is moot all around.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

Most people just upgrade RAM and hard drives, which you can do with a mini or an iMac.

A few more still might upgrade the processor - both of which can also be done on a mini or an iMac.

Beyond that, you have a very limited number of people seeking more upgrades.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[vux984]

If you are willing to spend that kind of money
either money is not an object ...

I wouldn't call a 2k PC unusually expensive. Hell, its same price range as the imacs.

you won't mind the time and effort to build a custom gaming rig, which will always be cheaper.

It isn't specifically about price although getting decent value for your money is an important factor. Its about getting the right hardware. Apple won't sell users the platform they want. They don't want anything particularly special - they want a core2duo in a tower configuration. If apple offered something like that at price consistent with their other platforms, it would be suitable.

The imac is suitable hardware specs at a suitable price, but the form factor is wrong; its not a tower; its a notebook designed for the desktop. The MacPro is the wrong platform, but the right form factor - Dual Xeon's and ECC RAM is overpriced overkill.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple tried allowing licensed clones at one point and were not happy with the results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone

... And it was a completely different organization at the time, one who couldn't get much of anything right. Jobs was still a year or two away.

Not to mention the playing field is much different now. Remember when Apple was licensing clones Windows 95 was still brand new (and even considered exciting and revolutionary, if you can imagine.)

Not that I think Apple would even do it, or that it would necessarily be a good idea, but it would be much different this time around.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[abhi_beckert]

I've seen my mate upgrade his mac mini's hard drive in under 1 minute using a blunt knife. The RAM was just as easily accessible once the case was open.

Sure, that's nothing like my mac pro, where it's so easy you have to remind yourself not to replace RAM chips while the machine is running, but it's not at ll a difficult procedure.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[MojoStan]

The Mini is actually one of the easier systems to upgrade, since you just have to pop the case off. Somewhat easy for you or me. However, according to the current Mac mini User's Guide (PDF):

• Page 29: "WARNING: Do not attempt to open your Mac mini. If your Mac mini needs service, see Learning More, Service, and Supporton page 41 for information about how to contact an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for service.Your Mac mini doesnt have any user-serviceable parts."
• Page 41: "Your Mac mini does not have any user-serviceable parts. If you need service, take your Mac mini to an Apple Authorized Service Provider or contact Apple for service.You can find more information about your Mac mini through online resources, onscreen help, System Profiler, or Apple Hardware Test."
• Page 49: "Your Mac mini doesnt have any user-serviceable parts. Do not attempt to open your Mac mini. If your Mac mini needs service, consult the service and support information that came with your computer for instructions about how to contact an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for service.

  If you open your Mac mini or install items, you risk damaging your equipment, and such damage isnt covered by the limited warranty on your Mac mini."

Much easier to get at than a laptop... I can upgrade much of the system with improved laptop components (like a faster drive and more memory). Mostly the things people would upgrade anyway. Actually, it's easier to upgrade hard drives and memory on most modern notebooks. You don't need to pry open the case and work around the other internal components like you would on a Mac mini. On most notebooks, just open the hard drive and memory covers on the bottom.

I agree that hard drive and memory are the most common upgrades/replacements on standard desktops. However, other somewhat common upgrades/replacements are optical drive (burner or Blu-ray), wireless (final draft 802.11n or WiMax), video card (for high-bitrate h.264 HDCP), and tv tuner. Sure, you can add most of these using slower and more expensive external peripherals, but doesn't that tarnish the elegance of the Mac mini?

The Mac mini is a very nice tiny computer and many users are more than satisfied with the performance of "slow" (by current standards) notebook parts. However, I wouldn't call it "easy to upgrade" and it doesn't integrate every useful technology that will be available over its 3-year or longer lifetime.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[toddestan]

The problem with used PCs is that when the hardware gets about 3 years old, ex-corporate PCs of about that age flood the used computer market, driving the value of used PCs down nothing. It's not that the hardware is of any less quality (virtually every PC I have ever bothered to pull from the trash works just fine), or less useful (notice that Vista and 10.5 have very similar minimum requirements?), it's just that you can't fetch the insane prices for a 3 year old PC like you can with a Mac, and people are more inclined to replace a PC when the cost of doing so is much lower. As a matter of fact, I would argue that used older PCs are more useful - you can more easily upgrade them - it's just that people don't bother with them as much.

Re:The myth of the upgradeless

[SuperKendall]

While the hard drive is not that easy to get to in a mini, the case itself really is easy to open once you get over the need to essentially force one part to start to get the clips undone. And once in, memory upgrade is right there with really no issue at all... I've opened a few minis now and it's really not hard.

The warnings above are because a lot of stuff is packed pretty close in the mini, but it's really not as delicate as the warnings might appear to make it.

True

[ToasterMonkey]

Short, but excellent point.

Truth is, all OS's out there now have this problem, but in different areas. OS X is a great mix of hackability and UI, Linux is king of hackability, Windows... Windows needs a damned soul or to drink blood to survive, I don't know how to fix that. Given Mac OS X and Linux, Windows is irrelevant.

I expect Google will be suing shortly

[drsmithy]

From TFA:

Spotlight has been substantially rewritten in Leopard, and is noticeably more responsive. It does not, however, use FSEvents [the public API]. Instead, it continues to drink from the [undocumented] /dev/fsevents fire hose, grabbing each individual event as it happens. This may seem like a failing of the FSEvents framework, but it's really more of an acknowledgment of the nature of Spotlight as a system-level facility.

Re:I expect Google will be suing shortly

[PsychoSid]

Unlikely (but not impossible) with Googles CEO Eric Schmidt a member of the Apple board.

Re:I expect Google will be suing shortly

[Anonymous Coward]

This goes to show that Apple can get away with anything evil Microsoft could not.

Re:I expect Google will be suing shortly

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Doesn't Safari still lock users into using Google whenever they use Safari's search box (not even allowing secondary search engines, let alone changing the default)? If so, I doubt there'll be any suits. ;)

Dock much better than you are thinking.

[SuperKendall]

Seriously, does ANYONE think the Dock is good?

Yes, I like it far better than the WinXP Taskbar (which I also use every day) or other Linux equivalents I have tried.

To me it does a far better job of telling me what applications are in use than the taskbar (which tends to run about three to four lines long in use), and acting as a store for my most common application sets. As someone else said, you use Expose for task switching which is simply the best mechanism for said switching that I have used to date.

The Dock is a crappy task switcher, and the Finder is still broken in most of the same ways it has been broken since, oh, 1984.

It's well threaded now which fixed just about all of my remaining complaints. Since I can't see why anyone would use anything other than column view I really am pretty happy with how it works now. Even the lack of FTP support for me is a "do not care" since I don't mind using Terminal for that anyway, and it can have files drug into it just like finder...

Then again, I never did like the OS 9 UI overmuch so I guess I have a different sensibility.

Are you joking? Geeks gain the most!!

[SuperKendall]

There is nothing new in Leopard that would interest most geeks.

Totally wrong!

In addition to great improvements in the dev environment, GC in ObjC, and the presence of Dashcode for quick things - you have whole new frameworks like Core Animation (which can be useful to improve usability if used in moderation).

Or for the pure UNIX kind of geek you have an optimized 64-bit kernel, that finally has a filesystem wit the BeOS featureset (read the article). And a new and improved Terminal.app.

So the normal users basically get a faster OS with Time Machiene and a shinier look along with lots of incremental app upgrades, while the geeks among us get so much more...

One big one: Boot Camp!

[gregeth]

So, lots of eye candy for the casual user. Anyone care to chime in why a geek might want to upgrade?

If you look around Apple's site now any mention of boot camp on Tiger or a download for it has completely disappeared. While it was only in beta, Apple did clearly advertise it with their Macs as a feature available for new Macs. Those who have purchased Intel based Macs with Tiger can no longer get boot camp for their Macs, unless they upgrade to Leopard. Unless, of course, if someone wants to correct me on this, but I can't find anything on it. It just seems typical of Apple to abandon their users like this.

John's right about Stacks...

[graffix_jones]

After having used Leopard for the past four days, the one feature that I so far love to (almost) hate is Stacks. From a theoretical standpoint, Stacks sound great, but Apple's implementation leaves something to be desired. In it's current incarnation, Stacks are barely usable, especially if you relied on the old Dock functionality that turned any docked folder into a nested hierarchal menu.

There's currently a debate going on in the Macintoshian Achaia over at Ars on whether or not Stacks are a useful addition to the OS, or a horrible mess that should've been sorted out before Leopard's release. My personal opinion is that while Stacks show promise, making them a substitute for the old functionality (hierarchal menus) was unwise (to put it kindly). Stacks should have been an addition to Dock functionality, not a replacement for a widely-used system of navigation.

Re:John's right about Stacks...

[p0tat03]

I agree with the Ars review. Stacks are very useful and I like the feature a lot, but instead of showing me a useless icon of whatever file is "first" in the stack, show me the icon of the folder. I keep my Downloads and Documents folder in there like it does by default, and if I hadn't memorized the order I'd never be able to tell them apart. Throw in some (better) folder icons and let us work with that! Otherwise I think the fanning works fine.

Re:John's right about Stacks...

[cvd6262]

Wait... so in Leopard, I can't use expanding folders in the dock anymore?

