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Originally posted by thalo:
Absolutely 100% NOT TRUE, brother jay. If you don't believe me, try it.

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If I was truly trying to troll thalo - believe me I've would've already done it.

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Meanwhile, tell me again just who is shelving you? We're having a spirited discussion, and I personally am digging the disagreements. I always do.

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HighHopes mainly. He essentially takes issue with me telling Rave to either contribute or leave and then pretty much uses the same technique on me. The difference is that I wasn't attempting to troll or spewing useless garbage.

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I think you know exactly where I stand, I think it's crap and OS 9 had a better interface and was better equipped to handle pro workflows.

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Please define a "pro" workflow. As a programmer/admin my definition of a "pro" workflow likely differs from yours in a substanial ways. The biggest problem with OSX is that yes its display layer leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to speed but now that Apple's machines have finally caught up to the rest of the world in terms of speed... the issue isn't nearly as so bad as you would have us believe.

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Like almost every Mac person, I'm basically adopted. Disappointed, but adopted.

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Read that statement over very carefully... you've essentially said that "almost every Mac person" is "disappointed" with OSX. That is so far from the truth that it's not even funny. Hell I'm not "disappointed" with OSX, Linux or Windows however I think that all of them present opportunities for improvement. Identifying opportunities for improvement and making requests based on those opportunities is not the same thing as being "disappointed" in my book.

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I'm pretty sure there won't be a return to OS 9 like there was a return to Classic Coke.

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Again this is where your slanted perception of the situation comes into play me thinks. In the case of "Classic Coke" the market at large wanted "Classic Coke" whereas the market for Macintosh machines seems to have generally embraced OSX. I would wager that most of the machines not running OSX aren't allowed to based upon Apple's strict G3 minimum requirements (and the people are either too afraid or dont care enough to use one of the many hacks out there that get around this).

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But do I want OS X to be better, and maybe ANALYZE why the Platinum interface was so much more responsive and intuitive? Absolute-a-mundo.

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Well thats easy. OSX has a ton of the display postscript tech in it that was in Next. OS9 didnt have this. Of course OS9 also froze all background processes when I held my mouse button down on the Apple Menu and couldn't manage to play a CD while handling moderate Photoshop system load.... it also liked to crash unceremoniously (remember the wonderful bomb icon?) and it had major problems keeping one extension from walking all over another.

I submit to you that OS9 was never the epitome of the "pro" experience. I mean using your system in a "pro" fashion goes beyond the workflow. It inherently applies that you are going to put some kind of load on the system whether it come from performing some large Photoshop operation, compiling an application, running an analysis of some kind or applying some kind of filter to a piece of digital video. OS9 failed miserably when it came to handling any kind of system load. In fact I submit sir that OS9 was the very reason Apple's marketshare began to decline massively. Once Microsoft started providing a better OS in the form of NT and even 9x the days of life that OS 7/8/9 had in it became numbered. Apple couldn't manage to write their own OS and eventually they turned to the only solution available to them: Buy it instead of Build it. Of course they ended up crawling back to Steve on their knees. And eventually Apple became what Next had endeavored to become at one time.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is a lot OS X could LEARN from OS 9. But OS X learned everything from NeXT and Windows and focus groups. And we've all seen the results. Crap. Not to put too fine a point on it.

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Yes but Windows doesn't embody any of the inherent performance problems that you claim are disturbing your "pro" workflow. 50 times as many people as their are Mac Users use Windows productively each and every day. Everybody in my office uses it. Everybody at GE where I used to work used it productively. How can you stand here and pretend that your idea of the "pro" experience is somehow more qualified for admission that the idea held by 99.9% of the world?

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While the iPod is kicking ass, there is no Mac Pro out there worth his or her salt who doesn't see that the Mac is struggling.

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So if some disagrees with you, they aren't worth their salt? Come on thats a bit disingenous dontcha think?

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Working Mac pros like me are SUFFERING THROUGH OS X.

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Have you ever considered that your idea of interfacing with your computer is outdated? The beauty of these operating systems is that each of them (Linux, Windows, OSX) all provide dozens of different means for every end. Just because your current technique isn't working, it doesn't mean that the OS doesn't have some better way of facilitating your needs - you just may have to change your views on how you'd like to go about filling those needs.

thalo,

Have you ever seen Rhapsody? If you haven't let me explain: It was OSX before OSX. Rhapsody was being cross-developed on both PowerPC and x86 platforms and it still made some use of the Platinum interface. I've done some work with Rhapsody and I have some screenshots available on my site...

http://www.jaylittle.com/jaylittle/default.aspx?cmd=article&sub=display&id=13§ion=PART%202

So tell how does this compare? I realize that some elements like the column-view file browser are clearly Nextish (and in fact the very same browser that shipped in OpenStep 4.0, Nextstep 3.x...) but does it not seem like a nice cross between the old and the new?

Well I have tought long and hard about the "Problems" greybeard experience. It should be pretty easy to get a "Plantium" for OSX and write a better finder. The solution is so simple. Besides everybody nows that OS 9 is meant for liberal soccermoms not professionals.

Think of how much bandwidth could have been saved if the single post of this "Rave" had simply been ignored instead of getting someone in an uproar. I guess someone's reactions were formed by life in other forums.

