MacOS X a dog or just in need of a good bitch slap?

WIndowshade extension? Sounds like more crap I don't need, which is precisely my problem with Snow Leopard. I'm running a flagship 27" imac which right now is totally frozen. Why? Because I am running Pshop and Lightroom in only 8gb of memory. Incredible. I need a light OS that can handle the small tasks I throw at it, not something that will push sandwiches in my mouth.

> remember the purple button? Steve won. Made it green and thought you'd forget. And as then, I agree with the single-window mode now [...] it's all optional, folks

But this marks the death of the "zoom" button, an extraordinarily useful window-management function of the Mac which was never even consistently implemented by Apple's own OS X programs. Not optional in any way.

The "Classic" Mac OS -- especially its Finder -- was always the best place to use multiple windows to manage complex tasks; OS X with its misshapen, half-baked Finder never restored the useful consistency and ease of using multi-windows, because from the beginning Steve was pushing the single-window UIs everywhere. If you cripple the window-management features, of course single-window UIs are easier to use; and of course they're simpler for total novice users. The problem is that they make complex tasks and multitasking harder for expert users. Instead of progressive disclosure, the state of Mac UI is more and more tilted toward one-simple-UI-for-all. It's looking less and less Mac-like, in the old sense of the word.

I'm being sarcastic, Baha. Windowshade was an extension that someone wrote because everyone hated that OS X took it out. My buddy laughed yesterday, "Remember when all you Mac users used to do this (does it on his Fedora machine)? What was the point of that?" Shrinking windows down to an easy-to-lose bar was kind of a ridiculous patch to a bigger issue. Thus always, progress. Sounds like what irritates you is Adobe applications. How Mac-optimized do you think they are? Jobs hates Adobe because you blame Apple for the poor experience. The Adobe applications are monolithic, totally the opposite of the task-targeted apps that run on a "light OS" called iOS. Bringing a little of that philosophy back to the Mac is a good thing. Though better pipes between apps would be welcome with that.

Roger, I'm curious as to how many of us use the green button. Personally I never use it specifically because of that inconsistent implementation across all apps. Probably stems from being a difficult thing to implement at the system level without knowing the contents of a window.

I don't discount the value of a multi-window interface, but I think I'd like to see some innovation on that. Perhaps that Windows 7 two-pane mode is good. Or what if everything had some snapping like palettes in Adobe apps? Windows and focus get lost too easily; something fullscreen that allows arrangement could be useful, much like the environment in iMovie, etc. except across apps.

As a rule, I despise the single-window approach, though I do have a couple of exceptions to that. And yes, this is the return of that fucking purple button.

Interestingly, though, it's also a metaphor for something that no one has touched on yet, which is good for Apple, and probably good overall, but bad for people like us.

Why did the purple button disappear way back when? Because the geek crowd was large enough and influential enough (because the market was, let's face it, so small) that we could actually effect change inside Apple. Now? The turn-over in Mac hardware purchases and the influx of new blood is great for Apple the company, and great (n a general sense) for the ecosystem, but it sucks because we long-timers are now truly marginalized. You won't see the uproar do any good because, as a percentage of revenue/unit sales, we don't really matter anymore.

> a difficult thing to implement at the system level without knowing the contents of a window

This makes no sense to me. Of course "zoom" was window-content-aware; that's the whole point of the function. Mac OS 9 had functional, consistent "zoom" controls on every window in every app, because it was part of the HIG. Only the crappiest Windows-ported applications ever used the zoom control to mean "maximize." My point is that the perennially promised return of Mac-like usability is being replaced, as a goal, by iPad-like simplicity as the only available option. They keep saying "the Mac is like a truck, the iPad is a sportscar," but even while they say that they're removing cargo capacity and durability and putting in bucket seats. Maybe single-window/full-screen mode isn't the worst idea in the world, I don't know; but zoom is something that should have worked right ten years ago, and now it's just being removed instead.

The Mac App Store is another thing entirely, and represents a much better idea of how to bring the good sides of the iOS experience to the Mac. But aside from the enhancements/renaming to Expose, the UI is yet another in a long series of clusterfucks.

Quote
Roger
Of course "zoom" was window-content-aware; that's the whole point of the function.

What I said was "at the system level." Unlike the other widgets which know what to do with every NSWindow, the zoom depends on the nature of the contents of that window, so the programmer often has to implement it. The OS doesn't know if it should snap to the edges of the content, or maximize because the content will flow to the boundary - depending on how custom the content view is.

Anyway, that's my theory as to why it's inconsistent now. We're in agreement that it sucks currently. I don't remember how perfectly OS 9's zoom worked. How would you define the zoom function?

Zoom is a DISASTER on OS X. I want it to work simply and effectively, ideally as it does in windows where it's a maximize button. Right now it's neither this nor that.

Adobe I have no problem with. I'd like more consistency, but their apps just work.

Lion on the other hand… what a disaster. Hope I can get a good Macbook Pro without running that mangey cat.