WTF?

I just got my first Mac in August, and one of the first things I did was plop my Documents folder in my dock. Click to open, right-click to browse. I read that Stacks had issues (limited to 62 items, no nested browsing), but I thought I would just go on using my old method.

That truly sucks if I can't.

Re:John's right about Stacks...

[Tony Hoyle]

I was absolutely amazed at the brokenness of the new dock... If you haven't read the review at least go to page 13: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/13

Just scroll down and look at the pictures is enough. Who at apple thought that was an improvement??

Re:John's right about Stacks...

[Kadin2048]

Yep, that's about right.

They pretty much ruined the Dock in this one. And the Finder. (Cover Flow? Seriously? And that iTunes-ish left-side pane thing? It was bad enough in a music jukebox, but now they've got it everywhere. To say nothing about the destruction of spatial viewing.)

There are some neat features but nothing totally compelling. Certainly nothing that would overwhelm the usability problems they've created by fucking around with things that worked fine.

Hopefully there will be an outcry and they'll un-break things in a point release, or in 10.5.1. But if they don't, I think I'll just hold out on this upgrade, particularly since they've made it harder for third-party customization apps to do their thing and repair the damage.

As an Apple customer and Mac user, I lived through the 'lean years' of the mid 90s. And although they did occasionally turn out something controversial, I don't recall them ever boning something up quite this obviously or badly, and then touting it as a feature.

I really love the Mac but jesus they make it hard sometimes. (head in hands)

Leopard...

[GiorgioG]

I was pretty underwhelmed after spending 4 hours downloading Leopard from Apple Developer Connection and the installing it at 5am. Nothing really appeared different. I should note that I've only had a mac for 4 months. I'm generally happy (though I spend more time in Vista 64 than in OS X (work.. .NET)) with the Mac, but I'd be pretty pissed off if I ran out to an Apple store, shelled out $129 to see a pretty reflecting dock menu at the bottom.

XCode is still a pile of crap compared to Visual Studio .NET.

Re:Leopard...

[ceoyoyo]

Difference of opinion. I find MS's developer tools absolutely abhorrent and quite like Apple's.

Plus XCode is free. As is the full developer documentation. What does Visual Studio and MSDN run you these days?

Re:Leopard...

[ambrosen]

Visual Studio and full documentation? Free. For the Express edition.

Re:Leopard...

[Tony Hoyle]

It was the same with 10.3->10.4 (in fact sometimes when I have to switch.. my machine dual boots them.. I forget which one I'm on - they're *that* similar).

You always get hype with a new OS release but it's only a point release so don't expect miracles.

Re:Leopard...

[sigzero]

"Free. For the Express edition."

Exactly! The "Express" edition.

Re:Leopard...

[BudVVeezer]

I'm not sure why this was moderated as a troll seeing as how it's a perfectly valid user experience story. If they were talking about Vista, it'd show up as +5 Insightful.

Re:Leopard...

[ceoyoyo]

Always the gotcha at the end.

VSExpress has some pretty serious limitations. MS also says it's "for the hobbyist, novice and student developer." I don't know if they enforce that or not, but it's not encouraging.

The XCode that Apple offers for free download and ships with every copy of it's OS is the same one that Adobe gets.

Introduction movie

[Niten]

This review is great, I'm glad we have a source like Ars Technica to provide counterbalance to all the vapid and superficial product reviews we usually find elsewhere; Siracusa goes in-depth on every topic from the UI to the filesystem to the new Core APIs and Objective-C 2.0. I agree on just about every point, particularly his comment about Apple's need to eventually supplement OS X with a first-class managed code language and runtime:

I'm sure there are Mac developers reading this that don't see any problem at all, in 2010 or otherwise. I could go off on another tangent about how programmers always seem to think the language they're currently using provides exactly the right amount of abstraction for the task at hand, with anything less dynamic being considered barbaric, and anything more dynamic seen as crazy and unsafe, but I'll spare you and save it for a blog post.

(As much as I love working and programming on the Mac, seeing how nice .NET is really gives me concern for the long-term future of Apple's platform.)

On the other hand, if you're not interested in all this technical mumbo-jumbo and only wanted to catch a glimpse of the new intro movie, here it is.

Re:Introduction movie

[ceoyoyo]

Like Python (first class and installed by default for years)?

Or the newcomer, Ruby?

Re:Introduction movie

[iluvcapra]

Like Python (first class and installed by default for years)? Or the newcomer, Ruby?

It's really not exactly the same, but it's probably sufficient. Just to play around today I built a little Ruby application against CoreData for saving a few related tables and saved thumbnail images, and it only took me about 10 lines of code on top of the boilerplate (and schema definitions, Interface Builder stuff, etc.) Archiving/Unarchiving the image and making the edit view receive it from a drag-n-drop event didn't require any code either, I was happy to notice. The Ruby/Python system is extremely good for making a quickie one-off program for yourself -- a demo project in the dev package is an RSS reader that pulls pictures down and lets you apply CoreImage filters among other things, very styling, beautiful UI and extremely fast to code, it's probably 100 lines. I might not ever write a CLI ruby script again, the Cocoa links and IB stuff are too easy.

The parent wasn't really talking about this, though. The desire is for some kind of first-class "environment" that doesn't just "bridge" into the OS framework but is actually used to implement it. Bound into this is "safe language" snobbery: there's this attitude among a certain class of programmer that if a language lets you put a *star in front of something, the language is inferior, will cause NORAD to launch missiles, will trash your ~/, and "crashes alot". The Siracusa quote on the issue might be:

In Objective-C, on the other hand, there is no gate [compared to C#]; it's all just one big, grassy field. Raw C code is just a keystroke away at all times. Again, this arrangement is a strength today. But in the future, I think the desire for "safety by default" will eventually win out, and Objective-C's intimate relationship with C will be perceived as a dangerous relic.

Of course, among the end users, Objective-C isn't perceived as much of anything. It ain't perfect but crashing and security aren't really issues on Mac OS X, and are quite effectively addressed (for the time being) in other ways. I've never ever ever heard an end user observe that programs on Mac OS X "crash more" or "install adware more" than programs on XP or Vista. This could change, but when is it going to happen and how?

That said, even when Apple came out with it's "safe" development environment and runtime, what devs would use it? I would, maybe Siracusa would, we're little ISVs. Maybe hobbyists and students and ISVs writing FTP software would, but nobody buys computers to run FTP programs or hobbyist projects; people buy computers to run Word, and Illustrator, and Final Cut Pro, and Cubase, and on and on. These vendors don't give a flying fuck about .NET, and won't probably ever, and we have yet to see any .NET or managed-runtime competitors for them.

I think the whole "safe language" debate is just a bunch of devs arguing over wether or not MS and Sun have discovered the "next magic bullet." Which, if you get my reference, lets you know what I think.

Re:Introduction movie

[Niten]

You seem to have misunderstood me; "first-class" wasn't a reference to the quality of the languages or runtimes. I was pointing out that no such framework is currently a first-class citizen on OS X: Python applications rely on a third-party Objective-C bridge to access the Cocoa frameworks. There's a whole lot more to being a first-class language/runtime than being installed by default.

That's not to say there aren't more fundamental problems with the notion of Python as a potential competitor to .NET, however, such as the fact that unlike in Java and .NET, Python's global interpreter lock mechanism prevents true SMP parallelism. (There's a reason that IronPython is so popular: people want to combine the excellent Python language and standard library with the frankly much more advanced and better performing .NET CLR.) Ruby's interpreter is even worse, although YARV might go a ways towards improving that, assuming it comes out with the next Ruby release as promised.

As Siracusa's review spells out, Apple's direction right now is that OS X is Cocoa is Objective-C. There's no managed runtime so technologically and strategically integrated into OS X as .NET is into Windows.

Re:Introduction movie

[Niten]

I've never ever ever heard an end user observe that programs on Mac OS X "crash more" or "install adware more" than programs on XP or Vista. This could change, but when is it going to happen and how?

There's no question that buffer overruns are at least as big a problem for Apple as they are for Microsoft. Just ask QuickTime. We could argue all day over why they aren't as widely exploited on OS X for now, but whatever the reason, it's no excuse for being complacent about the problem.

These vendors don't give a flying fuck about .NET, and won't probably ever, and we have yet to see any .NET or managed-runtime competitors for them.

In much the same way that Adobe and Microsoft don't give a flying fuck about Cocoa on OS X. Today's new software is by and large being developed on Cocoa and .NET; but of course all the big legacy applications are still based on the older frameworks, on their respective operating systems.

Anyway, there's a whole lot more to a managed runtime like .NET than the corresponding security against memory corruption (which even by itself is significant). For example:

• Portability. Suppose the PC industry altogether decided to switch from the x86 architecture to PowerPC. For pure .NET applications, we wouldn't have to suffer the burden of running them in Microsoft's anti-Rosetta until native PowerPC versions were shipped by each vendor; as long as there is a .NET runtime on that processor architecture, the apps would "just work", no fat binaries needed. A managed virtual runtime helps future-proof applications against unknown hardware requirements and advances.
• Type safety. Program behavior can be better verified under the memory-safe conditions of a managed runtime. This may eventually lead to widespread changes in hardware and software architecture. See the Singularity project for more information.
• Interoperability. Microsoft's CLI in particular provides a unified approach for handling exceptions, garbage collection, method invocation, and data passing in environments containing code written in a variety of languages.
• Fine-grained security. .NET's Code Access Security provides fine-grained control through code validation and call stack inspection.

