That's not what I'm talking about. Of course you can become root (or have a root shell). What I'm saying is you can not boot the computer and have root account as one of the options for you to log in as and run everything as root.
Also, one could argue that contents of/Applications are not system.
"System" lives in/System and in/Library and important parts in/usr
Of course you could go through this procedure to enable root account logins:
But most OS X users do not do that. I certainly have not, I do all my limited admin tasks by temporarily becoming root with sudo (and very very rarely with root shell).
Well it's not that simple. On OS X for example you can be an administrator and you still can't delete system files. You need to be root to do that. Also, in OS X you can not create "root account", and login into your session as root. It is simply not allowed and impossible to do. On Linux you can.
So for that hypothetical admin user to delete everything he would have to first become root (either by doing sudo, or starting a root shell, being authenticated first) and then executing rm -rf /
So, to recap, being an Administrator and just executing rm -rf / will not delete system files.
Several (non-technical and one anti-technical:D) people in my family have switched to OS X and they all like it and don't miss a thing.
You may not find exact same apps on OS X, but you can find often better apps to do the same things.
For most people, office is a major stumbling block. MS Office 2008 for Mac is enough for most people, but there are others.
Photoshop is there, Final Cut (pro or non-pro) are there for video. RAW image processing apps are available for most cameras (from manufacturers apart from Photoshop).
Mathematica and Maple are there for technical and engineering students, and everything else for software developers is included with every mac.
I don't miss anything from my windows world. As a matter of fact I have more apps available to me.
Sounds to me like opposite. You care very much that you are running Windows XP:D. If I were you I would be evaluating alternative OSes now. I was in the same situation a year ago, and I decided to make a costly switch to OS X. Apart from hardware (those Mac Pros are not cheap), I had to re-purchase some of my software as well. But in the end it was worth it, and now I look at my Windows days as dark ages of computing.
Do those $550 make that big of a difference? Just get a mac pro then, and have a much much better computing experience.
As someone who has Macbook, 24'' iMac and Mac Pro I can attest that Mac Pro does make the whole computing experience better. Coupled with 30'' screen, it's a joy to use since you rarely wait for the computer in your normal workflow (software development and image processing).
Seriously, what you are describing already exists, you are just not happy with the price.
I don't get it. People keep clamoring for desktop computer from Apple for a price between Mini and Pro. But there is iMac.
iMac is not upgradable perhaps, but then keep asking Apple to make it upgradable, rather than for a brand new product.
Most Mac users would not bother with upgrades themselves anyway, and that is the primary market for Apple. People who want the thing to just work. And for the most part they are getting exactly that.
I hate the glossy screens. I agree that they are horrible for any kind of work let alone color critical work.
But on the other hand, who does color critical work on a laptop anyway? I mean if you really care about color accuracy, you will have one of those wide gamut screens, with hardware calibration built in and above all, you will have controlled environment for your work.
Even the greatest screen will make you produce inconsistent results if you will have different color temperature in your work environment at different times of day (night, sunny, artificial lights etc).
You must take complete control of your light sources and adjust the temperature of the light to a pre-set standard, then start worrying about the screen.
Managing light in your work environment is probably more costly than the really good screens.
Cool. But you don't have to wait for OS X to flash the window and bring it forward. You can press Expose key again with the mouse pointer and dragged file over it, and that window will be brought forward, then just release the file dragged.
Also, I can drag a file to the taskbar item of the window that I want to drop it in, when the window gets focus I drop the file on the window. Can you do something like that with Expose? I tried it on my Macbook Pro and it didn't work but maybe there's a secret key combo?
Yes, you can do that with expose. You can even start dragging, and in the middle of the drag press expose key and drop it while windows are exposed.
Yes, the key symbols are confusing to a lot of people apparently (but they sort of make sense once you think about it.)
I think most people have issue with Alt (option) key symbol.
But how well does the taskbar solution scale? Win XP added grouping of taskbar buttons (which I turn off of course).
If you have 10 - 15 other apps on a 21'' screen they all scrunch and you either have to open apps in certain order ( which is what I do always on Win XP), or hover over the taskbar button to see tooltip of what the heck is there.
Having dual monitors doesn't help either.
I agree that expose is perhaps not discoverable (but you do have a button for it on the keyboard so inquisitive users might press it:D).
Well they only seem that way. If I have 5 firefox windows, and I'm reading something in one of them, then typing CMD+` to switch between them is usually very fast if my hands are on the keyboard.
If my hand is on the mouse, side mouse buttons bring expose and then I click on the one I want. Doesn't get simpler or faster than that.
