> I'm very interested in helping motivate a
> movement within the GNU/Linux community
> to focus on design from the outside-in,
> starting with a detailed specification for a GUI
> and human interface guidelines, and then
> working backward to technical implementation.
This is exactly what ESR criticized Mac developers for doing when he gave the recent MacHack Conference keynote address. He actually told them they spend too much time on human interface. Apparently, the keynote went hours past midnight and involved some standing on chairs and shouting. Must have been great.
> Context menus: A very nice thing. Something M$
> got right.
It's not missing... context menus have been on Mac OS for years, and apps add their own features to the context menus with plug-ins.
> C'mon, Apple... 2 and 3 button mice have
> been around for years
You can use ANY USB mouse with a Mac, regardless of the number of buttons, scrollers, whatever. USB Overdrive is a generic USB driver on the Mac that handles any joystick or mouse, without the need to even install the supplied driver (if there is one).
If you've ever navigated an OS with a pen, you surely can appreciate how cool it is that the OS only requires one point and one click (tap with a pen) to get things done. One button on a notebook palmrest is also a lot easier than two, especially for lefties (the two buttons on many PC notebooks are different sizes, so the right one is a sad candidate as a main button).
Adding more standard buttons to Macs now doesn't make sense, when computers are moving out of the box-with-a-mouse-and-keyboard-attached thing and into new form factors. Only a small (but fairly vocal) minority adds a two-button mouse to their Mac, and it costs them $20 and they get to pick their favorite mouse. I added one to my first Mac after being a Windows user, and then later realized I just didn't need the second button in Mac OS. I also found that one button took away any distraction that the mouse could provide. I mean, I scroll with the cursor keys.
> Menubars incorporated in windows: makes more
> sense than a single bar at the top
This is a feature, not a bug. The File menu is in the same place on every app I use, and you can't overshoot the menubar. This makes it very, very fast once you log an hour or two on a Mac. Muscle memory kicks in and you use the menus without thinking about "using menus". No choosing, no aiming. You can't access menus on background apps on Windows, so why look at them all the time?
Also, if you're using a drawing tablet (like a huge number of Mac users) which corresponds 1:1 to the display, you get a "virtual menubar" across the top of your tablet, so you can draw and then access menus quite easily from your tablet, without needing to pick up a mouse or go to the keyboard. I used to mark where the File menu is on my tablet, but I stopped needing to (muscle memory again). Very, very fast. The slowest part of the computer is the user, and if you can get them doing something intuitively, or from muscle memory, you've sped them up considerably. Especially when many people seem to actually lose IQ points when they are in front of a computer.
> where half the time you can't tell which application
> is currently in focus, due to ambiguities.
It's true that knowing which app you're in at any particular time is a weak point of the current Mac OS (at least for beginners), but in Mac OS X, the app's icon moves to the left, next to the File menu, and can optionally be displayed as the app's name. This makes it much clearer who owns the menubar at any one time. Also, Mac OS X has a new window stacking model, where you simply change to another window without worrying what app owns it, and the menus and tools that you need just show up. This means, for example, that you can easily place a Photoshop document next to a Dreamweaver document (in stacking order), while other Photoshop and Dreamweaver documents hang out in the background until you specifically call for them (they don't just follow the rest of the documents from their app). In other words, it's document-centric, not app-centric. The menubar makes even more sense with this model (inherited from NeXTSTEP).
Apple put a lot of research into their GUI. Things that seem strange at first turn out to be excellent features that you soon find yourself not being able to do without. A Slashdot reader criticized the new Apple mouse recently because he couldn't believe how short the cable was, but the mouse port on Macs is on the keyboard... it doesn't need to be long.
The one-button mouse and the one menubar are a big part of the reason why people describe using a Mac as being "transparent" or "it doesn't get in my way".
> Actually, the Enlightenment window manager
> has used transparency for some time
So has Mac OS, of course. When you drag an icon, for example, it turns translucent until you let it go. Mac OS icons are 32-bit images and have been for some time.
Mac OS X has made it a real design feature, though, building it into the graphics system at the lowest level. The display is layered, with every pixel being shared by all apps, so that transparency just happens, rather than it being an effect that's plastered on by one app.
> Apple would be quite dumb if they hadn't stolen
> most of their ideas from others.
> If you have linux and you want a new desktop
> you need only change the pulldown menu in XDM
You do know that Apple invented pull-down menus, right?
Yeah... NT Pro Tools is only supported on one $4000 machine from IBM... any other machine and you're on your own with no support. I can't see the point except perhaps to give them another vendor (when Apple's future was in doubt).
My studio is the same... a Mac, Pro Tools, and a bunch of software synths and effects. Unbelievably cheap and powerful.
I've read estimates that 4 out of 5 Macs ever sold is still running. You can surf the Web with a 1992 Mac.
Market share is a poor measure of viability in an industry that is explosively expanding. You could maintain the same market share for a few years but your business might have doubled.
> The claim that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop"
> is completely unfounded. Some people aren't ready
> for Linux, but there's lots of proof that Linux is a
> great desktop OS.
If you draw a map on a party invitation and only a few cartographers show up to your party, then who is to blame? It seems to me that many Linux users would blame the people who didn't make it for not being better map readers, or taking the time to become better map readers, just so they could come to your party. On the Mac, it is a point of pride - indeed, the platform's raison d'etre - to make maps for people who are not map makers, so that people who have Other Jobs can still come to the party. Mac users would blame YOU for your lousy map, and tell you to get to work on it until it serves its purpose: guide ALL of your invitees to your house. Yes, it's actually hard work to simplify something and make it work for anybody. Lots easier to make a map only for map makers... then you are free to create the Uber-map... the holiest and most mappish map that ever existed... geek nirvana... Linux.
I have a few friends who replaced Windows boxes with Macs in the past year. All they did with their Windows computers was Web, email, and Microsoft Word once in a while. They could have been quite happy with a Windows replacement that was just more stable and a bit easier to use. This seems to be the non-geek user that Linux is aiming straight for, and is probably not that far from satisfying. Thing is, though... since my friends got their Macs, they all make desktop movies, they all do some kind of digital photography and image manipulation, they made their own Web sites, they install their own software, they even troubleshoot the occassional conflict all on their own (and I don't get any more help-me calls, just calls saying "thanks for recommending the Mac"). These people feel liberated from computers in general. They have their own Personal Computer and they maintain it and use it for all kinds of things they never before dreamed of. They have been spoiled by the Mac, and they have stopped being the Web, email and word processing Linux customer.
