OS X is great. At first I wasn't into it, but now I never want to go back to 9. I am a UNIX system Admin so im not scared to the Terminal and have rarly had to use it. OS X is a little more complicated than 9 for average users but most of the confusing stuff or not obviouse stuff like becomeing supper user, changeing permissions, configuring the fire wall, etc. are not things that an average Mac user would want or need to do anyway. The only time A friend of mine (average usr) needed some help was when he count trash some files. The permissions were set wrong. I gave him some commands and that was that.
The 'Shared' directory (/Users/Shared/) is pretty odd with it's permissions.. if you put files there, only you can delete them... I have to sudo to get rid of other people's uploads which can be a pain.
keeksy, metadata is the file information that is not really part of a file but which the computer uses internally (and sometimes without the user even being aware it's there). This type of data does things such as tell which type of file it is and with what program it is associated. In Windows it is the file extension (ex, the jpg in picture.jpg) You remove that from a file on a windows machine and suddenly windows doesn't know what to do with the file. In Mac OS 9 and below this was stored in Type and Creator codes stored in a file's resource fork (something unix and windows don't know how to handle) and it allows jpegs to be associated with different apps, icons to be determined by file type and allows the system to know which files a program can open (so trying to drag and drop a photoshop file onto simpletext would not work). The problem, as I mentioned, is that windows and unix don't use resource forks (which is why most PC documents always came up looking generic unless PC exhange was properly configured) and Apple has dropped resource forks (seemingly) in exhange for mandatory and hidden file extensions (which are very limited and concealed) so that unix and windows filesharing would work better.
I think apple is sacrificing too much here to make their job simpler and I don't like it one bit. I intend on writing Apple on this issue and I hope others do as well.
I actually have had a wonderful experience with OS X.
...Okay, so maybe "wonderful" isn't the best descriptor for all of the fun I've had installing/using OS X on my slightly obsolete iMacs, but most of the problems I've experienced have been with my disks and not specifically OS X.
I have never had such a stable Mac or so few problems with the inner workings of an OS before. I'm very content with the way things are laid out (much more organized), I love Aqua as well as many of the theme replacements out there which I experiment with very easily. I also experiment with all kinds of servers and networking and other fun stuff. It is so cool being able to run a webserver with all of the newest technologies (ok, so that takes a little work), edit files on the very computer, or just shell in, do all of my work, run apps like MS Word and Adobe Photoshop, and play games, listen to music, edit movies, surf and email and IM, all in a beautiful and streamlined interface like Aqua, and of all machines on my Mac! I only go into Classic for Photoshop and it works great. Besides that, all of my favorite apps and more have been carbonized and things are just quite enjoyable for me. All of the hardware I use is supported, and well, and even hardware that shouldn't be supported on a Mac, is, with OS X. But beyond all of that, I love being able to use UNIX, have a command line interface right there that I can use and play with and experiment in. You see, I've tried installing LinuxPPC, YDL, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, etc on both my Macs and PCs, and I've never really been successful in getting anything to work... I just hate how unrefined Linux is, but envy the power and the command line interface. I used shells all of the time but even with that experience I was unable to configure and understand any Unix variant until Mac OS X made it so extremely easy tp get the ball rolling. Now I can use it like a tool, in a true Mac-like fashion where I don't have to worry about the inner mechanics constantly or getting it to work or whatever, I can just use it. Which I do, being a bit of a web developer when I'm not busy playing The Sims or goofing around on fora such as AI.
Whew. So that's how I feel. I am in love with OS X, I have been for quite a while. Frankly, the gripes of the community here are so small and stupid, not to mention probably going to get taken care of soon enough. Look at the big picture here folks. You are overreacting.
<strong>I actually have had a wonderful experience with OS X.
...Okay, so maybe "wonderful" isn't the best descriptor for all of the fun I've had installing/using OS X on my slightly obsolete iMacs, but most of the problems I've experienced have been with my disks and not specifically OS X.
I have never had such a stable Mac or so few problems with the inner workings of an OS before. I'm very content with the way things are laid out (much more organized), I love Aqua as well as many of the theme replacements out there which I experiment with very easily. I also experiment with all kinds of servers and networking and other fun stuff. It is so cool being able to run a webserver with all of the newest technologies (ok, so that takes a little work), edit files on the very computer, or just shell in, do all of my work, run apps like MS Word and Adobe Photoshop, and play games, listen to music, edit movies, surf and email and IM, all in a beautiful and streamlined interface like Aqua, and of all machines on my Mac! I only go into Classic for Photoshop and it works great. Besides that, all of my favorite apps and more have been carbonized and things are just quite enjoyable for me. All of the hardware I use is supported, and well, and even hardware that shouldn't be supported on a Mac, is, with OS X. But beyond all of that, I love being able to use UNIX, have a command line interface right there that I can use and play with and experiment in. You see, I've tried installing LinuxPPC, YDL, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, etc on both my Macs and PCs, and I've never really been successful in getting anything to work... I just hate how unrefined Linux is, but envy the power and the command line interface. I used shells all of the time but even with that experience I was unable to configure and understand any Unix variant until Mac OS X made it so extremely easy tp get the ball rolling. Now I can use it like a tool, in a true Mac-like fashion where I don't have to worry about the inner mechanics constantly or getting it to work or whatever, I can just use it. Which I do, being a bit of a web developer when I'm not busy playing The Sims or goofing around on fora such as AI.
