Apple unveils Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion coming this summer with 100+ new features

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  • Reply 221 of 273
    I'm going to hold out for OS 10.9 "Sea Lion."
  • Reply 222 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    These posts crack me up. having a rudimentary version of something and having something that is well integrated and usable are two different things.



    You'd be surprised... Linux's issues have nothing to do with the OS itself, but marketing and various other failings. But the filesystem is incredibly good, the UI can be nice, and its a very good, safe, stable system. Notifications and whatnot are very well integrated into some Linux OSes.



    Regardless, Linux will never touch anywhere near OSX's market share, but its servers run just about everything.
  • Reply 223 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sennen View Post


    I don't share your pessimism. From Gruber today, note the bold:



    Apple has been more than happy to disrupt it's own products over the past 10 years - the laptop becoming dominant over the desktop, the iPhone replacing the iPod, the iPad now looking at displacing the laptop. I doubt that Apple will sit still with the iPad. There are people at Apple who have read Clay Christensen, you know



    Equally, one day Apple itself will be disrupted, this is unavoidable. However, I don't see anything in ML that doesn't allow someone to use an Apple computer to do "serious computing". And perhaps the notion of "serious computing" itself will be different in 5 years to what it is now?





    This is a topic worthy for separate consideration on AI or somewhere: what is "serious computing" now and what will it be in five years? At root is the definition of computing, whether writing code is computing, whether popping an app icon is computing, whether watching a TV show via Apple TV is computing, or whether computing is -- and this is the definition I prefer -- being able to use a computer to characterize, deconstruct, and solve a problem that hasn't been solved before.



    Thanks, sennen, for putting it on the table.



    As for the issue of disruption, I agree that Apple has been self-disruptive in the past -- but the appearance of a string of Mac OSs based on iOS, now called only "OSX," and the integration of Apple everything with everything else suggests that those days are over.



    Self-disruption was characteristic of past high-profile Apple visionaries and inventors, and investors who enjoyed the adventure. Who can name one now?



    They are no more. Faceless finance is now in charge.
  • Reply 224 of 273
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    I agree that you should start looking elsewhere.



    I did, I stuck him and his 10 posts on ignore. Oh wait, you meant HIM to look elsewhere.



    Yah. The "digital toys" being used by doctors, the air force, wall street, etc are obviously really distracting him from "serious computing".
  • Reply 225 of 273
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by myapplelove View Post


    I care about it a lot because ...



    This long diatribe can essentially be summarized as "GET OFF MY LAWN!"



    /shrug



    As an older person with bad eyesight old cranky people annoy me when they start saying stupid stuff like this. The older we get the more like kids we become. I didn't get the kind of candy I wanted! Waaaah! Tantrum! Tantrum!



    Mkay. There are more useful features to aid eyesight issues in OSX than I've found in Win7.



    And if it comes down to it, use a small (32"-42") 1080p HDTV for a monitor. The UI is freaking huge and the resolution provides sufficient screen real estate. Resolution independence doesn't buy you crap given the end result is a smaller desktop on a bigger screen. Gee, that's what a bigger monitor with lower resolution does. Any other image quality gains you get from a hdpi screen isn't missed because, why? You have shitty eyesight which is why you wanted res independence in the first place.
  • Reply 226 of 273
    +1 for iBooks on OS X, seems an odd omission not to have it. If you have a macbook air you might quite like to read a book on a commute etc as opposed to carrying an iPad with you too. If you don't need it don't run it.



    Is there any mention of resolution independence? IF new high-res macbooks on way we're going to run into font size issues. (I can't believe they are not coming because there will be the inability to preview iBooks/ iPad retina apps at 1:1.)
  • Reply 227 of 273
    haarhaar Posts: 563member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Would 3.8Mbps be an acceptable bitrate for that sort of thing?



    no. for 1080p 10Mbps would be O.K.



    thats because SD vs 720 HD has 2.66667 more pixels ,so 720p vs 1080p24 has 2.25 times more pixels, thus SD 1.5Mbps, HD 720p 4.8Mbps, and 1080p24 10Mbps.