It's not just "safety snobs" who see the managed runtime as the future. There's a whole world of benefit to be had in abstracting bytecode from the CPU, replacing some of the rigid complexity of the hardware with software's power and flexibility. And if the managed runtime proponents turn out to be right, Apple will have lot of catch-up work to do...

Re:Introduction movie

[iluvcapra]

Don't get me wrong man, all of that's completely correct, it's just irrelevant.

For me the original issue was "is Mac OS X going to remain a relevant platform for development without a managed runtime?" To which I respond in the affirmative. .NET is just Microsoft's way of getting to the same place Apple is; where Apple controls their hardware platform, Microsoft abstracts it away, and where Vista uses the .NET CLR to provide runtime security and introspection, OS X simply does it in the Objective-C runtime and in the kernel with a different overall security model and tools like DTrace.

I guess .NET is provably more safe then running on the registers, but so was Smalltalk and Lisp, and look where they are now! Vista/CLR and OS X/Objective-C use very different techniques to provide an application environment that is, for all intents and purposes, from the perspective of the user, equivalent. The user experience is all that matters in my formulation of the issue, and users on OS X do not report the problems that come with unsafe languages running on, say, XP. All of this rather offensive talk of safe references, runtime introspection, and strict typing has nothing to do directly with the end-user experience, and most of the security and runtime benefits of a managed environment can be provided by other mechanisms, be they in the language or the client OS.

Developers can have an easy time or hard time, but if users like the overall platform, the devs will put up with a little pain to deliver the application in the users preferred platform. This is very much MS's modus operandi compared to Apple's. The former thinks "Make the devs happy and the users will buy what the devs build on," and this has worked historically. Apple's thinking is "Make the users happy and the devs will write on our platform," and this works too.

Re:Introduction movie

[ceoyoyo]

I regard the bridge as a strength. I would definitely NOT want to run an OS that had any significant part written in either Python or Ruby, but writing glue code and light logic in them is wonderful. I've written some big apps with them as well, including one for doing clinical studies on thousands of MRIs.

There was a problem with a development environment for Python on the Mac. I hear Leopard adds full Python support to XCode, though I haven't had a change to test it out. Even without, I haven't yet found anything I can't do with Python on OS X that I can do with Objective-C.

I agree with you on the "safe language" thing. The OS really should be restricting your pointers to your own memory space, so after that the only one you can hurt is yourself. Which just means you have to pay a bit of attention. As you point out, most big apps are still written in "unsafe" languages and they work just fine.

Re:Introduction movie

[ceoyoyo]

What do you require to regard a language as first class? If it gives me access to all the system libraries and lets me do anything that the language the OS is written in does, that seems close enough for me.

PyObjC isn't exactly third party either. Some of the major contributors are Apple engineers. I think it's one of the shining stars of corporate/open source community cooperation.

Yes, the Python interpreter could use some updating. Apple has added official support for it in XCode now, maybe they'll start turning some resources towards improving the interpreter as well.

Re:Introduction movie

[iluvcapra]

I hear Leopard adds full Python support to XCode, though I haven't had a change to test it out. Even without, I haven't yet found anything I can't do with Python on OS X that I can do with Objective-C.

Not just Python support, friend, but a complete bridge into the Cocoa classes. Take a look. I'm a Rubinista myself, but this stuff is pretty slick. All I write is in-house stuff, and this stuff is a serious gift. Who needs a CLR when you can just call /usr/bin/ruby?

Re:Introduction movie

[ceoyoyo]

The bridge isn't new. It's been pretty much complete for several years now. This IS the first time that Apple has included it with the OS though.

Agreed -- the bridge is really cool. There's nothing throwing up a Cocoa text view with Python, typing CoreImage kernel code into it and then having Python send that off to CoreImage to apply to an image. On the fly. The day Tiger was released to developers at the WWDC (05?)

Siracusa

[Overly Critical Guy]

I love the depth Siracusa goes in his reviews, but I hate having to wade through his obsessive nitpicking. Real users don't care about most of the complaints he has. There's this culture of Apple nerd that has built up the idea of this perfectionist OS X that exists only in their heads, and anything that violates their ideals is some crazy Jobs-mandated idea. Like the translucent menubar, which really just exists because Apple recognized that people are setting their digital photos as their backdrop, so the menubar now tints to blend in instead of being a big white streak across the top. I like it. I also like the 3D dock. I don't nitpick these things or reference Fitt's Law or do any of the other crazy things the hardcore devotees do.

Re:Siracusa

[Creepy Crawler]

As responding to your sig:

Piracy is no different than threatening to shoot a ship down at the high seas in order to steal its cargo and/or kill everybody on board.

Piracy is very very different than simple copyright violation: "Dont copy that Floppy" is just a joke compared to true high seas murder/theft.

Or are you comparing Kazaa to Murder?

Highlighting an overlooked fact

[SuperKendall]

It sounds silly at first, but it's highlighting a fact those of us technically inclined have always known - each version of OS X is faster than the last given the same hardware.

Re:Highlighting an overlooked fact

[PenGun]

Impressive ... the "have always known" thing. I would find that impossible but I'm just a boring old slak man.

Re:Highlighting an overlooked fact

[Ilgaz]

It sounds silly at first, but it's highlighting a fact those of us technically inclined have always known - each version of OS X is faster than the last given the same hardware. There is a trend in newly switched Windows users, especially Vista victims to ignore Leopard update thinking it will make their machine slower or it will need some extra RAM etc.

Apple is doing that on purpose, to make them understand a new OS doesn't mean that.

Same people are afraid of OS X free updates too.

Fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice...

[InakaBoyJoe]

Who else remembers when Panther came out and Apple promised a new Finder? Well, the same words are being used to described the "new finder" in Leopard. Shame on you, Apple.

From TFA:

The changes in Leopard do indicate that Apple has taken a renewed interest in improving the Finder, but motion is not the same thing as progress. For where I'm sitting, it looks like one step forward, two steps back.

Truer words have never been spoken. This guy deserves credit for inventing a vocabulary ("spatial"/"browser") so we can talk about the Finder issues clearly, and cutting through the haze of "new features" to see the underlying problems. How often do you see this level of insight from your typical schwag-drenched tech reviewer?

The problem with the Finder is that, even though most people agree that it's fundamentally broken, it's too mundane to get the high-level attention it needs. In particular, capital-S Steve probably figures most home users will be fine accessing their files through applications, otherwise it would have been fixed by now. But Steve! Remember you were the one who said that saving a few seconds of every user's day is like saving a few lives. Now, Mac OS has an installed base of over 20 million.

New features does not a new Finder make. It may seem like a mundane issue, but now is the time to raise a stink so we can move on from this already. F F T F .

Re:Fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice...

[Space cowboy]

Nice try, but

• He didn't invent a vocabulary, it's a well-established definition
  
  
• I think you'll find the acronym would be FTFF, not FFTF...
  
  
• Most of the complaints about the Finder are rooted in the old single-threaded networking behaviour. That *has* been fixed. I doubt you'll get too many more FTFF threads. Of course you can't please all the people all of the time, but the low-hanging fruit has definitely been gathered in now...
  
  

Simon

Re:Fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice...

[harrisg]

Who else remembers when Panther came out and Apple promised a new Finder? Well, the same words are being used to described the "new finder" in Leopard. Shame on you, Apple.
This is spoken like someone who hasn't used OS X since the early days. Maybe you have, but if so you should remember how bad the Finder was in Cheetah, Puma, and Jaguar. Panther was a huge improvement in Finder responsiveness and appearance, no matter how much people want to bash it for it's shortcomings. If the Leopard Finder is as much of an improvement as the Panther Finder, then it will be awesome.

My copy of Leopard is currently "out for delivery" with UPS!

Re:Fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice...

[CatOne]

What does "a new finder" mean to you? Do you mean someone actually has to throw the whole thing out and start with int main()?

To Steve, "A New Finder" means some substantial changes and additions. It doesn't mean new (from scratch) code... that is obvious.

But when you say it "is fundamentally broken," what do you propose a new Finder actually would be? The devil's in the details here. Like Clinton wonders what the meaning of "is" is, others may fairly debate what "new" means in the context of a "new" finder. Is it substantially enhanced, or completely overhauled from the first line? The latter rarely happens in software these days.

Re:Fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I doubt you'll get too many more FTFF threads."

They'll be replaced by FTFD threads.

You misread it

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing new in Leopard that would interest most geeks.

WPF

[Anonymous Coward]

The author spends a lot of time talking about Core Animation, and then the work Apple promised but hasn't come through with in terms of foreward thinking graphics APIs. It's interesting to note that Windows has a resolution-independent, vector graphics, hardware-accelerated and declarative animation framework called WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) that shipped with .Net 3.0 (with lots of other cool stuff too, like data-binding). It comes installed on every Vista box and is available on XP as well. Of course, with the obvious bias in reporting on this site, it's no surprise that people won't have heard of it around here but will hail Apple's improvements as revolutionary.