Whew. So that's how I feel. I am in love with OS X, I have been for quite a while. Frankly, the gripes of the community here are so small and stupid, not to mention probably going to get taken care of soon enough. Look at the big picture here folks. You are overreacting.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]We have whizzy Aqua, but no real changes to the filesystem--no journaling, no use of metadata, got rid of the Chooser and replaced it with "Print Center" and "Go," new snazzy dialog boxes that are broken and worse than OS9.<hr></blockquote>
I agree with the journaling, the metadata (though I do think including file extensions is necessary these days, however much a necessary "evil"), but I never liked the Chooser idea. The weakness in how OS X handles what the Chooser used to do is how it connect to some servers -- that Go menu thing. The Go menu is fine as is, but to me the old AppleTalk portion of the Chooser belonged in the finder itself or the Network browser, not just choosing"Connect to Server." The Print Center and the general idea of having AppleTalk/network stuff available through the Finder is fine. Just the Finder should be better about browsing servers.
I also agree that wizards are a very poor/lazy way of making a good interface.
[quote]The weakness in how OS X handles what the Chooser used to do is how it connect to some servers -- that Go menu thing<hr></blockquote>
Not saying the Chooser was a great thing, but Apple made a big deal about finally killing off the Chooser, and replaced it with something worse. At least with Chooser [that evil buggy thing] everything was available in one place, now between Print Center, the "Go" menu and the Finder, any network stuff is very fragemented.
It should all be transparent and visible in the Finder. Simple as that. Oh and better Open and Save dialog boxes too.
[quot]The weakness in how OS X handles what the Chooser used to do is how it connect to some servers -- that Go menu thing[/quote]
Apple made a big deal about finally killing off the Chooser, and replaced it with something worse. At least with Chooser everything was available in one place, now between Print Center, the "Go" menu and the Finder, any network stuff is very fragemented.
It should all be transparent and visible in the Finder. Simple as that. Oh and better Open and Save dialog boxes too.
Comments
I love OS X
keeksy, metadata is the file information that is not really part of a file but which the computer uses internally (and sometimes without the user even being aware it's there). This type of data does things such as tell which type of file it is and with what program it is associated. In Windows it is the file extension (ex, the jpg in picture.jpg) You remove that from a file on a windows machine and suddenly windows doesn't know what to do with the file. In Mac OS 9 and below this was stored in Type and Creator codes stored in a file's resource fork (something unix and windows don't know how to handle) and it allows jpegs to be associated with different apps, icons to be determined by file type and allows the system to know which files a program can open (so trying to drag and drop a photoshop file onto simpletext would not work). The problem, as I mentioned, is that windows and unix don't use resource forks (which is why most PC documents always came up looking generic unless PC exhange was properly configured) and Apple has dropped resource forks (seemingly) in exhange for mandatory and hidden file extensions (which are very limited and concealed) so that unix and windows filesharing would work better.
I think this is a horrible progression because, foremost, the ability to have jpegs associated with different apps is very powerful and useful. Also the hidden file extensions can cause LOTS of confusion as shown here: <a href="http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/macosx-10.1/macosx-10.1-11.html"; target="_blank">http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/macosx-10.1/macosx-10.1-11.html </a>
I think apple is sacrificing too much here to make their job simpler and I don't like it one bit. I intend on writing Apple on this issue and I hope others do as well.
Well, enough ranting,
CD
<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/codemaster/"; target="_blank">http://homepage.mac.com/codemaster/</a>;
...Okay, so maybe "wonderful" isn't the best descriptor for all of the fun I've had installing/using OS X on my slightly obsolete iMacs, but most of the problems I've experienced have been with my disks and not specifically OS X.