Oh I see. Well there are 3 solutions to that problem:
1. Use expose (you can launch expose in 3 ways, dedicated expose key on the keyboard, mouse hotkey, or hot corner). Once Expose is active, use tab key or arrow keys to select your application window. Or click on it. If the application that has multiple windows open has focus, then just click CMD+Expose key to "expose" only the windows of that application, ignoring others.
2. Right click (or option click if you don't like right clicking) on the application's icon in the dock and select one of the windows it has open).
3. Use CMD+Tab (or `) to switch to the app. Then Use CMD+` to move between multiple windows of the same application.
Which method you use depends on where your hands are (keyboard or mouse).
The semantics of the dock are still counter-intuitive to me and showstoppers like mandatory click-to-raise or the absurd "magic titlebar" ultimately made me go back to my linux desktop.
You do not have to click on application icon in the doc to "raise" it.
You can CMD+Tab to it, then press Option and release CMD to bring it up (even if the app does have any window open in which case a new one will be created).
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C) "Objective-C, like Smalltalk, can use dynamic typing: an object can be sent a message that is not specified in its interface. This can allow for increased flexibility â" in Objective-C an object can "capture" this message, and depending on the object, can send the message off again to a different object (who can respond to the message correctly and appropriately, or likewise send the message on again). This behavior is known as message forwarding or delegation (see below). Alternatively, an error handler can be used instead, in case the message cannot be forwarded. If the object does not forward the message, handle the error, or respond to it, a runtime error occurs."
So it would appear that calling a method (i.e. sending a message) on an object that does not have a method should blow up during runtime ?
Slashdot Mirror
and nothing happened. I feel so felt out and disappointed now.
yes. It started happening a long time ago :D.
Well how precise does it have to be really? All they have to do is launch one in the general direction of North America.
That's not what I'm talking about. Of course you can become root (or have a root shell). What I'm saying is you can not boot the computer and have root account as one of the options for you to log in as and run everything as root.
Also, one could argue that contents of /Applications are not system.
"System" lives in /System and in /Library and important parts in /usr
Of course you could go through this procedure to enable root account logins:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1528
But most OS X users do not do that. I certainly have not, I do all my limited admin tasks by temporarily becoming root with sudo (and very very rarely with root shell).
Well it's not that simple. On OS X for example you can be an administrator and you still can't delete system files. You need to be root to do that. Also, in OS X you can not create "root account", and login into your session as root. It is simply not allowed and impossible to do. On Linux you can.
So for that hypothetical admin user to delete everything he would have to first become root (either by doing sudo, or starting a root shell, being authenticated first) and then executing rm -rf /
So, to recap, being an Administrator and just executing rm -rf / will not delete system files.
Several (non-technical and one anti-technical :D) people in my family have switched to OS X and they all like it and don't miss a thing.
You may not find exact same apps on OS X, but you can find often better apps to do the same things.
For most people, office is a major stumbling block. MS Office 2008 for Mac is enough for most people, but there are others.
Photoshop is there, Final Cut (pro or non-pro) are there for video. RAW image processing apps are available for most cameras (from manufacturers apart from Photoshop).
Mathematica and Maple are there for technical and engineering students, and everything else for software developers is included with every mac.
I don't miss anything from my windows world. As a matter of fact I have more apps available to me.
Sounds to me like opposite. You care very much that you are running Windows XP :D. If I were you I would be evaluating alternative OSes now. I was in the same situation a year ago, and I decided to make a costly switch to OS X. Apart from hardware (those Mac Pros are not cheap), I had to re-purchase some of my software as well. But in the end it was worth it, and now I look at my Windows days as dark ages of computing.
Do those $550 make that big of a difference? Just get a mac pro then, and have a much much better computing experience.
As someone who has Macbook, 24'' iMac and Mac Pro I can attest that Mac Pro does make the whole computing experience better. Coupled with 30'' screen, it's a joy to use since you rarely wait for the computer in your normal workflow (software development and image processing).
Seriously, what you are describing already exists, you are just not happy with the price.
There is a setting in the keyboard options to turn predictive typing off (called Auto correction).
I don't get it. People keep clamoring for desktop computer from Apple for a price between Mini and Pro. But there is iMac.
iMac is not upgradable perhaps, but then keep asking Apple to make it upgradable, rather than for a brand new product.
Most Mac users would not bother with upgrades themselves anyway, and that is the primary market for Apple. People who want the thing to just work. And for the most part they are getting exactly that.
I don't understand the obsession with brightness. Today's screens are about 3 times brighter than what they should be or what is good for you.
