OS X - Jaguar - What is Still Missing
I read the following article on this topic, and I found it fairly insightful and accurate. You can view the original at: <a href="http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1079"; target="_blank">http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1079</a>;
I copied it here for convience sake... It rants a bit and is kinda long, but it made me think over some things. A good discussion generator, at least...
OS X Jaguar: What is missing?
What did the classic Mac have that OS X doesn't?
by: David K. Every\t
Sep 13, 2002
'm pleased with Jaguar's release and progress; there are a lot of improvements in it. But then I hear people telling me that it is as good as the classic MacOS , or that Apple is killing MacOS 9. While I like it, there are still many holes to be filled before it catches up with OS 9 (in at least a few areas). This article is about those holes. But just in case you think I don't like Jaguar, go over and read all the things I like about it: <a href="http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1081."; target="_blank">http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1081.</a>; I think Jaguar is a great OS on its own, just don't try to tell me it does everything that my Mac running MacOS 9 does.
Some people really like Jaguar. I've used it a bit and think it is a big improvement. But I must admit I can't go to it as my primary OS yet (I use it on a secondary computer). In fact I have to have many computers in the usual geek mode of having test and pretest machines, and ones with older versions of OS and tools as well as newer. I'm not doing the ordinary stuff. I'm doing development. But still, development tools are Applications and I'd love to be able to just blindly upgrade and have faith that things would work. Like I used to.
Which brings up the main issue: Jaguar is still a UNIX (and not a Mac). It is the best UNIX I've ever used (and I've used bunches) but I can't just upgrade blindly and expect things to work like a Mac. Many things require special versions of Apps or tools to run on Jaguar, many apps die after the upgrade, and the OS itself has issues after an upgrade. And don't move things around on OS X; I did that and confused the shit out of the OS. It seems that many Applications are not mine to control but rather the OS's. Same with naming. I have bunches of things that lost their bundles, or where they were supposed to be. There are whole hidden hierarchies and voodoo; deep paths that I don't have control over. Some UNIX types will blame this on me but they're missing the point; this is my OS, not theirs. It should behave like I own it, not that I'm beholden to the ivory tower and Apple to decide where things go and what I will do. So one of the first things I notice that I've lost is trust (that I can change things and it will still work), and faith in the robustness in the OS (as far as upgrading and not having things change). OS X (even Jaguar) is far more fragile towards change than the MacOS used to be.
Don't get me wrong, the pre-X MacOS had plenty of quirks or bad versions that would screw things up too. There were whole runs where I had to be much more cautious about blind upgrades and such. But users could move anything and go anywhere except for a little caution in the System Folder (and they had much more control over that too). But overall I had a 1:1 mapping between what I saw in the finder and what was there. I could change things without worry and change them back if something didn't work. I could drag-install and uninstall. I had trust that it was hard to break things and easy to fix them if I did.
I think it will be a while before we can get that stability and trust back. Don't get me wrong, I like Jaguar and OS X. We gained a lot of other things: easy UNIX ports, a command line, developer tools from Apple, Apps that don't bring down the OS when they crash, and so on. So it isn't all losses. I'm adaptive and use it just fine. But Apple and others document and sell all the positives; someone needs to speak up for the little guy. Or more accurately, I'm going to list my losses as well as the gains.
For newbies the "setting up the machine to work how I want it" issue matters less. Some are willing to not touch if you tell them to leave it alone. Others are outright dangerous. Power users are more willing to "put up with it", especially UNIX folks that can't seem to fathom why you would want to move something, or not spend days fixing problems if you do. And Jaguar isn't worse (or if it is, it's not much worse) than Windows in that regard. So none of that is the end of the world. But that platitude always sounds to me like a guy that gets drunk and beats his wife and kids weekly, and then is publicly criticizing the guy who does it nightly. The real solution is to stop doing it at all, not to claim "hey, at least I'm better than he is".
This fragility issue made me think of a whole list of things that are missing from Jaguar. I heard many saying that Jaguar is "as good as a Mac" (where have I heard that before?). And while I like it and use it, I couldn't help notice the huge disparity in experience between their view and mine. So I collected (from various places) a list of things that are missing. Some are important, some are not. The absence of some things likely benefits certain users. Some of my complaints about missing things are just whines but many are serious. Some are less tangible and harder to quantify (like trust and stability of installs). But when someone tries to tell me that Jaguar is as good as MacOS 9, at least I wanted a list of things I'm missing that affect me (and others) so they'll shut-up and understand that, while it works, it is not yet what a Mac should be.
So here goes...
Type/Creator - the #1 issue for anyone who uses a Mac and Jaguar. There have been large articles and threads, and forums dedicated to this. Is Apple listening? This is really many issues because of all the things not having a good metadata scheme means to the average user. The average user doesn't ask for metadata; they ask for the behaviors that good metadata will give them. This is universally the most glaring thing that is needed and I'll list just some of the things that it effects:
1.\tFilenames : I want to be in control of filenames, not have the OS tell me what I can call things, make things disappear because I put a period in front of something, or suddenly change icon and behavior. Filenames are MINE, not yours! Stop telling me what I can do with them! Arguing that you're not as completely moronic about hiding them as Microsoft is, is no consolation. It used to work far better.
2.\tFile behaviors : I want to be able to have one document of a given type open in one app, and another of the same type open in a different app, and have it work correctly. Files are mine, not yours! Stop telling me how they will work.
3.\tDrag and drop : this used to work. I could drag and drop documents onto other apps and they would highlight if they could handle that type. Now it is done by what they are named; but sometimes the names and behaviors don't sync. I have documents that are misnamed all the time, or I don't have a choice -- it should still not break. (An example is C++ header files that are not allowed to have an extension. They should work, not break the entire OS's metaphor).
And so on. There are hundreds of issues with this. To be fair, old Apple made things harder than they needed to be too. You should have been able to fix type/creator from "Get Info" and there should have been better global management of both. But extensions aren't better in most ways and are worse most. This is the most glaring hole in OS X. Fix it. My grandma does not need to know that if she starts her file with a period it will disappear. It isn't that hard and it used to work! Windows and UNIX are getting better about metadata, and the Mac has gotten worse. Fix it! Don't deny it sucks, don't try to sell me that your OS doesn't suck as bad as others, just fix it! And if you just told people you heard them and that you were working on it for a future version instead of ignoring them (or trying to market extensions to them) then they wouldn't be so damn pissed off. [end of rant]
Before I get lots of emails: Yes, I know a little about BeOS's metadata scheme. Yes it is better than what we have now. I'm not sure I think it was as good as what the Mac had (in at least some ways) but I do think there are some things we could learn from it. Best of all is to create a new scheme that can handle user and ownership domains as well as other resources
There are still many issues with the Finder. The Finder still feels (to some Mac users) like it was designed by a NeXT user (and what they thought a Mac was). It feels like the Finder got a promotion; it used to work for me, now I work for it. It has gotten better, but it still has plenty of room for growth.
1.\tSpring loaded folders - I know some will say that Jaguar has them but in Jaguar they only have half of the functionality. There were two behaviors: drag, and double-click tunneling. Jaguar got the first behavior mostly working but is missing the second. I used to tunnel by double-clicking on the first item, and then it would behave like I was dragging something for rapid navigation. This was intuitive, easy, fast, and cool.
2.\tTabbed Windows (Popup Folders) - it was always nice being able to decide how I was working and just dock a window at the bottom of the screen or set up and arrange my own topical dock (that frankly worked much better for me). Apple never implemented them as well as they should have (that whole moving around and resizing stuff on a portable, and I wondered why the top and sides weren't also part of the metaphor) so it could certainly be implemented better. But don't take away what I had and tell me I shouldn't miss it.
3.\tApplication Menu - it was aways much faster and better than trying to play the "find the running app" shell game that is the dock. The App menu even has the texual names of things (instead of playing concentration by matching the little pictures in the dock, or me having to rollover them) and a menu gets out of my way when I'm done with it (progressive disclosure). I've stripped my dock of everything except running apps, and use it like a little always-open running Apple menu and it works much better. And I use a reasonable dock: DragThing (which has a domain system). And there are third party Applicaiton menu hacks to make my Mac work like a Mac. But I think evolution is easier than revolution, and making an Application menu would not be a huge effort.
4.\tApple Menu - hey, while we're at it, I used to love to keep my accessories in there. What do you know, it was good for something. I understand the new menu layout and a lot of it makes sense. Fine; give me a "Dave menu" where I can put my things. I liked having my own menu and Apple took that away from me! Give it back!
5.\tControl Strip - my menubar is already crowded enough. I don't really mind controls up there and interface-wise they are consistent in behavior, but I'm running out of room already. With control strip I could organize it, hide it, and I could expand it by writing my own items. Since Apple is being a butt-head and intentionally breaking anyone else's custom-menu-control-strip things in Jaguar I want the old open way back!
6.\tButton view - hey, I know it is silly with the dock and all, but sometimes I set up button view windows and docked them (especially for other users). I still watch many users click once on an icon on the desktop and wait, or double click apps in a dock (and I wince). I understand their desire for more consistency and sometimes I could fake that for them with a few apps that they just click on. Not any more.
7.\tFinder Labels - I used to set colors and labels for items. I liked that the finder tried to adapt to my way of working and had generic behaviors like that which worked the same everywhere. Honestly, when I saw Copland's dynamic folders (auto-searching) labels became immediately 10 times more valuable. I could flag anything, anywhere as "hot" and have one folder which listed all the "hots". This was great and far more advanced than what I have now.
