The Macintosh Is Dead
 

Kind of a dark article that in some ways is true... :(

http://lowendmac.com/thomas/07/0119.html


<edit - inline article replaced by the link -- CRA>

You're not legally suppose to quote entire articles. Violates copyright. You should just put the link and let people go to the site that contains the material and read it there.

[/junior mod]

When I read stuff like that, I am overwhelmed with the desire to say "meh." :D

The software isn't written in Object Pascal and 68K assembly any more, either. I feel robbed. Or not.

To respond to the article:

I have an applications menu on the right side of my menubar.

I have anything I want to put there in my Apple menu.

I don't have no freaking buttugly Windows-esque Dock. I run Dockless.

I do have Platinum, and not Aqua, as my GUI.

My Mac boots with a happy Mac face and not a grey Apple.

The author acknowledges much of this:


Par for the course.

Under System 6, I wanted to be able to create a new empty folder, if necessary, in the process of saving a file. The OS didn't work that way, so I obtained the SFVol INIT and installed it. Instead of quitting to the Finder and digging around for the next app I wanted, I used OnCue. And I replaced that horrid Apple File Exchange utility with Dayna's DOSMounter and used PC diskettes just like Mac diskettes years before Apple supported that itself.

In my System 7 days, I didn't care for the anemic info available in Get Info so I had Get MORE Info installed; and I discovered the wonderful PopupFolder when it was included as a giveaway with another sw package I bought. OnCue was broken by System 7 so I switched to Apollo, then to OtherMenu.

System 8 broke PopupFolder and GetMOREInfo so I switched to FinderPop and Snitch to accomplish the same things. Installed DAVE to mount PC network shares on my Desktop just like AppleTalk.


Conclusion: the most Maclike thing that makes the Mac the Mac and not a PC is the confidence that you can have it your way. That you can install sw that modifies the user experience without living in mortal fear that your precious OS will go haywire if you do. That you can, in fact, install software until the proverbial cows come home, because there's no registry or any other reason to be wary of installing software.

Sure, Apple has taken away lots of things it used to provide. It has also started providing things I used to need 3rd party apps or extensions for. In at least one case (WindowShade) it's gone full cycle: the original was a 3rd party extension for System 6, then Apple provided it, and now it's back to being a 3rd-party haxie.

It only stops being a Mac when I can't have it my way.

(And to everyone who is inclined to say "But the PC has skins and can be modded and configured", give me a link to the PC sw that will make "application windows" go away so document windows can float alone like they do on the Mac!)

I think the first thing that needs to be done is that we need to define exactly what a Macintosh is. Up until now I had believed in the (perhaps somewhat misleading) definition that a Mac was a computer made by Apple. Since it still is that, I don't see any reason to change the name.

For my one philosophical point, I don't have any problem with hardware homogenization. The way I see it, if it's the best way to do it, then it does not matter if everyone else is doing it. 'Think Different' is supposed to infer 'Think in a way that makes your product the best' not 'Think Stupid.' The PPC was going down the tubes, ditch it. USB makes my Mac far more accessible, use it. In my honest opinion, "Different for the sake of Different" is the purest form of stupidity around. Think for yourself people.

http://content.imagesocket.com/images/emot_siren9c2.gif BREAKING NEWS http://content.imagesocket.com/images/emot_siren9c2.gif

Zealotrous curmudgeons can't stand change.

Film at 11.

And the award for most creative use of animated .gifs goes to... MIKEY-SAN!!! *Cue Music*

But seriously, where did you grab that stuff?

Read the article. Got the author's point. Figured the author was running out of ideas for articles. Then went back to enjoying my current Mac with OS X Tiger while eagerly looking forward to getting one of the new intel Macs running Leopard when it comes out.

I love my Macs. All of them. :)

Sitting around without any true innovation for 5 years, and then coming out with something so lame, most of the "fans" aren't just unexcited, but they are openly saying they don't want to upgrade. Now that's the life of a PC.

The Mac is different. It still does think different. It believes in innovating, taking risks, and progressing on a constant basis to the point you get so excited about the new stuff that you give you old stuff an early retirement because you can't wait to use the new innovations Apple has created. Now that's Macintosh.

I have to admit, the author did do a wonderful job of taking me through nostalgia lane, reminding me of why I have always loved using my Macs.

While I still love my Macs, the author's got a point. I remember the first time I got a Mac, it was an old LC. No Mac made today will match up to that experience.

No, it's a computer. It doesn't believe in anything. Its creators have design goals and ideals, but the computer is just a device. It is folly to consecrate a personal computing device born from the bosom of capitalism.