Just for the record, zoom *is* supposed to be inconsistent from app to app for the exact reasons mentioned: the meaning of zoom differs from content form to content form. Now,... there's correctly inconsistent and there's random. Mac OS 9 seemed to be majority "correctly inconsistent". These days, it's far more random.

Baha,

The churn you're having with multiple apps sounds more like slow system disk. Are you on an SSD? I thought I read you put in one of the hybrids.

Just curious what your pagein/pageout ratio is when you're seeing those problems.

> How would you define the zoom function?

I don't have the classic HIG handy, but the basic (and fully consistent!) semantics of it under (ca.) System 6-Mac OS 9 were always:

* (if not zoomed already, then) make window big enough to show as much of the content as possible, and no bigger;
* (if already zoomed, then) toggle back to previous window size.

The "no bigger than necessary for the content" part was the logical difference between "zoom" and "maximize," and while it did mean a bit of extra implementation effort (something that in many cases the app framework would handle rather than the individual developer) it made for a way more usable multi-window environment than OS X has ever had.

I actually do have it handy. pp. 168-170, Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. (And it can be found here: http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf )

Window Behaviors
Your application sets values for the initial size and position of a window. This
is called the standard state of the window. The user can change the size and
location of the window to a state that is more useful or convenient, the user
state. The user can then toggle between the standard state and the user state
by using the zoom box. Figure 5-38 shows an enlarged view of the zoom box.
Figure 5-38 The zoom box
Using the zoom box, the user can quickly manipulate windows to have access
to other icons or windows or to look at a document in a larger size or different
location. The user must drag or resize a window at least seven pixels to cause
a change in the user state.
A window’s standard state depends on the size and location that are best
suited to working on the document. Macintosh monitors come in many
sizes, and multiple monitors can be configured in many different ways, so
applications should never simply assume that the standard state should be as
large as the screen. Frequently the monitor is larger, sometimes much larger,
than the most useful size for a window. Screen real estate is valuable, so use
screen-sized windows only when they make sense. Figure 5-39 shows the
standard state and the user state of a window on the same size screen.

A document for a word-processing program has a well-defined most useful
width (the width of a page) and most useful height (the height of the screen).
Therefore the width of the standard state should be the width of a page or the
width of the screen, whichever is smaller. (When determining the width of
the standard state, it’s a good idea to leave room on the right side of larger
monitors so that desktop icons are not obscured when the user switches to the
Finder.) The height of the standard state should be the height of the screen or
the length of a page, whichever is smaller.
When a user clicks the zoom box to change a window from the user state to
the standard state, first determine the appropriate size of the standard state.
Move the window as little as possible to make it the standard size, and keep
the window on the screen.
Zooming behavior in multiscreen environments should not violate any of
the guidelines described in this chapter, but it does introduce one additional
guideline. The standard state should be on the monitor containing the largest
portion of the window, not necessarily on the monitor with the menu bar.
This means the standard state for a single window may be on different
monitors at different times if the user moves the window around. In any case,
the standard state for any window must always be fully contained on a
single screen.
The user can’t change the standard size and location of a window, but your
application can change the standard state when appropriate. For example, a
word processor might define the standard size and location as wide enough
to display a document whose width is specified in the Page Setup dialog box.
If the user specifies a wider or narrower document, the application might
change the values for the standard state to reflect that change.
As described in the section “Window Positions,” earlier in this chapter, open a
window in the last state it was in when possible. Your application must make
sure that the user state fits on the current screen. That is, if the window was
previously open on a different screen, you need to determine the correct
size and location for the current screen. Don’t open a window off of a
user’s screen.

Bought my parents an iPad yesterday, it's a birthday gift to my mom but we're silently hoping my dad would somehow become interested in computers (he's hated them all his life).

I couldn't help but notice how the large screen real estate is lost with developers creating all sorts of really small dialogs that are hard to press when you've got large hands (not sausage fingers). Also, many iOS applications do really work differently. Disappointing really, for a computer that is aimed at novices.

Still, he managed to be interested in it for about an hour, then putting it away while disclaiming that something like that was not meant for him. And he picked up his newspaper. Sigh...

I think it is more acceptable for an iOS app to "work differently." They take over the entire UI and can present a different (though hopefully internally consistent) paradigm. Ideally, you'd want to stay consistent with the basics (pinch to zoom, right flick, left flick) for easy user acclimatization. Kind of like full screen games on the Mac violate some of the interface rules.

Tom  … yes, it's what it sounds like… slow system disk indeed.

The hybrid is in the Macbook Pro. This is the 27" iMac. Stock drive from Apple.

Going to the Apple Web site scares me these days. It had a degree of predictability … simply easy enough to follow for certain things. now the new macbook air promo takes over everything… a sign of bad thinking that scares me about the next OS.

You're afraid for the first two seconds until the rest of the site is revealed?

At least you can be reassured that the web site team is totally removed from the os design team... and marketing is in between the two.

ddt

10.6.5 update is out.

Yeah, I can learn to live without Flash.

I'm getting numerous warning emails not to install 10.6.5 on any machine with PGP WDE installed.... that would be the thing TPTB forced everyone to put on their laptops.....