Basically that means that lots of home studio people who can't afford proprietary MAC hardware are out of luck if they want to get any updates for logic audio.
I'm thinking if you can't afford a Mac, you can't afford this software anyway. Have you seen the pricing?
I mean, if it can run on OSX, then its only a jump, hop, and skip away from Linux, Right?
Wrong. FCP is presumably a Carbon application, and the Carbon API is not available on any other platform - only Mac OS X and I believe Mac OS 8.5 and later (with CarbonLib). Porting the application to another API would require mostly rewriting it. That might be even harder than porting Carbon to other platforms, which Apple definitely isn't going to do.
Trivia: when Apple ported QuickTime to Windows, they decided it would be easier to port the API than to rewrite QuickTime. Old versions of QT for Windows contain a partial implementation of the Macintosh Toolbox, the API that Carbon is derived from. I think they rewrote QT as of version 4, so the Mac Toolbox is no longer there. I heard about some interesting hacks with people getting Mac applications to compile on Windows using the Mac Toolbox from QuickTime; since it wasn't a complete implementation it wasn't really that useful.
If you're "happy chugging along" with your Mac, why do you want a Windows port? If you prefer Windows, you haven't been using the Mac OS long enough yet.;-)
Who exactly maintains the list? Can a site be removed from the list if it stops hosting the objectionable content? How would the PA Attorney General's office be able to check the site to verify this, if every ISP in the state blocks access to it?
Does this law affect only those ISPs which are based in Pennsylvania, or ISPs that operate in Pennsylvania, or that have a Point Of Presence in Pennsylvania?
What about a national DSL ISP that doesn't have a POP in Pennsylvania, but instead backhauls all their Pennsylvania customers over the phone company's ATM cloud to a POP in a neighboring state? It could be argued that the customer is not technically connected to the Internet in Pennsylvania.
In order to block specific URLs (rather than IP addresses), PA ISPs would be required to redirect port 80 through a transparent proxy server. This can potentially cause problems (although it's not a problem for most people). If the law does not apply to ISPs that are not based in Pennsylvania, could non-local ISPs to advertise that they don't redirect, block or monitor traffic, possibly giving them a competitive advantage over local PA ISPs?
Of course I'm all for getting rid of child porn, but this doesn't sound like the way to do it.
Will filtering be based on A) IP address? B) specific URL? C) domain name?
A) if the server is using name-based virtual hosting, legitimate web sites with different names hosted on the same IP will be blocked, and nobody will have the slightest idea why.
B) AFAIK the only way an ISP can block access to a URL is by redirecting port 80 to a transparent proxy server, which will take the request from the client, check the URL, and if the URL is not on the list, make a query to the web server, and return the response back to the client. This can cause some problems, especially if the proxy server caches its content, but it's a common enough practice these days that maybe it wouldn't be a problem.
Any web site not using port 80 could not be blocked in this way, unless they redirected that port as well. What about something like http://www.kiddiepr0n.net:110/? You can't just redirect port 110 (normally for POP3 e-mail) without users going nuts, so you'd have to just firewall the IP for anything like this. Not likely to have name-based virtual hosts on strange ports though, so I suppose that's OK.
C) Adding a bogus zone file with no A records would effectively block domains from users who use your nameservers. Plenty of people use other nameservers, though, for various reasons. And, if the domain is also used for legitimate purposes, innocent bystanders get blocked again.
Because you can still run DOS programs on Windows. It may not work as well but you can still do it. I played Duke3D on Windows 95 (thankfully those days are over).
But Win95/98/ME are essentially a shell on top of DOS, while WinNT/2k/XP are not - they run the NT kernel, and at least pretend to have some semblance of security, so applications directly touching the hardware isn't supposed to be allowed.
If, for example, the Duke3d code includes io.h and uses a DOS specific function, it will at least build on Windows, if not run. You'd have to do some more work to make it build on Linux.
If it uses a DOS-specific function and it doesn't run, who cares if it builds? You'd still have to rewrite that piece of the code to make it run, and if you have to do that anyway, your rewrite will probably work on both.
I'm not a programmer, though, so I should shut up.