It doesn't think anything about the way you work. It doesn't believe in anything. It doesn't know how to inspire, it doesn't know how to imagine, and it doesn't know how to think identically or differently.

It just. Runs. Programs.

aw, so you mean the ebay seller who marked up my mac because it was baptized scammed me? :p

The Mac is dead because it's no longer necessary to create non-standard hardware to get things done "better." We have Firewire and USB for peripherals which is better than ADB/Apple serial, SATA for drives which is as fast as SCSI but much less expensive, and x86 processors which kick the butts of the PowerPC.

Where is Apple still Apple...the Mac Still Mac? Design and quality. The visual design of the machines and the OS is still nothing like any others. The quality of the machines is high, and performance beats the others in the same class. Look at the benchmark testing between a Mac Pro and the Dell professional workstations which have the same specs.

+1

I beleive it's called product evolution and product branding. Everyone understands that a Mac is Apples computer. And a Mac is whatever Apple wants it to be.

Man, I thought those kinds of articles had gone out after late 2002 and the endless complaints about OS X not coming out with a Platinum theme option.

I think Carlos said it well: Where is Apple still Apple...the Mac Still Mac? Design and quality. . . Granted the quantum break from OS 9, these are still alive and well - - and the OS is MUCH MORE STABLE now.

I know this guy who never bought OS 9 because it was too close to 10! :rolleyes: Mac OS 8.6 is the epitomy of perfection, for him. To each his own, of course. There will be old Macs that can boot up into Classic OS versions for many years to come. Have at it!

Since (on another thread) we're correcting some of Bill Gates' chronologies, the Dock is more NeXT-ish than Windows-esque.
- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP pre-dated Windows OS by several years, and since it (via OpenStep) was used as the basis for Mac OS X, that's where we got the Dock. Whether the Windows taskbar is modeled on the Dock, I don't know, but the temporal sequence would allow for this.

Personally, I find the Dock very useful -- much moreso than the Windows taksbar. It does entail different work habits, but it also makes possible a more efficient workflow, imo.

"As if all of that weren't enough, the ability to start the Mac with a power key on the keyboard was taken away by 2000."

True, but people don't turn off their computers much anymore, so how they are turned on is less important. Tapping the space bar is just as easy as pressing the power key, and waking from sleep is faster than starting up.

"In terms of hardware, the Mac has essentially become a PC."

Also true, but who cares? I don't miss ADB, that's for sure. There are far more mice and keyboards available for the Mac now than in ADB days. And I like being able to get a great price on a new hard drive from newegg, which caters mostly to PC users.

(re: the Dock) "While it's useful, it can be a pain in the rump roast for switching between applications."

Try command-tab. It's far more useful than going to the upper right corner of the screen with the cursor, which was the old way.

"Wasn't it Steve Jobs who said, "It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy"? Well my friends, Apple has joined the Navy."

I agree, up to a point. The hardware guts of the Mac have been commoditized. At the most basic level, the software is *NIX, a commodity OS if there is such a thing. All that's unique about the Macintosh is the UI, which was completely changed in OS X. And the snazzy case designs.

By the way, Apple no longer makes Macintosh computers. There never was, and probably never will be, an Intel Macintosh computer. They are Macs now. Apple has retired the Macintosh name, as the author wished.

I do have my gripes about the current UI, including the dock. But I don't think the Mac is dead.

Did you happen to think that the word 'Mac' is shortened from 'Macintosh' - I own a MacBook and a MacPro - both Intel - both 'Mac - intosh'

Also, why does everyone gripe about the dock? Please explain?

It’s a tool!
 

When I am carving wood sculptures, I quickly forget about my chisel and mallet.

The same holds true when I am writing an advertisement text, or an article for a magazine or book, doing the research for it, choosing photos or checking the final design before it goes to the printer.

I Just Do It! I forget about the tool. And that, to me, is the essence of the Mac. It’s a great tool -- it fits the hand, is satisfying to use, and it gets the job done.

Period.

Some may saay that the Mac is dead but i disagree.

Besides if i had to agree, i would explain to them that it has been modified/replaced with parts much better.

Who really cares anyway???

We can't power our Macs on via the keyboard! OH-NO!!! WE WILL ALL DIE! NOW WE HAVE TO PUSH A BUTTON ON THE COMPUTER ITSELF!!!!WHAT WILL WE DO?!?

OH-NO!!!When we do survive powering our Mac's on without the keyboard, we are greeted with a Apple Logo, OH F*%& WHAT WILL WE DO!?!? WE WILL LOOK AT A APPLE LOGO FOR A FEW SECONDS EACH DAY!!! WE WILL ALL HAVE TO COVER OUR EYES EVERY TIME WE BOOT OUR COMPUTERS!

