How do I make OSX not suck? (Seriously)
Mike Schneider
I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
* I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
* I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
* I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
* I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
(imagine a lot more asterixs here)
* In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
--
Reply to mike1@@@usfamily.net sans two @@, or your reply won't reach me.
EE
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>, Mike
Schneider <mike1S...@usfamily.net> wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
Why? Too old to learn new ones?
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
Get WindowShade.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
Go to Finder Preferences and mark 'Always open folders in a new window'.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
Check out the third party utilities: there are a lot of them
<http://www.versiontracker.com>
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
* In short: I don't. After working in OSX fulltime for 9 months now,
every trip back to OS9 (let me count... 1, 2,... there's no 3!) has
been awful. But I must admit you need fast hardware to really enjoy OS
X.
EE
--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana (Groucho Marx)
http://www.astronieuws.nl
+++killfile level: 10+++
Tom Stiller
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
Hide the toolbar.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
--
Tom Stiller
PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF
Davoud
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
*****
Some of what you want is available via shareware applications. We're
going to have to wait a while longer for OS X to catch up with the
featues of the earlier Mac OS. OS 10.2 may be a step in that direction.
Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
mantra.
Davoud
Randall Ainsworth
Greg Weston
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>, Mike
Schneider <mike1S...@usfamily.net> wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
Which Mac OS is your Mac OS? The Mac OS that was declared "dead" for
developers earlier this year had a very different interface from the
Mac OS I started with 14 years ago. It's been evolving constantly and
this is just another - albeit somewhat more abrupt than typical - step.
G
Mike Rosenberg
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
Sorry, no help there.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
WindowShade X, a $7 shareware Preference Pane, handles this nicely.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
Use the preferences, Luke! Finder Preferences, to be specific.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid
screen-bottomer.
Well, you can hide the Dock, and several freeware/shareware utilities
will give you the good ol' Apple Menu and/or Application Menu
functionalities. I use FruitMenu ($7 shareware) for the former and ASM
(freeware) for the latter, but you can find others via VersionTracker.
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
That would be Mac OS 9.2.2.
--
Mike Rosenberg
<http://www.macconsult.com>
"If you ever get annoyed, look at me, I'm self employed..."
EE
<da...@davidillig.com> wrote:
> Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> mantra.
Don't be rediculous: Classic MacOS was fine, and still is. But the
advantages of OSX simply outweigh the disadvantages over OS9,
especially on faster Macs.
Matthew Russotto
EE <e.echt...@DELETHIShome.nl> wrote:
>In article <210620020759449023%da...@davidillig.com>, Davoud
><da...@davidillig.com> wrote:
>
>> Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
>> you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
>> said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
>> mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
>> mantra.
>
>Don't be rediculous: Classic MacOS was fine, and still is. But the
>advantages of OSX simply outweigh the disadvantages over OS9,
>especially on faster Macs.
Don't mind davoud, he's just sore at Apple for not including the Semetic
input methods in OS X.
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
=====
Every time you buy a CD, a programmer is kicked in the teeth.
Every time you buy or rent a DVD, a programmer is kicked where it counts.
Every time they kick a programmer, 1000 users are kicked too, and harder.
A proposed US law called the CBDTPA would ban the PC as we know it.
This is not a joke, not an exaggeration. This is real.
http://www.cryptome.org/broadbandits.htm
Barbarossa
> > > stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> I'm unclear here as to what you want or mean, ...
Barbarossa:
I think what he means is the combo of 'BeHierarchic' and
'AliasMenus.' I know that in Classic/8/9 that is the fastest, and
easiest way of finding, or lauching, Anything.
Of course, AliasMenus has that annoying conflict woth Stuffit
that causes MenuBar text corruption ...
I don't use X yet, as my old Macs won't handle it, but I am
upgrading my son's B&W this summer (while he's away in Japan) and
I may install OS-X on _that_ and see how it works.
I was under the impressiton that folders full of aliases could
be put into the dock, and would pop up somwhat in the manner of
'AliasMenus,' but perhaps without the deeplevel digging of
'BeHierarchic.' ? ?
--
_____________B_a_r_b_a_r_o_s_s_a____________ ;^{>
Wayne B. Hewitt Encinitas, CA whe...@ucsd.edu
David Eppstein
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
Don't care about these three.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
Yes.
My biggest problems with the OS X user interface are:
* Files created by downloads or by command-line programs don't end up
with the correct icons and I don't have a good way of controlling this
(e.g. certain Carbon programs won't open files with blank type/creator
codes, which the "Open with..." file info dialog doesn't do anything
about, so I have to change the codes with some old Classic programs like
ICTypeChanger or FileTyper).
* Half the time when I click on a window or a background to select a
different program, the UI thinks I'm starting to drag a rectangle, and
won't do anything until I click again. This is despite the fact that
I'm clicking by tapping on the trackpad, and have the "Use trackpad for
dragging" preference disabled.
* I spend a lot of time looking at that stupid spinning colored wheel.
* The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
one long row.
But I like too much about the look and feel to go back...
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
David Eppstein
David Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> My biggest problems with the OS X user interface are:
Forgot another one: When viewing folders in column mode (the middle
option, whatever it's really called) every time I click on a column to
change the sort order the file name column shrinks, until eventually
it's a little tiny thing and all the filenames are "..."
David Pruitt
mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com, "Mike Schneider"
<mike1S...@usfamily.net> wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
Agreed. My biggest complaint is that the menu went from (approximating) a 10
pt font to about a 14 pt font. The menus are HUGE. I have a Ti Powerbook at
1152 x 864, but I feel like the menu and dock are taking up most of the
screen. I can always hide the menu, but I can't make that damn menu smaller.
--
D a v i d P r u i t t
da...@davidNOSPAMpruitt.com
(To send mail directly to me, remove NOSPAM from my email address)
Mike Schneider
e.echt...@DELETHIShome.nl wrote:
> In article <210620020759449023%da...@davidillig.com>, Davoud
> <da...@davidillig.com> wrote:
>
> > Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> > you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> > said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> > mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> > mantra.
>
> Don't be rediculous: Classic MacOS was fine, and still is. But the
> advantages of OSX simply outweigh the disadvantages over OS9,
> especially on faster Macs.
Arf.
I feel like a car-buyer whose only options are comfy Buicks that are
being dicontinued and Ferraris that go really, really fast but have bench
seats and crank windows and only run on special highways.
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/files/links.htm
Reply to mike1@@@usfamily.net sans two @@, or your reply won't reach me.
"Blood! Boobs! Swords! Snakes!"--fwfr.com four word film review of "Conan"
st...@temple.edu
>
> * The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
> frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
> pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
> one long row.
Well, you could always organize your dock with a frequently used programs
folder, and than additional folders in it.
Chris Patterson
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
To answer the question posed in your subject: Install LaunchBar.
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
Instead of doing a lot of wasteful mousing around to open apps,
documents, URLs, etc., LaunchBar lets you open *anything* you can
imagine with just a few keystrokes. For example:
Type Cmd-space, followed by:
"MT" to launch MT-Newswatcher
"DW" to launch Dreamweaver
"OW" to launch OmniWeb
"W" to launch Word
"GG" to launch OmniWeb and surf to http://groups.google.com/
"MY" to launch OmniWeb and surf to http://my.yahoo.com/
LB learns as you use it; listed above are my own preferences. Give it a
try!
--
======================================================================
Chris Patterson (to send me email, note that I switched to Comcast.)
Dopeler Effect: The tendency for stupid ideas to seem smarter when
they come at you rapidly.
David Eppstein
> > * The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
> > frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
> > pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
> > one long row.
>
> Well, you could always organize your dock with a frequently used programs
> folder, and than additional folders in it.
You can't drag things onto items in folders in the dock.
Matt
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
Try comp.sys.mac.pointless.whining.
Dragonmaster Lou
> My biggest problems with the OS X user interface are:
>
> * Files created by downloads or by command-line programs don't end up
> with the correct icons and I don't have a good way of controlling this
> (e.g. certain Carbon programs won't open files with blank type/creator
> codes, which the "Open with..." file info dialog doesn't do anything
> about, so I have to change the codes with some old Classic programs like
> ICTypeChanger or FileTyper).
Get Info on the files and one of the options is "Open With." No need for old
classic tools or anything.
[stuff I have no real response for snipped]
> * The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
> frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
> pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
> one long row.
Create one folder with aliases to all your favorite programs in them and stick
it on the dock.
--
-------------------- http://www.techhouse.org/lou ----------------------
"Dragonmaster Lou" | "Searching for a distant star, heading off to
lou at techhouse org | Iscandar, leaving all we love behind, who knows
Tech House Alum | what dangers we'll find..."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Eppstein
John Steinberg <manby...@coldmail.com.theobvious> wrote:
> > You can't drag things onto items in folders in the dock.
>
>
> Oh, good grief! Create your folder of aliases and drag that to the dock.
> Add/remove more aliases as you need to the aliased folder. Anything you
> add/remove to the aliased folder will appear in the docked folder.
>
> Come on now! This isn't exactly computer science -- oops, no offense
> intended. ;)
As I thought I said very clearly in the message you responded to, you
can't drag things onto items in folders of aliases in the dock.
Partly due to the difficulties OS X has with type/creator codes, I often
find myself wanting to open files with non-default programs. Currently,
I have to open the program first so that it appears in the dock, then
drag the file onto it, unless I want to try navigating deep folder
hierarchies in the file picker dialog. Under Classic, I could do this
in one step by dragging the file onto an icon in a pop-up. This is not
a big deal but it's one of the minor ways in which OS X worsened my
interaction experience.
