The Idea Basket has published a review of Panther targeted towards Switchers: “Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” finally fulfills the promise of the OS X product line by giving users a fast, stable, and easy-to-use environment in which to get their work and play done as quickly and efficiently as possible — and still have fun to boot. Panther contains some of the most innovative and state-of-the-art technology available in any mainstream OS.”
Panther: A Switcher’s Guide to What’s New in Mac OS X 10.3
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This review is pretty well done, leaves a good feeling after reading it. Doesn’t seem particularly biased and hits home with experiences i can identify with. (If you’re reading this)Well done Jared and thanks for sharing your Panther experiences with us.
I’ve used and supported every MacOS from 8.5 onwards – including the nightmarish 10.0 and the not-much-better 10.1. Until 10.2, I couldn’t stand Macs at all. 10.2 I found to be pretty good – but not good enough. There were still too many quirks to be worked out, and UI performance was a big, ugly issue.
Enter 10.3. We got in a new shipment of G4 towers that came pre-loaded with Panther. On a whim, I snagged one of the install DVDs and went to town on my Mac workstation – something I never used, except for Airport and LDAP (OS X Server) management.
After playing around with Panther for a bit, I was totally blown away. Not only was the performance damn snappy on my 533mhz G4 workstation, the UI was much more intuitive and clean. The hideous (yes, I hate ’em
bright pinstripes were gone, and the Finder had a nice new brushed look. PDF rendering is now *insanely* fast, and things just felt …. more refined. Much more refined.
I stopped using my Linux desktop machines almost immediately and made the switch, and it’s been great (still hanging on to my Linux servers, though.)
If you’ve used OS X in the past, you really should try 10.3 – it’s finally (in my opinion) ready for use.
and thus dont see what the fuzz is a bout.
the finder looks plastered together imho. ui inconsistency galore.
“I stopped using my Linux desktop machines almost immediately and made the switch, and it’s been great (still hanging on to my Linux servers, though.)”
10.2 was actually good enough for me to make me switch from a desktop Linux system at home to a Mac.
i’ve been using os x as one of main os’s since dp3… but i can never get off of linux as a development machine because of the multiple desktops. really, expose is “nice” but it doesn’t compensate for having four completely different desktops that can changed by a key stroke (not a click of the mouse)
10.2 was *not* good enough for me to switch – the speed was abysmal, and 10.2 was really what 10.0 should have been – a decent starting point. 10.2 still was a bit too much like 10.1 for my taste.
I will say that, by the time 10.2.6 rolled around, Apple really had ironed out many stability and just plain weirdness issues that kept me from using it. Speed (and the Finder’s overall design) both held me back.
The speed increase in 10.3 is pretty phenominal, especially on older hardware.
(From a server standpoint, one of my most contentious issues with 10.2 was LDAP with OS X clients and OS X Server – before 10.2.6, it really was flaky as hell. Apple did fix it with 10.2.6 onward; I’ve not had a single client or server authentication issue in any of my labs since I rolled out 10.2.6. Its behavior in 10.3 Server is still something I have to evaluate. However, I couldn’t get the two 10.3 clients I tested to authenticate against a 10.2 server….)
I know shelling out money for software is anathema for many, but do yourself a favor and buy a copy of CodeTek’s Virtual Desktop – http://www.codetek.com . It’s a damn good virtual desktop manager. I had used it quite a bit on my coworker’s 10.2 workstation, and was impressed. The day I switch to Macs, I bought myself a CodeTek Virtual Desktop license within a few hours.
There’s also a free VDM called – wait – Desktop Manager, but it’s a bit buggy. Random crashes in 10.3.1, and a bit spare. (For instance, no sticky windows.) If you want to give it a shot, it’s at http://wsmanager.sf.net .
Both of these can be controlled extensively with hotkeys, including switching to specific desktops or just toggling from one to the next.
To sum up, there are two (one awesome, one pretty darn good for being free) choices for multiple desktop management in OS X.
“and thus dont see what the fuzz is a bout.
the finder looks plastered together imho. ui inconsistency galore.”
What OS is more consistent?… (other than < OSX)
“the finder looks plastered together imho.”
Explain please.
I (we?) have no idea what you’re talking about.
“the speed [of 10.2) was abysmal”
Sure… it could have been improved… but it was far from abysmal. That term would certinly describe 10.0 but certinly not 10.2.
and 10.2 was really what 10.0 should have been – a decent starting point.”
