Apple Computer Inc. is planning to put the user at the center of its next major release of Mac OS X. According to sources, that’s the umbrella term the Cupertino, Calif., Mac maker is applying to an arsenal of innovative new features in store for Mac OS X 10.3, a k a “Panther,” reportedly due to ship in September. They said User at the Center features will make it simpler for individual users to personalize their computing experience and to move seamlessly among Macs and other devices.
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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That would be the news that will certainly put “Music To Your Ears”.
the question now is, who was at the center before?
In other news, a marketing droid at Apple also stated that OSX 10.3 will be faster, more stable, and easier to use.
@joe
“the question now is, who was at the center before?”
I don’t know but its not me.
Gallo is right, the article really doesn’t say too much and ther is not much to commment on.
No Comment
“Another candidate feature will let users log out of OS X and then log back in as another user, without having to close open applications. This capability resembles the “Fast User Switching” feature of Windows XP.”
Looks like Apple is copying some features from MS
Did he say that apple now has piles?
So is it going to cost another $129 to be the “User at the Center”?
From http://www.asktog.com/columns/035SquanAdv.html :
Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed by Gitta Salomon and her team close to a decade ago, a pile is a loose grouping of documents. Its visual representation is an overlay of all the documents within the pile, one on top of the other, rotated to varying degrees. In other words, a pile on the desktop looked just like a pile on your real desktop.
To view the documents within the pile, you clicked on the top of the pile and drew the mouse up the screen. As you did so, one document after another would appear as a thumbnail next to the pile. When you found the one you were looking for, you would release the mouse and the current document would open.
Piles, unlike today’s folders, gave you a lot of hints as to their contents. You could judge the number of documents in the pile by its height. You could judge its composition very rapidly by pulling through it.
1) An end to prebinding problems
My biggest issue with OS X, the prebinding system introduced in Jaguar seems to be the #1 cause of system instability. The prebinding tools are simply buggy. The system doesn’t have to be abandoned (although I’ve disabled it in favor of stability), but bugs in the prebinding tools must be fixed.
2) Introduction of more POSIX and BSD syscalls
Namely poll(), excluded from the past three OS X releases due to fear of breaking 3rd party KEXTs. I’m not sure how this would break 3rd party KEXTs except that it requires altering the system call table.
select() simply has one of the worst ABIs in history. It requires an externalized file descriptor table for a large set of connections which much be iterated before and after each select() invocation. Furthermore, since it’s a system call the kernel must process this entire list each time, due to a lack of statefulness.
Of course I would love to see support for kqueue() and kevent() added, but this probably isn’t going to happen any time soon. Furthermore, these features would only be useful to end users with the addition of kqueue support to the Finder, so changes that occur outside of the Finder’s well-regimented environment appear immediately.
3) Next generation Finder
I don’t think Apple has much of an excuse for the Finder remaining a Carbon application, except that they’re bound to their legacy codebase and aren’t willing to leverage the power of their own development environment to convert it to Cocoa. The main reason for not converting is that the Finder works now, and the fact that it’s a Carbon application only affects 3rd party utilities designed to interface directly with Cocoa applications.
Nothing like any of these is mentioned in the article, however.
This was nice to see, though:
“Sources said Panther will add more database-like structures to the file system, although the underlying file system will remain HFS+, ensuring backward compatibility.”
Glad to see that Dominic Giampaolo has been hard at work.
I just hope, however, that they pull in a modern UFS implementation, preferably one supporting soft updates. That, however, is probably a pipe dream, although not one as egregious as OS X on x86.
Actually, I really like this idea, and it makes me a bit excited…
The concept seems like something I’d like to see on a computer; maybe it’ll be enough to push me over the edge into buying this update (Besides the speed improvements) as it seems like a really, really, really intuitive and cool UI idea.
Is it a rule that to be a *nix OS that you must release remenial updates every x number of days and hype it like it’s the second coming?
In all seriousness it gets confusing for me. What is a minor upgrade and what is a major “new kitty name” release and what is a major super duper OS release? Is this release compareable to WinXP_WinXP SP1 or Win98_Win98se or is it like WinME_WinXP?
I guess it’s a bit like…
Little updates -> The occasional Windows security update, only these updates fix a few bugs, add a few features
Kitty Names -> Win98 SE. They add a lot, including bug fixes, but also new features
OS X vs OS 9 -> WinME to WinXP
In all seriousness it gets confusing for me. What is a minor upgrade and what is a major “new kitty name” release and what is a major super duper OS release? Is this release compareable to WinXP_WinXP SP1 or Win98_Win98se or is it like WinME_WinXP?
10.2.4 => 10.2.5 is a minor update
10.2 => 10.3 is a major update
Thanks Squidgee!
Anonymous’s post just after yours didn’t help much as giving me version numbers to something i’ve never used doesn’t help me. I have no idea what a “major” update means in OSX terms.. that is why I was asking what it was like in relation to windows.
you folks that complain that they are charging for 10.2/10.3 are being rediculous.
apple has always charges for .x releases…infact, in the old days they charged for .x.y versions though it was a minimal fee.
