Agreed to almost all of the previous posts, every one of them! So many posts and many are still on topic.
Anyhow, going back to OS 9 looks a bit like a glorified Palm OS. Very snappy but a bit too 1990 for me.
One thing is very clear, though. A slow finder sells more hardware. For example, my g3 400 lombard powerbook that has no graphics/quicktime support, so that I will purchase the pokey g4 powerbook.
jimmac, I'm surprised at your responses, you usually have good posts. If Apple hasn't caught OS X up with OS 9 (caught up, at least!) by 10.2 then we should really bombard them with mail. Did you READ my post jimmac? Windows, as hard as it is to admit, gets better every day. Know, ALL of us here know that more than HALF the reason we use Macs is MacOS.
I felt really dumb to have to tell my friend who just bought a pimped out 7500 with a 200mhz 604e that OS X would be so slow on it, it would be UNUSABLE. Jimmac, what machines have you used OS X on???
Granted, my 256 meg dimm for my iBook hasn't come yet, and I've yet to test battery life sleeping... But after hearing from ZO and doing some reading, I'm really hoping tomorrow Steve Jobs will blow us away with options for everything that currently isn't there or working, but should be
<strong>Hardware like my iBook!?</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS X loves RAM. The additional 256MB will make a difference. However, there's still work to be done. OS X has been getting faster, not slower, and I see no reason for that trend to change any time soon. It's still a work in progress.
[quote]<strong>If Apple hasn't caught OS X up with OS 9 (caught up, at least!) by 10.2 then we should really bombard them with mail.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Depends on what you mean by "caught up." For me, it passed by OS 9 some time around 10.0.3, sluggishness and all, and it's on another level now. For me, a few UI glitches are worth the trade for a few multitasking and stability glitches - at least UI glitches are easier to fix. I won't mention the arbitrary conglomeration of shareware hacks that passes for the OS 9 UI. Speaking as a programmer, the fact that OS X doesn't freeze every time I make a mistake is already a godsend; the fact that OS X is far more responsive than OS 9 for switching tasks - especially if one task is churning away, or hung - is a win; the Finder (with toolbar) and the new open/save dialog boxes have made it easier for me to find and organize files (I'm pretty bad at doing it myself). I've been completely spoiled by having all the apps I want to use one click away in the Dock - it neatly replaced my tabbed folder of aliases in button view in OS 9, and it's easier to set up, use and maintain. I used to have to be careful managing memory, especially after I discovered that giving OS 9 applications lots of RAM made them (and therefore the system) a lot more stable. Under OS X, all that's taken care of neatly and transparently.
I'm just venturing into AppleScript, but the people on the AS users list are praising OS X to the skies after some initial skepticism. AS always worked sort of provisionally in OS 9, and Finder was very slow and unreliable, in no small part because the cooperative multitasking environment makes automation hard. AS is much more at home in X (and much better supported), and that matters a lot to Apple's customers in publishing.
[quote]<strong>Windows, as hard as it is to admit, gets better every day.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, it improves at irregular (and often long) intervals, and rarely without a good list of gotchas and a few steps back. I know: I've spent 8 hours a day in Windows for the last 7 years or so. Few of the improvements are really all that earth-shaking, because MS is still hobbled by legacy compatibility. The UI might look less ugly (although XP looks garish and plasticky to me) but it still carries over all the inconsistent and gratuitously overcomplicated legacy cruft, and piles on more.
It also gets slower with every release. You should know that MS and Intel have been trying to find ways to get people to replace their computers every year in order to buoy stagnanting PC sales, so if you're concerned about performance on older hardware the Windows world is the wrong place to look.
[quote]<strong>I felt really dumb to have to tell my friend who just bought a pimped out 7500 with a 200mhz 604e that OS X would be so slow on it, it would be UNUSABLE.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Would you be embarrassed to tell him that a "pimped out" PC from the same era could barely run Windows XP?
[quote]<strong>Granted, my 256 meg dimm for my iBook hasn't come yet, and I've yet to test battery life sleeping... But after hearing from ZO and doing some reading, I'm really hoping tomorrow Steve Jobs will blow us away with options for everything that currently isn't there or working, but should be </strong><hr></blockquote>
"Everything" might be too hopeful, but I expect a steady stream of improvements over the next year. Another unambiguous benefit to OS X over OS 9 is that it's a modular architecture. It's much, much easier to change and upgrade.
In the mean time, that DIMM should make an immediate difference.
[edit by Amorph: Numerous clarifications, and a few corrections]
...... and a whole lot more....... </strong><hr></blockquote>
I knew that wasn't something I made up, I just didn't remember where I read it. And anyways, if you guys aren't getting like three hours per battery charge, maybe there's something wrong with your battery. Under OS X, my Ti500 with 512 megs of ram lasts for days when I take it in and out of sleep to browse the web, chat online, and email from my couch. (I use the new iMac 800 for the heavy stuff. .... Man! Can you imagine that? Using an IMAC for the processor intensive stuff! lol .... oh, forget it. This is a humorless thread, sorry. Didn't mean to ruin the flow, let the name calling and finger pointing begin again.)
Oh! I think I remember now! It was at WWDC 2000, one of the OS X conferences, I heard about the power management being handled by the OS........ or was it MacWorld SF 2001? Hmmm.... dammit. But, regardless, I heard this info straight from Apple's mouth. Hmm... I wonder what else I've forgotten?
