|
Go
|
New
|
Find
|
Notify
|
Tools
|
Reply
|
|
|
HighHopes |
Few corrections...
- Mac OS 9 could.... I think you are wrong in this approach, John. The strength of the original Mac OS wasn't to be found in its individual features, but in the way they fit together into a whole. Which, of course, means the real strength was the design philosophy behind the OS. I don't think you are going to capture that with a listing of specific handy features. Also, I think OS 9 is particularly difficult to defend. By this time the Mac OS had become somewhat of a disconnected mess of efforts to keep up with Windows. It needed redesign or replacement. Except for the lingering strength that OS 9 inherited from the original Mac OS design it didn't have much to offer. |
|||
|
THALO.net apostle |
quote: omfg. I've gone through this a thousand times. If you disable AA, the resulting bitmaps are LOUSY. They show the same mediocre hinting than the AA'ed fonts. Char-to-char spacing differs from zero to 2 pixels. So you get the shubby crispness and bad hinting, wow. And worse, OS-X doesn't let you choose other fonts for listviews, menus, etc. etc. Tools like Silk, Tinkertool doesn't help, because the concept of X doesn't allow specific custom fonts. This is a major turn-off for me. OS-X may be technically superior in the kernel and other stuff, but the lack of flexibility is wack. Even XP is better in this task. BUT: Flexibility never was one of Apple strenghts. Even in OS7/8/9 the richer font-preferences came very late, i think in OS8 (?!) AND: Better AA Algorithms offering hard hinting exist on Linux, but the typical Apple-Fanboy doesn't want to believe this, because Apple is always the best. THIS behaviour drives me nuts. I would love to use proper AA'ed fonts, but OSX doesn't satisfy me. I know 99% of the user-base is satisfied, but wtf. Millions of flies also like dogshit. warm regards... |
|||
|
Master Baiter |
quote: I sound the way I sound. It works well enough to light you up, and that's WHY I sound the way I sound. That aside, hey, I never once said I wanted to throw the baby out with the bathwater, brother jay. Two things X-Men LOVE to misrepresent me with: 1) that I want to go BACK IN TIME to OS 9 and prevent this bright and shining future; And B) That by criticizing the overdesigned interface and slowness and bugginess of the OS, that I'm invalidating the entire development, wherupon they tell me to go adopt Windows if I hate the Mac so much. Always good for a laugh. Brother, I've met your kind time and again, and it's always the same. They take criticism personally. If criticism isn't delivered just so, you find a way to get your feelings hurt. Trouble is, what I have to say is not that complicated, OS X is weak, and so it's relatively EASY to hurt feelings. But the message is simple. Not good enough for me. I merely juice that up with provocative rhetoric to see how emotional you really are. Bottom line, what I want is a better operating system. One that's pro capable, making my applications work better, and one whose interface doesn't cause irritating stoppages to my workflow, one that's not slower and buggier than a steaming pile of crap. All your rhetoric past this point is a variation of the basic OpenSource con. i.e. blame application developers for everything. If the kernel stays afloat, the OS is brilliant, yadda yadda. Yeah right. It's blame shifting at its finest. I say Apple, being the the multi billion dollar corporation trying to HARNESS OpenSource talent (not to mention take advantage of the fact that it's free) and deploy it in such a way as to attract big commercial developers, is where the buck stops. And as for dealing with problems, I'm curious to hear just what form you think that should take, from end users. Again, what I'm hearing is more your frustration that I'm holding Apple accountable (as opposed to big developers) rather than doing the work for them. Think about it, what more would you have me do than friggin' COMPLAIN, Feedback, or report my issues. Sorry man, that's what Apple ought to WANT from its users. The fact that these days they DON'T is a warning flag for their dysfunction. In three years I've carefully analyzed and in excruciating detail cataloged every problem and design flaw that directly impacts me and my work. I've highlighted the absolutely heinous stupid, irritating, illogical counterintuitive happy horseshit of Aqua... how its processor overhead kills performance. How it's font rendering is dumbed down just so a particular bell-and-whistle (real time zooming/resizing/genie sucking) works. I've even made suggestions how it all could be improved (stick with pre-Aqua Adobe rendering routines, allow bitmaps for fixed size interface fonts, go minimal with the design, etc. etc). The fact that my answers are pretty friggin' SIMPLE merely points to the fact that what's wrong with OS X are problems that run deep. Fundamental and philosophical. But it's back to the OpenSource trap again. In a world where everybody in the geek aristocracy, with their juicy chessclub brains sit around and come up with interesting mini-apps to sit back and WATCH, to be entertained by... their ways to fix things is always a cob job. A patch or hack. Because that's the way things in that world evolve. Moreover, they work sometimes out of the goodness of their hearts, so they figure if people don't like it, if it basically sucks, what the hell, I did it for FREE. Well, it ain't free any more... Mac Pros like me balk when excuses are made for low quality and hatchet jobs, nominal functionality, which we then have to pay top commercial prices for. There is absolutely no reason I should work for Apple for friggin' FREE. I don't WANT to program little widgets and I don't want to have to do their job for them. They make commercial products that run commercial products. If the software or hardware doesn't work, if the stuff isn't running right, I tell them about it. Complain. That's really all I can do. I shouldn't HAVE to say their software makes no sense and is poorly designed, because they should know what makes sense and how to make something work. That they don't, is again proof of dysfunction. I think what's happend to the Mac is simple. Apple got locked into my market, design industry and publishing pros... and they BLAMED us for not reproducing enough. For being a small population. They blamed the excellent tool they made for a small group of users, for their low market share. Instead of themselves. We, and only we helped them create an interface that worked. Not just for us, but one that made sense for everyone including newbies. Apple didn't trust that. And so they started asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. They said, if an interface that works this way only attracts the five percenters, we have to find out how to attract the stupid people, the casual users... while keeping the ultra-smart geeks feeling powerful and important. And that's just what they did. But Mac pros got the short end of the stick. X-Men crack me up. They completely wig out when I express the real, honest-to-god TROUBLE I'm having with this operating system. I mean, they really can't handle it. To them it's like me complaining that baby Jesus soiled his swaddling clothes, and is smelling up the manger. I don't see why I have to come up with a reasonable solution, when people at Apple are being paid way more than me to do just that. It's not my fault they are failing miserably. quote: Sorry, my brother, I don't agree. I think you believe that, and I see why it irritates you that I believe the exact opposite. I think most people who WANT to believe that, will. Despite reality. My experience says different. I think there are really potentially interesting and valuable things that OS X COULD be. But it's basically a big fat scam. Apple has written big hyped up checks that their software engineers could never cash. So much of this OS betrays a clunky, haphazard development. That cobbed/hacked thing I was talking about. Seat of the pants. It's caught in a permanent beta cycle. Rampant unrealized functionality. You want specifics? Gladly. I've been through it all a jillion times, but as you're