Hi my brothers, and welcome to the first post on the first day of THALO.net. Gotta start somewhere. As I sit here, pretty much the only registered user, on this infant new site of mine with its whole life ahead of it... so much I want to accomplish, so much I want to talk about... I was thinking, what if Apple could do only ONE THING to improve OS X, I mean right now this very day. One thing and one thing alone. What would you have have them do? What's at the top of your wish list?

For me, I guess it would have to be offer a Platinum theme. There's a lot more to it than that, but that would be the top of my list. I mean jeez, even Windows XP does that. Allowing users to maintain the old legacy Windows appearance of their interface if they choose to.

Part of my insanity and frustration over OS X and Aqua is that, to me, the interface was like the one thing that wasn't broken. One of the best things about the Mac OS prior to the coming of bloat. Simple, elegant, clear, readable, and customizable for pro use. Platinum did what it was meant to do, and didn't get in my way.

Yeah, a Platinum theme would go a long way toward healing the rift between Me, and the new operating system. I'd really love it if that theme not only changed the appearance of the interface to Platinum, but if within that there were other options to preserve things that Platinum did really better than OS X does: like Open/Saves. I'd also want to be able to configure the Platinum theme the same way I can configure Platinum in OS9 now. Meaning choose my Finder fonts, better control over font anti-aliasing and so forth.

Another thing within the theme that would make me jump for joy would be the ability to return to the traditional APPLICATION MENU instead of the Dock. While I feel the Dock is one of the better realized and more responsive features of OS X, I guess I just liked the old App menu better. I'd like to see more of a hybrid. Something that used the space where the App menu used to be, perhaps even a dock in the menu bar. Something with crisp icons that worked at smaller sizes, more like the Control Strip.

But let's start with a Platinum theme. As a kind of emergency measure, that would be the first best step toward giving me some sense of hope again. No more stripes, no more blurry upscaled fonts, no meaningless use of transparency. Tack the legacy look back on to the Mac interface, let me abandon Aqua, and it would show me a kind of toe in the water that Apple was willing to build on the strengths of the past.

What about you guys, where would you begin? If you could play CEO and fix one thing about X to kick the development into high gear, either make you adopt, or improve the character of your ongoing adoption, what would it be?

Well done, thalo. I imagine that figuring out all this billboard stuff took some time and a fair amount of skill. And I do thank you, sir, for the lack of stripes here at thalo.net. Sometimes it's the little things.

If I could change one thing (other than firing Jobs) (did I mention firing Jobs?), and that one thing wasn't firing Jobs, it would be the return of a simple principle: function over form. The rest would follow; the crisp functional theme, the GUI elements that worked cool instead of just looked cool, the commitment to REAL simplicity instead of faux simplicity, etc. The form/function ratio is now out of whack. I'm not for eradicating those whimsical little details that give the Mac some personality and soften the edge. But the personality of this OS, particularly the interface, is like a precocious child in the back of the classroom fidgeting in his seat because he knows the answer and desperately waving his hand to the teacher and screaming "Me! Me! Me!"

I'm basically tired of the Mac and Apple being turned into the high-sugar buzz of a Britney Spears video. A fad is not something on which to build an OS, and stripes, among a number of other things which I'm sure we'll get into, need to go. And marketing their products as if we were all idiots doesn't sit well with me either.

I should point out that OS X has driven me to semi-adopt XP for my graphics work. I say semi-adopt because I'm still in the transition stage. I suppose if Apple cut the crap I could still be persuaded to stay with the Mac. But they're going to have to make some changes. I'm not one of those people who goes gaga over either Unix or shiny, bouncy things.

thalo = Master Baiter

Brad = THALO.net novice

Novice? Moi? How pointlessly repetitive do I have to be until I make Master status? I feel I've already earned my stripes. On second thought, you can keep the stripes.