Perhaps, but if you remember back… the community was totally freaking out the lack of an OS X release. Apple even said that it wasn’t really ready for prime time yet… (remember the clock he displayed? At 10.0’s release… he said OS X was essentially only 1/4 optomized.
“10.2 still was a bit too much like 10.1 for my taste.”
There was nothing wrong with 10.1 except for speed issues. Since the speeds issues (for the most part) were gone at that point… I dont understand what you’re getting at.
“I will say that, by the time 10.2.6 rolled around, Apple really had ironed out many stability and just plain weirdness issues that kept me from using it.”
Wierdness issues? Explain please. (are you referring to the LDAP issues you mentioned later in your post?)
“Exposé… Expect to see the open source desktop world copy it before long, with Microsoft waiting in the wings with some Longhorn variant of the feature…”
Actually, I think one of the X window-managers has already duplicated this effect.
However, Exposé is merely a flashier version of the tiling function, which has been around since the dinosaurs. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 had this feature. One would go to the “window” menu and click on vertical or horizontal tiling, and the child windows would arrange themselves accordingly. Then one would merely click the appropriate window button to maximize the desired window. This feature also worked with the windows of application groups. By Windows 95, the tiling feature worked with multiple applications (and not just vertically/horizontally), by right-clicking the taskbar and then clicking the appropriate menu selection.
A good taskbar is probably faster and easier than tiling/Expose’, from a usability standpoint. A taskbar gives constant visual and functional access to all open applications. And, since the order on the taskbar is fairly consistent, there is no reconnoitering or confusion, as encountered with tiling/Expose’ after the windows are tiled/arranged.
Incidentally, I read about a feature similar to Expose’ that existed three years ago in an X window manager (Enlightenment?). The writer touted it as better than Expose’, because of some useful property which I can’t recall now.
Are there any good reviews of xcode out there, I have searched for a long time.
A good taskbar is probably faster and easier than tiling/Expose’, from a usability standpoint. A taskbar gives constant visual and functional access to all open applications.
I liked most of your post, but here you lost me. A taskbar does not show you what is in which window, and a taskbar takes up space, unless you have it automatically hide, in which case it is no longer constant visual and functional access.
Tiling is better than this, and Expose’ is better than tiling — although I agree with your main point, that Expose’ is merely a refinement of tiling.
Only people who have never used exposé for any length of time even consider comparing it to the tile windows function in Windows. In practice, they are light years apart.
However, Exposé is merely a flashier version of the tiling function, which has been around since the dinosaurs.
It’s not just flashier, it’s *much* more functional:
* It’s hotkey activated
* It doesn’t modify your existing window sizes
* It works “on the fly” (eg: during a drag & drop operation)
* When the windows zoom in and out, they stay in the same position on the screen.
* It doesn’t require maximising windows to be useful.
There’s no “mere” about it.
I wouldn’t say Expose is revolutionary in the “completely new idea” sense, but I would say it is in the “enourmous improvements that no-one else has thought of yet on basic principles” sense.
A good taskbar is probably faster and easier than tiling/Expose’, from a usability standpoint.
Not even close. Expose is spatial, visual and strongly leverages Fitt’s law. A taskbar doesn’t have a chance.
Heck, I’m a taskbar junkie and Expose just blew me away with how much faster and easer it was (once I’d changed the terrible default key to one of my mouse buttons).
It doesn’t matter how good you make the taskbar, you can’t get away from the fact that it’s at one edge of the screen, has small buttons and fairly non-descriptive icons and labels.
A taskbar gives constant visual and functional access to all open applications.
Unfortunately it’s all the way down at the bottom the screen and the buttons are relatively small targets.
It’s possibly better for indicating to the user what’s running, but for task switching Expose is faster – and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if actual measurements show a speed increase near an order of magnitude.
And, since the order on the taskbar is fairly consistent, there is no reconnoitering or confusion, as encountered with tiling/Expose’ after the windows are tiled/arranged.
Expose tries to keep the windows in the same position in the “zoomed out” view. They can occasionally move about a bit (but always in the same general area) if you’ve got a bunch of similarly-sized windows “near” each other, but in the couple of dozen-odd hours I’ve used Expose I’ve never found it a problem. Certainly not on par with the incredible-shrinking-taskbar-button problems that can arise if you’ve gots lots of windows open, or regularly open and close different windows – then there’s a *lot* of “reconnoitering”.
Added to that, while the order of the buttons on the taskbar doesn’t change, their position (and size) *can* – and usually does – as more windows are added or that abominable “window grouping” kicks in and collapses all the taskbar buttons into one (assuming you haven’t turned it off).
