I agree with HH too. But in the glory days of the Mac, like BN says, the whole of the interface design was suborned to a greater purpose, i.e. ease of use for the end user. Now, however, since the interface is a commodity, a marketing vehicle, the floodgates have been opened for happy horseshit eye candy, rather than functionality.

Like I said, we're on the right track when the UI designers start purposing FX like transparency TOWARD a purpose other than a Beavis & Butthead: "muh-huh-huh-huh...cool." Things like distinguishing the active window from background windows. But six shitty ways of browsing or looking at the same crap is just a diversion. Proof that they couldn't or didn't want to find ONE good way of browsing, like the legacy had. I mean come on, lookit how many different graphical ways we have of doing the EXACT SAME THING, like changing apps. We can cover-flow, command-tab, dock click, left finder click, icon double-click, etc. So I'd have to surmise that interface for its own sake is what's driving the development. Not usability or productivity.

And yet, better font rendering, keeping things arranged by date modified in column view (as well as other views) those are indeed advancements.

But we still have ridiculousness like having to twiddle columns... I just tried to use an open/save dialog where I couldn't read label one of the left column without twiddling it open. And there's no "handle" for easing like there are on the other columns. The left column is treated differently. That's another mistake.

quote:

But we still have ridiculousness like having to twiddle columns...

That's a disappointment. A fix for this would have so improved usability. Do the people who design OS X ever actually use it?

Brother Klappy can you explain this page on Apples website.

Apple is lying with this statement in bold:

quote:

Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one universal operating system. Now the Cocoa application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the UNIX foundations of the Mac, are all 64-bit. And since you get full performance and compatibility for your 32-bit applications and drivers, you don’t need to update everything on your system just to run a single 64-bit application.

Maybe the programmers are just to stupid to realize they can code in 64-bits much like the gamer programmers were to stupid to realize they could have made more powerful games by coding for Altivec on the PowerPC all those years.

Brother thalo how on earth can you make statements like one good way for browsing instead of six crappy ones? I thought Mac OS X didn't give the end users any choices to make in the first place. What was your one good way of browsing? List veiw? Isn't List view basically how you browsed the Legacy. I just checked a Finder window in Tiger for List view. I am able to use List view. Unless Apple dropped List view in Leopard am I to understand some how you are not capable of using List view? And if List view is one of the six crappy ways of browsing wouldn't that in turn make the Legacy equally as crappy?

I've just installed Vista on my iMac by way of Bootcamp.

Wow, the internet is fast! I didn't know the Web could be this fast.
Good fonts everywhere too.
Fine sensible scrollbars.
Customization options, oh yes! (I've just now turned off transparencies).

Steve can't get to me here in Vista; I'm beginning to feel like a free man.

.
Watch out for all the viruses, spyware, and other malware that attack Widows, yabor. Get the protective software as soon as you can. There's a price to be paid for feeling free.
.

Oh you poor soul Broeder yabor.

I hope Vista does not get in the way of Mevrouw yabor's Leopard install.

Steve can't get to me here in Vista; I'm beginning to feel like a free man.

Hey, I know what you mean, brother Yabor. The internet on Windows is generally a lot better. Get the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, or spend a little more and get the one that kills spam and spyware as well. I've had AVG Free Version running on four different machines for over a year now and have had no problems. I feel secure and Eve Fresh.

quote:

Brother thalo how on earth can you make statements like one good way for browsing instead of six crappy ones? I thought Mac OS X didn't give the end users any choices to make in the first place. What was your one good way of browsing? List veiw? Isn't List view basically how you browsed the Legacy. I just checked a Finder window in Tiger for List view. I am able to use List view. Unless Apple dropped List view in Leopard am I to understand some how you are not capable of using List view? And if List view is one of the six crappy ways of browsing wouldn't that in turn make the Legacy equally as crappy?

