I wish I had plain windows
 

Is there a way to deactivate all that Aqua and Brushed metal? I liked OS9 grayness.

I love windows XP's 3-clicks-visual-theme-removal.

There is no Apple-approved way to change window appearance except for the preference to have graphite "appearance" instead of aqua-blue. (System Preference/General)

There are some third-party utilities to change the appearance but there is a substantial risk of instability if you use them.

I would recommend that you stay with the standard appearance for some time until you get to know OS X better. The extra graphics in OS X does serve some purpose - e.g. to help you to know which windows are active, which will receive keyboard input, etc.
Note especially that not all windows of an application come to the front if one window is brought forward.

Done that already
 

I know OS x well enough... And i dont see any purpose for genie (and scale) effect, slowly flashing buttons, cursor shadow, and 128x128 32bits Icons are just ludicrous.

My stomach hurts every time I see the complete lack of parameters for all this flashy waste of system resources...:(

Well, the slowly flashing buttons draw your attention to the default button - what you get if you hit Return. It is important to know that this will happen.

The shadow makes the window stand off from what is behind it and hence makes it clearer which window is active.

The larger icons are useful in order to communicat more information. E.g. some apps change their icond to give infdication about what they are doing.

The genie effect is perhaps overkill - but it is useful to have some indication of what happens to a window when you minimize it.

What kind of a machine are you running OS X on?
For all recent machines, none of these graphical enhancements will take any significant resources at all, so perhaps it is just a psychological thing. Just don't worry about it.

unsanity.com

I just strongly believe that an operating system, by definition, should be both minimalist and efficient. A button doesnt have to flash slowly, a different color or font can do as good. A window doesn't need to cast a translucent shadow to be proeminent, a border and grayscale sheme would work as good. An Icon doesnt have to be beautiful and semi-transparent to convey more information, I prefer text.

As for system resources, it is true that recent systems (i have a g5) can handle all that fancy. But don't you think that having to upgrade your hardware to fit an OS is a little opposite of what an OS should be?!?

I really look forward for a MacOs that's customisable.

Well, the things you have been talking about are actually part of the window manager or even the applications (e.g. Finder) rather than (strictly speaking) what is "by definition" the OS. And you are free to run any window manager you want if you use X11. Of course, the Apple-supplied apps do not work under X11, nor do most commercial OS X apps.

But under the (more conventional/marketing) definition of an OS, I think an OS should do whatever adds to user productivity. Obviously this may be a user-dependent thing. But (in the absence of customizability, which is not without both development and user-interface-complexity cost), an OS designer has to go with the greatest good for the greatest number.

And I don't see your point about upgrading your hardware to be able to run the OS. All recent hardware runs OS X just fine - including all the extra graphical effects. Older hardware was designed to run the older versions of the OS (OS 9 and earlier).

Don't hold your breath waiting for Apple to support customizablity of window-manager or application appearance. I don't think it is on their priority list. If you want it to be, you should tell them via http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

Sure, and a car does not have to go 280 Km/hour when all the roads are 100Km/hour. That does not stop people from wanting/buying them. I kind of agree with the minimalist concept, but lets face it, it is not what is going to sell, and apple is in business. That said, I think we all have more than enough horsepower to throb a button without slowing us down. Hmmm, I have a 4+ year old G4 450MHz that is working just great with Panther (Don't tell my wife, I still *want* that dual 2GHz G5 8-).

If you want minimalist, login with the '>console' trick and you will have minimal!

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, grab a copy of themepark:

http://www.geekspiff.com/software/themepark/

The latest version works with 10.3. You can automatically create a theme with the current aqua look and go in and edit it to your heart's content. You can install your new theme with themechanger or other tools:

http://themechanger.sourceforge.net/

There are also themes that other people have written which you can use or modify with themepark. Here is a good place to find some.

http://www.resexcellence.com/themes/

So there is a way for you to put your strong beliefs into practice. It's not easy, and I recommend having a strong backup system in place before you get started!

once more: unsanity.com

Right, unsanity.com

And lots of customization in the System Preferneces.

. . . trying to remember the customization provided with Classic Mac OS to change the Platinum theme . . . hmm . . . :p

Right, Phil, that one never quite made it out of Beta. There was a place in the Appearance Control Panel to pick your theme, but Apple never formally released any other themes than Platinum. Drawing Board, HiTech, and Gizmo were Apple themes included on an apple beta CD.

The Drawing Board theme has actually been ported over to OS X, although not by apple. I have seen the original and the OS X port, which is a magnificent. I beleive that the author of this port has actually posted on this forum...

Yup - I looooved customising my system back in the bad old w2k days. Litestep was an app I used daily, and it was great. I was big into the flat, non-fussy themes that used lots of silkscreen fonts and thin lines - no slateboard pseudo 3d for me, thank you!

When I moved to OS X, I was worried that I would find all the eyecandy impossible to cope with. Too much happening on screen, too busy etc.

What I've found (after playing with LOTS of themes via duality etc) is that I invariably come back to the Aqua look'n'feel. What I love about it is the fact that it's been designed by some incredible HCI people. A whole load of it looks like simple window dressing, but when you remove it you can see why it's there.

Take drop shadows as an example. Any time I go back to windows systems, I'm startled and disoriented by the lack of "depth" to the desktop. In Panther, I can have 20 - 30 windows open at once (not uncommon in web dev ;) and can instantly know which one is "on top". Try that without the drop-shadows.

Also, the slow pulsing is a great feature. A simple "change in type" or whatever would *do*, but Apple's not about simply *doing*, it's about perfecting. The slow pulse is enough to suggest attention - not subtle enough to ignore, not blatant enough to annoy. Unlike the icon bouncing - there's a place where there's room for improvement ;)

As for the icons - don't like em? Run em down to 16 x 16. You're arguing for user choice, and 128 x 128 gives a LOAD of choice, as well as accessibility to those with poorer sight/coordination etc.

I agree Aqua's not to everyone's taste. There are options, but it's increasingly difficult to argue that the eye candy is superfluous or performance-detrimental. Performance rarely takes a hit thanks to Quartz Extreme, and the UI is infinitely easier to intuit than anything else out there.

Options ARE there (via duality), but I disagree that Apple should build in the frameworks to do this. Doing that would mean they'd have to "support" any crazy themes people came up with, which would make tech support a nightmare - "Okay, click the red button in the top left of the window..." "Red button? There's no red button there..."

And if the experiments in eye candy lead to features like Exposé, then I doubt anyone can argue with them very convincingly ;)

Very, very, very eloquently said, JayBee.

:-)

lack of choice is often a good thing
 

Actually, I think tech support would be the least of the worries. The real problem is development and testing cost. As a developer, I know that any configuration option introduces the possibility of bugs. The more options you have, the more combinations of things that there are that need to be tested and supported in future versions.

And as a user-interface expert, I know that the more options you have, the more complicated the preferences panel will become. A large part of making things more usable is taking away choices - the choices about things that don't really matter.

Usability is also about taking away choices that are unlikely to be useful for most people. Suppose that some feature is needed by only user out of 1000. Suppose this feature would make their machines ten times more useful for them - i.e. it would change the (hypothetical) "utility factor" for those people from 50 to 500. But suppose that for the other 99.9% of people, the introduction of this feature would be confusing and hence decrease the utility factor a tiny bit - so it would be 49 instead of 50. Then the overall utility would change to:
(.999)(49) + (.001)(500) = 49.01
I.e. a net loss of utility

If I were to list the GUI "skins" from System 6 through Aqua, plus all the Kaleidoscope packages and OS 9 Themes I've seen, plus all the OS X Duality Themes I've seen, plus all the Windows GUIs and Unix window managers I've seen, Aqua would rank pretty close to the bottom.

I'm currently using DarkGlass101, a Duality theme, in conjunction with visual and behavioral changes wrought by FruitMenu, X-Assist, TinkerTool, DefaultFolder, a manually generated Trash can alias, and the manually accomplished absence of Dock. If I could drop the font point size of contextual menus, I'd pretty much be there.