Brother Brad!
I'm sure you realize by now that I put the picture of Steve Jobs with the favorites heart and the "my hero" caption on the disclaimer page, just for your benefit

I dunno if firing Jobs is the answer. We've had this fight before, but I think he's in the perfect spot to continue to make history and fulfill his destiny. I believe the people with their heads screwed on backwards are probably in a boardroom somewhere in the Marketing Department. Steve Jobs' crime is not that he designed Aqua, I'm sure he didn't. It's that he's LISTENING to people who aren't Mac Faithful. He's APPROVING stuff that takes the platform in truly unfortunate directions. And I guarantee you, those directions are coming from people lower down on the food chain than the CEO. This whole project reeks of that. It's the facile, shallow use of eye candy to turn a buck that gives away the fact it's coming from middle managment, and not from people with vision. And hey, it's not even that they're WRONG that eye candy attracts the easily impressed. It does.

Look, I sit around MAKING eye candy all day. I play the same games, use the same visual tricks and techniques to try and sell stuff with graphics. I've deployed my share of stripes, and drop shadows, and BLUE same as the next guy. But I do it to sell stuff for clients on the web or in print. I don't make computer interfaces for a living (though I should) that people have to use every day for work. Stuff that by its very nature has to be functional first, and pretty second. Apple is selling stuff. Selling branding and an IDEA of the digital hub lifestyle, before it all actually works. Using overawe with eye candy to hide the unfinished bits. This is a dead giveaway who the target user base is, and it ain't pros who can see THROUGH eye candy, it's for people who are duped by eye candy.

Love, love your analogy of the classroom. That's it exactly. Competing themes. Competing functionality (some of which doesn't work, some of which is subservient to the bell and/or whistle that summons it)... junk-drawer mentality. Ten ways of doing the same thing, none of them the best way. Standard issue bloat.

As for your novice status, holy crap my brother, you can call yourself anything you damn well please. That's just the automatic generalizer and categorizer. Without a human generalizer and categorizer behind it. Say the word, and THALO.net will refer to you as whatever your Jobs-hating little heart desires.

And if you want, I'll give you power of life and death over the boards as a moderator. Just remember the words of Uncle Ben--no, not Spiderman's Uncle Ben who said "with great power comes great responsibility"... I mean the OTHER Uncle Ben, the rice guy, who said: "holy crap Doris, this is gloppy and sticky and tasteless and we'll never make a dime off of it."

Hello there brothers! :-)
So nice to see a forum called "OS X Talk" again!
Where's Phil St. Romain? :-)

I'm sure you realize by now that I put the picture of Steve Jobs with the favorites heart and the "my hero" caption on the disclaimer page, just for your benefit

Yes. I got a good chuckle out of that and it propelled me to try and bait the master baiter himself.

Say the word, and THALO.net will refer to you as whatever your Jobs-hating little heart desires.

Oh, you know me better than that, thalo. Particularly on an online forum, we should be judged by our ideas alone and no weight should be given to our words simply because of a title or number of posts. I'm happy with the novice moniker. There are a great number of things that I know but even more that I don't.

And if you want, I'll give you power of life and death over the boards as a moderator. Just remember the words of Uncle Ben--no, not Spiderman's Uncle Ben who said "with great power comes great responsibility"

I'd be glad to help out in the capacity of a moderator. I understand your rules and, more importantly, your philosophy behind the rules. I actually agree with that philosophy for the most part although I think you undervalue a few things. But since we live in an age of PC I understand the value of grabbing hold of that pendulum and giving it a good swing. With right hand in the air I promise not to delete a post (I'm steadying myself) even IF I hear the words "no blood for oil".

Where's Phil St. Romain? :-)

Hey, Max! I've been watching you from time to time over at Battlefront. Still fighting the good fight, eh? I'm master baiting Phil even as we speak. I hope to see him show up but in the meantime he does send his best wishes to thalo.

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If you could play CEO and fix one thing about X to kick the development into high gear, either make you adopt, or improve the character of your ongoing adoption, what would it be?

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I'd also go with firing Jobs as my first step. I know he didn't designed Aqua (or at least ALL of Aqua) but I'm pretty sure he played a big role in NeXT's interface and that's basically what we have now in OS X, eyecandy aside.

Simultaneously, I'd restore all of the Mac workflow and interface features we lost when switching to Unix and offer them as an option under Themes:Pro:Platinum.

Dream on... ;-D

brother mAx!
Damn glad to see you. There's a moderatorship reserved for you too, if you want it. After working with ubb.x for a couple of days, trust me, that's in no way an honor.

LOL, brother Phil is always welcome, I always thought of him as a very worthy adversary. Could master bait with the best of them. Same goes for brother Thundarr and the mighty johnq. But last time I talked to Phil, I think he was totally fed up with me.