David Eppstein
Dragonmaster Lou <l...@SPAM.ME.AND.DIE.techhouse.org> wrote:
> > * Files created by downloads or by command-line programs don't end up
> > with the correct icons and I don't have a good way of controlling this
> > (e.g. certain Carbon programs won't open files with blank type/creator
> > codes, which the "Open with..." file info dialog doesn't do anything
> > about, so I have to change the codes with some old Classic programs like
> > ICTypeChanger or FileTyper).
>
> Get Info on the files and one of the options is "Open With." No need for old
> classic tools or anything.
Let me be more specific, since obviously you misunderstood the part
about "Open with" not helping. If the type/creator codes are wrong, as
they usually are with files created by downloads or command-line
programs, the program I want to "Open With" is not listed in the "Open
With" dialog, even if you go through the tedium of the "Other..." file
picker part of the dialog.
As a specific example that I ran into yesterday, I can not use the "Open
With" dialog to make .eps files with blank type/creator codes be opened
with MacGSView X. Before I can use the "Open With" dialog on these
files, I have to change their type/creator codes to TEXT/something. OS
X provides me no easy way that I have found for doing so.
Marc Scheuner
<epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>Partly due to the difficulties OS X has with type/creator codes, I often
>find myself wanting to open files with non-default programs. Currently,
>I have to open the program first so that it appears in the dock, then
>drag the file onto it, unless I want to try navigating deep folder
>hierarchies in the file picker dialog.
You could maybe give Zingg! a try ......
http://www.brockerhoff.net/zingg/
Marc
Niklas Dougherty
> Partly due to the difficulties OS X has with type/creator codes, I
> often find myself wanting to open files with non-default programs.
> Currently, I have to open the program first so that it appears in
> the dock, then drag the file onto it, unless I want to try
> navigating deep folder hierarchies in the file picker dialog. Under
> Classic, I could do this in one step by dragging the file onto an
> icon in a pop-up. This is not a big deal but it's one of the minor
> ways in which OS X worsened my interaction experience.
You will appreciate DragThing, Zingg! and other mechanisms for dealing
effectively with different apps for different uses.
With DragThing, you can drag your file to a corner, and DragThing's
drawer, loaded with all your applications, will appear. With Zingg! you
can use a contextual menu to open a document with the app of your choice.
Although I have metric tons of apps, I find that I use a handful the
very most. These I drag to the Finder's toolbar and the Dock for quick
access. Usually these apps are related to text, graphics and web, since
most other apps have specific file formats that are unique.
Mac OS X brings about a new paradigm in desktop efficiency, and you will
have to forget old habits and learn different approaches.
--
“Libertas optima rerum, nunquam servili sub nexu vivito”
http://homepage.mac.com/nikd/ – C:\ONGRTLNS.WXP
ᚾᛁᚴᛚᛀᛋ ᛬ ᚱᛁᛋᚦᛁ ᛬ ᚴᚢᛘᛚ ᛬ ᚦᛀᛁᛋᛁ
己所不欲，勿施於人。 (孔子)
David Eppstein
Marc Scheuner <msch...@no.spam.for.me.ca> wrote:
> >Partly due to the difficulties OS X has with type/creator codes, I often
> >find myself wanting to open files with non-default programs. Currently,
> >I have to open the program first so that it appears in the dock, then
> >drag the file onto it, unless I want to try navigating deep folder
> >hierarchies in the file picker dialog.
>
> You could maybe give Zingg! a try ......
>
> http://www.brockerhoff.net/zingg/
Thanks, it looks like it will at least be a faster replacement for the
"Open with..." dialog.
Niklas Dougherty
> Let me be more specific, since obviously you misunderstood the part
> about "Open with" not helping. If the type/creator codes are wrong,
> as they usually are with files created by downloads or command-line
> programs, the program I want to "Open With" is not listed in the
> "Open With" dialog, even if you go through the tedium of the "Other...
> " file picker part of the dialog.
>
> As a specific example that I ran into yesterday, I can not use the
> "Open With" dialog to make .eps files with blank type/creator codes
> be opened with MacGSView X. Before I can use the "Open With" dialog
> on these files, I have to change their type/creator codes to TEXT/
> something. OS X provides me no easy way that I have found for doing
> so.
The type/creator mechanism is just one of the methods implemented in Mac
OS X. The two others are the famous extension driven associator à la WIN-
DOS and the content based Unix method of magic numbers. One way or the
other, Mac OS X will know what file you are dealing with. For instance (
in Terminal.app):
> file hexley_2k_vector_AI.eps
hexley_2k_vector_AI.eps: PostScript document text conforming at level 3.
0 - type EPS
Now rename this file to what appears to be a text file:
> mv hexley_2k_vector_AI.eps test.txt
Try the file command again:
> file test.txt
test.txt: PostScript document text conforming at level 3.0 - type EPS
Thus there's no go naming a virus I_love_you.vbs.txt in Mac OS X.
Why you have a problem with eps files is beyond me. Probably MacGSView
has a bug that doesn't make it listable in the Open With dialog, or else
you are simply not dealing with eps files.
If you are, you could use DragThing and drag your file onto the alias
for GSView there. If that doesn't work, MacGSView is definitely screwed
somehow.
Davoud
> > > Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> > > you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> > > said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> > > mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> > > mantra.
e.echternach:
> > Don't be rediculous (sic): Classic MacOS was fine, and still is. But the
> > advantages of OSX simply outweigh the disadvantages over OS9,
> > especially on faster Macs.
Mike Schneider:
> Arf.
> I feel like a car-buyer whose only options are comfy Buicks that are
> being dicontinued and Ferraris that go really, really fast but have bench
> seats and crank windows and only run on special highways.
*****
I'm with you to a point. I could live with the bench seats, crank
windows, and special highways if it were really, really fast. But it's
not.
Davoud
David Eppstein
Niklas Dougherty <dk...@cam.moc> wrote:
> Why you have a problem with eps files is beyond me. Probably MacGSView
> has a bug that doesn't make it listable in the Open With dialog, or else
> you are simply not dealing with eps files.
>
> If you are, you could use DragThing and drag your file onto the alias
> for GSView there. If that doesn't work, MacGSView is definitely screwed
> somehow.
It's beyond me, too, but it doesn't even work to drag .eps files onto
MacGSView's icon in the dock until I have changed their type/creator
code from the blank that it gets set as when I create them on the
command line. When first created they had an extension of epsf instead
of eps if that makes a difference... I'm guessing the reason it works
for you is that there's a mysterious database somewhere (which we are
not allowed to see or tweak) that sets the file/creator codes of
command-line-created files, and yours has an entry that mine is missing.
David Eppstein
Michelle Steiner <mich...@michelle.org> wrote:
> > > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> >
> > Yes.
>
> That's the easy one; just click on the little oval button at the top
> right of the window. Now, all sub folders will open in their own
> windows.
Thanks. How obvious. But it does seem to work, without having to go
into System Settings every time I want to switch between opening new
windows or reusing the same window...
Davoud
> > Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> > you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> > said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> > mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> > mantra.
Matthew Russotto:
> Don't mind davoud, he's just sore at Apple for not including the Semetic (sic)
> input methods in OS X.
*****
Actually, I'm getting over that, because rumor has it that that problem
will be fixed in 10.2. And it has been announced that future versions
of Opera will support the right-to-left languages.
It's the lack of a truly hideable dock that is practically my last
remaining peeve (OK, Finder speed, too). And before anyone patiently
(or otherwise) tells me how to find the Dock pane in System
Preferences, let me again say that "hideable" means to me that the dock
pops up only when I move my mouse into a hot corner, or type a certain
key combination, and not every time I accidentally move my mouse
anywhere in a certain edge of the screen. I would have thought that one
of those clever shareware programmers would have done something about
this by now. Until someone fixes this, DragThing will substitute well
enough.
Davoud
Niklas Dougherty
> Niklas Dougherty:
>
> > Why you have a problem with eps files is beyond me. Probably
> > MacGSView has a bug that doesn't make it listable in the Open With
> > dialog, or else you are simply not dealing with eps files. If you
> > are, you could use DragThing and drag your file onto the alias for
> > GSView there. If that doesn't work, MacGSView is definitely screwed
> > somehow.
>
> It's beyond me, too, but it doesn't even work to drag .eps files onto
> MacGSView's icon in the dock until I have changed their type/creator
> code from the blank that it gets set as when I create them on the
> command line. When first created they had an extension of epsf
> instead of eps if that makes a difference... I'm guessing the reason
> it works for you is that there's a mysterious database somewhere (
> which we are not allowed to see or tweak) that sets the file/creator
> codes of command-line-created files, and yours has an entry that
> mine is missing.
Nope. The OS determines what kind it is based on content:
> ll test.eps/rsrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 nik staff 0 Jun 21 21:21 test.eps/rsrc
> file test.eps
test.eps: PostScript document text conforming at level 3.0 - type EPS
> mv test.eps test.garbage
> file test.garbage
test.garbage: PostScript document text conforming at level 3.0 - type
EPS
> echo "aaa" > test.macroslosh
> file test.macroslosh
test.macroslosh: ASCII text
Mebbe you could try updating the locate database... try this in Terminal.
app:
sudo sh /etc/weekly
Ian Oliver
9QKQ8.46197$Na1.1...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net, "John Steinberg"
<manby...@coldmail.com.theobvious> wrote:
> David Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
Many interesting things. Please don't stop; I'm a newcomer to Macs and
especially OSX and I'm learning a lot.
Thanks for all the stuff from everybody.
Ol.
David Eppstein
Michelle Steiner <mich...@michelle.org> wrote:
> > As a specific example that I ran into yesterday, I can not use the "Open
> > With" dialog to make .eps files with blank type/creator codes be opened
> > with MacGSView X. Before I can use the "Open With" dialog on these
> > files, I have to change their type/creator codes to TEXT/something.
