OSX. Where has the AI spirit gone?
I remember back in the DP days, there used to be very lively threads around here about OSX. The AI boards were THE place to discuss the direction you felt OSX should go... Wild speculations fueled by hints and teasers by Belle, Kate, and others.
Seems like now the only threads around here are rants or "I want this OS9 feature back". None of the great OSX threads have come back with the revival of the AI boards.
I'm creating this thread so that those of us who see OSX as the future of the platform can discuss what *new* features/functionalities we would like to see in the future, and so that the few that have inside knowledge of Apple's direction with regards to OSX can post freely, without the wild scepticism they are often greeted with.
This is where I want OSX to go in the future:
Virtual Desktops. Every day I find myself wishing for them. Being able to fling the mouse on the side of the screen to change desktops, or view all desktops at the same time in a mosaic view would really make everyday use of OSX more powerful.
Tighter integration of Services with the Finder. Being able to convert images, send e-mails etc. directly within the Finder.
We have an industrial strength OS, give it an industrial strength file-system. Journaling, proper 64bit. And make the Finder USE extensible attributes.
Sherlock3: Major re-write. Indexing should be on the fly, and it should take advantage of the database-like structure of HFS+, so that file name searches are instant, ala BeOS. The direction Sherlock is taking was discussed at lenght a while ago in a Macnn thread started by a member named rm -rf etc or something similar. Very insightful, can't find it however.
Leverage meta-data, don't fight it. OSX should *not* rely on file extensions to determine a file's type. The OS should parse the data in the file to determine the type of the file, so that a situation where a user receives a file with the wrong extension, or no extension/file type and can't open it never happens. OS9 used to do it in an almost adequate way, the BeOS does it, OSX should too. John Siracusa says it best in his <a href="http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metadata-1.html"; target="_blank">review</a>
10.2 is said to bring back spring-loaded folders. Will Apple just give them back to us the way they appeared in OS8 in 97 or are they going to show us they were removed because they truly wanted to make them insanely great?
Exacerbate contextual menus by providing a documented API. Finder Pop was a wonderful addition to OS9, and that kind of functionality can only be brought by 3rd parties.
The Dock is a fine proof of concept. Now make it blow our minds with functionality we couldn't have imagined.
that' it for me, I'm waiting for you guys' crazy ideas, and maybe some insight on what Apple's doing (hint, hint
)
[ 12-24-2001: Message edited by: SYN ]</p>
Seems like now the only threads around here are rants or "I want this OS9 feature back". None of the great OSX threads have come back with the revival of the AI boards.
I'm creating this thread so that those of us who see OSX as the future of the platform can discuss what *new* features/functionalities we would like to see in the future, and so that the few that have inside knowledge of Apple's direction with regards to OSX can post freely, without the wild scepticism they are often greeted with.
This is where I want OSX to go in the future:
Virtual Desktops. Every day I find myself wishing for them. Being able to fling the mouse on the side of the screen to change desktops, or view all desktops at the same time in a mosaic view would really make everyday use of OSX more powerful.
Tighter integration of Services with the Finder. Being able to convert images, send e-mails etc. directly within the Finder.
We have an industrial strength OS, give it an industrial strength file-system. Journaling, proper 64bit. And make the Finder USE extensible attributes.
Sherlock3: Major re-write. Indexing should be on the fly, and it should take advantage of the database-like structure of HFS+, so that file name searches are instant, ala BeOS. The direction Sherlock is taking was discussed at lenght a while ago in a Macnn thread started by a member named rm -rf etc or something similar. Very insightful, can't find it however.
Leverage meta-data, don't fight it. OSX should *not* rely on file extensions to determine a file's type. The OS should parse the data in the file to determine the type of the file, so that a situation where a user receives a file with the wrong extension, or no extension/file type and can't open it never happens. OS9 used to do it in an almost adequate way, the BeOS does it, OSX should too. John Siracusa says it best in his <a href="http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metadata-1.html"; target="_blank">review</a>
10.2 is said to bring back spring-loaded folders. Will Apple just give them back to us the way they appeared in OS8 in 97 or are they going to show us they were removed because they truly wanted to make them insanely great?
Exacerbate contextual menus by providing a documented API. Finder Pop was a wonderful addition to OS9, and that kind of functionality can only be brought by 3rd parties.
The Dock is a fine proof of concept. Now make it blow our minds with functionality we couldn't have imagined.
that' it for me, I'm waiting for you guys' crazy ideas, and maybe some insight on what Apple's doing (hint, hint
)[ 12-24-2001: Message edited by: SYN ]</p>
Comments
When this problem is solved, it's uphill from there/
He, OK, seriously:
I would prefer a tabbed or similar interface to bring a "desktop" or series of desktops to the foreground than have virtual desktops as they currently are known. I'm not an expert by any means on this though: do virtual desktops hold more than just a "desktop" background change? Are settings and such changed too?