new, what the hell, I'll go over it again. SERVICES, for starters. Great idea. Pan-application functionality, I dig that. But it sits there non-functional and broken and unreliable. It's so back-burnered it ain't even funny. There is no overarching rule (like the old AHIGs that governed the legacy) that gives developers any more than the barest guidelines to deploy this. And so they don't. Not because they don't want to, but because trying to do it when the functionality is unrealized and unresolved is stupid and makes them look bad. Speaking of which... LABELS. Come on, how can you look at Panther labels and not laugh? I mean, it was as if somebody said, hey, let's try to design something so visually confusing with so many icon states that NOBODY knows what the fuck is going on. In the legacy, how many icon and label states were there? Hands? Now how many are there? And why? Because colorizing and masking overdesigned icons is too hard in Aqua. Total, absolute workaround... trying to hide stuff where they painted themselves into a corner. FINDER. Slow, can't handle large numbers of files... endless beachballs, and an interface that makes no sense. Rampant visual inconsistency. Mixed metaphors. Icons that look the same, but behave differently (finder toolbar, dock, left finder column). Some stuff you can poof, some stuff you can't. Some things you have to use a menu command to change, some things you can drag with a modifier. In my biz, I have to manage huge numbers of files, select big honkin' blocks of files in a directory and drag them somewhere else. Beachball. Work stops cold. Sometimes I get "snap back"... then the OS is so slow to update I have no visual confirmation that the task was completed. All signs of a half-assed poorly executed bloated beast of an operating system. One that grew organically from no direction, no guiding light, and too many fucking cooks. quote: Sure man, downloading files to the desktop. The OS is so slow to update, that the file icon doesn't appear until way after the fact. I sometimes have to check a finder WINDOW of the desktop rather than the desktop itself. Arriving email: the OS is so slow, that mail arrives in my client app, and the aural feedback of this action is so slow to make it through to the OS that it will occur FULL MINUTES after the fact. I'll read my email, trash it, go back to work... and suddenly "BEEP"... you don't know what the hell. It stops you, you go "what the fuck was that beep for?" Then you realize it was trying to tell you you got mail. Fuck, it's almost funny. The slow updating causes file corruption. If you're batch processing a slew of small graphics files, it can choke the system, when you get to the Finder, you'll eventually see the icons, but try to open them and something will be scrambled in the file. That's the OS bailing or experiencing errors when you ask too much from it. Likewise, for similar reasons, Quartz will misfire and either misdraw objects as you manipulate them (psychedelic multiple object effects), or not provide standard interface feedback. Leaving the end user wondering what the fuck is going on, and stopping workflow. I could go on and on. How about jumping icons? Say you like to organize your files in a Finder window or on the desktop visually, sans grid. Ever notice that sometimes they'll arbitrarily change location? If the OS gets into trouble, they'll snap to a predetermined default grid. It may make the OSs life easier, but it is an unexpected behavior, and makes for conflict between man and machine. PREFNESIA. My main observed behavior here, is that depending on how much work you do... how much you ask of a particular application, sometimes your prefs will be totally pooched. Prefs are totally forgotten and have to be reset or trashed and rebuilt. Does the APPLICATION cause this? No. But a failing in the operating system. You can't throw too many application preference changes at the OS while it's busy with other things (like drawing happy horseshit). Me, I say the user prefs are important. BUGS. My favorite bug is the repeating text bug. That disappeared in Jaguar, and now is back in Panther. It's a workflow stopper. Where suddenly a single character (usually in a text entry field in a dialog box) will suddenly repeat at top speed. The Window Manager is loaded with bugs. I've reported so many to Apple I've lost count. But many of them are irritating workflow stoppers. Stuff like clicking on a background window and having it NOT come forward. Or having a dialog window come forward while you're typing, and stopping your typing. Opening a file and having the window not come forward. Having to burn extra clicks to activate a window or widget. Happens to me all the time. The problem is, preemptive multitasking is not smart, user-aligned preemption. OS X has never had a sense that the user is king. It sometimes preempts the USER, and in the legacy, that would have been a crime. quote: Wait, wait, lol, WHO is kidding? First of all it is a text process, that's ALL it is. Managing chunks of text. Something OS X is good at, until it gets over-Aquaed. Then it slows right down and becomes unreliable. And it's directly proportional to how much interface is heaped on the process. A visual html editor like GoLive is a perfect example. What it does is basically butt simple. Installing chunks of code in sequence or at user-defined points. And yet, the SECOND there's a UI managment environment, the thing chokes. I get more Quartz misfires there than anywhere. Because OS X can't handle text? HELL NO, because it loves friggin' text. What it hates, is graphical user interfaces. It can't keep up. Remember, each user movement of a UI element (like moving a chess piece) is translated to a command line, then parsed, then spit back and a routine run. The text part is easy. If the user had used the COMMAND LINE to do the same thing, there would have been no problem. You gotta remember that OS X is basically server architecture. The UI that rides on top is a hack job. Designed and built by people who think GUIs are for absolute fucking morons. quote:I just did. It's not. There's no law that says you have to agree, but that's my assertion. Unless you are heavily using commercial graphics apps, you are probably not experiencing my flavor of hell. If your editors have big Aqua interfaces and you say they work, then I guarantee you aren't working fast, or throwing too much at the OS... you're working within its limits. I'm not. I push it too far. That much is as crystal clear to me as a transparent friggin' terminal window. quote: Uh, well, yeah. Only visual arts applications count to ME. I paid top dollar for them, and forgive me if I expect them and my OS to work in tandem. Hey, I don't know if other stuff is slow if I don't own and use it. If your stuff ISN'T slow, bully for you. If it is, maybe you'll understand where I'm coming from. I'm not complaining to hurt feelings (actually that's a lie, I do that NOW because it's fun)... but the REAL reason I do it is because I'm frustrated. I love Apple on the one hand; on the other they're FAILING me, screwing up, and I need crap to work. Unix schmoonix, I don't care what the kernel is. If it works, and works well, I could give a rat's ass. But because this effort is so weak for everything that I need, I have to pipe up. quote: What can I say, I'm a pretentious guy. Trouble is, I'm right. quote: Oh yes they do. You're right, there are those at the pinnacle of the aristocracy who laugh at it. There are linux purists, yeah. But there are unix geeks who friggin' LOVE OS X, who think it's liberating and wonderful. I'm sitting next to one right now. Hey you, come here. Say hello: HELLO! Go to OS X Hints and tell me there are no CLI guys there. Hell, I'M a CLI guy when I have to be. Back in the day, all I used to access the infant internet was Unix. And I do OS X. Actually, I like the CLI better than the GUI in OS X. Trouble is, I like the legacy Mac GUI more than anything. quote:As I've said many times before, the GUI in OS X has been designed by geeks who have a profound disdain for UIs in general, think they are for chimps. That's why we have a terrible interface in OS X. Making the