I can make statements like that, because they are TRUE brother! OS X doesn't give choices when it comes to important stuff like altering interface appearance for productivity, but it gives a plethora of choices which do more or less the same damn thing in slightly different ways. Yes, list view is how I browse the legacy. That's fine for me. They offered column view, and so I tried it... found things wrong with it, complained, and they fixed those things. Now they've added ANOTHER view, there is stuff wrong with it, I'm complaining, and hopefully they'll fix it.

What, do you want me to stop criticizing these views if they don't work? Why would I do that? I figure why add column view AND Cover flow, AND all the other arrays and such, unless they're functional? I'm sick of crappy ways to do stuff, added just for the visual FX jollies. And so I take Apple to task. I want to know WHY they keep adding view options while refusing to add other appearance options (that would definitely increase productivity or a sense of user-customization). And if you're going to add twenty ways to do things, isn't it appropriate to ask why, and shouldn't they work right? It's hard to give cover flow a chance when you run into something like not being able to drag shit into the cover flow icon if it's a folder. Oh, and I just noticed, if it's an APP in cover-flow, you can't drag an appropriate document on the app to open it. Makes no sense. It doesn't follow the AHIGs. It means you have this nice big target (which would be the REASON for something like cover-flow), which you can't DO anything with but sit back and look at it. There's one thing that works in cover flow: if it's, say, a PHOTOSHOP document, you can drag the cover-flow image onto the photoshop icon IN THE DOCK to open it.

The same thing happened with the large preview icon in column view. For some reason it never dawned on anybody that it should behave like an icon, because that's what it was. The same is true for cover flow. Sure, it's groovy to be able to flip through stuff that are representations of our documents and apps and everything. But each icon preview needs to behave like an icon. If it's a folder, you should be able to drag stuff into it. If it's an app, you should be able to drag something on it and open it... if it's a document, you should be able to open it or drag it onto an app (this you can do, except if what you're dragging it onto is an app in cover-flow).

Good fonts everywhere too.

I feel camaraderie with men who appreciate defense in sports, who like breasts that are only medium-sized, or who appreciate good screen fonts. Windows just kills OS X in screen appeal. I spend a good deal of time reading stuff on the internet and I far prefer my Windows machine at home.

Brother Yabor does not exaggerate. Windows does much better with fonts, at least when it comes to displaying standard interface and internet stuff. While OS X uses all the CPU muscle it can gather to paint the edges of its fonts with blur, Windows starts out with nice bitmapped fonts that don't need anti-aliasing. If you want to, you can. But you don't need to. I've got anti-aliasing turned off in Windows everywhere I can. I don't need it. And particularly on my relatively hi-res LCD monitor, it would serve nothing to randomly blur pixels. OS X is like a whore who wears too much makeup. I trust thalo (and only thalo, frankly) when he says that font display in Leopard has been improved. Good. About time. But this whole process is like Gutenberg inventing movable type but waiting years to then invent ink. I'm hardly impressed that the dumb-asses at Apple have finally deigned to make legibility a semi-priority. It's only semi because they continue to make a mockery of this operating system with insanely stupid uses of transparency, such as in the menubar.

I literally couldn't use 10pt. type in Tiger, the technicolor aliasing was so awful. Now it's still aliased (turning it off still sucks), but at least readable. No color ghosting. Still, you all know what I'd give my right nut for. Geneva 9. For every list, every icon label. That's what would make me happy. Along with black text highlighting and fucking icons that mask and tint for labels.

Mail has these new stationery templates. Oh god, would I love to do MY OWN. And not use Apple's boilerplate. There's gotta be a way.

Quicktime is buggy.
Safari is buggy. Anyone notice the white dot on the bottom line of the text entry box when you post? It's apparently the i-beam cursor dropping out that mushy graphite edge.

I'm wondering if I'm the only person who still sees crystal sausages everywhere. Is it really true that ONLY iTUNES has the good scrollbars?