Good GUIs:

WindowMaker (X11)
Platinum (OS 8/9)
Classic Platinum (Duality)
ByCrom (Kaleidoscope)
DarkGlass (Duality)
FusionTech (Kaleidoscope)
DSX (Duality)
Integral (Kaleidoscope)
KDE (X11)
Galacticon (Kaleidoscope)
Integral (Kaleidoscope)

Mediocre GUIs (among many):

Windows95
Metal Fish (Kaleidoscope)
Hi-Tech (Duality / unreleased OS 9 Theme)
System 6
WoodNymph (Kaleidoscope)

Bottom of the Barrel (among others):

Luna XP
Aqua
TWM (X11)
Gizmo (Kaleidoscope / unreleased OS 9 Theme)
Windows 3.x

AHunter - can I ask specifically what makes Aqua so terrible? I agree it's all a matter of taste; I try not to say it's the "best" UI, just the best I've used from a personal PoV, but seriously - it's worse than Luna? ;)

And Hayne - agreed! When the clients ask "Can we build in some customisation here?" I usually start screaming inside. Doesn't stop them asking, though ;) Usually you have to give a more convincing argument than the "Too much work, too little benefit, too much additional complication" which is often cynically interpreted by the client as "Too lazy, too lazy, too lazy" :D

Tech support is always a good and justified alternative "You really don't want that, do you?"

Oh, and offtopic - don't use Fruitmenu if you're looking for customisation. MaxMenus is infinitely more flexible, and allows for all the features of Fruitmenu without being a haxie and messing with OS X internals ;)

In everyday life, I ususally end up with my things classified in a pile. A big pile that's often out of control. My high school locker contained the best example of it. I consider a lot of windows on my desktop, even if they cast shadows at each other, as a pile.

At least, with windows, most of the windows in the pile has a button in the taskbar. A button that can be used to open, close and magnify a window.

Maybe you already guessed I am also a PC user, and have already beaing spoiled with such functionalities, used to have too much settings instead of not enough, and usually rename, copy, and delete files from an OPEN or SAVE dialog. (although i've been told panther can do it, can it?)

Re: lack of choice is often a good thing
 

Ahhh! A probabilist. A damned convincing argument!

All you have to do is look at Microsoft Word to see a very good example of this. The preferences are such that it is easier to find snow in Corpus Christi than it is to find the preference you're looking for.

If you want those customizations, there are 3rd party people who are more than happy to provide it to you.

sure. you just have to deal with the fine company that makes MaxMenus spying on their customers, and collecting personal information in their anti-piracy jihad.

beware Proteron.

Ah - you are a prime candidate for the use of Expose (in Panther). Check out the videos on Apple's site if you haven't seen it yet.

Like some of you, I have fought with Aqua at times, using Duality, unsanity haxies, and so forth. The transparent menus and prominent stripes in OS 10.0-10.1.5 were a bit of a strain for me. I found those features improved from 10.2-10.3, with less transparency and more subtle stripes.

What I've eventually come to settle on is a mostly vanilla set-up, with only MaxMenus to enhance the gui. Aqua and the workflow using the Dock and Panther's Finder works well for me. I don't even use Default Folder any more since the Open/Save dialogue options in 10.3 are much enhanced.

I know people from other forums who have written literally thousands of posts on how bad the OS X gui is, but I just don't get it. As JayBee and Hayne have pointed out, there's a lot of thought that's gone into this and it's still evolving. For those who need more than the default, there are some great 3rd party enhancements out there, and they don't even seem to destabilize the system as much as they did a couple of years ago.

Okay, scary. I'm a fully paid up MaxMenus/Liteswitch owner. What are they scavenging from my machine? Should I be worried?

beware/boycott proteron
 

i have seen many posts in different places all talking about the fact that Proteron is gathering personal info off peoples' hard drives and sending it back to their servers for their own purposes.

personally, i use Little Snitch, so i think i'd be immune. and i'd buy their software instead of stealing it, so they wouldn't have that motivation to be snooping into personal info on my hard drive. but once they've crossed that line in the sand, i wouldn't trust their software to not phone home with other personal info, if they thought it would benefit them.

and i most certainly won't do any business with a company that acts in these ways. i sent my money to Unsanity instead of Proteron, and recommend others do the same. if i were a lawyer with free time and a crusading conscience, i'd try to get Proteron shut down.

Here's the first mention i just found on google, from a MacOSXHints posting: (you can google for many, many more.)

----------------------------------

MaxMenus may harbor spyware
Authored by: icday on Tue, Dec 17 '02 at 09:04AM

On the 18th of September 2002 there were a number of posts of usenet saying Proteron had sent them threatening emails for illegal use of MaxMenus. Let me say first up that I do not condone copyright infringement , and if someone obtains software illegally they cannot expect the vendor to threat them with kid gloves. Nevertheless there are some points of concern-

First, more than one person said that they had received and email when they had not supplied that information to Proteron, so that apparently MaxMenus harvests this from the OS X configuration files.

Secondly,I stand to be corrected but , if the software requires administrative privileges on install then appareneltly all security is lost that that time; The installer can read / write /delete the systems most important files.

Thirdly, shareware vendors have a rough road to travel, but even so, the threat to get the offender fired from their job, in the posting below is, if correct, disturbing.

---

After Jag was released, I switched to X full time. I downloaded a bunch
of OS X utilities that provided OS 9 features to try them out, using
serials from Serial Box. MaxMenus was one of them. I registered the
product with a fake name, fake email address, and pirated serial. That
was on or after August 24.

About a week ago, I turned off MaxMenus in System Prefs because I wasn't
using it. I didn't delete it, though.

Today, in my *real* mailbox, not the phony address I typed in when I
installed MaxMenus, I received this gem:

>Subject: your use of an illegitimate MaxMenus serial number
>
> It has come to our attention that you are using an illegally obtained serial
> number for MaxMenus in direct violation of our license agreement.
>
> We'd like to know why you think you're allowed to do this.
>
> The 30-day trial lets you use our software without limitations. You should
> already be aware that no additional features are unlocked by the serial
> number, only the time limit registration reminders are removed. We made the
> decision early in the development process to allow you to test-drive every
> part of the software, without limitations, that is, until a complete month
> goes by. By that time, we theorized, you should be ready to purchase the
> product, or remove it, at your choice. You chose to do neither.
>
> You have not purchased MaxMenus.
> You have been using it for longer than the 30 day trial.
> But that's not all.
>
> You are receiving this note because we are disappointed that you have chosen
> to seek out an illegitimate serial number to register the software without
> paying for it, in an obvious and direct violation of our license agreement.
> If you are an enterprise or institutional user, we plan to notify your
> employer that you violated our license agreement. They will likely take no
> comfort in this information as your actions expose them to civil liability.
>
> Allow us to be as clear as possible here:
>
> Proteron makes absolutely no warranties about what our software will or won't
> do when unlocked with an illegitimate or stolen serial number. On the other
> hand, Proteron absolutely respects the privacy of paid users and will warrant
> that the software will respect their privacy. If you refuse to abide by the
> license terms (to which you agreed when you installed the software) by
> entering a stolen serial number and effectively insist upon stealing the use
> of this software from us, then we cannot guarantee that your privacy will be
> be respected. To reiterate, the privacy of Proteron's customers and users
> who are legitimately taking the software out for a test-drive is absolutely
> guaranteed. However, we are in no position to protect the privacy of anyone
> stealing serial numbers, licenses, or our software.
>
> Many late nights and long hours have been put into the development of
> Proteron's products. Every now and then it is a good idea to state the
> obvious: your purchase of our products provides incentive for us to continue
> to develop neat things for you to enjoy. We have a long history of providing
> innovative software, both in interface enhancement and in the audio encoding
> area. Proteron brought the task bar to Mac OS 9, and brought MP3 encoding to
> the Macintosh long before Napster and iTunes came along. We're currently
> engaged in various efforts to produce new works for Mac OS X. We want to
> keep doing it. But your insistence upon not paying for our software is
> inconsistent with our efforts and our vision to produce the software that you
> want to use.
>
> Straighten up and fly right. You'll be glad you did, and we will too.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Software Development Team
> Proteron LLC

Re: beware/boycott proteron
 

Wow! As mentioned above, I use MaxMenus--legally. I do have it on both my Powerbook and iMac, however, which I thought was OK. Maybe I'd better read the fine print on that license agreement. I'm sure my employer (me) won't fire me, however. :D

I don't like that kind of snooping around either and just hate it when I have to install an app using an installer that requires authentication. Consider all those apps that notify you when an upgrade is due--Watson and RBrowser, for example. If they check for version #, then why not for other info. I usually trust these companies, but you never know, do you?