>
> Have you tried changing ".eps" to ".txt"?
That does change the type/creator codes to TEXT/ttxt. But if I then
rename it back to ".eps" (which is important, these files are to be used
by the graphicx package in LaTeX, which automatically adds the ".eps"
extension so that the same TeX source can also be used with .pdf images
in pdflatex) the type/creator codes get changed back to blank again.
David Eppstein
John Steinberg <manby...@coldmail.com.theobvious> wrote:
> > As I thought I said very clearly in the message you responded to, you
> > can't drag things onto items in folders of aliases in the dock.
>
> Ahh, so *this* is what it feels like to be a salmon in spawning season?
>
> I've tried to help, I just don't think you're metabolizing what I'm
> suggesting, so I'll just leave you to your own devices and wish you well.
Well, I do appreciate the attempt to help, but you didn't end up telling
me anything I didn't already know about.
Orac
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
There are utilities that do all of these things.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
This is easy. Obviously you haven't looked very hard for this one. Reset
your Finder preferences. Click the option "Always open folders in a new
window."
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
Why would you want billions of commands on the menubar?
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
Who said it was YOUR Mac OS?
--
Orac |"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."
|
|"If you cannot listen to the answers, why do you
| inconvenience me with questions?"
Dragonmaster Lou
Eppstein wrote:
> In article <slrnah6qb...@techhouse.brown.edu>,
> Dragonmaster Lou <l...@SPAM.ME.AND.DIE.techhouse.org> wrote:
>
>> > * Files created by downloads or by command-line programs don't end up
>> > with the correct icons and I don't have a good way of controlling this
>> > (e.g. certain Carbon programs won't open files with blank type/creator
>> > codes, which the "Open with..." file info dialog doesn't do anything
>> > about, so I have to change the codes with some old Classic programs like
>> > ICTypeChanger or FileTyper).
>>
>> Get Info on the files and one of the options is "Open With." No need for old
>> classic tools or anything.
>
> Let me be more specific, since obviously you misunderstood the part
> about "Open with" not helping. If the type/creator codes are wrong, as
> they usually are with files created by downloads or command-line
> programs, the program I want to "Open With" is not listed in the "Open
> With" dialog, even if you go through the tedium of the "Other..." file
> picker part of the dialog.
I've never had this problem, oddly enough. At least, I don't remember having
this problem. Oh, and I apologize for skipping the part where you mentioned
"Open With." I scanned quickly and didn't read through.
David Eppstein
David Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> > I've tried to help, I just don't think you're metabolizing what I'm
> > suggesting, so I'll just leave you to your own devices and wish you well.
>
> Well, I do appreciate the attempt to help, but you didn't end up telling
> me anything I didn't already know about.
Maybe I should expand a little. My complaint was that under Classic I
could set up popups on the bottom of the screen, and *in a single
motion* drag items onto applications in those popups. Instead,
currently, I can either put the applications into the dock, and achieve
the same one-motion effect but the dock gets cluttered, or I can access
the applications through folders in the dock (e.g. the Applications
folder is in my dock) at the expense of having to go through two
motions: open folder then drag something onto item in folder, or open
application then drag icon onto application in dock.
Your response was to suggest that I put the items in a folder in the
dock. I already knew that, in fact I am already doing that, and it
works, but not as smoothly, because I don't have Classic's single-motion
user interface. So it is a very minor annoyance, but one of several
that make me feel that in some ways OS X is a step back (in a lot of
other ways it's a step forward, of course, which is why I continue to
use it).
If you misunderstood the intent of my original posting as "how can I get
something similar if a little clunkier" when in fact it was "I know how
to get something similar but I'm unhappy because it's a little clunkier"
I can see how you'd be frustrated by my unresponsiveness to your helpful
postings, and I apologize for that.
Orac
John Steinberg <manby...@coldmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> > > I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> Chocolate or vanilla? What kind of hardware are you running it on and
> how much RAM in that box.
>
> > > * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
>
> Can't help here as I've no idea what they were, but you do have some new
> key commands under OS X that require some re-learning.
>
> > > * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
>
> As others have opined, at least one 3rd part app is available, and I
> *think* that's returning in Jaguar.
>
> > > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
>
> Finder->Preferences-> à Always Open Folders in new windows.
>
> > > * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid
> > > screen-bottomer.
>
>
> I'm unclear here as to what you want or mean, but you can always boot
> back into OS 9 and just spend small doses of time with OS X. Part of
> what you're experiencing may be the shock of the new with regard to OS X
> -- I sure did -- and I also initially only used it in discrete bites.
> After a few months time I established a decent comfort level with it,
> and as of about 7 months ago, I fell in -love- with it. Indeed, I only
> boot into OS 9 for some maintenance tasks and even then I can't wait to
> return to OS X.
>
> > > * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
>
> Well, Steve says OS 9 is dead, and while no reasonable person would tell
> you OS X is perfect, or even that its feature set is on par with OS 9,
> but it's so much more stable, offers so many new practical and powerful
> tools, and it's frankly, for me anyway, an absolute joy in use. This
> despite its many shortcoming -- most particulary at the Finder level.
Indeed. I like OS X by and large. The single thing about it that drives
me batty is how slow the Finder is, however. v10.1 is much better than
v.10.0x (which was basically unusable for me), but Apple has a way to go
to make the Finder a pleasure to use. Basic things, like windows that
remember their size and column widths properly, copying that doesn't
just tell you that a file with the same name exists where you're copying
and asks you if you want to overwrite it but tells you if that file is
older than the file than you're trying to copy (as older Mac OS versions
have done for a long time). Basically, the Finder needs a lot of
polishing.
MacMan-2
> Mike Schneider:
> > I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
> > * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> > * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> > * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
> > (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
> > * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
>
> *****
>
> Some of what you want is available via shareware applications. We're
> going to have to wait a while longer for OS X to catch up with the
> featues of the earlier Mac OS. OS 10.2 may be a step in that direction.
>
> Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> mantra.
>
> Davoud
MacOS X (also called MacOS suX by those who know better) is probably
the worst thing to come out of Apple in a LONG time - software wise,
anyway. It's just a candy coloured pile of doggy-doo that is bug-ridden
and hopelessly slow on anything other than the very latest Mac. It's
also full of twiddly eye-candy that does nothing but slow it down even
more.
I have NO intention of switching over until I'm forced to upgrade my
Mac to one that won't run the proper OS.
Mind you, MacOS 9.0 isn't that great either. Thanks to all the garbage
Apple have included to allow it to run under MacOS suX as "Classic" it
too is bug-ridden.
Stick with MacOS 8.5 and forget all the nonsense people spout about
MacOS suX being a necessary upgrade.
MacMan-2 - An Apple a day lets you work, rest and play.
Greg Weston
<MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
> In article <210620020759449023%da...@davidillig.com>, Davoud
> <da...@davidillig.com> wrote:
>
> > Mike Schneider:
> > > I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
> > > * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> > > * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> > > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> > > * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid
> > > screen-bottomer.
> > > (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
> > > * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
> >
> > *****
> >
> > Some of what you want is available via shareware applications. We're
> > going to have to wait a while longer for OS X to catch up with the
> > featues of the earlier Mac OS. OS 10.2 may be a step in that direction.
> >
> > Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> > you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> > said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> > mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> > mantra.
> >
> > Davoud
>
> MacOS X (also called MacOS suX by those who know better)
False. It's called MacOS suX by self-important twits and armchair CEOs.
> is probably the worst thing to come out of Apple in a LONG time
> - software wise, anyway.
False. iTunes 1.0, for example, is a far less worthwhile item.
> It's ... bug-ridden
For small values of "ridden," maybe. For normal understanding of the
term, it's quite reliable.
> and hopelessly slow on anything other than the very latest Mac.
False. I've experienced OS X on 3 machines, none of which are even
close to "the very latest." For my needs, and by the standards which I
judge, it's insignificantly different from OS 9's performance.
> It's also full of twiddly eye-candy that does nothing but slow it
> down even more.
Exactly my complaint about Mac OS 8 when it came out.
> Mind you, MacOS 9.0 isn't that great either. Thanks to all the garbage
> Apple have included to allow it to run under MacOS suX as "Classic" it
> too is bug-ridden.
Non-sensical.
> Stick with MacOS 8.5 and forget all the nonsense people spout about
> MacOS suX being a necessary upgrade.
G
Peter Likidis
<mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>, Mike
Schneider <mike1S...@usfamily.net> wrote:
> I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
>
> * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
>
> * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
Then use OS 9.
David Eppstein
Barney Google <bg...@test.com> wrote:
> > * The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
> > frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
> > pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
> > one long row.
>
> One word: DragThing.
That does look close to what I want. But I'm on a laptop where screen
real-estate is tight. Is DragThing able to live off the edge of the
screen and only come up when needed, the way the dock or classic pop-ups
can?
Emory Savage
enjoy with my Macintosh have been taken away. I do some light programming
and when a project is finished and backup. I would, to get my Macintosh back
running at top speed reformat to get of all those bits that were not needed
and deep in some folder and missed. It was easy in Mac OS 9.x drag the
folders like Documents and burn them to CD.
Everything in Mac OS is hidden away I can't find anything. Lets take my
address book I keep one in Now connect, and one in MS Entourage, So how do I
backup Apple's Address App., I like Apple's mail program, and would use it
more if I could set the address book and would not need to keep redoing it
every time I reformat. This is just one of many, I like Mac OS X but it
could be more straight forward.
EJ
Davoud
> > One word: DragThing.
David Eppstein:
> That does look close to what I want. But I'm on a laptop where screen
> real-estate is tight. Is DragThing able to live off the edge of the
> screen and only come up when needed, the way the dock or classic pop-ups
> can?
