"Incredibly successful release of Lion"? There's a 150-page "discussion" on the Apple Forum, one of several such threads, that indicate the release was anything but successful. Sure, if you blatanltly misrepresent a weak product, people are going to buy it based on their expectations from the past. For Apple to try and ignore what's gone down with Lion is outrageous.
Enlighten us, what 'went down' with Lion?
Quote:
And oh, how we so love those great iPad and iOS operating systems.
You are trolling, really.
Quote:
Maybe it's time to start looking elsewhere
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Start reading here for firsthand accounts of the Lion fiasco. Then read the other dozen or so threads complaining of overheating (my Air's CPU took off and fried the logic board and the SSDs), low battery life, need for upgrades to run perfectly fine prior applications, and the general idiocy of the iOS interface. I don't shill for Apple, I want it to get better. Becoming a de facto monopolist that imprisons its users and developers for its own enrichment is so Robber Baron.
Why haven't I seen any of those threads here or anyone really complaining about Lion in that way? We got a lot of Rosetta complains here, sure, but that's Rosetta. If your app is six years old, you deserve to be obsoleted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberoid
…general idiocy of the iOS interface… …de facto monopolist that imprisons its users and developers…
I don't think it's unreasonable to bring up the issues with Lion. It's arguably been the most problematic release since 10.0. To call it a fiasco, however is over the top, in my opinion.
The last thing I want is my Mac to be more like my iPod. Crossing fingers that Apple doesn't screw this up...
Agreed, I don't want my MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros and PowerMacs reduced to cheap cell phone functionality or iPad functionality best suited to novice users.
I don't blame Apple for going after the consumer business but I dislike "upgrades" that actually de-feature the OS. I bought many of these powerful pro machines to do certain tasks in an efficient manner. I don't want them turned into consumer equipment.
A wise shift here might be to use the different types of users built into OS X. Managed, Standard and Admin accounts in OS X could conceivably be leveraged to maintain what thin differentiation that still remains between the cell phone world of Apple and what used to be the second word in the company's name.
I liked to call lion os x 10.7 vista, and I was exaggerating, sadly from what we know today mountain lion is os x 10.8 vista.
Sure is a good thing you're wrong. As evidenced by accounts of people who've actually used the Developer Preview of 10.8 and who actually have information from which they can formulate ANY sort of truthful opinion with weight behind it.
As opposed to what you've said. In what way, pray tell, is this supposed to be "Vistaesque"?
I don't think it's unreasonable to bring up the issues with Lion. It's arguably been the most problematic release since 10.0. To call it a fiasco, however is over the top, in my opinion.
it's fair to say Apple is much less concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft. Snow Leopard and especially Lion broke a lot of old software and left a lot of old hardware behind. that has caused lots of those issues. whereas MS Windows is definitely slowed down by its massive legacy demands, and is more complicated as a result too.
maybe it really is because Apple wants to incentivize hardware sales. but i also think it's just part of the Apple DNA - pushing the new even at the price of leaving behind the comfortable. the iOS-ification of OS X is plainly where Apple is going no matter what. take it or leave it (just reinstall Leopard).
you know, the old sytle desktop computer OS had to die someday.
you know, the old sytle desktop computer OS had to die someday.
And this is EXACTLY what's happening. People are whining about the iOS-ness and multitouch additions in the same fashion as when they complained about the move to a GUI between the Apple ][ and the Macintosh.
We just have to deal with it more visibly because the Internet exists this time around.
When you think about just how long it has been since computers were last revolutionized (particularly in respect to how much less time it took for the last transition from Altair to Apple ][), you have to wonder how much harder it will be to get people to make this change. It's like the San Andreas and New Madrid fault*lines or Yellowstone/other volcanoes. Eventually it will build up and all this whining explodes at once.
I wonder about the reason behind the amount of time this took. My thoughts drift back to the old, ever-present enemy as the reason we've had the same interface for the past 28 years, and I don't think I'm too far off.
Take a step back and realize you're complaining about an update you don't have to install, pay attention to, or even care about at all.
