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Hawkeye_a · Mar 25, 2007, 05:07 AM

Apple has been doing really well recently and they have some amazing products available. but i do miss some of the things that made the Macintosh, Macintosh.

What i'm talking about has more to do with usability than hardware. things like....
-the switcher
-balloon help
-power button on the keyboard (big one)
-Labels (where the icon gets tinted instead of a different color background for the text)
-"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

OSX is great, but the older OSs just seemed "friendlier" .....

/end rant

Cheers

Big Mac · Mar 25, 2007, 05:15 AM

The switcher... you mean the application menu? I personally don't miss it but I'm sure you can find shareware alternatives.

I agree with keyboard power. Balloon help was... crappy, but I do wish Apple had not ditched the interactive Help with coach marks found in OS 8. Labels in OS X are fine IMO.

Aron Peterson · Mar 25, 2007, 05:20 AM

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

-Labels (where the icon gets tinted instead of a different color background for the text)

I have used Labels X and Xounds with the Platinum theme since Unsanity released them. I also use WindowShade with minimize-in-place (Before that I used the mip hack in 10.1). My only specific complaint about OS X is how much screen space the GUI takes up and how widely spaced the icon view's grid is. Otherwise I don't miss OS 9's crashes and poor cooperative multi-tasking at all. What made me switch full-time from Windows was pre-emptive multi-tasking and true symetric multi-processing. If they never appeared on a Mac I'd probably still be using Windows NT4.

voodoo · Mar 25, 2007, 09:12 AM

Agreed Hawkeye_a, the old OS seemed friendlier and way more thought went into making it like that. OS X is.. polite. Not friendly.

V

Big Mac · Mar 25, 2007, 09:37 AM

Originally Posted by voodoo

Agreed Hawkeye_a, the old OS seemed friendlier and way more thought went into making it like that. OS X is.. polite. Not friendly.

V

Do you have any other basis for saying that other than the reasons already stated?

TETENAL · Mar 25, 2007, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

-the switcher

The application menu? I would say the Dock is easier to understand and use. But regardless of how you see it, you are forgetting Exposé for switching windows. In my opinion Exposé is the greatest UI invention in the last 10 years. So you can't say Apple isn't innovating any more UI-wise.

-balloon help

The way it was implemented it was more annoying then helpful. And it was a lot of work for developers to provide useful information (beyond "This is the close box. Click here to close the window.") so most didn't. Balloon help was practically useless. OS X has replaced it with tooltips which are less annoying due to the delay until they appear and they put less burdon on the developer so the are more widely supported.

-power button on the keyboard (big one)

I miss that too. Sleep uses practically the same amount of power than standby. Today any button is the power (wake from sleep) button.

-Labels (where the icon gets tinted instead of a different color background for the text)

With tinted icons is impossible to exactly identify the label colour. The background behind the text is not a mixture, so you can tell better which colour it is. This is actually a step forward in usability.

-"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

I don't get what you mean by that.

voodoo · Mar 25, 2007, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Do you have any other basis for saying that other than the reasons already stated?

...?

V

starman · Mar 25, 2007, 10:23 AM

Was the older OS "friendlier" or was Windows that much different, making the Mac OS seem that way?

mindwaves · Mar 25, 2007, 10:23 AM

I also missed the power button on the kb. To me, that was the distinguishing feature of a Macintosh kb.

Now, the distinguishing feature is the white color and the volume controls.

Big Mac · Mar 25, 2007, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by voodoo

...?

I love those kinds of responses. They are so very edifying.

OldManMac · Mar 25, 2007, 10:36 AM

To me, the good old days weren't. I started playing with Macs in '98, when I bought a used Quadra 660AV for my daughter, who's in college (I had already owned a number of computers, going back to 1983). She didn't use it much, as she was dating her future husband then, so I played with it, just because it was different, and it was something new to learn. My first Mac, a 2000 B&W G3, was a horribly unstable, crash prone, lock up prone, POS. It was so bad that the dealer, where I worked, took it back six months later, and gave me a new G4, with no difference in price. That machine worked a lot better, but, if it hadn't been for OS X coming out, I doubt if I would have stayed with Macs. Many people seem to credit the iPod for being one of the major reasons that Apple rebounded; they forget that, without a stable operating system to run it on, it would be just another music player.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2007, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by mindwaves

I also missed the power button on the kb. To me, that was the distinguishing feature of a Macintosh kb.

Now, the distinguishing feature is the white color and the volume controls.

I miss the power button a lot too. It would be sweet to have a Bluetooth keyboard with a power button.

analogue SPRINKLES · Mar 25, 2007, 10:56 AM

I agree with the original post but I am glad to get rid of all those things as long as I no longer have to rebuild the desktop or have extension conflicts.

voodoo · Mar 25, 2007, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I love those kinds of responses. They are so very edifying.

You posed a lazy and leading question. You already know the answer, so what are you after?

V