Proteron really needs some feedback about the kind of letter they send out. A simple notification with a cease and desist would be plenty.

Thanks for the heads up, petey.

There's some good discussion developing here about snooping and spyware, and that's off the thread topic. If someone wants to start a thread on that in the Coat Room, I'll transfer the relevant posts from this one to the new one and we can continue to discuss the original topic--plain windows/gui, etc. here.

Re: Re: beware/boycott proteron
 

note that this devolves to a matter of trust even without authentication. an app that installs without authentication can read/modify/erase your home folder. and if my limited understanding of permissions is correct, it could also read/modify/erase your /Applications and /Library folders.

i use Watson because i trust Karelia. i won't use MaxMenus becuase i don't trust Proteron.

(and FWIW, what i object to is not the psychotic tone of the email they sent out, what i object to is their scavenging their users home folders for email addresses. that seems very far beyond the pale to me...)

Hmm. Interesting. I don't trust Unsanity not to accidentally screw my system, and now I'm not to keen on trusting Proteron not to deliberately screw my system. Yeek.

I know in the UK we have a Data Protection act that means, for a capped admin fee, I can write to any company I have done business with and demand full disclosure to me of all information they hold on file about me. Failure to provide full information is regarded as a criminal offence and I can have all their data storage impounded by the police and searched. I wonder if this would apply to Proteron? Might be worth the email :)

i have my own issues with Unsanity. i don't like that their installers are not transparent (viewable with Pacifist), and i don't like that they install into /System.

that said, i've bought a couple of haxies from them, and run a couple more freeware APE modules. i also have an excellent level of trust in them.

my machine seems very stable running APE. and i like having a single method of hacking my system, rather than multiple ways.

i also like that Slava seems very responsive. he maintains a good blog, responds to email, and even participated in a thread here about his products.

your mileage may obviously vary.

Just to keep everyone updated, this could be interesting (and is way offtopic - sorry about that!) but I've emailed Proteron asking for disclosure of all information they carry on me. I'm assuming they'll at the very least come back and say I need to prove my identity to them.

Might start a separate thread for it, but then again I don't know how open they'd be if there was a massive thread here dedicated to the subject started by a user with a familiar email address ;)

This is a common lament regarding Windows. Every time they come out with a new OS, ya gotta upgrade your hardware. So where are your savings now PC users?

However, to Apple's credit, every OSX iteration gets faster and more efficient. But your lament is worthy of ranting to Apple. I did. I told Apple that they need to create iTheme which is a whole-heap-a-preference settings that gives the user complete control over the OS interface environment.

I told Apple that it is their focus to make the USER dictate how the computer operates and not the OS. So why are we forced to endure the Dock? Why are we forced to look at all that eye candy? Why are we forced to use the Dock trash can that moves every time we need to throw something away!?

Write them. Let them know that we want our control back. Otherwise, we will hack it all away and not pay another $130 for OS10.4

It is possible that MaxMenus (the application itself) only scavenges for information if you give it a pirated/illegal serial number. I have seen quite a few apps that tell you you entered a pirated serial number when you try.
The few shareware products that I am working on will have an internal database of pirated serial numbers, though it won't be phoning home, just wagging a finger at the user.

Anything like the suggested iTheme, coming from Apple, would be a tech support, and bug fixing, nightmare. Apple chose not to continue with the use of the built-in themes in 8.5 and higher for a reason. I installed hi-tech from one of my developer CDs into 9.1 once, and it had a knack for corrupting the finder preferences to the point of the machine needing a reboot and the prefs file deleted.

Personally, I think I'll be using ShapeShifter, as it appears to work in a similar way to Kaleidoscope in pre OS X (in that it doesn't modify existing core system files).

This scenario has been brought up before, and it is a good point. However, if we worried so much about corrupted preferences, we would not have our iApps. After all, they are all susceptable. The answer is not dropping good ideas due to corruption fears, but rather, fixing the corruption causes. You cannot innovate with fear at the helm.

The tech support issue is a good one. That is why I rethought out my proposition in regard to preferences with the following engineering scenario.

Rather than more preferences to set or disable, my answer would be to adjust the OS around my way of working. Let me explain this with our favorite example--the Trash Can.

Currently, the Trash Can is pinned to the Dock. Without using the hack you provided in your post, there it stays.

What I would like to see with this and a few other items in OSX, is for the Trash Can to be an application in the Utilities folder. By default, it is in the Dock. But you can unlock it by cntrl-click and poof it.
Now you have no Trash Can, but you can move it from the Utilities folder and place it on the desktop or place it as an icon in left menu or the customize menu, or locked back in the dock.
It does more, it also does not officially delete, rather it pretends to delete*. You can also do a security zero-bit delete as a cntrl-menu option as well as selected volume deletion.

So now the Trash Can has become an uber-can that is under my control. This to me makes a smarter OS and really shines a GUI. No additional preferences needed, just more control for the user without command-line hacks.


So here we have less preferences, yet power enought to allow the OS to run the way we choose and not visa verse.

The iThemes idea can be limited to window texture, various colors, blessed fonts, progress bar animation, buttons and other such items that could be nothing more but TIFF replacements. Apple could then have full control over its usage.

Again, it is the OS under our control and design, much like the desktop is today.

Everyone seems to be complaining that mac os is too "flashy." Maybe it uses some more system resources..but here is a fact:

-I have a 600mhz G3 slot loading iMac.
-At work I use a 2.08ghz Pentium 4 HP.
-The HP freezes all the time doing little to no tasks at all.
-My iMac outerforms the HP in everyday tasks.
-The HP flat screen monitor hurts my eyes after about half an hour..Also, everything in xp is pixelated and gross looking.
-I can sit at my iMac for hours and not feel any eye strain. OS X is smooth and beautiful to look at. If you use a computer for as many hours a day as I do, you not only need it to perform well, but you need to be able to stand looking at it.

I personaly feel XP is an ugly piece of trash. Just my 2 cents.

Your opinions matter in regard to interface look and comfort of use--especially in the area of eyestrain. I use Windows XP at work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and I agree, XP is bone ugly. However, I set the theme to Classic and all is well.

Alas, there is no such ability built into OSX. It is Apple that has decided to allow no control over the look of the OS--which I feel is a mistake. Perhaps someone wanting to switch from a PC looks at OSX and says, forget it, its ugly. Some have said the window borders are too thick. Others say they hate the brushed metal look.

Apple should realize that all of us Mac users have to look at the interface on a DAILY basis. Does Apple want users to bring their Mac up from sleep and think, "Ugh, I hate the look of those bubble-buttons." Wouldn't it be better to have them think, "Man, I love this new theme I downloaded from Apple."

But it's their baby. Just MY 2 cents for the pot.

XP can be an ugly piece of trash indeed, but to me its a functionnal ugly piece of trash. Did you remove that ugly rounded-corner theme? Did you activate font smoothing? What's the refresh rate of that HP flat screen?

Slamex is right. I'll bet big bucks that your monitor is set at a refresh rate of 60 Hertz. Right-click on your desktop and choose properties. Click "Settings" tab and then the "Advanced" button. Click the "Monitor" tab then up the Screen Refresh to as high as your monitor will allow. If your monitor cannot break 60 Htz, then the problem is your monitor and not your interface.

For reasons I cannot even begin to comprehend, both of the two mainstream commercial operating systems have gone to infantile in the decor department. Windows XP's Luna and its siblings all look like something the Teletubbies would use. But compared to anything except that, the Aqua appearance is pretty damn ugly too.

I don't mind "flashy", but Aqua is an odd mixture of plain and silly. System 6 has more dignity and clarity, while MacOS 9 (Platinum) looks more cool and modern.