I care about it a lot because I fell in love with the way os x did things when I switched way back when, and I find it incredibly frustrating the misguided direction they are taking it to. I am very frustrated that I have not seen a very good os grow to become even better but pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os, hardly adding any useful features, and actually taking major steps back in usability. I care very much where the os and the platform I spent so much money on and time to get to know is going. I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence and I get eye strain as I age, I care very much that they opted for a monochromatic interface and that makes my eye strain even worse.
I care cause I expected them to take a hint from the reception of lion from apple's user base, which was anything but a resounding success. And I expected that in it's next iteration os x would reverse some of the damage as well as bring about some real progress and fix some long standing issues.
And I am having my coffee today and I read about mountain lion, and I am thinking good god, it's not that I 'll have to wait a bit longer to get rid of lion with a better .8 release, there seems to be no hope for .9 either. It seems like it's adios amigos time to the os I 've loved using.
Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slurpy
Ok so now we're supposed to be outraged that Apple is still putting major attention on OSX and we'll have new features sooner than we ever expected. Last week it was outrage that Apple has 'abandoned' OSX.
Let me know guys, its tough to keep up.
What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Sure is a good thing you're wrong. As evidenced by accounts of people who've actually used the Developer Preview of 10.8 and who actually have information from which they can formulate ANY sort of truthful opinion with weight behind it.
As opposed to what you've said. In what way, pray tell, is this supposed to be "Vistaesque"?
Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
I have time again stated my case with what is wrong with how snow leopard developed to lion:
Lack of vision: simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet) and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
No zfs type robust file system for data integrity. No tangible improvements in the finder in terms of tagging and organization of files, minimum improvements in quick look and that's all.
No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Ruining of existing well functioning aspects of the os such as expose.
Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
I care about it a lot because I fell in love with the way os x did things when I switched way back when, and I find it incredibly frustrating the misguided direction they are taking it to. I am very frustrated that I have not seen a very good os grow to become even better but pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os, hardly adding any useful features, and actually taking major steps back in usability. I care very much where the os and the platform I spent so much money on and time to get to know is going. I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence and I get eye strain as I age, I care very much that they opted for a monochromatic interface and that makes my eye strain even worse.
I care cause I expected them to take a hint from the reception of lion from apple's user base, which was anything but a resounding success. And I expected that in it's next iteration os x would reverse some of the damage as well as bring about some real progress and fix some long standing issues.
And I am having my coffee today and I read about mountain lion, and I am thinking good god, it's not that I 'll have to wait a bit longer to get rid of lion with a better .8 release, there seems to be no hope for .9 either. It seems like it's adios amigos time to the os I 've loved using.
Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
I have time again stated my case with what is wrong with how snow leopard developed to lion:
Lack of vision: simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet) and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
No zfs type robust file system for data integrity. No tangible improvements in the finder in terms of tagging and organization of files, minimum improvements in quick look and that's all.
No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Ruining of existing well functioning aspects of the os such as expose.
Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the past. can happen to anyone. so now Apple is jilting you, but you'll always have Linux! Sayonara!
it's fair to say Apple is much less concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft.
And for the better, I believe. I'd much rather Apple focus upon optimisation for recent hardware than legacy support. In 2 years time when my mid-09 mbp is "stuck" with SL and ML partitions, it will still work fine. I'm sure I'll be wanting to upgrade to newer hardware by then, the Core2Duo is already feeling it's age with HD files...
"Misguided"? Are you Steve Jobs? Or, rather, are you Bertrand Serlet? And since your absence, Apple has decided not to listen to your advice in how you think the future of the Mac operating system should play out?
Because if not, I'm pretty darn sure they have it under control.
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?pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os?
I wonder if something like this was said about Mac OS 1. Just replace 'mobile' with 'artsy-fartsy' or something along those lines.
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?major steps back in usability?
You can ignore all multitouch gestures and use it just as you always have. You can ignore virtually all new features and use it just as you always have. The same goes for any version of OS X.
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I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence
Oh, you know this? You've read an internal memo or something that intimated as such? Because I see brand new hand and arrow cursors designed for this very thing. I see Desktop pictures with a resolution of 3200x2000, designed for that very thing. I see an option built into OS X right now to turn on HiDPI modes for this very purpose.
It will come. It HAS come; it's just not done yet.
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?some of the damage?
