Re: Aero and Aqua

"Snit" <SNIT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:C21A50E6.7AAC5%SNIT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Dan Johnson" <danieljohnson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> stated in post
12v7s7aakpcbd30@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 3/11/07 5:06 AM:

Well, that may be, but neither is renaming things very
much, so it's a pretty weak argument either way.

Some of the most high profile folders in Vista are now names as they are in
OS X...

"high profile"?

Only in .advocacy, surely?

alone this would be a poor argument, but together with the other
ways Vista is OS X-like and it becomes a pattern.

I think you have a stronger cases if you include
MS's *historical* pattern of copying Apple (and other
companies with good ideas), rather than restricting yourself
to Vista.

[snip]
I don't begrudge Apple ripping off MS. Honest. :D

It was not just the move to the arrows and away from the italics... the plus
while dragging to show a copy. Apple did it in a more consistent way, which
MS has gotten closer to, but Apple still copied MS in that.

I never noticed this "more consistent way"; please elaborate!

<http://comp.gallopinginsanity.com/mac_win_detail.html#dragrules>

This page does not say anything helpful about this; it does say
you don't understand how Windows behaves, so I'll tell you:
it behaves just like the Mac, but with right-dragging in.

The "drag creates shortcut by default" stuff is ancient history.

[snip]
They do. But I think that part of the difference is that people say MS has
copied Apple when they haven't, and ignores it when (say) MS copies from
someone else.

That does happen... no argument here.

You see, that's how I can tell you're the canonical Snit, and
other one is the Mirror Snit. The Mirror Snit just denies
everything.

It's like Spock's Beard. :D

I wonder what the Mirror Maverick is like. :D

[snip]
It also does not really let you chose your favorite scripting
language very well. It's pretty much AppleScript or bust.
It was meant to do that, back in the day.

Your complaint of speed - sure, I can buy that.
Your complaint that AppleScript only lets you use AppleScript is inaccurate.
You can, for example, call shell commands and the like.

You cannot script applicaitons using the shell.

You can't do that with OLE Automation either;
I don't think anyone really wants to.

Being able to run a shell script is trivial and
uninteresting. What I was talking about was replacing
AppleScript with Visual Basic. :D

[snip]
I can see where being able to do these things more in the background could
be a benefit.

Of course, there are reasons why AppleScript is
what it is. No registry, for one thing. :D

[snip]
What annoys me is that it's so *close*. They have
a really great idea in Automator, but they just didn't
quite *finish*!

They do not have a feature you would like - I would not say that means it is
not finished.

I would say that. As you may have noticed. :D

Still, I really think there's unrealized potential here.

[snip]
Bundles are not required for that; you can do it with shortcuts
(er, aliases) instead. Works just swell. But there's nothing wrong
with bundles as such.

Shortcuts / aliases most certainly do *not* work as well... I have given
example in the past, but here some are again:

* Consider this work flow (a real world one I and other Mac users use):
I download a program to my desktop and then either run it and make a
decision to keep it, toss it, or play with it more later. If I:

This is Strongly Discouraged on Windows for security reasons.

However, on Windows you do get a consistent UI for this:

You start your downloaded spyware by double clicking it;
this will run the installer and infect the machine. :D

* Keep it: I make an alias to a "favorite applications" folder
and then move the application to the Applications folder. The
alias *never* breaks and needs no time to fix itself. This is
not true on Windows... and even moving the Application might kill
it on Windows.

I think your information is out of date. Windows shortcuts are
very robust these days. They can even track things moving
between shares on an Active Directory domain.

But if you are using shortcuts to apps (in the Windows
Tradition), even on Win95, you can move the shortcut
as much as you want. It's moving the *executable* that
could break the thing.

And Windows will even track your recently used
applications for you, so you don't have to maintain
that folder-of-aliases yourself. Though I suppose
that's beside the point.

* Want to toss it: just move it to the trash. No need to run an
uninstaller or do *anything* else. Sure, there will be a pref
file left behind and maybe some other stuff in my Library...
just a registry entries might be left behind on Windows,
*except* if I opt to clean that stuff up I do not need to
enter any specialized tool such as regedit. Heck, just go
to my ~/Library and look for recently changed files... very
easy (though, again, something most users never do and have
no need to do)

Now, I do not see that the Add/Remove programs this is more
user friendly than dragging to the trash. But as I have said,
on OS X there's more than one way to uninstall; it lacks
consistency.

* Play with it more later: I put it in a "work" folder and
can come back to it as I choose.

Again, you can move a shortcut to a folder without
particular difficulty.

I also, of course, have the option to put the Application into my own user
Application folder so it is not available to other users. I can later, at a
whim, move Application back and forth for all users or just me.

Moving the application's implementation around on a whim
like that isn't actually useful.

I do not put applications I am testing into my Applications folder (where
other users would have access and I might forget they are being tested), nor
do I add them into my folder structure that is similar to Windows "All
Programs" section in the Start menu. What would be the comparably easy and
flexible work flow on Windows?

Your workflow seems to contain a number of stipulations of
the form "it must not do X, like Windows does".

If you construct your requirements like that, obviously
Windows is excluded.

But you *can* move shortcuts around pretty freely
and not break things.

[snip]
The problem is that the user experience for installing and uninstalling
software is inconsistent and sometimes mysterious.

There are *some* programs that are inconsistent... ones that do not work as
I describe above.

I mean the programs are not consistent with each other.

It is also true that there are "odd" programs on Windows
that *do* work much the way they do on Macs - though they rarely are just
one icon and if they are they do not have a semi-hidden folder structure.

Even the old Win3 programs often have an installer, though sometimes
not an uninstaller.

Sometimes you install software by double clicking the icon you
are given (this is for packages) and sometimes by dragging to
/Applications (for 'raw bundles').

Incorrect: software is not "installed" by dragging it to the Applications
folder. That is, however, a reasonable place to put them.

I think it is fair to call that installation.

[snip]
I couldn't say whether "Add/Remove Programs" is more
user friendly than "drag icon to trash", but I'm sure it's more
user friendly than "*sometimes* drag icon to trash".

Not all programs on Windows have uninstallers... or installers for that
matter. For an example, see here: <http://kstudio.net/dlpages/rewin.html>

I think only people from the Mirror Universe will deny that
installers and uninstallers are overwhelmingly common on
Windows.

There are no perfect utopias, of course, but Windows comes
close on this front. :D

[snip]
What it does it does fine, as far as I know. But it does not
do what it ought to do.

Do you think the Windows way is better - where you have uninstallers that
do, sometimes, work but certainly fail on a regular basis?

Yes. And of course, they do not "fail on a regulary basis".

But even if they did, that would be better than "can't uninstall
at all on a regular basis". :D

[snip]
I know better, but it's not worth arguing about, since it's
beside the point: the *installer* is half-baked. That may be
a good reason not to use it, but it is still half-baked for all
that.

What installer? If there is no installer present it is because none is
needed - the program is already installed.

Apple's package installer, Installer.app.

[snip]
(As far as I can tell, bundle-based installations simply do not get optimized.
Too bad that.)

I believe they do the first time they are run.

There is no very long delay when they are first run;
why does the Installer.app version of this take so damn
long if it can be done so fast you don't notice?

Seriously, I'd like to know. :/


.

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