In all fairness, I can think of a few Windows-isms that would be equally confusing to the newb. The great thing about Mac OS 8-9 is the ability to enable native "At Ease" in every build. It's an ultra-simplified UI that can prevent a user from running too many apps concurrently if administered properly. Different levels of user can be administered with various accounting bundles such as MacAdmin and Apple's own tools built in to OS X Server.
I've seen simmilar "lockdown" packages for MSWindows that would make me want to chisel my eyeballs out with an ice-pick if I was subjected to them as a total n00b, but I'm sure there are at least a couple that cover enough bases...
It was when the senior management was largely comprised of Microsoft lifers who joined in the early days of the company and had worked their way up. But it's very different when those people find themselves competing with professional managers brought in as lateral hires.
Graig Mundie was one of the first royal a-holes to join these ranks. You'll recall Mr. Mundie was the M$ VP a couple years back that decided to go on that major 'LINUX SUCKS' FUD crusade. My pappa was hired by the guy into Alliant Computer Systems back in the gay-80's - at which time he displayed extreme arrogance in the fact that pappa was able to summize (due to it coming from a submarine) that the "director" he needed to take a call with (cutting in to the interview time) was XxXx, a weekend naval sub warrior.
A little research on the company by a prospective employee and Mr. Mundie takes it as an ego-blow. The 'vendetta vibe' over this event haunted my pa until he wisely left that sinking ship for another 2 years later...
First and foremost, the older MacOS UI had the really nasty issue of making it too hard to tell which apps were still running.
Well, when Apple moved from OS 5 to OS 6, they introduced the "MultiFinder", which allowed more than one application to be running concurrently. The "Application Menu" was devised as a pull-down means of viewing all (non-invisible) running executables on the machine. The fundamental difference between Mac OS and Windows is/was that Windows encapsulated applications within a pane, while the Mac UI had always used a menubar-parent/window-child method. The Mac/Xerox method was engineered to adhere to Fitts Law of UI Interaction (which basically states that items at the edge of a work surface are more easily/less consciously accessible than items removed from the edge). With Mac OS 8, Apple introduced a pull-out application menu, allowing you to constantly see all apps that were running via icon or icon+title.
MacOS also made it too confusing to select the proper folder to save/download/install files in. (EG. If you have multiple hard drives and want to save on the one that didn't come up by default, you had to get there in 2 steps. First, select "Desktop", and *then* select the drive you wanted from the dialog box.)
On top of all of this, they never had the foresight to offer an actual file manager. MacOS sorely needed some sort of built-in utility that would show "tree" style folder lists and easily allow copying/moving/deleting groups of files.
Again, this stems from the original "Finder," whereas the desktop abstraction was 'root' to all other volumes and files. Apple added additional API's to either 8.0 or 8.5 (can't remember) that enabled you to bookmark favorites and/or directly jump to mounted volumes via pull-down menu, as well as 'branch' subdirectories by clicking on the small arrow icon. Not all application authors adopted the new save-dialog API set, however. Personally, I found it quite easy to command-D to the desktop whenever I wanted to save to removable media. What was the key-command to jump to "My Computer" under Windows 95/98/NT/2000?
Therefore, I'm not sure Linux wants to copy Apple's way of building GUIs. It seems to me it took Apple *far* too long to provide obviously needed functionality and features.
I wouldn't go so far as to declare those UI 'drawbacks' as "obviously needed" functions. They might have been for someone who developed UI skills in a Windows-only universe, but I never felt particularly inhibited by the Macintosh UI over the last 13 years - despite long periods of windows usage. It all comes down to buffering need-for-speed with memory-for-shortcuts. That applies to any GUI...
Commando, when Ahhhnold is chasing the dude who is trying to get to a phone to call the big-boss-man to inform him that Ahhhnold escaped from the jetliner...
Re:Actually
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Starcraft
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· Score: 5, Informative
Last year I caught a Nature special (or something) regarding the Indoenesian Mimic Octopi that caught my attention like no other creature ever had before! It's capable of mimicking a crab, sea snake, flounder, lionfish, and other species have other abilities. Absolutely floored me.
I think that "IN UNDERSEA INDONESIA, OCTOPI GENETICALLY MANUPULATE THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS."
Eh? Think about the volume of 5+ hour battery-life portables currently on the desks and laps of OSS phreaks... You don't think they have any motivation to port apps over?
Fink's Package DB indicates that the 'big momentum' has already begun...
