Yes, dragging and dropping is easier when a window isn't maximised. However, you forget one important factor: focus. When I open Photoshop I get all these annoying floating windows showing the Mac desktop on the background. All those icons on my desktop....it sucks.
Then clean your Desktop. This ain't Windows, where they need to be on the desktop so they can be usable. (What *is* it with Windows users having a bazillion icons on the desktop??) Actually, this is a great example of what I call cascading UI failures... "Why do you need to have full screen?" "To hide the desktop icons!" "Well, why do you need to have so many icons on your desktop?" "How else am I going to get quickly get to them?" A problem of quick file access ends up requiring full-screen maximize, Show Desktop, and all sorts of other unintended consequences that then cause their own issues that have to be worked around. If you look at the tools in MacOS X, each one solves a specific problem *without* causing cascading issues, in general.
Quote:
When I use Photoshop I want to draw and see which *photoshop windows* are open, not a mixture of windows and icons. The last thing I want to do is to drag and drop all the time. I want to paint, retouch, etcetera.
Luckely Photoshop has a full screen option. Pressing F once will change the view so that a canvas occupies the whole area, except the dock. Phew. Easy on the eyes. More productive all day!
Unfortunately this "F" option is an exception. Even Apple starts to realise that it is very annoying for some applications. iPhoto and other applications maximise like Windows do.
Nope, not quite.
Apple's version of Maximize is Zoom. It expands to show as much content as possible, but no more. ie, if you have a page width in a word processor, it will expand to a page width. A canvas that is larger than the screen *should* take up the entire screen. Content that is expandable, but not fixed, like iPhoto, will also take up the entire screen, since it... expands. They're not changing anything, they're adhering to the guidelines. Apparently Adobe isn't.
Safari is, ironically, one place where they don't follow this, since the content is technically expandable, but they pin it to a page width for easier reading.
Quote:
The hell with Apple guidelines!
If it doesn't work well for practical use, they should reconsider changing the guidelines. It ain't the holy bible. Laws change too. And even Apple sidetracks on their own guidelines too! Try clicking the right top button on iTunes which changes the app to a small player (inconsistent), the different look of Garageband (inconsistent), and the use of drawers versus sidepane (insonsistent)...to name a few.
That's why they're guidelines, not laws.
Quote:
I am not saying the maximise button on MacOSX is a bad idea. No, I like the idea that Safari doesn't maximise to my 24" inch widescreen monitor. That sucks on Windows. Good thinking Apple. But the lack of a canvas that spans the whole active application does suck, mostly the fault of third-party developers.
Wait, are you saying that you want an MDI-esque approach? ie, in Photoshop, you'd have those palettes and such floating with the canvas insides a larger window? Cripes, even MS is running away from that monstrosity of an idea as fast as their legs can carry them.
Quote:
Ladtly, I think window management does not "suck hard". You've told me one thing that you do not like, but why does it suck hard? I'd like to hear :-)
Got a few hours? Here are a couple off the top of my head:
Taskbar: The Amazing Shrinking Targets. As you open more windows, the buttons for the windows shrink, until... they collapse into app-specific menus. That part is a good idea, and should have been done originally. Problems: they're never in the same place twice, so you have to rescan the lists *every blasted time*; you can't bring all windows for an app to the front at once without cascading/tiling/otherwise screwing them up; the descriptions of the windows are generally unuseful. The Taskbar is this ever-shifting, less than useful window access tool. And it's supposed to be the primary way of getting to your windows? Ick.
Lost windows: I frequently see windows that don't even appear in the taskbar. Open a Control Panel, head to System, then Advanced, then Environment Variables. Create a new one. That's two new windows there, in addition to the Control Panel one. They don't appear in the Taskbar. Which means, when you're heading over to another window to get the info you need to enter, you damned well better not cover those windows up, you're going to have fun finding them again. The *only* way is to start moving windows out of the way - there is no direct access through the Taskbar. Why do some appear, and some don't? If the ones that don't appear aren't actually considered windows, but instead are considered dialogs, then they need to have a distinct visual appearance to indicate that. Lame.
