TheRegister’s Andrew Orlowski has published a preview of the new MacOSX 10.2 version, codenamed Jaguar. Read the preview and see some exclusive screenshots.
Apple’s Jaguar Sliced and Diced
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
that the speedups they were seeing weren’t soley due to having a 32Meg agp video card 🙂 My poor little 4-megVRAM blueberry is far short of that ideal….
Other than that, what is there to say but w00t! No more pizza-o-death! That would *rock*….
I am very unhappy with this situation.
Me and some other G4 Cube owners bought the Asus V7100 Pure Pro GeForce2 MX400 32MB AGP, because it supposedly works out of the box on a Mac (no flashing required). We thought we should upgrade our 16 MB Rage PRO in order to take advantage of “Quartz Extreme”. Well, we spent $85 USD on Monday, put the card in last night, and all I can see is some vertical lines and nothing else. The card does not work not even with the Cube’s latest firmware in it: 4.1.9f
There goes $85.
There are way too many people able to run this card on their G4 PowerMacs though (since last year). Which means that either Asus or nvidia now sells under the same model name a different revision of the chip which does not work on Macs, OR, it just doesn’t work with the Cubes. Dunno what to think.
where did you buy it? I know that CompUSA will take it back if you tell that that it did not work with your machine.
In another online shop… can’t remember now. Jbq bought it for me. Well, I am sure it works on my PCs, which is where the card is supposed to be used for, so if I tell them it does not work with a Mac Cube, they should laugh at me and replace the phone.
Anyways, we decided with JBQ to flash the card instead of sending it back. We will be trying this in 1-2 weeks from now, because it requires DOS in order to flash the card, and we don’t have any DOS machines left atm. We will be putting together one soon for this purpose, we got spare parts for another dual Celeron 466 around.
the comformation that it works very well on a g3 system so I guess that would belay any more complaints about no support for legacy hardware huh? infact, I am happy that they report it to be very responsice.
from what they say, it seems that services is a kind of graphical pipe ‘|’. that sounds like a lot of fun 🙂
I’m the only person the planet who actually likes the horizontal stripes!
I cannot wait for this…it sounds like the closest thing to OS perfection [though we all know that all software sucks……hello.c isn’t that bad though 🙂 ]
I don’t know what crack the register is smoking.
Try showing it to someone with sensitive eyes or certain eyesight troubles ( me on both counts )
I love OSX but when I get my Mac, I’ll always have to use themes as the standard Aqua interface gives me an appalling headache after a short ( less than 30 mins ) period.
I can use XP for hours on end without problems… No lines and darker colours – schweet.
Haven’t seen my eye doctor in over 3 years and I have been wearing the same perscription lens for that amount of time. Maybe it’s time I get my eyes checked, because I don’t see those stripes everyone is talking about. Seriously though, I do see them, but they’re not everywhere. I hardly notice them.
I think you should let Apple know that. they want to have a system that has good accessability, your input will help them.
Try showing it to someone with sensitive eyes or certain eyesight troubles ( me on both counts )
I love OSX but when I get my Mac, I’ll always have to use themes as the standard Aqua interface gives me an appalling headache after a short ( less than 30 mins ) period.
I can use XP for hours on end without problems… No lines and darker colours – schweet.
I like the stripes, too. This guy from The Register — what’s his beef about the Dock? I think I’m the only person in the world who likes the Aqua interface straight from the box. What is it about OS X that makes everybody think he’s an expert on UI design?
> the comformation that it works very well on a g3 system
I know Andrew who wrote the article has a G3. Last time I saw him, he was carrying a G3 iBook.
I agree with you Jerry. I think the default OSX look and feel is wonderful. I also think the doc is one of the best features of OSX.
I haven’t done it yet, but I will buy a Mac and it is entirely because of OSX.
There have been articles here this week about how slow the Mac processors are and a lot of, “speed doesn’t matter vs. yes it does” talk. For me, I don’t care if Macs are faster than PCs or not. If I want speed, I’ll use my FreeBSD and Linux machines. Compared to a PC, using a Mac is like a mental massage and perhaps some aroma therapy (haven’t you ever sniffed those gel buttons?)
when you want to sit back and relax, you can use a Mac. when you want high performence you can use an SSH windows and compile your work on a remote machine….if you are a graphics artist…well what ever floats your boat.