    (bluray is 25Mbps average, peak to 50Mbps)



    I find that 720p itunes 4Mbps is not good enough for a tv set. (great for ipad ) i find that the HD itunes movies look "noisy" .



    in any case the movies use "macroblocks" to encode the picture, the greater the resolution, the more macroblocks you need for the same quality at resolution. (SD itunes looks good, so does HD itunes compared to each other, because SD itunes approx 1.5 Mbps whereas HD itunes is approx 4.5 Mbps.)
  • Reply 228 of 273
    @cyberoid It has been very enlightening to read your lucid and intelligent posts.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nht View Post


    This long diatribe can essentially be summarized as "GET OFF MY LAWN!"



    /shrug



    As an older person with bad eyesight old cranky people annoy me when they start saying stupid stuff like this. The older we get the more like kids we become. I didn't get the kind of candy I wanted! Waaaah! Tantrum! Tantrum!



    Mkay. There are more useful features to aid eyesight issues in OSX than I've found in Win7.



    And if it comes down to it, use a small (32"-42") 1080p HDTV for a monitor. The UI is freaking huge and the resolution provides sufficient screen real estate. Resolution independence doesn't buy you crap given the end result is a smaller desktop on a bigger screen. Gee, that's what a bigger monitor with lower resolution does. Any other image quality gains you get from a hdpi screen isn't missed because, why? You have shitty eyesight which is why you wanted res independence in the first place.



    Apparently you are unaware of some of the basics of resolution independence and computer monitor technology. But you seem very capable at ad hominems and offending others as well as blind apologism.



    Lcds are meant to be run at their native resolution, otherwise they become fuzzy, that's why lowering the native resolution on an lcd screen doesn't work for people who have astigmatism, or are sensitive to glare, eye strain or for that matter any type of typeset on a computer monitor that is not well defined.



    Zooming in and out of font as is implemented in os x for accessibility also causes the text to appear fuzzy and this is not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact.



    Even people with perfect eyesight benefit a lot from well defined characters on a screen, that's why extremely large dot pitches such as the ones on the current iphones are making people everywhere attest to how good they find the iphone screen for reading due to its high dot pitch.



    In order to be able to run higher dpi monitors like the ones that appear in apple's portables and benefit from their increased pitch there has to be a way that os fonts do not constantly decrease in size as the resolution increases. (and all this of course has nothing to do with screen real estate). But that the user can set to enlarge their size across the os according to their preferences so by becoming larger they become more legible. There is no benefit from a screen with increased dpi when the fonts become smaller and smaller with every further increase in resolution and there is no way to make them uniformly larger. They benefit from getting better defined letters due to the higher dpi but if the letters become smaller and smaller that benefit is negated.



    Another issue that affects legibility of fonts, on the hardware side is the choice of the type of lcd technlogy used (pva, tn, ips, pls panels) and above all the coating used on the monitor. With modern ips screens almost all manufacturers are opting for extremely grainy and aggressive coatings that reduce reflectivity but give the text a very sparkly effect. Much less so in tn or pva panels. There's also the issue of reflections as I hinted at. No technology on a large scale exists today that can manage both a clear coating and an effective reduction in glare. Some are being researched. Apple has opted to mar their whole line up of macs with glass panels, with hardly any antireflective treatment. These glass layers are super imposed on top of the lcd screen, thus making two surfaces available for refraction of light, which are not even fused together as in the current iphones (how does it always end up to the fact that iphone is the only thing anyone really cares about in apple to actually aggressively move technology forward...). Glass is also highly reflective and that is a further reason why imacs cause eye strain. Of course, it goes without saying, that a clear coating makes fonts appear more clear the trade off is such high reflections.



    On both the software side what with no resolution independence and the screen tech on on modern macs, apple has not opted to invest any of their enormous money in the bank to actively research and promote technologies that would enable better legibility. They seem to not care about what is becoming an increasing problem in computer use. That of computers degrading users eye-sight and causing enormous eye strain (as well as headaches) to the user.



