Master thalo once mentioned that OS X was for twiddlers. Now, I know that sounds quite insulting but consider if you will the possibility that the computer has replaced the car as the male's favorite object for tinkering. Why do I say this? Well, I just took a good look at some of the subject headings on a number of OS X forums. You'll find people getting woodies over discussing such things as shell scripts, bash, the terminal, Apache, Unix, open source, etc., etc. All of these things can, of course, be quite useful. But I get the feeling it's something more than this. Unless we've all turned into master programmers and web administrators overnight there's little need for this stuff other than the tinkering value. Isn't that what we used to do with our cars?

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with this. Twiddling can be fun, educational and it's a relatively inexpensive hobby. But in the good ol' Mac days we tinkered with ideas themselves rather than the technology. Sure, the computer was a nifty device but it wasn't an end in itself. It was a means to an end, the means to express our ideas that before had either been impossible, too difficult or too expensive to do without the Mac. Now with OS X, we are almost back to where we started before there was a Mac. We're worshiping at the idol of technology.

When I found a thread in which people were stating their reasons for liking OS X, I ran into responses such as these: it's good looking; it's Unix-based; it gives me good uptimes; it uses a GPU for compositing; it's not made by Microsoft; parts of it are open source; it manages processes well; it networks well; it's stable; etc., etc. Nowhere did I find reference to being able to do something entirely new or creative with it. It's all about the technology or the Apple logo on it.

HH said something on another thread about OS X not offering anything really new or innovative. I couldn't agree more and it's something I've been saying for a long time. But I suppose it all depends on what your definition of "innovative" is. But I can definitely see brother thalo's point that Apple is aiming low with this OS; that's it's all about passive entertainment.

There are some exceptions, of course, such as iMovie. But that's an application that could just as well be run on OS 9 or even Windows. Some believe the perfect OS would be completely invisible to the user and that it's ALL about the applications you can run, and there is some truth in that. But I can't help believing that the OS itself, its goals and visions, help to craft the applications that are made for it. It provides the underlying structure for utility and creativity. What we had with the original Mac was the underlying structure for handling fonts and bitmapped graphics, among other things. This then allowed applications of so many different and unforeseen types to spring up and which then gave us all a lot of "power to be our best." What has OS X given us? Well, it's mangled screen fonts. It's sucked processor power in exchange for eye candy. The underlying things that are built into it I believe HH might refer to as "things that allow OTHER people to control the user" which is Unix incarnate. Sure networking and stability (when it finally gets it) are nice. But that's all geek stuff. Where's the beef? Where are the innovating things that will launch a whole new wave of apps that let US do things we could never do before?

With OS X we're somewhat worse than being back at square one. We have a crappier GUI and little core innovation (other than things that support eye candy such as the GPU support). But we're all supposed to be just thrilled because we can now twiddle in full MultitaskVision without having to restart our computers. Big whoopee.

I thought this was a good post, but it is dying a sad little death all by its lonesome. So, I am resurrecting it.

When I found a thread in which people were stating their reasons for liking OS X, I ran into responses such as these: it's good looking; it's Unix-based; it gives me good uptimes; it uses a GPU for compositing; it's not made by Microsoft; parts of it are open source; it manages processes well; it networks well; it's stable; etc., etc. Nowhere did I find reference to being able to do something entirely new or creative with it. It's all about the technology or the Apple logo on it.

I'll tell you something that OSX allows me to do creatively that OS9 did not. It gives me geater avenue to organize, combine, analyze, and bring together my scientific data and ideas. A month doesn't go by when I find some new little OSX application that gives me greater linkage between all of the ideas and data that I produce. I find that I am more able to see big pictures, while I zoom in to study one detail. Maybe all those tools were in OS9, and I just never found the inspiration to use them. If so, then OSX itself has elevated my abilities. Either way, it is the reason I have found OSX to be my system of choice.