Please, everyone, go to feedback and gripe. The feedback team is probably actually READING feedbacks now, after the new release. You want Less is More, go on there and pound out the criticism. Don't be lazy. Strike while the iron is hot.

Okay I installed Leopold.

I was going to have to reinstall Tiger becuase I had exhausted every thing I could think of to get it running properly again. I did an upgrade over my pooched version of Tiger. All seems okay so far. I was getting ten second beachballs every dozen characters or so when I would type trying to post in Tiger. This has stopped happening.

I have a new Mac now.

So brother thalo if you have List view then what do you have to complain about? Why even bother with the other views if they do not work for you?

.
Figures. Just when I see an up-to-date computer in my near future, everyone says the Leopard interface is a step backward.

I thought I would check Amazon to see what books would be available about Leopard for an X-newbie like I will be. There are quite a few...but most of them haven't been published yet, and many of them won't be out until next spring:

Amazon Leopard Guidebooks
.

Broeder Brad, thanks a lot for the AVG anti-virus program link.

I've run a full scan and "No threats and no Gauguins found" was the result. Splendid.

I found a free anti-addware program: link. Two programs in fact. They're in the "How to remove spyware from your PC", part 1 and 2, articles.

Broeder Rico do you think it would be technically possible for Apple to make it so that one could switch from Vista to Leopard without having to re-boot?

Early days, but this Vista interface I find so much more sensible, and pleasurable to look at, than Leopard's. I get a sense of user-friendlyness. As for apps, I need the Internet and I need writing apps, so also in this respect Vista suits me just fine. Let's hope it is stable in use.

quote:

Originally posted by RicoX:
Brother Klappy can you explain this page on Apples website.

Apple is lying with this statement in bold:

quote:

Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one universal operating system. Now the Cocoa application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the UNIX foundations of the Mac, are all 64-bit. And since you get full performance and compatibility for your 32-bit applications and drivers, you don’t need to update everything on your system just to run a single 64-bit application.

Maybe the programmers are just to stupid to realize they can code in 64-bits much like the gamer programmers were to stupid to realize they could have made more powerful games by coding for Altivec on the PowerPC all those years.

Brother thalo how on earth can you make statements like one good way for browsing instead of six crappy ones? I thought Mac OS X didn't give the end users any choices to make in the first place. What was your one good way of browsing? List veiw? Isn't List view basically how you browsed the Legacy. I just checked a Finder window in Tiger for List view. I am able to use List view. Unless Apple dropped List view in Leopard am I to understand some how you are not capable of using List view? And if List view is one of the six crappy ways of browsing wouldn't that in turn make the Legacy equally as crappy?

Yes, Apple is lying with this statement. The kernel in Leopard is actually running in an officially unsupported 32-bit-compatibility-mode on Intel processors. It only works because there are some bugs in Intel's documentation and/or implementation of 64-bit-mode. What Apple is doing kernel-wise is something that Intel actually forbids. Security-wise, it's a nightmare. The kernel developers have to jump through such ridiculous hoops to make the whole thing work on Intel processors (they even have to fake some PPC structures) that it's just a sick joke.

Isn't that sweet ? hundreds of thousands of "Mac" users switch to a new 64-bit-architecture only to run a crippled down OS that isn't able to use it and fakes the kernel into believing it's actually running on a 32-bit-processor.

Did you notice that there's no mention of Carbon in 64 bit ? That's because some of the die-hard-nexties at Apple still can't stand the fact that ALL of the professional applications running on their sick OS are still based on the framework they inherited from the goold old days and removed 64-bit support for Carbon for "political reasons". hat means no 64-bit Adbode CS, no 64-bit Final Cut Pro, no 64-bit-Lightwave, no 64-bit-anything apart from Joe Doe's cool Core-animation-image viewer.

But cool down, guys. After all, you're just users.

quote:

Broeder Rico do you think it would be technically possible for Apple to make it so that one could switch from Vista to Leopard without having to re-boot?