Could someone explain about the advantages of a "journaling" filesystem? I've read much about Be's use of this, but frankly, it was "in-one-ear-out-the-other." Basically, it sounds like one of those things you didn't know you needed until you have it. Is it a matter of abstraction -- that the contents of the finder do not have to directly display the organization and layout of the filesystem?
The idea of more context-specific file browsing/searching apps/utilities appeals to me, like the old example of the iTunes browsing feature. The inference Jobs once made about multiple Finders. In this case, I imagine that Sherlock as an exclusive app to go bye-bye and its various search types to be integrated with the appropriate browser (and I'm not think of the web browser typology). It's all quite fuzzy in my head, maybe others have a more concrete idea about this.
Is there some kind of hidden secret about disk copy? It sometimes seems like it's gotten a lot of attention. Maybe it's just me.
SLF: I've finally been convinced that SLF are pretty much OK as is when the Finder is in column or list view. I hold my opinion that they are a bit weird in icon view, especially when it's set to single-window burrowing. Ooh, and as long as they are making SLF for the Finder, could they please please please make it available to the Dock pop-ups? I'd be in Dock heaven with that! just toss my home folder and some odds-n-ends, and suddenly the Dock is indispensable (and a lot like the old pop-up folders).
And I'd like to see a better Help system. Nothing too whiz-bang, just speedy, with good searching, a depth of information, integration with the Knowledge base even more is possible and most importantly -- step by step help! I think Apple's consumer audience would find a great help system a very persuasive selling point.
Uh, more later I guess?
My first job using a computer was on a crazy Unix comp put together by guys in white coats at Kodak Electronic Publishing. While it may have been Unix, it did have a gui. Not a very good one, by todays standards, but it was completely gui once booted.
On the screen (actually there were two, but one was just for displaying pictures in color), which was in black and white, were four doors with doormats in the bottom left hand corner.
Two of the doors were workrooms. Basically, these were desktops which started off identical. You did all your work in either one. They acted the same as each other. One tech could use one room, another could use the other.
One of the doors was for your tools. You could go in here and get any color correction tool you wanted. Bring it back to one of the workrooms and you could duplicate it, use it, trash it or whatever. You could do some amazing batch functions with these tools.
The fourth door had pictures of trees, the sun and a little walking path on it. This was the "exit" door. You went here to log out and shutdown.
To open the door you held your mouse over the little doormat for a few seconds. The door would open. You then held the mouse in the doorway for a few seconds and voila - another room.
If they could do something like this for the virtual desktops it would be pretty cool. Either that or let apps continue to run when logged out sort of like (god help me) XP does.
It sucks when I have a process going, something downloading etc. and my GF has to log out and close my apps just to check her email.
<a href="http://forums.macnn.com/"; target="_blank">http://forums.macnn.com/</a>;
<a href="http://forums.macnn.com/"; target="_blank">http://forums.macnn.com/</a>;
hehe, cute
I'm not an expert by any means on this though: do virtual desktops hold more than just a "desktop" background change? Are settings and such changed too?
You can change resolution too on a per Desktop basis, being able to change Docks would be great. I remember a (very) old thread here which discussed the idea of a Cube you could rotate in order to access your various desktops... Amusingly, I met an ex-NEXTSTEP developer at AppleExpo 18 months ago and he told me he was thinking about implementing multiple desktops in that same way... Wonder what happened...
Could someone explain about the advantages of a "journaling" filesystem?
Basically, the file system keeps a log of all data transactions that take place. Thus, if for instance a power failure occurs while doing a large data transfer, your files do not get corrupted, and when you reboot, the filesystem's integrity will have been preserved. This can be achieved either with journaling, either with softupdates. I'd really like Apple to migrate towards XFS.
<strong>Ahhhh SYN, you want to confer with the Apple Apolgists. For that you'll have to go here:
<a href="http://forums.macnn.com/"; target="_blank">http://forums.macnn.com/</a></strong><hr></blockquote>;
Oh we have many apologists in here. Say anything bad about Apple or OS X's GUI and you get called a whiner and such. Some people just cannot STAND anyone saying anything bad about Apple. No matter what it is.
Well, this thread was not supposed to be an Apple Apologist gathering... I just got tired of the people threatening class-action law-suits everytime Apple did something that displeased them; and wanted to discuss something else. I thought I made this point clear in my initial post, as I clearly criticised some design decisions in OSX, reliance on extensions and sherlock being the most obvious.