Yes. For my purposes DragThing beats the dock by having an hot corner.
My problem with the dock is that it doesn't come up only when needed; I
require as much screen real estate as possible for graphics apps and
their numerous tool palettes. It is impossible for me to avoid
accidentally moving the mouse into the Forbidden Zone when selecting
tools, and up pops the unwanted Dock. With DragThing, on the other
hand, it is easy to avoid moving the cursor into a particular point
(corner) on the screen -- DragThing only pops up when I want it to. As
soon as one makes a selection, it politely retires. It also pops up
when one quits an application. While I don't always want to launch a
new app when I quit one, I like this behaviour as well, and I do not
find it obtrusive.
For a while I disabled the Dock by renaming Dock.app to sock.app in the
terminal. I quickly found out that MS Office notifications would not
run without Dock.app present. I haven't tried this recently (since
installing 10.1.5 and the MS Office service pack) to see if that has
changed, and I haven't yet tried putting a dummy file named Dock.app in
the appropriate directory. I live uncomfortably with the dock by
keeping it as small as possible and by having no icons permanently
installed.
Davoud
ZnU
David Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> In article
> <mike1SPAMKILL-2...@msp-65-25-244-249.mn.rr.com>,
> mike1S...@usfamily.net (Mike Schneider) wrote:
>
> > I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
> >
> > * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> > * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> > * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
>
> Don't care about these three.
>
> > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
>
> Yes.
>
> My biggest problems with the OS X user interface are:
>
> * Files created by downloads or by command-line programs don't end up
> with the correct icons and I don't have a good way of controlling this
> (e.g. certain Carbon programs won't open files with blank type/creator
> codes, which the "Open with..." file info dialog doesn't do anything
> about, so I have to change the codes with some old Classic programs like
> ICTypeChanger or FileTyper).
If you hold command-option while dropping a document on an app in the
Dock, the app will try to open the file regardless of its type/creator.
I use this several times a day now, and on the rare occasions I use OS
9, it drives me crazy that I can't do something similar.
[snip]
--
Right now the Internet gives an awfully good imitation of providing superhuman
intelligence capability, both in terms of the total hardware that is out there
and the fact that the 'net has all these human-equivalent peripheral devices
called "users" that can be appropriated in a distributed way to attack problems.
--Vernor Vinge
ZnU
> Mike Schneider:
> > I feel like I'm drowning in a vat of pudding when I'm using it. Uhhg.
> > * I want all my keyboard commands back to the way they were.
> > * I want to be able to windowshade open windows.
> > * I want sub-folders to open in new windows when I click them.
> > * I want billions of commands on the menubar, and no stupid screen-bottomer.
> > (imagine a lot more asterixs here)
> > * In short, I want my *Mac OS* back.
>
> *****
>
> Some of what you want is available via shareware applications. We're
> going to have to wait a while longer for OS X to catch up with the
> featues of the earlier Mac OS. OS 10.2 may be a step in that direction.
>
> Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
> you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
> said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
> mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
> mantra.
OS 9 was much better than the alternatives. But once you develop work
habits adapted to OS X, OS 9 does seem pretty unusable. This isn't a
"revisionist mantra" -- peoples' usage patterns are the only things
being revised.
ZnU
Davoud <da...@davidillig.com> wrote:
> Davoud:
>
> > > Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some
> > > circles you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that
> > > all that we said over the years about how insanely great the Mac
> > > OS was, was a big mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize
> > > that new, revisionist mantra.
>
> Matthew Russotto:
> > Don't mind davoud, he's just sore at Apple for not including the
> > Semetic (sic) input methods in OS X.
>
> *****
>
> Actually, I'm getting over that, because rumor has it that that
> problem will be fixed in 10.2. And it has been announced that future
> versions of Opera will support the right-to-left languages.
>
> It's the lack of a truly hideable dock that is practically my last
> remaining peeve (OK, Finder speed, too).
Finder speed is fixed in 10.2 as well, by all accounts.
> And before anyone patiently (or otherwise) tells me how to find the
> Dock pane in System Preferences, let me again say that "hideable"
> means to me that the dock pops up only when I move my mouse into a
> hot corner, or type a certain key combination, and not every time I
> accidentally move my mouse anywhere in a certain edge of the screen.
> I would have thought that one of those clever shareware programmers
> would have done something about this by now. Until someone fixes
> this, DragThing will substitute well enough.
Where do you keep your Dock? Mine was always getting in the way, until I
hit on a setup that worked for me. I've got it on the right of the
screen, pinned to the bottom corner, always visible, and with no
magnification. All is well now. Even apps that don't respect the Dock
almost never create windows under it, since typically windows are
created starting on the left of the screen.
David Eppstein
ZnU <z...@mac.com> wrote:
> If you hold command-option while dropping a document on an app in the
> Dock, the app will try to open the file regardless of its type/creator.
> I use this several times a day now, and on the rare occasions I use OS
> 9, it drives me crazy that I can't do something similar.
Thanks for the tip, this one sounds very useful.
Martin Nadeau
<z...@mac.com> wrote:
> Where do you keep your Dock? Mine was always getting in the way, until I
> hit on a setup that worked for me. I've got it on the right of the
> screen, pinned to the bottom corner, always visible, and with no
> magnification. All is well now. Even apps that don't respect the Dock
> almost never create windows under it, since typically windows are
> created starting on the left of the screen.
I've also found that the best place for the Dock is on the right side
of the screen. The only problem is that the Finder is one of those
applications that don't quite "respect" the Dock, and it will create
new folders under it, which I find terribly annoying.
--
Martin Nadeau
sbt
<nad...@mac.com> wrote:
I got annoyed by almost the opposite thing with the Finder (since I,
too, prefer the Dock on the right). The desktop icons start out
relatively close to the Dock, which is fine. But, as soon as I mount a
ZIP or a CD or a disk image, the Finder moves them about 100 pixels or
so to the left (I estimate the full 128-pixel max width of an icon, but
haven't measured it).
The annoyance abated when I turned off the preference to have disks
shown on the desktop (I just use column-view Finder windows or do a
Cmd-N to see what's available).
--
Spenser
Ian Oliver
<z...@mac.com> wrote:
> Where do you keep your Dock? Mine was always getting in the way, until I
> hit on a setup that worked for me. I've got it on the right of the
> screen, pinned to the bottom corner, always visible, and with no
> magnification. All is well now. Even apps that don't respect the Dock
> almost never create windows under it, since typically windows are
> created starting on the left of the screen.
Okay - I give up. Fiddled around and can't make it do that (go into a
corner). Please reveal all...
Ron Shepard
> * The dock gets too crowded with junk. Under Classic I had my
> frequently used programs organized into half a dozen or so different
> pop-up tabs at the bottom of the screen, now I have to have them all in
> one long row.
You could organize them the way you were and put aliases of the apps in
folders, and put the folders in the dock. The folders pop up and show
their contents when you click on them.
$.02 -Ron Shepard
nf
(in message <znu-2602B4.0...@news.fu-berlin.de>):
>> *****
>>
>> Some of what you want is available via shareware applications. We're
>> going to have to wait a while longer for OS X to catch up with the
>> featues of the earlier Mac OS. OS 10.2 may be a step in that direction.
>>
>> Your and my Mac OS is dead. Mac OS X fanatics -- and in some circles
>> you're s**t if you aren't one of them -- assure us that all that we
>> said over the years about how insanely great the Mac OS was, was a big
>> mistake. It was terrible, unusable. Memorize that new, revisionist
>> mantra.
>
> OS 9 was much better than the alternatives. But once you develop work
> habits adapted to OS X, OS 9 does seem pretty unusable. This isn't a
> "revisionist mantra" -- peoples' usage patterns are the only things
> being revised.
Agreed.
Once you get used to using OS X it is indeed very hard to go back to OS9
ZnU
Ian Oliver <iol...@magix.com.sg> wrote:
Oops, sorry about that. Pinning is a hidden option. Open a terminal
window and paste in:
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning end
Then log out and back in (or if you're comfortable on the command line,
kill off the Dock process from the terminal; it'll restart
automatically).
You can replace "end" with "start" to pin to the opposite corner, or
"center" to restore the default centering behavior.
Bruce Baugh
> Okay - I give up. Fiddled around and can't make it do that (go into a
> corner). Please reveal all...
TinkerTool is the answer to your problems here.
I'm now also using right side, pinned to end position, and find that it
works nicely.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
Blatherings du jour & Weblog at http://fortunewriter.blogspot.com/
http://www.tkau.org/
dude2
> The annoyance abated when I turned off the preference to have disks
> shown on the desktop (I just use column-view Finder windows or do a
> Cmd-N to see what's available).
Ah thats the giveaway that youre a windozer
-they just love OS X..
dude2
dude2
> FWIW, there are a lot of OS 9 features I miss in OS X, and I've never
> been shy about stating them here, and to Apple. There are a number of
> 3rd party tools that bring back some of that lost functionality, and
> some is due to return in Jaguar, but you're right, there are still some
> "less than OS 9 elegant" ways we need to work in OS X. Part of it is
> matter of adaptation, and part of it is waiting on Avie and company to
> recognize that throwing out the baby with the bath water was not the
> best approach. In dribs and drabs the important stuff is coming back,
> but even in its crippled state, I'm still hugely bullish on OS X.
You must be an Apple shareholder worried about losing millions.
Reality (as judged by long-term Mac users, not Microsoft zombies) says
its a crock of shit, covered with eye-candy.
But hey its *really* stable, no crashing that crock.
I saw the change quite neutrally until they made OS X the default OS,
btw. If it had been given a couple of years to mature to the level of
the REAL Mac OS it might have made the grade.
