As a quick aside - anyone else remember the Apple Human Interface Guidlines circa System 7-era, incorporating the Principle of Muscular Remembrance? The idea is that important stuff is always in the same place, every time, so that the user doesn't even have to conciously think about where to find things. It's the reason Macs have a single menu bar, at the top of the screen. It seems to me to also be a key thought behind the dock.
Or would, if the Dock icons didn't move up and down as more items were inserted.
Eternal Struggle MUD. 90% of character advancement is done via an "RP AWARD" system where players can reward those who RP well. The old-fashioned SMAUG combat system has been replaced by a shiny emote-fight system, which basically means that combat is resolved via descriptive actions rather than boring "X hits Y. Y hits X." crap. There are MUDs out there that cater to RPers, and no MMORPG will *ever* get this right, so there's no point to even trying to play them.
And their screenshots of how it renders incorrectly in "Internet Exploder" by "M$" (which is, in fact, what I'm using right now and it renders just find) really encourages me to give their software a fair trial-- after all, they have so much respect for the most popular web browser in existance.
I don't know who was first between the two, but Grant Naylor also wrote this into an episode of Red Dwarf. (Is it White Hole? I forget...)
In that episode, they use a solar flare to knock a 'cue' planet out of orbit with the goal of clogging up some space thing (white hole?) with it so it won't suck in the ship.
Definately! 100% agreement. There's one other point, though:
When you refer to these points in the OS, you *have* to include all applications written for that OS. MacOS has a great, consistant interface... but that all goes bye-bye if the poor user decides to run, say, ICQ. (MacICQ violates almost every MacOS Guideline there is.) I'm sorry to say it, but I'd have to include Quicktime on this list...
Also, drag and drop is essential. Not only with files, but with text, images, sound, *any* type of data. The saddest thing in Windoze is that it has support for this type of drag and drop support, but few applications make use of it.
Anyway, though. MacOS is already consistant, has full drag and drop support, is pretty durn stable, has a large user and application base, and includes a *great* scripting language. Just rip it off.:)
>You mean like dragging a floppy disk to the >trashcan to eject it?
No, no, no, no... this can be easily explained.
When Apple designed MacOS, they thought of the desktop as a temporary repository for files and folders. In that vein, they created a "Put Away" command...
You can drag a file or folder to the desktop, work with it as long as you want, and then select "Put Away" (command-Y) It will go back where it started.
Now consider a floppy disk... a floppy disk is a physical item, so putting it away would be putting it back in the drawer, or the box, or whatever. If you select a floppy disk, and then choose "Put Away", it will eject the disk.
The Eject command also ejects the disk... *but* it retains the contents in RAM, "keeps it mounted", so to speak. This is because early Macs had one floppy drive, making copying from one disk to another a complicated procedure.
Anyway... point is, when harddrives appeared, no one remembered/knew the function of the Put Away (which always seemed unclear anyway...), and Apple added the trash can 'shortcut.' Now the problem is that the trash can represents "delete" in all cases *except* a disk.
But, hey, the rest of the GUI kicks ass, huh?
(BTW, Apple also changed the Eject function now to "Put Away" by default, unless you choose "Eject and Stay Behind.", the keyboard shortcut for which I forget at the moment. Contextual menus also solve this in a nifty, neat fashion.)
Er. There are a few things you have to remember: MacOS is fast because of a clean, efficient UI, *not* because it has pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, etc. MacOS is, at its core, a windowing UI designed to run on 8 mHz 68000 chips on a 512x382 monochrome screen.
Look at it this way: The user is writing a document in AppleWorks or something, and pulls down a font menu to select Garamond. Given, all background tasks cease... but does the user care? His MP3 player has at least 30 seconds of music already to the sound chip, his downloads are going to recieve all those packets as soon as the menu is released. Ok, fair enough, your 3D rendering program is going to lose the amount of time the menu was held down... what, 10 seconds? 30, max. (In fact, OS 8+, as I recall, will 'unlock' locked menus after 15 seconds.)
In reality, though, (and try explaining this to a Windoze user), menus are a LOT quicker when you don't lock them down. One click instead of two.