Yeah, I have to agree with mithradites/Thundarr - the underlying technologies are definitely good things, but they're not the core of the experience... they're just enhancing it. I'm far more productive in OS X. 9 always bogged down on me because I pushed it too hard, usually by having too many apps and documents open at once. It would break instead of bend. OS X (and am I ever going to hear some crap about this one) is like one of those punching-clown toys - you can give it one hell of a pounding, but it never goes completely down, and it always comes right back up, unfazed.

You are damn right Brad. OS X is not innovative. Not a penny GUI-wise. Underpinnings are ok, but not innovation. We get overdue multitasking and stability at the expense of gigabytes of RAM and MHZ. Blah. And then we see stuff like "Jaguar: Wildly Innovative" ARGH>$#@%@#$^@

Talking about Blahs, where is Blah?

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OS X...is like one of those punching-clown toys - you can give it one hell of a pounding, but it never goes completely down, and it always comes right back up, unfazed.

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Gee, that's what I said about DigiKids!

Originally posted by Darctor Frankenstein: I thought this was a good post, but it is dying a sad little death all by its lonesome. So, I am resurrecting it.

LOL. A little mouse-to-mouse resuscitation.

I'll tell you something that OSX allows me to do creatively that OS9 did not. It gives me geater avenue to organize, combine, analyze, and bring together my scientific data and ideas.

If it's not too personal, and it doesn't reveal any proprietary information, someday we've got to see a screenshot of one of your desktops with them big molecular doo-dads posing as icons. No, I don't work for the EPA or even the FDA.

OS X (and am I ever going to hear some crap about this one) is like one of those punching-clown toys - you can give it one hell of a pounding, but it never goes completely down, and it always comes right back up, unfazed.

Anyone brave enough to use a little self-deprecating humor will never be ambushed by me. I have to say, I would be more than glad to take the underpinnings of Unix with the ability to launch several apps and then – bang – be able to switch to another already-running app and do something. I'd be glad to have the ability to REALLY bang away hard in one app knowing that the other running apps were nestled snuggly in their memory-protected beds. I'd be glad to take the ability to run some processor-intensive task in the background while merrily going about my work in the foreground. I'd love the ability to never have to mess with allocating memory; the ability to more easily network (if I needed to) with Windows or other computers; and I would gladly pay for this all with a the Unix file structure if absolutely necessary (and I'm not convinced it is). I could even live with the Dock if there was a way to drag it to the upper right part of the screen and have it function as an application menu. But I can't live with Apple taking the AHIGs and running them through a paper shredder. You guys find great productivity from the underpinnings (and some other stuff). I find it in the interface. It might be hard to convey just how I find it so but suffice it to say that Aqua is like putting a Steinway in front of a virtuoso but the white keys are all two inches wide and the black ones are recessed four inches further back than usual.

There's nothing "innovative" about OS X. It's nothing but a bunch of recycled technologies: a core OS from the '60's, filename extensions from the '70's, a vague approximation of an interface from the '80's, forced on Apple in the '90's, leading to plunging market share in the '00's.

Oh, wait...the blurry screenfonts and "go to the Terminal" troubleshooting instructions ARE new on a Mac-branded computer. I stand corrected.

Markle

"HH said something on another thread about OS X not offering anything really new or innovative"

In all fairness, when was the last time that Apple was innovative? I'm talking hardware and software, other than the "i" toys?

I'm always quite amused when that master pitchman, Jobs, has his audience wooing at what he tries to sell as innovative, when, in fact, many of those goodies existed in PC's for a while, sometimes years.

In spite of that, I still preferred the Mac OS (pre X) to anything Wintel. That was my personal choice and has nothing to do with the drivel Jobs delivers at the Expos. On the contrary, he'd be as good a reason as any not to buy a Mac. I find him to be a disingeunous, pretentious middle-aged man who tries so hard to be "hip" that he's actually unhip. Well, i suppose to the geeks of the world that any shirt that doesn't have a pocket pencil holder is avant-garde and risqué.