When the taskbar first appeared, it was a good improvement over the alternatives. Now Expose is here and the bar has been set higher again. I can’t wait to see it in Windows and Linux WMs.
I have never bothered with Mac reviews after the first page and I am a hardcore anti-Macfan… but this one has tickled the more inquisitive side of me. For once, I feel compelled to give 10.3 a test drive.
To Jared, thank you for a balanced and insightful review. It’s a job well done.
I’m glad you enjoyed reading the review. While I *am* an unabashed Mac fan, I tried to keep my bias to a minimum as I was writing about the OS. It’s great to see such a favorable response.
Cheers,
Jared
*** Re: Jack Perry ***
“A taskbar does not show you what is in which window…”
True, but a taskbar constantly shows which windows are available.
“…a taskbar takes up space, unless you have it automatically hide, in which case it is no longer constant visual and functional access.”
True, but in many cases a taskbar can be adjusted to an ideal thickness.
*** Re: drsmithy ***
“It’s [Expose’ is] not just flashier [than tiling], it’s *much* more functional:
* It’s hotkey activated”
Please don’t make me open Windows to find the tiling keys.
“* It doesn’t modify your existing window sizes”
Okay. I agree that in many instances it is important to be able to revert to the original window sizes. Pagers are also ideal for working with optimally sized windows.
“* It works “on the fly” (eg: during a drag & drop operation)”
You must mean Expose’ supports drag & drop. I’m not sure if Windows or any of the X desktops support drag & drop between applications (I haven’t used any M$oft beyond Windows 98, and I only use a tiny, simple WM in X). By the way, I recall that drag & drop first appeared in Ami Pro.
“* When the windows zoom in and out, they stay in the same position on the screen.”
I am pretty sure that Windows tiling preserves positioning… please don’t make me try this.
“* It doesn’t require maximising windows to be useful.”
Okay. But this point sort of goes back to your point on the existing window sizes.
“Expose is spatial, visual and strongly leverages Fitt’s law. A taskbar doesn’t have a chance.”
Certainly it is spatial in its scaling ability, but I am not sure if this feature is a big useability advantage over a taskbar. I can understand that it might be interesting eye-candy. In addition, Expose’ requires an extra step in that the user must click to see the available windows (not to mention the “reconoitering” moment).
Actually, a taskbar on the screen’s edge more greatly utilizes Fitt’s law in the sense that any clickable object at the screen’s edge or corner has a virtually infinite size (the pointer remains within the taskbar item no matter how far one moves the mouse past the edge threshold). As you implied, the number of open windows probably affects a taskbar’s useability/button-width, before it affects Expose’s useability (unless, perhaps, a taskbar could be made to cover all sides of the screen… a task frame?).
“Unfortunately it’s all the way down at the bottom the screen and the buttons are relatively small targets.”
In many WMs, the taskbar can be placed anywhere on the screen. Again, clickable items on the edge have infinite size, but a small width would make clicking difficult.
“I can’t wait to see it [Expose’] in Windows and Linux WMs.
Here is the link to Metacity’s Expose knockoff, “Expocity”:
http://www.pycage.de/expocity.html
Here are two links to the Expocity /. post, commenting on earlier, similarly useful functions of the Enlightenment pager:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=87001&cid=7556800
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=87001&cid=7559856
Overall, I think OS X 10.3 is an evolutionary set of improvements over 10.2. There’s nothing really great in 10.3 — even Expose is more flash than function.
However, 10.3 feels more polished and operates a little more smoothly. It is still sluggish even on the Dual 2Ghz machine which is disappointing.
It will be interesting to see if Apple’s growing number of technical users pushes the platform to be more suited to power users vs. computer idiots.
If Apple were to make the source available to their OS, it would have a much greater chance of becoming more popular. As it is today, Apple is getting the reputation of being a Mini-Me version of Microsoft. Apple will have to take further strides in opening up their operating system, support, and do a better job of listening to customers instead of just listening to Steve.
Goldstein, I’m sorry, but your comments are ridiculous.
10.3 is *not* sluggish on any G5.
Macs have always been used by “power users” and for particular types of technical work. I too hope it will continue in that direction, but it’s never been an OS just for “computer idiots”.
Apple making their source code available would be suicide.
Have you ever used a Mac?
OS X 10.3 is sluggish on all the machines I’ve tried it on, even the dual 2 Ghz G5’s. And by sluggish I mean the UI is slow. It seems like it is treading in sand compared to Microsoft Windows or Amiga.
