Well, in a way of explaining it, the Macintosh used to have two options for dealing with disks: Eject and Put Away.
Eject ejected the disk, but retained the icons for it in memory, and showed greyed-out on the screen. The original Macs had only a single disk drive, so Eject was necessary to copy files frmo one disk to another. To duplicate a disk, you would put the first disk in, then eject it, then put the second disk in. Now you can drag greyed files from the first disk to the second to copy them, and the OS will prompt you to enter the correct disks as needed. (This is a problem that Windows never even tried to solve, as far as I'm aware... it's all moot now, but back in the day this was important.)
Now, when you're done with the disk, you would use the Put Away command in the file menu. This command did exactly as it implies, ejecting the disk and unmounting it so that you could put it away in its box (or where ever you keep it.)
At some point, somebody at Apple thought this was too confusing for people, and so they made dragging a floppy disk to the trash can a shortcut to Put Away. It was a bad move, and the problem should have been solved another way. (And, frankly, very few people understood why after they ejected a disk, MacOS would sometimes ask for it back... they didn't get the difference between Eject and Put Away.)
Of course, that said, the person who explained it to you could have *correctly* explained that to finish using a disk you use the Put Away command, and then you wouldn't even need the 'drag to trash' shortcut and you'd have been just fine with MacOS.;)
Nope, you're correct, the grandparent is wrong. This is in the 1966 movie... to the best of my knowledge, the shark repellant was never used in an episode of the TV series. (And I've seen them all multiple times... sad, really.)
Did you even read my post? Apparently not, because you immediately started talking about Windows again.
Look, when Macintosh users sit around and talk about things that are troublesome in OS X, do you think there's a guy there that says, "well, it doesn't matter if foo steals focus because a lot of Windows applications also steal focus!?" The other people would just say, "what the hell does that matter?"
I'd like to think that the Linux community is capable of standing alone, but posts like yours appear constantly, comparing Linux to Windows... who cares? Judge Linux on its own merits.
So... the standard reply when anybody points of a usability problem in Linux is to whine and whine about how the same usability problem exists in Windows. (And then in the next sentence, they'll say that Linux isn't about just duplicating Windows!)
Figure it out, man. It doesn't matter if the problem also exists in Windows. The point is, it's a problem and it needs to be fixed. Period.
This is utter hogwash. They are simple even in their console versions.
I agree that they aren't that hard to use, but they ARE unfriendly towards commercial developers, and that's a problem that needs to be solved. If I put my Adobe Photoshop Linux CD (think big!) into my PC, and it updates some libraries, my package manager needs to know about that so it won't overwrite those changes and break Photoshop.
If a Unix app program is properly set up. THE LOCATION IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to the user.
No it's not. What if one of my partitions is running out of space, so I want to move some programs to another partition? I need to know where they are to do that. (Of course, since Linux and Windows programs frequently use hard-coded paths, you can't really do that anyway... OS X does it right. PLEASE PLEASE don't hard-code paths into your program if at all possible!)
It would also help if installed Linux programs automatically inserted themselves into the GUI in an organized fashion so you could get a simple list of what programs you have installed... like the Start menu in Windows, or the/Applications folder in OS X.
It's remarkably better than the alternatives.
Better? In what way? "usr" is better than "System Folder" or "Windows?" Did you think this assertion through before making it?
Quick questions: Where do I put fonts in a Linux distribution? In OS X, it's System/Library/Fonts, in Windows it's Windows/Fonts... simple and obvious.
"application unfriendliness" has squat to do with user friendliness. The whole point of applications is to mask the sharp edges of an OS.
At the most basic level, if you make writing applications quicker and easier, you give the developer more time to worry about improving their UI instead of just making it work.
Additionally, you can almost force good application design by having good APIs... it's actually harder to build a badly-designed UI in OS X than to build a correct one, just because of the way Cocoa is designed. Therefore, a lazy programmer is more likely to have a good UI.
MacOS Classic did a pretty good job of this back in the day... you had a System Folder, of course, and it had System, Finder, a folder for fonts, a folder for control panels, a folder for preferences, and a folder for extensions. It was actually pretty damn easy for any naive user to go in there and do what they want.