But come on folks, OS X, as awful an OS as it is, did not halt the Mac train of innovation, especially when that train had stopped long ago, probably at 7.5. OS X just wiped away a masterpiece that was admittedly a bit long in the tooth, but should have been used as the model for an improved Mac OS, not this monstrosity that dresses up UNIX.

Speaking of mock turtlenecks, Brooklyn boys have been known to come to the East Village to kick a few of those mock turtleneck-wearing asses, who dress from head to toe in all black, pretending to live a bohemian lifestyle while driving in from Long Island in their daddy's Volvos. Like, holy shit, man.

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In all fairness, when was the last time that Apple was innovative?

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You are kidding, right?

Well, in case you're not, let me help you.

• Rendezvous
  
• SuperDrive
  
• Quartz (and Extreme)
  
• AirPort (and Extreme)
  
• FireWire
  
• PowerPC (RISC in a consumer box instead of Big Iron)
  
• QuickTime
  
• Newton (the first PDA and arguably still the best)
  
• The PowerBook (Almost all of them)
  
• The Graphical User Interface (PARC pioneered WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer), and Apple purchased permission to build from the basic rules laid down by the Alto (in a rather lucrative stock deal for Xerox), but Apple added so much more on the original Mac. Far more stuff than the Alto team never even dreamed of. The Mac team's innovations are currently the basis of all personal computers.)
  
• And, yes, the iToys...
  

I'm sure there's quite a bit that I'm forgetting, too.

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Originally posted by 9KILLER:

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In all fairness, when was the last time that Apple was innovative?

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You _are_ kidding, right?

Well, in case you're not, let me help you.

+ Rendezvous
+ SuperDrive
+ Quartz (and Extreme)
+ AirPort (and Extreme)
+ FireWire
+ PowerPC (RISC in a consumer box instead of Big Iron)
+ QuickTime
+ Newton (the first PDA and arguably still the best)
+ The PowerBook (Almost all of them)
+ The Graphical User Interface (PARC pioneered WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer), and Apple purchased permission to build from the basic rules laid down by the Alto (in a rather lucrative stock deal for Xerox), but Apple added so much more on the original Mac. Far more stuff than the Alto team never even _dreamed_ of. The Mac team's innovations are currently the basis of _all_ personal computers.)
+ And, yes, the iToys...

I'm sure there's quite a bit that I'm forgetting, too.

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No, not kidding. Not really. I WAS sorta kidding about the boys from Brooklyn kicking ass part, though there was a bit of wishful thinking there.

I said that since 7.5, around the time that Win 95 arrived, Apple truly hasn't been in the forefront save a few cool ideas.

We all know about Mac's (Xerox) GUI and how Windows 95 "stole it." 20 years later, Mac zealots, hanging on to a thin thread, won't let anyone forget it.

Firewire, Newton and perhaps QuickTime I agree with. But Quartz/Quartz Extreme are specific to the design of the Mac, NOT the computing world, and you can hardly call it innovative when PC's outperform Macs equipped with Quartz and OSX.

SuperDrive? PC's had built in burners/DVD well before Jobs announced the "earth-shattering" SuperDrive. I actually shook my head and chuckled as his loyalists gave him a resounding ovation.

As for Airport, I'm not quite sure if this was a technological breakthrough for Apple, because it seems that there were a number of wireless network devices that came out at about the same time that didn't necessarily follow Apple's lead. Rendevous? Not sure, but I think you can network PC devices dynamically as well, or close to it?. Maybe I'm wrong.

I will say that the iMac was innnovative (aesthetically), as are most of Ive's designs.

I'm sure that I can think of a few more Apple innovations as well. Let's assume there are countless more innovations. Then why do Macs pale in comparison to the performance of PC's? Is it because those innovations are worthless, not utilized correctly, a product of Jobs' hyperbole, or does the Wintel world steal/borrow them and improve upon them?

