what's the skinny on 10.4?

Well. KDE was an example. I think the gui could be more customizable (and not via external hacks). So, maybe even the standard aqua and brushed metal etc appleistic ways could do. BUT give the option to choose how much energy you put to your gui! Not everyone has the latest, nicest, fastest and biggest machine, and sometimes some tasks take too much resources.. in those cases it would _jut_ be so nice to have a few options to reduce temporarily the gui (like disable shadows and everything needing calculating, jsut for the time of running some programs).
 
fryke said:
The database-driven file system? Not so sure. I don't want another 'layer' between the files and me. One of the best things about classic Mac OS' file handling was its direct way (for the user). You take a file, put it somewhere, and that's where it is. I want database-driven filing for MP3s (got that in iTunes), photos (got that in iPhoto) and mails (got that in Mail.app). Do I want it for Word files? I don't _do_ Word files. Do I want it for Photoshop files? Not really, as I use them for _projects_ - and the Finder should let _me_ handle the filing the way I want to. It does in most cases, but in some ways, the old Finder (OS 9 and lower) was better.
Click to expand...

All fair comments, can't really object to any of it.

I know what you mean about Classic with file handling. Apple took a lot of criticism from the guys at The Register when they moved away from the intelligent: "I might just be a file, but not only do I know _what_ I am, but I also know _who_ I belong to" to: "Well, they told me Microsoft Windows works like this, so who cares. By the way, just _who_ created me again?"

I get a lot of creator conflicts that just didn't happen with Classic. But maybe it was a necessary evil, some trade off against what they have in mind for the future.

Having a database driven file system is a big improvement for all of the reasons you sight as not being important to you, I would need!

In fairness, it might well be Microsoft who makes the better transition. Think about it; they're moving a lot of their applications over to xml, and they have some heavy-duty sql applications all ready to roll in.

That said, it'd probably cost a mint and work like a dog...
 
Giaguara said:
BUT give the option to choose how much energy you put to your gui! Not everyone has the latest, nicest, fastest and biggest machine, and sometimes some tasks take too much resources.. in those cases it would _jut_ be so nice to have a few options to reduce temporarily the gui (like disable shadows and everything needing calculating, jsut for the time of running some programs).
Click to expand...

I can't see Apple budging an inch on this one, and I have to agree with them. I went through the tinkerer stage for about three or four years. In the end, all I had left was Aaron, which emulated to look & feel of the "future" Copland OS .. where the hell did that go to? ;-)

The big thing with Apple is the consistency. On Windows, you've got about four different ways to close a window - and that's not counting the key strokes. It's a mess!

By enforcing a consistent look & feel across everything, you ensure that once you've figured one mac out, you don't have to do it all over again.

With KDE et al, the differences aren't major, but they're still differences, and it's a jolt to some people.

I think this schism in UI is actually working against Linux. Not with the hairy-palmed geek who probably never goes near the UI and lives out of the command line, but to the marketing efforts of Linux as a whole to court the corporate buyer and the home user.

I don't want to know the differences between one distro and another, and I certainly don't want to have to wrestle with another UI...
 
octane said:
... the intelligent: "I might just be a file, but not only do I know _what_ I am, but I also know _who_ I belong to" to: "Well, they told me Microsoft Windows works like this, so who cares. By the way, just _who_ created me again?"...
Click to expand...
Scot Hacker, the BeOS Geek has a good argument about a better way to do File-associations.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=421&page=13
Having come from BeOS to MacOSX myself, I agree with him on all counts. My biggest gripe with MacOSX is when I download something from another Mac User and it's associated with some bizarre app for Classic.
It's not so much a problem with 10.3 because it mainly affected PDFs... now all PDFs are opened in Preview; I don't have Acrobat installed.
If you still can't wrap you head around mime-typing, check out
http://www.birdhouse.org/macos/beos_osx/redux.html
and
http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/

octane said:
...I get a lot of creator conflicts that just didn't happen with Classic. But maybe it was a necessary evil, some trade off against what they have in mind for the future...
Click to expand...
I think's it is an unneccessary Evil. The whole concept of Creator Codes is flawed from the start. Why view an Image in PhotoShop, just because you created it in PhotoShop? Sound's a bit like overkill to me.
octane said:
...In fairness, it might well be Microsoft who makes the better transition. Think about it; they're moving a lot of their applications over to xml, and they have some heavy-duty sql applications all ready to roll in.

