hey guys, I got a copy of Tiger preview: it's a complete disappointment. I must say I was very exited by the feature set that Apple advertised; it looked cool on their site. But when you install the OS and try to see what has changed or will dramatically change in your experience with the OS, the results are very disappointing.

Spotlight, the most weighted feature in Tiger, is an overhyped feature, it's the same kind of overhyped feature as Sherlock, remember Sherlock? Both Mac OS 8.6 and OS9 had giant tags on their boxes "Featuring Sherlock". Phil Shiller demoed Sherlock with an "Apolo 13" search, yea I remember. Sherlock was going to change the world. We now know that Sherlock is just another insignificant little app; it didn't do anything drastic to the Mac user experience. Spotlight is the same thing. Yea we need to search things, but searching is not as important as the way things are accessed and organized and manipulated: Finder. The Finder in Tiger is about the same as Panther. ZERO changes. The Finder is the application that needs the most care, it needs polishing. Apple doesn't seem to give priority to this. It's so frustrating.

Worst of all is that Spotlight is flawed in its bad design: Spotlight is menu-based not window-based, so one can't select something and, for example, find out its parent folder, or drag it elsewhere. The menu widget is inconsistent with the HIGs, when selected the menu is dimmed (it should be highlighted like every other menu) when unselected, the widget is strong blue.

Dashboard seems to be another hyped feature. Konfabulator exists and it has never appealed to me for any other use than coolness factor. Dashboard is worse in some respects. To start, the UI is very fancy but it sucks. First thing that comes to mind is: This thing is messy as hell, limited and not flexible. What if I need the calculator visible to the side of an app? is there any way to make the widget come out of Dashboard? Not in Tiger preview. So if I need a calculator, lets say in Word, I need to launch it separately from the utilities folder. Not good design. Is somebody at Apple thinking of real world usage for these things? I have a perfectly functional calculator in Dashboard one keystroke away and I need to go somewhere else just to make the calc stick on the side of another app???????????? hello?? The same things applies to clocks, sticky notes, movies etc.
Stickies. One sticky note looks good in dashboard; it looks cool. But stickies can't be minimized, nor saved nor organized nor anything. So multiple notes are basically a mess. If you have 3 of them you need to put them on top of each other to make room for other widgets, and move them around everytime you want to look up info. No organization, nothing. That's where Dashboard is a mess. The windowing UI in dashboard is bad, I can write pages about it.

The stuff we really needed fixed isn't there!!!! We needed a better Font Book, a better Finder, better customization, more refinement: it isn't there and it won't be there. Flawed stuff like icons on the desktop displaying 2 lines unnecessarily is still there unfixed. It's so frustrating. It's so disappointing, Apple advertising features like spotlight and dashboard that are completely irrelevant when having more serious issues to be addressed first.

Apple doesn't get right the stuff they introduce. Relase after release they continue introducing flawed stuff. Apple doesn't fix nor refine what they introduce. Safari version 2.0 still has a non-standard non-customizable toolbar, what the hell?

"Oh this is only a preview, Tiger final is still months away"

lol.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trifid,

Trif, you're confirming some of what my Spider Senses were telling me. Lots of new, unfinished stuff without going back and improving and integrating what's already there. Of course, there's always pressure to add new features when you're trying to induce people to buy a software upgrade. But wouldn't it be neat to live in a world where instead of hearing "141 New Features" you heard "141 features slimmed down, integrated better, bug-proofed or totally removed!"

Yeah, same old same old.

Because the development of this operating system is not about giving us an operating system. It's about PROPOSING all kinds of useless gee-whiz crap to get people excited.

You said it yourself, you got excited. So did I. The IDEA of spotlight is, in fact, exciting. But I knew, and you found out, that the implementation is going to suck. Because nobody is willing to do the extra work to bring rational thought and practicality to the idea. I've said this from day 1: we are entering the age of the WORK IN PROGRESS. Where that initial excitement is more important than ever resolving anything. It's a friggin' shame. Roping people is more important than SERVING them, or giving them good tools.

I'm glad you brought up the Calculator. I see a calculator as it used to be, a desk accessory... which these days, could easily be called a SERVICE. In other words, something you tend to use WHILE you're in other apps. Me? I went to art school, sometimes I suck at "doing the math"... so in my day to day, I run into stuff where I have to deploy a tool like that to save me from math anxiety.