Back to Jobs, I've always said I don't care what code they rob from where, the kernel could be kernels of creamed corn, as long as it functions. And as long as the Mac GUI drives it as well as Platinum drove OS 9. To me there is no earthly reason why the guy who invented the Mac, and NeXT, can't follow his own AHIGs. I think he's just getting lazy, or trying to save a buck. But the Mac revolutionary is in him, buried, waiting for us to tell him it's OK to let it back out.

Brother thalo, of course I'd be glad to help moderate the forums. Just tell me how and I'm in.

I hope to see here those who deserted MFI after the pathetic irruption of that Von Finck thug to ban the X-critics and silence any comment against OS X. I'd like to also see those poor souls who applauded him at the moment and now find the forum so boring they want to kill themselves.

On Jobs I'd say that his Panther keynote will be CRUCIAL in letting the faithful know he's finally taking care of us this time around. He could regain our love with just a couple of thoughtful sentences and a good product.

I seriously doubt that any of those conditions will be present next June, though.

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Hey, Max! I've been watching you from time to time over at Battlefront. Still fighting the good fight, eh?

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Brad, great to see you!
Yes, I'm doing whatever I can with my limited time and grammar. :-)

Would be great to have you guys posting at Ars too. There's a huge Mac-only forum besides the Battlefront and the X-men over there are -generally- miles ahead from our crap-settler friends at MFI.

(Edit: Emoticons not working in IE 5.1.6 (9.1) Oddly, they're fine in Safari at home. Just added a different one...)

[This message was edited by mAxximo on Tue May 06 2003 at 10:05 AM.]

Would be great to have you guys posting at Ars too.

Good to see you too, Max. I do occasionally post over at Ars, but under another name. It's interesting to read through that stuff. Most of the platform-wars talk is more technically oriented and doesn't address many of the issues that concern a typical Mac user. But the technical knowledge of those people at Ars is pretty impressive. But when it comes to the interface and ease-of-use issues there's more of a "make due" attitude. But the Mac should be (and I think has to be) about getting the small stuff right. Who would spend more for a Lexus if the engine knocked, the tires were out of balance and it had HUGE tail fins.

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But the Mac should be (and I think has to be) about getting the small stuff right.

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While I totally agree with that, I think there's a pervasive impression at Apple, and at various places around the Mac community that maybe the interface is nothing more than "the small stuff," and all the stuff that the interface HIDES, is really the important stuff. Whereas, people who make a living depending on, and using the interface, are more likely to think of it as huge issue, because it's the front line, the primary way primate meets personal computer. I'd go so far as to say the more people understand computers, the less "charmed" they are by the interface, and the more they need one that is more function than fluff. That is, unless they are members of the geek aristocracy, where the interface is almost a nonissue and can be easily bypassed by simply ignoring it... seeing it as kind of software for morons that rides atop the "real" computer which they, and only they, can use to its fullest potential.

If Aqua was actually GOOD at letting us use the Macintosh personal computer to its fullest potential, streamlining and simplifying complex tasks, rather than making them even more complicated, Apple would be ruling the world by now. But they are falling into the same old traps. There is still an impulse to make arcane some fundamentally important tasks, in effect taking real power away from end users, and give it to people who can exploit and maximize their superior knowledge of geekdom. Whether it's to turn a buck or what.

An example is this, notice how Apple now DECIDES what activities on the Mac are easiest. I mean, decides FOR us. There is no doubt in my mind the type of activity they find acceptable, and the type of activity that they dole out for the benefit of people who need special knowledge. A Newbie has no trouble firing up iTunes and playing music. But there's a lot of stuff that's installed that's there with no explanation of what it is, why it's there AND WHAT WE CAN DO WITH IT.

Meanwhile, when given the opportunity to give the user true and powerful access to the amazing things a Mac can do nowadays, there is an impulse again, to separate geek and state. Always the sense that the real power in the computer is hiding behind useless eye candy. There for the benefit of marketing instead of being integral to the function.

