Re: Windows.. it's like coming home!

In article <1hk4y54.14jna68aykv0lN%pa_nihill@xxxxxxxxx>,
pa_nihill@xxxxxxxxx (Patrick Nihill) wrote:

Dan Johnson <danieljohnson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Patrick Nihill" <pa_nihill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1hk4jmv.9hntk2f5c49hN%pa_nihill@xxxxxxxxxxxx

<snip>

I think
it's fair to say though that Apple's curcumstances simply didn't allow a
gradual transition, especially in going from OS 9 to OS X. They started
from a position of severe weakness compared to Microsoft.

I do not really agree here. They lasted for many years without
making any transition; they should have spent that time
on the transition, rather than wait as long as they did.

Oh, they certainly should. They bolloxed around for years with a couple
of failed OS strategies. No-one's claiming that they didn't make a mess
of their OS strategy.

That was the pre-NeXT Apple, though, and the OS X strategy only came
into effect in 1997 at the earliest. By that stage Apple was listing
badly, and a graceful, longer-term transition wasn't going to cut it.
They needed something that could compete with Windows, and they needed
it yesterday.

Microsoft were never in such difficulty that they absolutely had to
transition to an NT-based OS as fast as possible or face extinction.

They had a hopelessly outdated OS, dwindling support and sales, and the
air of a company heading towards an inevitable end.

In 1993 it wasn't that far behind, and by then the future direction
they needed was plain, and MS had already articulated their
strategy. And then dumped OS/2 and articulated their new
strategy. :D

Yes, but I'm talking about the OS X transition. The interminable messing
about before that is what got them into the weak position I described
earlier.

Occasional hardware
hits like the original iMac couldn't sustain them when the basic
platform was in such poor shape. So, they rounded up 2 of every app and
plunged straight into the transition as fast as they could.

2 of every apps? You mean a male one and a female one?

Microsoft, on the other hand, had the luxury of taking their time moving
from DOS to NT. Windows 95 was insanely succesful, and NT 4.0 did a
pretty good job in the business market. Both were technically good
enough to compete in the markets they were aimed at, allowing Microsoft
to move them closer to each other and merge them at a much more
leisurely pace.

If you work it out, it actually took MS about as long
as Apple to get to their current OS. MS didn't
rush the transition, but they didn't sit still for
any extended period either.

Right, they kept developing the 2 OSs side by side for a very long time,
until they were ready to merge them. NT originated in OS/2, so Microsoft
spent more than a decade before the two were fully merged as Windows XP.
This worked out very well for them.

Apple released Mac OS X in 2001. The last release of the old OS was 9.2,
in 2002. Compatibility with the old OS, in the form of Classic, is now
totally gone as of 2006, just 5 years later.

That's a very rapid transition by comparison. It also explains what I
mean by the "2 of every app" comment before - Apple took whatever apps
they could on their transition, through Carbon, and have now left
everything else outside to die, by removing Classic just a few years
later. A painful transition, but it's my view that there was little else
they could from the position they were in in 1997.

<snip>

Yes, but it relies on periodic re-indexing rather than hooks to the
kernel code that modifies the filesystem, so new files that you create
don't show up until some unspecified time in the future. This is a bit
of a problem.

Experimenting with it, I observe that it does not do this;
it reindexes only changed files.

I've also experimented with it, and it does do this :-D

I created a file, gave it a distinctive name, and immediately ran a
query in MSN Desktop Search. No sign of it. I left the system alone for
a while, came back, and the search found it.

Spotlight, on the other hand, finds the new file instantly.

It does not need any new kernel code for this; XP already
has the NTFS Change Journal, which lets you
watch for changes volume wide. You only need to
reindex fully if it missing changes, because there
were too many changes while it was shut down,
and the buffer overflowed.

However, it does avoid indexing while the computer
is in use, which will presumably mean greater delays
that Spotlight shows.

I know it is capable of performing the indexing in the same way
Spotlight does, but my experience with it shows me that in practice it
doesn't. If it really does deliberately not do the indexing of files it
*knows* have just changed just because someone is currently using the
computer...well, that just seems a little silly, frankly.

Apple isn't into freebies, I notice.

What about all the updates to iTunes!

:D

[snip]
And the taskbar blows less real-estate, so
I can leave it visible. It can also hold more
items; it can be more than one tile tall,
and it auto-combines tiles into menus
when necessary.

The taskbar can hold more items if you resize it, but then you lose all
that Fitt's law goodness for all the items that are not on the bottom
row, and are left aiming at some very vertically thin targets.

Yes. I don't do this until I need to; but it's better
than scrolling, or squashing the buttons to very tiny
sizes (which is the only thing the Dock can do).