Main dislikes about Aqua:

• The fonts are like something out of Reader's Digest LARGE PRINT EDITION
• The "stoplight motif" for the window widgets is infantile and silly-looking
• Absence of window borders make windows look plain and the inability to click and drag from edges or bottom is annoying
• The GummiWorms-R-Us sliders and OK buttons and whatnot are silly and distracting and infantile.
• The "Computer" window and the Dock are Windows wannabe elements. The Dock in particular is an intolerable eyesore with no redeeming features whatsoever, eating up screen real estate, getting in your way, doing cutesey infantile things like jumping up and down for attention. It's useless as a launcher unless you're one of those folks who use less than a dozen applications, and very Windowsesque as a process swapper. (I will never, ever, under any circumstances, put up with the Dock. The moment Apple makes it truly impossible to run OS X without the Dock, I quit upgrading.)
• Prior to Panther, the Open/Save/Save As dialog boxes in MacOS X were the worst I've ever seen, with keyboard navigation a nightmare and mouse navigation frustrating as hell. Windows for Workgroups did it better. I don't have Panther installed yet so I can't credit the improvements yet (they sound great -- although what I'd really really really like would be the GUI of the pre-Navigation Services MacOS 8 dialogs except with the buttons to connect to servers like Nav Services added, the non-modal nature where you can leave the dialogs sitting there and go do other things in other programs, and the abilities provided by Default Folder (adding/renaming/deleting folders, renaming or deleting files, editing file characteristics, etc) or Windows Open/Save/Save As dialogs (which despite their other limitations were pretty good about letting you edit "Finder"-level stuff from these dialogs)

As others have said, the key thing is to give us choices. If I want all my overhead menus in Chicago 12 and my contextual menus and Finder labels in Monaco 9, I should be able to set them that way without semi-functional 3rd-party hacks. The Dock (including Cmd-Tab functionality as well as launching and minimizing and making any type of on-screen appearance) should be entirely customizable, or else be optional in its entirety (with the OS not dependent on it being a running process). MacOS X should have a general GUI pref that lets you use Classic Platinum or Aqua or System 6's GUI, which should come with the install pkg, or any of a zillion compatible 3rd-party alternatives that match a published standard.

MacOS X should have a general GUI pref that lets you use Classic Platinum or Aqua or System 6's GUI, which should come with the install pkg, or any of a zillion compatible 3rd-party alternatives that match a published standard.

Interesting idea. I wonder how much it would cost to test a commercial application against 'any of a zillion compatible 3rd-party alternatives that match a published standard,' and how much of that cost would be reflected in the price of said application.

Any software developers out there care to take a guess, based on experience with previous 3rd party alternatives which claim to match published standards?

Misery Loves Company
 

Ahhh, a kindred spirit. You will find an advocate here, AHunter. Your rants about the interface is almost parallel with mine (and funnier too). Caution, you can expect alot of flack (as I have) in these forums. Some are valid such as the support issues involved. Others are mindless and counter-productive such as "I like it, get used to it." nonsense.

Craig is right regarding the zillion 3rd party alternatives. That is just asking for trouble. Better yet would be to pin down the interface and just offer iThemes which will switchout the TIFF and PDF textures, buttons and bars. This then will not change the actual interface workings--just how it looks.

Now, Apple has stated with the new Panther Finder that the user dictates how the OS works and not visa-verse. I would apply this thinking to the dock, trash, and other items. There needs to be more control given to the user. I've discussed this before, so best look at those posts.

</mytwocents>

Unsanity has put out a program called ShapeShifter that allows os X to be themed. Resexelence.com has tons of themes. this fixes my problems. I themed XP to look like os X, but still wasn't happy, everything still looked gross to me. I guess i'm just a die-hard mac guy...anti microsoft.

Re: Misery Loves Company
 

OK, but it's not really that black-and-white (or red and green ;)). Take AHunter's statement: But compared to anything except that, the Aqua appearance is pretty damn ugly too. What bugs me about a statement like that is its tone of "objectivity." Is Aqua appearance "pretty damn ugly," or does AHunter (and you, apparently) judge it so?

Me, I like it . . . better than any theme I've used, and I've tried a lot. In the end, I come back to Aqua.

I also like the Dock and, as has been pointed out in many forums, it isn't a Windows knock-off but a NeXT ui feature (which Windows later copied).

More options for tweaking the ui would be nice, but, hey, what did we really have in Classic Mac? Not much. I could change a few colors on my windows, but it was always still the Platinum UI looking at me in all its boring splendor.

Seeing what PathFinder can do in presenting all sorts of configuration options, I'm surprised that Apple hasn't done as much, or more. Options seems to be the solution to this long-standing frustration some have with the ui. That failing, it's 3rd party stuff to the rescue. . . still a better solution than using Windows (which btw, I use about 30% of the time each week at a work station I'm stuck with.)

The Dock is lame for these reasons
 

First of all: It is an unefficient launcher. Take XP start menu for an example: you have a custmisable number of most used-apps on the first level, then a hierarchy of menus. To start applications I use most it's a 2-click deal (instead of one for the dock, I agree).

But wait! in windows, there is the Quicklaunch pad available for one-click access. Or even better, I can add any quantity of toolbars all around the screen with auto-hide on or off containing any shorcut or document I like, accessible in only one-click. All that without running third party haxies!
This, in my opinion, kick the dock's ass.

The dock changing position and scale is also a drag. As I don't use it as a launcher so I only have running apps in it, its scale depends on how much programs are running, wich is kind of annoying.

The dock also fails as an app switcher. While Aqua puts so much effort in fading colors on OK buttons to help me click on them, it only provide a 10 pixel wide black triangle to differenciate running programs from their shortcuts. And also fails to provide efficient document switching, due to the fact it uses beautifully 3d-rendered large semi-transparent icons or tiny screenshots of document windows instead of good old reliable text.

At least, Exposé is there to greatly ease the pain. And Panther improvement on the open/save dialogs are a good thing, although I don't understand why it wont let me perform every task a finder window do.

Firstly: I'm with Phil. I love Mac os, And Aqua. I think it's really kewl looking, and very contemporary. I also love the dock.

Secondly: We aren't really accomplishing anything. We are saying what we like and what we don't like. Not everyone is gonna be happy with everything, so use what works for you. If you don't like Mac OS, stop complaining and buy a windows machine. Some people like everything to do with the Mac OS, like me. Some people hate it all out. Either way, you don't have to make the other guy feel bad for his likes and dislikes.

If you don't like something, don't try to make other people feel bad for liking it. Even if you don't think it works, or is a waste, if some people like it, than good. Not everybody can agree on everything.

right... I admit my last post wasn't constructive at all. At least, it illustrates the fact that if OSX was customisable, I would have less reasons to complain.

Originally I hoped that some poeple would reply to my thread things like 'hey you can do that or that, just type this obscure line in terminal'... But instead I had links to program I can't afford to install because of stability issues.

Also, to me, an interface being 'cool' is a con. It's not a christmas tree, it's a tool.

fruitless futility
 

i thought that is what we are supposed to do :D

Re: fruitless futility
 

No, this isn't Ars Technica. ;)

- post mistakenly edited instead of replied to -

My fault.

Slaps own wrist! :eek:

Phil St. Romain

schneb: Thank you. I can't swear that either the nice haxies or the official Apple changes are in any way due to us loudmouth complaining types, but if I were the programmer I would appreciate feedback.

We could very well be sitting here with an OS that would not give you the option of displaying mounted volumes on the Desktop, stick you with an Apple (but no Apple menu) sitting smack in the middle of the title bar, no Finder labels, no menu clock, 64 x 64 pixel icons everywhere, a single Get Info window so you could not compare file info on two different files, and a host of other things.

I would not complain if I did not expect great things from Apple and the MacOS.

Absolutely! :-)

Scheb, the "tone of objectivity" I refer to is the stating of what's really an opinion as though it were an incontestable fact. Statements like "Stripes are ugly" is an example.

There are lots of issues pertaining to the ui that can be discussed on the basis of what could be more efficient--as in slamex's post about the Dock. I've also been on forums where people talk HIG principles about how the UI could be better designed. Even there, however, so much of that seems subjective to me and a matter of preference.

I'm not denying for a second that there are many ways the ui situation could be improved, but I do know that I enjoy the workflow and find myself much more productive in OS X than I have in OS <9 and Windows. I suspect a lot of others who post here feel much the same, and that's a pretty important bottom line. It provides an over-arching context for discussing the areas where improvements are still needed, so the tone is more like "This is good, let's make it better." That's different from what I've experienced on other forums where the tone seemed to be more, "This is crap--not a real Mac: give us OS 9.5!" I don't think that second attitude will fly here; too many people who've had good experiences. But we should all definitely want to help make things better.