<strong>I really don't feel like going over really old ground. Hell, we went over this crap almost a year ago and it's still stupid. </strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason we KEEP mentioning it is because OS X, in 1 years time, with all its promises of being the most kickass, incredible, revolutionary OS, hasnt really improved in leaps and bounds. Its been in development for, what, a million years now and we dont have something like spring loaded folders and labels? Come on people! WAKE UP! OS X is just not cut out to be all that its supposed to be. Yes, MAYBE in a year or two.. but right now, it still feels like a late beta.
In regards to Energy Saver, I must say, I have no complaints. I have a theoretical 6 hour battery life and actually managed to get 5h20 with some itunes, browsing, and word processing... very impressive.
My options will be the following:
1) Wait til 10.2 and see improvements and keep my iBook
2) 10.2 is marginally better but because I still want to have a Mac, I sell this one off and buy a lowend portable iBook and buy a PC and wait a few years to see if both processor and OS on the Mac side get less pathetic and eventually buy a nicer faster Mac.
While iMac has gotten, finally, a G4 for a great price, iBook users are still stuck in the shit with crap G3 processors and a slow OS to boot. I am NOT a happy camper.
ZO: you have to understand, OS X may have been in development for 'millions of years', but it's not that EASY to port an OS. First they had to find out which parts of the OS they can port from Intel (as I don't believe, by the time Apple picked up NeXT, it was running on PPC.) Then they had to decide which MacOS features they'd keep. Then they had to port the OS over, and even rewrite most of the functionality and APIs. THEN they had to devise a plan to get the developers on their side.... which ultimately backfired. So, they had to go to the drawing board and implement a new API on an already massive project and come up with a new strategy. By this time I'm sure Steve said they needed a new interface, and, designing an interface isn't exactly easy, just ask Microsoft. Fast forward a few years and it's amazing they've intergrated everything in the OS as well as they have. Carbon is still a moving target and it's always being improved. But, improving APIs bring about incompatibilites with current software, and I beleive 10.2, if there are big speed increases, might break compatibility with some apps, if not a lot. Remember, there's a reason apps require 10.1 instead of 10.0.x, certain hooks need to be there for their apps to run. In other words, it's not that easy writing an OS, though I think I've simplified it a bit much here, too. Give Apple a break. We're all impatient, but you can't fight drama with drama. So, relax.
You have to be kidding me. OS X knows better than I do what settings I want for the Energy Saver?
How else would I specify my always changing needs for different sleep/HD Spind Down/Screen settings on Battery and Outlet? I don't frikkin' care how dynamic it is. Sometime I want it full power everything on battery, sometimes I need to trim it down as conservative as possible.
Gambit, I do programming. OK, maybe I don't work in assembly or UNIX system calls But I know that it wouldn't take a frikkin' GENIUS to put Spring Loaded Folders in. Why don't they just release 10.1.4 with Spring Loaded Folders and Windowshades??? Amorph raised an interesting point about metadata and Labels, though. That needs some deeper thought.
Amorph, I am coming from a B&W G3 300 w/ 512 megs of RAM, plain vanilla everything. All I know is, 9.2.2 on the G3 300 whips 10.1.3's @$$ on the iBook, especially in terms of responsiveness, UI, and organization/customization. This is sad. This new iBook is less than a year old, the B&W.... Ah well. What do I know? Maybe OpenGL is slow, or Mach isn't monolithic? I just thought, with a total re-write and a year's worth of revisions, no 68K code, etc. etc., it would be faster. OS X has some good points, but multi-tasking isn't one of the ones I've observed. So far, the Dock is the only metric I've really looked, but it really seems to hog the CPU, looking at the CPU monitor.
A few employees at Apple devoted to bringing back the good stuff from OS 9 would do wonders for OS X efficiency, I bet. No smartass replies please, Windowshade X and Fruitmenu shouldn't be SHAREWARE. Unsanity should be based out of a Cupertino office!
I'm not saying options are bad. Nobody here is saying that. What I AM saying is that we're not smarter than Apple, smarter than the people at Apple. There HAS to be a reason OS X doesn't have the features we are requesting, and there has to be a reason why OS X is "taking so long." I don't know what that reason is, and while people may have good guesses, nobody really knows. You should go to MW or WWDC if you ever get a chance. The conferences, especially the really technical ones, not only give you a grasp of what OS X is doing behind the scenes, but it gives you a deeper appreciation for them, as well. (Hence why some of us sound forgiving. I know that's why I am.)
<strong>You have to be kidding me. OS X knows better than I do what settings I want for the Energy Saver?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Welcome to UNIX, the first operating system to present a greatly simplified, highly abstracted interface to the hardware. OS X knows a lot of things better than you do. Including when to store files in "memory" on disk, and when to store files on "disk" in memory. This means relinquishing low-level control, yes, but people have been eagerly doing just that since FORTRAN first appeared, in the name of ease of use.
Generally, this is a Good Thing(TM). It means that the average person - remember, the sort of person Apple has targeted from the get-go - can get excellent battery performance without ever seeing the Energy Saver control panel.