I surely expected the connex to drop at some point, but I awoke to a little present on my desktop this AM in the form of a full "MacOSXUpdate10.2.3.pkg"
P.S. Software Update 1.5.1 allows resumable downloads
(for the other branch in this thread)
Oh good grief yeah... Whenever I tab back over to a white webpage after reading an Ars novella I suffer from heinous retinal burn. If it wasn't for the neat-o diagrams I'd just cut+paste:P
Re:Reliability and ease of use? Surely you jest!
on
Build Your Own Mac
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· Score: 2
Ease of use? Face it. Ease of use became a moot point with the introduction of Windows95.
Suuure... rummaging through a registry and/or.INI file to rectify system crash epidemics is sure "easy"... Ye lacks perspective methinks.
Plus, the fact that when most Mac-heads talk about ease of use nowadays, what they're really talking about is familiarity. If you're more familiar with the Mac interface, it's easier for you to use than the Windows UI. And vice-versa.
Yep, lack of perspective. Apple has always wisely maintained a loose dictatorship when it comes to simple things like menu item ubiquity and key-command ubiquity. Windows completely sucks in this respect. Completely. Utterly.
Do you have any Macs with that kind of uptime?
Not personally, but Apple appears to have achieved some respectable longevity. These guys seem to be having better luck with OS X than Windows 2000 for what it's worth.
I absolutely agree... I've got an Intellimouse Explorer hooked up to the G4 I'm typing this on (and a Macally 'traditional size' keyboard). I was only referring to the GUI guidelines of each respective team:)
People like to regard Apple as the "innocent Hobbit" who feels little influence from "The One Ring"
In reality, they are just as prone to succumbing to power-hunger as any other entity. IMHO this doesn't alter the facts that matter.
What actually matters is the ergonomics of the product. Microsoft's attitude towards ergonomics places them at far lower levels of saliency, and it seems as though the Gnome/KDX teams suffer from 'far too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome when it comes to this matter. I must play with RH8 to see what can be accomplished.
Many people would rather stand behind a free-as-in-"blank" organization than a heavy-handed, 'we'll litigate at the drop of a hat if you fsck us' organization, and so be it. Apple's actions don't really sway my allegiances in that respect.
We chose quicktime because its open protocol, so we could understand it and manipulate the RTP stream without having to worry about reverse engineering etc.
I suspect that the Darwin Streaming Server being Free-as-in-Premium-Lager - and that its author doesn't demand any 'server tax' to run it - helped in that decision as well?
I absolutely concur! I was raised in British and American international schools in Europe until the 4th grade, at which point we moved back to the 'States and I attended Public schools. They began to teach us French in 1st frickin' grade!
I recall my 3rd grade class play was a highly professional production with singing solos etc - I move back to the states and I'm the frickin' '3rd upper Molar on the right side' in some banal play about hygeine.
This country's public school system (shy the new 'charter' system) strikes me as Cro-Magnon survival skills in comparison...
I'd like to avoid a political argument by all means, but I must question your assumptions about the current administration.
You're talking about the same 'old boys club' that persued any and all pieces of dirt they could possibly drudge up to smear Clinton's name. If you truly believe that the Bush administration won't use these same measures for the upcoming election I'm afraid you're terribly deluded. We're not talking "Democrat bad, Republican good" or vice versa... This is a deplorable practice that plagues all world politics.
2. The trend for english to become the "standard" language world-wide
That's the part I'm worried about.
Unicode is backwards-compatible with ASCII, so the legacy/source code argument is irrelevant. There are already compilers available (such as Vector Pascal) that interpret Greek, Cyrillic, Katakana and Hiragana. Heck, by 2012 I want to be able to code in Klingon!
Nope, I was referring to the 320 and 540. After a little googling I couldn't find any evidence of their ability to run IRIX:\ I don't know why I was under that assumption - perhaps I confused it with the included NT UNIX tools when I read the initial specsheet, dunno.
Yeah, it was preposterous to think that 32-bit x86's could power a 64-bit UNIX - or that sgi would cobble together a 32-bit IRIX-for-x86...
Re:I wonder how much of this is quality . . .
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
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· Score: 2
Aha! But isn't that the great thing about slashcode? The 'squelch' controls? I'm not too worried - 10 smarteygeeks can easily outmaneuver 10,000 idiotic trolls.
"Rocket" Rick Belluzzo is also the man responsible for SGI's disastrous attempt to drop IRIX and MIPS in favour of x86 workstations running Windows NT.
I don't think the decision itself was a disaster, rather the execution. I was freelancing for a predominantly sgi-centric printshop service provider at the time those workstations were announced. The engineers that attended the 'big unveiling' recounted that the presentation seemed completely unpolished. Apparently sgi had a troupe of lemurs for a marketing department at that time (still?). The architecture was pretty exciting, and they were even capable of running IRIX as an opt-out... In other words a $4500 fully capable sgi workstation - incapable of selling themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
In all fairness, I can think of a few Windows-isms that would be equally confusing to the newb. The great thing about Mac OS 8-9 is the ability to enable native "At Ease" in every build. It's an ultra-simplified UI that can prevent a user from running too many apps concurrently if administered properly. Different levels of user can be administered with various accounting bundles such as MacAdmin and Apple's own tools built in to OS X Server.