Can you give me any good reason why drawing a window on the screen using 4GHZ of CPU, 1GHZ of bus, 1GB of RAM, ATI 9600, etc., should be slower than an Amiga running a slow PPC chip?
People that use ONLY Mac may disagree because their perception is attuned to using a slow computer.
At least you didn’t argue about the retarded windows controls. Apple can’t even follow their own UI guidelines.
The Mac has never been thought of as a machine for experts. Show me any Apple advertising that is geared towards intelligent computer users. Last I remember I saw a drugged out teenager hocking Macs on TV. Apple themselves position the Mac as a platform for non-technical users. You are in effect arguing with Apple.
If you simply don’t understand… look at what’s going on with DVD authoring. The tools are much more complete on Windows leading many Mac users to making a PC purchase just so they have tools.
Or take a look at technical documentation. Adobe FrameMaker 7.1 is not even available on Mac.
Or look at 3D tools. Softimage is not available on Mac. Nor are many other tools which support UNIX/Linux/Windows.
There really is no important technical software that is available on Mac and not available in equal or better form on Windows.
If Apple opened their source, they’d establish a trustworthy computer platform. Without open source, any computer platform cannot be trusted. Witness what is happening in Asia with Windows… it is being replaced by Linux in large part due to the spyware that is in Windows. I don’t think for one second that Mac doesn’t have the same sort of malware in it, mandated by the US government.
As for me using a Mac, I’ve used a Mac since the Fat Mac, the 512K version of the original Mac. Along with many PC’s, an Amiga 1000, UNIX, Linux, etc. Because I’ve used other machines, I have perspective that Mac-only zealots do not.
Goldstein haven’t you promised that you’ll restrain from posting on these forums. Keep that promise, until you get some clue. My friend has just received his dual 1.8 and to me(I am mostly Win user) machine seems to be more responsive than my Wintel P4 2.8 512 MB RAM,WinXP.
Goldstein, get back under that bridge your supposed to be guarding!
The general consensus is that you have no idea what you are talking about. Even on G4s with Panther this window lag issue is greatly diminished. Give it a rest kid.
hi,
before i shell out money for os x .3 will it work on my 604 machine which i upgraded to a sonnet G3? 450mhz? is it worth it over os 9?
if it is not compatible, will apple refund my money?
thanks!
Its not likely to run with good reliability.
You may be able to install it using XPost but my experience with a G3 upgraded SuperMac S900 has not been good. The Panther installer states that you need a G3, G4 or G5 that has native USB support.
Sorry mate forgot to put an smiley there ?
as randall has already stated you need to have an USB mac
Not likely with 604 based machine.
Sorry, it looks like I’m too long-winded – had to break this into two posts.
True, but a taskbar constantly shows which windows are available.
I’m not quite sure why this is important. I mean, you’d have to really care about monitoring how many windows are available constantly for this to be significant enough to cancel out all the ways Expose is better.
I’d think most people would find have the window contents displayed much more useful.
True, but in many cases a taskbar can be adjusted to an ideal thickness.
The trouble is, an “ideal thickness” for one thing is rarely an “ideal thickness” for the other unless you’re running trivial numbers of applications. An “ideal thickness” of one row to maximise Fitt’s law benefits makes the taskbar buttons too small with a relatively small number of open windows.
Personally, I’d consider the screen real eastate much more valuable – that’s why my taskbar autohides.
Please don’t make me open Windows to find the tiling keys.
Don’t bother, there aren’t any. Or, at least, I’ve never heard of them in 10+ years of Windows usage, so if they do exist they’re far from common knowledge.
You must mean Expose’ supports drag & drop.
No, I mean you can grab a file from, say, Finder, then activate expose to locate a hidden window, bring it to the front and drop the file. You can’t do that with tiling as it requires a separate action.
I’m not sure if Windows or any of the X desktops support drag & drop between applications (I haven’t used any M$oft beyond Windows 98, and I only use a tiny, simple WM in X).
Windows has supported drag & drop for at least a decade. Granted, it was somewhat limited before Windows 95.
By the way, I recall that drag & drop first appeared in Ami Pro.
Who cares ? I seem to recall the Xerox protoype Apple looked at had primitive drag & drop and I wouoldn’t be at all surprised if it had been theorised before then – it’s a fairly logical progression from having a mouse and GUI in the first place.
Why does everyone have this obsession with who came up with and/or implemented and idea “first” ?
I am pretty sure that Windows tiling preserves positioning… please don’t make me try this.