[quote]<strong>Sometime I want it full power everything on battery, sometimes I need to trim it down as conservative as possible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, if you're trimming down as conservative as possible, you probably aren't ripping a CD while playing a tune while applying 10 filters to a 1GB file while running folding@home. Likewise, if you want to run full blast, you probably aren't running TextEdit all by itself with the brightness at 40%. So I'll bet that there's some correlation between what how you're using the laptop and what sort of energy requirements you need. That's not too hard for OS X to figure out. If, in actual use, OS X does what you want, then you aren't missing anything.
[quote]<strong>Gambit, I do programming. OK, maybe I don't work in assembly or UNIX system calls But I know that it wouldn't take a frikkin' GENIUS to put Spring Loaded Folders in. Why don't they just release 10.1.4 with Spring Loaded Folders and Windowshades??? Amorph raised an interesting point about metadata and Labels, though. That needs some deeper thought.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I sincerely doubt that it's a programming problem.
It's a design problem. You absolutely do not design a user interface by gluing a bunch of different widgets together without considering how they work together - that way lies Gnome. Nor do you offer everything and let the user and the developer choose. That way lies Motif, quite possibly the most godawful GUI ever inflicted on the world. Design 101: Anything that doesn't fit neatly into the gestalt should get cut. If Apple is lazy about making a UI decision in their new, fledgling OS, it will bite them in the ass for years. The time and trouble spent getting a design right the first time is far, far less than the time you'll spend coping with the oversights and compromises of a mediocre design. Believe me, I've learned this the hard way. There are several discrete functionalities within Aqua that either substitute for or moot the need for windowshades, so I don't expect them back. I certainly don't miss them, and I used them a lot in OS 9.
The classic Apple Menu is a textbook example of horrible UI design. Its passing should not be mourned. There are, again, different ways to accomplish the myriad, unrelated tasks that the Apple Menu tried to offer, so there's no reason to have it there.
[quote]<strong>Amorph, I am coming from a B&W G3 300 w/ 512 megs of RAM, plain vanilla everything. All I know is, 9.2.2 on the G3 300 whips 10.1.3's @$$ on the iBook, especially in terms of responsiveness, UI, and organization/customization.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not really surprising. 512MB of RAM will speed OS 9 up quite dramatically, especially if you change all your applications' memory usage to take advantage of it. Furthermore, if your iBook doesn't have much RAM (especially if it only has 64MB), then OS X will be hitting the hard drive a lot, and notebook hard drives are s l o w.
[quote]<strong>This new iBook is less than a year old, the B&W.... Ah well. What do I know? Maybe OpenGL is slow, or Mach isn't monolithic? I just thought, with a total re-write and a year's worth of revisions, no 68K code, etc. etc., it would be faster.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The Darwin kernel is monolithic.
The parts of the OS that are no longer 68K code are much, much, much faster in OS X. For example, the filesystem. There are things that are much more responsive in OS X, courtesy of the preemptive multitasking and far more efficient threading. As far as the total rewrite goes, there's an old saying from the NeXTStep days: Make it work, then make it fast. Apple is still making parts of OS X work. Lastly, Quartz does a whole hell of a lot more work than QuickDraw ever had to, so it will always be faster and easier for OS 9 to paint its primitive windows on screen.
[quote]<strong>OS X has some good points, but multi-tasking isn't one of the ones I've observed. So far, the Dock is the only metric I've really looked, but it really seems to hog the CPU, looking at the CPU monitor.</strong><hr></blockquote>
% CPU is highly misleading. Especially if there's not much else running, a spike of high CPU use is simply an indication of tightly written code.
[quote]<strong>Why are options bad?</strong><hr></blockquote>
First of all, a statement like "options are bad" is absurd. More often than anyone would like to admit, however, options are a symptom of developer laziness: They can't be bothered to do the extra work involved in deciding what belongs where, so they punt that task to the user. (I see a lot more of this in the Windows world, and it's rampant in the Linux community, but it's not unknown on the Mac side.) This is not the way Apple has ever done things, and this is precisely why they are admired for their user friendliness. In this case, the options you're asking for aren't so much enhancements of the Aqua interface as kludges to shoehorn in things from another interface that you're used to, and that immediately makes them suspect. If there's a problem Aqua doesn't currently address or address well (which is certainly not out of the question!) then the proper solution is to design a feature into Aqua's paradigm, rather than port something over from OS 9 lock, stock and barrel.
If you've tailored the way you work to OS 9, OS X is going to seem weird. I know this. But if you take the plunge, and approach OS X more like a new thing, I'm confident that you'll find a way to work without relying on (many) shareware hacks. If you stop thinking of it as a funny-looking OS 9, it does make sense in its own terms. At this point, I find OS 9 frustrating and awkward, and I've used Macs since 1986.
Yea! What James said! With a cherry on top! Actually, he wrote pretty much everything I wanted to say, except I was too lazy and not really interested in playing cheerleader for OS X/Apple. If you like OS 9, which I don't now after getting used to X, then stay in 9. X is better if you take it on its own terms, like I've been saying this entire thread.
At last some sanity! It just seems like everyone here is just waiting to jump all over Apple about something ( and yes it goes way beyond constructive suggestions ) witness the thread about the increase in iMac prices. They couldn't even get their facts straight so they spread misinformation about the prices being higher than they really are. It makes me ill. Thank you James, and Gambit.
I don't advocate not finding fault with Apple ( if it's really valid ) this is something else.
indeed Amorph, very informative and well said. Thanks for explaining a lot of tech stuff.
