Mac OS X Public Beta
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Having been an Apple customer since the Apple IIc, I was worried. OS 9 had a snappiness to it. OS X would struggle to change windows. At the time, Windows 98 and even moreso Windows NT could run circles around OS X. With XP dropping the same year, Windows consumers were running a really well optimized OS compared to an OS X that needed a lot of work.
Apple has come a long way since those dark times to having a truly enviable OS. They quickly got 10.1 out the door and 10.2 and 10.3 shipped in around 1-year increments (with 10.4 shipping a year and a half after 10.3). Apple really did a lot of work and, at this point, I don't think anyone questions Apple's ability to push a great OS, but there were some really bad times.
I remember people questioning whether it was that the Mach kernel was just inherently slow (igniting lots of micro vs monolithic debates) or whether the compositing window manager was worth anything or coming up with theories that it was because Apple replaced Display PostScript with Display PDF to get around Adobe licensing or whatnot. Today, the majority of Mac users probably never experienced that bad time of trepidation when the future of the Mac platform was in doubt. Today, it's really great to be a Mac user. It's hard to imagine a time when Apple's products were so fringe. At nearly 10% of the market (and nearly all of the premium market), Apple feels so strong and people really know Apple (both for computers and other devices).
Kudos to Apple for taking the risk and getting through the bad transition to what is a really wonderful OS. And kudos for making each new OS version feel better than the previous.
I was so scared of OS X, I stuck around on OS 9 until, I think 10.2. I might have stayed longer but my G3/266 (with AV personality card!) ended up biting the dust. The G4 that replaced it shipped with OS X and I took the plunge.
It was tough, at first. At that point I'd been a Mac user for ten years. I was a power user. OS X made me a newb again.
It was all for the best. OS X has been perfect for both home and work use. In the end, I give it so much less thought than what System 6 - Mac OS 9 required. It stays out of the way and just lets me work.
In addition, Apple gave developers a boatload of APIs and UI classes that let you build a surprisingly solid app with minimal effort. I cranked out a little desktop app a few weeks ago in about 25 hours. This results in an amazing freeware and shareware scene.
What a long way to come, for Apple and for all of us.
Apple has always taken the risk, it is one thing I love about them. You only need to look to their processor choices to see that: 68k -> PPC -> Intel. All transitions were just as painful as the OS9 -> OSX transition was. All in the name of pushing forward.
And I bought one of the first white iBooks (post toilet seat design) with the sole intention of using OSX (I'd used MacOS from 7 through 9, but departed briefly around that time). It was so slow it was literally completely unusable.
I do admit though, to this day there are things about OS Classic I really miss.
That wasn't bad.
And just lots of other little things that added up. Like placing the close button on its own side of the window. So if you are clicking in that region, then you've only got one target so the app can more confidently know you really did mean to close the window. Now in OSX, maybe you meant minimize? Or how the trash can was always in the lower right corner, using the edges of the screen to its advantage. If you dragged an item that far down, then you only had one possible destination, the trash, so the OS confidently places the item in the trash without nagging you for a confirmation (like Windows does by default). No OSX doesn't nag you, but the trash can isn't taking advantage of the corner of the screen either.
Minor things, yes, but I still feel the Apple of old thought about these things more thoroughly.
I like your other points though.
Really, that's easy: Apple Platinum (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager). I know, it's heresy! Still, I like the elegant simplicity of Apple Platinum. The color is brighter than the Windows grey; I like the horizontal pin-striping in the title bar; I like the purple accents which give it a soft, classy feel (rather than a more contrast-y feel) and it feels easier on my eyes than, say, Windows; I like the simplicity of the controls (such as the simple two black horizontal lines for the "shade-up" function) combined with the soft gradient of the square control. I think it made great use of space as well. The title bar wasn't big as is the current trend (damn kids wasting my pixels).
I'm also just not the biggest fan of the transparent movement. I don't find that it increases my usability, but rather detracts from it by making things fuzzy. For example, the OS X menu (today) is mostly opaque - you can't read anything behind it. However, the little transparency makes it harder to read as there's fuzzy changes behind where you're trying to read. Windows Aero is the worst. Those transparent windows with the changing fuzzyness depending on how you move them - yikes! I also don't like that the menu is white. Contrast is good, but I prefer black on platinum to black on white for my eyes.
There's even a little part of me that misses pixel-based icons. Having a set canvas to work with meant that authors tried to pack good meaning into small space. Now, you're expected to waste lots of pixels. Yeah, I like my screen real-estate.
Now, nothing I've said is objective at all. It's just my aesthetic. OS X, as time has gone on, has gotten closer to my aesthetic. Some of the more garish things have left, but the horizontal pin-stripes have also left. I don't want to make this sound like I don't think OS X is nice to look at - it is. But there's a part of me that misses the simple look of OS 9 and BeOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BeOS_Desktop.png) which had an elegance about them. Apple has done wonderful things with the OS X interface and I don't want to sound negative about OS X (plus, at least half of this is nostalgia talking). It's wonderful and so much better and I'm really happy with it.