MacOS may have terrible multitasking performance, but it's always been responsive to my commands, and isn't that what is more important? (Actually, OS 9 seems *less* responsive, and I can't figure out why...)
But my main selling point on MacOS is this. My computer is a old PowerMac 4400/200 upgraded to a G3. It has 64 MB of RAM. At this exact moment, I am running AIM, Claris Emailer, Claris Homepage, Finder, MacAmp Lite, Netscape, Rapscallion, and Word, and I'm not even close to dipping into virtual memory.
The most common complaints about MacOS are these: 1) Poor multitasking/poor response. (Solved by programmers using the proper WaitNextEvent delay time! Ugh. I hate people who code it wrong, think their application should get more than its fair share.) 2) Lack of protected memory. (Look, my Apple machine goes at least double the time between reboots as my Win98 PC. That's good enough for me. Plus, this is also solved by good coding practices... you don't need protected memory to bail you out of errors if your program has no errors.) 3) Lack of a second mouse button. This one really gets me... First of all, MacOS is more efficient in general with one mouse button than Windoze or X will ever be with two. Secondly, there is no "Golden Law of Macintosh" that says you can't buy and use a mouse with two buttons. I have a perfectly fine two-button mouse, with full contextual menu support in all applications.
Excuse me for the half-rant. I'm sick of people arguing that technology is the only thing that makes an OS more efficient or 'better' than another.
>Hopefully the next few generations of SF writers >will be frontier poets and authors writing of new >found opportunity, not academics writing of that >which could have been.
You also make that sound like a Bad Thing (tm). Personally, I love the dull crap that Clarke used to put out before all this touchy-feely sf happened.:)
I come across this problem a *lot* with Macintosh users. Most seem to assume that you can use the system forever without ever removing extensions, or running a disk utility, or rebuilding the desktop file.
But the plain truth is that OSes require maintainence. Some more than others, of course. (As I recall, there still are no disk utilities for BeOS, simply because the problem hasn't come up yet.) Anyway, nothing is worse than a computer-lab Mac with 400 extensions in it and a disk fragmented to hell, and the user asks, "Why does it crash?" It would be like a motorist asking, "Why won't it go?" after failing to change the oil for 8000 miles.
Anyway. Eventually we'll get to the stage where no OSes ever require maintainence, or we'll get to the point where computer users are smart enough to realize that they do, and stop expecting miracles.
Now moderate me down for being off-topic, and off-OS.:)
>Ever wonder why a burrito-sized pentium is also >called a "micro" chip? Me too... Might have something to do with the size of computers *before* the IC arrived...
What really bugs me about this isn't that the game was cancelled for Mac... (I happen to own both a Mac and PC. The Mac for real work, the PC (of course) for games.)
From what I know of programming, it's equally easy to make a *universal* version of the game than an *only* Windoze version, or an *only* Mac version. Being equally easy makes it equally expensive, meaning the only additional cost to making a hybrid game is in the marketing/packaging.
So why isn't this done? Games companies seem to be throwing away 10%+ of the market for every game they release. In any other industry, this would be seen as insane. In the computer industry, it's normal.
A plea: Come on, game makers. Why should you throw away a portion of the market *and* force some of your best customers to wait 6 months or more for your game? Use some common sense.
I don't know who here has played this game, but it *kind of* works in that spirit... However, instead of having access to the CODE, you have access to a superpowerful scripting language through which you can change almost any parameter you can think of. (If you have have the game, try comparing Base to Shifter, or Redneck. Try to find some aspect they *didn't* change.)
The only fault I can find with this system is that the client only runs on Windoze 9x.:( But I hear there's a MacOS client planned for Tribes II, so perhaps Dynamix can redeem themselves.
One poster mentioned that they used Enlightenment on their notebook computer to impress Windoze users. Heck, try MacOS 8.5 window tabs... that usually gets Win98 users drooling in a matter of seconds.
Also, looking at the screenshots on their site... I notice that check boxes and radio buttons look the exact same when un-checked. Possibly confusing for the user.