Eugenia I think you *have * to flash the card. I’ve never heard of any mac ready pc card, they all needed to be flashed IIRC, it’s an endian issue.
No, this card supposedly works out of the box, *without* flashing. There are 3 GeForce2MX models from 3 different companies that suposedly work out of the box.
Sorry folks, but I also love the DOCK. It’s just way too cool and functional for me to give any complaints. I use it with the hide and magnification modes, maybe they should try that. I can admit I don’t like it any other way.
🙂
That really sucks!
There are 3 GeForce2MX models from 3 different companies that suposedly work out of the box
Hmm, what are the other models?
what’s his beef about the Dock? I think I’m the only person in the world who likes the Aqua interface straight from the box. What is it about OS X that makes everybody think he’s an expert on UI design?
It doesn’t make people think they’re experts on UI design. It makes UI design experts cringe so much that they have to speak-up about it. If you are a UI designer, you would understand. Form does NOT come before function, people!
And holy hell that article has more typos in it than the last ten articles I’ve read combined. The editor is NOT doing his/her job!! The story-writer could have at least re-read the damn thing himself. What is it with people? Mediocrity is good enough???
OK, for the benefit of all us humble folk who aren’t UI designers, explain what is so cringe-worthy about OS X. I just find myself being productive with it, so in my ignorance I think it’s good.
The Jaguar?
C’mon Apple. The only Jaguar I want to see in the computer world was the Atari Jaguar – a real kick-arse console for its’ time!
Give it a new name, Mr Jobs, or it might suffer the same fate as my beloved Atari…
Gawd, Jaguar the new MacOS – sharing a similar name to an 8 year old console? That’d be as bad as a console being given an abbreviation the same as a computer platform/standard from IBM.
(But we all know that nobody would do that… I mean, PS/2 and PS2 are completely different – everyone says the “slash” bit, don’t they?)
OK, for the benefit of all us humble folk who aren’t UI designers, explain what is so cringe-worthy about OS X. I just find myself being productive with it, so in my ignorance I think it’s good.
I second that call for an explanation. IMOP, it’s usefull… sure, it would be better if they got rid of the fancy animations and stuff (that way they could save resources) but other than htat it’s pretty nice.
Oh please… they’re just using another codename that involves cats. The first OS X (10.0) was codenamed Cheetah and 10.1 was codenamed Puma.
– The close widget on a window should be in a separate corner from the other widgets, to minimize the chance of hitting it accidentally.
– Making the control widgets only easily identified by color (without a mouseover) is silly, and potentially confusing if a user is colorblind.
– The interface is too colorful. It can be distracting if you work with colors a lot (graphics professionals). This is why the all-gray theme is available, incidentally–although that makes everyone ‘colorblind,’ of course.
– The functions of a ‘launch bar’ (something to let you quickly launch applications) and a ‘task bar’ (something that lets you switch between running applications) are not identical, so while mixing them in one control looks simple, from a usability standpoint it’s more complex. This is a major complaint about the dock.
– Mouse “targets” should not move. This is another complaint about the dock (icons for applications that aren’t permanently docked appear and disappear, moving the icons to their right) as well as the menu bar (with the menus moving based on application title length). This is particularly annoying with the moving trash can, which not only jumps around as described above, but jumps to the right if you drag something a little too far to its left!
I think all of these are valid complaints–but I think they’re also often overstated. There are a lot of other complaints I find dubious: the font aliasing is bad because it tries to duplicate printed output rather than onscreen hinting (it’s a design decision inherited from NeXT), the shadows take up precious screen real estate (no, they don’t, they’re shadows!).
“Jaguar” is just an informal codename for products.
Example: Microsoft’s upcoming OS is codenamed Longhorn (what the heck?)
AMD’s Sledge/Claw Hammer will be Opteron.
You get the idea. It’s still be OSX and everyone will refer to it as 10.2
Thank God this didn’t turn into another car analogy eh?