Putting a decent GUI on unix is a huge task, they rushed it.
dude2
dude2
I agree 100% MacMan 2!
dude2
> In article <eppstein-522C76...@news.service.uci.edu>,
> David Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>
> > > Well, you could always organize your dock with a frequently used programs
> > > folder, and than additional folders in it.
> >
> > You can't drag things onto items in folders in the dock.
>
> You can open the folder and drag the item into it.
Yes, and thats called "progress"... Guess they need to recycle benefits
of the old Mac OS so we'll have something to look forward to in OS 11
dude2
ZnU
austr...@yahoo.co.uk (dude2) wrote:
Huh? I run with the exact same configuration, and I've been using the
Mac for the last 9 years.
Greg Weston
<austr...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> John Steinberg <manby...@coldmail.com.theobvious> wrote:
>
> > FWIW, there are a lot of OS 9 features I miss in OS X, and I've never
> > been shy about stating them here, and to Apple. There are a number of
> > 3rd party tools that bring back some of that lost functionality, and
> > some is due to return in Jaguar, but you're right, there are still some
> > "less than OS 9 elegant" ways we need to work in OS X. Part of it is
> > matter of adaptation, and part of it is waiting on Avie and company to
> > recognize that throwing out the baby with the bath water was not the
> > best approach. In dribs and drabs the important stuff is coming back,
> > but even in its crippled state, I'm still hugely bullish on OS X.
>
> You must be an Apple shareholder worried about losing millions.
Don't know about John, but I've never owned a share of Apple stock. I
_have_ been using Apple machines since 1980, Macs since 1986; and I've
been writing software for Macs since 1988. John's assertions above are
essentially correct and his personal preferences are as valid as anyone
else's.
> Reality (as judged by long-term Mac users, not Microsoft zombies) says
> its a crock of shit, covered with eye-candy.
No, you say that. I've met reality. You look nothing like her.
> If it had been given a couple of years to mature to the level of
> the REAL Mac OS it might have made the grade.
> Putting a decent GUI on unix is a huge task, they rushed it.
The first sentence is unsupported and, IMHO, unsupportable. The second
is completely divergent from reality. NeXT already put a decent GUI on
Unix. They're slowly changing it into a different decent GUI, but
that's a different task and it's not "rushed" so much as "still in
transition."
G
sbt
<austr...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Sorry to disappoint you or to mess with your preconceptions, but I've
been a Mac user and developer since just before the 1984 January
announcement (got NDAed on the Mac in Nov '83). I currently have five
Macs in the house: 5400 with TV card, 8500 with G3 upgrade working as a
server, PowerBook G3/400 (FireWire), G4/400, and iMac G4/800. The only
Windows machine is an old Pentium II/266 laptop that gets turned on
once a month to run a couple reports for a non-profit at which I
volunteer.
OS X isn't perfect (nothing is), but the advantages I've realized using
it outweigh the features I've lost from OS 9. I've also found that the
stuff coming from the Unix community in nice Cocoa wrappers includes
some really excellent tools and utilities -- things we never saw (or
were likely to see) on OS 9, particularly in the realm of digital
video.
--
Spenser
BK
>
> Mac OS X brings about a new paradigm in desktop efficiency, and you will
> have to forget old habits and learn different approaches.
My own experience is that the OSX GUI turned out more intuitive than
what one might have expected at first sight. I have also witnessed
totally computer illiterate newbies, one of them my 65 year old mother
in law, get along significantly better with OSX than with OS9. In this
respect I agree with your statement about forgetting old habits etc
etc.
However, I wouldn't go as far as classifying this as a new paradigm.
At least you would have to tell us what the new paradigm is and how it
is different from the old paradigm.
When it comes to user interfaces, I believe the two main paradigms
remain "document centric" versus "application centric". Neither
"document centric" nor "application centric" is a particular property
of either OS9 or OSX. And I cannot see how the OSX GUI has set a new
paradigm. Instead, the OSX GUI is the first major redesign of a GUI in
a decade. Any prior GUIs been suffering from a lot of ballast, which
the designers of OSX have got rid off.
This way, it was possible to take a new look at user requirements and
the capabilities of modern technology, then design something new that
is in one piece and not a patchwork. This approach has shown
advantages, but also disadvantages.
While on the advantages side we have a clean new design with no
ballast, on the disadvantages side the designers have taken a risk to
leave out things that they thought were ballast because they provided
alternatives, but in fact the alternatives have yet to mature and
therefore it seems as if something is missing.
I think this is what is behind most if not all of the features that
OS9 afficionados say are missing. This doesn't necessarily mean these
features should be reintroduced as they were, it may mean that the OSX
alternatives need to be improved to match the maturity their OS9
predecessors had reached.
In general I would agree that the OSX GUI still lacks maturity in the
field of "document centric" features. However, it looks as if this
shortcoming will be addressed by the upcoming Jaguar release and I am
sure development will not stop there.
The lack of document centric features is probably felt more than most
other things because outside the world of computers we all work
document centric all the time. We do not work application centric. For
example, we do not pick up a pencil and then ask ourselves "Oh, look
at this pencil ... now what could I possibly do with it ?" - instead,
we pick up a piece of paper and ask ourselves "Is there any pencil or
chalk I could use to write or draw something onto this piece of paper
?". We are so used to this way of thinking, that we feel more
comfortable with a computer that allows us to work in this way.
The spring loaded folders facility of OS9 is an example of a feature
that supports the "document centric" approach. In OSX the dock
supports this approach *in principle* as you can drag and drop a
document onto a docked icon, but this facility is still immature
because it doesn't extend to dropping documents onto icons inside
docked folders. As a result we have to compromise: Either we live with
clutter in the dock, or we give up the "document centric" facility.
Some people will feel more comfortable with this than others, but in
principle we should all agree that the dock should be improved to
reach such maturity so this compromise doesn't have to be made. This
can be done in a way perfectly consistent with the overall OSX design
philosophy and therefore this is not a matter of OS9 versus OSX. It is
a matter of detail - albeit a very important detail - not a matter of
principle.
I am sure that the vast majority of the OS9 afficionados who lament
OSX's lack of various OS9 features today, will be perfectly happy with
OSX and have their "don't want to go back" experience, once the OSX
GUI has matured. This may sometimes, *but not always* involve
re-introducing features from the OS9 GUI.
In any event, statements such as "OSX sucks" are totally unqualified
and inappropriate. At best such statements can only tell us something
about the maturity of those who make such statements, not about the
quality and maturity of GUIs.
rgds
bk
Sherman Wilcox
austr...@yahoo.co.uk (dude2) wrote:
> You must be an Apple shareholder worried about losing millions.
> Reality (as judged by long-term Mac users, not Microsoft zombies) says
> its a crock of shit, covered with eye-candy.
> But hey its *really* stable, no crashing that crock.
> I saw the change quite neutrally until they made OS X the default OS,
> btw. If it had been given a couple of years to mature to the level of
> the REAL Mac OS it might have made the grade.
> Putting a decent GUI on unix is a huge task, they rushed it.
Dude2, you're the crock of shit.
I'm as long-term a Mac user as they come, having used computers long
before Macs were ever sold, and Macs since they hit the market. OS X is
the best OS Apple has ever had. The eye-candy not only makes my
computing experience aestically enjoyable, but the GUI and other aspects
of OS X make me more productive than ever.
Rushed it? Give it more years to mature? Where, in some cellar somewhere
in a programmer's office? You don't convince companies that supply the
applications that we all rely on by holding back on release of OS X
10.0. You get it out there.
What's the big deal about making it THE DEFAULT? If you don't like it as
the default, click on OS 9 and reboot. Pretty hard stuff!
Dude, your "reality" is clouded -- where's your head?
--
Sherman
BK
>
> Everything in Mac OS is hidden away I can't find anything. Lets take my
> address book I keep one in Now connect, and one in MS Entourage, So how do I
> backup Apple's Address App., I like Apple's mail program, and would use it
> more if I could set the address book and would not need to keep redoing it
> every time I reformat. This is just one of many, I like Mac OS X but it
> could be more straight forward.
I have to disagree with that for OSX is certainly more straightforward
than OS9 in this respect. All your stuff is inside your home folder.
If you back up your home folder, then rebuild your machine from
scratch and restore your home folder back, you have got everything
back in your user environment, including your addresses.
As for your address book contents, they are in the "Addresses" folder
inside the Library folder inside your home folder
(˜/Library/Addresses).
hth
rgds
bk
zenbabe
> MacOS X (also called MacOS suX by those who know better) is probably
> the worst thing to come out of Apple in a LONG time - software wise,
> anyway. It's just a candy coloured pile of doggy-doo that is bug-ridden
> and hopelessly slow on anything other than the very latest Mac. It's
> also full of twiddly eye-candy that does nothing but slow it down even
> more.
The more I use OSX the more I love it. I resented and avoided it for a
long time though.
The GUI is actually surprisingly pleasing, once you live with it for a
while. It's much simpler to the eye, in use, than you'd think it would
be when you are instead focused on the glowey little buttons and such.
To be honest, one thing that held me back to switching to OSX on my
Beastie (quicksilver) was the worry that I'd get sick and tired of
looking at the style of the windows. I was/am forever changing the look
of the GUI in OS9 and below. I didn't like Platinum AT ALL, though of
course it's a bazillion times better than Windoze. Boring stuff,
Platinum. Cute and yet terribly dull.
The skin of OSX is a delight, shockingly enough. I've come to conclude
that I don't think I'll ever get sick of it, even if I never get a good
option for changing it.. though I'm positive that more Apple Approved
customization options will show up very soon. Is it a feature of Jaguar?
> I have NO intention of switching over until I'm forced to upgrade my
> Mac to one that won't run the proper OS.