- Arrggh!! Apologies, schneb. I mistakenly pressed edit for your post above instead of Reply and I can't seem to fish out your previous post.

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Phil

Time to lay off the Egg Nog, Phil. :p

Part of the deal for me is, that after spending a decade in the software industry, hearing things along the line of "well, it's just code, changing these things should be easy, why didn't they just do it right in the first place" combined with a (learned the hard way) notion of the economics of software development just makes me want to curl up in a little ball and weep for the future of humanity.


I think I'll just go have some Egg Nog, instead. ;)

Admin--Please Do Not Erase ;-)
 

Glad I read this post before wondering if I got censored. ;-) No problem.

In response your clarification regarding objectivity, I agree, this statement says it all... "This is good, let's make it better." And I agree. I usually just look past the emotional nature to pull out what the poster is really trying to say. Usually I just clarify for them in another post.
Sometimes I have just gotten tired of something that the Dock does to me (such as "What's Up Dock") and I just have to rant. I will be the first to say it is subjective at that point--OK, VERY subjective. Sometimes I like listening to a good rant, especially when it is cleverly worded like AHunter's, I laughed out loud and it did me some good. Helps me not take a computer OS so seriously.

To end on a high note, I really do love alot of things about Panther. I like that the stripes and brushed aluminum have mellowed. The Fast-Switching is awesome and worth the full upgrade price. I like the left menu, and they fixed a thumbnail bug that was driving me absolutely crazy in Jaguar.

I do a little code myself, and it is not easy by any means. Most of my suggestions posted to Apple are fairly simple items to code and designed to fit some of their OS philosophy such as (I am just guessing of course) having an OS that fits the user rather than visa verse. Having an OS that is simple enough for the new user, yet powerful enough for the power user--Not an easy task, and OSX is a prize winner. Personally, I think 10.3 is 90% there. In fact, the only problem I see with OSX is the occasional preference file corruption (which needs a utility for identification and quarantine).

I do think Apple could create a theme application that would supply, say 10 "blessed" fonts, selection colors, button styles, window texture and such. If the application would allow import of custom TIFFs and PDF files, the Mac community would have a ball.

I think it would be a simple code to allow the dock to behave as a utility and not attached to the OS, as well as making Trash a standalone utility that you can display in the dock, left menu, custom menu bar, or not at all (in the dock by default). These simple changes would put the user in charge of whether to use them or not.

What ever they come up with, it would have to be pretty darn good to suck another $129 out of my ever-shrinking wallet. Since the upgrade price seems to be a thing of the past, the only thing I see that would turn-my-crank would be those items I mentioned above. I have a few others, but CSI is almost on. ;)

What you are missing is that the $129 is the upgrade price. It's just that Apple has chosen to make the full price the same as the upgrade price. Compare with the prices for MS Windows and you will see that $129 is a fair price for an upgrade:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/538514

I'm begginning to understand what choices I have:
1- Hope for a better tomorrow, and begin saving for yet another update to implement interface alteration and customisation.

2- Hack my way to hapiness using third party programs, and begin saving for yet another update to fix stability issues. (Although I'm pretty sure most haxies will have trouble with 10.4, as well as a proportion of my software).

3- Bite the bullet and get used to it. After all, if Apple decides it's good, there must be a way to get along with it...

I guess I've been used to more flexibility, but I should get over it already and submit to macOS if I really want to use a mac. Maybe it's just part of the deal...

I also find that maintaining a sense of humor about this stuff goes a long way.

Doing support fulltime for a lot of other people's systems (after leaving the software industry in the mid 90's), you get to see how folks manage to get themselves into deep water by a tendency to over-tweak things, without really understanding what they're doing.

My rule of thumb has been: learn to manage things the way they start out, and over time you figure out how to change the things that are most important to you, and leave the rest alone.

One of the goals of this site is to promote understanding of how things work in the normal mode, so that it's a little easier to understand how to modify them, and how to recover from over-zealousness in those modifications.

Otherwise before long you wind up creating a thread about why your machine freezes, locks up, bluescreens, panics or a host of other evil things, and why did those nasty vendors do that to you.

IMHO. :)

Mr. Arko's personal rule concisely reflects my attitude. I've used various Macintoshes as my primary home computer since 1985, and I've dealt with all the OS frustrations along the way -- anyone else remember System 7.5.2? -- but I've also managed to have a bit of fun as I learned my way around or through them. I'm currently running 10.3.1 and while I see plenty of room for improvement with Apple's current GUI choices, there's nothing I can't deal with serenely and steadily.

With one major, glaring, clamorously noted exception: I cannot abide the Dock.

If you like the Dock and find it useful, I'd bet you've got more screen to work with than I do on my iBook. Even on my G4's desktop monitor it seemed positively anthropomorphic in its intuitive ability to disrupt my concentration, showing up whenever I had just managed to engage myself thoroughly in the task at hand. The Dock must die, or at least be made mortal to the extent that it will not resurrect itself until the next reboot. After all, as previously mentioned in any number of posts, there are any number of superior replacement launchers available. Suitably phrased in the language which best expresses my true desire: Which isn't really a very good idea, as its absence on booting seems to mess up the desktop more than a little. I've found a few Apple Scripts and mini-apps that function as temporary Dock killers, but they, too, have problems. The mildly useful command-tab mini-switcher goes away and any minimized window apparently heads off to the land of /dev/null.

It may be apocryphal, but I recall reading somewhere that the Dock was one of Mr. Jobs's personal innovations from the NeXT days, and he not only refuses to consider removing it, but has requested that it be so thoroughly interwoven with the GUI of the OS that it cannot be easily disabled.

That being true or not, the best and least disruptive workaround I've found (and my suggestion for fellow dock haters) is to let it run... but run somewhere out of the way. Since capital punishment seems to be unavailable as a remedy, long-term incarceration will have to do. Putting the Dock at the top of the screen works out best. One can use Cocktail, TinkerTool or type in a manual adjustment for ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist to do this.

When the Dock is in the balcony, as it were, and Dock hiding is turned on, it is necessary to hover the cursor over the bottom-most row of pixels in the menu bar to make it appear. That is not likely to happen by accident, in contrast to so many of the Dock's usual appearances. The jailed Dock now shows up only when you actually want it to, either by pointing at that line of pixels or by typing option-command-d. No more annoying pop-ups and no more stripes of screen real estate held hostage.

Phil St. Romain: a) All opinions I have voiced pertaining to the ugliness of Aqua's GUI are my own subjective ones. I would not anticipate that very many people would join me in preferring even System 6's simple black-and-white flatness (although a few minimalist types do); a bit more concurrence on preferring Platinum to Aqua but not a majority, certainly not in here.

b) I find myself moderately less productive in OS X now than I have in OS <9, somewhere between 9 and Windows, but the gap is not as bad as it was in earlier iterations of X. I suppose this is still subjective insofar as I don't have a table of minutes per task under each OS, nor data points other than my own experience (and yours apparently would differ).

