Re: First thoughts on Lion

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:43:33 -0700, Snit
<usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Me! But I have to admit that we don't know Lion will be a dud yet. Not
for sure.

Well, it would not only have to be a dud but also make previous releases
retroactive duds. I do not see how it could do that.

Nah. Leopard and Snow Leopard were pretty weak. But we've already had
those threads.

[snip]
I think we agree more than we disagree. I did not mean to suggest that
Launchpad looks like the Start menu, but that it serves a similar
purpose: a master list of all your apps. It's not "OS-specific", of
course.

So you are saying it is Start-menu like because it is used to open
applications. That is it. Then the Start-menu is like the application
folder of Classic Mac OS.

No. Start menu like because it lists all the applications. Launching
is just sort of a sideline, I'm sure. :D

Oh sure, they said it was called "Launchpad". But that was just a
typo. It's really called "Listpad". You'll see.

[snip]
It does have "stacks" though. And the dock is always available - it's
not a global mode. Do you really use more apps than it can hold, even
with stacks?

I would not want the dock to go away... but for those of us with *lots* of
apps, the new tool will be very handy.

It doesn't look to me like it'll be any better than the Finder for
that. It scrolls, it's got folders, sure. But what has it got that the
Finder lacks?

You know what Launchpad should be. It should be the Finder, maximized.
How about that?

[snip]
Well, it's what you've got on the Mac. But will app store apps wind up
in that directory? I'm guessing not. They'll be tied to an iTunes
account, and therefore per-user.

I would be shocked if they were not there. Good: we each have a prediction
we can check in the next 90 days.

Fair enough. Let's see how it turned out.

[snip]
What new ways? I do not follow.

Well, to exit Expose, you just click anywhere.

To exit Dashboard, you bang the mouse into a corner of the screen.

Huh? Click anywhere.

Not if it's on widget, of course. You can click in the background, but
I never did that because I never thought of it. It's quite nonobvious.

To exit Time Machine, you click a funny-looking 'Close' button.

Ah, yes, it is different than the other two. Fair enough. Though also a
different context, but I can see where a click off main elements would make
sense to close it.

Yeah, one could imagine a consistent UI where these mode always have a
background area you click to dismiss the mode. This seems weak- it a
pretty nonobvious way to do it. But it could be consistently done.

I don't think that's what Apple has done, however.

It looks like you exit Launchpad, you 'flick' your trackpad. And then
you do it a few more times, as it's apparently not very reliable. :D

I dunno, maybe the 'flick' we saw in the demo works in all these
modes, but Apple has invented a lot of ways to exit a full-screen
mode.

I am sure there will be mouse methods to exit it as well.

I wonder what the methods will be. Flick, flick?

[snip]
I just said: the dock and the finder. The other program launchers.

The work together. Have you seen the demo?

I have. I did not notice any "working together" though. Maybe I was
distracting by all the multitouch. What are you refering to?

The system works together as a whole: installed apps, for example, can be on
the dock or not... though the app store puts them there by default.

I am not following you. Being able to launch the same app is "working
together"?

[snip]
That's interesting. The dock doesn't have the problem: it's not a
global mode, and you never exit it. If you want to launch three
things, you click three things. You don't need to do anything special.

A very practical demonstration of a weakness of the modal approach.

How is it a weakness to give people more room than the dock. I know mine is
very crowded. Now if they would let me have app-folders on the left hand
side I would be really happy.

It is a weakness to have to explicitly enter and exit the thing. Even
if you know how, this makes it less available than the dock.

It's not even clear to me you can get more icons into the Launchpad's
first page than the dock. The dock supports small icons, after all.

[snip]
I don't think this is entirely clear; they may be doing this, or they
may not. I do think it would be a shame if Mission Control replaced
Expose entirely. The Mac really needs a window-switching device,
rather than just app-switching. Expose does that pretty well.

Mission control allows for window switching. So does the dock, really.

Well, it does, but it looked to me like it was a multi-step process:
you go to the app, then the window. With ordinary Expose, not.

Of course, with Expose you have to summon it. Nothing can beat the
taskbar. And I mean the real damn taskbar, not that Windows 7 thing.
And get off of my lawn, you lousy kids, etc, etc.

[snip]
I hope so too; it'd help. But I rarely find any advantage to
fullscreen over traditional maximization; the difference in workspace
is very small, after all.

It reduces clutter. Modern UIs have become quite cluttered.

Ah. That's different: you like the fullscreen mode because the UI you
get when in it was simpler. But what if it was simpler, and yet not
full screen?

This is what WMP is like. The WMP player window has the same UI as you
get in full screen mode, but in a window. This UI even fades away when
you aren't using it.

I think Snow Leopard's DVD player does something of this sort, also,
doesn't it?

[snip]
We'll see. Apple has not shown us what happens to an older, pre-Lion
app when you 'zoom' it on Lion. Perhaps they are just adding another,
additional, inconsistent behavior. Perhaps not.

Could be. That would be *bad*... the green dot would become even more of a
mystery. And it may be what is coming.

Hey, awsome. If it turns out Apple does this, you'll already have
admitted it was a mistake. Cool.

[snip]
I hope so. And it may be: it's not clear why 3rd party develoeprs
would put a large amount of effort to do it Apple's way, if that makes
their app worse.

What app would it make worse?

Any app, provided the "full screen" UI that app has is bad enough.
It'll be a case by case thing, I'm sure.

The thing is- if you have a great UI for 'full screen', why is that
not a great UI for use in a window? How does this make any sense
beyond "Apple is doing it, so it must be good?"

[snip]
Not sure I follow.

It looked to me, from the brief demos, that the 'full screen' UIs were
very iPad-like, even iPhone-like. That is: they had a very compact UI,
as if they need to squeeze everything into a very small space.

Things were more spread out... what screen looked squeezed together to you?

The iPhoto one was most remarkable to me, if I have not misidentified
it. A thin black strip along the bottom with controls, and everything
else is a matrix of thumbnails.

Uncluttered, perhaps, but it's just not making use of the vast tracts
of screen that are there. I'd work better on a small screen.

Perhaps if we run Lion on a Mac Plus? :D

[snip]
That's what it looked like in the demo. None of us have seem very much
of these UIs, of course. But this thread is all about the first
impressions.

I suspect there will be differences as Apple works out the kinks in this...
but nothing real bad.

It is too soon to know. But I assume the worst. And you knew I would.

[snip]
I suspect there will be a consistent way to leave full screen mode. If not
that would be rather absurd.

It would. I do hope that the consistent way is not that multi-touch
flick gesture.

Absolutely agreed. If this is dependent on multitouch it will suck.

Though Apple talked a lot about how they were bringing the iPhone
experience 'back to the Mac', and specifically called out their
mouse-gesture-pad-thing as part of that.

They might just be going that way.

[snip]
The thing is, it seemed to me to be just like any other Apple product
preview. They explain their plans, but they never make commitments.

Apple rarely makes promises... they know that development is filled with
uncertainty. They under-promise and deliver more.

Or less, as the case may be. Leopard was such fun for us WinTrolls.

[snip]
.

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