    I wonder how we got from Steve Jobs quitting college and attending a couple of calligraphy classes thus inspiring him to enable the macs to have more elegant typesets to the current state of affairs where one has to beg for apple to innovate in their screen coatings and for them to implement more legible fonts on the mac.



    But whoopy, I have reminders app and twitter integration, and I can finally learn chinese because the os supports it.
  • Reply 229 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cyberoid View Post


    ...

    Maybe it's time to start looking elsewhere -- or for Apple to cut loose the Mac division and let it sink or swim without the baggage of the digital toys. Keep the compatibility but lose the lame interface designs and performance. I bet it -- and we -- would do just fine.



    Yup. My current Mac will be my last Mac. At first it was because they switched the iMacs to glossy displays, but now it's their continued 'dummification' of OS X. I've long since accepted their completely inconsistent interface, but that's also another nail in the coffin.



    Looks like my next OS will be some version of Linux.



    Sucks as I've been using Mac's since the mid-80's.
  • Reply 230 of 273
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    I think it's great, it's like the early days of OS X when things were evolving very fast.
  • Reply 231 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post


    Yup. My current Mac will be my last Mac. At first it was because they switched the iMacs to glossy displays, but now it's their continued 'dummification' of OS X. I've long since accepted their completely inconsistent interface, but that's also another nail in the coffin.



    Looks like my next OS will be some version of Linux.



    Sucks as I've been using Mac's since the mid-80's.



    Bye. You're being a complete fool, but bye. It's obvious you won't wake up to reality, so enjoy learning a new OS for no reason.
  • Reply 232 of 273
    So with all the rumors about a TV or the next iPad or whatever, I did not see one report on any site, including AI, that said "rumor has it that Apple will release a new OSX in the summer of 12". Rumor mongers missed this one. Apple makes them all look a bit more foolish again. To be fair Apple got smart and got all the journalists to sign NDA's, then gave them first look. Smart way to shut down the rumor mill. My guess is when the rumors for a TV stop, that will be the indication it's real, or maybe not.
  • Reply 233 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kent909 View Post


    My guess is when the rumors for a TV stop, that will be the indication it's real, or maybe not.



    Just like when the rumors for the iPhone nano stopped, Apple released a smaller iPho? wait?



    Or when the xMac talk st? oh, that has NEVER stopped, has it. Well, at least it has NEVER been a rumor.
  • Reply 234 of 273
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    I think it was the last event Jobs spoke that he said the Mac was "just another device." I could see Apple changing the accounting for Macs that would make yearly updates free of charge. This could end up being more profitable for Apple as it could...
    1. Increase Mac ownership since free yearly OS updates would be considered value added.

    2. Lower the cost of the support since more users would be getting the latest OS updates since no cost is being applied.

    3. Eventually shorten the timeframe in which older Macs are supported to something more akin to the 3 years for iOS-based devices instead of going back 5 to 6 years for most machines.

  • Reply 235 of 273
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member
    based on this thread, maybe the best thing about Mountain Lion is all the endless whiners who will finally abandoned Mac OS and switch to Linux to continue forever with their "true computing." hopefully also migrating to Linux fan sites.
  • Reply 236 of 273
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    I don't know why people think Mountain Lion is dumbed down. What's dumb about Notes, Reminders, Notifications, Cloud Integration, Code signing, Airplay Mirroring?



    Ok, Twitter is dumb, but I don't mind all the social networking stuff if it's hidden behind a Share Sheet button I can safely ignore.



    You can still do all the hard core stuff you can do with Lion: open a terminal window, write your own app in C and run it (without signing if you don't want)... There's no dumbing down.
  • Reply 237 of 273
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    I don't know why people think Mountain Lion is dumbed down. What's dumb about Notes, Reminders, Notifications, Cloud Integration, Code signing, Airplay Mirroring?



    Ok, Twitter is dumb, but I don't mind all the social networking stuff if it's hidden behind a Share Sheet button I can safely ignore.



    You can still do all the hard core stuff you can do with Lion: open a terminal window, write your own app in C and run it (without signing if you don't want)... There's no dumbing down.



