Thoughts on OS-X/UNIX/and MacOS

It wasn't a bad example. It was a great example for me! :)

"but using CLI text editors is archaic, I really don't see the advantages of doing that. "

Working on your local system, I don't see any either. Wizards at them will tell you they're faster, and they probably are for people who've memorized all the commands.

But when you start working on remote servers, especially a sick remote server (ie, your bandwith or free cpu time isn't great), it's a lot nicer to be able to ssh in and use a CLI and text editor to fix things, rather than to open some kind of remote x-windows session (all of which I've found to be very slow in the best of circumstances).

BBEdit tries to address this by essentially working on a remote file through the GUI, but it has problems working through a VPN... still, it comes close.

Anyway, my point, weak though it was, is that long time Mac users shouldn't 'fear' the CLI as in some cases a text based configuration is quite easy to use. A good GUI interface to the same configuration would usually be better, I'll admit.

One thing I find kindof amusing, being at least partially on the outside looking in at the Mac community, is that most Mac power-users know all the hotkey commands and hardly ever USE the GUI when they can possibly avoid it.

My (totally uninformed) guess is that if you took a Mac power user, and a Windows power user, neither of which had ever worked with a CLI, and set them to learn how to use it, the Mac user would pick it up a lot faster.

Not that there's any point to that...just an idle observation.
 
It is interesting to see what people think about the CLI and GUI aspects of MacOS X, I for one really like the CLI and I find it refreshing to be able to drop into a terminal and work away.

But.

I have been very distressed lately while grabbing the latest shareware/freeware for MacOS X.

(Authors, please take no offense to what I am going to say, I'm just using pages as examples...)

To begin, remember way back when you first started using a Mac, you became familiar with the concepts of an Application, a document, a folder, a disk, fairly straightforward and understandable thoughts. To install an application you drag the application into usually the Applications folder, and thats where your applications reside. Install documentation was not necessary, everything was assumed! I always got a kick out of checking out Documentation in hybrid manuals. Windows Docs, 2 pages or more.. Mac Docs were less than half a page. (Insert CD, open Installer, Launch App)

Which brings be to my current quibble with not necessarily OSX, but developers for it.

Check out this page:
http://www.lisai.net/~hamada/Acti/MacOSX/MacOSX.html

Its a nifty screen saver for OSX! (I recommend it too! :)

But, if you read on... here is the description:
"Neko.saver (a Cocoa port of 'xneko' screensaver)"
"* Download version 0.3 of PPC binary"

Whats a PPC binary? (Yes... -I- know what it is, but...) Does the average user know what one is? As you start saying, "Mac users aren't stupid... and don't call them ignorant!", I am not doing anything of the sort. In fact I think it is amazing that we haven't had to deal with this until now. Mac users are used to a higher, more abstract level of operation, something that fits thier mind set, and they understand what the 'system' is doing.

For some reason, *nix terminology and all the technobabble that goes along with it is worming its way into Mac OSX!

Lets check out another page here, perhaps some install instructions.
http://www.classicmenu.com/

This is a program to restore the much lamented Apple Menu to Mac OSX, I don't want to turn this into an Apple Menu debate, I'm just focusing on thier install documentation.

"* Open a terminal window in the Terminal application (located in Applications: Utilities:).
* Type cd followed by a space, then drag the folder containing the downloaded file into the terminal window and press return.
* Type the command tar -xzf classicmenu.tar.gz followed by return to extract the files.
* Close the terminal window and open the newly-created Classic Menu 2.1 folder in the Finder."

Here inlies the problem. A CLI is a good quick and dirty way out of problems. It saves alot of time on the developer's side, and it is (usually) pretty logical to the person writing the docs/software. Problem is, most mac users have not seen this before, and rightly so. What happened to my Mac-like documentation, "Insert CD, Open Installer, Click Installer, Play".