Here's a test. Advocates of OS X often say stuff like "well, you don't have to even TOUCH the terminal or unix if you don't want to." That's sort of true. There's a recognition that the interface can make some things more accessible to some users. But try this on for size: Take a geek, any geek, and require him (or her) to use the Mac without touching the command line, at all, for a week. Not one single solitary typing in of anything in a terminal. Turn the tables. Take people who don't really NEED the interface, who in fact look down their noses at it and disdain people who depend on it... and force them to use it.

Make them go and track down a jillion various disparate utilities, some of which amount to nothing more than a big fancy front end, riding on top of something that they used to be able to do with a few keystrokes from one place, quickly. Trust me, Jaguar would be a very very different animal today.

We started by talking about ONE THING Apple could do, and I still think the interface wins. A pro theme would be my choice too. But there's a big philosophical issue here. These "one things" slice down to the very foundations of what it means to use a computer.

The Mac used to be about subverting the geek aristocracy. They managed to build a system, and a machine that was BETTER than the sum of its parts. Easier to use and did things in a more cohesive way. The parts hung together... were integrated into a metaphorical "virtual" environment that above all else, made sense.

It wasn't dumbed down. Rather it was consistent. It behaved a certain way, communicated well what impact you were having on it. Man and machine worked together in a way that you didn't need a computer science degree for. The interface wasn't a sham, it WAS the computer. So aligned to the functional tasks that the machine was able to do, we all asked less "how do I do this?" and more "WHAT can I do with this?" The Mac was a great big fat step forward in human evolution.

Now? Please. Now Apple is telling us what to do. Not liberating us, corraling us. Want to design a web site, DVD, or photo album? Here, we'll do it for you... just pick one of these bee-oooteeeful designs and you're done. Sit back, relax, listen to music, watch a movie trailer, we'll do all the work for you.

Seems like Apple wants to own us, rather than elevate us now. I want them to go back to pulling out the stops and saying the sky's the limit. What can you do with a Mac? Anything, here's how. Take geek knowledge and reinvent it. Show how completely stupid and time-wasting and arcane it can become. Make it silly to do it their way, and MUCH easier to do it the Mac way. That could be happening to a much greater degree than it is. How? by returning the primacy of intent of the Macintosh back to ease of use. And that means interface. That means fundamentally re-conceiving it the way Finder 1.0 blew the lid off'n Big Blue's dominance. Not for purposes of dividing knows from the know nots, but to give everyone a leg up in the world by giving them a tool that can maximize their creativity.

One thing: interface. But it ain't a small thing.

[This message was edited by thalo on Wed May 07 2003 at 09:47 AM.]

This is something you stated in the "Geek Aristocracy" thread, but I liked it so much it should go here. If there one thing I would like Apple to do is to elevate the command line to something that novice users could use. Perhaps add new commands that are similar to AppleScript commands. Make the man pages something a newbie could understand. Make downloading and compiling a breeze. I think what makes OSX so powerful, a GUI and a command line, would be even more so if the average joe, like Markle, could really get his hands dirty using both. Apple, you have the know how, make it so. Evolve the command line and GUI together into a new paradigm. Let us tap into both the geek and the artiste within.

Right, brother mithradites;
I've been saying this forever. Kick the unix door down. Put the gun in the hands of everyone, not just the elite. Demystifying the CLI would be a breeze for guys like Apple.

But a caveat: it has to be worth it. The unix part of the mac has to yield a return somehow. It has to be a true, not cursory unlocking of power. I have always pictured it as popping the hood. Good for troubleshooting, tweaking, hacking, and so forth. But every time I use it I say the same thing: this is antiquated. A lot of this BS hasn't changed a bit since I was in college. Where's the friggin' PROGRESS?

It is so, so time to reinvent the wheel here. That's what I thought the new OS was going to be, and so imagine my disappointment. Mac OS X is proceeding in an ad-hoc, seat of the pants way, without any clear vision. Without any magnificent metaphor that could revolutionize the Personal Computer. It's trying to be too many things to too many people without doing anything well. And so now it's good for only two slices of the user base: geeks, and digikids. It's a junk drawer for scammed, patched together, and outdated technologies. There is a profound sense of disharmony.

You know what, if you take a micro view, there is merit to some of the things Apple is doing. But none of it hangs TOGETHER. It's fifteen different computers, none of them really good for Pro Users in my industry.