WHAT damage? All I see is a bunch of people complaining about how it looks like iOS. NO one is going to listen to them. Apple didn't say, "Well, people are complaining that the Apple ][ isn't just a box with a bunch of flashing lights, so let's remove the keyboard and screen on the Apple ]|[."
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Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
And this bothers you, does it?
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Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
Our reaction is favorable. They are taking our hints.
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What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Yes, because there's absolutely no way that Apple has done anything else to the operating system. This is ALL you get. Period. No exceptions. They're just waiting another six months to release it for, well, really no reason. In fact, they just want to steal your money because since this is all they've done and will ever do to the OS, they could easily just release the applications themselves as standalone.
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Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
Yes, Android.
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Lack of vision:
Which is what YOU suffer from. I'll get to this in a minute.
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simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet)
Lion and Mountain Lion are transitional softwares. In this day and age, what with everyone and their mother (and their GRANDPARENTS) owning computers, you can't just plop down a new interface paradigm and say, "This is what you use from now on. It's truly infinitely better than what you've been using, so please just trust us and use it."
You can do it with phones because it had never been done before. You can do it with tablets because they'd been done wrong.
You can't do it with a desktop OS. Apple HAS a vision. Apple has had a vision since 2003 when Steve Jobs was first shown an Apple-designed-and-built tablet running OS X. By the end of the decade, by my thinking, we'll have a brand new interface paradigm. A multitouch desktop OS, built from the ground up, designed to be both multitouch AND of desktop use quality.
That's where these UI elements are coming in. We're being acclimated to them. You can have millions of people scale Pike's Peak, but you can't get them all on top of Everest as easily.
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and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
This is subjective as all get out.
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A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
I'd rather my OS not shove itself in my face. Being as unobtrusive as possible is key.
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No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
It's truly coming. I'd still believe you had the last few months' announcements and findings not happened.
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No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Props; you're right about that.
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Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
And you're acting as though this can and will never change.
@Tallest Skill, Some points well taken, no time to get back to you in more detail though, at some points we 'll agree to disagree. Had apple given me resolution independence and a way to turn off what I find are the more obnoxious ios elements (monochromatic sidebars being a case in point), as well as not defaulting on such things as versioning, I wouldn't be so up in arms about os x development.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alfiejr
there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the past. can happen to anyone. so now Apple is jilting you, but you'll always have Linux! Sayonara!
Enjoy your cocktails with Gruber and Phil(-lip) Shill-er at the hotel bar and watch out with the glasses because they can get slippery with concurrent lubricant use.
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Mission Control ruined Expose.
Also, OS X has gradually gotten more like iOS in that IT decides what you do. Not you. That's why I used a Mac instead of Windows, so I can do what I want how I want. Today I noticed because I moved QT PLayer into a folder with other media players, when I did a 10.6.8 security update it f'd up QT Player. I will have to apply a combo update or something. I can't even decide where my applications are stored. Fff. OS X is definitely going down hill in my opinion. I think the best release was either 10.5 or 10.6. This whole "turn the Mac into an iPhone" crap is annoying. Maybe that's because I hate the iPhone and iOS though... I like Android. Although I wouldn't want OS X to turn into that, either. I just want a good desktop OS. Forcing stupid iOS paradigms and concepts into OS X looks ugly, makes it less powerful and more kludgy. My 2 cents.
never really get the grousing about iTunes. it's always done what i need, nicely. pick my settings. ignore that parts i don't use. Match is great. so?
but the thing is, iOS DID break it apart into several smaller apps: Music, Video, and iTunes. wouldn't surprise me to see that break up also coming to OS X too with the next big iTunes update. so that's good, right? but if you're against the iOS-ification of OS X, that's bad, right?
but the thing is, iOS DID break it apart into several smaller apps: Music, Video, and iTunes. wouldn't surprise me to see that break up also coming to OS X too with the next big iTunes update. so that's good, right? but if you're against the iOS-ification of OS X, that's bad, right?
I'm against breaking it up, I just want it to not suck. It's embarrassing that I have to scroll down past every single one of my thumbnails for them to load. It's amazing just how bad it is in Windows; that reflects poorly on Apple software as a whole. And I'd love iTunes to get a nice redesign and actual recoding like we were led to believe in iTunes 10.