Have you given HaikuOS any time ?
Completely agreed: the fact that OSX UI (and iTunes) change in arbitrarily small ways with each release seems like evidence that they are orbiting a local maximum rather than making absolute progress. But Linux distros and Windows are just as bad. And much more interesting advances are happening with multitouch on iOS, so I give Apple a pass.
At least there's a pref for the menu: System Preferences > Desktop > Translucent Menu Bar.
although I suppose most people were still using Windows Me, the last DOS-based Windows, rather than Windows 2000, which descended from NT. They looked pretty similar, though:
http://www.google.com/images?q=windows+me+screenshot
Windows XP was released a year later and was the first release to unify the workstation and desktop lines on the same foundation (with the Home & Professional variants).
At the time, Windows beat OS X in some areas that are no longer important.. like very easy to resize windows and more consistent minimize/maximize behavior, all of which are less important in a high resolution world.
It goes to show that great product design is often more fashion than timelessness.
Most fashion-followers just specced a teal translucent instead of the beige they'd been using, left the design the same, and called it a day.
When Aqua was presented people loved it people hated it but nobody could ignore it. The first time you installed Mac OS X made you feel like you were in a whole new world.
Of course it wasn't that practical and funnily most of it has reverted back... before they pinstripes got faded, then we got the metallic grey, and now just a nice subtle grey.
All that is left from those old days are the traffic light buttons, the gem-blue scroll bars, and the standard button look.
What are you talking about? The pinstripes date all the way back to System 1. The modern OS X looks different from 10.0 but a lot more like 10.0 than like System 9.
True, but they were a _lot_ nicer. I remember at the time people complaining a lot about OS X look, including the stripes, and wanted the old look back. So I guess most of us don't feel like they are really the same. But I get your point.
As for the look of Snow Leopard vs. MacOS 9 and MacOS X 10.0 I'd say a lot has reverted back. The old one in particular used a lot of greys, which OS X at the beginning was trying to get away from ("Look, it's all colourful!").
So yeah, maybe I exaggerated when I said most of it, but you've got to admit that the look has moved back to the more subtle ways of Classic than the flashy ways of 10.0, no?
Mac hardware at the time had a pinstripe look, just the same. Today the interface has an "aluminum" look, as do today's Macs.
To say that experience made any hiccups with the OS X Public Beta seem tolerable would be a vast understatement.
It'll never catch on. People don't want that stuff.
Although I remember seeing an old Windows 98 box in my JCR's office... With a 800x600 CRT monitor stretched to a 1024x768 resolution. It made your eyes bleed.
I'm really glad that there's still a bunch of people on XP; it means that I don't have to bother upgrading, because anyone who targets Windows has to support XP. Sure, it's old and clunky, but that's what it's for: to run programs that are old and clunky.
Mac OS uses the 'shrinking window' effect to show you where your window has gone, and drop-shadows to give you a sense of depth. Translucency in menus gives a subtle feeling of impermanence, and subtle transparency emulates the effect of paper-on-paper, where you can kind of, but not quite, make out the letters on the page below the one you're viewing.
Compiz, however, seems to be based on the philosophy of 'Now that windows are textures, we can do arbitrary transforms on them' and throws in a lot of effects that make little sense. Menus that wobble into place, windows that behave like they're made of Jell-O, and so on. They're neat conceptually, but I tired ages ago of people pointing out how Linux was better because I could configure my windows to burn up in a puff of smoke whenever I closed them.
Sure a lot of the stuff Compiz is silly. Granted that wobbly windows is a wow factor thing, but why not? its the little nice touches that keep peoples interest in things, and makes it an enjoyable experience.
A modern version of the Librarian.app is what I miss most. It would have been so much nicer if that had been kept and expanded to include music, movies, etc.
Still, it would be annoying to find it when you have three 30 inch screens... The menu bar right on the window containing the data it's supposed to operate on is still a better solution.
You can give it a try with the GNUStep apps that come with modern Linuxes.
When I first saw OSX I thought it was ugly and slow compared to Windows 2000, although it looked better than RedHat, which was my main OS at the time. I didn't like OSX for a really long, long time. In fact I still don't trust it. Yes it's a nice desktop OS for end users and I'm typing this from a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV, but it still has it's quirks and sometimes just doesn't feel 'right'.
Having said that, a lot of what used to distinguish OSes (UI paradigms, available software, hardware architecture) has either fizzled out or become less relevant, so each to their own I guess. Mind you, I live in a house with everything from AROS to Windows in terms of popular OSes.
Et plus ça change, ...
"beta"
A name that needs an explanatory paragraph to pronounce correctly and doesn't really make logical sense.
Sound technical foundations that run slow on today's hardware.
Having two OSes and a transition strategy.
Crazy UI like pinstripes and brushed metal.
Letting the Unix/Next underpinnings shine through the gaps in the UI shell.