10.2 is a major release NOT a service pack. has it come to the point that apple critics must use the fact that they charge for their software as a reason not to use their machines?
I noticed that software companies are getting greedier and greedier. Stuff that they SHOULD have been doing in the first place, they don’t do. I think if Apple wants more users, they should quit being retarded and stop charging for minor upgrades. Microsoft can get away with this BS simply because they have a stronghold on the market, I don’t think that Apple can keep doing it. And besides, shouldn’t the user have been who the OS is centered around in the first place? It should already have been easy for users to interact with other devices and such. OSX is still young (relatively), and if Apple wants to get with it, then they need to provide real service to thier customers, and not charge for this kind of stuff.
Well you are another example for my point about version confusion. People are upset about the fee to upgrade because it’s confusing to give numbers 10.2, 10.3 and such. People want a full number change to justify the cost. Of course it can’t be OS/11 so Apple is just playing off the OSX thing. Maybe if they market it better we would understand that so much as been done that it’s really a ‘new’ (and worth paying for) edition. Giving it a new kitty cat name makes it seem like it’s a minimal upgrade. They keep the naming convention and that means to most that it’s part of the same family and not really worth the cost of a minor upgrade.
A lot of people didn’t buy Win98SE for that very reason. So a few years later Microsoft just stripped out (hid) DOS and added a little more hardware support and called it Windows ME. OH “ME” so it must be NEW and worth the price.
Just my not super thought out opinion.
Apple no steal from Microsoft, Apple ‘stealing’ from unix systems. Ooops, they are a unix system. Microsoft took the idea from unix systems. Logging in twice and starting an X server from both is nothing new, Apple’s and Microsoft’s systems just are different so they are innovating.
1 – no one is making you buy it. so dont if you think its unfair.
2 – the upgrade to jaguar was significant enough to justify pay. if you dont think so go back to 10.1 after using jag for a while. cry. then come back to jag.
3 – i have no doubt that 10.3 will be another great upgrade and i’m basing that on past performance.
4 – to the “apple should have done this in the first place” crowd. thats not how things evolve. 10.3 is using a lot of the stuff in 10.2 as 10.2 built off its predecessors. things “evolve.” thats how the life works and thats how the software cycle works. if you wanted them to do it all at once, then you have no os x till this fall.
to all you whiners…. if you dont like it, dont buy it. shut your pie holes.
I think the issue with pricing is that people have felt OSX was a largely unfinished product. So when faced with the newer versions, they see them more as the versions they should have been entitled to all along, rather than upgrades worthy of another $100. This is why so many feel bad about pricing. They felt like they were short changed the last time.
When I moved from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, I must admit, it no longer felt like an absolute necessary upgrade. I could have lived quite happily with Windows 2000 for another couple of years. I upgraded and felt it was more of a luxury than a necessity. I tend to pay for luxuries, so it is OK.
I can imagine the feeling is completely different to the OSX users (and I have used OSX in depth and the only reason it isn’t my desktop OS now is because it is too slow, and Apple treat their users/developers with absolute contempt).
smokey joe, while I understand that you’re offended by various peoples’ comments that they don’t feel paying so much for Panther is worthwhile, you are at least as wrong for telling everyone with such an opinion to shut up.
So we see marketspeak pushed at us again. If users weren’t at the center of this mesmerizing experience to begin with, where were they? Lurking at the margins? It’s not a surprise that Panther will have some features XP does. After all, when one is in the business of selling personal computers it helps to be able to say, “Yeah, Windows is cute, but my Mac can do that AND this!” Saleability’s good. But if the sale in question is taking place for a Jaguar pricetag (the OS upgrade, mind you), then I think I will pass. At no point have I been more happy to avoid the mainstream PC industry than now…
I too do not see the foundation of most of the price complaints. I’ve been using Mac OS X on my G4/400 since the Public Beta, and I’ve never felt short changed by it.
It was made clear from the start that 10.0 was an early adopters release, and Apple acted accordingly by making the 10.1 upgrade very cheap ($20 if I remember properly). With the release of 10.1, Mac OS X was a fully useable desktop system. It fully implemented all of the features that OS 9 had. So other than a bit of speed, nobody lost anything moving to 10.1.
Jaguar (10.2) was, for me, what took Mac OS X beyond what OS 9 had been. In addition to the benefits arising from its new core, Jaguar introduced new features above and beyond anything OS 9 had offered. Basically, Apple moved from a “making it work” to a “making it better than before” phase. I, for one, found the features more than ample enough. And since I was upgrading from one polished release to another, I don’t feel it was unjustified for me to pay the full price.
I expect Panther to be like Jaguar, and since it will be a move from a polished system to a new polished system, I expect to pay full price.
In short, I believe special pricing should only be used when the upgrade is from an unpolished system (like 10.0) to a polished system (like 10.1).
