1) It was a fluke. OS X doesn't crash like that in general.
2) I agree, but if you have a physical button and you press it, and the CD doesn't come out because something's in use... well, now you have another usability problem. "The CD eject button doesn't work! I hit it, and the CD didn't eject!" You're just trading one usability problem for another one. Now, I'm not saying that Apple's solution is perfect, but it's a solution at least... from my experience, Windows and Linux just gloss over the problem.
3) I didn't realize Mac Minis didn't come with a keyboard until just now. Admittedly, I don't know what 'eject disk' maps to on a standard keyboard... F12 maybe? (That's what it is on my iBook.)
I know. Same issue with my dual-G5 1.8 ghz + Radeon 9800. For what it's worth, Blizzard blames Apple's inferior OpenGL implementation... whether that's the case or not, I don't know.
(Since Apple uses OpenGL for everything from drawing windows to effects like 'genie', somehow I doubt their OpenGL implementation is all that bad. Maybe not game-optimized, but that's a different issue.)
OK, but if I buy a laptop from Emperor Linux, or a desktop from Linspire... WILL SOUND WORK!?
Your response to my post completely, utterly, ignored the only question in my post. Will sound work? If so, good, then there's no issue. If not, then we go back to, "well, what's Linux's excuse?"
The only reason that the file browser paradigm is more popular is because it's used in Windows. If the Linux community were full of MacOS users, you'd be making the same argument *against* spatial browsing. It's just one more piece of evidence that the real purpose of Linux developers is to mimic Microsoft as closely as possible... as soon as somebody does something "non-Microsoftish," they get flamed to hell and back.
That said, as a Mac user, I agree with you ENTIRELY. The problem is that there's no user testing in Linux... you sit a user down, you WATCH them use your distribution, and you take notes. EASY! Takes a few hours, maybe twice a month. And since all your packages are open source, you can (in theory at least) fix ANY bug or usability problems your 'man-on-the-street' finds. So why isn't that done?
It's not the technology that's bad, it's the UI to it. Like most things in Linux...
CUPS might be the best thing ever, but if nobody can figure out how to use it, what good is it? Apple only uses it after rewriting the entire GUI for CUPS from scratch.
FYI, World of Warcraft runs on MacOS. I know it's not central to your point, but you picked a bad example and you just know that some other Slashdot poster is going to say your entire point is moot because the example is bad.
Not just a framework, but user testing. Grab a buddy, sit him down in front of his computer, and tell him to use your application to accomplish a specific task and speak his thought process as he does it. Take notes. It takes maybe two hours, and has the potential to make your application a dozen times better, even if he doesn't find bugs.
How about everybody who used MacOS 1.0-9.2.2? That's a pretty big group of people who seemed to like spatial file browsers...
It would be nice if the Slashdot community stopped the whole "spatial = Windows 95" comparison... the Windows 95 implementation was botched terribly. It's not a good example of a spatial interface, it's a TERRIBLE example.
It worked fine for me in OS 9, and I had shitloads of files. (Over 12,000... I don't know how many folders exactly.) I'm with the grandparent 100%, the Linux community should *embrace* any project that tries to do something differently than the status quo... for instance, do you realize that now that Apple scrapped spatial interfaces for OS X, Spatial Gnome is the *only* spatial interface out there? Don't you think things like that should be praised?
The Linux community always calls out for choice. "Give me more choice! More distros! More window managers! More text editors! More choice!" Well, you have the choice to move to KDE if you don't like Gnome's approach.
P.S. From you saying that spatial interfaces are "useless for browsing deep directory trees," I'm assuming the only implementations you've used of it are Amiga's and Microsoft's Windows 95 botched version. Your argument is valid in both, but OS 9 provided a lot more window management features to make it a non-issue... the problem is that the vast majority of Linux users only used a spatial interface in Windows 95, and Microsoft botched theirs terribly, and so Linux users *assume* that ALL spatial interfaces are equally botched.