Alt-Tab: *Some* of the lost windows that don't appear in the Taskbar appear here, but not all. WHY? There's no sense to it. Also, Alt-Tab, like the Taskbar, works best when you have under 15 windows *total*, from *all* apps. You start getting above that, and it's just cumbersome as hell. It doesn't scale. Since I'm used to just throwing up windows like mad on my Mac, and being able to work with all of them at will, I generally have around a dozen apps and 50-60 windows open at any one time. I usually only have a few visible, but I can switch to new groupings very quickly. On Windows? Not so much. After about 15, the window management tools provided become unusable. That's a bad solution. And see, this leads back to the cascading failures issue... because you can't manage the windows effectively, you tend to have fewer open, which in turn leads them to be crammed with every widget possible (toolbars), which makes them bigger, which pushes them towards full screen.... and around and around we go.
etc, etc, etc.
Quote:
What I dislike about MacOSX: Try resizing your window on 4 sides and 4 corners... I can't and now, as a user I will need to move AND resize my window. 2nd: Explorer does a better job for fast everyday use. 3rd: There's an easy "hide all" button in the taskbar.
Yeah.... now how do you get them *BACK*? I was thrilled when I saw that, until I realized that it actually minimizes all the windows, it doesn't toggle their visibility. ie, if you hit that, you then have to reenable all your &*(%$#@ windows using the taskbar! Try Expose's Show Desktop feature. I have mine mapped to F12 because it's so blasted useful - *AND* if you hit it again, it puts it all back just the way it was. Nice.
Sorry, nice try, but Safari still fails to square off the top corners of the window when it butts up agains the menu bar,
If you mean the rounded edges of the upper windows, then you're being needlessly picky and having squared off windows wouldn't make the window any bigger.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macvault
and it fails to "stick" to all four sides of the screen as does a maximized window in Windows.
...and it doesn't need to. You can resize a window on the Mac that's open fully quicker than windows, where you have to minimize first and then resize.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macvault
And then, there's always the dock to contend with - if the dock is not hidden then any maximized window stops at the top of the dock and it looks like SH!T!
Trust me, you do not want your windows going behind the dock. Try to get access to any window elements at that point and you can't get to them if the dock is over top of them. If you must, just leave the dock hidden and then problem solved. The taskbar in windows doesn't size full screen behind it either unless you set it to hide.
Yeah.... now how do you get them *BACK*? I was thrilled when I saw that, until I realized that it actually minimizes all the windows, it doesn't toggle their visibility. ie, if you hit that, you then have to reenable all your &*(%$#@ windows using the taskbar! Try Expose's Show Desktop feature. I have mine mapped to F12 because it's so blasted useful - *AND* if you hit it again, it puts it all back just the way it was. Nice.
The more i read your posts (since the early beginning), the more i believe
we've got the very same Computer experience and approach over the years.
os X window management > windows window management.
the only thing that annoys me about osX window management is the finder issues.. ftff.. but thats all been said and if leopard fixes these issues I will be happy. the one thing I do think leopard should copy from windows though is the slideshow preview mode for images. either that or improve the features of the current slideshow feature, because at the moment its nice to use but lacks print features and other features.. please integrate something like this into finder because at the moment going through large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is irritating because it more or less necessitates that you move the images to iphoto first... and iphoto is irritating because it copies all your files and buries them in long strings of folders... with itunes you can turn the copy to music folder rule off, and keep your music organised in a folder of your choice... why not for iphoto
oh btw vox barbara I've taken the show desktop thing further and mapped it to my 5th mouse button - no need to move your hand
please integrate something like this into finder because at the moment going through large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is irritating because it more or less necessitates that you move the images to iphoto first... and iphoto is irritating because it copies all your files and buries them in long strings of folders... with itunes you can turn the copy to music folder rule off, and keep your music organised in a folder of your choice... why not for iphoto
To some extent i can understand the argument. Actually, perhaps you start thinking
about iPhoto as a Finder plug-in that manages Photos. In particular going through
large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is one of
iPhotos strength. Believe me, iPhoto is amazing in that particular task (among others).
It takes some time to get used to that "database" thing. But once you've grasped the
concept, you probably going to worry why it took so long.
There is nothing comparable (out of the box) on the Windows side. I know
a lot of people who gathered litteraly Thousends of Thousends of Pics.
Lately i asked one of them to show me one particular Pic (A Birthday Party 4 years ago
revealing some drunken guys kissing a dead frog). It took half an our. The Pic was buried
into a folder, that was buried into another folder and so on. A stupid naming scheme
(ala DC1904-34blablal) was no help at all.