Torrey: You’re actually about as wrong as you could be about the cat names. With the original OS X releases, the cat names were only internal code names. But as they realized that most users didn’t understand the significance of the 10.X numbers, they started using the cat names publically. It’s exactly like car models. While they all tend to follow a theme, a new name means a radically new model, as opposed to one which has just has its number incremented (a la 10.X.Y releases).
I don’t mind paying for an OS that keep getting better every year and also gets 5 revisions, improved iApps to go with the new OS and of course the security updates. The price of going from 10.1 to 10.2 was worth it and I don’t think as many people will balk when 10.3 comes out.
Here’s the deal…
The OS should have had all this crap in the first place.
Lets say I bought the original release of OSX. I was told that it was going to be blazing fast, new and special. I’m happy with it for now, even though it’s a little slow, I figure it’ll be fixed. Then Apple releases Jaguar. They then charge me money for the OS that I expected to have in the first place. So why the hell did I even bother paying for OSX.
This sounds like just as much a patch to the OS as Windows 98 was to Windows 95, and Windows ME was to 98. Windows 2000 was the same kind of OS change that OSX was to OS9, a REAL upgrade (maybe) worth paying for. Windows XP has nothing on 2000, and shoulnd’t be a pay for product, just like 10.3 shouldn’t be a pay for product over 10.2 or whatever previous versions are out there….
Apple, today, announced a new service. For only $99 you too can recieve Cavity Search(TM). This is a service part of Apple’s new “User at The Center” theme. Reports are that Mac users have been waiting in line, just to pay for this exciting new user friendly experience.
i really appreciate to get UFS2 in MacOS X.
with softupdates, background fsck, 64 bits pointer fs, extended attributes, it would be great
but hoping there is no more many apps which break on Unix FS (like the one which break on the old UFS of Apple)
I spoke with Jethro today about Apple’s upcoming OS 10.3 upgrade,seems he has been able to get himself a Beta version.Properly called the “Cavity Search and Install Package”(TM),it puts the user in the middle of the experience.Jethro indicated it is going to be an annual err….experience.
He was able to get the full demo at his local Apple Store.
It comes with a “remove and install tool” as well as the software in its own installer package.Jethro did mention that the installer is a manual package only,but Apple is working on a fully automatic setup.
Apparently the one piece “remove/install” tool detects those funny rectangular pieces of plastic that Mr Drysdale gave him,removing one for safe keeping,and then the other end is used to open the cavity where the software installer package is inserted and the software is compressed to install it…..only takes a couple of seconds and will leave a very COOOOL feeling,or so he claims.
In other news,Microsoft Marketing is jumping for joy as “nickel and dime” competitor Apple Computer is adopting MS marketing practices……….
I’ve been fiddling with the idea of purchasing myself a Mac w/ MacOSX, but the constant need to purchase updates worries me.
How many kittens will it take Apple to get a “final” type product out? I don’t want to buy my first Mac only to find that I have to get updates to the OS twice or more per year.
I paid for all four Windows versions (I refuse to count Me as a Windows version) and by no means felt screwed, the release schedule is OK and we get free service packs in between + minor addons and such so it’s not limited to big bug/security fixes.
As it looks now, I think I’ll just wait a couple of releases more before I jump onboard, and I know I’m not alone in doing that.
Look, I’m not against Apple charging something for Jaguar. But don’t you think they are being a little anti-consumer by not offering anything remotely similar to an upgrade price? Some guys here mentioned that in the good ol’ days, Apple did charge for x.x, but tell me, how often do they not give an upgrade price for a new version of Mac OS X?
Even giving 20% off for early adopters of Mac OS X would be much better than everyone getting the same price.
OS X 10.0 = Windows 95
OS X 10.1 = Windows 98
OS X 10.2 = Windows 98 SE
OS X 10.3 = Windows ME
Please note that they are all in the same family. Apple is developing faster then MSFT is; if they waited the 3 years between upgrades like MSFT does, then the OS wouldn’t even look the same. Also, who would like to still be running OS X 10.0 today; on the MSFT schedule we would still be waiting 1 more year for the OS X 10.1 release.
Apple release service packs just like MSFT; only they number them. So instead of Windows NT, Windows NT SP1, Windows NT SP2, Windows NT SP3, Windows NT SP4, and Windows NT SP5 we get OS X 10.2, OS X 10.2.1, OS X 10.2.2, OS X 10.2.3, OS X 10.2.4, and OS X 10.2.5.
Just like MSFT, Apple isn’t forcing you to upgrade from OS X 10.1 to OS X 10.2. You can skip releases if you like. A lot of people went from Windows 98SE to Windows XP and skipped the in between releases.
As for thinking everything should have been there with the initial release, sorry that’ll never happen. When Windows 95 came out it should have been fast, stable, supported USB, and have a polished interface; this didn’t happen until Windows 98SE. Why can MSFT charge for the in-between releases and Apple can’t?
I would suggest buy a Mac and have fun. If the new release dosn’t give you anything you want for the offered price, wait for the next release.