BUT, and I have to say this, the fact remains that OS X is not all that its made out to be. And dont think I just rant here and thats it, I send almost all my suggestions, problems, rants to Apple all the time in the hope that they pay attention at least a little bit.
Im jst really pissed off that I paid a LOT of money for a tricked out iBook and yet OS X is still, not dog slow, but definetly lacking. The few times I have to go to OS 9 I start to be able to work quickly again. OS X is a combination of pressing shortcuts, using mouse, clicking etc... but waiting that extra half second or 2 and having the damn spinning-wheel-of-death appear almost all the time.
As some other wise soul mentioned in another thread, OS X's demise right now is the little inconsistencies. Its 'this little qwirk' plus 'that little qwirk' plus 'this other bug' and finally 'this blatant fubar'. This is killing the whole OS X experience for me. Because I am a dedicated Apple person I am making an effort to use it, but its starting wear thin.
Examples of simple qwirks: The speedy Apple+N since forever has meant new folder. Now I have to use the shift button too. I had to get used to it and I have, but I actually have to think where I place my fingers on THREE buttons now. (big deal you say... but it interrups workflow even for a second... I have to think of the OS rather than my work)
-Desktop pictures not appearing... force quit of finder to see the changes (wtf is THAT about???)
-Icons disappearing
-Finder 'unexpectadly quitting' way too often
-Folders not rememberng their positions
-Get Info on many items will often not tell you the size because there are too many items... I have waited up to 5 minutes on a few occasions and Get Info would still not have been able to calculate the size a of a few hundred files
-Renaming files or folders: The cursor disappears when you move it in the name when you move it around (the postion cursor, not the mouse cursor)
-No labels (something I used continously in OS 7-9 to categorize the contents of folders (burned, read, to discard, etc etc)
-While placing a folder in the dock with apps works, its hideously slow the first time around... at least 4-5 seconds for the contents of my Applications folder to appear
I can keep going... and while these arent CRITICAL qwirks... they add up to mass frustration. BUT you still have to do your work so, off you go and use it anyway.... ugh.
Amorph, while I understand that while making major changes to 10.2 may break many if not all apps, this goes to show that 10.x is still very much beta... they are still getting feedback and improving if not totally overhauling parts that were deemed final years ago. I know that mistakes happen and technology continously improves, but I get these impressions that in many places Apple engineers just used something that was just 'ok' for the time beeing with in mind that they would 'get back to it some other time'. I also understand that OS X couldnt stay closed up at Apple forever and that even Win95 had major problems for a while after it was launched...
Fine, whatever... the bottom line is that OS X is not good enough for me now (and Im sure for many of you either).
<strong>Amorph, while I understand that while making major changes to 10.2 may break many if not all apps, this goes to show that 10.x is still very much beta... they are still getting feedback and improving if not totally overhauling parts that were deemed final years ago. I know that mistakes happen and technology continously improves, but I get these impressions that in many places Apple engineers just used something that was just 'ok' for the time beeing with in mind that they would 'get back to it some other time'</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, I said that: OS X 10.2 may break some apps. And because of that, you came to the conclusion that this shows that OS X is very much beta. That is the grossest assumption I've ever heard about OS X, and it's not a fair conclusion at all. This doesn't show that OS X is beta, this shows that OS X IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT, that it's continually improving, AND GETTING BETTER. Just like you want it to! You want all these new features, but when Apple changes the underlying structure to accomodate, you think that's evidence of beta software. That doesn't make sense. All it proves is that Apple is striving to make things better.
For instance: MacOS 9 came out and it broke many apps as they removed most of the 68k code that some developers relied on. (Remember that?) 9.1 broke even more apps because 68k code was finally removed completely. Does that mean 9.x is beta software? I've never heard that argument for any OS pre X.... oh, but that's right. The reason you never called OS 9 beta even though it broke compatibility with some apps is because you had your labels and spring-loaded folders. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Come on now, think about it.
[quote]Originally posted by ZO:
<strong>Fine, whatever... the bottom line is that OS X is not good enough for me now (and Im sure for many of you either).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Zo: OS X is not for people who are expecting it to be OS 9. If the current feature set or UI performance is not what you expected, then wait until it is. My buddy runs OS X on his iceBook and it DOESN'T respond as well as 9 does, but it runs faster than 9 when it comes to actually getting work done. It just seems like you're too caught up struggling against the benefits of X trying to make it something it is not. "Death by a thousand cuts" is something I've heard described about X by people who are trying to make it 9. Use it for what it is, not for what you want it to be. If that goes against your principles, then, like I said, wait for OS X to be more like you want. There's nothing else you can do.
With saying that it was like beta I didnt mean that feature sets were not ready... it just FEELS like a late beta (as in 'almost there but not quite')
Regarding my desires for it to be like OS 9, I just want SOME functionality of it... not a new OS with the same skin. That would be silly. I love OS X.. its beautiful to use (visually) and it indeed is a kick ass OS... but not yet.
I know OS 9 broke a lot of compatibility, but that got fixed pretty quickly. For OS X to go through this many major changes (almost one year now) is quite dramatic imo. They are well welcomed but I can hardly thing Developers are too happy to have to re-compile and re-tweak their apps for the umpteenth time. Well, whatever, as long as OS X gets damn faster I dont care.