You do put up a good argument, and my point is that Apple and their diminishing customer base seem to be resting on their past laurels while the ship is sinking. Almost makes those innovations potentially moot, though you do have to pay tribute to the valid ones regardless.

[This message was edited by SnobbyRobby on Sat June 14 2003 at 05:14 AM.]

Firewire, Newton and perhaps QuickTime I agree with.


Snobby, why do you agree with these "innovations? First, isn't firewire just the Apple name for the IEEE-1394 standard? In any case it is a computer serial port. Faster than other serial ports, but personal computers had communication serial ports from day one.

The Newton was a PDA. Other companies had PDAs (of lesser power) at the time. This one had different features and a different price/performance ratio, and I don't think it did very well in the price/performance ratio area.

QuickTime? Maybe. This software tends to turn your computer into a television/media combo. I don't think anyone who has looked at a computer monitor has failed to notice it's link to television. It is an old idea, very old. Many people and companies have had this same idea. Some, like Apple, Real Networks, and others have acted upon it. Innovative? Maybe if you stretch the meaning of the word. New thinking? Certainly not.

That whole list is basically just a feature list of the kind you could get in a brochure. One could just as easily have added the hinged computer case door and the big handles. That way you could say that hinges and handles are Apple innovations.

Companies use the term innovation very loosely these days. Now, one could use the term to include everything a corporation does to get the product out the door. Marketing department promotion and advertising has set the language of the discussion. Innovation no longer equates to new thinking. It just means whatever the company is happens to be doing no matter how mundane. Basically a feature list.

The Newton represents a con that's alarmingly similar to what's going on with OS X today. A kind of "overblown" vision of innovation. Selling the dream with a lot of half-realized, or completely broken or nonexistent functionality.

When stuff really, really doesn't work, like this OS... Apple manages somehow to get us to crap-settle. Overlook the stuff that doesn't work, or ain't finished, and focus instead on the dream. They do this by giving just enough functionality and just barely nominal performance. They try to wow us with bits and pieces of splashy and flashy stuff, and rarely follow it through.

I can't argue that I didn't like the IDEA of the Newton, just as I can't argue I don't like the IDEA of a brand new operating system for the Mac. What kills me, is how deftly Apple can play on our techno dreams, without really delivering half of what they promise... and still have us spend money.

They can sell us prop Star Trek tricorders, and call them PDAs, but there was just too much wrong to consider them the real McCoy. Same with OS X. It's being so unevenly developed, and the development process is so horrifically slow... that what we have now is a few iApps which a beta freeware OS has been cobbled to run. A few cool things became the raison d'etre of the beast... a stage set with some eye candy hiding the lie underneath.

WE'RE expected to fill in the blanks with our own imaginations. We're being required to be LOYAL, instead of actually getting anything from Apple in the way of a fully-realized product (except those few digikid things where they can sell us crap). We accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Some of us even deny that the negative is there, so accustomed are we to WISHING it away.

My favorite example is the so-called stability of OS X. Big, scary, system-wide crashes are way down (they're not gone, mind you, just down). OK, but I argue that we've just traded one kind of crash for another. Keeping an OS kernel alive, that does squat, while sacrificing application stability (and performance); is not creating a stable platform. But we have people going "WHEW! Now only APPLICATIONS crash!" Buh-buh-buh-whaaaa? Huh? I don't know about you, but I lose just as much work when apps crash, as I ever did when OS 9 crapped out on me.

I am under the constant impression that Apple has decided to play mind games on us, rather than stand and deliver. They're finding ways to HIDE problems, hide the truth... instead of finding ways to fix what's wrong. Eye candy itself is nothing more than a dirty trick. Sleight of hand, a distraction to take emphasis off a really bloated and easy-to-break operating system.