On a side note: Mac OS X is not really slow. While the GUI behaves a little slow with out Quartz Extreme, it seems to be a constant speed thats not affected by how many windows you have open or whats running in the back ground. Windows has a fast GUI when the system is idle, but once things start running then it gets much slower. I did a complete boot strap of the GCC 3.4 compiler in the back ground while surfing the web on my Ti400 note book using Airport and a Cable modem and didn’t see any slowdown in Safari or the GUI. If you start a job in Windows command line that takes 100% cpu (which most compilers do), then the GUI becomes unresponsive and mouse clicks can take upto 30 seconds to happen (the number 1 thing I hate about Windows).
I don’t get why everyone is so surprised. Windows 2000 = Windows NT 5.0.revision and Windows XP = Windows 5.1.revision. Jaquar = Mac OS 10.2.revision, Panther = Mac OS 10.3.revision There is no difference. Apple just doesn’t cover up the OS version with a name only. Since Mac OS X is at an earlier stage in development than Windows, improvements are coming at a faster rate than in Windows hence a faster upgrade cycle. Since purchasing Jaquar last year, minor point updates have really provided nice improvements to the system: iApp updates, Quicktime Enhancements, additional peripheral support, etc. Almost all Windows updates are nothing but security fixes…or as Microsoft likes to sugar coat it: “possible vulnerabilities”. If Panther doesn’t have enhancements that seem beneficial then don’t upgrade. It is as simple as that.
Looks like Joe P and I were typing at the same time 🙂
To anyone complaining of lack of substantial differences between OS X releases, what about:
“Sources also said Apple will provide full 64-bit support in Panther”
I know that this will not make an iota of difference to the established userbase, but if this is not a significant step forward from Jaguar, I don’t know what is…
What good does 64 bit support do for someone who is complaining about upgrade prices? I mean they already have a 32bit processor otherwise they would not be upgrading. They could care less about 64bits.
You know what… You are all right. I should quit complaining about paying for my software. I’m just gonna keep shoveling money out the window for my Mac. I mean hell it’s such an orgasmic experience to use my Mac, that I’m willing to pay for every single new thing that comes out. I mean, I woulndn’t want to be able to not only get free patches for my software, I don’t want to be able to upgrade my hardware either. Hell, isn’t it just easier to throw the whole thing away and start all over? I mean why would I want to use free software, and upgradeable hardware. My friends only spend about $300 at the most when new technology comes out, but not me. Since I’m rich and white, I don’t mind spending money, only so that I can get the lastest processor. Hell, I like having spare cases, power supplies, cdroms, hard drives and memory sitting around.
Whine whine whine. I don’t know what’s going to be in OS X 10.3 but it’s overpriced. I don’t know what they’re going to charge for it but it’s overpriced. Whine whine whine.
They should have had all that stuff in the OS to start with. Moan moan moan. Look at Microsoft. They do everything right. They never charged any upgrade fees, did they? Whine! They didn’t have to ’cause Windows 95 had everything right from the word go! Whine! Look how much faster Windows XP boots than Windows 2000 and Microsoft paid me $49 after rebate to use Windows XP, didn’t they? Didn’t you get paid for it? But wait, Windows 2000 had everything to start with so there was never any reason to upgrade! No, wait, maybe I’ve been running Windows XP since 1995! Yeah!
Apple should do that. Yeah. Why wasn’t OS X 10.0 exactly like what they’re promising for 10.3, even though they’re not even promising anything yet? They’re all losers. Overpriced losers.
Bitch moan whine.
For all the dumb@sses whining about the “User at the Center” speak! Are you really this stupid? This is an article from eWeek. This isn’t a product announcement from Apple’s Marketing. So what the hell are you guys talking about?
May this phrase appear when the product is released? Who knows, but because a reporter states this Apple is trying to shove crap down your throat? uh, huh. There’s nothing silly in advertising, right? “The usable internet” etc…
And REPEAT: this is not a product announcement from Apple. This is the choice of words from a reporter not affiliated with Apple. Wackos.
So, which part of:
“..even though this will not make an iota of difference to the established userbase…”
do you not understand?
Whether it is useful or not to existing users is _not_ point.
The point is that 10.3 will evidently be a big step forward as far as Apple is concerned, and they are therefore entirely justified in charging what they want for it.
If this particular step does not interest/benefit you, _nobody_ is forcing you to open your wallet.
“I mean why would I want to use free software, and upgradeable hardware. My friends only spend about $300 at the most when new technology comes out, but not me. Since I’m rich and white, I don’t mind spending money, only so that I can get the lastest processor.”
So basically your saying Apple, and Apple users are stupid, money wasting, racists?
10.4 “Pussy” will be the next installment of the Mac OS using the cat-themed naming convention.
Rumour has it they will really emphasise the lickable interface and of course change the color of all the buttons to pink. Since Steve Jobs announced this year as “The year of the laptop” for Apple, the ad slogan will be “Put a Pussy on your lap for the greatest user experience yet.”