substrate of the OS "transparent" is great... but geeks don't stay at the top of the food chain, emotionally or economically, unless that substrate is also ARCANE. The minute a computer is easier to use and troubleshoot by the end user, the more likely they're out of a job, or lose chops. That's why things are the way they are. We have access to the guts of the OS, where the "real" computing power is evident and accessible to people with specialized knowledge. And we have another layer for everyone else. And that graphical layer is not as powerful. It's been made deliberately counterintuitive so it acts as passive entertaiment. It shows me that UI users are perceived as chumps to be expoited by the geeks who think they are in charge. There is a vested interest in keeping the end user subjugated and dependent. On the hook and geek reliant. I say the Mac used to be more liberating and egalitarian. quote: Again, because I complain, that doesn't mean I don't have an open mind. Fuck man, I'd be FINE with OS X if it just worked and made sense. That's all. If I wasn't open to it, I wouldn't have installed it the DAY of the first release of the Public Beta, and wouldn't have used it every day since. I wouldn't be adopted right now if I wasn't OPEN to it. Come on. But I don't have to bend over and take it when it's not up to my standards or the standards of my industry. quote:The buck stops with Apple. Imagine how hard it is to develop for a half-assed, unfinished, unstable operating system, cobbled together from all these disparate geeks since what, 1968? You give ME a break. The fact that it's HARD to get it to work, doesn't mean I'm going to forgive them--or developers--when they can't do it. But I for one don't like being in a position where I'm paying good money for crap over and over again. It's unacceptable. If I'm financing this development, I need to have products that work as well as what I'm used to. quote: Don't make me laugh. Photoshop lost both speed and functionality. Tool responsiveness was better in the legacy. Filters run faster, that's about it. And now, there are SERIOUS inaccuracies in the toolset, pixel offset bugs that make the program much harder to use now than it ever was. Ever try to do detail work near the edges of a document? You'll position the crosshairs where you want to, say, ERASE, and click, and the tool fires two pixels north. Cursors disappear because Quartz can't figure out how to draw them. Don't get me wrong, I love Adobe CS. I love VersionCue workflows. But OS X, Quartz, and Aqua did nothing but bollox up Photoshop. In a program where you rely so heavily on the interface, a crappy interface makes it harder to use. And it is. I'm coping, but I ain't making this up. I use that program for hours every day. There's a perceptable lag in tool responsiveness that forces me to slow down and give the processors a chance to catch up. In the legacy, the SAME ACTION is much faster. Noticably faster. Meanwhile, OS X chokes with scratch disk and memory use. Have you ever SEEN what happens to the OS if you try and use Photoshop all day with big files? You have to frequently restart and flush, even with a dedicated scratch. And I've got 1.5 gigs of memory. To have Photoshop behave SOMETHING like it did in the legacy, I guarantee you I'd have to have a dual G5 with 8 gigs. I am about to get one. But look at how the legacy gave me JUST as responsive a system, without having to dump those kind of processor and memory resources at what's supposed to be the same app. Tell me OS X isn't bloated up the wazoo. quote:Please tell me you are not saying that Application development and OS development have ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION. If you are, I'm happy to let anyone reading this decide who is clueless to the nth degree. quote: Uh, except that they run on top of a totally OpenSource framework. Yes or no, when ANY of these are updated, does your BSD subsystem change? And, hey, didn't you just say that Application and OS development had no relation? You just called the Finder part of OS X, and it's an Application. quote: The stability of OS X is a total con job. Again I'll say, that I do more friggin' restarting of this system than I EVER did with the legacy. It's not only unstable, and needs almost constant nursemaiding, it makes Apps unstable. Even when the kernel stays alive, ga head and try and reclaim application stability WITHOUT restarting. Won't happen. Holy crap, guys like you are so desperate for stability, that you call things stability that really don't reflect a stable WORKING computer. If it's on and the deepest levels of the OS are doing something, while every app has bailed and the file system is fried, you'll still say "oh, at least I didn't crash." Yes you did. Your work stopped every bit as dead as if you had a kernel panic or other hard crash. I say it's time to stop calling crap stable that everyone knows isn't stability. quote: My experience with the legacy was not perfect. Hell no, that's why I was so ready for OS X. But honestly? OS X is much flakier than 9 was on its worse day for me. But that aside, the legacy had a much better interface that made my work faster and easier. The tradeoff for the benefits of OS X should have never compromised the interface. But that's what happened. An experiment I've ALWAYS wanted to do, is see how an interface as minimal and simple as Platinum would behave in OS X. In other words, if Aqua wasn't bolloxed up with all the happy horseshit and bells and whistles and sheer stupid nonsense, would I be happy? I wonder. That's my challenge to Apple. Let me cut the interface down to its bare essentials, without all the marketing nonsense. Let me customize my fonts and font rendering. Let me set my interface to behave like the legacy. And then we'd be able to see if I'm right about Aqua and Quartz mortgaging performance for bullshit. quote: the above shows me just how insulted you got by my use of one friggin' vocabulary word: "pro"... Almost every X-Man I've pulled that jag on, is powerless against it for some reason. And I thought I had an ego, lol. Face it, it's not that my criticism of OS X is off the mark, it's that you can't take the idea that I think I'm a pro and you're not. That's what this is all about. Your hurt feelings. quote: Getting a little upset there, my brother? Again, I'll blame APPLE COMPUTER thank you very much. You will never catch me dividing the OS and Apps like you X-Men do. These are things designed to work together. A good OS development equals good apps. A bad OS development equals bad apps. The operating system is the foundation. If it's a swamp, anything you build on the swamp will sink. quote: More hurt feelings. I really have no idea how much money you spend, nor do I care. It's really a question if you think the prices are FAIR, and if the software works for you after you buy it. In my case, I drop huge amounts of money on commercial graphics software and upgrades, and after all that find that it still hasn't surpassed the legacy for performance and reliability. In other words, the LEGACY VERSIONS I already owned work better in many ways than the native OS X versions I felt railroaded into buying. That friggin' SLAYS me. And it's all a result of this stupid "age of the work in progress." Where this OS will make more money for Apple and developers the more unrealized and unfinished it is. All they have to do is sit back and laugh at us rubes, release version after version and upgrade after upgrade and nobody holds them the least bit accountable for performance and reliability. Well screw that, I do. I think they're fucking up. I can't paint a roses and sunshine picture of OS X when my apps and OS behave this badly and when despite gigaflops of power, they grind along slow as shit. quote: Hey, it's what I do. I agree, it is amazing. Amazing how seriously you take it. That's my con. I've always said, if the Mac Faithful reacted HALF as vehemently to the insulting behavior of APPLE, as they do to MY rhetoric, OS X would be friggin' perfect. My point is, Apple has designed OS X to look DOWN on us. It's a big fat con-job. A marketing strategy. And it starts with expanding market