8.\tLocation Manager - while UNIX management of users and accounts works, and some behaviors (like multi-homing) need location manager less, I still like location manager and I wish it was back. OS X networking still has problems if you change places on it too often (which I do). My solution is to have multiple network locations set up (that I manually set). But this doesn't change everything that I need (like printers and network drives for example) and is not as good as having all my settings able to change globally the way I want them to.
9.\tPersistence - I used to set Window positions, size, controls, and views and they would consistently work. Now they don't. Sometimes they work but often they move, change size, or change what controls are shown. When I open a new window it sometimes inherits from the previous one and sometimes not. I know there are rules for when it works and why and that I can psuedo-program them myself to work how I expect. But so far, I'm amazed at how consistently wrong it is at guessing what I want or what I expect. It didn't used to be like that.
10.\tPut away - I used to just go to the trash or an item on the desktop and put it away. Undo sometimes works but is not really the same behavior, nor should it be. That's for undoing the last behavior, not selectively knowing to undo an action on the specific thing I've clicked on. Where's my flipping put-away button?
11.\tFile Name limits. You can type a name longer than it allows, then after you hit return it throws an error. What's up with an error? Are you stupid? The old Mac used to just beep and stop you when you went too far. This is just common sense dynamic feedback, guys; give people the feedback as they are doing the action, not later.
12.\tTighter grid (and more control) - I used to be able to set a tighter and more effective grid on icons (in windows and on the desktop); now I'm a victim of Apple's settings. The whole interface got looser with my screen real-estate, which is annoying but I can live with it. But with icon grids it is just too much. Jaguar is better at giving me more control but we need better still. And the finder needs to pay attention to those settings (sometimes it resets or ignores them).
13.\tAlias feedback is weak. The little arrow is small. Italics used to offer more feedback. That's gone.
1.\t
Mouse tracking - this sounds like a little issue. But the Mac always felt smooth and predictable. There's some new tracking in OS X (including Jaguar) that I've never gotten used to. The velocity curves are different, and it skips and jumps. Sometimes it stutters and before I know it, I've added things from the dock or pulled them out. Huh? It feels, well, like Windows to me. It is actually slightly better than Windows in that it is closer to a Mac, but it isn't yet correct.
2.\tCursors that work - The I-Beam cursor sometimes works, sometimes not (especially in the finder). Same with the silly little CD-ROM cursor. Has anyone figured out that this made sense when the NeXT cube had an optical drive (so a spinning optical cursor meant "loading") but that I'm using a hard drive? Not all pauses are due to waiting for the optical drive any more! Hello? What was wrong with the watch? (Made more sense to me). I like cursor shadows and cusror look and detail. Everything else in new cursors sucks.
3.\tGame controller support - Apple used to have input sprockets and so on. New Apple may rely on standards too much so they won't go beyond them. Mainly the USB drivers are covering this but there's still a little loss of specialization.
4.\tAnalog video input - I miss being able to just plug a VCR or camera into the Mac. Some of us don't own the hottest digital devices.
5.\tAnalog audio input - this comes and goes; which makes it hard to know what you're getting. Can I just plug in a mic. or stereo or not? This is a $.05 connector, leave it alone (and in).
6.\tPower Management that works better - I used to get 4 real hours out of the TiBook in OS9. I seem to get about half that with Jaguar and it runs hotter. I can discuss all the reasons why it doesn't work (UNIX VM disk thrashing and so on) but in the end they are excuses; it used to work better.
7.\tTimed startup and shutdown - I do not leave my machine on all the time. It turns out that OS X expects that I do and it runs maintenance tasks accordingly. I used to script things like "boot at 2:00 AM, backup and 2:15 AM, shutdown at 3:00 AM until 5:00 AM, then get up before I do so when I go downstairs you're all warm for me". Silly and minor, but still gone. A few of us used that stuff.
8.\tPortrait monitor - OK, so I'm the only dweeb left with an old one-page portrait display. I liked it I and wonder what would have been so hard about coding one more scan rate into a video chip?
9.\tHapppy Mac on boot - now honestly, why did that have to go? It isn't a huge deal either way (I don't lose sleep over it). I understand updating it, making it cooler and newer looking (bigger), animating it, putting more diagnostics in there, and so on. But there's a difference between evolution and change for change's sake. They could have made it better and do more. Instead they just made it different.
10.\tDidn't I used to be able to set function keys to run Apps? This doesn't seem like rocket science to me! Of course Apple never got it working very well (across all apps and so on), but still; I've had these keys for 10 years...why not make them useful again?
There are a whole lot of issues with controls and other little behaviors that are just wrong. Again, they don't matter to most users but they do matter to power users. I'm one of those and, for me, in many cases, the classic Mac way was just better.
Here's just a few of them:
1.\tESP / Precognition : I liked being able to type the first few letters in something and have it work. Mostly it works but not always, like in the most often used place (open/save dialog). What the hell is that trying to do anyways?
2.\tOpen / Save : this always had some problems that they had almost gotten worked out (in MacOS and Navigation Services). This new version is much worse. Why can't I resize things in column view so I can actually read from my list? I used to be able to see the names of things. If you are doing it "new" then why doesn't it just work more like other finder views and allow list or icon view? Copland was trying to make it better; instead we started over.
3.\tOpen / Save : as long as we are on Open/Save dialog, what moron figured that the controls and keyboard shortcuts should be different between that and the finder views? Duh! Hello? Have you heard about consistency?
4.\tRadio and Checkboxes : I like to click on the name, not just the tiny control itself. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Stop it. Make it work right all the time.
5.\tDraggable edges : I liked being able to grab the edge of windows to drag them. Not to mention having some contrast where one window ended and another started. I lost that with the Aqua theme; and I'm not even going to get into the hundreds of issues with that look and the whole menu transparency thing that drives me nuts.
6.\tCommand-period : I remember when command-. would stop things. I know it wasn't the most intuitive command but now things are worse. Maybe make something new with similar functionality or hack that to work again. But I want something predictable and consistent. Jaguar is better than 10.1 but needs more.
7.\tControl Panels menu : I used to be able to quickly go to the control panel item I wanted (through a hierarchy). Apple reverted us back to System 6's control panel where everything is a two stage process. Not a win, though I like the logical grouping. That grouping could have been done from menus as well. Without my stuff in it the Apple menu is naked anyway so start with each topic and have the items underneath. I know you are in love with your own icons but I like speed of use. Also control panels used to feel more open (people could make them with help from Apple, etc.). It feels less open now.
I miss fonts just working. I used to have them organized in one place. I could drag them in or out and they worked (at least for the next app I ran). Now I need to reboot and they are disorganized and in 5 different places. How is this easier? Why don't font previews work? What about MultiMaster Fonts -- are they working yet? Again, just some centralized font management would help. I do like the support for OpenType fonts (and many other things) but get the management working, make it dynamic, and then you'll have something.
1.\t
Shell - MPW people understood both shells and UI. So did some other efforts. I used to be able to see commands and add menus that ran either shell scripts or apple scripts or both. What about a help browser that can go through commands and man pages? Did everyone with that clue leave? Or is Apple trying to tell me that terminal is the ultimate shell environment? I think the problem is that they don't want to emphasize the shell too much, so they won't put any money into it. But some people (like me) have to use it. So make it more usable.
2.\tI used to have the extension manager that I could use to control what was running, what could be running, what I could turn off, and so on. I want similar functionality. There is sort of a "startup items" now, and there are ways that I can add things as psuedo-chron jobs and so on but Apple should make them standard, document them, and put an interface on their management. I don't think making users edit plists is the ultimate in management.
3.\tDock - sorry, the dock sucks (for some types of work/people). You've heard it before; I'm not going to go into it. But if you aren't going to fix it at least make it open and expandable (replaceable). In fact, even if you are going to fix it, make it an open, expandable, and replaceable thing. Right now it feels like a testament to Steve's stubbornness and hubris: "My way or the highway". What a way to build customer loyalty.
4.\tDevice Drivers : there are more now, and things are getting better. In another few years we'll have the same variety that we used to. This isn't to bash; these things take time and I think that OS X will eventually grow to be better than OS9 was in this area. But we still haven't caught up yet, and don't try to tell me we have.
5.\tPrint center : I used to think chooser was bad; now I have print center. It's slow, confusing, quirky. And shouldn't it (also drive setup, etc.) be in control panels or the Apple menu? What about scanners, cameras, and so on? I think all of this control panel stuff needs to be reworked to be more open and consistent. I want to go there to set up devices, not wander the hard drive looking for places Apple or others may have hidden things.
6.\tAnother thing is that I used to set up lots of auto-mount network drives. While I can manually mount network drives in OS X I've never figured out how to auto-mount them. There's probably a way (and I haven't tried hard to find it) but it should be more obvious or be part of the settings for that drive.
7.\tAnother nice to have is Internet controls that work across the system and are more consistent. Some of this is the fault of Apps that do their own thing (Explorer comes to mind) but fix them or convince them to see the light. The Internet controls worked better in OS 9; where are my helper apps settings?
8.\tThe old Apple strived for Openness when it came to the OS (sometimes too much). The new Apple is more open in some areas (Rendevous) but then closed in other areas. Why isn't there a replaceable dock? What about themes? What about the control strips? Play nice with others or they may take their toys and go home! I'm not saying they're all great ideas but I do think there's a selective attitude about what constitutes "open".
