As lashings go, that was pretty tame. Actually, as much as I dislike iOS, I have to admit that Steve's point concerning fragmented versus integrated is a good one. Android is starting to go the way of linux - too many disharmonious variants to choose from... and we all know how successful that strategy has been for linux with the general populace.
No, I'm basically implying that you are an Apple hater because of your tone and because you say things like "Steve's way or the highway".
Also, you continually ignore the utilitarian argument that I've been trying to make and keep challenging with GUI eye candy crap you fancy from other OSes.
Your premise seems to be if Mac OS X can't do some UI trick, but Windows can, then Mac is not as flexible. I can name a hundred UI tricks that Mac can do that Windows can't. I don't bother because these are beside the point. The point is that the Mac has an extensibility that not only is not, but cannot be duplicated by other OSes. This extensibility means that the Mac OS is limited more by the user's imagination rather than the OS designer's imagination.
So you say "Steve's way or the highway", but I'm saying Steve's way offers infinitely more roads to travel than Bill's way or even Linus' way.
Now if you want to make your argument about iOS, then I'm all over that. I am not a fan of iOS.
First, let me say that no OS can do every little thing in exactly the same way as every other OS. That's an unrealistic goal and certainly not what I was talking about.
You mention a handful of specific examples that you may or may not be able to do in Mac OS X, which even if accurate, does not demonstrate that Mac OS X is behind linux. If we listed all of the things that Mac OS X can do and all of the things that any linux distro can do and compared the lists, we would see a huge overlap. We would see some number of things that linux can do that Mac OS X can't do and we would see a much bigger list of things that Mac OS X can do that linux can't.
I use Mac OS X, Windows, and linux daily. They all have their quirks and perks. I like them all - I'm not a hater. If I'm totally objective, though, I have to say that Mac OS X offers more perks than the others. Are there things that I can do in linux that I wish I could do in Mac OS X? Of course. Are there things that I can do in Windows that I wish I could do in Mac OS X? Of course. The list of things I can do in Mac OS X that I can't do on the others is much larger, though.
I am less concerned about the aesthetics that seem to consume you and more interested in utility and functionality. Given that no OS will ever anticipate my every need, scripting power is the ultimate power. Sure, I can (and have) added perl and cygwin to my Windows machine and it's almost as good as perl in linux, which is almost as good as perl in Mac OS X. But perl (or any other conventional scripting language) is simply incapable of integrating with the OS and with the applications at the level that AppleScript is capable of. I can essentially change the feature set of my OS and of my applications.
Your obvious hatred for Steve Jobs and all things Apple has blinded you to a whole world of possibilities. Your perspectives on Mac OS X are limited by your trivial understanding of it's capabilities. Hate is a crippling thing.
You seem to be confused about my point. I was not trying to say that OS X can "look" like any other OS. Why would anyone want that? There's very little utility in making one OS "look" like another.
Mac OS X has all of the flexibility and configurability of linux (I'm going to assume you know what that implies). However, Mac OS X adds a lot to the unix foundation with hundreds of OS X specific UI extensions. However, the biggest area where Mac OS X stands out is in the area of automation. No other OS offers anything remotely similar to AppleScript and Automator which let the user build custom utilities that work cooperatively with the OS and with applications... essentially adding functionality to the OS and to applications.
And there you go. When Mac does something different than Windows it must be bad...
You are right. Green doesn't activate an optimal view, it toggles between your most recent view and an optimal view. I thought it was intuitively obvious, but I said it wrong. My bad.
For iTunes, the green dot toggles between the most recent user window settings and the mini player. Since most people want to listen to music and are not interested in having their music player hogging a lot of screen real estate, then I would say that the mini player is generally considered optimal.
So the + is not intuitive for you? Maybe you can suggest an alternative that is more intuitive? Would it help if you thought of + as meaning there's an additional view that you can toggle to?
I think your RDP scenario may be a fair one, but certainly a special case. I assume there is some reason that you need multiple instances of the application open rather than multiple sessions in one instance... Still, I see three problems with this scenario (1) What is the likelihood that you will walk away from your computer, return much later and the first thing you need to do is perform some menu function? (2) Even if this is a legitimate requirement, given that you've been away for presumably hours, can you not take the extra second to click on the relevant window and ensure your menu bar has the right context? and (3) All of the RDP clients I've ever used have contextual menus in the window, so you effectively have your menu bar in the window you care about anyway.
I'm sure that if you tried really hard you could come up with an even better example, but my point would be the same - in general, it's not a problem.
I might agree with the logic of the menu bar per window paradigm if the menu bars only affected the windows that they are associated with, but the Microsoft paradigm is a confused one. Some menus affect the window in focus and some affect windows that are not in focus (at the application level). Also, sometimes when I'm in a hurry, I may accidentally select menus from windows behind the one I'm interested in, sometimes with unpleasant consequences. And yes, I care about wasted screen real estate going to redundant menus, so it still matters to me... and don't even get me started with ribbons. To me, all of that is bad UI design.
