4 ms·

Your list of minor interface tweaks made in 10.8 isn't giving me an overwhelming sense of hostility toward personal computers.

veidr 14y ago
I don't think Apple is actively hostile to the 'power user' subset; they just no longer give a shit. At any rate, they certainly don't send us flowers anymore.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Power users are inherently high-maintenance. The difference between not giving a shit and active hostility is, to a first approximation, in name only.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
What's the last major OSX feature that wasn't bad? For a company known for its successes, you look at Launchpad, inverse scrolling, notification center... does anyone like those features? I've never read a single positive comment about any of them. The most positive thing I've read is that they are easy enough to ignore.
- webwielder 14y ago
  I like inverse scrolling. Old scrolling feels weird to me now. And anyway, why is a minor, optional tweak to scrolling direction anything more than a minor, optional tweak to scrolling direction? It seems like every move Apple makes, no matter how trivial, takes on apocalyptic significance to people. Notification Center is a list of notifications you can turn off if you don't like notifications. What's the big deal? Launchpad is a little icon you can click to see your apps. What's the big deal?
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    The big deal is that the nicest thing you can say about the biggest features of recent OSX versions is "at least you can turn them off".
    - andrewflnr 14y ago
      That is clearly false. GP and others have said that they like inverse scrolling and normal scrolling feels weird now, which is nicer than "at least you can turn it off". QED. Geez.
- veidr 14y ago
  To be fair, there are a lot. FileVault 2 is a massive improvement over the (hackass) first version. In 10.7, Mail got dramatically better at dealing with huge volumes (hundreds of GB, dozens of accounts) without crashing. Buttons finally became roughly rectangular. The OS supports Retina displays, one of the most significant general advances in recent history. Menlo beats Monaco. Resizing windows from any edge was only 20 years too late. Most importantly to me, (since for all my bitching, I spend a lot of my work time writing Mac software) Xcode went from 'spectacularly awful bag of suck' to just 'kinda sucks', and ARC, blocks, Objc-2, non-insane literal syntax are all forces for Good. And yes, I love inverse ('natural') scrolling and it is enabled on all my Macs. :) It's not that Apple does nothing at all good, it's that their focus has become even more relentlessly "systems that the average shopper at walmart can use" at the expense of those users who have a stronger grasp of general computing concepts. When they disable all the extra screens in fullscreen mode, the chances of my dad getting confused and looking at the wrong monitor are reduced. But at the same time, the amount of data I can see at once, and my ability to manipulate it, are also reduced.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    Those improvements are nice and all, but I'm talking about features that would be featured on http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/ http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/. Go look at that page real quick and count the number of things that are good. Not "not bad" or "you can turn it off". Good.
    - veidr 14y ago
      Yeah, I count one (Airplay Mirroring). Two if you include the new version of Safari.
    - webwielder 14y ago
      Well I love share sheets, iCloud syncing, and AirPlay, personally. Gatekeeper is a great compromise between a fully locked down system and a fully vulnerable one. And the new Safari is the best Safari ever, as the saying goes. So I count 4.5 on my end. Anyway, an OS is more than the sum of its newest features. On the whole, OS X 10.8 is a stable, polished, powerful, fully-featured operating system. There might not have been a big feature like Time Machine or Exposé in a couple versions, but I'd much rather use 10.8 than 10.5.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  Enough about Launchpad. It's perfectly ignorable, and no sillier an interface than FrontRow, which shipped on most of the supposedly better earlier versions of OS X. Remember when every Mac shipped with an IR port and a little remote? Laptops shipped with remotes. But apparently an optional app chooser interface (LaunchPad) is the most anti-PC they've ever shipped.
  - moostapha 14y ago
    I honestly miss front row. If front row still existed, I wouldn't be throwing away my 08 blackbook. It's not really powerful enough to be a server, but it would make an awesome HTPC.
    - TorbjornLunde 14y ago
      Movist has a “navigation mode” that works well as a simple Front Row replacement.
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      I thought I would use Front Row a lot when I hooked my Mac Mini up to my TV, but it turns out that most of the video we watch is through a browser--on YouTube, Vimeo, or Hulu. And I control my iTunes library through the Remote app on my iPhone. So I don't miss Front Row.
grey-area 14y ago
Perhaps you'd find the change of company name in 2007 more convincing? 1977-2007 Apple computer 2007-2013 Apple inc I very much doubt they did that just on a whim. As a user/developer of both platforms (iOS and Mac OS X) it's been clear for some time that the company has refocused on consumer gadgets - it's 'the next great thing', to quote Steve Jobs. That change might even accelerate under Tim Cook because that's where the money is. http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from-name/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from... Re the Mac Pro, I'd love to see them sell a stackable tower of modular units like the mini in form factor, offering as much hot pluggable storage and CPU power as you want. Then they could widen the market and sell it to consumers who think of themselves as pros too, and actually make money from it. At present there just isn't enough money in mac pros for Apple inc to bother updating them, and like the server line they have languished.