That's where we really want multitasking... the idea of apps running concurrently. Working in Excel, with a calculator assist. Do we need a calculator that takes up 33% of our screen real estate? Nah-ah, because it ain't as important as Excel. It just has to be readable and easy to use, while not being in the way.

And yet, we've had calculators for years, and none of them RESIZE. Icons resize on the fly, we can cause them to shrink and grow at will, and we don't really NEED that. Something like a Calculator, that crap could be useful. Some people might like large type, others might want a little floating palette. But under it all is the idea that this kind of thing should be a SERVICE. An accessory.

And to be fair, even though currently it is a standalone, you can make it work like an accessory. Put it in the dock, and you have quick access to it. Fine, great. But I question if Konfab--I mean Dashboard doesn't suffer from coolness coming before intelligence.

Let's think about it. Steve kept going "Expose for widgets." As if we really need a lot of widgets. Invoke Dashboard all tricked out like he did, and what did you see, a jillion stupid things all lumped together, no rhyme or reason. To see stock quotes, you had to also see your goofy clock, player, calendar, whatever. ALL OF WHICH we already have in other forms.

I call it another junk drawer and more junk.

BTW, I'm getting a dual G5 1.8 ghz, I have been waiting for 3 weeks; they still don't give me a shipping date. Argh!!

Congrats on the new hardware, Trif. But am I the only god damn one here who has problems with the OS and doesn't buy a new computer that is dependent upon it?

Oh yeah. Forget that this is still Hardware Amnesty Week (it's been extended due to popular demand). Sorry 'bout that. Enjoy your new hardware and thank you for shopping at thalo.net.

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Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
But am I the only god damn one here who has problems with the OS and _doesn't_ buy a new computer that is dependent upon it?

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You are not alone.

well, half of my problems/gripes dealt with the OSX GUI being unresponsive.... the dual G5 should handle the UI pretty nicely. If I get a super fast responsive system I think I can overlook many of the flaws, and as we humans usually do, adapt. It's either that or switch to Win XP.......

That's what I'm hoping, brother Trif. My plans are to order the G5 sometime at the end of the summer.


Meanwhile, I am finding that OS X on the 1.5GHz powerbook with a 128k vid card, is slightly more responsive than on my Dual 500 G4. Still leaves a lot to be desired in comparison to OS 9's interface... but it is probably proof that much more powerful hardware is needed to drive all of Aqua's happy horseshit.

As for adapting, I guess that's what I'm doing. My whole studio is pretty much adapted and adopted at this point. With more than half my working time spent in X rather than 9. But not because Apps truly work any better in X... but because we've been PRESSURED into it by Apple, and we're all getting friggin' USED to crap-settling. And because the network runs much smoother under OS X.

I still tend to boot into 9 to do Finder stuff. Organizing, moving things around, general housekeeping. But when moving things to and from other servers, it's usually OS X.

But man oh man, this software simply HAS to get better. I really needs some more serious speed, and it has to stop being so easy to break. I thought Unix was supposed to be super robust? Hey, not for me. I end up having to reinstall all the time. And there's typically cascade-type failures that compound each other. Way, way tougher to troubleshoot that OS 9 ever was. I spend a lot more time nursemaiding this operating system than I do working. And I am sick to death of that.

I still find OS 9 the more ENJOYABLE computing experience. Christ, I even find WINDOWS better than OS X. That's galling. The Mac OS needs to discover "Less is More" like yesterday.

trif

It sounds like you are using the spotlight feature backwards. As it looked to me to search and move files spotlight works thru a Finder window. The spotlight menu bar item works with files directly between applications.

Just my guess.

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Originally posted by ophion:

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Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
But am I the only god damn one here who has problems with the OS and _doesn't_ buy a new computer that is dependent upon it?

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You are not alone.

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Definitely not alone.

Good job Trifid. I so knew it...

Just remember brothers, now that I'm buying these new computers, Apple can run but they can't hide. They can't make excuses when OS X doesn't work, if it doesn't work on the systems that are supposed to maximize it.

That's when X-criticism will carry a lot more weight. Because I'm pretty sure I can prove in a court of law that the OS is inadequate for pro use. When I do that as an owner of the top-of-the-line Macs, they're going to have to listen.