In six months of use, OSX has never crashed on me. Programs have, but
not the OS. I only reboot by choice. Stuff is easy to find and organize,
a lot of things make a lot more sense.
> Stick with MacOS 8.5 and forget all the nonsense people spout about
> MacOS suX being a necessary upgrade.
One would be forced to upgrade very quickly running OS 8.5. The vast
majority of software and peripherals and expansion cards available right
now require at least 8.6.
simon gadbois
> Reality (as judged by long-term Mac users, not Microsoft zombies) says
> its a crock of shit, covered with eye-candy.
> But hey its *really* stable, no crashing that crock.
> I saw the change quite neutrally until they made OS X the default OS,
> btw. If it had been given a couple of years to mature to the level of
> the REAL Mac OS it might have made the grade.
> Putting a decent GUI on unix is a huge task, they rushed it.
>
>
> dude2
I took me and most of my friends 2 days to get used to the new OS X; snap
out of it. Be patient for 2 minutes, explore a bit and you'll see it is
actually quite a good GUI.
Also, for x.1 version it is unbeatable and by the way, 10.2 will bring back
some of the features from OS 9 that you liked so much.
If you still don't like it, have fun with Windows and its fantastic GUI and
stability...
simon gadbois
> stuff coming from the Unix community in nice Cocoa wrappers includes
> some really excellent tools and utilities -- things we never saw (or
> were likely to see) on OS 9, particularly in the realm of digital
> video.
Also in statistics and other scientific applications. The avalanche of new
Mac applications in the past year or so (and even more so in the past 6
months) has been quite refreshing.
Howard S Shubs
simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
> If you still don't like it, have fun with Windows and its fantastic GUI and
> stability...
Or with Linux, whose GUIs makes Windows' GUI look polished and
well-thought-out.
It's not really a question of "good". It's a question of "best
available". The industry hasn't yet come up with a good UI. Maybe some
day.
--
"Run in circles, scream and shout!"
I hope you have good backups!
Are there any more networked SJFs around?
Bruce Baugh
Emory Savage <ESA...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> Everything in Mac OS is hidden away I can't find anything.
Huh. I find it just the opposite.
Applications go in /Applications if they're available to all accounts on
the system, or in ~/Applications (that is, /home/{user
name}/Applications) if they're to be used by just the one account.
System-wide goodies - fonts and such - go in /Library ; account-specific
goodies go in ~/Library . Pretty much all preference files and the like
are in ~/Library/Preferences , while other supporting files may be in
~/Library/{Application name} or ~/Library/Application
Support/{Application name} .
Your Mail.app addresses are in ~/Library/Addresses .
Knowing this much, plus the names of directories I've created for own
purposes, like ~/Writing - Current and ~/Writing - Archive , covers
virtually everything I need to know to keep laptop and desktop
synchronized and archives.
Speaking for myself personally, I very much that all preferences go in
one place which is _not_ part of /System or /Applications , because it
reinforces the notion that the preferences are there for the user to
tweak and even delete, while the programs themselves should stay where
they are. Likewise, I find that if I go looking for
~/Library/{Application Name} , I'm very likely to find it. Stuff
accessible to multiple apps is almost always labeled as what it is -
Addresses, for instance.
MacMan-2
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <B93B7BA3.11A0D%sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca>,
> simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
>
> > If you still don't like it, have fun with Windows and its fantastic GUI and
> > stability...
>
> Or with Linux, whose GUIs makes Windows' GUI look polished and
> well-thought-out.
>
> It's not really a question of "good". It's a question of "best
> available". The industry hasn't yet come up with a good UI. Maybe some
> day.
Unfortunately, MacOS suX IS just like Windoze. It's a GUI stuck on top
of a DOS/CLI interface, and like all the others of this type it doesn't
work properly or easily.
To get anything done properly you have to delve into the depths of
incomprehensible .INI, .BAT, etc. text files hidden deep within the OS
system or type in arcane text commands into the Shell.
GROSS!!! DISGUSTING!! HORRIFIC!!
I know everything in the world seems to be jumping on the "70's/80's
bandwagon", but I would have hoped that the MacOS would have avoided
this disaster-trap. Unfortunately it hasn't.
A real GUI like MacOS "Classic" is the only way to make a computer easy
for the user, novice to advanced.
ZnU
MacMan-2 <MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
> In article <howard-B2C6E4....@enews.newsguy.com>, Howard S
> Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <B93B7BA3.11A0D%sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca>,
> > simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
> >
> > > If you still don't like it, have fun with Windows and its fantastic GUI
> > > and
> > > stability...
> >
> > Or with Linux, whose GUIs makes Windows' GUI look polished and
> > well-thought-out.
> >
> > It's not really a question of "good". It's a question of "best
> > available". The industry hasn't yet come up with a good UI. Maybe some
> > day.
>
> Unfortunately, MacOS suX IS just like Windoze. It's a GUI stuck on top
> of a DOS/CLI interface, and like all the others of this type it doesn't
> work properly or easily.
This isn't an accurate description of OS X *or* any recent version of
Windows. The GUI isn't "on top" of a text-based interface. It's "next
to" it. When you copy a file in the Finder, it doesn't run the Unix 'cp'
command behind the scenes. The Finder makes a system call, same as it
did in OS 9. The only difference is that in OS X, there also happens to
be a "cp" program, that, when run, makes the same sort of system call.
> To get anything done properly you have to delve into the depths of
> incomprehensible .INI, .BAT, etc. text files hidden deep within the OS
> system
Is hard-coding behavior in executables better than using scripts? Talk
about incomprehensible! There are many things you can do in OS X by
editing text files that you couldn't do in OS 9 without a copy of
MacsBug and an excellent knowledge of PPC assembler.
Fortunately, in both OS 9 and OS X, these aren't things that normal
users need to deal with at all.
> or type in arcane text commands into the Shell.
Only to get around GUI limitations. If you didn't have the command line,
you'd just have to wait for Apple to issue a patch. In other words,
you're blaming the problem on the workaround.
> GROSS!!! DISGUSTING!! HORRIFIC!!
>
> I know everything in the world seems to be jumping on the "70's/80's
> bandwagon", but I would have hoped that the MacOS would have avoided
> this disaster-trap. Unfortunately it hasn't.
>
> A real GUI like MacOS "Classic" is the only way to make a computer
> easy for the user, novice to advanced.
The only people who seem to have trouble with OS X are a certain small
fraction of long-time Mac fanatics. New users and people who just use
Macs casually have a much better time with OS X than with OS 9, in my
experience.
Strider
<MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, MacOS suX IS just like Windoze. It's a GUI stuck on top
> of a DOS/CLI interface, and like all the others of this type it doesn't
> work properly or easily.
>
This is just plain nonsense. An operating system has to have some way
to interact with the human - whether that be with graphics or command
line is irrelevent to the computer and doesn't affect how well the
computer works at all. Well, a graphical interface by its very nature
needs more oomph from the processor. But other than that graphical or
comand line is no big deal - for the computer. True, traditionally the
MacOS hasn't had a commandline interface but that was a choice made by
the programmers. It made the MacOS neither better nor worse than other
operating systems.
>
> To get anything done properly you have to delve into the depths of
> incomprehensible .INI, .BAT, etc. text files hidden deep within the OS
> system or type in arcane text commands into the Shell.
>
Bullshit. I cut my teeth on vax systems in the 70's and migrated
naturally to Windows and much later to the Mac. To me, the command line
interface is easy to use and makes perfect sense. I took to unix like a
duck to water.
HOWEVER - I have made it a point to not use the command line interface
with OS X. Not in the least. I haven't even opened the terminal. I
could but my clients and the people I support will not. So what I do to
make this machine work I do without the CLI. And I am doing quite well
thankyou.
>
> GROSS!!! DISGUSTING!! HORRIFIC!!
>
That's like a 10 year old turning his nose up at spinach. Grow up -
we're not forcing you to eat it. But your ignorance is embarrassing and
detrimental to others.
>
> I know everything in the world seems to be jumping on the "70's/80's
> bandwagon", but I would have hoped that the MacOS would have avoided
> this disaster-trap. Unfortunately it hasn't.
>
> A real GUI like MacOS "Classic" is the only way to make a computer easy
> for the user, novice to advanced.
>
There is no such thing as a REAL GUI. A GUI is a GUI whether a CLI sits
beside it or not.
Pepito
the_...@spamex.com wrote on 6/23/02 5:38 PM:
Beautiful words, too advanced for my little computer knowledge though.
What's a CLI?
dude2
> In article <1fe751r.cl60io9jzkf2N%austr...@yahoo.co.uk>,
> austr...@yahoo.co.uk (dude2) wrote:
>
> > You must be an Apple shareholder worried about losing millions.
> > Reality (as judged by long-term Mac users, not Microsoft zombies) says
> > its a crock of shit, covered with eye-candy.
> > But hey its *really* stable, no crashing that crock.
> > I saw the change quite neutrally until they made OS X the default OS,
> > btw. If it had been given a couple of years to mature to the level of
> > the REAL Mac OS it might have made the grade.
> > Putting a decent GUI on unix is a huge task, they rushed it.
>
>
> Dude2, you're the crock of shit.
now youre getting personal asshole, this is just about computers.
> I'm as long-term a Mac user as they come, having used computers long
> before Macs were ever sold, and Macs since they hit the market. OS X is
> the best OS Apple has ever had. The eye-candy not only makes my
> computing experience aestically enjoyable, but the GUI and other aspects
> of OS X make me more productive than ever.
>
> Rushed it? Give it more years to mature? Where, in some cellar somewhere
> in a programmer's office? You don't convince companies that supply the
> applications that we all rely on by holding back on release of OS X
> 10.0. You get it out there.