    It's just the newest way to troll. Fact is some of us have been using Apple since the Apple II days and the company has never sought to make their computers more complex to use. Steve used to parrot the phrase "the computer for the rest of us" .



    Yet some people get nostalgic and suddenly the "good ole" years were when the UI wasn't tailored to allow mom and grandma to understand easily thereby forcing them to appeal to their technical wizardry.



    Mountain Lion to me makes sense in almost every way.



    iCloud -



    Now that Apple has an extensible sync technology kludges like syncing To-Do through CalDav and Notes through IMAP are gone. Those features are now pulled out of Calendar and Mail and made rightfully into their own apps.



    I think there was a realization from Apple that you cannot effectively build a sync foundation at the same time as the OS and expect everything to be solid. ML should rectify this to some extent and clearly cleans up the hazy "Documents in the Cloud" that we have with Lion.





    I'm finding that I don't need some grand new feature added. I need a further evolutionary improvement to the features we have now. Excited for what's coming her and to me it's anything but dumbed down.
  • Reply 238 of 273
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by myapplelove View Post


    Apparently you are unaware of some of the basics of resolution independence and computer monitor technology. But you seem very capable at ad hominems and offending others as well as blind apologism.



    Nope. Very aware of monitor technology and rez independence. Rez independence can be both a great boon and a great headache for the developer.



    U mad bro?



    Quote:

    Lcds are meant to be run at their native resolution, otherwise they become fuzzy, that's why lowering the native resolution on an lcd screen doesn't work for people who have astigmatism, or are sensitive to glare, eye strain or for that matter any type of typeset on a computer monitor that is not well defined.



    Never said a word about running at lower than native resolution. I said get a bigger monitor at the same resolution.



    Quote:

    Zooming in and out of font as is implemented in os x for accessibility also causes the text to appear fuzzy and this is not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact.



    Yes, using the accessibility magnifying glass does make the text fuzzier. I hope you aren't doing that in Safari or MS Office. They have working zoom for text.



    Quote:

    Even people with perfect eyesight benefit a lot from well defined characters on a screen, that's why extremely large dot pitches such as the ones on the current iphones are making people everywhere attest to how good they find the iphone screen for reading due to its high dot pitch.



    You have crappy eyesight or so you claim. Increased dot pitches have very little value to you given you can't see the pixel structure anyway much less sub-pixel structure. Okay, if you're highly astigmatic WITH otherwise good vision maybe but probably the corrective measures is probably causing other visual artifacts reducing acuity anyway.



    The odds you are both highly astigmatic AND have good vision otherwise is reasonably low. Especially if you are complaining about resolution independence.



    And dot pitch is better the smaller the number gets given it's the space between subpixels. You can measure as dots per inch but typically when you say "dot pitch" the measure is in mm.



    Typically PPI is the increasing measure when resolution is increased for a given screen size.



    For example:



    The iPhone 3G has a dot pitch of 0.1541mm and a 164.83 PPI

    The iPhone 4S has a dot pitch of 0.0771mm and a 329.65 PPI



    But given you're such a screen expert you knew all that and that a large dot pitch is crappier not better.



    Quote:

    In order to be able to run higher dpi monitors like the ones that appear in apple's portables and benefit from their increased pitch there has to be a way that os fonts do not constantly decrease in size as the resolution increases. (and all this of course has nothing to do with screen real estate).



    We're talking about OSX and not iOS. The ability for Mountain Lion to do or not do resolution independence has nothing to do with portables except laptops. In which case you should stop spending money on the higher resolution 15" display and get the default medium rez panel.



    Resolution has everything to do with desktop screen real estate. The higher the resolution the more pixels to park things. Hence more real estate for icons, lines of text, image, whatever. 1024x768 is tight. 1920x1080 good. 2560x1440 very roomy.



    This is why 1024x700 netbooks sucked for web browsing. With all the window decorations and stuff the actual web page had very little vertical space.



    Quote:

    But that the user can set to enlarge their size across the os according to their preferences so by becoming larger they become more legible.



    Which reduces screen real estate because OMG everything is bigger and you have less room to actually put stuff.