This is why it's important for Linux advocates to claim the "#1 alternative to Windows" title, so that people who are fed up with Windows don't get a Mac. Once they go to a Mac, they may start to demand Mac features that Linux is not ready for yet. Linux is definitely much closer to competing with Windows feature-for-feature than competing with the Mac (at what they're each good at... read that again: at what they're each good at).
> photoshop may run slightly better on macos
> than windows, maybe, i'm not sure,
Yes. It started on a Mac and is still better there. Even if you had no other reason, the fact that the Mac version uses thumbnails of your file as the file's icon is enough to make the Mac version better. This is really a feature of Mac OS, though. The Photoshop interface is the Mac interface: single document windows, panels, etc. Just being able to drag out any kind of clipping and store them on the desktop... I couldn't work without that.
> will Photoshop be available for OS X?
Yes. Mac OS X is just Mac OS 10, which replaces Mac OS 9, just like Mac OS 9 replaced Mac OS 8. Most Mac apps will run just fine unmodified, but current apps will all be updated to take advantage of new features.
> if so, wouldn't that mean that photoshop has
> been/will be ported to BSD?
No. Photoshop 6 is a Mac application written to the Carbon API, and doesn't use the BSD API. Part of the reason for this is that it's easy to port from the Macintosh Classic API to the new Carbon one, and your application package will run on Mac OS 8, 9, and X. Mac apps will remain Mac apps for a while... many take advantage of lots of Mac stuff like QuickTime, AppleScript, ColorSync. These are technologies that don't exist on Linux or BSD yet.
> how far away is a linux port then? does it exist?
Very, very far away. First you need better font handling, at the very least. Better printing. Lots of pro-quality scanners. Support for graphics tablets, if that's not there already. Then you need a GUI that makes artists happy, and lets them easily get at and manage the hundreds of files they use in a single workday.
I really don't think Macs and Linux truly compete against each other. I really can't imagine that there are many Macs being replaced with PC's running Linux. Macs and Linux are just plain used for different things... almost for opposite things. There are very few Mac web servers, and very few Linux creative workstations. I mean, I use a Mac, and I run Pro Tools, Cubase VST, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Director, and I use QuickTime a lot. I could switch to a Windows machine tomorrow (where all of those apps exist, although one or two of them are severely behind the Mac versions in features, especially Pro Tools), but I think switching to Linux for my work is a long way off.
A dumbish terminal with super low-cost hardware that surfs the Web and does email without crashing, though... I can imagine lots and lots of "Linux desktops" that do that very well. Those are Windows machines you're going to be replacing, though.
In short, I don't think a Linux desktop and a Mac are used for the same things.
USB 1.0 and 2.0 require that a computer is somewhere on the bus. FireWire does not. The idea behind FireWire is that you will eventually unpack your new home entertainment system and plug the DVD player into the TV with a FireWire cable, and the TV into the amp, and the amp into the speakers. Then you're done and they all talk to each other. If you screw up and go TV-amp-speakers-DVD it doesn't matter. Adding a device just means plugging the new one into the last one (until you reach 63). You also don't need to add a hub every four devices or whatever.
> Due to availability of devices?
That's another reason. Every DV camcorder and VCR on the planet has a 1394 port. It is THE way that DV moves between devices, including computers.
> I'm a big fan of Apple and their technology, but
> USB 2.0 looks more attractive than the FireWire.
> Apple should do something on this.
Not sure why you think USB 2.0 looks attractive, other than the fact that it speeds up the USB bus so you can print and scan at the same time. Things are more exciting in the FireWire world with the DV stuff and with 1394b coming out soon. Apple will add USB 2.0 to future Macs just like they added USB 1.0 to past Macs. They are very aggressively behind USB. In 1998, a Mac user could choose from a handful of ADB joysticks, but now you have your pick of any USB joystick in the industry, without even requiring a special Mac driver (USB Overdrive on the Mac just works with all keyboards, joysticks, and mouses). It's been fantastic for Apple.
>> Another hidden cost of AGP is that it
>> makes multi-monitor computing more difficult.
> If you mean compared to 2 pci video cards, then
> yes.
I think he means that using two identical graphics adapters is complicated by AGP because you have only one port. To go to multiple monitors on a PCI-only system, you just add a second identical card. It's no big deal to go with a two different cards if you're using the second display for tools or whatever, but if you're putting two 15" flat panels together to make one big display, then ideally they'd both be identical right from the adapter on up.
Parallel cables like SCSI are ridiculously more expensive than serial cables like FireWire, as well as being thicker and limited to shorter runs.
It kind of sucks that there are two 1394 connectors (6-pin and 4-pin) but the fact that a 6-pin to 4-pin 10 meter cable can be had for $6 eases the pain. SCSI cables are routinely $35 and up for short lengths.
It's probably easier to make serial cables hot-pluggable, as well.
This is not the first time they've done this for 5300/190 PowerBooks. Those models are from 1996 and have a seven year repair warranty, and probably have the free phone support for life that Apple used to offer (it's free Web support for life these days, of course). They probably did a detailed projection and realized it would cost them less money to take the machines as trade-ins than it would to repair them. People will buy new RAM and new software to go with the new machines, and you buy back the customer, too. Those machines are from an entirely different Apple, and I'm sure they're happy to migrate users forward.
They are also doing this for 25th Anniversary Macintosh models, which are from the exact same era. They have a couple of pretty common problems. Some units start buzzing softly through the speakers or something. Replacing a TAM with a Cube would make sense...
It's not just PowerBooks that you can get as trade-ins, either. You can apply the rebate against a PowerMac as well.
I have a 190 that they repaired for me, and it came back looking like a totally different machine, with a new housing. It looks so brand new that it would be a shame to trade it in, especially since I maxed out the RAM (40MB... how times have changed... you can put a gigabyte of RAM in the newest PowerBook).