OSX seems to have hardware accelerated video drivers only for machines up to 3 years old. Older machines (including the first gen imacs) do not have HW accelerated video, therefore OSX seems to crawl. It seems as if Apple is trying to force people to upgrade to newer systems (thats where Apple makes money). So, can you trust your HW/OS vendor not to criple the OS performance on older hardware? Its easy to criple performance if you have another agenda . . .
On a side note, I just went through the ordeal of installing RedHat 7.3 on my x86 box. I miss BeOS.
I have a G3 Lombard, and currently (along with Wallstreets) have no DVD, or hardware accelerated 2D graphics. I remember something about Apple rephrasing the KB article on the ATI graphics support for these models. Does this improved G3 support mean that I can actually fully switch to OS X?
The two things that are keeping me from switching to OS X full time are:
1. Video drivers. This includes not only real video drivers, but also DVD playback abilities, as I should have that. In addition, I also want DVD PC Card Decoder support. Why is it that hardware decoding should not be supported since version 1.3 of Apple’s DVD Player application, when off-loading the task from the CPU is the way to go? I just don’t get it.
2. Cocoa apps. I need a cocoa office suite. Office v. X is nice, but Carbon apps don’t quite play that well with everything else. Sure, they have services now, but the way they handle text (especially for a word processor) is very important to me. I want to see this done right. Add to that a cocoa web browser. Omniweb has potential, but I won’t use it until I get CSS support that works. I would really love to see a browser (on any platform/api, especially OS X/Cocoa) that supports HTML4, XHTML1(.1), CSS1, CSS2, XML, MathML, and JavaScript (ECMAScript 1.5, IIRC) — SVG, PNG, and SMIL would be nice too — fully and completely. These are standards that have been around for quite a while, yet we have nothing to show for it.
That’s about it. Anybody that has used Jaguar: can you give any info on the the first point?
— Rob
“Oh please… they’re just using another codename that involves cats. The first OS X (10.0) was codenamed Cheetah and 10.1 was codenamed Puma.”
I though OS X codename was Rhapsody? Cat?
The genie effect is just way too much animation and way to much distraction.
The horizontal lines are annoying.
The file browser is still a piece of junk.
It’s hard to tell the differfence between open apps and app shortcuts on the dock. This is quite possibly one of the dumbest things about the interface.
While the UI does look pretty, it lacks greatly in actual functionality, which is what the UI is.
People say that the XP UI is ugly and fisher-priceish (of course, there are other skins that come with it, and you can make it look exactly like the old Win2k theme, and download other skins off the internet), but at least it’s functional. Sure, somethings may be a little too big and take up too much real estate on the screen, but that, as stated above, can be changed easily.
And again, the OSX UI may look nicer, or prettier, or sexier, whatever you want to call it, but it has very little function, and does not follow any good UI design rules.
I would add my own list of compaints, but, you know what? I’m sick of arguing this issue. Many well-published user interface designers and human/machine interface experts (and other people with quite legitimate credentials) have already poured over this topic (in depth) in magazines, web magazines and forums; the only response they get from Joe User is one of two:
1. “Right-on, man! Whatever you said I agree with.”
or
2. “You’re full of crap, luser! It’s perfect as is!”
The sad truth is that most users don’t know when something is a problem. They just live with it because they don’t know any better (they know of no alternatives or they believe in the dubious motivations of the designer). Any discomfort they experience is negligable (as they rarely are power-users). Many users are so unselective about their product-usage that you can give them massively defective products and they never get seriously upset about it (which products? say, most of the computer industry’s offerings).
It’s like the issue with poor editing in [supposedly professional] articles. If the language useage isn’t lower than the average reader’s, no one cares about how bad it really is. (and don’t even start about my spelling here in a stupid forum)
My reason for commenting at all was that I am sick of the lame complaints against people who speak their minds on topics they know all too well about.
“I started smoking cigarettes and suddenly everyone thinks they’re doctors.”
Your anti-UI-designer comments are just as stupid, folks.
have you tried it under OS9?
Try 1 year. My *one* year old tibook (400 mhz) only has an 8 meg vram card.. so no quartz accel for me either.
I like the stripes too but I do agree that OS X should be more customizable.