Re:WPF

[ThePhilips]

Quartz anyone??

Wind0ze as usually far behind Apple (and even Linux). Actually Apple was first to put vector graphics in OS with Quartz which is made after PDF and uses PDF as internal presentation.

Now Apple pumps incremental updates and improvements to its Quartz engine, while MSFT's WPS is largely beta technology.

Needless to add, that all output to screen from normal applications works thru Quartz. All Mac OS X applications are vector based. Most applications work thru backward compatible layer similar to Carbon which looks like raster, yet with few simple calls they can access all the power of Quartz.

Spaces is incredibly well done

[analog_line]

First the two things I'd like to have that it doesn't have:

1. sliding from desktop to desktop ala Enlightenment.
2. right/control-clicking on a Window border and and a menu coming up to send it to Space X, or Show on All, ala Gnome and XFCE (KDE probably has this too, but I don't use it, so I'm not sure)

The first is just something I got used to a long time ago and haven't used in years, it was just nice. The second is a bigger absence, but the Exposé-style zoom out to display all workspaces way of doing it is practically instantaneous, and all desktops are in realtime, with videos running, new IMS coming up, it's a cool little multiple workspace monitor as long as you don't need to control one of those apps while watching. Multiple desktops were, for me, one of the Linux killer apps that made using it more enjoyable than Windows. Macs now having it (as opposed to the utterly-useless-in-my-opinion Exposé, especially with more than a handfull of windows) is major boost to its usability for me. Definitely the single most-used addition for me so far, and likely to be until I get a hard drive I can dedicate to Time Machine.

I definitely agree with a lot of the issues with the Dock. Being forced to see Address Book as the Applications icon is probably going to cause me to remove most folders from my dock entirely, which is a shame because I really like the "stack" behavior.

Re:Spaces is incredibly well done

[Anonymous Coward]

2. right/control-clicking on a Window border and and a menu coming up to send it to Space X, or Show on All, ala Gnome and XFCE (KDE probably has this too, but I don't use it, so I'm not sure)

If you need to quickly move a window to another space, try grabbing it (start moving it and keep holding down the mouse button) while switching to the destination space. The window will stay visible, and is thus moved to the new space. Feels very natural, IMHO. :-)

Re:Spaces is incredibly well done

[goodmanj]

Haven't used Enlightenment, but I've used X11 window managers with virtual screens a lot, and I had one for Mac OS back in the day. If by "sliding from desktop to desktop" you mean that you can switch from one screen to an adjacent one by moving the mouse "off the edge" of the screen, there's a really good reason Apple doesn't do that.

Apple pays attention to the interface design idea that says that edges and corners are good places to put stuff, because they're essentially infinitely big targets: you slam your mouse up to the edge of the screen, and don't have to aim precisely. That's why Apple's menu bar is at the top of the screen, and the Dock at the bottom (or sides). If hitting the edge of the screen pops you over to a new screen, then the menu bar is no longer an infinitely tall click target: it's a narrow strip which totally vanishes if you mouse up a pixel too high. Same for the dock.

Edge-sensitive virtual desktop systems drive me batty, I constantly try to click on stuff near the edge of the screen only to have it vanish. It's even more problematic on Macs, since the top edge of the screen is very important.

Also, the idea of tiling desktops into a regular grid that actually lines up pixel-for-pixel on corners and edges works great for a rectangular desktop. But Macs are designed to work well with multiple monitors at different resolutions, for which that tiling doesn't work.

Re:Spaces is incredibly well done

[analog_line]

Yes, but Enlightenment implemented a feature that I'm going to call "sluggish edge sensitivity" because I can't remember exactly what it's called (since I don't use Enlightenment anymore) where you would have to sit your mouse at the edge of the window for a certain, user definable, amount of time before the screen flip happened. I agree that this behavior shouldn't be the default for the reasons you stated, but I'd like to be able to have it available at times.

As far as tiling goes, Spaces does implement that, and you even get screen slides. With Command-ArrowKey, it will slide your view in whichever direction on the grid you're going. I haven't tried Spaces on multiple monitors yet, since I don't do a lot of multiple monitor work in the first place (hence the usefulness of virtual desktops to me in the first placs) and it would be interesting to see how they do it. My guess would be that you can only enable virtual desktops on the primary display.

Re:Spaces is incredibly well done

[ErikZ]

Dear user,

Please stop customizing your desktop. As you're now part of the Apple family, you will do things the Apple way.

.Net vs ObjC

[Space cowboy]

(As much as I love working and programming on the Mac, seeing how nice .NET is really gives me concern for the long-term future of Apple's platform.)

There's a website written by a self-confessed .NET addict, a man who has quite literally written the book on .NET and the new MS frameworks. I recommend you visit his site, and click on the 'Cocoa' sidebar. More recently, he's been getting into ObjC, doing comparisons between the .NET framework, and the Cocoa/Foundation frameworks, between ObjC and the CLR. Pretty much every time, ObjC/Cocoa win out over C#(or whatever)/.NET (as long as we're talking Leopard, anyway, he prefers garbage-collected languages).

ObjC is elegant, powerful and simple at the same time - it's what C++ ought to have been. Objective C is (by leaps and bounds) my language of choice these days, it's one of the most under-appreciated languages in modern use. Certainly, the comparative perception I get is that the frameworks are way ahead of .NET in terms of actual usability - again, read some of his blog posts for the details.

Simon.

Re:.Net vs ObjC

[VGPowerlord]

I'm not saying that Objective C is better or worse than C#, because I've never used either, but I have a hard time taking that guy seriously when he says things like

That's great, but what you might not have noticed here is that I have foreknowledge of the data type of the destination property. What the hell does that mean? It means that this works because I knew at compile-time that FirstName is a string.

I don't know about him, but I don't go arbitrarily changing object properties without reading the documentation about what they're for.

Mouse Acceleration

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple still forces mouse acceleration down everyone's throats with no way to turn it off via menu or hack. Everyone suggests using USB Overdrive which I paid 20 bucks for, and it doesnt even work. Fantastic. Such a simple feature. Such a stupid operating system. Basically either you can either conform to the OSX way or leave, so I left.

Fuck the Apple, and fuck the Leopard.

Re:Mouse Acceleration

[Anonymous Coward]

Rant: 2/10, poor.

Re:Mouse Acceleration

[An ominous Cow art]

Fuck the Apple Hail, Eris!

Fuck the Leopard Isn't that the sequel to "How to Bathe Your Cat", by noted author Claude Ballz?

Changing the tune

[SuperKendall]

Which is the beauty of the other side's argument. Once you start talking ability, by bringing in Apple's expensive MacPro, that's when we start talking price.

RIght, knowing you're wrong you (and he) change the subject. Hardly something to admire, or even admit to.

"Macs can't be upgraded!"

"Well, actually they can"

"Hey, look at the shiny object!"

For those that do not like the Dock

[Channing]

I personally like the new Dock but if you don't, just do this in a terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

killall Dock

Let me know when you can change the colour scheme.

[ThirdPrize]

Well?

Is it really that postive?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I read the entire review and I get the distinct feeling that we got an amazing example of Fanboy syndrome at work here.

IF you replace OSX and Apple with say Vista and Microsoft or even KDE and Linux, you would perhaps find a far harsher review.

The icons suck, dock is unclear, new gui api is still not working. Lots of stuff added that is useless and distracts from the usability.

And yet, throughout it all,you sense that the reviewer really wants to be positive. Wants to make excuses, wants to see the good in it all.

WHY? That is NOT the job of a reviewer, he should simply state "this is good" or "this is bad", not try to explain why it happens, or why the designers might have thought it was a good idea.

Same with Apple still using HFS+, lets face it. It is in need of replacement, if MS was still using Fat32 it would get slammed, a linux distro still using ext2 would be laughed at, Apple uses HFS+ well that is just great.

No, this review like so many other Apple reviews reads like it was paid for OR the reviewer is a fanboy.

Really, be honest with yourselve, if you slammed MS for making meaningless chances to the UI in Vista/XP/2000/98 why do you not do the same when Apple does it?

If you come down on inconsistent design rules in KDE why do you lets OSX get away with it?

Read the review again but blot out that this is Apple we are talking about. Would you accept those icons from ANYBODY else? They are pretty horrible you got to admit.

If I read the review I can't think of anything else then "meh". A lot of UI changes, and some small upgrades. This is what Apple spend years on? This is it?

No, don't talk to me about Vista taking 5 years. I don't give a shit about Vista. If you take 2 days to run the mile it doesn't make my half hour run look any better. I am still a fat tub of lard even if you are worse.

Honestly, try to review a product WITHOUT wanting to be either positive OR negative. Review a product on its own merits.

Each time I consider buying a mac I come across a review like this that makes me shudder. Thanks but I will stick with XP for gaming and Linux for desktop yet. One I have gotten used to and the other allows me lots more freedom to have the desktop I want, the way I want it.

Re:Is it really that postive?

[Bryan Ischo]

It was the single most comprehensive, interesting, thorough, thoughtful, and worthwhile review of *any* product I have ever read, *ever*.