In iPhoto that particular task (revealing one particular Pic among 10.000 others)
is exactly one or two clicks away. Believe me. (Well, assuming you attach some
usefull keywords to your pics)
EDIT: In case you fear to lose control over your single Pics
(That's what i hear most frequently regarding "iPhoto" and "single Pics"):
this is not true. If you need to manage one particular Pic for whatever
reason differently than all the others, just pick it within iPhoto and drag
it where ever you want. Also you can asign, say Photoshop, to open all
Photos within iPhoto) Just for the sake of having control over your Pics.
You can do what you want with your Pics. iPhoto helps you, in the most
elegant way, if you ask me. If you want more control, get Aperture.
But if you just want to manage all your digital Photos (1.000 and above and rising),
iPhoto is the program for you. Believe me.
Quote:
...
oh btw vox barbara I've taken the show desktop thing further and mapped it to my 5th mouse button - no need to move your hand
Uhm, well, (slightly) moving parts of your body (say, even hands) isn't necessarily
a bad thing in the long run, the doctor says. Hands down.
I'd rather see some ideas that enhances productivity instead of, IMHO, useless eyecandy.
Eye candy is not useless. It sells. To use, who just want awesome features, it might not matter. But Apple is wanting to take advantage of Windows Vista here. They want to highlight the features they have and Vista doesn't -- and they want to attract new customers. With the eye candy of what trevorlsciact is talking about, that would defintally be a grade-a hook that will grab the attention of Windows users. And then when they start playing with Mac OS X Leopard, they will love these features that both improve your computing experience and enhance how you use a computer. And, btw, the "genie effect" for the dock is useless eye candy, they glossy white Aqua theme that currently is in Mac OS X (thats been the same, if I understand currectly, for little over a six years) is useless eye candy. Whether you believe it or not, Apple could have slapped a Mac OS 9 look and called it Mac OS X -- which none of us would love. Useless Eye Candy is a needed effect for an OS -- not for it to function, but for it to be pleasent to the eyes.
Also, I never imgined something quite like that for any OS, trevorlsciact, but thats simpley elagont and amazing. :-D Lets see what Apple comes up with.
And, btw, the "genie effect" for the dock is useless eye candy, they glossy white Aqua theme that currently is in Mac OS X (thats been the same, if I understand currectly, for little over a six years) is useless eye candy. Whether you believe it or not,
...
Believe it or not, the "genie effect" gives you visual feedback where files
are moving to and being placed to, if you send them to the dock. Hence i'd say the
genie effect is pretty useful, particularily for novice players. But even long term
Mac users do like the "genie effect". Matter of taste i guess so.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
On my Mac Mini, I find that Windows XP runs faster than OS X in general and I realise I don't particularly care about fancy effects. A lot of Windows users are not convinced that OS X is better because the first thing they use is they interface and they say to me that it feels sluggish so why would they pay more for a machine that runs their programs more slowly?
I can go on about the internals of OS X and how it is a better designed system but if they need to run a particular program and it loads and runs faster in XP then why would they switch? I believe that if Apple can show that Leopard is so much better in terms of speed than Vista irrespective of the effects that they will sell more.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
You have a point regarding speed, but I think this analogy is flawed... but aren't they all.
The model, where the eye-candy is completely orthogonal to the task of cleaning, is indeed a waste. However, what if you had two cleaners, one of whom put things away without telling you where it went, and one that showed you where they put your stuff? Which one would you think was better in the long run? Even if the one that shows you where you stuff went was a little slower, every time you went to find something from that point on, you wouldn't have to stop, think, search, and find it, you'd just go directly to it.
That's what eye-candy in MacOS X does - if you look closely at when it's used, it's to show where something went, or where something came from. For example, the genie effect to the Dock? It shows the user where the window went. Sheets dropping down from the window title bar? Shows exactly what window it goes with, and pins the association in the user's head.
Useless eye-candy is a complete waste, I wholeheartedly agree. Vista's stacked window view is just... whatever. (You can't see the window contents clearly, you're left with text descriptions that aren't much different than what you find in the Taskbar, but now they're *sideways*...)
Eye-candy that gives useful feedback to the user, however, is worth a few cycles.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
On my Mac Mini, I find that Windows XP runs faster than OS X in general and I realise I don't particularly care about fancy effects. A lot of Windows users are not convinced that OS X is better because the first thing they use is they interface and they say to me that it feels sluggish so why would they pay more for a machine that runs their programs more slowly?
I can go on about the internals of OS X and how it is a better designed system but if they need to run a particular program and it loads and runs faster in XP then why would they switch? I believe that if Apple can show that Leopard is so much better in terms of speed than Vista irrespective of the effects that they will sell more.
