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MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

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Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#131

Post by scarface_74 »

sanderjd wrote: post #88
coreyh14444 wrote: post #56

I was deep into OS explorations in this period. I ran BeOS, Yellow Dog linux on PowerPC, had all flavors of NT, etc. My feeling about OS X at this time was that it was the right choice but that it was "too late" and that Apple took too long and the window of opportunity had passed. I take that now as startup advice: It isn't too late!

I need to remember to remind myself of this more often! The one I remember so clearly is back when I was using Pidgin (or Adium I think was another thing I used?) with a few different messaging apps, and my company was trying to figure out how to make chat work, maintaining an irc server that we of course couldn't get the non-nerds to use, looking at HipChat and a couple others that seemed really expensive for their…

Isn’t that the ultimate survivorship bias?

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#132

Post by pavlov »

samtheprogram wrote: post #107
nobleach wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It got to a point with Apple where I had to tell my mother, "just tap everything... there's really no indicator if anything's a button anymore". While material/flat can look pretty, it is counterintuitive to communication. I'm sure Jony Ive read "The Design of Everyday Things" at some point in his career. Perhaps he got to a point where he decided that didn't apply?

Historically Jony Ive isn't involved in the user interface. Has he been in more recent years? I know that back during Scott Forstall's time and Apple's skeuomorphism phase that Ive stated in interviews that he wasn't involved in any of that. I thought his (direct) influence was limited to (hardware) product design.

Jony Ive was at least nominally in charge of UI design for the post-Forstall iOS 7 update which removed almost all textures and pseudo-3D and most button borders, replaced the previous earthy color palettes with primary colors and gradients, and switched the system font to Helvetica Light:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/ios-7-thoroughly-rev...

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#133

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

freedomben wrote: post #71
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the textured Aqua days. Peak was Leopard/Snow Leopard. Flat is just so... flat. And boring. And also harder to read, because it's harder to orient yourself in a big textureless area than in a space with some texture in it.

Likewise. Leopard/Snow Leopard were the point at which I was happen with everything Apple. It truly was peak (for me at least). I still had a Windows 7 PC and Linux (Fedora, Backtrack) on a laptop for running security tools, but I felt most "right" when on the mac.

I recall upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard on my 2008 polycarbonate MacBook. I got back 30 GB of disk space, and it absolutely flew. I straight up don't recall seeing a beachball while using Snow Leopard. Apple called it a 'purely bug-fix release', and free of bugs it was.

In my opinion, OS X has been (mostly) downhill after that. The iOS-ification began with Lion, which changed the juicy blue scrollbars to a boring grey, got rid of 'Save-As'—an extremely controversial addition, as I recall it—and added then-newfangled things like iCloud.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#134

Post by nobleach »

samtheprogram wrote: post #114
nobleach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/.

That particular example is Windows 10, that's correct.

My comment was mostly about how to find things in the new "settings" experience.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#135

Post by Tagbert »

jonhohle wrote: post #91
kilroy123 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think the new System Preferences was a big step back.

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…

Yes, the old grid layout was not good for anything that you didn’t access frequently. It was sometimes hard to find things if you didn’t already know where to look.

I agree that the actual settings controls and panel layouts are not as good as before. They are more autogenerated while the old panel layouts were more carefully planned. some of the controls seem poorly suited to the data they are controlling.

It might have been better if the navigation were changed but the original controls retained.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#136

Post by gedy »

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…

> Search as the primary interaction method

Thanks, I hate it. Search is terrible for browsing/discovery, in spite of many people liking it.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#137

Post by ruined »

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??"

embrace search. command+space is dmenu and command+f is dmenu for a specific context

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#138

Post by ori_b »

GeekyBear wrote: post #128
tinus_hn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> LLVM is because they don’t want GPLv3. LLVM and Clang are also about having a compiler stack that provides the information you need for a modern graphical IDE. For instance, GCC had made some decisions that made it difficult to point to which line of code caused a particular error message. Apple's Chris Lattner covered this in a 2007 tech talk he gave at Google introducing LLVM and the (then) new Clang project. htt…

> LLVM and Clang are also about having a compiler stack that provides the information you need for a modern graphical IDE.

Is that why all GNU utilities shipped with OSX were also stuck at the GPLv2 versions and never upgraded?

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#139

Post by Macha »

scarface_74 wrote: post #131
sanderjd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to remember to remind myself of this more often! The one I remember so clearly is back when I was using Pidgin (or Adium I think was another thing I used?) with a few different messaging apps, and my company was trying to figure out how to make chat work, maintaining an irc server that we of course couldn't get the non-nerds to use, looking at HipChat and a couple others that seemed really expensive for their…

Isn’t that the ultimate survivorship bias?

In terms of who the winners were, sure. There were many also-rans like Viber or companies that won only in certain markets like Line or Telegram.

But the idea that the network effects couldn't be overcome was definitely false. Not only are MSN, AIM and YIM so dead their servers are shut down, but the services which displaced them (Facebook Messenger and Skype) have themselves been displaced by a third wave of services (WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, Slack)

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#140

Post by hestefisk »

actionfromafar wrote: post #39
ArtWomb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circa 2000 I recall playing with a developers beta version of MacOS X approx 6 months or so pre-release. The move from motorola based power pc chips to x86 already felt a decade too late. And the nextstep & netbsd origins? Very "meh". Apache, Mosaic, Napster all crashing hard requiring system reboots. Apple was playing catch-up to professional grade sgi & sunos (which is what every one was using to build the early we…

Just so nobody gets confused, x86 support was released in 2006.

I think they might be referring to the transition from 68K to PowerPC.
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