I personally don't care about your accusations of fanboy-ism. You are irrelevent. You did not produce an absolutely awesome review, with about as much balance and fairness as is humanly possible. The author at Ars Technica *did*, and your unfounded accusations and complaints are just not even worth reading. Which is why I only skimmed your post.

I did read your last sentence though, and honestly, do you think anyone *cares* if you shudder when you read reviews that don't match your personal preferences? Or that you are going stick to running two operating systems?

Seriously man. This was an incredibly good review. It did not deserve your accusations of fanboy-ism. I don't even own a Mac, and my total time using Mac OS X amounts to probably less than 5 minutes. And yet, even I could recognize the quality of this review. You say that the review didn't "slam" OS X for its user interface inconsistencies???? Did you even read the review? It *did* slam OS X for the new UI inconsistencies; maybe it didn't do it using obscenity and OMFG THIS SH** IS THE SUCKS language, so you didn't understand what was being written. Regardless, it definitely slammed OS X pretty hard for these problems. But it also recognized that these are relatively minor faults that most people probably won't even know or care about. Which is undeniably true.

I think there is something so insidious about the kinds of complaints that people like you make about reviews. You express this sort of unprovable accusation that "if you were reviewing product X instead of product Y, you would have a completely different bias". But they aren't reviewing product X, they are reviewing product Y. How is what they would do when reviewing product X even relevent? It's mud-slinging that you engage in when you accuse the author like you have, and I think it's pretty lame, especially when considering how clearly well thought out, detailed, and just all around *excellent* that review was.

Re:Is it really that postive?

[moosesocks]

I would tell you to RTFA, but you've said you've already done so...

The reviewer absolutely rails on Apple because of the UI changes they made. They're not as dramatic (or unnecessary) as the ones made in Vista, but they were still a poor choice. And the reviewer say this on several occasions.

In fact, the only positive thing he has to say about the GUI changes is that he likes the new Unified window design, but criticizes it of falling short of providing a consistent set of design rules.

What about HFS? The reviewer does mention that it should be replaced, and you can't offer a solid reason for *why* it should have been replaced with Leopard.

HFS+ is showing its age, and is probably due for a replacement sometime soon. However, it does have journaling, is pretty reliable, and the performance doesn't suck. If you look here, you'll see that HFS+ compares competitively with NTFS, and even offers a few things absent in ext3/4. Granted, ZFS is the cats meow of filesystems, and I'd really like to see it eventually adopted in MacOS and Linux.

Re:Is it really that postive?

[kklein]

I concur. That was just such a detailed, well-thought-out review that I really felt like I knew what I'd be getting into if I bought it (I had been waiting for friends' appraisals), but after reading such a thorough review, I felt that I had enough information to make my decision.

It wasn't a glowing review; it was a totally fair review. It really was probably the best and most informative review I have ever read.

10.5 is installing on my laptop now!

Re:Is it really that postive?

[Manuscript Replica]

Wow, I could not possibly agree with this comment more. Great job, and I bet you the grandparent doesn't respond.

Re:Is it really that postive?

[Palshife]

Win.

If you're up for some great reads, just take a look at Siracusa's other reviews. His Tiger review introduced me to some very interesting concepts about filesystem metadata at work in OS X.

He's my first choice for industry-grade, professional review of technology, and he's a perfect example as to why I frequent Ars as much as I do.

Re:Is it really that postive?

[TheNetAvenger]

I have to agree. The review is much like something I personally would have wrote. Focusing on what Apple did right, what they screwed up, and not spending needless time trying to compare OS X to other operating systems.

I have seen a couple of other 'ok' reviews of Leopard, but they always end up trying to compare it to Vista, and this can go badly either direction depending on the reviewers background.

Coming from the Mac side, even when technical, they often don't understand the technologies in Vista and end up making very wrong comparisons or assumptions. The recent MacWorld review completely messed up their comparison of Time Machine to the snapshot/backup system in Vista, and instead focused on Volume Shadowing, which is the copy-on-write feature of NTFS, ended up very confused and assuming Vista couldn't restore file versions/revisions from backups or even how on volume snapshot versions worked in Vista.

Coming from the PC side, they often focus on the closed nature of OS X and use that as a comparative tool. One review totally slammed Leopard for being what it is good at, and that is consistency on a consistent hardware platform, and whether people personally agree with this model or not, a lot of people prefer this model and is why they buy Macs.

I'm very much a tech person, that admittedly uses Vista probably more than any OS on a daily basis, and I found this review very good. It was like listening to one of my Mac techs talk about Leopard. Excited, but not fanboi excited where Apple can do no wrong.

Transparent Menu bars were a bad choice.

[Shivetya]

Sorry, but its cheesey. I am looking forward to many of the changes involved, but some of the UI changes leave me scratching my head.

Time Machine - Disk Eater - be careful, when manipulating large files (movie/picture) and making only small changes it backs it all up. This is nice to get previous versions exactly as they were but the side effect is a lot of disk can be eaten.

Oh, do you have a lot of email? Some packages (not naming) store it all in one file, and as such guess what happens when your TM timer is up?

I so like the new preview functionality...

Re:Transparent Menu bars were a bad choice.

[Zelos]

Virtual Machines cause a similar problem with TM - my 20GB Parallels VM was being backed up once an hour, whenever it was running.

Dumbledore wants to tear your anus open...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief, even a kid's book/movie has to be a platform for gay activism now. Can we just give it a rest and let movies just be movies without some political agenda like they used to be?

Vista on known hardware....

[klubar]

The experience with Vista (or XP) just working is the same if you use "known" hardware. MS products install cleanly and are rock solid with high quality hardware. It's unfortunate that some home users (and very cheap small businesses) try to get away with cobbled together hardware (recycled memory, old disk drive, whatever) and then complain that Windows crashes or doesn't recognize it. My experience with Vista has been very positive--recognizes almost all devices (and in general more that the Mac), the interface is more intuititve to me than the mac, it has been rock solid and there is a wider range of software that I use than on the mac. I haven't had any viruses -- in spite of not running a virus checking program; but then again I don't generally run with as an administrator.

And for a corporate network of more than a few hundred desktops, Windows is a much better choice for deployment and control.

tldr

[mr.float]

o rly?

Upgrades rather limited...

[klubar]

The upgrade options on a Mac are rather limited. Even at the top of the Mac line the case is designed to hold only 2 drives. Hardly an example of flexiblity. The choice of graphic cards is limited to a handful as most companies don't supply drivers. Only one or two manufacturers make add-in SATA or SAS cards for the Mac, and I think there is only one battery backed-up RAID card for the Mac. If you go with the x-server some of these options are available (but again only from Apple).

The Mac fans point to the lack of hardware options as a feater ("just works"), enterprise customers point to the lack of options as a restrictions ("limited hardware support").

On anything but the Mac pro (aka expensive) line, there is essentially no hardware options.

Re:Upgrades rather limited...

[lyonsden]

Even at the top of the Mac line the case is designed to hold only 2 drives.

Actually, according to Apple it can hold four drives.

Not agreeing or disagreeing with your other points, but that one was wrong.

Re:Upgrades rather limited...

[ThousandStars]

Even at the top of the Mac line the case is designed to hold only 2 drives.

Umm, no. From the product page: "Mac Pro accommodates up to four drives and 3TB of storage with optional internal RAID, offers eight DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM [...]"

But can it run Java?

[ChunderDownunder]

Gosling has made the switch, away.

Others are set to join him.

Almost 12 months since Java 6 was released on other platforms. Still waiting, Steve.

Re:But can it run Java?

[jack_csk]

I remember back then when Steve Jobs promised OS X to be a nice Java development platform. It seems like somebody has forgotten his promise, and went his old way (just like his style back in the early days of Apple).

I had planned for buying a Macbook Pro to replace my laptop, but then I am thinking about getting a Thinkpad or Latitude instead.
The feature I miss the most on Mac is the integration provided by iSync, everything else is replaceable.

Re:But can it run Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally a true unspoilt platform. I'm getting one immediately.

They should use this as a selling point!

Re:But can it run Java?

[smcdow]

The future of Java on OSX is explained in the LLVM section here:

Apple has grand plans for LLVM. How grand? How about swapping out the guts of the gcc compiler Mac OS X uses now and replacing them with the LLVM equivalents? That project is well underway. Not ambitious enough? How about ditching gcc entirely, replacing it with a completely new LLVM-based (but gcc-compatible) compiler system? That project is called Clang, and it's already yielded some impressive performance results. In particular, its ability to do fast incremental compilation and provide a much richer collection of metadata is a huge boon to GUI IDEs like Xcode.

I know this LLVM subsection is quite a digression, but even if it's only used in a limited capacity in Leopard, LLVM is quite important to the future of Mac OS X. Indeed, it could also be important to the present of the iPhone and other OS X platforms.

Which says that there is no future for Java under OSX.

Re:But can it run Java?

[radish]

Which says that there is no future for Java under OSX

Why not? MS has .NET as their strategic dev platform for Windows, but guess what? I can still write/run Java just fine. Why does the existence of LLVM preclude Java?

Re:But can it run Java?

[jack_csk]

Suppose a third-party entity, be it Sun or the open source community, decided to relase a Java VM for OS X, I believe Apple won't be banning it. The fact is, just like Microsoft, Apple does not maintain the Java compatibility anymore (or as it seems at this moment).