The only part of OS X that was deemed final even a year ago won't be that until Sunday.
If you are talking about the public beta......well it did say beta and I assume that included all the parts therein. I'm sorry but when people make inaccurate statements like that it makes them sound like fanatics. I'm glad the group that doesn't like OS X seems limited to a few.
[quote]I'm sorry but when people make inaccurate statements like that it makes them sound like fanatics.<hr></blockquote>
Pot calling kettle black--or is that too subjective a statement. Sorry to say something bad about your prize OS, but some things haven't quite lived up to any Q&A standards except maybe M$'s. For those people who have DP machines and must live with PPP connections, or those with ATI Rage chipsets, or people who have lost USB print sharing or any one of a number of peripherals, or OPen GL gaming issues, it is a problem that cannot be glossed over by telling them to stick with OS9 or live without. After all if you're trying to migrate a user base and win market share the OS really has to work, and work well, for despite all of the protestations their is very little difference between OSX and XP. If you think thats a silly statement look at Apple's attempts to add value by bundling iApps.
Marketing hype aside, Apple has told its faithful user base that this is the OS of the future. and then has failed to communicate to its users what that future entails. Apple's disdainful secrecy is a major part of the problem. It really wouldn't hurt to let users know that USB printing will show up sooner or later, or that certain chipsets would not be fully supported.
Note that people aren't asking when the next generation in UI design or any other really wizzy features will show up, but when some things that are missing from OS9, and that DO fit into OSX UI paradigm will appear. To make it easier lets be real generic about these things, lest you hissy out:
Easier file manipulation, including copying and moving files.
Metadata
More location management options
More dependable printing
USB Printer sharing of some kind
Network browsing
Simplified user and group management [anything other than Netinfo]
Simplified file sharing [anything other than Netinfo]
Comments
Anyhow, going back to OS 9 looks a bit like a glorified Palm OS. Very snappy but a bit too 1990 for me.
One thing is very clear, though. A slow finder sells more hardware. For example, my g3 400 lombard powerbook that has no graphics/quicktime support, so that I will purchase the pokey g4 powerbook.
[ 03-20-2002: Message edited by: mugwump ]</p>
jimmac, I'm surprised at your responses, you usually have good posts. If Apple hasn't caught OS X up with OS 9 (caught up, at least!) by 10.2 then we should really bombard them with mail. Did you READ my post jimmac? Windows, as hard as it is to admit, gets better every day. Know, ALL of us here know that more than HALF the reason we use Macs is MacOS.
I felt really dumb to have to tell my friend who just bought a pimped out 7500 with a 200mhz 604e that OS X would be so slow on it, it would be UNUSABLE. Jimmac, what machines have you used OS X on???
Granted, my 256 meg dimm for my iBook hasn't come yet, and I've yet to test battery life sleeping... But after hearing from ZO and doing some reading, I'm really hoping tomorrow Steve Jobs will blow us away with options for everything that currently isn't there or working, but should be
<strong>Hardware like my iBook!?</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS X loves RAM. The additional 256MB will make a difference. However, there's still work to be done. OS X has been getting faster, not slower, and I see no reason for that trend to change any time soon. It's still a work in progress.
[quote]<strong>If Apple hasn't caught OS X up with OS 9 (caught up, at least!) by 10.2 then we should really bombard them with mail.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Depends on what you mean by "caught up." For me, it passed by OS 9 some time around 10.0.3, sluggishness and all, and it's on another level now. For me, a few UI glitches are worth the trade for a few multitasking and stability glitches - at least UI glitches are easier to fix. I won't mention the arbitrary conglomeration of shareware hacks that passes for the OS 9 UI. Speaking as a programmer, the fact that OS X doesn't freeze every time I make a mistake is already a godsend; the fact that OS X is far more responsive than OS 9 for switching tasks - especially if one task is churning away, or hung - is a win; the Finder (with toolbar) and the new open/save dialog boxes have made it easier for me to find and organize files (I'm pretty bad at doing it myself). I've been completely spoiled by having all the apps I want to use one click away in the Dock - it neatly replaced my tabbed folder of aliases in button view in OS 9, and it's easier to set up, use and maintain. I used to have to be careful managing memory, especially after I discovered that giving OS 9 applications lots of RAM made them (and therefore the system) a lot more stable. Under OS X, all that's taken care of neatly and transparently.
I'm just venturing into AppleScript, but the people on the AS users list are praising OS X to the skies after some initial skepticism. AS always worked sort of provisionally in OS 9, and Finder was very slow and unreliable, in no small part because the cooperative multitasking environment makes automation hard. AS is much more at home in X (and much better supported), and that matters a lot to Apple's customers in publishing.
[quote]<strong>Windows, as hard as it is to admit, gets better every day.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, it improves at irregular (and often long) intervals, and rarely without a good list of gotchas and a few steps back. I know: I've spent 8 hours a day in Windows for the last 7 years or so. Few of the improvements are really all that earth-shaking, because MS is still hobbled by legacy compatibility. The UI might look less ugly (although XP looks garish and plasticky to me) but it still carries over all the inconsistent and gratuitously overcomplicated legacy cruft, and piles on more.
It also gets slower with every release. You should know that MS and Intel have been trying to find ways to get people to replace their computers every year in order to buoy stagnanting PC sales, so if you're concerned about performance on older hardware the Windows world is the wrong place to look.
