(and
a small introduction for myself...)
Hi. My
name is Will. This is my first article. I hope it's
half-interesting to you!
My first
computer was a Mac Plus, with the System 6 OS. A couple of
years ago I turned it on again: that thing
turned
on so
quickly and was so snappy I couldn't believe it.
There's
certainly something to be said in design simplicity. Anyway,
over the years I never learned to program anything more
than HyperCard (may it rest in peace) until Uni when I
learnt a
little Ada, C, and a fair bit of MATLAB. I'd like
to pick up Cocoa when I have the time. Oh, and I can write
simple
stuff in Applescript as well.
I use a
PC for my research simply due to the facts that firstly,
Mac hardware has
been very underpowered versus
price compared
to the competition for the last few years; and more importantly,
the Engineering software I require simply is not available
for Mac OS X. MATLAB for Mac has been released, but it’s
a bit of a dog, running half in X11 and half in a Java
app that simply is more sluggish and (slightly) buggy
on my 12" Powerbook
(867MHz) than on my cheap Windows PC supplied for my
use by my department.
So, I use
this PC regularly (running Windows 2000 Professional),
but only really out of necessity. My brother also owns
a Windows XP desktop which he bought in order to use
the programs
that
he had to use for his Graphics subject at school (teaching
design on a PC? Dear me). So that's my background
on Windows. I can find my way around, but I'm
certainly not as proficient as in Mac OS X or below.
(Sometimes
I feel a little upset that all of my Classic Mac OS
knowledge is now
useless and wasting valuable space in my brain.)
Here
we are. What is this article going to be about? Well,
I was going to write about the fact that Windows
seems
to be very feature rich: I am often surprised by
the number of things
you can do with it that are built in, especially
when you then go to some earlier versions of Mac OS X and
the feature
set
is quite sparse.
But then
I realised that well, if Apple spent years developing Mac
OS X between releases, it'd
be feature rich as well. That one's fairly simple.
But is the result the same after three years if (like Apple)
you release an update every
year compared to (like MS) if you release only
once in this time? I would argue no. So, what are the differences
between
our friend Mac OS X and our acquaintance Windows?
I'm
talking about generalities, here, not specifics.
Now,
I must add the proviso that I have had more exposure
to Windows 2000 Professional than Windows
XP, so there’s
a small chance my opinion may be outdated. Let's
see where it takes us!
Okay. While
it may seem that this is supposed to be a two-sided article,
I'm really writing it for the perspective
it gives to the Mac OS X side of things. Simply
for the reason
that I care about Mac OS X and I don’t
care about Windows (although I have interest
in it, certainly!).
This may
be a loaded statement, but I'm going to say
that at the end of its life, the classic
Mac OS was a little outdated compared to the Windows
of the time, but nonetheless
could mostly hold its own. With some caveats
of course. Then Mac OS X and Windows were
released, at about the same time.
I feel that also, until now, Mac OS X and
Windows XP have never been directly comparable — it
has taken Apple three-ish years to catch
up with the feature set. Windows XP was complete
and huge, whereas Mac OS X was lacking in
many departments.
However, it appears now that Apple has an
upper hand until Longhorn is released, at which time
all bets are off. But that’s
for a later article!
What changed
at Apple that put it so far behind? Before I go into
that, however, I
must talk
specifically about
what
I mean
when I say that Windows was so far advanced
on Mac OS X, because that's a pretty
inflammatory statement in some circles.
To
generalise by specific example: Back
when XP was released, it included Firewire
over
IP. This
is only
now available
in Panther out of the box. Open up the
Windows Control Panel and
you find many many options and configurations
that simply were/are not available in
Mac OS X. As I
said, this discrepancy
has
narrowed. Now, I am a firm believer in
the adage that too many options is bad — as
a user you simply shouldn't
have to choose. However, back when Mac
OS X was first released, there was so
much more in Windows that was built-in
there
wasn't
much of a contest feature-wise. (Don't
forget that I have said that this is
no longer the case!) Networking, until
Rendezvous, was something that Windows
simply had dominance over for a long
time.