The last three issues I would mention are little ones: Documentation, Quality Assurance, and support. Things spiked way down when NeXT took over and slowly they've crept back -- but they still have a long way to go. Much of OS X feels like "ship it first, fix it later" or "Ship it first, document later". Not to mention support which sometimes says "I dunno, we just got that". And this is all over Apple. They still aren't as bad as Microsoft or some others at that. But compared to what Apple used to be like we might be going too far towards "real artists ship" mentality. Real artists also ship only when they're ready.
Again, I'm not unhappy with OS X; I use it all the time. There are many things it does right or better. But this article isn't about those things. This article is about all the things that are missing or that I still want.
I do use OS X. I do think it is the best UNIX ever. But don't tell me that it is as good as the classic MacOS. It isn't. I have hope that it will be someday. And if Apple can admit that it has a ways to go and learn from the old Mac ways (and behaviors) then I believe we can get there. But we can't get there through denial or claims that we're already there. So let's learn from the past and make a better future.
I copied it here for convience sake... It rants a bit and is kinda long, but it made me think over some things. A good discussion generator, at least...
OS X Jaguar: What is missing?
What did the classic Mac have that OS X doesn't?
by: David K. Every\t
Sep 13, 2002
'm pleased with Jaguar's release and progress; there are a lot of improvements in it. But then I hear people telling me that it is as good as the classic MacOS , or that Apple is killing MacOS 9. While I like it, there are still many holes to be filled before it catches up with OS 9 (in at least a few areas). This article is about those holes. But just in case you think I don't like Jaguar, go over and read all the things I like about it: <a href="http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1081."; target="_blank">http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1081.</a>; I think Jaguar is a great OS on its own, just don't try to tell me it does everything that my Mac running MacOS 9 does.
Some people really like Jaguar. I've used it a bit and think it is a big improvement. But I must admit I can't go to it as my primary OS yet (I use it on a secondary computer). In fact I have to have many computers in the usual geek mode of having test and pretest machines, and ones with older versions of OS and tools as well as newer. I'm not doing the ordinary stuff. I'm doing development. But still, development tools are Applications and I'd love to be able to just blindly upgrade and have faith that things would work. Like I used to.
Which brings up the main issue: Jaguar is still a UNIX (and not a Mac). It is the best UNIX I've ever used (and I've used bunches) but I can't just upgrade blindly and expect things to work like a Mac. Many things require special versions of Apps or tools to run on Jaguar, many apps die after the upgrade, and the OS itself has issues after an upgrade. And don't move things around on OS X; I did that and confused the shit out of the OS. It seems that many Applications are not mine to control but rather the OS's. Same with naming. I have bunches of things that lost their bundles, or where they were supposed to be. There are whole hidden hierarchies and voodoo; deep paths that I don't have control over. Some UNIX types will blame this on me but they're missing the point; this is my OS, not theirs. It should behave like I own it, not that I'm beholden to the ivory tower and Apple to decide where things go and what I will do. So one of the first things I notice that I've lost is trust (that I can change things and it will still work), and faith in the robustness in the OS (as far as upgrading and not having things change). OS X (even Jaguar) is far more fragile towards change than the MacOS used to be.
Don't get me wrong, the pre-X MacOS had plenty of quirks or bad versions that would screw things up too. There were whole runs where I had to be much more cautious about blind upgrades and such. But users could move anything and go anywhere except for a little caution in the System Folder (and they had much more control over that too). But overall I had a 1:1 mapping between what I saw in the finder and what was there. I could change things without worry and change them back if something didn't work. I could drag-install and uninstall. I had trust that it was hard to break things and easy to fix them if I did.
I think it will be a while before we can get that stability and trust back. Don't get me wrong, I like Jaguar and OS X. We gained a lot of other things: easy UNIX ports, a command line, developer tools from Apple, Apps that don't bring down the OS when they crash, and so on. So it isn't all losses. I'm adaptive and use it just fine. But Apple and others document and sell all the positives; someone needs to speak up for the little guy. Or more accurately, I'm going to list my losses as well as the gains.
For newbies the "setting up the machine to work how I want it" issue matters less. Some are willing to not touch if you tell them to leave it alone. Others are outright dangerous. Power users are more willing to "put up with it", especially UNIX folks that can't seem to fathom why you would want to move something, or not spend days fixing problems if you do. And Jaguar isn't worse (or if it is, it's not much worse) than Windows in that regard. So none of that is the end of the world. But that platitude always sounds to me like a guy that gets drunk and beats his wife and kids weekly, and then is publicly criticizing the guy who does it nightly. The real solution is to stop doing it at all, not to claim "hey, at least I'm better than he is".
This fragility issue made me think of a whole list of things that are missing from Jaguar. I heard many saying that Jaguar is "as good as a Mac" (where have I heard that before?). And while I like it and use it, I couldn't help notice the huge disparity in experience between their view and mine. So I collected (from various places) a list of things that are missing. Some are important, some are not. The absence of some things likely benefits certain users. Some of my complaints about missing things are just whines but many are serious. Some are less tangible and harder to quantify (like trust and stability of installs). But when someone tries to tell me that Jaguar is as good as MacOS 9, at least I wanted a list of things I'm missing that affect me (and others) so they'll shut-up and understand that, while it works, it is not yet what a Mac should be.
So here goes...
Type/Creator - the #1 issue for anyone who uses a Mac and Jaguar. There have been large articles and threads, and forums dedicated to this. Is Apple listening? This is really many issues because of all the things not having a good metadata scheme means to the average user. The average user doesn't ask for metadata; they ask for the behaviors that good metadata will give them. This is universally the most glaring thing that is needed and I'll list just some of the things that it effects:
1.\tFilenames : I want to be in control of filenames, not have the OS tell me what I can call things, make things disappear because I put a period in front of something, or suddenly change icon and behavior. Filenames are MINE, not yours! Stop telling me what I can do with them! Arguing that you're not as completely moronic about hiding them as Microsoft is, is no consolation. It used to work far better.
2.\tFile behaviors : I want to be able to have one document of a given type open in one app, and another of the same type open in a different app, and have it work correctly. Files are mine, not yours! Stop telling me how they will work.
3.\tDrag and drop : this used to work. I could drag and drop documents onto other apps and they would highlight if they could handle that type. Now it is done by what they are named; but sometimes the names and behaviors don't sync. I have documents that are misnamed all the time, or I don't have a choice -- it should still not break. (An example is C++ header files that are not allowed to have an extension. They should work, not break the entire OS's metaphor).
And so on. There are hundreds of issues with this. To be fair, old Apple made things harder than they needed to be too. You should have been able to fix type/creator from "Get Info" and there should have been better global management of both. But extensions aren't better in most ways and are worse most. This is the most glaring hole in OS X. Fix it. My grandma does not need to know that if she starts her file with a period it will disappear. It isn't that hard and it used to work! Windows and UNIX are getting better about metadata, and the Mac has gotten worse. Fix it! Don't deny it sucks, don't try to sell me that your OS doesn't suck as bad as others, just fix it! And if you just told people you heard them and that you were working on it for a future version instead of ignoring them (or trying to market extensions to them) then they wouldn't be so damn pissed off. [end of rant]
Before I get lots of emails: Yes, I know a little about BeOS's metadata scheme. Yes it is better than what we have now. I'm not sure I think it was as good as what the Mac had (in at least some ways) but I do think there are some things we could learn from it. Best of all is to create a new scheme that can handle user and ownership domains as well as other resources
There are still many issues with the Finder. The Finder still feels (to some Mac users) like it was designed by a NeXT user (and what they thought a Mac was). It feels like the Finder got a promotion; it used to work for me, now I work for it. It has gotten better, but it still has plenty of room for growth.
1.\tSpring loaded folders - I know some will say that Jaguar has them but in Jaguar they only have half of the functionality. There were two behaviors: drag, and double-click tunneling. Jaguar got the first behavior mostly working but is missing the second. I used to tunnel by double-clicking on the first item, and then it would behave like I was dragging something for rapid navigation. This was intuitive, easy, fast, and cool.
2.\tTabbed Windows (Popup Folders) - it was always nice being able to decide how I was working and just dock a window at the bottom of the screen or set up and arrange my own topical dock (that frankly worked much better for me). Apple never implemented them as well as they should have (that whole moving around and resizing stuff on a portable, and I wondered why the top and sides weren't also part of the metaphor) so it could certainly be implemented better. But don't take away what I had and tell me I shouldn't miss it.
3.\tApplication Menu - it was aways much faster and better than trying to play the "find the running app" shell game that is the dock. The App menu even has the texual names of things (instead of playing concentration by matching the little pictures in the dock, or me having to rollover them) and a menu gets out of my way when I'm done with it (progressive disclosure). I've stripped my dock of everything except running apps, and use it like a little always-open running Apple menu and it works much better. And I use a reasonable dock: DragThing (which has a domain system). And there are third party Applicaiton menu hacks to make my Mac work like a Mac. But I think evolution is easier than revolution, and making an Application menu would not be a huge effort.
4.\tApple Menu - hey, while we're at it, I used to love to keep my accessories in there. What do you know, it was good for something. I understand the new menu layout and a lot of it makes sense. Fine; give me a "Dave menu" where I can put my things. I liked having my own menu and Apple took that away from me! Give it back!