All of that is true. But if someone is looking for a new computer, and they are in the store and see all these fancy effects, it will draw them in and make them pay attention to Windows Vista. Now after use, they might choose to stay away from Windows Vista -- hell, the first time I used Vista in the store I was unimpressed and I wanted to avoid it at all costs (lol, but I still want to play around with it, so I can effectively talk about it in my school essays I will have to write this semester). But really -- Vista to me is unimpressive, it really, really is.
But that doesn't matter. What matters is the reason I even played around with it for about 10-15 minutes was because it looked pretty. If I was impressed with it, I may have walked out with a copy of Vista.
You catching what I mean? It doesn't sell alone -- you need a good product and/or service to actually make the sell -- but for a lot of people, the initial first impression (the "eye candy") is what grabs people in. It's a form of marketing, such as any design for any product and/or service. But it isn't the only factor in selling your prdocut/service -- just one part.
I think glossy black and a couple of lighting effects could be nice, but i really think OSX would look much better even just with a new set of icons... current ones are ok, but look "retro"
If the new UI is something along the lines of the invitation for WWDC (http://guides.macrumors.com/Image:wwdcsavethedate.jpg), with maybe some cool things like transparency, but low in hogwash and implemented as Kickaha has been saying (and as Apple will have no problem doing, and in fact would delight in as an argument-terminating response to Aero), sprinkled with a few fun Apple surprises, I'll be happy.
I think glossy black and a couple of lighting effects could be nice, but i really think OSX would look much better even just with a new set of icons... current ones are ok, but look "retro"
When i saw the 'welcome to 2007' banner on apple.com before macworld i couldn't help thinking how nice a dark blue-grey interface would be with glossy elements.... developing the ideas in iTunes 7 perhaps.
I know it has been mentioned before but i would love to see tabbed browsing in the finder and without raising hell i like the idea of 'breadcrumbs' history at the top of Vista's explorer. Also a button to merge all open finder windows and safari windows into a single tabbed window would be very neat.
Comments
Yes, dragging and dropping is easier when a window isn't maximised. However, you forget one important factor: focus. When I open Photoshop I get all these annoying floating windows showing the Mac desktop on the background. All those icons on my desktop....it sucks.
Then clean your Desktop.
When I use Photoshop I want to draw and see which *photoshop windows* are open, not a mixture of windows and icons. The last thing I want to do is to drag and drop all the time. I want to paint, retouch, etcetera.
Luckely Photoshop has a full screen option. Pressing F once will change the view so that a canvas occupies the whole area, except the dock. Phew. Easy on the eyes. More productive all day!
Unfortunately this "F" option is an exception. Even Apple starts to realise that it is very annoying for some applications. iPhoto and other applications maximise like Windows do.
Nope, not quite.
Apple's version of Maximize is Zoom. It expands to show as much content as possible, but no more. ie, if you have a page width in a word processor, it will expand to a page width. A canvas that is larger than the screen *should* take up the entire screen. Content that is expandable, but not fixed, like iPhoto, will also take up the entire screen, since it... expands. They're not changing anything, they're adhering to the guidelines. Apparently Adobe isn't.
Safari is, ironically, one place where they don't follow this, since the content is technically expandable, but they pin it to a page width for easier reading.
The hell with Apple guidelines!
If it doesn't work well for practical use, they should reconsider changing the guidelines. It ain't the holy bible. Laws change too. And even Apple sidetracks on their own guidelines too! Try clicking the right top button on iTunes which changes the app to a small player (inconsistent), the different look of Garageband (inconsistent), and the use of drawers versus sidepane (insonsistent)...to name a few.
That's why they're guidelines, not laws.
I am not saying the maximise button on MacOSX is a bad idea. No, I like the idea that Safari doesn't maximise to my 24" inch widescreen monitor. That sucks on Windows. Good thinking Apple. But the lack of a canvas that spans the whole active application does suck, mostly the fault of third-party developers.
Wait, are you saying that you want an MDI-esque approach? ie, in Photoshop, you'd have those palettes and such floating with the canvas insides a larger window? Cripes, even MS is running away from that monstrosity of an idea as fast as their legs can carry them.
Ladtly, I think window management does not "suck hard". You've told me one thing that you do not like, but why does it suck hard? I'd like to hear :-)
Got a few hours?