@Tallest Skill, Some points well taken, no time to get back to you in more detail though, at some points we 'll agree to disagree. Had apple given me resolution independence and a way to turn off what I find are the more obnoxious ios elements (monochromatic sidebars being a case in point), as well as not defaulting on such things as versioning, I wouldn't be so up in arms about os x development.
Enjoy your cocktails with Gruber and Phil(-lip) Shill-er at the hotel bar and watch out with the glasses because they can get slippery with concurrent lubricant use.
I thought your comments regarding Lion as a sparkling example of bad interface design and the tendency to surrender our computing habits to mobility habits -- as if all most of us did was email and videos, on the road -- to be right on.
Ultimately, Mountain Lion and its ilk may one day be remembered as the beginning of the end for Apple as a serious computing company, i.e., a company that enabled its customers to do computing, to be creative, not merely one that served only entertainment and e-commerce. (There will always be a market for gizmos.) Coincidental but symbolic that this hellbent for leather strategy is implemented so soon after Steve Jobs passing. His desire for elegance should not be conflated with Apple's new mantras, ultra-simplicity and do-it-our-way-or-else. As a case in point, the proposed cross-platform Mountain Lion setup is remarkably kludgy, even Rube Goldbergian. It will "work" for awhile in part because of an abundance of cheap bandwidth -- though soon that bandwidth will become extremely expensive. And it will "work" because millions of mobile users will remain content to know nothing about how their technology works, willfully surrendering their creative independence for cheap fun and a trifle of functionality. Until there is a backlash.
Clay Christensen's seminal The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard 1997) suggests that it's Apple that will most rue making the decision to so tightly integrate all of its products and then cast their fate on iOS. When someone comes up with something better or even just equal, but lower priced, Apple is going to have a hell of a time turning on a dime to compete. I'm a lifelong Apple user -- I bought one of the first Apple IIs for the California Legislature to try out, back in 1981 -- and I have to say, the best time I had being a real "computist" using Apple gear was in the supposedly dull late 90s, when Emilio licensed the OS to other companies. My Motorola Starmax was for its time the top computer in the world, utterly customizable, utterly adaptable, and powerful to boot. As much as I admire Apple in many ways, I don't worship it and if someone comes up with something better for computing purposes -- that honors my intelligence and creativity -- it's going to be very tempting to go for it. Already, Android has my interest as it sneaks into the enterprise and the home.
Someone earlier on remarked that he/she knew no Mac users who didn't also have iPhones. Funny, I don't know many Mac users -- and I know plenty -- who are avid iPhone users. The most sophisticated telecom people I know, world-class geniuses who live in the Metaverse, prefer highly competent flip phones. I hypothesize that the more you know about a field of practice, the more you want Grade A tools that fit specific purposes at hand, not products that are capable of doing (a very few) things in common, over and over, with overall B+ performance.
Mountain Lion brings up some interesting scenarios. What happens when Lenovo teams up with Samsung and comes up with an OS 15 equivalent targeted to computer users? They already can produce comparable hardware. Will Apple shift to 100% digital devices? Or, as cloud solutions proliferate and all things become interoperable, will it become merely a distributor of content? Its ferocious defense of patents suggests that its smart management recognizes the Dilemma but is doing all it can to avoid coming to grips with it by slaughtering the competition in court. That will go just so far.
In the late 60s, all roads led to White Plains and Armonk: IBM was synonymous with computing. There was no other. It did everything that needed doing.
Today, doing away with user-manipulable architecture, even files, and depending entirely on punching up little pictorial apps seems as doctrinaire as batch coding and C++ did then. But that's the nature of doctrines, they become dogmas; so let's bet the company on it. Forget the past, we're all about The Future.
Clay Christensen's seminal The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard 1997) suggests that it's Apple that will most rue making the decision to so tightly integrate all of its products and then cast their fate on iOS.
I don't share your pessimism. From Gruber today, note the bold:
Quote:
Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it?s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words ?Windows? and ?Microsoft? are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.
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?
Comments
"Incredibly successful release of Lion"? There's a 150-page "discussion" on the Apple Forum, one of several such threads, that indicate the release was anything but successful. Sure, if you blatanltly misrepresent a weak product, people are going to buy it based on their expectations from the past. For Apple to try and ignore what's gone down with Lion is outrageous.