I've found that because the Dock shows applications rather than windows,
and just icons rather than longer icons-plus-names, you can fit a much
higher number of apps in the same horizontal space.

Of course, you're probably thinking that this is just 2 negatives
combining by chance into a positive :-)

The taskbar also suffers from the completely unstable program placement.
Over the course of half an hour, the position of every single item in
the tasbar can and will change, leaving you hunting down items. If you
open a new instance of an already-running app, it opens somewhere in the
middle of the taskbar, whereas if there wasn't another instance already
running it opens at the end.

This is true. The taskbar's buttons have unpredictable
placement in this way; but at least the buttons do not
*always* move when another one is added.

The Dock need not always move either, it can be pinned to a corner so
that it grows out, rather than moving to remain centered. In this setup,
icons for apps in the Dock *never* move so much as a pixel.

The Dock, on the other hand, has nice and predictable program placement.
Programs stay in the same order all the time they're open, regardless of
what window management you do.

They stay in the same order, but shift to the side as
new items are added, to keep the Dock centered.

[snip]
Plus the start menu offers all sorts of system
configuration and control stuff, like the Apple
menu in Mac OS X. But the start menu can be
customized.

I don't see how you can say the apps in the Dock move around all the
time, because, quite frankly, they don't.

They do. Watch more closely while launching an app
not already in the dock- the icons move to make
room for it, and it maintain centering.

My Dock is set to be pinned to the corner, so this doesn't happen.
(Note: I've had it set this way for so long I forgot that this is not
only not standard behaviour, the option for setting it is not exposed
through the GUI. Boo and hiss, Apple!)

I've never heard of this. How do you do it?

The Start Menu is a great solution as a complete repository for all your
applications, but for quick-launching the most common apps the Dock
beats it easily.

I prefer the Start Menu; it does require an extra click to
summon it, but that allows it to both contain a lot more
functionality, and also use less real estate when inactive.

Most of the other functionality in the Start Menu is contained in any
given Finder window, and I find it as useful there as anywhere else. And
I'll even throw in one more point I forgot before that I think the Dock
wins on - launching multiple applications. You can click on any number
of apps in the Dock one after the other to launch them. The same
operation in the quick launch area of the Start menu requires you to
keep reopening it, as every click makes it disappear again.

The big reason for this is that the Dock pretends it's
not a launcher at all, and that all programs, running and non-running
are treated equally.

I know. I have long prefered document-centric UI to apps
centric, however, which is one reason I prefer working
with windows to working with processes.

I find there are situations where one works better than the other, and
vice versa. I think you can create a system of managing either that
works well, and I think Apple have done a (somewhat) better job for the
app-centric approach than MS have for the document-centric.

I have the programs I use 95% of the time all sitting in the Dock. Their
positions and order do not change, no matter what windows I open and
close, or whether or not any of these apps are open at any particular
time. I click on an icon in the same place all the time, and I get the
app I want.

As long as you never launch any app not in the dock,
and never minimize a window, you are safe!

I never minimize windows in OS X, and with good reason too - it's so
flawed as to be nearly useless. I much prefer hiding the app itself, if
for some reason I don't want to see it. To be honest, I hardly ever
minimise anything in Windows either. I just switch to the next relevant
window.

And as I mentioned above, I normally work with the apps I have in the
Dock, as 20 apps don't take much space along my screen. When I feel the
need to go wild and use something not in there, Spotlight launches it
about as fast as I can remember its name.

I don't need to perform any mental gymnastics to remember whether or not
the app is running (in Windows, the answer to this question determines
whether or not I use the Taskbar or the Start Menu) and I don't need to
wonder if it'll open alongside other similar windows in the middle of
the taskbar, or whether it'll appear appended to the end of my existing
application list. It's just always in the same place.

It may just be different mental models at work here; I'm
never concerned about whether an app is running- that's
Windows problem. I am looking for a window.

Right, but whether or not there is a window to be found depends on
whether the app is running. If it's not, you need to go somewhere else
to launch it. In my scenario, I don't need to do that.

For the less-common apps that are launched now and again, the Start Menu
is better than the Dock. But Spotlight (and, in fairness, MSN Desktop
Search) is better than either.

There's something to that, but I found Spotlight
surprisingly slow on my PowerBook G4; annoyingly
slow to use as a program launcher. Windows
Desktop Search doesn't have that problem, but then,
this isn't a G4 either.

I have a similar machine to yours (1.5GHz PowerBook G4) and I literally
can barely perceive a gap between me typing the name of the app I want
and it appearing in the Spotlight results. Perhaps it's RAM-related? I
have 1.5GB.
.