Customization = support costs, so Apple tries to minimize it. Seriously, I know, and it sucks, but that's the way it is. In any case, they've tried to address some of your issues at least:
1) My Canon LIDE20 scanner and 802.11g network work fine. Not to say all do, or anything, but it's not a general problem with OS X.
2) OS X doesn't have the concept of maximize. It has the concept of "make this window large enough so it can contain the content without scroll bars." Maximize is a Windows invention that hasn't been adopted by Apple. (I think because of their emphasis on drag&drop... generally, you can't use drag&drop with a maximized window because it's covering up all the drop destinations.)
That said, I find that moving the Dock to the right side of the screen and shrinking it down to 32-36 pixels or so helps a lot... putting the Dock on the bottom by default sucks up a LOT of vertical space, especially on wide-screen monitors, and vertical space is the most valuable to me.
3) As a long-time Apple user, I think the Dock is a nightmare. OS 9 had a separate 'application list' and notification system... OS X combines those two things *plus* minimized windows into a single awkward control. Even Windows realizes the value of a standardized notification area, but that concept is gone in OS X.
OS 9 had a technology called "windowshade" where if you clicked a widget on the right-hand size of the window, that window would 'roll up' and show only its title bar. Much, much handier than OS X's minimize IMO... for one, you can actually see the title of the window without having to hover your mouse over a teeny icon.
4) There's no notion of "multiple desktops" mainly because that's a very very Poweruser feature that very few people can wrap their head around. (To be honest, I've never gotten the fascination with multiple desktops... but anyway.) A few suggestions: a) Use fast user switching to simulate this feature by creating multiple password-less users and switching between them. Each user will have their own desktop. b) If you click an application's icon in the Dock instead of on that application's window, it'll bring *all* windows for that application to the front. If you use multiple desktops to run a different application under each desktop, that might be an acceptable solution. c) If you really get into Expose, I think you'll find that it covers a lot of the same problems that multiple desktops do.
5) In some ways, I hear you. I think MacOS 9 was a lot better than OS X in a *lot* of ways... less wasted space, spatial Finder (yeah, I know everybody on Slashdot hates spatial, but a) most of them never tried it, and b) I really liked it.)
I think even the Mac 512k had 4 sound channels to use... it was like 11mhz 8-bit sound, but they were there. I have no clue whether these were hardware channels, or software channels...
Heck, my Commodore 64 had like 3 sound channels, and it was a Commodore 64.
I don't know what your problem with the Terminal and Automatic Update (I keep those both running all the time with no problems.) But the fact remains that MOST users are happy with how Apple computers work... are they shooting 100%? No, of course not, but they have a ton more user satisfaction than Linux and Windows do.
P.S. Apple drives don't have physical eject buttons because then users would eject the drives while in use, and programs would crash and, maybe, users would lose data because of it. It made more sense with floppy drives than it does with CD, since people don't frequently run programs off CD, but their reason is still valid. Besides, the *is* an eject button, it's just on the keyboard.;)
Ok, so where's the computer with Linux installed out-of-the-box? The one Wal-Mart sells? Does async sound work in Linspire without any configuration on a Wal-Mart PC? (Seriously, I don't know, does it?)
it doesn't blue-screen, crash, corrupt and die every few months/years, I can leave it running overnight and not worry about if it'll crash before it finishes it's downloads, I can access it remotely (a good thing when you're working behind restrictive child-safe proxies all the time), and I can do things without wizards, dogs and paperclips jumping up to "help me find a file".
Uh, yeah, but that applies to Windows and OS X as well, but OS X and Windows can play multi-channel sound with no latency out of the box. What's Linux's excuse?
(Well, ok, in Windows, you'd have to spend a few minutes turning off the 'wizards dogs and paperclips', but surely that would take a TON less time than the 2 DAYS it took you to get your Linux box usable, right?)
(And ok, accessing remotely is extra cost in OS X and requires XP Pro, not XP Home, but it's certainly there in both OSes... plus your open source remote access software, VNC, runs fine on both.)