Enlighten us, what 'went down' with Lion?
And oh, how we so love those great iPad and iOS operating systems.
You are trolling, really.
Maybe it's time to start looking elsewhere
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Enlighten us, what 'went down' with Lion?
You are trolling, really.
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Start reading here for firsthand accounts of the Lion fiasco. Then read the other dozen or so threads complaining of overheating (my Air's CPU took off and fried the logic board and the SSDs), low battery life, need for upgrades to run perfectly fine prior applications, and the general idiocy of the iOS interface. I don't shill for Apple, I want it to get better. Becoming a de facto monopolist that imprisons its users and developers for its own enrichment is so Robber Baron.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194235?tstart=0
…general idiocy of the iOS interface… …de facto monopolist that imprisons its users and developers…
Uh huh.
The last thing I want is my Mac to be more like my iPod. Crossing fingers that Apple doesn't screw this up...
Agreed, I don't want my MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros and PowerMacs reduced to cheap cell phone functionality or iPad functionality best suited to novice users.
I don't blame Apple for going after the consumer business but I dislike "upgrades" that actually de-feature the OS. I bought many of these powerful pro machines to do certain tasks in an efficient manner. I don't want them turned into consumer equipment.
A wise shift here might be to use the different types of users built into OS X. Managed, Standard and Admin accounts in OS X could conceivably be leveraged to maintain what thin differentiation that still remains between the cell phone world of Apple and what used to be the second word in the company's name.
I liked to call lion os x 10.7 vista, and I was exaggerating, sadly from what we know today mountain lion is os x 10.8 vista.
Sure is a good thing you're wrong. As evidenced by accounts of people who've actually used the Developer Preview of 10.8 and who actually have information from which they can formulate ANY sort of truthful opinion with weight behind it.
As opposed to what you've said. In what way, pray tell, is this supposed to be "Vistaesque"?
I don't think it's unreasonable to bring up the issues with Lion. It's arguably been the most problematic release since 10.0. To call it a fiasco, however is over the top, in my opinion.
it's fair to say Apple is much less concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft. Snow Leopard and especially Lion broke a lot of old software and left a lot of old hardware behind. that has caused lots of those issues. whereas MS Windows is definitely slowed down by its massive legacy demands, and is more complicated as a result too.
maybe it really is because Apple wants to incentivize hardware sales. but i also think it's just part of the Apple DNA - pushing the new even at the price of leaving behind the comfortable. the iOS-ification of OS X is plainly where Apple is going no matter what. take it or leave it (just reinstall Leopard).
you know, the old sytle desktop computer OS had to die someday.
you know, the old sytle desktop computer OS had to die someday.
And this is EXACTLY what's happening. People are whining about the iOS-ness and multitouch additions in the same fashion as when they complained about the move to a GUI between the Apple ][ and the Macintosh.
We just have to deal with it more visibly because the Internet exists this time around.
When you think about just how long it has been since computers were last revolutionized (particularly in respect to how much less time it took for the last transition from Altair to Apple ][), you have to wonder how much harder it will be to get people to make this change. It's like the San Andreas and New Madrid fault*lines or Yellowstone/other volcanoes. Eventually it will build up and all this whining explodes at once.
I wonder about the reason behind the amount of time this took. My thoughts drift back to the old, ever-present enemy as the reason we've had the same interface for the past 28 years, and I don't think I'm too far off.
Take a step back and realize you're complaining about an update you don't have to install, pay attention to, or even care about at all.
I care about it a lot because I fell in love with the way os x did things when I switched way back when, and I find it incredibly frustrating the misguided direction they are taking it to. I am very frustrated that I have not seen a very good os grow to become even better but pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os, hardly adding any useful features, and actually taking major steps back in usability. I care very much where the os and the platform I spent so much money on and time to get to know is going. I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence and I get eye strain as I age, I care very much that they opted for a monochromatic interface and that makes my eye strain even worse.
I care cause I expected them to take a hint from the reception of lion from apple's user base, which was anything but a resounding success. And I expected that in it's next iteration os x would reverse some of the damage as well as bring about some real progress and fix some long standing issues.
