I see a lot of people complaining that the poster of this thread is being 'too harsh' on Apple.
But the way I see it, Apple made a big crappy mistake by deciding to take an otherwise almost cool OS and then add Aqua. The effect of that was to delay all of the application developers and such who now put in months of useless effort to make their buttons translucent blue.
Apple should have done what any decent programming team does: get the essentials done first -- then make it look nice. I guess the Apple marketing dept. won out over the intelligence of Avie.
I would have been perfectly happy with the existing OS 9 UI and a decent underlying OS. Instead Apple has delayed too long and our company is being forced to drop the crappy OS due to lack of Java 2 and threading support. (and please don't say just wait until OS X comes out -- it will be next summer before its ready for prime time -- trust me, I've used the beta's).
The Mozilla project sounds great to start -- open source, new layout engine, etc. The problem is that they added way too many features.
In modern programming, a new methodology has arisen which allows for very fast-to-market products. All of the mozilla people should check out 'extreme programming'.
The basic idea is to get a product out with the minimum feature set as early as possible so users get a chance to use it and give feedback. For mozilla: drop newsgroups (crappy newsreader anyway), drop IM (add it later), drop HTML editing, drop EVERYTHING except the browser!
I am forced to use the only usable browser on my system: IE5 for Mac. NetScape/Mozilla is an abomination.
I swear to god with 3 programmers and 3 months of time I could come up with a standards compliant browser that kicked the crap out of IE (standard's-wise that is) and was comparable on UI. (IE is pretty nice). But I would concentrate on the browser, not on the other crap like news, editing, or even skins.
It seems that Mozilla bit into this whole bit about a few techno-weenies (sorry/. readers) that think skins are necessary because they haven't figured out any other way to express their distinctness in a faceless online world. For most of the world, they can care less about skins -- they want a browser that WORKS!
They need to FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS! on a browser. Extreme programming lives!
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I see a lot of people complaining that the poster of this thread is being 'too harsh' on Apple. But the way I see it, Apple made a big crappy mistake by deciding to take an otherwise almost cool OS and then add Aqua. The effect of that was to delay all of the application developers and such who now put in months of useless effort to make their buttons translucent blue. Apple should have done what any decent programming team does: get the essentials done first -- then make it look nice. I guess the Apple marketing dept. won out over the intelligence of Avie. I would have been perfectly happy with the existing OS 9 UI and a decent underlying OS. Instead Apple has delayed too long and our company is being forced to drop the crappy OS due to lack of Java 2 and threading support. (and please don't say just wait until OS X comes out -- it will be next summer before its ready for prime time -- trust me, I've used the beta's).
The Mozilla project sounds great to start -- open source, new layout engine, etc. The problem is that they added way too many features.
In modern programming, a new methodology has arisen which allows for very fast-to-market products. All of the mozilla people should check out ' extreme programming '.
The basic idea is to get a product out with the minimum feature set as early as possible so users get a chance to use it and give feedback. For mozilla: drop newsgroups (crappy newsreader anyway), drop IM (add it later), drop HTML editing, drop EVERYTHING except the browser!
I am forced to use the only usable browser on my system: IE5 for Mac. NetScape/Mozilla is an abomination.
I swear to god with 3 programmers and 3 months of time I could come up with a standards compliant browser that kicked the crap out of IE (standard's-wise that is) and was comparable on UI. (IE is pretty nice). But I would concentrate on the browser, not on the other crap like news, editing, or even skins.
It seems that Mozilla bit into this whole bit about a few techno-weenies (sorry /. readers) that think skins are necessary because they haven't figured out any other way to express their distinctness in a faceless online world. For most of the world, they can care less about skins -- they want a browser that WORKS!
They need to FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS! on a browser. Extreme programming lives!