[quote]<strong>I felt really dumb to have to tell my friend who just bought a pimped out 7500 with a 200mhz 604e that OS X would be so slow on it, it would be UNUSABLE.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Would you be embarrassed to tell him that a "pimped out" PC from the same era could barely run Windows XP?
[quote]<strong>Granted, my 256 meg dimm for my iBook hasn't come yet, and I've yet to test battery life sleeping... But after hearing from ZO and doing some reading, I'm really hoping tomorrow Steve Jobs will blow us away with options for everything that currently isn't there or working, but should be
"Everything" might be too hopeful, but I expect a steady stream of improvements over the next year. Another unambiguous benefit to OS X over OS 9 is that it's a modular architecture. It's much, much easier to change and upgrade.
In the mean time, that DIMM should make an immediate difference.
[edit by Amorph: Numerous clarifications, and a few corrections]
[ 03-20-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Gambit wins the Queupie doll!
...... and a whole lot more....... </strong><hr></blockquote>
I knew that wasn't something I made up, I just didn't remember where I read it. And anyways, if you guys aren't getting like three hours per battery charge, maybe there's something wrong with your battery. Under OS X, my Ti500 with 512 megs of ram lasts for days when I take it in and out of sleep to browse the web, chat online, and email from my couch. (I use the new iMac 800 for the heavy stuff. .... Man! Can you imagine that? Using an IMAC for the processor intensive stuff! lol .... oh, forget it. This is a humorless thread, sorry. Didn't mean to ruin the flow, let the name calling and finger pointing begin again.)
By the way..... Queupie doll?
Oh yea, no humor. Sorry.
<strong>I really don't feel like going over really old ground. Hell, we went over this crap almost a year ago and it's still stupid. </strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason we KEEP mentioning it is because OS X, in 1 years time, with all its promises of being the most kickass, incredible, revolutionary OS, hasnt really improved in leaps and bounds. Its been in development for, what, a million years now and we dont have something like spring loaded folders and labels? Come on people! WAKE UP! OS X is just not cut out to be all that its supposed to be. Yes, MAYBE in a year or two.. but right now, it still feels like a late beta.
In regards to Energy Saver, I must say, I have no complaints. I have a theoretical 6 hour battery life and actually managed to get 5h20 with some itunes, browsing, and word processing... very impressive.
My options will be the following:
1) Wait til 10.2 and see improvements and keep my iBook
2) 10.2 is marginally better but because I still want to have a Mac, I sell this one off and buy a lowend portable iBook and buy a PC and wait a few years to see if both processor and OS on the Mac side get less pathetic and eventually buy a nicer faster Mac.
While iMac has gotten, finally, a G4 for a great price, iBook users are still stuck in the shit with crap G3 processors and a slow OS to boot. I am NOT a happy camper.
How else would I specify my always changing needs for different sleep/HD Spind Down/Screen settings on Battery and Outlet? I don't frikkin' care how dynamic it is. Sometime I want it full power everything on battery, sometimes I need to trim it down as conservative as possible.
Gambit, I do programming. OK, maybe I don't work in assembly or UNIX system calls
Amorph, I am coming from a B&W G3 300 w/ 512 megs of RAM, plain vanilla everything. All I know is, 9.2.2 on the G3 300 whips 10.1.3's @$$ on the iBook, especially in terms of responsiveness, UI, and organization/customization. This is sad. This new iBook is less than a year old, the B&W.... Ah well. What do I know? Maybe OpenGL is slow, or Mach isn't monolithic? I just thought, with a total re-write and a year's worth of revisions, no 68K code, etc. etc., it would be faster. OS X has some good points, but multi-tasking isn't one of the ones I've observed. So far, the Dock is the only metric I've really looked, but it really seems to hog the CPU, looking at the CPU monitor.
A few employees at Apple devoted to bringing back the good stuff from OS 9 would do wonders for OS X efficiency, I bet. No smartass replies please, Windowshade X and Fruitmenu shouldn't be SHAREWARE. Unsanity should be based out of a Cupertino office!
Why are options bad?
<strong>You have to be kidding me. OS X knows better than I do what settings I want for the Energy Saver?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Welcome to UNIX, the first operating system to present a greatly simplified, highly abstracted interface to the hardware. OS X knows a lot of things better than you do. Including when to store files in "memory" on disk, and when to store files on "disk" in memory. This means relinquishing low-level control, yes, but people have been eagerly doing just that since FORTRAN first appeared, in the name of ease of use.
Generally, this is a Good Thing(TM). It means that the average person - remember, the sort of person Apple has targeted from the get-go - can get excellent battery performance without ever seeing the Energy Saver control panel.
[quote]<strong>Sometime I want it full power everything on battery, sometimes I need to trim it down as conservative as possible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, if you're trimming down as conservative as possible, you probably aren't ripping a CD while playing a tune while applying 10 filters to a 1GB file while running folding@home. Likewise, if you want to run full blast, you probably aren't running TextEdit all by itself with the brightness at 40%. So I'll bet that there's some correlation between what how you're using the laptop and what sort of energy requirements you need. That's not too hard for OS X to figure out. If, in actual use, OS X does what you want, then you aren't missing anything.
[quote]<strong>Gambit, I do programming. OK, maybe I don't work in assembly or UNIX system calls
I sincerely doubt that it's a programming problem.