Actually, there was an expectation that the win32 version would come first, because, as you probably know, Duke 3D already runs on DOS, which means anything DOS specific won't have to be ported.
Uhh. Why not?
Re:I hate to ask...
on
Duke3d in Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I was wondering about this. The Mac version was ported by MacSoft. Others have said the original DOS version was written largely in x86 assembly, so MacSoft would have had to rewrite all of that. The Mac port was released for both m68040 and PowerPC, so presumably they didn't port the whole thing to both 68040 assembly and PowerPC assembly - they used some higher-level language and compiled it for both (that's just a guess on my part, of course).
Anyway, I was thinking, if the Mac version was rewritten in C, would it be easier to port the Mac version to Linux or Win32 than to port the DOS version?
Of course, MacSoft hasn't released the Mac version as GPL, and I can't say I expect them to. I'd think it would be interesting to see their code though...
I read an article once suggesting that Windows encourages people to fear computers, by punishing them any time they try to experiment. Hey, what happens if I move this application into a different folder, to keep things better organized? Now double-clicking a document gives me an error message that the application is missing! I don't remember exactly what I just did, so I'm not sure how to put it back, and besides, I might make it worse. Better call a Microsoft-certified professional! They're expensive, but I have to be able to open my documents. What's their advice for the future? Don't touch anything! OK, next time I won't touch it, because I don't understand it and I might break something.
In contrast, the Mac OS encourages people to learn, by being MUCH more forgiving. This article is a few years old, but it mentioned the AppleGuide help system which would walk you through various tasks, highlighting what you were supposed to click on with a big red circle.
Can anyone find this, or a similar article? It was really pretty interesting.
Re:Oh, wonderful...
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The whole interesting thing about NeXT is that they managed to create a non-spatial interface paradigm that actually worked well.
As was pointed out in the article, people who are used to remembering file paths can handle non-spacial interfaces better than newbies. If you're trying to access a file buried four layers deep, the column view works fine if you can remember the path, but spacial orientation allows you to use OTHER clues (such as which corner of the window you left it in) to choose the correct folders to open on your way. This is more natural to people who aren't already used to dealing with file paths. For those of us who are used to dealing with file paths, it doesn't get in the way.
Yes, NeXTStep worked well. The people I know who used it are all intelligent people who are accustomed to dealing with file paths and would not have trouble with that kind of interface. My mother would be lost.
Labels: Worse than useless, at least in the incarnation we know from OS9.
I didn't use them that often, but I certainly used them. It's not something I usually thought about much - it was just another tool available to me, that I could use for various purposes. I could color particular icons to make them stand out, or apply different labels to affect search order. I remember taking a bunch of MP3s in folders sorted by artist, going through each one, and making any necessary corrections to the ID3 tags - then using labels to mark which artist folders I had finished going through. Obviously when I was done, I cleared all the labels - I'd never intended for the labels to be permanent. It was just a temporary thing, and there are other ways I could have done it (moved them into a "done" folder), but labels were there so I used them.
Sure, they could be better. You're right. How? Suggestions?
The "Finder Browser": I oppose the name pretty strongly...
Hush. It's not a web browser. It's a file browser. IMHO the Finder is long overdue for renaming, but having browser windows isn't a problem, and doesn't confuse people. "Finder" confuses people.
Live Searches: Interesting, but I don't think these should be part of the Finder, per se. Don't make them folders; make them documents.
I completely agree. You should be able to save a search as a sort of bookmark file, and when double-clicking it should open into a Search Results window much like the current Search Results window you get as a result from using the Find command.
Metadata: Hellz yeah.
Damn right.
OSX's lack of support for metadata: Um, OSX does support metadata. The problem is, as is the case with most of Apple's best stuff, there's no documentation on it, leaving developers out in the cold.
When OSX was initially released, developers were told that when saving a file, setting the file and creator types was optional, because the OS would simply use the file extension (which would be hidden from the user by default) to determine both. I wanted to smack somebody. The importance of metadata was downplayed by Apple, and now that they've maybe realized their mistake, some damage has already been done.