Just as a frame of reference, have you tried OS X? You state "no modern OS is 'intuitive'," but it sounds like you're defining "modern OS" as Windows and Linux.
Every DVD player I've used keeps track of where you left off and resumes from there next time you enter the disk. I know that Panasonic players do it for sure, but I'm sure a lot of others do also.
Just FYI, every DVD player I've ever used (including the dirt-cheap one I bought first) also kept track of your position on the last 10-20 disks you inserted so it could instantly resume from where you left off. If that's a feature you appreciate, just look for a DVD player with it-- I know for a fact that tons have it. (My current Panasonic 5-disk changer does it, for instance.)
Additionally, DVD Player on Macintosh also keeps track for you.
Please, it takes technology almost 30 years just to catch-on.
How long has it been since spell checkers came into being? And yet, as I'm typing this on Firefox on Windows, there's no spellchecker available to fix any of my typos. Why not? It's the year 2005. Why don't I have spell checking in EVERY place on the computer I could possibly enter text?
(And yeah, I know MacOS X is moving in this direction-- Thank God! But it's still more of a "FINALLY somebody is doing this.")
But God they're UGLY! Even Microsoft hired a designer to pretty up the Microsoft Natural... couldn't Kinesis spend a few bucks to make keyboards that don't make me want to puke?
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 0, Troll
NOW I AM THE GOD OF TYPING! BOW BEFORE MY KEYBOARD SKILLS, MORTALS! FOR SOON YOU SHALL FEEL THE WRATH OF BIGTALLMOFO!
Holy shit, stop bragging. Nobody cares.
---
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped... The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped... The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped... The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped... The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
My point isn't that MacIE is THE BEST BROWSER EVER, my point is that for a long period of time it was the best browser available for Macintosh. Anyway, Slashdot isn't so important to me that I'd pick a web browser based on how it renders.
Opera had a HORRIBLE user interface at the time. It's sad that a Microsoft application like IE had a more Mac-like user interface than the only other competent browser on the market. Thanks for pointing out an omission, but Opera was no MacIE.
There was a period of about 3-4 years when IE for the Mac was the best browser by far...
Netscape 4.7 was a crashy, buggy, piece of bloated shit.
Cyberdog was dead and gone.
iCab has always supported about 1/10th the features of *real* web browsers.
And IE 4 was the best browser on the Macintosh platform, by far. Actually, when it hit version 4, it was the best web browser ANYWHERE by far... most compliant, most features.
Believe it, it took a LONG time for me to finally switch from Netscape 4.0.8 (the last non-bloated non-shitty Netscape) to IE, but when I did, I was really happy. Microsoft's software for Macintosh has always been far superior to the same software on Windows... I don't know why that is, exactly, but there it is.
I think it was Ebert in his review of Totoro who said that it's completely impossible for *ANY*body, no matter how greedy, cynical, detached, to sit down and watch My Neighbor Totoro without cracking a smile by the end.
I liked Atlantis (I wouldn't buy it, but it's worth watching once), but I didn't think Treasure Island was worth the price of admission.
Neither of those two are as good as The Emperor's New Groove or Lilo and Stitch, probably the best two animated features *period* during this supposed dry spell...
Disney might not be cranking out huge blockbusters recently, but they can still tell a good story and make a good movie. What else matters?
But yeah, I agree with you. Lilo and Stitch is probably my favorite Disney movie, followed closely by The Emporer's New Groove. And both of those movies are WAAAAAY off the Disney "singing animal" stereotype... so their innovation *can* pay off, on occaision.
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Well, in a way of explaining it, the Macintosh used to have two options for dealing with disks: Eject and Put Away.
;)
Eject ejected the disk, but retained the icons for it in memory, and showed greyed-out on the screen. The original Macs had only a single disk drive, so Eject was necessary to copy files frmo one disk to another. To duplicate a disk, you would put the first disk in, then eject it, then put the second disk in. Now you can drag greyed files from the first disk to the second to copy them, and the OS will prompt you to enter the correct disks as needed. (This is a problem that Windows never even tried to solve, as far as I'm aware... it's all moot now, but back in the day this was important.)