WHAT WILL WE DO!?!?!?
WE WILL ALL HAVE TO STOP BUYING MACS AND BUY PC'S!!!

WHY, WHY, WHY APPLE??? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE CHANGES LIKE ALL COMPANYS DO??? WHY, WHY WHY??????

Yeah, but go easy on the Caps Lock. Ouch! ;)

First off, each to his own, matter of taste, etc etc, standard disclaimers about not representing some kind of objective opinion, etc....


a) It takes up screen real estate. On that grounds it's a non-starter for the same reason the old MacOS 8 "Launcher Control Panel" was a non-starter. No way in hell I'm having some stupid thing floating around getting in my way like that. And yes the Dock does get in my way, even set to the tiniest size + auto-hide turned on... I get the mouse anywhere near it and the titles float up and don't always go away when I mouse-away. I have some window maximized and it has its own widgets at bottom (or left, right, wherever Dock has been pushed to) and I go to make use of them and OH HELLO you can launch SAFARI TEXTEDIT oh go away go away go away, drag window away from Dock-zone and try again...

b) It gives me the impression it was designed by someone who thinks I'm going to run, I dunno, maybe 4-5 apps at at time, and that I will as a general rule make use of only 9-10 apps at all (with rare exceptions or something). The design becomes increasingly user-hostile as you try to add your 8 favorite word processors and text editors, your 12 graphic and art apps, your 10 sound and audio editors, your 10 video tools & apps, your 40-60 utility apps, your 25-30 internet apps, your 5 emulators, all 24 varieties of FileMaker and FileMaker Server and Dev Tools, 7-8 other database spreadsheet and other info management apps, etc etc and then go back and add in the individual documents you like to launch. Yes, yes yes, of course you can create a hierarchy of all that mess by putting things in folders. The point is, that converts the Dock from a Dock to a hierarchical menu. Which is what I like, but it makes the Dock as Dock irrelevant, it then becomes a big blue stripe that occupies a chunk of my screen in order to house some hierarchical menus. Keep the hierchical menus and get that damn Dock off my screen. I like my hierarchical menu in a MENU, like the Apple Menu, where it isn't taking up screen real estate except when I explicitly invoke it.

c) Things move around, so you have to peer at it to figure out where things went before you can click. And I don't like mixing the "apps that are running" motif with the "apps that you might wish were running".

d) I'm a FileMaker geek and -⌘Tab is owned by FileMaker to move from layout to layout when you're in Layout Mode, or record to record when you're in Browse Mode. Yes, I'm well aware that nowadays PullTab lets you disable ⌘-Tab app switching but by the time Unsanity came out with PullTab I'd long since nuked the Dock. I prefer the old-fashioned application menu. Sometimes I don't wish to switch apps, I just want to see what's running. Recall previously mentioned comment about not liking the running-apps-mixed-with-apps-you-like-to-run motif.

e) There's something entirely too Romper Room, too PlaySkool, about apps bouncing up and down in the Dock like a kindergartner who needs to go potty trying to get the teacher to call on the raised hand.

f) Some of it is admittedly just muleheadedness: Apple decided I was gonna have to use the freaking thing, and provided damned little customization. Made it so it's not a normal app you can just quit. Made it so it always invokes on mouse-over even when you've got it hidden, instead of invoking only with hotkey. Didn't give you a choice about the keystroke ⌘-Tab. Didn't give you an option for putting the Trash Can on your Desktop. Well we'll just see about that!

Calling the Romper Room
 

On that we agree.

For real!? Then I can see why the Dock would annoy you.
I can also see that you belong to a veerrrrry tiny minority.

... in fact I hardly know anyone who has 150+ apps installed on their Mac, let alone are actually using them on a daily/weekly basis.
That sounds very, uhmm, Romper Room. ;)

:D ...’nuff said.
Seriously: Hidden Dock and pulling the mouse away immediately after clicking Hogwasher, means I don’t have to watch the little piggie icon jump up and down.

Agreed! That would have been nice.

-- ArcticStones

that article is complete crap. technology changes and if your product does not adapt its as good as dead. Back in the good old days computer technology was completely different. Also the earlier versions of Mac OS kind of sucked IMO, and if it wasn't for OS X I probably would not even want to deal with old stuff like apple talk, crappy network support, a basic boring gui that classic was, etc.

OS X is great its just like someone saying, oh man I miss the days of windows for workgroups 3.11, it was so much better back then because there were smiley faces.....now they should no longer call it windows because there is no dosshell...WAAAGH!!!!!!!

What a totally invalid complaint about how the mac is dead, I'd maybe settle for resurrected since Apple had a huge fall in sales and their stock plummeted to about $11 USD per a share right before OS X came out. It's still the same company and it is still the same product. It's just new and improved.