share by ASSUMING people are idiots. The stereotyping APPLE does, is WAYYY more damaging than my toungue-in-cheek rhetoric. Come on, I can't believe you can't see that. You are getting roped in like literally dozens of X-Men before you. You let me get under your skin and totally miss the point. I'm SHOWING you how this crap works. Apple's conning you the same way. Maybe you should be a little more skeptical, realize that there are motives and agendas at work, and stuff isn't always what it appears. OS X certainly isn't. It SAYS it's a ultra-modern, stable, fast, reliable operating system with a gorgeous interface. Pffffft. Puh-leeez. How gullible do you have to be? OK, wait, I get it. THIS gullible. quote: Again, nothing I haven't heard before from anyone who goes toe-to-toe with me. And my answer is always the same. Almost 20 years of Mac hardware infrastructure. All software licenses Mac. And the fact that Window is no great shakes either. PLENTY of my criticisms apply to Windows XP too. It's also overdesigned and poorly conceived. And yet somehow the interface is responsive and the fonts with Cleartype are better than OS X. To a veteran Mac loyalist like me, I think you can imagine how that makes me friggin' mental. Mac has ALWAYS kicked Windows butt when it came to the design world. They start appealing to a broader market, digikids and casual users, and POW. A lot of that goes right in the crapper. quote: No. Lookit how much the Legacy did with so little. It was ALL about design. The shortcomings of the processors of early incarnations of the Mac were overcome by an efficient and intuitive interface. That's Apple's job. And so I blame them. And you know what? They can take it. It makes me laugh that you are going to these lengths to shift blame off of Apple. Typical Apple apologist line of BS. That's the same reason you can say OS X is stable. Remove applications from the equation. I say, do that and what do you have? Squat. quote: A lot of people who don't work with type all day are saying the same thing. They can't figure out why designers think this rendering is so lousy. It was dumbed down just for guys like you who can't tell the difference. I really can't help you. Search the site and read about it. I'm telling you, Apple engineers took really good Adobe routines and blurred all edges equally so they'd behave better for Quartz resizing. But really good anti-aliasing is about making letterforms appear as crisp as possible. Quartz puts a blurry "halo" around the edges of all letters, which is why our interface fonts seem so blurry. You really see it on a Cinema Display. On a CRT it's not as bad, but still there. quote: Look very carefully at this statement. It's totally backwards. In the creative industry, tools evolve out of the needs of the artist. What you're describing is called "making do" a little something I like to call... uh, CRAP SETTLING. Think about it. If your car is a beater, with a crappy engine, sure you have to adjust your driving style to fit the tool, i.e. DRIVE SLOWER. But suppose you want to go fast? Now suppose you paid top dollar for it. Say you bought a freakin' FERRARI... You'd be pretty pissed off to have to redefine now, if it didn't perform well wouldn't ya? quote: Again we differ. I think Apple WILL catch on. I believe they care what pro users think. I believe that while they sold their soul, they will get it back. I am Mac loyal and Mac Faithful. They can't get away with this scam forever. And what's the big deal about master-baiting? It's my life, ain't it? I can do whatever the hell I want. quote: I don't have to prove it. I just have to say it. I don't care one way or the other what you believe. It's what -I- BELIEVE. I don't need you to believe what I believe. I just need to say what I believe. Meanwhile, nobody's stopping you from saying what YOU believe. If the membership of this site was 2, I'd still say the same thing. Because I'm right. And your responses only prove to ME that something I'm saying has gotten through to you. Something must have struck a nerve, or else any sane logical person would have just ignored me. You just don't like the way I say what I say. You're grooving more on the fact that I'm so full of myself than trying to hear the truth. But then after you pitch a fit, you'll turn around and admit there are problems with OS X. Well, come on, problems are problems. If my criticism of them is so inflammatory that it makes you go into denial about them, then you're not here to discuss anything but me. Which is fine by me, because me is my favorite subject. Well, welcome to thalo.net. Admitting the problem is step one. Being able to gripe about it and hold Apple responsible for fixing it? I guess you're not there yet. But you're having fun. Look at it that way. Think of this place as entertainment. This message has been edited. Last edited by: thalo, |
|||
|
|
Crap Settler Extraordinaire |
Title of the thread: "A request: help me to understand the thalo goal"
After reading the preceeding material, I am not sure that title was entirely genuine. Please forgive me if I am wrong, but usually when someone wants to understand, they approach the problem with an open mind, no? I get the idea that the thread was started for the sake of argument rather than understanding. I wouldn't presume to speak for thalo himself, but I will say that thalo.net has two goals: 1) We want to provide an environment where free speech is just that FREE. Open to all. We don't use the words as lip-service. You are free to say what you want here. That also means accepting that free speech does not necessarily mean civility. Although, if one's personal barometer dictates it, then feel free to be civil in the face of those who choose not. One thing I have noticed here, and elsewhere, is it is often telling that those who cry civility the loudest are the first to dispense with it when confronted with invective. Me sometimes included. Now that the experiment has been operative for some time, it still amazes me how people choose to react in a free and open environment under the curtain of relative anonymity. The best way to deal with boorishness is to either ignore it or counter it with wit and intellect. It is often difficult to do, but thalo.net is a great place to hone those skills. 2) We want to improve Apple's products through a collective voice. Some people find OSX and Apple's hardware offerings the bee's knees, like me and Rico, perhaps mighty too. Others are just plain upset that the offerings no longer suit their needs, like thalo, Markle, HH, Brad, mAx, and smithz. In all cases however, criticisms offered can serve to improve the product. Even if you like it in its current state, there is always room for improvement, right? How does Apple know what its users want or find problematic if no one speaks up? Even if you don't agree with the criticisms offered here, how do they really hurt you? Would a more responsive interface be a hindrance? Would better font rendering impede use? Would more effective memory management be an obstacle? Why not use the criticisms put forth here as a backdrop for your own criticisms to improve OSX. You do have some, yes? I know I do even though I really like OSX. For example, improvements to the Dock could make for a better workflow. Why can I invoke a hidden application switcher using command-tab, but I cannot invoke a hidden Dock with a keyboard command? Why does the hidden Dock trigger solely by a mouse position? This is highly inconvenient because no matter where on the screen I hide the Dock, invariably my mouse triggers it when I don't want it seen. Given the rapidity of my actions, sometimes I even end up starting an application in the Dock I didn't want open. Why not give the simple option to lock a hidden Dock from the mouse and allow a keyboard trigger. It would help many a "pro's" workflow I suspect. You get out of something what you give. Personal styles aside, there is much to learn in talking with the folks here, if you are interested in learning. But, if you want to start off with anger and incredulity, I am afraid that is all you will find. |
|||
|
|
Master Baiter |
just like the old days, eh, brother miths?
You can speak for me any time. That was great. I wish I was that articulate, lol. Another thing most people learn is that that after the initial wash of emotion and reaction, we do tend to get down to brass tacks. We hone arguments and have cogent debates. Amidst the fun. When you distill what I have to say, it's really not that inflammatory. I just like to make it so. And never forget, I WANT OS X to be the bees knees. I want it to live up to the hype. But I have no trouble saying it currently doesn't. And I have no trouble saying that I have the answer, exactly, to HOW it could measure up: Fix. The. Interface. Restore the primacy of the end user. Apple, stop treating us like market share, and start trying to build us good tools again. Stop looking down your noses at us, and give us the means to unleash the power of the personal computer. Make personal computer use fun and intuitive again. EVEN FOR PROFESSIONALS. You did it once before. You know what should be in the Smithsonian, if it ain't already? the 128K Mac, and Finder 1.0. We need some of that brilliance. There ARE minds like that out there. I know it. There is no excuse for the Mac interface to be this disjointed and poorly executed. It needs to be ONE interface, instead of a dozen competing ones. I mean Christ, aluminum or stripes, pick friggin' one. It needs to hang together, or, as god is my witness, it's going to continue to hang separately... like it does now. And look what's on the horizon. Tiger. With an insane amount of widgets, all with different competing skins. More happy horseshit, when EVERYTHING those widgets are going to do, we all know, could be done in one fiftieth the screen real estate that they will be done. Visual and spatial economy, Apple determined, doesn't appeal to the people it wants to appeal to. They're making crib toys to occupy us, enthrall us, keep us occupied. I say we need efficient. Something like the Heads-up display of a jet fighter. Only the most important timely information. Platinum had some great things going for it. It was SIMPLE without being insulting, it didn't get in the way, and it had that sense of "touch" that put us in control. It OBEYED our commands. And moreover, it was forgiving or instructive when our commands were, uh, stupid. That's becoming lost. Now Aqua is something to sit back and regard. Something to go "gee whiz" at, without really DOING what it's supposed to do. It does less, but it does it in such a kicked up way, that simpleminded digis and newbies don't really notice that it does less. |
|||
|
|
THALO.net novice |
quote: Fuck. I had a massive post brewing and IE somehow lost it. I hit the key combination that makes the browser go back and it did. Going forward again I found that my post was gone (fucking Infopop and their shit interfaces) So my response will be short and sweet to your massive post: 1) I appreciate the amount of detail provided. 2) Instead of properly blaming App developers for app issues and Apple for apple issues and OSS for OSS issues you have clearly decided to blame Apple for all of it. OSS has nothing to do with the ton of legitimate finder issues you have raised. The Finder is flawed because Apple fucked it up. The Apps run like ass because App Developers waited until the last minute to port their stuff to OSX (despite the fact that Apple was putting out dev previews since 1998 for them to work with) and they ended up relying upon the half-assed API known as Carbon rather than sitting down and taking the time to do it right with Cocoa. 3) This 1968 bullshit line you guys keep running: quote:Every single computer and piece of software on the planet is based on technology from late 60's - early 70's. Your ignorance of this fact does not excuse you from being held responsible for blaming this "stuff" for your issues with X. Unix on the whole may be user unfriendly but it does work. And now let me specifically hit a few of the high points: quote: Most people who use computers are idiots. Sometimes it's because they have too many other things going on in life to devote enough time to understand the computer and other times it is simply because they are just stupid. The age of computers for the elite is over. I'm sorry you have yet to reconcile this. However the reason why people love OSX (which consequently is the same reason a lot of us loved Nextstep/Openstep in retrospect) is because it takes something that is inherently non-user friendly and difficult to learn (unix in this case) and makes it accessible to the end user. Sure it could use some work when it comes to particular issues but all-in-all they've done a great job of accomplishing that particular task. quote: Heh. Yeah right. You would think the thousands of hours in lost productivity you guys claim would more than justify the move to another platform. Also I'd like to point out that 99% of the X criticisms you have detailed have nothing to do with windows (save the finder large number of files issue - windows explorer doesn't handle more than 10k files in a folder very well). But the point of my rebuttal isn't to push Windows. The point is to show that you guys would rather whine and complain rather than do something about it. Sometimes giving up the ghost and moving on is the only way to truly show your dissatisfaction with something. quote: Thats amazing hilarious. Classic did very little with very little. I mean OS 9 literally couldn't handle the running of more than one app at once better than OS 7 or 8 could. If you are only running ONE app at once, OS7/8/9 fucking rock. But as soon as your cross that threshold - BOOM!  quote: No they do not. Get this through your skull - the APIs that OSX applications use are Cocoa and Carbon. Cocoa is an open standard but it is certainly not "Open Source". These are the "frameworks" that OSX applications commonly make use of. They have NOTHING to do with open source. If you don't believe me, download the PPC installation image for Darwin (the Open Source portion of OSX) and start that bitch up. You will see nothing graphical. At. All. You will see no semblance of Cocoa and/or Carbon. At. All. quote: Likely only because you insist on booting back into OS7/8/9, eh? OSX is not unstable. quote: My feelings are not hurt. In fact the feeling I experienced when reading this is one of astonishment. Your "holier than thou" riff has gotten old. You refer to a "geek aristocracy" when you do nothing but reinforce that you are part of some "pro aristocracy". The irony of it all is just killing me... I may die laughing soon if you don't stop. quote: LOL... thats a good one. GUIs are for people who just want to use the computer without the bullshit. Simple GUIs are the reason personal computers ever hit it big. They were commerically pioneered by Apple itself. They are the reason why things like Linux still haven't hit it big in the desktop market as the GUI there is too disparate and a lot of tasks still require you to drop into the commandline. OSX does not suffer from these issues. That is why it works so well. quote: Yeah thats all programming is. Your ignorance is becoming quite unbearable. /me sighs quote: I'm not denying OSX problems. The vast majority of the finder issues you have pointed out are legitimate. But the effect they have on your workflow is exagerrated me thinks. Lets be honest how many files do you have to store in a single directory to choke OSX? If you can answer that why not just make an attempt to store some of those files in subdirectories (which likely would make them easier to locate later) rather than insisting that your lack of organization is for the best? Yes the Finder needs to be fixed but maybe your workflow needs to be fixed as well. Ours is not to ask why - ours is but to do and die. |
|||
|
Mockerator |
quote: Minus the expected evolutionary improvements (and perhaps a few revolutionary ones), that’s about all Apple needed to do. Take the great user experience of running one app under OS 9 and adapt and expand it to running many apps under OS X (or whatever next-generation system they came up with). What we got was a rather crappy user experience for each individual app, but we could, of course, run a lot of them at the same time. [Now imagine a typical Terry Gilliam animation of a crowd of flag-wavers giving a rather unenthusiastic "Hoorah!"] This is why I’m still a "greybeard" in OS 9 for the most part. I prefer quality, not quantity. |
|||
|
|
Mockerator |
quote: I agree with thalo. I think you’ve captured something there, Darr. Of course, I will be the first to admit that I love a good head-knocking debate. The subject matter is often just a detail. Taking out my life’s frustrations on the other guy, ratifying who I am, what I believe, and that I exist, well, that’s often the real point of it all, eh? And because we’re either afraid or unaccustomed to showing affection to other people (let alone to other guys), comradery often manifests itself as conflict or rivalry. Yeah, explanations such as this become rather stilted and useless. It’s a bit like dissecting a joke. You won’t find the funny and you will have killed the joke. But such is the nature of talk; to talk for talking's sake. More than one of us around here resembles Aqua. |
|||
|
|
HighHopes |
After reading the preceeding material, I am not sure that title was entirely genuine. Please forgive me if I am wrong....
What the hell is that happy horse shit, Darr? Please forgive you if you're wrong??? You're not wrong. This fellow doesn't want to understand shit. Mainly he came here to tell us how wrong we are (except you and other fans of OS X) but most of all he wants to tell us how right he is. You know, like a little kid. Not only doesn't he want to understand anything from us, he isn't interested in convincing us of anything as well. Look at his presentation. Does that sound like the presentation one would give if he had the least bit of interest in bringing people around to his point of view? Yeah, right! Have you heard one thing you haven't heard a thousand times? One new thing? It's all been said before and by guys who understand the Mac better. It's all the same, just the same old crap, except it's been said a lot better by wiser heads than this fellow. I'm not sure of what to make of the flaming asshole routine. Calling people he just met and doesn't know idiots and worse. Demanding that others leave the forum. What's with that? Are you really uncertain if this is a sincere search for understanding another point of view? There is some puzzlement in your mind? Or were you just being excessively polite? Maybe his strange behavior is just due to a sense of freedom at being able to say these things and hurl shit bombs in a forum. Hell, he can do it all he wants. Nobody is going to stop him. Nobody will play mommy for him here. What is puzzling is why he wants to do it. Claims to be a grown man. Why does he want to come off as a flaming obnoxious asshole? Must do something for him. Life's frustrations ya think? Maybe he's one of these guys that nobody likes so he might as well make it official. Who knows? Hard to say. Probably later we'll find he is a valuable addition with a wealth of information and a strong point of view. I think I see hints of that already, maybe. Or maybe I'd just like to believe that. In the meantime I have to agree that the routine does provide a sort of silly entertainment. It would be better if the arguments weren't so stale and old. Can't have everything I guess. It does kill some of the boredom. Thalo seems to be having a good time. It's worth something I suppose. |
|||
|
|
Master Baiter |
quote: Aw man, I'm sorry. I hate it when that happens. Still, you gotta admit, this is fun. Actually, one thing I'll give you is that the 1968 line is bullshit. I admit it. That's just sheer provocation and exaggeration. It's a half-truth and makes OS X sound based on an older technology than is probably fair. This one, however, I won't concede: quote: That's EXACTLY the attitude that has made OS X so crappy. My theory is, you NEVER design anything excellent for people you don't respect. I think Apple (in many ways rightly so) is frustrated by the user base. They worked so hard for so many years and now they're kinda throwing the hands in the air. They look at the phenomenal dominance of Windows and go, well, there, take that. Let 'em eat cake. We'll give these morons what they want. Me, if I was king of the world and boss of Apple, would have stood firm on the hearts and minds campaign. Apple was RIGHT. They did it RIGHT. They figured out the GUI and wrote a document (the old AHIGs) which in my thinking is up there with the US Constitution for liberating human beings. Trouble was, even with a BRILLIANT interface, they had small market share. I think where they really fucked up, was blaming that on people being stupid. People aren't stupid. But they are cheap, lol. Apple itself compares its product to high-end automobiles. You can't say you are BMW and then balk when your snobby users complain about scratches in the paint, or the fact that they think you could have done this or that better. Apple has always tried to walk the tightrope between making a computer that was EASY TO USE, and EASY TO LEARN, and intuitive. But they combined that with the idea that those things should be really, really expensive. So face it, the only people who could AFFORD Macs and make businesses with Mac infrastructures, were graphics pros, artists, and the desktop publishers of this world. quote: Hey, I DID move to another platform. OS X. Though I've held on to dual boot machines because sometimes the productivity hit is too much for me. Like I said, I'm doing my best to adjust. But the fact is, for what I do, the operating system is piss poor. I've even bought new hardware, I plan to buy the most powerful Mac system going... and yet I know that the problem ain't with the hardware. It's with the OS and with the software not running right in the OS. The problem is the interface. Dis the legacy all you want. I hated crashes too. But when I compare the simple, day to day smooth operation of the computer... the interaction of man and machine to accomplish work... OS X loses badly. Performance, where it counts, is terrible. I'd seriously RATHER have to deal with one app at a time, if those apps would run better that way. I don't need a web server. I need design workstations more. I really only USE one app at a time, most of the time. If I'm rendering a big 3-D project, I'll tend to jump on another system anyway, or just let it finish. Or do only basic shit like check email. I could do the same in OS 9, no trouble. I didn't have all that many "BOOMs" Certainly no more or less than OS X unexpected quits. And face it, I lose just as much work when an App bails in OS X as I did when OS 9 crashed totally. The fact that the kernel is tougher to kill means squat to me. To me, it's the same as if the whole thing went down... just as much pain and suffering and lost productivity. And given a choice of the X Finder or the legacy Finder, it's legacy all the way. No contest. Hands down. I really think all the drop shadows and elaborately rendered icons and genie suck effects are meaningless. Some things are kinda fun, but the computer is much harder to use. Like I have said in the past, you want to really experience the power of unix, do it from the terminal. That's where you see that Apple hardware is blazingly fast. Put a GUI on top of it, and it's an illustration of how Aqua is amazingly bloated and mortgages the computing power. And yet, GUIs are WHY I CHOSE MAC. Everything is GUI when you rely on commercial applications. The GUI has to be right. It ain't. It's ridiculous. Absurdly bad. Worst GUI I've ever seen on any platform. A few glimmers of hope, but mostly a three ring crap circus. My whole take on the Mac can be boiled down to three words: LESS. IS. MORE. They just don't get it. When they do, the Mac will be as much of a phenom as the iPod. Because the iPod got it. The iPod (at least prior to iPod Photo) is the friggin' epitome of Less is More. It's form meets function. Apple has so much going for it, it KILLS me that the software is so bad. Their hardware/industrial design is brilliant. I still marvel at my 17" powerbook as a work of art. If it booted an operating system that was lean and mean and made my life easier rather than harder, I'd follow Steve Jobs into the gaping maw of hell. What needs to happen is that all this NeXT bullshit has to be revamped and made Macintosh. We need to abandon what's Windowsy and NeXTy about the Mac (almost everything) and swap it out for an interface that is going to be better... one inspired more by the old AHIGs... using legacy precepts, but updating them with new and innovative technologies. quote: That's semantic hairsplitting and you know it. Sorry, you're not going to convince me that the commercial layers of the Macintosh operating system is closed source and commercial quality. Not when it's raison d'etre is to accomodate an OpenSource substrate. To Apple's credit, they have thought about this development in a new and exciting way. Trouble is, it's coming off as a cost-cutting measure and a means by which nothing is ever completed and quality is sacrificed. It takes the worst from OpenSource, it EXPLOITS it... rather than taking the genius from it and building on that. quote: No, and yes it is. Even when I don't TOUCH OS 9, it happens. Just from heavy use of commercial design applications. OS X stability and performance degrades with use. I've been over it a jillion times. It happens to me so regularly that I can anticipate it. I know WHEN I have to restart to avoid trouble. I'm a good little Skinner-box rat. I can read the signs. When my apps start acting flaky... when the beachballing picks up, I know that the scratch, swapfiles, file system, whatnot is ready to blow. And I know the only way to avoid catastrophe is to restart. This is so far from a stable release it's not even funny. This is as slow and buggy and unreliable a pile of garbage as I've seen from anyone at any time. But can I make it SEEM reliable? Sure, by guess what? NOT doing what I need to do. Hand it less. Then it's fine. But that's not an option. I should be able to do at least the things I did in OS 9, at least as well. That's to this day not true yet. And what's insane is that it's not true even with WAY more powerful hardware and way more physical RAM. This I agree with: quote:I don't however, get your following linux point. I don't know what issues you think OS X does not suffer from. I think almost ALL of OS Xs issues are GUI related, and the GUI does NOT in fact work well. Nor does the file system. Not in a pro setting. It's adequate for casual use, I'm sure. quote: Be that as it may, that's all programming is. The geek aristocracy loves to make it seem like what they do is magical, mystical, and hard... but it's really not. Given the right tools, I can envision a world where anyone can do it. But guess how likely I think that will ever happen, lol. But it's the same for my industry. There is no magic to being a graphic designer. I would LOVE everyone to have the ability to exercise their creativity exactly like a pro. Unlike geeks, I'm not worried that this will put me out of business. I don't need to be part of the aristocracy. I'd still be an artist even if Apple made the interface so intuitive and simple that a first time amateurs could master high end design software. Actually, that's what I WANT. I don't want the technical side of things to be an excuse for some people to play aristocrat and think they are better than their brothers. I want a level playing field, and egalité, fraternité and creativité. The problem with geeks, is that without mumbo jumbo and complexity, they can't be all superior. That's why they're fighting so hard to keep us sheep. |
|||
|
Thalo.net's official Master-debaiter |
Jay, I'm a happy Mac OS X user and your "printing the Finder windows" thing was feeble at best.
We often need to print the full directory listings, icons, info and all, as is in the window itself, even stuff scrolled out of view, for dozens of things, not the silly situation you described. Most of us printed little lists or booklets of the contents of a CD so we can see what's in it without plopping each and every CD in and seeing ourselves. There are dozens of other reasons, many professional situations. I don't buy into this "us vs. them shit". Mac OS 9 had some nice things I wish Mac OS X had. Hence, I don't defend Mac OS X's failings when they are indeed failings. This message has been edited. Last edited by: the man in black, -- I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care. |
|||
|
|
Thalo.net's official Master-debaiter |
quote: Huh? I can't keep up...  I wasn't defending Mac OS 9 for fuck's sake. I almost think you saw my first sentence and skimmed the rest? I hate this shit: Person A: "Mac OS 9 lets you print the entire contents of a folder" Person B: "Oh, so you hate Mac OS X huh? Well, it's better than Mac OS 9 because blah blah..." Or: Person A: "Mac OS X doesn't let you print the entire contents of a folder" Person B: "Oh, so you Mac OS 9 is perfect, huh? Well, Mac OS 9 couldn't do blah blah..." etc. First, you don't need to tell me any of that, I am totally aware of Mac OS 9's shortcomings (and Mac OS X's, too). That's why I used Mac OS X from Public Beta on and went along through the tough times. Second, I wasn't making some grand sweeping 9 vs. X thesis, I was merely correcting the exact details of the post I replied to. Fuck this, people have stopped actually reading it seems.  -- I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care. |
|||
|
THALO.net journeyman |
quote: This is a very handy utility for that http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6465 |
|||
|
|
Crap Settler Extraordinaire |
Why pay $15 for shareware functionality that should be in the OS itself?
Hey, I have tons of shareware and freeware that enhance the usability of OSX, and I am not afraid to shell out bucks for original ideas that extend the OS's capabilities. But, c'mon, some of this stuff should have been implemented from the get-go, but, if not, then certainly by iteration 4, don't ya think? |
|||
|
|
Thalo.net's official Master-debaiter |
Thalo, SERVICES, on the whole do work, and I explained this before in another thread which you assiduously avoiding replying to.