The strength of the old Mac UI was this PERVASIVE, logical, and completely consistent sense of the interface. A few easy-to-master skills, and you could pretty much crack into any new app and start using it right away. We've lost a whole lot of that. Never underestimate the power of an overarching metaphor. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I can come up with ten that would tie this beast together. Apple hasn't done one. There's still a plurality of interfaces, a lot of different ways to do the same thing, none of them really the best way.

Actually, the scary thing is, it's the terminal that's the best way right now. The CLI. When you ignore Aqua, the computer functions better. That's the path of least bullshit, and that's really frightening to me, because deep in my soul I'm convinced of the merit of GUIs.

I'm a guy who dual boots. And literally EVERY TIME I return to OS 9, I notice how capable and responsive Platinum is. How much better every single file management task is to visualize. How quick the Finder updates itself and provides consistent feedback. Back to OS X and you can feel the lameness. It's this gimpy, slow, kludgy thing that is like trying to explain to a toddler with ADD how to assemble a jet engine, when all he wants to do is ride his bike.

Other than speed issues, that has been the one disappointing thing about OSX for me. I wanted the union of the two to be insanely great. You are correct in that they are more separate than united. I think Apple HAS raised the bar in terms of ease of use for the CLI, but, frankly, quality is so low for UNIX based systems anyway that the bar didn't need to be raised far.

Apple didn't blow me away with their initial foray. There are actually tons of scientific tools waiting for the Apple touch. Tools that could be put into the hands of younger people to inspire them to pursue careers in science. I can only imagine our educational system if Apple truely made UNIX and the CLI something for the masses, where they could dive into the vast pool of open source with confidence and ease. That does take two to tango, many open source apps suck. But many are excellent and many others can be great if they had something great to aspire to. I'll give my X-man mantra and say that the potential is there and I am willing to give it some more time. But the clock is ticking and Apple needs to step it up.

AMEN, brother mithradites.
Apple does need to step up. But lookit how this core question cuts to the very foundation of the operating system!

It's two worlds. CLI and GUI. They are not adequately INTEGRATED with respect to the end user, unless that end user has the knowledge. You have to DENY one to use the other... travel to a different planet. One is the planet of virgin geniuses, and the other is the planet of the chimps.

I absolutely LOVED what you said about "tools that could be put into the hands of younger people to inspire them to pursue careers in science." Bravo. Clap clap clap clap clap.

And from my side of the tracks, think of all the young ARTISTS that could be spawned like I was when I first heard that startup chime. Do we really want just an MP3 Player and a music store and visual skins made by APPLE designers branding all our creative output?

Now listen, part of me knows that people will find a way. Despite all the happy horsesh*t apple is loading onto its OS, creative people WILL find a way to use it. They'll work around the nonsense. BUT. And this is a big 'un... WHY NOT MAKE IT EASIER FOR THEM? Why does this stuff have to be a friggin' obstacle. That was the one thing that was magnificent about the old days. There was an ethic that set about to destroy aristocracies, and put power in the hands of the average user. Gave them all sorts of creative possibilities. I remember going: "jeez, this machine is a business waiting to happen! I could do this and that and this..." The sky was the limit.

Now the limit is something SET by Apple. Something GOVERNED by marketing strategies. Not something that puts what people can BECOME, like scientists or artists or filmmakers first. Market share is the most important thing to them, not us, and unfortunately it shows.

It's two worlds. CLI and GUI. They are not adequately INTEGRATED with respect to the end user, unless that end user has the knowledge. You have to DENY one to use the other... travel to a different planet.

Yes, I would love to have the two integrated, perhaps even have a little terminal field in the Finder just like the search field they introduced in Jaguar. Want to move a file in an open window to another folder buried deep somewhere. Type "move fileX from folderA to folderB". Bingo. Done. And use English, not geek. But keep geek shorthand for those in the know.

I've always been with you on providing simple but powerful tools. Here in the lab, companies are always trying to sell us "kits" that make our life easier. But some of the oldest techniques are amazingly simple and economical. Sometimes I am teased because I won't use the fancy new kits, I use some Frankensteined protocol that does what I need in half the time and at half the cost. So I get where you are coming from and I can see the places OSX fails. But, for my needs, the classic OS bailed so many times and was so horribly bent under the lab use that it became very frustrating. Datasets have become so complex that they easily choked OS9 and forced a restart. Some of our applications were so delicate in OS9, it was always a crap shoot using them. Save everything and close all other applications before use. OSX has proven to be everything we need in that regard, with nary a hiccup.