> I'm surprised lowendmac.com didn't call put
> 667MHz instead (like Intel does); after all, the
> number 666 is quite evil.
It's an inside joke based on the fact that the Apple I sold for $666.
Re:Does Jobs bugger everything all to hell?
on
Looking Back At NeXT
·
· Score: 1
Steve Jobs
is a self-made billionaire
started the first personal computer company
rescued it 20 years later with all the tech and talent he had over at the NeXT
owns and heads the first movie studio to release a full-length computer-animated movie (and if you think the business side of a movie studio doesn't matter, you don't know the movie business)
has appeared on the cover of TIME magazine 3 or 4 times, including earlier this year.
Yeah, I can see why there are a few posters here who can call Steve Jobs "unsuccessful".
The only thing he's been involved with that could even pretend to be unsuccessful is NeXT, and that was only because it didn't meet its goals until years later (now) after being sold to another company. Most of the NeXT people are at Apple now, including the same CEO, and they're about to release a cube-shaped computer that runs Mac OS X. Financially, the sale to Apple kept it from being a money loser, didn't it? Where's the unsuccess? This guys one of the legends of Silicon Valley.
Is it because he's a chick magnet that so many Slashdotters like to rag on him? I mean, this guy's been involved in creating a user friendly Unix for 15 years (the NeXT project started at Apple where it was called "Big Mac" and left with Steve in 1985). It's only this past year or two that the idea of a user friendly Unix crossed over from insane to sane, and here Apple is with Mac OS X.
As far as giving all the credit for Apple to Woz, not to take anything away from the guy (he's a genius), but that's like saying the Rolling Stones are all Keith Richards and no Mick Jagger. I mean... come ON.
Fair enough that you get your dig at Unix, but take a look at the NeXT and Win95 GUI's side by side sometime. Microsoft's ability to be unoriginal is almost inspiring.
> If Jobs listened only to what people needed,
> maybe he would have incorporated actual
> multitasking - you know, making a system that a
> menu/dialog box cant crash.
That's what he did in 1988 or so with NeXT, what he was brought back to Apple in 1996 to do again, and what he's done with Mac OS X, which goes Public Beta in a month or so. I would argue that Steve Jobs has spent the last 15 years doing just what you say he would be doing if he thought about what people need.
The mouse cable is short because it's only meant to go from the mouse to either the left or the right side of the keyboard. Mac keyboards have always had a spot for the mouse and joystick to plug into.
> And could some one please explain to me how > otherwise rational people can have such feelings > for a corporation?
I'm going to take your question as sincere, because I used to wonder that same thing before I got a Mac.
The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good." They really are. There is nothing like the iBook, especially when paired with AirPort. The battery lasts forever, it runs cool, it's as rugged as a tank, and the display is beautiful. It's great stuff. There's nothing at all like iMovie except iMovie. A friend of mine who can barely run a browser and email without help made 20 minutes of rambling camcorder footage into a 5 minute QuickTime movie and put it on the Web for free with iTools. I didn't help and he didn't read the manual. Quiet machines with no fans... it's good stuff.
The long answer is that I get at least twice as much work done on my Mac than I did on the Windows machine it replaced, and I enjoy the work much, much more. My work is better as well... the apps are better, even though I'm using the same ones... the audio ones are more mature, for sure. Things the OS provides for free, like QuickTime or PostScript fonts or color management, make my work better. I spend less time and effort on stupid tasks that the computer should really know how to do, and more on creativity. Out of the box, the Mac knows how to display almost every image, audio, or video file type you can find (and a freeware called SoundApp does all of the other audio types). When I want to add hardware, it's always plug and play and then it works (I've added two PCI cards, 4 or 5 FireWire devices, 10 USB devices, 256MB of RAM and over 200GB of hard drive space without having to do more than drag a driver file into the System folder and restart). Formatting a disk takes three seconds. I like recording my actions as AppleScripts instead of writing batch files. You can move apps around (or rename them!) and they still work. You learn a few key shortcuts and you're rewarded by being able to use them in all of your apps. You don't get a daily dose of "you're stupid" when you try something that "should" work but doesn't.
I messed around with computers in the old days, but I don't have time for that now. When I need more hard drive space I just plug on a drive. It's not interesting to me to play Jerry Pournelle anymore. I don't want to worry about which drive letter Windows thinks is the CD-ROM today, or wonder if I can really drag an image from one app to another. I just want it to work, so I feel gratitude towards Apple for selling me a system that does work for about 10% more than a generic PC. You can't do the kind of work I do under Linux or BSD, so it's Mac or Windows. I LOVE not having to use Windows anymore, just like lots of Linux users love not having to use Windows anymore. How can you put a price on that?
The only really bad thing you can say about the Mac is that one app can crash and take down another and/or the whole system. But they're going to go public beta with the version that fixes that in September or so, and they'll put it out for real early in 2001, so the time for complaining about that is long past.
> willing to admit that Apple is capable of and > has actually shipped bad product in the past?
Oh, sure... so what? I only buy the good ones. It really isn't a bunch of zombies buying whatever Apple makes. Lots of people make a Mac last for three or four years, so they don't buy unless the new one is really good. Apple had a near-death experience a while back before NeXT bought them (ha ha) but their shit is just great now. Compare their product line from 1996 with what's expected in 2001. It's like a whole new company, and that's the point. A PowerMac G4 Cube with a Cinema Display and Mac OS X is a hell of a thing.
You can do all the context menu stuff by dragging:
To save an image, drag it from the browser window to your desktop (or another folder). IE 5+ even makes a preview icon on the file if you do this.
To save the target of a link, drag the link to the desktop (or another folder).
To add a link to your Favorites, drag the link to the Favorites tab of the Explorer bar in IE, or drag the link to the little Bookmark icon in Netscape.
A Command+click in IE 5 will open a link in a new window, which is very quick and useful, and faster than choosing a context menu item. I use that all the time.
Do you get that this mouse was made for inclusion on desktop Macs? All Macintosh keyboards have two USB ports (old keyboards have ADB), one on each side of the keyboard, for a leftie or rightie to plug in their mouse, so the cable only needs to go from the mouse to the keyboard.