I'm not Broeder Rico, but the answer seems to be yes. Walter Mossberg, the computer writer for the Wall Street Journal, said last week that there is a third-party program, either available now or on the way, that lets you switch between OS X and Windows on an Intel Mac without re-booting. I don't remember the name, but if a third-party can do it, Apple should be able to as well.
.

Brother Markle, you don't need a book. Don't waste your money.

The Leptard interface is a step backward for some things, a step forward for others. Of course the negative stuff jumps out at me, but there are positives. Another positive is the way the Finder deals with shared computers, that's much more intuitive now. Before I had to go to "Network"... and login to various hard drives on my server or laptop or remote computer separately. Now they appear nice and neat in the left Finder column as shared computers. When you select a shared computer, a grey bar appears (in list view) telling you how you're connected, and with a disconnect button available. Meanwhile, Spotlight searches all your shared computers now, without hassle. That's handy.

I haven't had NEARLY the problems with Spotlight that I did in Tiger, especially in the Finder, and especially in Mail, where it was a complete nightmare. I really, really, needed things like search "entire message" in Mail, and it never worked. Now it seems to. We'll see if it holds up. Remember, one of my criticisms of every version of OS X is that over time it degrades to the point of uselessness.

Brother Klappy's allegations about the Leopard kernel are pretty frightening. Though I can't say I'm surprised. Apple always looks better on paper than in reality, and it wouldn't be the first time they've promised something, and couldn't deliver. I just hate to see everyone duped. Here I am, about to buy a new Mac, and hear this? That they haven't even been able to successfully move the platform to 64 bit? I'll wait until I hear more about this.

Brother Rico, I certainly will use list view, but why apologize for Apple screwing up cover flow and column view? There are occasions where I might like to use these. I swear, I really don't understand why people slack cut Apple, when they should be demanding quality.

Here's the white dot bug in Safari illustrated:


Here's a pretty typical reaction to the scrollbars, as well as reaction to things that were promised but not delivered (resolution independent UI), typical excuse-making, apologists, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by yabor:
Broeder Brad, thanks a lot for the AVG anti-virus program link.

I've run a full scan and "No threats and no Gauguins found" was the result. Splendid.

I found a free anti-addware program: link. Two programs in fact. They're in the "How to remove spyware from your PC", part 1 and 2, articles.

Broeder Rico do you think it would be technically possible for Apple to make it so that one could switch from Vista to Leopard without having to re-boot?

Early days, but this Vista interface I find so much more sensible, and pleasurable to look at, than Leopard's. I get a sense of user-friendlyness. As for apps, I need the Internet and I need writing apps, so also in this respect Vista suits me just fine. Let's hope it is stable in use.

2 years from now, all of you will be running Vista on your "Macs", maybe some will be running XP.

So what's the fuss all about ?

Broeder Rico, I have been saved.

I used a copy of Vista that came with someone else’s new Dell laptop, and it turns out this copy has a unique code that only works with one computer. Bloody Microsoft. I can use it for 2 more days, and then it’s curtains.

No way I’m gonna pay a fortune (twice the price of Leopard) for Vista. For starters I can’t afford it. Oh well.

So, I’ll have to deal with the transparent enemy, Leopard.

For starters I have set up a Drag Thing dock, containing all my apps, as a tab on the bottom of my screen. I’ll use Apple’s dock--pinned to the side of course--only for running apps and a whole lot of stacks. I want that dock pinned to the bottom of the screen and I’m waiting for Tinkertool to give me the means to do so.

Stacks are really just like the popup folders in the Classic Mac, aren’t they? Good and nice.

I like Spaces too, definitely.

Someone out there is sure to hack away the crystal sausages and traffic lights, and I’m there the moment they do. I really can’t bear to look at Aqua anymore.