I'm really looking forward to getting Panther installed on my WallStreet just to be rid of column view in Open/Save/Save As dialog boxes. These things alone have probably cost me an average 20 seconds per open or save operation in comparison with 9 even with the aid of Default Folder (without it, and comparing to 9 also stripped of Default Folder and of FinderPop for fairness, probably an average 1 minute 30 seconds per open or save operation!!! I don't mean total, I mean that much extra!!). The bigger font, especially in contextual menus, has cost me around 5 seconds per use in browsers alone, where the huge font and the way the contextual menu does not always scroll up when you mouse down sometimes means scrolling the browser window up and trying again. Not having the contents of the Desktop folders of all volumes show on the desktop has cost me some time too. (There's no excuse for not bothering to hack in such a thing; and, looking forward, they should display contents of /Users/Shared/Desktop from any volume in the same fashion). Random unnecessary changes that are just "changes for the sake of changing something" have cost me in a similar fashion just because I know the old ways and waste time applying keystrokes I know which don't work, realizing it, then redoing it the new way -- things like Command-SHIFT-N to create a new folder and having to hit the Enter key before I can give it a name if I'm in list view -- but I had to relearn some stuff when System 7 came along too (like the delay when you want to rename a file or folder, I remember that drove me nuts for a long time until I got used to rightarrowkeying first). On the one hand, these are only negatives under OS X if one postulates that the user knows the OS 9 keystrokes and whatnot. On the other, they weren't changes that needed to occur -- they accomplished nothing aside from slowing down legacy Mac users like me. (Command-Y no longer unmounts mounted volumes. Now it is Command-E. Command-E is the old dreaded "eject disk and leave a ghost on the Desktop" command dating back to System 3 days and I just can't get used to it being a good thing). [edit: actually, System 1 days, but I wasn't a Mac user until System 3]

I suppose it is all subjective until someone commissions efficiency studies (and even that won't address the aesthetics, of course). But then I'm not arguing that the Aqua GUI or the Dock or other X-newnesses should be taken away from those who like them, am I?

re: compatibility and the "zillions of modules" thing -- all Apple needs to do is switch from referencing specific files at specific filepaths such as the ones inside extras.rsrc (chock full of tiny little TIFFs or PDFs to generate the GUI) and provide a folder containing the default ones to which 3rd party alternatives can be installed, plus a Prefs pane letting you pick Platinum or KDEclone or whatever instead of Aqua. Much as Duality and Shapeshifter and so forth do, quite successfully, except that they have to do their thing by patching how the OS thinks (Shapeshifter) or by swapping out the Apple-supplied files for substitute files with the same names (Duality). The instability comes not from "zillions of modules" but from the fact that the hacks have to work around the corners and margins of how Apple set up OS X to work. (I myself have not found Duality themes to be unstable, but I had a crash in mid-switch one time and had to manually copy in healthy versions of about 2 dozen files that got munged before I could boot again. Mostly I don't change GUIs around though, I set it to Classic Platinum and leave it there).

While we're at it, although I personally would not make use of it, I bet the Windows and Unix transplantees would appreciate the option of making an application's menus appear just below the top of the currently active window instead of in the menu bar.

ambrose: Naah, it's not so hard to nuke the Dock and live happily without it.

a) The Dock, if moved out of CoreServices and placed elsewhere, behaves like a regular application, aside from not having a File:Quit command. If you move it to /Applications or some other alternative, you can nuke it from Terminal, or batchscript a kill to get rid of it.

b) Under Jaguar and presumably Panther, you have to let it launch at logon or your Finder is glitchy, but it doesn't need to keep on running. So if you add it to logon items and then have a batchscript terminate it with extreme prejudice after your screens come up, you're fine.

c) WindowShade X will let you swap the behavior of the minimize-widget so that you get Window-shaded windows instead of windows that went into oblivion. Does other nice things too.

d) No Command-Tab? Good riddance! But if you liked it I'm sure there are 3rd party process swappers that will accept keystrokes including Command-Tab if you like your Mac to behave like a Windows PC.

e) You'll still need some kind of process swapper / access to running programs. Lots of them available from VersionTracker. I use X-Assist very happily but it's far from the only game in town. And you'll need an app launcher. X-Assist does double duty due to its customizable "Shortcuts" menu, but again there are a vast number of nice alternatives, including FruitMenu.

Hickory Dickory, baby, and hallelujah.

Stimulating As Always
 

Craig-Doing support fulltime for a lot of other people's systems, you get to see how folks manage to get themselves into deep water by a tendency to over-tweak things, without really understanding what they're doing.
This is why I think the root access thing was a great idea. "If you don't understand it, don't mess with it." I have known people back in OS9 that threw away extensions because they thought they didn't need it.

Craig-One of the goals of this site is to promote understanding of how things work in the normal mode, so that it's a little easier to understand how to modify them, and how to recover from over-zealousness in those modifications.
Absolutely, this is why I am so upset with Apple not providing control over (example) Dock or Trash. I have tried it since OS10.0, don't like it, have to hack it out. So I voice my discontent to Apple and encourage others to do so as well. I would much rather Apple give me some control rather than force the control out of their hands. (As Ambrose has said with such flair--made me LOL)

AHunter-I find myself moderately less productive in OS X.
I have always contended that Apple should have used the basic Platinum interface with the UNIX underpinnings so the crossover would not have been such a shock. I say this because our huge Graphics department resisted OSX until just recently because it would have slowed production down. Each employee would have to relearn how to use their Macintosh. Perhaps cold-turkey was the best way, but oy...

AHunter-I bet the Windows and Unix transplantees would appreciate the option of making an application's menus appear just below the top of the currently active window instead of in the menu bar.
I think making these users comfortable in any way possible would be a good thing. However, I would not want to bloat OSX just to please them. The goal is to make OSX lean and mean, yet still provide control for the user.

To be fair and even-handed, and because I rant too much -- what I like about Aqua / OS X's interface:

•_The way OS X handles printer choosing from the print dialog box positively trounces the MacOS 9 (and 8, 7, 6, etc.) method with its necessary trip to the Chooser. Boy is it nice to be rid of the Chooser! Well, this is not entirely interface, but I think it is in part. (If, under OS 9, Apple had made it possible to access the Chooser from within a print dialog box, that would have been wonderful too, even with the Chooser still in existence. But they didn't)

•_Progress bars under OS X are quite nice. Pretty. I am thinking of hacking the hack I'm using, of editing the Classic Platinum Theme's extras.rsrc file to incorporate Aqua's progress bars.

• The trash can is really nice-looking.

I agree all the Icons are really good looking. I mean there is no way I could imagine better looking Icons. Also, there seems to be a guideline that makes all of them looking great side by side, the way they are all lit from the top, and the subtle white reflection on the top half. The ludicrous resolution and perfect alpha keying just add that extra something that makes these graphics reach something near perfection.

As I said before, too bad it's not the point for an Icon to be cute.

Esthetics should come last in priority for OS design way behing utilisability, flexibility and, of course, neutrality.

Sounds to me like some of you would just really be happier in OS 9, or at least with the Classic Mac ui.

I wonder what percentage of Mac users fit that profile? Or how many are much happier with the new ui and workflow? We did this poll sometime back and 85% preferred Aqua. I wonder how that would go with Panther? From what I read about this around the net and in Mac magazine reviews, it seems there's much more of a favorable view of Aqua than not. That would provide little incentive for Apple to go out of their way to make a more Platinumish experience available.

No two ways about it, Phil. I'd absolutely love to have MacOS 9 on the visual level but with symmetric multiprocessing, protected memory, preemptive multitasking (with some ability to modify it, to give foreground processes more attention if I so chose) and Unix underpinnings. With the exception of the awful Chooser (a System 3 vintage anachronism with few defenders), I'd like the OS to have MacOS 9 behaviors and methods of doing things, as well as its better surface appearance.

I think you're right that people with my tastes are a minority, although I suspect we constitute more than 15% (this site by its nature has always attracted early adopters and enthusiastic embracers of all that is new with MacOS X more than semi-curmudgeonly people like me with one foot stomping through unfamiliar command line tricks and permissions settings while the other foot is firmly dug in in more historicaly Apple territories).

I hear you, AHunter, although I don't follow the part about doing "command line tricks." I very rarely need to use command-line, and when I do, it's to accomplish tasks and perform tweaks I could never do in OS <9.

But, hey, 'tis the season to be jolly. I've put together a series of desktop pictures in the 80% grey range. That ought to help cheer up any veteran Mac user! ;)

As a pendulum loses momentum, we are reaching a middle ground.

I have always felt that Apple did the right thing going symmetric multiprocessing, protected memory, preemptive multitasking, menu printer choice and Unix underpinnings. However, where they blew it was forcing a new way of using your machine. Everything should have been done under the hood. It is not a matter of taste, it is a matter of how an individual has spent years learning how to operate in his/her computer in their business or art. To be slowed down is a waste of OUR money, not Apple's. All the power items that Apple added (listed above) speed us up. Their interface changes slowed us back down. So going from 9 to X has been sweet and sour. It was never a nostollgia thing with me (although I did like the look better) it was the efficiency of movement that OS9 offered.

With Jaguar, I became fairly happy. Panther has made me content. Perhaps the next version (Puma?) will mollify me for good.

Puma was 10.1.