Don’t bother, it doesn’t. When Windows tiles windows it starts at the top left corner (of each screen) and procedes either vertically or horizonally in the order that the applications (on that screen) appear in the Alt+TAB list (I’m not sure what the official designation of that order is, but that’s the order they’ll be tiled in). Minimised windows are not tiled (Expose doesn’t show them either).
Okay. But this point sort of goes back to your point on the existing window sizes.
No, they are different problems. Changing window sizes, apart from being ****ing annoying, can break some things like terminal sessions. This is a separate issue to having to either maximise or manually resize a window just to make it useful again. The former situation can actually case real problems and not just annoyance.
Certainly it is spatial in its scaling ability, but I am not sure if this feature is a big useability advantage over a taskbar.
Not only its scaling ability, but the fact the windows are all displayed at once and are static in their positions (or very close to it). The buttons on a taskbar can change in position dramatically (eg: from the right end of one row to the left end of the other) – I’ve even noticed my Firebird windows often disappear from the taskbar altogether and I need to bring them to the foreground to make them reappear. Added to that, the area that the “spatiality” covers is the entire screen, as opposed to a small portion of it – so identifying and locating targets should be quicker.
In addition, Expose’ requires an extra step in that the user must click to see the available windows (not to mention the “reconoitering” moment).
The “reconnoitering” moment is, at worst, no different to that required with the Taskbar – and usually better since the windows are easier to identify and so rarely change position by any appreciable amount.
The extra step is completely insignificant[0] – it’s like saying alt-tabbing to the next window on the stack requires an “extra step” over using the taskbar to perform the same action.
[0] This is assuming you change the default shortcut to something more sane, like a mouse button or an alt+tab like combo that can be hit extremely quicky and without thought. A mouse button is the best – watching someone managing a lot of windows with Expose set to a mouse button is really quite amazing.
Actually, a taskbar on the screen’s edge more greatly utilizes Fitt’s law in the sense that any clickable object at the screen’s edge or corner has a virtually infinite size (the pointer remains within the taskbar item no matter how far one moves the mouse past the edge threshold).
This only works if the taskbar is a single layer thick – which with any non-trivial amount of windows is unusable because the buttons become to small (or worse, start to scroll off the bottom).
Expose makes better use of it in different ways.
* On average, the mouse pointer will have to move less distance (since the mouse cursor is usually centrally located and windows “zoom out” around the center of the screen – whereas every usage of the taskbar requires a cursor trip to the bottom of the screen and back).
* The targets are nearly always much bigger
As you implied, the number of open windows probably affects a taskbar’s useability/button-width, before it affects Expose’s useability (unless, perhaps, a taskbar could be made to cover all sides of the screen… a task frame?).
Much before. A taskbar on each edge would be better than just the one, but they’d eventually suffer the same problem. Added to that would be the complexity of four sets of relatively small targets.
In many WMs, the taskbar can be placed anywhere on the screen. Again, clickable items on the edge have infinite size, but a small width would make clicking difficult.
To make the mouse travel distances somewhat comparable, you’d need the taskbar somewhere near the centre of the screen. Even then, as you’ve noted, it will suffer from usability issues because the target buttons are so small (and that’s ignoring the fact it would simply get in the way).
There are some other areas Expose is superior that I haven’t yet touched upon as well. For example, multiple monitors – with the taskbar you need to trek back to the primary screen to access the taskbar, but with Expose each screen “Exposes” the windows that are on it (OS X isn’t perfect though – you still need to go back to the primary screen to access the menu bar). Another issue is that not all displayed windows actually appear on the taskbar (for example, a file properties dialog) whereas all non-hidden windows will be displayed with Expose.
Expose is just better – theoretically *and* pratically. As I said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if real measurements put it an entire order of magnitude faster (even more in the case of multiple monitors !). The only thing the taskbar does better is constantly displaying a (relatively – not all windows are displayed in the taskbar) complete “list” of open windows, which I’d personally consider of fairly limited use.
Here is the link to Metacity’s Expose knockoff, “Expocity”:
I remember reading about it – unfortunately I don’t have an appropriate machine around to install it on and test.
Here are two links to the Expocity /. post, commenting on earlier, similarly useful functions of the Enlightenment pager
Without actually *seeing* it in action I can’t comment. From the explanation it sounds like it would suffer from the same problems as the taskbar (long mouse travel, small targets).