5.\tControl Strip - my menubar is already crowded enough. I don't really mind controls up there and interface-wise they are consistent in behavior, but I'm running out of room already. With control strip I could organize it, hide it, and I could expand it by writing my own items. Since Apple is being a butt-head and intentionally breaking anyone else's custom-menu-control-strip things in Jaguar I want the old open way back!
6.\tButton view - hey, I know it is silly with the dock and all, but sometimes I set up button view windows and docked them (especially for other users). I still watch many users click once on an icon on the desktop and wait, or double click apps in a dock (and I wince). I understand their desire for more consistency and sometimes I could fake that for them with a few apps that they just click on. Not any more.
7.\tFinder Labels - I used to set colors and labels for items. I liked that the finder tried to adapt to my way of working and had generic behaviors like that which worked the same everywhere. Honestly, when I saw Copland's dynamic folders (auto-searching) labels became immediately 10 times more valuable. I could flag anything, anywhere as "hot" and have one folder which listed all the "hots". This was great and far more advanced than what I have now.
8.\tLocation Manager - while UNIX management of users and accounts works, and some behaviors (like multi-homing) need location manager less, I still like location manager and I wish it was back. OS X networking still has problems if you change places on it too often (which I do). My solution is to have multiple network locations set up (that I manually set). But this doesn't change everything that I need (like printers and network drives for example) and is not as good as having all my settings able to change globally the way I want them to.
9.\tPersistence - I used to set Window positions, size, controls, and views and they would consistently work. Now they don't. Sometimes they work but often they move, change size, or change what controls are shown. When I open a new window it sometimes inherits from the previous one and sometimes not. I know there are rules for when it works and why and that I can psuedo-program them myself to work how I expect. But so far, I'm amazed at how consistently wrong it is at guessing what I want or what I expect. It didn't used to be like that.
10.\tPut away - I used to just go to the trash or an item on the desktop and put it away. Undo sometimes works but is not really the same behavior, nor should it be. That's for undoing the last behavior, not selectively knowing to undo an action on the specific thing I've clicked on. Where's my flipping put-away button?
11.\tFile Name limits. You can type a name longer than it allows, then after you hit return it throws an error. What's up with an error? Are you stupid? The old Mac used to just beep and stop you when you went too far. This is just common sense dynamic feedback, guys; give people the feedback as they are doing the action, not later.
12.\tTighter grid (and more control) - I used to be able to set a tighter and more effective grid on icons (in windows and on the desktop); now I'm a victim of Apple's settings. The whole interface got looser with my screen real-estate, which is annoying but I can live with it. But with icon grids it is just too much. Jaguar is better at giving me more control but we need better still. And the finder needs to pay attention to those settings (sometimes it resets or ignores them).
13.\tAlias feedback is weak. The little arrow is small. Italics used to offer more feedback. That's gone.
1.\t
Mouse tracking - this sounds like a little issue. But the Mac always felt smooth and predictable. There's some new tracking in OS X (including Jaguar) that I've never gotten used to. The velocity curves are different, and it skips and jumps. Sometimes it stutters and before I know it, I've added things from the dock or pulled them out. Huh? It feels, well, like Windows to me. It is actually slightly better than Windows in that it is closer to a Mac, but it isn't yet correct.
2.\tCursors that work - The I-Beam cursor sometimes works, sometimes not (especially in the finder). Same with the silly little CD-ROM cursor. Has anyone figured out that this made sense when the NeXT cube had an optical drive (so a spinning optical cursor meant "loading") but that I'm using a hard drive? Not all pauses are due to waiting for the optical drive any more! Hello? What was wrong with the watch? (Made more sense to me). I like cursor shadows and cusror look and detail. Everything else in new cursors sucks.
3.\tGame controller support - Apple used to have input sprockets and so on. New Apple may rely on standards too much so they won't go beyond them. Mainly the USB drivers are covering this but there's still a little loss of specialization.
4.\tAnalog video input - I miss being able to just plug a VCR or camera into the Mac. Some of us don't own the hottest digital devices.
5.\tAnalog audio input - this comes and goes; which makes it hard to know what you're getting. Can I just plug in a mic. or stereo or not? This is a $.05 connector, leave it alone (and in).
6.\tPower Management that works better - I used to get 4 real hours out of the TiBook in OS9. I seem to get about half that with Jaguar and it runs hotter. I can discuss all the reasons why it doesn't work (UNIX VM disk thrashing and so on) but in the end they are excuses; it used to work better.
7.\tTimed startup and shutdown - I do not leave my machine on all the time. It turns out that OS X expects that I do and it runs maintenance tasks accordingly. I used to script things like "boot at 2:00 AM, backup and 2:15 AM, shutdown at 3:00 AM until 5:00 AM, then get up before I do so when I go downstairs you're all warm for me". Silly and minor, but still gone. A few of us used that stuff.
8.\tPortrait monitor - OK, so I'm the only dweeb left with an old one-page portrait display. I liked it I and wonder what would have been so hard about coding one more scan rate into a video chip?
9.\tHapppy Mac on boot - now honestly, why did that have to go? It isn't a huge deal either way (I don't lose sleep over it). I understand updating it, making it cooler and newer looking (bigger), animating it, putting more diagnostics in there, and so on. But there's a difference between evolution and change for change's sake. They could have made it better and do more. Instead they just made it different.
10.\tDidn't I used to be able to set function keys to run Apps? This doesn't seem like rocket science to me! Of course Apple never got it working very well (across all apps and so on), but still; I've had these keys for 10 years...why not make them useful again?
There are a whole lot of issues with controls and other little behaviors that are just wrong. Again, they don't matter to most users but they do matter to power users. I'm one of those and, for me, in many cases, the classic Mac way was just better.
Here's just a few of them:
1.\tESP / Precognition : I liked being able to type the first few letters in something and have it work. Mostly it works but not always, like in the most often used place (open/save dialog). What the hell is that trying to do anyways?
2.\tOpen / Save : this always had some problems that they had almost gotten worked out (in MacOS and Navigation Services). This new version is much worse. Why can't I resize things in column view so I can actually read from my list? I used to be able to see the names of things. If you are doing it "new" then why doesn't it just work more like other finder views and allow list or icon view? Copland was trying to make it better; instead we started over.
3.\tOpen / Save : as long as we are on Open/Save dialog, what moron figured that the controls and keyboard shortcuts should be different between that and the finder views? Duh! Hello? Have you heard about consistency?
4.\tRadio and Checkboxes : I like to click on the name, not just the tiny control itself. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Stop it. Make it work right all the time.
5.\tDraggable edges : I liked being able to grab the edge of windows to drag them. Not to mention having some contrast where one window ended and another started. I lost that with the Aqua theme; and I'm not even going to get into the hundreds of issues with that look and the whole menu transparency thing that drives me nuts.
6.\tCommand-period : I remember when command-. would stop things. I know it wasn't the most intuitive command but now things are worse. Maybe make something new with similar functionality or hack that to work again. But I want something predictable and consistent. Jaguar is better than 10.1 but needs more.
7.\tControl Panels menu : I used to be able to quickly go to the control panel item I wanted (through a hierarchy). Apple reverted us back to System 6's control panel where everything is a two stage process. Not a win, though I like the logical grouping. That grouping could have been done from menus as well. Without my stuff in it the Apple menu is naked anyway so start with each topic and have the items underneath. I know you are in love with your own icons but I like speed of use. Also control panels used to feel more open (people could make them with help from Apple, etc.). It feels less open now.
I miss fonts just working. I used to have them organized in one place. I could drag them in or out and they worked (at least for the next app I ran). Now I need to reboot and they are disorganized and in 5 different places. How is this easier? Why don't font previews work? What about MultiMaster Fonts -- are they working yet? Again, just some centralized font management would help. I do like the support for OpenType fonts (and many other things) but get the management working, make it dynamic, and then you'll have something.
1.\t
Shell - MPW people understood both shells and UI. So did some other efforts. I used to be able to see commands and add menus that ran either shell scripts or apple scripts or both. What about a help browser that can go through commands and man pages? Did everyone with that clue leave? Or is Apple trying to tell me that terminal is the ultimate shell environment? I think the problem is that they don't want to emphasize the shell too much, so they won't put any money into it. But some people (like me) have to use it. So make it more usable.
2.\tI used to have the extension manager that I could use to control what was running, what could be running, what I could turn off, and so on. I want similar functionality. There is sort of a "startup items" now, and there are ways that I can add things as psuedo-chron jobs and so on but Apple should make them standard, document them, and put an interface on their management. I don't think making users edit plists is the ultimate in management.
3.\tDock - sorry, the dock sucks (for some types of work/people). You've heard it before; I'm not going to go into it. But if you aren't going to fix it at least make it open and expandable (replaceable). In fact, even if you are going to fix it, make it an open, expandable, and replaceable thing. Right now it feels like a testament to Steve's stubbornness and hubris: "My way or the highway". What a way to build customer loyalty.
4.\tDevice Drivers : there are more now, and things are getting better. In another few years we'll have the same variety that we used to. This isn't to bash; these things take time and I think that OS X will eventually grow to be better than OS9 was in this area. But we still haven't caught up yet, and don't try to tell me we have.
5.\tPrint center : I used to think chooser was bad; now I have print center. It's slow, confusing, quirky. And shouldn't it (also drive setup, etc.) be in control panels or the Apple menu? What about scanners, cameras, and so on? I think all of this control panel stuff needs to be reworked to be more open and consistent. I want to go there to set up devices, not wander the hard drive looking for places Apple or others may have hidden things.