There's stuff that's been on the back burner now for two years. Stuff that's important, like services. I say either own up to the fact that you can't get them to work pan-application, or get rid of them. Classic. Holy crap, they aren't even TRYING. But to this day, I can boot into OS 9 and use many a 68k application just fine. The Finder. It's total bullshit. It used to BE what the Mac was all about. Now it's nothing more than a showcase for more stuff that barely works. And stuff like icon previews are still broken. Tiny photoshop icon previews. A bug that's been around forever.

What gets attention? Come on now, what? Look at this development, and you tell me where Apple's head is at. What's getting worked on to the greatest effect? And why?

Apple is ignoring almost everything that made the Mac great for pro use, and is scurrying around to tweak and fix everything that's making it good for casual use. And they expect to sell high end CPUs? Nah-ah. Sorry. Time to pull some of those resources out of the dream factory, and start making more than empty promises.

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Originally posted by HighHopes:
_Firewire, Newton and perhaps QuickTime I agree with._


Snobby, why do you agree with these "innovations? First, isn't firewire just the Apple name for the IEEE-1394 standard? In any case it is a computer serial port. Faster than other serial ports, but personal computers had communication serial ports from day one.

---

In retrospect I'd have to agree with you HH, even if Apple were the first to include an IEEE-1394 port on their computers. The technology already existed though Apple did have the vision to make it universal on their machines.

But as usual, and when you are dealing with "Megahertz Myth Jobs" it becomes semantics and mirrors. Call it a SuperDrive, and hey, Apple was the first to call it that! Call it their very own! But Apple invent it? No wonder Al "The Inventor of the Internet" Gore is on the Apple board - he fits right into their distorted and misleading mindset. As we all know, whatever the SuperDrive's function is had already existed for years and was built into PC's way prior to them being offered on Macs.

Hey, I can call typing posts at thalo.net "Wonderpigging" and tell you at this moment that I am the first person to ever Wonderpig, and I'd be accurate. But would typing a post be considered "innovative?" If I had Jobs shilling for me, he sure as hell would convince the "ooohing and ahhhhing" blind zealots that "Wonderpigging" is unique to SR and never before existed.

I know that I'm probably giving Apple less credit than they deserve, but all I know is that since day 1, when i decided to choose a Mac (for very good reason) over any PC (pre OS X) that Macs always lagged behind. And DESPITE that fact, I didn't care, for I enjoyed the Mac experience much more than what Windows had to offer. But I'd hardly call Apple innovative, considering I always felt like I was always 2 steps behind the PC world and yet still I'd thumb my nose at PC users like a cocky SOB. Not any more. Apple's going to have to blow me away, and quick, to make me "switch" back. Never EVER thought those words would be coming from my mouth.


Thank you Jobs. Thank you Apple.

[This message was edited by SnobbyRobby on Sat June 14 2003 at 10:12 AM.]

iMovie/iTools integration.

Mr. Gates, I challenge you to once again "steal" from Apple and come up with a reasonable facsimile. Then I'd have no excuse to go on my 800 Megahertz Mythed-friendly, FP iMac SUPERduperpooperscooperDrive, again.

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Call it a SuperDrive, and hey, Apple was the first to call it that! Call it their very own! But Apple invent it? No wonder Al "The Inventor of the Internet" Gore is on the Apple board - he fits right into their distorted and misleading mindset.

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As far as I'm concerned, there's our second entry in the Talk of Fame.

WOW, thalo. With all due respect to our Phil (if he's reading this) you are my Jesus. The supreme carpenter.

Once again you hit the nail on the head in your usual jaw-dropping manner.

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Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[QUOTE]
As far as I'm concerned, there's our second entry in the Talk of Fame.

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Why thank you, kind sir. Somehow I thought that I was stating the obvious, but I'm never one to turn down such a prestigious honor.

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Somehow I thought that I was stating the obvious

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It was a close call. But you got high marks in "Artistic Interpretation" with the Gore reference and that put you over the top.