I have never had such a stable Mac or so few problems with the inner workings of an OS before. I'm very content with the way things are laid out (much more organized), I love Aqua as well as many of the theme replacements out there which I experiment with very easily. I also experiment with all kinds of servers and networking and other fun stuff. It is so cool being able to run a webserver with all of the newest technologies (ok, so that takes a little work), edit files on the very computer, or just shell in, do all of my work, run apps like MS Word and Adobe Photoshop, and play games, listen to music, edit movies, surf and email and IM, all in a beautiful and streamlined interface like Aqua, and of all machines on my Mac! I only go into Classic for Photoshop and it works great. Besides that, all of my favorite apps and more have been carbonized and things are just quite enjoyable for me. All of the hardware I use is supported, and well, and even hardware that shouldn't be supported on a Mac, is, with OS X. But beyond all of that, I love being able to use UNIX, have a command line interface right there that I can use and play with and experiment in. You see, I've tried installing LinuxPPC, YDL, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, etc on both my Macs and PCs, and I've never really been successful in getting anything to work... I just hate how unrefined Linux is, but envy the power and the command line interface. I used shells all of the time but even with that experience I was unable to configure and understand any Unix variant until Mac OS X made it so extremely easy tp get the ball rolling. Now I can use it like a tool, in a true Mac-like fashion where I don't have to worry about the inner mechanics constantly or getting it to work or whatever, I can just use it. Which I do, being a bit of a web developer when I'm not busy playing The Sims or goofing around on fora such as AI.
Whew. So that's how I feel. I am in love with OS X, I have been for quite a while. Frankly, the gripes of the community here are so small and stupid, not to mention probably going to get taken care of soon enough. Look at the big picture here folks. You are overreacting.
<strong>I actually have had a wonderful experience with OS X.
...Okay, so maybe "wonderful" isn't the best descriptor for all of the fun I've had installing/using OS X on my slightly obsolete iMacs, but most of the problems I've experienced have been with my disks and not specifically OS X.
I have never had such a stable Mac or so few problems with the inner workings of an OS before. I'm very content with the way things are laid out (much more organized), I love Aqua as well as many of the theme replacements out there which I experiment with very easily. I also experiment with all kinds of servers and networking and other fun stuff. It is so cool being able to run a webserver with all of the newest technologies (ok, so that takes a little work), edit files on the very computer, or just shell in, do all of my work, run apps like MS Word and Adobe Photoshop, and play games, listen to music, edit movies, surf and email and IM, all in a beautiful and streamlined interface like Aqua, and of all machines on my Mac! I only go into Classic for Photoshop and it works great. Besides that, all of my favorite apps and more have been carbonized and things are just quite enjoyable for me. All of the hardware I use is supported, and well, and even hardware that shouldn't be supported on a Mac, is, with OS X. But beyond all of that, I love being able to use UNIX, have a command line interface right there that I can use and play with and experiment in. You see, I've tried installing LinuxPPC, YDL, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, etc on both my Macs and PCs, and I've never really been successful in getting anything to work... I just hate how unrefined Linux is, but envy the power and the command line interface. I used shells all of the time but even with that experience I was unable to configure and understand any Unix variant until Mac OS X made it so extremely easy tp get the ball rolling. Now I can use it like a tool, in a true Mac-like fashion where I don't have to worry about the inner mechanics constantly or getting it to work or whatever, I can just use it. Which I do, being a bit of a web developer when I'm not busy playing The Sims or goofing around on fora such as AI.
Whew. So that's how I feel. I am in love with OS X, I have been for quite a while. Frankly, the gripes of the community here are so small and stupid, not to mention probably going to get taken care of soon enough. Look at the big picture here folks. You are overreacting.</strong><hr></blockquote>
word.
You said it better than I ever could... :cool:
I agree with the journaling, the metadata (though I do think including file extensions is necessary these days, however much a necessary "evil"), but I never liked the Chooser idea. The weakness in how OS X handles what the Chooser used to do is how it connect to some servers -- that Go menu thing. The Go menu is fine as is, but to me the old AppleTalk portion of the Chooser belonged in the finder itself or the Network browser, not just choosing"Connect to Server." The Print Center and the general idea of having AppleTalk/network stuff available through the Finder is fine. Just the Finder should be better about browsing servers.
I also agree that wizards are a very poor/lazy way of making a good interface.
Not saying the Chooser was a great thing, but Apple made a big deal about finally killing off the Chooser, and replaced it with something worse. At least with Chooser [that evil buggy thing] everything was available in one place, now between Print Center, the "Go" menu and the Finder, any network stuff is very fragemented.
It should all be transparent and visible in the Finder. Simple as that. Oh and better Open and Save dialog boxes too.
[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: cowerd ]</p>
Apple made a big deal about finally killing off the Chooser, and replaced it with something worse. At least with Chooser everything was available in one place, now between Print Center, the "Go" menu and the Finder, any network stuff is very fragemented.
It should all be transparent and visible in the Finder. Simple as that. Oh and better Open and Save dialog boxes too.