I agree with the idea of the concept of task switcher versus program launcher. I use the dock as a program launcher and I use Keyboard Maestro (but will switch to Liteswitch X when that becomes available) as a task switcher. Liteswitch X should be purchased by Apple and incorporated into the OS as an optional program switcher IMO. At least it’s free.
As a program launcher I think the dock works ok. I use it with small icons and medium magnification and with autohide on. I’ve found that I’m able to stick over 50 icons on there and it still provides a very fast way to load apps. However, the dock is only good as a program launcher if you use a mouse. There are plenty of keyboard launchers out there for OS X and I think Apple should incorporate the best of the ideas into the OS.
As far as Carbon having less text capabilities, this is supposed to be fixed in OS X 10.1.5 which is due soon. Once that release is out Microsoft is releasing updates to IE and Office X to address text issues like support for antialiasing. Carbon vesus Cocoa is a short-term issue IMO. I think eventually they will be able to have equal access to all the OS capabilties. (But I also think that Cocoa, because of its APIs strong bent for dynamic binding, will be the faster development environment for new applications. But to an end user it shouldn’t make a difference.)
I made the switch to OS X pretty much exactly one year ago and I haven’t had this much fun since I first installed Linux in 1995. One of my favorite features about OS X is bundles. I love being able to drag applications around and have them still work! This is a major ease-of-use issue that Linux and Windows XP need serious help with.
If the user doesn’t know that anything is wrong then maybe nothing is wrong.
And yes, I have eyesight problems myself. Maybe it’s related? I just can’t bear those stupid stripes, they don’t even add to the aesthetics. At least I don’t understand how they do.
Solution: I won’t buy a Mac. Thank God for BeOS!
>>People say that the XP UI is ugly and fisher-priceish (of course, there are other skins that come with it, and you can make it look exactly like the old Win2k theme, and download other skins off the internet), but at least it’s functional. Sure, somethings may be a little too big and take up too much real estate on the screen, but that, as stated above, can be changed easily.<<
The XP UI is definitely a crappy design, but it’s a step up from the old Win95 design from years ago. You can also easily skin Mac OS X as well, I have already done so myself since Aqua can be boring after a long period of use.
That said I have also heard about licensing issues with the skins under XP, the only reason I bring this up is that a frined of mine was using ‘Aqua XP’ for his theme and then had switched back to his normal theme, and I asked why and he said that he had to license the theme after the demo period was over. Not sure if this is true or not… can anybody please specify the issue?
First the things which are no prob for me because you can disable or get software for it !!!
I mean everybody can switch the animations off (Tinkertolls) so what’s the problem about it ? And with the ‘classic menu’ you will get a easy startup menu so it’s also no problem. On my dock all running progs have a dark triangle underneath so its also easy to see which are running and are which are not.
So I only miss 3 functions
1. a function to’put the window in the background’!!! Yes I can hide it or send it to the dock, but there are situations when I only want to put it in the background (when I need the information which is in the window for example).
2. a better way to switch to other windows & programs !!!
3. virtual Desktops !!!!
Thoems
>>3. virtual Desktops !!!!<<
This is not the best implementation, but it might be what you’re looking for…
http://space.sourceforge.net/
Enjoy 🙂
And that UI expert is me. Yes, there really is no such thing as a UI “expert” because everybody’s different. I love the Dock — I truly love the Dock. I’m a Web designer and power user who’s been using computers and OSes of all kinds for years. I’m no idiot, and anyone who calls me such because THEY don’t like Aqua is the idiot. If you don’t like something in Aqua, fine. But don’t act like an ass and think you’re opinion is gospel and the users who disagree are actually stupid dolts! I think the disticion between application launching and application switching is RIDICULOUS and should be eleminated at all costs. The Dock does just that, and it’s brilliant.
So, next time you start railing at people who like Aqua for being dumbnuts who don’t know what’s good for them, maybe you could at least preface it with “In my opinion….”
Jared
I’d like to address some points made by CPUGuy and Jace:
“The genie effect is just way too much animation and way too much distraction.”
Surely that’s a matter of taste, and anyway, you can turn it off if you don’t like it.
“The horizontal lines are annoying.”
Again, a matter of taste, but the lines are meant to distinguish control surfaces.