PowerBooks have USB on the back, and iBooks only on the left hand side (good for lefties, but right handers would need an extension). Making the mouse work for the portables would require that all the desktop users have a couple of extra feet of cable getting in their way (the whole mouse cable sits on your desk, because it only goes to the keyboard). It's to Apple's credit that they didn't do this, especially when USB extension cables are like $3 each and you can choose the right length. This is a mouse for their desktop machines.
> why oh why do people still buy this crap?!?
Well... either it's not crap or there are a lot of people whose computing needs are not met by homemade Linux boxes, or both.
> Any modern mouse needs a wheel. I got so used > to scrolling pages (code, web pages, email) with > my index finger, I feel positively handicapped when > a mouse doesn't have a wheel.
Wheels aren't standard even on PC mouses, and some people feel that they're not ergonomic (sore fingers). The Apple mouse is just the one they include with systems. The same third-party scroller mouses that you can use on the PC are used on the Mac (USB ones, anyway).
> There are tons of computing activities that can be > done very efficiently single-handedly with a context > menu, my favorite being browsing the web and > right-clicking on pictures to save them.
On the Mac, this can also be done one-handed. You drag pictures from the browser window to your desktop (or another folder) and the file appears there (its icon is even a little preview of the picture). This works in Netscape or IE. Alternatively, if you do want a context menu in a browser, you can click-and-hold (click and then hold the button down for a second) and the context menu appears.
> While Sun's optical mouse was primitive by the new > standards, it WAS an optical mouse. If all Apple > claims is that they are the first to bundle an > OPTICAL mouse, they're plain wrong, period. > They have to qualify that statement to be correct.
How about if they qualified "the first to bundle an optical mouse" with the phrase "on ALL of their systems"? That is actually what they said. Note the "all". Apple no longer sells or bundles ball-mice. I would say that's a point worth mentioning.
> Let's give Microsoft credit for that technology, shall > we?
Well, MS will be happy to take it, as usual. But they (once again) didn't invent it.
> I'm sure someone will come out and claim that it > wasn't really Microsoft who developod the > technology (probably Xerox, right?). Even if that > were true, they marketed the first commercially > available product, so Apple is an also-ran in any case.
It's funny that you slag Apple with the Xerox remark, and then say that MS should get credit for the optical mouse since they "marketed the first commercially available product" even if they didn't invent it (which they didn't). Do you understand that the first commercially available mouse was from Apple? Do you understand that the first commercially available GUI was from Apple? Do you get that they invented the pull-down menu, overlapping windows, drag-and-drop, the File/Edit/View convention, the Clipboard, and the list goes on? Not to slag the Xerox contribution, but have you actually used an Alto? It's amazing for the '70's, but the Mac is not a rip-off of it. Apple did a lot of work between when they bought the initial research from Xerox in 1979 or so and when they released the Lisa in 1983.
> If you design something easy enough for idiots > to use, only idiots will use it.
People said this about Apple's mouse in 1984, simply because it was a mouse and the computer had a GUI. I guess it could be seen as a kind of progress that you're saying it just because you don't think the mouse has enough buttons.
> Actually, Windows is designed with one button > in mind; it's just more efficient to use the second > button. You can always get properties by selecting > and then going to the menu (just like the Mac).
But there is no menu on the Desktop in Windows. If you're not running Windows Explorer, you need a right-click to make a new folder. On the Mac, the menu is there so you can go File > New or you can use the key shortcut Command+N. Also, you can have multiple menubars in Windows, and always in different places on the display, so an under-the-cursor menu makes sense there. It doesn't make as much sense in Mac OS, where the menubar itself is context-sensitive and always in same place.
> One way Windows is superior to the Mac however > is that all applications can be used without a > mouse. One way the Mac really stinks is in the > area of keyboard traversal. Sometimes it's much > more efficient to be able to not have to reach for > the mouse. Yes, some Mac applications have > keyboard shortcuts for common functions, but > Windows has it built into the low-level GUI.
I'm not sure what the "low-level GUI" is in Windows, but the Mac has always had a GUI, and it didn't inherit a bunch of character-based apps from somewhere else, either. The Mac UI has consistent shortcuts for common things like File > New/Open/Save/Print/Quit and Edit > Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste/Select All. These shortcuts are the same everywhere, and they're all the Command modifier key plus one letter, such as Command+Q for quitting an app. You can also use an app called ResEdit (downloaded from Apple) to change the key shortcuts in Mac apps to whatever you want.
The only key shortcut thing that Windows is better at is forgoing the mouse completely and selecting a menu item with the ALT key. Is this popular, though? There was a time in Windows 3.0 days that you didn't need a mouse at all to use Windows, so the ALT key menu feature is there for that. I'd rather have a consistent way to quit an app, or close a window, or use the Find command. I do those things in Mac OS all day long almost without thinking because the key shortcuts are so consistent.
How about "no moving parts", I guess. Once you get to no moving parts (like these new optical mouses) you increase reliability and decrease production costs (in the long term). These mouses don't require a mouse pad, either.
Trackballs make sense on paper, but for most people, the mouse is still better.
> I tend to follow this stuff too, and I have yet to > see any Mac reviews give anything less than 5 > STARS ***** A MUST BUY. It must happen, > but the vast majority that I see are sycophantic > brown-nosings.
First, I've seen plenty of bad reviews for Apple products, even in Macworld, or MacAddict, or any other mag with "Mac" in the title. Apple have been making good stuff lately, and the good reviews and high sales reflect that. Even so, they got scorn for the puck mouse, for the original iBook with 32MB of RAM, for introducing an all-USB iMac when there were three USB devices in existence in the world. Apple have had periods of making worse stuff than today, though. There are particular models (especially one or two Performas and PowerBooks) that came and went in the space of a few months because reviewers panned them completely.
Second, the Windows and Linux magazines are at least as biased as those that cover the Mac platform. All journalism has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
> I'm very interested in helping motivate a
> movement within the GNU/Linux community
> to focus on design from the outside-in,
> starting with a detailed specification for a GUI
> and human interface guidelines, and then
> working backward to technical implementation.