I've seen simmilar "lockdown" packages for MSWindows that would make me want to chisel my eyeballs out with an ice-pick if I was subjected to them as a total n00b, but I'm sure there are at least a couple that cover enough bases...
A little research on the company by a prospective employee and Mr. Mundie takes it as an ego-blow. The 'vendetta vibe' over this event haunted my pa until he wisely left that sinking ship for another 2 years later...
His name is spelled "Jef Raskin", one "f" - and yes that is ironically an unintuitive, constantly botched way to spell the name...
Another movie scene came to mind a few years ago:
Commando, when Ahhhnold is chasing the dude who is trying to get to a phone to call the big-boss-man to inform him that Ahhhnold escaped from the jetliner...
Last year I caught a Nature special (or something) regarding the Indoenesian Mimic Octopi that caught my attention like no other creature ever had before!
It's capable of mimicking a crab, sea snake, flounder, lionfish, and other species have other abilities. Absolutely floored me.
I think that "IN UNDERSEA INDONESIA, OCTOPI GENETICALLY MANUPULATE THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS."
Eh? Think about the volume of 5+ hour battery-life portables currently on the desks and laps of OSS phreaks... You don't think they have any motivation to port apps over?
Fink's Package DB indicates that the 'big momentum' has already begun...
exact same story here....
I surely expected the connex to drop at some point, but I awoke to a little present on my desktop this AM in the form of a full "MacOSXUpdate10.2.3.pkg"
P.S. Software Update 1.5.1 allows resumable downloads
(for the other branch in this thread)
Oh good grief yeah... Whenever I tab back over to a white webpage after reading an Ars novella I suffer from heinous retinal burn. If it wasn't for the neat-o diagrams I'd just cut+paste :P
I absolutely agree... I've got an Intellimouse Explorer hooked up to the G4 I'm typing this on (and a Macally 'traditional size' keyboard). I was only referring to the GUI guidelines of each respective team :)
I wonder how many of the GNU/Darwin contributors will jump ship because of all this?...
People like to regard Apple as the "innocent Hobbit" who feels little influence from "The One Ring"
In reality, they are just as prone to succumbing to power-hunger as any other entity. IMHO this doesn't alter the facts that matter.
What actually matters is the ergonomics of the product. Microsoft's attitude towards ergonomics places them at far lower levels of saliency, and it seems as though the Gnome/KDX teams suffer from 'far too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome when it comes to this matter. I must play with RH8 to see what can be accomplished.
Many people would rather stand behind a free-as-in-"blank" organization than a heavy-handed, 'we'll litigate at the drop of a hat if you fsck us' organization, and so be it. Apple's actions don't really sway my allegiances in that respect.
4. The Macintosh alpha should be ready for download around ______ from now.
(pretty please? We OS X lUsers want to play too)
I absolutely concur! I was raised in British and American international schools in Europe until the 4th grade, at which point we moved back to the 'States and I attended Public schools. They began to teach us French in 1st frickin' grade!
I recall my 3rd grade class play was a highly professional production with singing solos etc - I move back to the states and I'm the frickin' '3rd upper Molar on the right side' in some banal play about hygeine.
This country's public school system (shy the new 'charter' system) strikes me as Cro-Magnon survival skills in comparison...
I'd like to avoid a political argument by all means, but I must question your assumptions about the current administration.
You're talking about the same 'old boys club' that persued any and all pieces of dirt they could possibly drudge up to smear Clinton's name. If you truly believe that the Bush administration won't use these same measures for the upcoming election I'm afraid you're terribly deluded. We're not talking "Democrat bad, Republican good" or vice versa... This is a deplorable practice that plagues all world politics.
well thanks for putting a damper on my weekend ;D
Make that: Klingon!
Wow....
Unicode is backwards-compatible with ASCII, so the legacy/source code argument is irrelevant. There are already compilers available (such as Vector Pascal) that interpret Greek, Cyrillic, Katakana and Hiragana. Heck, by 2012 I want to be able to code in Klingon!
Yeah, it was preposterous to think that 32-bit x86's could power a 64-bit UNIX - or that sgi would cobble together a 32-bit IRIX-for-x86...
Stay up with the times man!
Official Movie Site
Aha! But isn't that the great thing about slashcode? The 'squelch' controls? I'm not too worried - 10 smarteygeeks can easily outmaneuver 10,000 idiotic trolls.