6.\tAnother thing is that I used to set up lots of auto-mount network drives. While I can manually mount network drives in OS X I've never figured out how to auto-mount them. There's probably a way (and I haven't tried hard to find it) but it should be more obvious or be part of the settings for that drive.
7.\tAnother nice to have is Internet controls that work across the system and are more consistent. Some of this is the fault of Apps that do their own thing (Explorer comes to mind) but fix them or convince them to see the light. The Internet controls worked better in OS 9; where are my helper apps settings?
8.\tThe old Apple strived for Openness when it came to the OS (sometimes too much). The new Apple is more open in some areas (Rendevous) but then closed in other areas. Why isn't there a replaceable dock? What about themes? What about the control strips? Play nice with others or they may take their toys and go home! I'm not saying they're all great ideas but I do think there's a selective attitude about what constitutes "open".
The last three issues I would mention are little ones: Documentation, Quality Assurance, and support. Things spiked way down when NeXT took over and slowly they've crept back -- but they still have a long way to go. Much of OS X feels like "ship it first, fix it later" or "Ship it first, document later". Not to mention support which sometimes says "I dunno, we just got that". And this is all over Apple. They still aren't as bad as Microsoft or some others at that. But compared to what Apple used to be like we might be going too far towards "real artists ship" mentality. Real artists also ship only when they're ready.
Again, I'm not unhappy with OS X; I use it all the time. There are many things it does right or better. But this article isn't about those things. This article is about all the things that are missing or that I still want.
I do use OS X. I do think it is the best UNIX ever. But don't tell me that it is as good as the classic MacOS. It isn't. I have hope that it will be someday. And if Apple can admit that it has a ways to go and learn from the old Mac ways (and behaviors) then I believe we can get there. But we can't get there through denial or claims that we're already there. So let's learn from the past and make a better future.
Comments
Just because he THINKS the dock sucks, it should be replaced? Well, I'm sorry, but I think it's perfect. It's certainly a much better way to multitask than the "so-much-more-out-of-the-way" applications menu he evangelized.
He calls, for instance, the Print Center "quirky and confusing." Well, that certainly says a lot. No examples, nothing.
Give me a break. This guy is just another impossible-to-please complainer. He's hardly any better than that Kim Komando.
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: Jon Rubinstein ]</p>
Type/Creator I'm sitting on the fence with this issue as there are pros and cons for OSX's methodology here.
1. Filenames Never been a huge issue for me. Renaming a file in the finder with a dot in front throws up a warning anyway, which might alert David K. Every's grandmother. Being able to change behaviour witha file name helped me out when stuffit truncated the filenames of about hundred zipped MP3s - just adding .mp3 on the end and voila - they were working again. Of course you could have argued that they should have worked anyway...
2. File behaviours David makes a good point
3. Drag and drop agree on this, but doesn't really affect me too much, although I'll concede that others might find it infuriating!
Metadata I believe its coming in a future revision of the OS. The new iTunes is an example of how that might work.
1. Spring Loaded folders I'm sure the other half of that functionaility will make an appearance in a future revision of the OS. After all, how many versions of the old OS did we have before we got that functionality?
2. Tabbed Windows (Popup Folders) Man, I miss them: it really helped me organise my work the way I wanted to. I like the Dock, but I find it INFURIATING just as much: I have a lot of apps and on my 1600 x 1200 screen the Dock streches the full width and the icons are quite small. Everytime I want to add something I have to figue out what I need to remove before I can do that. Because there are no file names until I strum my mouse over them I'm forgetting where things are, especially on the right where you can put folders. I'm not saying get rid of the dock, but it sure as hell could be improved!!
3. Application Menu Agreed. See comments above. I must confess that the little black arrows showing running apps doesn't irk as much as some of the other stuff.
4. Apple Menu Can't see this ever coming back in the way described.
5. Control Strip See comments on the Dock above. The Dock is finite - that's the issue here I think!
6. Button View The return of this would be nice. Not overly important (don't stop work on the finder FTP to implement this Apple!)
7. Finder labels I'm sure the upcoming metadata will give David al the flexibility he craves.
8. Location Manager Agreed - this needs work. Although on a side note I like the way OSX on my ibook will switch to Airport at home if I don't plug in an Ethernet cable (like I have to at work)
9. Persistence Yeah, this bugs me, but I'm sure Apple are fixing this (*cough* iCal *cough*)
10. Put away Not sure if this will come back. I'll miss it, but I'll get over it.
11. File name limits Never actually tried to write a file name longer than 256 characters, but if that behaviour described is true, then that sucks and needs fixing.
12. Tighter Grid I had to flip my monitor res to 1600 x 1200 just so I didn't feel that OSX was being wasteful with space. Tighter grids please! Perhaps with a grid range that we could adjust?
13. Alias Feedback Bring back italic!!
1. Mouse Tracking Fine for me.
2. Cursors that work Is this related: renaming files in the finder seems more hit and miss than in OS9
3. Game Controller Support Apple has gone standards crazy. Get over it.
4. Analogue video input Ain't gonna happen
5. Analogue Audio Input This sucks. I really don't want to have to buy an iMic just to record some audio. But this isn't an OSX issue as it is a hardware issue... hmmm... okay I'm gonna skip a few of these things and just concentrate on the OSX ones...
9. Happy Mac Gone forever. I mean Jeez it's just a picture of a REALLY old Mac. Modern users have no idea WHAT it is supposed to represent!! Deal with it and move with the times.
2. Open / Save Agreed - this is one of the biggest bugbears of mine: navigating the column views in both the finder and the open/save dialogue boxes with just the arrow keys should work but MAN it drives me crazy. I curse Apple every time I have to do this and MANUALLY click with a mouse! Jeez - what are we? Cavemen? It worked in OS9! Please Apple take the team OFF the finder FTP and get them working on this issue!!!
5. Draggable edges Would be nice, especially when the resize triangle is underneath the dock...
Fonts I like being able to use PC fonts, but the fact that fonts are scattered all over the place is a nightmare. ATM Deluxe was great and Suitcase tries its best, but an Apple based method of switching on and off font sets would be cool (I have about three thousand fonts so I know what a pain in the ass this is!!!)
Okay, there are more good and interesting points made, but I gotta go out!! (This took longer to write than I thought it would!)
The only thing I'd say in Apple's defence is that I'm sure they are aware of many of these issues and are working hard to fix them. This is just a baby OS yet and hasn't achieved anything like maturity... I can't wait to see what the next major revision of OSX will bring!
1 Proper pop-up folders (tunnelling through the hard drive was just so simple).
2: Pop-ups that actually work in the Dock (I spent waaay too much time using A-Dock under OS 9) .
3: System Sounds (it all feels horrid not having the little clicks and pops going on, and great as Xounds is, it's still not as robust as System-level operation would be).
Of course, a lot of this is stuff that we only recently got, and I was dubious as hell of all of it to start with...
Things in X itself that need sorting:
1: Finder FTP. 'nuff said.
2: Inconsistencies between single and double-click behaviours. For instance, my natural instinct in System Preferences is to double-click the icons. Okay, I probably need to retrain the muscle-memory here, but it wouldn't take a huge visual cue to stop me doing this.
3: Proper Login/Logout items folders. I don't want to be messing about running cron jobs. It's inelegant, and it's un-Maclike.
<strong>I like the Dock, but I find it INFURIATING just as much: I have a lot of apps and on my 1600 x 1200 screen the Dock streches the full width and the icons are quite small. Everytime I want to add something I have to figue out what I need to remove before I can do that. Because there are no file names until I strum my mouse over them I'm forgetting where things are, especially on the right where you can put folders. I'm not saying get rid of the dock, but it sure as hell could be improved!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yea, I see a lot of people doing this, even the admins at the community college.
My philosophy with the dock is to keep my most used items in there. Everything else can get shoved into a psuedo-Applemenu, a folder that sits next to my trash in the dock.
I have only 15 apps in the dock. Everything else, I put an alias of inside of some organized folders (Internet, Graphics, etc.) in that Dock folder.
I also organize my dock icons according to use (system, email, browsers, chat apps, misc internet, design.)
I find it keeps me very organized and efficient with the Dock.
I tried to think of better Dock ideas some time ago o no avail. I thin there are improvements that can be made, I just find that no matter what you do, there are some drawbacks to an app switcher or launcher or taskbar or whatever that someone is going to hate. There is no magic bullet. It would be interesting to see if he has a more concrete example of what he wants --- so everyone can see how hard it is to deal with the issue to shortcuts and window management.
Frankly, I thought this little snipet was just plain funny:
"8. The old Apple strived for Openness when it came to the OS (sometimes too much)."
Really?!?!? Is he sure about that? I suppose his idea of what openness is differs a bit from mine. Apple pre-NeXT purchase was the epicenter for NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.
Actually, the more I read over the article, the more find some (not all) of his comments quite arbitrary. Why would italicized text indicate an alias better than the curved arrow? Neither solution is terribly (I hate this word) intuitive or obvious at a casual glance.
I don't really miss tabbed windows since you can just toss a folder in the Dock and get the same functionality, though perhaps waiting an extra second or using the control key for the list to pop up is annoying for a lot of people.