This is exactly what ESR criticized Mac developers for doing when he gave the recent MacHack Conference keynote address. He actually told them they spend too much time on human interface. Apparently, the keynote went hours past midnight and involved some standing on chairs and shouting. Must have been great.
> Key features missing from the MacOS GUI:
... context menus have been on Mac OS for years, and apps add their own features to the context menus with plug-ins.
... it doesn't need to be long.
> Context menus: A very nice thing. Something M$
> got right.
It's not missing
> C'mon, Apple... 2 and 3 button mice have
> been around for years
You can use ANY USB mouse with a Mac, regardless of the number of buttons, scrollers, whatever. USB Overdrive is a generic USB driver on the Mac that handles any joystick or mouse, without the need to even install the supplied driver (if there is one).
If you've ever navigated an OS with a pen, you surely can appreciate how cool it is that the OS only requires one point and one click (tap with a pen) to get things done. One button on a notebook palmrest is also a lot easier than two, especially for lefties (the two buttons on many PC notebooks are different sizes, so the right one is a sad candidate as a main button).
Adding more standard buttons to Macs now doesn't make sense, when computers are moving out of the box-with-a-mouse-and-keyboard-attached thing and into new form factors. Only a small (but fairly vocal) minority adds a two-button mouse to their Mac, and it costs them $20 and they get to pick their favorite mouse. I added one to my first Mac after being a Windows user, and then later realized I just didn't need the second button in Mac OS. I also found that one button took away any distraction that the mouse could provide. I mean, I scroll with the cursor keys.
> Menubars incorporated in windows: makes more
> sense than a single bar at the top
This is a feature, not a bug. The File menu is in the same place on every app I use, and you can't overshoot the menubar. This makes it very, very fast once you log an hour or two on a Mac. Muscle memory kicks in and you use the menus without thinking about "using menus". No choosing, no aiming. You can't access menus on background apps on Windows, so why look at them all the time?
Also, if you're using a drawing tablet (like a huge number of Mac users) which corresponds 1:1 to the display, you get a "virtual menubar" across the top of your tablet, so you can draw and then access menus quite easily from your tablet, without needing to pick up a mouse or go to the keyboard. I used to mark where the File menu is on my tablet, but I stopped needing to (muscle memory again). Very, very fast. The slowest part of the computer is the user, and if you can get them doing something intuitively, or from muscle memory, you've sped them up considerably. Especially when many people seem to actually lose IQ points when they are in front of a computer.
> where half the time you can't tell which application
> is currently in focus, due to ambiguities.
It's true that knowing which app you're in at any particular time is a weak point of the current Mac OS (at least for beginners), but in Mac OS X, the app's icon moves to the left, next to the File menu, and can optionally be displayed as the app's name. This makes it much clearer who owns the menubar at any one time. Also, Mac OS X has a new window stacking model, where you simply change to another window without worrying what app owns it, and the menus and tools that you need just show up. This means, for example, that you can easily place a Photoshop document next to a Dreamweaver document (in stacking order), while other Photoshop and Dreamweaver documents hang out in the background until you specifically call for them (they don't just follow the rest of the documents from their app). In other words, it's document-centric, not app-centric. The menubar makes even more sense with this model (inherited from NeXTSTEP).
Apple put a lot of research into their GUI. Things that seem strange at first turn out to be excellent features that you soon find yourself not being able to do without. A Slashdot reader criticized the new Apple mouse recently because he couldn't believe how short the cable was, but the mouse port on Macs is on the keyboard
The one-button mouse and the one menubar are a big part of the reason why people describe using a Mac as being "transparent" or "it doesn't get in my way".
> Actually, the Enlightenment window manager
> has used transparency for some time
So has Mac OS, of course. When you drag an icon, for example, it turns translucent until you let it go. Mac OS icons are 32-bit images and have been for some time.
Mac OS X has made it a real design feature, though, building it into the graphics system at the lowest level. The display is layered, with every pixel being shared by all apps, so that transparency just happens, rather than it being an effect that's plastered on by one app.
> Apple would be quite dumb if they hadn't stolen
> most of their ideas from others.
> If you have linux and you want a new desktop
> you need only change the pulldown menu in XDM
You do know that Apple invented pull-down menus, right?
Yeah ... NT Pro Tools is only supported on one $4000 machine from IBM ... any other machine and you're on your own with no support. I can't see the point except perhaps to give them another vendor (when Apple's future was in doubt).
... a Mac, Pro Tools, and a bunch of software synths and effects. Unbelievably cheap and powerful.
My studio is the same
In this transcript of a 1997 keynote speech, Steve Jobs says there are close to 25 million Macs.
q 4/970806.jobs.mwbos.html
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/speeches/1997/
I've read estimates that 4 out of 5 Macs ever sold is still running. You can surf the Web with a 1992 Mac.
Market share is a poor measure of viability in an industry that is explosively expanding. You could maintain the same market share for a few years but your business might have doubled.
> The claim that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop"
... then you are free to create the Uber-map ... the holiest and most mappish map that ever existed ... geek nirvana ... Linux.
... since my friends got their Macs, they all make desktop movies, they all do some kind of digital photography and image manipulation, they made their own Web sites, they install their own software, they even troubleshoot the occassional conflict all on their own (and I don't get any more help-me calls, just calls saying "thanks for recommending the Mac"). These people feel liberated from computers in general. They have their own Personal Computer and they maintain it and use it for all kinds of things they never before dreamed of. They have been spoiled by the Mac, and they have stopped being the Web, email and word processing Linux customer.
... read that again: at what they're each good at).
> is completely unfounded. Some people aren't ready
> for Linux, but there's lots of proof that Linux is a
> great desktop OS.