Clearly
there has been a change in the
way everything works. In Microsoft
land, and
in pre-Mac OS X
Apple land, major
new releases are/were ground-breaking
huge change-the-world things.
The operating system is a slow lumbering
beast that takes years of work. But
no more! Mac
OS X, we are
very glad
to know, is
constantly being updated, and while
the updates aren't
as major, they are all the more welcome
for their rapidity. How has this changed
life in Mac OS X Apple land?
Well, like
I mentioned, it all started very slowly. Rather than building
up
internal versions year
after year and
eventually releasing a product of
Longhorn proportions, Apple decided
to sell small with a sparse OS that
only could get better with time.
In contrast
to
Microsoft,
who put
all of their
developer
eggs into one basket to create a
fully fledged OS that shouldn't
need much work once it’s done.
Unfortunately, this has the side
effect of becoming very complex;
rarely is
an optimal
interface developed the first time
around. With the luxury of frequent
updates, the UI et al. can be iterated
to converge
on simple but efficient solutions.
The disadvantage of this is that
over time ones opinions and methods
can
change considerably,
and if the whole is not taken into
account, a lack of consistency can
result very easily. Hello Apple.
Frequent
updates to Mac OS X have yielded
a product that now is feature-rich
and stable. And (generally)
fast!
Usually it's
only two of the three, so we're
loving it. But there have been
downsides.
What I'm scared about with
Apple is that they aren't
spending enough time communicating
between
the different software departments.
The sacrifice is consistency,
and sometimes I'm startled
by the lack of it. At the moment,
I'm writing an email in Mail.app.
I have enabled the Applescript
menu in the menubar. It is a little
known
fact
that Applescripts may arranged
in there so that they only appear
on
a per-application basis. The short
of it is that I have
a menu on the right with my Mail
Applescripts in it.
(The long
of it is — handy tip! — that
if I create the folder ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail/
and put Applescripts
in there, they will only be visible
from within Mail itself.)
However,
it appears that the developers of Mail didn't
know about this script menu.
So they have included another menu, just left of Help,
with the same script menu icon. The
scripts that go here are located
in a separate folder, though: these scripts go in ~/Library/Scripts/Mail
Scripts/. Here is
my menubar at the moment:
Oh
my god! Two script menus! What’s worse is that this
also occurs in Address Book.
Considering we’re in the
third revision of the OS,
you’d
think they'd have
a bit more of a handle
on things like this. This isn't
the only aspect of the
applications in the OS that makes me cringe.
Why does Safari not use
the regular toolbar that everyone
is so fond of? (a la Finder
and Mail windows to name
just two.)
Why is iPhoto so weird?
I mean, it's got so many
useless buttons down the
bottom that
you can hardly shrink the
window at all, and you
can't remove them! I won’t
write much about iPhoto now,
but I do believe a whole
article could
be written about how it should
be improved.
Somehow
Apple has managed to avoid the "bloat" factor
of continually adding features;
paradoxically, their OS
has continued to become faster
and faster. This method
of affairs cannot continue indefinitely — but
by then it will assumedly
be time for Mac OS Y and
a new paradigm. In the
meantime, I wish Apple would hire a
couple of people like the
Daring Fireball guy, like the Betalogue guy, like the Membranophonist's
Ramblings guy, who all
pick up on the little details
in their weblogs that Apple
should absolutely be putting
into place
in order to give their
OS rock solid consistency.
Because
it's generally all
UI, this stuff isn't
too hard to change. I
understand that during testing, hundreds and thousands
of bugs can be
discovered and only a fraction
of them fixed. But keeping
everyone communicating, simply using an application
for half an hour, can bring to light these usability
inconsistencies (I won't
go so far as to say usability
issues just
yet!) which really shouldn't
be there.
What inconsistencies
to you hate?
Don’t you wish that Apple included my Time Zone on my
iPod so that my appointments
aren't half an hour out
of sync with Adelaide
time?
Well! That's
a long article just to get around to saying I hate inconsistencies
in Mac OS X. Do you think I was
a bit
indulgent? Next time
I'll cut to the chase and complain
about actual details.
Yeah?
Have fun!
Will Robertson.
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have your own thoughts regarding this article or this issue
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