Taskbar: The Amazing Shrinking Targets. As you open more windows, the buttons for the windows shrink, until... they collapse into app-specific menus. That part is a good idea, and should have been done originally. Problems: they're never in the same place twice, so you have to rescan the lists *every blasted time*; you can't bring all windows for an app to the front at once without cascading/tiling/otherwise screwing them up; the descriptions of the windows are generally unuseful. The Taskbar is this ever-shifting, less than useful window access tool. And it's supposed to be the primary way of getting to your windows? Ick.
Lost windows: I frequently see windows that don't even appear in the taskbar. Open a Control Panel, head to System, then Advanced, then Environment Variables. Create a new one. That's two new windows there, in addition to the Control Panel one. They don't appear in the Taskbar. Which means, when you're heading over to another window to get the info you need to enter, you damned well better not cover those windows up, you're going to have fun finding them again. The *only* way is to start moving windows out of the way - there is no direct access through the Taskbar. Why do some appear, and some don't? If the ones that don't appear aren't actually considered windows, but instead are considered dialogs, then they need to have a distinct visual appearance to indicate that. Lame.
Alt-Tab: *Some* of the lost windows that don't appear in the Taskbar appear here, but not all. WHY? There's no sense to it. Also, Alt-Tab, like the Taskbar, works best when you have under 15 windows *total*, from *all* apps. You start getting above that, and it's just cumbersome as hell. It doesn't scale. Since I'm used to just throwing up windows like mad on my Mac, and being able to work with all of them at will, I generally have around a dozen apps and 50-60 windows open at any one time. I usually only have a few visible, but I can switch to new groupings very quickly. On Windows? Not so much. After about 15, the window management tools provided become unusable. That's a bad solution. And see, this leads back to the cascading failures issue... because you can't manage the windows effectively, you tend to have fewer open, which in turn leads them to be crammed with every widget possible (toolbars), which makes them bigger, which pushes them towards full screen.... and around and around we go.
etc, etc, etc.
What I dislike about MacOSX: Try resizing your window on 4 sides and 4 corners... I can't and now, as a user I will need to move AND resize my window. 2nd: Explorer does a better job for fast everyday use. 3rd: There's an easy "hide all" button in the taskbar.
Yeah.... now how do you get them *BACK*? I was thrilled when I saw that, until I realized that it actually minimizes all the windows, it doesn't toggle their visibility. ie, if you hit that, you then have to reenable all your &*(%$#@ windows using the taskbar! Try Expose's Show Desktop feature. I have mine mapped to F12 because it's so blasted useful - *AND* if you hit it again, it puts it all back just the way it was. Nice.
Sorry, nice try, but Safari still fails to square off the top corners of the window when it butts up agains the menu bar,
If you mean the rounded edges of the upper windows, then you're being needlessly picky and having squared off windows wouldn't make the window any bigger.
and it fails to "stick" to all four sides of the screen as does a maximized window in Windows.
...and it doesn't need to. You can resize a window on the Mac that's open fully quicker than windows, where you have to minimize first and then resize.
And then, there's always the dock to contend with - if the dock is not hidden then any maximized window stops at the top of the dock and it looks like SH!T!
Trust me, you do not want your windows going behind the dock. Try to get access to any window elements at that point and you can't get to them if the dock is over top of them. If you must, just leave the dock hidden and then problem solved. The taskbar in windows doesn't size full screen behind it either unless you set it to hide.
Then clean your Desktop.
...
Yeah.... now how do you get them *BACK*? I was thrilled when I saw that, until I realized that it actually minimizes all the windows, it doesn't toggle their visibility. ie, if you hit that, you then have to reenable all your &*(%$#@ windows using the taskbar! Try Expose's Show Desktop feature. I have mine mapped to F12 because it's so blasted useful - *AND* if you hit it again, it puts it all back just the way it was. Nice.
The more i read your posts (since the early beginning), the more i believe
we've got the very same Computer experience and approach over the years.
Even the F12 Mapping is the same.