If you draw a map on a party invitation and only a few cartographers show up to your party, then who is to blame? It seems to me that many Linux users would blame the people who didn't make it for not being better map readers, or taking the time to become better map readers, just so they could come to your party. On the Mac, it is a point of pride - indeed, the platform's raison d'etre - to make maps for people who are not map makers, so that people who have Other Jobs can still come to the party. Mac users would blame YOU for your lousy map, and tell you to get to work on it until it serves its purpose: guide ALL of your invitees to your house. Yes, it's actually hard work to simplify something and make it work for anybody. Lots easier to make a map only for map makers
I have a few friends who replaced Windows boxes with Macs in the past year. All they did with their Windows computers was Web, email, and Microsoft Word once in a while. They could have been quite happy with a Windows replacement that was just more stable and a bit easier to use. This seems to be the non-geek user that Linux is aiming straight for, and is probably not that far from satisfying. Thing is, though
This is why it's important for Linux advocates to claim the "#1 alternative to Windows" title, so that people who are fed up with Windows don't get a Mac. Once they go to a Mac, they may start to demand Mac features that Linux is not ready for yet. Linux is definitely much closer to competing with Windows feature-for-feature than competing with the Mac (at what they're each good at
Yes, the Cube uses full-sized RAM and can take 1.5 GB in three slots, which is only one slot (and 512MB) less than what the G4 tower can handle.
PowerBooks take full-sized RAM, too.
> photoshop may run slightly better on macos
... I couldn't work without that.
... many take advantage of lots of Mac stuff like QuickTime, AppleScript, ColorSync. These are technologies that don't exist on Linux or BSD yet.
... almost for opposite things. There are very few Mac web servers, and very few Linux creative workstations. I mean, I use a Mac, and I run Pro Tools, Cubase VST, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Director, and I use QuickTime a lot. I could switch to a Windows machine tomorrow (where all of those apps exist, although one or two of them are severely behind the Mac versions in features, especially Pro Tools), but I think switching to Linux for my work is a long way off.
... I can imagine lots and lots of "Linux desktops" that do that very well. Those are Windows machines you're going to be replacing, though.
> than windows, maybe, i'm not sure,
Yes. It started on a Mac and is still better there. Even if you had no other reason, the fact that the Mac version uses thumbnails of your file as the file's icon is enough to make the Mac version better. This is really a feature of Mac OS, though. The Photoshop interface is the Mac interface: single document windows, panels, etc. Just being able to drag out any kind of clipping and store them on the desktop
> will Photoshop be available for OS X?
Yes. Mac OS X is just Mac OS 10, which replaces Mac OS 9, just like Mac OS 9 replaced Mac OS 8. Most Mac apps will run just fine unmodified, but current apps will all be updated to take advantage of new features.
> if so, wouldn't that mean that photoshop has
> been/will be ported to BSD?
No. Photoshop 6 is a Mac application written to the Carbon API, and doesn't use the BSD API. Part of the reason for this is that it's easy to port from the Macintosh Classic API to the new Carbon one, and your application package will run on Mac OS 8, 9, and X. Mac apps will remain Mac apps for a while
> how far away is a linux port then? does it exist?
Very, very far away. First you need better font handling, at the very least. Better printing. Lots of pro-quality scanners. Support for graphics tablets, if that's not there already. Then you need a GUI that makes artists happy, and lets them easily get at and manage the hundreds of files they use in a single workday.
I really don't think Macs and Linux truly compete against each other. I really can't imagine that there are many Macs being replaced with PC's running Linux. Macs and Linux are just plain used for different things
A dumbish terminal with super low-cost hardware that surfs the Web and does email without crashing, though
In short, I don't think a Linux desktop and a Mac are used for the same things.
> Well, but why USB 2.0 is not suitable for DV?
USB 1.0 and 2.0 require that a computer is somewhere on the bus. FireWire does not. The idea behind FireWire is that you will eventually unpack your new home entertainment system and plug the DVD player into the TV with a FireWire cable, and the TV into the amp, and the amp into the speakers. Then you're done and they all talk to each other. If you screw up and go TV-amp-speakers-DVD it doesn't matter. Adding a device just means plugging the new one into the last one (until you reach 63). You also don't need to add a hub every four devices or whatever.
> Due to availability of devices?
That's another reason. Every DV camcorder and VCR on the planet has a 1394 port. It is THE way that DV moves between devices, including computers.
> I'm a big fan of Apple and their technology, but
> USB 2.0 looks more attractive than the FireWire.
> Apple should do something on this.
Not sure why you think USB 2.0 looks attractive, other than the fact that it speeds up the USB bus so you can print and scan at the same time. Things are more exciting in the FireWire world with the DV stuff and with 1394b coming out soon. Apple will add USB 2.0 to future Macs just like they added USB 1.0 to past Macs. They are very aggressively behind USB. In 1998, a Mac user could choose from a handful of ADB joysticks, but now you have your pick of any USB joystick in the industry, without even requiring a special Mac driver (USB Overdrive on the Mac just works with all keyboards, joysticks, and mouses). It's been fantastic for Apple.
>> Another hidden cost of AGP is that it
>> makes multi-monitor computing more difficult.
> If you mean compared to 2 pci video cards, then
> yes.
I think he means that using two identical graphics adapters is complicated by AGP because you have only one port. To go to multiple monitors on a PCI-only system, you just add a second identical card. It's no big deal to go with a two different cards if you're using the second display for tools or whatever, but if you're putting two 15" flat panels together to make one big display, then ideally they'd both be identical right from the adapter on up.
Parallel cables like SCSI are ridiculously more expensive than serial cables like FireWire, as well as being thicker and limited to shorter runs.
It kind of sucks that there are two 1394 connectors (6-pin and 4-pin) but the fact that a 6-pin to 4-pin 10 meter cable can be had for $6 eases the pain. SCSI cables are routinely $35 and up for short lengths.
It's probably easier to make serial cables hot-pluggable, as well.
This is not the first time they've done this for 5300/190 PowerBooks. Those models are from 1996 and have a seven year repair warranty, and probably have the free phone support for life that Apple used to offer (it's free Web support for life these days, of course). They probably did a detailed projection and realized it would cost them less money to take the machines as trade-ins than it would to repair them. People will buy new RAM and new software to go with the new machines, and you buy back the customer, too. Those machines are from an entirely different Apple, and I'm sure they're happy to migrate users forward.
...
... how times have changed ... you can put a gigabyte of RAM in the newest PowerBook).