They’ll also announce that the new 64-bit processor designed to run this OS is not the long-awaited G5 but instead the relatively unknown G-Spot manufactured by Cervix…errr, I mean Cyrix.
(copied from Slashdot)
The marketing and the sales. That’s what was at the center. I don’t expect this has changed. They’re just adding a new kind of rhetoric. I’m sick of it and I see through it. The REAL focus should be “Completing the Operating System and making ALL of it WORK CORRECTLY.”
Is THIS next version going to fix any of the ONGOING problems I’ve had with this stupid “world’s most advanced operating system??” They’ve not fixed more than ONE of the completely obnoxious problems I have had with this OS since the first release. What did they fix? User-based screen settings. Another thing they didn’t finish by the first release and all its updates.
I won’t be paying for this next one…
It all works for me. What problems are you having?
It all works for me. What problems are you having?
Tons of little things… some big ones. When you have tons of little ones, they add up to be ONE BIG one.
1. Files that get marked as “in use by other process” when they aren’t. I have to resort to terminal (which I’m sick of) or OS 9 to move the file (yet if I use OS9, the file still is marked incorrectly in the file system, so I STILL have to fool with the terminal). Don’t pick on me about needing to learn the terminal tools. This is supposed to be user-friendly and the terminal is anything but. It doesn’t matter that I’m an experienced tech person, I am sick of operating systems claiming ease of use and then forcing you to the command line.
2. Finder/Desktop not reactive to FS changes. Example: I download a file, it doesn’t show up on the Desktop till I click on the Desktop. Example 2: I download a file, it automatically decompresses but that result file or folder does not show up unless I click on the Desktop.
3. Unicode support spurrious at best. Saved Illustrator document, went to Finder, renamed it with a Kanji in the name (the files are Kanji fash cards, so the Kanji in the name is pretty much required), later-on, open the file into Illustrator, work on it again, save it, the file name is screwed-up (some number code appears instead of a Kanji). Don’t the Japanese use OS X? I bet they have quite a hell of a time with it. (is this a carbonizing problem? I don’t really care what the technical problem is; the whole system doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do and that’s the point!) This is one of the BIG problems. My girl is studying Japanese and is trying to create flash cards and do everything the right way but OS X makes this a pain in the ass. I don’t see why this should relate to carbonized state of apps since file names didn’t have this problem in OS 9!!
4. 10.2.5 (or was that .4?) made my desktop images no longer stretch to fit (I reset it about six times before I gave up and went to a solid color).
5. User Interface responsiveness and behavior SUCKS ASS. Here are a handful of things that piss me off about it:
-If an app dies, and I click on the dock to get the context menu, I have to wait about five seconds until it shows up and sometimes clicking on force quit doesn’t force quit, then I have to use the three fingered key combo to get the force quit window.
-When apps load, their windows appear and you can move them around, but once the app is ready, the window snaps back to where it was. When an app is loading, if you try to minimize it, it will not work, but once it is done loading (and the hiding is no longer wanted) it minimizes.
-Context menus do not appear in proper places on screen when at edges and appear already scrolled off the edge.
-Finder error messages are USELESS to normal people. When I try to copy a file with more than 31 characters in the name (or if it is unicode) to an HFS disk (not HFS+), the error message is meaningless “file copy/move failed. error -36 occurred” This is USELESS INFO. It’s STILL like this after how many versions???!!
-Logging in takes too long.
-Logging out takes too long.
-All File i/o dialogs default to the user’s Documents folder. There’s apparently no way to stop this. We don’t USE these folders. Why? Because we already have a folder, at the root, that we use for our main Documents storage (from when we used OS9 all the time). We each have our own folders within that folder and we don’t have to worry that the access rights are too strong for someone else to read the files if they want to.
-User preferences are inconsistent. It saves some things per user and not others. (example: folder window appearances – one user will screw up another user’s views when they visit those folders) IDIOCY!
-All the dialog boxes for Printing are BADLY designed, unintuitive, confusing, unorganized and generally CRAP! I’ve not had this much trouble with the Printing dialogs on ANY other OS. Drop down/combo boxes are NOT MEANT to serve the same function that tabbed interfaces provide!!!! Hello Apple!!! What happened to user-friendly and easy to use? Did you dump all those concepts when you sold your soul to Unix?
-The UI is clearly just slapped onto the Unix that this OS is. It pretends to be like Mac OS, but it is as far from it, functionally, as any Unix is. The UI looks nice, but it “feels” like a pretty mask on an ugly system, where it doesn’t quite belong and some of the functions don’t link up properly to the underpinnings leading to constant need to go fix something via the terminal. (this complaint wont make any sense to you Unix/Linux people, but it makes sense to anyone who was in love with the design of the classic Mac OS; this OS is as far from that user-oriented design as Linux is).