Yeah, they'll get my money. The con is working. The strongarming me into adoption is working. I just ain't going quietly. My career depends on Apple getting its ass in gear and starting to provide better quality. And right now, that's all about its operating system software. That continues to be the big, smelly, glaring weak link in all of this.

Feedback... feedback...feeeeedddbbaaaaaccckkkk

Just a bit of an update on tiger: I played a bit more the other day with Spotlight and I found a couple of interesting things. Spotlight is very dependent on the speed of one's hardrive to produce results (mine is the usual 7200 rpm). This means one of two things: 1, stuff is not indexed or optimized in any sort of "innovative" way. 2_I'm guessing laptop users, which represent about %50 of OSX's user base will get poor user experience from Spotlight; the ibooks have 4200 rpm hardrives. A simple search can take some good 10 seconds.

I tried finding an indexing or scaning preference or even settings for customizing spotlight but I found none (how surprising) Spotlight's output gets displayed into categories such as "documents" "pdf documents" "applications" "contacts" etc What If I only want certain types of results displayed on the spotlight menu? For example, I rarely need to search for contacts, yet any simple search I make sometimes show contacts. Apple doesn't let me take that out. So I may get a spotlight menu crowded by results I will never need. This is where its implementation is flawed. It's not flexible, nor customizable and it's not responsive.

On a side note, Expose is unchanged in Tiger. I was expecting a few changes, at least the option to exclude certain types of apps (like dropdrawers!@!@).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trifid,

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Originally posted by Trifid nebula:
On a side note, Expose is unchanged in Tiger. I was expecting a few changes, at least the option to exclude certain types of apps (like dropdrawers!@!@).

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That has to be implemented by the application, IIRC.

mkconsole, for example, has this option.

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A simple search can take some good 10 seconds.

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That's pretty damn unacceptable. Do you have the same lag searching for music at the iTunes music store? I don't. And that's going out over the web, with kajillions of other people searching at the same time...

Here's what I'm guessing, you'll get back what you put in. If you comment the piss out of all your files, you'll probably make Spotlight's life easier. I don't mind looking at things in new ways, the trouble I'm having is that this ain't a new way. This is back to typing. The Mac was stronger when it was a simpler, visual experience. There used to be a difference between the stuff we worked with every day and organized and sorted ourselves... and the stuff we'd actually do text string searches for.

I think Spotlight could be a great tool... it's just that I don't think it's going to be a SUBSTITUTE for a metaphoric, visual interface. That's what we need back, and that's the thing that OS X seems to be struggling with. It's still not good enough at presenting our data in the ways we want to work. Intuitive for us is at odds with effective server organization for the operating system. Keeping track of the whims of the end user and journaling our every move is not an efficient use of resources. So what Apple does, is disdain that, call what we do chimpy, and try to hammer our square peg into its round hole. And what we end up losing is all sense of mastery and performance. We're left with sluggish, easy-to-break, and unreliable. And something's gotta give.

It's like politics. You can tell when a politician is saying or doing something because he thinks people are friggin' MORONS, and its insulting. That's what OS X is. It's built around the whole idea that developers are more important than users. We SHOULD feel like rubes when we use it, because the guys who designed this beast feel exactly that way about us.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: thalo,

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I think Spotlight could be a great tool... it's just that

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hey brotherhood,

i am also thinking a decent Search-funtion is welcome, BUT what i am really thinking is:

X offers no decent interface/tools to have all your files under control, so they give us spotlight. The focus on "search" at Apple tells me they haven't got a clue to deliver a finder that serves YOU 21st centry style.

(Same goes for expose, they give us a function that (they claim) help us over the multiple window-chaos instead of solving the multiple-window problem at the ROOT.

Every time i woosh around in X i don't feel I have any control over my files, it's like everything is hidden behind glass.

So, let's hope X will become better, not worse.
But Apple must be more brave, more radical and FAR speedier. No "150+ new features" please, BUT optimization and consequent evolution of the current features (aim: lightspeed.)

best, andi

Hey, Andi. Glad you could join us.

Here's an article relevant to this discussion called GUI now too complex.

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With those few tasks the GUI was a boon. “You didn’t have to remember anything, because you could see everything. Now making everything visible doesn’t work. The space gets too crowded.”

As a logical consequence of this, the all-purpose computer should become obsolete, he says.