File and Type codes can go the way of the dodo if they get a more portable and robust system of metadata in. I still like to think that Apple is working on this as part of any work they're doing with a next-gen filesystem for the OS. Same goes for labels.
I don't know why anyone would want anything like the Extensions Manager, or why we need one. what's there to manage? Why make hard for yourself? To me, it's the same scenario as when someone asks why there isn't an uninstaller utility. It's not there because it's simpler than that, and that's good thing.
Anyway, his other points are either really minor (Happy Mac), I don't have an opinion either way (game controllers), or I agree with him (grids, more consistent finder window behavior, etc.)
Dock is only one way--can drop things in, but can't launch or move files from folder in the Dock. Also for useful navigation, Tabbed Folders gave a text label so you could find your folder quickly and easily without pasting custom icons on every fsckin folder or scrubbing.
Open/Close dialogs--enough has been said about the absolute suckiness of these things.
Location manager--absolutely. Even the wonderful Network auto-magic only works if you have more than one interface. Two En0 settings and there is no auto detection, requiring opening the System Prefs and blah blah.
Print Manager--Bad bad bad. Better than 1.0, but so is a sharp stick in the eye. Want to change your printer interface, i.e. change a known printers IP address, or move from Appletalk to IP printing--the only way is to delete the printer and start over--how microsoft.
And how about that Apple Menu, or at least a way to config the Dock with out making little folders, pasting custom icons and dragging and dropping alias' for the apps we need to open (sound familiar--doh just like OS9). At least with the Apple menu the Calculator and Chooser were already there.
More user UI choice == happy users.
This is the biggest issue. period. OS9 still kicks the crap out of OSX in the speed department.
Actually, I do think the filenames issue is an improvement: instead of having to drag icons onto an app in 9, when I wanted, e.g. a Photoshop-Tiff to open in Pictureviewer for a quick peak, now, I can just change 'open in app' properties in batch. This I prefer.
I do think the Dock is better in some ways than the Application menu, although it does need some more refinement. (and that's what it should get: I know many people might be happy with the dock, but at the same time, many people aren't: my main issues with the Dock
1) hiding (viz. above) is not good for me now
2) I want to have more than one row on the Dock (look at DragThing there)
3) maybe even a tabbed Dock (looking at DragThing again).
=> I want more room and my icons still visible at the same time. The Dock is not very space-efficient right now.
I don't really need a 'Dave menu'/apple menu or Control strip.
Persistence of Finder prefs/view options is a big issue, admittedly. Some work needs to be done there.
File name-problems are not Apple's fault, in my opinion, they are the fault of developer's releasing crappily carbonized apps.
I prefer the aliases now.
ANALOG AUDIO INPUT. Fvck it, that's is the biggest turn-off of Apples nowadays (at least the iBook). Jeez. What's that all about? A smallish jack, that's all, I am really angry at apple for this. Just you know it.
Timed startup and shutdown: so true, a thing I miss so dearly that I already considered making my own app to do it.
The rest of the remarks I can't identify with too much (except maybe the draggable edges thing, but that's all).
Hell, I don't think this guy is wrong: this is indeed stuff that is putting long time Apple users in the cold. Apple should work on that.
Themes. That way no one complains about the GUI anymore. If Themes were Apple sanctioned they wouldn't have the chance of screwing stuff up. I want my System 7 look back damnit! Then again, even having flavors would be nice. Graphite, Aqua, and how about the other range of colors, like in IE or System 7? Apple needs to add more flexibility to the GUI. Being able to do it Terminalese doesn't help people like me that don't have time to learn obscure UNIX commands.
Again, Bruce Tognazini (sp?) had a good critique of Apple's new GUI, it still stands. The Dock SUCKS.
But, uh, like I said if I could only get rid of the goddam stripes without resorting to a Haxie!!!
The thing about David Every that cracks me up is that considering his incredibly specific gripes about UI details, his articles are generally haphazardly organized and written in a stream-of-consciousness style that makes them difficult to analyze.
But anyway...
0. The "fragility issue". I have to concur here. The organization of the System and BSD stuff doesn't matter here, because David carefully and sensibly refers to the fragility of files visible in the Finder. On the one hand, I think OS X's default way of sorting apps is a bit step up from OS 9, and newbie-friendly. On the other hand, I can't imagine why it shouldn't be able to find iTunes no matter where you put it. There are some alarming, and un-Apple, signs of laziness in Installer.app, and among the people who use it to prepare installers. And it's not, as frequently claimed by Every, a NeXT vs. Apple issue, because StepWise (hardcore NeXTies) has been crusading against Installer.app for years now. Slop is slop.
[quote]<strong>1.\tFilenames : I want to be in control of filenames, not have the OS tell me what I can call things, make things disappear because I put a period in front of something, or suddenly change icon and behavior. Filenames are MINE, not yours!</strong><hr></blockquote>
1) In Mac OS, files beginning with periods were treated - and loaded - as device drivers by the OS, which led to some truly spectacular crashes before Apple wised up and had their various filename-setting methods change a leading period to a bullet (sometime in OS 8, if memory serves).
2) As invisible dot-files are a cherished UNIXism, they're unlikely to go away. However, Finder could get around this easily by doing what it did in OS 9, and converting leading .'s to bullets. This might piss off the UNIX users, though, and distinguishing a dot-file from a file that just happens to begin with a period requires...
3) ...metadata. Apple hired two of BeOS' filesystem gurus a little while ago, neatly answering David's aside about the BeOS metadata system. The iApps and the Digital Hub control panel (whatever it's called now) all cry out for robust metadata support. It's coming. But first, you have to clear out the old way, which is incompatible with the rest of the world, and needlessly obtuse and limiting. TYPE and CREATOR are both 32-bit integers, not human-readable text - R*CH for BBEdit?! Also, the namespace is needlessly constrained. Yes, theoretically it can handle 4 billion types and creators, but the vast majority of those are unreadable swear-word-euphemism combinations that nobody is ever going to use. And Apple had to keep a central registry for them. They were a good idea constrained by PC technology ca. 1984. We have MIME and XML now.
The next several complaints all tie into metadata.
[quote]<strong>1.\tSpring loaded folders - I know some will say that Jaguar has them but in Jaguar they only have half of the functionality. There were two behaviors: drag, and double-click tunneling. Jaguar got the first behavior mostly working but is missing the second. I used to tunnel by double-clicking on the first item, and then it would behave like I was dragging something for rapid navigation. This was intuitive, easy, fast, and cool.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's nice, but how much different is it than clicking your way down a hierarchy in column view?
[quote]<strong>2.\tTabbed Windows (Popup Folders) - it was always nice being able to decide how I was working and just dock a window at the bottom of the screen or set up and arrange my own topical dock (that frankly worked much better for me).</strong><hr></blockquote>
And this is different from putting folders in the Dock... how? The pop-up folders had text labels, but they also were in Finder's z-order, so if you had a bunch of window spam you had to move and WindowShade things out of the way to get to them.
[quote]<strong>3.\tApplication Menu - it was aways much faster and better than trying to play the "find the running app" shell game that is the dock.</strong><hr></blockquote>
In OS X, what is the difference between a running app and a non-running app? Answer: A few K of virtual memory and a bounce or two. The worrying about whether or not an app was running is a legacy of Mac OS's requiring the user to do memory management. It's a non-issue now.
What's funny about this line of criticism of the Dock is that people are so used to having to divide things up into subcategories that they miss the Dock's simplicity: You click on the app you want, and it appears. If I want to use BBEdit, I click on its icon. Whether it was running or not, it pops up. This is so much simpler and faster than the Application Menu/Finder combination in OS 9 - Fitt's Law notwithstanding - that I can't imagine going back. (Fitt's Law does apply to the Dock, as it happens.)
David mentions the UI principle of "progressive disclosure" as a point in favor of the Application Menu, but you have to show enough detail to get people started before you can disclose more. The old Application menu failed so completely that a lot of people didn't even know it was a menu, and if they can't get that far it doesn't matter how useful its progressive disclosure is.
The one point against the Dock is that it doesn't scale up very well. This is fine: Macs should first and foremost answer to the needs of novice users, and professionals can seek out more specialized tools the way they always have. Replacing the Dock is currently a little more involved than point-and-click in Preferences, but substantially less involved than customizing the Apple Menu, which David doesn't even blink at.
[quote]<strong>4.\tApple Menu - hey, while we're at it, I used to love to keep my accessories in there. What do you know, it was good for something. I understand the new menu layout and a lot of it makes sense. Fine; give me a "Dave menu" where I can put my things. I liked having my own menu and Apple took that away from me! Give it back!</strong><hr></blockquote>
A "Dave" menu (or a "Favorites" or "Shortcuts" menu) would be much better than bringing back the Apple menu. As above, most people don't even realize it's a menu, because it doesn't look like the other menus. Also, it's odd that David complains that the Dock is overloaded, but lauds the Apple Menu for being even more overloaded, and more difficult to customize.
Or, he could use the Favorites shortcut in the Finder toolbar - even put it in the Dock! Both are far easier to customize than the Apple Menu.
[quote]<strong>5.\tControl Strip - my menubar is already crowded enough.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The widget - originally intended for portables - that required a non-obvious key/mouse combination to move around? That had to be manually resized? That became ridiculously overloaded? That ran over pop-up folders in the old MacOS, and would run over the Dock on most machines in OS X? Gah. No.
On the other hand, his idea of having a control-strip-style tab indicating a hidden Dock is a good one.
