29-04-2005 09:42									#1
	Mac OS X Tiger review Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

For those of you who are interested, here's the Ars Technica review:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars

	29-04-2005 09:45									#2
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Tiger Direct is suing Apple and asking for an injunction to stop sales.

	29-04-2005 09:50									#3
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thats a review? someone got paid to write that? i coulda done it for free without even booting up the software.

	29-04-2005 09:53									#4
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quote: I don't know about you, but I like the Panther look a heck of a lot better. The first time I saw the new Mail toolbar, I filed a bug on it. (Radar 3968093: "Toolbar buttons in Mail 2.0 are hideously ugly.") It was immediately closed as a duplicate, so at least one other person agrees with me. (Maybe it was this person.) The whole Mail application looks like it got beaten with the ugly stick in Tiger. Take a look.

It looks like Apple once again made arbitrary changes and conflicting and inconsistent changes at that. They've broken even more fairly standard HIG, and even their own (that's unbelievably sad). It's like there's no actual direction on the development, it's just kids playing with toys and what they think looks cool. I suppose that's all their limited audience wants, though.

Lawrence:

Ars Technica has some of the best reviews around on the net, period.

Did you just read the first page or something?

Mac Users.

Hint: The "Next >>" link at the bottom continues the review...

	29-04-2005 09:54									#5
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

good call

	29-04-2005 10:01									#6
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OS X Tiger still isn't a real 64-bit OS, it seems. More hacks and small steps on the way to becoming one though. Maybe by the time Longhorn or Blackcomb is out, Apple will have caught up to Microsoft in the 64-bit OS arena.

It's also interesting reading all about the horrible management of the kernel as well. It's no wonder Apple has horrible software support if they keep changing the APIs on developers.

The Win32 APIs have been frozen since...God, 1994/1995?

WinFX API have been frozen for a year or two now, and it won't come out til Longhorn...

Another striking example of the difference in development processes and caring about third-party developers.

He also lays into Apple's approach to metadata in OS X, including quotes from Bruce Horn, one of the original Macintosh developers from 1982...

	29-04-2005 10:16									#7
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quote: I think Apple has an insultingly low opinion of users' ability to understand nested boolean logic. They may not know what it's called, but the concept is intuitively understood. Even my mother has already asked me how to create a Mail rule that requires nested boolean logic: "(from A or from B) and subject contains C." I had to tell her that it's not possible. When asked why, I told her that Apple thinks few users need this ability and that it's potentially confusing. She wasn't particular satisfied by that explanation, and neither am I.

Dumb it down for the masses, aiiii.

It's also how patently clear how simple Spotlight really is, and how it is nothing more than any other desktop search on the PC today:

quote: It does seem like a bit of a hack—and potentially wasteful—to store both a monolithic database file and a bunch of individual data files for a given data set, but Spotlight as it currently exists is doggedly file-granular. There must be an individual file camped out in the file system somewhere for each entry in the Spotlight to metadata store.

They are getting some help, though!

quote: Apple is apparently working with at least one third-party developer, Microsoft, to see what can be done in this area.

He also isn't a huge fan of Spotlight's UI.

quote: Overall, however, the Spotlight user interface belies the strength of the service itself. The Spotlight UI is odd, clumsy, limiting, and often downright user-hostile.

	29-04-2005 10:19									#8
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quote: Here's some video of the Finder doing what it does best: confounding user expectations and absolutely hosing any semblance of consistency and statefulness. The movie shows the smart folder from the earlier video (the one with the "boogawooga" search string and no other search conditions) being opened and closed in both metal and non-metal modes. While watching, just try and guess how the window will look when it's re-opened after each of the demonstrated actions. You may need to step through the movie slowly to get a full grasp of the insanity

quote: Under what set of circumstances does this get to ship? I would love to see the "design document" for Spotlight's integration into the Finder's interface, if such a thing even exists. (I highly doubt that it does.) I'm tempted to say this is par for the course when it comes to Finder windows in Mac OS X. But really, this is way beyond the Finder's standard level of user abuse.

quote: I tried to film the user-hostile behavior of the "Find..." window, but it so thoroughly neglects to retain state that (in addition to eternally including the "Kind" and "Last Opened" conditions) it insists on opening in the same location and at the same size every single time—a size that is a bit too large to comfortably fit in a movie. No matter, I'm sure you'll become intimately familiar with it on your own time. As the kids say, "gg Apple."

See, I'm not alone in my well-founded criticisms against Apple. They **** in the face of established UI principles based on decades of interdisciplinary research to do what they think looks cool...

	29-04-2005 11:53									#9
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This thread's audience: *chirping crickets*

	30-04-2005 01:37									#10
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quote: don't know about you, but I like the Panther look a heck of a lot better. The first time I saw the new Mail toolbar, I filed a bug on it. (Radar 3968093: "Toolbar buttons in Mail 2.0 are hideously ugly.") It was immediately closed as a duplicate, so at least one other person agrees with me. (Maybe it was this person.) The whole Mail application looks like it got beaten with the ugly stick in Tiger. Take a look.

It looks fine to me.

Panther version:


Tiger version:


In fact I prefer the new version.

He also says this got beat with an ugly stick; I disagree. What is wrong with it?

	30-04-2005 02:21									#11
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They're both pics of the Panther version. The Tiger version is underneath.

	30-04-2005 02:23									#12
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I prefer the Tiger version

	30-04-2005 02:50									#13
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quote: Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar Is it just me, or are those two the exact same image?

Guess it didn't copy the second URL.

	30-04-2005 06:18									#14
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I think the Tiger one looks better from an aesthetic point of view, but the Panther one is probably easier to learn.

But you'd have to be a moron not to be able to use either.

Interestingly I've had three people who didn't know I used a mac confess to me that they will be switching soon.

Dissatisfaction with Windows is the main reason.

I showed my TA Garageband at the varsity store yesterday and he was blown away.