Maybe you should read before posting
edit: Merry Christmas to you all
[ 12-24-2001: Message edited by: SYN ]</p>
Well, as far as short-comings go, I think that even if there are native OS X apps, the problem is the quality of those said applications.
At this point, it seems like developers are just making the minimal modifications necessary to just barely pass over carbon-compliant line.
Why is this not a Good Thing(tm)? Quite simple, because by producing "Frankenstein apps" of this sort, what happens is that you end up getting all the disadvantages of running OS X (namely, major slowdown in speed) without the advantages of OS X (such as full use of services, true pre-emptive multitasking).
A good example of this is Internet Explorer start loading a page up and while you do, click and hold on a menu selection - the program stops rendering, just like pre-OS X. I thought the whole point of moving to OS X was so that inefficient system resource utilizations by the OS would be eliminated, but instead, what you have is an app that may look a little different (sacrificing a lot of processor power to do so in Aqua), but feels like an OS 9 app.
What I would prefer to see is developers actually taking advantage of all the new abilities that OS X has, rather than just rehashing an OS 9 app, thereby turning the OS X experience into a much slower version of an OS 9 experience.
[ 12-24-2001: Message edited by: Kestral ]</p>
Good apps are starting to come, but it's true that very few are taking advantage of OSX's unique features, such as services, CoreGraphics rendering, scroll wheel support etc. This will come in time. However if you choose your apps correctly, you'll see that we're getting there, albeit slowly.
The problem you're citing in your example is actually Apple's fault, not MS'
Any devs here know when (if?) it's supposed to be fixed?
QuickDraw and newer CoreGraphics APIs are fully re-entrant (QuickDraw I know for sure). They can be called on any thread in a given process.
The mouse issues in IE are most certainly Microsoft's fault. Even without threading, it is possible to do the rendering and downloads while the mouse is held down. Using the CarbonEvent function TrackMouseLocationWithOptions will allow to you to do this, simply specify an immediate timeout. You can also use Carbon Event timers. Or ReceiveNextEvent with no timeout - the possibilities are endless.
I know that the above techniques work, as I have personally worked on single thread applications, but they had live window resizing, menu interaction that didn't block the rest of the app; and yes, holding the mouse down didn't block the app either.
Microsoft has some pretty talented people on their Mac team. So I suspect that it's simply an issue of lack of time, as opposed to laziness or incompetence.
[I just checked, and while I hold the mouse down, a web page still renders. I think that Microsoft may have fixed a large portion of these problems with IE 5.1]
is apple not able to think for themselves or innovate in the operating system at all.
OS X played catch up. now its time to take the lead and they don't seem to be making any radical advancements that would give them the lead
<strong>all I want is for Apple to take chances and make inroads in UI design. they haven't. they put a gumdrop them on platinum and stuck a huge icon dock at the bottom of the screen.
is apple not able to think for themselves or innovate in the operating system at all.
OS X played catch up. now its time to take the lead and they don't seem to be making any radical advancements that would give them the lead</strong><hr></blockquote>
what sort of radical advancements do you speak of?
examples?
<strong>
what sort of radical advancements do you speak of?
examples?</strong><hr></blockquote>
hey, I'm not a visionary. Apple pays people to come up with stuff, not me
<strong>
what sort of radical advancements do you speak of?
examples?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Better handling of metadata for one. In this aspect, they could really learn something from BeOS. But even better would be an SQL-based file system.
examples?
The NewtonOS had basic AI functionality. For instance if you just wrote "Dinner tonite at 8pm with Janis", it would understand this was an appointment and automatically remind you when appropriate.
That was 5 years ago. Could such functionality not be added to OSX?
I know you guys are dreading a "paper clip" type implementation. However, done right, this could truly be a killer feature.
I don't know about that. That's where MS is heading with BlackComb... I don't know if SQL has been designed with the stress a Multimedia OS can put on a file system in mind...
Leveraging meta-data certainly is one aspect that I'd like to see in OSX more and more. Being able to set arbitrary attributes, ala BeOS, in the Finder would be great. HFS+ already allows this, it's just the Finder that blocks us.
[ 12-26-2001: Message edited by: SYN ]</p>
<strong>all I want is for Apple to take chances and make inroads in UI design. they haven't. they put a gumdrop them on platinum and stuck a huge icon dock at the bottom of the screen.</strong><hr></blockquote>
True, true, and look at the flak they got for changing just that.
I'm interested in non-desktop metaphors for GUIs, new ideas, but I'm waiting for someone else to do it -- it's not going to be Apple. (MS are in fact doing this but they have yet to impress me with their direction.)
PS: and I have no compliments for that old perspective-room-as-cube-multiple-workspace-thing people always bring up. I'm not interested in a 3D GUI until our displays project into 3D too.
[ 12-26-2001: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>