“The file browser is still a piece of junk.”
Pardon my obtuseness, but I really don’t see how the OS X Finder is all that different from the OS 9 Finder. OS X is a damn sight more functional than Windows XP, which does its best to hide your files from you.
“It’s hard to tell the differfence between open apps and app shortcuts on the dock. This is quite possibly one of the dumbest things about the interface.”
Why is this important? I’m inclined to agree with Mr. White above.
“While the UI does look pretty, it lacks greatly in actual functionality, which is what the UI is.”
I use it every day for my actual work, and it’s good for me. Am I wrong?
“The sad truth is that most users don’t know when something is a problem. They just live with it because they don’t know any better . . . Your anti-UI-designer comments are just as stupid, folks.”
I’m not anti-UI-designer; I’m just nonplussed to be told that my actual user experience is not as important as some theoretical ideal standard of what the perfect UI should be.
The problem is that the UI is designed to please a certain audience. This seems to be people who like pretty and effect-rich environments, with normal eyesight and a predisposition towards the Macintosh OS design choices (or, the Apple way). People who deviate from that user-group seem to have problems with OSX. There are lots of these people. Like the several people on this forum alone that have complained (rightly so) about eyesight problems that are complicated by MacOS X’s visual design.
UI Design is not supposed to be about “making it pretty” or “making it interesting.” You are supposed to aim for the most function in the most efficient manner, targeting the largest audience (often the lowest common denominator) first and then worry about the attractiveness and appeal (and configuration options) last (for those who want them).
If “you” have no problem with it, then good for you! That doesn’t mean that because YOU think it is great that there are not fundamental issues.
I’m not here trying to bitch about how much OS X sucks. I think it looks very neat and I plan to get a system going with it so I can tech support it. Again, my issue is with those who ignorantly make claims that the experts are full of crap.
But don’t act like an ass and think you’re opinion is gospel and the users who disagree are actually stupid dolts!
I hope you’re not referring to me. I never said “you people are stupid dolts” or anything like that. Please read what I say, not what you interpret. My frustration is towards those happy-with-OSX users that think the UI experts are arrogant asses because they have critical things to say about the UI design!
It’s not working I tried it some weeks before 🙁
It’s the some with other dockling they are not working on my system (10.1.4), don’t know why
thoems
I haven’t used ‘SPACE’ thing in awhile, I am so use to the ‘Hide’ function, but it doesn’t really help when you want to configure apps and windows together.
There is an app that requires you to pay, but the company who makes that also makes the technology that they use in order to skin the OS available for free. Basically, it’s just a hack a dll file that gets rid of the need to have skins digitally signed to be able to use them… but the app does more, which is why it costs money.
Once again, I say that the quality of the UI has little to do with how pretty it is, it has to do with functionality. The XP UI is NOT a crappy design.
Finder has been incredibly horrible in EVERY version of MacOS it’s been in, just because it was in OS9 doesn’t mean it must be good in OSX… it is flat out pathetic.
Why is it important to be able to tell the difference between running programs and just shortcuts? Maybe so you don’t hit a shortcut when you just meant to maxmize an app that’s already open.
And no, OSX’s UI is NOT more functionaly then XP’s, just because it is prettier does not mean it’s more functional, those two words have nothing to do with each other.
Jace, you’re not making any arguments, you’re just yelling. You use this word, “functionality,” without ever stating what your standards of functionality are. I don’t know how you can consider XP a functional interface — just to pull one of XP’s violations of interface standards out of a hat, any OS whose default setting is to hide the contents of the hard drive from the user is not functional. Aesthetics are very important in terms of functionality — you can’t use a interface that is too ugly to look at all day long. Plus, OS X’s eyecandy, whether you like it or not, isn’t there just for show — it is intended to provide feedback to the user.
Ok, so hiding required system files is wrong? Seeing where as you can easily turn that off, and the only people who should be turning it off are power users anyway, you comment is invalid. Why would a common user need to see system files, please tell me?
No one said that asthetics weren’t important, just not nearly as important as functionality, which OSX sacrifices quite a bit on… and no, I’m not saying that XP is perfect either.
I Cant wait, shows that we are better then the WinHell folks