veidr 14y ago

I don't think Apple is actively hostile to the 'power user' subset; they just no longer give a shit. At any rate, they certainly don't send us flowers anymore.

fpgeek 14y ago
Power users are inherently high-maintenance. The difference between not giving a shit and active hostility is, to a first approximation, in name only.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

What's the last major OSX feature that wasn't bad? For a company known for its successes, you look at Launchpad, inverse scrolling, notification center... does anyone like those features? I've never read a single positive comment about any of them. The most positive thing I've read is that they are easy enough to ignore.

webwielder 14y ago
I like inverse scrolling. Old scrolling feels weird to me now. And anyway, why is a minor, optional tweak to scrolling direction anything more than a minor, optional tweak to scrolling direction? It seems like every move Apple makes, no matter how trivial, takes on apocalyptic significance to people. Notification Center is a list of notifications you can turn off if you don't like notifications. What's the big deal? Launchpad is a little icon you can click to see your apps. What's the big deal?
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  The big deal is that the nicest thing you can say about the biggest features of recent OSX versions is "at least you can turn them off".
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    That is clearly false. GP and others have said that they like inverse scrolling and normal scrolling feels weird now, which is nicer than "at least you can turn it off". QED. Geez.
veidr 14y ago
To be fair, there are a lot. FileVault 2 is a massive improvement over the (hackass) first version. In 10.7, Mail got dramatically better at dealing with huge volumes (hundreds of GB, dozens of accounts) without crashing. Buttons finally became roughly rectangular. The OS supports Retina displays, one of the most significant general advances in recent history. Menlo beats Monaco. Resizing windows from any edge was only 20 years too late. Most importantly to me, (since for all my bitching, I spend a lot of my work time writing Mac software) Xcode went from 'spectacularly awful bag of suck' to just 'kinda sucks', and ARC, blocks, Objc-2, non-insane literal syntax are all forces for Good. And yes, I love inverse ('natural') scrolling and it is enabled on all my Macs. :) It's not that Apple does nothing at all good, it's that their focus has become even more relentlessly "systems that the average shopper at walmart can use" at the expense of those users who have a stronger grasp of general computing concepts. When they disable all the extra screens in fullscreen mode, the chances of my dad getting confused and looking at the wrong monitor are reduced. But at the same time, the amount of data I can see at once, and my ability to manipulate it, are also reduced.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Those improvements are nice and all, but I'm talking about features that would be featured on http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/ http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/. Go look at that page real quick and count the number of things that are good. Not "not bad" or "you can turn it off". Good.
  - veidr 14y ago
    Yeah, I count one (Airplay Mirroring). Two if you include the new version of Safari.
  - webwielder 14y ago
    Well I love share sheets, iCloud syncing, and AirPlay, personally. Gatekeeper is a great compromise between a fully locked down system and a fully vulnerable one. And the new Safari is the best Safari ever, as the saying goes. So I count 4.5 on my end. Anyway, an OS is more than the sum of its newest features. On the whole, OS X 10.8 is a stable, polished, powerful, fully-featured operating system. There might not have been a big feature like Time Machine or Exposé in a couple versions, but I'd much rather use 10.8 than 10.5.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Enough about Launchpad. It's perfectly ignorable, and no sillier an interface than FrontRow, which shipped on most of the supposedly better earlier versions of OS X. Remember when every Mac shipped with an IR port and a little remote? Laptops shipped with remotes. But apparently an optional app chooser interface (LaunchPad) is the most anti-PC they've ever shipped.
- moostapha 14y ago
  I honestly miss front row. If front row still existed, I wouldn't be throwing away my 08 blackbook. It's not really powerful enough to be a server, but it would make an awesome HTPC.
  - TorbjornLunde 14y ago
    Movist has a “navigation mode” that works well as a simple Front Row replacement.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    I thought I would use Front Row a lot when I hooked my Mac Mini up to my TV, but it turns out that most of the video we watch is through a browser--on YouTube, Vimeo, or Hulu. And I control my iTunes library through the Remote app on my iPhone. So I don't miss Front Row.

grey-area 14y ago

Perhaps you'd find the change of company name in 2007 more convincing? 1977-2007 Apple computer 2007-2013 Apple inc I very much doubt they did that just on a whim. As a user/developer of both platforms (iOS and Mac OS X) it's been clear for some time that the company has refocused on consumer gadgets - it's 'the next great thing', to quote Steve Jobs. That change might even accelerate under Tim Cook because that's where the money is. http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from-name/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from... Re the Mac Pro, I'd love to see them sell a stackable tower of modular units like the mini in form factor, offering as much hot pluggable storage and CPU power as you want. Then they could widen the market and sell it to consumers who think of themselves as pros too, and actually make money from it. At present there just isn't enough money in mac pros for Apple inc to bother updating them, and like the server line they have languished.