And now this new guy, Blah:

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In my mind Steve is goinig on the right course with OS X. Without him Apple would be lost, and windows NT would be bitchslapping apple all around the place.

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Change NT to XP or any other flavor of Windows, and that's exactly what's been happening for years. You think Windows ISN'T bitchslapping Apple??

I'll repeat for those who came in late, I think it's a sad admission of defeat that in looking for a new OS, Apple couldn't do better than an OS that had already failed once in the market, based on technology from 1968.

Markle

Edit: P.S. While I was writing this, Blah added a comment that was quite thoughtful.

Think of how much bandwidth could have been saved if the single post of this "Rave" had simply been ignored...

Exactly. For my part I was guessing that since it happen at the bewitching hour on New Year Eve maybe he was feeling a bit overly frisky. It kinda sounded that way. Just let it go. Under those circumstances it didn't seem to be anything to take real seriously. I theorized that a reasonable person wouldn't unless they purposely wanted to for other reasons.

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Hell I'm not "disappointed" with OSX, Linux or Windows however I think that all of them present opportunities for improvement.

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Puh-leez. That's just a NICE way of saying you're disappointed. Me, I come right out and just say it minus the dancing around. I hear you, I understand what disappointed means "in your book"... unfortunately, in my book, what I am with regards to OS X is very, very, exceedingly disappointed. Hey, I'm all for embracing opportunities for improvement or whatever you want to call it. I say without the slightest hesitation that Apple has done a godawful job at that.

Oh, before I forget, let me define a "pro" workflow. That would be a personal computer workflow for professionals. A series of actions upon the interface that lead to a smooth accomplishment of the task at hand, such task being intimately related to the user's making a living. In my case, a pro workflow has everything to do with the design industry. In other words, using large commercial design, drawing, and production applications to create product for press and web.

The Mac was always traditionally strong in my industry. In fact, in many ways the Mac CREATED my industry.

Now, while I understand that everyone's idea of "pro" workflows differs, I really don't have to care that I'm hurting a programmer's or unix geek's feelings when I don't include THEIR workflows in my criticism.

Because, let's face it, people who live and breathe code, who have mastered command lines, who spend all day apart from a GUI doing very SIMPLE text-based things, and who do their file management tasks in ways other than the Mac Finder, don't really have to worry about how fast their apps are (text editors are not very graphical, they're already simple, and are almost all fast).

More complex applications, in the visual arts, are DOG SLOW on the Mac under OS X. They choke the operating system. The operating system has a devil of a time keeping up with them. Visual people like greybeard mac-heads, live in a visual, virtual world. One of iconic representation, and real time acting on the graphical shorthand elements that stand in for our files.

Coders? Hey, they act on text strings. Rather than drag stuff around, they type in orders. It's a very different way of working.

And so while CLI guys might be pleased as punch with OS X, because it's now kowtowed to their archaic way to interact with hardware... Mac people--I'm talking veteran Mac pros--are not. I've heard WAY more people in day to day life that really are frustrated and disappointed in the Mac, than I do people who think it's the balls.

The exception, of course, are the geek aristocracy. As long as the Mac remains arcane, as long as its GUI remains semi-functional, they are in control. If we had a GUI that actually did as good a job as the CLI, it would steal their thunder, erode their edge.

But look at what's suffered. Applications. Commercial applications. I'm not talking one-note geek spinning-gears open source applications (which I call intellectual everests)... I'm talking stuff designed to work. Do a job. Those all suck now.

Stuff like Photoshop. Yeah, there's all kinds of new bells and whistles. But the app functioned better for artists and designers BEFORE OS X. Now? Jeez, it's barely a step up from gimp. Buggy and half-assed, with great big problems and important functionality and performance things in mid-development. And yet full prices are being charged.

We are getting the worst of both worlds. Application development has become lazy, because Operating system development has become lazy. OpenSource is a double edged sword. A lot of the work gets done for free. It just doesn't get done WELL, and is never, ever finished to commercial level.

But holy crap, they PRETEND it is, now don't they? They certainly charge us frequent upgrade prices.

Well screw that. I'm done slack-cutting and crap settling. After all these years, OS X should be stable and fucking WAY more "finished" than it is. It should be faster, it should be more carefully tested. And oh god, above all, IT SHOULD FRIGGIN' WORK.

It doesn't. Sorry, it just doesn't. Does not. It blows up all day every day. And the more you do, the worse it gets. The more you and your apps ask of the OS, the flakier and buggier and less reliable it is.

Ga head and point to how great people who work in text editors all day have it, and I'll laugh in your face.

Do work in big, expensive design apps that you've had to pay a fucking FORTUNE for, multiple licenses, then pay oh, TEN upgrades or so... and then wake up one day and realize that even after that THEY STILL NEVER WORKED RIGHT. Then come talk to me.

People who live and breathe type, like graphic designers. Show them the blurry, awful font rendering of OS X. Compare that to the legacy, OR EVEN WINDOWS, and tell me how great OS X is. Again, it just makes me laugh.

Bangers, digikids, and people who don't know what they are doing, all defend OS X to their dying breath. Why, because it's a good MP3 player? Good home movie maker? Good digital camera archival utility? Not enough.