>Statements like this worry me. Restarts are NOT >ok, and i'm sickened that people think >they are. Especially when they're frequent like >it sounds like this bug would make them. >The world is not windows, if it were then >everyone including me would have no problem >with an occasional restart. But more importantly, >G4's are usually going to be used as >servers. Reboots are NEVER acceptable in a >server, it can mean 20 minutes of >downtime on a website which can mean lost >revenue. It can mean lost e-mails within a >company which is a VERY bad thing. Get the >picture? I'm glad they're delaying the >release, of course, as this is not a good bug. OK >my rant is done:-) thanks for reading.
A few points here: 1. The server model of the G4 (as I recall) isn't even shipping yet. (someone correct me as I'm wrong.) Currently, the G4 isn't as much intended as a server as it is for home use. (See recent Apple TV ads.) 2. You make it sound as if the bug is already hurting people... unless someone *actively* overclocks their G4, there doesn't seem to be any indication that this error would do any harm at all. And anyone with the skill to overclock a G4 would surely be able to research about the bug. 3. The reason the article is lax about the bug is that, other than a possible shipment delay, the bug isn't important yet.
>It's just too bad that some people are convinced >that they will be sentenced to eternal torture for >using their own brains, curiosity, creativity, and >common sense. Makes you think, doesn't it?
The only problem I have ever had while operating on a computer (I mean, problem resulting from lack of the proper tool, of course,) was getting the Torx screws off the back of a Macintosh Classic case.
It required a Torx screwdriver taped to a normal screwdriver so it was long enough to insert into the hole...
The point is that most computer tools are plain tools. And few enough people actually tinker with computers to make it worth their while to buy specialized tools for it.
Then again, it's an open marketplace... good luck to them.
Slashdot Mirror
Or would, if the Dock icons didn't move up and down as more items were inserted.
Shameless plug:
Eternal Struggle MUD. 90% of character advancement is done via an "RP AWARD" system where players can reward those who RP well. The old-fashioned SMAUG combat system has been replaced by a shiny emote-fight system, which basically means that combat is resolved via descriptive actions rather than boring "X hits Y. Y hits X." crap. There are MUDs out there that cater to RPers, and no MMORPG will *ever* get this right, so there's no point to even trying to play them.
So, wait... I'm not entirely sure I'm following you here... are you saying that functional programming is dying?
How come no one ever mentions Serious Sam? Now that's the funnest game since DOOM and it's ignored by almost everyone. Weird.
One student, asked what he learned from playing SimCity, said, "I learned that if I don't feed the people, they will starve and die."
What weird-ass version of SimCity was this?
Last I played, the best thing I learned was that if your city is large enough, Superman will appear to fight off giant robot monsters from space.
And their screenshots of how it renders incorrectly in "Internet Exploder" by "M$" (which is, in fact, what I'm using right now and it renders just find) really encourages me to give their software a fair trial-- after all, they have so much respect for the most popular web browser in existance.
Hypertalk is quite close to human speech, modified to remove some ambiguities.
"set the horizontal location of Button1 to the vertical location of Field2"
"go to next card with visual effect dissolve"
etc.
I don't know who was first between the two, but Grant Naylor also wrote this into an episode of Red Dwarf. (Is it White Hole? I forget...)
In that episode, they use a solar flare to knock a 'cue' planet out of orbit with the goal of clogging up some space thing (white hole?) with it so it won't suck in the ship.
Definately! 100% agreement. There's one other point, though:
:)
When you refer to these points in the OS, you *have* to include all applications written for that OS. MacOS has a great, consistant interface... but that all goes bye-bye if the poor user decides to run, say, ICQ. (MacICQ violates almost every MacOS Guideline there is.) I'm sorry to say it, but I'd have to include Quicktime on this list...
Also, drag and drop is essential. Not only with files, but with text, images, sound, *any* type of data. The saddest thing in Windoze is that it has support for this type of drag and drop support, but few applications make use of it.
Anyway, though. MacOS is already consistant, has full drag and drop support, is pretty durn stable, has a large user and application base, and includes a *great* scripting language. Just rip it off.
>You mean like dragging a floppy disk to the
>trashcan to eject it?
No, no, no, no... this can be easily explained.
When Apple designed MacOS, they thought of the desktop as a temporary repository for files and folders. In that vein, they created a "Put Away" command...
