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Back in the Dark Ages, before OS X was truly usable, I rocked ion on my FreeBSD machine and MachTEN (to run Emacs) on my Macs. This experience conditioned me to

by jfb 14y ago

Back in the Dark Ages, before OS X was truly usable, I rocked ion on my FreeBSD machine and MachTEN (to run Emacs) on my Macs. This experience conditioned me to not fight the platform -- slate, as nice as it looks, seems to me a great deal like fighting the platform. Is it?

esolyt 14y ago
Maybe so. But I don't see a problem with that. OSX window management currently satisfies average users, but not power users. And since power users are exactly the kind of people who can do something about it, they are doing it.
- jfb 14y ago
  I think the distinction between "power users" and "average users" is meaningless. A user is someone who derives utility from a given platform.
  - whaevr 14y ago
    Perhaps so. But what if said user is interested in tweaking things to bend entirely to their own way of (loose use of word) computing. So much to the point that they are willing to (develop and or/change the entirety of) some of the main points of the functioning operating system (window management). Now the difference between that person and the guy thats fine with changing the windows theme to a different color....theres a distinction there the size of the grand canyon.
- zwily 14y ago
  What, exactly, is your definition of "power user"?
  - sjwright 14y ago
    Can't speak for the OP, but mine is someone who is sufficiently comfortable that they will happily accept increased complexity for improved productivity. (Like so many labels it spans a range on a continuum, but the thresholds should be fairly intuitively obvious.)
    - zwily 14y ago
      That's a fine definition, but I don't think it implies that power users cannot be satisfied with OS X window management.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  I disagree: OS X window management is geared towards people on a single laptop screen, no matter their level of proficiency. I am absolutely happy with OS X 10.8 on my MBA 13", and I use the new-style fullscreen quite a bit. Once I arrive in the office and sit down with two external displays, everything suddenly works against me. I don't want to use spaces (it confuses me to have 2 displays x N spaces), but Mission Control insists on the spaces bar. Putting Xcode into full screen will effectively disable the other display. I'd go insane without Divvy.
mauriciogardini 14y ago
As I say in the "About" section of my site, I like Mac OS X a lot, but it is not perfect. Frequently, I see features in other OSs (Normally, in Linux distros) that appeal to me, but I'm not quite ready to make the jump from Mac OS to Linux yet. So, looking for "workarounds" in my current SO seems like the solution to suffice my needs. So, yeah... Fighting the platform. Pretty much it. =]
nileshk 14y ago
I feel like this kind of thing extends the platform rather than fighting it. I don't use Slate (yet), but currently use a modified version of ShiftIt (I added resizing to percents) which does some window management. OS X lacks a way to resize/arrange windows without the mouse and this kind of software fills in the gap. I don't feel like this is fighting the platform (especially since Apple does not provide an alternative to this), but rather it is building on top of the platform. I also use Butler for another option for app switching/launching (Spotlight doesn't do this how I want it) and also to make Emacs PGUP/PGDN keys (Alt-V/Ctrl-V) work in every app. I also configured Cocoa for more Emacs-like functionality to extend the existing Emacs keyboard shortcuts it already supports. And I use BetterTouchTool to add volume up/down/mute to my mouse buttons. That's a lot of changes to the way the default platform works, and I have grown to depend on all these modifications, but it makes OS X work more like how I want it to work, and I think that is absolutely worth doing. I wasn't really completely happy with OS X until I had these things in place. That these changes are made through 3rd party software without any horrible hacks (that I know of) makes me feel like this is extending rather than fighting. On the otherhand, I do occasionally jailbreak my iPhone, and generally end up reverting back to stock, because that is fighting the platform.

by jfb 14y ago

esolyt 14y ago

Maybe so. But I don't see a problem with that. OSX window management currently satisfies average users, but not power users. And since power users are exactly the kind of people who can do something about it, they are doing it.

jfb 14y ago
I think the distinction between "power users" and "average users" is meaningless. A user is someone who derives utility from a given platform.
- whaevr 14y ago
  Perhaps so. But what if said user is interested in tweaking things to bend entirely to their own way of (loose use of word) computing. So much to the point that they are willing to (develop and or/change the entirety of) some of the main points of the functioning operating system (window management). Now the difference between that person and the guy thats fine with changing the windows theme to a different color....theres a distinction there the size of the grand canyon.
zwily 14y ago
What, exactly, is your definition of "power user"?
- sjwright 14y ago
  Can't speak for the OP, but mine is someone who is sufficiently comfortable that they will happily accept increased complexity for improved productivity. (Like so many labels it spans a range on a continuum, but the thresholds should be fairly intuitively obvious.)
  - zwily 14y ago
    That's a fine definition, but I don't think it implies that power users cannot be satisfied with OS X window management.
gurkendoktor 14y ago
I disagree: OS X window management is geared towards people on a single laptop screen, no matter their level of proficiency. I am absolutely happy with OS X 10.8 on my MBA 13", and I use the new-style fullscreen quite a bit. Once I arrive in the office and sit down with two external displays, everything suddenly works against me. I don't want to use spaces (it confuses me to have 2 displays x N spaces), but Mission Control insists on the spaces bar. Putting Xcode into full screen will effectively disable the other display. I'd go insane without Divvy.

mauriciogardini 14y ago

As I say in the "About" section of my site, I like Mac OS X a lot, but it is not perfect. Frequently, I see features in other OSs (Normally, in Linux distros) that appeal to me, but I'm not quite ready to make the jump from Mac OS to Linux yet. So, looking for "workarounds" in my current SO seems like the solution to suffice my needs. So, yeah... Fighting the platform. Pretty much it. =]

nileshk 14y ago

I feel like this kind of thing extends the platform rather than fighting it. I don't use Slate (yet), but currently use a modified version of ShiftIt (I added resizing to percents) which does some window management. OS X lacks a way to resize/arrange windows without the mouse and this kind of software fills in the gap. I don't feel like this is fighting the platform (especially since Apple does not provide an alternative to this), but rather it is building on top of the platform. I also use Butler for another option for app switching/launching (Spotlight doesn't do this how I want it) and also to make Emacs PGUP/PGDN keys (Alt-V/Ctrl-V) work in every app. I also configured Cocoa for more Emacs-like functionality to extend the existing Emacs keyboard shortcuts it already supports. And I use BetterTouchTool to add volume up/down/mute to my mouse buttons. That's a lot of changes to the way the default platform works, and I have grown to depend on all these modifications, but it makes OS X work more like how I want it to work, and I think that is absolutely worth doing. I wasn't really completely happy with OS X until I had these things in place. That these changes are made through 3rd party software without any horrible hacks (that I know of) makes me feel like this is extending rather than fighting. On the otherhand, I do occasionally jailbreak my iPhone, and generally end up reverting back to stock, because that is fighting the platform.