The second you need to draw, paint, build, do, animate, then Aqua is a liability. And so is OS X. Because it sucks when it comes to keeping up with a human user, asking it to keep up with their creative whims. And sorry, that is more than fetching files, or typing shit.

The legacy Mac was like a finely tuned musical instrument in ONE way: the way the human interacted with the computer. That's what made it a great creative tool. Now, it's all about passive entertainment. Sit back and watch. You have to, because the OS can't really figure out what to do when you have to actually do work.

Hey, I'm all for friggin' fun, but people who work for a living need better. I see the Mac being dumbed down. I see people dumbing down their workflows to accomodate a computer that does less, and does it less well. Well FUCK that.

Instead of holding Apple to lower standards, I say it's time to force them to step up. There's no excuse for Applications that run this poorly. No excuse for an interface that makes as little sense as this one does.

I say, time to go minimal. Less is More. We need to put an end to the overdesigned happy horseshit and think lean, mean, and functional. Bloated fat and supersized needs to be made obsolete. I'd rather have grey and boring and SUPER FAST, than all kicked up, gaudy, and slow.

Fonts? I'd rather have crisp and readable than blurry.

Finder? I'd rather have one that can visually manage large directories without the constant beachballing. The legacy Finder with Platinum is still, the A#1 best way to file manage bar none for pros in my industry. I sometimes boot into OS 9 JUST to avoid having to deal with the abysmally slow X Finder.

You may be content to sit back, play nice and make "requests". Not me. I'm pissed off. I say it's time to make DEMANDS, because OS X still sucks the big one. It's so clearly a dumbed-down marketing vehicle designed for retards. And worse, designed to give geeks dominion and advantage over end users who rely on GUI driven apps to make a living.

Are there exceptions? Yeah, I guess. Film editors seem pretty happy that their shit works. Their UI's aren't that terrible, and I guess they deal with fewer numbers of larger files... or one big editing project at a time, or they don't need to rely on the Finder like I do.

Music people seem pretty happy. What they do somehow seems to be a better fit with the idea of the Mac as a passive listening device. Their interface is a few sliders and some waveforms to watch. I guess Apple made them happy. Made them a priority.

Programmers, geeks, IT pros, hey, they might be giggling and crapping daisies, I really don't care.

Quark jocks, Photoshop jocks, Flash jocks... prepress guys. I'll speak for all them. They see that there are some serious weaknesses with this operating system. Some can live with them, some make excuses. I don't. I demand quality from Apple, from Adobe, from Macromedia.

I'm not getting it. And the REASON I'm not getting it, is that there's a massive con-job afoot here. A lazy, perma-beta situation where OS X can remain half-assed, and Apple still makes money. It's actually quite a brilliant scam. Trouble is, it leaves loyal hardworking Mac pros at a big disadvantage. Work that used to be easy is now difficult. A computing experience that used to be a joy is now a trial. That shit's gotta stop.

The Aqua interface needs to be RE MACINTOSHIZED. Or it's going to continue to be crap.

And hey, look around. Surf other forums. Thalo.net is not the only place who sees it. We were just the first.

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Originally posted by thalo:
Puh-leez. That's just a NICE way of saying you're disappointed. Me, I come right out and just say it minus the dancing around. I hear you, I understand what disappointed means "in your book"... unfortunately, in my book, what I am with regards to OS X is very, very, exceedingly disappointed.

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You sound like an idiot then. You'd rather throw out the baby with the bathwater rather than actually deal with the problems. So much for a resonable solution then, eh? OSX on the whole is light years beyond OS 7/8/9 and thats the bottom line. 99% of people out there agree with that viewpoint because it is clearly the case.

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Oh, before I forget, let me define a "pro" workflow. That would be a personal computer workflow for professionals. A series of actions upon the interface that lead to a smooth accomplishment of the task at hand, such task being intimately related to the user's making a living. In my case, a pro workflow has everything to do with the design industry. In other words, using large commercial design, drawing, and production applications to create product for press and web.

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Wow - let me tell you what I just got out of that... NOTHING. Seriously if OSX has so many flaws and it chokes on your "workflow" so consistently then present me with SPECIFIC USE CASES in which the OS fails to meet your needs in the expected manner. Define the specific series of events, circumstances and observed behaviors versus expected behaviors. Do you even know what a workflow is? Have you mindlessly been throwing the term around for so long that you didn't understand what I was asking for? Stop speaking in generalities and start with specifics. If OSX is as bad as you say it is - then this shouldn't be hard.

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Because, let's face it, people who live and breathe code, who have mastered command lines, who spend all day apart from a GUI doing very SIMPLE text-based things, and who do their file management tasks in ways other than the Mac Finder, don't really have to worry about how fast their apps are (text editors are not very graphical, they're already simple, and are almost all fast).

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You are kidding right? You think all programmers spend their entire day in the CLI? Do you have absolutely any small amount of clue what in the hell you are talking about? OSX has a massive IDE called XCode. XCode is akin to Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Writing code itself made be a "text" process but laying out the forms and in some cases connecting the dots certainly is not. And as far as how hard I push my box... take a long hard look if you'd like. My home box has three monitors. Each one serves a different purpose. At any given time I'm running dozens of applications. At any given time I'm using about a gig of memory when I'm really working.