I'm hoping for Smilodon. :D

To be slowed down is a waste of OUR money, not Apple's. All the power items that Apple added (listed above) speed us up. Their interface changes slowed us back down.

Umm . . . well, maybe for a few days, then I actually found I could work faster in OS X. For example, file management with two column view browsers open and the right toolbar shortcuts made for a much better situation, imo. But, yes, we did have to learn a few new work habits. C'est la vie! ;)

I'm growing kind of ashamed as I realize I'm more reticent to change I tough I was. About 70% of the things that bug me in OSX are not really related to the fact they are useless or not well designed, but more because they are not what I am used to. Hey, maybe those changes will enventually lead to something greater, far away from the concept of windows and menus and preference files. If the system allowed everybody to change their settings so it looks just like OS9, use a Chooser-like application(you never know), and a windows-like taskbar, how could Apple bring the next evolution of their interface smoothly?

Generally speaking, when Apple has introduced a new feature that was a genuine leap forward, there haven't been many cries for a way of disabling them. No one said:

"Aliases? I don't want aliases! This useless command clutters up my menu, please get rid of it"

"Hey, how come my Finder comments don't disappear any more when I rebuild the Desktop? Now I have to delete them all manually to get the same effect, this sucks!"

"Dear Apple -- it used to be that my Trash can would empty itself whenever I shut down the computer. Now you've made it so it only empties when I tell it to. How can I disable this stupid so-called 'feature' and make my Trash can behave the way it should?"

"Hey, I had a file copy going and I went to click on a folder and it let me do it. That's not right. When you've got files copying you're not supposed to be able to do anything else"


Other Apple innovations may have been less universally well-received but didn't irritate as many people because you were provided with a way to ignore them or turn them off:

"Like wow man. I can make my file orange and it says 'Hot', or blue and it says 'Cool'. That's so hot. That's so cool. Does anyone actually use these silly things?"

"What's this? Oh, a 'Launcher'. I get it. So I'm supposed to get rid of Apollo or OtherMenu and use this thing that sits here in the middle of my @#%$ screen distracting me. Ain't gonna happen."

"What's this? Oh, I can hide my Desktop when other applications are active, and save all my files in a Documents folder. Gee, I was really burning up with Pee Cee envy, thanks Apple."


Finally, there were the ones where Apple changed something and gave you no choice (or a deeply hidden and non-obvious choice) and it wasn't exactly a home run, and on these you may well have heard some legitimate screaming:

"Yeah boy, System 7, a memory hog permanent MultiFinder you can't quit out of and oopsie sorry but MacroMaker is broken but you didn't really need all those 1300 recorded Macros anyway did you? Umm, call me when System 7 is worth it, I'm sticking with 6."

"Hello Apple Tech Support. I just installed MacOS 8. You introduced this cute little trick whereby Command Tab switches applications. I do not want Command Tab to switch my applications. How the hell do I turn this bloody thing the hell off?"

"Die, cursed Desktop Printer, die! Arrgh! It won't let me get rid of it! I'm going to throw away every extension and control panel I find that I don't recognize until these things go away"


Unfortunately, lots of the things that were new about MacOS X, or even about specific new interations thereof, have been in the latter category.

Fear not -- when Apple does it right, we notice. If they make windows and menus unnecessary by replacing them with something much easier and cooler to use, we'll embrace it. But unless it's spectacularly better, they'd better give us options.

Wow, it is so great to hear myself speak through someone else, and AHunter really hit it for me.

It has always been my angst that I am forced to use the "new thing" with the inability to shut it off or modify it appropriately. I will sing the praises of all the new and wonderful things under the hood in OSX, and I am excited about the future. But Apple needs to listen to the average user regarding these issues. Apple may think it minor, but it is major to us.

Yes, it is good to be flexible, but not everyone is like that. Try telling your father or grandfather that the way they have been using the Mac you convinced him to buy has now changed 150 degrees and that HE has to relearn what he has spent the last 2 years trying to understand.

So this means more work for me to help folks relearn the new way of doing things, not just me.

Gentlemen, I'm not following the "us" part in your posts, especially if it's meant to represent the "average user" and you portray yourselves as representatives. I'm not arguing here against more and better options, but you really only speak for yourselves and a small minority of Mac users when you express such strong dissatisfaction with the ui.

Every one of the 70 + members in our Mac Users Group prefers OS X and Aqua. That wasn't always the case; initially, there were lots of angry voices in our meetings about how Apple had screwed up. Then there are people like my wife and kids--very average Mac users--who made the adjustment within a couple of days and haven't looked back. Learning to use the new OS and its interface is not that hard, and many of the changes really are improvements, imo.

That's really good honesty, slamex, and I think you put your finger on one of the most common issues generating complaints--the fact that people have to change a few work habits and that seems to be more difficult for some than others.

I think these people have really set the new bar for all OS builders to try to match in the future.

I'm sure 10.4 and Longhorn will both reflect this new user-centric design paradigm. :p

Genie and Scale are based upon sound scientific principles
 

Indeed, it is useful--perhaps more than many realize. I think you realize this, but others might not know that it's not all flashy graphics for the sake of a good show.

This isn't the place to go into detail, but, basically, user testing proves that a slow transition, such as the Genie, which shows clearly what is changing [and, for moving objects, clearly shows where it's moved from and where it's moving to], dramatically improves a person's ability to see what has just happened and recognize it. If you're interested in more proof, look up "change blindness" ....

These effects are undoubtedly the result of careful design and *user testing*. You may not prefer it, but it would be a mistake to think of these effects as superfluous entertainment. They are conscious improvements to the computer-user interface.

I would tend to agree with that. System 1 had a system whereby when you double-clicked on a floppy's icon, you'd see zoomrecs going from the icon to the exact center of the screen and then bouncing as if off the surface of the desktop "up" at you and outward (expanding) to the dimensions of the window. Apple simplified this with System 2 and gave us the zoomrecs we (those of us who grew up with classic MacOS, at least) are familiar with -- ever-expanding rectangles that start from the icon and just go outward from there without the intermediate step of bouncing off the middle of the desktop.

Some people regarded zoomrecs as nothing but an unnecessary slowdown but they gave you visual feedback that your double-click had "taken" and that something was opening or launching.

If I could minimize things to something other than the Dock (which I won't use), I would cheerfully accept minimizing as an improvement over window-shading, and if it were available to me I'd like some visual feedback rather than just click <gone>. Maybe less imposing than genie but that general type of thing. As with the zoomecs bouncing off the middle of the desktop, the genie effect is a bit much, but not at all a bad idea.

As it is, of course, I just windowshade and therefore don't ever see genie or other such effects anyhow.

Whoops. Accidentally posted twice. Please pardon me.
 

Whoops. Accidentally posted twice. Please pardon me.

Living with the Dock
 

I see that someone else has already pointed out a way to live without the Dock: let it start up, but let a script that runs at login kill it after it has started. A friend of mine does that to all the student lab machines she sets up, and showed me how it's done, but I decided to try and get along with the Dock, figuring that I should give it a good chance to prove itself.

After dealing with the Dock for some time, I've found that the following practices have proven useful:

1. Use Apple-Option-d to hide the Dock when you don't want to see it. I do that often. In general, I prefer using keys to the mouse [less wear and tear on the wrists], but sometimes I want to see the Dock. I'm glad there's a keyboard shortcut for this. You already knew this, but do you use it? Hide that Dock til you need it, if ever.

2. The friend I mentioned above pins her Dock to the left side of the screen, but allows it to auto-hide and to magnify. I tried it -- she's right about the fact that the left edge of the screen is the one my mouse least often touches, so that the Dock stays out of the way, and she has a point that the Dock can't block me from resizing a window if it's pinned left. Maybe you'd find it easier to live with over on the left. The scroll bars aren't there, nor is the single corner that you can drag to resize a window [now *that*, I wish were done the way Microsoft does it--resize from any edge--but it's a small thing].

3. Most of the time, though, I leave the Dock at the bottom, BUT I ALWAYS DISABLE MAGNIFICATION of the Dock icons -- I find that behavior distracting and annoying, especially when logged into my machines with VNC or Timbuktu, or when trying to drag something into Trash. [Speaking of trash, I use a hint recently appearing at this site to put a Trash icon on my desk, onto which I can drop things. It doesn't replace the Trash in the Dock, but it's easier to delete things with the desktop icon.]