FYI: Blue screens are caused by hardware errors. The reason people see these in Windows isn't because Windows is defective, but because Windows frequently runs on defective hardware. i.e. dirt cheap Dell computers.
Farnsworth: "Get in these net-suits I invented." Leela: "Mine smells like burning rhesus monkey!" Farnsworth: "Really? I guess when you're around it all day, you stop noticing."
Farnsworth: "This invention is sure to win me the nobel prize!" Fry: "In which field?" Farnsworth: "I don't care. They all pay the same."
It's the same $1000 whether I spend it now or whether I spent it when Classic loses support. I don't get your statement that I'll wish I were more agile... new versions of Office can read old Office files, new versions of Photoshop can read old Photoshop files-- it seems to me that the smartest action is to wait as long as possible before upgrading, and then I can upgrade to Word 2006 instead of 2004 and Photoshop 11 instead of Photoshop 9 (or whatever's out now.)
Did the iPod become successful because of or because of a lack of evangelizing and is a backlash from Apple becoming a bit too much of a "cool" and "think" dictator coming from people seeing it as hypocritical to it's think different market image?
For once I'm glad the editors cut something out of the article submission, because your question is pure gibberish.
How are you supposed to answer something like this: "Did the iPod become successful because of or because of a lack of evangelizing?"
And that's just a small portion of your huge run-on sentence.
As soon as Steve Jobs cuts me a check for $1000 to buy a new version of Office (I have 98) and a new copy of Photoshop (I have 5.5), I'll gladly abandon Classic into the trashbin of history. Unfortunately, I'm not rich, and I don't use those applications often-enough to be worth a grand... so Classic it is.
I thought the general concensus on this board is that competition of software products is a good thing which makes *all* the products better, or am I mistaken? (At least, that's the viewpoint people give when others complain about Linux having a whole bunch of different widget libraries and thousands of text editors.)
But as usual, it sums up as "if you don't like it, don't use it." Why insult Microsoft for making it? Why not think positively and stop being so cynical for once?
Sure, maybe it can't compete with Photoshop, ok. What about Photoshop Elements? What about Corel Painter? Maybe it'll help make ALL those products better by introducing a new interface idea or unique type of filter. Who knows?
Why not? How about because I disagree with their viewpoints?
If they had a fund where I could contribute JUST for GCC, that'd be fine... I do appreciate the software that I use almost every day. But I don't want my contribution seen as some political statement by the FSF.
(I can just imagine them releasing a press release like, "over $200,000 has been contributed towards the GCC project by users! Therefore, the GNU license is the Best Thing Ever and all Intellectual property should be free, Free, Gratis, FOSS, and whatever other term we'll start using for 'free' in the near future!" Screw that.)
Re:I refer you to a very old post I wrote
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Uh... yeah.
While you're at it, why not arrange for my chair to be free to choose whatever office it wants to be in? And my car should be free to have premium gas whenever it wants.
Are GPL users so strange that they actually think that inanimate objects should have "freedom?" That viewpoint makes PETA look sane!
Please. EVERY SINGLE THING Sony announces before the product is released is bullshit. Their marketing department probably has never even SEEN the actual console... or is this one going to be able to render Toy Story in real-time? Ooo, will games have powerful emotions in them because of the "emotion engine?" (After all, a hardware chip is the correct way of producing emotions, not good writing/artwork/direction!)
The saddest part is that people are falling for the same bullshit Sony announced before the PS1 and before the PS2. Sony marketing = BULLSHIT. Period.
Including a HD *with* the PS3 doesn't preclude offering additional HD space for sale later on. Hell, they could include the detachable HD with the machine instead of installing it in the case if they wanted, so you could replace the whole shebang anytime you wanted.
It's not a sensible approach, it's a "how many extra paid peripherals can we make to suck more money out of customers..." approach.
Slashdot Mirror
1) It was a fluke. OS X doesn't crash like that in general.