Leopard is faster than Tiger on my machine. Faster to the point of snappiness sometimes. That’s excellent. I’m curious how you are liking Leopard, Rico. The missus here LOVES it and the iLife stuff-- with the exception of the cr. sausages, I am pleased to add-- she much prefers the iTunes scrollbars. And also she wants customization options, choose interface colors etc, like is possible in Vista.

Spaces are helping keep things organized, that's for sure. I find it highly ironic that a feature that more or less goes back to the LEGACY, prior to the Multifinder, has increased usability. Back in the day, we worked on one app at a time. There wasn't much cross-app interchange, but it certainly kept things nice and neat, and helped performance. When we started to be able to run multiple apps, and were restricted by the amount of RAM, we gained more benefits, but never came close to the mayhem and disorganization that plagues the current operating system.

I wonder if that could be a wake-up call for Apple designers. They seem to be steering us away from "Drag and Drop" between Apps and in the Finder. It's obviously something that causes a yellow shitstorm in OS X. It's pretty clear that Apple is evolving strategies in the Finder that discourage certain learned behaviors that we have adopted over the years, dragging and dropping being one of these. Keeping items all junked on the desktop, not on a grid is another. These MUST be things that confuse OS X, or Apple wouldn't be trying to kill them.

Remember, OS X when all is said and done, is a server software. Everything Apple does leads us in that direction. Even cover-flow is an attempt to find a way to control our browsing in a way that charms us to the point where we notice we don't have any control, the way we did in the legacy. That's one of the con-jobs of OS X. Where in the old days we configured and organized for ourselves, now Apple is calling most of the shots, controlling things in such a way that make it easier for Apple.

The boilerplate Mail stationery is a perfect example. Instead of giving us a way to make our OWN stationery, Apple does it for us. Their way. The impulse is not to give us active tools, but rather passive ones that corral and control our computer use. Whereas the legacy was a computer adapted to people, now in the OS X era, we are getting a corporation trying to adapt people to the limits of a computer platform.

The old saying was, "what can I DO with this today?" Now it's kinda "what will Apple LET me do today?" What's still sorely lacking with this operating system is that mastery of the interface and workspace, custom tailored to the individual user. Now, we can choose a few pre-fabbed view options, but we stop short of really being able to customize our Macs for our own particular workflows. We keep colliding with the limits of a Unix server, and the way geek computers work. We're also being forced to use an interface designed by geeks who have a general contempt for graphical user interfaces, who see them as pointless decoration riding over the "real" command line interface.

And so OS X reads as pointlessly decorated. It's a skin on top of the command line, not a fully integrated, productivity enhancing tool designed with users in mind. It's more of a marketing con.

I thought I would check Amazon to see what books would be available about Leopard for an X-newbie like I will be.

Markle, you don't need a book. Here's a simple guide for the virgin OS X user, Leopard edition:

1) Don a leopard suit of some kind. It's Halloween anyway. No one will think you are being weird. Leopard-spotted underwear (which you might already have) will do in a pinch. Either way, it helps you get into the whole mood and mindset.

2) Go over to Apple Delusions and chide a few users there who are having legitimate problems. Tell them it must be a problem with their computer, not OS X, or that they're not doing it right, or that Apple will soon fix the problem. That will certainly get you into the proper frame of mind of crap settling and excuse making – just so that your expectations aren't so high that they could come crashing down so hard that apoplexy is accidentally induced. You don't want to approach OS X cold turkey. You have to warm up a little first. And there is one more exercise that is vitally important to reduce the risk of hurting yourself…

3) Eyeroll exercises. Should a big eyeroll moment come upon you while not being sufficiently warmed up, a mild sprain or even severe cartilage damage could occur. I suggest before booting up Leopard that you sit down in a chair with both feet planted firmly on the floor, eyes front, arms down to the side. Then look gently up at the ceiling. Then gently down at the floor. Start small and then build your way up into larger and larger arcs until you are nearly able to roll your eyes to the back of your head. Now you are ready to run OS X Leopard.