Honestly if you are trying to win this arugment by pretending that my workflow isn't nearly as demanding as yours - think again.

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More complex applications, in the visual arts, are DOG SLOW on the Mac under OS X. They choke the operating system. The operating system has a devil of a time keeping up with them. Visual people like greybeard mac-heads, live in a visual, virtual world. One of iconic representation, and real time acting on the graphical shorthand elements that stand in for our files.

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Oh thats right because only visual arts applications count right? Only they are slow right? If that was the case blame the application developers not the OS.

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Coders? Hey, they act on text strings. Rather than drag stuff around, they type in orders. It's a very different way of working.

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I don't presume to tell you how you work (though I have worked in your field before) and while you clearly have no clue how a developer works, you presume to tell us how we work. How pretentious.

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And so while CLI guys might be pleased as punch with OS X, because it's now kowtowed to their archaic way to interact with hardware... Mac people--I'm talking veteran Mac pros--are not. I've heard WAY more people in day to day life that really are frustrated and disappointed in the Mac, than I do people who think it's the balls.

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News flash: CLI guys dont do OSX. CLI guys install some minimal Linux distribution and don't install any of the graphical stuff at all. They use text-mode web browsers like Lynx and text-mode email clients like Pine. CLI guys at most install some minimalistic WindowManager like blackbox or twm. The people you are talking about are not CLI guys. They are people like to use their computer. They are people who like knowing that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goal. You do not fall into this classification from what I have seen.

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The exception, of course, are the geek aristocracy. As long as the Mac remains arcane, as long as its GUI remains semi-functional, they are in control. If we had a GUI that actually did as good a job as the CLI, it would steal their thunder, erode their edge.

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What does this "geek aristocracy" have do you with the GUI? The bottom line that Mac OSX is easier and makes more sense to people than MacOS 7/8/9 ever did. I mean honestly it sounds to me like because OSX has changed things up on you and you refuse to even open your mind to something different. Well I'm probably not the first to tell you and I certainly won't be the last: As a pro you have to do whats best for your customers and clinging to dead pieces of hardware and software and talking about "the good old days" isn't the way to maintain that image. The world is moving on and if you don't move with it you will be left behind.

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But look at what's suffered. Applications. Commercial applications. I'm not talking one-note geek spinning-gears open source applications (which I call intellectual everests)... I'm talking stuff designed to work. Do a job. Those all suck now.

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And of course that is ALL APPLES FAULT!!!! Because as we all know Apple writes every single application that runs on OSX right? Gimme a break.

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Stuff like Photoshop. Yeah, there's all kinds of new bells and whistles. But the app functioned better for artists and designers BEFORE OS X. Now? Jeez, it's barely a step up from gimp. Buggy and half-assed, with great big problems and important functionality and performance things in mid-development. And yet full prices are being charged.

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Stop bullshitting. Photoshop now supports multiple processors (MP support in the classic version was a hackjob at best) and it has the option of using G5 level optimizations. So Photoshop now runs many times faster yet you say that its not as good? Did it loose functionality? No. Did it loose speed? No. What did it loose exactly? Specifics please.

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We are getting the worst of both worlds. Application development has become lazy, because Operating system development has become lazy.

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The two have absolutely no relation. If you believe otherwise you are indeed clueless to the nth degree. In fact developing apps under OS7/8/9 was far worse than developing apps under OSX. If anything it was that ass backward API that held developers back in 7/8/9 and X has only enabled them to move forward. Too bad you haven't figured that out yet.

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OpenSource is a double edged sword. A lot of the work gets done for free. It just doesn't get done WELL, and is never, ever finished to commercial level.

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We agree here. But the fact remains that Aqua, Quartz, the Finder and the parts of OSX you are bitching about have nothing to do with Open Source. This is again another example of a fallacy on your part. All of the parts you mention are closed source and have nothing to do with the underlying code available from the Darwin project.

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Well screw that. I'm done slack-cutting and crap settling. After all these years, OS X should be stable and fucking WAY more "finished" than it is. It should be faster, it should be more carefully tested. And oh god, above all, IT SHOULD FRIGGIN' WORK.

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OSX isn't stable? That comes as news to most of us. I've NEVER had a problem with the stability of OSX. In fact if you really believe that OSX is unstable while pushing OS 7/8/9 as an alternative I fear that there is no hope left for you.

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It doesn't. Sorry, it just doesn't. Does not. It blows up all day every day. And the more you do, the worse it gets. The more you and your apps ask of the OS, the flakier and buggier and less reliable it is.

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Funnily enough this is exactly how 99.9% of people describe OS 7/8/9. It crashed all the time. Couldn't do more than one thing at once. It facilitated multiple reboots within a single day (unacceptable). When an app crashed it took down the whole system with it with no chance of recovery.

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Ga head and point to how great people who work in text editors all day have it, and I'll laugh in your face.

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I'm literally shaking my head here. You claim to be fighting for the users and yet you have no clue what other users are actually doing. As a contract developer I either meet my users expectations or I get canned. And let me tell you I am quite good at meeting my users expectations. In fact I would go so far to say that I have a far better understanding of how people attempt to use a computer than you appear to have at all. "Pro Workflow" my ass.