    Quote:

    There is no benefit from a screen with increased dpi when the fonts become smaller and smaller with every further increase in resolution and there is no way to make them uniformly larger. They benefit from getting better defined letters due to the higher dpi but if the letters become smaller and smaller that benefit is negated.



    If your vision didn't suck you might realize that increased resolution means more screen real estate for stuff you CAN see. With better vision you can in fact read smaller fonts and have more lines of text on the screen at one time. Whether that's a word document, lines of code or whatever.



    That's a big benefit. Unless you're blind...figuratively and literally.



    Quote:

    Another issue that affects legibility of fonts, on the hardware side is the choice of the type of lcd technlogy used (pva, tn, ips, pls panels) and above all the coating used on the monitor...



    blah blah blah



    Which has butkus to do with resolution independence aside from you wanting larger text/icons in the same space.



    Which is achieved on the desktop by what? Oh a bigger monitor at the same resolution which is what I suggested. On a laptop, it means the same size display with lower resolution (13" MBP vs 13" MBA or lower vs higher rez 15" MBP).



    I guarandamntee you that if you switched to a 32+" 1920x1080 HDTV (60 Hz) with IPS or PVA matte panel vs whatever hdpi monitor you're using you could see everything a lot better as long as the TV has a decent PC or Game mode (no extra video processing and perfect 1:1 pixel match).



    Given you're blind like I am you wont see the pixel structure at normal monitor distances anyway.



    It is more expense? Sure. The iMac comes with a screen...a pretty nice one at that. Getting a second monitor is more money. Then again, the 21" iMac is $500 less than the 27". That's plenty to opt for a 21" iMac and a 32" HDTV which will probably run you less than $500.



    Quote:

    They seem to not care about what is becoming an increasing problem in computer use. That of computers degrading users eye-sight and causing enormous eye strain (as well as headaches) to the user.



    Because evidently their primary demographic isn't old blind people like you and me. Waaaaaaaah.



    Buy a better for you desktop monitor. Go for the mini vs the iMac if having a second higher rez screen is useless for you. Even shifting to a 1920x1080 27" monitor would be good vs either iMac panels.



    This one is likely a TN panel but what do you want for $330.



    http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-P2770H.../dp/B0032ANC00



    Given that many cheap eIPS monitors are coming out I'm sure there will be a cheap 27" eIPS eventually. Or you can play panel lottery with the LG 1080 HDTVs and get a IPS or PVA one.
  • Reply 239 of 273
    Meh \



    No Finder improvements - after all these years????



    If there are no Finder windows showing, when I select the Finder app, I'd like two Finder windows automatically opened spanning the screen the same size one beneath the other. That's what I'd like to see - better ways to manipulate files. I use Google's 'Quick Search Box' rather than Spotlight as it is faster by miles.



    While the changes are no doubt clever, it seems Apple hasn't got a grip on Computer-User priorities, and instead have focused on game-player priorities.
  • Reply 240 of 273
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Alfiejr View Post


    Expose was too fussy for me, so i never used it. i actually use Mission Control and find it helpful.



    which proves, many of these things are simply matters of personal taste.



    I came to MacOSX a year or so ago - from Linux - and have not regretted the move. One of the things that appealed to me right away was space/expose. On Linux I had multiple virtual desktops and, unlike Windows, so did the Mac! One of the features I used a lot in Linux - and which the Mac also had - was the ability to easily move windows from one desktop to another. I use that every day.



    But with Lion, that capability just, poof, went away. Mission control does it in such a clumsy way: you have to first select the "source" (the one containing the window you want to move) and then drag that to the miniature representation of the "target" desktop.....in Expose, you could simply move the window! Not only that, in Lion, if the window is on the secondary monitor, it's even more awkward: you have to do the above AND THEN select the destination desktop AND THEN move the window once again to its place on the secondary monitor. This really sucks.



    I don't have enough history with MacOSX to know whether it's going downhill or not, but this is a feature that *lost* usability rather than improved it. And I wish the Apple team invested some time in getting it back into Mac OSX.
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