Have a nice day.
the only thing that annoys me about osX window management is the finder issues.. ftff.. but thats all been said and if leopard fixes these issues I will be happy. the one thing I do think leopard should copy from windows though is the slideshow preview mode for images. either that or improve the features of the current slideshow feature, because at the moment its nice to use but lacks print features and other features.. please integrate something like this into finder because at the moment going through large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is irritating because it more or less necessitates that you move the images to iphoto first... and iphoto is irritating because it copies all your files and buries them in long strings of folders... with itunes you can turn the copy to music folder rule off, and keep your music organised in a folder of your choice... why not for iphoto
oh btw vox barbara I've taken the show desktop thing further and mapped it to my 5th mouse button - no need to move your hand
...
please integrate something like this into finder because at the moment going through large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is irritating because it more or less necessitates that you move the images to iphoto first... and iphoto is irritating because it copies all your files and buries them in long strings of folders... with itunes you can turn the copy to music folder rule off, and keep your music organised in a folder of your choice... why not for iphoto
To some extent i can understand the argument. Actually, perhaps you start thinking
about iPhoto as a Finder plug-in that manages Photos. In particular going through
large numbers of photos for the purpose of picking particular ones is one of
iPhotos strength. Believe me, iPhoto is amazing in that particular task (among others).
It takes some time to get used to that "database" thing. But once you've grasped the
concept, you probably going to worry why it took so long.
There is nothing comparable (out of the box) on the Windows side. I know
a lot of people who gathered litteraly Thousends of Thousends of Pics.
Lately i asked one of them to show me one particular Pic (A Birthday Party 4 years ago
revealing some drunken guys kissing a dead frog). It took half an our. The Pic was buried
into a folder, that was buried into another folder and so on. A stupid naming scheme
(ala DC1904-34blablal) was no help at all.
In iPhoto that particular task (revealing one particular Pic among 10.000 others)
is exactly one or two clicks away. Believe me. (Well, assuming you attach some
usefull keywords to your pics)
EDIT: In case you fear to lose control over your single Pics
(That's what i hear most frequently regarding "iPhoto" and "single Pics"):
this is not true. If you need to manage one particular Pic for whatever
reason differently than all the others, just pick it within iPhoto and drag
it where ever you want. Also you can asign, say Photoshop, to open all
Photos within iPhoto) Just for the sake of having control over your Pics.
You can do what you want with your Pics. iPhoto helps you, in the most
elegant way, if you ask me. If you want more control, get Aperture.
But if you just want to manage all your digital Photos (1.000 and above and rising),
iPhoto is the program for you. Believe me.
...
oh btw vox barbara I've taken the show desktop thing further and mapped it to my 5th mouse button - no need to move your hand
Uhm, well, (slightly) moving parts of your body (say, even hands) isn't necessarily
a bad thing in the long run, the doctor says.
I'd like to see (again) the ability to print Folders, as in System 7-9
Uhm well, i see, that one only remotely refers to the original topic.
I'd rather see some ideas that enhances productivity instead of, IMHO, useless eyecandy.
Eye candy is not useless. It sells. To use, who just want awesome features, it might not matter. But Apple is wanting to take advantage of Windows Vista here. They want to highlight the features they have and Vista doesn't -- and they want to attract new customers. With the eye candy of what trevorlsciact is talking about, that would defintally be a grade-a hook that will grab the attention of Windows users. And then when they start playing with Mac OS X Leopard, they will love these features that both improve your computing experience and enhance how you use a computer. And, btw, the "genie effect" for the dock is useless eye candy, they glossy white Aqua theme that currently is in Mac OS X (thats been the same, if I understand currectly, for little over a six years) is useless eye candy. Whether you believe it or not, Apple could have slapped a Mac OS 9 look and called it Mac OS X -- which none of us would love.
Also, I never imgined something quite like that for any OS, trevorlsciact, but thats simpley elagont and amazing. :-D Lets see what Apple comes up with.
Eye candy is not useless.
...
Absolutely.
Eye candy is not useless.
...
And, btw, the "genie effect" for the dock is useless eye candy, they glossy white Aqua theme that currently is in Mac OS X (thats been the same, if I understand currectly, for little over a six years) is useless eye candy. Whether you believe it or not,
...
Believe it or not, the "genie effect" gives you visual feedback where files
are moving to and being placed to, if you send them to the dock. Hence i'd say the
genie effect is pretty useful, particularily for novice players. But even long term
Mac users do like the "genie effect". Matter of taste i guess so.
Apple could have slapped a Mac OS 9 look and called it Mac OS X -- which none of us would love.
Apple did slap a Mac OS 9 look and called it Mac OS X Server back in the Rhapsody days. Yes, the interface was as boring as it sounds.
Apple did slap a Mac OS 9 look and called it Mac OS X Server back in the Rhapsody days. Yes, the interface was as boring as it sounds.