You say poe-TAY-toe, I say poe-TAH-toe... let's call the whole thing off.
Apple has 5% but it's the cream of the crop in regard to certain traits: people who favor aestethics and "just works" over everything else and are willing to pay extra for it.
Well, I'm a computer engineer and I and a lot of my engineering peers own Macs. Aesthetics have very little to do with our decision... (we're geeks after all). "Just works" is way up there, but the number 1 reason that we like Macs is that Mac OS X is unix and the number 2 reason is that Mac OS X is the most flexible, configurable, programmable OS available - bar none.
As for paying extra... you pay a little more and get a lot more... there's a big difference between the concepts of price and value...
You make some good points and some not-so-good points. I agree with your concerns about the menu bar on multiple monitors to a degree, but frankly if you had multiple monitors then you probably had a multi-button mouse and most of the menus were available practically anywhere contextually.
I don't agree with your task switching point. You only needed to use the Application menu if all of your application windows were obscured. Sure that was a problem if you had a couple of dozen windows open simultaneously, but NT/2K was not a lot better when there was that much congestion. Contrast this problem with the Windows' MDI where one window could hold (and obscure) multiple documents unless you wanted to launch multiple instances of an application to have independent windows... which some apps would not support. In those days I had a lot more trouble sharing information between Windows documents than I did between Mac documents.
How was Mac OS 9's multi-tasking "iffy"? It was very similar in capability to NT and was more uniformly integrated into the OS. Both used a cooperative model, but Microsoft never bothered to tell their development community how to cooperate, so it was not uncommon for apps to not play well together.
You had some points in there about 10" screens and earlier versions of the Mac OS, but they were lost on me since they really had nothing to do with OS 9... Also, you seem to be enamored with Expose, which I agree is a nice touch, but prior to Expose, OS 9 supported WindowShade, which in some ways was nicer. I could temporarily hide all but the title bar of windows I was not currently dealing with, to let me focus on only the windows I cared about. This was actually a less cluttered solution to window management than Expose, docks, and taskbars... Of course, Spaces is a much better solution... Sadly, I've yet to find a decent / stable virtual desktop manager for Windows.
Just pointing out the irony of what you wrote:
I can see that Linux wins hands down in the tweakability front...
and
AppleScript is great and really powerful.
One of the things that makes AppleScript (and Automator) so fantastic is that they allow the savvy user to tweak the system / application interaction in ways that is far beyond what any linux could ever hope to do.
Also, not to nitpick, but practically any tweak you can do in linux you can do in Mac OS X and more...
It is things like using a green + to shrink a window. That is just wrong.
Perhaps what is wrong is your interpretation. The green + doesn't merely shrink the window. In fact, sometimes it enlarges the window. What it actually does is tries to resize the window to it's optimum information/real estate. What color and symbol would you prefer? I think + is reasonably intuitive and green is often used to indicate something is good or optimum.
Things like the red X sometimes closing the application, and other times only closing the UI to the application leaving the to continue running.
Again, this is only confusing if you are confused about the Apple window paradigm. For the most part, Apple leaves the application open if it is document based and there is some probability that you might want to open another document. These days the importance of this is lost, but I remember the old days when I was working on multiple documents in both Windows and on Macs. Many was the day that I cursed Windows for quitting the application and forcing me to wait seconds for it to relaunch with another document. In the Mac OS, if an application is not document based (for instance a utility), it makes sense to close the app when you close the document. And really, if you're serious enough to be concerned about this then your serious enough to learn Command-W and Command-Q.
... having to figure out what application the menu bar applies to is just annoying and breaks the flow of work.
This is only confusing if you're confused about what you're doing. Whatever application you're working in, that's the one the menu applies to. How difficult is that? Having a menu in every window is just a waste of screen real estate (and yes, that still matters).
The bottom line is that I have yet to find a UI that is perfect. There are some things that I like about the Mac UI and there are some things that I hate. There are some things that I like about the Windows UI and there are some things that I hate. Does that make either one a bad design? No. The designers have to make compromises and you and I will almost never agree with all of those compromises.
Funny, Windows XP is the only OS that ever crashed on me doing absolutely nothing.... Just sitting there... I had just started up the machine, checked my calendar, went to a meeting, came back to a BSOD.
FYI. I too saw a screen saver crash OS 9 once. The screen saver was originally developed for a 68000 machine, so it was running in emulation mode. Should it have worked? Yes. Was I surprised that it crashed? No.
I've been using both Macs and PCs (and unix/linux boxes) every day for about as long as they've all been around. In general, I've found the Mac OS to be more stable than PC.
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst