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Do work in big, expensive design apps that you've had to pay a fucking FORTUNE for, multiple licenses, then pay oh, TEN upgrades or so... and then wake up one day and realize that even after that THEY STILL NEVER WORKED RIGHT. Then come talk to me.

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BLAME THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE APP! ARE YOU STUPID OR SOMETHING? Besides dont talk to me about the cost of software... take a long hard look at the cost of Visual Studio.NET 2003 Enterprise edition, a year of an MSDN subscription and the cost of various pieces of software required to do my work (MS Office, Windows 2003, SQL Server...) and then come back and talk to me. You are clearly living in a dream land when panzy graphic artists are the only people paying for software and pushing their machines and software to the limit. You are so wrong that I don't even know where to begin when it comes to debunking your illusion.

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Bangers, digikids, and people who don't know what they are doing, all defend OS X to their dying breath. Why, because it's a good MP3 player? Good home movie maker? Good digital camera archival utility? Not enough.

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What I find most amazing is that you have a pre-determined stereotype set up for anybody who dares to disagree with you. Never once have you lent any credence to the claims that in a lot of ways OSX is better. Never once have you accepted the fact that 99.9% of people are just users and their needs are important. Never once. Take a long deep breath and try to let reality sink it bud.

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The second you need to draw, paint, build, do, animate, then Aqua is a liability. And so is OS X. Because it sucks when it comes to keeping up with a human user (edit: of course the term human user refers only to people who are graphic artists because the 99.9% of other people out there that fit this classification just aren't deemed good enough for my consideration), asking it to keep up with their creative whims. And sorry, that is more than fetching files, or typing shit.

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There, fixed that for ya.

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The legacy Mac was like a finely tuned musical instrument in ONE way: the way the human interacted with the computer. That's what made it a great creative tool. Now, it's all about passive entertainment. Sit back and watch. You have to, because the OS can't really figure out what to do when you have to actually do work.

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The legacy Mac was like me taking a dump into the toilet for the sole purpose of making my dog eat it. Of course given the right circumstances it can produce such abominations such as a collage of Mary the Mother of Christ rendered in shit but beyond that it's largely useless.

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Hey, I'm all for friggin' fun, but people who work for a living need better. I see the Mac being dumbed down. I see people dumbing down their workflows to accomodate a computer that does less, and does it less well. Well FUCK that.

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Here's a tip: If OSX isn't cutting it, STOP PAYING FOR IT! MAKE THE MOVE OVER TO WINDOWS AND GET THE HELL OVER IT ALREADY! All of the complaints you have outlined here (based on what very few specifics you have offered) don't apply to Windows in any way shape or form.

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Instead of holding Apple to lower standards, I say it's time to force them to step up. There's no excuse for Applications that run this poorly. No excuse for an interface that makes as little sense as this one does.

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Blame. The. Application. Developers.
Blame. Motorola. For. The. Shitty. G4. Processo

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I say, time to go minimal. Less is More. We need to put an end to the overdesigned happy horseshit and think lean, mean, and functional. Bloated fat and supersized needs to be made obsolete. I'd rather have grey and boring and SUPER FAST, than all kicked up, gaudy, and slow.

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Specifics please.

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Fonts? I'd rather have crisp and readable than blurry.

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I can read the text on OSX just fine. It reads as well as the text on Windows and Linux for that matter. So where is the problem?

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Finder? I'd rather have one that can visually manage large directories without the constant beachballing. The legacy Finder with Platinum is still, the A#1 best way to file manage bar none for pros in my industry. I sometimes boot into OS 9 JUST to avoid having to deal with the abysmally slow X Finder.

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Ummmmmm no. If this is really an issue (that I'll continue to be skeptical about until you provide a specific case for a repeatable problem) then change the way you store your files. Don't dump everything into one directory. I mean jesus even if the bug is legit sometimes as a pro you need to redefine your workflow to fit the tools rather than redefining the tool to fit the workflow. A mature professional would've accepted this. You have not.

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You may be content to sit back, play nice and make "requests". Not me. I'm pissed off. I say it's time to make DEMANDS, because OS X still sucks the big one. It's so clearly a dumbed-down marketing vehicle designed for retards. And worse, designed to give geeks dominion and advantage over end users who rely on GUI driven apps to make a living.

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Oh yeah and I'm sure Apple will catch on after they read this thread during their weekly "What does thalo" think meeting, eh? With this site all you may as well be doing is masturbating because Apple doesn't care. In fact as long as you keep shelling out the dollars, Apple really won't care.

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Are there exceptions? Yeah, I guess. Film editors seem pretty happy that their shit works. Their UI's aren't that terrible, and I guess they deal with fewer numbers of larger files... or one big editing project at a time, or they don't need to rely on the Finder like I do.

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But hey I guess they aren't real pros then, eh?

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Quark jocks, Photoshop jocks, Flash jocks... prepress guys. I'll speak for all them. They see that there are some serious weaknesses with this operating system. Some can live with them, some make excuses. I don't. I demand quality from Apple, from Adobe, from Macromedia.

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Somehow I doubt it. Given the low membership numbers on this forum I'm not even going to take that statement seriously. Prove it if you want me to believe it.