Now with that being said, I have been using Photoshop a decent amount in redesigning my website, and at times, it is painstakingly slow. I have the thalo finger drumming syndrome. It seems strange to me that everything I normally do works so well, but then I try and do things that are more typical of your usage and I see how frustrating it can be at times. That isn't to say our demand level is different. I think the applications we typically rely on are in different stages of, how shall I say it, refinement? I think Photoshop 7 is kind of a hack job and eats memory like there is no tomorrow. I have 1Gb of RAM, and using Photoshop with everything else open I typically use, I am still swapping out memory like a wildfire. i think the sluggishness of OSX is, in most part, the fact that many applications are pigs for memory. So, that would be my second job for Apple, and third party software makers. Reduce the load on memory, please. If that means excising some of the thalo bloat, so be it.

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Originally posted by mithradites:
Now with that being said, I have been using Photoshop a decent amount in redesigning my website, and at times, it is painstakingly slow. I have the thalo finger drumming syndrome... I think Photoshop 7 is kind of a hack job and eats memory like there is no tomorrow. I have 1Gb of RAM, and using Photoshop with everything else open I typically use, I am still swapping out memory like a wildfire. i think the sluggishness of OSX is, in most part, the fact that many applications are pigs for memory. So, that would be my second job for Apple, and third party software makers. Reduce the load on memory, please. If that means excising some of the thalo bloat, so be it.

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And for the record, I've said that Photoshop 7 is one of the BETTER implementations. But still, the thalo finger drumming syndrome? LOL. That was a long time ago. Now it's the thalo-pretend-to-put-a-gun-to-my-head-and-fire syndrome. Didja ever see the (great) commercial where this little girl is riding a new bike, and her friend says, "how'd you get the new bike?" The little girl says, well, in our family whenever you lose your temper, you have to put a quarter in a jar..." Her friend says "And?" "And my Dad has a crummy old computer." The scene cuts to some poor schmoe, sitting in front of a beater laptop, hitting a key over and over going "No. No. No. No. No (and then at the friggin' TOP of his lungs NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He just puts his face right up to the monitor, opens his mouth and completely lets go, pulls out all the stops, it's the funniest moment in commercials, and is EXACTLY how I feel with OS X. The ad closes with his little daughter outside hearing him and going "Cha-CHING!"

The irritating thing for me, is that AQUA, and OS X itself are the piggiest of pigs. That makes absolutely no sense to me, and hasn't since day 1. Look at the stuff the interface does now that it really never had to: composite with gradations, resize icons on the fly, live window resizing, play video in itself, vector effects, transparency effects... and very little of it is being used to good effect. To tell you the truth, I'd rather have fewer bells and whistles, and more speed and performance. Actually, the performance of the Dock is remarkable, if what you are trying to do is show off a lot of stuff that's pretty tough for computers to do. I say concentrate on stuff that's EASY for computers to do, when it comes to interface. Not everything has to be a real-time rendering project.

At least when I invoke a Photoshop filter in 9, I'm doing what I want, not burning cycles on Apple's digikid flypaper on top of my own work.

Photoshop 7 in 9 works FINE for me. The feature set between the OS X version and the legacy version is identical. What's not identical? The processor overhead, and the interface. And in X it causes all kinds of holy hell. The one that completely makes me want to jump off a bridge onto concrete, is when the keyboard tool modifiers suddenly stop working. It's unbelievable. I also hate when you're doing some precision work and there's a pixel offset on the tool (for example the brush eraser erasing a few pixels south of where you are trying to erase, if you are near the window's edge.) None of this happens to me in OS 9.

And you want crashes? The worst crash of all in Photoshop is the dreaded "Unexpected Quit." No explanation, no sorry, just pow. Am I comforted that the kernel is still up? No, because I'm still f*cked. The whole computer MIGHT AS WELL have crashed, because I was doing something important in the application, and a let-down is a let-down. If Aqua is chugging merrily away after my life is over (say this unexpected quit happened during a screaming deadline)... it just makes me all the madder.