I’d also guess the window updates would either be very slow or simply nonexistant – X doesn’t really have the scaling capability of Quartz. Not that the live window updates are an essential feature of Expose, but they do make it better.
i’ve got 192mb of ram. i upgraded from 604. i installed a pci card that has usb
Goldstein, Panther runs extremely fast on a Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5. If you want to be taken seriously, please don’t post such laughable remarks.
Also, the idea that Macs aren’t for technical work is extremely misguided. Why did you mention SoftImage when you could have just as easily mentioned Lightwave, Maya, Cinema 3D, Cararra, etc. — all available for OS X. Also, Pixar’s RenderMan will be out soon for OS X as well.
There’s tons of Unix/Linux software coming out for OS X all the time. The picture you paint of the Mac being stuck in some kind of weird, proprietary black box might have had a modicum of truth back in 1995, but to continue bringing up that tired old argument now is extremely misleading. This is 2003, and there’s a new Apple on the block, dontcha know?
Regards,
Jared
Thank you for your comments. I think we might be misunderstanding each other’s terminology.
<True, but a taskbar constantly shows which windows are available.>
“I’m not quite sure why this is important.”
From a useability standpoint, it speeds switching between applications to have this consistent mapping of the applications constantly in view. The taskbar button locations become conditioned and familiar.
“The trouble is, an “ideal thickness” for one thing is rarely an “ideal thickness” for the other unless you’re running trivial numbers of applications. An “ideal thickness” of one row to maximise Fitt’s law benefits makes the taskbar buttons too small with a relatively small number of open windows.”
By thickness, I meant the height of a horizontal task bar (which can be reduced the font height to minimize occupied screen real-estate). I have never had any problems instantly clicking on taskbar buttons. I guess the crucial variables are taskbar width and number of open windows.
<Please don’t make me open Windows to find the tiling keys.>
“Don’t bother, there aren’t any.”
The tiling keys for Win3.1 are Shift-f4. I couldn’t find keys for Win98.
<By the way, I recall that drag & drop first appeared in Ami Pro.>
“Who cares ?”
Certainly not any of the Apple users who are convinced that Apple invented the GUI, the mouse, the color screen and the portable MP3 player.
“I seem to recall the Xerox protoype Apple looked at had primitive drag & drop…”
I meant drag & drop text/content, as opposed to cut & paste. Incidentally, there were at least three GUIs before the Apple Lisa: the PARC, the Perq and the Star (see http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline3.html).
“…and I wouoldn’t be at all surprised if it had been theorised before then – it’s a fairly logical progression from having a mouse and GUI in the first place.”
Yes, you are absolutely right. Just like Expose’ is an obvious progression from tiling.
<I am pretty sure that Windows tiling preserves positioning… please don’t make me try this.>
“Don’t bother, it doesn’t.”
In Win98, the “untile” menu button reverts the windows back to their original positions and sizes. Not as convenient as the Expose’ controls, but it has existed for many years, none-the-less.
“The buttons on a taskbar can change in position dramatically (eg: from the right end of one row to the left end of the other) – I’ve even noticed my Firebird windows often disappear from the taskbar altogether and I need to bring them to the foreground to make them reappear.”
What WM/desktop do you use?
“Added to that, the area that the “spatiality” covers is the entire screen, as opposed to a small portion of it – so identifying and locating targets should be quicker.”
Again. Back to my earlier useability point… by having the taskbar buttons constantly in view, their positions are “prelinked” in the user’s mind, eliminating the subsequent identifying and locating you mentioned.
“Expose makes better use of it in different ways.”
* On average, the mouse pointer will have to move less distance (since the mouse cursor is usually centrally located and windows “zoom out” around the center of the screen – whereas every usage of the taskbar requires a cursor trip to the bottom of the screen and back).”
With mouse acceleration, a quick flick of the wrist puts the pointer right on the taskbar button.
“* The targets are nearly always much bigger”
How can they be bigger than infinity? As long as the virtuallly infinite taskbar buttons are wide enough, there is usually no problem.
Expose is awesome, and I find the suggestion that it is comparable to tiling a joke.
Although I would qualify this by saying that Expose comes into its own when you use a mouse button as the activiation rather than F9.
Expose is one of those pretty features people dismiss as gloss until you start using it for a while. All of a sudden you ask yourself “how did I ever manage without this”
I use Win2k at work and have never found the tiling feature to be particularlarly usefull (maybe its because I use a laptop and screen realestate is an issue, conversely expose is perfect for my 12” G4)
Goldstein, I’m not trying to pile on here. I’m not a Mac zealot. I use Windows XP and it is lightning fast on my Dell 2.4 GHz P4. But your comment about UI responsiveness on a 2.0 GHz G5 – I just don’t know where you’re coming from. With the G5 those problems (including mouse slowness) are gone.