That said, it'd probably cost a mint and work like a dog...
Click to expand...
And at least the Task-Based File-Associations that are being louded to be in Longhorn can be implemented so much easily in MacOSX, Just have A Context Menu specific to what each App actually does to the file.
For HTML Documents, for example;
> Edit (with Text Edit)
> Code (with XCode)
> View (with Safari)
> View (with Internet Explorer)
> View (with Camino)
> ...
For Images, for example;
> Edit (with PhotoShop)
> View (with Preview)
> Convert (with AppleScript)
> Rescale (with AppleScript)
> ...
For MP3's, for example;
> Playlist (with iTunes)
> Edit (with Quicktime)
> Edit (with ProTools)
> ReSample (with Quicktime)
> ...

The power of Applescript can do most of the little tasks, without having to launch the Über-swiss-army-knife-super-powerful-super-big.App for what is essentially a small task.
 
Yes, but. :)

If you, like me, had come from classic Mac OS, you'd probably appreciate Type/Creator more. It was (or seems, even now) more intuitive.

What I really, really _hate_ right now is how Mail handles JPEG attachments. Try 'Open with...'. My submenu counts about 200 applications that can open JPEGs. Because of QuickTime, of course. It's nice that almost ANY application can open JPEGs, but do I really _WANT_ to open a JPEG with "BBEdit"? Or even better: "Constrain to 300 pixels.exe"? (Guess that's a Photoshop filter or script.) No: I want a choice for such 'default' files. I want a place where I manage file types and handlers. And still I want the creator of a file (at least for locally created files) to be the 'owner' (i.e. for double-clicking...).

Ah, I guess there's no really good way... At least not a 'simple', 'intuitive' and 'powerful' way. Guess you could say:

1. Simple.
2. Intuitive.
3. Powerful.

Choose 'two'. Seems like Mac OS X has chosen 'powerful' and 'random' (selecting number 4 out of 3...).
 
fryke said:
... I want a place where I manage file types and handlers. And still I want the creator of a file (at least for locally created files) to be the 'owner' (i.e. for double-clicking...).

Ah, I guess there's no really good way... At least not a 'simple', 'intuitive' and 'powerful' way. Guess you could say:

1. Simple.
2. Intuitive.
3. Powerful.

Choose 'two'. Seems like Mac OS X has chosen 'powerful' and 'random' (selecting number 4 out of 3...).
Click to expand...

I don't mean to harp on, but BeOS was definately 2. Intuitive and 3. Powerful. There was a Filetype Preference panel which could facilitate the creation of new Mime Types, you could add and remove file compatability from Apps (using the File System Attributes) and you could customise Associated Apps on a Per-File basis.
One use I found for all these tools was to create a Filetype called "Comic", which had attributes like "Artist", "Writer", "URL" and of course "Height" and "Width" (to name a few). I also added support for image/x-comic to the ShowImage app so I could view the damned things. If I found a better Image Viewer, I could remove the association of image/x-comic from ShowImage and apply it to the other Viewer. iComic in MacOSX provides similar functionallity (with Downloading Support too), but isn't as good as my Powerful Roll-Your-Own Solution. :)
While this Solution was simpler than actually learning ObjC and PERL and writing iComic, it wasn't a simple process, so BeFS misses out on number 1.

I'm sure that simplicity could be engineered in without compromising on Power and Intuitiveness, but Be didn't do it. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why BeOS is dead. :(
 
fryke said:
Yes, but. :)

If you, like me, had come from classic Mac OS, you'd probably appreciate Type/Creator more. It was (or seems, even now) more intuitive.

What I really, really _hate_ right now is how Mail handles JPEG attachments. Try 'Open with...'. My submenu counts about 200 applications that can open JPEGs. Because of QuickTime, of course. It's nice that almost ANY application can open JPEGs, but do I really _WANT_ to open a JPEG with "BBEdit"? Or even better: "Constrain to 300 pixels.exe"? (Guess that's a Photoshop filter or script.)
Click to expand...