-No meaningful feedback to things that the user has to wait for. Progress bars are most often only representing ONE PART of a process and fail to provide any useful feedback of the overall process (example: Software Update: the progress bars are useless in judging the overall progress of the update). Info provided near the progress bars are often useless (what does “optimizing installation” mean?). Many progress bars are stateless (rotating pretty junk) when the functions certainly are measurable but the developer was lazy.
“A comment can’t be more than 8,000 characters long. Press the back button on your browser and trim your post down.”
5. User Interface responsiveness and behavior SUCKS ASS. Here are a handful of things that piss me off about it: (continued)
-If an app dies, and I click on the dock to get the context menu, I have to wait about five seconds until it shows up and sometimes clicking on force quit doesn’t force quit, then I have to use the three fingered key combo to get the force quit window.
-When apps load, their windows appear and you can move them around, but once the app is ready, the window snaps back to where it was. When an app is loading, if you try to minimize it, it will not work, but once it is done loading (and the hiding is no longer wanted) it minimizes.
-Context menus do not appear in proper places on screen when at edges and appear already scrolled off the edge.
-Finder error messages are USELESS to normal people. When I try to copy a file with more than 31 characters in the name (or if it is unicode) to an HFS disk (not HFS+), the error message is meaningless “file copy/move failed. error -36 occurred” This is USELESS INFO. It’s STILL like this after how many versions???!!
-Logging in takes too long.
-Logging out takes too long.
-All File i/o dialogs default to the user’s Documents folder. There’s apparently no way to stop this. We don’t USE these folders. Why? Because we already have a folder, at the root, that we use for our main Documents storage (from when we used OS9 all the time). We each have our own folders within that folder and we don’t have to worry that the access rights are too strong for someone else to read the files if they want to.
-User preferences are inconsistent. It saves some things per user and not others. (example: folder window appearances – one user will screw up another user’s views when they visit those folders) IDIOCY!
-All the dialog boxes for Printing are BADLY designed, unintuitive, confusing, unorganized and generally CRAP! I’ve not had this much trouble with the Printing dialogs on ANY other OS. Drop down/combo boxes are NOT MEANT to serve the same function that tabbed interfaces provide!!!! Hello Apple!!! What happened to user-friendly and easy to use? Did you dump all those concepts when you sold your soul to Unix?
-The UI is clearly just slapped onto the Unix that this OS is. It pretends to be like Mac OS, but it is as far from it, functionally, as any Unix is. The UI looks nice, but it “feels” like a pretty mask on an ugly system, where it doesn’t quite belong and some of the functions don’t link up properly to the underpinnings leading to constant need to go fix something via the terminal. (this complaint wont make any sense to you Unix/Linux people, but it makes sense to anyone who was in love with the design of the classic Mac OS; this OS is as far from that user-oriented design as Linux is).
-No meaningful feedback to things that the user has to wait for. Progress bars are most often only representing ONE PART of a process and fail to provide any useful feedback of the overall process (example: Software Update: the progress bars are useless in judging the overall progress of the update). Info provided near the progress bars are often useless (what does “optimizing installation” mean?). Many progress bars are stateless (rotating pretty junk) when the functions certainly are measurable but the developer was lazy.
“A comment can’t be more than 8,000 characters long. Press the back button on your browser and trim your post down.”
-Due to the constant context sensitivity of everything (like the menu bar and the pointer) it is hard and awkward to use the rest of the OS when apps are loading or processing (or otherwise making you wait) because of the pathetic window management in this OS. It improves on OS9, and I’m glad about that, but it still sucks. See previous complaints about window management.
-No visual feedback to the startup process.
-Can’t disable ALL the eye candy without 3rd party hacks that are unreliable (when new OS comes out, hacks break). Some eye candy can’t be disabled with 3rd party hacks.
-No way to set default system fonts/sizes/colors for windows, controls, Dock, etc. This is a serious problem for visually disabled people and people with tiny monitors.
-Default terminal settings suck. If you HAVE to use the terminal (and you DO), why not default it to a usable configuration? (path in prompt, etc). Why not? Because this OS is made for and by geeks, not regular people. The GUI designers try to convince us otherwise, but it’s pretty obvious.
-Context menus are poorly considered. They rarely offer all relevant and useful commands. But then, Apple is still fighting to make the claim that one button is best, so why would they care? This is typical of Apple. Users ask for something Apple doesn’t believe in. What do they do? They give it to us, but in a less than thought-out manner.
-Disk preparation must be hunted for (disk tools) instead of being right there in the Finder. They’re so keen on putting CD-R functions right there in the Finder, why the hell must I dig for Disk Tools to initialize a disk?
-File system organization and hierarchy sucks. Tons of meaningless names with meaningless icons. Hard to locate and kill specific preference files. Too many unwanted folders in my home hierarchy. You can no longer create a system disk by copying the system folder to the disk (one of the most sensible, easy and logical concepts ever). I long for the days of OS9. OS9 was the RIGHT way to do things in this area. But what can we do, it’s a Unix, right? Are there any developers and designers from the Classic OS left at Apple or did they all get driven away by the Unix geeks? All indications are that Copland would have been a true sucessor to Classic Mac OS, retaining the beauty and simplicity but politics got in the way.