Now, when you're done with the disk, you would use the Put Away command in the file menu. This command did exactly as it implies, ejecting the disk and unmounting it so that you could put it away in its box (or where ever you keep it.)
At some point, somebody at Apple thought this was too confusing for people, and so they made dragging a floppy disk to the trash can a shortcut to Put Away. It was a bad move, and the problem should have been solved another way. (And, frankly, very few people understood why after they ejected a disk, MacOS would sometimes ask for it back... they didn't get the difference between Eject and Put Away.)
Of course, that said, the person who explained it to you could have *correctly* explained that to finish using a disk you use the Put Away command, and then you wouldn't even need the 'drag to trash' shortcut and you'd have been just fine with MacOS.
Nope, you're correct, the grandparent is wrong. This is in the 1966 movie... to the best of my knowledge, the shark repellant was never used in an episode of the TV series. (And I've seen them all multiple times... sad, really.)
I bow to you, sir.
So... you don't know the answer then?
Did you even read my post? Apparently not, because you immediately started talking about Windows again.
Look, when Macintosh users sit around and talk about things that are troublesome in OS X, do you think there's a guy there that says, "well, it doesn't matter if foo steals focus because a lot of Windows applications also steal focus!?" The other people would just say, "what the hell does that matter?"
I'd like to think that the Linux community is capable of standing alone, but posts like yours appear constantly, comparing Linux to Windows... who cares? Judge Linux on its own merits.
... except in that case, the people downloading the files are breaking the law, and the people 'polluting' the torrents aren't.
So... the standard reply when anybody points of a usability problem in Linux is to whine and whine about how the same usability problem exists in Windows. (And then in the next sentence, they'll say that Linux isn't about just duplicating Windows!)
Figure it out, man. It doesn't matter if the problem also exists in Windows. The point is, it's a problem and it needs to be fixed. Period.
This is utter hogwash. They are simple even in their console versions.
/Applications folder in OS X.
I agree that they aren't that hard to use, but they ARE unfriendly towards commercial developers, and that's a problem that needs to be solved. If I put my Adobe Photoshop Linux CD (think big!) into my PC, and it updates some libraries, my package manager needs to know about that so it won't overwrite those changes and break Photoshop.
If a Unix app program is properly set up. THE LOCATION IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to the user.
No it's not. What if one of my partitions is running out of space, so I want to move some programs to another partition? I need to know where they are to do that. (Of course, since Linux and Windows programs frequently use hard-coded paths, you can't really do that anyway... OS X does it right. PLEASE PLEASE don't hard-code paths into your program if at all possible!)
It would also help if installed Linux programs automatically inserted themselves into the GUI in an organized fashion so you could get a simple list of what programs you have installed... like the Start menu in Windows, or the
It's remarkably better than the alternatives.
Better? In what way? "usr" is better than "System Folder" or "Windows?" Did you think this assertion through before making it?
Quick questions: Where do I put fonts in a Linux distribution? In OS X, it's System/Library/Fonts, in Windows it's Windows/Fonts... simple and obvious.
"application unfriendliness" has squat to do with user friendliness. The whole point of applications is to mask the sharp edges of an OS.
At the most basic level, if you make writing applications quicker and easier, you give the developer more time to worry about improving their UI instead of just making it work.
Additionally, you can almost force good application design by having good APIs... it's actually harder to build a badly-designed UI in OS X than to build a correct one, just because of the way Cocoa is designed. Therefore, a lazy programmer is more likely to have a good UI.
MacOS Classic did a pretty good job of this back in the day... you had a System Folder, of course, and it had System, Finder, a folder for fonts, a folder for control panels, a folder for preferences, and a folder for extensions. It was actually pretty damn easy for any naive user to go in there and do what they want.
Just as a frame of reference, have you tried OS X? You state "no modern OS is 'intuitive'," but it sounds like you're defining "modern OS" as Windows and Linux.