4. I keep certain things in my Dock always, but also allow myself to freely add and remove things from the Dock as it suits me. You'd think that would be hard to get used to, but the more I do it, the more I like it. While working on a certain client's files, I drag relevant folders to the Dock until I'm done with that client. I love how easy it is to add and remove icons there.

One thing I do that makes the Dock, and the entire OS, more comfortable for me is to customize icons. I really appreciate how easy that is to do. I give a client's folder a certain icon -- I downloaded a bunch so I can just go to my 'iconz' folder and pick one of a few hundred or so -- and give my Documents folder a certain icon [a green apple], etc. When these items are in the Dock, their icons instantly convey to me what they are, because I have so many icons to choose from and I was the one who chose the icons.

A bunch of blue folders in a row on my Dock is useless to me, but an apple, a toaster, SpongeBob, Darth Vader, and a coffee cup are all instantly visually distinct. I don't have to hover over them to remind myself which folder is which. That's my #1 tip for living with the Dock: customize your icons, and the Dock will be a conceptual map with *your* landmarks on it.

I would like to do away with bouncing icons, though -- perhaps there's a less obtrusive way to convey their message. How about a slight throb, just a pulsation of the icon so that you see it's moving [moving things attract our attention] without the icon obscuring your view at all.

Easy, go into System Preferences > Dock and uncheck "Animate Opening Applications". Now you'lll only have the little blinking triangle under the app icon during launch with no bounce.

I have the Dock running under root user only, and when I log in as root I've got the Dock pinned to the far left as you said.

They wouldn't have to change all that much to make the Dock tolerable:

a) The option to manifest the Dock as a menu in the menubar instead of floating around somewhere onscreen. Or, better yet, incorporate it into the Apple menu. Like this (Yes, that is System 6) except each running app would have a submenu of open documents. And, hey, if we're going to do that, we could let people add folders, documents, or applications to the Apple menu in lieu of adding them to the Dock, like this (courtesy of MacOS 8.6). And frankly, I'd like to see a Programs menu in the Apple menu, and to see commercial software installers get in the habit of offering to put an alias to the newly installed app in the Programs folder of the Apple menu. It's a nice touch for newbies, and one of the few Windows conventions I like (although editing the Start menu is a pain in the butt compared to editing the Apple menu of System 7 thru OS 9). Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah....

b) The option to change the keystroke combo for "go to next application", or disable it altogether. I'm sorry, but I'm a FileMaker programmer and Command-Tab is taken, the OS can't have it. I know users of various Adobe software products who feel the same way about it.

There, now, isn't that a much nicer Dock?

Aha. I never noticed that til you mentioned it, then remembered that I had seen it before, if you know what I mean. I saw it; I just didn't realize I saw it.

:D

Anyway, thanks for pointing out what might have seemed obvious!

For you, but not for me. I'm not a FileMaker user, and I have grown accustomed to [and well appreciate] the Cmd-Tab method of app switching.

Did you say you haven't upgraded to Panther yet? I wouldn't be surprised if there were some way, perhaps involving editing a prefs file somewhere, to 'take command' of the Cmd-Tab shortcut. You can't assign it via the System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse panel, though.

Phil posted, "I'm not following the 'us' part in your posts, especially if it's meant to represent the 'average user' and you portray yourselves as representatives."

By "us" I mean those who love OSX but do not appreciate the lack of control over the Dock and the Trash Can (such as both I as well as AHunter). Pretty much everything else is fine for me right now. The rest, such as Sarari and Mail useability, will all come in time.

The changes to the Dock AHunter suggested would be great. I would like to see the option to attach it to the Apple menu with the ability to drag items to the Apple, then to the location where I want it to reside on the menu. No trash can of course.

I am not completely anti-Dock, so I am going to try some of osxpounder's suggestions to see if I can make it more liveable. I too use it, though I am not very happy with some of its "ways".

To help in my workflow, I use DragThing to put the Trash on the desktop as well as hide all other apps automatically. That way I do not see my Mail app, Watson, Safari and more when I am working in Photoshop. Yet they are there and running when I need them.

AHunter, look into iKey.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6746
...I use it to go up and down in applications and it may help. It is nice, simple and unobtrusive.

You did feedback Apple with this, didn't you Hunter? I know I have.

I kinda follow that.

Your icon will still bounce if there is an alert and your application requires attention. This is necessary for those who auto-hide the Dock.

My really cheap way to improve the dock: I use my desktop as a launcher. I linked the middle-mouse-button click to Expose's reveal Desktop and organized all my desktop app shortcuts Icons in groups. I completely emptied the dock so it only contains running apps.

I sorta like it that way.

osxpounder: Well, I'm on a WallStreet, but I did take an auxiliary hard drive (no big deal if I make major ruination of it, in other words) and downloaded XPostFacto, swapped momentarily back to the stock daughtercard, and installed Panther onto it -- Panther on WallStreet

I'm still in Jaguar for everyday use but I'll play with Panther some more in January and decide whether or not I want to upgrade.

I might decide not to at this point and decide otherwise 8 months from now if to an increasing degree applications are requiring 10.3 as the minimum system on which they'll run. Or I might decide that getting rid of column view in Open/Save/Save As dialog boxes is worth the bleeding-edge risk of running an OS on unsupported hardware that has itself been modified and fitted out with 3rd party devices and whatnot.

No one has steered me towards a prefs-file editing hack that would let me assign app-switching to something other than Command-Tab. I'd love to set it to Command-Option-RightArrow (and previous app to Command-Option-LeftArrow) which is the combo I used in OtherMenu for years and to which I'm accustomed. Were it not for that, I could tolerate the Dock pretty nicely (especially since I hacked the size to 1 pixel by 1 pixel about 18 months ago) but Command-Tab is not a possibility with me.

I just saw this at Unsanity... have you tried it?

Look at the bottom Haxie called PullTab.

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/ape/

Direct link:
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/pulltab/index.html

Maybe i'm in the minority here but I love the look of OS X. I think it's a huge improvement over my old Grape iMac g3 with OX 8.5. I guess i like the "prettiness" of it. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.
Teri

Newcomer to the Debate
 

(* I have to say first that this thread has been captivating, sucking away about an hour of my time reading every sentence. *)

I've got to say that I'm with the lovers of OS X group. Though I was not at all a "power user" before OS X (nor can I truly say that I'm one now), I do love the inclusion of unix into the OS. In the two years since I've owned my Dual USB iBook I have probably had about 2 total system crashes. OS 9 (at least for me) crashed all the time.

Aside from that, I think that Dock is fine I do agree though that I regret the loss of the launcher. you could fit sooo much more into the launcher than you can into the Dock, and with much better grouping too. And when working in Photoshop or other high screen density programs I do find it's presence very annoying. However, overall I believe that this OS is hands down the best yet.

I find a lot of this to be look preferences, and the OS 9 and down look is available, no one forced anyone to switch to OS X.

Definitely there can be some improvements though! As always.

Re: Newcomer to the Debate
 

tvisher, you can add back some of those traditional Mac OS features using 3rd party applications and utilities.

Try Launcher, if you miss that feature so much. Or perhaps Dragthing . Both are highly rated and will do what the old Launcher did and much, much more!

Awesome, thanks for the tips... both those apps look really cool, I'm gonna have to try them.

Amen brother!

YES! please God make it so.

I can't beleive this thread is resurrected.

I was going to say things.. but to heck with it. This thread was flame-bait to begin with.

Here's something that's pretty close:

http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html

I don't agree, that statement tends to nullify our concerns with Aqua and the OS. I would rather not have my opinions disqualified like that. Remember, this post catagory is "Wish List" and many of us find parts of the interface more a hinderance than a help.

Well, I really did post the first message in hope that some solution is possible although I expected flaming. I kinda agree with it being a flamestarter because I mentionned Windows in the first place and I criticized Apple's design - wich is like, arguing that pi is exactly 3. But I really feel that an OS should allow as much customization as possible.

I wouldn't categorize this thread as flamebait, having seen the real thing before. :)

I like customization, too. It doesn't always happen according to my schedule.

Here's to customization . . . and to people learning new work habits! :D

In my experience, the user is always the most difficult component to customize to achieve fitness for a particular purpose. :D