-Macintosh Hard Drive icon does not stay where I put it, if its text label is within a certain distance to the edge of the screen. The result is that I place the icon where I want it, where it looks fine and it label is fully readable, and OS X moves it the next time I log in. Has nothing to do with users.
-Some apps size beyond the Dock area, some will NOT even if you try to make them. So you have inconsistency and lack of respect for user-choice. Why is this even up to the developer of the app?
-Some Mac OS X’s own apps and programs will quit when you close their window and some require you to Quit them from the Application menu. This is FREAKING STUPID. Apple has long been the worst culpret with inconsistency and with following (or ignoring) their own UI concepts and guidelines. If there was ONE behavior, the user could learn it and move on. But the way things are, you have to make sure you only ever quit apps from their Application menu if you want to be sure it’s Quit and out of memory.
-There is no way to switch among open windows or move the Z-order. It’s a game of “close this one” “hide that one” “move this other one” and “oh, there it is, now I have to click on it.” Have I mentioned that window management sucks?
-Why is there so much waiting in the UI in general? It’s almost as tedious as Windows. Maybe it’s more tedius. I’ve not done any serious comparison. The user should be the most important “process” there is. This isn’t a server I’m running, anyway.
6. Carbonized apps apparently don’t support longer than 31 character file names(??) This inconsistency between Carbonized apps and true OS X apps is rediculous. Apps can pretend to be OS X apps, but they prove they are just updated OS 9 apps through their stupid behaviors. Or is this the developer of the app? Why would that be? Doesn’t the app use the OS file requestors??
7. My USB LS-120 drive is 50-100% slower in OS X than in OS9. When using HFS disks, it is 50% slower. When using FAT disks, it is 100% slower and almost always fails if I am copying more than 35MB of data. The failure will leave the Finder unresponsive (where that drive is concerned) and requires a restart via the reset button (if I try a normal shutdown, it eventually freezes forever). DON’T blame my LS-120 drive. It works BEAUTIFULLY in OS9! One of the BIG problems. Just like most other operating systems, when you get truely bad errors in the i/o, you lose the whole system. Not acceptible in ANY OS but nearly all do it anyway because proper design choices aren’t made at the core. These are often “fix it later” issues or are not often-enough encountered to protect the system from them – go figure, I don’t know all the details.
8. Default permissions are too restrictive for a “desktop end-user-oriented OS.” Why should the three people in my household have to go through such efforts just to get files from each other’s desktops?? We have to use some stupid “shared” folder now? What if we didn’t PLAN on sharing the file?? There should be a GUI control that lets the user specify “read/copy” as the default file permission, not “locked.”
9. TextEdit crashes on me almost every time I use it. I’m not asking much. I just want to type or paste in some text and save it to my desktop. Instead, every time I select my Desktop (because all file i/o boxes default to the Documents folder, which none of us in my house want to use) it freezes and I have to force quit it. NOT ACCEPTABLE. I have turned to BBEdit Lite just to handle plain text files! This is one of the BIG problems.
10. All the mindless and annoying security is beaten by starting the computer in OS9. So what’s the damn point?
11. There is no uninstallation method for the developer tools. I installed them, didn’t accomplish what I wanted, and tried to remove them (waste of space!) and was barred from doing so as I am not ROOT. How do normal users get rid of it? Can they?? NO! Don’t give me some kind of terminal tasks to do to get rid of it, either. Anything that requires the user going to the terminal to solve a problem created while in the GUI indicates FAILURE of design.
12. The WHOLE printing system is a piece of crap. It randomly fails to print without any just cause (try again works or doesn’t work). The print center is not easilly accessible to users (they have to dig for it – why isn’t it available in the Apple menu or in the System Preferences area??). When it fails to print, it gives USELESS messages “Communication with the printer failed” message, print restart job, prints fine – go figure. Sometimes the print service isn’t even started! It actually asks me if I want to start the print service when I try to print sometimes – NO CRAP I want the print service started, MORON! The print center UI sucks and is convoluted and not intuitive. Its behavior and messages assume you have multiple printers whether you do or not, involving unclear messages and more clicking to get where you want to be. See my complaints above about the printing dialogs. We spend more time on the stupid printing process than we should be spending. One of the BIG problems.
13. No way to manage the system add-ons to remove or temporarilly disable drivers that you are troubleshooting. OS9 had this right (though it was getting out of hand).
14. Disk Tools UI displays inconsistent terminology AND incorrect information. HFS is called “HFS” and “Standard Mac OS Filesystem” and HFS+ is called “HFS+” and “Extended Mac OS File System” depending on where you look (the inconsistency is there, despite my inability to recall exact wording). Initialize a disk as Standard HFS and the info tab tells you it is HFS+.
15. Get Info windows do not tell you what filesystem a volume contains. The only way to tell is to try putting data there that you know isn’t compatible with whatever FS you think it might be (like filename lengths longer than 31 characters or using unicode).