You can drag a file or folder to the desktop, work with it as long as you want, and then select "Put Away" (command-Y) It will go back where it started.
Now consider a floppy disk... a floppy disk is a physical item, so putting it away would be putting it back in the drawer, or the box, or whatever. If you select a floppy disk, and then choose "Put Away", it will eject the disk.
The Eject command also ejects the disk... *but* it retains the contents in RAM, "keeps it mounted", so to speak. This is because early Macs had one floppy drive, making copying from one disk to another a complicated procedure.
Anyway... point is, when harddrives appeared, no one remembered/knew the function of the Put Away (which always seemed unclear anyway...), and Apple added the trash can 'shortcut.' Now the problem is that the trash can represents "delete" in all cases *except* a disk.
But, hey, the rest of the GUI kicks ass, huh?
(BTW, Apple also changed the Eject function now to "Put Away" by default, unless you choose "Eject and Stay Behind.", the keyboard shortcut for which I forget at the moment. Contextual menus also solve this in a nifty, neat fashion.)
Er. There are a few things you have to remember: MacOS is fast because of a clean, efficient UI, *not* because it has pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, etc.
MacOS is, at its core, a windowing UI designed to run on 8 mHz 68000 chips on a 512x382 monochrome screen.
Look at it this way: The user is writing a document in AppleWorks or something, and pulls down a font menu to select Garamond. Given, all background tasks cease... but does the user care?
His MP3 player has at least 30 seconds of music already to the sound chip, his downloads are going to recieve all those packets as soon as the menu is released. Ok, fair enough, your 3D rendering program is going to lose the amount of time the menu was held down... what, 10 seconds? 30, max.
(In fact, OS 8+, as I recall, will 'unlock' locked menus after 15 seconds.)
In reality, though, (and try explaining this to a Windoze user), menus are a LOT quicker when you don't lock them down. One click instead of two.
MacOS may have terrible multitasking performance, but it's always been responsive to my commands, and isn't that what is more important? (Actually, OS 9 seems *less* responsive, and I can't figure out why...)
But my main selling point on MacOS is this. My computer is a old PowerMac 4400/200 upgraded to a G3. It has 64 MB of RAM. At this exact moment, I am running AIM, Claris Emailer, Claris Homepage, Finder, MacAmp Lite, Netscape, Rapscallion, and Word, and I'm not even close to dipping into virtual memory.
The most common complaints about MacOS are these:
1) Poor multitasking/poor response. (Solved by programmers using the proper WaitNextEvent delay time! Ugh. I hate people who code it wrong, think their application should get more than its fair share.)
2) Lack of protected memory. (Look, my Apple machine goes at least double the time between reboots as my Win98 PC. That's good enough for me. Plus, this is also solved by good coding practices... you don't need protected memory to bail you out of errors if your program has no errors.)
3) Lack of a second mouse button. This one really gets me... First of all, MacOS is more efficient in general with one mouse button than Windoze or X will ever be with two. Secondly, there is no "Golden Law of Macintosh" that says you can't buy and use a mouse with two buttons. I have a perfectly fine two-button mouse, with full contextual menu support in all applications.
Excuse me for the half-rant. I'm sick of people arguing that technology is the only thing that makes an OS more efficient or 'better' than another.
>Hopefully the next few generations of SF writers
:)
>will be frontier poets and authors writing of new
>found opportunity, not academics writing of that
>which could have been.
You also make that sound like a Bad Thing (tm). Personally, I love the dull crap that Clarke used to put out before all this touchy-feely sf happened.
I come across this problem a *lot* with Macintosh users. Most seem to assume that you can use the system forever without ever removing extensions, or running a disk utility, or rebuilding the desktop file.
:)
But the plain truth is that OSes require maintainence. Some more than others, of course. (As I recall, there still are no disk utilities for BeOS, simply because the problem hasn't come up yet.) Anyway, nothing is worse than a computer-lab Mac with 400 extensions in it and a disk fragmented to hell, and the user asks, "Why does it crash?" It would be like a motorist asking, "Why won't it go?" after failing to change the oil for 8000 miles.