We HAD all the applications we needed with the real Mac GUI, remember?
OS X is just for selling new versions of hard & software.
> What's the big deal about making it THE DEFAULT? If you don't like it as
> the default, click on OS 9 and reboot. Pretty hard stuff!
Because that started the countdown for making future Mac hardware no
longer compatible with the "classic" OS -wake up!
> Dude, your "reality" is clouded -- where's your head?
just crawl back under your rock if you dont get the big picture.
dude2
David Eppstein
Strider <the_...@spamex.com> wrote:
> HOWEVER - I have made it a point to not use the command line interface
> with OS X. Not in the least. I haven't even opened the terminal.
Not me. As someone who's been using both Unix and Macs (but not
Windows) for a long time (Unix since late 1970's), the OS X synthesis of
the two of them makes me very happy. I'll use the UI for UI programs
(say, Adobe Illustrator, although I don't have the OS X native version)
and the command line for command line programs (say, eps2eps), mixed
together in the same session (eps2eps is useful for cutting down the
bloated size of AI files). I also ssh from my Mac to some Solaris
machines in my department, and very much like having the identical tcsh
command line interface on both. It's sometimes convenient to be able to
kill -9 the Classic environment when it becomes wedged...much nicer than
the old way of having to reboot the whole machine. And I no longer have
to be embarrassed to admit that there's no way to pipe two programs
together on the Mac.
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Orac
austr...@yahoo.co.uk (dude2) wrote:
> Sherman Wilcox <wilcox...@unm.edu> wrote:
> > Rushed it? Give it more years to mature? Where, in some cellar somewhere
> > in a programmer's office? You don't convince companies that supply the
> > applications that we all rely on by holding back on release of OS X
> > 10.0. You get it out there.
>
> We HAD all the applications we needed with the real Mac GUI, remember?
> OS X is just for selling new versions of hard & software.
Oh, please. Give me a break. The SAFE thing for Apple to have done would
have been to develop a new version of the OS that was based on the
previous version, just as all the previous versions were before it. What
Apple did was very risky, without any guarantee at all that users or
developers would embrace such a radical departure. Indeed, they bet the
future of the company on it. If people really didn't like OS X, you can
bet that, when it came time for a new computer purchase, they'd be
thinking of getting a Wintel box.
> > What's the big deal about making it THE DEFAULT? If you don't like it as
> > the default, click on OS 9 and reboot. Pretty hard stuff!
> Because that started the countdown for making future Mac hardware no
> longer compatible with the "classic" OS -wake up!
So what? As long as I can remember, Apple has always made its hardware
so that it requires the latest version of the Mac OS in existence at the
time new computer models ship. Why should OS X be any different? Sooner
or later, Apple will ship computers that require OS X to run, but I'm
betting it will be later, given how much software is out there that
still hasn't been updated.
> > Dude, your "reality" is clouded -- where's your head?
> just crawl back under your rock if you dont get the big picture.
Sounds to me as though you're the one who doesn't get the big picture.
--
Orac |"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."
|
|"If you cannot listen to the answers, why do you
| inconvenience me with questions?"
Daniel
josephama...@mindspring.com wrote on 6/23/02 6:07 PM:
>
> Beautiful words, too advanced for my little computer knowledge though.
> What's a CLI?
CLI= Command Line Interface.
Think DOS or UNIX or the Terminal.
Orac
austr...@yahoo.co.uk (dude2) wrote:
> nf <nascarf...@netscape.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 22 Jun 2002 9:39:13 -0400, ZnU wrote
> > (in message <znu-2602B4.0...@news.fu-berlin.de>):
> > > OS 9 was much better than the alternatives. But once you develop work
> > > habits adapted to OS X, OS 9 does seem pretty unusable. This isn't a
> > > "revisionist mantra" -- peoples' usage patterns are the only things
> > > being revised.
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> > Once you get used to using OS X it is indeed very hard to go back to OS9
>
> Thats one hell of a reason to change..
Well, in essence, you seem to be saying that you think it's too
difficult to adapt to the new interface. That's a hell of a reason NOT
to change.
Orac
Pepito <josephama...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> in article 230620021738574621%the_...@spamex.com, Strider at
> the_...@spamex.com wrote on 6/23/02 5:38 PM:
> > There is no such thing as a REAL GUI. A GUI is a GUI whether a CLI sits
> > beside it or not.
>
>
> Beautiful words, too advanced for my little computer knowledge though.
> What's a CLI?
Command line interface.
Garner Miller
<austr...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> We HAD all the applications we needed with the real Mac GUI, remember?
> OS X is just for selling new versions of hard & software.
So that's your answer? System 8 was fine, so leave it alone and never
add new technologies? If that was the case, then we'd never have "all
the applications we needed."
OS9's underpinnings had some serious problems. The lack of memory
protection meant that one rogue application could bring the whole
system down, and it very often did. Its cooperative multi-tasking
scheme meant that even on the fastest Mac, one application could bring
all the others to a screeching halt.
Paradoxically, OS9 applications had their own "fixed" memory window
that often had to be adjusted to allow applications to even run when
their data files got too big. Try explaining this to a new Mac user
who's just deleted a bunch of files to "make more memory" -- I have --
and you see it wasn't the perfect OS by any means.
The underlying OS needed a serious overhaul to keep up with new
technology. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Apple turned to the most
stable OS on the planet as a starting point. That was the smartest
decision they could have made.
> > What's the big deal about making it THE DEFAULT? If you don't like it as
> > the default, click on OS 9 and reboot. Pretty hard stuff!
> Because that started the countdown for making future Mac hardware no
> longer compatible with the "classic" OS -wake up!
The same was said when the color software started showing up for the
Mac II that wouldn't run on black-and-white machines. Would you prefer
we return to those days? Do you want the newest software to be able to
run on a 128K Mac? Do you want that to be the
least-common-denominator? Where do we draw the line?
No-one is forcing you to upgrade. No-one. You're welcome to continue
using the same hardware and software as long as you want. But if you
want to do new things, you'll eventually need new software and
hardware.
I like the old MacOS a lot, and was reluctant to upgrade to X. Now
that I see its stability, its power, and its speed, I never want to go
back to that old architecture. Never under OS9 could I run FTP and web
servers, burn a CD, and play a 3-D game all at the same time. But I
can do it now because of these new technologies.
It's different than the old OS, certainly, and that breeds a certain
amount of hesitation. But it's much better-organized than the old OS
ever was, and is capable of doing things no earlier MacOS has ever been
able to. You can stick to your Mac Plus and be content. The rest of
us will pass you by.
Greg Weston
<Or...@mac.com> wrote:
> So what? As long as I can remember, Apple has always made its hardware
> so that it requires the latest version of the Mac OS in existence at the
> time new computer models ship.
Nah. My SE would actually boot the 1/84 OS.
G
Greg Weston
<gar...@netstreet.net> wrote:
> In article <1fe9can.180uukd1wrf2heN%austr...@yahoo.co.uk>, dude2
> <austr...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > We HAD all the applications we needed with the real Mac GUI, remember?
> > OS X is just for selling new versions of hard & software.
>
> So that's your answer? System 8 was fine, so leave it alone and never
> add new technologies? If that was the case, then we'd never have "all
> the applications we needed."
>
> OS9's ... cooperative multi-tasking
> scheme meant that even on the fastest Mac, one application could bring
> all the others to a screeching halt.
This is not _quite_ true. It's very close, but in fact it was entirely
possible for programs to continue to do _some_ useful work (network,
file, serial and audio I/O; general computation) even if something else
wasn't explicitly giving up time. On the other hand, the presence of a
preemptive scheduler doesn't guarantee that hogging won't happen. It
has to be a decently written scheduler. As a result, I know of exactly
one platform that lets user-permission code wedge a machine so firmly
that a hardware reset is required to regain control...and that's the
Win32 family.
> Paradoxically, OS9 applications had their own "fixed" memory window
> that often had to be adjusted to allow applications to even run when
> their data files got too big.
This, strictly speaking, was programmer error since the introduction of
System 7. Apple distinctly recommended that transient allocations -
including documents and such - be made from a globally available pool
with the application partition sized to hold the code and the
persistent allocations. It was no more difficult to do that than not,
and if developers _had_ done it, the effect would have been
indistinguishable from the memory management we have under OS X in
almost every circumstance.
> Do you want that to be the least-common-denominator? Where do we
> draw the line?
Apple draws the line at 7 years. You won't necessarily get all the
latest doodads, but that's how long they support a given model in the
field. Seems reasonable.
G
Strider
Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> In article <230620021738574621%the_...@spamex.com>,
> Strider <the_...@spamex.com> wrote:
>
> > HOWEVER - I have made it a point to not use the command line interface
> > with OS X. Not in the least. I haven't even opened the terminal.
>
> Not me. As someone who's been using both Unix and Macs (but not
> Windows) for a long time (Unix since late 1970's), the OS X synthesis of
> the two of them makes me very happy. I'll use the UI for UI programs
> (say, Adobe Illustrator, although I don't have the OS X native version)
> and the command line for command line programs (say, eps2eps), mixed
> together in the same session (eps2eps is useful for cutting down the
> bloated size of AI files). I also ssh from my Mac to some Solaris
> machines in my department, and very much like having the identical tcsh
> command line interface on both. It's sometimes convenient to be able to
> kill -9 the Classic environment when it becomes wedged...much nicer than
> the old way of having to reboot the whole machine. And I no longer have
> to be embarrassed to admit that there's no way to pipe two programs
> together on the Mac.
And that is the great thing about OS X - we get to chose depending on
what best suits our taste and the job. At present I make it a point not
to use the CLI but in time I will.
