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MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

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Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#111

Post by mproud »

tambourine_man wrote: post #86
tambourine_man wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X was a bet on the future, that double buffering everything was OK because graphic cards would get there eventually. They certainly did, but we suffered through menus taking a good fraction of a second to drop down for a few years. I can still feel the pain. I would never have taken that bet. I want computers to be fast now . It was the right bet.

Another hard decision that was the right choice in retrospect was going with KHTML. I remember watching the keynote and waiting for them to announce it was based on Gecko. Camino had shown it was possible and worked well. Apple had hired David Hyatt. It was obvious they would go with Gecko. There was an audible gasp when they announced it was based on KHTML. What the %^&$ is KHTML?

The venerable KHTML project was just officially discontinued this year.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#113

Post by kitsunesoba »

zokier wrote: post #93
dsego wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears to have all the basic functionality expected from a modern operating system The truth is, for the most part operating systems haven't really advanced that much, at least from a ux standpoint. Speaking as someone who started using computers in 1997 on windows 95 and a 133mhz pentium. All the basic metaphors and mechanisms have stayed the same. Tabs in browsers were considered like a huge leap (I know it's…

Search as the primary interaction method instead of menus and icons is pretty dramatic shift though; compare vscode command palette to traditional vs, or windows 7 and later start menu to its predecessors. Another thing, especially on Windows, is the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars, once staple of desktop interfaces. As a more generic trend, I think modal dialogs with forms were far more common inter…

> the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars

This change irks me quite a lot. Hamburger menus are terrible and while command palettes are nice, they aren't available everywhere, and so on Windows and Linux you end up with a lot of software not having any kind of index of its functionality and burying functions in dialog tunnels.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#114

Post by samtheprogram »

nobleach wrote: post #103
graypegg wrote: post #77

I think one of the weirdest things to me is how unchanged OSX / MacOS is. As much as I like this specific paradigm of computing UI, I kind of see why they’ve been trying new things as of late. (Stage manager, new settings panel, iOS-y control centre) Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it NEEDS to change, but I can imagine the need to at least explore a bit if something stays mostly the same for 20 years.

It seems like "EVERYTHING" Apple has done in this arena just ensures I'll have to use a search function to find what I want. Same is true for Windows 10+. "I just want to format a USB Thumbdrive!!! why do I have to search for some sort of Disks section in the Control Panel??"

Not that there aren't more settings/apps/etc nowadays, but your example doesn't apply well for macOS because Disk Utility has been in the same location since the first version over 20 years ago, in /Applications/Utilities/.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#115

Post by mattkevan »

avidphantasm wrote: post #101
jonhohle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for what reason? There were things that were so easy to do - like change network interface priority by reordering the list of interfaces - that have obvious method anymore (I want to prefer ethernet when it’s attached, for example). I can no longer navigate to settings I frequently used and need to search for just about everything. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect things to stay the same after 20 years(!), but for long…

It's just a big dumb list that I now have to use search to find anything in. My guess is that someone doesn't want to spend developer and designer resources curating the old design. Now they can more or less shove new things into the list and call it a day. Sad.

I've used macOS since the early betas and could never find what I wanted in the big dumb grid. Had to use search every time.

IMO the sidebar is more usable as I can just scan down to find the right option, or just use the search as before.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#116

Post by tinus_hn »

tambourine_man wrote: post #92
tambourine_man wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another hard decision that was the right choice in retrospect was going with KHTML. I remember watching the keynote and waiting for them to announce it was based on Gecko. Camino had shown it was possible and worked well. Apple had hired David Hyatt. It was obvious they would go with Gecko. There was an audible gasp when they announced it was based on KHTML. What the %^&$ is KHTML?

Yet another one was going with LLVM. Now that they had a decent running GCC on PowerPC they want to build a compiler infrastructure from scratch? Apple is full of those decisions. I'm just glad they don't take advices from me.

LLVM is because they don’t want GPLv3. They just went ahead with a stack where they can be in control on their own terms.

Basically GNU gambled and lost, they wanted to make a big stand against software patents and some other powerful forces had different opinions.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#117

Post by kitsunesoba »

jraph wrote: post #40

Notice the Internet Explorer icon? This may feel unexpected and out of place but Safari was first released only in 2003.

And the Tasman engine that IE for Mac was built around was much nicer than the Trident engine that powered IE for Windows. IE for Mac had good support for CSS and support for transparent PNGs many years before IE for Windows did. I always wondered why MS decided to fix up Trident to create the original Edge instead of porting Tasman to Windows.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#118

Post by kitsunesoba »

tinus_hn wrote: post #116
tambourine_man wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another one was going with LLVM. Now that they had a decent running GCC on PowerPC they want to build a compiler infrastructure from scratch? Apple is full of those decisions. I'm just glad they don't take advices from me.

LLVM is because they don’t want GPLv3. They just went ahead with a stack where they can be in control on their own terms. Basically GNU gambled and lost, they wanted to make a big stand against software patents and some other powerful forces had different opinions.

GPL v3 is part of it, but as I understand, back when the decision was made GCC was rather inflexible compared to LLVM/Clang which was also a big factor.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#119

Post by golergka »

graypegg wrote: post #79
G3rn0ti wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It still looks fresh and modern, although maybe a bit too playful so that it appears a bit childish? The aesthetics is called „Frutiger Aero“. Lots of colors and especially of blue, lots of transparency effects and fake light reflections. It all is inspired by natural landscapes with blue skies or blue water surfaces. Also skeuomorphisms everywhere. Windows 7 could be called the pinnacle of the use of Frutiger Aero…

I wonder if we’ll ever find ourselves in a “aero” nostalgia cycle? I already see a lot of hazy glass and reflections on some apple UI! Maybe it’s time for it’s renaissance!

It was heavily referenced by vaporwave movement alongside windows 95 aesthetics. And vaporwave was 12 years ago.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#120

Post by pram »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #48
zoky wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although, OS X was painful for many years. I guess it depends on how you define "many". I bought my first Mac in 1998 (the "Smurf" G3) and used MacOS 8/9 for quite a few years after that. I remember looking forward to OS X once they announced it—it was literally the coolest shit ever. Like, the ability to run Photoshop and Emacs on the same system at the same time? Wow, was that cool. There was definitely a period…

As I recall, the main issue with the earliest versions of OS X is that they were slow, somewhat unstable, and would occasionally do really weird things (like how on my summer 2000 iMac DV, OS X 10.0.x once randomly decided it wasn’t going to draw the cursor any more and had to be reinstalled before it was fixed). This led me to spend a fair amount of time booted into OS 9 with an Aqua Kaleidoscope scheme applied and…

Yup by the time Panther came out I didn’t have any problems. Having my macports env, X11, Unreal Tournament 2k4, and World of Warcraft on the same laptop felt like the high water mark of computing at the time lol
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