They are also doing this for 25th Anniversary Macintosh models, which are from the exact same era. They have a couple of pretty common problems. Some units start buzzing softly through the speakers or something. Replacing a TAM with a Cube would make sense
It's not just PowerBooks that you can get as trade-ins, either. You can apply the rebate against a PowerMac as well.
I have a 190 that they repaired for me, and it came back looking like a totally different machine, with a new housing. It looks so brand new that it would be a shame to trade it in, especially since I maxed out the RAM (40MB
> I'm surprised lowendmac.com didn't call put
> 667MHz instead (like Intel does); after all, the
> number 666 is quite evil.
It's an inside joke based on the fact that the Apple I sold for $666.
Steve Jobs
... come ON.
is a self-made billionaire
started the first personal computer company
rescued it 20 years later with all the tech and talent he had over at the NeXT
owns and heads the first movie studio to release a full-length computer-animated movie (and if you think the business side of a movie studio doesn't matter, you don't know the movie business)
has appeared on the cover of TIME magazine 3 or 4 times, including earlier this year.
Yeah, I can see why there are a few posters here who can call Steve Jobs "unsuccessful".
The only thing he's been involved with that could even pretend to be unsuccessful is NeXT, and that was only because it didn't meet its goals until years later (now) after being sold to another company. Most of the NeXT people are at Apple now, including the same CEO, and they're about to release a cube-shaped computer that runs Mac OS X. Financially, the sale to Apple kept it from being a money loser, didn't it? Where's the unsuccess? This guys one of the legends of Silicon Valley.
Is it because he's a chick magnet that so many Slashdotters like to rag on him? I mean, this guy's been involved in creating a user friendly Unix for 15 years (the NeXT project started at Apple where it was called "Big Mac" and left with Steve in 1985). It's only this past year or two that the idea of a user friendly Unix crossed over from insane to sane, and here Apple is with Mac OS X.
As far as giving all the credit for Apple to Woz, not to take anything away from the guy (he's a genius), but that's like saying the Rolling Stones are all Keith Richards and no Mick Jagger. I mean
Fair enough that you get your dig at Unix, but take a look at the NeXT and Win95 GUI's side by side sometime. Microsoft's ability to be unoriginal is almost inspiring.
> If Jobs listened only to what people needed,
> maybe he would have incorporated actual
> multitasking - you know, making a system that a
> menu/dialog box cant crash.
That's what he did in 1988 or so with NeXT, what he was brought back to Apple in 1996 to do again, and what he's done with Mac OS X, which goes Public Beta in a month or so. I would argue that Steve Jobs has spent the last 15 years doing just what you say he would be doing if he thought about what people need.
The mouse cable is short because it's only meant to go from the mouse to either the left or the right side of the keyboard. Mac keyboards have always had a spot for the mouse and joystick to plug into.
... it's good stuff.
... the apps are better, even though I'm using the same ones ... the audio ones are more mature, for sure. Things the OS provides for free, like QuickTime or PostScript fonts or color management, make my work better. I spend less time and effort on stupid tasks that the computer should really know how to do, and more on creativity. Out of the box, the Mac knows how to display almost every image, audio, or video file type you can find (and a freeware called SoundApp does all of the other audio types). When I want to add hardware, it's always plug and play and then it works (I've added two PCI cards, 4 or 5 FireWire devices, 10 USB devices, 256MB of RAM and over 200GB of hard drive space without having to do more than drag a driver file into the System folder and restart). Formatting a disk takes three seconds. I like recording my actions as AppleScripts instead of writing batch files. You can move apps around (or rename them!) and they still work. You learn a few key shortcuts and you're rewarded by being able to use them in all of your apps. You don't get a daily dose of "you're stupid" when you try something that "should" work but doesn't.
... so what? I only buy the good ones. It really isn't a bunch of zombies buying whatever Apple makes. Lots of people make a Mac last for three or four years, so they don't buy unless the new one is really good. Apple had a near-death experience a while back before NeXT bought them (ha ha) but their shit is just great now. Compare their product line from 1996 with what's expected in 2001. It's like a whole new company, and that's the point. A PowerMac G4 Cube with a Cinema Display and Mac OS X is a hell of a thing.
> And could some one please explain to me how
> otherwise rational people can have such feelings
> for a corporation?
I'm going to take your question as sincere, because I used to wonder that same thing before I got a Mac.
The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good." They really are. There is nothing like the iBook, especially when paired with AirPort. The battery lasts forever, it runs cool, it's as rugged as a tank, and the display is beautiful. It's great stuff. There's nothing at all like iMovie except iMovie. A friend of mine who can barely run a browser and email without help made 20 minutes of rambling camcorder footage into a 5 minute QuickTime movie and put it on the Web for free with iTools. I didn't help and he didn't read the manual. Quiet machines with no fans
The long answer is that I get at least twice as much work done on my Mac than I did on the Windows machine it replaced, and I enjoy the work much, much more. My work is better as well
I messed around with computers in the old days, but I don't have time for that now. When I need more hard drive space I just plug on a drive. It's not interesting to me to play Jerry Pournelle anymore. I don't want to worry about which drive letter Windows thinks is the CD-ROM today, or wonder if I can really drag an image from one app to another. I just want it to work, so I feel gratitude towards Apple for selling me a system that does work for about 10% more than a generic PC. You can't do the kind of work I do under Linux or BSD, so it's Mac or Windows. I LOVE not having to use Windows anymore, just like lots of Linux users love not having to use Windows anymore. How can you put a price on that?
The only really bad thing you can say about the Mac is that one app can crash and take down another and/or the whole system. But they're going to go public beta with the version that fixes that in September or so, and they'll put it out for real early in 2001, so the time for complaining about that is long past.
> willing to admit that Apple is capable of and
> has actually shipped bad product in the past?
Oh, sure
You can do all the context menu stuff by dragging:
A Command+click in IE 5 will open a link in a new window, which is very quick and useful, and faster than choosing a context menu item. I use that all the time.
Do you get that this mouse was made for inclusion on desktop Macs? All Macintosh keyboards have two USB ports (old keyboards have ADB), one on each side of the keyboard, for a leftie or rightie to plug in their mouse, so the cable only needs to go from the mouse to the keyboard.
... either it's not crap or there are a lot of people whose computing needs are not met by homemade Linux boxes, or both.