As a final note: with a Unix system, it isn't possible to achieve the one-to-one relationships between icons and files seen in OS9 and such. You can do it with windows and folders, which seems to be Siracusa's main beef, but it's impossible with icons and files, which may be equally important. The reason: hardlinks. Simply put, a single file can be in multiple locations in OSX; even HFS+ supports this.
True. Symbolic links appear as aliases, which is fine, but with hardlinks, the same file shows up in two places (with an icon in each place). However, I'm not convinced that this breaks anything. They simply behave as two separate files, that happen to share the same content. Each icon exists spacially (it can be moved around and positioned how you like).
The fact is, hard links aren't that common, and the average user isn't likely to see one. The more advanced user knows what they are and how to deal with them.
The UI for handling hard links could certainly be improved, but the existance of hard links doesn't break the entire paradigm.
Because you can't sort by that in a list view. In Mac OS 9, you can sort by label.
And because a label can be quickly selected from a menu, instead of 1) going to Get Info, 2) copying the icon, 3) launching a graphics app, 4) pasting the icon, 5) changing the color, 6) copying the new icon, 7) pasting it back, and 8) probably losing the alpha channel along the way.
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
To actually open you have to use Apple+O, which is considerably harder to key.
I use Command-down arrow to open files or folders. Conveniently, Command-up arrow does "cd..". Add option to automatically close the folder you're in when opening the new one (if you fixed your preferences to make windows behave how they should).
Having said that, there's no place in UFS for this sorta thing & I doubt Apple could get around it by 'bundling' (using folders) like they did the last time.
What's in.DS_Store?
Putting metadata in hidden files wouldn't be worse than putting whatever's in.DS_Store in hidden files, I would think.
I was surprised to see the request for "live search" folders. This seems to me like an advanced feature that novices won't know how (or want) to use, and most people will have only one of them. And, I think it would complicate the Finder's interface.
The behavior he describes for search results is pretty much exactly the same as what you already get with the Search Results window. I think the idea of saving search criteria is just fine - I doubt I'd use it much myself, but as he said, some people want this feature, and I can understand that. Fine - add a "Save Criteria" button to a search results window (so you can save the results AFTER searching, to make sure your criteria are what you want before saving). It would be nice to be able to drag something out of the window onto the Desktop or into a Finder window as well, like I can drag the icon to the left of the address bar from my web browser to save a bookmark of the page I'm on. Wouldn't be difficult to do.
I completely agree with his view of the file browser. There was an old shareware app called Greg's Browser, by the same guy who made Kaleidoscope, which was a column-based file browser exactly like what we're talking about here. It was a seperate application, and the (spatial) Finder was still there, and there could be no confusion between the two. The Mac OS X Finder needs to abandon the notion that any window may be toggled between spatial (icon or list view) and browser (column view). A browser window should be a different kind of window that can only be a browser window. Double-clicking a folder in a browser window should open that folder in the spatial Finder. A contextual menu item, toolbar button and keyboard shortcut in a spacial Finder window should open a new browser window (or with a modifier, reuse an existing browser window) with the current folder or file selected.
It should not be possible to open the Desktop folder in the spatial Finder, because it's already open on the Desktop. No reason you shouldn't be able to open it in a file browser though.
I like the shelf idea, and I agree that copy/pasting files needs to go away. Not sure about the implementation though.
Definitely like the idea of view plugins; Windows XP does some interesting things with views. Again, not entirely sure about the best implementation. I believe XP chooses the view based on the contents it detects. XP also reserves part of the window space to show information about the selected item(s); the Mac uses a column for this in column view.
Overall, he's got a lot of good points, and interesting ideas. Sadly, I have little faith that Apple will do the right thing. I hope they surprise me.
Re:Great... another April 1st joke....
on
BSDs to be Merged
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if paid subscribes don't have to put up with the April 1 jokes... might be worth it really.
Yeah, it's great - as a Slashdot subscriber, I have the option to go to other sites today. I highly recommend subscribing, just for this benefit alone!
Yes, the "beach ball" cursor has also existed in classic Mac OS since nearly the beginning. The watch cursor usually indicates a brief delay while waiting for the application to complete a minor task and become responsive again, while the spinning beach ball is usually for larger tasks which are expected to take longer.