I don't know where the problem lies, but there is an easy way to fix it. Now all you (myself included) CLI fans, will cry murder, but I don't think the terminal app should even be included on the main install CD. I don't want a developer (again, myself included) to ever even have the option of saying, "Ah well, pop open the terminal, that'll work..."

The minute we do that, the GUI is thrown down the toilet. Now... on the otherside, the GUI needs to be improved by leaps and bounds. If you remove the terminal, we need every user desireable (define as you will) function to be available somehow, someway through the GUI.

Now, of course not -every- command line function can be emulated, replaced, or even routed, but everything that a user would -need- (need being the important word) should be there...

Now, for those of us that like to type like so:
"perldoc perlstyle | perl -ne '($_)=m%it.d (\w+\s\w+)%;y%b%M%;print'"

Then I think I can safely say that yes, we can handle downloading a 500k Application off of Apple's site, or wherever. (The terminal app)

Most (all?) developers should have some net access, that can handle a 500k, heck even 5 meg download (a spiffy terminal app).

For the rest of us, why bother? We shouldn't need it, and if a user feels he or she wants to dabble, who's to stop them? Just download the terminal app.

The important thing is to stress to developers that the terminal is NOT a standard part of the Mac OS, and should not ever be. It can be considered a door into the bowels of the system, that some like, others don't, but it should never be expected to be there.

Yes, I am sure there will be apps, tools, whatever that are exceptions to this rule, and fit the CLI, but I for one, do not want to see the average user daunted with the task of typing out lines of cryptic stuff, just to figure out the web page had a typo on it, or they screwed up something and then have one VERY frustrated user.

Well, I think that has gone on long enough! :)

Thanks for listening!

I hope OSX is all we hope it to be.
 
:D ( I wanted 2 icons on the subject line :p lol ... )
Anyway to the point...

I DON'T want the terminal to be a seperate download from the OS X CD. I WANT it to be there for me to use. I would like to use the CLI, but I do not know much about UNIX. I learned enough to get me around when I started programming in Java on a Sun machine.

Having said that, I DO NOT WANT SOFTWARE THAT RADICALLY DEPARTS FROM THE OLD WAY OF INSTALLING THINGS. I want things to be simple. Personally I have an idea what a binary is BUT I wasnt to use a GUI installer and NOT have to meddle with the CLI, just because I AM NOT a proficient user of the UNIX (or DOS) CLI. If I were I would not have any problem for myself.
But there are other mac users out there that are even less acustomed to the CLI.
My girlfriend ( A PC person) was doing a report on Macintoshes and their OS, and her conclusion?
"SO easy that your Grandmother can use it"
DO developpers understand this concept ??? THis has been the concept of the Mac ever since its introduction. I doubt that a granny will ever master the CLI, and what happend if she wants to install a nice little app, and the develloper has made it so that you NEED to use the CLI ?
The concept of "The mac is so easy to use" goes down the drain.
I think developpers should not expect their users to meddle with the CLI to install their apps, that
is for apps that are for consumers. IF the apps are for devellopers, the fine, use the CLI, use the GUI, use mind control peripherals for all I care (Hint: sarcasm :p )

I know it's a temptation but in the end one of two things will happen if devs use the CLI for end uers not fully educated un UNIX
1) Apple concept of ease oes down
or
2) Their apps will not be used...

a good example is me, this past weekend. I recently aquired a 150Mhz PC (Old piece of sh*t but useful for experimentation) and so I went online to freeos.com and treid getting alternate OSs to load on it so I could try em out. I downloaded several that were EXE files, but I stayed away from the .tgz files just because to me it posses greater trouble to download several TGZ files and try to make use of em....

That's my opinion ;)

ooohhh and SAVE THE TERMINAL... dont get rid of it :p

Admiral

PS: Are we on page 8 yet ?? :p
 
"Now all you (myself included) CLI fans, will cry murder, but I don't think the terminal app should even be included on the main install CD."