It seemed as if you were not first selecting text first on which to perform a given service. Without a selection, Services are grayed out. The text also should ideally be suited for the given Service's task. Is it useful and/or flawless? I can't say. I actually don't use them much due to their implantation as a global menu (why not contextual menu?) -- I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care. |
|||
|
|
Thalo.net's official Master-debaiter |
quote: I'm sure he agrees. Don't mistake helping with not complaining. One can do both at the same time! -- I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care. |
|||
|
|
THALO.net novice |
quote: Indeed it is. quote: Thank you. quote: Heh. Do you have any idea how hard it is to design a decent user interface? Every single day I struggle with this issue and the only thing that I can say is that it is VERY HARD. Why? I don't know to be honest. Different people have a different idea of how things should work. I think that eventually (especially in a custom app situaton) the developer will try to meet the users needs but eventually the two meet somewhere in the middle. OS X is kind of like that. Though OS X in some ways (i.e. your ways) hasn't met you at all, from a typical end user standpoint it has met them. quote: You claim that OSX costs you productivity. If it really is costing you in terms of productivity it shouldn't take much to justify the move to another non-Apple platform. quote: A workstaton by definition can do more than one thing at once. Having a computer that you paid 3 grand for that can't manage more than one app at once is kind of not acceptable. quote: You are absolutely wrong here. NextStep was turned into an open standard called OpenStep before the ship that was Next Inc. began to sink. That is why there was never a NextStep 4.0 and instead an OpenStep 4.0. They changed the name to reflect that the system was based on an open standard. Open Standards and Open Source are non related. Microsoft implements lots of Open Standards but that work is not "Open Source". The same goes for Cocoa (part of the OpenStep standard). Everything in OSX that is OpenSource is included in Darwin. If you cant find it in Darwin then it isn't an Open Source part of OSX. I know that we are playing semantics but there is a MASSIVE different between "Open Source" and "Open Standards" and to blame the Open Source community for the failings of the "Open Standard" implemented by Cocoa is 100% wrong. The two are not related. quote: Do you have any idea what you are saying? The Open Source portions of OSX that are specific to OSX (the kernel mainly) are descendants of the very same closed source components in Nextstep/Openstep. Apple didn't just say to the OSS community, "Build us a kernel". Nope. They instead Open Sourced the kernel that they bought when they took over Next Inc. And the kernel has nothing to do with the problems that you mention. The other commandline level utilities that are open source also have nothing to do with the problems that you mention. Every single issue that you and others here have mentioned with OSX have everything to do with the Closed Source portions rather than the Open Source portions. I don't what else to say to make this point clear. What you are doing is blaming the manufacturer of the brake pads on a car because your engine won't turn over. It just doesn't make sense. quote: Holy fuck you've got to be kidding. Have you ever designed a database? Have you ever figured out the best way to implement a solution on a three tiered architecture? Do you have any idea what it takes to create a decent user interface? You have NO idea. People generally don't think logically. Programming requires that you excel at logical thinking. It requires that you see the big picture as well as deal with things on the lower level. If requires you to understand the system as well as the application. Forget it, I'm done debating this point with you. It just isn't worth the effort. quote: Right. Thats why you keep referring to "Mac Pros" right? Thats why everybody who disagrees with you must've been a "Mac Pro" not with their weight in salt, eh? Sure. Keep telling yourself that. quote: OSX IS ALL ABOUT NOT MAKING YOU A SHEEP! IT TAKES SOMETHING INHERENTLY USER UNFRIENDLY LIKE UNIX AND MAKES THAT POWER AND CAPABILITY ACCESSIBLE TO EVEN THE MOST IGNORANT USER. I think I've had enough. It was somewhat fun while it lasted. Thanks for the debate. Jay Ours is not to ask why - ours is but to do and die. |
|||
|
|
THALO.net novice |
quote: You know what? I'm done. However I would like to excercise my right to say one final thing: Fuck. You. I've met a lot of assholes online but you rank near the top of them. Do the world a favor and go fuck yourself. Jay Ours is not to ask why - ours is but to do and die. |
|||
|
|
HighHopes |
John, what the hell are you arguing about? I don't understand. You were comparing OS X and OS 9. I was merely adding that OS 9 may not be the best example of OS excellence for the benefit of anyone who may make the mistake of thinking that the reason you would bring up OS 9 was because we are all so thrilled with it. Your post was perfectly clear to me that you were not making a grand sweeping 9 vs. 10 defense. Beside, I know you better than that.
I agree with what you said and you just said you agreed with the point I made about OS 9. So, we agree. We don't agree the right way??? |
|||
|
|
Master Baiter |
quote: Sorry, I just snorted coffee through my nose. Here I am in Safari. Let me "grab" a screenshot. No, no wait, let me send this thalo.net web page as an email... no, let me open the source of this page in BBEdit... no, hang on, how about let me create a Quickey shortcut--something that says "SERVICES DON'T WORK" which I can invoke with a keystroke. Why do I have to SELECT TEXT to do that? Quickeys is already a standalone "service" that I can invoke with a shortcut. It should be there accessible in Services menu (like it is from the Dock or System menu). It's more a service than it is an app. So isn't Suitcase. And there should be associative keyboard shortcuts for all of them listed in the SERVICE menu. I say things that are listed there, need to work, and work IN CONTEXT. Globally. Right now they don't. You explain to a new user why all those greyed out menu items are there. Say some poor schmoe is just exploring, looking for functionality. What would YOU make of that menu? They're there, but they don't work or make any real sense, when they ought to. Be honest. Does anyone actually use them? Why not? I can envision them as really, really valuable. I can picture in my mind the way they SHOULD work, but don't. Sometimes the only way to activate the functionality in the menu is to do counterintuitive things like selecting text. Even in cases where you don't really want to DEAL with a text selection. The active window should be enough of a "selection" to activate certain services. Suppose I've got a browser page opened. I could easily see wanting to invoke the BBEdit service and open THAT source in a new BBEdit doc. Mail? You shouldn't have to select. If you're on a web page, and it's the active window, you should be able to mail the page with one command, or the URL with another. I see lots and lots of services. Some of which I'd actually use if they worked. Nine times out of ten the menu selection is grayed out and unavailable when something is not selected. And yet I can visualize the service working, and being available at all times in the application, or wherever, at all times. Especially a browser, when there's nothing more than an active window. Take grab. That's a useless service. I'm not clear why it's service incarnation isn't obviously aligned with its OS X keyboard shortucut functionality. Is "grab" the same as command-shift-3 and 4? Or is it just the app "grab". Stupid redundancy. About the most I can do is email a text selection, open it in TextEdit, speak it, or make it a sticky. OK, those work. Sort of. But are YOU happy with the implementation? Give me any one of these you've found to be indispensable. On my scorecard, there has not been service one that I thought was worth a damn. The things I rely on that actually ARE services, like Quickeys, Suitcase... aren't services in the OS X sense. Services are another junk drawer. When they could be our right hand utilities, available pan application. |
|||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 13 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© 2005 THALO.net