Please note that I am not speaking for Apple. I agree that their stand is arrogant (deleting Java-related complaints from their forums, no public words for the Java plan, bad Java support on Leopard, retracted Java1.6 beta from their website), and Steve Jobs promised to make OS X a nice Java development platform.

Seems like somebody forgot what he promised, or we just have a different definition for "nice" with those guys in Cupertino.

Re:But can it run Java?

[smcdow]

Sorry; let me clarify.

It won't preclude the existence of Java on OSX, but it certianly points to the fact that Java on OSX will be treated as a 2nd class citizen by Apple.

As far as portability is concerned: the combination of LLVM, Cocoa, Xcode, etc., will provide all the portability that Apple cares about. Which is to say, portability between Apple products.

Given that Apple products are, in essence, easy-to-use multimedia centers (as opposed to computers), -- and that trend will accelerate to be sure -- I think it's a smart move. They'll control their own platform.

Re:But can it run Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which says that there is no future for Java under OSX.

No. It doesn't. You are trying to read between the lines, and doing a bad job at it.

LLVM is about improving the C language family compilers used to compile MacOS X and its applications. It is not about replacing anything Java does on MacOS X at present. Apple gave up on the notion of making Cocoa work in Java years ago, long before they took the LLVM project on board. Ever since they made that choice, the only reason to have Java on MacOS X has been to run crossplatform Java applications.

Since it's not likely to be a high priority for most of Apple's customers to run Java apps, it's not surprising (to me, anyways) that it's not a high priority for Apple to make MacOS X the #1 Java deployment target in the land.

That doesn't mean there is no future for Java on MacOS X. It just means that the future is going to be more of the same: Apple isn't going to get gung ho about getting the latest and greatest Java on MacOS X, ever. It's always going to lag a bit. They're going to want to have the version most applications are currently targeted to, not the latest and greatest.

Re:But can it run Java?

[iluvcapra]

Almost 6 years since they built the serious pain-in-the-butt Java-Cocoa bridge, and no popular java applications written for OS X. Still waiting, Java developers. Of course, it's all deprectated now, because after 6 years no one used it. I don't know if they kept statistics on it, but I bet you could count the number of times someone typed extends com.apple.cocoa.foundation on one hand. If java had taken off as a good way to write applications for the platform, then maybe things would've been different, but there really haven't been any. None, really, that I can think of.

The java devs are not completely forgotten, Apple still has webobjects, but just how much energy are they supposed to put into keeping the Java kit up-to-date just to keep java developers happy, particularly if they don't share any of their happiness with common users? Aside from good press from the grey old men of Java, what exactly does Java bring to Mac OS X? If I were allocating resources in Cupertino, hell yes I would get Time Machine debugged before I spent a man-hour on Java 6.

I swear the only time I hear about this issue is when Gosling blogs on it, and then it is copied off to the rest of the intarweb as an utterance from the mountaintop. Is this what we Ruby on Rails developers sound like? :)

Re:But can it run Java?

[iluvcapra]

It's coming in a week?

Low minimum buy-in

[Immerial]

"Not to mention the minimum buy-in for an new 'upgradable' Mac is a US$2500 Mac Pro."
Just a little edit. Actually you can get an upgradable Mac for far less. Any of the earlier towers will work fine that way (G4, G5, MacPro). I've got an old Sawtooth G4 (400Mhz, circa 1999) tower that I've upgraded the heck out of (1.4Ghz G4, Radeon 8500, 1Gb HD, 120 Gb, 300Gb, USB2, DVD-R, internal card reader), and it still runs great, even with the latest OS.

Re:Low minimum buy-in

[MBGMorden]

In all fairness, buying an old one specifically to upgrade is nonsense. I've got a G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) that has dual 500mhz processors (40gb hard drive, DVD-RAM, and 512mb memory upgraded from 256mb).

Now, having checked into this, a processor upgrade that brings this machine to less than 2Ghz (and not a good 2ghz - the G4 architecture and FSB limitations really hold it back) is going to cost $200 minimum. The RAM is old SDR RAM which costs a bit more. 256mb runs about $30 compared to 1gb for the same price in DDR2. Video cards are insanely priced. Unless you want to throw in a hacked card, a Radeon 8500 (which is woefully updated) runs over $200 itself. If you want to add a SATA hard drive or anything over 120GB you're going to have to add in a separate controller card (which again, needs to be Mac certified, which will run you $50 for the card).

When I got it tallied up, just to take my outdated Mac to something simply LESS outdated, it was around $800 (not even counting the original cost of the system). I faced the fact of the matter: I could build a PC that would blow that thing out of the water for under $500, and I did. Matter of fact my initial build came in at $250. It had a Celeron 2.6Ghz, 1GB of RAM, DVD burner, Geforce 7300LE, and 160GB hard drive. I installed a hacked copy of OS X 10.4.8 and went to town on my thrown together machine far cheaper and better than what I could have upgraded my "real" Apple to. And as a sign of the neatness of upgradeable computers, I've since swapped the processor up to a Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, went to 2GB of RAM, and changed the video card to a Geforce 7900GS, and I didn't have to pay extortion prices for model specific "upgrade" versions of the components.

Re:Low minimum buy-in

[Immerial]

Oh I agree with you. You can definitely build a cheaper PC than upgrade a Mac. I'm not saying whether or not it is better, just that there are other options other than new Mac Pro to get an upgradable Mac.

great review no vista bashing

[majortom1981]

This was a great review. I think the first one that did not bash vista everychance they got. This is how a review should be done. The only thing keeping me from getting a mac is the price. Apple really has to stop overcharging for their computers.

Re:great review no vista bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in the market to get a new computer and have been looking at Apple Mac's as well. To be fair they are not over priced they just don't have anything in the middle-range (even the iMac is upper-range for a lot of people). This makes them _look_ expensive when really they are not when you spec up a similar Dell and then look at the differences. I am seriously tempted by a MacBook Pro as similar spec Dell's are the same price (some even more expensive!) but are massive and weigh twice/three times as much!

Oh, it's positive, baby.

[teapot_giovanni]

Has no-one mentioned the obvious fallic inspiration for stacks yet? I mean when I first saw it expand out in a proud, if slightly bent manner, I almost snorted my drink through my nose..... Must be me.

Pre-exposé task switching

[interactive_civilian]

As I mentioned in my original post, many Mac greybeards are comfortable with just going to the windows in the background (and in the Classic Mac OS days using WindowShade to quickly get the contents of the front most window out of the way without "minimizing" it to a location like the Windows Taskbar or the OS X Dock). That is the traditional Mac OS UI paradigm.

I'm not saying it is better or worse than the Windows MDI "most users have the the applications maximized" kind of paradigm. In Windows and the way people use it, the taskbar makes a lot of sense. The Mac way is just different, and here it really comes down to what the user is used to, IMHO.

Keep in mind that in the early days of OS X, it seems like no one was quite sure what the Dock wanted to be. Was it meant to be like the task bar? Just a program launcher with goodies? Apple Menu replacement? The dock always seemed a bit incomplete and schizophrenic to me. However, since I was comfortable with the old Mac OS way of task switching, it didn't bother me much. When Exposé came out, however, I'd wondered how I'd ever lived without such an efficient way of switching tasks.

Anyway, I don't think the Dock ever was meant to really handle task switching, though this wasn't really apparent until Exposé. I think it was always just a launcher (with application status goodies), but it took getting a really excellent task switcher in there to make that clear. Of course, hindsight is 20-20, and I could be dead wrong.

I'm running OSX Leopard and it's great!

[Ragnarr]

OSX 10.5 is great. The review on Ars is spot on; many of the changes are underneath the hood and you can't really see them in your day to day work. The new search features are great; definitely a step up from what they had. Time machine looks good; I'll be looking forward to setting it up and testing it out. The only program that I had to reinstall from the "upgrade" was SETI@Home; something to do with BOINC didn't like the upgrade process but ran fine after being reinstalled. The new "dock" is a little less intuitive; it is much harder to tell what program is still running based on the little lights below the icons. I miss my triangles!

Anyways, as many people have said, macs are appliances versus a computer. They are meant to do specific things; they're not hobby devices for you to upgrade and continue upgrading over a course of several years. The best part: it just works. I can't tell you how many times I had to dick with XP or Vista to keep it connected to my wireless network or deal with anti-virus. OSX just works; and it works with so many good programs such as Open Office and GIMP. I love it, and I hope alot of you would consider looking beyond the high start-up cost and think about the time ya'll spend maintaining those win boxes.... I think you'll find your time is more valuable than your computer.

Only one thing I need to know about the upgrade

[mario_grgic]

I'm a software developer heavily entangled in Java. Java support on OS X has always been weak (despite the marketing hype claiming otherwise).

And the upgrade drops Java 1.6, and to add injury to insult it also breaks existing 1.5. So, for people like me, OS X is no longer a viable development platform, and it was never a good runtime/deployment platform to begin with.

So, it's Windows and Linux for me as the only solid choices.