[quote]<strong>6.\tButton view - hey, I know it is silly with the dock and all, but sometimes I set up button view windows and docked them (especially for other users). I still watch many users click once on an icon on the desktop and wait, or double click apps in a dock (and I wince). I understand their desire for more consistency and sometimes I could fake that for them with a few apps that they just click on. Not any more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
When to click and when to double-click is confusing, but I'm not entirely sure what to do about that - I've seen it confuse people on Mac OS, on OS X, and on Windows. The buttons were clear, but on the other hand a Dock full of buttons would look ugly and cluttered. Come to think of it, the OS 9 buttons were pretty ugly as well. They were perfect for kids, though. I haven't checked: Is the kid-friendly tabbed Finder still around? or some analog?
7. Finder labels fall under metadata. I agree that folders as persistent search criteria are cool, and OS X already has a few steps in that direction with a better Folder Actions implementation than OS 9 had.
[quote]<strong>8.\tLocation Manager - while UNIX management of users and accounts works, and some behaviors (like multi-homing) need location manager less, I still like location manager and I wish it was back. OS X networking still has problems if you change places on it too often (which I do).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I've never used Location Manager, so I'll have to punt this one. It seems like setting up multiple user accounts ("work," "home," "road") as "locations" would handle this OK. Then you could have custom Docks and the whole nine yards. A "New User from This User" option would make that go a lot smoother - is there one in Jaguar? Or, can someone who did use Location Manager a lot explain whether or not my multiple-user idea would be acceptable? I can think of one possible gotcha: Sharing documents between accounts might run afoul of OS X's default security level.
[quote]<strong>9.\tPersistence - I used to set Window positions, size, controls, and views and they would consistently work. Now they don't. Sometimes they work but often they move, change size, or change what controls are shown. When I open a new window it sometimes inherits from the previous one and sometimes not. I know there are rules for when it works and why and that I can psuedo-program them myself to work how I expect. But so far, I'm amazed at how consistently wrong it is at guessing what I want or what I expect. It didn't used to be like that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seconded.
[quote]<strong>10.\tPut away - I used to just go to the trash or an item on the desktop and put it away. Undo sometimes works but is not really the same behavior, nor should it be. That's for undoing the last behavior, not selectively knowing to undo an action on the specific thing I've clicked on. Where's my flipping put-away button?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I have to admit, I'm completely baffled. I never used "put away." Does someone have a clearer explanation than the above?
[quote]<strong>11.\tFile Name limits. You can type a name longer than it allows, then after you hit return it throws an error.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seconded. This is dumb and sloppy. The input method should allow 256 characters, make whatever other changes are necessary (changing :'s and /'s) on the fly, and start beeping when the filename reaches its limit. Just like Mac OS.
[quote]<strong>12.\tTighter grid (and more control) - I used to be able to set a tighter and more effective grid on icons (in windows and on the desktop); now I'm a victim of Apple's settings.</strong><hr></blockquote>
John Siracusa noted a similar thing: That grids resize as icons do. This seems like a misfeature to me. On the other hand, I'm trying to think of a way to separate them that wouldn't be needlessly complex.
[quote]<strong>13.\tAlias feedback is weak. The little arrow is small. Italics used to offer more feedback. That's gone.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Minor.
[quote]<strong>1.\t
Mouse tracking - this sounds like a little issue. But the Mac always felt smooth and predictable. There's some new tracking in OS X (including Jaguar) that I've never gotten used to. The velocity curves are different, and it skips and jumps.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I've heard this before, but I'm not sure what exactly is going on here. I have no trouble mousing around in OS X, and I don't remember an adjustment period. I do still hate mousing in Windows, though, so I know that it's not just because I'm used to Windows that I can use the mouse easily in OS X. I'd chalk some of it up to optical mice, which are more precise than their ball-driven cousins until they become wildly less precise.
[quote]<strong>2.\tCursors that work - The I-Beam cursor sometimes works, sometimes not (especially in the finder). Same with the silly little CD-ROM cursor.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'll chalk this up to spit and polish on Apple's part. I would also prefer a watch or something else that indicated "please wait" a little more obviously than an Aquafied MO drive.
[quote]<strong>3.\tGame controller support - Apple used to have input sprockets and so on. New Apple may rely on standards too much so they won't go beyond them. Mainly the USB drivers are covering this but there's still a little loss of specialization.</strong><hr></blockquote>
With Jaguar, Apple pulled off the feat of mapping Classic's Input Sprocket to OS X's controller support, which is impressive. I'll bet they're either looking around for a standards-based replacement (since Input Sprocket was much loved) or perhaps leaving game developers with the current robust but low-level API.
[quote]<strong>4.\tAnalog video input - I miss being able to just plug a VCR or camera into the Mac. Some of us don't own the hottest digital devices.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Minor.
[quote]<strong>5.\tAnalog audio input - this comes and goes; which makes it hard to know what you're getting. Can I just plug in a mic. or stereo or not? This is a $.05 connector, leave it alone (and in).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Minor. It's more useful than the analog video connector, though, and I see that it seems to be making a comeback.
[quote]<strong>6.\tPower Management that works better - I used to get 4 real hours out of the TiBook in OS9. I seem to get about half that with Jaguar and it runs hotter.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As I lack a portable, I can't comment, but I've heard all sorts of different accounts of how well Jaguar does with battery life.
[quote]<strong>7.\tTimed startup and shutdown</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, please.
[quote]<strong>8.\tPortrait monitor - OK, so I'm the only dweeb left with an old one-page portrait display. I liked it I and wonder what would have been so hard about coding one more scan rate into a video chip?</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
How old is that thing?
[quote]<strong>9.\tHapppy Mac on boot</strong><hr></blockquote>
Doesn't look like anything Apple is currently shipping, and really isn't that much of a loss. The best thing about it was the way it communicated the state of the Mac on bootstrap (happy face, frowning face, x'd face). I hope the new screen is at least as informative.
[quote]<strong>10.\tDidn't I used to be able to set function keys to run Apps?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Global key bindings are apparently some thing of a bear to implement with the new Window Server. It's something that Apple can polish up at least enough to allow a third party to implement it, but with the Dock displaying your favorite and running apps right there, I don't think it's a terribly high priority.
[quote]<strong>1.\tESP / Precognition : I liked being able to type the first few letters in something and have it work. Mostly it works but not always, like in the most often used place (open/save dialog). What the hell is that trying to do anyways?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seconded.
[quote]<strong>2.\tOpen / Save :</strong><hr></blockquote>
... are still a good idea in search of a good implementation. They're getting better, but they still require a mouse to use.
I'm reminded of the fact that Open/Save dialogs were originally a way around the problem that Finder couldn't run while an app was running on the original MacOS. I still think that getting rid of the buggers entirely and making it possible to pop a Finder window (set up however the user wanted) to a particular directory, with a sheet for a filename prompt, would be much cooler than constantly wrestling with little mini-Finders. The problem of inconsistent behavior between open/save dialogs and Finder windows would be a solved problem as well.
[quote]<strong>4.\tRadio and Checkboxes : I like to click on the name, not just the tiny control itself. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Stop it. Make it work right all the time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seconded. More spit-and-polish here.
[quote]<strong>5.\tDraggable edges : I liked being able to grab the edge of windows to drag them. Not to mention having some contrast where one window ended and another started.</strong><hr></blockquote>
In another article he raves about how appropriate shadows are. Hmm. What does he think they're for?
I'm torn on the window border issue. On the one hand, it's nice to be able to drag-and-resize from anywhere. On the other hand, it's cluttered and occasionally annoying when you don't want to resize the window.
[quote]<strong>6.\tCommand-period : I remember when command-. would stop things.</strong><hr></blockquote>
True. It's a semi-intuitive command, to, since periods indicate the end of a sentence, or (voiced as a word) a command to end a discussion.
I like Escape as an option as well. There's more history behind that as a bail-out command (that's where it got the name "Escape" after all). Therefor, Apple should implement both.
[quote]<strong>7.\tControl Panels menu : I used to be able to quickly go to the control panel item I wanted (through a hierarchy). Apple reverted us back to System 6's control panel where everything is a two stage process.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Toss-up: Speed vs. clarity. I'll take clarity. It's not like I'm firing up System Preferences constantly. And I'm forever in the debt of the nice person who consolidated the various net-related control panels into Internet and Networking.
[quote]<strong>I miss fonts just working. I used to have them organized in one place. I could drag them in or out and they worked (at least for the next app I ran). Now I need to reboot and they are disorganized and in 5 different places. How is this easier?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, the old way worked until you had more than 256 fonts, and if you were willing to wait a long, long time for the Font menu to build (during which time, of course, you could do nothing).
OS X's way makes sense from a multi-user perspective. You have one place to place fonts: In your Library. I dragged and dropped a whole slew of fonts (over 300) into my Library/Fonts folder and everything just worked. So I'm not sure what the issue is.
Carbon apps need access to the little font previewer, but aside from that... And aren't Multiple Master fonts working in Jaguar now, or did I mishear?
\t
[quote]<strong>Shell - MPW people understood both shells and UI. So did some other efforts. I used to be able to see commands and add menus that ran either shell scripts or apple scripts or both. What about a help browser that can go through commands and man pages?</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is all very nice, and I believe it can all be added to Terminal by third parties, just as NeXTStep's Terminal was. Cocoa rules that way.
