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Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

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Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#431

Post by Tycho »

abduhl wrote: post #348
cubicle67 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they've come from Windows where that is the behaviour. Much like using ctrl or cmd as a modifier - when you become accustomed to one, the other takes some getting used to.

How is this an argument? If users expect a button to do a certain thing then that is what the button should do. Where the behavior was learned is irrelevant.

How is THAT an argument? Different users will obviously expect different things.

The green button in almost every case just resizes the window to the optimal size. Whereas the maximise button simply wastes most of your screen estate (which, bizarrely, many Windows users think is actually taking advantage of their large displays, whereas its really doing the opposite).

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#432

Post by keithpeter »

sjs wrote: post #370
subsection1h wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Xmonad and the like seem primitive compared to just adding tiling goodies (Divvy, SizeUp) to a standard WM to get the best of both worlds. I don't use Xmonad and I don't know what you meant by "the like", but Awesome WM is vastly more powerful[1] than the OS X WM with any add-ons that I've encountered. [1] http://awesome.naquadah.org/doc/

By "the like" I mean tiling WMs. "Primitive" was the wrong word, I should have said "intrusive". I used tiling WMs almost exclusively for quite a while. My problem with them is that they tile by default, which is fine for some things but I find it much less intrusive to add tiling actions to a "regular" WM. So I can do things like "move this window there", "make this window occupy the left half of this display", etc.…

I'm afraid it would with such a plugin/script on Ubuntu Unity as the menu associated with each of the tiled windows would appear in the top bar of the screen, but I intend to play with this in Unity 2d...

http://markhansen.co.nz/xmonad-ubuntu-oneiric/

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#433

Post by ricardobeat »

subsection1h wrote: post #369
ricardobeat wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you gave up on it before trying. It can do everything you complain about. Homebrew beats apt-get any day of the week.

Homebrew beats apt-get any day of the week. Great argument. I'm convinced. By the way, apt-get is an inteface for APT, and one of many, so you should have stated that Homebrew beats APT. And of course, you wouldn't have needed to substantiate that claim either, because you are, after all, ricardobeat.

Should I add "IMO"? I use both Ubuntu 10 and OSX daily, and brew packages are always more up-to-date and more reliable.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#434

Post by safeer »

I think Tim O'Reilly's argument is pretty silly actually. Here's my response: http://bit.ly/v6Adhu (re-printed below). ---

I understand what Tim is saying, but I disagree that it's time to start over.

With Mac OS X, Apple definitely seems to have begun heavily focusing on feature development over refining existing UX. But the claim that successive releases of OS X become more user-hostile and encourages more lock-in is a bit of a stretch.

Apple has never developed for the power user, and they never should -- this is part of what makes their products so great; their unrelenting focus on the common case. In fact, complaining about a hidden library file for Mail.app misses this point entirely. It's actually a wonderful feature, since the common user is more likely to mess up their own mail library than to have a need to move it between disks.

+Tim O'Reilly's second point is valid, though, the UX for emptying the trash can definitely be improved. But again, is the common case deleting 400,000 files? Is the "delete whatever you can checkbox" too odd for a normal user to understand? Let's take the mom example; if your mom emptied the trash after deleting a file, would she want to know if it couldn't be emptied, or would she be OK with it being emptied without her recently deleted file actually being removed?

People can yell for a OS do-over all they want. The fact remains though: Apple focuses on UX more than any other company I know. If that UX doesn't cater to your particular needs and you'd rather have power-user flexibility and features, even if it means less polish and more annoyances when dealing with common tasks, use Linux or Windows. Or, better yet, just learn to use the Terminal and you can have the best of both worlds.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#435

Post by cantbecool »

Nagyman wrote: post #411
cantbecool wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I can't believe that Lion does not have an "all-windows" Expose. It's annoying trying to find a hidden window by minimizing everything. If someone knows how to toggle between an applications windows, please let me know.

CMD+` will cycle through applications' windows, but it won't restore minimized windows.

Thanks, Nagyman. You have no idea how useful that shortcut is to me.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#436

Post by DanBC »

Tycho wrote: post #431
abduhl wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this an argument? If users expect a button to do a certain thing then that is what the button should do. Where the behavior was learned is irrelevant.

How is THAT an argument? Different users will obviously expect different things. The green button in almost every case just resizes the window to the optimal size. Whereas the maximise button simply wastes most of your screen estate (which, bizarrely, many Windows users think is actually taking advantage of their large displays, whereas its really doing the opposite).

> The green button in almost every case just resizes the window to the optimal size.

For varying values of optimal including "not optimal in any way for any user in any situation"

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#437

Post by philwelch »

throwaway64 wrote: post #430
philwelch wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are PCI-E enclosures that connect to Thunderbolt: http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp

>If you are a PCIe adapter manufacturer and want to make your product compatible with Express Box 3T, please contact Marketing(at)Magma.com to join our Partner Program or Join our Interest List and let us know that you're a developer. And how many PCIe card makers have patched their drivers to work with this thing?

So it's a software problem rather than a hardware problem. Fine, maybe it's not a finished solution yet--but Apple hasn't stopped selling Mac Pros yet, either.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#438

Post by quanticle »

sjs wrote: post #353
quanticle wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your expectations don't make it broken. It's not 1990 anymore. All operating systems manufacturers need to understand that the vast majority of users have used Windows and are used to Windows' UI conventions. At the very least, one should offer a way for the Windows user to discover what the new conventions are, rather than having to Google and find websites that other people have made when they made the same transi…

> It's not 1990 anymore. All the more reason not to have a maximize button. Displays only get more pixels year to year.

It's easier to have more windows on the screen, but it's still no easier to manage them. It's not a problem of pixels, but of cognitive load. For many people simply having more windows visible is distracting, even if those windows are in the background and can be ignored. Its the same reason that people would prefer a clean desk, with only one or a few things on it than one that has lots of things on it. A cluttered desk, no matter how well it's organized, is still harder to manage than a clean desk. A cluttered monitor is the same.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#439

Post by sbuk »

duairc wrote: post #350
megamark16 wrote: post #39

I came from a windows background, tinkered with Linux for a few years on and off, and when I started my current job I was given a Macbook Pro. After a few months of using it I as so frustrated, and found myself spending more and more time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, that when they were ordering new MBPs for the design team I offered to give mine up to a designer and buy a ThinkPad, thus saving the company over $1,0…

This is exactly my experience of trying to use OS X, thanks for putting it into words! The Home and End thing is by far the most annoying one (for me, but only because it's always the first one I run into whenever I find myself having to use a Mac). It's so ridiculous that there's this mentality (everywhere) that "power users" are bad people whose needs always contradict those good, "average" users. That mythical "av…

Has it occurred to you that being a "power user" on one platform doesn't necessarily translate to another or that another platform may be signifantly different to what you are used to? This isn't a case of OS X being different for the sake of being esoteric or being aimed at the 'average' user; rather these shortcuts have existed in Mac OS since at least the early 1980's.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#440

Post by sjs »

quanticle wrote: post #438
sjs wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not 1990 anymore. All the more reason not to have a maximize button. Displays only get more pixels year to year.

It's easier to have more windows on the screen, but it's still no easier to manage them. It's not a problem of pixels, but of cognitive load. For many people simply having more windows visible is distracting, even if those windows are in the background and can be ignored. Its the same reason that people would prefer a clean desk, with only one or a few things on it than one that has lots of things on it. A cluttered…

That's exactly what Cmd-h and Cmd-Opt-H are for. This is a solved problem on OS X.
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