Norman, who has written several books on usability, was Apple’s design guru for many years and also worked for Hewlett-Packard. He is now advising Microsoft on the forthcoming Longhorn version of Windows, and agrees with its being based on a searchable database and doing away with a static file system view. The document-folder-cabinet hierarchy may be a fair simulation of the way an office works, he says, “but I just want to get my work done”. Wanting to send an email with an attached document and having to look in different folders and maybe start up a word-processing program is an obstruction to the natural way of working. It clearly makes sense to store everything once. Conventional file systems tend to produce duplicate files stored in different places.

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And where have I heard these words before?

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“And one point where Apple really shot itself in the foot was to come up with the message that the Macintosh was ‘The computer for the rest of us’ — not for you dull business people. So Microsoft and the IBM-style PC, not surprisingly, sold very successfully into the business market.”

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Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
Hey, Andi. Glad you could join us.
Here's an article relevant to this discussion called

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Morning' Brotherhood,

i can't stand it. again. I read those article on osnews, too. The author wrote stuff I disagree about. Hmm...
I mean, seeing your whole content on the screen ? Hmm, when does wrote that article ??? Besides he article was bashed on osnews.

I can't see the big problems of delivering a GUI/Finder that FIRST serves the user and is configurable to match the needs of a beginner OR a socalled "pro-user".
I can't understand why everything takes soo long, or maybe i'm just too impatient.

Many GUIs and Finder'esque Apps exist for decades and all they need to do is locate the features that worked excellent for a longer time, why such a fuzz about all new shiny features, that were born years ago.

Search, c'mon. OK, search is good, but IT IS A STANDARD.
I was laughing hard at the search-field in system-prefs, hey, there seem to be people that are too blind to find their pref-panels ?? holy...

Everytime Apple wants to invent the wheel again and i hate them for this behaviour. They hardly can just "borrow" a feature from "os-y" (any os) ... so the Thinktank thinks for a long while, but most of the time the solution is already well thinked-out laying around in the world.

I really dunno what to do about it. Wait for Apple? Hiargh, that's not an option, i'm getting old faster than some features will be released by apple. :-)

Sorry, i sometimes get lost in my own english sentences, but remember english is not my native language. thanks.

andi

Search, c'mon. OK, search is good, but IT IS A STANDARD.
I was laughing hard at the search-field in system-prefs, hey, there seem to be people that are too blind to find their pref-panels ?? holy...

If there is a problem finding what you want in the pref panels, it may be because the usual practice is to stuff a bunch of marginally-related junk into one ambiguous, catch-all category like "General" or "Appearance". What does "Use smooth scrolling" have to do with appearance per se? Perhaps an "Interface" pane would make more sense with subcategories for the Dock, Expose, etc. But the way System Preference looks and works, that just wouldn't be feasible, although it surely might be easier to use.

Everytime Apple wants to invent the wheel again and i hate them for this behaviour. They hardly can just "borrow" a feature from "os-y" (any os) ... so the Thinktank thinks for a long while, but most of the time the solution is already well thinked-out laying around in the world.

Something like that was also a critique of Norman's:

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It rewarded creativity, which meant it brought out some brilliant products badly [implemented]. Things about the Apple designs needed fixing, but nobody wanted to fix anything, because that wasn’t creative.

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I agree with him completely.

Andi, your English is just fine. Continue using it and I'm sure it will get even better.

Hey guys, I noticed a piece of inconsistency in OSX Panther (not Tiger necessarily) that no one else on the net seems to have mentioned. Maybe I'm too meticulous... I don't know... Panther introduced a new implementation of Labels along with a new contextual menu for them. Has anyone noticed that the "Color Label:" item in contextual menus it's non-selectable yet it isn't grayed out? I think Apple has just broken years of consistency with this. We would expect every item in a menu that is not greyed out to be an available action. The two words "Color Label:" serve as a label not an action. This caught my eye; I don't know how...
Anyway, Thalo you should add this to the OSX miles-long iconsistency list

Maybe the colon after "Color Label" is meant to be a new interface convention. I'd have to see it used for other things to develop a firm opinion on its appropriateness. It looks like a one-shot deal, but I wonder if we'll see something like that in a font menu for "regular, bold, italic, bold italic", etc.

The long and the short of it is that they invented something new that could have been handled just as well with conventions already in place. It does save you from going to a submenu but if everything in the interface becomes a one-shot thing then you get chaos. I'd be more willing to give something like that the benefit of the doubt if much of the rest of the interface wasn't shit.