Another comment on:That is a feature that can be disabled in Dock Preferences. Let's not blame Apple for forcing us to have to live with that one.

Remember the early days of OS X when one of our evaluations of the upgrades was how many bounces it would take to open an app? I remember 22 bounces for Eudora (OS X 10.0) on my old Powerbook gradually diminishing to two by the time Jaguar came out.

A quick trip to ⌘-F says I have 967, but of course many of those aren't "apps" in the usual sense. OTOH, lots of X11 and other unix apps, and apps buried away in diskimage-files that run only under an emulator are hidden away from the OS X Spotlight, so it probably evens out.

Just for the record, I like the dock bounce! :(.

Okay, so it's not for everyone. But it is a very "OSX" sort of thing now. It's a good sales point to, come to think of it. When I worked in sales, people thought the dock was just the coolest looking thing. It popped up, would zoom in, the icons bounced. While it had no practical value, it was far more aesthetically pleasing than just clicking on an icon (a la Windows). Who can blame Apple for wanting to make their computers more sell able? (Is worrying about the aesthetics of one's computer, rather than the practicality, "Thinking Differently?")

i love the dock, and i love things like this

http://patrickhaney.com/thinktank/20...megaman-effect

ha, 1,483 apps for me...take that! :p :D

Essentially, the Intel macs are the equivilent of taking a G4 case and dropping an Intel mobo inside, and running OSx86 on it.

It looks like an Apple, it operates like one, but under the hood, all it is is a PC.

It uses an intel processor.

It uses an intel SATA controller.

While we are on the subject of what's unique about Macs, I noticed the laptops still have one button.

Holy mofo!

Are you guys on a drug called "versiontrackerinsanity" ??

Do you just trawl version tracker and mac update and click and download every single app thats released?

I have about 80 apps, including full CS2 suite, final cut express, and every other app i think i'll ever need.

First off, keeping over 40 apps in your dock for starters is absurd, just go through them and how many do you actually use?

Second, if you really need 1500 apps, then there must be some element of overlap in features and usability?

did you guys just do a spotlight search for anything ending in .app? I have no idea how many apps are on my macbook pro.

Spotlight search - 116 .app

Looking through them, I see lots of redundancy -- and a few I didn't even know I had. :)

when I do a search for .app files I get 525 results. I have a lot of little things installed here and there I don't use on a daily basis but will probably use once in a blue moon. I have buku networking apps and Fink commander installed with a lot of my favorite linux stuff installed, parallels, and some cross over apps. I also run 4 OSes on my macbook so i think that search may be a bit bloated.

I've got 224 Apps all-in-all, beside, shouldn't somebody starrt a new thread about this, we are digressing from the original subject.

I keep all the apps i install in the one folder , is has 38 in it, although 18 of them were all from my HP All-in-one printer.

i couldn't run a system with that many apps on it, i like to keep my system tidy and i delete anything i do not need/is out of date. I just can't stand having loads of crap lying around that i don't use, it builds up and one day, and one day maclova will have to tidy his system because his HDD is full/spotlight turns slow because of all the results it has to pull up. I may be wrong though...

**and yes my system is the only thing i keep tidy**

Somewhere between 1000-2000 here, including also the X11 (from fink), Windows (in Parallels), and Classic (in SheepShaver) programs. :)

ha! so I'm not alone :D although it is a bit confusing how you just said you have 116 apps here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showpo...0&postcount=32 :confused:

lol I keep my system tidy too...still plenty of disk space left as well...my secret? A lot of those apps are from my collection of vintage software ;) :p :cool: :)

lol...no...that would require a insane amount of disk space...most of the apps are from my vintage mac software collection which thus results in a high amount of apps appearing when doing a Spotlight search for all apps while also keeping disk space relatively low (when compared to the disk space that'd be consumed by that many of todays modern apps) :)

yeah...the mac may not be as unique hardware wise as it once was but to me the most important part is the fact that they still have a great unique OS that's secure and very easy to use...it doesn't require you to dink around trying to get what you want done, it just does it without hassle which is a great model for the rest of the OSes out there IMO (linux is getting up there although there still are some parts, especially wireless and guis on some computers, where quite some fiddling is required in order to get the desired task done right) (with Mac OS X installing updates is painless, installing OSes is painless, installing apps is a matter of drag and drop, installing hardware is just a matter of inserting it into a usb/firewire port or into a pci slot, booting up and enjoying the new hardware (no booting up required though if it's firewire/usb though of course), good security and as of yet no viruses, etc...just so simple, so hassle free...that is why I chose Macs over the rest)....the nice looks of the macs externally isn't as important although it is nice