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Originally posted by Markle:
I'll repeat for those who came in late, I think it's a sad admission of defeat that in looking for a new OS, Apple couldn't do better than an OS that had already failed once in the market, based on technology from 1968.

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Every single current OS on the planet with the exception of Windows is based on that technology from 1968. Millions of people manage to get their work done, why can't you? Of course this means fuck all when you consider that the *nix core of OSX has NOTHING to do with the few specific complaints you have raised. I mean do you guys even take the time to figure out what you are talking about? How do you expect people take you seriously when all you have is generalities, massively incorrect stereotypes and line of extremely flawed reasoning to draw upon?

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For my part I was guessing that since it happen at the bewitching hour on New Year Eve maybe he was feeling a bit overly frisky.

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If I didn't have anything better to do on New Year's Eve than post notes on internet forums, I'd be a little grumpy, too.


Markle

Hi jay you said:

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But even though I think you were kidding I wouldn't go so far as to refer to the use of Linux as "crapsettling".

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You were right the first time that I was kidding. I never said Linux is crapsettling. I only tried to clarify that you are a windows crapsettler and a Linux wanna be.

Your comments that Linux is probably one of the greatest hobbyist OSes in the world only reinforces such a notion.

Windows is indeed crapsettling. Windows is nothing other than an inferior Mac OS upside down.

Now I am a mongoloid? How did you know. I have tried to keep it a secret all my life.

As for Rave's post just ignore such posts if they offend you. For all we know Rave could have this tune playing in their head all the time.

As for being banned. I think if you were banned you would not be able to post anymore.

The only person around here that ever is banned I believe is the moderator mAxximo but that is because he periodically bans himself to better feel at home.

Wow, it's like the old days--the battle between the X-Men and the Niner-whiners!

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Every single current OS on the planet with the exception of Windows is based on that technology from 1968.

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Since the key word here is "current," and Windows is excepted. That leaves only the antique Unix systems--Linux, Unix itself, and OS X. In other words, every Unix system on the planet is based on Unix. Duh.

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You'd rather throw out the baby with the bathwater rather than actually deal with the problems.

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Is it the responsibility of paying customers to "deal with the problems?" Are we beta testers and support staff, paying Apple for the privilege? These are supposed to be mass-market computers used by average, non-techie people, who use computers as tools, and who just want them to work, without having to wrestle with them.

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99% of people out there agree with that viewpoint because it is clearly the case.

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In the next post, this became 99.9%. Who is this Everybody, this World, you keep talking about? The under-1% of the computer world that uses OS X? OS X is the enthusiastic choice of people who are enthusiastic users of OS X?

Markle

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Originally posted by Markle:
Since the key word here is "current," and Windows is excepted. That leaves only the antique Unix systems--Linux, Unix itself, and OS X. In other words, every Unix system on the planet is based on Unix. Duh.

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I don't know if you've noticed (apparently not) but in the world of Operating Systems there are two choices: Windows or something *nix (i.e. meets the POSIX standard) based. Thats it. So continue to be a smartass if you'd like but that is the reality of the modern OS world. Even Apple's other OSX contender BeOS was arugably *nix based as it maintained a high level of POSIX compatibility (not 100% though by any means) and contained the ability to access a terminal enivironment comprised of standard GNU tools.

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Is it the responsibility of paying customers to "deal with the problems?" Are we beta testers and support staff, paying Apple for the privilege? These are supposed to be mass-market computers used by average, non-techie people, who use computers as tools, and who just want them to work, without having to wrestle with them.

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And again, you expect anybody to take you seriously with this approach? I wouldn't call OSX a Beta product nor would I describe it as a product riddled with problems.

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In the next post, this became 99.9%. Who is this Everybody, this World, you keep talking about? The under-1% of the computer world that uses OS X? OS X is the enthusiastic choice of people who are enthusiastic users of OS X?

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In this the percentage itself is insignifigant however you can assume that I meant 99.9% whenever I used 99%. The fact is that 98% of computers users don't bother with Macs. Out of the remaining 2% that Apple desperately clings to, at least 40% of those machines are running OSX. Out of the remaining 60% of the original 2% (approx 1.2%) it is arguable that a large percentage of the machines aren't supported by OSX given that Apple had far higher marketshare in the early to mid nineties than it currently sports now (not to mention the fact that Apple machines have long been heralded by their fans for their longevity).

So the conclusion here is that the 0.10% remaining (give or take a few hundredths of a percent) are comprimised of people not unlike the members here at thalo. Please explain to me why Apple should give two shits about that 0.1% when there is 98% of the market that they have let slip by the wayside. The economics of the situation make it clear that you do not matter. The sooner you accept this, the better. Apple has been making a push on the software end to appeal more to the common user over the last few years. Rumor has it they will follow this up on the hardware end at the Max Expo in July by announcing a low-end competitively priced Mac.

Don't you get it yet? Hasn't it sunk in? Your cries go unheard because it really doesn't matter. Especially considering that somehow despite all of your supposed anger and gripes you continue to send Apple their yearly payment of $129.00. Switch to Windows and get the hell over it already. Oh wait thats right... Windows sucks too right? Care to offer any reasonable explanation? I mean Windows certainly doesn't suffer from the same graphic slowdown issues you claim OSX does, so what is it? While I'm sure you'll come up with something... it takes a Pro to act like a Pro. Only an amatuer blames his tools for his failures to be a professional.