Re:Only one thing I need to know about the upgrade

[doktorjayd]

So, it's Windows and Linux for me as the only solid choices.

dont forget solaris.

its not for everyone, but if you want a java friendly environment, you want solaris!

they even ship out free multi-platform media if you're prepared to wait a couple weeks.

or just click through here...

Use NeoOffice, not OO.o

[amake]

The preferred OpenOffice.org implementation on OS X is NeoOffice, which doesn't require X11 and has many benefits over vanilla OO.o.

Re:Use NeoOffice, not OO.o

[jocknerd]

FYI, there is now a native port of OpenOffice.org for the Mac. Its in alpha, but its working pretty good for me. It can't print yet, but by the middle or end of 2008, it should be ready to go.

Re:Use NeoOffice, not OO.o

[iron-kurton]

I tried that too, didn't like it. It's not a very polished product -- I'll attribute it to being an Alpha release.

All that...

[Anonymous Coward]

and yet I still get asked if I REALLY meant to put a file into the recycling bin. And then I get asked if I REALLY want to empty the recycling bin. How about giving the user a little credit and only challenging them once per deletion? It's even worse if something triggers the damned UAC in Vista. "Are you sure? Are you REALLY sure? Are you REALLY, REALLY sure? REALLY?" *throws computer out window*

thats one fine reveiw!

[doktorjayd]

well, not often that i rtfm, but i just spent an hour pretty well engaged in it.

and i'm not a (current) mac user, nor will i be again any time soon. ( unless someone buys me a mac, but thats not gonna happen, and even then i'd expect to be dual booting to linux before long... )

delving in past the 'lickable' gui, then working up from the kernel and new tools and frameworks ( hey, they got DTrace ! ) makes me think apple have come quite a ways since i tapped away on OSX 1.2 server with the NeXT step interface ( which i actually preferred to the aqua eye candy ), made for a comprehensive review.

if you're reading this instead of the article, you're mad!

for mine, the most important new gear in this release is the LLVM (http://llvm.org) integration. man, having a JIT compiler for near native bytecode on any cpu will certainly come up pretty big in compiler technology real soon.

not taht i have anything against gcc, but this sounds infinitly more flexible.

.... but it comes with gcc-4.2.2, so who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really now.... I get your point about the Java stack, but for the rest of the developer world, this looks pretty freaking cool. I thought that Java wasn't used in the iPhone anyway?

1) Objective C 2.0
See, another whole number! How can it not be shinier, more pretty? Lick it!

2) Gcc-4.2.2. Like 'em or leave em, Apple has the latest FSF release at the time of their new OS launch. Smart. No matter what they say about clang and LLVM, Apple keeps on tracking gcc mainline. Cool.

Previously, Apple was stuck at the unfortunate 4.0.x. Changes since then:

http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.1/changes.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.2/changes.html

Seems pretty impressive. Thanks Apple, for not fucking us with a shitty proprietary compiler!

3) Xcode 3.0, shark. Updates seem nice, but I've not played with this yet.

Debacle

[Anonymous Coward]

I could use an 88 million copy debacle. Heck, I'd settle 87 million.

QuickPick

[esme]

I haven't upgraded yet, but I agree that it's ridiculous that they've gotten rid of using folders in the dock as hierarchical menus. Luckily, I just found a new app launcher called QuickPick that does this task. It has the added bonus of having a nicer UI for managing the folders, and being a little faster.

BSOD Easter Egg

[daveywest]

If you browse a PC network using the Coverflow view, the icon for a PC server shows a monitor with a BSOD.

Siracusa's reviews amaze me.

[CatOne]

I have to wonder from where he gets all the details. He really has a ton of insight into the low level workings.

Mac keyboard shortcuts *bad*?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like and use both Linux and Mac OS, but I'm having trouble understanding one class of complaints you have.

First, the shortcuts are not consistent from program to program. Firefox, for example, uses Ctrl-D to deny cookies, while Safari uses Command-D to deny.

Are there two browsers on Linux that have the same keyboard shortcuts? I haven't found any yet.

Microsoft Word for Mac uses Windows-style shortcuts (end/home etc).

Where did you get your copy of Microsoft Word for Linux for this comparison?

I realize that this is not an OS X problem, but in a way it is -- these keys are not enforced like they are on other OSes (yes, linux has good shortcuts).

How? Is there a file in /etc I can edit to get "good shortcuts"? I've got a lot of programs here with horrible shortcuts -- who do I go to go "enforce" good ones?

These impede my flow of thought when I have to fish for the right keys to move from word to word, use the delete key (on a laptop), show the desktop (F11? wtf).

So go to the control panel (uh, I mean "system preferences") and change it to some other key -- exactly the same thing I do in Linux if I don't like its default (control-alt-D, which is even worse, but still, easy to change). BTW, on the newest Apple keyboards, show-desktop actually has its own key.

I could go on and on about bad shortcut keys, but I think I have gotten my point across.

Indeed. You're using two third-party apps which are inconsistent (and hated by many Mac users for it) and you don't like the default for show-desktop.

Oh, and using Open Office is not feasible in OS X. I'm sorry, but it plain sucks (slow, inconsistent, requires X11...)

No, it doesn't.

P.S. Sorry to have to post as AC, but I don't want to go to Karma hell. It's not my intention to start a flame war anyway, just giving you an honest answer to your question, from my point of view.

Have I been trolled? Is this another case of somebody flaming on a forum to get free tech support? Beats me. It doesn't seem much easier than going to the control panel and typing "keyboard shortcuts" in the search box, so I suspect it's a troll.

Re:One big one: Boot Camp!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should have followed all of the warnings that said it is only a beta for Tiger. There were also several releases stating you will be able to purchase a stand alone bootcamp after Leopard's release, no free rides forever.

Behind the times - four SATA bays

[SuperKendall]

The MacPro (ever since the Intel switch) has had four SATA II bays. I have an older G5 with just two, but that hardly matters when you can just buy an eSata card and hook up an external drive bay (I have four more drives external).

CPU yes, motherboard no...

[SuperKendall]

The CPU is easy to change out an all the current macs I believe (including the mini and the iMac, I think even the laptops are socketed - might be wrong about those).

When I was doing PC's I always found the ability to get new motherboards was pretty limited anyway, because by the time I went to look for new ones I would need a new case to get better motherboards. So I really don't see that as very much of an issue since the parts you would want to replace can be.

Re:CPU yes, motherboard no...

[msimm]

Thanks. I'm not sure why you'd have trouble with the motherboards fitting standard cases, I've been using a brushed aluminum coolmaster wave for ages now and at work I just recently racked an ATX mobo we had laying around into a steel AT case from ages ago and managed to fit it (a few small modifications).

Trends not specifics

[SuperKendall]

Yes Mac video cards have a more limited selection. But among that seelction are the same cards PC's are using, and as time goes by I will have more powerful Mac versions just as there are more powerful PC versions to be had. So a Mac does not limit your upgrade path from going upward, it's just a narrower path.

True of almost anything...

[SuperKendall]

But what about being able to plug *any* generic piece of hardware into the mac and getting it to "just work"?

Actually you can use almost any generic PCIe expansion card and have it just work. I think sound cards will work but since Macs come with really god sound support already, I've never even thought to look at what would really work (but I think musicians use some of the higher end cards).

Macs come with really good motherboards already, so it's not like you really need to update that often.

Video cards are the one area where you really can't just use any old card, it still has to be Mac specific. But there's always some Mac versions of newer cards, so it's not like you are trailing in terms of performance if video card performance matters to you.

You could even drop a different PSU in if you felt like - but again why, Macs already ship with a beefy PSU to start with so what's the need? Even if you add a lot of drives and other components you have enough power.

Agreed...

[Radical Moderate]

Give me a single proc Mac with a pci-x slot or two and I'm happy...basically a Mini without laptop components in a minitower case.

Earth to Apple...most gamers don't spend a couple grand for gaming machine, they get a $600 Dell and put a decent graphics card in it. By ignoring these folks you're leaving money on the table, a lot of us would love to be able to run Windows for games and Mac for real life, but we're not going to drop a couple grand to do it.

I understand Apple doesn't want to fracture the market with too many offerings, but at the rate their market's growing there should be room for another model.

Carbon Finder... 64-bit is still not key.

[argent]

I don't think that the lack of 64-bit Carbon support is as big a deal as he makes out, since a lot of Apple's own legacy code is still chock full of toasty Carbon flakes: Finder, iTunes, Safari... Apple's not going to do anything that makes things hard for these programs.

I think that, basically, his original statement about the unimportance of 64-bit is still true. 64-bit is STILL not an issue for all but a tiny fraction of programs. If iTunes and Finder and Safari *never* go 64-bit, who will notice? Not I.

If the performance difference of i386 and amd64 modes gets severe, they'll just compile 32-bit code in amd64 mode. That's how DEC solved 32-bit compatibility problems on the Alpha... you really can compile code that operates entirely as if it was 32-bit code on a 64-bit machine, and get all the extra registers. But given that they're going with Intel and not AMD, I think it's going to be a while before they have to care about that.

Mac vs Win command-switching

[Kadin2048]

alt-tab works pretty much the same under OS X as it does under Windows I agree that the GP is going out of his way to make work for himself, but Alt-Tab/Cmd-Tab in the Mac OS and in Windows do not work the same way.