And I am having my coffee today and I read about mountain lion, and I am thinking good god, it's not that I 'll have to wait a bit longer to get rid of lion with a better .8 release, there seems to be no hope for .9 either. It seems like it's adios amigos time to the os I 've loved using.
Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
Ok so now we're supposed to be outraged that Apple is still putting major attention on OSX and we'll have new features sooner than we ever expected. Last week it was outrage that Apple has 'abandoned' OSX.
Let me know guys, its tough to keep up.
What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Sure is a good thing you're wrong. As evidenced by accounts of people who've actually used the Developer Preview of 10.8 and who actually have information from which they can formulate ANY sort of truthful opinion with weight behind it.
As opposed to what you've said. In what way, pray tell, is this supposed to be "Vistaesque"?
Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
I have time again stated my case with what is wrong with how snow leopard developed to lion:
Lack of vision: simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet) and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
No zfs type robust file system for data integrity. No tangible improvements in the finder in terms of tagging and organization of files, minimum improvements in quick look and that's all.
No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Ruining of existing well functioning aspects of the os such as expose.
Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
I care about it a lot because I fell in love with the way os x did things when I switched way back when, and I find it incredibly frustrating the misguided direction they are taking it to. I am very frustrated that I have not seen a very good os grow to become even better but pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os, hardly adding any useful features, and actually taking major steps back in usability. I care very much where the os and the platform I spent so much money on and time to get to know is going. I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence and I get eye strain as I age, I care very much that they opted for a monochromatic interface and that makes my eye strain even worse.
I care cause I expected them to take a hint from the reception of lion from apple's user base, which was anything but a resounding success. And I expected that in it's next iteration os x would reverse some of the damage as well as bring about some real progress and fix some long standing issues.
And I am having my coffee today and I read about mountain lion, and I am thinking good god, it's not that I 'll have to wait a bit longer to get rid of lion with a better .8 release, there seems to be no hope for .9 either. It seems like it's adios amigos time to the os I 've loved using.
Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
I have time again stated my case with what is wrong with how snow leopard developed to lion:
Lack of vision: simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet) and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
No zfs type robust file system for data integrity. No tangible improvements in the finder in terms of tagging and organization of files, minimum improvements in quick look and that's all.
No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Ruining of existing well functioning aspects of the os such as expose.
Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the past. can happen to anyone. so now Apple is jilting you, but you'll always have Linux! Sayonara!
it's fair to say Apple is much less concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft.
And for the better, I believe. I'd much rather Apple focus upon optimisation for recent hardware than legacy support. In 2 years time when my mid-09 mbp is "stuck" with SL and ML partitions, it will still work fine. I'm sure I'll be wanting to upgrade to newer hardware by then, the Core2Duo is already feeling it's age with HD files...
?misguided direction?
"Misguided"? Are you Steve Jobs? Or, rather, are you Bertrand Serlet? And since your absence, Apple has decided not to listen to your advice in how you think the future of the Mac operating system should play out?
Because if not, I'm pretty darn sure they have it under control.
?pandering to an aesthetic of a mobile os?
I wonder if something like this was said about Mac OS 1. Just replace 'mobile' with 'artsy-fartsy' or something along those lines.
?major steps back in usability?
You can ignore all multitouch gestures and use it just as you always have. You can ignore virtually all new features and use it just as you always have. The same goes for any version of OS X.
I care very much that the've abandoned any plans for resolution independence
Oh, you know this? You've read an internal memo or something that intimated as such? Because I see brand new hand and arrow cursors designed for this very thing. I see Desktop pictures with a resolution of 3200x2000, designed for that very thing. I see an option built into OS X right now to turn on HiDPI modes for this very purpose.
It will come. It HAS come; it's just not done yet.
?some of the damage?
WHAT damage? All I see is a bunch of people complaining about how it looks like iOS. NO one is going to listen to them. Apple didn't say, "Well, people are complaining that the Apple ][ isn't just a box with a bunch of flashing lights, so let's remove the keyboard and screen on the Apple ]|[."
Not even Steve Balmer would advertise chinese as a major new os feature.
And this bothers you, does it?
Maybe they will take a hint now from the reaction of people on the internet. Maybe they won't.
Our reaction is favorable. They are taking our hints.