2) I agree, but if you have a physical button and you press it, and the CD doesn't come out because something's in use... well, now you have another usability problem. "The CD eject button doesn't work! I hit it, and the CD didn't eject!" You're just trading one usability problem for another one. Now, I'm not saying that Apple's solution is perfect, but it's a solution at least... from my experience, Windows and Linux just gloss over the problem.
3) I didn't realize Mac Minis didn't come with a keyboard until just now. Admittedly, I don't know what 'eject disk' maps to on a standard keyboard... F12 maybe? (That's what it is on my iBook.)
I know. Same issue with my dual-G5 1.8 ghz + Radeon 9800. For what it's worth, Blizzard blames Apple's inferior OpenGL implementation... whether that's the case or not, I don't know.
(Since Apple uses OpenGL for everything from drawing windows to effects like 'genie', somehow I doubt their OpenGL implementation is all that bad. Maybe not game-optimized, but that's a different issue.)
OK, but if I buy a laptop from Emperor Linux, or a desktop from Linspire... WILL SOUND WORK!?
Your response to my post completely, utterly, ignored the only question in my post. Will sound work? If so, good, then there's no issue. If not, then we go back to, "well, what's Linux's excuse?"
The only reason that the file browser paradigm is more popular is because it's used in Windows. If the Linux community were full of MacOS users, you'd be making the same argument *against* spatial browsing. It's just one more piece of evidence that the real purpose of Linux developers is to mimic Microsoft as closely as possible... as soon as somebody does something "non-Microsoftish," they get flamed to hell and back.
That said, as a Mac user, I agree with you ENTIRELY. The problem is that there's no user testing in Linux... you sit a user down, you WATCH them use your distribution, and you take notes. EASY! Takes a few hours, maybe twice a month. And since all your packages are open source, you can (in theory at least) fix ANY bug or usability problems your 'man-on-the-street' finds. So why isn't that done?
It's not the technology that's bad, it's the UI to it. Like most things in Linux...
CUPS might be the best thing ever, but if nobody can figure out how to use it, what good is it? Apple only uses it after rewriting the entire GUI for CUPS from scratch.
FYI, World of Warcraft runs on MacOS. I know it's not central to your point, but you picked a bad example and you just know that some other Slashdot poster is going to say your entire point is moot because the example is bad.
Not just a framework, but user testing. Grab a buddy, sit him down in front of his computer, and tell him to use your application to accomplish a specific task and speak his thought process as he does it. Take notes. It takes maybe two hours, and has the potential to make your application a dozen times better, even if he doesn't find bugs.
How about everybody who used MacOS 1.0-9.2.2? That's a pretty big group of people who seemed to like spatial file browsers...
It would be nice if the Slashdot community stopped the whole "spatial = Windows 95" comparison... the Windows 95 implementation was botched terribly. It's not a good example of a spatial interface, it's a TERRIBLE example.
It worked fine for me in OS 9, and I had shitloads of files. (Over 12,000... I don't know how many folders exactly.) I'm with the grandparent 100%, the Linux community should *embrace* any project that tries to do something differently than the status quo... for instance, do you realize that now that Apple scrapped spatial interfaces for OS X, Spatial Gnome is the *only* spatial interface out there? Don't you think things like that should be praised?
The Linux community always calls out for choice. "Give me more choice! More distros! More window managers! More text editors! More choice!" Well, you have the choice to move to KDE if you don't like Gnome's approach.
P.S. From you saying that spatial interfaces are "useless for browsing deep directory trees," I'm assuming the only implementations you've used of it are Amiga's and Microsoft's Windows 95 botched version. Your argument is valid in both, but OS 9 provided a lot more window management features to make it a non-issue... the problem is that the vast majority of Linux users only used a spatial interface in Windows 95, and Microsoft botched theirs terribly, and so Linux users *assume* that ALL spatial interfaces are equally botched.
Customization = support costs, so Apple tries to minimize it. Seriously, I know, and it sucks, but that's the way it is. In any case, they've tried to address some of your issues at least:
1) My Canon LIDE20 scanner and 802.11g network work fine. Not to say all do, or anything, but it's not a general problem with OS X.