I well remember the first few weeks when I began using a Mac. There
were several jobs I wanted to do. I wanted to rename a group of files,
I wanted a hard copy of a directory, and I wanted three programs to
start up when I turned on my machine. I was clueless how to make those
things happen and with DOS they all were so simple. I finally figured
out how to do 2 of the 3 but I had to write a program to do the batch
filename changes.
Orac
Greg Weston <gwesto...@CAPSattbi.com> wrote:
I did say "as long as I can remember." :-)
Although I did get to use my college housemate's original Mac in 1984,
there was a gap between 1985-1988 where I didn't use computers much at
all and rarely put my hands on a Mac. The first computer I ever bought
was a Mac LC in 1991, and it is true that ever since then new Macs
always required the latest version of the Mac OS being used at the time
of their release.
Orac
Greg Weston <gwesto...@CAPSattbi.com> wrote:
Indeed, especially since a seven year old computer is practically a
museum piece these days. ;-)
Strider
<z...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> The only people who seem to have trouble with OS X are a certain small
> fraction of long-time Mac fanatics. New users and people who just use
> Macs casually have a much better time with OS X than with OS 9, in my
> experience.
>
I think this is another example of how Apple has done its job too well.
Mac users haven't had to know about their computer in the way Wintel
users have had to. I've been hired by small businsess people and
professionals to fix their computer and worked on a 2, 3, even 4 or 5
year old computer that has never been upgraded, never been repaired,
and is virtually unchanged from the way they unpacked it from the
computer store. That is amazing!
I think many Mac users are completely clueless to what goes on under
the hood and why the OS had to be changed. They don't understand that
the Mac is, in many ways, unchanged from 1984 when it was first
released. That speaks wonderful volumes about the vision and genius of
its inventors. But it is time for a change. Not just the gratuitous
change of different Finder commands, but a massive change under the
hood.
When OS 7 was released color printers were expensive and few people had
them. MP3s didn't exist and neither did digital photography or movies.
Streaming audio and video didn't exist. Networking was done in offices
and schools, not homes. (Well, some of us were exceptions.) All these
changes and more Apple has adapted to by bolting extra functions into
the OS - basically by patching it.
Imagine a car that has the roof cut off and the back seat and trunk
removed to turn it into a truck. Then imagine bolting a hydralic piston
in it so the truck bed could be raised. Instant dump truck from a
Cadillac Seville. I actually saw such an animal in Mexico. That is what
OS 9 was all about.
It was time for a change.
We can talk about why the Finder got changed so much next time.
Kwan Yeoh
> Also, for x.1 version it is unbeatable and by the way, 10.2 will bring back
> some of the features from OS 9 that you liked so much.
And the rumour is that it might not be 10.2 but 10.5, & that we all get
to pay Apple more money for it.
--
NB. Remove ".SpAmMeNoT" to reply.
I apologise for the necessary use of this antispam measure.
ZnU
The Xserve is already OS X-only, supposedly.
> Sooner or later, Apple will ship computers that require OS X to run,
> but I'm betting it will be later, given how much software is out
> there that still hasn't been updated.
Even systems that couldn't boot OS 9 would probably still be able to run
it in Classic.
[snip]
ZnU
KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT (Kwan Yeoh) wrote:
> simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
> > Also, for x.1 version it is unbeatable and by the way, 10.2 will bring back
> > some of the features from OS 9 that you liked so much.
>
> And the rumour is that it might not be 10.2 but 10.5, & that we all get
> to pay Apple more money for it.
Yeah, well, it's also going to have some fancy new stuff that OS 9 never
had.
MacMan-2
<z...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <1fea6cr.yzs0hr1fwxww0N%KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT>,
> KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT (Kwan Yeoh) wrote:
>
> > simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
> > > Also, for x.1 version it is unbeatable and by the way, 10.2 will bring
> > > back
> > > some of the features from OS 9 that you liked so much.
> >
> > And the rumour is that it might not be 10.2 but 10.5, & that we all get
> > to pay Apple more money for it.
>
> Yeah, well, it's also going to have some fancy new stuff that OS 9 never
> had.
and never needed and bugger all people even want. Great! :-(
simon gadbois
> We HAD all the applications we needed with the real Mac GUI, remember?
> OS X is just for selling new versions of hard & software.
Oh My God! There you go... A conspiracy theory! Apple were not just trying
to create to most modern and stable OS out there, no!, they were just trying
to get us to buy more applications (from other companies)...
As for new versions of hardware, they did not need OS X to force people to
upgrade, all Mac users (and PC users) have been doing it for 2 decades, that
is just the name of the game.
Gee...!
ZnU
MacMan-2 <MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
There is some very cool stuff in Jaguar. Not just gee-wiz features, but
things that are going to actually change the way people use computers.
I'm thinking mostly of Rendezvous here.
MacMan-2
<z...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <240620021609304443%MacM...@AppleMac.com>,
> MacMan-2 <MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <znu-E9255F.2...@news.fu-berlin.de>, ZnU
> > <z...@mac.com> wrote:
> >
> > > In article <1fea6cr.yzs0hr1fwxww0N%KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT>,
> > > KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT (Kwan Yeoh) wrote:
> > >
> > > > simon gadbois <sgad...@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
> > > > > Also, for x.1 version it is unbeatable and by the way, 10.2
> > > > > will bring back some of the features from OS 9 that you liked
> > > > > so much.
> > > >
> > > > And the rumour is that it might not be 10.2 but 10.5, & that we
> > > > all get to pay Apple more money for it.
> > >
> > > Yeah, well, it's also going to have some fancy new stuff that OS 9
> > > never had.
> >
> > and never needed and bugger all people even want. Great! :-(
>
> There is some very cool stuff in Jaguar. Not just gee-wiz features, but
> things that are going to actually change the way people use computers.
> I'm thinking mostly of Rendezvous here.
I've no idea what "Rendezvous" is, but NOTHING is going to "actually
change the way people use computers" - that just sounds like the WAY
over the top hype for the useless iPod (yet another stupid thing in
Apple's releases).
Kwan Yeoh
> > and never needed and bugger all people even want. Great! :-(
>
> There is some very cool stuff in Jaguar. Not just gee-wiz features, but
> things that are going to actually change the way people use computers.
> I'm thinking mostly of Rendezvous here.
And handwriting recognition?? Yep, can see a big market for that indeed.
MacMan-2
KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT (Kwan Yeoh) wrote:
> ZnU <z...@mac.com> wrote:
> > > and never needed and bugger all people even want. Great! :-(
> >
> > There is some very cool stuff in Jaguar. Not just gee-wiz features, but
> > things that are going to actually change the way people use computers.
> > I'm thinking mostly of Rendezvous here.
>
> And handwriting recognition?? Yep, can see a big market for that indeed.
Nope. That's almost as "useful" on a computer as speech recognition.
:-\
ZnU
KY...@Mac.Com.SpAmMeNoT (Kwan Yeoh) wrote:
> ZnU <z...@mac.com> wrote:
> > > and never needed and bugger all people even want. Great! :-(
> >
> > There is some very cool stuff in Jaguar. Not just gee-wiz features, but
> > things that are going to actually change the way people use computers.
> > I'm thinking mostly of Rendezvous here.
>
> And handwriting recognition?? Yep, can see a big market for that indeed.
If Apple's working on some sort of tablet device, then the handwriting
recognition stuff is a fairly important as well. If Apple isn't planning
anything like that, then it's just a nice feature that probably won't be
used by many people.
ZnU
MacMan-2 <MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
Rendezvous (AKA ZeroConf networking) allows computers to automatically
discover devices and services on the local network.
There will be (at least) a couple of applications included with Jaguar
that show some of the possibilities here. iChat, in addition to logging
onto the AOL IM network, can also use Rendezvous to automatically
discover other iChat users on the LAN, and show you a list of them. A
new version of iTunes will use Rendezvous to find other copies of iTunes
on the LAN, and allow users to see each other's playlists and play each
other's files.
The real power of this kind of thing isn't obvious until you think about
the way it combines with wireless networking. With Rendezvous + AirPort,
devices that are near each other can automatically organize themselves
into ad-hoc networks, with no prearrangement or centralized
infrastructure. This allows information to be exchanged in very natural
ways. Imagine sitting on the grass at an open-air concert with your
TiBook open, trading MP3s back and forth with other audience members
while you wait for the show to start.
Neil Jones
<MacM...@AppleMac.com> wrote:
> change the way people use computers" - that just sounds like the WAY
> over the top hype for the useless iPod (yet another stupid thing in
> Apple's releases).
'Useless'? Define useless, please...
And *every* new wave of software/hardware capabilities changes the way
people use computers. I've had macs for over a decade, and believe me
I've changed the way I use computers several times...
Neil
Greg Weston
<Or...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <230620022101319191%gwesto...@CAPSattbi.com>,
> Greg Weston <gwesto...@CAPSattbi.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <230620022030147237%gar...@netstreet.net>, Garner Miller
> > <gar...@netstreet.net> wrote:
>
> > > Do you want that to be the least-common-denominator? Where do we
> > > draw the line?
> >
> > Apple draws the line at 7 years. You won't necessarily get all the
> > latest doodads, but that's how long they support a given model in the
> > field. Seems reasonable.
>
> Indeed, especially since a seven year old computer is practically a
> museum piece these days. ;-)
As a primary use machine, certainly, but you could get a lot of life
out of them by repurposing. As it happens, I only recently retired my
last 68k machine. And I'm seriously thinking about putting NetBSD on it
and bringing it into the office as a Nethack server.
For context, it should be noted that the first wave of PowerPC Macs
turned 7 (and was officially desupported in most of the US) right
before the release of OS X. My SE was desupported roughly the time
those 601 machines were introduced.
G