It's a design problem. You absolutely do not design a user interface by gluing a bunch of different widgets together without considering how they work together - that way lies Gnome. Nor do you offer everything and let the user and the developer choose. That way lies Motif, quite possibly the most godawful GUI ever inflicted on the world. Design 101: Anything that doesn't fit neatly into the gestalt should get cut. If Apple is lazy about making a UI decision in their new, fledgling OS, it will bite them in the ass for years. The time and trouble spent getting a design right the first time is far, far less than the time you'll spend coping with the oversights and compromises of a mediocre design. Believe me, I've learned this the hard way. There are several discrete functionalities within Aqua that either substitute for or moot the need for windowshades, so I don't expect them back. I certainly don't miss them, and I used them a lot in OS 9.
The classic Apple Menu is a textbook example of horrible UI design. Its passing should not be mourned. There are, again, different ways to accomplish the myriad, unrelated tasks that the Apple Menu tried to offer, so there's no reason to have it there.
[quote]<strong>Amorph, I am coming from a B&W G3 300 w/ 512 megs of RAM, plain vanilla everything. All I know is, 9.2.2 on the G3 300 whips 10.1.3's @$$ on the iBook, especially in terms of responsiveness, UI, and organization/customization.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not really surprising. 512MB of RAM will speed OS 9 up quite dramatically, especially if you change all your applications' memory usage to take advantage of it. Furthermore, if your iBook doesn't have much RAM (especially if it only has 64MB), then OS X will be hitting the hard drive a lot, and notebook hard drives are s l o w.
[quote]<strong>This new iBook is less than a year old, the B&W.... Ah well. What do I know? Maybe OpenGL is slow, or Mach isn't monolithic? I just thought, with a total re-write and a year's worth of revisions, no 68K code, etc. etc., it would be faster.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The Darwin kernel is monolithic.
The parts of the OS that are no longer 68K code are much, much, much faster in OS X. For example, the filesystem. There are things that are much more responsive in OS X, courtesy of the preemptive multitasking and far more efficient threading. As far as the total rewrite goes, there's an old saying from the NeXTStep days: Make it work, then make it fast. Apple is still making parts of OS X work. Lastly, Quartz does a whole hell of a lot more work than QuickDraw ever had to, so it will always be faster and easier for OS 9 to paint its primitive windows on screen.
[quote]<strong>OS X has some good points, but multi-tasking isn't one of the ones I've observed. So far, the Dock is the only metric I've really looked, but it really seems to hog the CPU, looking at the CPU monitor.</strong><hr></blockquote>
% CPU is highly misleading. Especially if there's not much else running, a spike of high CPU use is simply an indication of tightly written code.
[quote]<strong>Why are options bad?</strong><hr></blockquote>
First of all, a statement like "options are bad" is absurd. More often than anyone would like to admit, however, options are a symptom of developer laziness: They can't be bothered to do the extra work involved in deciding what belongs where, so they punt that task to the user. (I see a lot more of this in the Windows world, and it's rampant in the Linux community, but it's not unknown on the Mac side.) This is not the way Apple has ever done things, and this is precisely why they are admired for their user friendliness. In this case, the options you're asking for aren't so much enhancements of the Aqua interface as kludges to shoehorn in things from another interface that you're used to, and that immediately makes them suspect. If there's a problem Aqua doesn't currently address or address well (which is certainly not out of the question!) then the proper solution is to design a feature into Aqua's paradigm, rather than port something over from OS 9 lock, stock and barrel.
If you've tailored the way you work to OS 9, OS X is going to seem weird. I know this.
[ 03-20-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
I don't advocate not finding fault with Apple ( if it's really valid ) this is something else.
[ 03-21-2002: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
BUT, and I have to say this, the fact remains that OS X is not all that its made out to be. And dont think I just rant here and thats it, I send almost all my suggestions, problems, rants to Apple all the time in the hope that they pay attention at least a little bit.
Im jst really pissed off that I paid a LOT of money for a tricked out iBook and yet OS X is still, not dog slow, but definetly lacking. The few times I have to go to OS 9 I start to be able to work quickly again. OS X is a combination of pressing shortcuts, using mouse, clicking etc... but waiting that extra half second or 2 and having the damn spinning-wheel-of-death appear almost all the time.
As some other wise soul mentioned in another thread, OS X's demise right now is the little inconsistencies. Its 'this little qwirk' plus 'that little qwirk' plus 'this other bug' and finally 'this blatant fubar'. This is killing the whole OS X experience for me. Because I am a dedicated Apple person I am making an effort to use it, but its starting wear thin.
Examples of simple qwirks: The speedy Apple+N since forever has meant new folder. Now I have to use the shift button too. I had to get used to it and I have, but I actually have to think where I place my fingers on THREE buttons now. (big deal you say... but it interrups workflow even for a second... I have to think of the OS rather than my work)
-Desktop pictures not appearing... force quit of finder to see the changes (wtf is THAT about???)