What features are we getting? A notes and reminders app from the ipad? Twitter? Chinese? Ichat renamed as messages?
Yes, because there's absolutely no way that Apple has done anything else to the operating system. This is ALL you get. Period. No exceptions. They're just waiting another six months to release it for, well, really no reason. In fact, they just want to steal your money because since this is all they've done and will ever do to the OS, they could easily just release the applications themselves as standalone.
Vista was bloatware with too much of the wrong type of eye candy badly done, sound familiar?
Yes, Android.
Lack of vision:
Which is what YOU suffer from. I'll get to this in a minute.
simply adding ios aesthetic elements to pander to the ios crowd and get more people to switch. Ios elements that translate poorly on a desktop interface (because they are suited for a tablet)
Lion and Mountain Lion are transitional softwares. In this day and age, what with everyone and their mother (and their GRANDPARENTS) owning computers, you can't just plop down a new interface paradigm and say, "This is what you use from now on. It's truly infinitely better than what you've been using, so please just trust us and use it."
You can do it with phones because it had never been done before. You can do it with tablets because they'd been done wrong.
You can't do it with a desktop OS. Apple HAS a vision. Apple has had a vision since 2003 when Steve Jobs was first shown an Apple-designed-and-built tablet running OS X. By the end of the decade, by my thinking, we'll have a brand new interface paradigm. A multitouch desktop OS, built from the ground up, designed to be both multitouch AND of desktop use quality.
That's where these UI elements are coming in. We're being acclimated to them. You can have millions of people scale Pike's Peak, but you can't get them all on top of Everest as easily.
and actually make life worse on os x, case in point the calendar and address book apps.
This is subjective as all get out.
A monochromatic paradigm from ios, which makes life so much harder on os x, what with colour cues missing.
I'd rather my OS not shove itself in my face. Being as unobtrusive as possible is key.
No resolution independence, long abandoned as apparently undoable for apple and substituted with some vagueness of hdpi screen support, whenever this might come.
It's truly coming. I'd still believe you had the last few months' announcements and findings not happened.
No major rewrite or paradigm swift for itunes which by now is as bloatware as it gets.
Props; you're right about that.
Icloud while welcome is also, a. a step back since keychains are not synced anymore, nor docks as in mm, b. instead of fixing idisk just because they couldn't buy off dropbox they ditched it.
And you're acting as though this can and will never change.
there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the past. can happen to anyone. so now Apple is jilting you, but you'll always have Linux! Sayonara!
Enjoy your cocktails with Gruber and Phil(-lip) Shill-er at the hotel bar and watch out with the glasses because they can get slippery with concurrent lubricant use.
Enlighten us, what 'went down' with Lion?
You are trolling, really.
Goodbye! Don't let the code byte you where the wall should indite you!
Mission Control ruined Expose.
Also, OS X has gradually gotten more like iOS in that IT decides what you do. Not you. That's why I used a Mac instead of Windows, so I can do what I want how I want. Today I noticed because I moved QT PLayer into a folder with other media players, when I did a 10.6.8 security update it f'd up QT Player. I will have to apply a combo update or something. I can't even decide where my applications are stored. Fff. OS X is definitely going down hill in my opinion. I think the best release was either 10.5 or 10.6. This whole "turn the Mac into an iPhone" crap is annoying. Maybe that's because I hate the iPhone and iOS though... I like Android. Although I wouldn't want OS X to turn into that, either. I just want a good desktop OS. Forcing stupid iOS paradigms and concepts into OS X looks ugly, makes it less powerful and more kludgy. My 2 cents.
but the thing is, iOS DID break it apart into several smaller apps: Music, Video, and iTunes. wouldn't surprise me to see that break up also coming to OS X too with the next big iTunes update. so that's good, right? but if you're against the iOS-ification of OS X, that's bad, right?
but the thing is, iOS DID break it apart into several smaller apps: Music, Video, and iTunes. wouldn't surprise me to see that break up also coming to OS X too with the next big iTunes update. so that's good, right? but if you're against the iOS-ification of OS X, that's bad, right?