Anyway. Eventually we'll get to the stage where no OSes ever require maintainence, or we'll get to the point where computer users are smart enough to realize that they do, and stop expecting miracles.
Now moderate me down for being off-topic, and off-OS.
- James Schend
It's nice to see stories for once relating to *legal* MP3s.
It's hard to keep one's morality when everyone around them has 100 CD collections on MP3 without spending a cent. Ugh.
P.S. What's the point of securing a 'first post' if you, a) mispell 'post' and b) are an anonymous coward?
Sorry about the formatting on that last post... forgot to select "plain ol' text"
>Ever wonder why a burrito-sized pentium is also >called a "micro" chip? Me too... Might have something to do with the size of computers *before* the IC arrived...
What really bugs me about this isn't that the game was cancelled for Mac... (I happen to own both a Mac and PC. The Mac for real work, the PC (of course) for games.)
From what I know of programming, it's equally easy to make a *universal* version of the game than an *only* Windoze version, or an *only* Mac version. Being equally easy makes it equally expensive, meaning the only additional cost to making a hybrid game is in the marketing/packaging.
So why isn't this done? Games companies seem to be throwing away 10%+ of the market for every game they release. In any other industry, this would be seen as insane. In the computer industry, it's normal.
A plea: Come on, game makers. Why should you throw away a portion of the market *and* force some of your best customers to wait 6 months or more for your game? Use some common sense.
- James Schend, an annoyed Mac user.
Tribes.
:( But I hear there's a MacOS client planned for Tribes II, so perhaps Dynamix can redeem themselves.
I don't know who here has played this game, but it *kind of* works in that spirit... However, instead of having access to the CODE, you have access to a superpowerful scripting language through which you can change almost any parameter you can think of. (If you have have the game, try comparing Base to Shifter, or Redneck. Try to find some aspect they *didn't* change.)
The only fault I can find with this system is that the client only runs on Windoze 9x.
Take a gander at www.tribesplayers.com
- James Schend
One poster mentioned that they used Enlightenment on their notebook computer to impress Windoze users. Heck, try MacOS 8.5 window tabs... that usually gets Win98 users drooling in a matter of seconds.
Also, looking at the screenshots on their site... I notice that check boxes and radio buttons look the exact same when un-checked. Possibly confusing for the user.
- James Schend
>Statements like this worry me. Restarts are NOT :-) thanks for reading.
>ok, and i'm sickened that people think
>they are. Especially when they're frequent like
>it sounds like this bug would make them.
>The world is not windows, if it were then
>everyone including me would have no problem
>with an occasional restart. But more importantly,
>G4's are usually going to be used as
>servers. Reboots are NEVER acceptable in a
>server, it can mean 20 minutes of
>downtime on a website which can mean lost
>revenue. It can mean lost e-mails within a
>company which is a VERY bad thing. Get the
>picture? I'm glad they're delaying the
>release, of course, as this is not a good bug. OK
>my rant is done
A few points here:
1. The server model of the G4 (as I recall) isn't even shipping yet. (someone correct me as I'm wrong.) Currently, the G4 isn't as much intended as a server as it is for home use. (See recent Apple TV ads.)
2. You make it sound as if the bug is already hurting people... unless someone *actively* overclocks their G4, there doesn't seem to be any indication that this error would do any harm at all. And anyone with the skill to overclock a G4 would surely be able to research about the bug.
3. The reason the article is lax about the bug is that, other than a possible shipment delay, the bug isn't important yet.
- James Schend
>It's just too bad that some people are convinced
>that they will be sentenced to eternal torture for
>using their own brains, curiosity, creativity, and
>common sense. Makes you think, doesn't it?
No, it doesn't make me think... it can't... nooo!
(descent into Hell)
The only problem I have ever had while operating on a computer (I mean, problem resulting from lack of the proper tool, of course,) was getting the Torx screws off the back of a Macintosh Classic case.
It required a Torx screwdriver taped to a normal screwdriver so it was long enough to insert into the hole...
The point is that most computer tools are plain tools. And few enough people actually tinker with computers to make it worth their while to buy specialized tools for it.
Then again, it's an open marketplace... good luck to them.
- James Schend