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What I smell here people is bullshit. A lot of it. This forum is literally populated by people known as "Greybeards" who in all honesty, can't stand the fact that 99% of ex-Apple users believe that OSX is hands down better than that piece of MacOS 7/8/9 garbage ever was.

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I think that's an interesting, revealing and defining statement by Jay. I'm not so much into the OS X argument these days, but it's clear that for many (most?) Mac people this is still a battle oriented around "critical mass" and not "product quality". The critical mass argument is comprised heavily of "my thing is better than your thing". Reasons are given but reasons aren't nearly as important as "just because" and getting as many people on the same page as possible. They aren't totally dismissive or unconcerned with product quality but the assumption is that the strength of product quality is directly tied to strength of evangelism because the latter will give time and breather room for the former to occur.

Thalo represents the purely pragmatic side of the argument. He has feelings for Apple like we all do with our brands these days, but these feelings are not as important as a working product free of as many defects as reasonably possible. That's not to say that thalo doesn't evangelize several marginally related concepts (that is, "B.S.") in the midst of his more pragmatic Mac-oriented stuff. He does. But when it gets down to the nitty gritty of the Mac-related stuff, it's all about what works.

If the argument here is so pragmatic... then I would expect to be presented with a list of specific problems you have with OSX. Include the symptom, the circumstances, and the behavior you expect vs the behavior you experience.

If you guys can't even produce something that basic - I'm forced to reject your premise on the basis that you have provided nothing to support it. If the fonts are blurry then lets see some evidence. If the GUI cant keep up with you, provide a specific set of steps that you perform in which the GUI effectively stifles your progress. If OSX is unstable then please provide a specific set of steps that causes the OS to fail consistently. I've asked for these things a number of times but despite the fact that this forum has existed for the sole purpose of discussing these supposed issues for years... not a single shred of actual fact has been produced to back up your claims.

….not a single shred of actual fact has been produced to back up your claims.

I guess I’m the only one who consistently has to click twice on things in the Finder to select them or to initiate a drag-n-drop. Jay, when you claim "not a single shred of actual fact" you prove my point that you're about bulldozing over the truth in order to prop up the image of the product, not sifting through the problems with OS X and holding Apple to a high standard of quality.

Brother jay

You should check some of the other threads.

Brother Smithz's started this thread about fonts.

He has created a gif showing how the fonts do not render consistently.

I think there are some basic things that were not present in X that were in the Legacy that made it maddening for Mac users to move from 9 to X.

A simple example for instance in the Finder under 9 there was an option to Print a Finder window. There is no such option in X straight from the Finder. Instead in X there is an app called Grab that will print windows. You can see Grab in the Finder services menu but the services do not work.

This might seem trivial to you but it is this sort of inconsistency that can slow a work flow.

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A simple example for instance in the Finder under 9 there was an option to Print a Finder window. There is no such option in X straight from the Finder. Instead in X there is an app called Grab that will print windows. You can see Grab in the Finder services menu but the services do not work.

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Few corrections...

- Mac OS 9 could print the entire Finder window's listing, even things that were scrolled out of view. There is no built-in Mac OS X equivalent, that I can see. PathFinder, gloriously, can do this.

- Grab merely takes a picture of what is visible in the folder. If it is scrolled out of view, it doesn't get captured.

- The far easier way to take a screen grab of a window (from within any Application without needing Grab) is:

Command-shift-4 then hit the spacebar. Mouse over the window you want (it hilights) and click. (Or escape to cancel)
Optionally hold control before hitting the spacebar and it captures to the clipboard instead of to a file.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: the man in black,

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I think there are some basic things that were not present in X that were in the Legacy that made it maddening for Mac users to move from 9 to X.

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Hi brothers,

Oh well, i' ve experienced that knowledge/information is getting lost at an increasing rate. Not only on mac, this is a generic behaviour on IT, mostly consumer-IT. IMHO

This drives me nuts, but it's good for companies, because they can invent the wheel each year again. I think 90% of current OSX users have forgotten about special OS9 Features. Everything that counts, that it's new. Software that is older than 1 year: obsolete, "old-fashioned",...

Printing finder-windows is one example.
I once got some cd-labels that consisted of printed finder-windows from OSX, just imagine: Blurry fonts PRINTED on paper. I was shocked.
The person i got them from doesn't understood me.

People also forgot that they needed less clicks in 9 to get the same results than in X. More clicks is better for Apple, more FX to brainwash the user, More FX consumes more CPU, Faster machines are needed. <sigh> ...

I have to admit i have pretty much given up on apple, it hurts, but i can't stand that bullshit anymore.

I recommended an XP Laptop to my sister, just an example. I thought several times about it, bc. X may be quite nice for newbies, but knowing how to operate OSX would be a waste of time for her. In 99% of all cases, she will need to operate a windows machine at work.

No, i don't like XP, it's a decision based on facts.

btw, happy new year ****

Wow, it's like the old days--the battle between the X-Men and the Niner-whiners!