Wasn’t it Dell’s the drugged out kid was hawking? 🙂
I’ll leave the technical business alone, except too say I too hope Apple and OS X continue to move in that direction – more areas of technical software…scientific, etc.
Apple cannot, as a company, open up its source code – nobody would buy that exclusive hardware then 😉
Goldstein to me it seems you are just as much as zealot as you acuse mac users of being. You just seem to be anti-mac zealot.
The thing you are forgetting is that most Mac users have or still do use Windows and other OS’s either because of work or other situations. Whereas most Windows or Linux users have never used a Mac. Most of them because they buy a $500 machine and proclaim it to be a quality fast machine, and look at the price for a Mac and say oh its to expensive and can’t get all my programs (read games)
(to then by another one 12 months later) although i will say that Linux users normally doesn’t seem to be as speed obsessed as Windows users (but then again with such a Worm for and OS you have to tout your horn somehow).
And as for you, you are talking about Amiga OS. Now that is being a zealot. You are using an OS, that while it was a great os in its day, it doesn’t exist anymore. The company is gone. I know that it is out there still as an OS, but really admit to being a Zealot yourself.
I thought this review was spot on. I myself recently joined the mac world and have found Panther to be the greatest desktop OS Ive used to date. Like anything, there is always room for improvement, but in the case of OSX we have Apple making great strides with yearly releases. Panther is now at the top of its class and will only continue to improve. With MS software you get what you get….then you get to wait another 5 years for some improvement. And, at that, the improvements are more along the lines of maintnence with nothing much in the way of innovation or improvement.
Re: Expose, I agree its not revolutionary, but at the same time I would say its a massive step forward and definately innovative. It has quickly become one of my favorite window management features. And while this doesnt exactly blow everyones skirts up, I really love the eye candy in OSX.
Re: Sluggishness?!?! Um I have no idea where this comes from. My Powerbook 1ghz, 1gb DDR, GF4 running Panther is not sluggish at all. Everything is very zippy and it multitasks well….except maybe when youre video encoding etc. About the only thing that may cause some lagging for me is a direct result of the typical slowness of laptop hard drives and in no way has anything to do with Panther. Id say its right on par with my XP machine (AMD Barton 2800, 1gb DDR) with a few caviats in favor of OSX. With XP a nice clean install generally gives you a nice lightning fast system. However, once you start piling the apps on it tends to get slower and slower as a whole….lets also not forget how lovely the, pretty much required, virus scanners are on XP performance. This is pretty much characteristic of any Windows OS, and is not an issue with any *nix based OS.
Firstly, Eugenia was NOT the author of this article. She simply links to the articles for our benefit. Secondly, it IS an OS oriented article. Thirdly, on the same note, one might also ask “What is the point of your presence on this thread?”
And it was a good, fair review to boot!
With Apple committing herself to the open standard/source community with complete NT network compatibility combined with the best unix/gui-os the message of this review is: We are in no way dependent on the MS monopoly anymore.
Hurray!!!
I find these comparisons of Tiling to Exposé pretty humorous. Does Tiling allow you to simultaneously Tile *all* windows of *all* apps? Can you assign Hot Corners to toggle it on and off? Can you hit a key to cycle through open application windows (` on the Mac)?
As for Windows and drag and drop, although it “supports” it, its support is so poor that users are quickly discouraged from using it for anything more than the most basic tasks:
http://www.xvsxp.com/draganddrop/
And Ambrosia has posted a jaw dropping video of Exposé being stress tested:
http://mahajir.ambrosia.net/spx2_panther_expose.mov
To demean Exposé as mere eye candy is to completely overlook the usability that comes from a feature that is so intuitive and engaging.
Tup while it would seem that the task bar would be a better example of Fitts law unfortunately it isn’t. The tiles for each window do not go to the edge which actually means you have to stop your cursor before hitting the bottom edge. There is a one to two pixel space below the tiles.
With a small modification it could be greatly improved. You would think over the years they would fix it. Then again Apple has made the error of not having the Apple menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen. There is actually about 6 pixels of space to the left of it that are wasted. Very sad and a poor design choice. : )
Re: Pouliot
“I find these comparisons of Tiling to Exposé pretty humorous. Does Tiling allow you to simultaneously Tile *all* windows of *all* apps?”
Of course! Tiling allows one to simultaneously tile all windows of all apps!!!