In Mac OS X, the "spinning pizza" cursor (I don't know if that's the most commonly accepted name for it or not) is triggered by the operating system when it senses that an application is not responsive for any reason. I think applications that want to indicate a busy status will generally use the old watch cursor - or maybe that's just Carbon apps. At a quick glance I can't see any mention of this in the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines.
Similarly, they yanked at one point the Chimes Of Death(doo wee do doooooo) that accompanied the dead-mac(and error code dump), usually caused by severe hardware or software problems during booting in older macs. It genuinely freaked people out(I know it scared the shit out of me the first time i heard it.)
The replacement sound is screeching brakes and a big explosion played at full volume. I don't think they changed it because the old sound was too scary.
I find it ridiculous that the loudest linux/open source zealots in here refuse to pay to support it. Open source programmers deserve to be paid too. Put your money where your mouth is. And yes, for the record, I've paid for every version of RH since 6.x, and I even paid for Debian once.:) Let the flames begin.
I paid for Slackware 9, and am waiting for it to arrive in the mail (also bought 8 and 7). I won't be buying RedHat. If I download RedHat, it will just be to play around with. I buy software I use, not stuff I just wanna look at. If I couldn't get RedHat free, I wouldn't get it at all.
From my brief look at RH8 (which I recently downloaded for free), I'm pretty impressed. I wouldn't let it come near a server, but it looks like a VERY nice desktop for newbies. Very polished. The only thing I see holding it back from mainstream acceptance is the simple fact that people who are used to downloading and installing Windows software can't download and install Windows software the way they're used to.
That said, I won't be using it myself, and therefore won't be paying for it.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Basically that means that lots of home studio people who can't afford proprietary MAC hardware are out of luck if they want to get any updates for logic audio.
I'm thinking if you can't afford a Mac, you can't afford this software anyway. Have you seen the pricing?
Am I seeing double, or is this a dupe of the *previous story*.
You're seeing double, it's not a dupe.
You're seeing double, it's not a dupe.
I mean, if it can run on OSX, then its only a jump, hop, and skip away from Linux, Right?
;-)
Wrong. FCP is presumably a Carbon application, and the Carbon API is not available on any other platform - only Mac OS X and I believe Mac OS 8.5 and later (with CarbonLib). Porting the application to another API would require mostly rewriting it. That might be even harder than porting Carbon to other platforms, which Apple definitely isn't going to do.
Trivia: when Apple ported QuickTime to Windows, they decided it would be easier to port the API than to rewrite QuickTime. Old versions of QT for Windows contain a partial implementation of the Macintosh Toolbox, the API that Carbon is derived from. I think they rewrote QT as of version 4, so the Mac Toolbox is no longer there. I heard about some interesting hacks with people getting Mac applications to compile on Windows using the Mac Toolbox from QuickTime; since it wasn't a complete implementation it wasn't really that useful.
If you're "happy chugging along" with your Mac, why do you want a Windows port? If you prefer Windows, you haven't been using the Mac OS long enough yet.
It seems to me that $150,000 per song is rediculous, but this number came out of Washington, not out of the RIAA.
And how do you suppose it got into Washington?
Who exactly maintains the list? Can a site be removed from the list if it stops hosting the objectionable content? How would the PA Attorney General's office be able to check the site to verify this, if every ISP in the state blocks access to it?
Does this law affect only those ISPs which are based in Pennsylvania, or ISPs that operate in Pennsylvania, or that have a Point Of Presence in Pennsylvania?
What about a national DSL ISP that doesn't have a POP in Pennsylvania, but instead backhauls all their Pennsylvania customers over the phone company's ATM cloud to a POP in a neighboring state? It could be argued that the customer is not technically connected to the Internet in Pennsylvania.
In order to block specific URLs (rather than IP addresses), PA ISPs would be required to redirect port 80 through a transparent proxy server. This can potentially cause problems (although it's not a problem for most people). If the law does not apply to ISPs that are not based in Pennsylvania, could non-local ISPs to advertise that they don't redirect, block or monitor traffic, possibly giving them a competitive advantage over local PA ISPs?
Of course I'm all for getting rid of child porn, but this doesn't sound like the way to do it.