In Windows, Alt-Tab cycles between windows. In Mac OS, Cmd-Tab cycles through applications. (Cmd-tilde cycles through an application's windows on the Mac.)

one item can be fixed, at least

[onemorechip]

I don't know if anyone posted this yet (and I haven't tried it, since I don't have Leopard yet), but there is a fix out for the translucent menu bars, here.

Really?

[RandyOo]

Even the lack of FTP support for me is a "do not care" since I don't mind using Terminal for that anyway, and it can have files drug into it just like finder... I bought my first OS X Mac about a year ago, use Terminal almost every day, and didn't know that you can drag files onto it. Crazy!

Just wanted to plug MacFusion, which provides a GUI to mount FTP (and SSH!) as Volumes which show up on the Desktop. Love it!

Re:Are you joking? Geeks gain the most!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for the pure UNIX kind of geek you have an optimized 64-bit kernel, Leopard's kernel is 32-bit, even for 64-bit CPUs. Didn't you RTFA? That's why there's no driver problems: Leopard still uses 32-bit drivers.

that finally has a filesystem wit the BeOS featureset (read the article). Actually (from the article), Leopard's filesystem now has NeXT's feature set. Leopard isn't even close to matching BeOS's advanced filesystem. It's easy for non-geeks to get them mixed up because everyone believed Apple would buy Be, but they bought NeXT instead.

Needs more cowbell... I mean explanation

[argent]

The kernel buffers are a fixed size, and if they fill up because of a slow client, events get dropped. This means that one badly behaved client can ruin it for everyone.

That doesn't follow. If the oldest events are dropped when the buffers fill up then only the slow client will miss events. Needs more explanation of this point.

Re:Needs more cowbell... I mean explanation

[John Siracusa]

The kernel doesn't keep track of "whose" event(s) are being dropped. If it had to drop any, it sends a generic FSE_EVENTS_DROPPED notification to all registered processes.

Rich file system metadata has its own perils

[argent]

Apple is still recovering from the results of their decision to store critical metadata outside the visible file, in the resource fork, and even a single bit of critical metadata... the UNIX execute bit... has caused problems with older programs that don't preserve it. OS X doesn't live in the same kind of walled compound that Apple tried to keep Mac OS, so you can't expect programs to be written using Apple's frameworks. It's absolutely critical that all file system metadata be accessible through the same API as regular files, and on OS X that's open/read/write/close... I hope that Apple doesn't neglect this.

10.4.11? Not for hoi polloi.

[argent]

Over two years later, Tiger has reached version 10.4.11

10.4.10, friend. Just because you have a seed of 10.4.11 doesn't mean it's out there for the rest of us.

Signed apps? I hope you can turn this off...

[argent]

In the end, it still all comes down to trust. Either you trust software from Acme Inc., or you don't.

I don't. I trust that the particular program I downloaded is what I downloaded, and that's as far as it goes. I don't enable automatic updates. I don't run Software Update. I approve of being asked to update my keychain.

That's up to you to decide. Signed applications are just as capable of erasing your hard drive and stealing your passwords as unsigned applications.

Indeed. So they shouldn't be granted any more rights by default, including access to my keychain. If someone gets hold of Acme's key, I don't want to let them write a signed trojan that doesn't even need to install a keystroke logger to get my Acme password.

But unlike unsigned code, a signed application cannot be tampered with after installation. If an application from Acme Inc. does something malicious, you can be sure that it's not because it's been hijacked by some other bit of malware. Put another way, well-behaved code will continue to be well-behaved. Any attempt to modify it will stop it from running entirely.

I routinely go in and modify applications, fixing UI errors, replacing ugly bitmaps with better ones. And the debugger API means that applications can be modified without changing the signature on their code at all.

Signatures, like all crypto, are useful tools. But they're not a panacea, and like all crypto they can get in the way of other tools.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

[argent]

Talent and hard work.

He's getting Apple's developer releases and he's spending a lot of time digging around in them. I don't always agree with everything he writes, but I can't fault his skill and diligence.

Death to metakeys!

[argent]

Just option-click on one of the circular "+" widgets to create a new nested clause.

Metakeys are evil. They are not discoverable, there's nothing that looking at the window will tell me that a metakey is available, and you can't explore them because you don't know what they do. They are useful as accelerators, perhaps, but requiring them to access any functionality is just plain wrong.

This is the biggest user-interface screwup on the Mac (and given what I think of the menu bar that's saying something) and it's one that's been there forever.

AUGH. Say it ain't so, Joe... John.

[argent]

What the Leopard Finder no longer even attempts to do, however, is remember the view style for each folder (e.g., list view, icon view) unless explicitly asked to do so by the user.[...]In other words, while window size and position remain attributes of individual folders, view style is now a global attribute of the Finder application itself (optionally overridden by a per-folder setting that must be manually applied as described above).

First, this has nothing to do with "browser" versus "spacial" views. You can have per-folder view styles in browsers... even using his Safari analogy: changing something on a web page doesn't make all other web pages change. The Windows file manager is unrepentantly a browser, but it manages to keep per-folder changes.

Second, the lack of a per-folder view is what made me switch back to Finder from PathFinder. Even two generations of Finder ago, that by itself was enough to make me abandon the otherwise superior tool. Now Finder's losing it?

Hopefully this can be fixed with Applescripting or Automation, or at least a Haxie.

That's so easy to fix.

[argent]

The kernel doesn't keep track of "whose" event(s) are being dropped.

Ah, so if it drops events, it doesn't drop the wrong events, but applications don't know that they haven't lost any events. That could be solved by an API to ask when the most recent dropped event happened. If you were already up to date, you wouldn't need to do any rescanning to figure out if you'd lost anything.

If it had to drop any, it sends a generic FSE_EVENTS_DROPPED notification to all registered processes.

That's a pretty standard UNIX model. That's how all process wakeups used to happen. If you can efficiently tell if you need to do anything, it's actually quicker to wake up all processes and have them check than to maintain queues. In a VM environment, of course, you don't want to wake up ALL processes but ones that are already doing real-time work? Sure.

I think they made the wrong decision here. Following the UNIX design would have been much more efficient than creating a new complex queue.

Traditional UNIX allowed hard directory links

[argent]

Historically, Unix has only allowed hard links to files. In Leopard, Apple has included the ability to make hard links to directories.

Historically, hard links to directories were allowed in all versions of UNIX up until the mid-80s. Symlinks didn't show up until then and hard links to directories were removed after that. I have always thought that restricting hard links to files was a mistake... it doesn't cause any problems for file lookup (namei), but only for file enumeration (ftw). That happens in userland and maintaining two words (device and inode) for each directory in the path during a tree walk is not a great burden.

Couple of useful optimizations for Time Machine...

[argent]

Hopefully Apple will think of these. This could be implemented regardless of the file system, without wating for ZFS, and would solve the two biggest problems:

1. Compression. Compress the files stored in Time Machine, in place, behind the scenes, with a header (or metadata, if you insist) indicating the original name and how it's compressed.

2. Deltas. Compare multiple versions of the file and store a compressed diff of the *older* one against the newest permanent version. Why the older one? Because it's the one that's going to be deleted first when the disk fills up.

Guest account with password

[argent]

They REALLY need to have to option to give the guest account a password.

I wouldn't mind telling people that my guest account password is "satire", but I wouldn't want to leave my Mac in a state where anyone can walk up and log in without a password.

Firefox Help pages are wrong?

[Kadin2048]

Very odd. The official keyboard reference page says that the Firefox Mac shortcut for "next tab" is Cmd-Opt-Tab, but this doesn't work on my system at all. Neither does Cmd-PageDn, which is supposedly the alternative.

Command-Option-[Left|Right]Arrow seem to do it, though.

Not everyone finds that useful.

[Kadin2048]

It's a lot faster to slam my mouse to the bottom of the screen and then pick the application I want out of the Dock than to type it in and pick it out of a Spotlight search result.

I have basically everything that I use in a typical day on my Mac in the Dock (20 applications, not counting the Finder), arranged left to right basically by frequency-of-use (Firefox, Mail, and Terminal are at the far left, Calculator is at the right).

I think it works pretty well, although I have a tremendous hatred for Dashboard (even though I've shut down the process, the damn thing still sits down there in my Dock, taking up space). I was really mixed on the idea of the Dock back around 10.0, because it seemed Windows-ish and foreign, and I still think that it wouldn't be nearly as necessary if they had a functional spatial Finder like they used to (the further destruction of which is one of the reasons why I won't be upgrading to Leopard anytime soon), but it's a lot more intuitive for me than having to search for everything.

I think there's a big difference between people who like choosing options from lists and might prefer a search and list-based interface. I am definitely not in that camp. I don't remember names, I remember icons and spatial relationships (where something was in a window, where it was in relation to other objects, etc.), so Spotlight is unhelpful for me. I use it perhaps a few times a month when I'm looking for some really old document.

Re:Not everyone finds that useful.

[anaesthetica]

Interesting. The way you phrased things leads me to a second idea.

Siracusa distinguishes between spatial-Finder and browser-Finder. But we've added this third thing, Spotlight, which is nearly a return to CLI.

Perhaps the Finder should just be made spatial, while the Spotlight and browser-Finder should merge.