Very true.

Worse still, the menu is just a text list. I like to see application icons, that helps me rush up and down the visually rather than having to read a list of names...
 
An application list of, say 200, with icons would take a long time to load... I want five (good) items with icons. :)
 
Has everyone seen the looking glass demo from Sun?

It's very cool, and while it's obviously using technology similar to Aqua Extreme, I like the idea that even Sun is thinking about the interface in new and interesting ways. Innovation is always good, no matter where it comes from (well, almost always).

I'd like to see a lot more innovation in 10.4 than we did in 10.3. Don't get me wrong - I love Panther, but I feel like we're still only barely scratching the surface of a revolution in computer interfaces. Expose is just a light demo of the power of technology like Aqua Extreme.

An interface should be natural and tactile. An interface should feel like an extension of the mind, as are your fingers and toes.

Today's interfaces still aren't much different than they were in 1984. A lot has changed in 20 years, but I don't work with my system tremendously different than I did back then. (Come on, someone is still shipping a one-button mouse? Give me a break.)

Microsoft is not known for simply sitting idle. Barring something unforseen happening, Longhorn is going to be drastically different (better?) than Win2k/XP. Sun's demo shows us that other companies are exploring new areas as well. Apple has the platform advantage at the moment, but I'm afraid that if we move forward at the same pace that we have for the last 2 or 3 years, we'll have fallen behind other innovators...
 
I love the strides Apple has taken with the finder. The as-you-type searching has completely changed the way I work, especially since the search results come right inline in the finder window, and you end up goign back to your last window, just by clearing the search field. My question for everyone is this. Apple was pretty clear in 2000 about their intentions on a few things. For example, Steve Jobs hinted about "Multiple Finders". When talking about the finder, he said something along the lines of (not direct quote, but I have the video,a nd will watch later to double check) "the finder is a great tool for using files, and it's going to stay that way. You don't go to the finder to find e-mails. Thats because there are far more intuitive ways" to do these different things. Things have been moving in this direction as well. As of 10.3 the V-Twin search was part of the finder to get nearly instant access to any file. The Searchkit is part of carbon and cocoa. The SearchKit is as fast as it is, I believe, because of the journaling. Do I think that Apple has a lot more to do with the finder and the way we work with files? Definately. Does it necessarily have to be database driven? Not really. Apple has been moving in kind of a rhythm in their actions. What do I personally think is going to be in the next verion? How about Smart Folders? We have all ready seen Smart Playlists in itunes, where you tell it certain rules, and it creates a list based on that meet those rules. It could just as easily work in the finder, where it brings up alias's to that one folder. What about Piles? To me, Expose seems like a Piles way of organizing Windows. The next logical step is to let you work with files in these same ways.

One thing that has been standing out in my mind is what is it that a Database can do that Apple can't all ready to with Metadata? Well, you can probably build relations between people, and files. Lets say that "Brandon" sends me a file through ichat. iChat knows that Brandon sent me the e-mail, and puts something in the Metadata, that links him to it in some way. Maybe his initials will show up in the lower corner of the icon or maybe his buddy icon.

The beautiful thing about the iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, and maybe iCal specifically), they all let you go into their XML, and use their data to do different things with the types of functions they provide.
 
The question is whether these things _should_ be stored in the files. For example, I wouldn't want a GIF file sent to me as 3K in size to grow to 50K before I upload it to the web-server, just because the stupid file now 'knows' who sent it to me, whether that person is online and what other files 'might be' related to it. ;-) I also enjoy having some privacy. I don't want all my web-guests to know who created a GIF-file and what other services that persons offer me. See? Metadata (many of it) should be local.
 
Giaguara said:
.. and maybe some of the things added to 10.4 will be those that have always been in the other unix bases OSs but not in OS X. such as multiple desktops .. (yes expose is cool but if you had 4 desktops it'd be moere comfrotable .. ).
Click to expand...

FYI, I am using Expose with 2 each 19" monitors and 6 desktops with Codek Virtual Desktop - for my purposes this is way more than I would ever need and I find that I no longer rely on the virtual desktops since Expose (especially since controlling Expose via my Logitech MX700 mouse). Still, it would be nice to see how Apple does multiple desktops.
 
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