OS X is like a blame-shifting little punk, throwing up its hands "I didn't do it! See, -I'm- still up and running! It was Adobe! It was Adobe!" No, it's your crappy two-bit freeware beta operating system that you're charging money for. I can do the same thing in OS 9 and it doesn't cause an app bailout.

Don't get me wrong, I'll get heart-breaking crashes in 9 too. But not nearly with the frequency and suddenness of an X crash. Sometimes I'm even able to recover my work. Meanwhile, I get a more consistent interface, something that's more responsive and easier to use. But ya know what I want? NO crashes. I don't WANT to trade a few big crashes for a bunch of equally damaging (to me) small crashes. I want them to fix friggin' crashing altogether. I want a warning that I'm in danger of crashing... quick, back up, save... something's WRONG! I want a warning light to go off when the processor is being pushed to its limit, telling me that I'm heading for disaster.

You want to know why Apple doesn't build something like that into OS X? Because for pro users that warning light would be going off all the time. Anyone whose workflow isn't:
Scenario #1: logon...play iTunes...e-mail/chat with friends... surf... mess with iPhoto...mess with iMovie2...mess with iCal or Address Book, or messing with whatever the hell as long as it's a lot of messing and nothing serious; or
Scenario #2: do geek stuff, crunch numbers or run simulations, or write code or do internet/multiple user stuff from the terminal AS IF OS X is a common unix box. It can be serious, and you might be able to play iTunes or the spinning gears program at the same time.

If you have an alternate workflow, as in if you're a graphic designer, illustrator, prepress pro, or digital artist (the traditional Mac Market)... you're pretty much screwed. Oh, the computer isn't USELESS, but you have to take a BIIIIG hit over what you're used to. Or else decide that playing iTunes while you work, and/or the "look" of the bloated interface is so WORTH the hit, that you don't notice it.

It's easy to ask developers to reduce the load on memory... but it's really Apple who the buck stops with. Their operating system is groaning under a lot of nonsense, which developers HAVE to accomodate. They used to just have to worry about their own feature set... now they have to deal with every bell and whistle of Aqua. And sorry, there's just not enough computer to go around yet. We're heading for a day of quad processors where three of them, plus a two pound video card will be drawing Aqua, while one measely processor MIGHT get us back some of the performance we used to have in the legacy.

All because they let bloat take over the interface. Because eye candy has become more important than visual or programming economy. Look at how bloated all unix programs are. That's where we're living now.

Look at how powerful and yet compact old legacy Mac apps were.

If you can do the same work with a pixelated, graphically simple, unrendered interface...WHY worry about transparency and drop shadow and stripes and upscaled bouncing happy horsesh*t? Because it's cool? Well cool only goes so far for so many people. When the blush is off the rose, and it's time to get work done, all that BS is not worth squat.

Now I think that the BS could be MADE to be meaningful. A few well-placed bells and whistles might add to usability an intuitiveness. But that's totally not what we have now. This OS lacks conception, vision. Its only vision is the digital hub strategy, vis-a-vis market share. But that vision is certainly NOT making yours truly go out and buy new hardware or software. In fact, it's got me really worried for anyone who's not a geek or a casual user.

Where Apple is impressive now, is the casual use market. It is terrific to plug in a digital camera and have iPhoto suck down the shots. It is terrific to play iTunes while you work; terrific to slap a few transition effects on a digi-video and soundtrack it. But sorry, mortgaging every other possible use of the PC so that stuff mostly works, ain't right. Not when one of the first casualties is the Mac look and feel and a powerful, fast system and intuitive interface. Not when the big pro apps, and hell, even the FINDER itself, are struggling for basic functionality. Something is wrong. Something's gotta give. And the answer is start cutting the crap. Start making decisions about what's important and what's superfluous.

I don't buy that new market share is directly wedded to superfluous bullshit. I think a blazingly fast, great operating system will sell itself, even if the interface is simple, monochrome and boring. All it has to do is work right. Apple can decide things like how much is too much... what's really necessary... unfortunately very little of Aqua is mission critical. Let's pretend we're sending it into orbit and we have to cut it down in size and weight by more than half. What would we keep? What would we ditch?

OS X is like a blame-shifting little punk, throwing up its hands "I didn't do it! See, -I'm- still up and running! It was Adobe! It was Adobe!"

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