“Can you assign Hot Corners to toggle it on and off?”
What the f**k is Hot Corners?!!
“Can you hit a key to cycle through open application windows (` on the Mac)?”
Er…. how about Alt-Tab ?!!!!!!!!!!
“As for Windows and drag and drop, although it “supports” it, its support is so poor that users are quickly discouraged from using it for anything more than the most basic tasks”
Er…uh… yes…. like… perhaps Windows Ami Pro draging & dropping complex text and formatted content back in 1992!!!!!!!!!!
“To demean Exposé as mere eye candy is to completely overlook the usability that comes from a feature that is so intuitive and engaging.”
Yes, and Expose’ is just one extra step from the task-bar efficiency!
RE: Sam K
“Tup while it would seem that the task bar would be a better example of Fitts law unfortunately it isn’t. The tiles for each window do not go to the edge which actually means you have to stop your cursor before hitting the bottom edge. There is a one to two pixel space below the tiles.”
Which WM are you using????!!!!… are you using a taskbar on Apple???
“Then again Apple has made the error of not having the Apple menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen. There is actually about 6 pixels of space to the left of it that are wasted. Very sad and a poor design choice. : )Then again Apple has made the error of not having the Apple menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen. There is actually about 6 pixels of space to the left of it that are wasted. Very sad and a poor design choice. : )”
Yes. When one goes with Apple, one is stuck with the sole Apple GUI choice!
“
From a useability standpoint, it speeds switching between applications to have this consistent mapping of the applications constantly in view. The taskbar button locations become conditioned and familiar.
Except they move around a lot and they all look *very* similar.
By thickness, I meant the height of a horizontal task bar (which can be reduced the font height to minimize occupied screen real-estate). I have never had any problems instantly clicking on taskbar buttons. I guess the crucial variables are taskbar width and number of open windows.
I know what you mean and my comment stands. To make the height useful in terms of how many windows can be on it, it needs to be more than a row high. Reducing the font makes the already small writing even smaller and the icons alone are not enough to identify windows, so that text is necessary.
To make the height useful in tersm of “infinite sized targets” you can only have one row – which impact usability in terms of how many windows can be open.
The tiling keys for Win3.1 are Shift-f4. I couldn’t find keys for Win98.
It’s been a long time since I’ve used 3.1, but I think you’ll find that only tiles document windows inside MDI apps, not all windows inside the shell. Other versions of Windows are they same.
In any event, this comparison has passed the point of silly and into the realms of ridiculous. It should be plainly obvious that the execution of Expose – a single hotkey or mouse click – is infinitely superior to any implementation of tiling in any version of Windows.
Certainly not any of the Apple users who are convinced that Apple invented the GUI, the mouse, the color screen and the portable MP3 player.
You’re baiting the wrong hook. I’m no Apple fan.
I meant drag & drop text/content, as opposed to cut & paste. Incidentally, there were at least three GUIs before the Apple Lisa: the PARC, the Perq and the Star (see http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline3.html).
I know what you meant. I don’t know when Ami Pro first appeared, but the original Mac GUI supported dragging & dropping of GUI objects – but I’m pretty sure the idea had appeared before then.
In Win98, the “untile” menu button reverts the windows back to their original positions and sizes. Not as convenient as the Expose’ controls, but it has existed for many years, none-the-less.
But the “undo tile” function makes it useless for task switching, as it returns focus to the application it was originally on.
“The buttons on a taskbar can change in position dramatically (eg: from the right end of one row to the left end of the other) – I’ve even noticed my Firebird windows often disappear from the taskbar altogether and I need to bring them to the foreground to make them reappear.”
What WM/desktop do you use?
That was under Windows.
Again. Back to my earlier useability point… by having the taskbar buttons constantly in view, their positions are “prelinked” in the user’s mind, eliminating the subsequent identifying and locating you mentioned.
As they are once Expose has been activated once or twice – same principle applies to both the taskbar and Expose. Only expose gives much better visual feedback and individual windows are easier to identify.
With mouse acceleration, a quick flick of the wrist puts the pointer right on the taskbar button.
Nevertheless, it has to move further.
How can they be bigger than infinity?
Becaues, as I’ve pointed out, to get the advantage of infinite height, you need to make the taskbar a practically unusable single layer of buttons. Added to that, taskbar buttons aren’t especially wide and get narrower quickly.
As long as the virtuallly infinite taskbar buttons are wide enough, there is usually no problem.
Trouble is, they only stay wide enough for about the first four or so open windows.