As a matter of fact you can guarantee that screen that appears very bright is not color accurate.
some screens are just so bad that you can't profile and adjust them to be precise.
I hate the glossy screens. I agree that they are horrible for any kind of work let alone color critical work.
But on the other hand, who does color critical work on a laptop anyway? I mean if you really care about color accuracy, you will have one of those wide gamut screens, with hardware calibration built in and above all, you will have controlled environment for your work.
Even the greatest screen will make you produce inconsistent results if you will have different color temperature in your work environment at different times of day (night, sunny, artificial lights etc).
You must take complete control of your light sources and adjust the temperature of the light to a pre-set standard, then start worrying about the screen.
Managing light in your work environment is probably more costly than the really good screens.
Cool. But you don't have to wait for OS X to flash the window and bring it forward. You can press Expose key again with the mouse pointer and dragged file over it, and that window will be brought forward, then just release the file dragged.
It saves a second :D.
Also, I can drag a file to the taskbar item of the window that I want to drop it in, when the window gets focus I drop the file on the window. Can you do something like that with Expose? I tried it on my Macbook Pro and it didn't work but maybe there's a secret key combo?
Yes, you can do that with expose. You can even start dragging, and in the middle of the drag press expose key and drop it while windows are exposed.
Yes, the key symbols are confusing to a lot of people apparently (but they sort of make sense once you think about it.)
I think most people have issue with Alt (option) key symbol.
But how well does the taskbar solution scale? Win XP added grouping of taskbar buttons (which I turn off of course).
If you have 10 - 15 other apps on a 21'' screen they all scrunch and you either have to open apps in certain order ( which is what I do always on Win XP), or hover over the taskbar button to see tooltip of what the heck is there.
Having dual monitors doesn't help either.
I agree that expose is perhaps not discoverable (but you do have a button for it on the keyboard so inquisitive users might press it :D).
Well they only seem that way. If I have 5 firefox windows, and I'm reading something in one of them, then typing CMD+` to switch between them is usually very fast if my hands are on the keyboard.
If my hand is on the mouse, side mouse buttons bring expose and then I click on the one I want. Doesn't get simpler or faster than that.
Oh I see. Well there are 3 solutions to that problem:
1. Use expose (you can launch expose in 3 ways, dedicated expose key on the keyboard, mouse hotkey, or hot corner). Once Expose is active, use tab key or arrow keys to select your application window. Or click on it. If the application that has multiple windows open has focus, then just click CMD+Expose key to "expose" only the windows of that application, ignoring others.
2. Right click (or option click if you don't like right clicking) on the application's icon in the dock and select one of the windows it has open).
3. Use CMD+Tab (or `) to switch to the app. Then Use CMD+` to move between multiple windows of the same application.
Which method you use depends on where your hands are (keyboard or mouse).
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
I don't know about that. If an app is running, its icon will be in the doc and it will have blue dot under it.
If you CMD+Tab you will get a list of all apps running as well.
UNIX processes and daemons will not be there of course, but that's why you have terminal and ps (or even activity monitor).
In OS X, when a window is not minimized, there is no representation of it in the dock. How does that make sense? How is it useful?
That's simply not true. Each active app appears in the doc (even if it has no windows open).
The semantics of the dock are still counter-intuitive to me and showstoppers like mandatory click-to-raise or the absurd "magic titlebar" ultimately made me go back to my linux desktop.
You do not have to click on application icon in the doc to "raise" it.
You can CMD+Tab to it, then press Option and release CMD to bring it up (even if the app does have any window open in which case a new one will be created).
I'm in the same boat. I would never ever go back to windows (and I was paid to develop software for windows).
are you saying that this isn't correct, that in OS X i would only be able to view the workspace of a single application at any given time?
No, OS X works exactly the way you described it in the previous paragraph, i.e. you can layer documents of different apps.
They will just clone him and harvest the liver. Or perhaps it would be better to let the clone take over.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C)
"Objective-C, like Smalltalk, can use dynamic typing: an object can be sent a message that is not specified in its interface. This can allow for increased flexibility â" in Objective-C an object can "capture" this message, and depending on the object, can send the message off again to a different object (who can respond to the message correctly and appropriately, or likewise send the message on again). This behavior is known as message forwarding or delegation (see below). Alternatively, an error handler can be used instead, in case the message cannot be forwarded. If the object does not forward the message, handle the error, or respond to it, a runtime error occurs."
So it would appear that calling a method (i.e. sending a message) on an object that does not have a method should blow up during runtime ?