Not quite, Markle. Most of the old X-men were ex-Mac OS people. This ill-mannered fellow is basically a MS/Windows guy. He is clueless about the Mac. Doesn't get it. When you make the point that the product should conform to the wishes of the customer he thinks you've lost your mind. Add this to his breathtaking leaps of logic, his lunatic belief that he can read the minds of people he never met, his childish lack of social skills, and I don't see any place to begin a discussion about the Macintosh and probably not much else. But, I could be wrong. Brad says that people who come from other forums seem to need a period of decompression before they realize that we have conversations here, some of them quite heated, and not posting contests to be fought and 'won.' As usual Brad provides an insight that the more rash among us may miss. Is there such a thing as a forums decompression chamber? Where can we buy one?

I always thought, and said, the idea of dedicating thalo.net to an old discussion of OS X was the wrong thing to do. The Mac is dead and gone and the discussion about that fact is pretty much over. "Battle Royale," my ass. The strength of thalo.net was always that it is a place were one can speak one's mind without interference from geeky, clueless 'moderators' who have no understanding of the issues being discussed. Little fellows whose working lives are completely immersed in endless detail shouting they don't understand and they need even more detail, and making the assumption that because they don't understand it must be wrong. It is the open and free discourse part of thalo.net that separates it from the rest. The "Battle Royale" part you can get anywhere. Everywhere. But, thalo is amused by this sort of thing and it's his dime. He doesn't make many demands as site owner and payer of the bills. So, I think one has to give ground on this point. He'll probably enjoy himself. For my part, I thank the gods of computer hardware for the mouse scroll wheel.

Okay. So what have we got so far?

1) A picture showing that 9pt OSX rendered fonts enlarged to 400% look different from one another.

2) Complaints that you can't print out the entire contents of a finder window.

Lets address these complaints one by one:

1:


Turn off antialiasing. AntiAliasing doesn't look good for small fonts (you can change the threshold in OSX though but only up to a 12pt font size) and thats a known fact. Turning it off in OSX isn't that hard and I found out how to do this in about ten seconds on google:

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http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31702&seqNum=10
The General pane does not allow you to disable font smoothing for sizes larger than 12. Some users would like to turn off font smoothing for larger sizes or turn the option off altogether. You can do this easily enough with the share-ware utility TinkerTool, a user-installed system preference.

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2:

So your idea of an efficient workflow is to be able to a) select a finder window b) print the contents c) go to the printer d) pick up the print-out e) come back to the computer f) occassionly leaf through the print out as needed? To be frank that isn't even close to efficient. In this particular situation I would reccommend exploring OSX's multiple monitors capability as a solution to this problem. With a second of a third monitor you can simple maximize the finder window you are interested in on a single monitor and occassionally glance back at the window for a point of reference. I do this all of the time with explorer windows on my tri-monitor windows workstation and I find that it works great. Not to mention the fact that you save all the paper and toner/ink that would be wasted by the first method along with the fact that you actually have to wait for the printer to print.

Is this the best you guys can do, seriously? Anytime your workflow relies upon a print-out of something that you can be easily viewed electronically (unless you are proofing something of course) then it's your workflow that is in need of examining, not the tool you are attempting to use me thinks. You can however argue that Apple had no reason to remove the functionality but even you yourselves mentioned that a third party app is available that fits the bill for this perfectly. So what exactly is the problem then? Are you just pissed off that somewhere along the line somebody at Apple said, "This option is pretty useless, so let's just remove it"? Because thats what this complaint comes off as.

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Originally post by HighHopes:
Not quite, Markle. Most of the old X-men were ex-Mac OS people. This ill-mannered fellow is basically a MS/Windows guy. He is clueless about the Mac. Doesn't get it. When you make the point that the product should conform to the wishes of the customer he thinks you've lost your mind.

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I am clueless about "the Mac" because I happen not to agree with you? I am basically a "MS/Windows" guy despite the fact that am an avid Linux user with 8 years of experience? Heh I suppose I should congratulate you on continuing to reinforce the illusion you seem so desperate to maintain but I won't.

For the record: The product should conform to the wishes of the customer but again let me say: People like you do not make up enough of a significant percentage of the customer base for your opinion to mean much. In the world of software development (especially when you depend upon your users purchase of upgrades to put food on the table) the decision regarding feature additions/upgrades essentially becomes a democratic process or you end up failing miserably. In this particular case features like "Printing a Finder Window" weren't missed by a large majority of Mac Users and as a result Apple simply doesnt care. Not to mention the fact that the addition of such a feature won't help them to make a dent in the other 98% of people who won't even consider buying a Macintosh at this point in time.

However when OSX first came out I'm sure you can remember how they were missing popular features in 9 such as "Spring Loaded Folders" and what not. Eventually as a result of the outcries of former 9 users, Apple added that feature into OSX. And debate it all you want but Apple made at least an attempt to port the infamous "Labels" feature in 7/8/9 to X. These decisions were not made directly by Apple - they were made by the customers of Apple products. The same decision was made by Apple's customers to forget about features such as "Printing a Finder Window". Now while it may be sad that the loss of this particular feature has impacted your workflow... the bottom line fact is that it wouldn't take much to change your workflow so that you didn't need this feature. You inability to adapt to this simple change speaks volumes about the kind of professionals you actually are me thinks.

Only an amatuer blames his tools.