-Icons disappearing
-Finder 'unexpectadly quitting' way too often
-Folders not rememberng their positions
-Get Info on many items will often not tell you the size because there are too many items... I have waited up to 5 minutes on a few occasions and Get Info would still not have been able to calculate the size a of a few hundred files
-Renaming files or folders: The cursor disappears when you move it in the name when you move it around (the postion cursor, not the mouse cursor)
-No labels (something I used continously in OS 7-9 to categorize the contents of folders (burned, read, to discard, etc etc)
-While placing a folder in the dock with apps works, its hideously slow the first time around... at least 4-5 seconds for the contents of my Applications folder to appear
I can keep going... and while these arent CRITICAL qwirks... they add up to mass frustration. BUT you still have to do your work so, off you go and use it anyway.... ugh.
Amorph, while I understand that while making major changes to 10.2 may break many if not all apps, this goes to show that 10.x is still very much beta... they are still getting feedback and improving if not totally overhauling parts that were deemed final years ago. I know that mistakes happen and technology continously improves, but I get these impressions that in many places Apple engineers just used something that was just 'ok' for the time beeing with in mind that they would 'get back to it some other time'. I also understand that OS X couldnt stay closed up at Apple forever and that even Win95 had major problems for a while after it was launched...
Fine, whatever... the bottom line is that OS X is not good enough for me now (and Im sure for many of you either).
ZO
<strong>Amorph, while I understand that while making major changes to 10.2 may break many if not all apps, this goes to show that 10.x is still very much beta... they are still getting feedback and improving if not totally overhauling parts that were deemed final years ago. I know that mistakes happen and technology continously improves, but I get these impressions that in many places Apple engineers just used something that was just 'ok' for the time beeing with in mind that they would 'get back to it some other time'</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, I said that: OS X 10.2 may break some apps. And because of that, you came to the conclusion that this shows that OS X is very much beta. That is the grossest assumption I've ever heard about OS X, and it's not a fair conclusion at all. This doesn't show that OS X is beta, this shows that OS X IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT, that it's continually improving, AND GETTING BETTER. Just like you want it to! You want all these new features, but when Apple changes the underlying structure to accomodate, you think that's evidence of beta software. That doesn't make sense. All it proves is that Apple is striving to make things better.
For instance: MacOS 9 came out and it broke many apps as they removed most of the 68k code that some developers relied on. (Remember that?) 9.1 broke even more apps because 68k code was finally removed completely. Does that mean 9.x is beta software? I've never heard that argument for any OS pre X.... oh, but that's right. The reason you never called OS 9 beta even though it broke compatibility with some apps is because you had your labels and spring-loaded folders. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Come on now, think about it.
[quote]Originally posted by ZO:
<strong>Fine, whatever... the bottom line is that OS X is not good enough for me now (and Im sure for many of you either).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Zo: OS X is not for people who are expecting it to be OS 9. If the current feature set or UI performance is not what you expected, then wait until it is. My buddy runs OS X on his iceBook and it DOESN'T respond as well as 9 does, but it runs faster than 9 when it comes to actually getting work done. It just seems like you're too caught up struggling against the benefits of X trying to make it something it is not. "Death by a thousand cuts" is something I've heard described about X by people who are trying to make it 9. Use it for what it is, not for what you want it to be. If that goes against your principles, then, like I said, wait for OS X to be more like you want. There's nothing else you can do.
Regarding my desires for it to be like OS 9, I just want SOME functionality of it... not a new OS with the same skin. That would be silly. I love OS X.. its beautiful to use (visually) and it indeed is a kick ass OS... but not yet.
I know OS 9 broke a lot of compatibility, but that got fixed pretty quickly. For OS X to go through this many major changes (almost one year now) is quite dramatic imo. They are well welcomed but I can hardly thing Developers are too happy to have to re-compile and re-tweak their apps for the umpteenth time. Well, whatever, as long as OS X gets damn faster I dont care.
" deemed final years ago " what ???????
The only part of OS X that was deemed final even a year ago won't be that until Sunday.
If you are talking about the public beta......well it did say beta and I assume that included all the parts therein. I'm sorry but when people make inaccurate statements like that it makes them sound like fanatics. I'm glad the group that doesn't like OS X seems limited to a few.
Pot calling kettle black--or is that too subjective a statement. Sorry to say something bad about your prize OS, but some things haven't quite lived up to any Q&A standards except maybe M$'s. For those people who have DP machines and must live with PPP connections, or those with ATI Rage chipsets, or people who have lost USB print sharing or any one of a number of peripherals, or OPen GL gaming issues, it is a problem that cannot be glossed over by telling them to stick with OS9 or live without. After all if you're trying to migrate a user base and win market share the OS really has to work, and work well, for despite all of the protestations their is very little difference between OSX and XP. If you think thats a silly statement look at Apple's attempts to add value by bundling iApps.
Marketing hype aside, Apple has told its faithful user base that this is the OS of the future. and then has failed to communicate to its users what that future entails. Apple's disdainful secrecy is a major part of the problem. It really wouldn't hurt to let users know that USB printing will show up sooner or later, or that certain chipsets would not be fully supported.
Note that people aren't asking when the next generation in UI design or any other really wizzy features will show up, but when some things that are missing from OS9, and that DO fit into OSX UI paradigm will appear. To make it easier lets be real generic about these things, lest you hissy out:
Easier file manipulation, including copying and moving files.
Metadata
More location management options
More dependable printing
USB Printer sharing of some kind
Network browsing
Simplified user and group management [anything other than Netinfo]
Simplified file sharing [anything other than Netinfo]
oh yes this is ALL very subjective
[ 03-21-2002: Message edited by: cowerd ]</p>