Zone Alarm sucks. Compatibility issues, GUI from hell...
Use Sygate Personal Firewall. Equally free. Much fewer compatibility problems. Much better GUI.
If you like shitty Disney sci-fi movies, I'm glad to say that The Black Hole *is* available on DVD! (And ashamed to say I own it.)
Every DVD player I've used keeps track of where you left off and resumes from there next time you enter the disk. I know that Panasonic players do it for sure, but I'm sure a lot of others do also.
Just FYI, every DVD player I've ever used (including the dirt-cheap one I bought first) also kept track of your position on the last 10-20 disks you inserted so it could instantly resume from where you left off. If that's a feature you appreciate, just look for a DVD player with it-- I know for a fact that tons have it. (My current Panasonic 5-disk changer does it, for instance.)
Additionally, DVD Player on Macintosh also keeps track for you.
Gnustep's been around for a decade now, and it's still BARELY usable... it's no surprise that Apple is coding circles around them.
Please, it takes technology almost 30 years just to catch-on.
How long has it been since spell checkers came into being? And yet, as I'm typing this on Firefox on Windows, there's no spellchecker available to fix any of my typos. Why not? It's the year 2005. Why don't I have spell checking in EVERY place on the computer I could possibly enter text?
(And yeah, I know MacOS X is moving in this direction-- Thank God! But it's still more of a "FINALLY somebody is doing this.")
But God they're UGLY! Even Microsoft hired a designer to pretty up the Microsoft Natural... couldn't Kinesis spend a few bucks to make keyboards that don't make me want to puke?
NOW I AM THE GOD OF TYPING! BOW BEFORE MY KEYBOARD SKILLS, MORTALS! FOR SOON YOU SHALL FEEL THE WRATH OF BIGTALLMOFO!
Holy shit, stop bragging. Nobody cares.
---
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
The lameness filter is more lame than any post it's stopped...
So what did you use? Netscape 4?
My point isn't that MacIE is THE BEST BROWSER EVER, my point is that for a long period of time it was the best browser available for Macintosh. Anyway, Slashdot isn't so important to me that I'd pick a web browser based on how it renders.
Opera had a HORRIBLE user interface at the time. It's sad that a Microsoft application like IE had a more Mac-like user interface than the only other competent browser on the market. Thanks for pointing out an omission, but Opera was no MacIE.
There was a period of about 3-4 years when IE for the Mac was the best browser by far...
Netscape 4.7 was a crashy, buggy, piece of bloated shit.
Cyberdog was dead and gone.
iCab has always supported about 1/10th the features of *real* web browsers.
And IE 4 was the best browser on the Macintosh platform, by far. Actually, when it hit version 4, it was the best web browser ANYWHERE by far... most compliant, most features.
Believe it, it took a LONG time for me to finally switch from Netscape 4.0.8 (the last non-bloated non-shitty Netscape) to IE, but when I did, I was really happy. Microsoft's software for Macintosh has always been far superior to the same software on Windows... I don't know why that is, exactly, but there it is.
Hey, stop complaining. Usually there are too few links... much better to have too many than to have too few, IMO.
I think it was Ebert in his review of Totoro who said that it's completely impossible for *ANY*body, no matter how greedy, cynical, detached, to sit down and watch My Neighbor Totoro without cracking a smile by the end.
I liked Atlantis (I wouldn't buy it, but it's worth watching once), but I didn't think Treasure Island was worth the price of admission.
Neither of those two are as good as The Emperor's New Groove or Lilo and Stitch, probably the best two animated features *period* during this supposed dry spell...
Disney might not be cranking out huge blockbusters recently, but they can still tell a good story and make a good movie. What else matters?
And remember: Pudge controls the weather.
And yet almost entirely forgotten...
But yeah, I agree with you. Lilo and Stitch is probably my favorite Disney movie, followed closely by The Emporer's New Groove. And both of those movies are WAAAAAY off the Disney "singing animal" stereotype... so their innovation *can* pay off, on occaision.