Will filtering be based on A) IP address? B) specific URL? C) domain name?
A) if the server is using name-based virtual hosting, legitimate web sites with different names hosted on the same IP will be blocked, and nobody will have the slightest idea why.
B) AFAIK the only way an ISP can block access to a URL is by redirecting port 80 to a transparent proxy server, which will take the request from the client, check the URL, and if the URL is not on the list, make a query to the web server, and return the response back to the client. This can cause some problems, especially if the proxy server caches its content, but it's a common enough practice these days that maybe it wouldn't be a problem.
Any web site not using port 80 could not be blocked in this way, unless they redirected that port as well. What about something like http://www.kiddiepr0n.net:110/? You can't just redirect port 110 (normally for POP3 e-mail) without users going nuts, so you'd have to just firewall the IP for anything like this. Not likely to have name-based virtual hosts on strange ports though, so I suppose that's OK.
C) Adding a bogus zone file with no A records would effectively block domains from users who use your nameservers. Plenty of people use other nameservers, though, for various reasons. And, if the domain is also used for legitimate purposes, innocent bystanders get blocked again.
Because you can still run DOS programs on Windows. It may not work as well but you can still do it. I played Duke3D on Windows 95 (thankfully those days are over).
But Win95/98/ME are essentially a shell on top of DOS, while WinNT/2k/XP are not - they run the NT kernel, and at least pretend to have some semblance of security, so applications directly touching the hardware isn't supposed to be allowed.
If, for example, the Duke3d code includes io.h and uses a DOS specific function, it will at least build on Windows, if not run. You'd have to do some more work to make it build on Linux.
If it uses a DOS-specific function and it doesn't run, who cares if it builds? You'd still have to rewrite that piece of the code to make it run, and if you have to do that anyway, your rewrite will probably work on both.
I'm not a programmer, though, so I should shut up.
Actually, there was an expectation that the win32 version would come first, because, as you probably know, Duke 3D already runs on DOS, which means anything DOS specific won't have to be ported.
Uhh. Why not?
I was wondering about this. The Mac version was ported by MacSoft. Others have said the original DOS version was written largely in x86 assembly, so MacSoft would have had to rewrite all of that. The Mac port was released for both m68040 and PowerPC, so presumably they didn't port the whole thing to both 68040 assembly and PowerPC assembly - they used some higher-level language and compiled it for both (that's just a guess on my part, of course).
Anyway, I was thinking, if the Mac version was rewritten in C, would it be easier to port the Mac version to Linux or Win32 than to port the DOS version?
Of course, MacSoft hasn't released the Mac version as GPL, and I can't say I expect them to. I'd think it would be interesting to see their code though...
Call me a skeptic, but I think it takes longer than 42 days (and the limited audience of blogs) to coin the meaning of a new term.
Well, there's an interesting legend about the origin of the word "quiz"...
Like administering a Windows or Mac system. All voodoo and no understanding.
Some admins understand a lot more than others.
I read an article once suggesting that Windows encourages people to fear computers, by punishing them any time they try to experiment. Hey, what happens if I move this application into a different folder, to keep things better organized? Now double-clicking a document gives me an error message that the application is missing! I don't remember exactly what I just did, so I'm not sure how to put it back, and besides, I might make it worse. Better call a Microsoft-certified professional! They're expensive, but I have to be able to open my documents. What's their advice for the future? Don't touch anything! OK, next time I won't touch it, because I don't understand it and I might break something.
In contrast, the Mac OS encourages people to learn, by being MUCH more forgiving. This article is a few years old, but it mentioned the AppleGuide help system which would walk you through various tasks, highlighting what you were supposed to click on with a big red circle.
Can anyone find this, or a similar article? It was really pretty interesting.
The whole interesting thing about NeXT is that they managed to create a non-spatial interface paradigm that actually worked well.
As was pointed out in the article, people who are used to remembering file paths can handle non-spacial interfaces better than newbies. If you're trying to access a file buried four layers deep, the column view works fine if you can remember the path, but spacial orientation allows you to use OTHER clues (such as which corner of the window you left it in) to choose the correct folders to open on your way. This is more natural to people who aren't already used to dealing with file paths. For those of us who are used to dealing with file paths, it doesn't get in the way.