I'm against breaking it up, I just want it to not suck. It's embarrassing that I have to scroll down past every single one of my thumbnails for them to load. It's amazing just how bad it is in Windows; that reflects poorly on Apple software as a whole. And I'd love iTunes to get a nice redesign and actual recoding like we were led to believe in iTunes 10.
Mission Control ruined Expose.
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.
@Tallest Skill, Some points well taken, no time to get back to you in more detail though, at some points we 'll agree to disagree. Had apple given me resolution independence and a way to turn off what I find are the more obnoxious ios elements (monochromatic sidebars being a case in point), as well as not defaulting on such things as versioning, I wouldn't be so up in arms about os x development.
Enjoy your cocktails with Gruber and Phil(-lip) Shill-er at the hotel bar and watch out with the glasses because they can get slippery with concurrent lubricant use.
I thought your comments regarding Lion as a sparkling example of bad interface design and the tendency to surrender our computing habits to mobility habits -- as if all most of us did was email and videos, on the road -- to be right on.
Ultimately, Mountain Lion and its ilk may one day be remembered as the beginning of the end for Apple as a serious computing company, i.e., a company that enabled its customers to do computing, to be creative, not merely one that served only entertainment and e-commerce. (There will always be a market for gizmos.) Coincidental but symbolic that this hellbent for leather strategy is implemented so soon after Steve Jobs passing. His desire for elegance should not be conflated with Apple's new mantras, ultra-simplicity and do-it-our-way-or-else. As a case in point, the proposed cross-platform Mountain Lion setup is remarkably kludgy, even Rube Goldbergian. It will "work" for awhile in part because of an abundance of cheap bandwidth -- though soon that bandwidth will become extremely expensive. And it will "work" because millions of mobile users will remain content to know nothing about how their technology works, willfully surrendering their creative independence for cheap fun and a trifle of functionality. Until there is a backlash.
Clay Christensen's seminal The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard 1997) suggests that it's Apple that will most rue making the decision to so tightly integrate all of its products and then cast their fate on iOS. When someone comes up with something better or even just equal, but lower priced, Apple is going to have a hell of a time turning on a dime to compete. I'm a lifelong Apple user -- I bought one of the first Apple IIs for the California Legislature to try out, back in 1981 -- and I have to say, the best time I had being a real "computist" using Apple gear was in the supposedly dull late 90s, when Emilio licensed the OS to other companies. My Motorola Starmax was for its time the top computer in the world, utterly customizable, utterly adaptable, and powerful to boot. As much as I admire Apple in many ways, I don't worship it and if someone comes up with something better for computing purposes -- that honors my intelligence and creativity -- it's going to be very tempting to go for it. Already, Android has my interest as it sneaks into the enterprise and the home.
Someone earlier on remarked that he/she knew no Mac users who didn't also have iPhones. Funny, I don't know many Mac users -- and I know plenty -- who are avid iPhone users. The most sophisticated telecom people I know, world-class geniuses who live in the Metaverse, prefer highly competent flip phones. I hypothesize that the more you know about a field of practice, the more you want Grade A tools that fit specific purposes at hand, not products that are capable of doing (a very few) things in common, over and over, with overall B+ performance.
Mountain Lion brings up some interesting scenarios. What happens when Lenovo teams up with Samsung and comes up with an OS 15 equivalent targeted to computer users? They already can produce comparable hardware. Will Apple shift to 100% digital devices? Or, as cloud solutions proliferate and all things become interoperable, will it become merely a distributor of content? Its ferocious defense of patents suggests that its smart management recognizes the Dilemma but is doing all it can to avoid coming to grips with it by slaughtering the competition in court. That will go just so far.
In the late 60s, all roads led to White Plains and Armonk: IBM was synonymous with computing. There was no other. It did everything that needed doing.
Today, doing away with user-manipulable architecture, even files, and depending entirely on punching up little pictorial apps seems as doctrinaire as batch coding and C++ did then. But that's the nature of doctrines, they become dogmas; so let's bet the company on it. Forget the past, we're all about The Future.
You bet. Tell it to history.
Clay Christensen's seminal The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard 1997) suggests that it's Apple that will most rue making the decision to so tightly integrate all of its products and then cast their fate on iOS.
I don't share your pessimism. From Gruber today, note the bold:
Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it?s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words ?Windows? and ?Microsoft? are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.
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?