Although there has been no official word on this, the unofficial word (from Sal ?? who is one of the Applescript gurus at Apple, and posted this as his best guess over at the MacNN forums a while back) is that the terminal won't be part of the default installation of OS X.

People jump up and down a lot over the PB. I think Apple kind of shot itself in the foot releasing it to the general public. People see this unfinished piece of software and assume that this is how it'll be when it ships (my prediction is that it'll ship late summer 2001).

I'm not speaking of present company, but I've been on lists where people are screaming about how much OS X sucks because the print drivers don't work, or whatever... hell, I saw one guy asking what kinds of e-commerce solutions people were using in OS X, and he specified NOT OS X server. This fellow wanted to run his e-commerce application on beta software!?! Sheesh


Is there a solid and dependable (free) installer package available to developers at this point? If not, is the lack of such a tool causing some of the beta-days installation heartache? I mean, when someone ports python or something and the installation consists of untarring it, I can relate. Basically someone's just taken the source code and tweaked it a little to get it to compile under OS X PB and thrown it out there. That's cool. I'd rather have that than wait another month while they built a slick gui installer for something I'm going to run from the CLI anyway.

But stuff like replacement desktop utilities (Apple menu replacements or control strip replacements or what have you), or anything coded from the ground up to be an OS X program, you'd think a gui installer wouldn't be that much more work...
 
the two reasons I chose to buy a macintosh are Mac OS X and I am a loyal mac user...but that is beside the point of this post. I really like how Mac OS X is setup because I have the opportunity to learn the UNIX operating system. Knowing the power of unix/linux over Windows made me wanting to hone my baby CLI skills. I think Apple did a great job of leaving the Command Line Interface open to people who are really proficient(or want to be) in unix. Apple's Marketing Campaign tried very hard to hide the fact that there is a CLI available to regular PC/Mac users.

that is my opinion of today...

:)
 
My opinion is that 2 year old threads should stay dead. Ideas expressed a few posts up aren't very relevant any more to 10.2

Besides that, I think Apple has been doing a really geed job of putting a front end that is usable on a Unix style underbody while allowing full access from the CLI.

On the bad side, I think they're getting kinda linuxy with their "toss everything in the kernel" fetish. Mach was not meant to be this. Unix was not designed so that you could avoid all of the protection of the system by running everything in kernel space.

I think 10.1.5 was 1000 times more stable and sturdy than 9.1 with a typical installation of applications. I have found that 10.2 seems to be about 10 times as crash/lockup prone as 10.1.5 - I understand that it's about 100 times better than 9.1 was, but I feel like we're losing ground. All those darn speed whiners have countered the OS's tendency toward uber-stability. I don't even want to wander into the territories of "My blue screen is prettier than your" because I don't want to know what it looks like. Worse yet, I don't want the kernel to lock up and not even properly panic. That doesn't help at all in troubleshooting.
 
On the contrary..

I believe the move from a black and white interface to a colored interface in the upcoming system 7 will be of TREMENDOUS value to Apple's user base. Windows 3.1 is going to be out the door soon and Apple needs to stay competitive or they might lose a LOT of ground to microsoft, who I believe might end up controlling the software market entirely if things keep going the way they're going.

I know I'm only 12 years old but I'll be all grown up soon!

Look, mommy! There's no planes in the sky

uhhh.. p-poop.. poo- pooped.. my pants.... uhhhh

-Carlos-
 
toast, I disagree.

I believe that the pharaoh would be much more interested in the creation of a ROUND object for transporting things to and from the great pyramids, which are coming along quite beautifully might I add.

I believe that your quadrilateral design for a ground-mover is inefficient.

I propose going back to the round design, and .... and... the ingenious idea of connecting two rounds to a long stick, which would make the rounds turn round and round without needing slaves to pick up the rounds and carry them back to the front of the transporting thing!!

I believe I will call this.... a wheel.

Wheeeel. Wheel wheel wheel wheel. Say it a bunch of times, it's fun!! Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel Wheel
 
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