PowerBooks have USB on the back, and iBooks only on the left hand side (good for lefties, but right handers would need an extension). Making the mouse work for the portables would require that all the desktop users have a couple of extra feet of cable getting in their way (the whole mouse cable sits on your desk, because it only goes to the keyboard). It's to Apple's credit that they didn't do this, especially when USB extension cables are like $3 each and you can choose the right length. This is a mouse for their desktop machines.
> why oh why do people still buy this crap?!?
Well
> Any modern mouse needs a wheel. I got so used
> to scrolling pages (code, web pages, email) with
> my index finger, I feel positively handicapped when
> a mouse doesn't have a wheel.
Wheels aren't standard even on PC mouses, and some people feel that they're not ergonomic (sore fingers). The Apple mouse is just the one they include with systems. The same third-party scroller mouses that you can use on the PC are used on the Mac (USB ones, anyway).
> There are tons of computing activities that can be
> done very efficiently single-handedly with a context
> menu, my favorite being browsing the web and
> right-clicking on pictures to save them.
On the Mac, this can also be done one-handed. You drag pictures from the browser window to your desktop (or another folder) and the file appears there (its icon is even a little preview of the picture). This works in Netscape or IE. Alternatively, if you do want a context menu in a browser, you can click-and-hold (click and then hold the button down for a second) and the context menu appears.
> While Sun's optical mouse was primitive by the new
> standards, it WAS an optical mouse. If all Apple
> claims is that they are the first to bundle an
> OPTICAL mouse, they're plain wrong, period.
> They have to qualify that statement to be correct.
How about if they qualified "the first to bundle an optical mouse" with the phrase "on ALL of their systems"? That is actually what they said. Note the "all". Apple no longer sells or bundles ball-mice. I would say that's a point worth mentioning.
> Let's give Microsoft credit for that technology, shall
> we?
Well, MS will be happy to take it, as usual. But they (once again) didn't invent it.
> I'm sure someone will come out and claim that it
> wasn't really Microsoft who developod the
> technology (probably Xerox, right?). Even if that
> were true, they marketed the first commercially
> available product, so Apple is an also-ran in any case.
It's funny that you slag Apple with the Xerox remark, and then say that MS should get credit for the optical mouse since they "marketed the first commercially available product" even if they didn't invent it (which they didn't). Do you understand that the first commercially available mouse was from Apple? Do you understand that the first commercially available GUI was from Apple? Do you get that they invented the pull-down menu, overlapping windows, drag-and-drop, the File/Edit/View convention, the Clipboard, and the list goes on? Not to slag the Xerox contribution, but have you actually used an Alto? It's amazing for the '70's, but the Mac is not a rip-off of it. Apple did a lot of work between when they bought the initial research from Xerox in 1979 or so and when they released the Lisa in 1983.
> If you design something easy enough for idiots
> to use, only idiots will use it.
People said this about Apple's mouse in 1984, simply because it was a mouse and the computer had a GUI. I guess it could be seen as a kind of progress that you're saying it just because you don't think the mouse has enough buttons.
> Actually I remember reading somewhere that the
> Microsoft optical mouse has a processor about as
> powerful as a 486....
What's really amazing is how Microsoft is able to get it to run like it's only a 286.
> Actually, Windows is designed with one button
> in mind; it's just more efficient to use the second
> button. You can always get properties by selecting
> and then going to the menu (just like the Mac).
But there is no menu on the Desktop in Windows. If you're not running Windows Explorer, you need a right-click to make a new folder. On the Mac, the menu is there so you can go File > New or you can use the key shortcut Command+N. Also, you can have multiple menubars in Windows, and always in different places on the display, so an under-the-cursor menu makes sense there. It doesn't make as much sense in Mac OS, where the menubar itself is context-sensitive and always in same place.
> One way Windows is superior to the Mac however
> is that all applications can be used without a
> mouse. One way the Mac really stinks is in the
> area of keyboard traversal. Sometimes it's much
> more efficient to be able to not have to reach for
> the mouse. Yes, some Mac applications have
> keyboard shortcuts for common functions, but
> Windows has it built into the low-level GUI.
I'm not sure what the "low-level GUI" is in Windows, but the Mac has always had a GUI, and it didn't inherit a bunch of character-based apps from somewhere else, either. The Mac UI has consistent shortcuts for common things like File > New/Open/Save/Print/Quit and Edit > Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste/Select All. These shortcuts are the same everywhere, and they're all the Command modifier key plus one letter, such as Command+Q for quitting an app. You can also use an app called ResEdit (downloaded from Apple) to change the key shortcuts in Mac apps to whatever you want.
The only key shortcut thing that Windows is better at is forgoing the mouse completely and selecting a menu item with the ALT key. Is this popular, though? There was a time in Windows 3.0 days that you didn't need a mouse at all to use Windows, so the ALT key menu feature is there for that. I'd rather have a consistent way to quit an app, or close a window, or use the Find command. I do those things in Mac OS all day long almost without thinking because the key shortcuts are so consistent.
> Who could ask for more? [than a trackball]
How about "no moving parts", I guess. Once you get to no moving parts (like these new optical mouses) you increase reliability and decrease production costs (in the long term). These mouses don't require a mouse pad, either.
Trackballs make sense on paper, but for most people, the mouse is still better.
> I tend to follow this stuff too, and I have yet to
> see any Mac reviews give anything less than 5
> STARS ***** A MUST BUY. It must happen,
> but the vast majority that I see are sycophantic
> brown-nosings.
First, I've seen plenty of bad reviews for Apple products, even in Macworld, or MacAddict, or any other mag with "Mac" in the title. Apple have been making good stuff lately, and the good reviews and high sales reflect that. Even so, they got scorn for the puck mouse, for the original iBook with 32MB of RAM, for introducing an all-USB iMac when there were three USB devices in existence in the world. Apple have had periods of making worse stuff than today, though. There are particular models (especially one or two Performas and PowerBooks) that came and went in the space of a few months because reviewers panned them completely.
Second, the Windows and Linux magazines are at least as biased as those that cover the Mac platform. All journalism has to be taken with a grain of salt.