As well as for the first two Developer Previews for Mac OS X client
There is nothing comparable (out of the box) on the Windows side.
Though not out of the box, I find Picasa (now owned by google) to be pretty comparable to iPhoto. It really is one of the best windows apps I know.
Though not out of the box, I find Picasa (now owned by google) to be pretty comparable to iPhoto. It really is one of the best windows apps I know.
Yeah i know this particular Program. I strongly recommend it to all
Windows users i know. But unfortunately they all deny. Why? Old habits
i guess. They all want to control every single Pic. Same with Mac users.
Btw, there is one slick feature Picasa has that i miss of iPhoto:
password protected Libraries and/or Albums.
Sorting in column view.
This has already been confirmed from other threads.
Eye candy is not useless. It sells.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
On my Mac Mini, I find that Windows XP runs faster than OS X in general and I realise I don't particularly care about fancy effects. A lot of Windows users are not convinced that OS X is better because the first thing they use is they interface and they say to me that it feels sluggish so why would they pay more for a machine that runs their programs more slowly?
I can go on about the internals of OS X and how it is a better designed system but if they need to run a particular program and it loads and runs faster in XP then why would they switch? I believe that if Apple can show that Leopard is so much better in terms of speed than Vista irrespective of the effects that they will sell more.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
You have a point regarding speed, but I think this analogy is flawed... but aren't they all.
The model, where the eye-candy is completely orthogonal to the task of cleaning, is indeed a waste. However, what if you had two cleaners, one of whom put things away without telling you where it went, and one that showed you where they put your stuff? Which one would you think was better in the long run? Even if the one that shows you where you stuff went was a little slower, every time you went to find something from that point on, you wouldn't have to stop, think, search, and find it, you'd just go directly to it.
That's what eye-candy in MacOS X does - if you look closely at when it's used, it's to show where something went, or where something came from. For example, the genie effect to the Dock? It shows the user where the window went. Sheets dropping down from the window title bar? Shows exactly what window it goes with, and pins the association in the user's head.
Useless eye-candy is a complete waste, I wholeheartedly agree. Vista's stacked window view is just... whatever. (You can't see the window contents clearly, you're left with text descriptions that aren't much different than what you find in the Taskbar, but now they're *sideways*...)
Eye-candy that gives useful feedback to the user, however, is worth a few cycles.
Now that I've seen Vista reviews and used XP a lot, I'm not so sure. Most people need a computer to get a job done, not to look nice while doing it. Imagine if you had a cleaner who looked really ugly but kept the place spotless. Then you got a model who cleaned things very slowly. Sure the model is far nicer to look at but if the place is a mess then the cleaner is not doing their job.
On my Mac Mini, I find that Windows XP runs faster than OS X in general and I realise I don't particularly care about fancy effects. A lot of Windows users are not convinced that OS X is better because the first thing they use is they interface and they say to me that it feels sluggish so why would they pay more for a machine that runs their programs more slowly?
I can go on about the internals of OS X and how it is a better designed system but if they need to run a particular program and it loads and runs faster in XP then why would they switch? I believe that if Apple can show that Leopard is so much better in terms of speed than Vista irrespective of the effects that they will sell more.
All of that is true. But if someone is looking for a new computer, and they are in the store and see all these fancy effects, it will draw them in and make them pay attention to Windows Vista. Now after use, they might choose to stay away from Windows Vista -- hell, the first time I used Vista in the store I was unimpressed and I wanted to avoid it at all costs (lol, but I still want to play around with it, so I can effectively talk about it in my school essays I will have to write this semester). But really -- Vista to me is unimpressive, it really, really is.
But that doesn't matter. What matters is the reason I even played around with it for about 10-15 minutes was because it looked pretty. If I was impressed with it, I may have walked out with a copy of Vista.
You catching what I mean? It doesn't sell alone -- you need a good product and/or service to actually make the sell -- but for a lot of people, the initial first impression (the "eye candy") is what grabs people in. It's a form of marketing, such as any design for any product and/or service. But it isn't the only factor in selling your prdocut/service -- just one part.
I think glossy black and a couple of lighting effects could be nice, but i really think OSX would look much better even just with a new set of icons... current ones are ok, but look "retro"
Dull they are at this stage.
I know it has been mentioned before but i would love to see tabbed browsing in the finder and without raising hell i like the idea of 'breadcrumbs' history at the top of Vista's explorer.
And absolutely no trace of brushed metal please