[quote]<strong>2.\tI used to have the extension manager that I could use to control what was running, what could be running, what I could turn off, and so on. I want similar functionality.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ummm, why? We're back to Mac OS' requiring significant manual intervention here. Since drivers and the like don't actually patch the operating system at startup, and are only run when needed, as long as they're needed, I don't see the problem. If you don't want a KEXT loaded, don't use the device that loads it.
I suppose better Startup/Shutdown (and Login/Logout) item support would be nice, though. (David's later complaint about auto-mounting network drives goes here, too).
[quote]<strong>3.\tDock - sorry, the dock sucks (for some types of work/people). You've heard it before; I'm not going to go into it. But if you aren't going to fix it at least make it open and expandable (replaceable).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Unless I'm misremembering, you can copy Dock.app to a separate file, change the name of your replacement to Dock.app in the same folder, and OS X will dutifully autolaunch it with Finder. That seems pretty simple, if not exactly elegant.
[quote]<strong>In fact, even if you are going to fix it, make it an open, expandable, and replaceable thing. Right now it feels like a testament to Steve's stubbornness and hubris: "My way or the highway". What a way to build customer loyalty.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Unless I'm missing something, none of Apple's navigational tools have ever been open or expandable. (Well, you can put your hard drive in the Apple Menu, I suppose...). None of the third party replacements have, either.
[quote]<strong>5.\tPrint center : I used to think chooser was bad; now I have print center.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I haven't seen the Jaguar implementation yet, but I agree that it's not as transparent as it could be. And it's a little too close to Windows in implementation (which might be an attempt to lure switchers, but why not improve things a little in the process?)
[quote]<strong>7.\tAnother nice to have is Internet controls that work across the system and are more consistent. Some of this is the fault of Apps that do their own thing (Explorer comes to mind) but fix them or convince them to see the light.</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS 9 was hardly better in this regard: too many apps just stomped all over your settings, which was even worse than ignoring them outright.
[quote]<strong>8.\tThe old Apple strived for Openness when it came to the OS (sometimes too much).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sorry, David, but this is utter poppycock. Mac OS had been around long enough, and it had been static enough, that people got comfortable with rummaging around in its innermost workings to hack together things like Kaleidoscope (and it's funny how people forget how hack-like Kaleidoscope really was). OS X's innards are probably guarded because Apple is constantly changing them. I know Print Center went through a complete overhaul, for example. When OS X comes out of its current growth spurt, we'll see more options and more third-party hacks. In the mean time, between Darwin and the intrinsic dynamism of Cocoa and Objective-C, I'd say OS X is the most open Apple OS ever. By leaps and bounds.
A themeable OS takes a lot of work to do right, and there's no point even trying until Apple gets the default interface settled down. Also, I find it hilarious that the same people who slam Aqua for being slow want more dynamism (= less performance). It's undoubtedly in their long-term interest to make the OS themeable (and resolution independent, when that becomes possible) but they have other fish to fry in the near term.
OS 9 was never completely themeable. Kaleidoscope was possible not because Apple did anything to make it possible, but because Greg Landweber and company spent years rooting around in dark places themselves to come up with an app that resulted in a noticeable drop in both performance and stability and hundreds of UI glitches like words being cut off because the font was too big for the space allocated to the text - all of which looked really professional. A truly themeable OS is not a trivial undertaking, and there are very real tradeoffs.
In response to his last paragraph, I'm all for more documentation and more QA.
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
The lack of translucency in menus doesn't have much impact on the UI speed really. If you turned of the alpha completely (even OS 9 has 1 bit alpha), then you would see a difference, but unless Apple has changed how Quartz 2D draws things, everything has an 8 bit alpha channel even if it's opaque. The translucency is "free" at that point.
Frankly, considering menus are instant on my iMac with 10.2, I don't think that's the source of any GUI slowness. I suspect that the animations make things feel slower than in OS 9, but I've really not seen any real speed issues in Jag. There are few reasonable exceptions. iPhoto and iCal are sometimes slow when resizing and responding to clicks (even though in iPhoto, resizing the pictures in the window is quick). Sometimes apps will take a while to load on login too. Also, when I have a folder set to generate previews of the images inside, my big folders can take a while to make the thumbnails. They should consider making an index of thumbnails like they have a content index, and like how Curator works. Oh, and these forums load slowly on OW.
I noticed the comment about drag-n-drop in Every's article, but I can't say I've had any problem. I drag-n-drop between PS elements, TIFFany, PixelNhance, Create, iPhoto, etc all the time without any glitches. You can even force an app to try to open a document if it doesn't recognize the content (hold down option -command when you drag the file icon over the app's Dock icon).
Anyway, looking ahead, I'm still mainly looking for a simpler computing experience, not a more elaborate one. My biggest desire right now is for one place to organize my images, which include Photoshop files and TIFFany 3 documents. Curator comes the closest because it can read all those formats, and because it can look in my own folders that I place wherever. iPhoto is trickier to use with Photoshop and TIFFany files since you have to confirm to their folder system, though I suppose I can alter my organization a bit. But Caffeine removed the ability to move files and folders around in Curator -- get this -- because of user demand! So I can view files and their previews in that app, I can create new folders, but I can't actually organize them unless I jump back into the Finder.
I guess I don't ask much from the OS at this point, it seems to be just what I need right now.
For those complaining about the placement of the Dock, I have to say DUUUUHH!! Just change it's position on the screen, it's simple. I've foundd that by far the best place for the Dock is on the left edge of the screen, it doesn't interfere with the scroll bars or the resize widget in the corner of windows. The only control the Dock can possibly interfere with is the streetlight control widgets in the top left, and even then usually theres enough of a gap between the Dock and the top of the screen that you dont need to move the window to access the widgets.
This arrangement is also space efficient, especially with widescreen monitors, because the Dock fills up some of the space on the sides of the screen that are usually blank since few windows are wide enough to use all the horizontal space on the screen. One issue is that it can't hold as many app icons before getting tiny, but this shouldn't be an issue if you keep your absolute most used apps in the Dock. If you don't access an app more than once a week, it shouldn't be in the Dock. The way I have it set up, I have 14 of my most used apps in the Dock, and I have my HD icon in the Dock so I can access the rest of my apps by right-clicking and accessing the drop-down menu. It takes a tiny bit longer, but the functionality it adds more than makes up for it.
As for the Dock itself, I feel that it could use some options on placements of custom dividers between icons plus drag-and-drop and spring-loaded folders support, but other than that it's fine for most users. Of course there are better ways of doing things, but it works well, and is far easier to use than the old App Switcher menu.
As far as the Finder, I keep hearing people saying it's no good. Personally I think it's great, and far more useful than anything OS 9 had. I love column view. If someone could outline the basic objections most people have to the Finder I'd be really interested in hearing about it, because I can't really see any ways to improve it besides little stuff.
If theres one area where I think the user experience needs some work, it would be support for a single app mode. In other words, when I switch apps, it will automatically hide all other apps without me asking it to. This functionality could be elegantly incorporated either by an option in the General preference pane, or (my favorite) double-clicking on the Dock icon of an app brings it forward while hiding all other apps, while single clicking on the icon works the old way. Hopefully either Apple is working on this or a 3rd party app is under development.
It's already been said that Apple is most likely working on revamping the file system using the knowledge of the Be engineers it hired, so I won't go into that. All I can say is I hope we see this in 10.3, I'm really excited with the opportunities this would present. I'm also really excited abou the future of the iApps and bundled apps. Mail is really solid now, the new Address Book is cool but could use some work with the interface. Print Center should be incorporated within a more general device manager pane in System Prefs. iPhoto 2 should be cool, especially if it implements some basic image manipulation tools like resizing pictures, blur, sharpen, and support for different formats. iCal 2 will also be cool, the interface needs work but should be awesome in the next release. I am eagerly awaiting iChat 2, I liked it a lot but it was too immature for me to switch from Adium, and hopefully it will have support for ICQ and MSN as well.
OT does anyone know how to set the System Preferences app to have icons only in the toolbar? I've seen this in pictures but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it.
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: hotboxd ]
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: hotboxd ]</p>
<strong>OT does anyone know how to set the System Preferences app to have icons only in the toolbar? I've seen this in pictures but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Command click on the oblong toolbar widget to toggle through the toolbar view options (i.e., big icons and text, small icons and text, big icons only, small icons only, text only).
Hmm, that doesn't seem to work, with either my mouse or using the track pad.
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: hotboxd ]</p>
Sure, there are two or three good points in there about metadata, dialog consistency and the like. But it's hard to give the guy any credence when he drowns those good points in what is basically a lot of whining and righteous indignation.
"Files are mine! Don't change their behaviors!" This was MINE, stop changing it."
Grow up, already. Just because Apple is ready to close the book on OS 9 and some of us are ready as well, doesn't mean we're completely happy with the OS or won't demand that Apple keep innovating and refining things where needed. At some point you have to let go of the side of the pool and SWIM, damnit...that is what Apple is going to do in January. And to suggest they shouldn't or that this is shortsighted is basically to ignore reality.
<strong>Hmm, that doesn't seem to work, with either my mouse or using the track pad.</strong><hr></blockquote>Holding the command key and clicking the toolbar widget. It works on all Macs with 10.2 that I've tried it on.
Here's what the resizing looks like:
[ 09-23-2002: Message edited by: trevorM ]</p>
Hmmm.... doesn't work for me
10.2.1
<img src="confused.gif" border="0">