Yes, NeXTStep worked well. The people I know who used it are all intelligent people who are accustomed to dealing with file paths and would not have trouble with that kind of interface. My mother would be lost.
Labels: Worse than useless, at least in the incarnation we know from OS9.
I didn't use them that often, but I certainly used them. It's not something I usually thought about much - it was just another tool available to me, that I could use for various purposes. I could color particular icons to make them stand out, or apply different labels to affect search order. I remember taking a bunch of MP3s in folders sorted by artist, going through each one, and making any necessary corrections to the ID3 tags - then using labels to mark which artist folders I had finished going through. Obviously when I was done, I cleared all the labels - I'd never intended for the labels to be permanent. It was just a temporary thing, and there are other ways I could have done it (moved them into a "done" folder), but labels were there so I used them.
Sure, they could be better. You're right. How? Suggestions?
The "Finder Browser": I oppose the name pretty strongly...
Hush. It's not a web browser. It's a file browser. IMHO the Finder is long overdue for renaming, but having browser windows isn't a problem, and doesn't confuse people. "Finder" confuses people.
Live Searches: Interesting, but I don't think these should be part of the Finder, per se. Don't make them folders; make them documents.
I completely agree. You should be able to save a search as a sort of bookmark file, and when double-clicking it should open into a Search Results window much like the current Search Results window you get as a result from using the Find command.
Metadata: Hellz yeah.
Damn right.
OSX's lack of support for metadata: Um, OSX does support metadata. The problem is, as is the case with most of Apple's best stuff, there's no documentation on it, leaving developers out in the cold.
When OSX was initially released, developers were told that when saving a file, setting the file and creator types was optional, because the OS would simply use the file extension (which would be hidden from the user by default) to determine both. I wanted to smack somebody. The importance of metadata was downplayed by Apple, and now that they've maybe realized their mistake, some damage has already been done.
As a final note: with a Unix system, it isn't possible to achieve the one-to-one relationships between icons and files seen in OS9 and such. You can do it with windows and folders, which seems to be Siracusa's main beef, but it's impossible with icons and files, which may be equally important. The reason: hardlinks. Simply put, a single file can be in multiple locations in OSX; even HFS+ supports this.
True. Symbolic links appear as aliases, which is fine, but with hardlinks, the same file shows up in two places (with an icon in each place). However, I'm not convinced that this breaks anything. They simply behave as two separate files, that happen to share the same content. Each icon exists spacially (it can be moved around and positioned how you like).
The fact is, hard links aren't that common, and the average user isn't likely to see one. The more advanced user knows what they are and how to deal with them.
The UI for handling hard links could certainly be improved, but the existance of hard links doesn't break the entire paradigm.
Why don't you just...
Because you can't sort by that in a list view. In Mac OS 9, you can sort by label.
And because a label can be quickly selected from a menu, instead of 1) going to Get Info, 2) copying the icon, 3) launching a graphics app, 4) pasting the icon, 5) changing the color, 6) copying the new icon, 7) pasting it back, and 8) probably losing the alpha channel along the way.
To actually open you have to use Apple+O, which is considerably harder to key.
..". Add option to automatically close the folder you're in when opening the new one (if you fixed your preferences to make windows behave how they should).
I use Command-down arrow to open files or folders. Conveniently, Command-up arrow does "cd
Having said that, there's no place in UFS for this sorta thing & I doubt Apple could get around it by 'bundling' (using folders) like they did the last time.
.DS_Store?
.DS_Store in hidden files, I would think.
What's in
Putting metadata in hidden files wouldn't be worse than putting whatever's in
That would be awesome, I'd also like if files in my command shell were clickable or selectable and opened the correct application when clicked.
Type "open filename"; "man open" for details.
I was surprised to see the request for "live search" folders. This seems to me like an advanced feature that novices won't know how (or want) to use, and most people will have only one of them. And, I think it would complicate the Finder's interface.