2) OS X doesn't have the concept of maximize. It has the concept of "make this window large enough so it can contain the content without scroll bars." Maximize is a Windows invention that hasn't been adopted by Apple. (I think because of their emphasis on drag&drop... generally, you can't use drag&drop with a maximized window because it's covering up all the drop destinations.)
That said, I find that moving the Dock to the right side of the screen and shrinking it down to 32-36 pixels or so helps a lot... putting the Dock on the bottom by default sucks up a LOT of vertical space, especially on wide-screen monitors, and vertical space is the most valuable to me.
3) As a long-time Apple user, I think the Dock is a nightmare. OS 9 had a separate 'application list' and notification system... OS X combines those two things *plus* minimized windows into a single awkward control. Even Windows realizes the value of a standardized notification area, but that concept is gone in OS X.
OS 9 had a technology called "windowshade" where if you clicked a widget on the right-hand size of the window, that window would 'roll up' and show only its title bar. Much, much handier than OS X's minimize IMO... for one, you can actually see the title of the window without having to hover your mouse over a teeny icon.
4) There's no notion of "multiple desktops" mainly because that's a very very Poweruser feature that very few people can wrap their head around. (To be honest, I've never gotten the fascination with multiple desktops... but anyway.) A few suggestions:
a) Use fast user switching to simulate this feature by creating multiple password-less users and switching between them. Each user will have their own desktop.
b) If you click an application's icon in the Dock instead of on that application's window, it'll bring *all* windows for that application to the front. If you use multiple desktops to run a different application under each desktop, that might be an acceptable solution.
c) If you really get into Expose, I think you'll find that it covers a lot of the same problems that multiple desktops do.
5) In some ways, I hear you. I think MacOS 9 was a lot better than OS X in a *lot* of ways... less wasted space, spatial Finder (yeah, I know everybody on Slashdot hates spatial, but a) most of them never tried it, and b) I really liked it.)
What do you mean "fix" her laptop? Is it broken?
I think even the Mac 512k had 4 sound channels to use... it was like 11mhz 8-bit sound, but they were there. I have no clue whether these were hardware channels, or software channels...
Heck, my Commodore 64 had like 3 sound channels, and it was a Commodore 64.
I don't know what your problem with the Terminal and Automatic Update (I keep those both running all the time with no problems.) But the fact remains that MOST users are happy with how Apple computers work... are they shooting 100%? No, of course not, but they have a ton more user satisfaction than Linux and Windows do.
;)
P.S. Apple drives don't have physical eject buttons because then users would eject the drives while in use, and programs would crash and, maybe, users would lose data because of it. It made more sense with floppy drives than it does with CD, since people don't frequently run programs off CD, but their reason is still valid. Besides, the *is* an eject button, it's just on the keyboard.
Ok, so where's the computer with Linux installed out-of-the-box? The one Wal-Mart sells? Does async sound work in Linspire without any configuration on a Wal-Mart PC? (Seriously, I don't know, does it?)
it doesn't blue-screen, crash, corrupt and die every few months/years, I can leave it running overnight and not worry about if it'll crash before it finishes it's downloads, I can access it remotely (a good thing when you're working behind restrictive child-safe proxies all the time), and I can do things without wizards, dogs and paperclips jumping up to "help me find a file".
Uh, yeah, but that applies to Windows and OS X as well, but OS X and Windows can play multi-channel sound with no latency out of the box. What's Linux's excuse?
(Well, ok, in Windows, you'd have to spend a few minutes turning off the 'wizards dogs and paperclips', but surely that would take a TON less time than the 2 DAYS it took you to get your Linux box usable, right?)
(And ok, accessing remotely is extra cost in OS X and requires XP Pro, not XP Home, but it's certainly there in both OSes... plus your open source remote access software, VNC, runs fine on both.)
FYI: Blue screens are caused by hardware errors. The reason people see these in Windows isn't because Windows is defective, but because Windows frequently runs on defective hardware. i.e. dirt cheap Dell computers.