16. iTunes wastes hard drive space by making its own library of files (copies of any file you double-click on to play) and makes it unclear where your MP3 files are located. Dialogs and messages compound the problem. It would be REALLY nice if the file system changes in the future eliminate this BS. I download lots of music I don’t want to keep. Why do I have to put out so much effort to remove the files from my system??
17. Mouse pointer speed cannot be set high enough without relying on 3rd party drivers (and I HATE my mouse’s 3rd party drivers because the click response is lazy). This problem is right out of OS9. This is either “the Apple way” or code from Classic Mac OS.
18. Impossible to use the OS without a mouse. I KNOW that Jaguar us supposed to have full keyboard functionality and I have that turned on. I still cannot select and manipulate buttons, windows, icons, etc without the mouse. If someone has clear info to explain how to do this, I would LOVE you to share it with me. The Apple help system SUCKS.
19. Help system is useless. It is the equivalent to a dictionary defining a word by using that word as the definition. Don’t ask me for examples, I have seen too many and can’t recall a specific one. (okay, how about a chart of ALL keyboard commands!!)
20. The Mail program crashes a lot and has confusing UI design and messages. I don’t use it, but whenever I help my girlfriend’s dad with it, it pisses him off and pisses me off too.
21. Input method switching can be slow and lag. Also it is inconsistent due to Mac OS context sensitive design (you toggle to Japanese, type a bit, then you switch to another app and try to type but you have to toggle to Japanese AGAIN! this should be a global setting!)
22. The system isn’t truely multi-tasking and protected as far as I am concerned. Limewire brings our Mac to its knees as long as it is on screen. If I minimize the app, everything goes back to normal. But as long as this app is visible on screen, the ENTIRE OS (except Limewire, ironically) CRAWLS!! Yeah, blame it on the app. The app shouldn’t be able to do this. Clearly it has something to do with redraw, but that’s all I can figure.
23. The Java app “runner” seems to suck, or maybe it’s just that ALL java apps suck on their own. I can’t tell. I’ve never run the same Java app on more than one OS (isn’t that ironic?).
24. I have to reboot after installing things. Why? Can’t the mouse driver installer just restart the input_server? Can’t the sound card driver installer just restart the media_server? Can’t the… oh, yeah, this is a Unix. I forgot. Maybe some of the people at Apple that came from the company that made my personal favorite OS will make some changes… probably not those kinds, though. They have to maintain a level of sameness with the Unix core, right?
I have so many more… I’m sure people here don’t want me to continue and it’s probably safe to assume that I’ve pissed off at least everyone.
After saying all that, I have to admit there are a lot of good things in this OS. Many of those good things are also holdovers from classic Mac OS (or things that the users SCREAMED to be brought back). Others are new things (I don’t like the Dock, but it helps). Though I can’t say that it is definitely an improvement over Classic Mac OS. Mostly I think it is a backwards path. All Classic Mac OS needed was protected memory, true multi-tasking and multithreading. What we got was not a new Mac OS. We got a Unix with a pretty visage stapled on top. Now we have Unix as a buzzword and the ease of use is drowning in technical nonsense. But the good things are not so good that I would prefer this OS over Windows XP. I have no preference between Windows and Mac OS X. To me, they are about nose to nose in usability and friendliness. I use both because we have both kinds of machines here (our Macs were sold with classic Mac OS) and because it helps to suffer differently at different times instead of the same way all the time.
This is the last Part, I promise.
My preferred OS isn’t the one I can spend my whole computer-using time in, so I HAVE to use Mac OS and Windows (each have their function at home). Functionally, OS X is more stable than OS 9 and requires less rebooting, but I would like to see the architecture MASSIVELY changed. It needs to be more Mac OS and less Unix. I suspect that in about six more years Apple will get around to that, but they can’t really do all that much in the end if they want to continue synchronizing their Unix core with the BSD folks. In the end, all Apple can do is improve the UI and make small improvements to the Unix to tie the two together better.
Feel free to email me to continue if you want…
Apple really isn’t who it used to be, and I think it shows now more than ever. From everything I have been able to determine, OS X is NeXTStep 5.x. Mind you, there are differences; for example, I enjoyed using NeXTStep for the most part, whereas OS X makes me feel twitchy and irritated within minutes. Not being able to turn off OS X’s plastic GUI’s extra CPU- and GPU-devouring features is just one of my grievances against it. It’s so very nice to run into someone else that doesn’t bow before this product.
P.S. Yes, I still like it better than Windows XP.
P.P.S. Note that I am a diehard BeOS fan and restrained myself from even one instance of saying, “It’s a real shame Jean-Louis Gassee and Apple couldn’t come to an understanding so all this could have been avoided.” Oops. 😉
Apple wanted Steve back. Unfortunately they paid the price and that was NeXT.
OSX is really a Unix kernal with a GUI added – not all that different in concept to Linux but more polished. The concept is not too bad – it just arrived way too late.