The behavior he describes for search results is pretty much exactly the same as what you already get with the Search Results window. I think the idea of saving search criteria is just fine - I doubt I'd use it much myself, but as he said, some people want this feature, and I can understand that. Fine - add a "Save Criteria" button to a search results window (so you can save the results AFTER searching, to make sure your criteria are what you want before saving). It would be nice to be able to drag something out of the window onto the Desktop or into a Finder window as well, like I can drag the icon to the left of the address bar from my web browser to save a bookmark of the page I'm on. Wouldn't be difficult to do.
I completely agree with his view of the file browser. There was an old shareware app called Greg's Browser, by the same guy who made Kaleidoscope, which was a column-based file browser exactly like what we're talking about here. It was a seperate application, and the (spatial) Finder was still there, and there could be no confusion between the two. The Mac OS X Finder needs to abandon the notion that any window may be toggled between spatial (icon or list view) and browser (column view). A browser window should be a different kind of window that can only be a browser window. Double-clicking a folder in a browser window should open that folder in the spatial Finder. A contextual menu item, toolbar button and keyboard shortcut in a spacial Finder window should open a new browser window (or with a modifier, reuse an existing browser window) with the current folder or file selected.
It should not be possible to open the Desktop folder in the spatial Finder, because it's already open on the Desktop. No reason you shouldn't be able to open it in a file browser though.
I like the shelf idea, and I agree that copy/pasting files needs to go away. Not sure about the implementation though.
Definitely like the idea of view plugins; Windows XP does some interesting things with views. Again, not entirely sure about the best implementation. I believe XP chooses the view based on the contents it detects. XP also reserves part of the window space to show information about the selected item(s); the Mac uses a column for this in column view.
Overall, he's got a lot of good points, and interesting ideas. Sadly, I have little faith that Apple will do the right thing. I hope they surprise me.
I wonder if paid subscribes don't have to put up with the April 1 jokes... might be worth it really.
Yeah, it's great - as a Slashdot subscriber, I have the option to go to other sites today. I highly recommend subscribing, just for this benefit alone!
Hit your nearest CPAN mirror and 'use Acme::Bleach' for great justice.
;-)
Speaking of which, have you seen http://www.cpan.org/ today?
Yes, the "beach ball" cursor has also existed in classic Mac OS since nearly the beginning. The watch cursor usually indicates a brief delay while waiting for the application to complete a minor task and become responsive again, while the spinning beach ball is usually for larger tasks which are expected to take longer.
In Mac OS X, the "spinning pizza" cursor (I don't know if that's the most commonly accepted name for it or not) is triggered by the operating system when it senses that an application is not responsive for any reason. I think applications that want to indicate a busy status will generally use the old watch cursor - or maybe that's just Carbon apps. At a quick glance I can't see any mention of this in the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines.
Similarly, they yanked at one point the Chimes Of Death(doo wee do doooooo) that accompanied the dead-mac(and error code dump), usually caused by severe hardware or software problems during booting in older macs. It genuinely freaked people out(I know it scared the shit out of me the first time i heard it.)
The replacement sound is screeching brakes and a big explosion played at full volume. I don't think they changed it because the old sound was too scary.
Spinning Pizza Of Death? WTF is that? (guess the none-mac-user)
It's just the "busy" cursor, left over from NeXTStep but redrawn in rainbow colors. Equivalent to the hourglass cursor in Windows.
I find it ridiculous that the loudest linux/open source zealots in here refuse to pay to support it. Open source programmers deserve to be paid too. Put your money where your mouth is. And yes, for the record, I've paid for every version of RH since 6.x, and I even paid for Debian once. :) Let the flames begin.
:-)
I paid for Slackware 9, and am waiting for it to arrive in the mail (also bought 8 and 7). I won't be buying RedHat. If I download RedHat, it will just be to play around with. I buy software I use, not stuff I just wanna look at. If I couldn't get RedHat free, I wouldn't get it at all.
From my brief look at RH8 (which I recently downloaded for free), I'm pretty impressed. I wouldn't let it come near a server, but it looks like a VERY nice desktop for newbies. Very polished. The only thing I see holding it back from mainstream acceptance is the simple fact that people who are used to downloading and installing Windows software can't download and install Windows software the way they're used to.
That said, I won't be using it myself, and therefore won't be paying for it.