Farnsworth: "Get in these net-suits I invented."
Leela: "Mine smells like burning rhesus monkey!"
Farnsworth: "Really? I guess when you're around it all day, you stop noticing."
Farnsworth: "This invention is sure to win me the nobel prize!"
Fry: "In which field?"
Farnsworth: "I don't care. They all pay the same."
The taskbar predates Windows by at least a decade
Source?
I'm not certain about the System Tray, but it doesn't seem like all that much of an innovation to me
Again, source? As far as I'm aware, Windows is the first OS to have a system tray/notification area.
It's the same $1000 whether I spend it now or whether I spent it when Classic loses support. I don't get your statement that I'll wish I were more agile... new versions of Office can read old Office files, new versions of Photoshop can read old Photoshop files-- it seems to me that the smartest action is to wait as long as possible before upgrading, and then I can upgrade to Word 2006 instead of 2004 and Photoshop 11 instead of Photoshop 9 (or whatever's out now.)
Somewhere else in the comments, the original post pastes the rest of his submission that was cut off. It's even worse.
Did the iPod become successful because of or because of a lack of evangelizing and is a backlash from Apple becoming a bit too much of a "cool" and "think" dictator coming from people seeing it as hypocritical to it's think different market image?
For once I'm glad the editors cut something out of the article submission, because your question is pure gibberish.
How are you supposed to answer something like this: "Did the iPod become successful because of or because of a lack of evangelizing?"
And that's just a small portion of your huge run-on sentence.
As soon as Steve Jobs cuts me a check for $1000 to buy a new version of Office (I have 98) and a new copy of Photoshop (I have 5.5), I'll gladly abandon Classic into the trashbin of history. Unfortunately, I'm not rich, and I don't use those applications often-enough to be worth a grand... so Classic it is.
I thought the general concensus on this board is that competition of software products is a good thing which makes *all* the products better, or am I mistaken? (At least, that's the viewpoint people give when others complain about Linux having a whole bunch of different widget libraries and thousands of text editors.)
But as usual, it sums up as "if you don't like it, don't use it." Why insult Microsoft for making it? Why not think positively and stop being so cynical for once?
Sure, maybe it can't compete with Photoshop, ok. What about Photoshop Elements? What about Corel Painter? Maybe it'll help make ALL those products better by introducing a new interface idea or unique type of filter. Who knows?
Why not? How about because I disagree with their viewpoints?
If they had a fund where I could contribute JUST for GCC, that'd be fine... I do appreciate the software that I use almost every day. But I don't want my contribution seen as some political statement by the FSF.
(I can just imagine them releasing a press release like, "over $200,000 has been contributed towards the GCC project by users! Therefore, the GNU license is the Best Thing Ever and all Intellectual property should be free, Free, Gratis, FOSS, and whatever other term we'll start using for 'free' in the near future!" Screw that.)
Uh... yeah.
While you're at it, why not arrange for my chair to be free to choose whatever office it wants to be in? And my car should be free to have premium gas whenever it wants.
Are GPL users so strange that they actually think that inanimate objects should have "freedom?" That viewpoint makes PETA look sane!
Please. EVERY SINGLE THING Sony announces before the product is released is bullshit. Their marketing department probably has never even SEEN the actual console... or is this one going to be able to render Toy Story in real-time? Ooo, will games have powerful emotions in them because of the "emotion engine?" (After all, a hardware chip is the correct way of producing emotions, not good writing/artwork/direction!)
The saddest part is that people are falling for the same bullshit Sony announced before the PS1 and before the PS2. Sony marketing = BULLSHIT. Period.
That's a bullshit reason.
Including a HD *with* the PS3 doesn't preclude offering additional HD space for sale later on. Hell, they could include the detachable HD with the machine instead of installing it in the case if they wanted, so you could replace the whole shebang anytime you wanted.
It's not a sensible approach, it's a "how many extra paid peripherals can we make to suck more money out of customers..." approach.